Okay, I guess it’s official now. As Deadline Hollywood is reporting, the Producer’s Guild of America has officially created a new category for the “transmedia producer.” From Nikki Finke’s piece: I’ve learned that a significant All-Boards meeting for the Producers Guild of America took place tonight. Sources tell me that the members voted on a series of amendments that qualify individuals as professional producers. More importantly, for the first time in the guild’s history, they voted on and ratified a new credit — that of the Transmedia Producer — which had been shepherded by such Hollywood names as Mark Gordon, […]
You could say that Bill Gunn was a man who came before his time, but that leaves you working under the flimsy assumption that a time more hospitable to this man of undeniable talents and mercurial preoccupations would some day come. If you don’t already know this is a weak proposition, you’re not paying attention to the tenor of the times we live in. One can be forgiven for being unable to relate to the struggles of an unorthodox black artist to find proper patrons and an appreciative audience I suppose. Still, it is better to say that Bill Gunn, […]
The ever-whimsical and inventive Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind) might have worked with some of the best names in the business, putting his personal stamp on everything from music videos to comedies, TV series, romantic fantasies, and soon, a Seth Rogen–penned reboot of ’60s serial The Green Hornet, but his latest film hews much closer to the heart. An affectionate and emotionally probing portrait of Gondry’s Aunt Suzette, a schoolteacher in rural France for 34 years, The Thorn in the Heart is a personal documentary in the purest sense of the term, a […]
In a surprising Hollywood Reporter article, Eriq Gardner discovers a new indie film monetization scheme. He quotes Jeffrey Weaver of the D.C.-based U.S. Copyright Group who says of his company’s work, “We’re creating a revenue stream and monetizing the equivalent of an alternative distribution channel.” Like many others in the indie community, Weaver’s efforts involve torrents. In his case, however, the company is not using torrent sites as a no-cost means of cultivating an audience but rather as objects of prosecution. From Gardner’s piece: In what may be a sign of things to come, more than 20,000 individual movie torrent […]
On my list to see if Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard, in which the iconoclastic French director takes on the classic tale from the point of view of two modern-day young girls. It opens today at the IFC Center. The trailer is below.
As filmmakers, we are genetically programmed to look to the future. The next script, the next movie, the next deal. After all, the films — on DVD, on hard drives, in canisters stacked in our closets — are their own memories. Except, of course, that a film only tells part of the story. They are the ends of their tales, not the beginnings, and they only tell their own stories, and not the dramas of their making. If at all, those stories that circle around a film are only sometimes relayed in magazine profiles or in books written by people […]
Returning to feature-film directing after a six-year absence, Irish playwright Conor McPherson (The Seafarer, Shining City) drew heavy interest at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival when he unveiled The Eclipse, a subtle, emotionally restrained drama of male grief shot through with lightning-flash bursts of supernatural horror. Based on a short story by co-writer Billy Roche, the low-gear genre mash-up might play as a mere curiosity were it not for Best Actor winner Ciarán Hinds, whose solemn turn as a widower with literary aspirations gives the film a quiet center of gravity. And in coarser hands, McPherson’s abrupt tonal shifts could […]
A maverick of the 1950s Hollywood system, with Johnny Guitar and Rebel Without a Cause already under his belt earlier in the decade, Nicholas Ray’s melodrama Bigger Than Life was perhaps his most structured work when it came out in 1956. Starring James Mason (who also produced) in a uncharacteristic — yet riveting — role, the film was virtually ignored by audiences when it opened, but with its look at American suburbia during the nuclear-era (and a precursor for highlighting the abuse of prescription drugs) it has since become a popular title of critics and cineastes alike. The film opens […]
Today is the day our film screens at the gorgeous Paramount cinema in Austin. We were there opening night for the raucous screening of KICK-ASS and so it feels like we have big shoes to fill! However a quick glimpse at the theatre at lunchtime with a queue already forming despite the rain, we had some hope of at least filling the 600 seat stalls before we had to worry about the balcony. It ended up being better than we could have expected (I know I keep saying this, but SXSW keeps amazing me!) and we had lines all around […]
An operatic look at the largely forgotten life and times of Benito Mussolini’s first wife Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), veteran Italian helmer Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere is a tragedy on scales both intimate and national. Il Duce’s transformation from a anti-war journalist to socialist rebel rouser to brutal fascist dictator is glimpsed through the lens of his misbegotten first marriage to Dalser, a beautiful and politically conscious Milano hair dresser who, enraptured by his charms and ideals, sells off her business and belongings to fund his early publishing efforts. However, in the wake of their marriage and the birth of their […]