Here we are again, with part three in a series highlighting some of 2011’s most daring, innovative television. This week, I’ll be singing the praises of AMC’s consistently shocking and always riveting Breaking Bad. Indeed, there is no show on TV more unrelenting in its exploration of human misery than Breaking Bad. Created by former X-Files writer Vince Gilligan, the show stars Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who, after being diagnosed with cancer, begins cooking and distributing meth with the help of a burnout ex-student (Aaron Paul). If that premise sounds a bit too high-concept […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Dec 22, 2011Here are a few of the articles in my Instapaper this week. At Bad Lit, Mike Everleth has his usual excellent selection of Underground Film Links, including this link to “Foreign Cinema: Whither San Francisco’s Experimental Film Legacy,” by Kimberly Chun at the Bold Italic. She visits Canyon Cinema and and various local filmmakers, looking for scene described in the Pacific Film Archive’s first book, Radical Light. Chuck Tryon watches (and likes) The Fighter with his Massachusetts-born fiance and notes the reference to the documentary High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell: A look back at the documentary shows […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 13, 2011For a while AMC has been an approachable theater chain for independent filmmakers seeking a direct way to get their films in front of theatrical audiences. Now, the company has announced AMC Independent (“AMCi”), a program that commits screens in 60 AMC venues to independent fare. Most of the films upcoming on the initial AMCi slate are mini-major titles (Please Give, Babies) that I’m sure would have wound up on AMC screens anyway, but the fact that the company has positioned the program they way it has — and the noises they are making about future programming — are encouraging […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 23, 2010