17805 Results for “”
-
Prepared — and Unprepared — on the Way to Sundance: Taylor Hess’s Producer Diary #1
I am packing for Sundance. I have some sweaters, some warm pants, a bottle of Wellness Formula, and a portable humidifier. My mini portable humidifier was lost in the vortex of production and my medium-sized portable humidifier may not fit in my suitcase. But I am prone to nosebleeds, and so it must fit. I feel prepared. And unprepared. I haven’t been to Sundance in nine years. Back then, there was a day in Park City when all I ate was Chobani yogurt, which was handed out for free from a little tent. The memory is strong: there I am, […]
by Taylor Hess on Jan 18, 2024 -
Exclusive Clip: Scott Cummings’s Sundance-Bound Realm of Satan
Never have the words “in collaboration with” carried such a potent charge as they do in Scott Cummings’s Sundance-bound documentary, Realm of Satan. Working with members of the Church of Satan, Cummings hypnotizes viewers into the landscapes, physical spaces and ultimately mindsets of this misunderstood group as they, in the words of the Sundance programmers, “fight to preserve their lifestyle: magic, mystery, and misanthropy.” Writing about his previous film, Buffalo Juggalos, Cummings, a Filmmaker 25 New Face, said, “The Juggalos were not my subjects, they were participants, and every choice I made honored that participation.” There’s a similar ethos at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2024 -
Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash Named Favorite All-Time Sundance Film
Over 500 members of Sundance’s filmmaking community took part in a poll that named Damien Chazelle’s jazz drummer drama Whiplash as their favorite film of the festival’s 40 years. World premiering at the 2014 festival, the film won Sundance’s Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic and Grand Jury Prize; U.S. Dramatic. Of note is that the film was based on a proof-of-concept short that itself won the top prize at Sundance only the year before. The other nine selections are similarly well-known pictures by directors who have gone on to stellar careers. It’s a list that includes the first features by the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2024 -
“We’d Have These Practical Conversations About How Sex Would Be Achieved in These Costumes”: Costume Designer Holly Waddington On the Historical Rule-Breaking of Her Work in Poor Things
A feminine coming-of-age film by way of Frankenstein, Yorgos Lanthimos’ gorgeously designed Poor Things follows Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), an unhappy and suicidal woman brought back to life by the enigmatic scientist Baxter (Willem Dafoe), and then embarking on a feminist journey of equality and sexual liberation. Bella’s voracious appetite for all the colors of life and sex (as well as Lanthimos’ signature maximalist touches) infuses Poor Things with boundless exuberance, matched by costume designer Holly Waddington’s extraordinary work—both late-19th-century, and fiercely modern and rule-breaking. “I realized that I would need the clothes to really move with her, not just […]
by Tomris Laffly on Jan 15, 2024 -
“David Initially Said, ‘What if We Do the Whole Movie Handheld?'”: DP Erik Messerschmidt on The Killer
The Killer begins with an assassin (Michael Fassbender) in a half-completed WeWork office awaiting the arrival of his latest target. As he waits, he details his vocational mantras for the audience in voiceover: stick to the plan. Don’t improvise. Never yield an advantage. Forbid empathy. Fassbender proceeds to miss his shot and spends the rest of the film breaking each and every one of those tenets in the chaotic aftermath. Many of the pieces written about the film have pointed out perceived similarities between the film’s methodical, detail-oriented titular character and the perfectionist reputation of its director, David Fincher. However, […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jan 11, 2024 -
“I Think of My Work as Functioning Like a Virus in the Sense That It Gets Inside Your System”: Michelle Handelman on Her New Installation, DELIRIUM PART ONE: DEATH (The Breakdown)
“Make space to think about that which has died,” begins Lydia Lunch at the start of DELIRIUM PART ONE: DEATH (The Breakdown), a new multi-media installation by filmmaker and artist Michelle Handelman up through January 20 at New York’s signs and symbols gallery. On three projections spanning the viewer’s peripheral vision are performances by Lunch as well as the choreographic duo FlucT and dancers; the score, by Jack Dangers and Pharmakon, blends electronic drones, pulses and rhythmic stabs with breath and guttural sounds — “the cacophony of grief,” says Lunch. Together, the work is both a departure for Handelman and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 11, 2024 -
“Victim Cinema is for People that are Convinced”: Felipe Gálvez on The Settlers
The Settlers simulates several different types of Westerns without committing to one mode. The set-up of Felipe Gálvez’s first feature is classic: Scottish soldier MacLennan (Mark Stanley), American mercenary Bill (Benjamin Westfall) and their Chilean mestizo guide Segundo (Camilo Arancibia), who’s been pressed into service from a chain gang, are sent on a mission by landowner José Menéndez (Alfredo Castro). Making their way on horseback across the Chilean landscape, the three are captured in long zooms and accompanied by the booming tympani of Harry Allouche’s orchestral score. If that music places The Settlers somewhere in the realm of ’50s westerns, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 11, 2024 -
SXSW Announces 2024 Competition Selections, Opening Night 3 Body Problem TV Premiere and More
The SXSW Film Festival has announced its competition selection, opening night TV premiere and other titles for its 2024 edition, which takes place March 8 – 16. From the press release, the titles announced today follow. Opening Night TV Premiere The 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival’s Opening Night TV Premiere is the highly anticipated Netflix series 3 Body Problem created, executive produced and written by Emmy Award winners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and Emmy Award nominee Alexander Woo. In this must-watch adaptation of the internationally celebrated bestseller, a young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 10, 2024 -
Watch: David Ehrlich’s 25 Best Films of 2023 Video Countdown
Indiewire critic David Ehrlich returns at the top of the year with his characteristically excellent supercut of the past year’s best films. This 2023 edition clocks in at over 18 minutes and includes such films as Past Lives, The Taste of Things, Oppenheimer, The Zone of Interest and, well, 21 others. Music includes cuts from Pet Shop Boys, Radiohead and Bonnie Tyler. If you haven’t seen any of these titles, the overall exuberance of Ehrlich’s presentation will send you to the theaters or their streaming platforms. Every year Ehrlich pairs the supercut with a charity. This year’s, he writes, “is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2024 -
Trailer Watch: The Peasants
DK and Hugh Welchman are the directors of 2017’s Loving Vincent, a Vincent Van Gogh biopic created entirely from individually painted images. Now they return with the similarly ambitious The Peasants, for which you can watch the trailer above. As the filmmakers write in the press kit of the film’s making: While The Peasants incorporates the same painting animation technique made popular with our previous film Loving Vincent, our approach to the painting animation for The Peasants varied significantly from Vincent. […] The over 100 painting animators who worked on the film did so on specially designed PAWS units (Painting Animation […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 4, 2024
