Paterson
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“Doing a Shot List is One Thing, Bringing It Alive is Something Else”: Kent Jones on Diane, Understanding Costume Design and Tax Incentives
Best known as a critic and programmer, Kent Jones has also made documentaries for years, but Diane is his first narrative feature. Written specifically for Mary Kay Place, Diane begins as a seemingly modest, naturalistic, one-day-at-a-time portrait of a woman grounded in her family life. Volunteering gives her days structure, while trying to take care of her drug addict son undermines that structure; walking that fine line is a challenge. The centerpiece of this hard-earned naturalism is a scene with Diane, friends and family in a kitchen—a long exchange that feels intensely lived in. In its last third, Diane goes in a different, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 28, 2019 -
Strategies for Sharing
“I’m the only one of these directors with a @twitter account. Am I doing it wrong?!” tweeted, tongue-in-cheek, Moonlight helmer Barry Jenkins last November. Good question: Jenkins had just been announced as one of the Best Director nominees for the Film Independent Spirit Awards (the others were Andrea Arnold, for American Honey; Pablo Larraín, for Jackie; Jeff Nichols, for Loving; and Kelly Reichardt, for Certain Women), and among such esteemed company he was the sole denizen of the Twittersphere. Was Jenkins boosting his chances during awards season by maintaining an active presence on Twitter? Or does a social media identity […]
by Stephen Garrett on Jan 18, 2017 -
Welcome to the Working Week: On Paterson and Groundhog Day
Every day begins the same: We wake up. Usually in a bed, often by an alarm. Sometimes a pet gets me, or a slice of sunlight, or the shrill beeps of a garbage truck. I awake with a slow fade, or maybe a jolt, or perhaps only after a series of false starts. We can delay our rise from bed, but the inevitable remains: A full day of consciousness awaits us. How will we use it? How do we live life so we can live with ourselves? For Phil Connors, he awakes at the strike of 6:00 AM to the […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Jan 9, 2017 -
2016: The Year in 10 Double Features
The double feature has been a moviewatching mainstay since at least the 1930s. Their appeal is obvious: What better way to cap off a film than to delay real life for a few hours more with another one? Few of us catch double bills at a theater anymore, but their allure remains strong at home. As sites like Mashable and Uproxx reported this year, Netflix users can access double-feature-friendly micro-genres with ease. These days, the work of curating a dual bill of “critically-acclaimed gritty independent crime dramas” is practically done for you. You can even start the next film without […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Dec 22, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson Stars Adam Driver as a Poet/Bus Driver
Jim Jarmusch’s latest film, Paterson, premiered to acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival in May and now, courtesy of Yahoo Movies, it’s gotten its first trailer (above). The film stars Adam Driver (Girls, The Force Awakens) as Paterson, a poet/bus driver who lives an uneventful life with his pregnant wife (Golshifteh Farahani) in Paterson, New Jersey. In a report from Cannes, Blake Williams wrote, “It’s a remarkably free form film —so affable and comfortable in its skin —that my registration of time (‘the fourth dimension’; ‘Hmm’) dropped away for much of the first hour; I would have been perfectly satisfied to see it continue, devoid […]
by Paula Bernstein on Sep 29, 2016 -
Cannes Dispatch #2: Paterson, Happy Times Will Come Soon, Harmonium, Personal Shopper
I really ought to have more faith in Jim Jarmusch. Here’s an artist who, despite routinely delivering cinematic UFOs time and again, is still capable of surprising me with works that feel sui generis not only with regard to world cinema, but to his own filmography as well. Paterson, which is not even close to the “slight” or “minor” effort early reports claimed were threatening to land it in a sidebar (low key, sure, but so what?), manages to restate a number of Jarmusch’s pet motifs and themes in a tenor I’d not yet experienced in his work—at least not […]
by Blake Williams on May 17, 2016
