| Filmmaker Magazine

THE NECESSITIES OF REALISM

David Denby has a good piece in the New Yorker this week, the rather self-explanatorily titled “The Moviegoer: Susan Sontag’s life in film.” He of course begins by discussing Sontag’s 1995 essay, “A Century of Cinema,” in which the late critic bemoaned not only the decline of international art cinema but the decline of cinephilia as a necessary intellectual and social endeavor in general. From there Denby jumps backwards, tracing the development of Sontag’s thinking with regards to art and politics as it appears through the lens of the movies she championed. In this passage, Denby hits on what seems […]

by Scott Macaulay on Sep 9, 2005

THE SHOOTING SCRIPT

My first job in film was reading scripts for New Line Cinema. When I got rid of my old Epson desktop computer, which was a couple of years after I stopped reading, I counted the coverage files and realized that I read 1,300 scripts for the company over the few years I worked for them. And though that gig was some years in the past, I constantly hear news about writers whose name I recognize from decade-old scripts. One such writer is Tom Benedek, an early script of whose I remember reading and liking. The New York Times has this […]

by Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2005

BRION’S CUES

The composer Jon Brion, who has done scores for directors such as Michel Gondry, David O. Russell, and Paul Thomas Anderson, has been getting a lot of ink this week for his producing and arranging work on the new Kanye West album. Here’s Rob Mitchum in Pitchfork Media, who compiles a 70-minute mixtape designed to update you on Brion’s eclectic body of work. From the piece: “The most talked about man in music right now is Kanye West, whose recently-released Late Registration album is already one of the most prominent critical battlefields of 2005. It’s no shocker that an expert […]

by Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2005

HURRICANE HOUSING

MoveOn.org has launched a new project, HurricaneHousing.org, a website at which you can post offers to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina with free housing. If you are able to house someone displaced by the storm, head on over to the site.

by Scott Macaulay on Sep 4, 2005

HURRICANE RELIEF

Please consider donating to the American Red Cross to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina.

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 30, 2005

MOUNTAIN MAN

First assistant camerman and blogger John Ott emailed to tell us about the the blog he’s been keeping on the production of Rain in the Mountains, an indie feature written by Joel Metlen and co-directed by Metlein and producer Christine Sullivan. Ott blogs on everything from day-to-day production issues to “poor man’s ADR” to the stroke that affected one the leads just days before the film wrapped just last Tuesday. (The actor is recovering and Ott is regularly updating his progress.) Ott even links to Peter Jackson’s “making of King Kong diary so you can compare the difference between making […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 28, 2005

AMERICAN INDIES, THE SLEEPING GIANT

Here’s our good friend Noah Cowan, co-director of the Toronto Film Festival in Indiewire today talking about a surprise in this year’s selection process: “The biggest surprise this year has actually been the United States. There has been a kind of copycat lethargy to the US indie scene over the last few years, from our perspective. Only a few films a year really stood out from the crowd as meaningful cinema. But we have been overwhelmed this year by strong, political films by filmmakers unafraid to take risks. There are maybe twenty or more films from the indie scene that […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 25, 2005

DESTROY HOT ACTION!

The folks at Fleshbot linked to this totally genius video blog, Destroy Hot Action, that is both web-based art and a Quicktimed portfolio of personal empowerment. In these short clips, posted daily, Philip Clark samples hardcore porn streamed over the internet and scrambles short bursts into totally abstract and strangely hypnotic video art. What’s more, he’s compellingly literate about the childhood roots and contemporary rationale behind his project: “My earliest encounter with hardcore video porn happened at a friend’s house, also late at night. They had cable at their house and my friend was scanning through some channels with really […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 24, 2005

INDIE FILMMAKING, IRAQ STYLE

Anybody else check out the ABC News Nightline tonight? I’m watching as I’m blogging here about Ted Koppel’s interview with Cyrus Kar, an American documentary filmmaker who was held in an American detention center in Iraq for 55 days after the cab he was riding in was pulled over. When U.S. soldiers found a collection of washing machine timers in the cab’s trunk, suddenly his camera equipment, microphone wires and the cab driver’s timers all seemed elements of potential Improvised Explosive Devices. Kar was held briefly at Abu Ghuraib before being transferred to a prison near the airport that also […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 24, 2005

MARKETING THUMBS UP

Most movie marketing sucks, so when a campaign for a new film catches my eye and causes me to surf to the site and learn more about it, it’s worth throwing some props towards the filmmaker and marketing team. I first noticed the sweetly ironic posters for Mike Mill’s Thumbsucker last weekend in the East Village, and now the website is up. Check it out and you’ll find some of the usual materials (cast bios, a trailer, etc.) but also a lot of other stuff that seems personal and direct from the filmmaker. There’s a page devoted to the Humane […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 24, 2005

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