Playwright, actor, director and screenwriter Tom Noonan is currently debuting his latest play, The Shape of Something Squashed, at New York’s Paradise Factory, but it might never have been written if it weren’t for an invitation to meet with Jennifer Lawrence one day. I’ll let Noonan tell the story below, but suffice to say that the bent emotions and darkly comic introspection that near-encounter produced are the stuff Noonan has memorably mined in his writing and directing work for years. Noonan’s film roles include singular turns in Heat, Mystery Train, Manhunter, Synecdoche, New York, and House of the Devil, to […]
In 2002, Palestine made its first Best Foreign Language Film submission to the Academy Awards. Despite accepting films from Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not accept their submission. But by the next year, the policy had changed: the Palestinian Ministry of Culture’s submission, Divine Intervention by Elia Suleiman, was accepted. Three years later, Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, the acclaimed and controversial story of two Palestinian men planning a suicide attack on Tel Aviv, was not only accepted as Palestine’s submission, it was also one of the final five nominees competing […]
In today’s treacherous distribution environment, should filmmakers seize control of their destinies by controlling the copyright of their films? That’s the question posed — and answered in the affirmative — by Chris Dorr in a recent blog post, “We Own Our Own Copyrights.” But this argument isn’t one that’s just arisen in the digital era, and, I’d argue, Dorr’s conclusion isn’t one that filmmakers should automatically reach. Owning copyright and tending to a film’s needs over the course of a lifetime is a choice some filmmakers will benefit by making. Others will be better off taking a fee for their […]
Pompeii, so-called vulgar auteurist Paul W. S. Anderson’s latest extravaganza, is a love story and a disaster movie, a prison film and a paean to a certain kind of tried-and-true action pic many directors attempt but few make as involving and effortlessly enjoyable as “the other” Paul Anderson. Since his 1994 debut, Shopping, he has, with moxie and aplomb, uncorked one high-concept genre thrill ride after another. In his first film since 2008 without his wife, the actress and model Milla Jovovich, the British veteran deftly takes on the sword-and-sandals adventure epic. After opening with an odd epigraph about the […]
Swede: to remake a film with limited resources, cheap effects and obsolete technology, as per Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind. The idiosyncratic Frenchman put his own concept to the test with his low-budget re-imagining of Taxi Driver. Upon watching the short, screenwriter Paul Schrader had this much to say: “I always maintained Taxi Driver should never [have a] sequel or [be] remade. Michel Gondry is making me rethink this position.” With Schrader recently dismissing talk of a Lars Von Trier Taxi Driver remake, now is the time to revisit Gondry’s version.
There were movies. Some, like New York Times film critic (and my fellow SUNY Purchase Film alum) Manohla Dargis, said there were too many — even before she saw any of them. Sales, at least during the festival, weren’t robust; perhaps some of the weary execs, including a couple she overheard dishing on their inability to sit through American Hustle while in line for a theater, are taking her advice and sitting on their pocketbooks. Perhaps we’ll find some of these movies on VUDU or Seed&Spark or NoBudge. Maybe someone will tap an unexpected and unforeseen audience outside of the […]
While much of the indie film community’s attention remains on Park City, there’s more than enough going on elsewhere to keep filmmakers and art lovers busy. Foremost among such events is the Dance on Camera film series, co-presented by Film Society of Lincoln Center and Dance Films Association and held from January 31 – February 4. Dance films date back at least to Edison’s very first Vitascope exhibition in April 1896 and have been a mainstay of popular and arthouse cinema ever since, from Loie Fuller through Gene Kelly, Maya Deren, and the work of hundreds of choreographers, film directors, and documentarians today. DFA […]
“How elaborate is the camera?” The Foxy Merkins director Madeleine Olnek texted me as I was walking to photograph her with her female laden crew at Columbus Circle. “We would like to stage ourselves being hit by a cab,” she explained simply and obviously. As it happened, a few months prior to making The Foxy Merkins, a film about lesbian hookers, Olnek was in a taxi driven by a woman named Debbie. They got to talking and Debbie threw out the “If you ever need an [insert random gender, race, or career here]” phrase filmmakers always get. In Debbie’s case it […]
In every young filmmaking scene, there are always one or two up-and-coming DPs you want to shoot your movie. These are the guys, or women, who have shot award-winning student films, who have loyal crews, and who know how to bring extra style, assurance and compositional smarts to first-time features. In the New York independent film community, Chris Teague has been one of those folks, and this year his talents are receiving greater recognition at Sundance, where two of his narrative feature films are debuting. In the Premiere section is the debut of Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, a sly comedy […]
The following article originally ran in Spring 2013, when Street was on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It is republished here to coincide with it playing as part of New Frontier at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In James Nares’s 1976 film Pendulum, a large metal sphere swings ominously from a bridge in a desolate TriBeCa street. We watch with unease as the ball, viewed from multiple positions, traces a giant arc, pulling on the cable, which emits a low rhythmic groan on the soundtrack. This tense, hypnotic Super-8 film, which transforms a forlorn […]