Critic David Ehrlich’s 25 Best Films of 2017 supercut, dropped today, is an expected pleasure. Through the luxuriousness of its 12-and-a-half minutes, it produces, as it always does, the affect of, “Hey, this was a decent year for movies!” There a quite a few personal favorites on his list — Personal Shopper, Phantom Shopper, Good Time, A Ghost Story, to name a few — as well as a spirited soundtrack flecked with a number of ’70s and ’80s pop hits and disco anthems. Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” is the bold opener, and particularly amazing needle drops include Chaka Kahn’s “I’m […]
“Sit down! I don’t deserve that!” After being introduced by her friend Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman took to the stage at Monday night’s Gotham Awards to accept a Tribute award for her distinguished career.
Taking the stage to accept the Gotham Award for Best Actor for his turn in Call Me By Your Name at last night’s Gotham Awards, Timothée Chalamet — a graduate of NYC’s LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, as he noted — closed out an exuberant speech by rattling off a roll call of the New Yorkers who’ve inspired him. It’s a diverse cluster that included Edie Falco, John Leguizamo, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, Kid Cudi, Cardi B and Martin Scorsese.
“When I started to write this film, I set out to make a movie that would be my favorite movie that I’d never seen,” said Jordan Peele when accepting his Best Screenplay Gotham Award for Get Out from the legendary Lois Smith (nominated for Best Actress for Marjorie Prime) and The Florida Project‘s Brooklynn Prince. “I didn’t know that it would ever actually get made.” Peele returned to the stage later in the night when the breakout horror film also picked up the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award and Audience Award. “It’s so important that we support these voices from the outside, […]
Tonight marks the 27th annual edition of the Gotham Independent Film Awards, presented by Filmmaker‘s parent organization, IFP. Starting at 6 pm EST tonight you’ll be able to watch the ceremony, beginning with the red carpet arrivals, with the ceremony proper staring at 8. A Facebook live stream of the ceremony has begun; click on the Facebook icon here to watch. For more information, including a complete list of the nominees and tributees, click here, and check back tomorrow for a write-up of the ceremony.
I’m a fan of Jason Kohl’s SXSW-premiering short film, The Slaughter, which he wrote about here for Filmmaker. And I also took note of his thoughtful filmmaking how-to, Film School: A Practical Guide to an Impractical Decision. Today, Kohl’s debut feature, New Money, is having its world premiere at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Starring the great Louisa Krause (King Kelly, The Girlfriend Experience, The Flick), it’s described as a “sharp-witted true crime drama” inspired by a story Kohl heard about two stepchildren, worried about their inheritance, who kidnapped their stepdad to insure that they’d get their cut of […]
195 Lewis, a web series directed by Chanelle Aponte Pearson and created by Rae Leone Allen, premieres tomorrow night at 8:00 PM at the show’s website. Last year, when the series was in production, we interviewed Pearson, and she discussed her own motivation for joining the project: At the time of joining the project as director, I used to watch The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and The Couple, so I largely understood the format to work best for comedies with episodes ranging from two to five minutes. Despite knowing this, I still entered the writing process not focusing on […]
From the LowRes Wünderbred account comes this video essay, the first in a series that will explore how the unmade comedy One Saliva Bubble — co-written by David Lynch and Mark Frost as a Steve Martin-Martin Short vehicle (!) — shaped Twin Peaks. (The screenplay, at least a version of it, can be found here.)
Director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire, whose 2008 debut feature, Johnny Mad Dog, was a thrillingly immersive journey into the world of African child soldiers, makes his long-awaited return to theaters with another picture — A Prayer Before Dawn — set within a violent community: Thai kickboxers in the country’s infamous Bang Kwang Central Prison. Wrote Guy Lodge at Variety upon the film’s Cannes premiere: Competition is stiff for the title of cinema’s most violently harrowing prison drama, and tougher still for the all-time most pummeling boxing movie. Gutsily, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s A Prayer Before Dawn”comes out fighting for both, landing a number of […]
I love this short — The Polaroid Job — now up on the New York Times Op Doc page by producer, director and Sundance shorts programmer Mike Plante. A trip home to visit his parents leads to Plante sifting through stacks of their old Polaroids, photos that not only document family moments but also a family business. For a short time, while Plante was 11, his parents had “the Polaroid job,” a gig that involved taking a large-format Polaroid camera to various events — a store opening, a haunted house, etc. — and taking pictures of attendees posing with various […]