Interviews
Interviews
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Gothams Tribute: Penélope Cruz
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Jason Guerrasio interviewed Vicky Cristina Barcelona star Penélope Cruz for our Gotham Independent Film Awards special section in the Fall ’08 issue. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is nominated for Best Actress (Penélope Cruz). Talking over the phone from London where she’s rehearsing her role in Rob Marshall’s film adaptation of the Tony Award-winning musical, Nine, Penélope Cruz sounds humbled when congratulated for being named one of this year’s Gotham Award Tributes, but […]
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Drawing From Memory
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed Waltz With Bashir writer-director Ari Folman for our Fall ’08 issue. Waltz With Bashir is nominated for Best Foreign Film. It’s been said that the job of the filmmaker is to put on screen things that have never been seen before. And while cinema is essentially an infant art form, these days there are still relatively few films that move into genuinely new territory. Waltz with Bashir, which […]
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Social Studies
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Brandon Harris interviewed The Class co-writer-director Laurent Cantet for our Fall ’08 issue. The Class is nominated for Best Foreign Film. Starting with 1999’s Human Resources, Laurent Cantet has quickly built an international reputation as France’s most socially engaged narrative filmmaker, crafting films that highlight the ever lingering issues of race and class in both France and, as in the case of his 2006 film Heading South, its former colony of […]
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Eye of the Storm
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Howard Feinstein interviewed Trouble The Water directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal for our Summer ’08 issue as well as the film’s subjects, Kim and Scott Rivers, in a sidebar to the piece. Trouble The Water is nominated for Best Documentary. Brooklynites Tia Lessin and Carl Deal had the near-perfect recipe for what I consider the near-perfect documentary: a unique situation, inimitable subjects, a strong but non-didactic political thrust and that […]
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Werner Herzog, Encounters at the End of the World
WERNER HERZOG AND D.P. PETER ZEITLINGER CAPTURE ANTARCTICA IN ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD. COURTESY THINKFILM. Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed Encounters at the End of the World director Werner Herzog for our Director Interviews section of the Website. Encounters at the End of the World is nominated for Best Documentary. For more than 40 years, Werner Herzog has been redrawing the map, both cinematically and geographically. He started making short […]
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Dancing in the Clouds: Director James Marsh on Man on Wire
James Marsh has wrestled before with subjects — both fictional and real life — whose obsessions have fueled eccentric and, at times, even extreme behavior. In The Burger and the King (1996), based on David Adler‘s book, he chronicled Elvis Presley‘s lifelong habit of compulsive eating. Wisconsin Death Trip (2000), based on the nonfiction book by Michael Lesy, traced the origins of a bizarre strain of murders, suicides and odd happenstances in a small Wisconsin community of the 1890s. And in his debut feature, The King (2005), which Marsh scripted with Milo Addica, he dramatized a story of misguided faith […]
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Director Ellen Kuras on The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed The Betrayal director Ellen Kuras for our Director Interviews section of the Website. The Betrayal is nominated for Best Documentary. THAVISOUK PHRASAVATH AND ORADY PHRASAVATH IN DIRECTOR ELLEN KURAS’ THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON). COURTESY CINEMA GUILD. Since she first came to prominence almost twenty years ago, Ellen Kuras has established herself as one of the most talented directors of photography working today. Film was not Kuras’ primary focus when […]
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Performance Driven
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. James Ponsoldt interviewed Rachel Getting Married director Jonathan Demme, as well as other principals from the film, to dissect the creation of the title character for our Fall ’08 issue. Rachel Getting Married is nominated for Best Actress (Anne Hathaway). Jonathan Demme has made a career out of revealing the humanity in oddballs, eccentrics, zealots and rock stars. As a storyteller, Demme doesn’t judge. He trusts that if you listen to […]
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No Vacancy
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Howard Feinstein interviewed the key principals of The Visitor for our Spring ’08 issue. The Visitor is nominated for Best Actor (Richard Jenkins). In 2005, Tom McCarthy, who has been acting for nearly 20 years, appeared in three films with strong political thrusts: Syriana; Good Night, and Good Luck; and Danny Leiner‘s underappreciated The Great New Wonderful. In The Station Agent (2003), his first feature as a director, however, McCarthy displayed […]
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2008 in Quotes
Last year, I put together a blog post with a taster of some quotes from Director Interviews I did in 2007 and I have now (somewhat belatedly) come up with a compilation of choice soundbites from this past year. Though in my thoughts on 2008 I expressed the opinion that it had been a below average year for cinema (at least in comparison with the high water mark of 2007), it has been a hugely enjoyable 12 months from my perspective as an interviewer. Any year in which you get to sit down with George Romero, Werner Herzog, Catherine Breillat, […]
