Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Scott Macaulay interviewed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly director Julian Schnabel for the Fall ’07 issue. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is nominated for Best Director (Julian Schnabel), Adapted Screenplay (Ronald Harwood), Editing (Juliette Welfling) and Best Cinematography (Janusz Kaminski). Most films draw us in with some promise of possibility. Buy a ticket, sit back and have your world expanded for a couple of hours. Be someone new and […]
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Howard Feinstein interviewed Sicko director Michael Moore for our Web Exclusives section of the Website. Sicko is nominated for Best Feature Documentary. Timely is the release of Michael Moore’s long-gestating Sicko, an exposé of the U.S. health insurance industry, especially its efforts to withhold benefits to subscribers. Americans rank health insurance as their number two concern after the war in Iraq. Democratic presidential candidates are whipping up health care plans; so […]
The New York-based film festival CineKink has announced their line-up for this year’s event, which runs from February 26 to March 2. From the press release: Billing itself as “the really alternative film festival,” the event will run February 26-March 2, 2008. Presented by CineKink, an organization dedicated to the recognition and encouragement of sex-positive and kink-friendly depictions in film and television, works presented at CineKink NYC will range from documentary to drama, mildly spicy to quite explicit – and everything in between. “It seems our programming theme for this year was ‘No mercy!’” says Lisa Vandever, CineKink’s co-founder and […]
An amazing, amazing Super Bowl with a fourth quarter for the ages. John Woods, liveblogging for The New York Times, says, “To heck with the Coen brothers. This is your best picture of the year.” I just finished watching the game in Paris on France 2, where most of the late-game commentary consisted of “Incroyable!” and “Ooh, la la!” (Seriously.) Anyway, congrats to the Giants and all the fans!
The AP is reporting that four New York indie film companies — Greenestreet Films, This is That Corporation, Killer Films and Open City Films — have signed an interim agreement with the striking WGA, allowing them to go forward with WGA-scripted development projects and productions. From the piece as it runs on CNN.com: Jason Kliot and Joana Vicente, speaking for GreeneStreet, Open City and Killer films, credited the union with “thoughtfulness during the discussions.” This is that co-founders, Ted Hope and Anne Carey, said the united action by the companies to settle “clarifies our support for and solidarity with the […]
Given that he’s just made his debut feature about the mysteries, speculations, half-truths and flights of fancy that comprise the 9/11 Truth Movement, I guess it makes sense that filmmaker Paul Krik is accustomed to finding conspiracy wherever he goes. He’s travelled from Brooklyn to Rotterdam to premiere Able Danger, but when I ask him to shoot me an email about why he chose to make a movie about 9/11 conspiracy theorists, he responds by noting some suspicious activities having to do with Dutch bicycle renting: “Indruk de en Brooklyn fietser in Rotterdam” True Conspiracy #1; It is illegal to […]
The following essay by Ray Carney on Aaron Katz’s Quiet City accompanies a 2-disc DVD release from Benten Films out this week of Quiet City and Katz’s first film, Dance Party, USA. Mainstream film is so much an art of the maximum – the biggest, the flashiest, the fastest, the most exaggerated – that it is easy to forget that the great films all go in the opposite direction. They are, almost without exception, triumphs of minimalism. They rely on subtlety, understatement, indirection, and simplification. In Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, and Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch sets long sections […]
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Ray Pride interviewed Once writer-director John Carney and lead Glen Hansard for the Spring ’07 issue. Once is nominated for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly” (Music and Lyric by Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova). When Baz Luhrmann was promoting his musical phantasmagoria Moulin Rouge, I asked him how far you could go in the other direction — could a film musical consist simply of a couple coming together and moving […]
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Lisa Y. Garibay interviewed Juno director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody for the Fall ’07 issue. Juno is nominated for Best Picture, Best Directing (Jason Reitman), Best Lead Actress (Ellen Page) and Best Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody). The pairing of writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman was one of complete chance, like one of those cop-buddy movies where the grizzled vet is set up with a renegade newbie and […]
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director Andrew Dominik for our Web Exclusives section of the Website. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Casey Affleck) and Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins). After making only two features, Andrew Dominik deserves to be recognized as one of the most exciting and talented writer-directors working today. Born in […]