A24 is having a good year. Again. After last year ushering Moonlight to Oscar gold, they are now poised to do the same with Lady Bird, Good Time, The Disaster Artist and The Florida Project. If they were distributing Call Me By Your Name, they’d have a monopoly on hip films of the season. Indeed, the distributor has a knack for creating pop-culture phenomenon out of independent films that might have been buried by other distributors. I’ve really been enjoying the “Lady Bird for President” posters and seeing pink hair trending. But what happens to the films in their packed […]
by Meredith Alloway on Dec 6, 2017There was a mini-boomlet a few years ago in cinematic fashion films, and Kate Mulleavy and Laura Mulleavy, the two sisters who are the designers for the fashion label Rodarte, were behind several of the best. Working with the director Todd Cole, the films were stunningly beautiful, fitfully mysterious and emotionally ambiguous. Now, the sisters have directed their own first film, out this September from A24. The trailer, posted above, is an absolute knockout — my favorite trailer posted in the last two days. Here’s the press release copy: The exquisite feature film debut of visionary fashion designers Kate and […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 9, 2017Director Matthew Frost and actress Kirsten Dunst team up for this short film, Aspirational, about celebrity fandom in the age of the selfie. A tag is worth more than a moment as Dunst encounters two fans outside her house. Via VS Magazine.
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 29, 2014For many supposedly serious cinema folk, there is no secret pleasure more pleasurable than the disaster film. What makes the genre so familiar – predictable plotlines, one-dimensional characters and an ever-present threat that only kills the people who deserve it – is also what makes it so damn fun. In the late ’90s, people cheered when the alien spaceship blew up American monuments. A full decade after September 11th, it’s still hard to imagine that happening now. During the past decade, disaster films have become more serious, less The Towering Inferno and more District 9, but it is only in the […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Dec 20, 2011First that Cannes press conference and now the new R.E.M. video — Kirsten Dunst knows how to hold a close-up. After her series of conflicted, painful expressions while Lars Von Trier rambled on about Nazism endeared her to the world press corps, Dunst now appears in the final video of R.E.M., again transfixing without speaking. But what got me really excited was seeing the second version of this song, “We All Go Back to Where We Belong,” which features poet and performance artist John Giorno. I knew John a little bit back when I worked at The Kitchen, and I […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 29, 2011Though Lars von Trier’s mouth gets him into trouble, the Dane’s incredible story-telling talents are well under control. Melancholia, his latest, is a masterfully beguiling tale of sisters, depression and the end of the world. By Zachary Wigon
by Zachary Wigon on Oct 23, 2011The Cannes Awards Ceremony has just begun, hosted by Melanie Laurent. I’ll be refreshing this page as the awards unfold. The Short Film Prize, announce by Michel Gondry, goes to Cross Country, by Ukraine’s Maryna Vroda. The Camera d’Or, given to best first film, goes to Argentinia’sLas Acacias, by Pablo Giorgelli. To the strains of Morricone’s score for Once Upon a Time in America, jury president Robert De Niro joins Laurent on stage to introduce his fellow jury members: Olivier Assayas, Uma Thurman, Johnnie To, Martina Gusman, Nansun Shi, Linn Ullman, and Mahamat Saleh Haroun. And they announce the Jury […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 22, 2011The controversy that has resulted in the Cannes Film Festival — which shows itself to be the spineless tool of a government uniquely, like many of its citizens, obsessed with self-image — declaring Lars von Trier persona non grata on account of his comments that began with his upbringing as a Jew is a despicable, hypocritical mountain made from a molehill. (Would The Producers be banned here? Hardly. Will I lose my accreditation in the future for writing this? I would not put it past them.) Laws about expressing antisemitism are strict here (six months in prison, clearly related to […]
by Howard Feinstein on May 20, 2011I missed the Wednesday morning Melancholia screening, having to moderate a table at the Producers Network breakfast the same time, but afterwards I happened to catch a snippet of the press conference. I tweeted a few comments, namely ones in which the director talked about this relationship with the film’s d.p., who started the project by telling him not to behave like so many “old or middle-aged directors and make [his actresses] younger and more naked.” “Don’t tell me that,” Von Trier said he told the cinematographer. Watching press conferences on those little TVs in the basement of the Palais […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 20, 2011The trailer is both gorgeous and slightly perplexing — and after Mike Cahill’s Another Earth, seems to be continuing a trend of arthouse psychological planet movies. In truth, I can’t wait for this this new, presumably Cannes-bound pic from Lars Von Trier. Melancholia from Zentropa on Vimeo.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 8, 2011