With many viewers struggling with subscription-itis — a costly overload of SVOD memberships that inflate credit card bills at the end of each month — it’s no wonder that the so-called FAST (free ad-supported streaming television) channels are taking off in popularity. For filmmakers, these channels offer a new revenue stream, and for viewers not only no-cost entertainment but the chance to discover many titles that for whatever market-based reasons aren’t streamable on Netflix, Amazon Prime or Criterion. Filmmaker‘s Web Editor, Natalia Keogan, and I took a look through the current offerings of the most well-recognized FAST channel, Tubi, to […]

(The Dish & The Spoon world premiered at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival. It opens theatrically at the reRun Gastropub in NYC on Friday, February 10, 2012. Visit the film’s official Facebook page to learn more.) Alison Bagnall’s The Dish & The Spoon opens with a distraught young woman named Rose (played by Greta Gerwig) hastily driving an old, large Mercedes station wagon into the rainy sprawl of an off-season Delaware beach town. When her cell phone rings, she only hesitates for a moment before throwing it out the window onto the highway. This act — equal parts defiant, hostile, […]

This week on the blog I wrote a post asking what independent films made young audiences fans of independent film. Below are responses from writer, actor, director and musician Evan Louison. Buffalo ’66. I was 15. Particularly for the quiet, for the musical numbers, and for the paleness and stillness of the winter depicted. Particularly for the dinner table scene. I felt like I understood, or better like someone else did. I was in private school, and wrote a paper on it that got me called in after class. I don’t know what happened. They had a thing with strange […]

Vincent Gallo fans — and perfectionist filmmakers with money to spare — must check out this eBay page in which Gallo sells the camera, lights and sound package used to create The Brown Bunny. (Being a fan, I hope this doesn’t herald a retreat from filmmaking for Gallo.) The package contains two Aaton 16mm cameras, Super Baltar lenses, the last Nagra 4 STC made by the company, and an Angeniuex zoom purchased from the Kubrick estate! Writes eBay seller nbvbn, who, by the way, has a seller rating of 76 with 100% positive results, “Vincent Gallo, the director of Buffalo […]