Interviews
Interviews
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Juno Temple: Indie’s Ingenue
Juno Temple is on the move. For an interview regarding her loaded roster of new roles, in films as disparate as Killer Joe, Jack and Diane, The Dark Knight Rises, and Little Birds (released this Friday), the 23-year-old blonde Briton is calling from a car, which is shuffling her from one L.A. commitment to the next. “I’m sorry, I might lose you,” she says through a bit of static, shortly before the call is indeed dropped. But within moments, Temple is back on the other end again, her coo of an accent as beguiling as her onscreen presence. The whole […]
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Kleber Mendonca Filho, Neighboring Sounds
One of the year’s most startling debuts, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds is a queasily effective portrait of a society undergoing dynamic change. Unfolding over the course of a few weeks in the perpetually sunny Brazilian metropolis of Recife, the film centers on several families in one upscale block which is surrounded by new development. Yet the perpetual noise of high rise construction isn’t the only thing haunting the denizens of this seemingly comfortable and manicured urban space. Fear of crime and just-under-the-surface racial tension takes its toll on everyone in unspoken ways. Even as fading reminders of Brazil’s ever-present […]
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Alex Buono on Cinematography
Alex Buono, the cinematographer for the Saturday Night Live film unit, recently spoke at an event in Boston. (See: Alex Buono: Shooting for Saturday Night Live.) In addition to discussing his work on Saturday Night Live, he also talked about gear, technology, and his philosophy of shooting. Part of the reason Alex gave the presentation was to demonstrate and talk about the Canon C300, but he was careful to stress, as Roger Deakins said, “Cinematography is more than a camera,” or as Alex put it: “Filmmaking is not a science project.” Here are some of the topics he touched on: […]
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“Blue Velvet Project” Creator Nicholas Rombes
One year ago, Nicholas Rombes proposed “The Blue Velvet Project” to me at Filmmaker. For 12 months, three times a week, he would scrutinize a single frame from David Lynch’s modern classic, looking both inside and outside of its aspect ratio for correspondences, allusions and meanings. For Rombes, it would be another in his “time-based” critical film essays — appropriately so, for it was because of another of these columns, 10/40/70 at The Rumpus, that I discovered his writing in the first place. (In fact, I interviewed him previously about this other fascinating project.) Nick had contributed to Filmmaker before […]
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Chris Kenneally on Side by Side
Over the past few decades, film’s iron-clad grip on the motion industry has gradually been chipped away by emerging digital technology. Yet it hasn’t necessarily been a smooth transition. Traditional celluloid film has gone largely unchanged as a medium for a century and has been the canvas for works from Casablanca and Apocalypse Now to this summer’s blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises. As the saying goes: old habits die hard. In this case, for good reason, a film produces a picture quality, texture, and dynamic range unparalleled by digital. But digital technology has continued to make leaps and bounds in […]
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Alex Buono: Shooting for Saturday Night Live
Alex Buono is perhaps best known for his work with the Saturday Night Live Film Unit. He shot the current opening for SNL, as well as many of the fake commercials seen on the show, but his passion is documentary and making independent films. “I’m always trying to get the next one off the ground,” says Buono, “and SNL, as much as I like it, it’s a lot of fun and I really like who I’m working with, [but] it’s this great day job I do while I’m trying to get a movie [going].” Most recently, Alex worked on the […]
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Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Chicken with Plums
Chicken with Plums focuses on a deeply sensitive Iranian musician named Nasser Ali (Mathieu Amalric), and the film, from writer-directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, makes clear from the start that viewers shouldn’t be expecting anything like a storybook ending. Having watched helplessly as his violin is smashed before his eyes, Nasser decides he’s had it with this life. And so into bed he climbs, determined to die, lest he face another year with Faranguisse (Maria de Medeiros), the wife he’s never loved. As the days go by, his mind wanders from the past to the present, and to the […]
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Richard Trank, It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl
Studiously researched, It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodore Herzl reveals the life that informed Austro-Hungarian journalist-playwright Theodor Herzl’s creation of the Zionist Movement, which ultimately led to the founding of the state of Israel. Directed by Richard Trank, the film uses Herzl’s diaries and photographs, correspondence and drama, as well as a limited but effective pool of other historical artifacts to recreate the dynamic world of central European Jewry that Herzl sprang from, while explaining the rapid development of his politic cause in a way that will resonate with both laymen and history buffs alike. Narrated by Ben […]
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Director Aurora Guerrero on Mosquita Y Mari
Though Aurora Guerrero made Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” list in 2006, the director behind this year’s Sundance-premiering, award-winning Mosquita y Mari – which most recently took both Outstanding First U.S. Dramatic Feature Film, as well as Outstanding Actress in a U.S. Dramatic Feature Film for its lead Fenessa Pineda, at Outfest – was a welcome new face to me when I caught the film earlier this year. A tale of two Chicanas coming of age in working-class L.A., Guerrero’s feature debut is breathtaking in its understatement, less your typical “queer flick” than a continuation of the […]
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Mikkel Norgaard, Klown
Long considered one of the funniest shows in Scandinavia, the television series Klown features Danish comedians Casper Christensen and Frank Hvam playing Curb Your Enthusiasm-style variations on themselves, getting into hysterically awkward encounters with friends and strangers, loved ones and frenemies, including other Danish celebrities such as actress Iben Hjejle (High Fidelity, The Boss of It All) and Jørgen Leth (the co-director, with Lars von Trier, of The Five Obstructions). Running for six seasons, it propelled the comic duo to the heights of Danish celebrity and mainstream popularity. Now there is a film version of Klown directed by Mikkel Nørgaard, who conceived and directed much of […]
