Web Junkie, Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia’s startling documentary about internet addiction in China opens today at New York’s Film Forum. At Sundance, where it premiered, it was considered by Brandon Harris, and Danielle Lurie interviewed the directors. Wrote Harris, in a piece that also included discussion of the doc Love Child: In Web Junkie, teenage boys, often having been deceived into going or plainly drugged and captured with their parents’ approval, suffer a military bootcamp-style existence complete with isolation chambers and other forms of moderately cruel discipline, interspersed with moments of counseling from sensitive, largely female psychologists and a […]
Now in its seventh year, the multidisciplinary Wassaic Project’s Summer Festival — whose 2014 edition opens today — offers an intimate screening experience where independent films by emerging filmmakers mix with art, music, dance and the great outdoors. It’s probably the only festival where films are projected in a Cattle Auction Ring, a fact doubly surprising given the festival’s location just two hours from New York on Metro North’s Harlem Line. The Wassaic Project is a non-profit that has as its mission the creation of “genuine and intimate context for art making and strengthening local community by increasing social and […]
For this correspondent’s money, the film to beat so far in 2014 is Swiss filmmaker Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen), a dazzlingly low-key schematic diagram of a single day’s ebb and flow in a German apartment. Zürcher cracks the space open like a dollhouse, but his exacting frames don’t create drama; rather, each individual component — a kettle, a ball, a clock, the nominal tabby, a regularly screaming child or any of the extended family members shuffling in and out of Zürcher’s rooms — invites the viewer’s attention as they often repeatedly intersect. Between narrative scenes, […]
For this correspondent’s money, the film to beat so far in 2014 is Swiss filmmaker Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen), a dazzlingly low-key schematic diagram of a single day’s ebb and flow in a German apartment. Zürcher cracks the space open like a dollhouse, but his exacting frames don’t create drama; rather, each individual component — a kettle, a ball, a clock, the nominal tabby, a regularly screaming child or any of the extended family members shuffling in and out of Zürcher’s rooms — invites the viewer’s attention as they often repeatedly intersect. Between narrative scenes, Zürcher stops for montages […]
Fresh from Comic-Con is a new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, which appears to be sitting out on the fall festival circuit. The circumstances aren’t exactly discernible from the footage, but Matthew McConaughey is summoned away from his simple Texas life and family to take to the solar system, for a long enough duration that his pre-pubescent daughter turns into Jessica Chastain while he’s away. The dialogue and thematic tendencies point towards the topical, diminishing sources of life on earth as a possible cause for his intergalactic adventure, and the visual effects look to be on point. The film is set to open from Warner Brothers […]
Adam Epstein is a freelance editor. For the last five years, he’s worked with the Saturday Night Live film unit, editing parody pieces of all kinds. He’s just begun a nationwide workshop tour with “The Cutting Edge Post-Production Tour,” a day-long seminar covering techniques, theories and editing insights. We recently spoke to Epstein about editing, working on SNL and the workshop tour. Filmmaker: How did you become an editor? Epstein: In my experience, it’s never a direct path. I started out in school, working on a student-run sketch comedy show, and we were able to get our hands on some of the […]
Volunteers welcome you into the theater, guiding you towards your allotted place. The lights are going off slowly. As you sit down on your chair, you look ahead at the stage. It’s unlike any other stage. I was at the Culture Center ZIL in Moscow, attending a performance of The Death of Mr. Tarelkin, staged by the Manege/MediaArtLab Open School, Ballet Moscow Theatre and the International Centre for Dance and Performance TsEKh. This was a sidebar event at the 36th Moscow International Film Festival (June 19 – 28), described on the website as “a performance where Russian classics, contemporary dance, […]
The following is a guest post from director, writer and actress Bethany Orr, whose untitled Iceland-set, psychosexual drama is currently raising funds on Indiegogo in a campaign titled “Iceland or Bust.” Click here at the link to learn more and to support the project. Okay, so you’re not Zach Braff. The market is saturated with projects competing for attention and the hard-earned dollars of YOUR potential supporters. So why crowdfund in 2014? Hasn’t that train left the station? I mean, it’s a huge risk, what if you embarrass yourself? Crowdfunding is, after all, the quickest new way to get unfollowed […]
Following the announcement of its Special Presentation and Gala selections last week, this morning TIFF released the Documentaries, Masters, Midnight Madness and Vanguard programs for the upcoming festival. That just leaves Mavericks, Discovery, Wavelengths, Contemporary World and several others to go. 17 world premieres have been added, along with Cannes (Godard, Sissako, Zvyagintsev, Polsky, Wiseman, Mitchell) and Venice (Andersson, Oppenheimer, Hong Sang-soo) holdovers. You’ll note that the ‘Canadian Premiere’ asterisk likely indicates a Telluride bow. Artistic Director Cameron Bailey spoke to the LA Times about the new ruling on premiere statuses, as a result of the immediate media narratives that take shape on Twitter moments after credits […]
I had a dream the other night, and all my filmmaking heroes were there. Young, full of vision, light in their eyes. A party at a swanky bar. Then last call was called. And the lights came up. And Orson Welles was drunk, huge, exhausted. And Nicholas Ray, with an eye patch, was chain smoking. And Hal Ashby was haggard, mumbling to himself in the corner about someone taking away his final cut. The horror stories of my heroes haunt me. What is it that happened to them? Did they bring it on themselves with youthful hubris and defiance? Were […]