Columns
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Hits & Misses
Back to reality. That may be the best way to describe both the status of our global economy and the previous 12 months in independent film. Little irrational exuberance; no breakout blockbusters; but a few profitable indie films, perhaps countable on one hand, that stand out as carrots for hundreds of others to try to reach out and emulate. Calmer heads prevailed at Sundance 2012 as sellers and buyers got down to the more complicated business of the current indie marketplace, with its delicate mix of theatrical and VOD platform releasing. No one was throwing money around like it was […]
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Super 8
Flicklist The Digital Age is a double-edged sword in terms of creative content: it has exponentially increased the accessibility of creation and consumption but also led to a flooded and overwhelming marketplace. Co-founded by Ted Hope, Brian Newman and Antonio Kaplan, Flicklist is a new iPhone app aimed at streamlining the search for films that you’ll love. Simultaneously allowing you to compile your own lists of cinematic recommendations, as well as follow the tastes of people whose opinions you trust, Flicklist creates an interactive social-media platform around movies and then alerts you to their availability, whether online or at your […]
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Locarno Film Festival
What to say of a film festival at which the most highly anticipated — and, as it turns out, best — entry is an 83-minute-long documentary about fishermen with no real dialogue or narration that was shot on a dozen GoPro cameras, many of them tethered to a commercial fishing boat? A number of things come to mind, all of them complimentary, but what first bears mention is how well matched the 65th Festival del Film Locarno and Leviathan were for one another. Had it premiered at Cannes or Toronto, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s film would likely have been […]
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Toronto International Film Festival 2012
The increased emphasis on red carpet and premiere status in Toronto seems to have left the festival with an identity crisis. Compared to festivals like Locarno and Rotterdam, which have hit their stride in promoting the new guard of international cinema, just a quick glance at this year’s program guide makes it clear that the “Festival of Festivals” is in the midst of redefining itself. Wavelengths, formerly a sidebar of avant-garde shorts programs, has expanded to include the section previously known as Visions. Many of the more interesting films in the festival could be found here, including the much-buzzed-about Leviathan […]
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Toronto Film Festival 2012: In From the Cold
The 1970s were a time of reckoning for the radical social transformations of the 1960s; with the left shattered by the specific political interests of its sectarian ideologies, and the mainstream culture seeking a shift inward, toward the ethos of the self (and, ultimately, its apotheosis in the greed of the 1980s), the ’70s are often overlooked as the era in between the good times. This year’s Toronto International Film Festival featured several films that grappled with the 1970s and its legacy, each specific to its place, each an examination of the politics of life in the era when everything […]
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Super 8
Devin Townsend Project Vancouver-based metal maestro Devin Townsend returns to the “Devin Townsend Project” moniker on the heels of his wildly ambitious—and stylistically varied—quadrilogy of albums with the release of Epicloud. In contrast to the prog-metal chaos of his previous Deconstruction, Townsend’s latest album can be summed up via lyrics of the track “Liberation”—“the time has come to forget all the bullshit and rock!” Spectacle Among the growing number of movie theaters in Williamsburg, Spectacle is undoubtedly the most unique and least known. A 20-seat, community-based theater run entirely by volunteers, Spectacle features an eclectic program of films ranging from […]
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Debate Club
On a recent Saturday when I had nothing to do, I put out a call to see who was around for a last-minute dinner party. Result: nine random guests including several journalists, an art critic, one poet, my 22-year-old cousin from Nashville and two game designers. As will happen when game designers are in the room, we ended up playing. I’ve mentioned Colleen Macklin and Eric Zimmerman on these pages before. Their work continues to inspire me, and I need to tell you about this game they brought over to my house. It’s called The Metagame, and it comes from […]
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Goodbye, New York
Ten years ago this summer, Good Machine, the film company responsible for helping launch the careers of such American auteurs as Nicole Holofcener, Ang Lee, Todd Field, Todd Solondz and many, many others, was absorbed by Universal Studios, effectively marking the end of an era in indie film. Good Machine co-president James Schamus would start Focus Features, the Universal subsidiary that he still oversees today (one of the last specialty distributors based in New York), while Ted Hope, the other co-president, started his own production company, This is That. But the company closed its doors in 2010 and now, Hope, […]
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Culture Hacker: Is Story Simply a Utility?
Ext: Night – Suburban Cul-De-Sac – In the not-so-distant future Welcome to the quintessential suburban neighborhood — manicured lawns, two cars in each driveway and a bluish hue flickering from each window. Inside, families watch screens in a state of entertainment bliss, enjoying vast catalogs of content as they shop to their hearts content inspired by what they see onscreen. For well over a decade, this has been the dream of cable, telcos and satellite companies. The promise of merging the best of what the Internet and TV have to offer has been attempted by players big and small — as […]
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Load & Play
Green Factory 25 – out now A provocative drama about sexual power play and female jealousy, Sophia Takal’s Green is one of 2011’s most arresting independent debuts. Boasting lush 5D cinematography and stellar performances, the eerie Green depicts a bookish couple — he (Lawrence Michael Levine) is writing a blog on organic gardening while she (Kate Lyn Sheil) reads Bataille — whose erotic relationship is upended when they befriend a comically outgoing but emotionally needy neighbor (Takal). With its disquieting sound design and escalating atmosphere of dread, Green seems poised to burst into full-on erotic thriller mode during much of […]
