We’ve featured the work of filmmaker Mike Hedge on the site before, and he’s just forwarded the trailer for his “participatory documentary” shot at Burning Man, As the Dust Settles. It premieres next week at the Byron Bay Film Festival in Australia. From the site: Following a simple rule of working on this participatory documentary 50% of the time, we captured our life-changing experiences at the annual arts festival held in northern Nevada, known as Burning Man. Our documentary reveals an intimate glimpse of what we discovered about love, creativity, community, the environment, the art, the gift economy, and reality. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 21, 2013Since repetition in the form of rote memorization is a major element of education, I’m not going to apologize for this, one of my periodic rants on the ways in which filmmakers (and, sometimes, their publicists) fail in the promotion of their films online and through social media. I’m sure that over the years I’ve posted every one of these points before, as have other writers on our site, like Jon Reiss. But, based on my encounters with filmmakers, their films, and their websites these past few weeks, these are worth repeating. Want to decrease press interest and the size […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2013Gary Huggins made our 25 New Faces list in 2006 on the basis of his excellent Sundance short, First Date. After a successful Kickstarter raise, he’s back now with his first feature, Kick Me. Here’s the synopsis, and the video is above. A fancy high school guidance counselor (Santiago Vasquez) ventures into unknown territory – Kansas City, Kansas – and learns crucial lessons about community, prejudice and brotherhood the hard way.
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 6, 2013American Hardcore directors Paul Rachman and Steven Blush are back with Lost Rockers, a documentary on great rock ‘n roll performers who have been buried beneath the sands of time. They include Chris Robison, Gloria Jones, David Peel, Bobby Jameson, Evie Sands, Cherry Vanilla, and Gass Wild and Johnny Hodge of the Lightning Raiders. Rachman and Blush have just released this new teaser, and you can read more about the film at its website.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2013Here’s the just-released second trailer for Quentin Taratino’s upcoming Django Unchained.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 10, 2012Ava DuVernay won the Best Director prize at Sundance for her second feature, the powerful, superbly acted Middle of Nowhere. The first trailer has just dropped; watch it below, and look for DuVernay’s interview with Spike Lee in our current print edition.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 26, 2012Here’s the first trailer for Ang Lee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel, Life of Pi. The film’s in 3D, and you can sense how spectacular and immersive it should be from this preview.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 25, 2012The Master is Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to There Will be Blood, my favorite film of that year. After this trailer I’m even more psyched.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 19, 2012Here’s the second bit of footage released from Paul Thomas Anderson’s forthcoming The Master, this time featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman (who plays the title character), as well as Joaquin Phoenix. As with the previous one, this is really a teaser/clip rather than an actual trailer, giving us a sense of only a small aspect of the film — rather than taking the usual trailer tactic of telling us 90% of the plot and compacting every notable or high-energy moment from the film into 90 seconds. As someone who likes to be surprised by movies, I hope that this refreshingly different […]
by Nick Dawson on Jun 19, 2012Over the last year Filmmaker Contributing Editor Brandon Harris has been making his first feature, Redlegs, and it receives a sneak preview next Thursday at Brooklyn’s reRun, sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council. It then opens for a week on May 25 at that same venue. Check out the trailer below. (There’s also a Tumblr blog, where Harris is promising “goofy, poignant and otherwise unmissable stuff.”)
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2012