Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Watch: Caveh Zahedi’s “Not Getting Stoned with Alex Ross Perry”
Alex Ross Perry, writer/director of the highly recommended and in-theaters Her Smell, is the guest in this latest installment of filmmaker Caveh Zahedi’s self-explanatory interview show,(Not) Getting Stoned with Caveh. As is the case with the show as well as its sister series, Getting Stoned with Caveh, Zahedi takes a few hits before drawing out his subjects in conversation. Here, the totally straight Perry discusses with Zahedi subjects ranging from small talk at parties to sociability to cinephilia in general. And, oh yeah, at the instigation of a cinematographer friend, Zahedi varies his practice here, switching from his usual two-camera […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2019 -
“There’s a Vulnerability That Can Isolate Us, Whether We’re in an Era of Analog Connectivity or Virtual…”: Five Questions for Colewell Writer/Director Tom Quinn
Receiving its world premiere tomorrow in the Launch section of the 2019 SFFILM Festival, Tom Quinn’s sophomore feature Colewell stars Karen Allen, whose filmography runs from intimate dramas to some of contemporary cinema’s biggest blockbusters, as a clerk in a small town post office whose way of life — and, actually, her life itself — are imperiled when her branch is scheduled for closure. Inspired, as Quinn relates below, from learning of an instance in which a town was literally erased from a map, Colewell is a gentle, melancholic film, one inflected by bursts of real anger and sorrow, that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 12, 2019 -
Trailer Watch: Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die
Jim Jarmusch seems to be in full-on comedic mode with this take on the zombie-thriller, The Dead Don’t Die. Starring Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver, RZA, Selena Gomez, Carol Kane, Austin Butler, Luka Sabbat and Tom Waits, it’s in theaters on June 14. See the just-released first trailer above.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 1, 2019 -
Back to One, Episode 50: Michael Mando
Michael Mando is best known for his captivating portrayal of “Nacho” Varga on the hit AMC series Better Call Saul. You might also know him from Orphan Black, Spider-man: Homecoming, or Far Cry 3. In his latest film, The Hummingbird Project, he plays the chief engineer of a massive high frequency trading operation opposite Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård. In this half hour he talks about his interest in the metaphysical aspects of the craft, his beginnings as a hungry but happy acting student, and how he doesn’t let fame get to his head but he’s open to the changes […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 19, 2019 -
“Persistent Paranoia, Anxiety and Fear Does Something to Your Body…”: Five Questions for Tito Writer/Director Grace Glowicki
One of the great independent film discoveries of SXSW 2019 is a picture that is also one of the boldest artistic statements of year, Grace Glowicki’s Tito. The Canadian actor and director is known to Filmmaker readers as the female lead of 2016 25 New Face Ben Petrie’s Her Friend Adam, which I dubbed in these pages “a squirmy treatise on sexual insecurity and relationship oneupmanship.” Glowicki’s character’s response to her partner’s icky jealousy, I wrote, is one of “unrivaled power and blistering sexual humiliation, capped off by a loudly feigned orgasm that will erase in viewers any memory of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2019 -
Locked in Rage: Writer/Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre on The Mustang
A wild horse is captured, transported to a prison facility where he will be “broken,” or trained, in a program that doubles as a form of therapy for the inmates inside. A broken man is released from solitary confinement into the main population, where his ability to banish his anger is dependent on the relationship he forges with that horse, a brilliant brown mustang. The Mustang, the first feature from Paris-born, LA-based filmmaker Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, is an artfully restrained, quietly moving film built around the most elemental of oppositions: freedom vs. imprisonment, man vs. animal, violence vs. self-control. And […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2019 -
Lookbook Case Study: The Evening Hour
For Braden King, the lookbook process is an iterative one that doesn’t even stop with a film’s production. “In the case of my last feature film, Here, the lookbooks were very close to the final film, both tonally and imagewise,” he writes in an email. “But they were also completely comprised of my own photographs and functioned as a part of the larger, multiplatform project. We created a three-screen installation with live soundtrack accompaniment and several gallery exhibitions, [and] the lookbook for that film was also featured in a group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.” King’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2019 -
Lookbook Case Study: The Mountains Are a Dream that Call to Me
Writer/director Cedric Cheung-Lau says the initial version of the script for his in-development debut feature, The Mountains Are a Dream that Call to Me, consisted solely of 44 images. Then came the words. For the lookbook, Cheung-Lau took sentences from the finished script and married them to images of his location, the Annapurna section of the Himalayas. The script tells the story of a grieving older woman and a young Nepalese man who meet in the mountains and go on a journey together, and Cheung-Lau stresses the importance of the setting to the story. “The landscape surrounding them is real,” […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2019 -
Lookbook Case Study: 306 Hollywood
“With our lookbook, we wanted to capture our visual aesthetic and emphasize the importance we place on images,” write directors Elan and Jonathan Bogarín about the presentation deck for their hybrid documentary, 306 Hollywood. A work years in the making, the doc details the sibling filmmakers’ excavation of their grandmother’s New Jersey home in the years after she died. The archeological metaphor here is intentional; the Bogaríns describe the house in their 2017 Filmmaker 25 New Faces profile as “a microcosm, a universe… The whole history of the 20th century can be found in the layers of this house.” 306 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2019 -
Lookbook Case Study: A Woman, A Part
“I knew from looking at lookbooks that people pull images from online, but I didn’t see the point of doing that,” says writer/director Elisabeth Subrin. “Because then you are just saying, ’I want my film to look like someone else’s film.’” For the lookbook for her first feature, A Woman, A Part, Subrin says, “I thought it would be fun to see if I could create the images from the script that I had in my head for years.” (Disclosure: I produced A Woman, A Part along with 2019 Film Independent Producers Award winner Shrihari Sathe.) Subrin, previously best known […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2019
