Authors — Nick Dawson
-
Jeff Nichols, Shotgun Stories
The North Carolina School of the Arts film program has, during its relatively short existence, produced a wealth of cinematic talent. Prominent alums includes writer-directors David Gordon Green, Craig Zobel, Michael Tully, Aaron Katz, Jody Hill and Nate Meyer, actors Danny McBride and Paul Schneider (who is also a writer-director), DPs Tim Orr and Adam Stone — and to that list one must now add another notable talent, Jeff Nichols. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Nichols graduated from the school in 2001 and has to date written and directed six short films in addition to working on Gary Hawkins’ […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 26, 2008 -
Christophe Honoré, Love Songs
LUDIVINE SAGNIER, CLOTILDE HESME AND LOUIS GARREL IN DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHE HONORÉ’S LOVE SONGS. COURTESY IFC FILMS AND RED ENVELOPE ENTERTAINMENT. Occasionally a filmmaker comes along who truly remind us why we love cinema. Christophe Honoré is not only one of those people, but also finds multiple other ways of expressing his seemingly endless creativity. He was born in Finistere (literally “The end of the world”), a small town in Brittany, France, and attended the University of Rennes, where he studied literature and film. In 1995, he moved to Paris where he began reviewing for the legendary Cahiers du Cinéma while […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 21, 2008 -
Michael Haneke, Funny Games U.S.
NAOMI WATTS AND TIM ROTH WITH UNWELCOME VISITORS MICHAEL PITT AND BRADY CORBETT IN DIRECTOR MICHAEL HANEKE’S FUNNY GAMES U.S. COURTESY WARNER INDEPENDENT PICTURES. Michael Haneke is a director who makes films strictly on his terms, and — as his new movie demonstrates — writes his own rules if he doesn’t like the existing ones. The son of an actor-director father and an actress mother, Haneke was born in Munich, Germany, and grew up just outside the Austrian capital, Vienna. He attended the University of Vienna, where he studied philosophy, psychology and theater. Over the course of the 70s and […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 14, 2008 -
Lucy Walker, Blindsight
BLIND CLIMBER DACHUNG IN DIRECTOR LUCY WALKER’S BLINDSIGHT. COURTESY ROBSON ENTERTAINMENT. The projects Lucy Walker has chosen to take on in her career demonstrate an admirable desire to tell difficult and important stories. The British documentarian was born and raised in London, and during her childhood lost the sight in one of her eyes. However, if anything this only further fueled her fascination with film and other visual media. She was a literature major at Oxford University before winning a Fulbright Scholarship which took her to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she studied film. During this time, she […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 5, 2008 -
Ramin Bahrani, Chop Shop
ALEJANDRO POLANCO IN DIRECTOR RAMIN BAHRANI’S CHOP SHOP. COURTESY KOCH LORBER FILMS. Ramin Bahrani’s films are what one could term “outsider cinema,” and yet they are made with the quiet confidence of someone who knows he belongs. Iranian-American Bahrani was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and moved to New York to study film at Columbia University. After making the short films Backgammon (1998) and Strangers (2000), he spent three years living in Iran, his parents’ former home country. Once back in the U.S., his awareness of immigrant life and the psychology of the outsider found a voice in […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 27, 2008 -
Stefan Ruzowitzky, The Counterfeiters
AUGUST DIEHL, KARL MARKOVICS, VEIT STÜBNER AND AUGUST ZIRNER IN DIRECTOR STEFAN RUZOWITZKY’S THE COUNTERFEITERS. COURTESY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS. It is the natural desire of critics to put films and their directors into neat categorizations, and yet there are some directors, such as Stefan Ruzowitzky, whose work simply cannot be summed up in a simple all-encompassing description. Born in Vienna, Austria, on Christmas Day 1961, Ruzowitzky stayed in his home city to study film, theater and history before pursuing a career in directing television shows, commercials, and pop promos for bands such as The Scorpions and Nsync. In 1996 he […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 22, 2008 -
“A Lot of People Settle for the Vanilla”: George A. Romero on Diary Of The Dead
With the passing yesterday of legendary horror auteur George Romero, we’re reposting Nick Dawson’s 2008 interview with the director on the release of the penultimate chapter of his zombie series, Diary of the Dead. R.I.P. George Romero. No matter how you look at it, George A. Romero will always be remembered as the godfather of the zombie movie. Born in 1940 in New York City, Romero graduated from Carnegie Mellon in the early 60s and stayed in Pittsburgh to set up a commercial production company. In 1968, he segued into features with his seminal debut, Night of the Living Dead, […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 15, 2008 -
Paul Andrew Williams, London To Brighton
LORRAINE STANLEY AND GEORGIA GROOME IN DIRECTOR PAUL ANDREW WILLIAMS’ LONDON TO BRIGHTON. COURTESY OUTSIDER PICTURES. A rare handful of people are born to make movies, and new British writer-director Paul Andrew Williams is undoubtedly one of those few. Born in 1973 in the Southern coastal town of Portsmouth, Williams initially studied as an actor at LAMDA and spent the latter part of the 1990s playing smaller roles in UK TV shows like Casualty, Eastenders and Soldier, Soldier. In 2000, however, he set up So Loose Films and began making a string of short films. The second of these, Sugar […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 8, 2008 -
Nadine Labaki, Caramel
WRITER-DIRECTOR-STAR NADINE LABAKI IN A SCENE FROM CARAMEL. COURTESY ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS. As role models, few filmmakers are more inspirational than Nadine Labaki. On top of the inherent difficulty of succeeding as a writer-director, Labaki grew up in Lebanon’s war-ravaged capital, Beirut, in a Middle Eastern culture where women are essentially second-class citizens. However, Labaki’s passion for film drove her to overcome her obstacles, and in 1998 her short film 11 Rue Pasteur (her graduating project at Beirut’s Saint-Joseph University) won the top prize at an Arabian film festival in Paris. Back in Lebanon, Labaki honed her craft as a director […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 1, 2008 -
Last Man Standing
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director Andrew Dominik for our Web Exclusives section of the Website. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Casey Affleck) and Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins). After making only two features, Andrew Dominik deserves to be recognized as one of the most exciting and talented writer-directors working today. Born in […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 28, 2008
