Damien Chazelle
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Trailer Watch: Damien Chazelle’s Babylon
The uncensored trailer has arrived for Damien Chazelle‘s fifth feature, the Hollywood Jazz Age epic Babylon. Charting the transition from silent films to “talkies,” the film follows several characters who experience a dramatic rise and fall during this era of unbridled excess and hedonism. Babylon boasts an enormous ensemble cast, starring Diego Calva, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt and featuring Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, Jean Smart, Tobey Maguire, P.J. Byrne, Lukas Haas, Ethan Suplee, Olivia Hamilton, Jeff Garlin, Max Minghella, Eric Roberts, Rory Scovel, Katherine Waterstone, Flea, Olivia Wilde and Samara Weaving. Paramount Pictures will release Babylon in select theaters […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 13, 2022 -
“Our Entire Moon Was Lit by One Single Lamp”: DP Linus Sandgren on First Man
In La La Land, cinematographer Linus Sandgren imbued the love story of two showbiz strivers with the opulent grandeur of the Golden Age Hollywood musical. First Man, which reteams Sandgren and La La Land director Damien Chazelle, presents the opposite challenge — reducing the mythic nature of mankind’s first voyage to the moon to something intimate, personal, and human. To do so, Sandgren eschewed the intricate, elegant long takes of La La Land in favor of an immersive cinéma vérité aesthetic inspired more by Pennebaker, Maysles and Wiseman than the sterile cosmic wonder of Kubrick. With First Man now out in […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 22, 2018 -
Anatahan, Woman of the Year, Baby Boom and La La Land: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations of the Week
Director Josef von Sternberg’s last film, Anatahan (1953), represents one of those rare cases where a director got to go out on the absolute perfect note: it sums up many of his philosophical and aesthetic preoccupations while also starkly departing from the kinds of lavish Hollywood productions that made him famous. Loosely based on a true story, it follows ten Japanese soldiers who are stranded on an island during World War II and remain there for years, reduced to their primal instincts by their surroundings as well as the lone woman they discover inhabiting the island. Von Sternberg shot the […]
by Jim Hemphill on Apr 21, 2017 -
Pink Skies and Poetic Artifacts: DP Linus Sandgren on La La Land
Early in La La Land, Emma Stone’s aspiring actress rises from a restaurant conversation about the unpleasantness of contemporary moviegoing and sprints to the Rialto Theatre to take in Rebel Without a Cause with Ryan Gosling’s intractably traditionalist jazz pianist. The burst of exuberance doesn’t last. The Rialto later closes down and as Gosling waxes poetic about jazz’s declining cultural relevance you begin to feel that for La La Land jazz is just a surrogate for the state of film itself. La La Land is an ode to the magic of movies – at a time when going to the movies has […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jan 18, 2017 -
Watch: “Whiplash: From Short to Feature”
Jacob T. Swinney’s new video essay intercuts the short and feature versions of Whiplash seamlessly, showing how close the first incarnation was to the final feature project. And it’s also probably the only legal way you can see parts of the original short for now.
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 25, 2016 -
Watch: Whiplash, The Short
Initially unable to raise the $3 million budget for Whiplash, Damien Chazelle made a proof of concept, 18-minute short film that premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Now available online, the short looks to be more or less an exact excerpt of the feature script, distilling Fletcher’s emotional manipulation, rage, and abuse into three consecutive scenes. The precise editing, gliding camerawork, and J.K. Simmons’ high octane performance are all on display, though the short — presumably for budgetary reasons — lacks the isolated, brooding mood and dark yellow color pallet of the feature version. Also notable is that Johnny Simmons was […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 2, 2015 -
Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash Wins Two Top Prizes at the 30th Sundance Film Festival
Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash soared to victory in the major awards categories in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 30th Sundance Film Festival Saturday night. The picture, which was picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics during the festival, took home both the U.S. Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award. Starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons, Chazelle’s second feature tells the story of an ambitious young jazz drummer and his unrelenting instructor in a no-holds-barred conservatory environment. The 28-year-old Chazelle first gained attention in 2009 when his feature directorial debut Guy and Madeleine on a Park Bench surfaced at […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 25, 2014 -
Whiplash | Director Damien Chazelle
Attention, our audience’s and our own — it’s a valued commodity these days. We struggle to command our audience’s attention, for them to discover our work and then, once they’ve discovered it, to actually focus on it. Meanwhile, we struggle to focus our own attention, to fight our society’s weapons of mass distraction so we can not just see our work to completion but fully discover the meanings within it. What role does attention play in your work? Can you discuss an instance where you thought about some aspect of attention when it came to your film? Making Whiplash was […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 15, 2014 -
Sundance Shorts Winners Announced
Tonight the winners of the short film awards for the Sundance Film Festival were announced. The Grand Jury Prize went to Polish director Grzegorz Zariczny’s The Whistle, while two directors known for their feature-length work — Damien Chazelle and Michael Almereyda — also picked up awards. The full list of winners is below: The Short Film Grand Jury Prize was awarded to: The Whistle / Poland (Director: Grzegorz Zariczny) — Marcin, a lowest-leagues football referee who lives in a small town near Krakow, dreams of better times. At his mother’s urging, he decides to change his life and find himself a girlfriend and a better job. […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 23, 2013 -
DAMIEN CHAZELLE, “GUY & MADELINE ON A PARK BENCH”
Damien Chazelle’s Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench is a throw back and perhaps a harbinger of things to come, a bebop tinged DIY mumblemusical that, despite its New Wavesque 16mm B&W aesthetic, is very much a movie of this time and moment. It concerns a relatively young, black and talented trumpet player named Guy and his would be, perhaps still his lover, a white grad student named Madeline (the oddly alluring Desiree Garcia). Played by real life Boston jazz scene leading light Jason Palmer, Guy engages in a series of pseudo-romances, bemoans the marginality of the relatively esoteric Jazz […]
by Brandon Harris on Nov 3, 2010
