Netflix
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Back to One: Actor Glen Powell on Developing His Process and Starring in the Netflix Comedy, Set it Up
Glen Powell gives me hope for the future of the movie industry. He crushed the role of legendary astronaut John Glenn in Hidden Figures and donned some ’80s duds in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some, but he really grabbed my attention in the brand new Netflix rom-com Set It Up, where, in my humble opinion, he has crafted a classic, for-all-time, romantic lead performance opposite the incomparable Zoey Deutch. We talk about his process in general and do a deep dive into his work in Set It Up in particular. And by the end, I come closer to understanding why […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Jun 19, 2018 -
Back to One, Episode Seven: Blue Bloods and Candy Jar Star Sami Gayle on Getting to Know her Characters and Navigating an Early Career
Sami Gayle has played Nicky Reagan on the hit CBS drama Blue Bloods for eight seasons, performed on Broadway a few times, acted opposite Adrien Brody in her first film, and she’s only 22. She now stars in Candy Jar, a fun and smart new Netflix film set in the world of high school debate, which was written by her brother Chad. We talk about the unique way the work deepens when you have played a character over a period of time, and why “quality over quantity” is the approach she’s taking with her career. This episode can be listened […]
by Peter Rinaldi on May 29, 2018 -
Trailer Watch: Ryan Koo’s Amateur
Filmmaker and No Film School founder Ryan Koo — one of our 2008 25 New Faces of Independent Film — has been working on his debut feature for years. His extremely successful Kickstarter (over $140,000!) launched in 2011, and in a series of updates — and one 2013 Filmmaker interview — he’s been transparent about the long road that developing and making a first feature can become. Well, Netflix ultimately came on board to finance the film, and now there’s a first trailer, with the feature itself set to drop on April 6. You can read more about the film […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 19, 2018 -
DP Rachel Morrison on Mudbound, Her Ideal Extinct Film Stock and Using Waveform Monitors
In Mudbound, a friendship between two returning soldiers – one white (Garrett Hedlund) and one black (Jason Mitchell) – sets a pair of neighboring farming families on a path to tragedy in post-World War II Mississippi. For cinematographer Rachel Morrison (Fruitvale Station, the upcoming Black Panther), filmic references for the harshness of agrarian life in the Jim Crow South were few and far between considering the Hollywood studio offerings of the era were preoccupied with propagandistic war movies and opulent musicals. Instead, Morrison looked to the Depression-era photography commissioned by the Farm Security Administration – specifically the work of Gordon […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jan 11, 2018 -
American Head Trip: Joshua Oppenheimer Talks to Errol Morris About his Netflix Docudrama Hybrid Wormwood
Recounting a recent conversation, Errol Morris says that he’s happy his friend understood Wormwood, the documentary filmmaker’s epic new work, as “an essay on ‘doing history.’” “I think it’s a lot of things, too,” Morris goes on to say, “but I like to hear that it’s about my obsessions with epistemology.” Obsession and epistemology—doesn’t the latter usually require the former? It certainly does in these reality-challenged times, when the act of landing on some honest reckoning with the social and political record requires a scrupulous method, unrelenting tenacity and, indeed, some small degree of obsession. All these qualities have been […]
by Joshua Oppenheimer on Dec 14, 2017 -
“To Dominate out of Fear is Our Worst Characteristic as Humans”: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady on Their Oscar-Shortlisted One of Us
Directing partners Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady — selected for Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces in 2005 — first came on to the filmmaking scene with heartfelt documentaries The Boys of Baraka and Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp. In their latest documentary One of Us, currently available on Netflix and just shortlisted for the Best Documentary Academy Award, their signature cinema verite style of filmmaking unveiled a level of suspense and drama they were not expecting. Centered around three people who are attempting to leave the tight reigns of their New York-based Hasidic Jewish communities, the film goes deep inside an overly controlling, […]
by Tiffany Pritchard on Dec 12, 2017 -
DP Erik Messerschmidt on Shooting Netflix’s Mindhunter with a Custom Red Xenomorph
When mere mortals gear up for a job, they are restricted to selecting cameras currently in existence. Not David Fincher. Fincher has long hated all the gak required to make a digital cinema camera functional: a wireless transmitter to get signal to video village, the add-ons to provide wireless iris and focus control, the assistant camera’s onboard monitor hanging off the side — all the things that turn a small, lightweight camera body into a labyrinth of cables and breakout boxes. Red Digital Cinema responded by making Fincher his own set of custom Weapon Red Dragons for use on the […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 26, 2017 -
Leaving the Hasidic Faith: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady on One of Us
Described at one point in the film as a community based on survivors of trauma, the Hasidic population of Brooklyn, New York is known for being a tight-knit religious group as private as it is self-dependent. Keeping to the strict customs inherited from their ancestors, the men and women separate themselves from the secular community by adhering to strict dress codes, luddite beliefs and a need to keep their families intact. Equally stringent and oppressive, the Hasidic faith — in the case of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s new investigative documentary, One of Us, Hasidic New Yorkers — are particularly firm […]
by Erik Luers on Oct 20, 2017 -
NYFF 2017: Mindhunter (Episodes 1-2), Good Streamable Chronological Narrative Content
The first two episodes of Netflix’s Mindhunter, directed by David Fincher, are slightly stylistically diluted but still distinctively his. Fincher also directed the last two episodes of the ten-episode first season, which has already been renewed for a second prior to dropping this Friday — whether I make it to his bookending episodes I have no idea, but fans should at least take a look at this starting point. “Peak TV,” or at least the limited-run series, has increasingly accommodated one director who wants to do it all: this year has seen airings of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope, Jean-Marc Vallée’s Big Little […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 12, 2017 -
Rise of the Machines: Cathy O’Neil and James Schamus on How Algorithms are Changing Society — and Filmmaking
Amazon and Netflix are having a huge impact on the independent film business, and there are more players entering the subscription VOD space every day, both here in the United States and worldwide. I myself just had a great experience working with Netflix on Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet, which Green, Filmmaker’s own editor-in-chief Scott Macaulay and I produced. Opening day on Netflix was, though, a bit unsettling. The data driving the film’s marketing, and the measures for its success or failure, are closely held corporate secrets — even the sources and kinds of data the company uses to determine how […]
by James Schamus on Sep 14, 2017
