George and Mike Kuchar are two of the great camp experimental filmmakers of all time. They represented a pastiche heavy, less self-serious strand of the New American Cinema’s downtown explosion in the early 1960s. Evangelized by Jonas Mekas in the pages of The Village Voice, their work spans over 700 short and feature films, almost all of the executed on the flimsiest of budgets, many of them made in an almost artisanal, fiercely individualistic mode. In a Critics’ Poll of the 100 best films of the 20th century, appearing originally in the January 4, 2000 edition of The Village Voice, […]
The Edit Center, the New York school that teaches beginning editors by having them edit actual films from outside filmmakers, is launching a class in music supervision and editing. Those looking to break into this business might want to check out this program. Deadline to enroll is April 16. From the press release: Learn the language of music in film in this creative and pragmatic 4-week seminar led by music editor Suzana Peric’ (Rachel Getting Married, The Illusionist, The Pianist) and music supervisor Sue Jacobs (Little Miss Sunshine, Everything is Illuminated, Capote). The class will cover what a music editor […]
We just went to press on the new issue of Filmmaker very late last night and as we were doing so we had some informal conversations on a possible iPad version of the magazine. (Check out the blog hopefully later today or tomorrow for my review of the device.) So far not many magazines have published iPad specific editions due to two reasons: iPads weren’t available for testing; and publishers, designers and editors are still in the process of rethinking their products for the iPad platform. Conde Nast is apparently going to be experimenting with several different approaches across all […]
Okay, I guess it’s official now. As Deadline Hollywood is reporting, the Producer’s Guild of America has officially created a new category for the “transmedia producer.” From Nikki Finke’s piece: I’ve learned that a significant All-Boards meeting for the Producers Guild of America took place tonight. Sources tell me that the members voted on a series of amendments that qualify individuals as professional producers. More importantly, for the first time in the guild’s history, they voted on and ratified a new credit — that of the Transmedia Producer — which had been shepherded by such Hollywood names as Mark Gordon, […]
Remember our serial killer pal Mike and his 70-minute takeout of George Lucas’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace? Well, he’s back. Red Letter Media has posted his equally epic sequel — another long consideration, this time of Episode Two: Attack of the Clones. Part one below.
The Sundance Institute have announced the projects chosen to be a part of the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in East Africa. The Lab will take place July 9-29 on the island of Manda off the coast of Kenya. The Lab will provide these projects with guidance in their creative development towards the end product. Styled from the Sundance Institute Theatre Labs, Sundance Institute East Africa is an exchange and development program, and participants will receive training and mentoring from American and African Creative Advisors. The projects included this year are Cut Off My Tongue by Sitawa Namwalie, The Book of […]
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Okay, it’s the weekend, so I’m allowing myself a frivolous but funny post. Filmmaker was invited to the set of this film just a few weeks ago. We weren’t able to send anybody but I just came across this entirely safe-for-work trailer of the porn parody of The Big Lebowski starring Tom Byron as “The Dude,” Peter, um O’Tool eerily accurate in the John Goodman role, and Kimberly Kane channeling Julianne Moore’s performance artiste. Porn parodies have come a long way. Some of these set-ups compare to the original pretty well. From the press release we received: New Sensations, the […]
The first round of Apple iPad reviews has hit the ‘net. David Pogue of the New York Times split his somewhat muted review into two points-of-view: the tech geek and everyone else. He begins both by writing, “The Apple iPad is basically a giant iPod Touch.’ The tech geek POV review is mixed; the “everyone else” pretty positive. Edward Baig in USA Today is less equivocal: The first iPad is a winner. It stacks up as a formidable electronic-reader rival for Amazon’s Kindle. It gives portable game machines from Nintendo and Sony a run for their money. At the very […]
You could say that Bill Gunn was a man who came before his time, but that leaves you working under the flimsy assumption that a time more hospitable to this man of undeniable talents and mercurial preoccupations would some day come. If you don’t already know this is a weak proposition, you’re not paying attention to the tenor of the times we live in. One can be forgiven for being unable to relate to the struggles of an unorthodox black artist to find proper patrons and an appreciative audience I suppose. Still, it is better to say that Bill Gunn, […]