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Directing on a Dime: Shorts, Austin and Bradley Jackson
Bradley Jackson is quickly becoming a rising star on the short film circuit. His latest short, The Man Who Never Cried, won the top prize at last year's Doorpost Film Project. The win, not to mention the $110,000 that came with it, has definitely helped the up-and-coming writer/director get his foot in the door out in Hollywood. While Jackson currently has two scripts in the works and anticipates a later move to features, one question remains unanswered: Will this proud Austinite stay in Texas... or make the move out to L.A.? I sat down to talk with Jackson about how he got into making movies, his experience at film school and how he lucked upon a well-known actor to star in The Man Who Never Cried.
February 10th, 2012 | Category: Directing on a Dime | By Andy Young
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1997—Fireworks (Takeshi Kitano)
I don't know if it's the Virgo in me, but I always prefer simple to complicated. Particularly as our world seems to be getting more and more complex, I want art to strip that complexity away to give us a view of something pure, clean and fairly uncluttered. I want art to be a respite from my daily life. Many of my favorite moviemakers (Bresson, Jarmusch, Rohmer, Dreyer and early Wenders, to name but a few) make films that fall into this category. They are simplifiers, always looking to distill their work to its most basic essence. "What else can I take away?" must be one of the most important questions in their approach. Another moviemaker I'd put into this category is Takeshi Kitano. Like those mentioned above, Kitano keeps things spare and minimal.
February 8th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Park City Diary, Part 2
It’s only been a week since Tiffany and I were sitting in Ron Nyswaner’s condo in Deer Valley, Utah awaiting the Sundance premiere of Predisposed, the film Nyswaner co-directed with Phil Dorling. Already, it seems like it never happened. The mix of altitude and headiness has given the whole affair the feel of a dream, especially seeing as Tiffany and I have since returned to the grind of trying to raise the rest of our budget for Tiny Dancer, and I’ve jumped into the TV pilot season as an actor.
February 7th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
I Found It At the Movies: 1996—Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Roger Deakins began his collaboration with the Coen brothers with their 1991 film Barton Fink. Since then, the two directors and the cameraman have proven that they have one of the most vital, important and powerfully artistic relationships in film. All of their collaborations have visual interest, but Fargo remains my favorite of their aesthetic accomplishments. I'm a sucker, as I've mentioned a couple of times now, for snow-covered imagery, and this is a film about as white as any ever made. It's a gorgeously controlled work in terms of its color palette, camerawork and production design. Everything is deliberate and feels unusually cohesive.
February 1st, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Park City Diary, Part 1
Tiffany, our son and I arrived in Salt Lake City in the middle of the night, got in a rental car and drove up to Park City, where two films I’m in—Price Check and Predisposed—were having their premieres. All the venues we passed as we rolled into the city were aglow as hordes of people exited midnight screenings and queued up to catch shuttles. It was 2am, and the lobby of our hotel was abuzz with bloggers, moviemakers, critics and volunteers, all clicking away on laptops. A scant bit of sleep later, and our eyes popped open for our first full day at Sundance.
January 31st, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
I Found It At the Movies: 1995—Heat (Michael Mann)
Ask me to choose my favorite post-‘70s crime film, and this is it. Not only is Heat Mann's greatest accomplishment, I also think it's our greatest post-Godfather crime epic. Mann stays true to some of the greatest aspects of classic noir film while still giving the film a modern edge; in doing so, he manages to uphold the noir tradition while moving it forward at the same time. For me, when it comes to updating noir, Heat is the perfect paradigm for a new direction. I simply think it's masterful.
January 25th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: To Sundance We Go
Later today, Tiffany and I are boarding a plane for the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where two of the films I had the good fortune of acting in, Michael Walker’s Price Check and Phil Dorling and Ron Nyswaner’s Predisposed, are having their premieres. We both feel extremely late to the party. All week, people have been emailing things like “Meet me on Main Street!” or “You are invited to the gifting suite!” When they hear we’re arriving in Park City for the last half of the festival, they promptly say something like “Oh, I’ll be back in NYC on Monday. You really are missing everything if you don’t come the first weekend. Why even bother going?!” You’d think we’ll be arriving in a ghost town!
January 24th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Directing on a Dime: How to Get Your Short Film on the Big Screen
We live in a world dominated by YouTube, where your short film has the potential to be seen by hundreds, thousands, even millions of people without you ever having to leave your living room. But what moviemaker dreams of one day getting "20,000 views" or seeing their movie on somebody’s iPhone? No, you want to see it on the big screen! To many, this would be a dream come true, but making the dream into a reality can be intimidating. Fortunately, there are a still some great ways for moviemakers to get their short films on the silver screen.
January 20th, 2012 | Category: Directing on a Dime | By Andy Young
I Found It At the Movies: 1994—Les roseaux sauvages (André Téchiné)
Fans of Renoir's A Day in the Country take notice! Along with that famous film, this is one of French cinema's most poetic and lyrical pastoral works. Not only is it visually stunning, Les roseaux sauvages (Wild Reeds) is also emotionally devastating. In fact, it captures the complexity of adolescence as well as anything I've ever seen. It's intense, penetrating, nakedly honest and gets at the vulnerability of mid-teens in a remarkably truthful way. This is one of those films where everything seems to have aligned perfectly: The director's sensibility with the material, the casting, the choice of locations—it's simply a staggering accomplishment from Téchiné.
January 18th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: And the Award Goes To...
Watching the Golden Globes last Sunday, Tiffany and I couldn’t help but analyze the seeming trend for this year’s awards season. It looks as though comfort films like Hugo, The Help, The Artist and The Descendants are what we are going to see winning the big awards this year. Is this a reflection of our need for heart-warming films in these dire economic times, or just the old story of the winning films being the ones that spent the most on marketing? A bit of both, I would imagine.
January 17th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Mixed Reviews: Shpadoinkle: The Making of Cannibal: The Musical
Right off the bat, I want to say that Jason McHugh's Shpadoinkle: The Making of Cannibal: The Musical is the best low-budget moviemaking journal I’ve read since Robert Rodriguez's Rebel without a Crew, and its definitely a book I wish had existed when I made my own low-budget feature film (which was actually heavily inspired by Cannibal! The Musical). McHugh, a producer/actor on the cult classic Cannibal! The Musical, takes readers through a personal journey that spans his early interest in movies, his experience at film school and how he came to befriend UC-Boulder classmates Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who would later go on to create Orgazmo, Team America: World Police, The Book of Mormon and, of course, "South Park." But before any of that, the three of them were just a bunch of young, like-minded film geeks looking for the next step in their careers.
January 13th, 2012 | Category: Mixed Reviews | By Andy Young
I Found It At the Movies: 1993—Carlito's Way (Brian De Palma)
Cinematic from the very get-go. What an opening this movie has: Black and white, slow motion, voiceover and that mournful music, all beginning with an extraordinarily well-choreographed long take that is at once abstract, complex and sensuous. And that's just the moviemaking. At the root of this, one of my favorite crime films of all time, is a theme that affects me deeply: The idea that one mistake may trap you forever. If Carlito had just left Benny Blanco alone, stayed out of his way, everything would have been okay. But he made one blunder, and he could never quite escape it.
January 11th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Grant Me a Wish
The first movie of 2012 that I saw in theaters was Pina, a stunning 3-D documentary tribute to famed German choreographer Pina Bausch, directed by an idol of mine, Wim Wenders. The poster for Pina reads “Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost,” so Tiffany, Tiny Dancer’s DP Kate Phelan and I figured it was mandatory viewing. While I waited in line at the IFC Center screening in New York City to meet Mr. Wenders, who was on hand sign books and participate in a Q&A, I held a handful of poster cards for Tiny Dancer. It was my hope that he would go to our site and watch our trailer, especially since he’s been quoted in interviews about Pina as saying he’s finally cracked the solution to filming dance in its truest, most visceral form... by using 3-D cameras. I wanted to say to him: “Hey, Wim, we used this GoPro camera and had our lead dancer, Katherine Crockett, hold it in her hand, and it’s pretty cool, Wim!”
January 10th, 2012 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Directing on a Dime: The Great Film School Question
For many of you, this is the time of year where you're pulling up to that big fork in the road that every young moviemaker eventually approaches: Film school. Should you go? Or is it best to just jump headfirst into making movies? Whether it's worth it to go to film school is something that every budding moviemaker has to answer for themselves, but for those needing some guidance, here are what some successful indie directors and producers—ranging from Dan Myrick (The Blair Witch Project) to Jay Duplass (Jeff Who Lives At Home)—have to say on the subject.
January 6th, 2012 | Category: Directing on a Dime | By Andy Young
I Found It At the Movies: 1992—Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
When I think about Unforgiven, I simply think of an extremely well-made film. Everything is top shelf: The acting, the writing and the directing. I know there is a critique of violence and a certain moral position taken in the movie, but that doesn't really connect with me all that much. What really gets me here is the theme of friendship and the incredibly moving bond between the characters played by Eastwood and Morgan Freeman. Eastwood is so adult, so patient, so restrained, that he stands out by not standing out. He's carrying on a certain tradition of classical moviemaking, and the further we get away from it, the more of a wonder it is that a non-postmodern work like this was able to gain so much attention.
January 4th, 2012 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1991—My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant)
God, I miss Heath Ledger, Brittany Murphy, Brad Renfro and especially River Phoenix. All were young actors with an incredible amount of talent who American cinema will never quite replace. Phoenix had an elemental presence on screen. He was wise, full of life and had a weight of vulnerability about him that I hadn't seen since Clift or Dean. I always enjoyed his work, never more than in this early Van Sant film. I think I'm on the somewhat unpopular side when it comes to Van Sant. Although I greatly admire his later, more experimental work (Elephant, Gerry, etc.), I definitely prefer some of his other films. I guess I like it when he takes himself a little less seriously, like he does here.
December 28th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>I Found It At the Movies: 1990—Trust (Hal Hartley)
I'll never forget reading the liner notes for Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers album and seeing their music described as "angular." At the time, it seemed a strange word to use, and yet the more I thought about it, the more it seemed apt for their music—and, for that matter, apt for a few other things I've experienced, as well. In fact, it's the best word I can think of to describe Hal Hartley's work. Trust—and some of the other Hartley movies from this period—possesses some of the most unique rhythms and cadences in the history of film. It's almost as if it invented a whole new time signature. The movie doesn't cut when it seems normal to cut. The camera doesn't move when it seems like it should. Everything seems to be just a little bit off. But, at the same time, it all coheres into something that is clearly conceived and purposeful.
December 21st, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: 2011—Our Year in the Crowd
2011 was the year of the Arab Spring, of Occupy Everything, of people taking to the streets with placards and doing it themselves. I’m glad I’m around to see another great social movement sprout. As “Hollywood types,” it’s often easy for Tiffany and I to feel like egomaniacs, disassociated from any larger socio-political movement, but I have to admit that this year—the year we took the plunge into the D.I.Y. movement to crowdfund Tiny Dancer—we've felt like a part of the zeitgeist.
December 20th, 2011 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
I Found It At the Movies: 1989—Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Lee’s an interesting director. So much energy and pretty damn prolific. I can’t say I love every one of his films, but there’s a passion that comes through in his work that’s pretty infectious. He’s versatile, a major risk taker and someone who can do comedy just as well as drama. And when it comes to blending genres, he’s about as fearless as they come. Do the Right Thing is one of my favorite of all his films. The way it juxtaposes comedy and drama is as powerful as it is unsettling. In other words, the drama hits hard, and the comedy is laugh out loud funny.
December 14th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Mr. Crowdfunding Goes to Washington
Tiffany and I have our plane tickets and hotel room in Park City, which means it’s now time to set up meetings at Sundance; we’ve started emailing agents, sales agents and producers about grabbing some coffee on Main Street and talking about funding Tiny Dancer. As I’m formulating our plan of attack to get at least $75,000 more for its budget, I see that the little indie engine that could known as “crowdfunding” has gone legit, courtesy of the recently passed Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act, which encourages small businesses—and indie moviemakers—to raise low levels of investment from individual investors via crowdfunding.
December 14th, 2011 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
Directing on a Dime: Animation Pioneer Jerry Rees on His Kid's Classic The Brave Little Toaster
If you’re a 90’s kid like me—or if you’ve been to Disneyland or Disney World in the last 15 years—chances are you’ve seen the work of Jerry Rees. Now a staff director for in-ride attractions at Walt Disney World, Rees had been involved with some amazing films, like TRON, The Fox and the Hound and Space Jam... but he’s best known for writing and directing the 1987 animated classic The Brave Little Toaster. Rees took the time to chat about his early interest in animation, his experience getting Toaster made (and the shock he had when he took it to Sundance), a possible sequel to the film and the legacy it has left behind.
December 9th, 2011 | Category: Directing on a Dime | By Andy Young
I Found It At the Movies: 1988—Bird (Clint Eastwood)
Clint Eastwood—as a director, not an actor—appears on this list three times. And even though I can't say that any of his movies are desert island films for me, I do greatly admire both his formal and business approach. Formally, his work recalls some of my favorite early Hollywood films: They are well-told by a director who makes material, not style, his focus. As for business, he's among the few directors with a system of delivering nearly a film a year. I can't say too much about Bird, as I haven't seen it in many years. But I do remember feeling that it gave me a great sense of what it meant to be a jazz musician in the forties and fifties. It features remarkable performances from Forest Whitaker and Diane Venora and displays an extraordinary patience in the way that it allows its story to unfold.
December 7th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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' . $phpAds_raw['html'] . ''; } ?>Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie!: Hello, Sundance
Tiffany and I submitted our 20 minute work-in-progress cut of Tiny Dancer to Sundance in the outside chance that someone would think it was brilliant and program it in the shorts category. Did it get in? No. But I have been acting in a few films this year, and one in particular, Price Check—directed by the talented Michael Walker (Chasing Sleep), produced by Sundance alum Dolly Hall and starring Parker Posey—did get in! Price Check will have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012. So now Tiffany and I are wondering: Do we walk up and down Main St. in Park City, setting up meetings to help get Tiny Dancer into production? I say: Yes.
December 6th, 2011 | Category: Just Crowdfund the $&*# Movie! | By Jayce Bartok
I Found It At the Movies: 1987—Where is the Friend's Home? (Abbas Kiarostami)
I'll never forget the first time I saw one of Abbas Kiarostami's films. I was living in Caen, France, and Through the Olive Trees was playing at the local arthouse. I use the term “local” loosely, as I didn't have a car that year and sometimes the buses would go on strike, taking away my option of public transportation, too. But I was determined to see the film, so I decided to walk. It was least an hour each way, and I can remember questioning my decision a number of times while in transit. After seeing the final shot of the film, though, I left the theater and began my walk back home in absolute movie nirvana. Kiarostami is up there in a small group of my favorite moviemakers. More than anything, what I love about his work is the way he combines cinematic rigor with deep humanity. His style is simple, disciplined, restrained and—to throw in a culinary descriptive—clean. Meanwhile, the emotional core of his work is deep, honest, probing and insightful.
November 30th, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
I Found It At the Movies: 1986—Hoosiers (David Anspaugh)
Hoosiers is my most uncharacteristic choice in this entire countdown and probably the least impressive artistically. But when it comes to sports movies (and sports were pretty much my life for the first eighteen years), this is the one that moves me the most. I don't want to psychoanalyze myself here, but when Jimmy Chitwood says, "There's one other thing: I play, coach stays. He goes, I go," it brings me to tears every time. It's one of film's greatest moments of someone standing up for the underdog, the unconventional, the person who has dared to go against the grain. I've always been physically slight, and as an independent moviemaker, you certainly spend a good deal of time as the underdog. We're all trying to beat the machine on some level, and this is one of those movies that always restores my faith a bit.
November 23rd, 2011 | Category: I Found It At The Movies | By Jeffrey Goodman
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