I’ve still got most of my Sundance commentary to get up and I’m on my way to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where I’ll try to file some short reports on the fest and the concurrent Cinemart, which is a great financing conference that plans, this year, to begin a dialogue about how it can be reshaped for the future. (Full disclosure: I’m on the CineMart’s Advisory Board.) From the festival’s Tiger Daily: Eschewing conference and panel formats and instead deploying the tried and tested device of brainstorming towards a consensus, IFFR management and industry experts will sit down this […]
It happened maybe a day later than last year, but the acquisitions floodgates have opened a bit at the Sundance Film Festival. But it wasn’t the typical first-weekend films that enthused distributors. In Variety, Ann Thompson is reporting that Focus Features has bought Andrew Fleming’s Hamlet 2, which debuted at the unsexy time of Monday at 5:30 in a deal she pegs at over $10 million for worldwide rights. The film stars Steve Coogan as an English teacher who writes a sequel to Shakespeare’s play in other to rescue the school’s theater department. Perhaps more significantly, the film is directed […]
Interview by Brandon Harris As Sundance begins this weekend, the world of independent cinema once again turns its attention to this snowy resort town thirty miles outside of Salt Lake. Yet, since 1995, Sundance hasn’t been the only act in town. The 2008 Slamdance Film Festival begins today at Park City’s Treasure Mountain Inn, opening with Randall Cole’s Real Time, a brisk indie comedy starring Randy Quaid. As a brief snapshot of some of the 29 features and 67 shorts that Slamdance will screen in the next nine days, I caught up with thirteen Slamdance Filmmakers to discuss their films […]
As I type this I’m on my way to the Sundance Film Festival, where the Filmmaker team will be filing coverage all week. I’ll be blogging along with Jason Guerrasio and Justin Lowe; Jamie Stuart will be shooting video – creating one of his own typically personal and idiosyncratic portraits of festival life as well as filming interviews with directors and actors which you’ll see in the months ahead; if all goes well, Brian Chirls will be shooting and posting video from the fest’s panels and programs; and, Brandon Harris will be covering Slamdance, blogging news and reviews from the […]
This film is an exploration into why people use steroids, but we live in a time where steroids are an extremely taboo subject. As we were making the documentary, we were frustrated because we kept hitting roadblocks with people not wanting to talk honestly about their relationship with steroids. Even one of my best friends lied to me on camera. While we were shooting interviews for the film we would have liked 10 percent more honesty from many of the people involved in the steroid issue. However as we were editing the film, we realized that the fact that people […]
For those who just read the blog, check out the main page all this week as we’ll be highlighting the responses we got from many of the filmmakers with features at this year’s Sundance Film Festival as they answer the question: if you had 10 percent more of anything, what would it be and why? The responses are also in our Winter issue, which will premiere at Sundance (hits newsstands a week later) and also includes interviews with Paul Thomas Anderson on There Will Be Blood, Alex Gibney talks about his latest doc Taxi To The Dark Side and author […]
Lost creator and Cloverfield producer J.J. Abrams spoke at the TED conference about his creative process, which he symbolizes at one point by displaying a “mystery box” from New York’s Tannen’s Magic. Last April Abrams spoke to the New York Times about the “mystery box” and described it thusly: Prized possession: I have a mystery box from Tannen’s Magic in New York. It’s a cardboard box with a question mark printed on it. It’s one of those things you buy for $15 and they advertise that it has at least $20 worth of stuff inside. I’ve never opened it. I […]
Filmmaker, performer and musician Brent Green, one of Filmmaker‘s 2005 25 New Faces of Independent Film, sent an email with all of the exhibitions and performances he’s planned for the next couple of months. If you haven’t seen his intense and theatrical live performances, in which he collaborates with musicians for a live score and, in the process, comes up with a different model of independent film exhibition, I highly recommend you check one of them out. A recent performance clip is embedded below, and here’s the email: On Jan. 11th I’ll be screening all of my films with live […]
THE GHOSTLY TOMÁS (ÓSCAR CASAS) IN DIRECTOR JUAN ANTONIO BAYONA’S THE ORPHANAGE. COURTESY PICTUREHOUSE. Though he looks and dresses like he’s still a teenager, behind Juan Antonio Bayona’s youthful appearance hides a mature and sophisticated cinematic sensibility. The 32-year-old Barcelona native has a passion for movies that first led him to become a precocious journalist, and then to study directing at film school. Since graduating, he has built a formidable reputation making a series of acclaimed commercials, pop promos for Spanish artists such as Hevia, Ella Baila Sola, Camela and OBK, and two short films, Mis Vacaciones (My Holidays) (1999) […]
In Denzel Washington’s second directing effort, the Oprah Winfrey produced The Great Debaters, he takes what he learned from his debut, Antwone Fisher, and uses it to make the inspirational true story of one small all-black school’s rise to the top of the college debating ranks in the Jim Crow South. Washington also stars in the film as the rebellious Melvin B. Tolson. Known for his American Modernist poetry and a contemporary of the Harlem Renaissance, in the ‘30s Tolson was a professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. There he coached the debate team and in 1935 his team […]