MICHAEL CAINE AND BILL MILNER IN DIRECTOR JOHN CROWLEY’S IS ANYBODY THERE? COURTESY STORY ISLAND ENTERTAINMENT. Along with Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, John Crowley is part of a recent wave of Irish theater influx into film. Born in 1969, Crowley is a philosophy graduate from the University of Cork in Ireland who first became involved in theater as a student, seeing it as a way to get into directing film. He began directing plays in Dublin in the early 90s and was successful enough that already in 1996 he was working in London’s West End. After a few years, […]
The IFP has just released the ten projects selected for their Independent Filmmaker Lab, hosted by Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. For five days this week the filmmaking teams will participate in workshops in which they receive advice on technical, creative, and post-production issues. There are two tiers of mentorship support: via the program’s Lab Leaders who lead each of the five-day-long intensive sessions, and workshop leaders who provide technical, creative and strategic support to help bring films to completion. The 2009 Documentary Lab leaders are producer Lori Cheatle (51 Birch Street) and producer Lesli Klainberg (Paul Monette: The Brink […]
Simon Channing Williams, one of the towering figures in British cinema, died Sunday of cancer. Williams was best known as Mike Leigh’s producer and his partner in Thin Man Films, their production company. Commented Leigh in The Guardian, “”He was a natural-born producer, a great leader, always an enabler, a protector; never a dictator or an interferer. Infinitely generous, his life was all about doing things for people, and bringing out the best in everybody. He was the ultimate fixer, and a phenomenal organiser. He relished the impossible challenge, and loved the cut-and-thrust of negotiations, at which he was a […]
Via Everything Unfinished, the blog over at Identity Theory, comes an interesting post on the law of supply and demand, marketability, and the Darwinian nature of the marketplace. The discussion is prompted by a post on Curtis Brown literary agent Nathan Bransford’s blog, and it’s about the world of book publishing, but it’s not hard to extrapolate the data and apply it to the world of film and screenplay representation. On Monday Bransford is beginning a contest that is inspired by all the grumbling he’s heard from writers who complain that agents don’t respond to queries. Bransford will be posting […]
I was stunned to receive a call from a friend this afternoon telling me that Wouter Barendrecht, co-chairman of the top arthouse international sales and production company Fortissimo Films, died suddenly this weekend in Bangkok. Wouter has been a bedrock of international art film distribution as long as I have been in the film business. His exquisite taste, championing of auteurs new and established, business savvy, uncanny networking ability and indefatigable good cheer at the festivals he seemed to effortlessly navigate were all things anyone who worked in world cinema strived to emulate. This is a devastating loss, for both […]
There are many reasons why the current recession is bad for films and filmmakers. Venture capital is drying up; lacking stock portfolio gains, individual investors don’t have the “mad money” that once fueled indie film production; and the entertainment conglomerates are cutting back by axing the specialty divisions that were the buyers for our films. However, there are reasons why which the recession may turn out to be a good thing for filmmakers, and some of these are the same reasons I just listed above. At the Steady Diet of Film blog, Erin Donovan posts, “Why the financial collapse is […]
Ari Folman‘s Waltz With Bashir took home four awards including Outstanding Achievement in Direction at last night’s Cinema Eye Honors, which highlight the year’s achievements in non-fiction. Handed out by the event’s creators — filmmaker AJ Schnack and Thom Powers, documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival — at the Times Center in the New York Times building, James Marsh‘s Oscar winning doc Man on Wire was awarded the evening’s big award, Outstanding Achievement in Non-Fiction, along with two other prizes. Yung Chang‘s Up the Yangtze won the Debut Feature award as well as Audience Choice. The full list […]
An additional $350 million for the New York State Film Production Tax Credit program has been found to continue supporting the state’s popular film and TV tax incentives. The funds were announced as part of the budget that was proposed today; however, given that last year the state issued $460 million in film and TV tax incentives and that this new $350 million is capped, it’s clearly a stopgap motion for the program. The lack of long-term visibility means that TV shows in particular will be wary of setting up shop in New York for fear that the program will […]
William Grimes in the New York Times reports that Steven Bach, former U.A. studio executive and author of Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the Making of Heaven’s Gate has died of cancer at the age of 70. As an exec he was associated with such films as Annie Hall, Cutter and Bone, and True Confessions, but he is perhaps best remembered for Final Cut. Says critic David Thomson in the Times obit: “It is the best book ever written about the making of a movie. It gives you an understanding of the battles, the egos, and how a film […]
Thanks to Jamie Stuart for the heads up about the trailer for After Last Season, which is in the early stages of going viral by virtue of its genuine oddness. Michael Tully at his Indiewire blog writes, “It’s like Todd Haynes lost his mind after Safe and was hired to direct a series of cable access sci-fi infomercials,” while David Lowery writes, “I’ve watched the trailer about ten times now, and have yet to tire of it. It is so beyond logic in its construction that it essentially reinvents itself anew upon each viewing.” In addition to being featured on […]