Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for the Filmmaker
Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for the Filmmaker from Films Gone Wild Another month, another capitalist
THE GUEST COLUMN: Watching Nacho Vigalondo's COLOSSAL (on VOD now) in the #metoo Era
Colossal came out in early 2017, when America had elected Russia had installed a male chauvinist pig as president, one who bragged of his sexual predation prowess, but had not yet reckoned with the full impact of the “woke” reaction to come down the pike. The film quickly came and went in the theaters, and even dedicated sci-fi/monster fans let it slip by, unaware of the larger impact the film was to impart.
FILM FESTIVAL NEWS: Dorie Barton ‘s GIRL FLU Opens the Ohio-based Inside the Loop Film Festival announces lineup for the fest’s debut in October
Inside the Loop will open with Dorie Barton’s award-winning comedy GIRL FLU, close with Ben Bacharach-White’s music comedy MOCK AND ROLL, and will include a meet-and-greet and “Conversation on Hollywood” with “Young & the Restless” star Daniel Goddard, among an exciting three-day weekend in October including a total of 7 feature-length films and 22 short films.
SHORTS AND TO THE POINT: Maja Aro ‘s HOODS hits the bullseye as the complete package in a cleverly conceived and created short film…that could be expanded into something more
It actually started as a very different script inspired by a video game. I wanted to write something with a badass female lead, then she evolved into this motorbike riding little red riding hood. I love the esthetic of dieselpunk, so the world was heavily influenced by that. It all kind of evolved from there. The world is big, and even though the short is just a little slice of an introduction to it, I didn’t want to feel half assed just because it was a short.
THE GUEST COLUMN: Women Texas Film Festival's Justina Walford asks, "Do you dare look inside a female filmmaker's brain?" "Can you handle the Sisterhood?"
Do we dare to watch? Do we dare to look at women’s brains? No matter how ambitious, how whimsical, how inclusive or exclusive, how morbid or light, how vapid or cerebral? Are we willing to embrace the cynicism? The bluntness?
FILM FESTIVAL NEWS: Matteo Servente WE GO ON : The 2017 Memphis Film Prize Announces the Winner of its $10,000 Cash Prize
“This year’s Film Prize films were amazing, so Matteo and the cast and crew of WE GO ON should be incredibly proud to have won our $10,000 prize,” said Gregory Kallenberg, founder and executive director of the Film Prize Foundation. “The Memphis Film Prize has, once again, shown that Memphis is an upcoming indie film capital. We couldn’t be prouder of Matteo and of this city for helping to make this event so successful.”
SHORTS AND TO THE POINT: Pascal Leister ’s LONE HUNTER delivers nuance and heartbreak in a dramatization of a real-life race-related shooting tragedy
We did extensive research and we watched some documentaries about the case, so we had that as a background. One problem was that to this day there is no clear answer as to who fired the first shot. The details of actual events in the woods are somewhat murky. So we went for our interpretation and took some artistic license to fit it all into the dramatic arc of a short. We weren’t necessarily trying to retell the actual events to the tee but we tried to create an authentic, plausible story.
The Edward Douglas Guest Interviews: The Israeli director Rama Burshtein of THE WEDDING PLAN, talks about taking a more optimistic look at a woman’s wedding-based dilemma
I think I’m lighter than Fill the Void. The Wedding Plan is more of who I am and more of my world, and this is a film that speaks about hope and you don’t wrap hope in grey colors, so it is lighter, because I think when you speak about hope, but people watch the film and they feel very differently. A lot of people cry the whole time and don’t laugh at all.
GUEST COLUMN: Colin Stacy on the "Vulgar Cinema" of Olivier Assayas and PERSONAL SHOPPER
Personal Shopper continues his cinema of crassness as it does his work with the inimitable Kristen Stewart. This mesmerizing collaboration is a relationship that deepens with this newest film as Stewart, the 21st century androgynous Brando, now takes the lead role.
DIFF 2017 REVIEWS: Mark Palansky ‘s REMEMORY is the rare sci-fi film/emotional drama hybrid that gets the balance right
When it comes to the matter of “truths,” REMEMORY is complex enough to admit that examining perspective and putting together the pieces of multiple accounts is everything in the quest for enlightenment. In this sense, the film is a reflection on the human condition and the types of neuro technologies that we’re set to wrestle with in the near future.