17728 Results for “”
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“I Do Not Have an Adult Profession, and So You Need To Maintain Access to Your Childlike Self”: Matthew Maher (Back To One, Episode 256)
In recent movies like Air and Funny Pages, television series like Our Flag Means Death, and plays like Annie Baker’s The Flick, Matthew Maher has made a name for himself as someone who can bring an oddball or weirdo to full life with enough charm, charisma, and genuine gusto to make us love him unconditionally. On this episode, he talks about his acting foundations, the tools formative teachers have given him, and some theories he has developed as a teacher himself. He explains the allure of experimental theater in ’90s New York City, makes a case for embracing contradictions and obstructions in a character and […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Jun 6, 2023 -
Girlblogging: American Psycho
This post is part of a series, Girlblogging. Read the introduction here. Also, in New York, American Psycho screens tonight at the Paris Theater with director Mary Harron present in a tribute to producer Ed Pressman. The orchestral sting slices through the opening credits; perfect drops of blood rain down like vinyl balloons or the forms in a photorealistic painting: taut and shiny, artificially self-contained. When they splatter, the punch line lands. It was a joke all along—not blood, not really, just a false appearance—an emulsion drizzled across bone china; the screen expands to reveal a chef’s knife descending upon […]
by Matilda Lin Berke on Jun 5, 2023 -
Girlblogging: For Girls, By Girls (Girls on Film)
Girlblogging is the online expression of a certain kind of girlhood: a condition not strictly defined by youth or gender, but—per the French theory collective Tiqqun in Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl—the quality of being “the model citizen as redefined by consumer society.” The lace and ribbons are just bells and whistles. At its core, girlhood is the aesthetic of the unequal power-relation. The Young-Girl who constructs reactions and critiques, the girlblogger, manages to be both the consummate consumer and the consummate consumer good. Though she is wounded by them, she derives a certain pleasure from the […]
by Matilda Lin Berke on Jun 5, 2023 -
Trailer Watch: 25th Anniversary 4K Restoration of Lars von Trier’s The Idiots
MUBI has released a new trailer for the 25th anniversary 4K restoration of Lars von Trier‘s dark comedy The Idiots. The only film that von Trier made under the Dogme 95 “Vow of Chastity” (and the second official Dogme film, or Dogme #2), The Idiots centers on a commune in the Danish suburbs where members aim to disrupt wider “bourgeoisie” society by pretending to have mental and physical ailments in public. It is the second film in von Trier’s Golden Heart Trilogy, preceded by Breaking the Waves and followed by Dancer in the Dark. The Idiots will open theatrically at […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 5, 2023 -
Sundance 2023 Documentary Sales and Beyond: Stark Realities, Golden Opportunities
Distribution strategist Peter Broderick, whose articles on microbudget filmmaking were foundational in the early days of this magazine, publishes a weekly newsletter that is a must-read for anyone tracking the independent film industry. A recent edition, his report on Sundance 2023 documentary sales, has prompted discussion and clarified important current trends in non-fiction acquisitions. This report is reprinted with his permission. Sign up for Broderick’s newsletter here. — Editor “Every independent filmmaker should learn the lessons of Sundance. This year’s festival revealed critically important developments in the indie ecosystem.” Let’s start with the same two sentences that began my Special Report […]
by Peter Broderick on Jun 2, 2023 -
“Directing Is Being a Professionally Passionate Person”: Celine Song on Past Lives
A lived-in, swooning memory piece on the intersection of roads taken and missed, Celine Song’s Past Lives is as confident as filmmaking debuts come. “I needed to invent the way that this movie should be made. I wanted it to be the first movie of its kind to be made,” Song tells me recently during an interview at the Madison Square Park—one of the locations of her film—over a picnic of petits fours and sparkling lemonade. “I think that every filmmaker pursues this when they approach a new project,” she continues. “I needed this to be something that stands on […]
by Tomris Laffly on Jun 2, 2023 -
“Music Will be a Prism That You Can See the Whole Movie Through”: Director Zachary Wigon on Story Beats, Miles Davis and His BDSM-Themed Thriller Sanctuary
The poster for Sanctuary features a blonde Margaret Qualley whispering to a mysterious Christopher Abbott. Its imagery — a seeming femme fatale, an unknowing male prey and all the imagined chaos in between — evokes the height of the cinematic erotic thriller era. But the strength, elegance and wit of Micah Bloomberg’s (TV series Homecoming) script and Zachary Wigon’s (The Heart Machine) direction is their interest in subverting your (and the characters’s) expectations at every step. In Sanctuary, Abbott plays Hal, a hotel mogul’s son and heir. He has ordered a fancy meal to a decadently opulent hotel suite where […]
by Meredith Alloway on May 31, 2023 -
“Annoying, Finicky Placement Stuff”: DP Jody Lee Lipes on Shooting Two Rachel Weiszs for Dead Ringers
Cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes says that shooting an actor playing twins is like learning a new filmmaking language. By now, he’s fluent. Lipes lensed all six episodes of the 2020 HBO miniseries I Know This Much Is True, with Mark Ruffalo playing identical twins. As an added complication, the coverage of each brother was shot months apart as Ruffalo took a hiatus to gain 30 pounds to physically transform himself into the other sibling. On the new Amazon series Dead Ringers, it’s Rachel Weisz starring as twin New York City gynecologists who meet a tragic end. The show is a […]
by Matt Mulcahey on May 31, 2023 -
“It Really Does Take a Village”: Ted Schaefer on Giving Birth to a Butterfly
Our projected identities—and the constant performance inherent in presenting ourselves—fuel the surrealist philosophy of Ted Schaefer’s Giving Birth to a Butterfly. The filmmaker’s directorial debut, from a script he co-wrote with author Patrick Lawler, delves into a psychedelic psychology of what truly constitutes “the self” (very fitting for a collaborative duo who met through a mutual therapist). Giving Birth to a Butterfly largely consists of a roadtrip odyssey shared by Diana (Annie Parisse), a pharmacist stuck in an unfulfilling marriage to aspiring chef Daryl (Paul Sparks), and Marlene (Gus Birney), a heavily pregnant young woman who’s dating Diana’s son Drew […]
by Natalia Keogan on May 30, 2023 -
“I Had Three Art Directors and Two Cinematographers”: Rodrigo Moreno on The Delinquents at Cannes 2023
It’s the rare three-hour film that has as light a touch as The Delinquents while keeping a deft hold on the audience. That’s partly down to its surefire bank heist plot, borrowed somewhat from Hugo Fregonese’s 1949 Argentine noir Hardly a Criminal: a longtime clerk steals enough money to retire on, stashes it, then goes to jail, planning to recover the loot upon release. Morán (Daniel Elias) is the nebbishy thief in Rodrigo Moreno’s new film, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes to general delight. But his accomplice on the outside, Román (Esteban Bigliardi), gets distracted by another […]
by Nicolas Rapold on May 30, 2023
