Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Watch: Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Volume II
Swapping Rammstein for The Talking Heads, the trailer for Volume II of Lars von Trier’s nymphomaniacal, five-hour affair is considerably more dialed down than its predecessor. Favoring mood and quiet exchanges to the sexed-up, melodramatic hysteria that’s categorized the majority of Nymphomaniac‘s elongated marketing scheme, this new trailer puts its best ensemble forward with glimpses of Christian Slater, Willem Dafoe, Shia Labeouf, Stellan Skarsgard, Mia Goth, Stacy Martin, and of course, the titular Charlotte Gainsbourg. The U.S. had its first glimpse of Nymphomaniac: Volume I at Sundance’s secret screening last week, and Magnolia Pictures will release Volumes I and II to the rest of […]
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The Conquest of Happiness: Drugs on Film
For nearly as long as there have been moving pictures, there have been drugs moving through their frames. The Conquest of Happiness, a 2005 pastiche by the German artist Oliver Pietsch, examines the patterns of drug use and representation on film. Compiling hundreds of clips over the course of two years, Pietsch “[aimed] to mirror the subject drug by aiming for a similar absorbing and lulling effect.” In an interview with Carroll/Fletcher earlier this month, Pietsch remarked of his piece that “the structure of repetition goes well with the principle of drugs.” While the obvious titles like Requiem for a Dream and Scarface make their […]
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Trailer Watch: David Gordon Green’s Joe Starring Nicolas Cage
Joe, David Gordon Green’s adaptation of the Larry Brown novel, sees the peripatetic filmmaker returning to the Southern-fried family drama of his Undertow days, if not with considerably more grit. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, where Tye Sheridan — riffing off the remnants of his Mud daddy issues — scooped up the Marcello Mastroianni prize for Best Young Actor, Joe follows the eponymous cypher, played by Nicolas Cage, who takes Sheridan under his wing and away from his troubled home life at the local lumber company. As you may glean from the trailer, Sheridan’s father doesn’t take too kindly to the boy’s new […]
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Lena Dunham and Hamish Bowles in a Vogue Short
As you may have heard, Lena Dunham recently took some time out of her stacked schedule to appear on the cover of Vogue. As is the magazine’s custom with women who weigh more than a hanger and call comedy into their line of work, the spread lacks any semblance of effort, though the article is worth a read. A couple days ago, Vogue released a supplementary short, directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, that plays up this indulgent image of Dunham as a clumsy thing, lost in the world of high fashion. The sitch is this: Dunham is so nervous the […]
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Watch Sarah’s Uncertain Path: An Op-Doc from the Directors of Rich Hill
For their Op-Doc collaboration with Sundance Institute grantees, The New York Times tapped 25 New Face Andrew Droz Palermo and his cousin Tracy Droz Tragos, filmmakers behind the Sundance title Rich Hill, to produce a short profile of Sarah, a pregnant Midwestern teen, struggling to strike out against her familial trajectory. Sarah’s Uncertain Path acts as a microcosm for what Droz Palermo and Droz Tragos call “a myth in America.” “If you have a strong moral compass, work hard and make good choices, you will have equal opportunity,” they write of this unfulfilled promise. “But after two years of listening to and documenting low-income […]
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What If Fight Club Had No Tyler Durden?
Editing Tyler Durden out of a Fight Club sequence may seem like a (spoiler alert) self-explanatory hijink, but Richard Trammell, the man behind “Fight Club Minus Tyler Durden” actually cooked up the idea while watching the trailer for Lawrence of Arabia. “I thought it would be funny to take Peter O’Toole out of it,” says Trammell, “Before I realized it would be more interesting to remove a character who doesn’t really exist within the world of the movie.” Trammell then perused Fight Club for scenes in which Brad Pitt’s character did not obscure the background, before taking to AfterEffects. “I made freeze frames of […]
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Watch the Series Premiere of HBO’s Looking on YouTube
It’s a strange time in the post-Netflix Original landscape. While more and more brand-name talent seems to be drifting from film towards premium cable, a new study reports that HBO and Showtime subscribers are dwindling — and potentially jumping ship to Netflix. Indeed, the streaming service has enjoyed a 4% rise in viewership over the last two years, whereas premium cable channels have lost 6% of their subscription base. So what does HBO, with its barrage of new and returning shows, do? Court viewers through the most public of streaming forums: YouTube. As such, Looking, which premiered on Sunday night, is […]
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No Green Screen? Try the Kubrickian Front Screen Projection
A new video from Shanks FX and PBS Digital Studios illustrates the process behind front screen projection. The technique, famously used by Kubrick in the “Dawn of Man” sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, combines foreground action with background footage to allow for substantial depth of field that cannot otherwise be achieved on location. Merely reflecting a projection off a one way mirror, and capturing the results with a camera, can produce footage that rivals most computer generated images.
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Watch Lance Bangs’ Short Documentary Her: Love in the Modern Age
Using Spike Jonze’s her as a springboard, Lance Bangs shot a documentary about the modern person’s relationship to love. Culling a wide range of perspectives — from Charlyne Yi to Olivia Wilde to Bret Easton Ellis — Bangs asks us to consider how we relate to Jonze’s unusual tale of boy meets girl. Offers Yi, “Recently, I was thinking about relationships like shoes, and how it’s cheaper to buy new shoes than work on the shoes that you really love and care about.” If the trailer’s any indication, we can expect an eclectic offering. Keep an eye out for Her: Love […]
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Sundance 2014: First Teaser Trailer for Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip
In advance of its world premiere on Monday, Alex Ross Perry has released a teaser trailer to his latest, Listen Up Philip. Clocking in at under two minutes, the clip features various men and women addressing Jason Schwartzman’s titular character. One gets the sense that Philip’s not the most agreeable fellow, and his ego has grown even more insufferable on the eve of the release of his second novel. Co-starring Elisabeth Moss, Krysten Ritter, Jonathan Pryce, Josephine de La Baume, Jess Weixler, Dree Hemingway and Keith Poulson, this idiosyncratic ensemble looks to promise some of Perry’s brand of quick wit. Watch above.
