As unclassifiable and startlingly original as promised, Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin has an obvious experiential agenda. Scarlett Johansson’s unnamed alien rides around Glasgow, picking up men, bringing them back to her pad for sex, then harvesting them for meat. As sound designer Johnnie Burn told Ashley Clark in an interview Filmmaker published earlier this month, the intensely fussed-over sound mix literally took years. In the mall, at the club or on the street, different snatches of ambient sound compete for attention, with normally unexamined noises briefly coming to the fore. The movie is totally successful at defamiliarizing ordinary actions […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 28, 2014Speaking April 30, 1999, at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center, Werzog Herzog laid down 12 edicts on the pursuit of “ecstatic truth” in the documentary. “The so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité,” Herzog proclaimed in his “Minnesota Declaration,” announcing instead his devotion to “poetic, ecstatic truth” accessible “only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.” He was speaking specifically about his 1992 masterwork Lessons Of Darkness: unfaked, awe-inspiring footage of Kuwait’s oil fields on fire after the Iraq War, framed by a made-up Pascal epigraph and narration from the perspective of an alien intelligence baffled by what it’s seeing. Herzog unrepentantly […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 28, 2014Starting in fourth grade, Houston native Josh Wiggins acted, edited, written and generally pitched in small, goofy YouTube shorts with his friend Tommy Hohl. He didn’t perform professionally until last year, but since then Wiggins has quickly gone from low-budget filmmaking to big studio work in near-record time. One day before the world premiere at Sundance of Kat Candler’s third feature Hellion, Wiggins signed with UTA and Leverage Management. Hellion began as a short film in 2012 starring Hohl. Wiggins inherited his friend’s part as Jacob, a troubled 13-year-old whose mother is dead. While grieving father Hollis (Aaron Paul) turns […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 28, 2014It’s no surprise that Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel was a technically complicated production, and a video posted this week by VFX house Look Effects, Inc. breaks down exactly how complex putting the movie together was. In a nearly-five-minute reel that can’t be embedded (you should definitely take a look here), a variety of post-production work is highlighted, from color correction of the typically fastidiously coordinated hotel to the mechanics of the dizzying climactic downhill mountain chase. There are surprises big and small, including the amount of physical “snow” used on-set (thereby avoiding the usual hazy look of CGI […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 25, 2014Journey To The West‘s 14 shots begin with an extended screen-filling close-up of Denis Lavant’s face, neck and shoulders. His carotid artery’s unignorable pulsing attests to how difficult it is to attain complete stillness and mastery of even a small portion of the body; wrapped in a Buddhist monk’s robes, Lee Kang-sheng’s subsequent slowgoing progress across Marseilles magnifies that strain across an entire person. Lee must always maintain motion without going any faster than absolutely necessary, and his legs and torso sometimes wobble with the effort of restraining more violent movements. In two extended centerpiece shots, he descends the stairwell […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 24, 2014Making his name with Afterschool and Tiny Furniture, Jody Lee Lipes has quickly solidified his standing as one of the most impressive American cinematographers currently working. Alongside a diverse slate of DP work (he both shot and directed episodes of Girls and is currently working on Judd Apatow’s next feature Trainwreck), Lipes has also been establishing himself as a documentarian. 2009’s Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be The Same followed the title artist in the middle of a creative and personal breakdown/breakthrough; for 2010’s co-directed NY Export: Opus Jazz, Lipes staged a 1958 Jerome Robbins ballet on New York’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 22, 2014Last year the Tribeca Film Festival opened with Mistaken For Strangers, a sideways documentary view of The National followed by a performance from the band. Attendees moved from screening venue to a separate show space, but this year both opening night parts were combined at Madison Square Garden’s Beacon Theater. First came One9’s Time Is Illmatic, a history of Nas’ seminal 1994 album, then the 20th anniversary performance. You can go here to read Brandon Harris’ take on the movie (which plays once more on Friday). Ten years in the making, One9’s debut documentary tracks the making of the instant […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 21, 2014From 2005 to 2010, Sean Gullette (still most commonly ID’d as the star of Pi) lived full-time in Tangier, Morocco. Expanding on a 30-minute short made in 2010, Gullette’s feature directorial debut Traitors tracks a Clash-esque femake punk rock band (their big chorus is “I’m so bored with Morocco”) stuck in Tangier. When frontwoman Malika (Chainmae Ben Acha) decides to pay for a demo recording session with a one-off drug run, the film’s second half takes her out of the city and up to the Rif Mountains. The Tribeca Film Festival is the latest stop on an extensive festival circuit […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 20, 2014Sabine Lubbe Bakker and Niels van Koeverden’s Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don’t Forget Me) takes its name from a Jacques Brel song whose fervid tone fits its disheveled subjects well. Marcel and Bob are best friends: deep in rural Belgium, they wile away their hours in a drunken haze, footage that straddles a productively uncomfortable tragic-comic line. Marcel’s wife leaves him at the beginning, which gives him more time to spend with older, more grizzled, seemingly more resigned Bob: their epic drinking bouts regularly punctuate the film, getting into more and more dangerous territory as spiral downward and, unnervingly, take […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 18, 2014After serving as a producer on films including Afterschool and Two Gates Of Sleep and directing three shorts, Andrew Renzi is transitioning to directing features with not one but two films in 2014. First up is Fishtail, a portrait of life on a Wyoming cattle farm shot in a mere four days. Speed doesn’t mean sloppy haste: Fishtail makes full use of its 16mm widescreen frame, carefully capturing agricultural processes that connect the present to the old American West. Later this year, expect Renzi’s Richard Gere-starring drama Franny; his documentary premiered yesterday at the Tribeca Film Festival. In an email […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 18, 2014