| Filmmaker Magazine

GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK

Reuters has an article up announcing the official and long-expected shutdown of Section 8, Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s production company, and Clooney’s formation of a new company, Smoke House, which will be based at Warner’s. As always, Clooney is great with a quote: The shutting down of Section Eight came about partly because the business aspect of the company was starting to weigh down the filmmakers. “We decided that three years ago, the minute it becomes a business we’re going to get out,” Clooney said in January. “It doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to make films, it doesn’t […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jul 20, 2006

THE ATROCITY RETURNS

Several years ago I selected for our annual “25 New Faces” feature filmmaker Jonathan Weiss, who had just finished a many-years-in-the-making adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s great novel The Atrocity Exhibition. The film is full of amazing sequences, has a truly unique and disquieting tone, and embodies a keen understanding of the ideas that course through Ballard’s most radical novel. (Yes, more radical than Crash.) I spoke to Weiss a few weeks ago and it seems like he’s looking for a U.S. video deal for the film. I hope he’s secured one by now, but in the meantime, here’s Tim Lucas […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jul 19, 2006

THE JEDDAH VISUAL SHOW FESTIVAL

Via Netribution, “The first Saudi Arabian film festival opened in the Red Sea city of Jeddah this week, in an ultra-conservative country where the silver screen is so controversial that the word ‘cinema’ does not even get a mention in the title. ‘The Jeddah Visual Show Festival’ started on Wednesday night screening two hours of home-grown short films.” The article goes on to talk about the slow birth of cinema in Saudi Arabia — namely, cartoons and the short films shown at this festival. From the piece: Public screenings of movies are taboo in Saudi Arabia, where religious scholars believe […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2006

Head Trip

Co-director Keith Fulton reveals how to create an unlikely filmic Frankenstein like Brothers of the Head, welding a bizarre story of conjoined rock stars onto a fake-documentary framework. HARRY TREADAWAY AND LUKE TREADAWAY IN KEITH FULTON AND LOUIS PEPE’S BROTHERS OF THE HEAD. Ever heard of Tom and Barry Howe, conjoined twin frontmen from seminal seventies punk rock band Bang Bang? Remember “Two Way Romeo,” their signature live hit, when Barry would pull up his shirt and display the shared flesh-band that forever connected them at the midsection? No recollection? Then what about the British band “Spinal Tap,” with the […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Jul 16, 2006

24 (MINUTES)

Rick Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly is the best screen capturing of the vibe and ideas of one of my all-time favorite writers, Philip K. Dick. If any of you are on the fence about seeing the movie, the folks over at Film Force have posted the first 24 minutes of the movie. Click over to the site and check it out. Elsewhere on Film Force, A Scanner Darkly producer Tommy Palotta talks about the team’s desire to do Dick right: When we initially approached the estate, we told them that we wanted to do a really faithful adaptation. You know, […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jul 15, 2006

BACKSTAGE

The guys over at Other Music have noted the DVD re-release of Ron Dorfman and Peter Nevard’s 1970 documentary, Groupies. A rarely seen cult film on the ’60s rock scene, Groupies is now out from Cherry Red Records and is described by their catalog like this: A classic sixties documentary, “Groupies”, finally gets its release on DVD. “Groupies” is the ultimate expose of back-stage shenanigans. At times hilarious, at times almost tragic, the documentary follows the fortunes and dilemmas of various real life groupies, a supremely hedonistic bunch of rock fans, on their relentless search for a new kind of […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jul 15, 2006

THE ABSENT PRESENT

In The New York Times, Felicia Lee reports on artist Chris Moukarbel, whose art riff on Oliver Stone’s 9/11 film got him sued by Paramount Pictures, as we have blogged about extensively below. Moukarbel currently has a related artwork up this month at Chelsea’s Wallspace Gallery (the new artwork uses no materials appropriated from Stone’s work) and, the article says, is hopefully near a settlement. From the piece: After a temporary restraining order was placed on the distribution and showing of his video (part of a thesis project for his Master of Fine Arts at Yale), Mr. Moukarbel went ahead […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jul 13, 2006

THE BEST MUSIC IN A TRAILER AWARD GOES TO…

… the new trailer for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette/. It starts off with a lovely non-beat-oriented track from Aphex Twin’s underrated Drukqs album before cutting to an essential track by the Gang of Four, “Natural’s Not in It,” that announces the film’s themes in its brilliant lyrics: “The problems of leisure/What to do for pleasure… This heaven gives me migraine!” It then concludes in quite with “Ceremony,” the first single by New Order that was penned as a Joy Division track and which functions as a epitaph to Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, who committed suicide shortly after recording demo […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2006

THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD

There’s a trailer up for Allan Coulter’s debut feature, Hollywoodland, and it looks pretty great. The film seems to be a noir detective story based on the real-life mystery surrounding actor George Reeves, best known for playing Superman in the tv series, and his mysterious death. Ben Affleck plays Reeves, and he looks really good as does Adrian Brody, Diane Lane, and the rest of a great cast. Coulter is best known for directing many episodes of The Sopranos and he’s been a hot name on various director lists for years.

by Scott Macaulay on Jul 5, 2006

FAST TRACK CONGRATULATIONS

Congrats to director Robert Crary and writer/star Jennifer Westfeldt (pictured) whose Ira and Abby won one of two L.A. Film Festival Audience Awards. The film was one of the three selected in 2003 by the L.A. Film Festival and Filmmaker to become part of our “Fast Track” program.

by Scott Macaulay on Jul 5, 2006

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