Last year I skirted around the issue of a Top 10 list by highlighting my 10 favorite scenes of the year, my logic hovering somewhere above “What is an effective film, if not the sum of its parts?” This year, I’m not so sure that axiom stands. Whether or not you regard it as the masterpiece it may or may not be, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has unimpeachably proved to be *the* film of 2014. I was fortunate it enough to see it in its best possible setting: front row at the Paramount Theater at SXSW, where a sizable chunk of the audience was hometown cast and crew. […]
On the verge of a breakthrough with his sophomore novel, writer Philip (Jason Schwartzman) abuses the patience and tolerance of both his girlfriend (Elisabeth Moss) and everyone around him. Egged on by his embittered Philip Roth-like mentor Ike (Jonathan Pryce), Philip shuttles between New York City and upstate while waiting for his big break to crest. Alex Ross Perry’s third feature is funny and bitter in equal measure, an acerbically insightful portrait of the artist as an angry bundle of well-articulated hostility.
A spinning vortex of yellow leopards could be a metaphor for the feverish mixture of exhaustion and exhilaration experienced at the Locarno Film Festival. The image was a large collage of the festival’s mascot produced by the proprietor of my B&B, which he showed to me one sleep-deprived morning, on my way to a 9 am press screening at the Kursaal Cinema. Speaking of altered states, there’s been a persistent sense of déjà vu at the festival — which is actually a good thing. Seven days into the ten-day celebration, it’s clear that the 67th edition continues its tradition as […]
Here we have the just announced line-up for the main slate of the 52nd New York Film Festival. It’s probably safe to expect some additional titles to be added later on, but the 30 titles below are already no joke, covering a broad swath of some of the most-discussed titles from this year’s festival circuit. Titles and descriptions are from Lincoln Center’s press release, which can be read in full here, with links to any previous coverage of the films as applicable in the title. Gone Girl (Opening Night – World Premiere, previously announced) David Fincher, USA, 2014, DCP, 150m […]
It’s rare that I can recommend nearly every program at a film festival, but that’s the case with this weekend’s Sundance Next Festival in Los Angeles. With events taking place tonight at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and then this weekend at the theater at the Ace Hotel, the Next Festival is intimate, very cool and with a strong multidisciplinary bent. Alongside several artistic feature highlights from this year’s Sundance Film Festival are shorts, panels and bands, making each program something of an event. Check out the complete line-up at the festival’s site, and here are a few picks of mine: […]
A few days before the summer solstice, I arrived on an oddly cool night in Dallas for the Third Annual Oak Cliff Film Festival. A driver picked me up from the airport and whisked me directly to a pre-festival soiree at a bar called Wild Detectives where everyone seemed to know each other already. A few houses from the corner of East 8th St. and North Bishop Ave., Wild Detectives is proof Dallas’ zoning rules are the envy of lushes everywhere; the bar is a two-story house right in the middle of a residential neighborhood! That neighborhood, from which the […]
While the internet wages on about whether or not the cinematic True Detective is fit for the small screen, HBO is pressing ahead on the ever-thinning gap between film and television. Yesterday, the premium cable channel announced that 25 New Face Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher would be getting the adaptation treatment. Michael Costigan, upon seeing the film at 2013 Sundance, enlisted Fidell and Daniel Brockhurst, former showrunner of the UK Shameless, to executive produce and write the series. Mark and Jay Duplass, who are gearing up to shoot their own HBO series Togetherness, will also executive produce, with Fidell directing the potential pilot. This […]
Katie Stern is that inexplicable combination of inviting, accessible, and tough as nails. When I went to photograph her at the color correction of the film she produced, Listen Up Philip, she was wearing all black, despite my suggesting filmmakers wear a splash of color. “It’s just what I’m used to wearing,” she says, a true New Yorker. “But I did wear lipstick – and that’s not normal for me.” In the color correction suite, Stern was the only woman in a small sea of men, including the film’s director, Alex Ross Perry. The film was on the big screen, […]
1. WarpFilms10 The cinematic arm of ubercool British record label Warp has hit its first decade and is celebrating by issuing a 200-page coffee table book containing some of its greatest movies. The DVDs tucked inside include no less than three by Shane Meadows (Dead Man’s Shoes was the first ever Warp Films title), plus other excellent and diverse works such as Chris Morris’ Four Lions, Richard Ayoade’s Submarine, Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur, Ben Wheatley’s Kill List and Justin Kurzel’s The Snowtown Murders. 2. Milq The brainchild of Hear Music founder Don MacKinnon, Spectacle: Elvis Costello with… creator Jordan Jacobs, and Tomi Poutanen […]
Each year, Filmmaker asks the Sundance Film Festival feature directors a question about their filmmaking process. We then compile any and all of the directors’ feedback and bring it to our readers courtesy of our “Sundance Responses.” This year we asked: Attention, our audience’s and our own — it’s a valued commodity these days. We struggle to command our audience’s attention, for them to discover our work and then, once they’ve discovered it, to actually focus on it. Meanwhile, we struggle to focus our own attention, to fight our society’s weapons of mass distraction so we can not just see […]