17729 Results for “”
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Wings of the Hawk, The Parallax View, Smooth Talk: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Director Budd Boetticher made dozens of movies ranging from romantic comedies and noirs to science fiction and prison pictures, but he’s long been known primarily for the seven Westerns he made with Randolph Scott between 1956 and 1960. While those films are all terrific and worthy of the praise bestowed upon them by the likes of Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino, their canonization has kept many other worthwhile Boetticher works from discovery. I’ve always been partial to the movies he made as a contract director at Universal in 1952 and 1953, a period during which he made a […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 5, 2021 -
Sundance Critic’s Notebook #2 (Steve Dollar): Jockey, Human Factors and President
After so much meta-ness, it was practically relaxing to settle back in the waning hours of this year’s Sundance with a drama as solid and old-fashioned as Jockey. Not unlike The Wrestler, absent the self-consciously Dardenne-ian camerawork, this Southwestern slice-of-life follows an aging athlete – the titular jockey Jackson (Clinton Collins Jr.) – as he confronts the end of his long ride. On the racetrack, at least, although the aggregated damage caused by a series of back injuries now threatens to cripple him, or worse, if he keeps at it. Director and co-writer Clint Bentley, who previously co-wrote and produced […]
by Steve Dollar on Feb 4, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook (Vadim Rizov and Abby Sun): Cusp and Close
Hello Abby, We’ve been Gchatting through our initial Sundance 2021 reactions in between filing festival coverage proper, so it only seems logical to finish out this year by doing a direct handoff in public view. While our experiences were complementary, we had different timelines and levels of willingness to engage. You tried out a good chunk of New Frontier material and went to virtual gatherings in avatar form; true to usual IRL form, I kept a skulking low profile. Our coverage overlapped a few times online (thanks, by the way, for getting into the political dimensions of El Planeta I […]
by Vadim Rizov and Abby Sun on Feb 4, 2021 -
DIY Lives? #LIKE‘s Distribution Journey, Part Two: The End of the Beginning
On January 26th 2021 my film, LIKE, a feminist noir thriller, debuted on Apple TV, Amazon Prime and others. It has been a long and winding road just to get to the end of the beginning. Part 1 of my article, published in July, details my voyage into the opaque world of film distribution and the ever-evolving influence of streaming, which had for years been diminishing independent film theatrical box office. But then, of course, live audiences were near-obliterated when COVID-19 lockdowns shuttered theaters. In other words, the theatrical exhibition experience was all but gone until who knows when. I […]
by Sarah Pirozek on Feb 4, 2021 -
“A Very Sculptural Process”: Editors Natalia Almada and Dave Cerf on Users
Natalia Almada’s Users is an inquisition on technology and its inextricable nature from modern life. Juxtaposed against Californian wildfires and oceans on the rise, the film questions what progress means when we sacrifice so much in the process. Almada, alongside her co-editor Dave Cerf, describes the unique collaborative process used in editing the film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Almada: Well… I’ve edited all my films. In part I think it is because I need the editing […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 3, 2021 -
“We Sat Down and Considered Pushing Production to Spring of 2020”: Erin Vassilopoulos on Superior
Duplicity in all its forms lurks just below the surface in Erin Vassilopoulos’s debut feature, Superior, which had its world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival last weekend. Expanded from a short she made in film school, Vassilopoulos’s feature concerns two fraternal twin sisters (Alessandra and Ani Mesa) unexpectedly reuniting after six years apart. The film opens in October of 1987, with Marian (Alessandra), a touring musician on the run from a secretive past, returning to her hometown to spend a few days with her sister, Vivian (Ani). The two sisters haven’t spoken in six years, spending the interim leading […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 3, 2021 -
“Wildfires Are a Complicated Tornado of Danger”: DP Bennett Cerf on Users
Natalia Almada’s Users is an inquisition on technology and its inextricable nature from modern life. Juxtaposed against Californian wildfires and oceans on the rise, the film questions what progress means when we sacrifice so much in the process. DP Bennett Cerf discusses the morbid thrill of capturing disasters on film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Cerf: Natalia has always shot her own projects except for her narrative feature, which Lorenzo Hagerman shot. I was peripherally involved in […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 3, 2021 -
“The Whole Story Through the Protagonist’s Eyes”: Enis Saraçi on Hive
Blerta Basholli’s Hive explores macro gender dynamics in her home country of Kosovo. Among a league of women awaiting news of their husbands, fathers and sons’ fates in the Kosovo War, Fahrije practices self-reliance and encourages other women to seek independence despite the violent patriarchal expectations of their community. Editor Enis Saraçi tells us why the film is shot primarily through Fahrije’s perspective. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Saraçi: Yll and Valon, producers of Hive, were both […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 3, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook 4 (Abby Sun): R#J, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran
As I hinted in my first entry on Sundance 2021, I’ve spent a couple hours a day on the festival’s browser-based New Frontier space, which houses all 14 projects in the New Frontier selection, a space for watching select films in VR and Film Party, an online proximity-based video and audio chat space. There’s also a digital ferry from the Gallery to IDFA DocLab’s do {not} play platform, which was for IDFA (the world’s largest documentary festival and marketplace, held in Amsterdam in November of every year) what Film Party is to Sundance. Navigating the Sundance digital platform through my […]
by Abby Sun on Feb 3, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook 5 (Vadim Rizov): I Was a Simple Man, The Blazing World
Sundance 2021 offered two case studies in the anxiety of influence, or lack thereof—neither film’s particularly worried about covering its tracks. Hawai’ian director Christopher Makoto Yogi’s I Was a Simple Man is a logical progression from his first feature, 2018’s August at Akiko’s, which climaxed by layering a Mulholland Drive riff (a sax player soloing inside an empty cave with no audience) on top of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (said shot of cave models its angle and lighting directly on Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s climactic setup). But August at Akiko’s told an essentially simple, literally meditative story about atmospherically re-immersing oneself at home after a long […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 3, 2021
