Natasha Lyonne
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I Wanted To Go Deeper Than Just a Portrait of a Band”: Rita Baghdadi on her Sundance-Premiering doc Sirens
Trying to make it as a twenty-something in a band is hard enough. But when that band is Slave to Sirens, the Middle East’s first all-female metal group, the stakes and the obstacles can seem off the charts. Which is exactly what makes Moroccan-American director and cinematographer Rita Baghdadi’s Sirens, world-premiering in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at this year’s Sundance, so engrossing. The film focuses on the band’s co-founders and guitarists Lilas and Shery, who over the course of a brisk 78 minutes navigate friendship and sexuality, artistic vision and international fame – all within the explosive confines of […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 23, 2022 -
Revision Mode: Co-creator Leslye Headland on Russian Doll
You start with a character, or a situation, perhaps, and then…what? You work out the next step, get through maybe a scene, or an episode, or a first act, and larger themes and ideas emerge. And then, realizing that what you’ve done is all wrong, you rip it all up and start over. When the eight episodes of Russian Doll—the New York East Village–set fantastical time-loop drama starring Natasha Lyonne and created by Lyonne, Amy Poehler and Leslye Headland—dropped on Netflix earlier this year, my social media feeds all exploded. Everyone seemed to be watching this show, its storyline connecting […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 19, 2019 -
“I’d Spend 24 Hours with My Family, Fly Back, Sleep for Five Hours and Shoot the Next Day”: Cinematographer Chris Teague on Russian Doll
On the night of her 36th birthday, New York video game developer Nadia (played by the show’s co-creator Natasha Lyonne) stumbles out of a party in her honor and is killed by an oncoming car. Thus begins a cycle of “resets” in the new Netflix series Russian Doll, with each demise bringing Nadia right back to the same birthday party bathroom mirror on the same night. The Groundhog Day comparisons are unavoidable, yet as Russian Doll unfolds across its eight episodes it reveals layers of emotional complexity and existential angst that extend beyond that Bill Murray classic and its Christmas Carol-esque […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 21, 2019 -
Kimberly Peirce, Natasha Lyonne, Lena Dunham and More Talk Therapy with Alex Karpovsky and Teddy Blanks
Disclosure: I’ve never done therapy, although it has certainly been suggested over the years. Any recent therapy-curiosity was tempered by watching a couple of episodes of the Naomi Watts/Netflix series Gypsy, which made seeing a therapist seem like being the unwitting subject of a Sophie Calle art piece. Offering a point-of-view both more optimistic and realistic is, timed to National Therapy Day, a set of six new shorts from directors Alex Karpovsky and Teddy Blanks in which five women and one man discuss their various experiences in therapy. Director Kimberly Peirce talks about an experience in couples therapy, author Susan […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 25, 2017
