There is a saying I once heard: “Once you change the method of distribution, the product has to change.” This itself is a take on the idea that distribution defines the product. You see this around every day in the products you buy. Cars are influenced by the dealership networks that sell them. Phones by the mobile network operators and the choice of computer you use at work by whatever the IT department or value-added reseller prefers to work with. Mass-market restaurants offer what can be sold by wholesalers — typically frozen, long shelf-life staples. Almost every product category is shaped more by […]
There’s something we should have learned in the last five years, which is the most important lesson we can carry into the next 20 years: ignore audience at your own peril. For a while now, indie film’s m.o. has been, “Build it and they will come.” Well, audiences have stopped coming. A few years ago, if you asked a young indie filmmaker who his or her audience was, you heard “everyone.” Nowadays, ask an indie filmmaker about audience and most likely you get “I don’t know,” or perhaps just panicked silence. But we keep making thousands of indie films a […]
At the start of my interview with Tim Squyres, the editor of most of Ang Lee’s films, including his latest, Life of Pi, I tell him how much I like the movie. I say that I know I like it because its images, its ingeniously affecting conclusion, and, most of all, the headspace it created for me have lingered for days. Upon waking each morning, scenes have come flooding back. And the subtleties of the film’s ending, which contains a rich meditation on the role stories play in our lives, have resonated in my mind in unexpected ways. “I get […]
With the 2008 post-crash Presidential election as ironic backdrop, Andrew Dominik’s violent crime, Killing Them Softly, bitterly regards our crumbling American dream. Brandon Harris interviews the Australian writer/director.
Jessica Yu revisits the subject of her own Academy Award-winning short documentary Breathing Lessons by speaking with writer/director Ben Lewin, whose The Sessions brings the story of the paralyzed poet Mark O’Brien to dramatic life.
Ava DuVernay won the Best Director prize at Sundance for her second dramatic feature, Middle of Nowhere, a heartfelt and complex tale of a woman discovering her own identity while fighting for the parole of her convict husband. A writer, director and also distributor, DuVernay is releasing the film through a partnership between her own African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement and Participant Media. Producer Nekisa Cooper learns more.
In Jacques Audiard’s tough-minded romantic melodrama, Rust and Bone, Marion Cotillard delivers a powerful performance as a woman struggling to rebuild her life after a devastating accident. Nick Dawson speaks with writer/director Audiard and co-screenwriter Thomas Bidegain.
David O. Russell makes bipolar disorder, dance competitions and the NFL the stuff of romantic comedy in Silver Linings Playbook, a seriously funny feature with star turns by Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Miguel Arteta interviews writer/director Russell and executive producer/star Cooper.
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 […]
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 […]