270 of this year’s movies, mashed up into one eye-popping trailer of cinematic uplift. Kudos to Gen I., who writes, “This year’s movies have legitimately transformed my idea of what is creatively possible.” Make sure to note the mid-clip David Lynch appearance and, later, the Lena Dunham/Alex Karpovsky fist bump. Here’s also a list of all the films used. (Hat tip: Kottke.org.)
Perhaps my most pleasant surprise of 2009 was popping up along with 20 other folks on Ted Hope’s Truly Brave Thinkers list. It was the first list of what I hoped would be for Ted an annual tradition, and today is confirmation that it is. Visit Ted’s Truly Free Film blog for his 2010 edition, one that is even more mindful of film’s need to embrace new business paradigms and audience-development tools. You will find directors and producers mixing it up with executives from both the profit and non-profit/government-funding worlds. Indeed, the list’s swath is wide, encompassing people like Ed […]
If you’re in New York, come out tonight for an evening with Pete Sillen at the IFC Center. Filmmaker is hosting a screening of Pete’s short-form work, and I’m moderating the Q & A. The evening begins at 7:00, and here’s the description: Tonight at 7:00pm! We’re proud to welcome critically acclaimed director Peter Sillen Tuesday December 14 discussing his works with Filmmaker Magazine Editor-In-Chief Scott Macaulay. Sillen will present screenings of a number of his short films, including Speed Racer: Welcome to the World of Vic Chesnutt, Grand Luncheonette, Branson: Musicland U.S.A., and a short working cut of his […]
I tweeted this video earlier in the week but hadn’t realized then it was on YouTube. Here, then, is Nick Knight’s remarkable video tribute to designer Alexander McQueen, with original music by Bjork.
Director Asa Mader and choreographer Benjamin Millepied, currently being celebrated for his choreography for Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, have collaborated on a short starring Millepied and French actress Lea Seydoux. (Update: Millepied is also being reported as Natalie Portman’s fiance and the father of her baby.) From Nowness: After meeting at a dinner one night about five years ago, director Asa Mader and current principal of the New York City Ballet Benjamin Millepied struck up a friendship. “We immediately had a connection,” says Mader. The duo subsequently holed up over a long weekend in the Hamptons (they stayed at the […]
I haven’t done one of these in a while, so a few of these links are less than current. In any case, here are some links of interest from my Instapaper archives. First, Instapaper itself, and its founder Marco Arment, got some love from today’s New York Times. In The Paris Review, filmmaker Michael Almereyda collects largely unseen and uncollected photographs by William Eggleston. He writes: William Eggleston’s color photographs are among the most widely viewed, and widely admired, in the medium. But I wanted to survey Eggleston’s unseen, unpublished work—his B-sides, bootlegs, unreleased tracks—and to that end I made […]
(Editor’s Note: This essay contains spoilers.) In literature or in oratory, where rhetoric arose from, it’s somewhat difficult to separate the argument’s mode of persuasion from its substance. In order to make an entirely skilled rhetorical point, the writer or speaker will have to present a series of assumptions and assertions, facts and hypotheses, in such a way that makes the argument’s substance apparent. That’s why literature lends itself to the intellectual: it’s founded upon a progression of ideas. Cinema is often referred to as a different kind of linguistic medium (the “language of film”), but a linguistic one nevertheless, […]
The Sundance Institute has announced the films that will be screening as part of Sundance Film Festival USA. On Thursday, January 27, 2011 nine different cities will screen films from the Sundance 2011 slate. The full list of titles and theaters involved in Sundance USA are listed below. Tickets are available through individual theater’s box office. See the complete list of Sundance Film Festival competition titles here and out-of-competition titles here. The festival will take place Jan. 20-30, 2011 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah. Sundance Film Festival USA Win Win / U.S.A. — Ann Arbor, […]
Mike Fleming is reporting at Deadline that the MPAA has overturned the NC-17 rating originally given to Derek Cianfrane‘s Blue Valentine. The film will be given an R rating. The appeals board was unanimous in its decision. Blue Valentine chronicles the budding relationship of a couple, played by Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, and its eventual collapse. The MPAA originally gave the film an NC-17 rating for a scene they deemed too sexual in nature. The ruling sent shock waves through the movie industry and led to the film’s distributor, The Weinstein Company, filing an appeal which included, Fleming says, […]
Something of a prodigy even before she made her first feature, Manhattan native Ry Russo-Young (Orphans) had an early apprenticeship in the medium, studying visual arts and drama at Oberlin College and Yale, respectively, before putting in some time at the Lee Strasberg Institute and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Russo-Young eventually directed the short film Marion, a multi-screen deconstruction of scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho enacted by three actresses, which won the 2005 Silver Hugo Award for best experimental short film at the Chicago International Film Festival. Two years later, she debuted Orphans, an emotionally wrenching drama about […]