Bruce McDonald’s new film The Tracey Fragments played at the AFI Fest this week, but if you missed it, don’t worry — you can make your own version of the film. The film stars Ellen Page and is described as “a 21st century Catcher in the Rye told in a dizzying pop-art fashion.” The film is also edited in a multi-frame format, and the filmmakers have employed this aesthetic concept coupled with open-source generosity to come up with a unique promotional tool. As one of the three editors of the film, Matt Hannam, wrote in an email, “As the movie […]
Arriving at the start of the second week of the Writer’s Strike is a research report by Global Media Intelligence entitled “Do the Movies Make Money”” Their answer? No. As reported in the International Herald Tribune by Michael Cieply, Global Media Intelligence, which is a partner of Merrill Lynch, examined the revenue from all films distributed by the six major studios, Dreamworks, and the studio specialty divisions and reported that the film business overall runs at a loss. (They report last year’s loss at $1.9 billion against $25.6 billion in revenue). What’s the reason? High guild residuals? No. The report […]
OCTAVIO GÓMEZ IN STEVE BARRON’S CHOKING MAN. COURTESY INTERNATIONAL FILM CIRCUIT. Considering Steve Barron’s career, you can’t help wondering why he isn’t better known. Having grown up around films (because his mother, Zelda Barron, was a script supervisor, producer and director), Dublin-born Barron progressed from a clapper loader on movies like A Bridge Too Far and Ridley Scott’s debut The Duellists (both 1977) to one of the most influential pop promo directors of the 1980s. He was responsible for the videos for Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean, Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing and a-ha’s Take On Me. After making the cult […]
Over at Lance Weiler’s Workbook Project, there’s a newly launched group blog authored by the participant’s in this year’s IFP Rough Cut Lab. The ’07 class is a fantastic group of filmmakers and the challenges they face as they complete their films are ones that any working filmmaker will empathize with. Click on the link above and read what they have to say.
Robert Greenwald’s latest missive against Fox News — for the wanton “pornification” of its news programs — is both hilarious and weirdly disturbing. In this short video he skips through their various news shows and finds strippers, spring-break’ed co-ed’s and, as Bill O’Reilly might say, lingerie action. It’s all part of Fox Attacks, a group advocating a consumer’s right to boycott the conservative cable channel by de-bundling it from his or her cable package. (Hat tip: Talking Points Memo.)
The nominees for the Gotham Awards‘ Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You will be screening Friday, Nov. 16 – Monday, Nov. 19 at The Museum of Modern Art. Here’s a look at this year’s nominees. The winner, selected by Filmmaker and MoMA‘s dept. of film, will be announced at the Gotham Awards Nov. 27. Click here for more on the screenings. Approximate running time: 5:10. Download here by right clicking and choosing Save Target or Save Link. To learn more about the films, go to their websites: Off The Grid: Like on the Mesa Frownland Mississippi Chicken […]
Filmgoers of course know Vincent Gallo from his features The Brown Bunny and Buffalo 66, but he’s also an accomplished painter and musician. Today, Pitchfork reports on Gallo’s latest, RRIICCEE, a new music group featuring him and Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson. The group will go on tour next month. RRIICCEE has a website that is promising more details soon, and Gallo had the following words in a press release: “Improvisation is not a good word for what we’re doing. It’s more a gesture of composing and performing at the same time, always hoping to avoid musical cliché or jamming. We’ve […]
Over at Film Comment, critic Amy Taubin visits the mumblecore party and finds that the keg has run dry. “Adieu, mumblecore, the indie movement that never was more than a flurry of festival hype and blogosphere branding,” she opens (and summarizes) with in a piece that challenges the proposition that these largely no-budget, DIY films constitute a valid aesthetic movement. Is that, however, a sufficient basis for a film movement? Obviously not in the grand sense of the French New Wave or the postwar American avant-garde. At most, one might think of mumblecore as an update of the “New Talkie,” […]
Steve Barron’s Choking Man, which won the Filmmaker-sponsored “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham Award last year, is finally — and thankfully — in theaters. It opens this Friday at the Cinema Village and we highly recommend it. If you don’t know much about it, elsewhere on this site Nick Dawson interviews Steve Barron, the writer/director. Over at The Reeler, Stu Van Airsdale has a great feature up in which he talks with Barron and sorts through the film’s odd but ultimately touching mixture of social and magic realism. Go see it — and, if you’re […]
The writing staff of The Office shot on the picket line this informative and funny YouTube piece explaining why they’re part of the WGA strike.