6584 Results for “production”
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“All These Other Misogynists Waiting to Pounce”: Sophia Takal on Black Christmas
Rotely obsessed with heroic Final Girls and the murderers brandishing phallic-shaped penetrative weapons who stalk them, slasher films have long been the subject of gender-study discourse and academia, each observation proving that a knife can be perceived as more than a knife, a stabbing more than a stabbing. What is it about the anonymous, shadowy male presence that feels so threatening? Sophia Takal’s Black Christmas seeks to investigate and literalize that question, presenting the modern male as someone who can be equally powerful and deceitful. What’s so scary about the fictional Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees when the world we […]
by Erik Luers on Dec 18, 2019 -
“When You Don’t Have a Lot of Time Film Actually Helps”: DP Rachel Morrison on the Kristen Stewart-Starring Seberg
At the height of her fame, actor Jean Seberg was targeted by the FBI for her political beliefs. Clandestine surveillance and smear campaigns helped damage her career, destroy her personal relationships, and led her to doubt her sanity. In Seberg, director Benedict Andrews explores both the actor, played by Kristen Stewart, and an FBI agent assigned to her case (Jack O’Connell). The script (by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse) also shows how the COINTELPRO operation helped undermine the civil rights movement. The Amazon Studios release opened theatrically December 13. Cinematographer Rachel Morrison worked with Andrews and production designer Jahmin Assa […]
by Daniel Eagan on Dec 18, 2019 -
“We Have a Relationship with Fear from an Early Age… We Understand What It Means to be Prey”: Jennifer Reeder on Her Female Teen Horror Film, Knives and Skin
Genre filmmaking is arguably one of the most exciting and provocative sectors of cinema right now, with fresh perspectives and elevated messaging challenging the screen and its audiences. Case in point: Jennifer Reeder’s new feature, Knives and Skin. The filmmaker, who has crafted a number of successful short films over the past few years, has a bold aesthetic and isn’t afraid to put complex characters — especially young women — in bizarre and provoking situations. “I love seeing so many women not just like reclaiming, but claiming,” says Reeder about women in horror. Women have often been the subject of so many […]
by Meredith Alloway on Dec 11, 2019 -
Fast, Cheap and Good
“I’ve wasted the greater part of my life looking for money, and trying to get along… trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paint box which is…a movie. And I’ve spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with a movie. It’s about two percent moviemaking and 98 percent hustling.” — Orson Welles I never heard “hustling” mentioned in film school, college theater or acting class. I agree with Mr. Welles about the two percent moviemaking part of the equation; it’s just that, for my kind of independent filmmaking, the other 98 percent is self-reliance. […]
by Mark Terry on Dec 10, 2019 -
Memory Play: Producer Designer Barbara Ling on Conjuring Quentin Tarantino’s Period LA in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
The credits of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood are filled with the director’s usual suspects. Cinematographer Robert Richardson, editor Fred Raskin and assistant director William Paul Clark are among the consummate craftspeople who have spent at least a decade collaborating with the auteur. However, Hollywood also features a significant contribution from a new initiate to the Tarantino film family—production designer Barbara Ling. While Ling doesn’t share any work history with the director, the two are connected in another way. Both grew up in the Hollywood milieu lovingly resurrected in Tarantino’s ninth—and, if you believe him, next […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Dec 10, 2019 -
Start Your Engines: The Sound Team of James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari on the Thrill of the Race
Supervising sound editor Donald Sylvester was working on James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari before shooting even started. “They had mocked up some of the races with visual effects and pre-viz,” Sylvester says, “proving that you can see the right scene, but if you don’t feel the cars, it’s hard to visualize.” The sound journey of Ford v Ferrari, from those early pre-visualizations to the Dolby Atmos-mixed period feature currently exciting audiences in theaters, is one involving the sound team’s intense collaboration with Mangold, careful consideration of POV and the interplay between internal and external space and perspicacious car collector detective […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019 -
Allowing for Transitions: Editor Anne McCabe on the Restorative Rhythms of Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood centers on New York–based journalist Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), who’s assigned to profile Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) for Esquire in the late 1990s. For editor Anne McCabe, who cut Heller’s previous feature, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, and Beautiful Day, the process was fundamentally the same on both: She began cutting dailies on day two of production while working through familiar challenges. “Any movie I work on is a lot longer at the beginning,” she observes. “Almost always you’re working on the setup. There’s usually too much at the beginning, and you’re […]
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 10, 2019 -
The Regretful Viewer: Memory and Anxiety at the Multiplex
Time carries forward, seemingly interminable, as we plunge into a new decade. But with each new marker, we are reminded that time itself is terrifyingly finite. The unknowable possibility of heaven or hell—or the more likely chance of stark nothingness—looms. With the unnerving fact of human mortality comes mournful reflection of why life transpired as it did, and what could have been—a mood and narrative spark defining part of the cinematic output of 2019. Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is centered around two has-beens played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, relics of the Hollywood studio […]
by Beatrice Loayza on Dec 10, 2019 -
Economy of the Arcane: Pedro Costa on Vitalina Varela
Pedro Costa will not separate films from how they are made. We cannot escape that “how” from what we are seeing on screen, so we must make films the hard way. It is not enough for us to get them made: We must know our technicians closely, see that they are compensated fairly, ensure that our project is optimized for our tools and that those tools only operate at their zenith. Ease, Costa warns, is the sure sign of a “trap,” that, if succumbed to, will expose one’s work to “bullshit,” a word he does not use lightly. If we […]
by A.E. Hunt on Dec 10, 2019 -
Parlays and Teasers
I first learned of Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems—a comedy/drama built around the self-delusions, self-destructions and unbridled compulsions of a midtown Manhattan diamond dealer—back in 2011. The brothers had just completed their first feature as a directing duo, Daddy Longlegs (Josh previously directed 2008’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed), and shared a 161-page early draft. Much of the ingenious plotting of their new film was missing, but the character of that dealer, Howard Ratner, screamed out. Indelibly portrayed by Adam Sandler eight years later, Howard is a perpetual motion machine of mishap, whose schemes spiral more and more painfully […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019
