All Kore-eda films prior to Shoplifters (Manbiki Kozoku) involved families pushed together by blood or filiation, but for his new family of misfits crime is the only accord. They are a troop of scavengers who steal to survive, orphans, abandoners, and the abandoned, who’ve found each other. For the first time he tells the story of a family that chooses to be together. Drama arises from those characters not wanting to admit their motivations, as doing so might affirm no “real” family awaits their return. Kore-eda doesn’t know this story, though he’s shaped it through his life experience as much […]

Alice (Madeline Brewer), the star of Cam, sustains herself as a full-time webcam model at the top of the “FreeGirls.Live” leaderboards. She aspires to break Top 50, but to do so she’ll have to descend deeper into her on-screen persona and farther from her off-screen principles. The system of rewards in this cyber cranny conditions her to betray her standards; the more Alice caters to her audience’s desires the more her fan base grows and the bigger her tips get. When she’s pushed to go beyond her comfort zone, a digital doppelganger of Alice, named Lola, manifests and assumes control […]

At the time of our Skype call, director of photography Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Call Me By Your Name, Cemetery Of Splendour, Arabian Nights Vol.1 & 2) was celebrating the news that Nakee 2, a film he shot in Thailand last year, had just broken box-office records. He was also celebrating a friend’s wedding party in Bangkok, his choice venue for the interview, and its jolly attendees enjoyed hollering their two cents in Thai from off screen. Spirits were high. It was midnight in New York and 11:00 AM in Bangkok. My questions were too prepared. I had mistaken Guadagnino’s complex reimagining […]

Jong-Su (Ah-In Yoo) meets Hae-Mi (Jong-Seo Jeon) dancing at a storefront display beside a lottery machine. Her dance partner projects keywords (“Sales,” “Prizes”) over a PA system and through a K-Pop deluge. They are lures. Hae-Mi has rigged the whole raffle, Jong-Su wins a pink wristwatch (per her intervention) and she expects he’ll gift it back to her. This is no meet-cute, it’s an odd-reunion, Hae-Mi reveals to Jong-Su, her old friend. They grew up together, but Jong-Su either can’t remember or can’t recognize her post-plastic surgery. He won’t forget her now. These two characters thicken and sink to form […]

Adult Swim’s Tim And Eric, Awesome Show! Great Job and The Eric Andre Show ushered in a revolution of on-screen-comedy. Their new perspectives offered something so irradiated, shocking, non-linear and “random” that explaining them seemed inscrutable. You’d flip the channel if your grandma joined you at the television in fear you might have to justify it to her—in fear she might discover you’re insane. “These shows can only be the result of drug induced, inhuman, and unconscious improvisation!” The artists responsible for making you laugh are high, and maybe you ought to be while watching too. Those who “get it” […]

While shooting a commercial in Thailand cinematographer Sean Price Williams (Good Time, Golden Exits, Marjorie Prime) contracted an ear infection. He let me rattle questions into his ear canals despite it. Two months prior The Great Pretender, the second feature film he had shot with writer/director Nathan Silver (Thirst Street, Stinking Heaven, Exit Elena), premiered in the Viewpoints section of Tribeca. Following the screening, Sean revealed that the film had been shot on a DLSR camera that could fit in one hand, with plastic, sparkle filters taped over the lens, completely eschewing a matte box.   He managed to photograph Brooklyn […]

Hélène Louvart, collaborating with Wim Wenders, Agnes Varda, Leos Carax, Larry Clark, et al., has shaped herself into a maven of cinematography and her name into a renown of its own. Shooting features since 1986 with, as of now, more than a hundred IMDB cinematographer credits, Louvart’s experience is ample and never slowed. Since Beach Rats, Louvart has shot five feature films: two in Italy, two in Spain, one in Argentina, and one, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Maya, that spanned France, Jordan, and India. During a brief break in Paris before a trip to India to shoot pickups for Maya, Louvart summoned the collaborative process […]