Most of the time when I come across interesting articles or video on the web I clip them to my Evernote reader and check them out later on my Blackberry or iPad. Here, then, are a few things I’ve clipped that might interest you too. From CNN Money: “One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010.” What are the implications for online content creators? In Spring 2008 I wrote about Alix Lambert’s Crime book for Filmmaker. (The piece is not online, but you can check it out on her site.) Here, at The Graveyard Shift, she discusses […]
Joe Corey who posts at A Site Called Fred emailed with this video of James Cameron planting a tree on Earth Day. The kicker is that its in old-school 3D, so if you have some of those blue and red glasses you can slip them on. He also calls this a remake of Les Blank’s film Werner Herzog Eats his Shoe, a comparison which, I have to say, I’m baffled by. No matter — watch Cameron plant a tree in 3D (preceded by a discussion of 3D itself).
A powerful statement from U.S. directors calling for the release of director Jafar Panahi from prison in Iran has been issued. I’ll let the petition speak for itself, but kudos to the organizers for taking action and assembling this illustrious group. New York, NY (April 30, 2010) – Jafar Panahi, an internationally acclaimed Iranian director of such award-winning films as The White Balloon, The Circle, Crimson Gold and Offside, was arrested at his home on March 1st and has been held since in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. A number of filmmaking luminaries have come to Mr. Panahi’s defense and “condemn […]
You know that already, but to be reminded again, surf to this week’s must-read post on film criticism in the age of the internet. Yes, it’s sad that film critics are losing their jobs, but Ebert finds good reason to celebrate the diversity of voices the ‘net brings us. A key graph: What the internet is creating is a class of literate, gifted amateur writers, in an old tradition. Like Trollope, who was a British Post official all his working life, they write for love and because they must. Like Rohinton Mistry, a banking executive, or Wallace Stevens, an insurance […]
With Tribeca wrapping up this weekend I thought this would be the right time to give some of my highlights from what I saw this year. Sadly, I didn’t get out to as many movies as I would have liked (but Howard Feinstein did, and he writes about some of them in his preview and at the half way point) but here’s some notes from my vantage point. Best Performance Melissa Leo in The Space Between. Leo plays a grumpy airline stewardess who after her flight is grounded on 9/11 has to watch over one of her passengers, a Pakistani-American […]
The winners of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival were announced tonight. Feo Aladag‘s When We Leave received the fest’s top honor, the Founders Award for Best Narrative. The film follows a woman and her son as they try to escape her husband’s abuse and finds shelter with a family in Berlin. Best Documentary went to Alexandra Codina‘s Monica & David, which highlights a couple living with Down syndrome. Other winners include Dana Adam Shaprio‘s Monogamy taking home the New York Competition category and the outlandish comedy Spork won the first ever Best Feature in the Tribeca Film Festival Virtual category. […]
Sparrow Songs is a documentary project by filmmaker Alex Jablonski and d.p. Michael Totten, who are making and posting one short doc film per month on their site for a whole year. They are six episodes in, and the films are quite wonderful. Averaging about eight minutes, they are poetic essays that capture the essences of specific places, people, and moments, and that then, without pretension, build these observances into larger statements about love, truth, community, and the ways we are choosing to live our lives. The films include Porn Star Karoke, about the crowd that gathers weekly at an […]
Despite being born and bred on our shores, Mormonism is still something of a fringe religion. For a lot of Americans, there’s something vaguely worrying about its army of clean-cut, nametag wearing missionaries. Neither Hollywood nor the independent film scene have helped the Mormon case for normalcy – their portrayals tend to fixate on the church’s checkered history with polygamy. Last night’s Stranger Than Fiction featured Cleanflix, a sympathetic look at the more mainstream side of Mormon culture. Directed by Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi, two filmmakers who grew up in the tradition (James is no longer practicing, but Ligairi […]
California native Patrick Hoelck had auspicious beginnings, but the corkscrew path he took through music, fashion, and commercial photography on his way to becoming a feature filmmaker belies his earliest and most abiding passion. Weaned on arthouse classics and American films of the seventies, Hoelck moved to New York City in his teens and became a music-video director before he was old enough to vote, eventually directing for the likes of Beenie Man, the Deftones, Ben Harper, and Alicia Keys. Over a decade ago, he turned to still photography and (with the help of pal Vincent Gallo) quickly made a […]
In 2004 Hal Hartley released a series of shorts he made from 1994-2000. Titled Possible Films, which is also the name of his web site where he sells his films and music, Hartley has compiled a second anthology that highlights his time living in Berlin, Possible Films, Volume 2. (He recently moved back to New York.) The five shorts are similar in style (shot on DV) with many of them shot in the same apartment, vary from fiction to non, and were all made within a few years of each other. Exploring small ideas that couldn’t be fleshed out in […]