Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Marion Cotillard Added to Gotham Honorees
Last week it was announced that Matt Damon, David O. Russell and Jeff Skoll will be presented with career tributes at the 22nd Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards™. Today, Marion Cotillard is joining their ranks. Cotillard is a critically acclaimed actor, who has built up an enviable filmography, working with some of the industry’s most renowned directors, domestically and abroad. “Marion Cotillard is not only a delight to watch, she is one of the most talented women working in cinema around the world today,” said Joana Vicente, Executive Director of the IFP. “Her acting choices are always challenging and rewarding, and her performances […]
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Ursula Meier and Agnes Godard on Sister
Switzerland’s submission for the best international picture is Ursula Meier’s Sister, starring the stunning and earthy Léa Seydoux as a Swiss hot mess and Kacey Mottet Klein as her weedy 12-year-old brother who supports them both through petty thefts. It’s a subtle, complex film that avoids obvious polarities of class, family, even landscape. As director Meier said to me recently of the mountain resort setting, and about finding her way into the script by focusing on the location of the ski lift cable cars, “It’s the place where he belongs, between two worlds. And it’s also the rhythm of the […]
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Lady Vengeance: V/H/S — Horror Movie Litmus Test
The most important thing to know about V/H/S is that it is more than the sum of its gimmicky-on-paper parts, which include found footage film, genre anthology, and snuffy homage to the recent history of lo-fi horror. Although it is not entirely free of the inherent unevenness of the omnibus film, V/H/S works surprisingly well as a whole because of consistency in the aesthetic, clever writing, and tongue-in-cheek humor across multiple directors’ vignettes. The setup involves a group of 20-something delinquents whose primary activity is shooting prank videos of a slightly racier nature than the likes of Jackass. When they […]
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VIFF Critics Notebook #1
My fifth year in a row of attending the Vancouver International Film Festival in my hometown has been unique thus far—I’m at the precise halfway point of the 16-day event as I write this—in that it’s the only time that I’ve already caught many of the films playing thanks to my trip to Locarno in August. This has afforded me the freedom to venture beyond the “festival-of-festivals” programming of obligatory Cannes leftovers and such, to explore, among other things, the Dragons & Tigers section for which VIFF is renowned. For those that don’t know, Dragons & Tigers is a long-running […]
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When Should You Give Up, a Postscript
Remember “When Should You Give Up?” It was one of our most commented upon posts here at Filmmaker, an extended conversation about the practicalities as well as psychological ramifications of quitting. Quitting a specific project, that is, not filmmaking in general. The post was inspired by a post by author Edan Lepucki over at the Millions titled “Shutting the Drawer: What Happens When a Book Doesn’t Sell?” Lepucki wrote about how, when the novel she had been working on for so long didn’t sell, she simply packed it in and started working on another. No flogging it for years, exploring […]
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Dennis Dortch on the Secrets of Web Success
Dennis Dortch is the director of the Sundance film A Good Day to Be Black & Sexy, available to watch on Netflix now. He also has created a veritable empire on YouTube with his channel Black & Sexy TV consisting of two successful web series, The Couple and The Number, and two more on the way. He and his team are currently crowdfunding a film based on The Couple. In this interview he talks about the difference between creating a film and creating content for the Web, how to juggle multiple web series at a time and how to keep […]
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In Production: August: Osage County, A Most Wanted Man, Calvary and Clear History
“In Production” is a regular column which focuses on notable independent films that are currently shooting. If you would like your film to be included in this space, please send an email to nick@filmmakermagazine.com Principal photography has commenced on the star-studded film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer-prize winning play August: Osage County. Directed by John Wells (The Company Men), the domestic drama focuses on the Weston family who reunite after their alcoholic patriarch mysteriously disappears. Meryl Street plays the explosive, pill-popping matriarch Violet, taking over from Tony-award winner Deanna Dugan in the play’s Broadway run. August: Osage County also stars […]
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Watch “25 New Face” Julia Pott’s Awesome New Short The Event
When I interviewed Julia Pott a few months back for her “25 New Faces” profile, she told me about the new film she was working on, a short about love and the apocalypse, based on a poem, which she had been commissioned to make by Channel 4. The Event, part of the Random Acts series, is Pott at her best, with her fierce imagination, beautiful hand-drawn animation and tragicomic sensibility colliding to make something really special. The Event from Julia Pott on Vimeo.
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Five Questions with Fred Won’t Move Out Director Richard Ledes
In Fred Won’t Move Out, writer/director Richard Ledes digs into one of American film’s most fertile fields by tapping the improvisational abilities of Elliott Gould. Ledes last directed Gould for the 2008 corporate-crime thriller The Caller, but when he decided to do a smaller, more personal story inspired by his own family, Ledes turned once more to the veteran actor’s versatile skills. The impetus for the film came from the director’s own experience with his aging, infirm parents and their inability to maintain their lives in the house where Ledes had grown up. The characters were inspired by the members […]
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Grouping Films at The New York Film Festival
Grouping is an excellent organizing tool during a film festival — mapping the films and intimating their relationships. The only problem is that, for the reader, you run the risk of relinquishing the element of surprise. Take, for example, Our Children (pictured above), a New York Film Festival main slater by Belgian director Joahim Lafosse. (The original French title is A Perdre la Raison.) It was not invited to Toronto, which has at least ten times the number of films as the New York Film Festival. What differentiates Our Children from the other selections? The most obvious is fragmentation. Short […]
