Here are a few articles of interest I’ve stored in my Instapaper. There’s a new website for Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, and it takes something of a transmedia approach. Chuck Tryon explains: As you enter the website, it invites you to follow one of two forking paths, the father’s way or the mother’s way, while a haunting, almost mournful score plays in the background. Once you choose, you encounter a split screen with half the screen filled by a semi-circle of video clips and the other a white space with some cryptic text that evokes a moral parable. […]
Okay, I’m not on the road to NAB… but David Leitner is, and he’ll be filing reports from the conference here at Filmmaker. Look for his pieces beginning tomorrow or Monday. There are other sites to follow as well. Koo will be attending NAB for the first time and posting interviews, write-ups and news over at No Film School. Phillip Bloom will be attending as wIll Vincent Laforet. For many, the big news will be (the rumored) announcement by Apple of the new Final Cut Pro. If you’re not following all the tech blogs, here’s the low-down: at the last […]
“By making this movie, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride have done what all of us have dreamed of doing since we too fantasized about making movies as adolescents. They have used their current success to truly test the boundaries of what they can get away with, and they’ve done it at a time when the Hollywood industry is as timid and fearful and insecure as it has ever been (which is saying something). They have caged their inner scaredy cats and swung for the f**king fence to produce something on a grand scale that has no direct precedent (or […]
The IFP and Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media ForumNYC is coming up April 19, and, as it approaches, several of its participants will be blogging for Filmmaker. Today’s first post is from Mark Harris, who will be presenting his new project, The Lost Children, at the event. Click on the link above for more info and tickets. One of the things that excites me the most about “Cross-media,” “Transmedia” or whatever it is, is the idea of telling a story in many different ways. I know this may not fit into a lot of peoples’ definitions of these terms, but […]
The trailer is both gorgeous and slightly perplexing — and after Mike Cahill’s Another Earth, seems to be continuing a trend of arthouse psychological planet movies. In truth, I can’t wait for this this new, presumably Cannes-bound pic from Lars Von Trier. Melancholia from Zentropa on Vimeo.
[Editor’s Note: Spoiler Alert – The ending of Source Code is mentioned in this piece.] “We have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image — whose predestination to this phase-effect is sufficiently indicated by the use, in analytic theory, of the ancient term imago. This jubilant assumption of his specular image by the child at the infant stage, still sunk in his motor incapacity and nursling dependence, would seem to exhibit in an exemplary […]
(Meek’s Cutoff is being distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories. It opens theatrically at the Film Forum in NYC on Wednesday, April 8, 2011. Click on the links to learn more. ) As much as I approve of Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff in every single way, I’ve been finding it incredibly difficult to write a review of it. Not that I don’t have anything worthwhile to say. It’s just that everything I’ve come up with so far sounds like film school pretension. Though term papers could — and hopefully will — be written about how Reichardt revises and revitalizes the traditional Western […]
Until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard of the Texas stand-up comedian Bill Hicks, who died in 1994 at age 32, having found resounding success overseas and little more than professional respect at home. Since then, I’ve devoured several hours of his comedy specials on my Netflix Instant account, marveling at the way this artist managed to blend blisteringly caustic commentaries on sex, politics, rock music, religion, and drug addiction with a weirdly humane, almost holistic philosophy of life. Stand-up comedy in any form is not normally my thing, but I’ve become rather attached to The World According to […]
This column usually focuses on one subject per post that tackles one specific aspect of micro-budget filmmaking. I never wanted it to be a place where we talk about the latest gear or tips on how to get a film done; There are other awesome sites for that. However, after talking with filmmaker Jamie Heinrich, about no-budget filmmaking, he sent me the list of important things to remember below. Jamie recently completed his film I Like You, and after seeing the trailer I can’t wait to check it out. Jamie’s advice is funny, to the point, and no nonsense. I […]