| Filmmaker Magazine

THE COAT TAILS OF THE PENGUINS

In Europe, the domestic theatrical business is as perilous as it is in the States. After spending time with a number of foreign distributors while at the Cinemart in Rotterdam, I was struck by the topics of conversation: declining audiences, fewer young people going to the movies, the threat to conventional theatrical from DVD day-and-date, and worries over the impact of new distribution platforms, like first-run downloading of feature films direct to cell phones. (Apparently, this was tried with The Interpreter in Italy and theatrical bookers revolted, booting the film off a number of Italian screens during its first run […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2006

FOUNTAIN SPURTS

The A.V. Club has a review up of the comic book adaptation of Darren Aronofsky’s forthcoming The Fountain. From Noel Murray’s review: “It’s difficult to read The Fountain without imagining how it’s going to look as a movie, or wondering what Aronofsky ultimately changed for the screen. But that’s actually part of what’s enjoyable about the book. Readers can treat it like an elaborate storyboard and see a movie in their minds. Given Aronofsky’s penchant for obscurity, the mind-Fountain may even end up being clearer than the finished version, even though it lacks the director’s gift for dynamic cinematic poetry. […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 6, 2006

NEW NEW YORK FILMMAKERS ON THE WEB

I received two emails recently from filmmakers who are highlighting their work on newly launched websites. The first was from director and editor Jim Helton, whose Blue Coup D’Etat is, as he describes, a “docu-poetic video blog” where he’s posting “sometimes little silent movies of friends and family, sometimes sound movies, sometimes simple, sometimes complicated.” Helton is a world traveller, and many of these mini-movies capture brief flashes from journies to Bangkok, Koh Samui and other places. Other clips feature (and are birthday gifts to) his filmmaker friends Derek Cianfrance and Shannon Plumb. The second site is BorderLine Films, the […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 6, 2006

RACY VIDEO

Harmony Korine has directed a new Cat Power video, “Living Proof.” There’s a short piece and a comments page over at Antville. (His previous clip for Bonnie “Prince Billy,” aka Will Oldham, star of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, is here.)

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2006

FRESH REVIEWS

Ann Thompson has a good “Risky Business” column up at The Hollywood Reporter that tracks the growth of Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review aggregator. Along with Metacritic, the site is part of a shift by which now 90% of a younger demographic finds their movie reviews online. Thompson describes how Rotten Tomatoes survived the Internet bust and is now a thriving go-to advertising destination for distributors confident of the critical appeal of their films.

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2006

PIRACY, SWARMING AND THE PARADIGM SHIFT OF BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Producer Ted Hope emailed me about this essential three-part series by Mark Pesce entitled “Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV.” It’s from May, 2005, but it’s still an utterly relevant essay on how television producers can successfully adapt to a BitTorrent world in which audiences are in control of the process of distribution. Pesce’s predictions are provocative — he believes, for example, that the broadcast networks are soon to morph into high-powered ad agencies as opposed to content distributors — and I’m not sure I agree with all of his advice to producers regarding the content of […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2006

SEXIER THAN PARIS HILTON

Good article in The Guardian about Al Gore’s trip to Sundance with the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. From the piece: “What can a film that has helped make Al Gore sexier than Paris Hilton possibly be about? A partial list of its contents would include the greenhouse gas effect, the proliferation of carbon dioxide, the convection energy of hurricanes, the paradoxical flood-drought syndrome, melting methane in Siberia, the history of the Ice Age and the physics of solar ray absorption. It becomes no clearer why this film is having such an impact when you learn that it largely takes the […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2006

BROKEBACK MASH-UP

The strangest thing about the Brokeback Mountain phenomenon is the extent to which a movie that has so thoroughly entered the popular cultural discourse plays as an extremely private film. Gay or straight, one feels as if one is the only person in the theater while watching Lee’s intimate epic. Contrast that highly personal feeling with the late-night talk show jokes and SNL parodies and one finds a rare case of a soft-voiced, emotionally penetrating film that doubles as a cultural juggernaut careening through the contemporary zeitgeist. The latest affectionate parody is this trailer mash-up by students at Emerson College […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2006

ROTTERDAM AWARDS

After the various industry complaints about Sundance “at the breaking point” of overcrowding and rampant commercialization this year, a trip to Rotterdam is like visiting an alternate film festival world. Relentlessly polite and civilized, the International Film Festival Rotterdam with its accompanying financing conference, the Cinemart (which I had a project in this year), provides a low-key tonic to the frenzy of Sundance and the upcoming bustle of Berlin. This year, a lot of Rotterdam industry folks had a Sundance hangover as Sundance’s international program and a desire to closely monitor U.S. premieres lead to a larger than usual delegation […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2006

NAM JUNE PAIK, 1932 – 2006

Yahoo News is reporting that pioneering video artist Nam June Paik has died at 73. The Koren born artist was known for his multi-monitor sculptural video pieces, his various video happenings, and collaborations with artists like John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others. When I worked at The Kitchen Center right out of college, Paik was a grand master of the video art realm, someone whose belief in the untapped power of this new art form fueled both is pieces as well as the innovative manners in which they were presented.

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 31, 2006

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