| Filmmaker Magazine

L.A. DEPARTED

The tour de force blog posting of the day is playwright and television creator Jon Robin Baitz’s second half of his “Leaving Los Angeles” essay on the Huffington Post. This part two deals with Baitz’s final feelings about the city he’s worked in the past few years (he compares L.A. to Johannesburg in the ’70s), his romantic life, youth culture, the WGA strike, identifying oneself as an artist while working in TV, and the struggle to create a show that reflects and not obfuscates the realities of life in America right now. (Part one, which details some of the details […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 6, 2008

POULTRY POWER

The below was posted on Filmmaker‘s Facebook page by John Fiege, director of the documentary Mississippi Chicken, which was one of our five “Best Film Not Playing Near You” Gotham Award nominees this year. As it’s a general call for support, I’m taking the liberty of posting it here. It’s the holiday season, and in the spirit of Christmas a major poultry company fired one of MPOWER’s board members in what appears to be a retaliatory action for his active involvement in fighting several cases of race discrimination at the plant. MPOWER is the workers’ center that was in the […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 5, 2008

BINARY CODE

Over at the Invisible Cinema blog, Jennifer MacMillan starts the new year with a list challenging the binary oppositions that too often inappropriately frame the relationship between narrative film and experimental film. And, um, I guess with that last sentence I fell into the sloppy thinking she critiques. Witness point number four: “To say that an experimental video is ‘non-narrative’ is like saying that Henry Ford’s invention of the T-model automobile was a non-horse & carriage buggy! Or it’s like saying that Rimbaud wrote non-novels. Grouping all short films together is misunderstanding cinema.” And here’s #2, on the year-phenomenon of […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 5, 2008

“3:10 TO YUMA”

In remaking the 1957 classic Western starring Van Heflin and Glenn Ford, director James Mangold (Walk The Line) thankfully doesn’t bastardize the solid story or the sanctity of the original. Instead he returns to the source material (an Elmore Leonard short story) and creates this battle of wills between a struggling rancher and the notorious leader of a band of outlaws with respect to the genre and a kick in the pants for a new generation of viewers. Though I would hardly call it the best Western since Unforgiven (as a Houston Chronicle blurb boasts on the DVD cover), teaming […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 5, 2008

MICHAEL MOORE COMMENTS ON IOWA

If you’re a Democrat in Iowa — or if you’re just a Democrat who, like many, are still trying to make a decision about who to support in ’08 — Michael Moore has collected his thoughts in a letter posted on his blog. He’s not endorsing anyone yet, but he does offer some cogent commentary on current candidates.

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 2, 2008

Andrew Piddington, The Killing Of John Lennon

JONAS BALL AS MARK CHAPMAN IN DIRECTOR ANDREW PIDDINGTON’S THE KILLING OF JOHN LENNON. COURTESY IFC FILMS. After spending the majority of his career working in television, 54-year-old Brit Andrew Piddington has committed the rest of his career to being an independent film director. He began his career working with poetic filmmaker Brian Lewis in 1980, and directed his first solo project as a writer-director, D.H. Lawrence as Son and Lover, that same year. Over the course of the 80s, he distinguished himself with his television work, most notably more biographical dramas about significant cultural figures, such as Under the […]

by Nick Dawson on Jan 2, 2008

CONNECTION TO HER FANS

The new issue of Filmmaker, which we just sent to the printer, has author Jonathan Safran Foer interviewing Michel Gondry about his new feature, Be Kind Rewind. They talk a lot about invention, DIY artmaking, and artists who gaze horizontally at their audiences… all of which are echoed in Gondry’s new Bjork video, just released today, for her single “Declare Independence.” Check it out below.

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 2, 2008

MASH UP IT UP UNDER THE LAW

Over at the Center for Social Media/American University Law School, Pat Aufderheidi and Peter Janzi have published a study of online video and user-generated content that attempts to chart the limits of fair use within this emerging field. From their web page: When college kids make mashups of Hollywood movies, are they violating the law? Not necessarily, according to the latest study on copyright and creativity from the Center and American University’s Washington College of Law. The study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video, by Center director Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi, co-director of the law school’s […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 2, 2008

THE ORCHESTRA AS GUITAR

To make it two Radiohead-related posts in a row, I’ll note Mark Pytlik’s review at Pitchfork of Jonny Greenwood’s There Will be Blood soundtrack, which succinctly nails where Greenwood is coming from in his work for orchestra. The lede: The first hint that Jonny Greenwood might make a gifted composer came in 1997, when, bored with the syrupy, provincial strings that dominated the tail-end of Britpop, he channeled Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki for the arrangement on OK Computer’s “Climbing Up The Walls”. Essentially a wall of quarter notes played against each other, that noisy squall stood out in dramatic opposition […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 2, 2008

SCOTCH MISTING IN THE NEW YEAR

My first act of cultural consumption in the New Year was watching “Scotch Mist,” Radiohead’s webcast/live session/fans-New-Year’s present, on one of the late, post-midnight Current TV rebroadcasts before falling asleep. A really great hour of TV with the five band members playing in their small studio shot with locked off webcams, some odd off-kilter interstitials and spastic animations, a slow-mo music video for “Nude,” and a stunning version of “Faust Arp” with just Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood singing/playing at magic hour in the outdoor hills. The complete show is embedded below. All the cuts are recommended, particularly, my favorite, […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 1, 2008

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