Just like Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel, which revolves around Eilis Lacey having to cope with the changes caused by her immigration from Ireland to America during the 1950s, the cinematic adaptation of Brooklyn encountered some alterations over the course of its development. Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) was to play the lead female protagonist but delays in the production required a new actress to be cast (Saoirse Ronan) and a non-Irish filmmaker was sought for the project that ended up being directed by John Crowley, a native of Cork, Ireland. While attending the Toronto International Film Festival, Crowley shared […]
Today at IBC Sony announced a smaller version of their popular PXW-FS7 4K camera. The PXW-FS5 takes most of the features of the PXW-FS7 and shrinks them into a box that’s less than half the weight and almost one quarter the volume. While it takes away some features — there are fewer recording options, no extension arm or LCD loupe — it does include an interesting new feature; an electronically variable ND filter that lets you select any position between 1/4ND and 1/128ND with 128 steps. Adjustment from one level to another should be fairly smooth, enabling you to adjust […]
The major studios’ current preference for selecting the shepherds of their franchise properties is to pluck directors from the relatively obscurity of indiedom. Colin Trevorrow went from Safety Not Guaranteed to Jurassic World. Josh Trank moved from Chronicle to Fantastic Four. Jon Watts leaped from Cop Car to the reboot of the reboot of Spider-Man. Alex Ross Perry opted for the opposite approach. After his breakthrough film Listen Up Philip, Perry stripped down his budget, cast, and crew for a character piece about a pair of female friends (Elisabeth Moss, Inherent Vice’s Katherine Waterston) whose relationship unravels during a week-long […]
In its first half, the Competition of the 72nd Venice Film Festival has been a let-down, failing to present a single truly great title. The Orizzonti and Out of Competition selections have generally proved a safer bet, and of course the excellent Venice Classics program, which so far included screenings of restored masterpieces by the likes of Fellini, Melville and Hou Hsiao-hsien, has been a reliable and most welcome morale boost whenever necessary. Following Birdman and Gravity in the last two years, the festival extended its string of star-studded, big-spectacle openers with Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, a fictionalization of an infamous 1996 commercial […]
The world of inexpensive 4K cameras is expanding rapidly. For $8,000 there’s the Sony PXW-FS7, and Panasonic will soon start shipping the fixed lens AG-DVX200. At $4,195 the DVX200 takes the sensor from their GH4 and puts it in a more traditional video camera body. If the fixed lens of the DVX200 is too limiting, you could always buy the GH4 itself, which at $1,400 is one of the cheapest ways to record UHD video. And if the sensor size of the Panasonic camera’s is too limiting, the $3,200 full-frame Sony a7RII is the current darling of reviewers. Yes, it’s […]
Blind, the feature directorial debut of Joachim Trier’s co-writer Eskil Vogt, is an aesthetically spick-and-span Nordic nightmare, a meditation on loneliness, illness and responsibility. If its effects are a bit sneakier than the wrecking ball to the chest approach of Oslo, August 31, it’s due to the meticulousness of its script, and the complex interplay among its many principal characters. Ingrid (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) has recently lost her sight, and spends her days cooped up with her computer while her husband Morten (Henrik Rafaelsen) is at work. Unable to relate to the outside world, Ingrid retreats into her imagination, crafting an interwoven tale of […]
[Editor’s note: The Mend writer/director John Magary has written for Filmmaker before in a critical capacity. Today he contributes an essay about the making of his debut feature, with bonus oral history appended. For information on playdates, click here.] “This movie…it’s a quilt!” — Russell Harbaugh, exiled roommate Over about five weeks in September and October of 2013, an unusually sustained period of bright and pleasant weather, we shot The Mend in New York City. The idea early on, before the first index card was pinned up, was to make something makeable. “Makeable” is a funny word, an aspirational spin on “possible,” […]
Samyang [also sold under the Rokinon brand] attracted quite a bit of attention from budget filmmakers when it started selling its budget line of “Cine” lens. These were their traditional still lenses with standard geared focus and aperture rings, de-clicked aperture ring, and remarking for T stops rather than F stops. The lenses received generally positive reviews from users — particularly as they provide a good mix of image quality/construction for the price. They are, however, fully manual lenses, with no auto-focus support or image stabilization built in. But adding teeth to the focusing ring of a lens doesn’t truly, a […]
The following interview, in which producer and director Roger Corman broke down the filmmaking rules he lives by, was conducted in 2013 and is reposted today on the sad occasion of Corman’s passing last Thursday at the age of 98. R.I.P. Roger Corman. The legendary Roger Corman is America’s proto-independent filmmaker, having produced literally hundreds of films and directed dozens more, most of them genre films made under a “fast, cheap and profitable” model that still offers guidance for new filmmakers everywhere. And while Corman is best known for films made during an earlier independent era, one in which regional […]
A visibly irritated, middle-aged leader of a small-town criminal syndicate lectures a younger, much more junior member of his band of thugs. The latter has just informed him that he might be able to rustle up a portion of the 10 grand he owes him over the next few days. “I don’t live in a $10,000 world of maybes, Webb,” says the boss, Duane (Jason Douglas). I live in Texas.” (The troubled and troubling sociopath Webb is played by James Landry Hebert, a man who will be going places.) Don’t look for logic in the sage’s upbraiding. The statement is […]