Authors — Scott Macaulay
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TIFF 2015: 5 Questions for The Meddler Writer/Director Lorene Scafaria
Screenwriter-turned-director Lorene Scafaria burst onto the scene with her screenplay for Peter Sollett’s Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Since that 2008 film she has bounced between film and television, writing and directing episodes of New Girl while also debuting her first feature, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. So it’s fair to ask Scafaria what made The Meddler, a comedy/drama about an intrusive widowed mom (played by Susan Sarandon) and her frazzled Angeleno daughter (Rose Byrne), a story for the large screen instead of the small. That’s just one of several questions she offers cogent answers to in the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 14, 2015 -
TIFF 2015: 5 Questions for Born to Be Blue Writer/Director Robert Budreau
More than three decades after Charlie “Bird” Parker, nearly three decades after Thelonious Monk and just a couple of weeks before Miles Davis, the jazz great whose trumpet style his own owed something to, West Coast jazzman Chet Baker is brought to the screen in Robert Budreau’s appropriately intimate biographical drama, Born to be Blue. I write “appropriately intimate” because the constricted scale of Budreau’s picture, in which Baker’s troubled life is evoked through scenes set at and in the beaches, cafes, apartments, recording studios and even film sets of California’s “cool jazz” scene, scales the trumpeter’s life just right. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 14, 2015 -
TIFF 2015: 5 Questions for The Missing Girl Writer/Director A.D. Calvo
A.D. Calvo is known in the independent horror community for frightening features like The Midnight Game and House of Dust, but with The Missing Girl, premiering in Toronto’s Vanguard section, he dials down the jump scares in favor of a bittersweet character study that’s still not without a sense of mystery. Robert Longstreet, who has given indelible performances in films like This is Martin Bonner and Septien, plays a sad sack owner of a comic book store who becomes unhinged when his pretty young employee, played by Alexia Rasmussen, disappears. Below, Calvo discusses his change of direction, his interest in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 13, 2015 -
TIFF 2015: Director Avi Lewis on Climate Change Doc, This Changes Everything
The third in what has been dubbed an “antiglobalization trilogy,” Naomi Klein’s latest book, This Changes Everything, strips away the niceties of middle-brow climate change activism. As Klein argues, promoting the type of meaningful change that will lead to the survival of the planet involves more than film festival reusable sippy cups and something considerably different than the pro-market solutions of green business consortiums. Indeed, Klein’s book is subtitled “Capitalism vs. The Climate,” and it directly blames the growth mantra of governments and economic markets for our rising temperatures. Furthermore, it intertwines the fight against global warming with the fight […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 13, 2015 -
Errol Morris Asks Donald Trump about the Meaning of Citizen Kane
In this interview clip from a shelved Errol Morris project, businessman and now presidential candidate Donald Trump muses on the meanings of Orson Welles’ classic film, Citizen Kane. Trump doesn’t diverge from critical orthodoxy about the film, but it’s still interesting to hear him take away the standard lesson that money isn’t everything. Still, as Jason Kottke notes, Trump can’t just help himself from throwing in conversation-ending misogynistic aside. From Morris’s site: The Movie Movie, an aborted project, is based on the idea of taking Donald Trump, Mikhail Gorbachev and others and putting them in the movies they most admire. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 7, 2015 -
Watch: Cruise, Pacino, Travolta and More in a Red-Hued Disco Multiverse
An unintended companion piece to yesterday’s post, “Red Lighting in the Films of Martin Scorsese,” Hells Club is a blood-hued mash-up from Antonio Maria Da Silva in which a host of our favorite cinematic characters all boogie down — and draw their weapons — in the same pulsating nightclub. Writes Da Silva: There is a place or fictional characters meet. Outside of time, Outside of all logic, This place is known as HELL’S CLUB, But this club is not safe TERMINATOR VERSUS TONY MONTANA VERSUS TOM CRUISE VERSUS CARLITO BRIGANTE VERSUS BLADE VERSUS JOHN TRAVOLTA VERSUS AL PACINO VERSUS PINEAD […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 3, 2015 -
Watch (and Listen): Hearing A Nightmare on Elm Street
In our second Jacob T. Swinney video post of the day, here’s the critic and filmmaker’s tribute to the late Wes Craven, in the form of an analysis of the director’s use of sound in his horror classic. From the video’s notes: The first horror movie I ever watched was Wes Craven’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. Being a child, the film frightened me so badly that I didn’t view another horror film until my teen years. Despite the obvious tormentors of a man with a burned face, gravity defying whirlpools of blood, and a dying teen being dragged around […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 1, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: Zia Anger’s My Last Film
Disconcerting: Zia Anger appeared on our beginning-of-career 25 New Faces list just this year, but she’s already titling her latest short, My Last Film. Clarification should come shortly; the film, which stars Lola Kirke, Kelly Rohrback and Rosanna Arquette, premieres at the New York Film Festival as part a New York-centric shorts program alongside other favorites including Dustin Guy Defa, Nathan Silver, Pacho Velez & Daniel Claridge and Joanna Arnow. In the meantime, a short, foreboding trailer, above, offers few clues.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 31, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: Jonas Carpignano’s Mediterranea
Jonas Carpignano made Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2012 on the basis of his astonishing short, A Chjàna, about violence between African immigrants and police in Rosarno, Italy. His debut feature, Mediterranea, develops a similar storyline and premiered in Cannes this year. Check out the film’s foreign trailer, which just dropped.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 31, 2015 -
Watch: Behind-the-Scenes at Burning Man in As the Dust Settles
With the annual Burning Man conference underway, now is a good time to revisit what producer and editor Mike Hedge calls a “participatory documentary,” As the Dust Settles. Shot at the festival, the doc uses a number of collaborating directors (Roger Ingraham, Katheryn McGaffigan, Jamie Dee, Jeremy Lubman, and Tarynn Wiehahn) and generally superb cinematography to capture, says Hedge, “an intimate glimpse of what we discovered about love, the environment, the gift economy, reality, art, creativity, and ourselves.” As the Dust Settles is available on a wide variety of streaming and download platforms. As a special bonus, Hedge has provided […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 31, 2015
