Filmmaking

THE YEAR’S MOST DANGEROUS INDEPENDENT FILM?

Somehow, I don’t think the folks at Apple promoting iMovie had this in mind. From today’s New York Times comes this very disturbing article by Fox Butterfield about the methods by which youth gangs are threatening grand jury witnesses. (Times registration required.) The article talks about a two-hour DVD doc entitled Stop Snitching being distributed “grass-roots style” in local neighborhoods which puts out a threatening message to witnesses of violent crime. After detailing several instances where witnesses around the country have been murdered because of their grand jury testimony, the article notes: “And in each city, CD’s and DVD’s titled […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2005 Filmmaking
PARK CITY LANDSLIDE

A small addition to the world’s very strange weather woes of the moment, this news out of Park City. One and possibly two skiers have been trapped in a giant landslide in Park City, Utah near the Canyons Resort, just days before this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 14, 2005 Filmmaking
THE BEST-FINANCED INDEPENDENT FILM COMPANY IN NEW YORK

Well done piece by Eddie Borges in the New York Observer about Blueprint, the new New York-based collaboration between Initial Entertainment’s Graham King and former Miramax exec Rick Schwartz, famous for his supporting role in Project Greenlight. Writes Borges, “And so, earlier this year, Blueprint opened its sparsely furnished offices in a second-story loft overlooking Mercer Street in Soho, marking the arrival of a new big fish in the small pond of Manhattan’s film world. For, despite the apparent frugality of its offices, as a subsidiary of Mr. King’s Santa Monica-based film sales company, Initial Entertainment Group, which just secured […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 13, 2005 Filmmaking
INDIE PRAXIS

Filmmaker readers should check out two essential articles in the Village Voice this week by friends and colleagues Anthony Kaufman and Ted Hope. Both deal with the relationship between our current political climate and the state of indie filmmaking today. Kaufman, who gives up his “NY Scene” column in our magazine this month due to his move to Chicago, asks the question, “Reagan-era callousness sparked an indie film renaissance. Will Bush 2 inspire another?” Kaufman’s piece winds its way through discussions with Christine Vachon, James Schamus and Jeff Levy-Hinte before concluding with a trenchant inquiry by HBO’s Colin Callendar: “Whether […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 12, 2005 Filmmaking
THE NEW INDIE SCENE… THE GAMING SCENE, THAT IS

One topic Graham Leggat’s Game Engine column in Filmmaker regularly returns to is the rise of “independent gaming” in the videogame world. Just as independent filmmakers reacted against studio monoliths in the ’80s to start a new wave of indie production, there is now a slowly emerging groundswell of developers doing something similar in the world of videogaming. From the Guardian‘s gaming weblog comes this beginning-of-the-year piece, “Nine Foolish Videogame Predictions for 2005.” One of these predictions is “The Rise of the Indie Scene”: “The dominance of EA doesn’t necessarily mean the death of smallscale videogame production. Far from it. […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2005 Filmmaking
LIKE SUNDANCE USED TO BE…

From a story in Variety: “The porn industry’s AVN Adult Entertainment Expo has always been a colorful, if slightly tawdry, event, a reliable resource for camera crews looking to goose news ratings in the name of covering the multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry. However, in what is the AEE’s seventh year since splitting away from Las Vegas’s concurrent Consumer Electronics Show, the porn event has begun to look a little more like Park City… Like the Sundance Film Festival of a decade ago, the once scrappy trade show has begun to make big deals with corporate sponsors. It’s attracting celebs who […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 6, 2005 Filmmaking
ARTISTS FOR TSUNAMI RELIEF

A few days ago we posted an email from independent producer Tanya Selvaratnum about the devastating effects of the tsunami in her homeland of Sri Lanka. Now, Selvaratnum in conjunction with Syndicate is organizing a benefit in New York on January 20 in which 100% of the proceeds will go towards tsunami relief. There will be appearances from Angela McCluskey, Metro Area (Morgan Geist + Darshan Jesrani), Moby, Vernon Reid, DJ Rekha, Anna Deavere Smith, DJ Spooky, and Colson Whitehead. The Benefit Committee consists of: Alpana Bawa, Claude Arpels & Winsome Brown, Jennie Boddy, Gabri Christa & Vernon Reid, Nathan […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 6, 2005 Filmmaking
TALES OF BUBBA

Interesing news via Variety (registration required) today. Producer Michael London is partnering with Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner to produce for Paramount “a coming-of-age film about James ‘Bubba’ Smith, a teen who is to motocross racing what Tiger Woods is to golf.” It’s interesting not just because this story seems to be staking out some territory before a new Paramount head, presumably Brad Grey, comes in (says Variety, somewhat obliquely, “In an unusual development, Par topper Donald De Line has allowed development to progress without assigning an exec. The producers wanted it that way so they could flesh out their […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 6, 2005 Filmmaking
DESPERATE CRITICS

A TV show used to be many years in syndication before it became critical fodder for academics and intellectuals. But as it has swiftly climbed the ratings ladders, Desperate Housewives has also attracted notice from the sorts of writers who wouldn’t normally stoop to covering TV. Like Germaine Greer. Here’s the author of The Female Eunuch on the hit ABC show, as reviewed in The Guardian: “The series has nothing to say about the vicissitudes of the average or even the well-to-do American stay-at-home wife; it is neither feminist, nor pro-feminist nor proto-feminist nor post-feminist. Feminism has as little to […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 5, 2005 Filmmaking
EIGHT IS ENOUGH

Via press release we learned of producer Effie T. Brown’s ambitious new production and development slate — eight pictures ranging from a horror movie with a black cast to a couple of period dramas. She also announced that her production company, Duly Noted, has a first-look deal with HBO’s Original Programming Department. Brown, who received the IFP Producing Spirit Award three years ago, has been a producer on several HBO movies, including Real Women Have Curves, and The Stranger Inside, and she was also Executive Producer of Jane Campion’s hugely underrated In the Cut, which is on cable a lot […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 5, 2005 Filmmaking

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