At the Festival Square in Edinburgh, Tilda Swinton organized and led a flash mob dance yesterday, coinciding the launch of her new charity, the 8 1/2 Foundation. From an article in the Scotsman: Gathering several hundred willing participants under the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, she led them in a soft-shoe shuffle known as At The Ball, by the Avalon Boys, originally performed by Laurel and Hardy, in an effort to create a “flash mob dance”, where a group suddenly and spontaneously start dancing in a public place. The instructions, disseminated online, were simple: watch the Laurel and Hardy clip, turn […]
Filmmaker (and former Filmmaker Managing Editor) Matt Ross made this short film updating the European trip montage from Rules of Attraction to material taken from and inspired by all of Ellis’s books, including his new Imperial Bedrooms. It stars Kip Pardue, James Van Der Beek and Tara Summers, and it was conceived of, shot, and edited in ten days. And, oh yeah, it has no name. You can take part in a contest by naming the film at the Knopf website.
Over at FilmInFocus, screenwriter Howard Rodman picks up on the vino intelligence of Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids are All Right to riff on wines that would go well with specific films. Here’s his recommendation for Far from Heaven: The elegance and depth of Far From Heaven deserves an expression of fruit, tannin, poignance, melancholy, and regret. A wine that satisfies on first sip, then opens up in the glass to reveal tastes and emotions far more profound. Giacomo Conterno’s Barolo Monfortino is such a wine. A bottle of the 1982 will take you to the precipice, then gently guide you […]
The Sundance Institute announced its 12 Documentary Film Fellows and their five projects in the seventh Documentary Edit and Story Laboratory. Taking place from June 19-27 at a resort in Sundance, Utah, this Lab supports visionary filmmakers and their projects. Fellows are selected from a pool of 60 active, Sundance-funded documentary projects. Lab Fellows are: Ra’anan Alexandrowicz (Directing Fellow), Michael Collins (Directing Fellow), Heather Courtney (Directing Fellow), Ramona Diaz (Directing Fellow), Ron Goldman (Editing Fellow), Kyle Henry (Editing Fellow), Stephen Maing (Directing Fellow), Leah Marino (Editing Fellow), Eric Daniel Metzgar (Editing Fellow), Jonathan Oppenheim (Editing Fellow), Trina Rodriquez (Editing Fellow), […]
Producer Mike S. Ryan challenges the current preoccupations of our independent film scene.
I was saddened to hear of the death of Vic Skolnick, an influential co-founder of Long Island’s first major art house movie theater, The Cinema Arts Center, in Huntington, N.Y. Passing away at 81 on June 10th, Skolnick, along with his wife, Charlotte Sky, founded what was originally known as the New Community Cinema in 1973. Skolnick, a teacher for twenty years at N.Y. public schools, combined his passion for history with a lifelong love of films. His ambition was to show as many diverse films as possible and educate his loyal audience in innovative cinema. The cinema went through […]
The Sundance Director’s Lab is currently wrapping at the Sundance Institute in Utah, and we have two filmmakers blogging about their experience. First up is Uzbekistan writer/director Saodat Ismailova, whose project, 40 Days of Silence, is described like this: “Four generations of women under one roof in Uzbekistan look to each other for comfort as they try to overcome their destinies.” Yesterday, June 19th, the director’s lab came to the end. When I look back at the past three weeks of my life it already seems like it was more than a year ago… I will simply divide the process […]
Filmmaker Zeina Durra’s Sundance Competition film The Imperialists are Still Alive! has its East Coast premiere tonight, June 24, in an Indiewire-hosted screening at the 2nd Northside Festival of Film and Music in Brooklyn. The film, a graduate of the IFP Narrative Lab, is an upscale Manhattan comedy of manners with an internationalist flavor and a post-9/11 paranoid bent. It also has the most arresting first shot of the year. Writing for Filmmaker, Eric Kohn said of the film: Consider the revelatory drama The Imperialists Are Still Alive! Like a 1990s-era Amerindie upgraded to post-9/11 concerns, this insightful low key […]
The Sundance Institute has announced the inaugural Shortslab: LA, a three-part, all-day workshop that will offer filmmakers inside guidance through the development, production, and exhibition of short films. Shortlabs: LA will be held Saturday, July 31st at the Downtown Independent Theater (251 South Main Street) in Los Angeles. Tickets are $150. For information or to purchase tickets visit: www.sundance.org/shortslab Here is the workshop schedule: Story Development (9:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.): Acclaimed filmmakers including Sundance Film Festival alumni share their experiences working with short-form during their careers. These tales from the trenches will focus on conceptualization and script development. Participants […]
I’m not sure I see the Michel Gondry in this trailer for his The Green Hornet. On the other hand, as this interview with Gondry, Seth Rogen and producer Neil Moritz at Ain’t It Cool News points out, the trailer is intended for newcomers to the comic and doesn’t get into the intricacies of the film or some of its more innovative visual elements. I’m not a fan of the comics but am a big Gondry fan. What do you think?