| Filmmaker Magazine

WAITING FOR THE MAN

Halfway through Pusher, Nicolas Winding Refn’s first installment in what would ultimately become an epic trilogy, the director faced a predicament. Suddenly, the genre marked by guns and car chases held no interest. He abandoned the beatings and foot chases from the film’s early scenes, and went for a haunting, harrowing character study. “I realized I wasn’t interested in gangsters and crime,” the Danish filmmaker explains of his 1996 film. “I was really interested in the morality of the characters, and their emotional descents into hell.” That’s from KM Doughton’s feature on Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher trilogy which we’ve just […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 16, 2006

Film Fix

Director Nicolas Winding Refn on “The Pusher Trilogy” KIM BODNIA IN “PUSHER” Halfway through “Pusher,” Nicolas Winding Refn’s first installment in what would ultimately become an epic trilogy, the director faced a predicament. Suddenly, the genre marked by guns and car chases held no interest. He abandoned the beatings and foot chases from the film’s early scenes, and went for a haunting, harrowing character study. “I realized I wasn’t interested in gangsters and crime,” the Danish filmmaker explains of his 1996 film. “I was really interested in the morality of the characters, and their emotional descents into hell.” “The Pusher […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Aug 16, 2006

LENS ON LEBANON

Astra Taylor, one of our “25 New Faces” this year, passed on information about a new media activist and documentary organization, Lens on Lebanon, currently seeking donations and support. From the group: Lens on Lebanon is a grassroots documentary initiative formed in response to the devastating Israeli bombardment of 2006. As filmmakers, journalists, and activists from Lebanon, Europe, and North America, we are pooling our resources to deliver film and video equipment into communities in south Lebanon, and to bring out documentary evidence as well as photo narratives, and video diaries of daily life under siege. With its infrastructure destroyed, […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 16, 2006

KILLING AN ARAB

I kinda wondered this myself when I read the story: Why is George Bush reading on his vacation in Crawford, Texas, an existentialist novel about a man who impulsively and without provocation kills an Arab? John Dickerson gives it some more thought over at Slate: Unhappy tales of East meets West are found in the papers every day, so presumably the president was looking for more, but his aides will not tell us what he made of the story of a remorseless killer of Arabs. White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush “found it an interesting book and a quick […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 15, 2006

DISTRUSTING DARK LORD

Screenwriter John August (Go, Big Fish) has been directing a movie, an indie and his first, and he’s been writing about it on his blog. This week he discusses the dilemma of working within the industry and still trying to audience-test your work: Last Monday was the first time I put The Movie in front of an audience: thirty friends and colleagues recruited to help figure out whether the film was appropriately funny, dramatic, and comprehensible. (Answers: Yes, Yes, and Not So Much. We’re working on that last part.) Screening a work-in-progress is just as nerve-wracking as it sounds. Going […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2006

HOW MANY PRODUCERS…

… does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Does it have to be a lightbulb? Jokes aside, the topic of producer credits — who deserves them, who doesn’t, and whether or not they should be regulated — has been in the news this year due to producer and financier Bob Yari’s lawsuit against the Producers Guild of America and AMPAS regarding his credit on Crash. In the new Filmmaker, producer Kendall Morgan (Southland Tales) uses the Yari case as the jumping off point for a discussion of these issues, and her piece — which is not posted on […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2006

DREAM MACHINE

Via Movie City Indie, this link to Michel Gondry’s collaboration with website Meme which enables the circulation of videos about dreams. It’s all, of course, part of the build-up to the release of his new feature, The Science of Sleep.

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 10, 2006

MARY, MARY

The Reeler notes that IFC Films has picked up Abel Ferrara’s Mary. I’m happy about that — it’s Ferrara’s best film in years, and its story of a fucked-up, megalomaniacal film director making a religious epic is nothing if not timely… Check out the trailer on MySpace.

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 8, 2006

FURNITURE AND FILM

The furniture and home furnishings store Design within Reach is presenting in its stores The Eames Film Festival. Consisting of seven short films by modernist designers Ray and Charles Eames, the series will be presented at DWR studios across the country and includes their classic 1977 film Powers of Ten, which is described like this: Starting at a one meter square image of a picnic, the camera moves ten times further away every ten seconds, reaching to the edge of the universe; then the journey is reversed, going ten times closer each ten seconds, ultimately reaching the interior of an […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 7, 2006

ESSAYING "TALLADEGA NIGHTS"

I was up at the Creative Capital retreat this weekend where I saw a lot of great work by the organization’s ’04 and ’05 grantees. But if I was in town I probably would have been, along with $47 million of you, at the opening weekend of Talledega Nights. It reunites the Anchorman team of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, and that’s enough for me. James Ponsoldt, who directed Off the Black (which I produced and which is coming out December 1 from Think Film) has just launched a MySpace page and he’s already got several blog entries up, including […]

by Scott Macaulay on Aug 7, 2006

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