This 1998 interview with Paul Thomas Anderson has been online for a while; credit to The Seventh Art for finally bringing it to my attention. Talking with fellow director Mike Figgis after only two features under his belt, a supremely unfazed Anderson eats pizza while holding forth on Boogie Nights‘ origins as a short film equally inspired by Zelig and This is Spinal Tap, shares a lot of opinions about inadequate porn performances, discusses a written-but-never-filmed sex scene for Don Cheadle’s character, and generally shows almost no self-consciousness about saying whatever he wants. Emblematic of the era sentence: “I was actually with Quentin Tarantino the other […]
The sad news of Mike Nichols’ death at age 83 had me searching for something beyond the usual The Graduate highlight reel that would illustrate what seems to me like his greatest directorial virtue: the ability to keep a tonal straight face when confronted with material whose comic or dramatic potential could quickly push matters way over the top. This Catch-22 clip serves the purpose: the famous speech explaining what Catch-22 actually is is dwarfed by the airfield it takes place on, with jets and vehicles surrounding Yossarian (Alan Arkin) and Doc Daneeka (Jack Gilford). The choreography, both human and mechanical, is immaculate and […]
A considerable crowd of critical praise has coalesced around the work of Josephine Decker, most notably this “A Star is Born” piece from her longtime champion Richard Brody. Kevin B. Lee at Fandor put forth a more tempered assessment of Butter on the Latch and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (ending their week run at the IFP Media Center today), but he also compiled this beautiful, elliptical montage of the imagery in the two films. Narrative and/or stylistic misgivings aside, it is undoubtedly clear that Decker buttresses her films with a visceral atmosphere, achieved through fine details, ethereal lighting and playful camerawork, […]
In this Q&A from a recent Toronto screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, stars Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood are in fine form as they take to the stage to discuss why all the actors in the film were Canadian (Canadian actors didn’t need visas to live in the UK at the time), trade interpretations of what that ending means, and share a plethora of production anecdotes. Other highlights include Dullea’s reminiscences of how he came to be involved in the sequel 2010 and the two recalling Gene Hackman and Warren Beatty’s post-screening reaction: Beatty told the pair they were […]
Blood can’t be any other color, but there are plenty of things — like spacesuits and bathroom walls — that can. In this punchy, to-the-point supercut, Rishi Kaneria draws from 2001, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, Barry Lyndon and other Kubrick films to make a case for the director’s love of the crimson.
This new video by Sergei Prokhnevskiy follows up on his initial “20 Useful Tricks in After Effects You May Not Know About” tutorial from a few weeks back. This time he tackles another 22 aspects of the video effects software, keystroke commands and all: how to find missing effects, footage or fonts, flexible masking options and so on. Nothing fancy here, just clear audio explanations illustrated on-screen.
Pulp fans, take note: via Pitchfork, US viewers can stream the entirety of Florian Habicht’s new documentary about them for free. Part concert film from their 2012 reunion, part tribute to and investigation of their Sheffield roots: enough said. Miss the window of opportunity? It enters limited release on Wednesday and is available for digital download starting Friday.
Footage from Sony’s PXW-FS7 new camera is starting to make its way online. Michael Murie ran down its tech specs in September, and now we have this intriguing test from DP Ed David, who put together this short video of footage captured at 180 fps. As he told No Film School, David enjoyed the “incredibly ergonomic, small, and intuitive” camera but had some trouble figuring out waveforms and with the non-intuitive zebra feature.
Within an overly crowded film festival landscape, it takes something special for a new event to stand out. Such is the case with New York’s newest festival, scheduled for February, 2015: the New York City Drone Film Festival. While the FAA’s drone filming rules are still being developed, festival founder and cinematographer Randy Scott Slavin intends to use the event to celebrate robotic aerial filmmaking and to change the public’s perception of drones. He told the New York Post’s Chris Perez, ““These flying robots are amazing and exciting technologies, but because the word drone is so controversial, its constantly being […]
Sometimes enemies can be misperceived as friends… and vice versa. From Portland animation studio HouseSpecial is this short, A Tale of Momentum and Inertia, directed by Kameron Gates showing why the “shoot first, ask questions later” approach isn’t always the best. Gates has previously contributed effects works to such films as Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, King Kong and Hellboy. The short is currently on the festival circuit, but you can watch it above.