Darren Aronofsky
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Trailer Watch: Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale
The first trailer has arrived for Darren Aronofsky‘s dark drama The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser in a highly-anticipated comeback role for the actor. The film had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September before screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and London Film Festival. A24 will distribute the film stateside. Based on the 2012 play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter (who wrote the screenplay), The Whale follows a 600-pound man named Charlie (Fraser), a reclusive former English teacher who attempts to re-connect with his estranged 17-year-old daughter (Sadie Sink). Hong Chau […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 8, 2022 -
Trailer Watch: Lance Oppenheim’s Some Kind of Heaven
Opening in theaters and on demand January 15, 2021 from Magnolia Pictures is the debut feature from documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, Some Kind of Heaven. Featured in Filmmaker‘s 2019 25 New Faces, Oppenheim makes documentaries that are as attuned to their subjects’ interior lives — their fears, dreams, insecurities and aspirations — as to their physical surroundings. “How fantasy informs the way people live their lives, the camera has to do the same,” he told me when I interviewed him. “The only way to get into these people’s lives and their stories is to accurately depict the headspace they are […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 19, 2020 -
Watch: A Masked and Distanced Kronos Quartet Playing the Requiem for a Dream Theme
The pandemic has upended many film anniversary tribute plans, as well as inspired others. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Darren Aronofsky’s iconic Hubert Selby adaptation, Requiem for a Dream, its soundtrack players, the Kronos Quartet, perform composer Clint Mansell’s now iconic theme. Of course, they’re appropriately distanced and masked. Listen here to a lovely version of a track that’s graced countless indie film mood reels in the two decades since its composition. Lionsgate has released a new 4K Blu-ray edition of the film you can read about here.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 16, 2020 -
Requiem for a Dream, The Haunting and Sergeant York: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. theatrical release of Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky’s visually dazzling and emotionally shattering adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel about doomed addicts. When it came out in 2000, Requiem for a Dream more than delivered on the promise of Aronofsky’s 1998 debut feature Pi, taking that film’s ambitious experiments with subjective point of view to a whole new level; in Requiem, Aronofksy utilizes split screen, speeded up and slowed down motion, multiple exposures, impressionistic digital and practical special effects, unnatural lighting and clashing color temperatures, extreme focal lengths at either […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 16, 2020 -
Paxton Winters’s Aronofsky-Produced Pacified Wins Top Prize at San Sebastian; Other Dramas Explore Franco’s Legacy and the Spanish Civil War
San Sebastian has always been a place where the past meets the present with some finesse, its Art Nouveau buildings nestling happily next to the angular lines of the film festival’s main Kursaal auditorium, opened in 1999 and intended to mimic “two beached rocks.” This mix of energy is reflected in the audiences who attend, often seen snacking on a glass of wine and one of the city’s traditional pintxo canapes as they patiently queue for the cinema, and who generally break out into a round of spontaneous hand-clapping as the festival’s jazzy introduction plays before each film. History seemed […]
by Amber Wilkinson on Sep 29, 2019 -
“Storytelling is in Our DNA”: Darren Aronofsky’s Ten Rules for Independent Filmmakers at SXSW
“Storytelling makes us human, it’s in our DNA,” said writer-director Darren Aronofsky in a keynote panel at SXSW. Giving Filmmaker a shout-out along the way, Aronofsky recalled his early days at Harvard and the American Film Institute and the hours spent watching the first works of Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater on VHS, wondering how he’d break into directing. His research led him to the making of his feature debut Pi, an experimental psychological thriller that was “weird,” was shot on high-contrast black-and-white reversal film, and opted for a non-linear form of storytelling. The film won […]
by Tiffany Pritchard on Mar 11, 2018 -
Beautiful Abyss: Eliza McNitt on her Visionary VR
Filmmaker Eliza McNitt’s second VR film, SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime, has made history as the first VR film to sell at Sundance. CityLights, a VR financing and distribution company, acquired the project as a three-part series for a significant seven-figure deal. Narrated by Jessica Chastain, SPHERES is inspired by the recent discovery that gravitational waves make their own music, and it visualizes the collision of two black holes that produce these movements. With the Oculus Rift headset and hand controllers, the viewer uses their voice and body to interact with the cosmic landscape, drawing stardust circles while being pulled into […]
by Meredith Alloway on Mar 8, 2018 -
A Woman Above Everything Else
The camera pushes tight in on Natalie Portman’s distressed face, a layer of 16mm grain putting a slight filter on her perfect features. From the very beginning, we’re too close; the customary distance from an iconic first lady is gone. Also missing are biographical flashbacks, or early happy moments, or pretty montages locating Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy within the tapestry of her husband’s life and administration. No, Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, which follows the first lady in the days following John F. Kennedy’s assassination, begins in a kind of emotional media res, a heightened state accentuated by the dark chords of Mica […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2016 -
Watch: “Like Requiem for a Dream“
Inspired by the rapid drug sequences in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, Candice Drouet envisions what other films could look like with a similar editing style. The latest Fandor Keyframe video essay reimagines films such as Drive, Pulp Fiction and Mad Max: Fury Road.
by Marc Nemcik on Jul 11, 2016 -
39 Movies Released in 2014 Shot on 35mm
Last year, I posited that Boyhood‘s use of 35mm seemed to be a kind of special effect as much as anything: committing to film ensured an internally continuous look over 12 years of production whose uniqueness would survive despite a digital intermediate and no prints being struck for American release. This type of use of 35mm, separate from its ongoing viability as an exhibition format, was one common reason cited for its use in 39 2014 US releases originating in whole or substantial part from it. That’s a list that’s probably not complete: collating the release calendar against the technical specifications primarily quickly […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 15, 2015
