Enter the 48 Hour Film Festival

…by clicking here.

The Return of the Silent Film

Of all the cinematic surprises of 2011, the renaissance of silent cinema was probably the hardest to see coming down the pike. When Harvey Weinstein enthused about a silent back-and-white film, starring two unknown French stars, which he’d just bought at Cannes, brother Bob suggested he check himself into a mental asylum. After it received a 15-minute standing ovation, The Artist was marked up by Oscarologists as the outside favorite to win best picture.

Read more here.

The Film Camera is Dead

“We might as well call it: Cinema as we knew it is dead.

An article at the moviemaking technology website Creative Cow reports that the three major manufacturers of motion picture film cameras … have all ceased production of new cameras within the last year, and will only make digital movie cameras from now on.

What this means is that, even though purists may continue to shoot movies on film, film itself will may become increasingly hard to come by, use, develop and preserve. It also means that the film camera … will become to cinema what typewriters are to literature.”

Is this a bad thing? Matt Zoller Seitz doesn’t think so. Read why here.

Spoilers don’t really spoil anything

A recent study concluded that “almost every single story, regardless of genre, was more pleasurable when prefaced with a spoiler.”

Hard to believe? Read for yourself by clicking HERE

How to make an intelligent blockbuster

“Every time I complain that a blockbuster movie is directorially dumb, or insultingly scripted, or crappily acted, or artistically barren, I get a torrent of emails from alleged mainstream-movie lovers complaining that I (as a snotty critic) am applying highbrow criteria that cannot and should not be applied to good old undemanding blockbuster entertainment. I am not alone in this; every critic worth their salt has been lectured about their distance from the demands of “popular cinema”, or has been told that their views are somehow elitist and out of touch (and if you haven’t been told this then you are not a critic, you are a “showbiz correspondent”). This has become the shrieking refrain of 21st-century film (anti)culture – the idea that critics are just too clever for their own good, have seen too many movies to know what the average punter wants, and are therefore sorely unqualified to pass judgment on the popcorn fodder that “real” cinema-goers demand from the movies.

This is baloney – and worse, it is pernicious baloney peddled by people who are only interested in money and don’t give a damn about cinema. The problem with movies today is not that “real” cinema-goers love garbage while critics only like poncy foreign language arthouse fare. The problem is that we’ve all learned to tolerate a level of overpaid, institutionalised corporate dreadfulness that no one actually likes but everyone meekly accepts because we’ve all been told that blockbuster movies have to be stupid to survive. Being intelligent will cause them to become unpopular. Duh! The more money you spend, the dumb and dumberer you have to be. You know the drill: no one went broke underestimating the public intelligence. That’s just how it is, OK?

Well, actually, no. You want proof? OK. Exhibit A: Inception.”

Read the rest of the article here.

What it’s like to have your movie flop at the box office

A writer of Conan the Barbarian 3D discusses his reaction:

By about 9 PM its clear when your “candidate” has lost by a startlingly wide margin, more than you or even the most pessimistic political observers could have predicted. With a movie its much the same: trade magazines like Variety and Hollywood Reporter call the weekend winners and losers based on projections. That’s when the reality of the loss sinks in, and you don’t sleep the rest of the night.

For the next couple of days, you walk in a daze, and your friends and family offer kind words, but mostly avoid the subject. Since you had planned (ardently believed, despite it all) that success would propel you to new appointments and opportunities, you find yourself at a loss about what to do next. It can all seem very grim.

Read the article here.

Time is kind to directors. Is it the same for actors?

What can we learn about filmmakers by analyzing the website Rotten Tomatoes? Here’s one statistical analysis:

…A director’s first movie averages a Tomatometer rating around 55 percent. But the average ratings for the next few movies don’t drop much at all, never falling below 54 percent. Then, between the average director’s seventh and eighth movie, the Tomatometer ratings jump dramatically, from 55 percent to nearly 63 percent. That score stays steady for the average director’s ninth through 11^th films and then jumps again to the 80s and 90s for the rest of his career.

Read the rest of the article here.

Ode to the Femme Fatale

“She’s in trouble, she says, and needs his help. He hesitates a second while his brain tries to work. Whatever her problem is — something about her husband working her over, the sick bastard — she can take care of herself, from the looks of her. But hello, the looks of her: those long legs, those tremulous lips, those wounded eyes. This dame isn’t in trouble, she is trouble, his brain shouts — but those eyes, those eyes. He’s way past listening to his brain. The only sound he can hear is her voice, whispering that she needs him, wants him, can’t live without him. And if his brain turns out to be right, if she ends up dragging him down into depravity, madness and murder, well, tough. If there was ever a thing worth going straight to hell for, she’s it.”

Read the rest of the article from Obit Magazine here.

Five Books About Film Noir

From the Five Books website–film writer Barry Forshaw picks the five books you should read to learn about film noir.

(He also reminds you that you should be watching Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice!)

Read the article here.

Screenwriting, Cinema’s Invisible Art

A cool article from Granta magazine about screenwriting. Of course, the Coen brothers are considered among the gods of the craft.

Read the article here.