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NCSA Becomes UNCSA
Some may not see a big difference between “North Carolina School of the Arts” and “The University of North Carolina School of the Arts,” but the school’s chancellor, John Mauceri, explains that the recent name change “is emblematic, in every sense, of a larger and, for us, deeply important shift in the attitude of our university and state leaders toward the School of the Arts.” The North Carolina School of the Arts became The University of North Carolina School of the Arts after the Governor gave his stamp of approval and signed it into law on August 8th (the bill had previously passed unanimously in the Senate and by a margin of 115 to 1 in the House).
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Stephen Susco Sees Red
Drunk with ideals of fame and fortune like many film industry wannabes who come to Los Angeles mesmerized by the expansive back lots and star-seeking paparazzi on Robinson Blvd., writer-director Stephen Susco quickly realized that he needed to pull his head out of the clouds if he wanted to make it any further in Hollywood. As a graduate student at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, Susco immersed himself in the craft of screenwriting and wrote away, day in and day out. His unrelenting discipline and passion for the craft eventually lead him to his first professional job, with director Ted Demme, before he even received his diploma from USC.
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Isabel Coixet’s Cinematic Poem
Known for her strong female leads, Coixet takes on Philip Roth and misogyny with Elegy
A director best known for her strong female leads wouldn't be the first choice to adapt a novel from one of today's most misogynistic novelists. But Elegy, Isabel Coixet's adaptation of Philip Roth's The Dying Animal, just may surprise you.
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Aaron Rose : Writer, Director, Beautiful Loser
The pied piper of Manhattan's 1990s Lower East Side artist's movement, Aaron Rose breaks into film this year with his documentary, Beautiful Losers. The movie, which features interviews with the people behind the "Beautiful Losers" traveling exhibition—among them Mike Mills, (Thumbsucker) and Harmony Korine (Kids, Mister Lonely)—was six years in the making. Rose, who had previously worked in short form video, recently spoke with MM about putting together this feature project, how he struggled staying true to the art of it and what is on tap for the future.
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Shakespeare on Film: William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet
Baz Luhrmann attempts a modern-day retelling of Romeo and Juliet in MM's 11th week of Shakespeare on Film
By making rapiers a brand of automatic pistol, Paul Sorvino's Fulgencio Capulet a Godfather-like character and sixteenth-century Verona into 1990s Verona Beach, a Miami-like city, Baz Luhrmann made Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet leap off the screen with unprecedented energy and immediacy. No other director, before or since, has managed to erase young cinemagoers’ resistance to Shakespeare’s language so effectively, by producing a movie that sounds like original-text Shakespeare but looks and feels like a genre adaptation—and succeeds as both.
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A Return to the Hallowed Halls of Hogwarts
The sixth film in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, doesn’t hit theaters until November but with newly released photos from the film, the recently-announced plans for a Universal Studios theme park dedicated to the franchise and the latest Rowling book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, ready for order nationwide, MM thought it would be a good exercise to recap the past while we preview what’s to come.
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Enzo Castellari's Inglorious Past
Italian drive-in king gets royal treatment for cult classic
When cult moviemaker Enzo G. Castellari, hailed as the “70s Italian Drive-In God” by L.A. Weekly, embarked on his 1978 World War II adventure, Inglorious Bastards, he had little idea that, 30 years later, his film would still be loved and appreciated by a new generation of enthusiastic fans.
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Get Your Summer Fix with 10 Beach Flix
A day at the beach spans a number of genres
While the beach’s natural beauty may seem like a cinematographer’s dream, the truth is, it’s one of the most difficult locations to film. Mother Nature unfortunately takes over as assistant director when it comes to scheduling shoots, as uncontrollable conditions—the burning sun, unrelenting wind and loose, unstable sand—often cause delays in production. Yet screenwriters can’t get enough of the beach as a backdrop for their stories and as a result, numerous moviemakers have braved the rough conditions in order to capture the shoreline’s effortless beauty. From here to eternity, MM counts down the best beach films of all-time.
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It’s Bikes, Camera, Action! for Female Moviemakers
The open road has long been at the center of Hollywood films and road movies are showing no sign of decline with everything from College Road Trip to Wild Hogs hitting theaters in the past two years. Even in this age of inflated gas prices, audiences find themselves captivated by the ability of the open road to stimulate untouched dreams and desires, create hope when all is lost and promise a freedom that knows no boundaries. Sometimes, there’s just no better feeling than having your hair dancing in the wind as you careen down a vast, desolate and seemingly endless highway... or watching that on screen.
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Israel Offers Moviemakers A Little Bit of Everything
If you’re searching for the world’s most diverse landscape to film your next production, set your sights on Israel. With four climate regions, from snow peaks to sand dunes and unique plant and animal life mixing and crossing over three continents, Israel has a climate and landscape to accommodate all kinds of moviemaking—from sand-and-sandals historical epics to snow-covered mountain disaster movies.
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Anton Diether and Writers Literary: Your Screenplay Connection
Let’s face it: Without the help of a high-profile agent, a famous uncle or a replenishing bank account, it can be extremely tough to “make it” as a Hollywood screenwriter. As most production companies refuse unsolicited scripts, agencies keep their contact information hidden and nearly everyone you meet in Los Angeles claims to have a screenplay (or even multiple) in the works, the odds of standing out from the rest of the starry-eyed crowd seem like they are hardly ever in your favor.
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Shakespeare on Film: Othello
The language of Shakespeare trips up the actors in MM's 10th week of Shakespeare on Film
Othello director Oliver Parker trims about 50 percent of the text, delivering an audience-friendly two-hour running time without muddling the play’s clear plotting. His script severely restricts the dialogue entrusted to Desdemona (played by Irène Jacob) and handicaps Laurence Fishburne, who exudes hearty sexual swagger and adopts a rich, almost Caribbean accent, but pentameters are alien to an actor more at home in the expletive-ridden worlds of 1990s thrillers like King of New York.
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Is Horror Dead?
Does a changing of the guard mean the end of a genre as we know it?
Freddy, Jason and Leatherface have packed it up—and horror legends like George Romero are having a tough time at the box office. What does the future hold for the horror genre?
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Jerry Rudes Bids Bon Voyage to Avignon
After 25 years of celebrating cinema and connect moviemakers the world over, Avignon Film Festival founder Jerry Rudes bids bon voyage to the cherished event.
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Giuseppe Tornatore Dives Into the Great Unknown
He may be best known for the beloved Cinema Paradiso, but Giuseppe Tornatore's The Unknown Woman, his first film since 2000's Malena, is a substantial departure from that bittersweet love song to cinema. The Unknown Woman stars Russian actress Xenia Rappaport as Irena, a mysterious Ukrainian woman who ingratiates herself with a prosperous Italian family, taking care of their young daughter. Is she after blackmail? Revenge? Lightning-quick flashbacks provide hints of terrible secrets from her past, andThe Unknown Woman constantly keeps us off-balance with its blend of suspense and melodrama, and its mingling of past and present into one continuous stream.
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Man on Wire Reaches Box Office Heights
A new daredevil conquered the box office this past weekend, without the help of any flashy tricks or high-tech gadgets. After opening on only two screens in New York City on July 25th, Magnolia Pictures’ latest documentary, Man on Wire, grossed an impressive $51,392 over the weekend (Friday to Sunday), averaging $25,696 per screen. The highest per screen average of any film currently playing in the United States, Man on Wire even overtook this summer’s blockbuster sensation The Dark Knight, which had a per screen average of $17,000.
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Hollywood Stands Up To Cancer
Each year cancer kills more than a half million people in America alone. Through the new initiative Stand Up to Cancer, Hollywood industry giants are aiming to bring awareness to this fact and further aid in the fight against the disease. The organization’s first effort is a film challenge that will accept short films (less than three minutes) focusing on the subject of cancer, its effects and/or the battle against it.
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Boy A Star Andrew Garfield Isn't Afraid to Be Picky
Andrew Garfield’s brief but impressive filmography thus far is no accident; the young actor is nothing if not selective. “I know I’d be really miserable if I was working on something that I didn’t believe in,” says Garfield, 24, whose first four feature film roles are each enviable in their own way.
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Nanette Burstein, Queen of DIY Docs
Nanette Burstein just may be the queen of do-it-yourself documentaries and American Teen can prove it. The Academy Award nominee started her career as the writer and editor of the 1998 doc In the Name of the Emperor, which detailed the brutal 1937 massacre of more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. But her real claim to fame came with the 1999 movie On the Ropes, which she produced, directed and edited. The documentary, about the injustices of life in the boxing arena, won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier that year and picked up a nomination for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards the next.
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Editor Richard Harris' X Factor
Oscar-winning editor works his magic with The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Editing is an integral part of creating suspense in a film—anyone who has seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) can attest to that. For a film like The X-Files: I Want to Believe (whose creators were so intent on producing a suspenseful aura for its audience that only a very elite group of those involved were given full scripts), having a skilled editor was crucial to its success. It made perfect sense when the moviemakers behind the film called in Richard A. Harris, an editor with plenty of experience (and an Academy Award) under his belt.
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Another Step Up for John C. Reilly
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Shakespeare on Film: My Own Private Idaho
Gus Van Sant challenges classicists with My Own Private Idaho in MM's ninth week of Shakespeare on Film
In the 1980s, Gus Van Sant was already writing a screenplay about gay hustlers in Portland, Oregon, when he saw Welles’ Chimes at Midnight and was inspired to make My Own Private Idaho double as a partial, modern-day adaptation of Henry IV. Together with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, the writer-director created a not especially engaging seventy-minute feature: Part love story, part road movie.
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Two Festivals Come Together in Kansas City
Watch out, Midwest: A new festival is coming. It may sound a bit familiar though, for this new fest, the Kansas City FilmFest, is actually a joint effort of two former Missouri-based ones: KC Jubilee Film Festival and FilmFestKC. MM had the chance to ask festival president Fred Andrews a few questions about the new event, discussing both the issues and advantages that come along with re-creating a festival.
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The Truth Is Out There: TV Adaptations Don’t Always Succeed
For years, studio executives have followed a simple formula to cash in on certain franchises: Take a widely acclaimed television show, modernize and condense it into a 90-minute script and out comes an instant crowd-pleaser. Though a handful of TV adaptations have triumphed and achieved critical acclaim, many television-to-film adaptations fail miserably, ultimately revealing that oftentimes the jokes, drama and supernatural should be left to the small screen.
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That’s Quite a Cast of Characters
Zack Snyder assembles a cast of relative unknowns for Watchmen
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Dance with Films at this Week-Long Fest
The 11th annual Dances with Films, taking place at the Laemmle Sunset 5 Theatre in Los Angeles from July 24 - 31, is a truly independent film festival where what you do, not who you know, is what really matters. Talent trumps connections at Dances with Films; the rules mandate that films in competition involve no established directors, actors, writers or producers.
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The Doorman Opens Up
Wayne Price straddles the line between fact and fiction
“What is a doorman without a door?” That is the question that director Wayne Price explores in his new movie, The Doorman, a film that balances the line between fact and fiction. The movie is a faux documentary that focuses on exclusive club doorman Trevor W. (Lucas Akoskin) who tries to maintain the façade of his elite lifestyle after the loss of his job. Largely improvised, The Doorman features both actors and non-actors in an interesting (and sometimes comedic) look at the club lifestyle and what happens when one man loses his position of power within that world.
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Zeitgeist Captures the Films of Our Times
MoMA celebrates Zeitgeist Films' 20 years of cinema history
As part of the month-long retrospective “Zeitgeist: the Films of Our Times,” celebrating NY distributor Zeitgeist Films’ 20th anniversary, critically acclaimed moviemaker Atom Egoyan recently introduced a screening of his 1993 film Calendar, which was distributed by Zeitgeist, on Saturday July 12th at The Museum of Modern Art. Following the film, Egoyan conducted an interview with Zeitgeist founders Nancy Gerstman and Emily Russo.
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Shooting The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan and DP Wally Pfister shed some light on their latest collaboration
Flashback: Christopher Nolan is at the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival for the premiere of Following, his first feature-length film. Though he served as the writer, director and cinematographer, Nolan wasn’t interested in pursuing a career as an auteur. At the same time, he saw The Hi-Line, which premiered at the nearby Sundance Film Festival. Maybe it was destiny calling. That film's cinematographer was Wally Pfister, ASC.
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Shakespeare on Film: The Animated Tales
Shakespeare gets the thumbs-up from the younger set in MM's eighth week of Shakespeare on Film
From 1990 - 94, Shakespeare—The Animated Tales exposed the younger set to 12 of Shakespeare's most famous plays. Adapter Leon Garfield scripted a dozen abridgments, which won three Emmy Awards and have screened in more than 50 countries. They merit collective rather than selective recognition, firstly because they provide an accessible introduction for young viewers and, secondly, because they triumphantly demonstrated to viewers of all ages that a medium too often associated solely with children’s stories could realize adult Shakespearean imagery and themes with as much imagination and poetry as live-action film.
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Christian Bale Returns to Brooding Batman in The Dark Knight
Back in 2005, Christian Bale might not have seemed the most likely choice to play the title role in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, the risky re-imagining of the classic comic book franchise. Yet, due to the first film’s critical and commercial success—and Bale’s stand-out performance—the Welsh actor is donning the black cape once again for the highly anticipated sequel, The Dark Knight.
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Meryl Streep and ABBA visit Greece with Mamma Mia!
Moviemakers overcome challenges to film the scenery of the Greek Islands
Greece: The birthplace of the Olympic Games, theater and western civilization. This historically rich country is also one of the most picturesque places in the world. When scouting in Greece, most moviemakers have veered toward the beautiful Greek Islands, which are scattered about the Aegean and Ionian Seas within the vast Mediterranean. In total, there are 6,000 of these islands, only 227 of which are inhabited. Popular destinations and filming locations include: Mykonos, a rocky island covered with blue and white buildings and signature windmills, and Santorini, which sits on a mountain 350 meters above sea level and is considered to be one of the best places in the world to watch the sunset.
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At the Height of Their Power
The 10 best, most popular and groundbreaking graphic novel adaptations
Say goodbye to those flowery adaptations of 19th-century British literature and Oprah’s Book Club bestsellers. Studio executives have unearthed a new moneymaking inspiration in comic books and graphic novels—and this summer is full of them. From Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk—the first two movies from newly-minted Marvel Studios—to Wanted and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the season has already seen an unusual amount of these adaptations. This week audiences are eagerly awaiting another—arguably the most anticipated film this year, period—when The Dark Knight is released on Friday.
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Vancouver Film School Fishes For YouTube Talent
Online video communities are emerging as ideal places for unknown and often untrained artists to display their work. The Vancouver Film School (VFS) took advantage of this pool of young talent by holding an online competition, in conjunction with YouTube, to award scholarships to three aspiring moviemakers. The winners—Christopher Harrell, Stefan Ramirez Pérez and Jorge Rolando Canedo Estrada—can look forward to a great year spent honing their skills under the direction of accomplished faculty at a school that prizes hands-on experience and produces artists who have the creative vision as well as the technical knowledge they need to gain a foothold in the industry.
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Spotlight on Aspiring Moviemakers at the Angelus Student Film Festival
Moviemakers with heart, take note: The Angelus Student Film Festival is awaiting your next film. The 2008 festival, which will be held Sept. 13 at the Directors Guild of America Theater in Hollywood, honors future moviemakers as they create works that respect the dignity and complexity of the human condition. And after 12 years honoring the inspiring works of student moviemakers, Angelus has expanded to include an accomplished jury for their documentary competition.
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Video Views Pick: Wanted
The editors of VIDEO VIEWS magazine pick Wanted, based on the Mark Millar graphic novel, as the best new DVD this week. Featuring eight bonus featurettes and a cast that includes James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, home video watchers can't go wrong.
Posted 12.3.08 | Video Views Pick | 1 comment
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