Authors — Vadim Rizov
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Watch: The First Trailer for Hal Hartley’s Ned Rifle
Here’s the first trailer for Ned Rifle, the third part of Hal Hartley’s “Henry Fool” trilogy, which began with the titular 1998 film and continued with 2007’s Fay Grim. The trailer’s wordless for a good chunk, but when we finally hear words, we know exactly what’s going on: Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) and Fay (Parker Posey)’s son Ned (Liam Aiken) is going to find his dad and kill him. This capstone film — “probably” the final installment, the Kickstarter hedged its bets — was posted in advance of the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival later this year. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 22, 2014 -
35mm Colors in Digital Translation in Boyhood
One aspect of Boyhood that’s been relatively underdiscussed (assuming there are any such left) is its use of 35mm, which has been widely noted but little parsed. Richard Linklater’s repeatedly noted that the primary reason for shooting on film over 12 years was to ensure visual continuity from one year to the next. This doesn’t mean he’s a Luddite in any way, as he explains in comments from a recent screening at the BFI on technology’s pros and cons: There is nothing more stable than a 35mm negative. Had I started on the best HD camera back in 2002, I’d […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 22, 2014 -
Theatrical, Regained
In 2008, Jake Perlin launched his specialty repertory film label The Film Desk with the first U.S. release of Philippe Garrel’s 1991 I Don’t Hear the Guitar Anymore, a compressed tragic romance doubling as a eulogy for the director’s ex, Nico. Perlin followed with reissues of Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux and Susan Sontag’s Promised Lands. Today, Perlin thinks that adventurous opening trio still represents the kind of movies he wants to reissue. “I go after movies I’m interested in, and part of my interest in them is that I can make prints.” With a few exceptions made for films where […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 17, 2014 -
Irregular Beats: Roberto Minervini on Stop the Pounding Heart
The third film in Roberto Minervini’s “Texas trilogy,” Stop the Pounding Heart, is his first to get American distribution. His debut feature, 2011’s The Passage, followed a terminally ill woman driving through the state in search of a faith healer, while the following year’s Low Tide focused on a mother and her solitary son in small-town Texas. The three films are realized by Minervini in collaboration with his cast, non-actors whose characters and story lines are drawn from their own life experiences. Sara Carlson was a supporting player in The Passage, while Colby Trichell had a bull riding scene in […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 17, 2014 -
Watch: Dennis Hopper, Richard Linklater and the Russian Dynamite Trick
From January through May this year, Richard Linklater hosted a series of screenings at the Austin Film Society of his favorite films from the ’80s followed by post-screening Q&A’s. One of his selections was Dennis Hopper’s perverse 1980 tour-de-force Out of the Blue. After the screening, Linklater had a story to tell about seeing Hopper present the film in Houston in 1983 and then taking those in attendance to a racetrack, where he surrounded himself with sticks of dynamite and set them off. You can first watch Linklater describe the evening in question and Hopper’s thinking — that the simultaneous […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 16, 2014 -
Watch: The First US Trailer for 20,000 Days on Earth
Here’s the first American trailer for the keenly anticipated, highly-praised Nick Cave portrait 20,000 Days on Earth. Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s hybrid film is part concert/performance piece, part collaborative dramatization of the legendary performer/writer’s day-in/day-out routine. As the trailer indicates, Cave’s come a long way since the days when he treated interacting with journalists and the wider public as a horrific task that reduced him to sputtering rage. Those unfamiliar with this part of Cave’s legacy should check out a recently republished 1988 interview, which opens with him throwing an irate boot at his interlocutor. Regardless, 20,000 looks sleek […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 14, 2014 -
Watch: A Video Analysis of Punch-Drunk Love as Superman-Inspired
As Spinal Tap observed, there’s a fine line between clever and stupid, and there’s a similarly thin divider between convincing argument and tenuous grasping. Is this 12-minute analysis of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, which argues that it refers heavily to the 1978 Superman, reaching too far when claiming e.g. that the harmonium leading Adam Sandler to Emily Watson could be a stand-in for the Fortress of Solitude? Probably, but it’s an enjoyably go-for-broke interpretation regardless. In this formulation, Sandler’s Barry is Clark Kent — meek and mild at some times, superhumanly strong and violent at others — and Emily […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 10, 2014 -
“In Prison, I Had Some Peace of Mind”: Jafar Panahi on Closed Curtain
Dogs have been banned as pets in Iran, providing the starting premise for Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain. A screenwriter (Kambozia Partovi, also the co-director) has a dog smuggled into his seaside villa by friends. Once the animal’s inside, the man systematically draws the curtains over windows on all three floors. The opening of Jafar Panahi’s Closed Curtain fictionalizes the necessary circumstances of its production: working in secret, the director was forced to draw the curtains for as much of the shoot as possible to make sure no one could see what was going on inside. There are echoes of recent scenes […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 9, 2014 -
Malcolm X in Dinesh D’Souza’s America: A Dialectical Double-Feature
Cities with active repertory theaters offer options for constructing cross-town do-it-yourself double-features, and a chance this Sunday to follow Malcolm X at BAMcinématek’s Spike Lee retro with Dinesh D’Souza’s America: Imagine the World Without Her seemed too dialectically productive to pass up. The connecting common component turned out to be a compact Malcolm soundbite (“We don’t see any American Dream. We’ve experienced only the American Nightmare!”), recited by Denzel Washington at the end of a longer peroration in Lee’s opening credits and presented as a stand-alone snippet from the real Malcolm in D’Souza’s film. It’s no surprise America ditches the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 8, 2014 -
Watch: How to Hack a Lomo Camera Fisheye Lens for a DSLR
Australian artist/filmmaker Max Piantoni has a Lomo camera sitting around that’s not much good for anything these days, but he thought he could reappropriate the fisheye lens for a DSLR to cool ends. So he took a hammer, smashed apart the Lomo, and added the lens to the DSLR. In this video, he explains the relatively simple process and shows off some neat test footage that he took. Yes, Piantoni knows that there’s already a Lomo fisheye lens for DSLRs and no, he doesn’t care. Thanks to our friends at No Film School for the heads-up, and definitely head over […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 3, 2014
