Filmmaker Alison Murray emailed to say that she’s launched her new Web site, The Hellhound, which contains a trailer from her forthcoming debut feature Mouth to Mouth as well as short films and other info. Says the Web site, Mouth to Mouth, executive produced by Atom Egoyan, “features Alison’s signature choreographic style, woven into a powerful narrative about a search for belonging. Sherry, a teenage goth, runs away with a bizarre collective called SPARK (Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge) losing her lip ring, her virginity and her family in one road trip. Cast include Natasha Wightman (Gosford Park), Eric […]
I received sad news from my friend Claire Best today. Geraldine Peroni, one of New York’s top film editors, died unexpectedly at her home yesterday. Peroni has long been associated with the films of Robert Altman — she cut The Player, Short Cuts, Pret-a-Porter, Kansas City, Dr. T and the Women, and The Company — but she also contributed her considerable skills to a number of other great independent films by a wide range of directors. She cut Alison Maclean’s Jesus’ Son, Rose Troche’s The Safety of Objects, Tom DiCillo’s Johnny Suede, and Sande Zeig’s The Girl, among others. At […]
The British newspaper The Guardian has long been a daily read for its left-leaning political coverage. Now they’ve added a Gamesblog, so you can check them out for smart takes on gaming played on platforms ranging from PCs to phones. Amid the obvious — like links to the new Doom 3 demos — the blog discusses a game featuring an s/m virtual world, a forthcoming game in which one can hunt Osama Bin Laden, and the poltical potential of quickly conceived and rendered downloaded Java games.
Producer Jeff Levy-Hinte (Thirteen, High Art, and the Venice-bound Mysterious Skin) wrote one of the most important articles Filmmaker has ever published in our current issue. Entitled “The Digital Divide,” it’s a trenchant and provocative attack on the intersecting political and lobbying efforts that comprise the MPAA’s “War on Piracy.” Levy-Hinte uses last fall’s “screener battle” (which he, Ted Hope, the IFP and the IFP/L.A. as well as an alliance of independent producers all fought) as the jumping off point to discuss what’s next when it comes to the effect of anti-piracy policies on independent filmmakers. By parsing the history […]
Filmmaker doesn’t run a lot of letters to the editor. We’re usually strapped for space at our regular 96 or 112 page count, so we can’t publish all the letters we’d like to. One letter that calls out to be published, at least here on the blog, is below. Feel free to post if you can answer this fellow’s question. Hi, I am interested in an adult scene in film and video which is connected with both Paramount (then run by Barry Diller) and Tri-Star (when Columbia was owned by The Coca-Cola Company). I believe the film was released in […]
When I read about filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn (My Architect) and producer Callum Greene’s film about M. Night Shamalayan for the Sci-Fi Channel running into trouble over Night’s refusal to cooperate once the documenatarians discovered a “buried secret” in his past, I meant to check it out by making a call to Greene. We recently covered his last produced feature Homework in the magazine. But today I was reminded that this had slipped off my “to-do” list by this piece on CNN.com. In it, Sci-Fi Channel president Bonnie Hammer described the news leak as a “guerilla marketing campaign” that went too […]
In the current issue of Filmmaker, producer Jeff Levy-Hinte writes a lengthy and provocative essay on the MPAA’s “War on Piracy.” Even if we weren’t the publishers of the magazine, we’d tell you that it’s a must-read. But for those who, after finishing it, may feel that Jeff’s paralleling of the “War on Piracy” with the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” is a bit over-the-top, then check out this link to an article in The Guardian, in which the true cost of that black-market copy of Soul Plane is revealed. Writes The Guardian: “That, essentially, is the message being promoted […]
According to a new poll released today and disseminated by MoveOn PAC, “viewership of Fahrenheit 9/11 continues to grow with 11 percent of all voters now reporting they have seen Michael Moore’s film. This is nearly double the number of viewers since the July 4th weekend, when 6 percent reported having seen the movie. “An additional 33 percent [reportedly] intend to see Fahrenheit 9/11, which means that 44 percent of all voters in the 2004 Presidential election could be exposed to the film. “Movie-goers and intended movie-goers represent a broad and diverse slice of the electorate and spread across the […]
Over on his The Hot Button site, David Poland’s got up one of his rambling think pieces, this time on the State of Things in the world of Internet publicity. A lot of it is comprised of his critical take on Ain’t It Cool News and the way in which both the studios and the mainstream media feed off of it. It’s a three-part article and is quite interesting in its attempt to define and argue for the specialized role of Interet publicity while also calling out the most egrigious offenders of the relaxed-sourcing, anyone-can-do-it attitude of the Web press. […]
Lawrence Lessig, in a “Guest Column” in today’s Variety writes: “Robert Greenwald’s latest film, ‘Outfoxed,’ is a political documentary about Republican bias at Fox News. It is also, as the New York Times Sunday Magazine dubbed it, a ‘guerrilla documentary.’ “In addition to interviews with former Fox employees, academic studies evaluating the ‘Fox effect’ and internal Fox memos, Greenwald has used a significant number of clips from Fox News to show the bias that the slogan ‘fair and balanced’ belies. “He had no permission to use those clips. “Fox has called Greenwald’s use stealing. It has warned other networks that […]