[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21 5:30 pm –Prospector Square Theatre, Park City] The most truthful answer I can come up with as to why my story is told as a film (and not a novel or a play) is this: the most profound narrative experiences I have had have been in a dark movie theatre. One of the first films I can remember seeing was Jaws. I must have been about five. The experience was seared into my brain. It was horrifying, primal. Even now, as an adult, so many years later, every time I swim or surf in the […]
Filly Brown director Youssef Delara and his wife agreed to have their photo taken by me in the shuttle from Salt Lake to Park City…even after they had been traveling for the last 24-hours. They were complete champs and Youssef didn’t even seem all that tired. He kept up with all my annoying questions, and was excited and eager for Filly Brown‘s premiere today. Friday morning was the perfect mix of snowy but not too cold, and still quiet before the masses arrived in Park City for the 2012 festival. Sundance Channel Headquarters promotes tagging your message. Welcome to the New […]
Indie sweetheart Antonio Campos debuts his newest feature film, Simon Killer, today at Sundance. After he and his partners made waves in Park City last year with Martha Marcy May Marlene (which won Sean Durkin the Best Director award, and introduced Lizzy Olsen to the world), critics and audiences have placed Borderline’s newest on their must-see list. But that hasn’t changed things for Campos. He comes to Park City as a director this year, prepared to experience the festival from a new perspective. — Filmmaker: You and your partners at Borderline Films are no strangers to Sundance and the festival marketplace. With three […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, Noon –Egyptian Theatre, Park City] As a boy, as a little dreamer imagining what fantastic job he might one day have as a grown man, I always saw myself filling the roles of the hero/villain archetypes we see in the movies. A cowboy, a detective, an archeologist adventurer, a robber even, sometimes Robin Hood and other times James Cagney. Older, increasingly more in touch with reality, and with my dawning awareness of film as a created world imagined and rendered by artists and crews, I arrived at a new aspiration (still just as fanciful as […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20 6:00 pm –Screening Room, Sundance Resort] As a storyteller, I suppose I have that spark that makes me think that I might touch people, and the power of film is exponential in that regard. It is not just ideas, images, words and sound. It is all of these things simultaneously, and therefore the sum is much greater than the parts. I also happen to love production. Yes, it’s too rare. It’s chaotic and things go wrong. But it is exciting as hell to solve problems if you work with good people like I do. It […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 20, 5:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] Michael Olmos: For me, being a filmmaker – an explorer of stories – is about discovery and finding connections. Of recreating that magical life altering feeling you get when something that you where never aware of, suddenly enters your conscious mind, and completely rewires you – it is an all encompassing experience. It can happen on an emotional level or intellectual level, and it often causes a physical response – you cry, laugh, bend over in pain, whatever. Sometimes these discoveries where right in front of you, but […]
When Senior Director of Professional Engineering and Solutions at Canon, Larry Thorpe spoke recently about the Canon C300, he talked quite a bit about the sensor in the camera. His explanation of why they developed an HD camera rather than a 4K sensor, and how the image is processed, is especially interesting. The following is an edited transcript of that part of his talk [You can see a video of his full talk here: Canon EOS C300 Pub Night with Larry Thorpe on 1.5.11 Vimeo] There’s also a Canon white paper, written by Larry, that covers this and other aspects […]
Safety Not Guaranteed might be the first feature film based on an internet meme. In 2005, a newspaper classified ad from 1997 started to spread across the web, depicted a mulleted man who claimed to be seeking, “Somebody to go back in time with me.” The ad, which also specified, “this is not a joke” was eventually revealed to be exactly that, a fake listing published to fill out space in the paper. But that hasn’t stopped director Colin Trevorrow from crafting his first feature film around it. Produced by Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf of Big Beach (Little Miss […]
(Scalene opens in New York City at the reRun Gastropub for a one-week run beginning Friday, January 20, 2012. Visit the official website of Along the Tracks Productions for more information about the film.) If you’ve seen Zack Parker’s Scalene, then you might understand why I feel weird describing the experience of watching it as “a pleasant surprise.” But it’s true. Even though this film is comprised of scenes and plot twists that are as disturbing as any that are likely to appear on screen this year, what struck me most loudly was the realization that I was in the […]
Five years after finishing his wonderfully wacked-out debut, The Guataealan Handshake, Todd Rohal, frustrated by the time it was taking to set up a new movie, jumpstarted a micro-budget comedy about a priest. Called The Catechism Cataclysm, the movie was made for $50,000, and it got into Sundance, playing in last year’s midnight section. IFC bought the film for its Midnight label, releasing it to a scant $897 on a single screen. Rohal didn’t sweat it; the movie did what it needed to do for him (read Megan Holloway’s consideration here), and he went on to his next film. And […]