Powered by 
With Robert DeNiro announcing that
The Criterion Company has arguably created the most successful art-film related brand when it comes to monetizing the idea of cinematic value. Many people buy their DVDs for the same reason my parents used to line our bookshelves with Modern Library editions of the classics. They are titles that if one is cultured one should know about. They rarely sell the idea of excitement or entertainment; instead, with their director-approved transfers and culturally dense supporting materials, they sell the idea of connoisseurship and erudition. Until now, that idea has always rested in physicality of their beautifully packaged disks. Now, the […]
Filmmaker Ian Cheney, co-producer of King Corn, and director of the forthcoming The City Dark, and Emily Bolevice, a teacher and freelance photographer, have created a lovely video op-ed for the New York Times. It argues that the city should cut back on the night lighting of public buildings as a way of dealing with the coming budget gap, and it is illustrated with beautiful night-time photography of the city. The City Dark is a feature dealing with the fascinating subject of light pollution. For more on the movie click on the link. The Times video is not embeddable, so […]
The Talented Mr. Ripley by way of Somerset Maugham, Henry May Long is a drama about two men, Henry May and Henry Long, set in the upper crust and under belly of 1887 New York City. Long is obsessed with the golden child May, and via constant surveillance has come to know his secret debt and drug addiction. He convinces May to care for him for three months, as an illness takes his toll, in exchange for money to repay May’s debts. Hiding out, along together, their friendship expands and May begins to find meaning in his own limited life […]
For the final artist statement in our check-in with the “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” directors, whose pictures can be seen at MOMA this weekend, here is what Afterschool director Antonio Campos emailed to the blog. (Afterschool plays tomorrow at 5:30pm). I also point you towards BFNP juror Brandon Harris’s compelling argument for the film over at Hammer to Nail. An excerpt: Afterschool is a movie not unlike so many punky, fishnet wearing, Sartre reading high school students; the type you don’t often encounter in this kind of picture. Like that tired cliché for transitory and […]
At Filmmaker, we like to keep up with the directors who we have supported early in their careers. Back in Summer, 2003, we placed Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen on the cover. Now, three films and five years later, she is at the helm of a genuine pop-cult phenomenon: Twilight, adapted from Stephanie Meyer’s best-selling teen novels. Over in our web exclusives, Alicia Van Couvering catches up with Hardwicke on the eve of the film’s release and discusses things like teenage lust, vampires on jet-skis, casting Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and how you could always use a little more money. An […]
All of Catherine Hardwicke’s four feature films – Thirteen, The Lords of Dogtown, The Nativity Story and now Twilight – have been about teenagers. They have also all been about real people, and all but Thirteen cover stories and characters already known to the public. Twilight is a teen vampire love story based faithfully on the Stephanie Meyer’s book trilogy, starring Kristen Stewart as the human Bella and Robert Pattison as the “vegetarian” vampire Edward Cullen who loves her too much to bite her. The books are coveted and obsessed over by young girls across this country, who are assembling in […]
THAVISOUK PHRASAVATH AND ORADY PHRASAVATH IN DIRECTOR ELLEN KURAS’ THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON). COURTESY CINEMA GUILD. Since she first came to prominence almost twenty years ago, Ellen Kuras has established herself as one of the most talented directors of photography working today. Film was not Kuras’ primary focus when she was younger; the New Jersey native initially attended Brown to study anthropology but became interested in photography after taking a class at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design. Though she won a Fulbright Scholarship to go to the esteemed Lodz Film Academy, Kuras instead began working in film, taking numerous […]
Taylor Greeson’s Meadowlark was a happy discovery for me while sitting on this year’s “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham Award panel. I didn’t know Greeson and hadn’t heard of his film. But I, along with the panel, responded to his formally ambitious mixture of crime-reconstruction film and personal documentary. Here’s the program note. “When I was twelve years old, my brother was murdered, I lost my virginity to a twenty-year-old man, and I was ordained with the priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” So begins Meadowlark, Taylor Greeson’s quietly devastating […]
Jake Mahaffy is one of my favorite filmmakers in this week’s “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” series this week at MOMA. We selected him as one of our “25 New Faces” in 2005, and I’ve watched his shorts and his Sundance Lab project with interest since. His second feature, Wellness, won the Grand Prize at SXSW this year, and its emotional, political and spiritual themes only become more relevant by the day. Mike Ryan beautifully wrote about the film at Hammer to Nail. An excerpt: One of our greatest American philosophers, William James, writes about the […]