Watching Billy Wilder’s Ace In The Hole, which has been beautifully re-mastered by Criterion in a 2-disc package ($39.95) available this week, two things come to mind: 1) How forward thinking Wilder was and 2) how the movie ever got released. Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a despicable newspaper reporter who stumbles upon a man trapped inside an old Indian burial cavern in Albuquerque, N.M. and creates a sideshow out of it. Though Tatum has a nose for scoops, his ego and determination to escape the desert and get back to the big city causes him to destroy everything in […]
Variety recently ran an article about how declining opinions of America’s behavior worldwide are affecting international audience’s attitudes towards American films. But perhaps international audiences are simply reacting to artfully crafted image campaigns promoting our competition. See, for example, the promo reel below that the E.U. Media program created to tout its accomplishments in the promotion of Euro films.
Jamie Stuart emailed a question about the upcoming writer’s strike, wondering whether it will provide opportunities for independents looking for both work and to expand the boundaries of network programming. He wrote: Since the last TV strike (or was it threatened strike?) brought about reality TV, what’s the probability that the studios and networks will simply dive into the pool of cheap online talent to fill out their rosters? I dunno… discuss.
If you missed it, below is Michael Moore’s outraged appearance on Wolf Blitzer’s CNN show. After watching, check out Moore’s web site for his rejoinder to the report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Sicko that CNN preceded Moore’s appearance with.
DIANA GARCIA IN GERARDO NARANJO’S DRAMA/MEX. COURTESY IFC FIRST TAKE. Not many people can genuinely claim that cinema is their savior, but Gerardo Naranjo is probably one of the few. Growing up in the small Mexican town of Salamanca, he frequently got into trouble and was forced to move from school to school as a result of his problems with authority, but managed to escape his difficulties while watching movies. He ended up studying at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, where he founded a cinema club called Zero for Conduct, — named after the Jean Vigo movie, a favorite […]
BoingBoing documents an eccentric patent war in this post about two companies facing off over the right to rent inflatable dummies for movie crowd scenes. It starts with this story on CNN by Elizabeth Wright: You’ve seen them in Million-Dollar Baby, Be Cool, and Ocean’s 13: stands crammed with spectators cheering for the hero. But in the movies, sometimes not even the extras are real. To cut costs, filmmakers dress up inflatable vinyl torsos to intersperse among real people in crowd scenes. Now the two startups in the market are squaring off in court. Crowd in a Box (crowdinabox.com), which […]
Mary Pols has assembled some good directors who have offered some great quotes in her piece entitled “They’re Women, Directors and Few.” It’s another piece on why there are so few working female directors in Hollywood, and Pols has brought together indies like Hilary Brougher and Nicole Holofcener with studio vets like Mimi Leder to discuss why. She also talks with Kasi Lemmons, whose Talk to Me (pictured) opens this week. Here’s a section in which Sherrybaby director Laurie Collyer talks about the differences in approach that men and women have: But women in the film industry aren’t held back […]
Initially it might appear that filmmakers Godfrey Reggio (Koyaanisqatsi) and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation) have little in common with directors Kelly Reichardt or Rob Epstein. Caouette’s intensely self-referential experimental documentary footage or Reggio’s dreamlike visual-image essays differ considerably from Reichardt’s well-received narrative feature Old Joy or Epstein’s award-winning political documentaries. Behind the scenes, however, these filmmakers and nearly 500 more have obtained funding and support from the nonprofit organization Renew Media (formerly known as National Video Resources), established in 1990 by the Rockefeller Foundation to administer the annual Media Arts Fellowships. In 2003 Renew Media assumed full responsibility for managing the […]
If you’re in NYC today, come check out the first of three evenings Filmmaker is hosting with the IFC of new work and personal appearances by idiosyncratic documentary filmmakers. The first is tonight and we’ll be screening the work of talking with Bradley Beesley. Here’s more info: Filmmaker and IFC Center are pleased to announce the debut of “Dialogues on Film,” a new series of screenings and discussions with directors, moderated by Filmmaker’s Scott Macaulay; the series launches Monday, July 9 at 7:30pm with “An Evening with Bradley Beesley.” The program includes Beesley’s cult classic documentary OKIE NOODLING, along with […]
BRENDA BLETHYN AND KHAN CHITTENDEN IN CHERIE NOWLAN’S INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS. COURTESY WARNER INDEPENDENT PICTURES. Australian director Cherie Nowlan grew up in the small town of Singleton, New South Wales, and segued from a brief career as a journalist to working her way up the ladder in television and film. Her first film, God’s Girls (1991), about the nuns who taught her in high school, won the Best Documentary prize at the Australian Film Institute Awards, and prompted her to go to film school to study screenwriting. After making the short Lucinda 31 (1995), Nowlan directed her first feature, romantic […]