Few directors out of Japan are as controversial as Takashi Miike, a man who has been surprising audiences for years with anything from stomach-wrenching horror films to slick yakuza films to happy-go-lucky children’s films, with no less than 70 directing credits to his name. This year at Cannes he surprised fans perhaps more than ever before by premiering his most mainstream film yet, a smart thriller that seems to be begging for a Hollywood remake. Shield of Straw follows a team of security police who must transport a psychopathic killer across Japan to Tokyo for trial. The criminal in question […]
Earlier this week I posted “15 Lessons for Producers from the Cannes Film Festival and Market.” With the festival and market now firmly in the rear-view mirror, the consensus is that it was a solid one for the international sales community, without, perhaps that one giant locomotive title but with an appropriately modest number of films hitting their ask prices. Tastes were noted to have shifted, with buyers wanting “more Jennifer Lawrence and less Sylvester Stallone.” And on the pure indie level, I noticed, as I wrote in my piece on producers, a new crop of American independents have figured […]
Right now the answer is not entirely clear. The Xbox One, which was unveiled in a presentation last week, represents Microsoft’s latest bid for domination of the living room through a single multipurpose device. It’s not a complete reinvention of the Xbox brand, but it integrates and advances several technologies Microsoft has been working on over the years. Microsoft’s accompanying efforts to expand away from hardcore gaming into other areas of entertainment such as streaming video make it a viable contender to the PS4, Apple TV, and other devices/platforms. Here’s the video of the device’s entire reveal. The discussion of […]
Learning from your producer colleagues — that’s one of the benefits of attending the Cannes Film Festival and Market. Whether you are premiering a film, hustling a film, or just watching movies, the experience of encountering at multiple parties fellow filmmakers makes Cannes a great place to glean tips on your practice by observing how others are getting it done. In addition to watching movies, this year at Cannes I moderated morning meetings at the Producers Network, of which IFP is a sponsoring partner. I also moderated the “American Producers in Cannes” panel at the American Pavilion and spoke with […]
For the final installment of Filmmaker and the MIT Open Documentary Lab’s interview project with the foremost thinkers on transmedia, IDFA DocLab’s Caspar Sonnen answers our questions. Sonnen is the new media coordinator for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and curator of the festival’s IDFA DocLab, a competition program for new forms of documentary and interactive storytelling. In 2008, Sonnen founded IDFA DocLab to create a platform for interactive and multimedia documentary storytelling that expands the genre beyond traditional cinema. Besides his work at IDFA, he is co-founder and programmer of the Open Air Film Festival Amsterdam. For an […]
In James Nares’s 1976 film Pendulum, a large metal sphere swings ominously from a bridge in a desolate TriBeCa street. We watch with unease as the ball, viewed from multiple positions, traces a giant arc, pulling on the cable, which emits a low rhythmic groan on the soundtrack. This tense, hypnotic Super-8 film, which transforms a forlorn streetscape into existential theater, offers a strange love-letter to a city (at that moment) riddled with danger and alive with artistic possibility. Pendulum was made several years after Nares’s arrival in New York at age 21 from his native England. The city’s been […]
Made quickly and on the cheap, prolific South Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s 18th film, Pieta, is an often disturbing revenge tale, moody and morally challenging, where redemption for one of recent cinema’s most dark-hearted anti-heroes seems just out of grasp. Kang-do (Lee Jung-jin) is a pitiless and anger-fueled debt collector for a equally brutal moneylender who specializes in forcing his often destitute debtors to commit insurance fraud in order to pay back what they owe him. Living a comfortless and filthy existence in the same slum as many of his victim, Kang-do has not a friend or a care in the […]
Over the past few months it’s been hard to miss the green icons showing up on Twitter and other social media in support of the FX Protest, an event that happened at this year’s Oscar ceremony to protest ongoing problems in the VFX industry. While movies continue to make great use of visual effects, the companies that create these effects are being financially stressed and are going out of business. To find out more about what’s been going on in the VFX industry, we spoke to Michael Scott, a VFX compositor who has been working in the industry for the […]
For those headed to the South of France this week, Filmmaker has polled our friends and colleagues for their advice on attending the Cannes Film Festival. Even if you are not a first-timer there’s something here for you, ranging from day-trip suggestions to business etiquette to restaurant tips. If you are a first-time attendee, take these especially to heart, and if you’re a returning veteran and have tips, feel free to post them below. See you on the Croisette. Ben Gibson (director, London Film School, and producer): Been doing this advice for many years: Have a meal with someone you’ve […]
“The independent screenwriter” — is the term a tautology or oxymoron? While the word “independent” is often applied to directors and sometimes producers, it’s rarely seen appended to the job title of screenwriter. Is that because so many independent directors write their own scripts? Because screenwriters-for-hire are inevitably drawn to the world of Hollywood? Or, perhaps, because the term means little when applied to the craft of screenwriting? After all, while a director is reliant on others to provide financing and labor, a writer can always sit down with pen, paper or word processor. In this new, occasional column, we […]