Filmmaking

ADDITIVE CINEMA

Holly Willis has a fascinating piece up at the L.A. Weekly about an internet-based new-media film entitled No Animals Were Hurt by Peter Brinson. Writes Willis: At the very moment I write this, Peter Brinson’s online biopic of inventor Alan Turing is 33 percent its proper length. That’s because since early January, when the site with the video was launched, there have been 17,044 viewers, each one unlocking and revealing a single frame in the video’s 5,000 frames. As the number of viewers grows closer to multiples of 5,000, the video images slow down, allowing the voice-over to complete the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 23, 2006 Filmmaking
FEVER DREAMS

Redford on this year’s Sundance on Yahoo: “It’s gotten to the point now — almost to a breaking point — where there’s a fever that has taken over the festival that creates an enormous amount of chaos and excitement and tension,” the 68-year-old actor said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “It’s gotten a little bit harder on me… “The festival that we do is the same one as we did the first year,” he said. “We program it exactly the same every year, which is for new voices and more experimental films.” The difference now, Redford said, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 23, 2006 Filmmaking
A LIFE IN TICKET STUBS

There’s an eccentric tracking of life and movies through ticket stubs posted by Mike over at Botsko.net. Having collected all his movie ticket stubs for six years, he puts their data in a spreadsheet and analyzes his moviegoing habits through dating, Fandango, ticket price increases, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the birth of his child. One of his conclusions: he wound up paying more for movies he liked: What’s interesting though is that the average price I paid per ticket reflects my opinion of the movie. The better I rated the movie, the more I paid on average […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 23, 2006 Filmmaking
CRANKED UP

Twitch, which is a great site covering what it calls “strange little films from around the world” (with a heavy emphasis on Asian art and genre films) links to Handcranked Films, a collective of filmmakers who include War (pictured) director Jake Mahaffy, one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of 2005. What I didn’t realize until Twitch’s piece is that Handcranked includes a number of other filmmakers, including Daniel Sousa and Jeff Slas, and that all of their work is featured on the site. Here’s what Todd at Twitch has to say about them: “Handcranked is a collective of film makers […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 22, 2006 Filmmaking
CURRY’S ROAD TO THE OSCARS

The Reeler has a good piece up on Marshall Curry, whose Street Fight opened today at New York’s IFC Center. From the piece: “While viewing Curry’s riveting film last week, it occurred to me that this could absolutely be the dark horse nominee come March 5. In chronicling Newark’s 2002 mayoral race between relative newcomer Cory Booker and Jersey’s reigning machine-politics king Sharpe James, Curry captures a system imploded by racism, corruption, lies and at least a few physical altercations. Perhaps more shockingly, Street Fight reflects the assured work of a first-time feature filmmaker–a guy who quit his job, bought […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 22, 2006 Filmmaking
WHO’S THE GENIUS?

I ran into a colleague on the street a few hours ago who caught me up on some depresing industry buzz that had been circulating in Berlin: that Genius, the parent company of theatrical distributor Wellspring which is majority-owned by the Weinstein Company, is effectively shuttering the classy specialty distributor that has released so many great foreign and independent films. And now, Eugene Hernandez has the details in Indiewire. Going forward, the Wellspring name will become a home-video brand, and the Weinstein Company says they’ll release Wellspring’s upcoming theatrical titles. About ten people in Wellspring’s theatrical division will lose their […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 21, 2006 Filmmaking
AN EX-PAT IN PARIS

Josh Horowitz has a good conversation with writer/director Whit Stillman up on his Better than Fudge blog. His transcribed phone call works as a solid “part two” to Anthony Kaufman’s piece in the current Filmmaker which discussed the making of Metropolitan on the release of the film’s new Criterion release. Here’s the end of the piece, but click on the link above to read the whole thing: “JH: What do you miss most about making films?WS: Number one, an income. Number two, director’s guild health insurance. Number three I just miss the extroverted production life, being around technicians and being […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 21, 2006 Filmmaking
SCRAMBLE SUITED

There’s a new trailer up for Richard Linklater’s Philip K. Dick adaptation A Scanner Darkly. It’s way better than the previous teaser as it highlights the film’s woozy humor as much as its panoptic paranoia. When I interviewed Rick for Filmmaker, the film was slated to come out this spring. It’s been pushed to summer, so this trailer will have to tide you over in the meantime…

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2006 Filmmaking
THE SILENCE IS OVER

Forgive us as we iron out the kinks on the new site design. We just learned that due to an improper setting comments from readers have been going into the ether as opposed to onto our website. We’ve just reinstated those formerly lost comments and have changed our settings so comments are posted immediately.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2006 Filmmaking
EARTHSHAKER

Chris Gardner in Variety reports today that producer Michael London has launched a new financing and production company, Groundswell Productions. Starting with a capitalization of $55 million, the company plans to raise a total of $100 million and produce five films a year with budgets under $20 million. From the piece: “Groundswell’s business strategy will be a mix of foreign pre-sales for projects with established stars or pure equity investments in filmmaker-driven projects. The company’s slate will mix films from established directors and emerging talent alongside comedies and genre films. London said with Groundswell he will be looking for projects […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2006 Filmmaking

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