Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: David Lynch Talks Saving Twin Peaks on Letterman, 1991
While Lynchians wait patiently for the 2017 return of Twin Peaks, a good way to pass the time might be with Dennis Lim’s new book on the director. Numerous extracts from David Lynch: The Man from Another Place have been shared online, and this part on Twin Peaks, recently published on Slate, is a fine place to start. As Lim writes: In what was widely seen as a bid to euthanize the show, ABC moved Twin Peaks to the television wasteland of Saturday night at the start of the second season. Ratings continued to decline, and in February 1991, the network put the show on hiatus, to the […]
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Watch: Joe Dante on The Mask (1961)
Joe Dante is one of the collaborators behind the site Trailers From Hell, which regularly posts videos of directors speaking about films of their choice. For this video, Dante himself appears to give a little history on the 1961 horror film The Mask. Topics of discussion include anaglyph 3D, the rise of Canucksploitation, and the exploits of late publicist Jim Moran (who once sat on an ostrich egg for 19 days until it hatched as part of a publicity stunt).
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Watch: Robert Altman Directs Martin Scorsese and Steve Buscemi for Tanner on Tanner
No idea where this footage surfaced from, but here’s Robert Altman on the set of the 2004 series Tanner on Tanner directing Martin Scorsese and Steve Buscemi as themselves. Scorsese has dialogue input and Altman doesn’t know how to pronounce Buscemi’s name.
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Watch: An Andrew Bujalski Book Trailer for Karen Olsson’s All the Houses
We don’t normally post book trailers over here, because a) that’s not our remit b) they are, by and large, perfectly dreadful. This is a little different though, since it’s been made by Andrew Bujalski to help promote his wife Karen Olsson’s second novel All the Houses — as he wrote in an email, “I directed a ‘book trailer’ (not that anyone seems to know what a ‘book trailer’ is).” The novel concerns a family haunted by the father’s involvement in Iran-Contra. That makes for an excuse to playfully intercut between questions to Olsson (who sometimes cracks up at her inability to […]
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Watch: Breathless and How World War II Changed Film History
This is a solid nine-minute look at Breathless and how it grapples with Hollywood’s influence on the film industry. Beginning with Quentin Tarantino’s oft-noted quote that he “outgrew” Godard after being initially inspired to make movies by him, this video from The Nerdwriter breaks down how WWII led to an influx of Hollywood films in France, the way Breathless grapples with this legacy, the specter of Humphrey Bogart, Lacan’s mirror stage and much more. Hat-tip to David Hudson at Keyframe Daily.
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Trailer Watch: Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq
The idea of a movie about gun violence in Chicago structured as an update of Lysistrata may not make intuitive sense, but the trailer for Spike Lee’s forthcoming Chi-Raq (and Amazon Studios’ first foray into theatrical distribution) makes it immediately clear what you’re going to see. It’s a Spike Lee movie: there will be didactic politics, a people-mover shot, and a definite can-this-actually-work? factor. For more information, read this excellent recent interview with Lee.
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(Misleading) Trailer Watch: Anomalisa, Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s Stop-Motion Feature
Here we have a first trailer for Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s keenly anticipated stop-motion animation romance/drama/something Anomalisa. By all accounts, this trailer is wildly misleading about the movie’s depressive tone: on Twitter, Brick/Looper director Rian Johnson observed that “It’s a little like that recut The Shining trailer awhile back, which I think is great.” The movie comes out in limited NY/LA release on December 30, with a platform expansion to follow.
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Watch: Effectively, Spike Lee’s Feature-Length Animated Film For NBA 2K16
It’s been a busy year for Spike Lee, whose Da Sweet Blood of Jesus came out earlier this year and who will bookend the year with his Chicago gang violence film Chi-Raq, out December 4. It turns out that his feature film release count for the year is actually three if you put together all the cut scenes for NBA 2K16, which clock in at nearly two hours. Hat-tip to Nick Newman over at The Film Stage for sharing this odd little item. As he notes: It might make sense if Lee took the time to craft 10-20 minutes of generic cut scenes for a […]
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Watch: “Why Props Matter”
What are props, and how do they work? Rishi Kaneria’s video essay considers the many functions props serve: as symbols of death (The Godfather‘s oranges), as ways to transition from one scene to another (Lawrence of Arabia‘s famous match cut), as objects indelibly associated with their characters (Indiana Jones’ bullwhip), and — of course — as weapons.
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Watch: “Alfred Hitchcock’s Close-Ups”
Jorge Luengo Ruiz’s straightforwardly titled supercut breaks down Hitchcock’s close-ups (from Rebecca to Family Plot; the British films await their own supercut) by category: hands, money, letters, paintings. Brisk work.
