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The Sundance Institute today announced the Opening Night film and complete lineup of feature films screening in the Premieres, American Spectrum, Frontier, Park City at Midnight, Special Screenings, and Sundance Collection categories of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. According to a press release received today, “The Film Festival opens on January 20 in Park City with the World Premiere of Happy Endings, written and directed by Don Roos and starring Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Tom Arnold. ‘A discussion of American values is at the forefront of many of the films this year, and the humor and compassion with which […]
When I read about filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn (My Architect) and producer Callum Greene’s film about M. Night Shamalayan for the Sci-Fi Channel running into trouble over Night’s refusal to cooperate once the documenatarians discovered a “buried secret” in his past, I meant to check it out by making a call to Greene. We recently covered his last produced feature Homework in the magazine. But today I was reminded that this had slipped off my “to-do” list by this piece on CNN.com. In it, Sci-Fi Channel president Bonnie Hammer described the news leak as a “guerilla marketing campaign” that went too […]
Thanks to David Poland and his Hot Button for posting this link to the Holy Grail of underground videos: Todd Haynes’s Barbie-doll-epic Superstar. The Illegal Art organization, which highlights and exhibits works that tangle with and illuminate the complexities and inequities of copyright law, has posted a downloadable copy of Haynes’s hard-to-find first film. The 43-minute work draws on the same Sirkian influences displayed in his more recent Far from Heaven in telling the tragic tale of anorexic pop diva Karen Carpenter. And while you’re there, check out the rest of the site, which features work by Joe Gibbons, Negativeland […]
There are frustrations in editing a published-quarterly magazine like Filmmaker. As media cycles accelerate around us, we still publish every ninety days, trying to write intelligently about the aesthetics, business, and reasons for making independent film while pretending not to care that, with our long-lead schedule, we can’t really comment on that day or week’s movie news. The current issue of Filmmaker, for example, went to bed in mid-December, will be first read at the Sundance Film Festival, and will linger on newsstands until early April or so. Which means that meaningful commentary on the latest breaking news is pretty […]