6296 Results for “Open ”
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PORNFILMFESTIVAL BERLIN
As a filmmaker who makes G-rated porn I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being thoroughly excited when I learned that a festival devoted to celebrating sex onscreen had filled its opening night slot with a flick that contains not one sex scene. And writer/director/producer/editor Zach Clark’s SXSW 2009 hit Modern Love Is Automatic (pictured right), a refreshingly respectful and poignant comedy that centers around a jaded nurse who moonlights as a dominatrix and her aspiring (or rather delusional) model roommate, wasn’t the only selection to subversively screw with the very definition of porn. This year’s fifth edition, which […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 2, 2010 -
“ON COAL RIVER” AT STRANGER THAN FICTION
There’s an explosion. Children play on swings, unaware of a darkening cloud on the horizon. A man opens the back of his toilet only to discover it’s filled with black sludge. Just a few scenes from On Coal River, last night’s selection for Stranger Than Fiction, the weekly documentary series hosted by Thom Powers at the IFC Center. Significantly more frightening than your average horror flick, On Coal River follows a group of West Virginia activists in their fight against Massey Energy and its practice of “mountaintop removal mining,” a type of strip mining where they literally blow off the top […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Oct 28, 2010 -
BILL PLYMPTON, “IDIOTS AND ANGELS”
If two-time Oscar-nominated animator Bill Plympton had been alive in early 20th century Berlin, he’d surely have aligned himself with Dadaists like George Grosz and Otto Dix, satiric artists whose mastery of the comic grotesque are echoed in the Oregon native’s deranged, darkly comic visions of everyday life. Like his illustrious predecessors, Plympton was a widely published illustrator and political cartoonist; his eponymous comic strip debuted 35 years ago in the Soho Weekly, years before he ever inked a cel. A decade later, after tinkering with short animation, he made his first feature, The Tune, a landmark in single-artist independent […]
by Damon Smith on Oct 27, 2010 -
This Gun for Hire
Both a Cannes sensation and a hit television miniseries in France, Olivier Assayas’s Carlos, an incisive and exciting look at left-wing mercenary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez and the political culture that sustained him, now comes Stateside.
by Brandon Harris on Oct 25, 2010 -
Fraud Alert
Charles Ferguson follows up his hard-hitting Iraq War documentary, No End in Sight, with another investigative look at a complicated and controversial subject: the global economic crisis. In Inside Job, Ferguson indicts the growth of the banking industry for causing the global economic crisis, asking why not a single person has gone to jail because of it. By Scott Macaulay
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 25, 2010 -
New Model Army
Making a business out of independent film is harder than ever. But still, great films are being made. In this series of short profiles, Filmmaker asked a number of leading independent producers about their producing models and how they’re finding everything from financing to material to office space.
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 25, 2010 -
HORROR LABEL GLASS EYE PIX CELEBRATES ITS 25TH
Our favorite NYC-based low-budget horror mega-studio, Glass Eye Pix, celebrates its 25th anniversary with a two-week retrospective series of screenings at reRun in New York that begins today. They include founder Larry Fessenden’s first picture, No Telling, his excellent and quite movie Wendigo, and films by its roster of artists including Ti West and James McKenney, whose Satan Hates You, says Fessenden in the New York Times video below, is an “oddly serene and pious Christian scare film.” In Fall, 2009, Filmmaker celebrated Glass Eye Pix’s 24th anniversary with an article and interview of Fessenden by Lauren Wissot. From her […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 22, 2010 -
KENTUCKER AUDLEY PREMIERES NEW FILM (AND STREAMS IT FOR FREE)
In our Winter print edition, Alicia Van Couvering wrote five short case studies of films raising production financing in innovative ways. One was Kentucker Audley’s Open Five, and now the film is finished and premiering tonight as the Opening Film of the 13th Memphis Film Festival. In addition to premiering for the Memphis audience, the film will also be streaming free for a limited time at Audley’s site. (Loyal readers will also remember that Audley was one of our “25 New Faces” of 2007. From the press release: Open Five is described as a blend of “reality and fiction” and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2010 -
FREDERICK WISEMAN, “BOXING GYM”
This year the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Department launched a year long retrospective of a prominent octogenarian documentarian. On opening night of the series, with the filmmaker present, the curator of the series asked during a Q&A, “do you think you’ve mellowed a bit with age?” Frederick Wiseman responded, “why does one have to mellow?” In fact, at eighty, he hasn’t at all. Yes his films have grown a touch more lyrical and perhaps one could even say tender as he enters his sixth decade as our country and perhaps the world’s most vital documentarian. Since bursting on the […]
by Brandon Harris on Oct 21, 2010 -
iMovie ’11 and its Critique of the Movie Trailer
Have you ever thought that most movie trailers, with their portentous title cards and triumphant musical scores, could have been stamped out by a computer? Well, Steve Jobs and his software designers at Apple certainly did. But rather than whine about Hollywood’s formulaic marketing techniques, they monetized their critique. Brand new today is iMovie ’11 with a clever and soon to be supremely irritating new feature: movie trailers. Check out this iMovie demo to see what it’s all about. So, get ready for every holiday card to now feel like a Jerry Bruckheimer promo, with your friends’ sons and daughters […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2010
