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The Paul Thomas Anderson fansite Cigarettes and Red Vines has just posted the first trailer for Anderson’s latest, There Will Be Blood. It looks completely stunning and just the kind of change-up I want to see from Anderson right now. Can’t wait till this is released.
JEMAINE CLEMENT AND LOREN HORSLEY IN TAIKA WAITITI’S EAGLE VS SHARK. COURTESY MIRAMAX FILMS. To describe Taika Waititi as simply a filmmaker would be to do him a disservice. Just watching him as he talks – fiddling with anything and everything within reach, getting up and walking around the room, constantly active – it’s apparent that his inherent energy and enthusiasm make it impossible for him to focus on just one thing. He first rose to prominence in his native New Zealand as part of the comedy duo Humourbeast (along with Eagle vs Shark‘s leading man, Jemaine Clement), and was […]
In the Village Voice, Robert Shuster reports on artist Christian Tomaszweski, who has spent three years creating a series of installations directly inspired by David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. According to the article, they remake “the movie’s spaces, props, and moods, including the hallways outside Isabella Rossellini’s apartment, a scale-model view from the closet where naked Kyle MacLachlan witnesses gas-sucking Dennis Hopper commit a brutal rape, and that notorious severed ear.” According to a press release issued by New York’s The Sculpture Center, which is exhibiting the work through July 29: Since 2004, Christian Tomaszewski has been plunging into the entrails […]
Over at Movie City News, Larry Gross posts one of his occasional and quite brilliant critical essays, this time on those eight seconds of black at the end of The Sopranos. And although Gross sees in Sopranos creator David Chase echos of Tolstoy and Balzac and not the Joyce or Kafka of The Prisoner creator Patrick McGoohan, it’s occurred to me that the conclusion of Chase’s series has inspired the same level of audience vexation that the famous final episode of The Prisoner caused back in the ’60s. Gross’s article is long and fascinating in its consideration of the aesthetic […]
IFP announced today the ten films selected to participate in its third annual Narrative Rough Cut Lab, a national program connecting mentors and projects by first-time feature filmmakers before they are submitted to festivals. Taking place in New York City June 12 – 15, this year’s Lab includes a number of new initiatives, such as: the formation of an Advisory Board, expansion of the program from three to four days, and moving the program from September to June, thereby ensuring that participants will have time after working with their mentors to submit their strongest work possible prior to the submission […]
[Beginning today Filmmaker Magazine will be taking an exclusive look inside the Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs. Every Monday Filmmaker Braden King will be posting a weekly story on his experience at the Labs until its conclusion on June 28. His project is titled Here, co-written by himself and Dani Valent, and follows an American mapmaker charting the Armenian countryside who’s traveling with an adventurous landscape photographer revisiting her homeland. King has directed music videos and short films for Sonic Youth, Will Oldham and Yo La Tengo. He co-directed the film Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back.] Friday, June 08 […]
WILL OLDHAM IN TODD ROHAL’S THE GUATEMALAN HANDSHAKE. COURTESY AMALGAMATED FILMWORKS. Todd Rohal is possibly the Mumblecore director you’ve heard least about, maybe because his films don’t fit with the movement’s improvisational, talky style or focus on twentysomething relationships. A native of Columbus, Ohio, he studied film at Ohio University, where his first short film, Single Spaced (1997), was nominated for a Student Academy Award. He made two subsequent shorts in college, Slug 660 (1998) and Knuckleface Jones (1999), and resisted the lure of Hollywood after graduating, instead choosing to take a more unconventional road. He made his fourth short, […]
Over on the main page check out Jamie Stuart’s Q&A with legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. Here’s an excerpt: Filmmaker: Apocalypse Now. Theatrically, it was amazing to see it in its Scope aspect ratio, in 2001. I know that at this point you’re preferential to 2:1, but some people were upset to see it on DVD cropped from the 35mm 2.35. Storaro: Well, I always connected with one painting that Leonardo did, The Last Supper. The Last Supper is 2:1. At the time of shooting Apocalypse Now, I was not aware. I don’t really remember when I became conscious of the […]
At the Filmmaker office we’ve been researching the emerging online indie film market for an upcoming story about how independents are selling their work through digital download services. But perhaps I should just keep a running link to Scott Kirsner’s Cinematech blog as he’s made this field his beat for the last several months. This week he posted “For Indie Filmmakers: How to Sell DVDs Online”, a recounting of a conversation he had with Jamie Chvotkin, founder of FilmBaby.com, a site that assists filmmakers in the marketing and promotion of their DVDs. (More info here.) What’s interesting about the post […]
Out on DVD today is Joe Angio’s documentary, How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It), on the life and work of Melvin Van Peebles. I saw the film at its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival a few years back and when I watched it again on IFC not too long ago I was reminded by how well done the film is. Angio not only examines how Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song invented the Blaxploitation genre, but spotlights his renaissance life which includes working on Broadway and the New York Stock Exchange. But I think […]