Filmmaking

ALUMNI REPORT

A couple of emails arrived this week announcing new online work from folks who have appeared here or in the print magazine. I wrote about NYU student filmmaker Sam Goetz on this blog when he took to the internet to fundraise for his student short, “Bruno.” “Breaking a record at the school’s production center for most check-outs in one semester, this film was not the easiest to get into the can,” he writes. “Fortunately, everyone put in 110% and bore through the 30+ days of shooting with a champion’s spirit.” He’s got a teaser up on the web now for […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 13, 2005 Filmmaking
ATTRACTIONS FROM FAR AWAY

This year Filmmaker partnered with the IFP to create a new award to be given out in a few weeks at this year’s Gotham Awards. Titled Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You, the award is designed to highlight worthy films that have fallen beneath the theatrical radar. We asked 18 festival programmers to each nominate two films from their festival. From this list, our editors — myself, Matt Ross, Peter Bowen, Mary Glucksman and Ray Pride — narrowed it down to five nominees and, eventually one winner. It was an interesting exercise. The films nominated by the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 13, 2005 Filmmaking
NETFLIX FINDS ITS SPIRIT

The clock is ticking on a promotion offered by Netflix and Film Independent (FIND, formerly the IFP Los Angeles) and having to do with this year’s Spirit Awards. Only FIND members are allowed to vote for the Spirit Awards, and, this year, FIND members will receive a free three-month Netflix membership and a special code allowing them to rent all the nominated films. To take advantage of this, you need to join FIND (if you’re not a member) by November 15.

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 13, 2005 Filmmaking
DOWN AND OUT… WITH NO MUSIC

Sony/BMG’s debacle over the “rootkit” copy protection on their music CDs has gotten a lot of hilarious press in the last few days. If you haven’t been following the story, the digital rights management software contained on Sony music CDs burrows deep into your operating system where it does Many Bad Things, including act as Trojan horse for a lot of malware and bad viruses. As documented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, Sony/BMG has added insult to injury by concocting a draconian end-user license agreement that treats a CD-buyer like some sort of pauper out of a Dickens’ novel. […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 13, 2005 Filmmaking
ROCK ‘EM SOCK ‘EM ROBOTS

Chris Cunningham’s new commercial for the PlayStation Portable can be found here.

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 12, 2005 Filmmaking
THE BIG TEASE

After months of internet buzz, there’s finally an “internet teaser” up for Darren Aronofsky’s long-awaited The Fountain. Check it out as well as Moriarty’s interview with Aronofsky over at Ain’t It Cool News.

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 9, 2005 Filmmaking
DIVINE NEUROSIS

Artist, filmmaker and production designer Dan Ouellette contributed a thoughtful and in-depth interview with Chris Cunningham to Filmmaker‘s current issue (sorry, it’s only in the print magazine), and today he’s just launched his new website, Neurotica Divine, which has to be one of the best personal artist sites I’ve seen. At the beginning of his film career Ouellette was known for his production design of Hal Hartley’s early work. More recentlly Ouellette production designed Alice Wu’s Saving Face. But Ouellette has always been a vivid visual artist whose work combines science-fiction and horror imagery with dashes of surrealism and dark […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2005 Filmmaking
CLOSET LAND

Somehow Filmmaker‘s proprietary search engine which scours the web to collect all manner of breaking indie film news missed the following announcement, which did not escape the sharp eye of The Reeler: R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet is now out on DVD. For those of you going “huh?”, think back to this year’s MTV Music Video Awards and that mid-show detour to Off-Broadway featuring pop star R. Kelly rapping, singing and emoting a tale of infidelity, bisexuality and a megastar hiding in a closet. Explains the publicist of the 12-part DVD film compilation, “What began as a simple music […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2005 Filmmaking
RISKY BLOGGING

Anne Thompson’s industry column “Risky Business” lived for a while at Filmmaker before moving to swankier digs at The Hollywood Reporter. Now, Thompson’s opinionated takes on the intersection of films and the film business has spawned a blog. Bookmark it now. And, via GreenCine, comes this notice of New York Times critic Dave Kehr’s blog, which is subtitled “Dave Kehr reports from the lost continent of cinephilia.” Kehr’s posts are great reads, like this early take on Harold Ramis’s upcoming Focus release, The Ice Harvest: “After all the failed attempts to capture the flavor of the great noir novelists like […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2005 Filmmaking
FOUR-EYED TOP 100

Arin Crumley and Susan Buice, makers of the film Four-Eyed Monsters, sent out an email blast announcing their new videoblog, which in just three days has been seen by over 5,000 viewers and made it onto the iTunes Music Store. And while the videoblog is ostensibly a promotional tool designed to raise awareness of the couple’s film and help it find a distribution deal, their poetic downloadable musings on art, life and filmmaking limn the contours of a new and appealing intimate aesthetic medium. Writes Crumley and Buice, “Now all we need to do is get the film distributed. But […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2005 Filmmaking

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