A lovely short directed, shot and edited by Jamie Stuart on his Canon 7D during the blizzard that covered New York and much of the East Coast. Updated: Roger Ebert fell in love with the short and writes: “This film deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject. (1) Because of its wonderful quality. (2) Because of its role as homage. It is directly inspired by Dziga Vertov’s 1929 silent classic “Man With a Movie Camera.” (3) Because it represents an almost unbelievable technical proficiency. He conducts an email interview with Jamie, in which Stuart says: Technically, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 27, 2010Here are a few links I sent to my Instapaper account and have been reading this weekend. * When we queried a few filmmakers for a column on software and apps in the new issue of Filmmaker, I noted the number of respondents who had migrated to the Android operating system. I recalled meeting an Android developer at SXSW this year, and he told me he was planning for the platform’s rapid rise. He also said that he was an Apple fan too, and he felt the competition would be a good thing for both platforms. There’s an exchange along […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 11, 2010You know that already, but to be reminded again, surf to this week’s must-read post on film criticism in the age of the internet. Yes, it’s sad that film critics are losing their jobs, but Ebert finds good reason to celebrate the diversity of voices the ‘net brings us. A key graph: What the internet is creating is a class of literate, gifted amateur writers, in an old tradition. Like Trollope, who was a British Post official all his working life, they write for love and because they must. Like Rohinton Mistry, a banking executive, or Wallace Stevens, an insurance […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 1, 2010It was a big night for Lee Daniels’ Precious at the 2010 Spirit Awards. The film picked up awards for Best First Screenplay (Geoffrey Fletcher), Supporting Actress (Mo’Nique), Actress (Gabourey Sidibe), Director (Lee Daniels) and Picture. The only other film to win more than one award was Crazy Heart, which picked up Best First Screenplay and Actor (Jeff Bridges). Hosted by Eddie Izzard and presented by Film Independent, the awards were the first Spirits held in downtown L.A. on a Friday night rather than Saturday afternoon at the Santa Monica beach. The Spirits’ gently irreverent tone remained the same — […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2010Celebrated film critic, screenwriter and national arbiter of taste for the moviegoing public, Roger Ebert, will be honored at the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival (April 22 – May 6) with the Mel Novikoff Award, an award that celebrates an individual or institution’s achievement in bringing to the public a treasured appreciation of world cinema. He will be honored on Saturday, May 1 at 5:30 pm as part of a presentation entitled An Evening with Roger Ebert and Friends at the Castro Theatre. Guests include directors Jason Reitman and Terry Zwigoff, with others to be announced soon. The festival […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Mar 2, 2010Over at The Hot Button,, David Poland, while discussing Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival, throws out some industry analysis that feels pretty dead on and which is the kind of thinking that a lot of first-time filmmakers I encounter don’t really understand when they talk about the value of their film: The new small distributors are trying a new model. 12-16 movies a year. Nothing too big. $15 million is the top. Nothing too small. A $1 million or $2 million pick-up is possible… but only if the film looks like $8 million or more. Cover most of the money […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2006