Columns
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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 […]
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Super 8
1 hitRECord’s RECollection “Who knows, maybe in three years we’ll have hitRECord cinema!” This was Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hope when we talked to him about his open-collaborative site hitRECord.org in 2009. Well RegularJOE, you did it in less than three! With the release of RECollection: Vol 1, Gordon-Levitt’s dream of building work with a community of artists from across the globe is becoming a reality. Featuring the films, music, drawings, poetry and photography of 471 collaborators (which have already been showcased at Sundance and SXSW), this hardbound 64-page book (along with DVD and CD) proves that Gordon-Levitt’s mission to create a […]
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Load & Play
Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times Magnolia Home Entertainment – October 18 Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times visits one of our nation’s oldest and most-read newspapers at a time of existential crisis. Directed by Andrew Rossi, this documentary focuses on The Times’ media desk, tasked to cover, among other things, the crisis facing journalists today due to the Internet. At the center of the film is David Carr, a veteran reporter and ex-drug addict in the midst of a lengthy piece about the collapse of The Tribune Company. The film incorporates events like […]
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Hard to Kick: On Videogames and Addiction
February 12, 2014: It was something of a watershed moment last weekend when Doug Nguyen, creator of Flappy Bird, the world’s most popular free app, pulled his game from the App Store. The app was estimated to have generated for Ngyuen $50,000 a week in advertising revenue. The problem? The game, said Nguyen, was addictive. He told Forbes, “Flappy Bird was designed to play in a few minutes when you are relaxed. But it happened to become an addictive product. I think it has become a problem. To solve that problem, it’s best to take down Flappy Bird. It’s gone […]
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Super 8
1 John Peel’s Record Archive Regarded as one of the greatest DJs of all time, the legendary John Peel introduced British listeners to countless seminal bands – including The Buzzcocks, New Order, The Slits and Peel’s favorite band, The Fall – on his BBC Radio 1 show, which ran from 1967 until his untimely death in 2004. Now the Arts Council England, via its website The Space, has created an online archive of Peel’s radio shows, live sessions and, most remarkably, his incredible record collection. For fans of Peel and music in general, this website is a veritable rock-and-roll treasure […]
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Can Microbudget Filmmakers Graduate to the Big Time?
Independent film has long been considered the farm leagues for Hollywood’s majors. But with fewer specialized distributors and a risk-averse studio system, do up-and-comers still have the opportunities they once did during the ecstatic exuberance of the sector’s heyday? The crossover success of former DIY filmmakers Lena Dunham (with HBO’s Girls), Sean Durkin (who is developing The Exorcist TV series) and the Duplass brothers (with their studio-indies Cyrus and Jeff, Who Lives at Home), suggests that breakthroughs are still very possible. And yet, for every Jeff Nichols (Mud) or Zal Batmanglij (The East), there are numerous filmmakers who have made […]
