It was a calculated move on Brett Gaylor’s part to not only make a movie about fair use, intellectual property and copyright, but to make a movie that you could dance to. It begins as a case study of the mashup musician Girl Talk, whose music is comprised of thousands of samples from artists as disparate as Madonna, Elton John, Rihanna, the Jackson 5 and Muddy Waters (and doesn’t hesitate to try to make you dance). Then Gaylor jumps off into his Remixer’s Manifesto, the points of which are: 1. Culture Always Builds on the Past. 2. The Past Always […]
If there were to be a mumblecore parade, Joe Swanberg would be the man in the shiny red convertible, waving to onlookers and trailing a team of baton twirlers in his wake. His films – LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights & Weekends – have helped to define a genre that was never supposed to be a genre at all. Alexander the Last, his latest, was executive produced by Noah Baumbach and stars Jess Weixler (Teeth), Barlow Jacobs (Great World of Sound, Shotgun Stories), Amy Seimetz and Justin Rice (Mutual Appreciation), as well as Jane Adams and Josh Hamilton. It’s […]
Originally posted in our SXSW 2009 coverage, Breaking Upwards opens in select theaters this Friday. In Breaking Upwards, Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones play a young New York couple named Daryl and Zoe. The film was written by the two of them, plus Peter Duchan, directed by Wein, and produced by all three. Zoe plays an actress, starring in an Off-Broadway play; Julie White plays Daryl’s mother, and was cast after appearing in an Off-Broadway play with Lister-Jones. To say that this film is autobiographical is, to be brief, an understatement. It’s a romantic comedy that borrows its hyper-articulate, hyper-intellectual […]
Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me was one of our favorite films at Sundance this year. It is a free-wheeling, lyrical but sometimes jarring depiction of a few months in the life of young and struggling New York actress navigating both harsh auditions and her own chaotic emotional relationships. The film has a deceptively casual feel as it avoids obvious plot points and melodramatic narrative contrivances. By its conclusion, however, it feels full — an honest portrait of character we haven’t quite seen on screen before at a very specific moment in her life. Following its Sundance premiere, the film […]