With Antiviral, Possessor and Infinity Pool, filmmaker Brandon Cronenberg has expeditiously carved out a distinct, experimental aesthetic for his work. However, he has followed in the footsteps of his legendary father David in one respect—forging a lasting alliance with his cinematographer. All but three of the elder Cronenberg’s 20 features films were shot by either Mark Irwin or Peter Suschitzky. All of Brandon’s efforts thus far bear the name of Canadian DP Karim Hussain. Hussain begin writing, directing and shooting low budget genre films while still a teenager, before eventually opting to focus solely on the latter of those roles. He […]
Though it hasn’t reached the fever pitch of absurdity of The Fast and the Furious franchise just yet—a series that began as a Point Break riff but now includes nuclear submarines and Pontiac Fieros in space —the John Wick saga has certainly expanded from its humble beginnings. Produced independently and shot in New York on a budget in the mid-$20 million range, the original film found its titular assassin (played by Keanu Reeves) emerging from retirement to avenge the death of his dog. Four chapters later, Reeves is hopping between New York City, Osaka, Berlin, Paris and the Wadi Rum […]
Dune: Part Two will hit theaters just over two years after Dune, director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 landmark sci-fi novel. The first trailer arrives six months before the second and final installment of Villeneuve’s saga is set for release. The story will continue to follow characters from the first film (save for Oscar Isaac, whose Duke Leto Atreides perishes during the first half of the story), with roles reprised by Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Stellan Skarsgård, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Charlotte Rampling and Javier Bardem. Yet there’s a considerable amount of buzz surrounding […]
In the new Amazon series Swarm, a fanatical devotee of a Beyoncé-esque pop star embarks on a quest to meet the singer, with a few stops along the way to dispose of those who have disparaged her idol online. Created by Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, the show hops around between Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, Seattle and L.A., but was shot largely in Atlanta by Drew Daniels. The Red Rocket and Krisha DP spoke to Filmmaker about the influence of Michael Haneke, the beauty of imperfect camera moves and Swarm’s extremely last-minute switch to 35mm film. Filmmaker: Let’s start with some […]
In 1989, Friday the 13th transplanted its hockey-masked slasher from summer camp to concrete jungle for the franchise’s eighth installment, Jason Takes Manhattan. That titular promise was not fully delivered upon: Manhattan was mostly Vancouver and Jason spent much of the running time on a boat full of high schoolers traveling to the city. The newest Scream offers up a similar relocation as Ghostface follows the previous chapter’s survivors from Woodsboro to college. Again, a Canadian city (this time Montreal) stands in for New York. But this time, the killer actually spends the entire running time chasing his victims through […]
For Metropolis special effects artist Eugen Schüfftan, a model, a mirror and a sharp-edged tool were all the instruments required to create cinematic wonder in the 1920s. The mirror—placed at a 45-degree angle in front of the camera—reflected the image of a model cityscape located just out of frame. The tool then scraped away sections of the mirror’s reflective layer, leaving only glass and revealing strategically placed actors in the distance. When the mirror was filmed, the citizens of Metropolis now magically appeared to inhabit the colossal urban dystopia. A century later, virtual production is the latest evolution in cinematic […]
“Go make movies.” That was my Editor’s Letter signoff here in the earliest days of this publication. And, over the ensuing 30 years, many of you did! I won’t give Filmmaker anything more than a small amount of credit for the independent production boom in the years following our 1992 launch, but we have certainly been out there issue by issue, web page by web page, encouraging new independent filmmakers. We’ve also tried in these pages to deliver doses of reality along with our encouragement. We’ve run articles on the vicissitudes of financing, the high cost of delivery, difficult sales […]
Winners of the Best Screenplay and Best Picture awards at last night’s Oscars for their Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Daniels — Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — have appeared in our pages many times over the years, with the various articles and interviews offering a historical timeline of the iconoclastic creators’ move from music video stars to celebrated feature directors. The two showed up first in 2015, in our 25 New Faces list, while they were in production on their first feature, Swiss Army Man. But we had already been knocked out by their music videos for the […]
According to cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, writer/director Todd Field often expressed his desired aesthetic for TÁR in a series of repeated Field-isms: Let’s just witness. Don’t gild the lily. Don’t make it look like a movie with a capital “M.” In other words, make the style invisible. However, Hoffmeister’s work was far from invisible to his peers, who bestowed an Oscar nomination upon the German DP for his work on the film. TÁR—Field’s first feature in more than 15 years—follows the downfall of a composer/conductor played by Cate Blanchett as she prepares a career-capping performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. […]
War is young men dying and old men talking. The former lies at the heart of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the German writer’s experiences in the trenches of World War I. In Netflix’s new adaptation, the latter half of that axiom is also represented with the addition of a subplot centered on the armistice negotiations that ultimately ended fighting on the Western Front. As in Remarque’s novel, the story is principally told through the eyes of Paul Bäumer, a teenager who—propelled by patriotic fervor—enlists alongside his schoolmates only to be disillusioned […]