Powered by 
Writing in Salon, Andrew O’Hehir captures what a lot of people are thinking: it wasn’t a bad year for movies, but when it comes to independents, the long-form theatrical experience may be on its way out. There are no grand conclusions here, but O’Hehir talks to the right people — IFC’s Jonathan Sehring, Killer Films’ Christine Vachon, Milos Stehlik of Facets — in his attempt to assess the healthiness of independents surviving on the other side of the mini-major divide. An excerpt: Milos Stehlik, director of the Chicago-based video distributor and art-house proprietor Facets Multi-Media (which occasionally dabbles in theatrical […]
The appealingly designed, crisply minimal Motion Design site describes itself as “a research blog on the subject of Motion Design. It serves as a means to discuss, share and develop ideas that will be used for a feature length documentary film.” I came across the site because it just posted an article about Pablo, director Richard Goldgewicht and producer Jeremy Goldscheider’s animated documentary on title designer Pablo Ferro. (You may remember this film and these filmmakers — they were featured in our 25 New Faces this year.) From the piece: Back in March of this year, a short teaser popped […]
You don’t have to be a massive Radiohead fan (like me) to be interested in the sudden and unexpected news today about the release of their new album, In Rainbows. (Thanks, Pitchfork, for the heads up.) With this new release the band is busting the music retailing paradigm in ways that filmmakers might think about as well. The Radiohead site, linked above, allows you to buy the album, but it’s a bit, uh, mysterious, so you may as well get all the details from the Pitchfork link. But, here’s a synopsis of what Radiohead is doing that’s different: 1. The […]
I’ve posted previously about Jonathan Lethem’s “Promiscuous Materials Project,” in which he allows filmmakers, songwriters and playwrights free adaptation rights to some of his short stories. Now, Lethem has a page on his blog in which he notes which artists have taken him up on his offer. An, in the cases of many of the songwriters, he posts streams of their work. Check it out. Among the film news: Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher is making a short fllm from Lethem’s story “Interview with a Crab.” Related: Lethem also announced that he would give the film rights to his latest […]
One of my favorite websites, Boing Boing, has just undertaken a re-design. The site is a lot cleaner and easier on the eyes now, all the better to scope out eccentric pieces like this article in the Denver Westword News about the historical end date of the Mayan calendar, Freemason conspiracy theory, the New World Order… and the Denver airport? It’s all knitted together by a filmmaker — producer Nick Weidner, who, with his partner Sharron Rose, made 2012: The Odyssey. Westword’s Jared Jacang Maher, who writes about Weidner’s appearance on KHOW’s Coast to Coast, explains: Weidner, a filmmaker and […]
Over at the website for his film, Tom DeCillo is posting a very funny series of video podcasts in which he parodies the insanity involved in promoting an independent film — in his case, Delirious, which opens August 15th. Here DiCillo is at an early marketing meeting… and what’s scary is that I’ve been at marketing meetings only slightly less crazy than this one. And here’s the latest, in which DiCillo tries to get star Gina Gershon to do some viral marketing in a clip with the Google-friendly name of “Gina Gershon Sex Tape.”
The Criterion Collection has started a blog titled “On Five.” (It’s subtitled, “Unofficial Information about the Criterion Collection from the People who are Officially in Charge.” Click over there on Tuesdays and Fridays for posts on new releases, HD vs. Blu-Ray, and more.
New York magazine is streaming five shorts screening at the New York Film Festival. Go to the above link to see Benoit Forgeard’s absurdist comedy, The Naked Race; Ariana Gerstein’s experimental documentary Alice Sees the Light; Tom Harper’s comedy about British hooliganism, Cubs (pictured); Faye Jackson’s female-centric horror film, Lump; and Elisabeth Subrin’s tale of intimate encounters, The Caretakers (the latter of which, I’ll admit in a full-disclosure moment, I exec-produced.)
The lawyers at Paramount, who presumably are not fans of folks like Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, and other appropriation-based artists, have launched a federal lawsuit against artist Christopher Moukarbel, who we blogged about recently. They are charging copyright infringement with regards to a 12-minute film he created and put up online which is based, apparently, on a copy of the screenplay for Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. (Filmmaker‘s blog is cited in the Paramount filing.) The Smoking Gun has all the details, including links to screenplay excerpts, which have been filed as exhibits, as well as a side-by-side comparison of […]
Despite the subject matter, it was always going to be a little dicey premiering Sofia Coppola’s deliberately stylish, English-language, Yank-directed and anachronistically scored Marie Antoinette in Competition at Cannes, where, even on a normal day, audiences can resemble an angry lynch mob. And, from a business point-of-view, distributor Pathe’s opening of the film in France simultaneous with the Cannes premiere creates an interesting situation for U.S. distrib Sony Pictures who will have to either springboard off the film’s European performance or else actively ignore it when it debuts the film here in the fall. This morning the Drudge Report linked […]