Walter Potter: The Man Who Married Kittens is a new short documentary by The Midnight Archive webseries creator Ronni Thomas scheduled to have its premiere June 6th at the new Morbid Anatomy Museum at 424A 3rd Avenue Brooklyn, New York. From the Walter Potter Taxidermy website: This surprisingly tender and heartfelt film features never before seen footage of the great tableaux of eccentric Victorian anthropomorphic taxidermist Walter Potter and the collectors around the world who treasure them. You will meet in the course of this film tiny kittens in gowns attending a wedding or having a tea party; toads playing […]
“I don’t actually think it’s worth my time to make movies right now,” said producer and Fandor CEO Ted Hope at an EbertFest panel last month. “If I really want to see a vibrant, ambitious film culture,” he continued, “I can help a lot more by trying to build a better infrastructure.” Keyframe Daily, the blog imprint of Fandor, is running a four part series from this conversation, the first of which was posted yesterday. In this excerpt, Hope puts forth six key issues which he hopes to address for the betterment of the independent film industry: 1. Independent film needs […]
At turns mesmerizing and confounding, Ari Folman’s The Congress was one of the more talked about titles of any Cannes sidebar last year. Though Drafthouse Films scooped up the rights less than a month after its Director’s Fortnight premiere, it’s only just now making it’s way toward theaters, with an official release set for August 29. A loose adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress, Folman’s followup to the Oscar nominated Waltz with Bashir positions Robin Wright as a fictionalized version of herself, who agrees to replicate her once commodifiable actress for a movie studio’s gain. Playing on recurrent themes of aging in the film […]
The premise for Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria is a ripe one. An aging actress, cast opposite the role that provided her breakout decades prior, is now tormented by her young colleague and the passage of time. Looks can be deceiving, but the trailer, released today ahead of tomorrow’s Cannes premiere, hints less towards introspection and more towards camp. Perhaps it’s the peculiar pairing of Juliette Binoche and the stunningly one-note Kristen Stewart, but the plot mechanizations wherein Binoche’s new role mimics her lust for the Stewart assistant character feel a bit trite. Here’s hoping Assayas proves me wrong.
More than half a century since Breathless, Godard still enjoys his fair share of devotees despite a descent into overwrought provocations. Rather than field befuddled questions following the premiere of his 3-D talking dog opus Goodbye to Language after its Cannes premiere this morning, the filmmaker recused himself from promotion with the above. Opening with the official seal of “Khan Khanne,” the “Letter in Motion to Gilles Jacob and Thierry Fremaux,” fashions clips from Godard’s own work, asides from Hannah Arendt, and ruminations on these “other worlds” he now inhabits. I began trying to draw out what little French I understand before noticing that Indiewire had translated the […]
Thanks to director Darius Devas for emailing us about his interview from SXSW 2012 with Malik Bendjelloul, the late director of Searching For Sugar Man. In this five-minute interview, a thoroughly engaged Bendjelloul talks about finding his story, constructing a narrative that builds from one “and then” moment to another, and the human brain’s close resemblance to a chimpanzee’s.
Recently, someone on my Twitter feed ruminated that directors used to proudly point out instances of visual effects, where today, they are want to highlight in camera effects. The times they are a changin’. This supercut from Jim Casey neatly considers the evolution of VFX across 136 years, from 1878 to today. With glimpses of Le Voyage dans la Lune and Metropolis to Gravity and Inception, the aesthetic beauty of the films has arguably improved, if at the expense of the overall storytelling. I’m still scratching my head over last year’s rapturous response to Gravity, which merely proved that 3-D could be artful, even if the script was still pedestrian.
Making its way on the festival circuit since last fall’s Raindance is a film called I Play With The Phrase Each Other, which purports to be the first-ever feature comprised entirely of cell phone calls. It is, rather fittingly, shot on an iPhone and rendered in attractive black-and-white hues that belie its format. In addition to serving as a nice narrative tie-in, the filmmakers choice of camera was also likely dictated by budgetary constraints (or, perhaps as more likely, an Apple tie-in.) Still, it’s remarkable that a lucrative automobile giant like Bentley Motors would shoot their latest ad campaign on a consumer phone like […]
While Christopher Nolan’s co-opted eyeballs with the trailer to what is sure to be another portentous sci-fi jaunt, a nice tonic is to be found in this glimpse of Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens’ Sundance charmer, Land Ho! Paul Eenhoorn and Earl Lynn Nelson star as a couple of ex-brother-in-laws who take to Reykjavik to “get their groove back.” Damping down the epiphanies and life crises that accompany most riffs on the road movie, Land Ho! finds its subtle grace in situational hilarity. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film stateside on July 11.
One of several high profile titles premiering this week at Cannes, Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner explores the late career of the eccentric 19th century British painter. Foremost regarded for his alternately bleak and hilarious portraits of middle class London, it will be interesting to see Leigh tackle a (period steeped) biopic. Of course, character driven narratives are Leigh’s bread and butter, given his now widely imitated scripting process in which the fruits of rehearsals are folded into the pages. Starring frequent collaborator Timothy Spall, the film premieres tomorrow in Competition and will be released by Sony Pictures Classics on December 10. Watch the trailer […]