Authors — Nick Dawson
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Sundance 2014 Competition and NEXT Titles Announced
Slamdance was yesterday, and now it’s the Sundance Film Festival who are putting out their initial competition slates. There’s no single opening movie anymore, but instead Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, Todd Miller’s doc Dinosaur 13, Hong Khaou’s narrative feature Lilting and Nadav Schirman’s Israeli doc The Green Prince kick off things on January 16. I’m always excited to see lineups that have a mixture of work by familiar faces and names that are as yet unfamiliar to me, and this is definitely one of those. In the U.S. Dramatic Competition, there are films from Joe Swanberg, Jim Mickle, Craig Johnson, Carter Smith and the Zellner brothers plus debuts […]
by Nick Dawson on Dec 4, 2013 -
Documentary Shortlist Announced for 2013 Academy Awards
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced the shortlist of 15 films from the five nominees for Best Documentary will be chosen. That announcement comes on January 16, but until then we can pore over a pretty strong list, featuring Gotham winner The Act of Killing plus new films from such vets as Alex Gibney, Alan Berliner, Lucy Walker and Jehane Noujaim plus crowd favorites from newcomers such as Zachary Heinzerling (Cutie and the Boxer) and Gabriela Cowperthwaite (Blackfish). There are also inevitably a number of notable absentees, such as Lana Wilson and Martha Shane’s After Tiller, […]
by Nick Dawson on Dec 3, 2013 -
Slamdance 2014 Lineup Announced
The main competition lineup for the 2014 Slamdance Film Festival was announced today for the event which runs, parallel to Sundance, in Park City between January 17 and 23. The two titles two particularly catch my eye in the Narrative section are Copenhagen by Mark Raso, and Jay Alvarez’s I Play With The Phrase Each Other. Raso, a Student Academy Award winner in 2012, blogged for Filmmaker during the making of his low-budget feature debut (you can read those posts here), while Alvarez — also a first-time director — has ambitiously crafted a black-and-white film which is made up entirely […]
by Nick Dawson on Dec 3, 2013 -
The Other Moments of the 2013 Gotham Awards
Almost a decade ago, I was assigned to cover an LA-based awards show by The London Times. I was attending as the guest of an employee of the organization which put on the show and so was afforded access that a journalist might not get. I remember sitting up in the gods, watching the show, getting the same experience one would get watching on television, except from a great distance. During the second commercial break, after watching the usually hilarious host stumble through some mostly unfunny material, I realized that I had literally nothing to write about and that the […]
by Nick Dawson on Dec 3, 2013 -
Your Reading List for the 2013 Gotham Independent Film Awards
The 2013 Gotham Independent Film Awards take place tonight. The show is live-streaming here, but to complement your viewing experience you can also read extensively about the nominated films tonight. Below is a full reading list of articles on the Filmmaker website on the movies in contention. Good luck to all involved, and good reading! 12 Years a Slave Screenwriter John Ridley Talks 12 Years a Slave The Act of Killing Caught on Film Errol Morris Let’s Loose on The Act of Killing Controversy Joshua Oppenheimer on How Limitations Shaped The Act of Killing The Act of Killing Takes Top Prize at CPH:DOX Afternoon Delight Sundance Responses: Afternoon […]
by Nick Dawson on Dec 2, 2013 -
Christopher Nolan, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach on the Painters That Inspire Them
The Tate Gallery in London launched a great little series of videos today entitled Film meets Art, in which prominent U.K. directors discuss their appreciation for and how they were influenced by a particular British artist. Above, Christopher Nolan talks about his love of Francis Bacon’s work and how it shaped his rendition of Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight.Nolan says that Bacon was his favorite artist from a young age, which I find to be very unusual and striking idea. (What kind of a childhood did Nolan have that this was how he saw the world?) Mike Leigh […]
by Nick Dawson on Nov 26, 2013 -
“I’d Rather Take the Risk, I’d Rather Go Somewhere That’s Unknown:” Steve Coogan on Screenwriting
On his latest film, Philomena – the story of journalist Martin Sixsmith’s quest to help the title character (Judi Dench) find the son who was taken from her 50 years previously – Steve Coogan is not only the lead actor but also the screenwriter, credited alongside co-scribe Jeff Pope. Coogan is a veteran performer who started out on British TV, where he created such characters as Alan Partridge, and moved into film, making both mainstream Hollywood funny fare like Night at the Museum and Tropic Thunder and more sophisticated humorous expeditions in the UK, such as Michael Winterbottom’s Tristram Shandy: A Cock […]
by Nick Dawson on Nov 22, 2013 -
Writer/Producer/Actor Jim Piddock on Christopher Guest’s Family Tree
As a longtime writer for both big and small screens and a member of Christopher Guest’s regular comic ensemble, Jim Piddock was an ideal creative collaborator on Guest’s 2013 TV series, Family Tree, which recently came out on DVD through HBO. The show centers on Tom Chadwick (Chris O’Dowd), a newly unemployed and recently single Londoner who breaks out of his stagnant funk by researching his family’s genealogical roots, discovering a branch of relatives in the U.S. and ultimately traveling across the pond to meet his Stateside kin. Piddock co-wrote Family Tree with Guest and also produced and acted in […]
by Nick Dawson on Nov 19, 2013 -
On the Road: the “25 New Faces” Screening Tour Hits the Midwest Today
Starting today, the Filmmaker “25 New Faces” screening series gets underway: Scott Blake (Surveyor), Anahita Ghazvinizadeh (Needle) and Mohammad Gorjestani (Refuge) are hitting the road, with myself in tow, with the first event taking place at the UW-Madison Cinematheque in Madison, WI. The road show, which is sponsored by Sony Creative Software and ARRI, will then progress to Cleveland, Iowa City, Kansas City, Columbia, MO and Nashville. If you’re in or around any of these places, please come to the event and say hi. As Scott wrote in his newsletter last week, this tour and the “Best Film Not Playing” screening series are our “ways of […]
by Nick Dawson on Nov 16, 2013 -
Five Questions with Charlie Countryman Director Fredrik Bond
A veteran director of commercials and music videos, Swedish-born Fredrik Bond makes his feature debut with Charlie Countryman, an extravagantly romantic tale of the titular young American (Shia Labeouf) who flees to Bucharest after the death of his mother (Melissa Leo). His neighbor on the flight to the Romanian capital dies on the journey, and Charlie is left to seek out his pretty young daughter, Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood), with whom he immediately falls in love. With a star-studded cast featuring Mads Mikkelsen (as Gabi’s psycho gangster ex, Nigel), Til Schweiger, Aubrey Plaza, Vincent D’Onofrio and Rupert Grint (playing a wannabe […]
by Nick Dawson on Nov 15, 2013
