6582 Results for “production”
-
Stanley Kubrick’s “Manhattan Project”: How Two Experimental Filmmakers Contributed to 2001: A Space Odyssey
It was December 1964, and Stanley Kubrick had a problem: No one wanted his new movie. The 36-year-old director had spent months writing a treatment for a science fiction film titled Journey Beyond the Stars with renowned novelist Arthur C. Clarke. When he started to pitch it, however, he found that no movie company wanted to produce it, with only MGM showing a vague interest. Considering his near legendary status nowadays, it may come as a surprise to learn that in the early 1960s, despite his growing reputation, Kubrick did not yet have movie moguls at his beck and call. […]
by Simone Odino on Oct 11, 2021 -
Daniel Garber
Equally adept with fiction and documentary, editor Daniel Garber has worked on films as varied as Sierra Pettengill and Pacho Velez’s all-archival The Reagan Show (2017), Daniel Goldhaber’s thriller Cam (2018) and Lance Oppenheim’s nonfiction Florida retirement community portrait Some Kind of Heaven (2020). Despite the differing modes and materials of each work, Garber’s fleet, frequently rapid-fire cutting is responsive to each individual challenge and informed by an interest in shaping story from production to post. Documentary filmmaking, he notes, is a crucial example of writing in post. In that sense, working on nonfiction isn’t that different from the f/x-heavy […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Sushma Khadepaun
“A decisive woman,” Sushma Khadepaun muses, “poses a big threat to society in some way.” Over the sound of passing cars blaring music outside her Harlem apartment, she continues, “There is a desire to clip her wings before she may fly.” Born and raised in the state of Gujarat on India’s Western coast, Khadepaun had a close connection to her family, and her upbringing was defined by binging Bollywood films. However, like many girls raised within male-dominated nuclear families, she has discovered in retrospect that these memories reveal the existence of a deeply ingrained gender bias. “I grew up in […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
“This Film was Just 11 Days”: DP Maz Makhani on The Guilty
When cinematographer Maz Makhani met director Antoine Fuqua on a Lil Wayne/Bruno Mars video a decade ago, the rapport was instant. “It was really clear to both of us that we had a very similar aesthetic,” said Makhani. “We both liked the same compositions, the same type of lighting. Antoine juxtaposes the real and raw and gritty with style and beauty, and that’s also my aesthetic.” That simpatico relationship went from a luxury to a necessity on the new film The Guilty, when COVID forced the pair to shoot the Netflix thriller without ever being on set together. Days before the […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 8, 2021 -
Drugstore Cowboy, Straight Time and Misery: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Gus Van Sant’s 1989 masterpiece Drugstore Cowboy is one of the seminal films of its era, a movie both timeless and completely of its time; like the 1940s noir pictures it echoes and expands upon, it’s a weary reaction to its moment (in this case the age of Reagan and the first Bush) that taps into enduring truths about marginalized and desperate people yet does so with surprising humor and vitality. Matt Dillon gives one of the best performances of his career as the title character, an addict who feeds his habit not by buying or stealing drugs on the […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 8, 2021 -
“…About That Pivotal Time in a Young Person’s Life When Libido and Ambition Get All Mixed Up”: Director Sarah Adina Smith on her Amazon Dance Drama, Birds of Paradise
The complexities, uncertainties and rivalries of young female friendship are explored in heightened, near-surreal ways in Sarah Adina Smith’s ballet-school drama, Birds of Paradise, now playing on Amazon Prime. Working-class Kate (Diana Silvers) is the awkward newcomer at a somewhat gothic Parisian dance academy, and she’s immediately thrust into competition with Marine (Kristine Froseth), the talented, beautiful and mercurial daughter of the American French ambassador. The two women, placed together as roommates, quickly bond, however, following a competitive dance-off in a psychedelic dance club, a night-long endurance test that Smith cleverly constructs along the lines of the classic game-theory test, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 5, 2021 -
“If We were Doing Inserts, We Could Cut Them In as We Were Shooting”: 2nd Unit DP Ross Emery on Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the Matrix Trilogy
A 2nd unit DP must be a chameleon who can bend their own style to the shape of the main unit cinematographer. For Australian DP Ross Emery, that can mean replicating the regimented classical approach of someone like William Fraker on one picture, then recreating the instinctual fluidity of Dariusz Wolski on the next. For his latest project, Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Emery once again finds himself emulating main unit cinematographer Bill Pope, who he collaborated with on The Matrix trilogy two decades ago. Emery —whose career includes main unit DP credits on The Wolverine […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 5, 2021 -
Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: “Melvin Van Peebles: Essential Films,” Love and Basketball and Masquerade
When screenwriter, director, producer, actor, novelist, stock options trader, playwright, musician, newspaper columnist and gallery artist Melvin Van Peebles died last week at the age of 89, he left behind one of the most varied and entertaining bodies of work in all of American (and French, thanks to his Parisian detour in the 1960s) arts and letters. He’s best known for his revolutionary 1971 feature Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, but that classic—important as it is as a point of reference and inspiration for generations of independent filmmakers—only scratches the surface of Van Peebles’s genius and audacity. Thankfully, the Criterion Collection […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 1, 2021 -
Overwhelming the Circuit: How I Scored First-Class Distribution for My Microbudget Film
My film was never going to be an easy sell. It’s black and white, nearly three hours long and stars no recognizable name actors. That’s all without mentioning that it was shot on the rattiest of shoestrings and, as a story, it’s a rather strange ride. Yet it wound up with dozens of positive (and sometimes rave) reviews from established critics, and a distribution deal with Kino Lorber, one of the best—if not the best—arthouse distributors in the country, and all without a publicist or sales agent. To invoke the Talking Heads: “Well, how did I get here?” I have […]
by Daniel Kremer on Sep 29, 2021 -
“I Have to Pay Some Form of Homage to the Art Form That Saved Me From Myself”: Writer/Director James DeMonaco on His Staten Island-Set Drama, This Is The Night
A veteran screenwriter and, more recently, an accomplished director, James DeMonaco has had a prolific career most commonly associated with The Purge franchise. Spanning five films and a television series, The Purge marked DeMonaco’s sophomore directorial outing and, aided by the upstart production company, Blumhouse, saw the filmmaker’s first box-office hit. DeMonaco, who also directed the second and third entries in the series, continues with the franchise, as a screenwriter, to this day (a rumored sixth installment is currently in the works). However, ties to his hometown of Staten Island remain at the forefront of DeMonaco’s creative endeavours, and his […]
by Erik Luers on Sep 28, 2021
