Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Watch: James Gandolfini’s Last Film The Drop
Adapted from Dennis Lehane’s short story Animal Rescue, Michaël Roskam’s English-language debut The Drop also marks James Gandolfini’s final film appearance. Transposed to New York from Lehane’s preferential Boston setting, The Drop finds Tom Hardy (doing his best Ryan Gosling) and Gandolfini on the hunt for a stolen deposit from the nightly dive bar “drop.” Gangsters, guns, dogs and a Noomi Rapace romance ensue. Obviously no stranger to the mob, Gandolifini appears a bit softer around the edges here than in his iconic Soprano role. The Drop will be released by Fox Searchlight on September 19.
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Watch: Cinematography In The 21st Century
Emmanuel Lubezki, Christopher Doyle, Bruno Delbonnel, Roger Deakins, Robert Richardson, Janusz Kaminski all in one place? This video, strewn together by editor Erick Lee, features clips from the work of internationally illustrious cinematographers over the past decade. Interestingly, there is very little handheld to be had, with most of the stylized shots achieved on a dolly.
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Trailer Watch: Manakamana
Ahead of its April 18 release at New York’s IFC Center, the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab’s latest outing, Manakamana, now has a proper trailer. Directed by Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez, the documentary captures several 10-minute tram rides to the titular Nepalese shrine through a fixed camera, mounted before the passengers. Spray spoke about the extended metaphor in a wonderful profile on the Lab in Boston Magazine. In the article, the reticent founder Lucian Castaing-Taylor also talks his plans to make a narrative-doc hybrid about sex and cannibalism. If it looks anything like Leviathan, it should be interesting.
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Short Film: Luiz Stockler’s Montenegro
Meet Luiz Stockler, a promising animator who’s recently graduated from the Royal College of Art. Born in Brazil, raised in Wales and now a London resident, this is his second RCA project; his first, 2012’s Home, played at Slamdance in 2012. Just under 1:30, that was a mildly stroboscopic freakout on the topic of domesticity. You can view it here (NSFW warning: contains line drawing breasts and genitalia). It’s got a definite early Don Hertzfeldt vibe, which is expanded in the much more ambitious Montenegro to include that animator’s increasing melancholy as channeled through a very British sense of humor. […]
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Trailer Watch: Nathan Silver’s Soft in the Head
Home to one of my favorite scenes of 2013, Nathan Silver’s Soft in the Head now has a delightfully cryptic trailer ahead of its April 18 release at New York’s Cinema Village. Roving, drunken mess Natalia (the loose-limbed Sheila Etxeberría) finds an empathetic respite from the city streets at a predominately Jewish male shelter, run by patron saint Maury (Ed Ryan.) Entirely improvised, Soft in the Head constructs its narrative from kinetic exchanges that bely the simplicity of the film’s storyline with their engrossing frenzy. More aggressive than his breakthrough Exit Elena (which will have its own run in April at Anthology), Soft in the Head teems […]
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Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia as a Cinematic Candle
I’ve seen it over a dozen times, and Nostalghia‘s late, nine-minute shot of a homesick Russian poet carrying a candle across a pool in an Italian spa in tribute to his mad, suicided friend, still devastates. I always read the scene in Tarkovsky’s penultimate film as the poet’s final ritual, a symbolic act carrying its own final, life-or-death meaning. But the struggle to keep the flame lit while poised between wind and water is obviously a metaphor for life itself, which is how actor Oleg Yankovsky described it in a quote included in the text for a fascinating video based […]
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Short Film: Joel Potrykus’s Coyote
Far more whimsical than his down-the-middle abrasive character sagas Ape and Buzzard, Joel Potrykus’s 2010 short Coyote relates an outward manifestation of inner demons. Played by regular collaborator Joshua Burge, the Coyote in question is a heroin addict who trolls downtown Grand Rapids in between binges at his rundown compound. Replacing tirades with tunes, and low-grade digital with Super 8, Coyote presents a more curious Potrykus, whose character is guided by circumstance as much as his malcontent.
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The “One-Point Perspective” in Stanley Kubrick’s Work
We’ve been on a bit of a Kubrick kick lately, and here’s another tidbit to add to the heap. Dubbed “one-point perspective,” the above video showcases the symmetrical framing — often from a down-the-corridor POV — in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, Barry Lyndon, Eyes Wide Shut and Paths of Glory. Set, for dramatic effect, to Clint Mansell’s “Lux Aeterna,” the collage demonstrates the versatility of the shot, as it adopts a humorous stance (Alex DeLarge slurping spaghetti) and a one filled with dread (Jack Torrance, the twins).
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Trailer Watch: Nymphomaniac Volume II
A few weeks out from its release, here’s the first trailer for Volume II of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac. There not much going on here that hasn’t already been introduced, so I’ll take the opportunity to point you toward Charlotte Gainsbourg’s interview in New York Magazine. The article offers insight into her intriguing relationship with von Trier, but also gifts us this nugget: One thing she’s not entirely happy with: the casting, as Joe’s younger self, of English actress Stacy Martin. (Nymphomaniac is, for some reason, supposed to be set in the U.K., though like most of von Trier’s films it’s really set in a darkly […]
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Supercut Shows the Evolution of the Movie Camera, from Hand-Cranked to Google Glass
For the Society of Camera Operators 2014 Lifetime Achievement Awards Bob Joyce edited this supercut showing, in just under four minutes, the evolution of the movie camera, from the box-y instruments used by the Lumiere Brothers through massive 70mm rigs to, more recently, tiny handheld and wearable devices. Indeed, what’s fascinating here are the alternations of large and small. For much of cinema’s lifetime, there was a push-pull going on, with larger units enabling better picture quality and resolution while, simultaneously, smaller cameras were developed enabling greater mobility. But, as the piece shows, with technological developments these two trendlines may […]
