Columns
-
Lady Vengeance: Trollhunter Review
Any genre fan will tell you that when it comes to movie beasties, delayed gratification is key. It is considered classic good form to mount anticipation via quick glimpses of scales/fur/claws, or unnerving detritus left in the creature’s wake, all leading up to the spectacular fashion in which the monster will finally emerge. Rather than bend completely to convention, Trollhunter, with dry Scandinavian aplomb, breaks with this rule of horror suspense by having the grizzled titular character run out of the woods, shout “TROLL,” and cause his disbelieving companions to disperse chaotically amid earth-quaking snorts and stomps. The troll isn’t […]
-
Reindeerspotting: Escape From Santaland — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Reindeerspotting: Escape From Santaland is the opening night film in the MoMA Presents: DocPoint series and screens daily through Monday, June 13, 2011. Go here to learn more.) In the opening minutes of Joonas Neuvonen’s Reindeerspotting: Escape From Santaland, don’t be surprised if you’re overcome with that “here we go again” feeling, and not in a good way. For the eternal question remains, does the world really need yet another film about junky culture? Yes, we know drugs are bad. Yes, we understand by now that they numb your senses and make you behave in illegal, immoral ways. Yes, we […]
-
Fuller: On Great, Boring Movies and Cultural Vegetables
Unless you are a very serious basketball player — at minimum serious intramural league level, or one of those Wall Street guys who absolutely must blow off a ton of steam by playing their hearts out on the court or else they’ll absolutely lose their soul — there is a very distinct qualitative difference between what it feels like to play basketball for a while and to run for a while. After you finish playing basketball for a while you feel good, you’ve gotten some good cardio, but that cardio is intermittent, the game being filled with plenty of pauses […]
-
The Microbudget Conversation: A Filmmaking Tool
After our last post the response was overwhelming in regards to what micro is, if it’s important, and where it’s headed. In the spirit of conversation I worked with Todd Looby (pictured below) on a post almost exactly the opposite of Scott’s. Todd sees micro-budget filmmaking as a skill, a tool, and somewhat of a stepping-stone. Our conversation wouldn’t be a conversation without this point of view. To me, microfilmmaking is not an end that anyone in his or her right mind should be pursuing. Of course, as people interested in filmmaking, we are not necessarily right in the […]
-
Lady Vengeance: Poster? I Don’t Even Know Her
In an impressive show of state pride and clever programming, the Alamo Drafthouse, the much-lauded Austin-based movie theater chain run by the same folks behind nerd art and t-shirt purveyor Mondo and annual genre film festival Fantastic Fest, is doing a roving summer screening series called The Rolling Road Show. Each of its ten lovely Texas cult classic films, from The Searchers to Bonnie and Clyde to Blood Simple, will be shown outdoors in a town related to the film. To promote the series, the Drafthouse worked with artist Jason Munn to create new, graphically minimalist posters for these films, […]
-
Out of the Blue — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Out of the Blue opens at Anthology Film Archives for a one-week run on Friday, July 3rd, 2011. Its home video availability is spotty, though hopefully that will change soon.) American cinema has spoken quite well for itself in the first half of 2011, but watching a new 35mm print of Out of the Blue makes even the most graphic new releases seem so utterly tame. As disturbing today as Dennis Hopper’s 1980 drama presumably was back then, Hopper’s long-overdue directorial follow-up to his grand folly The Last Movie unflinchingly depicts the loss of one young girl’s innocence while simultaneously […]
-
Introducing Our New Genre Column, Lady Vengeance
Today on the site we introduce Farihah Zaman’s new column devoted to genre cinema, “Lady Vengeance.” I’ve long wanted a place on this site dedicated to genre cinema and was happy when Farihah proposed tackling it. Some of you will know her byline from columns and articles posted at Reverse Shot and The Huffington Post. Here at Filmmaker she’ll be appearing every Friday covering genre films of all stripes and sizes, from the mega-blockbusters to the indie, micro and foreign-language titles that contain much of science fiction, fantasy and horror’s new energy. Her piece today, “Revenge of the Nerds,” is […]
-
Lady Vengeance: Summer Box Office’s Revenge of the Nerds
Summer is a strange and wonderful time when many of the rules of regular conduct cease to apply, and this pertains not just to the frequency of ice cream consumption and the blessing of “summer Fridays.” Many people have an image of how genre films are usually consumed – by dedicated genre fans, in a quirky downtown arthouse theater, perhaps, or via DVDs shipped from Hong Kong while alone on the couch wearing a snuggie — but in the summer, the entire country seems to develop a taste for blood or kung fu. Independent genre features continue to be released, […]
-
The Tree of Life — A Hammer to Nail Review
(The Tree of Life is distributed by Fox Searchlight. It opens in NYC and LA on Friday, May 27, 2010, and expands to many more cities in the subsequent six weeks, before opening nationwide on Friday, July 8. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) NOTE: While I’d venture to say this movie can’t be “spoiled” by a review, there is a lot of specific detail contained in this (perhaps too lengthy) reaction. For what it’s worth, I suggest that you experience the film having read as little as possible beforehand. It seems implausible to me that anyone would […]
-
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is now available on DVD through Factory 25. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. NOTE: This review was first published at Hammer to Nail in conjunction with the film’s theatrical release at Film Forum on May 12, 2010.) The knowledge that Jessica Oreck is an entomologist at the Museum of Natural History in New York City who has never previously made a film might cause one to worry that Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo will be an unavoidably stiff and grueling piece of video academia. Worry not, skeptic. Oreck’s wildly precocious exploration of Japan’s ongoing […]
