In what looks like a bit of a spiritual sequel to Somewhere — if you add a couple or more decades to each of the characters — Bill Murray plays a womanizing dad concerned about the possibly adulterous activities of his daughter’s husband (Marlon Wayans) in Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks. Rashida Jones plays the disbelieving daughter in a picture sure to bring the feels for the beauty of a pre-pandemic New York City. The film is forthcoming as the first venture between Apple TV+ and A24 and will be in theaters and online in October.
In 2011, I was trying to evolve. To be something no one else was. Define myself, so to speak. First, I trained for something that wasn’t really needed. Something where I would go into conflict zones or hard to reach areas — mountains, jungles, etc. Something that I could do quite easily and trained accordingly, but again “things” evolved. A friend of mine had created VFX plates and had learned something that was already dying out. As a result, I took my game higher, evolving into some risky endeavors. This opened a door that I didn’t know existed. The next few years […]
Until September 7 American filmmakers can submit their works-in-progress to one of the leading European programs supporting new US filmmakers, US in Progress. Celebrating its tenth anniversary, US in Progress has always taken place within the American Film Festival in Poland and has consisted of events and a live pitching forum. For this edition — November 11-13, when international travel, particularly from the US, is uncertain due to the coronavirus pandemic — US in Progress will take place virtually while an in-person American Film Festival unspools in Wroclaw alongside the New Horizons Film Festival. “It’s the same structure as before,” […]
Irish actor Niamh Algar has been making her mark in the UK of late portraying women dealing with their intense pasts, like Dinah in Shane Meadows’ The Virtues and Ursula in Calm With Horses (which just opened in the States as The Shadow of Violence). The intensity continues with her latest project, Raised By Wolves, Ridley Scott’s sci-fi series for HBO MAX (which drops on September 3th). In this episode, she talks about following her gut, why she asks questions early, adapting to the director, the importance of not taking yourself too seriously, and much more. Back To One can […]
In the mid-1990s, director Mimi Leder revolutionized network television with her kinetic, elaborately choreographed long takes on the medical series ER. A master of complicated blocking and the use of camera movement to plunge the audience into viscerally charged suspense, Leder also knew when to pull the visual pyrotechnics back and generate power through restraint. Leder’s command of the medium has only become more impressive in the 25 years since; her most recent feature, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex, is a master class in composition and color, and her work on the Apple+ series The […]
Eugene Kotylarenko has carved out a niche of vomiting up hyper-contemporary satires, up-to-the-minute and on-the-nose in their damning send-ups. His latest is Spree, a gory thriller told through livestream feed about Kurt, a rideshare driver and wannabe influencer who broadcasts a twisted murder rampage. (The film is available for rental now on digital platforms.) After producing content in obscurity for so many years, he kills his passengers in a desperate attempt to achieve viral fame. For good reasons, Spree has garnered comparisons to Taxi Driver and To Die For, but the LA backdrop made me think first and foremost of […]
Earlier this year I wrote about Criterion’s Bruce Lee: His Greatest Hits boxed set and declared it one of the best Blu-ray releases of all time. Less than two months later, the producers at Criterion have already topped themselves with the 15-disc The Complete Films of Agnes Varda collection, a comprehensive look at the work of one of the French New Wave’s grand masters. The set contains 39 features and shorts, arranged not in chronological order but in a series of intelligently curated programs, as though the movies were being shown in a public retrospective; there are discs devoted to […]
The New York Film Festival announced today the 25 films from 19 countries that comprise its 2020 Main Slate. “The disorientation and uncertainty of this tough year had the effect of returning us to core principles,” said Dennis Lim, Director of Programming for NYFF, in a press release. “To put it simply, the Main Slate is our collective response to one central question: which films matter to us right now? Movies are neither made nor experienced in a vacuum, and while the works in our program predate the current moment of crisis, it’s striking to me just how many of them […]
Five U.S. film festivals — Boston Underground Film Festival, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, North Bend Festival, Overlook Film Festival and Popcorn Frights Film Festival — are responding to the coronavirus pandemic’s challenges to the festival and exhibition landscape by creating a new virtual festival, Nightstream, that will run October 8 – 11. Programmers from all five festivals will curate the event, which will contain, according to a press release, “a mix of international horror, fantasy, sci-fi, vanguard, and underground films that capture the distinct curatorial spirit of each festival.” In addition, “Proceeds from the event will be shared with all participating filmmakers […]
Sundance Institute announced today the 39 international media and arts organizations that will receive a total of $405,500 from its Respond and Reimagine Plan. Launched in April, the $1 million fund redistributes funds, according to a press release, to “directly support the urgent needs of artists, as well as organizations from around the world leading the field in support of artists from historically marginalized communities disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.” The grants are non-recoupable and are flexible in intent; they may be used to support individual artists or to “strengthen the organizations themselves in their ongoing work.” Earlier this summer […]