Gus Van Sant and American Indies at Cannes

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

On some level, I’m happy that a Romanian film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. After all, Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was on every critic’s list of prizewinner favorites. Looking at theRead More

Postscript: Waitress

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

Steve Ramos reports in indieWIRE this morning that Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress expanded to 510 theaters and took in an additional $4 million at the box office last week, bringing the four-week total to $6.5 million. It will expand to 605Read More

DVD Commentary and Special Features

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

William Speruzzi at [This Savage Art] asked folks to cite examples of the best commentary or special features on a DVD. I confess that I almost never rewatch the film with the director’s commentary, and only occasionally bother to watchRead More

On the Marketing of Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

|I had not intended to write about the late Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress because I personally find it impossible to separate her film from the tragedy surrounding Shelly’s senseless murder last November, following an argument with a nineteen-year-old construction worker inRead More

Postscript: Sundance 608 Revisited

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

The added surcharge on tickets at Sundance 608 made the front page of The Capital Times last Friday afternoon with the $11.75 ticket price prominently featured in the headline. The article by Samara Kalk Derby indicates that there have beenRead More

Robert Redford’s Sundance 608 Rides into Town

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

I attended the May 6 benefit at Sundance 608, the new six-screen multiplex that opened in Madison last week with great fanfare. I’m frankly excited at having Sundance in town, because it serves to increase the number of screening possibilitiesRead More

The State of American Indies

Posted on : by : jjmurphy

I talked about the identity crisis facing American independent cinema in my recent book on indie screenwriting. It’s been a topic of discussion almost from the start, as evidenced by Jonas Mekas’s criticism of the second “scripted” version of JohnRead More