Amazon is upping the ante in the original content wars. On June 27, the giant online retailer’s movie group, Amazon Studios, started accepting 2- to 15-minute sizzle reels or pitches for feature-length films. Its Hollywonk blog said it was seeking projects that “express an idea that’s begging to be seen on the big-screen, in full-length, full-budget form.” Amazon’s current development slate includes a mixed bag of movies: the horror flick, ZvG: Zombies Vs Gladiators, a thriller, Burma Rising, a sci-fi, Hiber, and a family comedy, It Came in the Mail. “Amazon Studios wants to discover great talent and produce programming […]
Many filmmakers make a low-budget movie in the hopes of getting to L.A. and working on a big-budget movie. The Rasmussen brothers went in a different direction. Going out to L.A. they wrote and sold a script that was made into The Ward, directed by John Carpenter. But they wanted to do more than just write the script, so after completing their next screenplay they came back to Boston and made the movie Dark Feed on a shoestring. The Rasmussen brothers, Michael and Shawn, spoke to us recently about this experience, and what they have learned about making a movie […]
Sebastián Silva is that rare filmmaker who manages to be both independent and prolific. With five features and a Digital HBO series under his belt, plus three new projects in the works, the 34-year-old writer/director shows little sign of slowing down. At Sundance this year, Silva premiered not one but two new films, the improvisational road trip comedy Crystal Fairy and the Magic Cactus and 2012, and the dark psychological thriller Magic Magic. Both films, made in quick succession, were shot in the director’s native Chile, center on the erratic adventures of displaced Americans, and feature effectively off-kilter performances by Michael Cera. […]
This article was orginally published in March 2013 to coincide with the film’s premiere at SXSW. Some Girl(s) opens theatrically today in NYC and LA, it’s also now available worldwide on Vimeo On Demand. In the battle of the sexes, there has been perhaps no more controversial warrior than the playwright, screenwriter and director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men). Since the mid-90s, LaBute has made a name for himself by writing movies that are truly, madly, deeply cynical. Adapted by LaBute from his own stage play and directed by Party Girl helmer Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Some Girl(s) stars […]
Jem Cohen’s highly recommended Museum Hours — the winner of the Filmmaker-sponsored 2013 Cinema Eye Heterodox Award — opens in theaters today from Cinema Guild. Below is an excerpt (about half) of my interview with Cohen in the current print issue of Filmmaker. You can read the whole interview in the issue, and in the iPad version there’s also a 12-minute video with Cohen explicating various scenes in the film. What does it mean, in 2013, to photograph — to reproduce — a painting? Does it, as Walter Benjamin wrote in his 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the […]
There is a camp for everything. Dance, wrestling, Jesus — you name it, your kid can camp it. In Judd Ehrlich’s charming Magic Camp, the kids have no desire to be the next LeBron James or Sidney Crosby, however; they want to be like one of the Davids, Blaine or Copperfield. Held each summer in Bryn Mawr, PA, Tannen’s Magic Camp, a spinoff of the famed Gotham magic store, teaches teenagers, mostly boys, the fine art of making a rabbit disappear into their ear or a wand suddenly appear in their hand. You think it’s difficult to saw someone in half? Just […]
As an undergrad at NYU, Timur Civan studied sculpture before moving into video. “I became really interested in video because I was able to bring time into my sculptural work,” he says. Civan has produced a wide variety of work, from short films, music videos, and corporate videos, to commercials and documentaries. He recently DP’d Vincent Laforet’s intro for the M?VI digital 3-axis gyro-stabilized camera gimbal. He has an affinity for experimenting with unusual gear, and finding new in-camera effects. Civan spoke to us briefly at a recent presentation he gave at Rule Boston Camera: Filmmaker: How did you first get […]
Dean Fleischer Camp and Jenny Slate — the 2011 25 New Faces who created the delightful Marcel the Shell with Shoes On — have a new web series, a 12-part “comedy of sincerity” called Catherine. Camp wrote in an email: It’s a comedy, but it’s also sincere and menacing and hopefully kind of evocative. In some ways it’s a response to the “awkward” comedy that dominates TV & movies right now. My secret hope is that it kicks off a new movement away from that kind of boring cynicism toward something with a live, beating heart. A single-entendre sense of […]
This article was orginally published in February 2013 to coincide with the film’s premiere at MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight. Homegoings opens theatrically today at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem and airs tonight on POV. Just in the nick of time for Black History Month, and debuting at the 2013 Documentary Fortnight: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film, is Christine Turner’s Homegoings, a poetically crafted exploration of the history of African-American funeral traditions. Told via the Harlem neighborhood’s legendary funeral director Isaiah Owens – who found his calling as a small child, burying all deceased animals he stumbled across in his South […]
Making the movie was easy, crowdfunding is hard. Ok, that’s a ridiculous oversimplification, but not completely untrue. I’m currently in the midst of a crowdfunding campaign to raise post-production funds for my first feature film, Sidewalk Traffic (a comedy/drama about a struggling filmmaker and new father in post-Great Recession NYC), which I wrote, co-produced and directed this past winter. Realizing the lifelong ambition of directing my first feature film meant making a substantial financial investment (though well short of what an MFA at an elite film school costs), informing my wife and two young daughters that I would be for all […]