Just in case you missed it—I did—here’s a New Yorker profile of James Cameron from this past October.
A short by (Pixar animator) Rodrigo Blaas.
The new Black List is out. For those who don’t know, it’s described thusly:
THE BLACK LIST was compiled from the suggestions of over 300 film executives, each of whom contributed the names of up to ten of their favorite scripts that were written in, or are somehow uniquely associated with, 2009 and will not be released in theaters during this calendar year.
Something I can really get behind: in anticipation of every year’s Oscar season, more and more Hollywood studios are publishing screenplays for award contenders online for free download.
Rope of Silicone has been keeping a list of links.
You’ll recognize the following six films: 9, District 9, Napoleon Dynamite, The Evil Dead, Bottle Rocket and Boogie Nights.
You may not know, however, that they were all originally filmed as shorts by amateur filmmakers—all of whom began their professional careers by turning the short films in question into features.
Check out the roundup—with embedded YouTube videos—on Mental_Floss.
From (the superlative) Overthinking It: rooting through The Fantastic Mr. Fox for some truly disturbing thematic material.
Caution: mild spoilers ahead!
Filmmaker Werner Herzog recently appeared on KCRW’s The Treatment podcast and talked about his preference for casting animals in main acting roles, about the capricious allure of American football, about conquering fear, about his Spanish opera, about traveling to Southern Ethiopia to film a musical, about getting shot during an interview and being the only guy who didn’t want to call it off. Listen.
You may have heard about how members of Wes Anderson’s team allegedly took exception to his ‘sociopathic’ directorial style during the extremely tedious production of The Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Making Of has a short featurette on how the workflow actually worked.
It’s all pretty brilliant, but I still think It’s amazing that they got anything done this way.
The Auteurs—a site that I can only describe as a sort of streamable, pay-per-view Criterion Collection—recently added three films by Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel: L’Âge d’or, Death in the Garden and Un Chien Andalou.
They’re all free to watch. For now.
You should check them out (but only if you like your movies old, French and unsettling).