The Cinematic History of Fake Blood

There are a lot of ways to make the screen bleed – in this course we dissect the history of fake blood from its origins in the Theater to modern recipes for making characters bleed on screen. This course is sponsored by RØDE Microphones http://rode.com/ Recipes: Grand Guignol (modified) Vegetable Glycerine Color with Red, a Read MoreRead More

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The History of Horror and Why We’re Attracted to Scary Movies

Before you settle in for a Halloween Movie Night – check out our recap of the history of Horror and dive into some theories on why we’re attracted to movies that go bump in the night.Read More

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Watch: Effectively, Spike Lee’s Feature-Length Animated Film For NBA 2K16

It’s been a busy year for Spike Lee, whose Da Sweet Blood of Jesus came out earlier this year and who will bookend the year with his Chicago gang violence film Chi-Raq, out December 4. It turns out that his feature film release count for the year is actually three if you put together all the cut scenes for NBA 2K16, which clock in at nearly two hours. Hat-tip to Nick Newman over at The Film Stage for sharing this odd little item. As he notes: It might make sense if Lee took the time to craft 10-20 minutes of generic cut scenes for a […]

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“I Can’t Try to Be an Activist If People Don’t Know My Real Story”: Tangerine’s Mya Taylor

“I can’t keep beating around the bush because I’ll eventually run out of bushes to beat around,” sighs Mya Taylor. We’ve just spent 90 minutes together in her hotel room at the 59th London Film Festival. In that time, I don’t speak much, but when I do, I’m drawing parallels between Taylor and Marlon Brando. To be fair, I’d just seen Stevan Riley’s Listen to Me Marlon, so referencing some uncovered Brando philosophy from the documentary during my conversation with Taylor felt pertinent at the time. Mya Taylor is a black trans-woman born in 1991, so in retrospect, the comparison is pretty ridiculous. […]

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“I’m a Cheap Guy”: John Carpenter on Vampires

John Carpenter is a unique case among American filmmakers, in that his work is immensely popular and acclaimed yet still weirdly underrated – he’s acknowledged in many circles as great, yet he’s even better than most people think he is. Just about everyone agrees that he directed two of the greatest horror films ever made, Halloween and The Thing, though the second of these was largely considered to be a critical and commercial disappointment when it was released in 1982. And there’s no denying the massive influence of his 1981 action classic Escape From New York, or the prescience of […]

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On the Down Low: Seidl’s In the Basement

“Fassbinder died, so God gave us Ulrich Seidl,” wrote John Waters in Artforum in 2012. You can find obvious parallels between the directors; both are German-speaking iconoclasts (Seidl is Austrian; Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died in 1982, was from Bavaria), whose precisely arranged and shot films cloak worlds of odd and over-the-top individuals with a patina of intense, self-conscious color, supplemented with frequently incongruous, unanticipated music. Before it became de rigueur, they explored in depth the intersection of the personal and the political in unique, ideologically loaded and often grotesque narratives. It’s not by chance that their bodies of work […]

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Watch: “Why Props Matter”

What are props, and how do they work? Rishi Kaneria’s video essay considers the many functions props serve: as symbols of death (The Godfather‘s oranges), as ways to transition from one scene to another (Lawrence of Arabia‘s famous match cut), as objects indelibly associated with their characters (Indiana Jones’ bullwhip), and — of course — as weapons.

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The Camera and the Pen

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Gothams Announce Nominations for New Long- and Short-form Breakthrough Series Categories

Here’s the final piece of the Gothams nominations. The previous nominations can be found here, but this time around we have the nominations for two new categories honoring long- and short-form breakthrough series. For the full press release, click here. Breakthrough Series – Long Form* A continuing or limited series with episodes running 30 minutes or longer. Jane the Virgin, Jennie Snyder Urman, Creator (The CW) Mr. Robot, Sam Esmail, Creator (USA Network) Transparent, Jill Soloway, Creator (Amazon) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Tina Fey, Robert Carlock, Creators (Netflix) UnREAL, Marti Noxon, Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, Creators (Lifetime) *Additional nominee credits to be […]

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Watch: “Alfred Hitchcock’s Close-Ups”

Jorge Luengo Ruiz’s straightforwardly titled supercut breaks down Hitchcock’s close-ups (from Rebecca to Family Plot; the British films await their own supercut) by category: hands, money, letters, paintings. Brisk work.

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Mira Nair, Debra Granik To Screen Their Films and Speak at Made in NY Media Center

As part of the “Gothams Classics” event series celebrating the Gotham Independent Film Awards awarded annually by IFP (Filmmaker‘s parent organization), directors Mira Nair and Debra Granik will be in conversation at the Made in NY Media Center following screenings of two of their films. Tonight, Mira Nair will be speaking in between screenings of two of her best known films, Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake; more information on that event can be found here. Tomorrow night, acclaimed narrative and documentary filmmaker Debra Granik will speak after screenings of Down to the Bone and Winter’s Bone; more information on that event can be found here. […]

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Ten Lessons on Filmmaking From Wes Anderson

The Rome Film Festival had a striking fresh look this year under the direction of its new artistic director Antonio Monda. The redesigned fest had a slew of hot films and top-tier tributes. But at the core of the new “festa,” or celebration of cinema, was a series of high-profile conversations with leaders in the arts. One of the main highlights of the fest was a conversation with Wes Anderson and novelist Donna Tartt in which they discussed their love of Italian films. While Tartt went in depth on her love of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea, Max Ophuls’ Everybody’s Woman, and Paolo Sorrentino’s […]

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