Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Watch: Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth
From the copyright notice to the ominous voiceover, the latest trailer for Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth plunges us into the world of ’60s/’70s arthouse psychological horror — mid-period Bergman, Polanski and Allen’s Interiors, for example. Here, Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men, Top of the Lake) retreats to the lakeside home of her best friend, played by Katherine Waterston (Inherent Vice), to recuperate after twin emotional jolts. There’s history, however — the lingering after effects of another weekend at this house spent one year earlier. Wrote Scott Foundas in Variety: The flashbacks in Queen of Earthh are like little Proustian […]
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Trailer Watch: Lenny Abrahamson’s Room
Fall festival season means trailers are dropping at an ever quickening pace, and here’s one that was recently announced as a TIFF premiere, Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank follow-up, Room. Based on the novel by Emma Donoghue, Room stars Brie Larson as a woman who raises her child in captivity after having been kidnapped at a young age. A24 will release the film on October 16.
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Trailer Watch: Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant, Partially Shot with an ARRI Alexa 65
The first trailer for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant, an Alaskan-wilderness-survival saga, is here. The major point of interest for the technically inclined is that the film was the first to make use of the ARRI Alexa 65, which boasts a 65mm sensor. The footage looks accordingly/appropriately shiny; opens Christmas Day.
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Watch: It’s A Mad Mad Mad Max Fury Road
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.
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Trailer Watch: David O. Russell’s Joy
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.
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Watch: Parallels in the Work of Yasujiro Ozu and Wes Anderson
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.
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Watch: Eye Contact in Satyajit Ray’s The Big City
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.
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Test Footage of the GoPro HERO4 Session
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 […]
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Trailer Watch: Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs
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.
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Watch: Ornette Coleman: Free Spaces
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.
