The Screen Actor’s Guild has confirmed on its website news that has been floating around the indie world for a few weeks: that SAG will offer “guaranteed completion contracts” to indie productions so that they will be unaffected by a possible strike. What’s great about the SAG news, aside from quite valuably allowing indies to make a living during a labor stoppage, is that it implicitly acknowledges that all producers are not represented by the AMPTP and should not be affected by issues that primarily affect studio moviemaking. From the website: Guaranteed Completion Contracts are only available to independent productions […]
ALEJANDRO POLANCO IN DIRECTOR RAMIN BAHRANI’S CHOP SHOP. COURTESY KOCH LORBER FILMS. Ramin Bahrani’s films are what one could term “outsider cinema,” and yet they are made with the quiet confidence of someone who knows he belongs. Iranian-American Bahrani was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and moved to New York to study film at Columbia University. After making the short films Backgammon (1998) and Strangers (2000), he spent three years living in Iran, his parents’ former home country. Once back in the U.S., his awareness of immigrant life and the psychology of the outsider found a voice in […]
… is the very eye-catching come-on for the theatrical release of Tarsem’s long awaited, long in production second feature, The Fall. Previously Tarsem directed the underrated The Cell as well as some classic music videos, including R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.” Here’s the trailer.
Over at his Cinema Echo Chamber, Brandon Harris has a go at Richard Corliss’s list for Time Magazine of the “25 Most Important Films about Race.” From Corliss’s intro: To celebrate Black History Month, we’ve chosen 25 movies to honor the artistry, appeal and determination of African Americans on and behind the screen. The films span nine decades, and reveal a legacy that was tragic before it was triumphant. At first, blacks were invisible; when they were allowed to be seen, it was mostly as derisive comic relief. The 1950s ushered in the age of the noble Negro, in the […]
With the passing yesterday of legendary horror auteur George Romero, we’re reposting Nick Dawson’s 2008 interview with the director on the release of the penultimate chapter of his zombie series, Diary of the Dead. R.I.P. George Romero. No matter how you look at it, George A. Romero will always be remembered as the godfather of the zombie movie. Born in 1940 in New York City, Romero graduated from Carnegie Mellon in the early 60s and stayed in Pittsburgh to set up a commercial production company. In 1968, he segued into features with his seminal debut, Night of the Living Dead, […]
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Ray Pride interviewed The Savages writer-director Tamara Jenkins for the Fall ’07 issue. The Savages is nominated for Best Lead Actress (Laura Linney) and Best Original Screenplay (Tamara Jenkins). Note-perfect, Tamara Jenkins’s The Savages was one of Sundance 2007’s stellar surprises. Where another unlikely gem from the festival, Once, was bittersweet in its simple romance, Jenkins’s long-in-coming sophomore directorial entry (after 1998’s Slums of Beverly Hills) is a complex mesh of […]
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Jason Guerrasio interviewed The Kite Runner director Marc Forster for our Web Exclusives section of the Website. The Kite Runner is nominated for Best Original Score (Alberto Iglesias). When Khaled Hosseini sat down to write his first novel he imagined a story that would shed light on the culture, beauty and history of his home country and have people see it in a different light than its usual portrayal on the […]
The New York-based film festival CineKink has announced their line-up for this year’s event, which runs from February 26 to March 2. From the press release: Billing itself as “the really alternative film festival,” the event will run February 26-March 2, 2008. Presented by CineKink, an organization dedicated to the recognition and encouragement of sex-positive and kink-friendly depictions in film and television, works presented at CineKink NYC will range from documentary to drama, mildly spicy to quite explicit – and everything in between. “It seems our programming theme for this year was ‘No mercy!’” says Lisa Vandever, CineKink’s co-founder and […]
Interesting news via Pitchfork Media: Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has launched Oscilloscope Pictures, a new independent distributor, with former Think Film V.P. David Fenkel and former Think employee Dan Berger. The Pitchfork article quotes this Reuters/Hollywood Reporter piece, which gives more details. From the Gregg Goldstein piece: Yauch and Fenkel plan to acquire narrative and documentary features from festivals for release in the U.S. and provide funds to complete and release unfinished films. The pair, who worked on Yauch’s Beastie Boys documentary “Awesome! I F***in’ Shot That!” at ThinkFilm, will oversee postproduction and marketing work at Oscilloscope Laboratories’ downtown Manhattan […]
The AP is reporting that four New York indie film companies — Greenestreet Films, This is That Corporation, Killer Films and Open City Films — have signed an interim agreement with the striking WGA, allowing them to go forward with WGA-scripted development projects and productions. From the piece as it runs on CNN.com: Jason Kliot and Joana Vicente, speaking for GreeneStreet, Open City and Killer films, credited the union with “thoughtfulness during the discussions.” This is that co-founders, Ted Hope and Anne Carey, said the united action by the companies to settle “clarifies our support for and solidarity with the […]