| Filmmaker Magazine

THE POSTMODERN AESTHETIC

Over at Movie City News, screenwriter Larry Gross has penned the most provocative review of Fincher’s Zodiac yet. His lede: Zodiac is an important postmodern work. It’s an authentically “new” and even experimental thing attempting, to quote from Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation,” to put content in its place. It’s very very much a film constructed on a 21st century conception of information as a non-substantive, purely relational digital phenomenon, and the fact that it was shot on video and exists immaterially as digital information is thus not a merely decorative issue but crucial to its meaning.

by Scott Macaulay on Mar 4, 2007

RECOMMENDED READING

Jumping off Bridges director Kat Candler is teaching a film class this semester, and to compile the syllabus she asked her filmmaker friends to put together a “recommended reading” list comprised of books that have helped them in their professional lives. She agreed to let me publish this list, so here it is below, grouped by filmmaking discipline, with the names of the filmmakers who recommended each book in parentheses after the title. Screenwriting The Ice Storm: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Script Series Book) by James Schamus (Kat Candler) Sex, Lies and Videotape (Faber Reel Classics) by Steven Soderberg […]

by Scott Macaulay on Mar 3, 2007

FIRST STEPS

The film, That, may just be a 39-minute “snowboarding epic,” but independent filmmakers should take note of it because, according to Variety, it’s the first piece of independently distributed media on the Apple iTunes Movie Store. The pic was produced by Forum Snowboards, and here’s the trade mag described its journey to iTunes: Forum first asked its DVD distrib to gets “That” onto iTunes. When it didn’t succeed, the company started talking to Apple directly. Though iTunes does sell some short films in its movies section for $1.99, they all come from established names such as Shorts Intl. and Sundance. […]

by Scott Macaulay on Mar 1, 2007

SHORT FILM CONFESSIONS

In 2004 Cinevegas and Sundance programmer Mike Plante wrote a piece for us titled “Confessions of a Short Film Programmer” in which he listed the ingredients that make a short film impress festival selection committees. Now he’s got a new website, “I Blame Society,” with both a photo blog as well as a blog tied to his film zine Cinemad. On his latest post, he references the Filmmaker article and adds an addendum, which I’ll repost here: One of the things I did not mention in the article: why do film schools try to teach students by showing them features […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 28, 2007

CANNES DO SPIRIT

Over at their MySpace page, the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival is announcing the First Annual American Pavilion Student Filmmaker Program Short Film Contest (whew!). The deadline is March 9, and submitted films should tackle the question, “How will Cannes 07 change your life?” The prize? A trip to the Cannes Film Festival. For more info, click on the MySpace page above or visit the American Pavilion website.

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 27, 2007

ON THE MAIN SITE…

For those who only bookmark this one: Mike Plante interviews Cam Archer about his Wild Tigers I Have Known, which opens tomorrow at the IFC Center. And Justin Lowe on Rich Wong’s Gotham and Spirit-nominated Colma: The Musical.

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 27, 2007

FEMALE TROUBLE

I’m usually annoyed that whenever the horror genre heats up, a bunch of indie filmmakers decide to capitalize on the trend and “make a horror movie.” Most of the time, these filmmakers don’t really like horror, don’t watch it, and don’t understand its specific rules and traditions. And then they wonder why people don’t find their scripts scary. So, this article in Variety by Archie Thomas is quite interesting. It reports on a new venture from the folks at the U.K. film production company Warp X. It’s called Darklight, and it’s a program intended to get horror newcomers — specifically, […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 27, 2007

PATENT LEATHERED

For those of you who briefly scanned the recent headlines stating that Microsoft was fined $1.52 billion for infringing on two minor patents related to MP3 technology with only mild passing interest (or glee), Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly has a solid post explaining why this situation is more than a little screwed up. Here are the key graphs: So how about MP3, the ubiquitous music encoding standard? Who holds the patents on that? Answer: the MP3 standard was developed in the early 90s and the patent pool was originally controlled by Fraunhofer IIS. Microsoft paid Fraunhofer $16 million […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 25, 2007

FILM INDEPENDENT 2007 SPIRIT AWARDS

The Film Independent Spirit Awards were handed out yesterday in Santa Monica, California. Here are the winners. Best Feature: Little Miss Sunshine, Producers: Marc Turtletaub, David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf, Albert Berger & Ron Yerxa Best Director: Jonathon Dayton & Valerie Faris, Little Miss Sunshine Best Screenplay: Jason Reitman, Thank You For Smoking Best First Feature: Sweet Land. Director: Ali Selim. Producers: Alan Cumming, James Bigham, Ali Selim Best First Screenplay: Michael Arndt, Little Miss Sunshine John Cassavetes Award (For the Best Feature made for under $500,000):Quinceañera. Writer/Directors: Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland. Producer: Anne Clements Best Supporting Female: Frances […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 25, 2007

HANGING AT THE CON

The second annual New York Comic Con seems like the last place Filmmaker would be at but yesterday I was at the Javits Center to see new footage of Eli Roth’s sure-to-be gore fest Hostel: Part II and got a look into fan boy paradise. Showing up a little early to get my badge, I walked around the trade show which is split up in designated areas for comic giants like DC Comics and Marvel, turn a corner and you can try your hands at some of the newest video games, and a little farther down are racks of memorabilia […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Feb 24, 2007

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