Authors — Scott Macaulay
-
“TYRANNOSAUR” STAR PETER MULLAN AND DIRECTOR PADDY CONSIDINE
When Jamie Stuart and I shot this video at Sundance this year, our jaws dropped at Peter Mullan spun out an incredibly eloquent, sustained one-take summation of Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur. He’s a great actor, of course, but still we were stunned at how it all just flowed. Here is that video, with Mullan and writer/director Paddy Considine talking about making a movie based on a short, dark characters, and where it all comes from. The film opens tomorrow from Strand Releasing.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 17, 2011 -
GRAVITATIONAL PULL: MIKE CAHILL’S “ANOTHER EARTH”
Originally published in the Summer 2011 issue. Another Earth is nominated for Breakthrough Director. “It has a gentle sensibility,” says director Mike Cahill about his debut feature, the Sundance hit Another Earth. Indeed, this tale of grief, love and “Life Out There” does have a delicate touch, a sensitivity that sets it apart from the summer’s other science fiction. While in other films giant robots destroy entire cities — in 3D, no less — and romance is punctuated every 10 minutes by a train-destroying fireball, Another Earth, starring and co-written by newcomer Brit Marling, harkens back to the speculative parables […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2011 -
CALVIN LEE REEDER AND LINDSAY PULSIPHER OF “THE OREGONIAN”
Calvin Reeder’s trippy art-horror film The Oregonian lands in New York today for one screening at Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema. When we selected Reeder for our 25 New Faces series, Mike Plante wrote: “I’m not really sure” how he arrived at his alt-horror style, Reeder says. “Just sorta roll the dice. I do love Sleepaway Camp. I just like to make movies all bent up, I guess.” Originally from Portland, Ore., and living in Seattle up until this year, Reeder played extensively with the great art-punk bands the Popular Shapes and the Intelligence. But he got notoriety, for better or worse, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2011 -
THE RETURN OF MARCEL THE SHELL
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is the totally winning animated short that placed writer/director Dean Fleischer Camp and writer/actress Jenny Slate on Filmmaker‘s 2011 25 New Faces list. (Read their profile here.) Now, the couple — and Marcel, the Montaigne of animated seashells — returns in a new short. He seems slightly cheerier than last time, and the production values are a smidgen better while not betraying the short’s lo-fi origins. There is no better way to start your morning.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 16, 2011 -
TRAILER: DE NIRO AND DANO IN “BEING FLYNN”
Talk about a frame grab to use as the trailer image! Here’s the first trailer from Paul Weitz’s Being Flynn, an adaptation of memoir writer Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. It stars Robert DeNiro, Paul Dano, Julianne Moore and Olivia Thirlby and will be released by Focus Features this coming Spring.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 15, 2011 -
LAURA KENNEDY, R.I.P.
Laura Kennedy, bass player for the iconic New York punk/funk band Bush Tetras, died yesterday in Minneapolis of complications from Hep C. From Marc Campbell at Dangerous Minds: Kennedy was in the center of the musical vortex that thrived in downtown Manhattan through the 1970s and into the early 80s. It was a time in which rock and roll was stretching its wings while simultaneously banging its head against the walls and sidewalks of a city both bleak and beautiful. The Bush Tetras pulled uptown downtown and showed the Studio 54 crowd that there was some tribal thunder brewing below […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 15, 2011 -
Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd Talks The Hurt Locker
Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd has shot almost 50 features with numerous directors, but when it comes time to discuss his work on Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, his collaborations with two other helmers need to be referenced. The first is Ken Loach, the director Ackroyd is most associated with. The Manchester, England-born d.p. has shot many of Loach’s films, including Raining Stones, Ladybird Ladybird, Land and Freedom, the Palme d’Or-winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and his upcoming Looking for Eric. In these films he developed an unadorned, naturalistic camera and lighting style that gave them an almost doc-like verisimilitude. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 14, 2011 -
Werner Herzog on Into the Abyss
In his films, Werner Herzog has traveled the Amazon, journeyed to Antarctica and, most recently, descended through time into the caves of France to uncover centuries-old cave paintings. So, his trip to a small town in Texas awaiting the capital punishment of a young murderer might have been less epic were it not for the moral dilemmas, lingering anguish and genuine strangeness he finds there. Eschewing the tropes of typical capital punishment documentaries, Herzog, with his German-accented voice jutting from behind the camera, lends an empathetic ear to the words of not only the killer but his accomplice, the victims’ […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 11, 2011 -
25 NEW FACES: “GREEN”‘S SOPHIA TAKAL
Originally published in the Summer 2011 issue. Green is nominated for Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You. Sophia Takal is engaged to filmmaker Lawrence Michael Levine and their roommate is actress Kate Lyn Sheil. After the three worked on Levine’s debut feature, Gabi on the Roof in July (Takal played the eponymous lead, and Sheil co-starred), Takal decided to make her own movie, which would explore the theme of jealousy. She cast rising star Sheil as an insecure bookstore clerk, Genevieve; Levine as Sebastian, her intellectually patronizing boyfriend; and herself as Robin, the offbeat, emotionally hungry local […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 11, 2011 -
SYRIAN FILMMAKER NIDAL HASSAN DETAINED ON WAY TO CPH:DOX
While the excellent DOC NYC is nearing its midpoint, I have decamped to Copenhagen, returning to the equally excellent CPH:DOX, which is devoted to adventurous and radical forays into non-fiction filmmaking. The selection here is huge and ambitious, mixing new work with several retrospectives, guest curations and special events. I’m just settling in today, but here are some things I’m looking forward to and hope to write about as the week goes on: The Prophet, Gary Tarn’s world premiering follow-up to Black Sun, for my money one of the most important docs of recent years; Michael Madsen’s 3D The Average […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 7, 2011
