Over at his CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner responds responds to an article in the Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern entitled “Size Matters.” In the article, Morgenstern questions whether the viewing medium of handheld devices will lead to artistic cinematic innovation and seems to think it will not. I’m incredibly interested in this subject and will be writing more on it in the future. I said at my SXSW panel that I’m mystified why more independent filmmakers haven’t tried to create innovative content for the web, but, unlike Morgenstern, I don’t think the answer is because the medium of the […]
Here at Filmmaker you’ll read about the films playing at the South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) at Austin, Texas, but to get the festival you need to understand that films aren’t the only game in town. There’s of course music — SXSW started as a music fest, and, mid-week, when it changes over, the crowded streets will really explode –- but there’s also SXSW Interactive, which focuses on new media and gaming. And then there’s the conference part of SXSW. In the huge Austin Conventional Center, which is the hub of the festival, panels and small group discussions with […]
Few films have had an effect of making people think differently about the world, or at least confirming their worst instincts about it. No Country For Old Men is one of those films. Set against the arid backdrop and sparsely populated tableau of West Texas, Joel and Ethan Coen paint a bleak depiction of human nature in which there is no country for good men, who are helpless to stop the evil men. Josh Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, an ex-Vietnam vet who, while hunting antelope, stumbles upon a drug-deal gone wrong (so wrong, that not only have all the pushers […]
Okay, I’ve posted, MySpace’d and Facebooked you all to death about Ronnie Bronstein’s Frownland, which opens tomorrow at the IFC Center. You know you have to see it, right? You will be graded on it on the upcoming final. And if you’re in Austin for SXSW, as I’ll be, you can score some extra credit by seeing Mary Bronstein’s debut feature Yeast, which premieres there. Mary is Ron’s wife, she co-starred in Frownland, and he was one the cinematographers of her movie. Greta Gerwig also stars. If you want to learn more about it, listen to Mary on the Renart […]
The Screen Actor’s Guild has confirmed on its website news that has been floating around the indie world for a few weeks: that SAG will offer “guaranteed completion contracts” to indie productions so that they will be unaffected by a possible strike. What’s great about the SAG news, aside from quite valuably allowing indies to make a living during a labor stoppage, is that it implicitly acknowledges that all producers are not represented by the AMPTP and should not be affected by issues that primarily affect studio moviemaking. From the website: Guaranteed Completion Contracts are only available to independent productions […]
Gary Gygax, co-creator of the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (with Dave Arneson), died on March 4th. He had been in poor health for some time, and apparently died of heart problems. I saw notice of his death on Boing Boing earlier in the week, took a second to recognize Gygax’s name, and then kept on surfing through the site. Later, though, I thought a bit more about Gygax and his cultural contribution and decided to write something here for a couple of reasons. First, I’ll cop to having been a bit of a D&D geek for a couple […]
BLIND CLIMBER DACHUNG IN DIRECTOR LUCY WALKER’S BLINDSIGHT. COURTESY ROBSON ENTERTAINMENT. The projects Lucy Walker has chosen to take on in her career demonstrate an admirable desire to tell difficult and important stories. The British documentarian was born and raised in London, and during her childhood lost the sight in one of her eyes. However, if anything this only further fueled her fascination with film and other visual media. She was a literature major at Oxford University before winning a Fulbright Scholarship which took her to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied film. During this time, she […]
Eric Kohn emailed to tell me about a new online magazine he’s involved with called Stream. From the introductory notice posted on the site: Stream is a new magazine devoted to filmmakers who want to exploit new technologies in producing, promoting and distributing their work. It’s not as complicated as it sounds: We wish simply to be enablers. Filmmaking is the cultural phenomenon of our times, in the way that rock n roll was a generation or two (or three) ago. Once upon a time, any kid could pick up a cheap guitar and make their own noise. Now that […]
Over at Film in Focus, Karina Longworth is the latest profile in the “Behind the Blog” series. Currently the editor of Spoutblog, Longworth talks about her favorite posts, her work day, and her history as a blogger, excerpted below: I’m a rare specimen, in that I’ve been a “professional” movie blogger from the jump–meaning, from the very early days of Cinematical through the present, I’ve always been paid to do it, and I’ve more or less treated it like a career. I have great admiration for those who self publish out of a labor of love, but I wouldn’t know […]
I’m posting this short review by Richard Brody that appeared in the New Yorker this week as the first of a trickle of postings, message board missives, MySpace bulletins, and FaceBook alerts that will soon develop into a deafening roar of digital noise converging towards one important goal: to get you to see Frownland this weekend in New York at its world theatrical premiere at the IFC Center! If you’ve been following this blog over the last year, you know of our huge love for this film. I first saw it a year ago at SXSW and was on the […]