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SHAME ON SHOWTIME
I met independent filmmaker Mohammed Naqvi a couple of years ago when he participated in the IFP Director’s Lab, which I taught. Now, he’s finished a powerful film, Shame, which is a doc version of the dramatic script he was writing back then. Premiering on Showtime this week, the film “tells the true story of international human rights icon Mukhtaran Mai, a Pakistani peasant who was gang-raped and publicly shamed in her village, but used her trauma to spark a legal revolution that exposed centuries of brutal tribal conflict and government mismanagement.” Here are the Showtime dates: Showtime May 31 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 1, 2007 -
Judd Apatow, Knocked Up
KATHERINE HEIGL AND SETH ROGEN IN JUDD APATOW’S KNOCKED UP. COURTESY UNIVERSAL. After 15 years rising up through the Hollywood ranks, comedy’s underdog is on top of the world. At the moment, studios are scrambling to work with Judd Apatow (there are no less than seven films he’s currently involved with which he has written and/or produced), but this is a stark contrast to the rejection he became used to. It is ironic that the projects now being snapped up are the same ones that were repeatedly passed on previously. Apatow began as a writer on The Ben Stiller Show […]
by Nick Dawson on Jun 1, 2007 -
EXTRA, EXTRA
Over at Cinematical Ryan Stewart rounds up some Darren Aronofsky news including word of his new script (Noah’s Ark) and a link to the director’s MySpace page where he blogs about his fight to release a bonus-packed DVD of The Fountain. From the blog: so the dvd came out.happy that it is in the world.hope more folks will get to see it. as many of you can tell it is light on the extras as compared to my previous dvd releases. everything at the studio was a struggle. for instance: they didn’t want to do a commentary track cause they […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 31, 2007 -
NO MORALS WITHOUT STYLE
Today GreenCine links to a couple of articles discussing Rainer Werner Fassbinder, his legacy, and allegations that the Fassbinder Foundation and its director, Juliane Lorenz, have “systematically erased” (to quote d.p. Michael Ballhaus) important figures like composer Peer Raben and actress (and ex-wife) Ingrid Caven from the Fassbinder history. The key document is a translation in Sign and Sight of a Die Zeit interview with Caven (pictured here). Caven’s attack on Lorenz and the Foundation is what’s getting all the press attention, but the interview is also striking for Caven’s memories of Fassbinder’s sex life, the early days of the […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 31, 2007 -
VITALI ON KUBRICK
On the occasion of the Walter Reade’s 30th anniversary screening of Barry Lyndon (the last show is tonight at 7), Jamie Stuart contributes to The Reeler an interview with Kubrick actor and long-time associate Leon Vitali. Vitali, who most recently produced Todd Fields’s Little Children, is in town to intro tonight’s screening and he took a few moments to talk to Stuart, who also snapped the pic of the producer shown here. From the interview: Reeler: But other filmmakers I think of who have a great degree of control — modern filmmakers like say the Coen Brothers or somebody like […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 29, 2007 -
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
Director Chris Munch (The Hours and Times) sent the below comment in regarding Ted Hope’s post, below, on start-up online film distributor Jaman. While applauding the company’s goals and its economical price points, Munch wonders whether all the enthusiasm for digital film distribution means that we are being conditioned to accept lower image quality when it comes to viewing our favorite movies. Will the price ever rocket, though? Will producers and filmmakers benefit if it does? Jaman seems like a good idea at a good price point. I’m astonished how “content delivery trend predictors” have been proven wrong time and […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 28, 2007 -
JAMAN FOR FREE
Ted Hope sent the following thoughts on Jaman’s current trial offering of free online art-film rentals. Check out Hope’s comments and then, if you are so inclined, click over to Jaman to download the player and watch a movie. The absolute hostility, at best, neglect, generally speaking, that the American Film Industry displays towards adventuresome work, and particularly such work done in a non-english language, has some nice byproducts. When no market exists, salesman often resort to the time tested techniques of the drug pushers. Want to sample the product? Find nirvana for free? Here you go friend, feast away, […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 25, 2007 -
THE RIGHT WAY TO PAY
Over at his CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner receives an email from Dovetail CEO Jason Holloway about the current debate over just how content creators should be compensated for the online viewing of their work. Holloway discusses the pros and cons of the paid subscription model, the pay-per-download model, and the ad-supported model, and provides an opinion as to which types of content are most appropriate for each model. I’m with Kirsner in believing that there is considerable untapped promise in the pay-per-download model (essentially, this is the model of the iTunes Store), but Holloway makes some points about the value […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 23, 2007 -
Lars Von Trier, The Boss Of It All
JENS ALBINUS AND IBEN HJEJLE IN LARS VON TRIER’S THE BOSS OF IT ALL. COURTESY IFC FIRST TAKE. Lars von Trier, the enfant terrible of world cinema, is always looking for the next thing to surprise or wrongfoot audiences. He made only three features in the first decade of his career, and though The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987), and Zentropa (1991) were all critical successes that ably demonstrated von Trier’s cinematic gifts, it is since then that he has truly excelled. In this period, not only has he founded the revolutionary Dogme 95 movement, but completed the Gold […]
by Nick Dawson on May 23, 2007 -
SCENES FROM MISTER LONELY
For those of you who, like me, didn’t make it to Cannes this year to see Harmony Korine’s new feature Mister Lonely, here’s a teaser: a couple of clips have popped up online on a site entitled Fest 21 and are embedded below:
by Scott Macaulay on May 22, 2007
