Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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TRAILER WATCH: MATT WALSH’S “THE HIGH ROAD”
As one of the four founding members of seminal New York improv group The Upright Citizens Brigade, Matt Walsh has been thinking on his feet for years. And with The High Road, his directorial debut, he’s taking that skill to a new playing field, crafting a feature-length “improv movie.” Throughout the shoot, Walsh presented his actors with scene outlines and plot points, but left it to them to fill in the details and the dialogue. In lesser hands this might prove a recipe for listlessness, but with a cast that included improv stalwarts such as Ed Helms, Lizzy Caplan, Zach […]
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VIDEO: “ARBITRAGE” DIRECTOR NICHOLAS JARECKI
Stephen and Patrick from the National Film Society are back with one last Sundance interview. And they’re going in style, sitting down with Nicholas Jarecki, director of the hedge-fund thriller Arbitrage, for what Jarecki refers to as “without a doubt the weirdest interview I’ve ever done.” One of the big hits of this year’s festival, Arbitrage sold to Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions for a deal reportedly in the $2.5 million range. Video Highlight: Jarecki hilariously describing some unexpected sexual tension during his first meeting with actor Richard Gere. Watch that, and more, below:
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TRAILER WATCH: “EASTBOUND AND DOWN” SEASON THREE
HBO has released the trailer for the third and final season of its Danny McBride-starring comedy, Eastbound and Down. Created by Jody Hill (The Foot Fist Way) and David Gordon Green (George Washington, The Sitter), the first two seasons tracked fowl-mouthed, washed-up baseball icon Kenny Powers (McBride) as he moved back to his hometown and courted success in Mexico, respectively. This year, Powers is headed to Miami Beach, where he’s making a last ditch effort to climb back up to the majors. Returning along with McBride are many of the show’s supporting players, including John Hawkes, Will Ferrell, and The […]
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NAVIGATING OUR ROTTERDAM PREMIERE
February is going to be a busy month. We are getting ready to premiere two new films simultaneously, one at Rotterdam the other in Berlin. The first, The Patron Saints, is a hyperrealistic portrait of a nursing home and its inhabitants, and will have its international premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The second, our narrative feature Francine, a film about a recently released prison inmate with a complicated affinity for animals (played by Melissa Leo), heads to the Berlin Film Festival for its world premiere in the festival’s Forum Section. Preparing for festivals is a lot of […]
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VIDEO: TERENCE NANCE AND NAMIK MINTER OF “AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY”
Sundance 2012 is in the wind, but Stephen and Patrick from the National Film Society are back with another interview they filmed during the festival. This time out, the duo sit down with director Terence Nance (An Oversimplification of Her Beauty) and actress Namik Minter. Minter and Nance, who spent over half a decade readying Oversimplification, are good sports, answering Stephen and Patrick’s questions about their favorite part of being in love, their least favorite part of being in love, and how to get into Sundance parties. Watch the interview:
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The Blue Velvet Project, #73
Second #3431, 57:11 Outside of church (St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, in Wilmington, North Carolina), Jeffrey and Sandy prepare to leave. The scene in question is a fulcrum point in postmodern cinema: are Jeffrey’s lament about the presence of evil in the world, Sandy’s monologue about the robins bringing light, and the church itself, shaded with sincerity or irony? For many contemporary reviewers, the “hokey,” melodramatic acting was the sign of a cold tactician at work. In his Washington Post review, Paul Attanasio wrote that “Lynch likes to use wooden acting as a distancing technique, or a kind of joke.” […]
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Sundance 2012: Trophies And Laurels
Sundance announced their award winners on Saturday night and, as usual, the festival’s mission of inclusivity was in full bloom; over 25 films were handed a prize from the podium, which is great for everyone involved. There is no harm in recognizing great work, and the more Sundance laurels on trailers and posters going forward, the better for all, but given the festival’s reliance on very specific categories and competitions (World Dramatic, World Documentary, U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, Next, Midnight, Spotlight, New Frontiers and Shorts), several great films went unrecognized. I am not sure if the festival’s programming categories are […]
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“BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD” TOPS SUNDANCE AWARD WINNERS
With Sundance wrapping up tomorrow, this year’s award winners were announced at a ceremony tonight in Park City. Perhaps unsurprising considering the amount of critical acclaim it’s been garnering this past week, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild took home the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize. Meanwhile, Eugene Jarecki’s War on Drugs critique The House I Live In won this year’s Documentary Grand Jury Prize, and Mark O’Brien’s crowd-pleasing drama The Surrogate took home the Dramatic Audience Award. The full list of winners: Grand Jury Prize, Dramatic: Beasts of the Southern Wild Grand Jury Prize, Documentary: The House I Live […]
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PAUL SIMON, JAMES MURPHY AND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE MODERN ARTIST
Does the culture make the artist, or does the artist make the culture? Two Sundance documentaries — Shut Up And Play the Hits, which follows James Murphy through the last concert of his band LCD Soundsystem in 2010, and Under African Skies, Joe Berlinger’s history of Paul Simon’s seminal Graceland – might seem to be unlikely bedfellows. Both films are brilliantly executed portraits of musicians walking the tightrope of cultural relevance and personal expression. The differences between the two stories illustrate fundamental changes in our popular culture over the last 30 years. Both films seek to explore “a moment in […]
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“CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT” RINGS IN SUNDANCE’S YEAR OF THE DRAGON
The Year of the Dragon calls for boldness, passion and power. What better way for Sundance to usher in the new year than a dragon dance up and down the aisles of the Yarrow Theatre? Cavorting to drums and cymbals, the dragons were introducing the world premiere of the documentary, China Heavyweight. China Heavyweight is the second feature-length doc from Montreal’s Yung Chang, who helmed the award-winning Up The Yangtze. Chang follows coach Qi Moxiang and his two boxers, Zongli He and Yunfei Miao, in southwestern China as they train for the championships. The area they come from is poor, […]
