British actor James Norton gives an affecting and haunting performance in Agnieszka Holland’s important new film Mr. Jones, which opens June 19th. Last year he played James Brooke (Meg’s love interest) in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. The discussion in this episode comes back often to those two directors, as Norton generously takes us on a deep dive into his stage and screen work, lets us peek under the hood of his process, and talks about why he’s not consumed by his expanding “leading man status.” Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google […]

Fall 2019 provided us with a massively budgeted 35mm feature in the form of J.J. Abrams’s The Rise of Skywalker (shot by Dan Mindel and colored by Stefan Sonnenfeld at finishing house Company 3) and a surprisingly visible A24 mid-budget art film in the Safdie brothers’s Uncut Gems (shot by Darius Khondji and colored by Damien van der Cruyssen at The Mill). In each case, the choice to shoot on celluloid was rooted in what could be termed (charitably) as a nod to film history or (uncharitably) a nostalgic gesture. I make no claims as to which it is, nor […]

Creating cinema without concern for the economic system in which you operate is a privilege few can exercise. Like most filmmakers I know, I make films not only as a form of expression but also as a means of financial subsistence. I wrestle with the impact this dependency has on my work on a daily basis. Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, a film that she pitched as being about “art and women and money,” examines the complex relationship between profit and power in storytelling. Gerwig’s adaptation of the century-and-a-half-old text boldly restructures the narrative and further blurs the line between author […]