This just in: Rootclip offers a new venue for amateur and indie filmmakers who want to take part in a joint story-telling experience. How It Works Rootclip provides an initial story idea with a "root" or starter clip – one to two minutes of compelling video that begins a story and is totally open-ended. How … Read more
The screen is black. A mass of ambient sounds emerges to pull the viewer into an immediate state of hypnosis. Crickets and a plethora of other insects are making their voices heard. Cattle and roosters join in, birds chirping, all while the camera slowly spins around with the grace of a Hitchcock film. At first … Read more
At this year’s Academy Awards, there will be films that — believe it or not — are actually judged on their artistic merit. No one will remember them a year from now, or probably even a month from now, but these reels contain imaginative innovations and emotional depths that surpass those evoked by any nominee … Read more
“ … Sure, it’s all there, but it’s kind of a tease. We’re definitely guilty of teasing.” —Joel Coen, on Barton Fink If you’ve visited the website for No Country for Old Men (opening November 9), you might have read the claim that the Coen brothers’ newest film “strips down the American crime drama and … Read more
“Combining collegiate potty humor with flashes of surrealistic brilliance, comedies such as Anchorman, Wedding Crashers, and Old School represent the height of the Hollywood crossover, appealing to old smart alecks, young dumb alecks, and anyone in between who appreciates gratuitous nudity and boner gags.” That’s stripper-turned-critic-turned-screenwriter Diablo Cody reviewing The 40-Year-Old Virgin in City Pages. … Read more
As I was watching the mid-June press screening of Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko, I could almost hear the lips of the conservative bloggers and talk show hosts beginning to smack as the smell of fresh meat wafted over the media landscape. Moore, whose Bowling for Columbine won the Academy Award for best documentary, won’t … Read more
I raised three daughters who spent their childhoods reading Harry Potter. So I had never encountered the Nancy Drew mysteries until Malcolm, my seven-year-old son, received a copy of one in a bookstore earlier this year. Apparently, Nancy Drew wasn’t selling, so to spark interest the store was giving away The Secret of the Old … Read more
The best news the fans of James Bond books could have heard last year was that Paul Haggis was working on the screenplay for Casino Royale, and that this movie would stick closely to Ian Fleming’s book. Haggis, the writer of Crash and Flags of Our Fathers, teamed up with writers of the last few … Read more
Jon Steinhorst was on break from Columbia College’s film program, and he was looking to make a few bucks. Back when he was in design school, Jon spent his summers painting houses, so repairing stucco on his mother-in-law’s home wasn’t out of the question. But stucco proved to be an insurmountable challenge. So Jon whipped … Read more
Let’s begin by getting one fact clear: Al Milgrom, the Twin Cities’ most famous fool for cinema, is an old man. His driver’s license makes the bold claim that he was born in 1922—a claim belied by both his appearance, for he doesn’t look a day over sixty-five, and his behavior, for he acts like … Read more