Actors
-
Cannes 2013: Five Questions with The Congress Actor Danny Huston
Few movies were so widely talked about at Cannes as Ari Folman’s The Congress, a part live-action, part-animated adaption of Stanislaw Lem’s sprawling sci-fi novel. It’s a film that explores society’s obsession with celebrity culture, its constant need for escapism, and what effects technology may have on the future of storytelling. In addition to the gorgeous, other-worldly animation, the acting is stunning, with unforgettable performances by Robin Wright as the aging actress, Harvey Keitel as the hustling agent, and Danny Huston as the scary studio executive, Jeff. Huston nails the character of Jeff, creating both a serpentine man who’s all […]
by Ariston Anderson on May 29, 2013 -
Margarethe von Trotta on Hannah Arendt
The most evocative and engrossing picture this writer has ever encountered about the life and times of a thinker is Hannah Arendt, German filmmaker and actress Margarethe von Trotta’s magnificent meditation on the incendiary political theorist. Reuniting with her Vision (2009) and Rosa Luxemburg (1986) star Barbara Sukowa, the ex-Fassbinder muse has delivered a titanic and highly unusual work, a film of rare intelligence that animates the life of a protean mind in a manner that is at once spartan, highly dramatic, and incredibly timely. Hannah Arendt focuses on the period immediately before, during and after Arendt’s famous coverage of the Adolf Eichmann […]
by Brandon Harris on May 29, 2013 -
Nebraska Star Bruce Dern on Alexander Payne and “the Dernsies”
This interview with Bruce Dern was originally published following the Cannes Film Festival, where Nebraska premiered. If you ever have the good fortune of getting a press pass that grants you access to a roundtable with a Hollywood star, there are few actors out there who could provide a better interview than Bruce Dern, who recently won a Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance in Alexander Payne’s comedic drama, Nebraska. A planned 20-minute roundtable with a few grizzled journalists turned into a half-hour sprawling monologue of memories and observations on movie production, gently flavored with imitations of Hollywood […]
by Chuck Tryon on May 26, 2013 -
Cannes 2013: Polanski’s Venus in Fur and Katrin Gebbe’s Tore Tanzt
My last day in Cannes brought about a number of mixed emotions: relief that the somewhat grueling schedule of waking up for early morning press screenings was coming to an end, disappointment that my time at the festival was over (and that I was shut out of the afternoon screening of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, bringing unceremonious closure to my festival experience), and excitement that I have had the experience of attending a festival like Cannes where there is so much energy devoted to the idea of cinema. Two of the last films I saw at the festival, […]
by Chuck Tryon on May 25, 2013 -
Julianne Moore: Cinema’s Modest Chameleon
Julianne Moore makes it terribly easy to like her. Her remarkable consistency has helped her remain a stellar screen presence for more than two decades. Her transformative abilities have morphed her into everything from a troubled hypochondriac (Safe) and a maternal porn star (Boogie Nights) to a 1950s housewife (Far From Heaven) and one half of a loving lesbian couple (The Kids Are All Right). And her singular, nature-defying beauty has continued to land her fashion cover shoots at the age of 52. All of this springs to mind when Moore greets an eager parade of press while promoting her new […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on May 17, 2013 -
Jeff Nichols on Mud and the Realities of the Contemporary Indie Director
Jeff Nichols, a product of the vibrant class of the North Carolina School of the Arts film program that also produced David Gordon Green, Craig Zobel, Michael Tully, Jody Hill, Tim Orr, and Danny McBride, announced himself as a highly talented young filmmaker with his 2007 debut Shotgun Stories. The slow-burning rural drama was gorgeously shot in Scope and revealed Nichols’ ambition to create cinema on a big canvas, even when his budgets were small. Four years later, his sophomore feature, Take Shelter, about a father who believes an apocalyptic storm is coming, caught the imagination of both critics and […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 26, 2013 -
Sun Don’t Shine — A Hammer to Nail Review
Sun Don’t Shine is being distributed by Factory 25 and opens theatrically on April 26, 2013, in NYC and Seattle, in addition to becoming available on VOD. It world premiered at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival. Visit the film’s Facebook page to learn more. NOTE: This review was first published at Hammer to Nail on November 29, 2012, in conjunction with the film’s ‘Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You’ nomination. We hear it before we see it. A sharp, resounding slap jumps out from the soundtrack. Milliseconds later, the first jittery, violent, sweaty images of Amy Seimetz’s […]
by Cullen Gallagher on Apr 25, 2013 -
Five Questions with Sunlight Jr. Director Laurie Collyer
While the lives of the working class are not the stuff Hollywood dreams are made of, they are at the heart of Laurie Collyer’s new film, Sunlight Jr. Starring Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon as a couple dealing with an unexpected pregnancy while trying to survive on minimum wage jobs, Sunlight Jr. premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this weekend where it is sure to stir up a conversation about what it means to be numbered among the working poor in American society today. Filmmaker: Although income inequality and poverty is one of the biggest issues facing America right now, […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Apr 20, 2013 -
Five Questions with Hide Your Smiling Faces Director Daniel Patrick Carbone
In Daniel Patrick Carbone’s Hide Your Smiling Faces, two young brothers wrestle with the meaning of mortality following the mysterious death of a friend. Paying little mind to the root of the accident, Carbone readily positions the death as a catalyst, allowing its existential domino effect to reverberate across the conscience of Eric, Tommy, and their equally curious cohorts. The lush and expansive woodland landscape where most of the narrative unfolds belies the intimacy of the film, as the viewer is able to peer inside a series of identity shaping interactions that function more like memories than plot points. In […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Apr 20, 2013 -
Ron Eyal and Eleanor Burke on Stranger Things
Ron Eyal and Eleanor Burke’s elegant and evocative Stranger Things, which won Slamdance’s Narrative Competition Grand Jury Prize in 2011 is a moody and clear-eyed drama from a pair of our 25 New Faces in Independent Film, as tranquil and refreshing as an autumn afternoon along the rural British coast, where much of its story is set. A young, lonely woman named Oona (Bridget Collins), coping with the recent death of her mother (with whom she was clearly not close) and hoping to sell the house the deceased woman spent her last years making art in, returns to the home’s seaside village to […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 5, 2013
