Filmmaking

RACY VIDEO

Harmony Korine has directed a new Cat Power video, “Living Proof.” There’s a short piece and a comments page over at Antville. (His previous clip for Bonnie “Prince Billy,” aka Will Oldham, star of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, is here.)

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2006 Filmmaking
FRESH REVIEWS

Ann Thompson has a good “Risky Business” column up at The Hollywood Reporter that tracks the growth of Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review aggregator. Along with Metacritic, the site is part of a shift by which now 90% of a younger demographic finds their movie reviews online. Thompson describes how Rotten Tomatoes survived the Internet bust and is now a thriving go-to advertising destination for distributors confident of the critical appeal of their films.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2006 Filmmaking
PIRACY, SWARMING AND THE PARADIGM SHIFT OF BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Producer Ted Hope emailed me about this essential three-part series by Mark Pesce entitled “Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV.” It’s from May, 2005, but it’s still an utterly relevant essay on how television producers can successfully adapt to a BitTorrent world in which audiences are in control of the process of distribution. Pesce’s predictions are provocative — he believes, for example, that the broadcast networks are soon to morph into high-powered ad agencies as opposed to content distributors — and I’m not sure I agree with all of his advice to producers regarding the content of […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2006 Filmmaking
SEXIER THAN PARIS HILTON

Good article in The Guardian about Al Gore’s trip to Sundance with the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. From the piece: “What can a film that has helped make Al Gore sexier than Paris Hilton possibly be about? A partial list of its contents would include the greenhouse gas effect, the proliferation of carbon dioxide, the convection energy of hurricanes, the paradoxical flood-drought syndrome, melting methane in Siberia, the history of the Ice Age and the physics of solar ray absorption. It becomes no clearer why this film is having such an impact when you learn that it largely takes the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2006 Filmmaking
BROKEBACK MASH-UP

The strangest thing about the Brokeback Mountain phenomenon is the extent to which a movie that has so thoroughly entered the popular cultural discourse plays as an extremely private film. Gay or straight, one feels as if one is the only person in the theater while watching Lee’s intimate epic. Contrast that highly personal feeling with the late-night talk show jokes and SNL parodies and one finds a rare case of a soft-voiced, emotionally penetrating film that doubles as a cultural juggernaut careening through the contemporary zeitgeist. The latest affectionate parody is this trailer mash-up by students at Emerson College […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2006 Filmmaking
ROTTERDAM AWARDS

After the various industry complaints about Sundance “at the breaking point” of overcrowding and rampant commercialization this year, a trip to Rotterdam is like visiting an alternate film festival world. Relentlessly polite and civilized, the International Film Festival Rotterdam with its accompanying financing conference, the Cinemart (which I had a project in this year), provides a low-key tonic to the frenzy of Sundance and the upcoming bustle of Berlin. This year, a lot of Rotterdam industry folks had a Sundance hangover as Sundance’s international program and a desire to closely monitor U.S. premieres lead to a larger than usual delegation […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2006 Filmmaking
NAM JUNE PAIK, 1932 – 2006

Yahoo News is reporting that pioneering video artist Nam June Paik has died at 73. The Koren born artist was known for his multi-monitor sculptural video pieces, his various video happenings, and collaborations with artists like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others. When I worked at The Kitchen Center right out of college, Paik was a grand master of the video art realm, someone whose belief in the untapped power of this new art form fueled both is pieces as well as the innovative manners in which they were presented.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 31, 2006 Filmmaking
THE HARD TRUTH

For those attempting to parse the business climate at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, today’s piece by David Halbfinger in the New York Times is pretty on the money. Also, I should note that I was a trifle embarassed to have been called by Ann Thompson one of the passionate bloggers who would be reporting from Sundance and then not to have written anything. Well, I was there more in producer mode this year rather than daily reporting mode, but I did catch a bunch of films I’ll be writing about during the year. And, I am heading to Rotterdam […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 28, 2006 Filmmaking
SELF DISTRIBUTOR NO MORE

In Filmmaker this issue writer-director Andrew Bujalski interviews Caveh Zahedi, whose I am a Sex Addict won the new Filmmaker-sponsored “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” award at the Gotham’s this year. As a sidebar to the piece, Zahedi penned a “Self Distribution Manifesto” explaining the moral imperative behind his decision to distribute his film himself. Zahedi started the piece by admitting that he had always dreamed of getting big distribution deals for his film and that none were forthcoming for Sex Addict. But midway through he turned what could have been a sour-grapes rant into a […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 28, 2006 Filmmaking
FILMMAKING FROM THE HOODS

In the print magazine this issue Rupert Chiarella writes a short piece about Turn Here.com, a new website that streams short films created specifically about neighborhoods all over the United States. I figured some interesting filmmakers might be tempted to contribute to the site, but the site’s layout makes it hard to identify the directors behind the various clips. So, I was glad to get an email today from Chris Kenneally, a veteran NYC post supervisor (he post-suped Patrict Stettner’s Sundance pic The Night Listener) and also a director/producer (with co-director Danielle Franco he directed the doc Crazy Legs Conti: […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 28, 2006 Filmmaking

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