6301 Results for “Open ”
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Breaking Character: Josephine Decker Talks to Mike Mills about Madeline’s Madeline
Madeline (Helena Howard) has a hospital bracelet on her wrist and a rehearsal to go to. One of the questions fueling Madeline’s Madeline, Josephine Decker’s third feature as a solo director, is how two of the biggest elements of Madeline’s life — some unspecified form of mental instability and her promise as a young actress — interact, or if they even can safely. Howard’s breakout performance as the troubled thespian is part of an unusual triangle. At one point is her mother Regina (the writer, actress and performance artist Miranda July), whose protective custody of her unstable daughter is unreadable: justifiable […]
by Mike Mills on Jun 11, 2018 -
Notes on Camp: Desiree Akhavan on The Miseducation of Cameron Post, ADR Rewriting and 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up”
In Desiree Akhavan’s feature debut, Appropriate Behavior, the cowriter/director was front and center as Shirin, a young, bisexual Persian Brooklynite trying to figure out how to live her life, one sexually impulsive bad decision at a time. It was in keeping with the of-the-moment nature of The Slope, Akhavan’s reputation-making 2011 web series about a year in a lesbian couple’s New York relationship, in which she again costarred. Her sophomore feature, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, tackles new territory: It’s Akhavan’s first time working from an adaptation, first period piece and first time staying offscreen in her work. Miseducation was […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jun 11, 2018 -
Why I Am Hopeful: Programmer Eric Allen Hatch on the Future of Arthouse Programming
As a film programmer who recently made the painful but necessary decision to quit the organization at which I’d worked for 11 years, you might expect me to have a dim view of contemporary film culture. I don’t. Quite the contrary: I feel strongly that this is one of the great watershed moments in the history of cinema. Some of the reasons for my optimism are personal, but most can be generalized. Working more than a decade for a regional film festival that gradually entered the national discussion around independent film, I became increasingly aware of an alarming divide. On […]
by Eric Allen Hatch on Jun 11, 2018 -
Onrushing Now
Nick Nolte had walked into a bar. Nolte was a constant in a screenwriting partner’s Malibu hinterlands, hair ever elevated, stalking across a parking lot to Coogie’s for the midafternoon breakfast, resplendent in striped Sulka pajamas and happy dudgeon. This time, it was dark and it was Toronto, across from the Sutton Hotel headquarters of the festival. The upstairs of now long-defunct Bistro 990 on this night in the late 1990s is rich with heightened voices but not shouting. I’m standing near Nolte with a cofounder of Indiewire, Mark Rabinowitz. Our eyes literally grow large just as our ears figuratively […]
by Ray Pride on Jun 11, 2018 -
How to Cast and Direct an Ensemble Film: Seven Lessons from Bernard and Huey Director Dan Mirvish
One of the great joys of directing a film is to work with actors, and when you make an ensemble film, you get to work with a lot of actors! But working with any big group of people — especially actors! — can come with a host of unique challenges. So, whether you’re making a blockbuster like the Russo Brother’s recent uber-ensemble Avengers: Infinity Wars or you’re making a web series in your back yard with all your high school drama class friends, many of the lessons are the same. My current film, Bernard and Huey may sound like a […]
by Dan Mirvish on Jun 8, 2018 -
“This Kind of Storytelling with Real People is Social Experimentation”: Marcus Lindeen on his CPH:DOX-Winning Conceptual Doc, The Raft
Reposted here from its original publication following last year’s CPH:DOX — where the film won the top prize — is Pamela Cohn’s intensive interview with director Marcus Lindeen about his provocative non-fiction experiment, The Raft. The documentary opens tomorrow for a run at New York’s Metrograph, with Lindeen and various commentators and critics appearing at the various screenings. Swedish artist, writer and director Marcus Lindeen stepped into documentary filmmaking with a very specific method in mind as to how he wanted to frame people’s stories. His particular obsession within the context of nonfiction is in the performative aspects of insinuating […]
by Pamela Cohn on Jun 6, 2018 -
Wearing a Sandwich Board to Promote Your Movie: Tips from Bernard and Huey Director Dan Mirvish
There are two types of filmmakers: those who will stand on a street corner wearing a sandwich board to promote their movies, and those who will not. Dan Mirvish is fearlessly in the former category, as evidenced by this video, which finds the Bernard and Huey writer, director and Slamdance co-founder outside the Laemmle Monica hustling passersby to come and see his movie this weekend (and also be passersby in a video about promoting via a sandwich board). Writes Mirvish in an email about promoting via sandwich board: It has some historical context: 22 years ago, I wore a similar […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 6, 2018 -
Back to One: Margaret and Nancy Star J. Smith-Cameron on Stage, Screen and Her “Inner Actor”
The brilliant J. Smith-Cameron blew us away in Margaret (written and directed by her husband, Kenneth Lonergan) and in the acclaimed series Rectify. Currently she’s starring in the new play Peace For Mary Frances (with Lois Smith), and the praiseworthy film Nancy (written and directed by Christina Choe and co-staring Andrea Riseborough and Steve Buscemi), which opens Friday June 8th. We talk extensively about her work in the latest two pieces and how her desire for rehearsal is sometimes satisfied in a roundabout way on a TV shoot. She also shares what she does right before she steps on the […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Jun 5, 2018 -
Discoveries from the Middle East at the Seattle International Film Festival
The last time I saw Seattle, Barack Obama was a president-elect. I arrived November 2008 on a road trip with two close friends, both of whom had worked full-time to get Obama elected. The trip had a practical function — to help one of them move to L.A. — but in earnest it felt like a victory lap. We traveled through Denver, Missoula and Vancouver before reaching Seattle, our last stop as a trio. We celebrated Thanksgiving in the city. We caught a screening of Rachel Getting Married, Jonathan Demme’s ode to a multicultural America. With the end of the […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Jun 2, 2018 -
DP Larkin Seiple Breaks Down Every Shot from Childish Gambino’s “This Is America “
Since its May 5th launch, Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” video has been viewed more than 215 million times on YouTube, a testament to the power of the internet as mass medium. According to Variety, the average ticket price for the first quarter of 2018 is $9.16; using that math, a music video shot in two days with nine rolls of film has been viewed by as many people as Avengers: Infinity War. “I was a bit shocked at the scale and speed of the reaction. It was released on a Saturday evening and on Sunday morning I woke up to […]
by Matt Mulcahey on May 31, 2018
