6576 Results for “production”
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The Asphalt Jungle, Loophole and More: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Nearly 30 years after his death, writer-director John Huston remains, in my estimation, a slightly underrated figure in the landscape of American cinema. This may seem like a perverse statement given his multiple Academy Award nominations (including two wins) and the fact that several of his films (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, etc.) are widely acknowledged classics, but Huston is even better — far better, in fact — than his reputation suggests. His is a career of astonishing variety and endless probing, one that includes not only multiple jewels of classical Hollywood narrative […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jan 15, 2017 -
Watch: An New Clip from Celia Rowlson-Hall’s MA
A woman, a man, a car and the desert. Widescreen. That’s the gist of this clip for Celia Rowlson-Hall’s highly-recommended MA, which opens tomorrow at the IFC Center via Factory 25. Check out the clip, read the synopsis below and see the movie! In this modern-day vision of Mother Mary’s pilgrimage, a woman crosses the scorched landscape of the American Southwest. Reinvented and told entirely through movement, the film playfully deconstructs the role of this woman, who encounters a world full of bold characters that are alternately terrifying and sublime. MA is a journey into the visceral and the surreal, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 12, 2017 -
Listen: Brian McOmber’s Haunting Score for Celia Rowlson-Hall’s MA
Celia Rowlson-Hall made our 25 New Faces list in 2015 on the basis of her entirely original, stunningly assured and nearly indescribable feature debut, MA. A year later, we picked for the list her film’s composer, former Dirty Projectors drummer Brian McComber, who not only composed her amazing score but did similarly outre work for Trey Shults’s Krisha. As he relates in our profile, the experimentalism of Rowlson-Hall’s film let him go slightly wild with the score; hence, the evocative gongs and cymbals. Now, over at the Soundcloud page of the film’s production company, MEMORY (yet another 25 New Face […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 12, 2017 -
Four Lessons for Filmmakers from Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto
Throughout December, perhaps the best film showing in New York wasn’t in a theater at all but in a Civil War-era equine drill hall. Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto, a multiscreen installation starring Cate Blanchett in twelve different roles, closed its stay at the Park Avenue Armory last week. A single-screen linear version will reach a broader audience at Sundance next week, prompting me to reflect on the (presumed) differences between the two versions and what video artists and filmmakers of all stripes can learn from Rosefeldt’s latest work. First, a description. Manifesto takes its title and its text from the written manifestos of artists […]
by Randy Astle on Jan 12, 2017 -
Cameraperson and O.J.: Made in America Top the 2017 Cinema Eye Honors
The Cinema Eye Honors, which has been celebrating exceptional documentary filmmaking since 2007, wrapped its first decade tonight with its annual awards ceremony, hosted by documentary director Steve James, at the Museum of the Moving Image. Kirsten Johnson’s memoiristic meditation on documentary image-making, Cameraperson was the big winner, taking home three awards, including Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking, Outstanding Achievement in Editing and Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography, while Ezra Edelman’s sprawling O.J.: Made in America won two: Outstanding Achievement in Directing and Outstanding Achievement in Production. Other winners included Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos’s Netflix series Making a Murderer (Outstanding […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 11, 2017 -
Will Streaming Services Gain the Right to Show Films without Licensing?
As Filmmaker recently reported, on January 1 in the U.S. the federal tax incentive program known as Section 181 expired, with little prospect of resuscitation: although the program benefits high net worth individuals like Donald Trump and his advisors, current Republican animosity toward Hollywood (see: Meryl Streep) could translate to low congressional will to assist the film industry. This has the potential to reduce filmmakers’ options at the beginning of a project’s life cycle. But another issue is emerging that could affect it at the end: the continuing legal battle over the streaming company VidAngel and their incipient campaign to have Congress strengthen the […]
by Randy Astle on Jan 11, 2017 -
Activist Resistance and Organization in Portland and Elsewhere: Penny Allen on Her Career
This weekend, Metrograph hosts a bona fide repertory first for New York City: a retrospective of four films by activist-director Penny Allen, who grew up in Portland and is currently based in Paris. I was one of a relative handful lucky enough to see Allen’s 1978 gentrification satire-docudrama Property at a packed Light Industry screening in 2014: the film was an anthropological curio concerning a handful of Portland hipsters — a clique a far more “Dogpatch,” to use Allen’s term, than the upscale suburbanites currently associated with that particular epithet — who band together to save their neighborhood from gentrification by buying […]
by Steve Macfarlane on Jan 6, 2017 -
Choosing the Alexa 65 over Film and Finding the Right Format: DP Greig Fraser on Lion and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
It’s fair to say that 2015 was a pretty good year for Greig Fraser. The cinematographer globetrotted to London, Jordan, Iceland, the Maldives, India, and his native Australia while lensing two movies. One of them (Lion) has Fraser in the Oscar conversation and the other (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) is a blockbuster prequel to his favorite childhood films. The two movies seemingly couldn’t be any more different. Rogue One is a space adventure with a $200 million budget and a small country’s GDP worth of merchandising revenue in which the final half is basically one intense battle sequence. […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jan 5, 2017 -
We Can’t Make The Same Mistake Twice: At the RIDM (Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal)
Is it worth developing a taxonomy of film festivals? Would such an order more resemble a food pyramid or a series of loosely overlapping Venn diagrams? At the peak or center of either we can be assured to find prestige world-class festivals à la TIFF or the NYFF. In the 1990s, Montréal had its own to rival and even challenge these, the Montréal World Film Festival. Technically the festival still exists, though as a shell of its former glory following decades of poor programming and mismanagement by the president Serge Losique. As was widely reported in August, this year the […]
by Jesse Cumming on Jan 4, 2017 -
Under the Radar: The 31st Mar del Plata Film Festival
Situated at the windy seaside of the Argentinian port city and resort destination, the Mar del Plata Film Festival is rare in its aversion to trends and commercially driven programming. Selection is motivated not by industry concerns but rather genuine cinephilia, impressively supported by a devout and adventurous local audience. Programmers give generous, enthusiastic introductions, and there’s a vibe of sincerity guiding the proceedings. Taking place in November — springtime in the country — the fest has the luxury of assembling the best films of the year, but it’s hardly an automated “festival of festivals,” featuring plenty of bold, unusual films alongside expected […]
by Adam Cook on Jan 4, 2017
