Boing Boing has been covering this week the controversy surrounding the Slamdance Film Festival’s rejection of a video game, Super Columbine Massacre, from its interactive competition, the Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition. Here is Slamdance’s official statement: The Super Columbine Massacre RPG game has been withdrawn from Slamdance ’07. While understanding the different positions people have already taken with the game, we want to express the struggle we had with ours. On one hand, a jury selected a game they believed merited programming, a decision that always leads to our organization supporting the creator’s independent vision and freedom of expression. On […]
The new Apple iPhone. It’s a widescreen iPod (but, um, at only up to 8 gigs? What gives?); OS X powered; a full version of Safari; WiFi and Bluetooth. Looks very cool. I’m officially very up on this and will be over-the-moon about it when it upgrades to a larger hard disk.
As you may have read below, Filmmaker is hosting an evening with animator and artist Brent Green this coming Wednesday. I think his work is really great and hope you can come and check it out. If you want to learn more about him, check out this essay on the Creative Capital website. Green is a Creative Capital fellow, and their support helped him realize his new Paulina Hollers, which we’ll screen on Wednesday before its Sundance screening next week. An excerpt from the Creative Capital page: Picture this: a Santa Claus who’s a skinny, irritable old cuss who guzzles […]
Christopher Stack, who is finishing his film An Exercise in Vigilance and who replied on the Sundance post below, blogs over at Deep Structure. I just checked out his blog for the first time and like this post from back in August on what Stack calls ADDI: ADDI-compliant. it’s a term a friend and i coined to describe films that don’t bore me. add (attention deficit disorder for those of you living under a rock) + intelligence. the film not only has to move quickly, but it has to do so with intelligence, not wasting time on explaining the obvious […]
I don’t post a lot of rumors on this blog, but this one is cool. Ain’t It Cool News linked to Film Ick which linked to this article in New Zealand’s Stuff, in which Kirsten Dunst discusses an upcoming film role: Her only project on the horizon is with visionary French director Michel Gondry, whom she worked with on Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. “[It’s] about somebody who everybody knows, but I can’t say who it is,” Dunst teases, before admitting her character is a “well-known singer”, giving credence to reports that she is to play a very abstract […]
In an effort to capture the Park City experience through social networking, text messaging and camera-phone reporting, Lance Weiler has created a “social mobile experiment” to document Sundance and Slamdance this year. Head over to the link for more info and to sign up. Here’s how Weiler describes it: WHO: We’re looking for people headed to Park City – so if you know anyone else that might be interested please forward them this email WHY: This is a free social mobile experiment to capture the festival experience from multiple people and to create a collage of those experiences. WHAT: We […]
Over at GreenCine, there’s a translation of a piece by Tobias Ruther on David Bowie and his film influences, posted as a salute to the artist on his 60th birthday. An excerpt: He lived out his dreams of youth in Berlin. “The first film that ever moved me,” he once said, “was The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. I was around fourteen. Later, I saw M and Metropolis and films by Pabst, Murnau, and they all came from Berlin.” He becomes deeply enthralled with German Expressionism, rides his bike to the Brücke Museum in Grunewald, paints: a child in the stairway, […]
Filmmakers attending Sundance next week may hear the line above as they stand outside the Cinetic or William Morris parties, but for, oh, a couple of thousand feature directors, those words came a bit early – when they got their Sundance rejection letters. As Filmmaker’s editor, I go through several phases when I review Sundance’s annual list. There’s my first, “Oh, great, that got in” reaction when I see that films I’ve been looking forward to screening have made the cut. And then there’s the “Wow, how did they get that finished in time?” take on movies that entered production […]
Those of you in New York should come down to the IFC Center next Wednesday, January 10, for an evening Filmmaker is co-presenting featuring the very interesting work of animator and artist Brent Green. Coinciding with his solo show at the Bellwether Gallery, the evening will feature Green’s original animations, including his Sundance-bound Paulina Hollers (pictured at right), a Q and A between myself and Green, and films by special guest artists. The show starts at 7:30, and I’ll post more on it next week. For now, though, here’s what I wrote about Green in 2005 when we selected him […]
Michael Fleming in Variety is reporting the big talent agent news that ICM motion picture head Robert Newman (pictured) and TV lit department head Matt Solo have left the agency for Endeavor, where both will become partners. While Variety says that Solo’s exit from ICM was expected, “Newman’s exit was a jaw-dropper, bringing Endeavor a client list that includes Danny Boyle, Guillermo Del Toro, Mike Figgis, Baz Luhrmann, Paul McGuigan and Robert Rodriguez.” The article goes on to note Newman’s strength: identifying hot directing talent early and guiding them to successful careers.