Eric Kohn emailed to tell me about a new online magazine he’s involved with called Stream. From the introductory notice posted on the site: Stream is a new magazine devoted to filmmakers who want to exploit new technologies in producing, promoting and distributing their work. It’s not as complicated as it sounds: We wish simply to be enablers. Filmmaking is the cultural phenomenon of our times, in the way that rock n roll was a generation or two (or three) ago. Once upon a time, any kid could pick up a cheap guitar and make their own noise. Now that […]
Over at Film in Focus, Karina Longworth is the latest profile in the “Behind the Blog” series. Currently the editor of Spoutblog, Longworth talks about her favorite posts, her work day, and her history as a blogger, excerpted below: I’m a rare specimen, in that I’ve been a “professional” movie blogger from the jump–meaning, from the very early days of Cinematical through the present, I’ve always been paid to do it, and I’ve more or less treated it like a career. I have great admiration for those who self publish out of a labor of love, but I wouldn’t know […]
I’m posting this short review by Richard Brody that appeared in the New Yorker this week as the first of a trickle of postings, message board missives, MySpace bulletins, and FaceBook alerts that will soon develop into a deafening roar of digital noise converging towards one important goal: to get you to see Frownland this weekend in New York at its world theatrical premiere at the IFC Center! If you’ve been following this blog over the last year, you know of our huge love for this film. I first saw it a year ago at SXSW and was on the […]
According to The Huffington Post, the Hillary Clinton campaign released this video demonstrating the support of Jack Nicholson: UPDATE: Over at his The Chutry Experiment, Chuck Tryon explores the semiotics of this advertisement, noting that many of Nicholson’s characters are rebellious anti-establishment types, and muses on the collision between these associations and the Clinton campaign. Meanwhile, The Caucus blog at the New York Times discusses this video as well and, as a poster in the comments thread below concludes, doubts that it came from the campaign itself.
When Filmmaker starts pulling in the big bucks, I’m going to demand that the magazine send me to the TED conference each year. The high-level conference acts as a platform and networking group for transformative ideas about technology, politics, social change, and the arts. The 2008 edition is in progress right now in Monterey, California, and news of the event can be found across the web. Steven Levy at Newsweek has this intro in which he talks about how the conference has changed over the years. Another distinguishing characteristic of TED is its tilt away from a classical tech conference […]
After I posted links to various summaries of the Edison Chen nude picture scandal, a flurry of new news appeared online. Last week the actor held a press conference in Hong Kong where he stated that “society as a whole has been affected” by the scandal, apologized to “all the ladies and all their families,” and announced his indefinite hiatus from the film business: It seems that Chen has now left Hong Kong for the States where he will lay low… at NYU Film School? Meanwhile, Radar Online aggregates some of the latest developments, including the theory that Chen leaked […]
From Fogonazos: Kolmanskop is a ghost town in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port of Lüderitz. In 1908, Luederitz was plunged into diamond fever and people rushed into the Namib desert hoping to make an easy fortune. Within two years, a town, complete with a casino, school, hospital and exclusive residential buildings, was established in the barren sandy desert. But shortly after the drop in diamond sales after the First World War, the beginning of the end started. During the 1950’s the town was deserted and the dunes began to reclaim what was always theirs. Soon the […]
ALEJANDRO POLANCO IN DIRECTOR RAMIN BAHRANI’S CHOP SHOP. COURTESY KOCH LORBER FILMS. Ramin Bahrani’s films are what one could term “outsider cinema,” and yet they are made with the quiet confidence of someone who knows he belongs. Iranian-American Bahrani was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and moved to New York to study film at Columbia University. After making the short films Backgammon (1998) and Strangers (2000), he spent three years living in Iran, his parents’ former home country. Once back in the U.S., his awareness of immigrant life and the psychology of the outsider found a voice in […]
… is the very eye-catching come-on for the theatrical release of Tarsem’s long awaited, long in production second feature, The Fall. Previously Tarsem directed the underrated The Cell as well as some classic music videos, including R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.” Here’s the trailer.
Over at The Workbook Project, M. Dot Strange offers the case study of his film We Are the Strange that he prepared for the Berlin Talent Campus. Here’s his intro: This was part of a presentation called “Adventures in self distribution” I describe the journey I took with my animated feature film “We are the Strange” From my bedroom to Sundance and beyond and back to my little studio again after turning down Hollywood deals and deciding to self distribute and make my films my way. And here’s the embed: M dot Strange: Berlin Talent Campus 08 from M dot […]