Issues
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Load & Play
THE HOUSE I LIVE IN Virgil – out now The definitive American documentary about the defining civil-rights issue of our time, Eugene Jarecki’s The House I Live In is a personal epic, a film that takes Jarecki’s relationship with an African-American family, the matriarch of whom used to be his house cleaner as a child, and uses it as a springboard to investigate the dark secret in the American heart that is our disastrous, 40-year-old drug war. Harrowing and sublime, The House I Live In is aided by a Greek-chorus-like narration from ex-crime reporter and The Wire auteur David Simon. […]
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The Day Before: Ryan Coogler on Fruitvale Station
On Jan. 1, 2009, two hours after the New Year’s stroke of midnight, a Bay Area Rapid Transit officer fired upon and killed an unarmed Oscar Grant on the platform at Oakland’s Fruitvale Station. Grant had been returning home to East Bay from San Francisco with friends when a fight broke out in the subway car. Cops pulled a number of people off the train, and with Grant face down and restrained, an officer named Johannes Mehserle shot him in the back. Later, Mehserle would say he meant to draw his Taser instead of his pistol. The incident was recorded […]
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Do No Harm: Lana Wilson and Martha Shane on After Tiller
While making After Tiller, Lana Wilson and Martha Shane struggled to get support from granting agencies cautious about supporting a film about such a hot-button topic as third-trimester abortion. In response to the pair’s bid for support, one major film grant organization said, “We’re waiting to see where this movie comes down.” Or, in other words, “We can’t support the film unless we support the way you depict this contentious issue.” The genius of After Tiller is that it doesn’t “come down” anywhere. It doesn’t make a case or take sides. At a time when documentaries about major political and […]
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Outlaw Country
David Lowery made waves last year in the independent film world with the news that Ain’t Them Bodies Saints — the follow-up to his little-seen $12,000 feature film St. Nick (2009) — had attracted the stellar cast of Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck and Ben Foster. It quickly became one of the year’s most anticipated independent films, premiering at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Critic’s Week. The film begins with a robbery and shootout, and a young couple torn apart. Bob Muldoon (Affleck) is sent to prison, leaving his pregnant girlfriend Ruth Guthrie (Mara) to raise their daughter alone […]
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¡Viva La Revolución!
A few months ago I went to the Los Angeles premiere of a horror film, Aftershock, directed by Nicolás Lopéz and produced by Eli Roth. Roth stars as an American who travels to Chile to visit local friends, but what starts as a romantic comedy about a trio of losers trying to get laid shifts dramatically and horrifically when a massive earthquake hits. Roth, in a khaki suit, plaid shirt and blue tie, looked more the producer than director of horror films such as Hostel and the upcoming The Green Inferno. He introduced Lopéz with generous praise. Roth had known […]
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Super 8
James Turrell While a visit to James Turrell’s private, Arizona-based Roden Crater project remains on every art obsessive’s bucket list, the optical mysteries of this groundbreaking artist can be more easily viewed this summer in a monumental three-museum retrospective. Visit the Guggenheim in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the L.A. County Museum of Art to experience Turrell’s indescribable, light-based sculptures. Accidental Tech Podcast Developers, consumer tech geeks and, particularly, obsessive Mac fans, there’s a new podcast for you. Three developers and tech journalists (Marco Arment, Casey Liss and John Siracusa) who previously found their home on […]
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The Kids from Kids, Savages, the Internet, Screenwriting, Soderbergh, Mellow Pages and More: Sunday Links
For Narratively, Carolyn Rothstein revisits the kids from Kids, 20 years later, in “Legends Never Die.” Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson are stars, Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter have passed away, and the others are living their lives in diverse and at times unexpected ways. As her interviewees tell it, Kids was not just about people but a city: The kids say the film was accurate, except for the most fantastical stuff. There’s no denying they weren’t sober during filming. Even the scene with Javier Nunez, at fourteen, by far the youngest of the skate crew, and three other little […]
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Tribeca 2013 Critic’s Notebook #3: On The Margins
It’s easy to feel cheated at film festivals, especially ones that charge $18 per ticket. (Does Tribeca still do that?) You couldn’t get into this screening or you missed that party or the awards because you couldn’t find a cab or had to file some copy. The publicist you have a crush on just isn’t that into you. Cry me a river. And then the awards have been given, the parties have been had, the distribution panel nameplates thrown in the trash. The clock is ticking, always, and you can never see or do everything. Funny, when you’re young, you […]
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Meeting Ingmar Bergman
“Dear David, the important thing is you told me the truth.” — Ingmar Bergman Early 1964 “It’s Paul Kohner. Do you want to talk to him?” asked my assistant Peggy. Why not? Paul, who was born in Germany and worked for several American studios in Europe in the ’30s, was a highly respected agent in Hollywood representing mostly talent born or based in Europe. The good news with Paul was that you never knew what he might have up his sleeve, since his representation was reasonably unpredictable. The other good news was that he was on the phone from Los […]
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True/False Film Festival 2013
This was my fourth year attending Columbia, Missouri’s documentary-oriented True/False Film Festival, which this time celebrated its 10th anniversary — a number calling for reflection, with the attendant risk of self-congratulation. A commemorative book was released, and nearly every screening had its reserved tickets sold out (ticket sales were up about 5,000 from last year, placing the festival at around 42,000 advance tickets sold), but signs of hubris or overcrowding and goodwill-fraying logistical problems were minimal. My attending experience has remained consistent: commendably adventurous programming during the day, a sort of free-for-all of critics, filmmakers and college students running around […]
