Authors — Vadim Rizov
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Watch: P.T. Anderson and Inherent Vice Cast’s NYFF Press Conference
Stoking the fires of anticipation for P.T. Anderson’s Pynchon adaptation Inherent Vice, here’s the press conference from Saturday morning’s NYFF press screening. The questions may not always be on point, but you’ll probably want to stick with it for P.T. Anderson quoting Crazy People to explain why he shot in 1.85 rather than widescreen (it’s like a Volvo: “they’re boxy but they’re good”), Owen Wilson explaining that “I had one shirt that I really wanted to wear, and I guess it wasn’t ’70s enough” and that his look was equally modeled on Dennis Wilson and Zoot the sax player from […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 6, 2014 -
NYFF ’14: David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars and Consumed
There’s something about anti-Hollywood satire that brings out the worst/most facile in otherwise great filmmakers. The prime example is probably Robert Altman’s The Player, which pretends to be aghast that studio executives have never heard of The Bicycle Thief and concludes that’s why everything sucks. Oddly, Scream 3 may be the only satire in this vein with real teeth, since its murderous mayhem is instigated by a need to avenge a decades-old casting couch act of sexual aggression, something of more consequence than the usual “those philistines rewrote my script by committee” japery. David Cronenberg is decidedly not calling from […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 6, 2014 -
Watch: iPhone 6 Plus 240 fps Slow Motion Test Footage
Our friends at No Film School have a good round-up of 240 fps test footage shot with the iPhone 6 Plus. I’m particularly mesmerized by this 39-second snippet, which is nothing more than wine being poured from a bottle into a glass. The same way NFL Films render just about anything hypnotic by breaking it down to the tiniest movements, so here: wine’s trajectory through air is captured in all its separate streams, then blood-like bubbles and blobs pop up as liquid hits glass.
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 2, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Interstellar, Now with Giant Waves
Here’s the latest trailer for Christopher Nolan’s global warming/space travel epic Interstellar, now reported to clock in at a you-better-deliver 175 minutes. Where the last trailer had Michael Caine orating Dylan Thomas to urge humanity to not go gentle into that good night, this time the exposition gives a more concrete idea of what to expect, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your tastes. There’s also lots of Matthew McConaughey urging people not to give up and what appears to be the biggest tidal wave since The Abyss‘ director’s cut.
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 1, 2014 -
Watch: Don Hertzfeldt’s Fantastic The Simpsons Couch Gag
You’re hopefully familiar with animator Don Hertzfeldt’s fatalistic, sinisterly humorous, one-of-a-kind body of work. Last night The Simpsons let him take over the opening couch gag. The result is a phantasmagoric two-minute short that turns the clan into protozoa and reverses the flow of time. It’s very much of a piece with his recent work as anthologized in 2011’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day. Watch Homer chant “I AM SIMPSON!”; deriders of the show’s deathless downward spiral, you’ll be convinced that The Simpsons is still good for something. If you’re not familiar with Hertzfeldt’s work, you should follow that up […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 29, 2014 -
Watch: The Eyes of Hitchcock by :: kogonada
Here’s the latest from video essayist :: kogonada, who Scott Macaulay interviewed earlier this week. Beginning, as you might expect, with the zoom into red eyes from Vertigo‘s opening credits and the zoom out from Janet Leigh’s dead eyes in Psycho, :: kogonada captures Hitchcock’s characters’ eyes in states of fear, hypnosis, dawning comprehension et al. This one’s via the Criterion Collection.
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 26, 2014 -
NYFF ’14: Hill of Freedom and La Sapienza
The same trajectory through similar way stations has served Hong Sang-soo equally well from 2004’s Woman is the Future of Man onwards: ill-fated romantic and sexual encounters between men and women fueled and derailed by epic soju consumption, meetings which repeat with a disconcertingly slight degree of difference across the same locations. From such modest materials, the tone has swerved from potentially inconsequential farce (Like You Know It All, In Another Country) to the recent dourness and cyclical/purgatorial futility of The Day He Arrives, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon and Our Sunhi. For detractors, this reliance upon nearly interchangeable plots is an […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 26, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Michael Mann’s Blackhat, starring Chris Hemsworth
Here we have the first trailer for Michael Mann’s Blackhat, the Heat director’s first film since 2009’s lukewarmly received Public Enemies. Observe Chris Hemsworth as a hacker who enters government service to battle some really dangerous high-level computer shenanigans. The trailer plays adroitly on contemporary paranoia about the real-world fallout of technological malfeasance, and there’s gunplay galore in the director’s trademark digital-blur-at-night idiom. The vibe and visuals are very much in keeping with Mann’s 2005 update of his Miami Vice, complete with Hemsworth’s slicked-back, Colin Farrell-esque hairdo, though the music — Antony & The Johnsons covering “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” — […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 25, 2014 -
The 52nd New York Film Festival: An Overview
Starting tomorrow and continuing through October 12, the 52nd edition of the New York Film Festival offers residents the chance to get a leg up on some of the year’s most anticipated festival titles. As usual, the main slate is claiming much of the attention, sporting as it does the technical world premiere of Gone Girl — screened for a small branch of the press corps but not for the public yet; no less than eight screenings have been scheduled — and, nearly two months before release, P.T. Anderson’s equally wildly anticipated Inherent Vice. There is, as always, more to […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 25, 2014 -
Watch: John Waters Talks Female Trouble and his Career with J. Hoberman
“Improvisation is like a face lift: if you notice, it’s bad.” John Waters is typically adroit, on-point and witty in this 25-minute conversation with critic J. Hoberman, conducted at Lincoln Center earlier this month on the opening night of the adeptly titled career retrospective “Fifty Years of John Waters: How Much Can You Take?” Topics of discussion include Waters’ influences, filming Divine in prison, and what it’s like to look back at his past provocations.
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 24, 2014
