Authors — Sarah Salovaara
-
“A Relationship is Never a Straight Line”: Joanna Hogg on Exhibition
“It’d be nice if you could come up here, maybe distract me from my work,” H (Liam Gillick) tells his wife D (Viviane Albertine) at the start of Joanna Hogg’s surprising and stunning new film Exhibition. The two speak via intercom, from separate stories of their postmodern London behemoth, and Hogg’s film is as much about communication, or lack there of, as it is about staving off our most prized objectives. D and H — both artists, only one of whom is “successful” — have decided to sell their house after living there for nearly 20 years. That decision, or rather, acquiescence on D’s part, […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 20, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Justin Simien’s Dear White People
Dear White People was unsurprisingly divisive at Sundance, where some viewers questioned what they saw as its muddled provocations. Sight unseen, however, this just released trailer makes the film’s aims and strategies rather apparent. Directed by Justin Simien, the satire follows the experiences of four Black students at a predominately White university. With only a few shorts to his name, Simien’s brilliant concept trailer — whose opening is quoted almost verbatim in the above trailer — went viral, sparking a widespread debate and healthy Indiegogo campaign. It’s an exemplary instance of pre-production marketing, and Simien was able to follow through on its promise. Dear White People will […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 19, 2014 -
Hive Minds and Solitary Settings: BAMcinemaFest’s Sixth Edition
A carefully curated round-up of the festival circuit’s notable American titles, BAMcinemaFest begins its sixth edition today with the New York premiere of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Though the program is designed to favor nascent talent — Spike Lee, Les Blank and other repertory screenings aside — it’s hard to think of a more exemplary opener than this American independent masterwork. As a narrative experiment, Boyhood is every bit as unparalleled as you’ve heard, elevating its seemingly generic arc with moments of searing veracity. Given the holistic scope, I would wager that any viewer is bound to encounter a mirror image demanding of introspection and a helping side of tears. Not all of the festival’s inclusions scrape […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 18, 2014 -
Sound Design and Silence in the Work of Martin Scorsese
This effectively concise visual essay from Tony Zhou examines the significance of silence in the films of Martin Scorsese and modern cinema at large. From Raging Bull, in which Scorsese combines a dolly zoom with a hollowing “numbing effect, as if you’re hit in the ear too many times,” to the iconic Goodfellas scene where Joe Pesci comically dupes Ray Liotta, Zhou considers how silence is consistently “derived from character…[which] lets the director build a full cinematic structure around sound.” Sound, for Scorsese, is no mere secondary player but rather a device to develop thematic and situational texture, like how the violence in Raging Bull‘s ring is […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 16, 2014 -
Watch: 45 Minutes of Jean-Luc Godard on Goodbye to Language
Canon Europe recently conducted a 45 minute interview with Jean-Luc Godard on Goodbye to Language and the resulting conversation is pretty incredible. One could parse through the exchange for hours, but it’s best to watch for yourself and hear Godard on the everything from the melancholic underpinnings of “SMS,” the boundary-less nature of 3D, the fickle ways of language (“montage” vs. “editing”) and exploiting spatial imbalances (the creation of reverse shots). The interview also features a few short clips from Goodbye to Language and the following comment on its title: “When I say ‘farewell’ to language, it really means ‘farewell,’ meaning to say goodbye to […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 13, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman
Alejandro González Iñárritu last film Biutiful was so relentlessly depressing its body count nearly totalled that of an apocalyptic blockbuster, so it’s nice to see him swinging in the other direction with what looks to be a high-concept, gonzo comedy with Birdman. Starring Michael Keaton as an over-the-hill superhero actor struggling to mount a Broadway comeback, the film, which is shot by the inimitable Emmanuel Lubezki, boasts an eclectic ensemble in Naomi Watts, Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Amy Ryan and Emma Stone. What piques my interest, however, is the fact that the Broadway play is an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 12, 2014 -
“Maybe I Hate Pity:” Nathan Silver on Uncertain Terms
Nathan Silver first courted audiences in 2012 with Exit Elena, his charming, claustrophobic take on arrested development through the eyes of a live-in aide. His follow-up, Soft in the Head, also captured an outsider’s rambunctious navigation of new environs, so it should be no surprise that Uncertain Terms, premiering this Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, treads the familiar territory of interloper interrupted. Silver may be a premature embodiment of Fassbinder’s creed that “Every decent director has only one subject and finally only makes the same film over and over again,” but Uncertain Terms feels more patient in execution than its predecessors, mirroring the bucolic enclave which houses a bevy of […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 12, 2014 -
Seed&Spark Partners with American Express’ Digital Distribution Service
On Monday, it was announced that the crowdfunding and streaming platform Seed&Spark would partner with American Express’ AmEx NOW distribution service in an effort to bring their titles to an audience of 67 million households. AmEx will select five films a month (both shorts and features) from Seed&Spark’s library to screen on their interactive TV channel, AmEx NOW. The first crop of films includes features Like The Water, The Man Who Ate New Orleans, Mana’olana: Paddle for Hope, and shorts Tick Tock Time Emporium and Lex. Filmmaker spoke to Seed&Spark’s Director of Content, Amanda Trokan, about the details of the new initiative and the open submissions process. Filmmaker: In collaborating […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 11, 2014 -
Watch: David Fincher’s Zodiac and the Art of the Insert
Within David Fincher’s filmography, Zodiac has always struck me as something special, if not anachronistic, for its handling of the police procedural genre. Perhaps it’s because, despite legions of so-called confessors, its true-life case was never closed. Appropriately, the film seems less concerned with tidy plotting than the psychosis — personal, collective and social — such a lingering mystery can create. Still, for all the film’s meta-textual aspirations, Fincher is, at heart, a narrative filmmaker and does relate the necessary details with a compendium of insert shots. They are all spliced together here in this supercut from Josh Forrest.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 10, 2014 -
Data Points Emerge in the VOD Landscape
Lately, it’s seemed like I’ve been inadvertently launching a weekly VOD column, but here is yet another contrarian and unexpected entry in the financially-shrouded market’s set of data points. Over the weekend, Radius-TWC released their digital grosses for The Unknown Known and 20 Feet From Stardom at $1 million and $1.3 million, respectively. In the exclusive report, co-president Tom Quinn offered his reasoning behind the films’ release strategies (“Errol Morris has a heavy following on Twitter”), while the author Brian Brooks points out that although VOD is assumed to be a major source of revenue, “some execs have noted that tabulating nontheatrical grosses is inherently not the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 9, 2014
