Fall 2015
The Masked Woman: Todd Haynes on Carol
A key movie to first understanding Todd Haynes is his Karen Carpenter “biopic” cast entirely with Barbie dolls, Superstar. This 1987 short that, due to Karen’s brother, Richard, and music rights problems will never be released, seems to define not only Haynes’s subsequent cinema, but also how much he understands the ways in which popular culture, music and memories interweave with the struggles of being a woman, the struggles of sexuality and the struggles of controlling ourselves in a world that won’t really allow it. Superstar goes beyond Karen Carpenter, digging into our own memories and insecurities. For those who first […]
Features
Come to the Sound of My Voice: Laurie Anderson Talks Heart of a Dog
I remember when you started hearing that voice everywhere. Melodious, precisely phrased yet awkward in its pauses, the electronic approximation of the human voice, whether sampled, altered, or pitch-shifted, and triggered by the pound sign, or, now, simply a “Hey, Siri,” has lured human dialogue into an uncanny valley of meaning since the 1970s. And, after Kraftwerk, certainly, but long before AutoTune, 808s & Heartbreak and the Gregory Brothers there was Laurie Anderson, whose vocoderized voice forced us to try and make sense of it all. Anderson, a performance artist and composer whose early work included a piece where she played […]
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How to Deliver Your Film to a Festival
Note (May 2018): the updated version of this article can be found here. Format. Codec. Audio. DCP. You’ve worked on your movie now for some time and have been eagerly waiting for acceptance emails from festivals. One lands in your inbox, and you excitedly read through the letter until, when you get to the festival’s technical requirements, you develop a sense of dread. The tersely worded communication from the technical director (glad we could finally meet) would put you to sleep if it didn’t terrify you. But don’t panic. Instead, phone your editor, and read this guide. Caveat emptor, though: […]
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Carol Sound Designer Leslie Shatz
It’s the middle of the week and I’m walking with sound designer Leslie Shatz from 34th Street toward Times Square. Manhattan’s mayhem is a fusion of random crowds and even more random noises. Leslie abruptly asks me to keep quiet for a few moments while he takes out his phone and starts recording the sounds of the street. I realize that he is in search of new ideas. “You can shut your eyes, but you cannot shut your ears,” he says. “Sound is always a tool you can use in interesting and different ways.” Sound designer Leslie Shatz, winner of a rare […]
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The Camera and the Pen: Documentary Writer Mark Monroe
Over the past 15 years, documentary writer Mark Monroe has almost silently built up one of the most prolific and successful careers in nonfiction film. His credits include Louie Psihoyos’s Oscar-Winning film, The Cove (as well as the brand-new Racing Extinction), the award-winning Sundance films Chasing Ice, Who is Dayani Cristal? and The Tillman Story, Foo Fighter Dave Grohl’s Emmy Award-Winning HBO series Sonic Highways and Ron Howard’s upcoming Beatles documentary. I recently sat in on some of Monroe’s work in New York (which included a feedback screening of Nanfu Wang’s upcoming doc on Chinese activists, The Road from Hainan) […]
How to Deliver Your Film to a Festival
Carol Sound Designer Leslie Shatz
The Camera and the Pen: Documentary Writer Mark Monroe
Other articles
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Hell on Earth: László Nemes on Son of Saul
László Nemes’s debut feature Son of Saul was awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes this year. Taking place over a 36-hour-period at Auschwitz in 1944, the film tells the story of Saul, a member of the “Sonderkommandos,” the Jews forced to handle the dead bodies in the crematorium. When Saul sees the body of a boy he believes to be his son, he goes on an impossible mission to try to save the body from the flames and find a rabbi who can recite the Kaddish to give the boy a proper burial. Saul risks everything and stops at nothing, […]
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Golden Years
In his review of Andrew Haigh’s 2011 drama Weekend, in which two men meet and fall in love over the span of three days, New York Times critic A. O. Scott writes, “Each one, without quite saying so, is grappling with basic questions about love and identity. What can I mean to another person? Whom do I want to be with? Who do I want to be?” In Haigh’s new film, 45 Years, Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay are a couple about to celebrate their 45th anniversary for whom these same questions prove as necessary — and the answers as […]
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Bizarre Love Triangle: Gaspar Noé on Love
A threesome in 3-D and unsimulated sex in a simulated cinematic hyper-reality: that’s what Gaspar Noé’s latest film Love has been promising for months. At Cannes in 2014, producer Vincent Maraval teased audiences with explicit promo materials, pledging plenty of penis, nipple and onscreen ejaculate. While the film has all three in abundance, it turns out Love is more about loss than sex. The surprisingly sentimental tale begins with Murphy (Karl Glusman) receiving a desperate voicemail message from an ex’s mother. Murphy’s an American in Paris with a French girlfriend, crying baby and New Year’s Day hangover — a trifecta about […]
Hell on Earth: László Nemes on Son of Saul
Golden Years
Bizarre Love Triangle: Gaspar Noé on Love
Also: Click and Release Scoped Out Look Into the Cut: Jessica Brillhart on Editing VR Dark in the Daytime Super 8: Class Action Silver Anniversary: The IFP Gotham Awards at 25 Parting Shot: Chantal Akerman Editor’s Letter
