“Confounding in a good way” is probably a cop-out way to describe a film, but I can think of few other ways to succinctly sum up Pascale Ferran’s Bird People. As you may have deduced from the title, this binary portrait features a supporting character of the avian persuasion, who turns in some of the most seamless VFX work this side of The Wolf of Wall Street. The above video from French special effects company BUF — who also handled The Matrix series, United 93 and The Dark Knight — reveals that nearly every background in the film was transposed onto a green screen. This would seem logical as […]
When Motown Records impresario Berry Gordy made his debut as a filmmaker in 1972, the dominant mode in Black cinema was that of Blaxploitation flicks like Shaft and Superfly or gritty indies like Melvin Van Peebles’ politically and formally radical Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Gordy saw a void to be filled—and an opportunity to showcase his label’s biggest star, Diana Ross—by producing a glossy, old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama with Black performers; the result, the Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues, was a landmark musical that catapulted Ross to an Oscar nomination and instantly created a new standard for leading men […]
The best thing about Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World: 35mm. Take whatever jabs you will at the 27 year-old Québécois (he’s certainly taken his fair share this year as the first of several punching bags in the Competition slate), but he is as mindful as any active filmmaker — young or old — about basic formal decisions like aspect ratios and the textural differences between digital and celluloid images. The only new film in the entire festival to be projected from a film print (Cannes Classics has two: Frederick Wiseman’s Hospital and Roger Corman’s The Pit and […]
I’m not much for year-end listmaking — the release calendar variables for potential inclusion are pretty limited, so it feels like a pointless exercise in rearranging the same 20 pieces as everybody else, and I’ve probably written about the movies in question enough for the time being by year’s end. It is, nonetheless, the tail end of the season where people put out their lists and justifications, so I’ve laid out ten arbitrary categories that allow me to tout some titles, released in the US in 2014 unless otherwise noted. Best DTV Casualty Few people have reshaped the multiplex landscape as much in […]
There were few surprises to be had at this morning’s announcement of the Competition, Un Certain Regard and Special Screenings sections for the 2014 Cannes Film Festival — perhaps barring Fremaux’s proud, misleading assurance that a whopping 15 female directors were included in the lineup, which is evidently French for eight. Familiar faces returning to the Croisette include Assayas, Cronenberg, Zvyaginstev, Bilge Ceylan, Hazanavicius, Egoyan, Loach, Leigh and the Dardennes, whose Two Days, One Night may prove to be Marion Cotillard’s successful shot at the Best Actress title, after snubs for Rust and Bone and The Immigrant. The two American titles in Competition […]
Awards were handed out last night in Chinatown for the 6th annual Tribeca Film Festival. See list of winners below. The Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature – My Father My Lord (Hofshat Kaits), directed by David Volach (Israel). Best New Narrative Filmmaker – Two Embraces (Dos Abrazos), directed by Enrique Begne (Mexico). Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film – Lofti Edbelli in Making Of (Akher film), directed by Nouri Bouzid (Tunisia, Morocco). Best Actress in a Narrative Feature Film – Marina Hands in LadyChatterley, directed by Pascale Ferran (France, Belgium). Best Screenplay – Making Of (Akher film), written […]
The Tribeca Film Festival announced its World Narrative and World Documentary Feature Film Competitions as well as its selections in the Spotlight category today. The fest’s sixth edition will take place April 25-May 6. See below for the complete list of films. World Narrative CompetitionBorn and Bred (Nacido y Criado), directed by Pablo Trapero, written by Pablo Trapero and Mario Rulloni. (Argentina) – U.S. Premiere. When his life is shattered by a terrifying accident, a successful interior designer winds up in the desolate extremes of Patagonia, trying to find himself among other lost, disaffected men. Pablo Trapero’s haunting film demonstrates […]