The Canon C300 had a coming out party in Boston last week where Larry Thorpe of Canon presented the camera at an evening event hosted by Rule Boston Camera. A large crowd turned out to hear Larry speak about the camera, and to play with the four demo units that were present. When the camera was first announced I asked some local DPs for their reaction to it, and I took advantage of this opportunity to get their reactions after seeing the camera in person: Jeremy Traub is a DP based in Boston who is very familiar with RED […]
For many years Welt am Draht, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 three-and-a-half hour, made-for-TV science fiction opus was one of the late German directors’ most underscreened films. Dazzlingly stylish, and with narrative and thematic concerns anticipating the cyberpunk themes that would take root in science fiction more than a decade later, the film was only shown in America once in 1997 — that is, before it was restored and received a short run at MoMA in 2010. Fassbinder was quoted in MoMA’s catalogue as saying the film, translated as World on a Wire, is “a very beautiful story that depicts a […]
Here’s the just issued press release announcing the nominees for the 2011 Heterodox Award, given by Cinema Eye Honors and sponsored by Filmmaker. New York – The Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking today announced the five nominees for its second annual Cinema Eye Heterodox Award, sponsored by Filmmaker Magazine. The 2012 Heterodox Award will be presented at the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking on January 11 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York. The Cinema Eye Heterodox Award honors a narrative film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production. These […]
The Kickstarter campaign for Iranian basketball documentary The Iran Job ends next Monday, but the project has already passed its ambitious $50,000 goal. In production for several years, The Iran Job (which is fiscally sponsored by IFP) is seeking finishing funds to prepare for a 2012 release. The documentary follows Kevin Sheppard, an American basketball player who has become an unlikely spokesperson for reform while playing ball in Iran. Per the project’s Kickstarter page: With tensions running high between Iran and the West, Kevin tries to separate sports from politics, only to find that politics is impossible to escape in […]
As 2012 dawns and the conversation in the film (and greater artistic) community shifts from ‘DIY’ to the advent of the ‘artist-entrepreneur’, I find myself pondering the meaning of all this in my own career and life, while thinking about one of my most enduring inspirations to go it my own way, my friend Cory McAbee. The bulk of this post was originally drafted in the fall of 2009 right after the release of Cory McAbee’s film, Stingray Sam, and was written simply as a fan of Cory’s work and aesthetic. I was first introduced to Cory’s work when The American Astronaut garnered some […]
Though not as well known outside Iran as Abbas Kiarostami or Jafar Panahi, writer-director Asghar Farhadi has been steadily building an impressive cinematic resume since graduating from Tehran University in 1998 with a degree in dramatic arts. After a stint developing stage plays and TV series for Iran’s national broadcasting corporation, Farhadi co-scripted Ebrahim Hatamikia’s post-9/11 political farce Low Heights, about a desperate man who hijacks a plane carrying his wife and handicapped son. He then moved into the director’s chair with Dancing in the Dust and Beautiful City, a social-issue film concerning the archaic custom of “blood money” […]
I plead guilty. I’ve committed the writer’s sin of entitling this article with a heavily loaded pun that threatens to undermine what follows. Referencing a 65-year-old recognized masterwork of classic Hollywood melodrama — one by Douglas Sirk, no less — that has stood the test of time, then segueing into more of the best-of-this-and-that-from-2011 litanies that every film journo is tossing into the blogosphere right now, stacks the deck against the most recent productions. A few will be remembered, but All That Heaven Allows stays with us. Out of all possibilities, this is the one Todd Haynes chose as a […]
I wasn’t supposed to go to Europe. You can’t really drive there (unless you’re the Muppets) and flights across the pond are expensive, but when a production comes calling, I listen. This one made it easy, asking would I come to the UK if they covered the plane ticket? A no-brainer. Which is how I ended up in Newcastle upon Tyne, a small city near Scotland, serving as gaffer in a country where I have absolutely no idea how the electricity works. And when I ask how much I can put into a circuit, I’m told that, well, that depends […]
Second #2726, 45:26 1. The danger of the close-up, bringing the viewer ever nearer to the rage of Frank’s face. It’s almost clinical: a portrait of a madman and of an actor playing a madman. Reaching out to part Dorothy’s robe, Frank’s hand occupies nearly as much screen space as his face. And almost half the screen is in darkness, as if leaking in from some extra dimension. 2. Sergei Eisenstein, in his 1944 essay “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today,” wrote: We know from whence the cinema appeared first as a world-wide phenomenon. We know the inseparable link between […]
Dave Kruta grew up drawing and painting, but fell into cinematography in an unusual way. Working as a web designer, a job for a friend led to a video project. This eventually led to working as a DIT – he is a member of Local 600 DIT – but he says his passion is cinematography. He’s been doing more d.p. work this past year, perhaps helped by the fact that he bought his own Red Epic system earlier in the year. In this interview he talks about using the Epic and Alexa, the M and X versions of the Epic, […]