In the midst of a successful modeling career a decade ago, Abbey Lee’s chance to break into acting came with Mad Max Fury Road. That challenging shoot was the first of many she faced with relish. A scene-stealing role in The Neon Demon followed, then M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, Lovecraft County, and Florida Man, to name a few, and now she stars opposite Kevin Costner in his 2-part western epic Horizon: An American Saga (in theaters now). On this episode, she talks about letting the character find her, the importance of staying malleable, using everything that happens as fuel for […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Jul 2, 2024A great American film finally gets a proper home video treatment on Twilight Time’s new Blu-ray of Moby Dick, John Huston’s 1956 adaptation of Herman Melville’s 1851 classic novel. It’s a film of many virtues, starting with the literary – Huston collaborated with Ray Bradbury on the screenplay, and their adaptation is a surprisingly successful distillation of Melville’s voice and themes. Huston’s memories of the production were not fond; he described it as the most difficult picture he ever made and said in his autobiography, “I lost so many battles during it that I even began to suspect that my […]
by Jim Hemphill on Dec 10, 2016Kevin B. Lee has been considering the candidates in the major Oscar categories. In this video essay, he breaks down the styles of the five candidates (The Hateful Eight, Sicario, The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road, Carol). The sound’s off as Lee narrates, but he also recommends watching the video silently to focus more on the cinematography. Pressed for time? You can read his essay here.
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 4, 2016Every cinephile knows the curatorial bliss of a great double feature. A flexing of film nerd muscles while sitting on your ass for three to five hours, a double bill brings two films into dialogue with one another based on style, subject, theme, or whatever connective tissue you can find. Double features, like well-sequenced mixtapes, require the instincts of a programmer. Thanks to streaming, digital rentals, and the perennial ease of sneaking into a second film at your local AMC, the work of making a double bill happen has never been easier. Below, I rally through 10 great double features from […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Jan 5, 2016Shared title adjective aside, what do It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Mad Max: Fury Road have in common? Ezequiel López’s video yokes the Fury Road trailer’s audio to selected mayhem from the 1963 super-comedy, finding lots of running, jumping, water-drinking and ladder-swinging similarities.
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 16, 2015Sometimes it’s good to state the seemingly obvious, so Vashi Nedomansky has performed a public service in assembling this brief video showing how centered and symmetrical framing helps guide viewers’ eyes through the many cuts of Mad Max: Fury Road. Audio of John Seale discussing director George Miller’s constant instructions as to where to keep the camera’s crosshairs in each shot clarifies the point being made visually. Read more at Nedomansky’s site; thanks to The Playlist for the heads-up.
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 1, 2015Could it be, six features deep at the most exalted film festival in the world, that this writer’s favorite film isn’t some scrappy Critics’ Week indie or an ennui-driven Eastern European drama of profound sociopolitical relevance — but rather, the $150-million studio juggernaut Mad Max: Fury Road? Nothing new needs to be said about the most inventive, thrilling, lyrical action flick in ages (considering it’s now opened worldwide) except that it’s radically more feminist than Emmanuelle Bercot’s Standing Tall. Cannes’ first opening night selection to be directed by a woman in nearly three decades, Bercot’s juvenile justice-system drama — a clumsy, histrionic […]
by Aaron Hillis on May 15, 2015As much as Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) struggles to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where primitive warlords rule the desert wasteland and women are enslaved, Australian filmmaker George Miller had to battle financial difficulties, security concerns, and heavy rains turning the desert location into a landscape of wildflowers in order to bring the fourth instalment of the Mad Max franchise to the big screen. A further complication occurred when veteran collaborator Dean Semler left for personal reasons just before principal photography was to commence on Mad Max: Fury Road, leading to the Oscar-lauded cinematographer being replaced with Academy Award winner John […]
by Trevor Hogg on May 12, 2015Many on-set, behind the scenes videos alternate extremely mundane footage of the business of getting coverage with actors rotely reciting how amazing and wonderful everybody involved in this production is. Not so this casually intense assemblage of work on Mad Max: Fury Road, which begins with a car flipping over. What follows is not quite as routinely life-threatening, but it’s still incredibly physical filmmaking. $150 million, it seems, will buy you the budget to stand in the desert, sling a camera around on a very flexible boom, and have some guys swing around on poles.
by Vadim Rizov on May 5, 2015This new trailer for George Miller’s forthcoming fourth Mad Max movie can speak for itself. You know the drill: cars blow up, lots of desert, fierce men wearing improbable makeup, explosions for days. Bracing stuff.
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 10, 2014