In a release sent out moments ago, the Sundance Institute has announced Martin McDonagh‘s comedy In Bruges as the Sundance Film Festival‘s 2008 Opening Night Film. The film stars Ralph Fiennes, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. For those who may not be familiar with McDonagh, he’s an award-winning playwright and this film marks his debut feature. More on McDonagh and the film is in the release from Sundance below. The entire 2008 festival line-up will be announced Nov. 28 and 29. McDonagh’s first foray into filmmaking was with the short film, SIX SHOOTER, also starring Gleeson, which won the Academy […]
The mumblecore-haters may be out in force these days but, hey, it’s not like they got a word into the New Oxford American Dictionary. As reported on the Oxford University Press blog, “mumblecore” is a runner-up 2007 “word of the year.” The OAD defines mumblecore as: “an independent film movement featuring low-budget production, non-professional actors, and largely improvised dialogue.” As a word, mumblecore faced stiffed competition. Some of its challengers included “upcycling” (“the transformation of waste materials into something more useful or valuable”); “previvor” (” a person who has not been diagnosed with a form of cancer but has survived […]
Over at Film Comment, critic Amy Taubin visits the mumblecore party and finds that the keg has run dry. “Adieu, mumblecore, the indie movement that never was more than a flurry of festival hype and blogosphere branding,” she opens (and summarizes) with in a piece that challenges the proposition that these largely no-budget, DIY films constitute a valid aesthetic movement. Is that, however, a sufficient basis for a film movement? Obviously not in the grand sense of the French New Wave or the postwar American avant-garde. At most, one might think of mumblecore as an update of the “New Talkie,” […]
The Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting today issued proposed new rules for the permitting of film shoots in the city of New York. If you remember back several dozen internet news cycles (like around late July), an outcry arose when the Mayor’s Office issued specific new shooting rules that seemed to many to disregard First Amendment rights, legitimate news gathering needs, the needs of tourists, and the working practices of artisanal street photographers and experimental filmmakers. Protests were had, everyone from no-budget filmmakers to Keith Olbermann chimed in, and a grass roots group, Picture NY, organized the opposition. […]
The appealingly designed, crisply minimal Motion Design site describes itself as “a research blog on the subject of Motion Design. It serves as a means to discuss, share and develop ideas that will be used for a feature length documentary film.” I came across the site because it just posted an article about Pablo, director Richard Goldgewicht and producer Jeremy Goldscheider’s animated documentary on title designer Pablo Ferro. (You may remember this film and these filmmakers — they were featured in our 25 New Faces this year.) From the piece: Back in March of this year, a short teaser popped […]
David Halbfinger has a noteworthy piece in The New York Times today revealing that Ed Burns will release his new film, Purple Violets, a $4 million indie production starring Burns, Debra Messing, and Selma Blair, exclusively on iTunes. From the piece: When Edward Burns’s latest romantic comedy, “Purple Violets,” had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, it drew positive reviews, but only lukewarm offers from movie distributors. Mr. Burns, the director of indie favorites like “The Brothers McMullen” and “She’s the One,” but whose latest movies have not done as well, knew from experience how that story […]
From commercial crab fishing in Alaska, to learning how to become a filmmaker in Peru, Aaron Woolf’s worldly experience makes him an ideal documentarian for PBS. His previous films — Dying to Leave: The Human Face of Global Trafficking, Greener Grass Cuba and Baseball and the United States — all aired on public television, but Woolf is proud to have his latest film, King Corn, get theatrical distribution. “I never wanted to be anything,” Woolf says. “I only knew things I wanted to accomplish in my life. I wanted to build a house, drive cross-country, run for office, shoot a […]
Josh Welsh over at Film Independent forwarded me this info about a cool new documentary project that’s unfolding on YouTube. Two filmmakers, Eric Byler and Annabel Park, are making a film about the politics of immigration in Northern Virginia. They are posting short clips of their film on a channel they have set up on the site and are soliciting viewer feedback about the future direction of the project. “We will respond to viewer feedback, including requests for more coverage on certain storylines, contextual clarifications, and even perhaps on-site production excursions,” the filmmakers write on their YouTube page. Here’s a […]
RYAN GOSLING DINES WITH PAUL SCHNEIDER, EMILY MORTIMER AND “BIANCA” IN CRAIG GILLESPIE’S LARS AND THE REAL GIRL. COURTESY MGM. 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. Nick Dawson interviewed Lars and the Real Girl director Craig Gillespie for our Director Interviews section of the Website. Lars and the Real Girl is nominated for Best Original Screenplay (Nancy Oliver). In one of the more unusual coincidences on this year’s movie release schedule, Craig Gillespie has seen his first […]
TOM WILKINSON AND GEORGE CLOONEY IN TONY GILROY’S MICHAEL CLAYTON. COURTESY WARNER BROS. PICTURES. As a Hollywood screenwriter, Tony Gilroy has brought an insistent energy and intelligence to the projects he has worked on, so it was a totally logical step that he should progress to becoming a director. New York native Gilroy grew up with writing and the movies in his veins, as he is the son of Frank D. Gilroy, the Pulitzer prize-winning writer and filmmaker, possibly best known for writing The Only Game in Town (1970), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty. Gilroy Jr. debuted with the […]