Shared title adjective aside, what do It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Mad Max: Fury Road have in common? Ezequiel López’s video yokes the Fury Road trailer’s audio to selected mayhem from the 1963 super-comedy, finding lots of running, jumping, water-drinking and ladder-swinging similarities.
Originally a spec script from Bridesmaids co-writer Annie Mumolo, Joy received a top to bottom rewrite from David O. Russell before production, and the results appear to be somewhat darker than his last two screwball jabs, American Hustle and The Silver Linings Playbook. In any event, here is your first look at the rags to riches tale of Joy Mangano, inventor of the Miracle Mop, as played by Russell regular Jennifer Lawrence.
At first blush, the filmmakers Yasujiro Ozu and Wes Anderson would appear to have little in common, but this video essay from Anna Catley attempts to look past the more superficial aspects of their respective oeuvres to find striking and surprising similarities. From symmetrical frames to a faithful allegiance to familial strife and more in between, the filmic parallels are far more numerous than you may expect.
In one of my favorite recent video essays, “Rohmer’s Guessing Games,” Kevin B. Lee explores the POV shots and blocking in A Summer’s Tale as a means of muddling character motivations. The above inquiry, from Joel Bocko, into eye contact throughout Satyajit Ray’s The Big City as a mode of character development, makes for a rather nice companion piece, and also a nice reminder of how storytelling is consistent in the finer details.
Today GoPro announced the release of their first brand new camera in nine years: the GoPro HERO4 Session. The reviews trickling in thus far are fairly positive, despite noting the trade offs that accompany a design that is 40% smaller than the current HERO4 line. (For starters, the camera will reorient itself based off a 180 degree axis, but it cannot rotate at a 90 degree angle.) On the plus side, the Session comes waterproof (up to 33 feet) straight out of the box, and has an in-camera microphone that drains as you move from liquid to air. It’s available July 12 for […]
Last seen as the source of much squabbling in the Sony hacks, here is the first official look at Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender. Sorkin, who scripted, seems to be giving the late entrepreneur a similar treatment to his handling of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, painting Jobs as a ruthless CEO. Steve Wozniak, who is portrayed by Seth Rogen in the film, has already weighed in, claiming “[he feels] a lot of the real Jobs in the trailer, although a bit exaggerated.” It opens October 9.
Shirley Clarke’s filmography is witnessing a much needed resuscitation thanks to the efforts of Milestone Films, and one specific title, Ornette: Made in America, is of particular pertinence given the untimely passing of its subject, Ornette Coleman. Kevin B. Lee has taken Clarke’s ever unusual documentary portrait — filmed over the course of 20 years — and divvied its often psychedelic tinged frames over a widescreen to analyze the visual patterns and rhythms Clarke achieves with her offbeat editing style. Watch above.
25 New Faces Michael Tyburski and Ben Nabors have teamed up yet again on their latest short film, Actor Seeks Role. Starring Alex Karpovsky as an aspiring method actor who resorts to medical acting in lieu of a silver screen gig, Actor Seeks Role is a witty, efficient rumination on the downsides of a theatrical affliction. Watch above.
Anyone who’s seen Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack knows that the Angulo brothers have a flair for costuming, and those talents are on full display in Mukunda Angulo’s Mirror Heart, a rather abstract short film made for Vice. Billed as “an imaginative tale about a cast of dreamlike characters who unify around the necessity to create,” Mirror Heart also employs the voice acting of a handful of the brothers as that nagging, negative portion of one’s creative conscience. Check out the short above and a making of video at the link.
Chicago filmmakers Jerzy Rose and Halle Butler are currently fundraising for their feature length satire Neighborhood Food Drive, about two egomaniacal restauranteurs and their unpaid intern as they throw a series of lavish and disastrous fundraisers. Below, Rose interviews his casting director Samy Burch about the process of pulling together both professional actors and otherwise for a cast headed up by Bruce Bundy and Lyra Hill.–SS Jerzy Rose: I have a vague memory of you telling me, after you’d seen Crimes Against Humanity, that you’d love to help me cast my next movie. I followed up one year later. I think I simply asked “How […]