The IFP announced today that Penelope Cruz will be presented with a Gotham Award Tribute at the 18th annual Gotham Awards on Dec. 2 at NYC’s Cipriani Wall Street. Cruz can recently be seen in Elegy opposite Ben Kingsley and Woody Allen‘s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (pictured right). Additional Tribute receipients will be named next week and nominees for this year’s Gothams will be announced on Oct. 20. To learn more about the event go to http://gotham.ifp.org.
Celebrated and influential film critic Manny Farber died yesterday at the age of 91. At Movie City Indie Ray Pride has a lovely, well-linked remembrance, which opens like this: Manny Farber, painter, brilliant writer, indelible critic and all-round original whom some aped and few grazed, died in his sleep last night at the age of 91. He had retired from writing and teacher and devoted himself to painting and drawing. To cite Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, which early Preston Sturges savant Farber would likely not frown upon, “What a life!” Glenn Kenny also has a long piece on […]
I’ve posted before about Chris Anderson’s dictum that everything in the digital world wants to be free. One type of merchandise that may prove Anderson’s theory is independent film hits from the 1980s and ’90s. Whit Stillman and Cinetic Media organized a blogosphere blitz this week with the free streaming release of his 1990 debut feature Metropolitan on Hulu.com. As Cinetic’s Matt Dentler blogs, Stillman did fresh interviews with Karina Longworth at Spout, Eugene Hernandez at Indiewire, and Stephen Saito at Indiewire. Noticing all the commotion, I emailed Dentler and asked him what prompted it. He wrote back, “Cinetic Rights […]
David Byrne and Brian Eno did it right when releasing their new Everything that Happens Will Happen Today, I think. Even though 20+ years have elapsed since their last collaboration, this one was announced and then made available to fans just three weeks later — no time for record industry leaks to pop up on the internet but enough time to score feature coverage like the piece in the Sunday New York Times. A free song was provided at the end of July in return for your email address. Today, the record’s release date, an email went out reminding you […]
Over on his blog These Are Those Things, Ted Hope tracks a correspondence between fishing and film that has taken 17 years to play out. In a post entitled “Rock & Roll & Film & Fishing & Tripping,” Hope traces the ripple of a stone thrown in the lake by John Lurie in his cable show Fishing with John and watches it turn into an afternoon in which Caveh Zahedi and Will Oldham trip on mushrooms and then, later, yet another fishing trip, this time shared by Dean Ween and the Butthole Surfers. Head to Ted’s blog for the links […]
This article, written by Bergen Swanson, originally appeared in our Winter, 2002 issue. YOU’VE DONE IT! The screenplay you’ve been slaving over for months has finally been optioned by an edgy production company noted for offbeat films. Or, the movie that has consumed your life for the past two years has been picked up by a noted distributor. Emptying out your savings, selling your comic book collection, sleeping on friends’ couches – it’s all been worth it. But then the unthinkable happens. The company that bought your film or script files for bankruptcy, and your project gets thrown into legal […]
ROBERT ENGLUND AND TREVOR MATTHEWS IN DIRECTOR JON KNAUTZ’S JACK BROOKS: MONSTER SLAYER. COURTESY ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT. At a time when horror films are getting ever more brutal, Jon Knautz brings a comfortingly old- fashioned feel to genre filmmaking. The Ottawa-born writer-director, who grew up on a diet of slasher films and 50s creature features, went to Vancouver Film School to pursue his dream of making movies. Knautz’s graduation project, Apt. 310 (2002), a stylish, tightly scripted noir, was the first in a series of shorts that harked back to classic modes of filmmaking. After making the blood-spattered comedy horror […]
Alex Karpovsky, writer/director, 2006: Since being included in the list back in 2006, I teamed up with Indiepix to release my first feature, The Hole Story, on DVD. The film is now available at retail stores across the country, Netflix, and other outlets. I have also completed another feature, Woodpecker, which premiered at SXSW last March and is now bouncing along on the festival circuit. Currently, I am in post-production on my first feature-length documentary TJ and Dave, which focuses on America’s most revered long-form comedy improvisers, Tj Jagadowski and Dave Pasquesi. I’ve also done a bit of acting recently, […]
Here’s the sixth of our catch-ups with previous “25 New Faces” filmmakers. If you’ve been on the list and haven’t sent us an update, you can still email one to editor.filmmakermagazine AT gmail.com. David Russo, writer/director, 2003: I’m in post (special effects & animation) on my live action feature, The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle. I’d like to have it done for Sundance 2009 consideration, but I’m really taking advantage of both the Rockefeller and Creative Capital grants to make it thoroughly my own kind of vision. For me that just involves time, time & more time. The investors are […]
Independent film is, unfortunately at times, a cyclical business. In 2002 we commissioned producer Bergen Swanson to write “Hollywood or Bust: What if Your Producer Goes Bankrupt.” It was relevant then and may be relevant at now. It’s in our Web Exclusives. Here’s a taste: YOU’VE DONE IT! The screenplay you’ve been slaving over for months has finally been optioned by an edgy production company noted for offbeat films. Or, the movie that has consumed your life for the past two years has been picked up by a noted distributor. Emptying out your savings, selling your comic book collection, sleeping […]