Advertisement
Having Big Fun in the Big Town
26 years after it was filmed, Dutch director, journalist and rap aficionado Bram Van Splunteren's Big Fun in the Big Town is finally being released to worldwide audiences. A documentary on the origins of hip hop filmed in New York in 1986, just as the genre was getting noticed—but not, notes Van Splunteren, being taken seriously—on an international scale, Big Town features interviews with pioneers like Russell Simmons, Run-DMC, Grandmaster Flash, Doug E Fresh and LL Cool J from before they became household names.
(No comments yet)
Telling the Story of Portrait of Wally
The history of Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally seems too improbable to be true. Art theft. Prestigious cultural institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and NPR. A Jewish art collector who spent the last decades of her life trying to get a beloved painting, looted by Nazis, returned to her—and a seemingly unscrupulous fellow collector who refused to give it up. But truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction—and director Andrew Shea lays out the incredible tale of "The face that launched a thousand lawsuits" with his documentary Portrait of Wally, opening in New York City today.
(No comments yet)
“It’s Only Forever…”
Director Brian Crano on the pressures and triumphs of A Bag of Hammers
Making a film, you learn a lot of lessons—often contradictory lessons, but lessons nonetheless. These are a few of the thousand lessons I learned in the process of making my first feature, A Bag of Hammers. I’ll skip the really obvious ones, like “Write a great, compelling script” or “cast the best actors you can"...
(No comments yet)
The Journey to The Cup
On New Year’s Day of 2003, a neatly handwritten note arrived on the fax machine: “I have a story idea I wanted to run past you. I am sure you are familiar with the subject matter and would welcome your thoughts and suggestions.” The intriguing note came from Eric O’Keefe, a Texas journalist I had met while directing the television western Crossfire Trail. “What do you know about the 2002 Melbourne Cup?,” it read.
(No comments yet)
Documenting the Lost and Found Generation in Falling Uphill
As a Hitchcock enthusiast, for years I wanted to direct a dark, suspenseful thriller. So I spent a of couple years developing a film in this “Hitchcockian” vein while producing and managing other films. After working on Peter Bratt’s La Mission, which depicts San Francisco in a very intimate and non-traditional way, I began to observe my surroundings and reflect on my personal life. Although it sucked to set aside my high concept screenplay, I refocused my energies on a more personal project featuring San Francisco. The film that resulted is Falling Uphill, which tells a story about heartbreak, self-discovery and new beginnings.
(No comments yet)
Water Takes Center Stage in Last Call at the Oasis
When we started Last Call at the Oasis, our goals were ambitious and the challenge was considerable. We wanted to illuminate the water crisis and its many facets... and there are many, many facets. Generally, when we hear “water crisis” we think “drought”—usually “drought happening somewhere else in the world.” But what’s going on is big, and it is crucial that we understand it. This is water—essential for all life. Could the stakes be any higher?
(No comments yet)
Over the Rainbow with Jonathan Kalafer
The PS22 Chorus isn't your normal elementary school extracurricular group. A certified viral sensation after chorus director Gregg Breinberg started posting their performances on YouTube, in 2010 they were invited to perform at the Academy Awards. There to capture their journey from Staten Island to the Kodak Theatre was director Jonathan Kalafer, for whom the making of the film was its own sort of underdog story. In advance of world premiere of Once in a Lullaby: The PS22 Chorus Story at the Tribeca Film Festival, Kalafer took the time to share with MM his experience filming the PS22's Chorus incredible journey—and the personal impact doing so had on him.
(No comments yet)
My Golden Rules: Ti West
With The House of the Devil and Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, writer-director Ti West showcased an uncanny ability to pay tribute to the classic horror films of the 1970s and ’80s while reinvigorating the genre with a bold indie spirit. His latest effort, The Innkeepers, was an award-winning hit on the film festival circuit and landed on Blu-ray and DVD on April 24th. Here, the horror-icon-in-the-making shares his golden rules of moviemaking.
(No comments yet)
James McTeigue Captures The Raven
Unlike the many American teens who first encountered the work of Edgar Allan Poe in English class, James McTeigue, director of the upcoming thriller The Raven, discovered the Gothic writer in the lyrics of 1970s punk rock, specifically the song "Descent Into the Maelstrom"—named after a Poe story—by the band Radio Birdman. The first assistant director on all three Matrix films before making his directorial debut with V for Vendetta, McTeigue was never a Poe fanatic. But when producer Aaron Ryder (Donnie Darko, Memento) suggested that they work together on a fictionalized account of the legendary writer’s life, he couldn’t say no.
(No comments yet)
Richard Linklater’s Cinematic Conviction
Legendary indie takes on the justice system with Bernie
The first thing you need to know about Richard Linklater is that he’s a Texas moviemaker. From his breakout hit Slacker, which told the poly-vocal story of several eccentric Austin residents, to his latest film Bernie, which is based on the true story of a murder that took place in Carthage, Texas in the mid-1990s, the bulk of Linklater’s films have taken place in his home state. MM caught up with the director on his home turf, at the SXSW Film Festival, to talk about truth, justice and the moviemaking way.
(No comments yet)
John Stockwell’s Golden Rules
Actor-turned-director John Stockwell (Crazy/Beautiful, Blue Crush, Into the Blue), whose most recent film as a director, Dark Tide, comes out on DVD and Blu-ray today, shares his Golden Rules for directing.
(No comments yet)
Revisiting Stony Island
Director Andrew Davis recalls the making of his 1978 R&B drama Stony Island, out for the first time on DVD April 24th
The development of Stony Island began long before there was a script, from spending time with and shooting images of my brother Richie and his friends. I had been doing this for over a year when I met Tamar Hoffs, who had a brother with a similar story to mine. They were both musicians, white kids who loved the blues, Muddy Waters and all the great artists from South Side. I shared my research and images with Tammy, and we began working together on a screenplay. We called it Stony Island, after an area of Chicago that was a vortex of black/white South Side culture and had real significance to both of us.
(No comments yet)
Enjoying Chicken with Plums
Co-directors of the Oscar-nominated Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud have tackled another one of graphic novelist Satrapi's works for their second collaboration, the dreamy, fairy tale-esque Chicken with Plums, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival last year and is having its U.S. premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. In advance of the film's first Tribeca screening this Sunday, the duo took the time to chat with MovieMaker about their second collaboration and the source of their visual inspiration for this truly stunning film.
(No comments yet)
Weathering the First Winter
In Benjamin Dickinson's feature directorial debut First Winter, a group of Brooklyn hipsters at a yoga retreat in upstate New York are forced to learn survival skills the hard way after an immense blackout hits, stranding them a drafty farmhouse with dwindling supplies and miles separating them from any passable roads—or, indeed, the rest of humanity. With their stock of food shrinking and temperatures dropping, buried tensions come to the fore, straining the friends' ability to work together even though—in a world with no electricity, no way to communicate with the outside world and virtually no chance of making it back to the city alive–all they really have is each other.
(1 comment)
Meet the Rat King
Petri Kotwica's gaming-themed thriller brings a modern edge to noirish suspense
To get a sense of Finnish director Petri Kotwica's Rat King, try imagining a standard thriller. Then infuse it with a heavy dose of Hitchcockian suspense, add a dash of high school drama and flavor the whole thing with a cyberpunk aesthetic. In advance of the film's international debut at this month's Tribeca Film Festival, Kotwica shared with MM his inspiration, influences and favorite silver screen villains.
(No comments yet)
Inside Inside Hana’s Suitcase
One of the great horrors of human history, the Holocaust is the title of millions of interlocking stories that span tragedy to comedy, despair to hope. The delivery of a battered suitcase from the Auschwitz Museum to director Fumiko Ishioka of Tokyo's Holocaust Education Resource Center marked the beginning of one of those stories. Ishioka, along with a group of young Japanese students, made it her mission to unearth the fate of the little girl whose name was painted across the suitcase front: Hana Brady. Ishioka's search for Hana's identity, and the story she discovered, is the subject of Larry Weinstein's documentary Inside Hana's Suitcase, opening in New York tomorrow, April 18th.
(No comments yet)
posted 05.15.12
posted 05.11.12
posted 05.8.12
SITE DELIVERY OPTIONS
