Top L to R: Lauren Wissot, Michael Tully, Laura Blum; Bottom L to R: Mark Bell, Dusty Wright Part I. Five Film Reviewers on Screening Films Part II. Five Film Reviewers Advise Filmmakers In Baal – the BBC’s 1982 cinematic adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s 1918/1923 dramatic play – Ekart is broke and unable to pay his bar bill. In a grimy tavern, he explains: “If I had money to pay, it would undermine my sense of self.” Paying a bar bill can be a bitch, but living as a drunken-pauper doesn’t sound better. Unlike Ekart in Baal*, I doubt today’s bohemians would be …...
- 7/30/2013
- by Stewart Nusbaumer
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Top L to R: Michael Tully, Marshall Fine, Lauren Wissot; Bottom L to R: Mark Bell, Dusty Wright With prices dropping and technology increasing and audiences expanding, the indie community is whacking out films at a hectic pace — but it’s even more prolific at whacking out words on films. Websites and magazines broadcast a stream of articles on the work of emerging filmmakers. For years, info-packed pieces on distribution and funding have been ubiquitous. Tacky scribblers suck up to celebrities, arty ones profile auteurs, bloggers are all over the turf — latest craze, lists of the best and the worst …...
- 7/19/2013
- by Stewart Nusbaumer
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Jeff Nichols, a product of the vibrant class of the North Carolina School of the Arts film program that also produced David Gordon Green, Craig Zobel, Michael Tully, Jody Hill, Tim Orr, and Danny McBride, announced himself as a highly talented young filmmaker with his 2007 debut Shotgun Stories. The slow-burning rural drama was gorgeously shot in Scope and revealed Nichols’ ambition to create cinema on a big canvas, even when his budgets were small. Four years later, his sophomore feature, Take Shelter, about a father who believes an apocalyptic storm is coming, caught the imagination of both critics and …...
- 4/26/2013
- by Nick Dawson
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Congratulations to Filmmaker contributor Zach Wigon, who won this month’s Hammer to Nail Short Film Contest with his cyber-age paranoid romance, Someone Else’s Heart. From Michael Tully’s post: Is our increasing dependence on virtual communication deforming the way we interact with others in our real, everyday lives? Isn’t there something inherently strange about all this “how many friends and followers do you have” business of late? While the internet is without question an incredibly useful contribution to our modern world, on the other side of that coin, take a few steps back and watch someone “interacting” with their computer. Whether …...
- 12/27/2012
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Learn the ropes from experienced filmmakers with this month's Moviemaker Dialogues from Austin Film Society. Held around 6-8 times per year with visiting filmmakers, the next series kicks off at 7 pm tonight in the Afs Screening Room with "Sustainable Film Culture" featuring Ted Hope, producer of the awardwinning movies Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Ice Storm. Hope will discuss how producers and filmmakers can contribute to a sustainable culture for independent films. A meet-and-greet with Hope, who is in Austin for the annual International Film Festival Summit, will follow the discussion.
Keep the dialogue going this weekend with a cinematography master class at 2 pm on Saturday in the Afs Screening Room with Tim Orr, director of photography for Pineapple Express. Orr, who is in town shooting the new David Gordon Green film Joe, will discuss techniques and trade secrets in this conversation about the art and craft of filmmaking.
Keep the dialogue going this weekend with a cinematography master class at 2 pm on Saturday in the Afs Screening Room with Tim Orr, director of photography for Pineapple Express. Orr, who is in town shooting the new David Gordon Green film Joe, will discuss techniques and trade secrets in this conversation about the art and craft of filmmaking.
- 11/30/2012
- by Jordan Gass-Poore'
- Slackerwood
When it was announced earlier this month that San Francisco's famed Roxie Theater would be launching a Kickstarter campaign with endorsements from such film luminaries as John Waters, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Michael Tully and more, we were promised a video endorsement from the king of trash cinema. In his video endorsement of the Roxie Theater, which is seeking funds to convert into a sustainable non-profit organization, Waters says that anyone that doesn't support the Roxie is "an asshole" and notes some of the extracurricular activities in which Roxie patrons could engage themselves -- namely, self-pleasure and cruising. Check the video out below and visit the Roxie Theater Kickstarter campaign here. ...
- 11/16/2012
- by Bryce J. Renninger
- Indiewire
Michael Tully of Hammer to Nail passed along this review of Benjamin Dickinson’s First Winter, written by fellow filmmaker Zach Clark. First Winter is an accomplished, compelling and unexpectedly timely first feature, but I debated a second about posting this. That’s because Clark is also the programmer of Videology, where the film is premiering tomorrow. That said, he opens with a quote from Andrei Tarkovsky so, with this disclaimer, I was cool to run it. — Sm First Winter, Benjamin Dickinson’s microbudget entry into the slow-burn apocalypse pantheon, owes no small debt to that scant subgenre’s zenith – Andrei Tarkovsky’s …...
- 11/15/2012
- by Zach Clark
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Michael Tully of Hammer to Nail passed along this review of Benjamin Dickinson’s First Winter, written by fellow filmmaker Zach Clark. First Winter is an accomplished, compelling and unexpectedly timely first feature, but I debated a second about posting this. That’s because Clark is also the programmer of Videology, where the film is premiering tomorrow. That said, he opens with a quote from Andrei Tarkovsky so, with this disclaimer, I was cool to run it. — Sm
First Winter, Benjamin Dickinson’s microbudget entry into the slow-burn apocalypse pantheon, owes no small debt to that scant subgenre’s zenith – Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice. It seems entirely appropriate then, that a quote from the mustachioed master best sums it up. Here it is:
“’Man is born unto the trouble as the sparks fly upwards.’ In other words suffering is germane to our existence; indeed, how without it, should we be able to ‘fly upwards?...
First Winter, Benjamin Dickinson’s microbudget entry into the slow-burn apocalypse pantheon, owes no small debt to that scant subgenre’s zenith – Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice. It seems entirely appropriate then, that a quote from the mustachioed master best sums it up. Here it is:
“’Man is born unto the trouble as the sparks fly upwards.’ In other words suffering is germane to our existence; indeed, how without it, should we be able to ‘fly upwards?...
- 11/15/2012
- by Zach Clark
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
San Fransisco's Roxie Theater, the oldest continuously running cinema in the United States and the second oldest theater in the world, has launched a Kickstarter campaign with the hope of raising $60,000 by Dec. 12. Any contributions made in the name of the Roxie Theater will support the final phase of its transition into a sustainable 501c3 non-profit organization and help to keep the unique venue a bastion of independent filmmaking. Each week, in order to rally further donations and enthusiasm, the Roxie Theater campaign will feature shorts by filmmakers who have been affected positively by the Roxie's support, such as John Waters, Barry Jenkins, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Valerie Soe, Jane Reed, Zachary Booth, Everything is Terrible, Scarlett Shepard, Mike Ott and Michael Tully. Though differing in approach, the shorts represent each filmmaker and his or her relationship to the theater (Valerie Soe's nostalgic clip highlights her first Hong Kong movie at the Roxie in.
- 11/13/2012
- by Justin Krajeski
- Indiewire
Holly Herrick joins the staff of Austin Film Society this week as Associate Artistic Director. Herrick's most recent work was with the Hamptons International Film Festival where she served as Programming Deputy Director. She has also written for film site Hammer to Nail (her filmmaker husband Michael Tully, also new to Austin, contributes to the site as well).
She took a break during her move from Brooklyn to Austin over the weekend to answer some questions for us (via email).
Slackerwood: What drew you to Austin and this new position with the Austin Film Society?
Holly Herrick: The Austin Film Society always stood out to me as an organization that took an original, creative approach to developing local and regional film culture. As a festival producer and programmer, I was positioned between the film industry and communities that felt they could benefit from a greater emphasis on film programming and filmmaking in their region.
She took a break during her move from Brooklyn to Austin over the weekend to answer some questions for us (via email).
Slackerwood: What drew you to Austin and this new position with the Austin Film Society?
Holly Herrick: The Austin Film Society always stood out to me as an organization that took an original, creative approach to developing local and regional film culture. As a festival producer and programmer, I was positioned between the film industry and communities that felt they could benefit from a greater emphasis on film programming and filmmaking in their region.
- 6/12/2012
- by Elizabeth Stoddard
- Slackerwood
Susan Sarandon is keeping busy with various projects, as Deadline reports she’s adding the coming-of-age tale Ping-Pong Summer to her filmography. Relatively unknown director Michael Tully will helm the project from a script he also wrote.
Set in the summer of 1985, the film revolves around a teenage boy obsessed with ping-pong and hip hop, who has a family vacation that changes everything. We haven’t gotten word on Sarandon‘s specific role, but I can only assume she will star as the boy’s mother, who is also unidentified at this time.
It would seem that Sarandon feels somewhat attached to the game of ping-pong, seeing as the Oscar-winner has also started a ping-pong program for New York City students. Dubbed “SPiN”, the program brings the game to schools across the five boroughs. With little news to go on, I guess it doesn’t hurt that the actress is...
Set in the summer of 1985, the film revolves around a teenage boy obsessed with ping-pong and hip hop, who has a family vacation that changes everything. We haven’t gotten word on Sarandon‘s specific role, but I can only assume she will star as the boy’s mother, who is also unidentified at this time.
It would seem that Sarandon feels somewhat attached to the game of ping-pong, seeing as the Oscar-winner has also started a ping-pong program for New York City students. Dubbed “SPiN”, the program brings the game to schools across the five boroughs. With little news to go on, I guess it doesn’t hurt that the actress is...
- 5/18/2012
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
The 4th Reich
Sean Bean, Sean Pertwee, Tom Savini and Craig Conway have all signed on for Shaun Robert Smith's WW2 action-horror film "The 4th Reich" at Mann Made Films. Shooting will take place this Summer.
The story follows a brigade of British soldiers sent into occupied mainland Europe who find themselves up against an enemy created by Nazi scientists as an all-powerful fighting force for what would be the 4th Reich. [Source: Risky Biz Blog]
Desert Dancer
Freida Pinto, Alfred Molina and Reece Ritchie have joined Richard Raymond's UK biopic "Desert Dancer" about the life of Iranian dancer Afshin Ghaffarian.
Set against the backdrop of the 2009 election protests in Iran, Ritchie plays a young man willing to risk his life to fight for his dream to become a dancer. Shooting begins this summer in Turkey and Jordan. [Source: Variety]
Ping-Pong Summer
Susan Sarandon is set to star in Michael Tully's "Ping-Pong Summer...
Sean Bean, Sean Pertwee, Tom Savini and Craig Conway have all signed on for Shaun Robert Smith's WW2 action-horror film "The 4th Reich" at Mann Made Films. Shooting will take place this Summer.
The story follows a brigade of British soldiers sent into occupied mainland Europe who find themselves up against an enemy created by Nazi scientists as an all-powerful fighting force for what would be the 4th Reich. [Source: Risky Biz Blog]
Desert Dancer
Freida Pinto, Alfred Molina and Reece Ritchie have joined Richard Raymond's UK biopic "Desert Dancer" about the life of Iranian dancer Afshin Ghaffarian.
Set against the backdrop of the 2009 election protests in Iran, Ritchie plays a young man willing to risk his life to fight for his dream to become a dancer. Shooting begins this summer in Turkey and Jordan. [Source: Variety]
Ping-Pong Summer
Susan Sarandon is set to star in Michael Tully's "Ping-Pong Summer...
- 5/18/2012
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Could this be the Balls of Fury sequel no one was clamoring for? Unlikely, though Deadline does say that Oscar-winner Susan Sarandon will be involved with Ping-Pong Summer, a feature Michael Tully plans to direct from his own script. It.s being described as a coming-of-stage story of a New Jersey teen with a passion for table tennis and hip-hop music who embarks on a family vacation in the summer of 1985 and contends with his entire life changing before his very eyes. Get me a young John Cusack on the phone! Let.s hope Sarandon doesn.t play a seasoned beach comber who helps trigger a sexual awakening in the young protagonist in Tully.s screenplay. Will this be The Wackness, or One Crazy Summer? We.ll find out as more details emerge. If you think it.s strange that Sarandon would commit to a ping-pong-themed project, you don.t...
- 5/18/2012
- cinemablend.com
Austin's film community is about to get a new member: Holly Herrick, who's worked with the Hamptons International Film Festival and the Sarasota Film Festival, among others. Austin Film Society announced today that Herrick has been named to the newly created Associate Artistic Director position, and will start on June 15.
Looking at Twitter posts about the announcement this morning, I realized that Austin will also get a new filmmaker/film writer, since Herrick's husband Michael Tully of Hammer to Nail will be moving with her. The couple currently resides in Brooklyn.
The official press release from Afs is reprinted below with details about the new position and also Herrick's background. I look forward to meeting her this summer.
read more...
Looking at Twitter posts about the announcement this morning, I realized that Austin will also get a new filmmaker/film writer, since Herrick's husband Michael Tully of Hammer to Nail will be moving with her. The couple currently resides in Brooklyn.
The official press release from Afs is reprinted below with details about the new position and also Herrick's background. I look forward to meeting her this summer.
read more...
- 5/9/2012
- by Jette Kernion
- Slackerwood
The Terracotta Far East Film Festival is on in London through the weekend, presenting, as Electric Sheep notes in the introduction to its newish issue, "the UK premiere of Sion Sono's Himizu [review: John Bleasdale], using a comic to tackle the fallout from Fukushima." Es takes "a look at manga adaptations with Takashi Miike's stylized, violent high school movie Crows Zero [comic strip review: Joe Morgan] and Toshiya Fujita's 70s revenge tale Lady Snowblood: Blizzard from the Netherworld [review: Virginie Sélavy]."
Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo, seven years in the making, opens in Japan next week after a run through the festival circuit and, in the Japan Times, Mark Schilling gives it four out of five stars: "Hayao Miyazaki is the obvious point of comparison, but unlike many of Miyazaki's more fanciful landscapes, Okiura's port is vividly, recognizably real — so much so that you can almost smell the salt in the water and feel the warmth of the stones.
Hiroyuki Okiura's A Letter to Momo, seven years in the making, opens in Japan next week after a run through the festival circuit and, in the Japan Times, Mark Schilling gives it four out of five stars: "Hayao Miyazaki is the obvious point of comparison, but unlike many of Miyazaki's more fanciful landscapes, Okiura's port is vividly, recognizably real — so much so that you can almost smell the salt in the water and feel the warmth of the stones.
- 4/13/2012
- MUBI
"In 1962 Pier Paolo Pasolini received a suspended sentence for his allegedly blasphemous contribution to the portmanteau film Rogopag, a brilliant sketch satirizing biblical movies," writes Philip French in his brief review of the new Masters of Cinema release of The Gospel According to St Matthew in today's Observer. "Two years later the gay, Marxist atheist showed the world how a life of Christ should be made, and it is a magnificent achievement, far superior to Scorsese's or Gibson's films."
David Jenkins in Little White Lies: "Essentially a 'straight' retelling of the life of Christ (who is played with fervent intensity by Enrique Irazoqui), which, on its surface, seldom editorializes or strays towards controversy, the film was fully embraced by the religious community to the extent that a colorized version was made to capitalize on the Bible belt buck. General familiarity of with the text makes this one of Pasolini's most easily approachable films,...
David Jenkins in Little White Lies: "Essentially a 'straight' retelling of the life of Christ (who is played with fervent intensity by Enrique Irazoqui), which, on its surface, seldom editorializes or strays towards controversy, the film was fully embraced by the religious community to the extent that a colorized version was made to capitalize on the Bible belt buck. General familiarity of with the text makes this one of Pasolini's most easily approachable films,...
- 4/8/2012
- MUBI
There'll be a party following the single screening of Bad Fever this evening at the Downtown Independent Theater in Los Angeles. Nick Schager, originally for the Voice, now in the La Weekly: "Writer-director Dustin Guy Defa's stark indie trains its character-study gaze on Eddie (Kentucker Audley), a socially dysfunctional 20-something who — while living at home with his dour mom (Annette Wright), hanging out in empty diners and entertaining stand-up comedy dreams by recording anecdotes on cassette — strikes up a random romance with Irene (Eleonore Hendricks), who lives in an abandoned school and has a fondness for kinky videotaping. Eddie and Irene are kindred misfits in search of some direction and contentment, and if Defa's aesthetics are mundane, his leads' performances are not, especially in the case of Audley, whose darting eyes and hushed, stuttering speech express confused longing with transfixing, train-wreck magnetism."
The New Yorker's Richard Brody: "Defa exerts...
The New Yorker's Richard Brody: "Defa exerts...
- 4/2/2012
- MUBI
Indiewire is a big fan of the microbudget film review site Hammer to Nail, as well as filmmaker Alex Ross Perry, whose "The Color Wheel" won the title of Best Undistributed Film in last year's critics' poll. So we were excited to see Perry's name in Hammer to Nail this past week with an essay/interview that reflected his Diy ethos. Perry's interview with Joe Martin, the longtime proprietor of Brooklyn rental store Reel Life--which closes its doors for good at the end of this month--is an unexpectedly heartfelt tribute to the deterioration of the physical video store. Perry and Hammer to Nail editor Michael Tully have graciously allowed us to republish the interview here in full. --Indiewire editors __________________________________________________ On Sunday March 18, 2012, I was walking around the neighborhood where I live—Park Slope, Brooklyn -- thinking about places where I would be able to display promotional posters for the release of my.
- 3/31/2012
- by Alex Ross Perry
- Indiewire
On Facebook, Hammer to Nail’s Michael Tully describes this as “The Trailer of the Century!” And certainly Penny Vozniak‘s Despite the Gods – a doc about Jennifer Lynch making her third feature, Hisss, in India — looks incredibly compelling and entertaining. Judge for yourself below!
The movie premieres at Hot Docs at the end of next month, and I’m looking forward to hopefully catching up with it shortly afterward.… Read the rest...
The movie premieres at Hot Docs at the end of next month, and I’m looking forward to hopefully catching up with it shortly afterward.… Read the rest...
- 3/28/2012
- by Nick Dawson
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
"The agony and perverse ecstasy of unrequited love permeate Terence Davies's The Deep Blue Sea," writes Graham Fuller at the top of his interview with the director. Also in the new March/April 2012 issue of Film Comment: Jonathan Rosenbaum remembers Gilbert Adair (plus a few online exclusives: Adair on Mae West and his "Cliché Expert's Guide to the Cinema"), Anton Dolin examines "The Strange Case of Russian Maverick Aleksei German" (see, too, J Hoberman's 1990 piece for Fc on German) and Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life tops the Reader's "20 Best Films of 2011" Poll — plus comments.
Then there are the shorter bits from the issue online: Nicolas Rapold on Pablo Giorgelli's Las Acacias and Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg (more from Eric Hynes [Time Out New York, 4/5], Eric Kohn [indieWIRE], Anthony Lane [New Yorker], Dennis Lim [New York Times], Karina Longworth [Voice], Henry Stewart [L] and Michael Tully [Hammer to Nail]), Phillip Lopate on Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb's This Is Not a Film...
Then there are the shorter bits from the issue online: Nicolas Rapold on Pablo Giorgelli's Las Acacias and Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg (more from Eric Hynes [Time Out New York, 4/5], Eric Kohn [indieWIRE], Anthony Lane [New Yorker], Dennis Lim [New York Times], Karina Longworth [Voice], Henry Stewart [L] and Michael Tully [Hammer to Nail]), Phillip Lopate on Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb's This Is Not a Film...
- 3/7/2012
- MUBI
The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art have announced that they'll be presenting 29 features and 12 shorts in the 41st edition of New Directors/New Films, running March 21 through April 1). The series, dedicated to "the discovery of new works by emerging and dynamic filmmaking talent," opens with Nadine Labaki's Where Do We Go Now? (see the Cannes roundup). A few notes on the other features:
The Ambassador (Mads Brügger). The La Weekly's Karina Longworth suggests that Brügger is "sort of the Vice magazine version of Sacha Baron Cohen, as financed by Lars von Trier. His last film was The Red Chapel, an exercise in hidden camera comedy with unusual socio-political stakes, which I put on my top 10 list for 2010." In "his hilarious, troubling new film," Brügger poses as "a diplomat in Africa, a decadent Westerner plundering a third-world nation…. For a six-figure outlay, Brugger is promised a Liberian passport,...
The Ambassador (Mads Brügger). The La Weekly's Karina Longworth suggests that Brügger is "sort of the Vice magazine version of Sacha Baron Cohen, as financed by Lars von Trier. His last film was The Red Chapel, an exercise in hidden camera comedy with unusual socio-political stakes, which I put on my top 10 list for 2010." In "his hilarious, troubling new film," Brügger poses as "a diplomat in Africa, a decadent Westerner plundering a third-world nation…. For a six-figure outlay, Brugger is promised a Liberian passport,...
- 2/26/2012
- MUBI
Over at Hammer to Nail, Michael Tully has announced the winner for the inaugural edition of his monthly Short Film Contest. This month’s winner, Kelly Sears’ Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise, is available to watch online, and it’s unforgettable; a nightmare-ish collage of refracted high school memories, manipulated yearbook photos, and an escalating sense of dread.
You can stream Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise over at Vimeo. My advice – don’t watch it at work unless you want your coworkers to see your terrified face.
Previously supported by Rooftop’s Filmmakers’ Fund, Sears’ short was chosen by a panel of judges including filmmaker David Gordon Green, reRun Gastropub curator Aaron Hillis, and Hammer to Nail editor Michael Tully. As part of her prize, Sears will receive fee waivers to several major Us film festivals, as well as a full review on Hammer...
You can stream Once It Started It Could Not End Otherwise over at Vimeo. My advice – don’t watch it at work unless you want your coworkers to see your terrified face.
Previously supported by Rooftop’s Filmmakers’ Fund, Sears’ short was chosen by a panel of judges including filmmaker David Gordon Green, reRun Gastropub curator Aaron Hillis, and Hammer to Nail editor Michael Tully. As part of her prize, Sears will receive fee waivers to several major Us film festivals, as well as a full review on Hammer...
- 2/22/2012
- by Dan Schoenbrun
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Filmmaker has launched the February edition of its curated monthly list of notable VOD titles.
Highlights include many of 2011′s end of year standouts, including Sean Durkin’s cult thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene, Bruce Robinson’s foray into the twisted mind of Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary, and Jeff Nichol’s apocalyptic Americana Take Shelter, a film that Michael Tully called a “modern American masterpiece” in his Hammer to Nail review.
Also available are some very promising first-quarter 2012 titles, including Liza Johnson’s war vet character portrait Return and Tony Kaye’s Adrien Brody-starring classroom drama Detachment.
For titles from previous months go to our VOD Calendar homepage.… Read the rest...
Highlights include many of 2011′s end of year standouts, including Sean Durkin’s cult thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene, Bruce Robinson’s foray into the twisted mind of Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary, and Jeff Nichol’s apocalyptic Americana Take Shelter, a film that Michael Tully called a “modern American masterpiece” in his Hammer to Nail review.
Also available are some very promising first-quarter 2012 titles, including Liza Johnson’s war vet character portrait Return and Tony Kaye’s Adrien Brody-starring classroom drama Detachment.
For titles from previous months go to our VOD Calendar homepage.… Read the rest...
- 2/2/2012
- by Dan Schoenbrun
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The Sundance Film Festival will begin unveiling its 2012 lineup on Wednesday, and it's going to take several days to get it all out there. At Ioncinema, Eric Lavallee has put together a package of 80 previews of films he predicts will be premiering in Park City. One page per film, so this is a holiday weekend sort of browse. The image above, by the way, is from So Yong Kim's For Ellen, #19 on the list, featuring Paul Dano, Jena Malone and Jon Heder.
Somewhat related is Michael Tully's "2012 Indie Cinema Preview" at Hammer to Nail, a simple list of filmmakers and titles.
More lists. The Philadelphia Weekly's Sean Burns and Matt Prigge present a "highly subjective list" of the top 50 films ever.
For Time, Wook Kim writes up and finds clips for a list of the "Top 10 Thanksgiving Movie Scenes."
Awards. The Screen Actors Guild Awards won't be handed...
Somewhat related is Michael Tully's "2012 Indie Cinema Preview" at Hammer to Nail, a simple list of filmmakers and titles.
More lists. The Philadelphia Weekly's Sean Burns and Matt Prigge present a "highly subjective list" of the top 50 films ever.
For Time, Wook Kim writes up and finds clips for a list of the "Top 10 Thanksgiving Movie Scenes."
Awards. The Screen Actors Guild Awards won't be handed...
- 11/24/2011
- MUBI
Originally published in our Summer 2011 issue, Bellflower is nominated for Breakthrough Director. Here Michael Tully talks to director Evan Glodell about his debut feature and how the exposure at this year’s Sundance has changes his life.
From the interview:
Did the Sundance selection really help you in concrete ways, like finding representation? Or is that my wishful thinking for your sake since nothing magical has happened in my life? [laughs] It changed everything. We were at our lowest point. We had the movie to a place where we thought it was good, and we had had screenings with friends of friends, people who didn’t know the people in the movie, at some peoples’ houses. Everybody really liked it, and so it was time to get it into somebody’s hands in the industry who really knew how this all works. Everyone tried to get in touch with someone who...
From the interview:
Did the Sundance selection really help you in concrete ways, like finding representation? Or is that my wishful thinking for your sake since nothing magical has happened in my life? [laughs] It changed everything. We were at our lowest point. We had the movie to a place where we thought it was good, and we had had screenings with friends of friends, people who didn’t know the people in the movie, at some peoples’ houses. Everybody really liked it, and so it was time to get it into somebody’s hands in the industry who really knew how this all works. Everyone tried to get in touch with someone who...
- 11/8/2011
- by Jason Guerrasio
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Even as I carry on updating the entry on Doc NYC, there's quite a lot besides going on in the field of nonfiction filmmaking. Last week, both the International Documentary Association and Cinema Eye Honors announced the nominations for their respective awards, and yesterday, Cinema Eye unveiled "a new, periodic award called the Hell Yeah Prize, to be given to filmmakers who have created works of incredible craft and artistry that also have significant, real-world impact. The inaugural Hell Yeah Prize will be presented to Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky for their HBO Documentary Films trilogy Paradise Lost, which played a critical role in securing the release from prison of the wrongly prosecuted and convicted West Memphis Three."
And the other day, when I pointed to Dennis Lim's review of Travis Wilkerson's An Injury to One (2002), "one of American independent cinema's great achievements of the past decade, just issued on DVD by Icarus Films,...
And the other day, when I pointed to Dennis Lim's review of Travis Wilkerson's An Injury to One (2002), "one of American independent cinema's great achievements of the past decade, just issued on DVD by Icarus Films,...
- 11/4/2011
- MUBI
"Anyone who caught writer-director Todd Rohal's The Guatemalan Handshake (2006) knows that he likes to lace his indie realism with generous helpings of lysergic weirdness," writes David Fear in Time Out New York. "So it's no surprise that what starts out as a beer-soaked cringe comedy about stunted masculinity ends up deep in the woods with noise-loving Japanese tourists and exploding craniums — or that such detours into psychotronic oddity for its own sake can make even a 75-minute running time feel like an eternity. Still, kudos for the oh-so-clever title."
"Produced by Eastbound & Down masterminds David Gordon Green, Jody Hill, and Danny McBride, and starring that show's standout weirdo Steve Little, writer/director Todd Rohal's farce follows incompetent Father Billy (Little) as he tries to rediscover his faith through a sabbatical canoeing trip with his sister's high school ex-boyfriend Robbie (Robert Longstreet)," explains Nick Schager in the Voice. "Little's...
"Produced by Eastbound & Down masterminds David Gordon Green, Jody Hill, and Danny McBride, and starring that show's standout weirdo Steve Little, writer/director Todd Rohal's farce follows incompetent Father Billy (Little) as he tries to rediscover his faith through a sabbatical canoeing trip with his sister's high school ex-boyfriend Robbie (Robert Longstreet)," explains Nick Schager in the Voice. "Little's...
- 10/21/2011
- MUBI
"In his mid-50s and a festival favorite since the 80s, [Aki] Kaurismäki has joined the ranks of the master auteurs," writes Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times, "but in the Us at least, he has remained somewhat overlooked. Le Havre is being released by Janus Films, the sister company of the Criterion Collection, and for those looking to catch up, a pair of DVD boxed sets are available on Criterion's midprice line Eclipse. Compassionate chronicles of the romantic, economic and existential plights of blue-collar outsiders, the films in the Proletariat Trilogy set [Shadows in Paradise, Ariel and The Match Factory Girl], made between 1986 and 1990, put Kaurismäki on the international map. The Leningrad Cowboys set (out this week) shows off his goofier side, not to mention his taste for Soviet kitsch and American rockabilly."
This second trilogy — Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994) and Total Balalaika Show (1994) — "chronicles eight years in the group's history, from their ramshackle...
This second trilogy — Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989), Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994) and Total Balalaika Show (1994) — "chronicles eight years in the group's history, from their ramshackle...
- 10/19/2011
- MUBI
Donal Foreman's cut-to-the-bone report on the five-day Filmmaker Conference at last month's Independent Film Week pits Jon Jost against Ted Hope, weighs the effect of Michael Tully's "Take-Back Manifesto" and explains why Antonio Campos prompted another panelist to ask, "Are you saying we should all become communists?" A lively must-read for anyone interested in the current state of independent filmmaking.
Also in the October issue of the Brooklyn Rail: Tom McCormack remembers Robert Breer, who "pioneered a form of cinematic collage that used single-frame editing and omnium-gatherums of chaotic imagery to shape the quotidian into whirligig treatises on the nature of perception." Plus: Leo Goldsmith and Rachael Rakes on Harun Farocki's Images of War (at a Distance), on view at MoMA through January 2, and Emily Apter talks with Silvia Kolbowski about two of her works, A Few Howls Again? and After Hiroshima Mon Amour.
Los Angeles Filmforum...
Also in the October issue of the Brooklyn Rail: Tom McCormack remembers Robert Breer, who "pioneered a form of cinematic collage that used single-frame editing and omnium-gatherums of chaotic imagery to shape the quotidian into whirligig treatises on the nature of perception." Plus: Leo Goldsmith and Rachael Rakes on Harun Farocki's Images of War (at a Distance), on view at MoMA through January 2, and Emily Apter talks with Silvia Kolbowski about two of her works, A Few Howls Again? and After Hiroshima Mon Amour.
Los Angeles Filmforum...
- 10/9/2011
- MUBI
"Standing outside his small-town Ohio home, his wife and child busy preparing breakfast inside, Curtis Laforche (Michael Shannon) looks up at the ominous slate-gray sky in the first scene of Take Shelter," begins Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "The clouds open, raining down oily piss-colored droplets. It's end-of-days weather, a phenomenon that only Curtis seems to witness, and the first of many private, impressively CGI'd apocalyptic visions to come. Like Carol White, the central, unglued character of Todd Haynes's Safe (1995) who is 'allergic to the 20th century,' blue-collar worker Curtis is haunted by one of the looming terrors of the 21st: financial ruin. This unarticulated fear triggers Curtis's mental illness, and despite a few missteps, Take Shelter powerfully lays bare our national anxiety disorder — a pervasive dread that Curtis can define only as 'something that's not right.'"
"Convinced the end is coming," writes James Rocchi at the Playlist,...
"Convinced the end is coming," writes James Rocchi at the Playlist,...
- 9/30/2011
- MUBI
"Most romantic movies are so determined to chart the course of a love story — how boy meets girl leads to happily or unhappily ever after — that they miss the intensity and import of beginnings," writes Dennis Lim. "But the new British film Weekend, like its closest American predecessor Before Sunrise, lingers on the initial sparks of an erotic and emotional connection. As a one-night stand turns into something more, the film explores the notion that to meet someone new, not least a potential partner, is also to rethink who you are, an invitation to shape and refine the self you wish to project. A story about falling in love that is also a tale of identity and self-definition, it is perhaps all the more resonant for taking place between two gay men."
Also in the New York Times, Ao Scott argues that in the wake of recent comedies such as...
Also in the New York Times, Ao Scott argues that in the wake of recent comedies such as...
- 9/23/2011
- MUBI
"Has any attack in history ever been commemorated the way this one is about to be?" asked Edward Rothstein in the New York Times a few days ago. "It seems as if every cultural institution, television network and book publisher feels duty-bound to produce some sort of Sept 11 commemoration. Is there a precedent for this almost compulsive variety show about an attack on a nation's people? No examples suggest themselves. And in the United States, the attack on Pearl Harbor — the only incident remotely comparable — doesn't seem to have inspired anything similar, even though that surprise assault initiated one of the most traumatic and transformative decades in this nation's history…. Of course Sept 11 is something different…. Had a bomb fallen on the twin towers," he suggests, "even that would have been less traumatic. This was something unforeseen, expertly planned, a jarring demonstration of vulnerability. So otherworldly did it seem when...
- 9/10/2011
- MUBI
When, in 1934, Jean Vigo died of tuberculosis, he was only 29, "a neglected figure at the margins of the industry who had seen one of his films (Zéro de Conduite) banned by the French authorities and another (L'Atalante) recut and retitled by its producer." Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times: "Vigo lends himself to romanticization, and not just because of his tragic early death and the aura of unfulfilled promise. He led a brief but colorful life as a fellow traveler of the French surrealists and the son of a well-known anarchist who was apparently murdered in prison. Vigo's first film, the silent, 23-minute À Propos de Nice (On the Subject of Nice), part of the 'city symphony' genre that flourished in the 1920s, confirmed that the young Jean was very much his father's son…. All of Vigo's films were shot by Boris Kaufman, brother of the Soviet film pioneer...
- 8/31/2011
- MUBI
"Often unfairly dismissed as a minor prelude to Stanley Kubrick's work from his attention-demanding antiwar indictment Paths of Glory onwards, 1956's The Killing finds the master imposing Big Direction on Small Ideas," argues Vadim Rizov at GreenCine Daily. "Instead of the headier themes associated with Kubrick — nuclear war, Vietnam, extraterrestrial monoliths — here is an 84-minute noir, adapted from a Lionel White novel by expert nihilist Jim Thompson, confined to the bare minimum of sets and a few street exteriors. The dialogue has Thompson's characteristic mean-spirited tone: when Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor) tells her lover Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) about her meek husband George's (Elisha Cook Jr) upcoming involvement in a robbery, he scoffs. 'That meatball?' Sherry corrects him: 'A meatball with gravy.'"
"The first product of the reportedly strained, multi-film collaboration between Kubrick and Thompson, their incendiary script for The Killing remains cinematic legend, lightning trapped in...
"The first product of the reportedly strained, multi-film collaboration between Kubrick and Thompson, their incendiary script for The Killing remains cinematic legend, lightning trapped in...
- 8/19/2011
- MUBI
In our Winter issue Michael Tully sat down with David Gordon Green to discuss the arc of his career, which has gone from small-scale, Malick-inflected indies to big, ’80s-riffing studio comedies. His latest is The Sitter, starring Jonah Hill, and while it may seem like a raunchy take on Chris Columbus’s Adventures in Babysitting, Green said he had a different model in mind. Here’s an except from the interview:
Filmmaker: You’ve just finished shooting. Are you watching movies? Do you watch movies that reflect the mood you’re in and the movie you’re making? Or is it the opposite? Do you watch a scrappy indie while you’re making a big movie?
Green: I always watch the opposite of what [I’m making]. [For The Sitter] I actually watched Adventures in Babysitting and some of these John Hughes movies that I am inspired by. In my head this is my version of an ‘80s John Hughes movie.
Filmmaker: You’ve just finished shooting. Are you watching movies? Do you watch movies that reflect the mood you’re in and the movie you’re making? Or is it the opposite? Do you watch a scrappy indie while you’re making a big movie?
Green: I always watch the opposite of what [I’m making]. [For The Sitter] I actually watched Adventures in Babysitting and some of these John Hughes movies that I am inspired by. In my head this is my version of an ‘80s John Hughes movie.
- 8/6/2011
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
"Cars 2, directed (like several great Pixar films of the last two decades) by John Lasseter, finds itself in the unlucky position of the not-so-bright kid in a brilliant family," finds Slate's Dana Stevens. "No matter if his performance in school is comfortably average; he'll always be seen as a disappointment compared to his stellar siblings. There's nothing really objectionable about Cars 2, although parents of young children should be warned that a few evil vehicles meet violently inauspicious ends. It's sweet-spirited, visually delightful (if aurally cacophonous), and it will make for a pleasant enough family afternoon at the movies. But we've come to expect so much more than mere pleasantness from Pixar that Cars 2 feels almost like a betrayal."
Nick Schager for the Voice: "Pixar's Cars franchise takes a sharp turn from Nascar mayhem and rural red-state-targeted 50s nostalgia to 007 espionage with this upgraded sequel, though in its...
Nick Schager for the Voice: "Pixar's Cars franchise takes a sharp turn from Nascar mayhem and rural red-state-targeted 50s nostalgia to 007 espionage with this upgraded sequel, though in its...
- 6/25/2011
- MUBI
Updated through 6/12.
Let's begin this quick run through goings on in New York and with J Hoberman in the Voice: "Dennis Hopper changed the game with Easy Rider (1969), blew up his career with The Last Movie (1971), and then, through a never clearly explained series of events, took over and reconfigured a Canadian tax-shelter project for which he had been hired to act, thus contriving a dialectical comeback with his brutal, accomplished Out of the Blue (1980)."
"Widely banned and/or shoved under the rug at the time of its limited release primarily due to its violently bonkers ending, the film's alternately herky-jerky and languid cadence is suggestive of a terminally wounded body undergoing a death rattle." Joseph Jon Lanthier in Slant: "This produces a look and feel that communicates the blind rage and ennui out of which punk's jabby power chords and raucous lyrics sprang. But the film's punk apotheosis — the...
Let's begin this quick run through goings on in New York and with J Hoberman in the Voice: "Dennis Hopper changed the game with Easy Rider (1969), blew up his career with The Last Movie (1971), and then, through a never clearly explained series of events, took over and reconfigured a Canadian tax-shelter project for which he had been hired to act, thus contriving a dialectical comeback with his brutal, accomplished Out of the Blue (1980)."
"Widely banned and/or shoved under the rug at the time of its limited release primarily due to its violently bonkers ending, the film's alternately herky-jerky and languid cadence is suggestive of a terminally wounded body undergoing a death rattle." Joseph Jon Lanthier in Slant: "This produces a look and feel that communicates the blind rage and ennui out of which punk's jabby power chords and raucous lyrics sprang. But the film's punk apotheosis — the...
- 6/12/2011
- MUBI
Updated through 6/7.
In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, John Horn and Steven Zeitchik report on the uphill battle Fox Searchlight will be fighting this summer as they roll out Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life from just four theaters this weekend in New York and Los Angeles to eight more cities next week, all the way to 200 by the July 4 holiday weekend. In short, they realize that Brad Pitt and the Palme d'Or alone won't hack it. If marketing success were measured by the sheer bulk of critical coverage, though — and, Lord knows, it isn't — the team could already be resting on its laurels.
Reverse Shot, for example, has spent all this past week with the film, running five essays in all. Here in The Notebook, we've had Daniel Kasman's first impressions from Cannes and, on Thursday, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's (if you'll allow us) magnificent review. Both follow, of course,...
In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, John Horn and Steven Zeitchik report on the uphill battle Fox Searchlight will be fighting this summer as they roll out Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life from just four theaters this weekend in New York and Los Angeles to eight more cities next week, all the way to 200 by the July 4 holiday weekend. In short, they realize that Brad Pitt and the Palme d'Or alone won't hack it. If marketing success were measured by the sheer bulk of critical coverage, though — and, Lord knows, it isn't — the team could already be resting on its laurels.
Reverse Shot, for example, has spent all this past week with the film, running five essays in all. Here in The Notebook, we've had Daniel Kasman's first impressions from Cannes and, on Thursday, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's (if you'll allow us) magnificent review. Both follow, of course,...
- 6/7/2011
- MUBI
This week’s Must Browse link is the new Cinemad Presents website for Mike Plante’s distribution arm of his legendary zine and blog. He’s currently representing some amazing films, including perennial Bad Lit hits Heavy Metal Picnic and Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then.Not sure when this happened, but the Video Data Bank completely revamped their website and it looks amazing! They’ve also made it easier to watch lots of clips of videos in their collection, so go browse around.Migrating Forms is happening right now this week in NYC and the fest got a ton of press. First up, for the Brooklyn Rail, Aily Nash interviewed organizers Nellie Killian and Kevin McGarry.For the Village Voice, Nick Pinkerton wrote a nice Migrating Forms fest overview.For The L Magazine, David Phelps considers the notion of what’s “experimental” in the context of Migrating Forms’ offerings.Art...
- 5/22/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
"A onetime yakuza turned jailbird turned filmmaking enfant terrible, the now-75-year-old Japanese director Kōji Wakamatsu has long been loved by cinema cultists for an outrageous string of 1960s provocations made under the guise of the pinku eiga — or 'pink' film." Steve Dollar at GreenCine Daily: "These typically low-budget sex romps could be as insane, surreal, or mind-bending as possible, as long as they included a minimum amount of nudity and softcore humping. Wakamatsu, seizing the opportunity, used the form to pursue the extremes, reveling in obsessive sex and violence as a leftist critique of Japanese society. Beyond the outrage and sleaze of The Embryo Hunts in Secret [1966]; Go, Go Second-Time Virgin [1969]; and Ecstasy of the Angels [1972], was a form of perverse shock treatment. Wakamatsu took a break from the camera in 1977, and didn't return for 27 years. But he still wants to mess with your head."
Steve Erickson for Moving...
Steve Erickson for Moving...
- 5/8/2011
- MUBI
Melissa Anderson for Artforum: "After last year's glut of bumptious, high-profile nonfiction films — some of which were revealed to be hoaxes (Casey Affleck's I'm Still Here), possible hoaxes (Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop), or artless, witless pseudohoaxes (Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's Catfish) — Clio Barnard's Brechtian documentary The Arbor stands out all the more for its seamless hybridization of fact and fiction. Barnard, an artist making her feature-length directorial debut, traces the troubled life and legacy of British playwright Andrea Dunbar (1961–1990), whose highly autobiographical work chronicled her grim existence on the Bradford, West Yorkshire, council estate where she grew up. (And which she never left: Dunbar died of a brain hemorrhage at age 29, shortly after collapsing at her local pub.) Though widely acclaimed for her three plays — her first, The Arbor, premiered in 1980 at London's Royal Court Theatre; her second, Rita, Sue and Bob Too, was made...
- 4/29/2011
- MUBI
“By making this movie, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride have done what all of us have dreamed of doing since we too fantasized about making movies as adolescents. They have used their current success to truly test the boundaries of what they can get away with, and they’ve done it at a time when the Hollywood industry is as timid and fearful and insecure as it has ever been (which is saying something). They have caged their inner scaredy cats and swung for the f**king fence to produce something on a grand scale that has no direct precedent (or at least one that I can recall). Creatively, they’ve managed to tap into their inner smart-asses and be as unselfconscious and freewheeling as possible. On the scale at which they were working, it’s hard to fathom how difficult this actually was to do.”
That’s set...
That’s set...
- 4/8/2011
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Park City, Ut - When I went to Ireland to visit the set of "Your Highness," it was an odd and enjoyable group of people who went with me. There were familiar faces like Devin Faraci and AICN's Quint and JoBlo's Mike Sampson, but there were also some people along who I have never seen on any other set visit. One of those was Michael Tully, who runs the website HammerToNail, which is far more focused on the microbudget Diy world of filmmaking, which made it seem strange that he would join us at first. Turns out Tully had more of a...
- 1/21/2011
- Hitfix
Perhaps my most pleasant surprise of 2009 was popping up along with 20 other folks on Ted Hope’s Truly Brave Thinkers list. It was the first list of what I hoped would be for Ted an annual tradition, and today is confirmation that it is. Visit Ted’s Truly Free Film blog for his 2010 edition, one that is even more mindful of film’s need to embrace new business paradigms and audience-development tools. You will find directors and producers mixing it up with executives from both the profit and non-profit/government-funding worlds. Indeed, the list’s swath is wide, encompassing people like Ed Burns and Rainn Wilson with Kickstarter’s Yancey Strickler & Perry Chen and Variance’s Dylan Marchetti.
I was particularly happy to see producer Mike Ryan on the list because of what Ted wrote:
Perhaps no post on indie film initially infuriated me as much as Mike’s Filmmaker...
I was particularly happy to see producer Mike Ryan on the list because of what Ted wrote:
Perhaps no post on indie film initially infuriated me as much as Mike’s Filmmaker...
- 12/14/2010
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Next week, the Sundance Film Festival will unveil the 100+ features titles for their 27th edition (with the short film announcements made usually get release the week after) and this can only mean one thing: this past week was the official nail-biting, living next to the phone type of deal for several first time filmmakers. Though Redford's festival is the holy grail of U.S indie festivals, my word of advice to those who've received a "nay" type answer...you'll have other great opportunities to premiere your film. Every year I'll find some great examples of American indie debut films and then rhetorically ask why this didn't play in Park City? and this will surely be the case for a good number of the 60 predictions we made over the previous weeks and that are mentioned below (click here to commence the countdown or click on the individual titles below for a...
- 11/27/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
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