Documentary
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Ramin Bahrani, Chop Shop
ALEJANDRO POLANCO IN DIRECTOR RAMIN BAHRANI’S CHOP SHOP. COURTESY KOCH LORBER FILMS. Ramin Bahrani’s films are what one could term “outsider cinema,” and yet they are made with the quiet confidence of someone who knows he belongs. Iranian-American Bahrani was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and moved to New York to study film at Columbia University. After making the short films Backgammon (1998) and Strangers (2000), he spent three years living in Iran, his parents’ former home country. Once back in the U.S., his awareness of immigrant life and the psychology of the outsider found a voice in […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 27, 2008 -
INTERVIEWING THE OSCAR WINNERS
I’m not much on post-Oscar pontificating — there are plenty of others who do it much better than me. But, the show did seem awfully low-key this year. I guess the writer’s strike necessitated a slimmed down show overloaded with film clips and tributes. Anyway, I was happy to have interviewed three of the Oscar winners. For Filmmaker I interviewed Best Actress winner Marion Cotillard and the director of the Best Documentary, Alex Gibney. And for the FilmInFocus site I interviewed the winner of the Best Score Oscar for Atonement, Dario Marianelli. Also, here’s Lisa Garibay, who interviewed Best Original […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 24, 2008 -
POST-GAMING THE SPIRIT AWARDS
The cinematic year of the pregnant woman continued as Juno won Best Picture, Best Actress (Ellen Page, pictured), and Best First Screenplay at the Film Independent Spirit Awards this weekend while nominee Angelina Jolie, clad in a tight-fitting black dress, made gossip page news by premiering her own baby bump at the event’s red carpet. The Spirits have always managed the tricky business of blending authentic Hollywood glamour, cheeky awards-show irreverence, and sincere salute to independent film, and this year was no exception. Winners spanned the range from mega-hits like Juno to no-budget indies like Chop Shop, and the crowd […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 24, 2008 -
SPIRIT AWARD WINNERS
Juno was the big winner of the Spirit Awards, which just wrapped up on a soggy afternoon in Santa Monica, CA. The film walked away with Best Feature, Best Female Lead for Ellen Page and Best First Screenplay for Diablo Cody. The complete list of winners is below. BEST FEATUREJuno BEST DIRECTORJulian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly BEST MALE LEADPhilip Seymour Hoffman, The Savages BEST FEMALE LEADEllen Page, Juno BEST SUPPORTING MALEChiwetel Ejiofor, Talk To Me BEST SUPPORTING FEMALECate Blanchett, I’m Not There BEST SCREENPLAYTamara Jenkins, The Savages BEST FIRST SCREENPLAYDiablo Cody, Juno BEST DOCUMENTARYCrazy Love, Director: Dan […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Feb 23, 2008 -
Stefan Ruzowitzky, The Counterfeiters
AUGUST DIEHL, KARL MARKOVICS, VEIT STÜBNER AND AUGUST ZIRNER IN DIRECTOR STEFAN RUZOWITZKY’S THE COUNTERFEITERS. COURTESY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS. It is the natural desire of critics to put films and their directors into neat categorizations, and yet there are some directors, such as Stefan Ruzowitzky, whose work simply cannot be summed up in a simple all-encompassing description. Born in Vienna, Austria, on Christmas Day 1961, Ruzowitzky stayed in his home city to study film, theater and history before pursuing a career in directing television shows, commercials, and pop promos for bands such as The Scorpions and Nsync. In 1996 he […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 22, 2008 -
“A Lot of People Settle for the Vanilla”: George A. Romero on Diary Of The Dead
With the passing yesterday of legendary horror auteur George Romero, we’re reposting Nick Dawson’s 2008 interview with the director on the release of the penultimate chapter of his zombie series, Diary of the Dead. R.I.P. George Romero. No matter how you look at it, George A. Romero will always be remembered as the godfather of the zombie movie. Born in 1940 in New York City, Romero graduated from Carnegie Mellon in the early 60s and stayed in Pittsburgh to set up a commercial production company. In 1968, he segued into features with his seminal debut, Night of the Living Dead, […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 15, 2008 -
Paul Andrew Williams, London To Brighton
LORRAINE STANLEY AND GEORGIA GROOME IN DIRECTOR PAUL ANDREW WILLIAMS’ LONDON TO BRIGHTON. COURTESY OUTSIDER PICTURES. A rare handful of people are born to make movies, and new British writer-director Paul Andrew Williams is undoubtedly one of those few. Born in 1973 in the Southern coastal town of Portsmouth, Williams initially studied as an actor at LAMDA and spent the latter part of the 1990s playing smaller roles in UK TV shows like Casualty, Eastenders and Soldier, Soldier. In 2000, however, he set up So Loose Films and began making a string of short films. The second of these, Sugar […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 8, 2008 -
Fubar
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Scott Macaulay interviewed No End in Sight director Charles Ferguson for the Summer ’07 issue. No End in Sight is nominated for Best Documentary. PAUL BREMER (LEFT) AND GENERAL JAY GARNER. In the current debate over the Iraq war, Charles Ferguson’s debut documentary, No End in Sight, takes what is perhaps the most troubling position of all: the war could have gone right. Largely sidestepping questions about the justness of the […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Feb 8, 2008 -
The Doctor Is In
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Howard Feinstein interviewed Sicko director Michael Moore for our Web Exclusives section of the Website. Sicko is nominated for Best Feature Documentary. Timely is the release of Michael Moore’s long-gestating Sicko, an exposé of the U.S. health insurance industry, especially its efforts to withhold benefits to subscribers. Americans rank health insurance as their number two concern after the war in Iraq. Democratic presidential candidates are whipping up health care plans; so […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Feb 8, 2008 -
CINEKINK ANNOUNCES LINE-UP
The New York-based film festival CineKink has announced their line-up for this year’s event, which runs from February 26 to March 2. From the press release: Billing itself as “the really alternative film festival,” the event will run February 26-March 2, 2008. Presented by CineKink, an organization dedicated to the recognition and encouragement of sex-positive and kink-friendly depictions in film and television, works presented at CineKink NYC will range from documentary to drama, mildly spicy to quite explicit – and everything in between. “It seems our programming theme for this year was ‘No mercy!’” says Lisa Vandever, CineKink’s co-founder and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2008
