6300 Results for “Open ”
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ALL THAT ELEVEN ALLOWS
I plead guilty. I’ve committed the writer’s sin of entitling this article with a heavily loaded pun that threatens to undermine what follows. Referencing a 65-year-old recognized masterwork of classic Hollywood melodrama — one by Douglas Sirk, no less — that has stood the test of time, then segueing into more of the best-of-this-and-that-from-2011 litanies that every film journo is tossing into the blogosphere right now, stacks the deck against the most recent productions. A few will be remembered, but All That Heaven Allows stays with us. Out of all possibilities, this is the one Todd Haynes chose as a […]
by Howard Feinstein on Dec 27, 2011 -
DEE REES ON HER DEBUT “PARIAH”
After winning the Breakthrough Director award at this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards, Dee Rees sat down with us for a brief chat about her highly anticipated debut, Pariah. Which opens this week. If you’re an avid reader our site (or the magazine), you already know a bit about Rees. She was one of our 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2008 and already this year you’ve seen her in our video pieces from Sundance and the NYC taxi cab spots we produced. But that’s not all. Later this week you’ll see another video with Rees from Sundance, which […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 26, 2011 -
TRAGEDY IN SLOW MOTION: AMC’S BREAKING BAD
Here we are again, with part three in a series highlighting some of 2011’s most daring, innovative television. This week, I’ll be singing the praises of AMC’s consistently shocking and always riveting Breaking Bad. Indeed, there is no show on TV more unrelenting in its exploration of human misery than Breaking Bad. Created by former X-Files writer Vince Gilligan, the show stars Bryan Cranston as Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who, after being diagnosed with cancer, begins cooking and distributing meth with the help of a burnout ex-student (Aaron Paul). If that premise sounds a bit too high-concept […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Dec 22, 2011 -
Wim Wenders, Pina
German filmmaker Wim Wenders started taking photographs at the age of seven. Over the years he has turned his attentions to medicine, philosophy, painting, and engraving, but it is his four decades directing that has most often caught the publics’ attention. I first saw and loved his films with Wings of Desire; later I could be found carrying around a copy of his book Once religiously. His new film Pina, is a loving tribute to his 20-year friendship with, and admiration of, the dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. It is a documentary that uses new 3D technology to exquisite effect. […]
by Alix Lambert on Dec 21, 2011 -
The Microbudget Conversation: What Is Your End Goal?
As the editor of this column it is my job to choose the contributors, shape the voice, and move the column in a forward direction. The last post really struck up a good conversation, and it is now clear that my decision to move the blog in a new direction would be a welcome change. This does not mean, however, that we will stop talking with micro-budget filmmakers on timely topics and take the time to check in on their latest projects. Despite what some people feel, one of the functions of this column is to help contributing filmmakers get […]
by John Yost on Dec 20, 2011 -
2011 IN FILM: A DISASTER ODYSSEY
For many supposedly serious cinema folk, there is no secret pleasure more pleasurable than the disaster film. What makes the genre so familiar – predictable plotlines, one-dimensional characters and an ever-present threat that only kills the people who deserve it – is also what makes it so damn fun. In the late ’90s, people cheered when the alien spaceship blew up American monuments. A full decade after September 11th, it’s still hard to imagine that happening now. During the past decade, disaster films have become more serious, less The Towering Inferno and more District 9, but it is only in the […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Dec 20, 2011 -
THE OCCUPY ZEITGEIST IN 2011 CINEMA
1. A sense of outsideness. Buildings turned inside out on 9-11, and people outside in the streets of Manhattan. The mind, outside of itself with disbelief. The brutal and temporary restoration of the natural world in the middle of one of the world’s largest cities. Located a block from the World Trade Center, Zuccotti Park, terribly damaged on 9-11 and slowly restored, would become the locus of the Occupy Movement. Encampments. Tents. The incongruous sight of camping gear in urban spaces and beneath the shadows of skyscrapers, in a forest of steel and concrete and glass. It is not films […]
by Nicholas Rombes on Dec 19, 2011 -
Jared Flesher on Doc Filmmaking with a DSLR: Part Two
In part 1 of this interview, filmmaker Jared Flesher talked about his latest project, Sourlands, and making the switch to a large sensor DSLR camera. In part 2, Jared talks about how he works as a one-man crew, other equipment he uses, finishing the project, and what future camera he might like to use: You were your own crew for this documentary? Part of my style of filmmaking is to be a one0-man film team. There are practical reasons for that. I’m working on a fairly limited budget, so if I don’t have to pay a sound man, or someone […]
by Michael Murie on Dec 17, 2011 -
ANOTHER OBSERVATION IN MARRAKECH: ON “RIO DE ORO” (“RIVER OF GOLD”)
One should always be wary of tossing the term “masterpiece” around when talking about any cultural object, especially in the cinema, this enfant artform, which feels as if it may have exhausted its formal and rhetorical possibilities much too soon. The hothouse conditions of film festivals are especially bad places to get all ebullient with praise, as well do all over again next month in Utah, the following month in Germany, Texas the one after that. Best to take one’s time, reflect on what has been seen and heard, what its possible meanings and difficulties and structuring absences are, on […]
by Brandon Harris on Dec 16, 2011 -
DAVID POMES, “COOK COUNTY”
The rapid growth of methamphetamine use in rural America has been unabated for years now, but it has just now found its definitive cinematic dramatization in David Pomes’ bittersweet crime thriller Cook County. Contemplating the final weeks in the life of an east Texas drug din as its proprietor spins out of control, Pomes’ film details the dark underbelly of addiction within an entire community that silently affirms the control meth has taken over many of its citizen’s lives. Meditating on the particularly harsh affect the drug has had on a family through three generations, Cook County is at heart […]
by Brandon Harris on Dec 15, 2011
