Filmmaker and journalist Daniel Nemet-Nejat took a short break from his blog 40 Years in the Desert but he’s back now with two posts that riff on the ways new distribution technologies can enable new and successful independent film content. In the first, “HIgh Tech Hams,”, he describes his experience reporting on XM Radio for a magazine piece and muses on what filmmakers might learn from the satellite network. In the piece directly below it, Excuse Me While I Howl at the Moon, Nemet-Nejat begins to describe the business and artistic imperatives behind the construction of an “internet aesthetic” when […]
The new issue of Film Comment isn’t online yet, but a friend emailed me this excerpt from Gavin Smith’s Cannes review in which he singles out for praise Julia Loktev’s mysteriously compelling American independent film Day Night Day Night: “In the end, it was the Directors’ Fortnight that served up the festival’s single most riveting work, Julia Loktev’s unforeseen tour de force Day Night Day Night. The film’s cool, uninflected observation of a young woman being prepared for and then setting about executing a suicide bomb attack in the middle of Times Square obviously courts controversy, even thought the Russian-born […]
Ain’t It Cool News is ten years old today, and they’ve got a great, low-key birthday feature up: they’ve asked their various contributors to pick ten films “that best sum up America.” The lists are really interesting, and the capsule blurbs about the films are full of the genuine enthusiasm for film that has distinguished the site over the years. All the Presidents Men, Taxi Driver, Nashville and, um Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle all make an appearance on the list. Check it out and, AICN, happy birthday!
Over at his blog, Anthony Kaufman rounds up some news on David Lynch and his upcoming Inland Empire, which reportedly will screen in Venice. He links to this YouTube clip entitled “David Lynch Experimenting with Digital Video.” There’s no real solid info to confirm whether it’s truly by Lynch or not, but it certainly feels like something of his. He also links to Lynch’s blog, which consists of short questions on various topics, many related to 9/11, that Lynch throws out for his readers to respond to. Also, here’s an interview from Business Week in which Lynch talks about his […]
Caroline Bermudez over at Pitchfork chats via email with Scott Crary whose Kill your Idols opens on July 7th at the Cinema Village in New York and comes to DVD this fall. The doc, which Crary says he made for $300 (okay, I know these bands aren’t the Rolling Stones, but I’d hope they got more than $3 each for their music rights) looks at the late ’70s/early ’80s New York No Wave — folks like Arto Lindsay and DNA, Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch — and the current musicians (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, A.R.E. Weapons, etc.) they have […]
Slate has a Summer Movies Week going, and this interesting feature is part of it: a survey as to which film various directors and actors watch the most. Here’s Neil LaBute’s reply: Outside of perennial holiday fare like The Wizard of Oz, It’s a Wonderful Life, or Salo, I think I’ve watched Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon more times than any other movie I can remember. (Warren Beatty’s Reds would give it a run for its money—I saw that 14 times in the theater!) For me, Barry Lyndon is the most distinctive and beautiful re-creation of period on film, bar none, […]
In another lifetime when I used to produce performance and theater at New York’s The Kitchen I presented the Bay Area-based Survival Research Laboratories in a very noisy and very rainy show in the parking lot of Shea Stadium. Via BoingBoing, the group is still at it and will perform their latest spectacular on August 11 in San Jose, California as part of the 13th Annual Symposium for Electronic Arts. Bre Pettis at Makezine has posted a video blog recounting a visit he took to the group’s S.F. headquarters. (The image at right was shot by A*A*R*O*N at an SRL […]
Over at the online gaming website Bioware, Hugh Hancock, the Artistic Director of the Strange Company, provides a great “how-to” on the making of his Machinima game BloodSpell. For those interested in making a film using a video game engine, Hancock walks you through concept, script, building sets and characters, creating animatics and more. BloodSpell itself has a site here, and below is a quote from the piece: Around about August 2003, a mad Frenchman named Francoise said that Strange Company needed to “get the punk back.” The day after that the folder on my hard drive called “Gettin The […]
Filmmaker Michael Kang has taken up a novel and interesting approach to promoting his new film, The Motel. He’s started a blog featuring personal stories sharing the theme of his movie: Puberty Sucks. (Well, that’s not what I’d guess the theme of the movie is, because it’s really a quite winning coming-of-age tale, but then again, stories about people’s rotten childhoods are always entertaining…) Here’s from his first posting: Thanks for stopping by. I’m sorry the place is a bit sparse right now. I started this site not only because of my stunted emtional state but also because of the […]
I’ve been working on a bunch of stuff, not the least of which is the next issue of Filmmaker, so the blog has been relatively neglected of late. Here then, to nab some quick search engine traffic and boost our Alexa rating, is this “Stunning Nikon” commercial directed by Mark Romanek starring a sinuous Kate Moss. (Click under the tab “provocative.”)