Recommended on a Friday: Moonlight, Fire at Sea, Criterion’s Boyhood Disk, Dessert, Chris Gethard and More

Our new “Recommended on a Friday” column is meant for us here at Filmmaker to throw some attention on films we love that perhaps we haven’t covered online and in print, but this week we’re just going to start by piling on a pick that you’ve already heard quite a bit about: Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight. Jenkins’s previous film, Medicine for Melancholy, was a Filmmaker cover back in 2009, and we’ve been eagerly awaiting his next film since. Moonlight — a bracingly tender, ambitiously realized and wisely provocative character study about the construction of African-American masculine identity — demands to be…  Read more

Recommended on a Friday: Little Sister, Christine, Tower, Certain Women and More

If you look at the long list of movies opening every weekend, not just in theaters but on digital platforms too, you probably feel like you can’t keep up. We feel the same way here at Filmmaker, with usually more films entering the marketplace then we’re able to devote meaningful editorial to. Invariably, some films slip through the cracks, while others may have been covered by us at their festival premieres months ago, with our coverage now buried in the depths of our CMS. So, we’re starting this “Recommended on a Friday” series of picks designed to help you navigate…  Read more

Alan Vega, 1938 – 2016

Alan Vega, half of the epochal punk electronic music duo Suicide, died yesterday. He was one of the greats. With Suicide partner Martin Rev, Vega laid the groundwork for industrial electronic music, and much more, as he mixed noise with melody, free-form floating song structures with the terse songwriting economies of doo-wop. The band — starting with its title — was a provocation, but also a salve (or, as Bryan McPeck and Matt McAuley from ARE Weapons wrote in their interview with Vega, “optimistic, life-affirming shit”). Songs dealt with psychotic killers and social unrest and love and optimism. “Dream, baby,…  Read more

R.I.P. Muhammad Ali, 1942 – 2016

Indeed, the Greatest. Remembering Muhammad Ali with this trailer from also one of the greatest sports documentaries of all times, Leon Gast’s When We Were Kings. From Edward Guthmann’s review in the San Francisco Chronicle: At the height of his stardom, Muhammad Ali was possibly the most famous man on earth. Cocky, dynamic, a tremendous athlete and a wizard at homespun, extemporaneous verbal gymnastics, Ali had the world on a string…. On a deeper level — and this is where When We Were Kings exceeds its expectations and becomes a great film — Gast examines African American pride. He records…  Read more

The Return of the Cassette: Prisons, “Analog Time” and a Forthcoming Feature

Filmmaker and Filmmaker contributor Alix Lambert is a guest producer on this week’s Theory of Everything, where she learns that it’s not just hipsters causing a revival in the audio cassette format but prisoners. Indeed, for most prisoners, cassettes are the only music delivery device they’re allowed. Listen to her episode, “Analog Time,” embedded here, as Lambert talks to some incarcerated men for whom cassette tapes are an escape, a salve, and even a medium of exchange. Meanwhile, Zach Taylor and Georg Petzold are finishing Cassette, “a feature-length documentary that celebrates the past, present, and future of an endearing musical…  Read more

Collaborative Essay/Music Project March Sadness Enters its Final Four

With Paula Bernstein writing today about Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World, I was reminded to post about a cool internet essay/music project by Ander Monson with Megan Campbell, March Sadness. For those a bit blue, and no following college basketball — and, probably, more than a few who do — the month-long series has paired off sad songs for voters to up and downvote, mixing in essays on the music by Rick Moody, Juan Diaz, Megan Campbell and others. Explains Monson: So this March I’ve been running this project called March Sadness. Well, I’m already oversimplifying: we…  Read more

David Bowie, 1947 – 2016

I’ve been listening to David Bowie’s new Blackstar all week, and its lyrical ruminations on mortality — some aching, some cheeky — are inescapable. Still, the idea that these were prompted by anything more than an impending 70th birthday didn’t occur to me. It seemed unbelievable that David Bowie would not be around for a little while longer. So, it’s a sad day to wake up to the news that Bowie has died. So meaningful, influential and vital through so many different periods of our lives. For me, the Berlin trilogy, my first arena show, The Man Who to Earth,…  Read more

Christmas Surprise Tracks from LCD Soundsystem and Radiohead

Here’s hoping this becomes a new tradition — surprise releases from great bands that are actually pretty good! The first, what will become a seasonal classic for melancholics everywhere, is from a band that technically doesn’t even exist anymore: LCD Soundsystem. And the second is an unused theme for the James Bond film Spectre by Radiohead. First, here’s what LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy wrote to accompany “Christmas Will Break Your Heart”: so, there’s been this depressing christmas song i’d been singing to myself for the past 8 years, and every year i wouldn’t remember that i wanted to make it…  Read more

Filmmaker Seeks Contributing Web Editor

Are you a good writer, knowledgeable about new developments in film and new media, and a reader of Filmmaker? Filmmaker is currently seeking a Contributing Web Editor. This is a paid, part-time position, averaging 10 hours per week, and it involves daily writing and posting to this site. In addition to possessing strong writing, reporting and editing skills, our ideal candidate will have experience with filmmaking itself, including production, post-production and business issues. Our Contributing Web Editor will report on developments of interest to our filmmaking audience, including reports on new equipment and technologies, software and events as well as…  Read more

Kentucker Audley Wants You to Support the Movies on Kickstarter

Kentucker Audley might have been reading Mike Ryan’s “TV is Not the New Film,” in which the producer concedes that TV is dominating our cultural conversation right now. And he’s decided to do something about it. Audley has taken to Kickstarter to sell a simple item of apparel that will tell the world that, yes, you’re a movie fan.