(Electrick Children world premiered at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival and was picked up for distribution by Phase 4 Films. It opens theatrically on Friday, March 8, 2013. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Oh, to read the description of a movie and go into it with one’s thickest guard up, anticipating some exercise in “indie quirk,” only to realize within seconds that, shame on you, that assumption couldn’t have been further from the truth. Rebecca Thomas’s debut feature, Electrick Children, shut me up right quick, for it becomes immediately evident that this is one of those lovely […]
Should filmmakers learn to code? That’s the question posed by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin in her introduction to a 12-part series beginning today at Filmmaker. And, amidst all of our discussion in our pages about DSLR cameras and crowdfunding and audience engagement strategies, it’s a question that we’ve contemplated too. We wouldn’t think of telling a director he or she doesn’t need to know anything about lenses, or sound design or dramatic lighting. So, as filmmaking begins to embrace transmedia — extending story beyond the film frame — why shouldn’t producers and directors know something about the tools […]
(Distributed by Cinema Guild, Leviathan opens at the IFC Center in New York City on Friday, March 1, 2013. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) A staggering thrill-ride of an experience, built on moments of astonishing cinematic immediacy, Leviathan marks a major leap forward in nonfiction filmmaking. It’s certainly not a film all viewers will respond to, but as someone who makes documentaries, I see Leviathan as the future. The progeny of direct cinema, experimental film and ethnography, Leviathan uses new cameras and an inventive technique to create something bracingly distinctive. Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, Leviathan […]
David Bowie and Tilda Swinton star as a retiring couple assaulted — literally — by vampiric celebrity culture in the latest from David Bowie. It’s directed by Floria Sigismondi, who is in fine form with this electrifyingly creepy clip. With the new Bowie album due out in a few weeks, you may have seen its wildposting campaign, in which its title, “The Next Day” is superimposed over a variety of advertising images. On its blog, CPH:DOX, which has paid homage to Bowie by naming an entire section after one of his songs (“Sound and Vision”), notes their own use of the same […]
The Oscars are not generally considered a crucial event for genre lovers; the inclusion of such films is often limited, and often ghettoized, relegated to technical awards only. This year there are several films in requisite categories like Makeup and Hairstyling, and Visual Effects (whose nominees include The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Avengers, Snow White and the Huntsman, and Prometheus). Another good category where one can snoop out genre fare is in Best Animated Film, and 2013 doesn’t disappoint, with the lovingly crafted and decidedly Gothic take on suburbia in ParaNorman and Tim Burton’s tale of a boy and […]
(Bestiaire had its World Premiere at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It is being distributed theatrically in America by KimStim and screens in L.A. at the Cinefamily, Feb. 21 – 27, 2013. ) The first animals we see in Bestiaire are humans, observing something with great attention. The scene resolves in a funny anti-climax: it’s revealed that they’re sketching in an art class, and all that intense focus is directed at a small, taxidermied deer. By starting his film looking at the viewer, director Denis Côté suggests that what we’re about to experience will be as much about ourselves and […]
In case you are living in a cave and missed it, the big news of last week was that RED is suing Sony. RED claims that Sony’s F65, F55 and F5 infringe on patents RED holds, specifically relating to REDCODE RAW. It appears that the issue may turn on the compression of a RAW video stream in the camera. Jim Jannard posted on the REDuser Forum: We are heavily invested in concepts, inventions, designs, development and manufacturing of RED cameras, REDRAY and the RED Projector. Each is unique and has motivated the industry to get better, for the benefit of […]
Imagining a future in which celebrity worship has become the new world order hardly strains the brain, but first-time filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral creates this scenario with such casual logic and vivid detail that very little imagination is required to make the leap from current reality to future absurdity. In this world, we no longer want to hear, as a society, that stars are just like us, we want them to be other, god-like. There is also a yearning to be close to them; the ritualistic collection of autographs or buying Kim Kardashian’s used hair dryer on eBay has morphed […]
(Porfirio world premiered at the 2011 Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. It opens theatrically in New York City at MoMA on Friday, February 8, 2013. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Though his stylistic vision might superficially call to mind filmmakers like Carlos Reygadas, Lucrecia Martel, and Yorgos Lanthimos, with Porfirio, Alejandro Landes carves a unique path all his own. Based on a too-strange-to-be-true story concerning a Colombian man named Porfirio Ramírez that made headlines back in 2005, Porfirio stars none other than the real Porfirio Ramírez himself. From the very first second that you see […]
As I learned from a piece by Andrew Leonard at Salon, at 12:22 AM last night a Netflix event was created in my household when I switched off Episode Four of the streaming video giant’s new series, House of Cards, and went to bed. Leonard’s event was caused when he stopped midway into the show’s first episode, but I watched the first two back to back before a digital datapoint was created. That event was triggered by me pausing the show to make dinner, a moment presumably reduced in significance by my subsequent reengagement with the series. If I do […]