In 2004 Cinevegas and Sundance programmer Mike Plante wrote a piece for us titled “Confessions of a Short Film Programmer” in which he listed the ingredients that make a short film impress festival selection committees. Now he’s got a new website, “I Blame Society,” with both a photo blog as well as a blog tied to his film zine Cinemad. On his latest post, he references the Filmmaker article and adds an addendum, which I’ll repost here: One of the things I did not mention in the article: why do film schools try to teach students by showing them features […]
Over at their MySpace page, the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival is announcing the First Annual American Pavilion Student Filmmaker Program Short Film Contest (whew!). The deadline is March 9, and submitted films should tackle the question, “How will Cannes 07 change your life?” The prize? A trip to the Cannes Film Festival. For more info, click on the MySpace page above or visit the American Pavilion website.
For those who only bookmark this one: Mike Plante interviews Cam Archer about his Wild Tigers I Have Known, which opens tomorrow at the IFC Center. And Justin Lowe on Rich Wong’s Gotham and Spirit-nominated Colma: The Musical.
I’m usually annoyed that whenever the horror genre heats up, a bunch of indie filmmakers decide to capitalize on the trend and “make a horror movie.” Most of the time, these filmmakers don’t really like horror, don’t watch it, and don’t understand its specific rules and traditions. And then they wonder why people don’t find their scripts scary. So, this article in Variety by Archie Thomas is quite interesting. It reports on a new venture from the folks at the U.K. film production company Warp X. It’s called Darklight, and it’s a program intended to get horror newcomers — specifically, […]
For those of you who briefly scanned the recent headlines stating that Microsoft was fined $1.52 billion for infringing on two minor patents related to MP3 technology with only mild passing interest (or glee), Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly has a solid post explaining why this situation is more than a little screwed up. Here are the key graphs: So how about MP3, the ubiquitous music encoding standard? Who holds the patents on that? Answer: the MP3 standard was developed in the early 90s and the patent pool was originally controlled by Fraunhofer IIS. Microsoft paid Fraunhofer $16 million […]
The Film Independent Spirit Awards were handed out yesterday in Santa Monica, California. Here are the winners. Best Feature: Little Miss Sunshine, Producers: Marc Turtletaub, David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf, Albert Berger & Ron Yerxa Best Director: Jonathon Dayton & Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine Best Screenplay: Jason Reitman, Thank You For Smoking Best First Feature: Sweet Land. Director: Ali Selim. Producers: Alan Cumming, James Bigham, Ali Selim Best First Screenplay: Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine John Cassavetes Award (For the Best Feature made for under $500,000):Quinceañera. Writer/Directors: Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland. Producer: Anne Clements Best Supporting Female: Frances […]
The second annual New York Comic Con seems like the last place Filmmaker would be at but yesterday I was at the Javits Center to see new footage of Eli Roth’s sure-to-be gore fest Hostel: Part II and got a look into fan boy paradise. Showing up a little early to get my badge, I walked around the trade show which is split up in designated areas for comic giants like DC Comics and Marvel, turn a corner and you can try your hands at some of the newest video games, and a little farther down are racks of memorabilia […]
Kirby Dick‘s This Film Is Not Yet Rated didn’t just expose the inconsistencies in the MPAA ratings system but helped in the battle documentary filmmakers fight every time they make a movie and must determine what is in the realm of fair use and what isn’t. In Dick’s film over 100 clips are used to show how violent films are deemed acceptable by the MPAA while films with sexual scenes aren’t. Defining the clips as fair use, Dick didn’t pay licensing fees, which would have ranged between $10,000-$15,000 a clip. Inspired by the film, Kansas City-based Media/Professional Insurance has started […]
COLMA: THE MUSICAL. Accustomed as we are to lavish, star-studded productions like Dreamgirls, Chicago and Moulin Rouge, it’s rare to hear the words “low-budget” and “musical” uttered in the same sentence. Contrary to high-priced expectations, however, Colma: The Musical is an upstart indie produced on a shoestring budget in the San Francisco Bay Area that has built a groundswell of support on the festival circuit over the last year, earning awards and prominent placement on year-end critics’ lists. Colma director Richard Wong received a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination in November for the IFC/Acura Someone to Watch Award, which “recognizes […]
Both underseen and mythologized due to rights-holder issues, one of the great pieces of proto-independent cinema — and certainly one of the most provocative director launches ever — can now be seen on Google Video. Click here to view Todd Haynes’s Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story.