6300 Results for “Open ”
-
Director Bob Byington on Somebody Up There Likes Me
It’s rare to come across a film that genuinely feels “different,” but Bob Byington’s Somebody Up There Likes Me is one of those films. Byington is an Austin-based writer/director and has worked (on both sides of the camera) with a number of mumblecore and post-mumblecore figures, directing Justin Rice and Alex Karpovsky in his 2009 feature Harmony and Me while also cameoing in Andrew Bujalski’s Beeswax and Alex Ross Perry’s The Color Wheel. His recent films, the gleefully edgy RSO [Registered Sex Offender] and the charming, sweet Harmony, were quirky indie comedies but definitely felt like they fit within a […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 29, 2013 -
Director Pablo Berger on Blancanieves
If two recent adaptations of the “Snow White” tale offer any indication, the film industry takes the modern revisionist’s pleasure in applying its cutting-edge tools to the creaky joints of bedtime stories. But Spanish director Pablo Berger swerves away from the familiar path taken by the likes of Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror. His latest, Blancanieves, is a silent black-and-white film that appropriates more of the old than the new — and yet it feels fresher than the rest. The binary palette is no limitation, rendering the velvety texture of shadows and the film’s gothic sensibility. Berger […]
by Esther Yi on Mar 29, 2013 -
Five Questions with Night Train to Lisbon director Bille August
Danish film director Bille August has consistently brought a strong vision to international stories. He is best known for Pelle the Conqueror, the 1987 film about Swedish immigrants in Denmark, which received the Palme d’Or, the Academy Award and the Golden Globe. He is one of the few directors who have won the Palme d’Or twice, putting him in the ranks of Francis Ford Coppola, Emir Kusturica, and the Dardenne brothers. His second came with the 1992 film The Best Intentions, a semi-autobiographical family story written by Ingmar Bergman. Twenty years ago August explored love and revolution in The House […]
by Ariston Anderson on Mar 29, 2013 -
Rodney Ascher on Room 237 and the Haunting of The Shining
A must-see for not just fans of The Shining but anyone who has been obsessed by a movie, Rodney Ascher’s Room 237, opening today, is a documentary about a group of online fans, scholars and theorists who have dedicated their lives — or at least their leisure hours — to unpacking bizarre, alternative interpretations about Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic. Above, recorded last year at the Cannes Film Festival, I discuss with Ascher the origins of his film, why you never see the faces of his interview subjects, and Fair Use. Ascher is interviewed in the latest issue of Filmmaker by […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 29, 2013 -
The Emmys Create New Interactive Media Awards
One sign of transmedia’s inevitable movement to the center of mainstream media–not just technophile or indie fare–is its representation in the major awards. And while a film released on iTunes still may not be Oscar-eligible, digital media awards have been progressing far beyond the Webbys for years, with more popping up all the time. The Emmys are particularly interesting, though, because in a way they represent the heart of what mainstream television audiences are watching and praising. It’s notable, then, that the International Digital Emmy Awards will reach their eighth year at MIPTV in Cannes with the ceremony on April […]
by Randy Astle on Mar 29, 2013 -
Rebecca Richman Cohen on Code of the West
In Code of the West, director Rebecca Richman Cohen chronicles the legislative machinations surrounding Montana’s endangered medical marijuana law. The debate, which was colored by outrageous, scaremongering claims about increased teen use and demonic possession, revolved around the possibility of an outright repeal of the initial 2004 law, which spawned an industry that became the ire of conservative politicians and family groups. During the vote on a proposed repeal, DEA agents raided 26 ostensibly legal cannabis growing sights across the state and put the state’s biggest caregivers out of operation, including one owned by Tom Daubert, the protagonist of Cohen’s […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 28, 2013 -
Kiss of the Damned — A Hammer To Nail Review
(Kiss of the Damned world premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival. It becomes available on VOD on March 28, 2013, and opens theatrically on May 3rd. Visit the film’s page at Magnet Releasing to learn more. NOTE: This review was written in conjunction with the film’s North American premiere at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival.) One of the most accomplished and engaging North American premieres I saw at the 2013 SXSW Film Festival was a genre film, the first fiction feature by Xan Cassavetes. Xan is the daughter of cinema legends John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. Her first film, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession, was a documentary about […]
by Mike S. Ryan on Mar 28, 2013 -
The New Digital Storytelling Series: Kamal Sinclair
The Senior Manager at the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab, Kamal Sinclair came to interactive via an unlikely, but, in many ways, appropriate route. While many in the interactive and new media fields hail from technology and filmmaking, Sinclair began her career in a medium where she received direct feedback from audience members every night — the theater. A trained dancer, choreographer and actress, Sinclair joined the Off-Broadway production STOMP at only 18, spending the next six years on their stages. In the below interview, Sinclair describes how she went from nightly performing to Sundance, a journey that also […]
by MIT Open Documentary Lab on Mar 28, 2013 -
Hands on a Hard Body Director S.R. Bindler On His Documentary’s Unlikely Broadway Adaptation
An odd, homemade blend of Garrison Keillor and Jackass, as filtered through an early Errol Morris-like lens, S.R. Bindler’s 1997 documentary Hands on a Hard Body is now having one of the most unexpected independent film second lives ever. Hands on a Hard Body the film has led to Hands on a Hardbody the Broadway musical, starring Keith Carradine, directed by Neil Pepe, with a book by Pulitzer-Prize winner Doug Wright and a score by Phish’s Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green. It opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theater last week, and Charles Isherwood wrote in the New York Times, “…this […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 28, 2013 -
Festival Cinematography Notes – At Berlin, Back to Black
Back in February, I had the privilege of giving two workshops, “Intro to Large-sensor Digital Cinema Cameras” and “Large-sensor Digital Cinema Cameras in Detail” at the 11th edition of the Berlinale Talent Campus. For those not acquainted with this Berlin Film Festival initiative: the Talent Campus each year invites 300 directors, producers, editors, and cinematographers – “talented emerging filmmakers in the first years of their career” – each with a film or two under their belts. Most seem to be in their late 20s. This year over 4,400 applied from 137 countries. Clearly a hot ticket. The 300 lucky ones […]
by David Leitner on Mar 27, 2013
