Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: “The Chase,” A Supercut of Great Chase Scenes From Bullitt to Fury Road
Taking its earliest footage from 1968’s Bullitt, generally considered the origin point for the modern car chase, and its most recent footage from this summer’s Mad Max: Fury Road, Michael Mirasol’s very fine supercut breaks down chase sequences into their common constituent parts. Starting with many POV shots of the road racing before a speeding car, “The Chase” builds to a steady compare-and-contrast stream of head-on collisions, heavily-braked 360s and impossible vehicular leaps.
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Watch: An Impressive Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki
Animator “dono” is responsible for this impressive super-montage of Hayao Miyazaki’s work. Recreating Miyazaki’s settings with the animation software Blender, dono then places the 2D characters into this 3D amplification of their original worlds. It’s technically adroit and, if you’re a fan, quite lovely.
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Kickstart David Felix Sutcliffe and Lyric R. Cabral’s (T)ERROR
A shocking exposé on the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts, David Felix Sutcliffe and Lyric R. Cabral’s (T)ERROR is in danger of not seeing an official release due exorbitant legal and insurance fees. In profiling a longtime informant, Saeed “Shariff” Torres, Sutcliffe and Cabral demonstrate enough evidence to suggest that the FBI might invent terrorists just as much as it prevents them. The film is an essential conversation piece, and one that deserve to reach the widest audience as possible, so please consider donating to the Kickstarter to fund the theatrical release.
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Trailer Watch: Jake Mahaffy’s Free in Deed
Jake Mahaffy appeared on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2005 following his Tarkovsky-esque black-and-white (shot on a hand cranked camera, no less) tale of American collapse, War. His very different 2008 feature Wellness won the Grand Prize at SXSW and now, seven years later, Mahaffy is back with the Venice-premiering Free in Deed. Produced by Mike Ryan, it’s easily the film I’m anticipating most on the Fall festival circuit. From the film’s Facebook page: Set in the distinctive world of storefront churches and based on actual events, Free in Deed depicts one man’s attempts to perform a miracle. When […]
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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.
