With the Financial Times reporting that Apple will announce their long-awaited tablet on Tuesday, January 26, it is time for all of us in the magazine business to think seriously about digital versions of our content. (Well, of course, the major publishers I’m sure have already done this — expect to see tablet-ready versions of a number of major publications announced alongside the device.) Filmmaker has offered a digital edition for about a year now, and it’s a great deal because for half the price you get every issue as well as all back issues through 2005. It mimics the […]
I am reprinting below a letter I received from Joana Vicente, Acting Director of the IFP, which publishes this magazine. Please consider joining the IFP and taking part in its activities over the coming year. It has been a time of many changes in the independent film scene; both scary and exciting. Through it all, independent filmmakers of all stripes keep pushing forward, making great work that moves, inspires, and amuses countless people around the world. It has been a year of changes at IFP as well. After 12 years at IFP’s helm, Executive Director, Michelle Byrd, stepped down to […]
Cornelieu Porumboiu’s absurd anti-policier Police, Adjective, a hit at last fall’s New York Film Festival, has pushed the Romanian director into the forefront of a young group of Romanian filmmakers who have in the past four years taken the world of International Art Cinema by storm. Along with Cristian Mungiu (2008 Palme D’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days), Cristian Nemescu (California Dreamin’) and Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. L?z?rescu), Porumboiu has found success at the highest levels of the international festival circuit while still trying to carve out audiences at home. In his latest film, the follow […]
Perhaps you’ve gotten into the habit of phoning your elected representatives about issues like, I don’t know, health care… Well, if you are a working film producer you might add one more call to your phone sheet. Section 181, which allows investors to write off the cost of film production in the first year of expenditure, has been a real incentive to the independent film business over the last few years. It is due to expire December 31, but there is a possibility it will be extended. The extension vote has passed the House and is now waiting Senate passage […]
I haven’t seen Avatar yet, and I’m waiting to discover why a film in which not a single clip I’ve seen so far thrills me is going to rock my world. But I love these ten random notes on the film by Anne Billson over at her Multiglom blog. Like this one on technology and alien sex: James Cameron has developed millions of dollars’ worth of technology in order to deliver the message that technology is bad. Crazy guy! Basically, he’s a techno geek who’s emotionally stuck at adolescence. His idea of alien sex is sloppy kissing! It’s alien sex […]
Anthony Kaufman’s current Village Voice piece, “New York’s Independent Film Community Goes from Boom to Bust: My Big Fat Greek Collapse,” has some good quotes that speak to the changes the indie film world has gone through this past decade. I’m not one to periodize things too much by saying that things were once X and now they are Y. Independent film has always been too multi-headed a hydra, and the business plans that a distributor talks about were often ones that didn’t have much to do with the majority of actual makers. That said, on decade’s end it’s clear […]
A while back, I posted a call to filmmakers to let us know about any alternative marketing or distribution efforts they are planning around their Sundance selections. With this video by Bass Ackwards producer Thomas Woodrow, the grand total of filmmakers doing this seems to be… two. Watch Woodrow’s walk and talk as he explains why he has partnered with Zipline Entertainment and New Video to release his Sundance picture February 1.
A while back I blogged in response to all the lamenters of the decline in the number of film critics, writing that critics will have to find new forms of reviewing aimed at new online audiences. One critic who has just done that is, um… a serial killer named Mike from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And he has done so not by crafting some kind of 30-second quick hit that you scan amidst flashing banner ads but with a hilarious, detailed, fan meta-critical 70-minute takedown of a film that most of you have probably already forgotten: George Lucas’s Star Wars Episode One: […]
A lot of people are excited to see Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett in The Runaways. I am — I think she’s the real deal. But I’m even more interested in seeing the film because it’s Floria Sigismondi’s directing debut. Sigismondi is an artist, photographer and music video director whose well-known clips include videos for the White Stripes, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie and many others. I think Jett, Cherie Curie et al are a great match for Floria’s sharp eye and smart sensibility. More on this film in the days ahead, but, for now, the trailer.