Noah Baumbach
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Laughing Matters (and Not)
The Squid and the Whale The Squid and the Whale was, for Noah Baumbach, a rare and blessed thing: an honest to god new beginning. Baumbach’s directing career started strong (his first two films, Kicking and Screaming and Mr. Jealousy, were both released before he turned 30) but sat idle for eight years between Mr. Jealousy and the 2005 Sundance premiere of The Squid and the Whale, which brought Baumbach back with a passion. Watching the film, you get the sense that the wasteland years created within him a burning passion to scream this autobiographical story as furiously as possible […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 20, 2016 -
“This is What a Movie Feels and Breathes and Looks Like”: Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow on De Palma
It’s always been a convenient avenue for critical dismissal to view Brian De Palma’s films as impersonal. As the director says himself in Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s eponymous documentary opening this week, he makes films from the outside in — beginning with the visual lexicon of the narrative, then connecting that architecture with living characters and scenes. Some struggle to defend their affinity for his films. The targets are legion. One is the voyeur’s presence in most of them — almost always misconstrued by detractors and, if only in the most fleeting moments, pegged as either contrivance, obsession, or […]
by Evan Louison on Jun 7, 2016 -
NYFF Critics’ Notebook: De Palma
Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s De Palma is a fans-only interview session with the director. Straightforward, even staid in its construction, it consists almost entirely of two shots of a seated De Palma — one in medium close-up, the other presumably punched-in in post — and appositely illustrative clips and stills. The film currently only has two credits: the opening all-caps title “DE PALMA” scrolling left to right in lurid red, and a closing copyright credit (hard-working editors will, presumably, be thanked at a later date). Interlocutors Baumbach and Paltrow are never heard; according to this useful interview, they never even considered […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 30, 2015 -
Watch: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach Fundraise for Orson Welles’ Final Film
You’ve probably heard about the latest push to finally produce a finished, edited version of Orson Welles’ uncompleted final film, The Other Side of the Wind. In support of an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds, Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach have taped a video message urging you to just contribute already. Unusually for the famously controlling Anderson, he appears to have shot the video handheld selfie style.
by Filmmaker Staff on May 20, 2015 -
“To Remove What Feels Electronic in the Image”: While We’re Young DP Sam Levy
Early in writer/director Noah Baumbach’s latest effort While We’re Young, the film presents a montage of its 40-something protagonists (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) transfixed by the glowing screens of their digital devices, juxtaposed against a younger couple they’ve recently befriended (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried) basking in the analog glory of board games, vinyl and VHS. To be a contemporary cinematographer is to embrace both worlds of this montage: the analog and the digital, the new and old, the 6K camera and the perfect imperfections of the vintage lens. While We’re Young cinematographer Sam Levy talked to Filmmaker about […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 27, 2015 -
Sundance 2015: Mistress America and It Follows
Modern media has a perverse fascination with pinpointing the motivations of the millennial. When not publishing extensive reports on “hookup culture,” many publications are transfixed by the generation’s ostensible desire to simultaneously better themselves and the world, while still being unable to get it together and move out of their mom’s basement. With Mistress America, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig have created a precise portrait of a woman who embodies the ephemeral essence of a do-it-all, self-entitled millennial without dispensing any blanket, generational theses. This character, however, is not the film’s purported protagonist — that would be 18-year-old aspiring writer Tracy, played by a nicely understated […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 25, 2015 -
Fox Searchlight Acquires Noah Baumbach’s Sundance-Bound Mistress America
Fox Searchlight has struck early, acquiring Noah Baumbach’s highly anticipated Mistress America two weeks before its premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. As described in the press release, “In Mistress America, Tracy (Lola Kirke) is a lonely college freshman in New York, having neither the exciting university experience nor the glamorous metropolitan lifestyle she envisioned. But when she is taken in by her soon-to-be stepsister, Brooke (Greta Gerwig) – a resident of Times Square and adventurous gal about town – she is rescued from her disappointment and seduced by Brooke’s alluringly mad schemes.” The film is written by Baumbach […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 9, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young
“I’ve become so disturbed by younger people!” “What? Younger people?” The trailer for Noah Baumbach’s forthcoming Frances Ha follow-up While We’re Young is undoubtedly the only teaser for a Ben Stiller vehicle to frame itself with quotes from Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder. Older couple Stiller and Naomi Watts meet younger partners Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried and ends up wandering around Bushwick; musings on aging and maturity follow, but it’s funny anyway. It’s also very nice to see Charles Grodin back in action, in his first feature since 2006’s The Ex. The film opens March 27.
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 4, 2014 -
Fact or Fiction: The Toronto International Film Festival
If The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is to be judged on the world premieres it attracts, this edition of the festival was far from vintage. Artistic Director Cameron Bailey signaled a change in policy this year when he declared that no film playing at Telluride would be allowed to debut in Canada until after the all-important first weekend. He even broke with tradition by declaring the exact status of films playing at TIFF, and, since the program is announced before Telluride reveals its line-up, anyone that cared would know many of the films that would be playing at Telluride […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Sep 18, 2014 -
Frances Ha — A Hammer To Nail Review
Frances Ha world premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. It is being distributed by IFC Films and opens theatrically on Friday, May 17, 2013. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. Just when it seems oh so skull-poundingly clear that the world really, really, really does not need yet another portrait of confused Caucasian 20-somethings who are fumbling and bumbling their way through the posh shopping mall that is 21st century New York City, along comes a cinematic delight like Frances Ha to soothe ones agitated nerves like a tingly pill of Vicodin. And though the fact […]
by Michael Tully on May 16, 2013
