Director Randy Mack is quoted in my “How to Find a Producer” article, discussing the production scene in his hometown, New Orleans. Now, he’s on Kickstarter raising funds for the completion of his dark comedy, Laundry Day. Set over the course of 24 hours in a New Orleans bar, the film is, says Mack, a something cross between Magnolia and Barfly. In an email, he writes, “Laundry Day is a feature-length dark comedy about a bar fight in a 24-hour bar/laundromat/night club between a musician, a gutter punk, a drug dealer, and a bartender. The nonlinear story explores the incident […]
Technically speaking, not much happens in Pioneer, David Lowery’s 2011 short about a man who tells his son a bedtime story. The action is confined to one room as it cuts between the two actors, but the yarn spun by Will Oldham’s character, and the subtle inflections in the pair’s performance along with a textured sound design, make the film as charged as any meticulously choreographed exchange. Listen closely, and you can even discern some early seeds of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints in the mix.
It’s here, it’s unavoidable, and it won’t tell you much unless you want to see how Harrison Ford and Chewbacca are looking these days. It’s the second trailer for J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, which will open December 18, and it’s just fine.
Still one of my Sundance highlights, Andrew Bujalski’s Results is nearing theaters on May 29. An off-kilter, comedic take on the love triangle, Results concerns two trainers (Cobie Smulders and Guy Pearce) and their wealthy new client (Kevin Corrigan). You can check out my take from Sundance here, and Vadim Rizov will have an interview with Bujalski in the Spring issue.
As Tribeca gears up for this year’s edition, one of last year’s Viewpoints selections, Garrett Bradley’s Below Dreams, opens in New York and Los Angeles. In the exclusive clip above, Bradley follows one of the characters of her atmospheric tryptic, Jamaine, as he hitches a ride home from a friend. Bradley had the following to say about the conception of Jamaine: In following Jamaine’s story I had hoped to replace the public imagination around African American men with gold teeth, seen on street corners and stoops or in transit with a real presence that could be heard and not just seen. The role that […]
Lincoln Center’s keenly anticipated “Art of the Real” series on boundary-pushing contemporary documentaries kicks off tonight with a shorts program which includes a new short film by Eduardo Williams. To whet your appetite, I highly recommend watching his remarkable 2011 short Could See a Puma, which appears to be his second film. I couldn’t possibly improve on the IMDB synopsis: “The accident leads a group of young boys from the high roofs of their neighborhood, passing through its destruction, to the deepest of the earth.” This is bold, formally adventurous filmmaking that really seems to be something new — if […]
A couple years ago, there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the distribution trials behind Jonathan Levine’s first film, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, which changed hands four times before finally seeing a release seven years following its TIFF premiere. About Elly, Asghar Farhadi’s Silver Bear-winning precursor to A Separation, experienced a similar quagmire when its original distributor, Here Films, went out of business. Thankfully, some six years later, Cinema Guild has untangled the rights issues and is now distributing the film on its original 35mm print. Check out the trailer above.
I love this movie and just finished editing a great conversation with director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and screenwriter Jesse Andrews for the next print issue of Filmmaker. It won Sundance, you probably heard, and, if you’re a Brian Eno fan, well, it’s got a lot of his best songs in it. (And two in the trailer!) For now, I’m not going to say much more than that, but check it out.
Sony’s Action Cam line provides a competitive alternative to GoPro for filmmakers looking to expand their production resources. To showcase the camera’s capabilities, Sony’s launched a series of films demonstrating how filmmakers can use the Action Cam to make movies “never before seen.” More than 20 will eventually be unveiled on YouTube and Sony’s products website, where you can find more information about the making of each film. Above, check out Charles Young’s Paperports, which documents his work with intricate miniature paper architecture. The FDR-X1000V model offers both 4K and 2K resolution. Some notable technical specs regarding resolution and frame rate: 4K: […]
Currently ongoing at the Film Society of Lincoln Center is the Walerian Borowcyzk series, Obscure Pleasures, and Film Comment Digital Editor Violet Lucca fashioned a nice film essay to supplement the occasion. The above video considers how Borowcyzk’s animation background influenced his treatment of objects, which he often imbues with lifelike or plot-reflecting properties. In the opening film of the series, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, a phonograph is partially responsible for the third act climax. Lucca also considers the filmmaker’s disregard for shot-reverse-shot construction and his dedication to portraying female sexuality in a series of fairly NSFW clips.