Just announced as the Opening Night film of the New York Film Festival, Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk dramatizes Philippe Petit’s 1971 high wire balancing act between the Twin Towers. Staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit, The Walk was described by NYFF festival director Kent Jones as “a classic heist movie in the tradition of The Asphalt Jungle or Bob le flambeur” but with access in lieu of money as the objective. The Walk is set to open (in IMAX) worldwide in October.
It’s hard to nail a trailer for a satire that stars such a gratingly self-obsessed character as Greta Gerwig’s Brooke in Mistress America, and this first look from Fox Searchlight sells Baumbach’s latest film as far more ‘quirky’ than it actually is. After seeing it at Sundance, I found it to be a rather clever, entertaining critique of the half-hearted do-it-all millennial ethos, so you can expect much more out of the screwball comedy than this teaser suggests. Mistress America will be released in theaters August 14.
In this video, director Nathan Silver breaks down a dinner scene from his film Uncertain Terms (currently playing in New York and Los Angeles, as well as being available for streaming on Fandor) two ways. In the first part, he shows where each person in the conversation sits around the table, freeze-framing each shot as he cuts to another person; it’s an interesting lesson in seeing how editing for film space doesn’t necessarily bear much relationship to literal space. In the second part, we see the scene uninterrupted as Silver talks through his decisions.
Sometimes it’s good to state the seemingly obvious, so Vashi Nedomansky has performed a public service in assembling this brief video showing how centered and symmetrical framing helps guide viewers’ eyes through the many cuts of Mad Max: Fury Road. Audio of John Seale discussing director George Miller’s constant instructions as to where to keep the camera’s crosshairs in each shot clarifies the point being made visually. Read more at Nedomansky’s site; thanks to The Playlist for the heads-up.
Video essayist Tony Zhou recently griped about the preponderance of Fincher, Scorsese, Anderson, Nolan, etc. dissections, and has since turned his efforts to more unusual facets in film history. His latest video, for instance, explores the role of the chair — or, an extension of the production designer — in storytelling. With a wide range of clips, he interrogates the furniture as a conduit for a person, a situation, and the filmic context.
Here’s the first trailer for James Ponsoldt’s David Foster Wallace biopic, The End of the Tour, which picked up several nice notices out of Sundance, if not from his family and literary estate. Starring Jason Segel as Wallace and Jesse Eisenberg as the Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky, the two-hander winds through a leg of the former’s book tour for Infinite Jest. A24 will release the film on July 31.
Project Catalyst, an “innovative transmedia initiative that fuses creative community building with cinema, art, music, and technology” and is aimed at multicultural communities was pitched at an NYU Cinema Research Institute event last month, hosted at AOL Build. In the video above, learn how Great intends this smartphone app to connect audiences with filmmakers in original ways and in order to support diverse content.
With Robert Zemeckis back in the live-action world and James Cameron taking his time to gear up Avatars 2-4, there’s not been much discussion lately of motion capture. That doesn’t mean it’s gone away, and this video from Vice’s The Creator Project is a nicely succinct overview of what motion capture’s evolved from and where it’s going next; the participation of the technicians behind the technology is a big plus. The baby project described and shown at the end may just be the one that crosses the uncanny valley.
You’ve probably heard about the latest push to finally produce a finished, edited version of Orson Welles’ uncompleted final film, The Other Side of the Wind. In support of an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach have taped a video message urging you to just contribute already. Unusually for the famously controlling Anderson, he appears to have shot the video handheld selfie style.
Given the overwhelming surplus of articles about David Letterman’s retirement, career and final show tonight, there barely needs to be anything said here. Bill Murray was the guest on last night’s penultimate show, which is fitting, as he was the first guest on Letterman’s first NBC show in 1982. They antagonized each other, watched a panda video and then Murray performed Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical,” which is basically everything you need for good television.