As most of you know, I write a weekly newsletter that contains a letter that’s not usually posted on this blog. Sometimes it consists of thoughts that coalesce into an article or blog post down the line, and sometimes it consists of of-the-moment reactions to events just hitting the news. Often the newsletter poses questions that I’d like our readers to comment on. Yesterday I wrote about the newly announced Amazon Studios and solicited feedback. I hope to, in the next few days, write about the provocative new venture, which has good elements (a new financing source for independent filmmakers […]
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed today the 15 films that have made their shortlist for the Best Feature Documentary category in the 83rd Academy Awards. They include: Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Alex Gibney, director (ES Productions LLC) Enemies of the People, Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, directors (Old Street Films) Exit through the Gift Shop, Banksy, director (Paranoid Pictures) Gasland, Josh Fox, director (Gasland Productions, LLC) Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont, directors (White Pine Pictures) Inside Job, Charles Ferguson, director (Representational Pictures) The […]
Remember The Third and the Seventh, that amazing piece of architectural CGI by Alex Roman that I blogged about in January? If you don’t, don’t worry — I’ve reposted it below. Just up is a new piece by Roman that’s a stunning one minute of slow-motion images that are pure CGI. Titled “Above Everything Else,” it’s a spot for kitchen countertop manufacturer Silestone. Writes Motiongrapher: Although this spot is 100% CG, the beauty of the shots distract the viewer from this amazing fact. Each composition is elegantly balanced: light counterweights dark, chaos challenges order. The sparse soundtrack creates a sense […]
When I was in a high school in Tennessee, a classmate of mine started crying while discussing a short story about Vietnam. Through her tears, she explained that the soldiers battling for their lives reminded her of all the unborn babies who’d been killed that week. What those of us not on the frontlines of the abortion battle often forget is that for those who feel passionately on the subject, abortion is not just an issue, it’s the only issue. In 12th and Delaware, last night’s entry into the Stranger than Fiction canon, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady take […]
One of my favorite movies of all time, Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, has been released on Blu-Ray and SD by Criterion today. Here’s a piece I wrote back in 2001 on the film in the context of a review of Simon Callow’s BFI monograph. François Truffaut queasily likened The Night of the Hunter, actor Charles Laughton’s 1955 directorial debut, to a “horrifying news item retold by small children.” Quoted in Simon Callow’s new British Film Institute monograph on the film, Truffaut goes on to offer a bit of middlebrow advice proving that the confluence of film criticism […]
The sixth edition of the Eurasia International Film Festival (Sept 21-25) in Kazakhstan was a showcase of films from Central Asian and Turkish-speaking countries, but what particularly stood out in its various programs was the strong output of Kazakh films, a result of increasing government and private backing in project development, production and post-production facilities. High above Kazakhstan’s former capital and current cultural center Almaty, construction crews were racing to finish buildings for the 2011 Asian Winter Games in the foothills of the majestic Tien Shan mountain range. A country larger than Europe, Kazakhstan spans the oil-rich coast of the […]
In the ’90s, Sarah Jacobson was a rising indie filmmaker. Beginning with her half-hour short film I Was A Teenage Serial Killer in 1993, she garnered enough underground critical success to make her feature debut, Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore, a coming-of-age tale about a teenage girl’s loss of virginity and her friends’ experiences with their first times. Jacobson was set to move on to bigger films, but she sadly passed away from endometrial cancer at age 32 in 2004. To carry on her life’s work and support for fellow filmmakers, Jacobson’s mother and film producer Ruth Jacobson and […]
The Nation Institute and the Fertel Foundation have partnered to launch the Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize, to be awarded to a film that embodies values of truth-telling, protecting the public interest, promoting social justice, or articulating the qualities of a more just society. The deadline is December 1, and the prize, which includes a $10,000 stipend, will be awarded this Fall. From the press release: October 8, New York City – The Nation Institute and The Fertel Foundation announced today the launch of the Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize. This new prize, which carries a $10,000 stipend, will be awarded alongside […]
So much depends upon… the position in which one reclines. Seated next to me in the elite section of a flight to Doha, Qatar, an Indian financial wizard with rings on each slim finger nodded and looked thoughtfully out the plane window. Across the aisle, Harvey Weinstein, an overstuffed teddy bear in Qatar Airways pajamas, turned another page of “My Week with Marilyn” and growled for the stewardess. Upon touchdown, a phalanx of young stewards ushered a group of remarkably well-rested travelers into private cars and whisked us away to the second annual Doha Tribeca Film Festival. Could any film […]
This blog post is part of the Requiem 102 experiment: on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, different writers are each looking at the film through the prism of specific frames, one from each minute of the film. I’ve been assigned minute four. Follow all the responses here. For me, the most memorable scene in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream is not in the movie but in the script. I had read it before the film’s pre-production, and the scene in which dealers line up for a new shipment of drugs after […]