Filmmaker. Winter 06.

With its new Winter issue, Filmmaker also relaunches its site - slicker, cleaner, easier to read, and now with the blog entries appearing right there up front, just a lot more happening, too.

Of immediate interest in the new issue, even for those not following goings on in Park City all that closely, is "Defining Moments," a feature in which over two dozen filmmakers with works screening at Sundance address "the pivotal event from the making of their movies."

If you're a regular reader of the Daily, it's probably because you share a general set of interests, and you'll find many of those interests strewn throughout this issue. Scott Macaulay talks with Richard Linklater about A Scanner Darkly, for example, a film we've been anticipating feverishly around here. (Design note: Now the "How They Did It" sidebar really is a sidebar; nifty.)

Andrew Bujalski - yes, Andrew Bujalski - interviews Caveh Zahedi. The subject at hand, of course, is I Am a Sex Addict, which, as Eugene Hernandez reported recently in indieWIRE, has been picked up by IFC Films. But the two filmmakers talk about Caveh's work as a whole as well, and then there's the sidebar: Caveh's "Self-Distribution: A Manifesto."

Matthew Ross: "Twenty-five years and countless bad movies later, another film has finally captured the magic of Wild Style and updated it for the new millennium." The film is Block Party, and Matthew talks to its director, Michel Gondry.

Matthew Ross also has questions for Eugene Jarecki about Why We Fight. The opener: "I'm pretty obsessive about politics, but your movie still scared the shit out of me." To which Jarecki replies, "In that way I guess it's a bit of a horror film or a tragedy, I suppose." (Euro readers: The film's on Arte this coming Tuesday evening.)

Once again, Matthew Ross: "Bubble does not come off as an experiment or stunt." And yes, he talks with Steven Soderbergh.

Anthony Kaufman explains why Strangers With Candy and Factotum got dropped by their US distributors. The second story has a happy ending. As Anne Thompson reports in the Hollywood Reporter, it's been picked up by - again - IFC Films.

Mary Glucksman returns with that terrific regular feature, checking in on five indies currently in production.

"Reports":

• Travis Crawford on Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, "the most challenging and least audience-friendly of [Park Chan-wook's] 'Vengeance' films."

• Rupert Chiarella has a quick talk with Rupert Murray about his "highly thought-provoking" Unknown White Male.

• One of GreenCine's managing partners has been waiting anxiously for a particular DVD for years. He'll want to read this from Anthony Kaufman: "Speaking to Filmmaker, [Whit] Stillman fondly recalls Metropolitan's production, specifically its minimalist aesthetic."

Posted by dwhudson at January 25, 2006 11:23 AM