It isn't often that the Academy Awards bring to mind the quotations of Mao Zedong, but by 10 pm last Sunday I was busy hunting for my copy of The Little Red Book. I felt the need to re-read Section Four on "The Correct Handling...
The most notable event next Sunday at the Academy Awards will be when Kathryn Bigelow receives the Oscar for Best Director. At least she’d better win. She won the Directors Guild of America award, and it’s basically the same bunch voting for Best Director at...
When you think movies, you think Wal-Mart. OK, normally there's no way Wal-Mart should be in this equation, but with their purchase of the digital movie provider Vudu, Wal-Mart is hoping to dominate the brave new world of movie downloadables. Sort of makes sense. By...
Yes, it is now official. The Avatar tsunami is over. The waters are receding and we can finally observe the debris field. Though Anderson Cooper has yet to cover this disaster, he might as well start interviewing the survivors. Heck, George Clooney could turn it...
Alfred Hitchcock did not say that actors were cattle. He simply advised that they should be treated as such. OK, it's not that big of a difference, and you've really got to be Hitchcock to get away with this attitude. For independent filmmakers, actors are people...
I once had a film professor tell me that a paper of mine gave him a "vague sense of nothingness." I learned several things from this experience. First, he was right. I wasn't exactly getting the point of "film theory." Second, the same could be...
There are two great things in life: free stuff and stuff that’s almost free. Unfortunately, it seems as if nothing is free in the filmmaking process, and there are plenty of companies looking to make some nice profit from every aspect of the industry. All...
There have been a lot of changes in our society over the past fifty years. Hey, about fifty years ago it was almost impossible for an African-American filmmaker to exist; now it's merely almost impossible for him (or her) to get a distributor. Well, that's pretty...
There are many ways to acquire money for a small-budget film. For example, selling your organs on the black market. That should be good for a few thousand bucks. But once you run out of spare kidneys, you'll have to adopt an alternative strategy. Thank the...
The great thing about predictions is that few people ever go back a year later to find out where you were wrong. For example, I predicted a few months ago that Avatar wouldn't necessarily make it past the billion dollar mark. OK, I was wrong....