There’s a lot of filmmaking advice out there, but as you know from reading this magazine and website, I favor instruction from people who are in the trenches themselves. Director Seth Fisher sent me an email about his movie, Passing Harold Blumenthal, a while back, and I’m only just getting to it now. Consequently, I missed the chance to plug his Kickstarter — not that he needed it, though, because he successfully raised $50,000. But it’s not too late to plug his blog, which I’ve just paged through. At Watch Me Make a Movie, Fisher is walking you through his […]
While in Cannes this year I moderated a panel on new distribution thinking, and one of the panelists was Shawn Bercuson of PreScreen. I wrote: … PreScreen’s business operates on an entirely different principle. Using a targeted email approach similar to GroupOn’s, PreScreen blasts fans with invites to watch films via secured streaming before their theatrical release. Then, says Bercuson, detailed information flows to the filmmakers regarding the demographics of the audience who responded to the invites. This information can help in the further crafting of marketing, or the digital release can simply generate good old word-of-mouth. PreScreen, which promises […]
I’m a sucker for performance art projects dealing with things like solitude and personal healing. For example, there’s Sophie Calle’s famous Exquisite Pain, which documented her being dumped by a lover by phone at the tail end of a trip to Japan. Another piece involving Japanese hotel rooms, but with a different kind of pain, is Laurel Nakadate’s Love Hotel, currently on view at P.S. 1. In that piece, Nakadate checks into, alone, a series of Japanese sex hotels and photographs herself simulating the acts that go on there. Slotted into this sub-genre is a new film project by Mexican […]
Anna Calvi’s self-titled album, recently shortlisted for the U.K. Mercury Prize, has been a grower with me in the last few weeks. Now, an interview with Calvi in The Guardian has bumped it up even further. A lot of reviewers have referenced the cinematic quality of Calvi’s songs and, indeed, singles like “Blackout” make one think that she’d be a natural for the next James Bond soundtrack. So, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Calvi’s inspirations are a lot less obvious. Indeed, the only movie that has inspired one of her songs is one of the past decade’s best […]
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For the last ten days, the conclusion to the massively popular Harry Potter series has been jerking tears and dredging up boatloads of cash, and it seems its total box office domination is far from over. In honor of this momentous occasion I decided to undertake the unoriginal but ambitious quest of watching all of the previous films in the week leading up to the premiere. The Potter-palooza culminated in a midnight screening of The Deathly Hallows Part 2 in a strip mall multiplex near the rural Michigan town where I was vacationing, complete with buttered popcorn, limited edition 3-D […]
Here’s the beginning of my interview with Another Earth screenwriter/star Brit Marling and screenwriter/director Mike Cahill, pictured here at the Crosby Street Hotel. The film is highly recommended, particularly for our specific readership. Not only is it a good movie, but it’s also an excellent example of how a fresh concept and skillful execution can amplify a tiny budget. Read the rest of my interview in this Summer’s print edition. Filmmaker: There’s a lot in the movie. There’s the psychology of grief, science, and metaphysics, all wrapped up in the form of a science-fiction fable. How did all of these […]