Juno Temple is on the move. For an interview regarding her loaded roster of new roles, in films as disparate as Killer Joe, Jack and Diane, The Dark Knight Rises, and Little Birds (released this Friday), the 23-year-old blonde Briton is calling from a car, which is shuffling her from one L.A. commitment to the next. “I’m sorry, I might lose you,” she says through a bit of static, shortly before the call is indeed dropped. But within moments, Temple is back on the other end again, her coo of an accent as beguiling as her onscreen presence. The whole […]
It was a hazy Saturday afternoon in Berne, New York, and a motley crew of filmmakers holding shotguns, aimed at the sky, surrounded me. My mouth was dry and I felt the mind’s eye going black while gripping my barrel. “What the hell am I doing here and who are these strangers?” Well, I was asked to join a small group of filmmakers to shoot skeet and talk shop (and sadly, not form a militia). This past year was a whirlwind tour with my first feature art/documentary, Convento, which premiered at SXSW, played a bunch of fests and was picked up […]
Last week, the New York Times published a profile on writer/director (and also nuclear physicist) Ian Harnarine, who is a member of our 2012 “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” The article details Harnarine’s interesting backstory — he is a Trinidadian Canadian, an NYU professor who teaches both film and nuclear physics, a Spike Lee acolyte — but is maybe most interesting in its description of the difficulties the director of the award-winning short Doubles with Slight Pepper had in connecting with an audience and the Indo-Carribbean community in his adopted home city. [F]or all the accolades the film has […]
Following on from the announcement of its main slate, the New York Film Festival has unveiled the event’s sidebar programs, which includes a sneak preview of three episodes of Oliver Stone’s forthcoming Showtime series Untold History of the United States. For me, the most exciting strand of those just announced is Cinema Reflected, which has such titles as Room 237, Rodney Ascher’s obsessional examination of Kubrick’s The Shining; Marina Zenovich’s follow-up doc Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out; a bizarre concoction by Taxidermia director György Pàlfi called Final Cut — Ladies and Gentlemen which proclaims to be scenes from 450 of […]
New Large-Sensor Camera From Sony Sony has announced another new camera, the Sony NEX-EA50, which fits somewhere between the very consumer-ish NEX-VG20 and the semi-professional NEX-FS100. The common design element of NEX cameras is the use of Sony’s E-mount, which has a very shallow flange depth – the distance from the mount to the sensor – making it possible to use a variety of lens mounts with an appropriate adapter. The NEX-EA50 is clearly aimed at the event and documentary shooter. It has a new body shape with an integrated shoulder pad (which can be adjusted), XLR audio inputs, and comes […]
Like most working independent film producers, I’ve pitched my projects to more potential financiers than I can remember. I’m always relieved when they’re seasoned film investors because then I can focus on the creative aspects of the project, the production and distribution plan, and the recoupment structure. When I pitch to someone who hasn’t invested in film before, most of my time is spent explaining how film investment works, the typical life cycle of a film, and the current industry landscape (often with historical context!). I genuinely love educating people about “how film works.” It’s great to shatter the US Weekly version of the […]
In his 1977 novel Players, Don DeLillo told the story of a crumbling marriage amidst terrorism on the New York Stock exchange. In the 1973 Great Jones Street, he portrayed a wealthy rock star escaping the solar of his own fame by walking off his tour and hiding out in a downtown Manhattan apartment. And in Mao II (1991), he sent a reclusive, blocked novelist away from the world of cultural production into the zeitgeist of Middle East political violence. The emotional affect of a hypermediated society, the ways in which personal relations are shaped by the white noise of […]
Trailers have the ability to psyche us up, freak us out, turn us off, and lead us very, very astray, but the heightened anticipation is part of the fun, regardless of how accurate a representation of the film that cleverly constructed little bugger ends up being in the end. Recently there’s been a spate of trailers for horror-themed animated children’s films, starting with ParaNorman (pictured above), which opened today. So which of these flicks is most likely to either give your kids nightmares, or send them down a lifelong path of genre appreciation? Let’s judge a book by its cover […]
Second #7144, 119:04 [Final post. Thank you to Scott Macaulay for taking a chance with this.] The blue curtain, creating the conditions for its own strange, vertical, blue-noise static. Remainders: 45,000 = total words in project 2 = frames that feature Dorothy, Jeffrey, and Sandy together 3 = frames including Aunt Barbara 17 = frames in which no human being appears 20 = frames featuring Jeffrey and Dorothy 23 = frames featuring Jeffrey and Sandy Robin Wood, from his classic 1979 essay “An Introduction to the American Horror Film”: Some version of the Other [include, simply] other people. It is […]
Over the past few decades, film’s iron-clad grip on the motion industry has gradually been chipped away by emerging digital technology. Yet it hasn’t necessarily been a smooth transition. Traditional celluloid film has gone largely unchanged as a medium for a century and has been the canvas for works from Casablanca and Apocalypse Now to this summer’s blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises. As the saying goes: old habits die hard. In this case, for good reason, a film produces a picture quality, texture, and dynamic range unparalleled by digital. But digital technology has continued to make leaps and bounds in […]