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Honoring the Vision of Cinematographer Anette Haellmigk
Over a long and accomplished career, cinematographer Anette Haellmigk, whose credits include "The West Wing," "Big Love," and ABC's upcoming "666 Park Avenue," has certainly made her mark on both film and TV. And come June this German-born DP is being recognized—not just for her extraordinary creative output, but for serving as a positive role model for women in the entertainment industry.
This year's Women In Film (WIF) Crystal + Lucy Awards, held on June 12th in Los Angeles, will see Haellmigk honored with the Kodak Vision Award, given annually to a female moviemaker who, in addition to contributing to the landscape of cinematography, collaborates with and assists women making their own way in the entertainment world.
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Coming Home: Veterans on the Big Screen
Coming home from war is a wrenching transition for the returning veteran. “Soldier’s Home”—a short story in Ernest Hemingway’s early collection, In Our Time (1925)—masterfully captures the returning war veteran’s sense of dislocation and alienation from a “normal” life after confronting the horrors of war. Though written shortly after the end of World War I, Hemingway’s story distills the essence of the returning vet story to which moviemakers have returned again and again over the intervening years. In some ways, the battle to readjust to civilian life can be as difficult and daunting as facing enemy fire in a distant land.
To commemorate Memorial Day and to honor our war veterans, MM has chosen five movies that represent the most riveting and heartfelt examples of the “coming home” genre.
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James Franco vs. the Fact Checkers Unit
Director Dan Beers and Executive Producer Thomas Bannister of the Web series "FCU: Fact Checkers Unit" sit down with MM to chat about their Web series, the latest episode of which, starring James Franco as a possibly pregnant supergenius version of himself, premieres... well, right now. Read the interview, then check out the "FCU" episode "James Franco is Preggers," embedded below for your viewing pleasure.
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Celluloid Dreams: Spurning Digital to Shoot a First Feature on Film
From inception, it was essential to me that we shot Joshua Tree, 1951 on film. While many similarly budgeted first features opt for the RED or even a Canon 5D, celluloid was an integral and irreplaceable component of the vision of the film. A combination of strategic planning, careful budgeting and on-set restraint made it possible. The result, I believe, is a level of production value and emotional intimacy within the image that we could not have accomplished any other way.
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Film History’s Top Five Funny, Foolish, Freaky Aliens
The original Men in Black, released in 1997, was a pitch-perfect combination of action, comedy and sci-fi trappings, and audiences flocked to the genre mashup, which earned over $250 million domestically and spawned the 2002 sequel, which was poorly reviewed and didn't do as well at the box office as its predecessor but still managed to generate a profit. Now, 10 years later, Agents J and K are back for Men in Black III, in theaters this Friday. In honor of the film that brought sci-fi comedy into the mainstream, at least for a little while, we're taking a look back at five of cinema history's most hilarious aliens.
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Live from Cannes: Critic’s Notebook
Wes Anderson was dining with French friends when he got the call—three months after submitting his resplendent new feature, Moonrise Kingdom, to Cannes—that his eccentrically funny-sad, 1965-set charmer was chosen for opening night at the world's most prestigious film festival. Sharing such thrilling news with his dinner companions, they all offered up the same reaction: "Better to be in competition."
Fortunately for Anderson, as the director recalled during an intimate press conference more luxurious than your average hotel junket (the sound of raindrops bouncing softly off an open-air tent on the Riviera beach), Moonrise later rose to a competition slot, and remains this writer's first and favorite selection seen at this year's Cannes. It's for that reason that only now, while fruitlessly waiting for a second film to rank as highly, that MovieMaker checks in at the fest's midpoint. Which is not at all to say that this has been a "weak year," as some jaded critics have grumbled, but we haven't yet seen any cinematic pleasures to collectively knock us out of our chairs (or wildly polarize) à la 2011's Melancholia, Drive and Palme d'Or winner The Tree of Life.
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10 Great No-Entry Fee Film Festivals
Independent moviemakers are renowned for having tons of creativity, scads of grit and boatloads of determination, but there's one crucial element that most of them lack: Cash. If there’s one thing that's music to a moviemaker’s ears, it’s the simple four-word phrase “No entry fee required.” For a film entered in multiple film festivals, submission fees alone can run into the hundreds of dollars, and it's important to submit your film to a festival that won’t put you in the poorhouse. With that in mind, join us as we take a look at 10 diverse, cost-effective fests with zero dollar entry fees.
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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.
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Battleship Sunk by The Avengers
It's three weeks of box office dominance and counting for The Avengers, which easily kept new release Battleship from the number one spot and became Disney's highest-grossing film ever in the process. The superhero extravaganza's $55 million weekend gross brings its domestic total so far $457 million; add in international receipts and its worldwide haul is now $1.18 billion, the fourth-highest ever.
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What The Dictator Learned from Borat
From Cannes to Hollywood, Sacha Baron Cohen is back in the news this week as his latest mash-up of humor and political commentary makes it way into theaters, courtesy of The Dictator. If the moviemaker learned anything from Borat, it just may be that sweeping a number of unsuspecting "actors" into your film without their permission can turn into a very big headache.
After the release of Borat, 27 claims were filed against the Hollywood funnyman that eventually resulted in 10 lawsuits. All but one of these suits were dismissed or defeated, while the remaining one resulted in a small settlement. How did the story turn out so well for Borat when you consider the hundreds of folks who never signed a release at all and the dozens who did sign a release but wish they had thought twice?
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Dark Shadows Can't Bring Down The Avengers
The Avengers handily overpowered Tim Burton's Dark Shadows over the weekend, becoming the top film at the box office for the second week running and, incidentally, topping $1 billion at the worldwide box office after only 19 days of release. The superhero 'stravaganza's domestic box office gross of $103.1 million (that's only its weekend gross, by the way—total domestic is $373.1 million so far) is over three and a half times what poorly reviewed new release Dark Shadows was able to pull in.
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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.
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Meanest Movie Moms
This weekend, offspring young and old will buy flowers, send cards and pay tribute to the women who brought them into this world. Mother’s Day is a time of celebration and gratitude toward the lady dearest to our hearts. And while turbulent times with mom are a natural part of growing up, this year you should be extra sweet to your creator, because she could be a whole lot worse. Don't believe us? Then take a look at this list of cinema's meanest mothers. From the psychotic to the just plain nasty, these moms make us glad that making our beds and taking out the garbage were the most ever asked of us.
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“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"...
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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.
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Avengers Assemble at the Box Office
So, you might have heard—The Avengers did pretty well at the box office this weekend. If by "pretty well" you mean it shattered the record for best three-day weekend with its $200.3 million haul. Add that to the $441.5 million it's earned internationally since it came out just over a week-and-a-half ago, and the superhero extravaganza has racked up $641.8 million in just 12 days. All very good news for distributor Disney, which definitely needed a post-John Carter morale boost.
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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.
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Super (and Not-So-Super) Hero Flicks
Superhero movies tend to come in just one of two flavors: Exceptional and terrible. They either work as visually breathtaking, escapist fun… or they don’t. This summer features a slew of upcoming superhero flicks, including The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises. The latest, Joss Whedon's highly anticipated The Avengers, hits theaters today.
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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?
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Think Like a Man Continues to Dominate
New wide releases The Pirates! Band of Misfits, The Five-Year Engagement, Safe and The Raven failed to snatch the number one spot out of the hands of last week's winner, Think Like a Man, which returned to the top of the box office for the second week running. Second place went to Pirates, while another holdover from last week, The Lucky One, claimed spot number three.
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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.
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From Penguins to Pirates: The Best of Aardman Animations
After taking a detour into the world of CGI for last year's Arthur Christmas, Aardman Animations—the studio behind the Wallace and Gromit films, Chicken Run, "Shaun the Sheep" and more—has returned to the world of stop-motion with The Pirates! Band of Misfits, out in theaters stateside tomorrow, April 27th. To herald their return to the Claymation that made them great, we're taking a look back at some of Aardman's greatest contributions to the landscape of cinema.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee: 2012
Making the decision to screen at a festival is easy. But which fests are truly worth a withdrawal from your hard-earned Entry Fee Bank Account? Here's our 2012 list of 25 festivals worth the entry fee.
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Sol Negrin, Candid Cameraman
Noted cinematographer goes from the set to the classroom at Five Towns College
Einstein once said that, “It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” But when it comes to teaching the art of moviemaking—particularly cinematography—that task might be easier said than done, as reading textbooks and analyzing films cannot truly prepare a student for the realities of a film set. Veteran cinematographer Sol Negrin, ASC, now a professor at New York's Five Towns College, understands the challenges of bringing cinematography from the set to the classroom. Not one to hoard his knowledge, Negrin shares his tricks for the best ways to teach—and learn—cinematography.
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Think Like a Man Bests The Hunger Games
Sayonara, The Hunger Games! After a month of ruling the roost, new release Think Like a Man grabbed the box office behemoth's number one spot, earning $33 million over the weekend to The Hunger Games' $14.5 million. Fellow new release The Lucky One also bested The Hunger Games, grabbing the number two spot with its $22.8 million weekend haul. Chimpanzee, the final new wide release, earned $10.2 million, enough to land it at number four, while last week's runner-up The Three Stooges fell three spots to number five.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Ian Fitzgibbon Tackles the Death of a Superhero
In Irish director Ian Fitzgibbon's Death of a Superhero, teenager Donald's creativity, active imagination and innate talent combine to make him a highly talented comic book artist. His future would be bright were it not for one thing: Donald, 15, is dying of leukemia. With a cast that includes Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Donald, a non-mocap Andy Serkis as his unconventional psychologist and Michael McElhatton and Sharon Horganas his struggling-to-cope parents, Fitzgibbon has managed to direct a film about a teen with cancer that manages to be inspiring but not melodramatic, sad and poignant but not unrelentingly grim.
With his film coming out on VOD tomorrow courtesy of Tribeca Films, Fitzgibbon took the time to chat with MovieMaker about what initially drew him to the script and how he crafted his own approach to the material.
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