Okay, it’s the weekend, so I’m allowing myself a frivolous but funny post. Filmmaker was invited to the set of this film just a few weeks ago. We weren’t able to send anybody but I just came across this entirely safe-for-work trailer of the porn parody of The Big Lebowski starring Tom Byron as “The Dude,” Peter, um O’Tool eerily accurate in the John Goodman role, and Kimberly Kane channeling Julianne Moore’s performance artiste. Porn parodies have come a long way. Some of these set-ups compare to the original pretty well. From the press release we received: New Sensations, the […]
I’ve been hearing about Zachary Oberzan’s no-budget unauthorized adaptation of David Morrell’s First Blood (the basis for the Rambo movie series) from one of our writers, Lauren Wissot, for some time. Staged entirely in Oberzan’s apartment and featuring the director in every part, the film was called by Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice as “the best movie of 2010.” And, over at Hammer to Nail, Brandon Harris has praised the film too. He writes: David Cronenberg once said that as long as you have good sound, movie audiences can be compelled to watch anything. Zachary Oberzan’s Flooding With Love […]
Concluding a decade in which specialty film distribution boomed and busted, and in which the identity and composition of filmed entertainment itself was challenged, perhaps it’s not surprising that David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, the ultimate unstable cinematic text, wound up on top of Filmmaker Magazine’s Editor’s Poll of the Best American Independent Films of the ’00s. Begun as television pilot but finally assembled as a feature according to the unconscious urgings of its creator, Mulholland Drive is a dyspeptic musing on the cinematic dream machine, one that launched an actual movie star (Naomi Watts) while also serving notice that the […]
In our Spring, 2009 issue, Lauren Wissot interviewed In a Dream director Jeremiah Zagar as well as his longtime producer Jeremy Yaches and their executive producers Pamela Tanner Boll and Geralyn White Dreyfous. The feature, which is a fascinating look at artistic obsession and its effects on an entire Philadelphia family, receives its broadcast premiere on HBO2 tonight at 8pm with further screenings as detailed on this schedule: Wednesday, 8/19 @ 8pm – HBO2 EastWednesday, 8/19 @ 11pm – HBO2 WestMonday, 8/24 @ 6:30pm – HBO2 EastMonday, 824 @ 9:30pm – HBO2 WestFriday, 8/28 @ 1:30am – HBO2 EastFriday, 8/28 […]
Opening today in New York at the Cinema Village is Jeremiah Zagar’s documentary In a Dream, which is a fascinating story of artistic obsession and its effects on an entire Philadelphia family. In our current issue, which is just coming off the newsstands, Lauren Wissot interviewed not only Zagar but his longtime producer Jeremy Yaches and their executive producers Pamela Tanner Boll and Geralyn White Dreyfous. Here is a brief excerpt: Filmmaker: I know that Jeremiah is a big fan of Errol Morris, and that definitely comes through in In a Dream. Are there other films or books or works […]
Director Maria Beatty last appeared in Filmmaker in 2002 when she interviewed Erin Cressida Wilson about her screenplay for Steve Shainberg’s Secretary, and since then we’ve been hearing about her plans for a mainstream narrative feature. Now, reports Lauren Wissot in a “sneak peek” at The House Next Door, Beatty has finished Bandaged, which is executive produced by Abel Ferrara. From Wissot, an excerpt: Bandaged is S&M filmmaker Maria Beatty’s foray into the indie mainstream – if one could call a flick best described as Mädchen in Uniform meets The English Patient meets Eyes Without A Face “mainstream.” Fittingly, none […]
Cinekink, the festival that can lay claim to being truly alternative kicks, off tonight with an 8pm gala and fundraiser at the Kush Lounge, 191 Chrystie Street. Screening will be three shorts — Petra Joy’s Artcore, Chuck Renslow’s The Blue Rose, and Eva Midgley’s Erotic Moments. Tomorrow the fest moves over to the Anthology Film Archives with screenings of Daryl Wein’s doc Sex Positive and Robert Pratten’s erotic horror film MindFLESH. Other highlights include Barbara Bell and Anna Lorentzon’s Slamdance-premiering doc Graphic Sexual Horror, which looks at how the U.S. Patriot Act was used to shutter the extreme bondage website […]
A couple of new writers have been added to the Spout Blog, and one, Lauren Wissot, has her first post up today. Wissot is a filmmaker and writer who has written for her own blog, Beyond the Green Door, as well as The House Next Door. Her debut piece for Spout is entitled “Dial S/M for Marnie” and it looks at Hitchcock’s film through the lens of kink: An excerpt: What neither the feminists nor cinephiles seem to appreciate is that Marnie is one of the greatest bondage and discipline (B&D in sadomasochistic parlance) pics of all time. Artfully disguised […]
Writer Lauren Wissot emailed me after I blogged about the Antidote Films vs. JT Leroy verdict with a link to her own blog, Beyond the Green Door, where she’s posted several pieces about the case. Wissot takes the pro-Laura Albert position in two posts, beginning with: I guess I’m trying to find the humor in all this because, frankly, Laura Albert’s Kafkaesque nightmare scares the hell out of me. Though the defense lawyers have broached the subject of Albert’s psychiatric history on the stand, Albert’s mental health is irrelevant. (Though as a good friend of mine pointed out, amputees who […]
If you want to read some great and diverse film writing, I really recommend you check out Stu Van Airsdale’s The Reeler this week. While Stu travels to L.A., he’s asked a great group of New York film people to guest-blog, and so far, each writer has really risen to the challenge. Check out Stu’s blog and read: Andrew Wagner posting from the editing room of his new feature; James Ponsoldt on MOMA’s Dada show and the art movement’s relationship to contemporary comedy; author Lauren Wissot on Roman Polanski’s foot fetish; AMMI curator David Schwartz on Jacques Rivette; Eric Kohn […]