Jamie Stuart emailed the following observation about No Country for Old Men after rewatching the film on DVD: I rented No Country yesterday. I’d read a few complaints on Anne T.’s blog about the scene where Bell goes to the motel room — and Chigurh is supposed to be behind the door (people were complaining that Chigurh seemed to have vanished). I always thought Chigurh was simply hiding behind the door, since that’s where he’s shown during the initial cross-cutting. But watching the DVD — and even brighting the image all the way — Chigurh IS NOT THERE when the […]
Producer Keith Griffiths forwarded the below article about the great Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and censorship of his latest acclaimed feature, Syndromes and a Century, released in the U.S. by Strand Releasing. He also forwarded the accompanying photos, which are of the actual censorship in progress. Read on… In his review of Syndromes and a Century the Guardian Film Critic Peter Bradshaw, wrote that the film was “Profoundly mysterious, erotic, funny, gentle, playful, utterly distinctive, it is the work of the Thai director and installation-artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who now has a claim to be approaching the league of Kiarostami and […]
In a story posted today on Variety‘s The Circuit, Michael Jones reports that B-Side, the company that gathers audience reactions for thousands of festivals, is now going into the fest submissions game with the announcement that it’s creating Submissions 2.0, a site where filmmakers can submit work to multiple festivals without paying a service fee. Set to launch this summer, it will certainly be in direct competition with Withoutabox. Read full story here.
I don’t know Chris Doyle that well — I’ve met him a few times, have sent him a script, once, I think, and we’ve run articles on him twice in Filmmaker. (One, an interview with August Doyle, is here; the second, by Matt Ross, is here.) But I do have his email address, and whenever I’ve sent him a question he’s always responded surprisingly quickly — like two minutes later. So when I read this interview conducted over the ‘net with Doyle by Stu Van Airsdale, I immediately recognized the great d.p.’s distinctive cadence and penchant for metaphorical musing. Both, […]
In Filmmaker‘s Fall issue we published And Nothing But the Truth, filmmaker Arne Johnson’s thoughtful meditation on issues of truth and reality as they play out in documentary film practice. Now, you have a chance to see how Johnson resolved these issues for himself in his charming and energetic doc, Girls Rock! The film is currently playing in NY, LA, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Chicago, Seattle, and Portland. Click on the link above to learn more, and check out the trailer below.
Announced today, the new non-profit, Cinereach, has announced the first-ever recipients of The Reach Film Fellowship. Created last fall by a group of young filmmakers and philanthropists, Cinereach’s goal is to developing original features that focus on issues of cross-cultural communication, global unity and other matters of social relevance. The four Fellows, announced in a press release today, will show their work at a reception hosted by Mira Nair in New York City on March 19th. The Fellows were chosen through a judging panel that included Jeffrey Abramson of GenArt, producer Caroline Baron, GOOD founder Benjamin Goldhirsh and associate director […]
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 […]