Ethan Hawke
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SXSW: Five Questions for In a Valley of Violence Writer/Director Ti West
SXSW and Ti West have been to each other over the years. The Austin festival premiered his debut feature (The Roost) before going on to play Trigger Man and then breakthrough picture The Innkeepers, which landed West on our Winter, 2012 cover. Now he returns to Texas with, certainly, his starriest movie to date, and one that steps outside of the horror genre he’s best known for. Produced by his usual team alongside Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Pictures, In a Valley of Violence is a revenge western starring John Travolta, Ethan Hawke, Taissa Farmiga and Karen Gillan and set […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 12, 2016 -
In a Valley of Violence DP Eric Robbins on Shooting Ti West’s New Film in 35mm
Don’t let the title mislead you: In a Valley of Violence is only Ti West’s second non-horror film. This time around, West tackles the Western with a tonal twist. In an inspired bit of expectation-reversing casting, this classic saga of a violent town on the frontier has John Travolta as the good guy and Ethan Hawke as the villain. The film premieres tomorrow at SXSW. In advance, cinematographer Eric Robbins answered some questions about shooting on 2-perf 35mm, lighting in the desert and his longtime collaboration with West. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 11, 2016 -
TIFF 2015: 5 Questions for Born to Be Blue Writer/Director Robert Budreau
More than three decades after Charlie “Bird” Parker, nearly three decades after Thelonious Monk and just a couple of weeks before Miles Davis, the jazz great whose trumpet style his own owed something to, West Coast jazzman Chet Baker is brought to the screen in Robert Budreau’s appropriately intimate biographical drama, Born to be Blue. I write “appropriately intimate” because the constricted scale of Budreau’s picture, in which Baker’s troubled life is evoked through scenes set at and in the beaches, cafes, apartments, recording studios and even film sets of California’s “cool jazz” scene, scales the trumpeter’s life just right. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 14, 2015 -
The Tainted Veil: Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill
The soldiers can barely agree to disagree. They are primarily ex-pilots but a few video gamers have recently thrown into this mix that operates drone strikes from the safety of temporary metal trailers on a military base outside the rhinestone city of Las Vegas. The year is 2010; the U.S. drone program is at a new high. Some of these armchair warriors have increasingly strong feelings against the manner in which drones are deployed in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, and Waziristan; others feel that anything goes to keep America safe following the events of 9/11; and a couple are practical […]
by Howard Feinstein on May 14, 2015 -
Sons of Anarchy: Cymbeline at Film Comment Selects
In delivering the first fully 20th-century filmic transplant of Hamlet, Michael Almereyda made wondering how he’d update each famous beat part of the fun, from “to be or not to be” rendered as prince Ethan Hawke’s internal monologue against Blockbuster’s “Action” aisle (totally unexpected, too-obvious only after its execution) to the total collapsing of “The Mousetrap”‘s text into a wordless Lewis Klahr short. That 2000 rendition took place in sleek, ever-more-expensive Manhattan — the birthright setting of one of Shakespeare’s most familiar plays, which deserved nothing less. This Cymbeline‘s location is never specified, but you can see Bay Ridge A-train subway stops at the frame’s sides; it’s an outer-borough and upstate […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 3, 2015 -
True/False Diary 2: Actress, Killing Time, Boyhood
Full disclosure: I consider the industrious Robert Greene a friend, but that makes me no less cautious in deeming his new film Actress a big deal. This collaborative psychodrama follows and subjectively sculpts his friend/neighbor Brandy Burre’s attempt to simultaneously separate from her longtime boyfriend and return to the acting world she left for suburban motherhood. (Greene’s written for Filmmaker about deciding to premiere his fourth feature at this year’s True/False.) Burre is introduced in a bright red dress standing before a kitchen sink, moving in ambiguously charged slow-mo. Is it true that, as she muses, “I tend to break […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 5, 2014 -
Third Time Around
It began with a glance. When Céline hurried down the aisle of the Vienna-bound train, did she notice Jesse first — or he her? It’s been so long since the two met — 18 years! — and so much has happened since then (divorce, commitment, children). It’s easy to forget that Jesse and Céline were once proverbial strangers on a train. But the couple still sees each other, sees through each other as only romantic partners can, and their romance has spanned millennial change. What was once a Gen X, pre-Internet love affair has aged into a full-blown, middle-age relationship — […]
by James Ponsoldt on Apr 23, 2013 -
Lady Vengeance: Sinister Review (Fantastic Fest 2012)
A mainstream production with a mainstream star, Sinister employs such horror movie tropes as a nice family moving into a new house with a past, the supernatural traveling through photographs and movies, and suspiciously troubled children. Yet despite its potentially cliché setup, the film feels unexpectedly fresh; a mash-up of ghost story, serial killer thriller, and Ringu-style photo-phobia that is more than the sum of its parts. The film is anchored by a story of believable domestic strain, and probes slightly deeper than many films in its exploration of the primal idea that images, like the film itself, represent a […]
by Farihah Zaman on Oct 12, 2012 -
21st Century Man: Abel Ferrara
In person, Abel Ferrara is a whirlwind of gestures and jokes, of quick smiles and vulgar asides, digressions piled upon digressions, even if he’s much sharper and in control of his staccato New Yorkese vernacular than he lets on. Ferrara, who will turn 60 this year, has had one of American indie cinema’s strangest and most fascinating careers, one which has taken the Bronx native from the old 42nd Street’s row of exploitation and porn cinemas to the Croissette in Cannes. Often we talk of middle-aged artists mellowing, but Ferrara maintains a manic, youthful energy that is both infectious and […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 11, 2011 -
FILMMAKER FLASHBACK: WINTER, 1995
Winter, 1995, was a great issue. Our cover story was Rick Linklater’s Before Sunrise. Andrew Hindes interviewed Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, while Jean-Christopher Castelli detailed the film’s use of Austrian tax funds for its financing. Paula Bernstein interviewed James Gray about Little Odessa, and then there was one of the best pieces we’ve ever run: development executive (and, later, Oscar-winning short film director) Barbara Schock’s “The Write Stuff: Intelligent Screenplay Development.” Technology and methods of financing may change, but these notes on working with writers don’t date. From the piece: One of the biggest impediments I’ve encountered in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 11, 2010
