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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
This heartfelt doc of one man’s attempt to give something back to the world before he leaves it has gone on to win the hearts of festival goers all over the world. Following the journey of Mr. Vig, an elderly Danish man who’s been a lifelong bachelor and recluse, he offers up his 50 year old castle to the Moscow Patriarchate so that they can turn it into a Russian Orthodox monastery. But seeing it hasn’t been inhabited in 20 years there’s much work that needs to be done before the church can accept his offer. When the strong willed […]
LORRAINE STANLEY AND GEORGIA GROOME IN DIRECTOR PAUL ANDREW WILLIAMS’ LONDON TO BRIGHTON. COURTESY OUTSIDER PICTURES. A rare handful of people are born to make movies, and new British writer-director Paul Andrew Williams is undoubtedly one of those few. Born in 1973 in the Southern coastal town of Portsmouth, Williams initially studied as an actor at LAMDA and spent the latter part of the 1990s playing smaller roles in UK TV shows like Casualty, Eastenders and Soldier, Soldier. In 2000, however, he set up So Loose Films and began making a string of short films. The second of these, Sugar […]
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Howard Feinstein interviewed I’m Not There co-writer-director Todd Hanyes for the Fall ’07 issue. I’m Not There is nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett). Todd Haynes’s first film, a 1985 student short called Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud, focused in a manner both engaging and Brechtian on the anarchistic French poet who scandalized the bourgeoisie in 19th-century Paris and London. Haynes was studying semiotics and art at Brown, and it’s […]
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Scott Macaulay interviewed La Vie en rose star Marion Cotillard for the Spring ’07 issue. La Vie en rose is nominated for Best Lead Actress (Marion Cotillard), Best Costume Design (Marit Allen) and Best Makeup (Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald). SYLVIE TESTUD WITH MARION COTILLARD (RIGHT) AS EDITH PIAF IN LA VIE EN ROSE. In person, French actress and star Marion Cotillard is tall, confident and with a quicksilver responsiveness that […]
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Ray Pride interviewed The Savages writer-director Tamara Jenkins for the Fall ’07 issue. The Savages is nominated for Best Lead Actress (Laura Linney) and Best Original Screenplay (Tamara Jenkins). Note-perfect, Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages was one of Sundance 2007’s stellar surprises. Where another unlikely gem from the festival, Once, was bittersweet in its simple romance, Jenkins’s long-in-coming sophomore directorial entry (after 1998’s Slums of Beverly Hills) is a complex mesh of […]