richard kelly
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World of Wong Kar Wai, The Ten Commandments, Southland Tales and More: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
The Criterion Collection adds another indispensable boxed set to its library with this month’s release of World of Wong Kar Wai, a package of seven essential features, all restored and remastered and accompanied by an abundance of interviews, deleted scenes, and alternate endings. Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love have been released by Criterion before, but the remaining five films – As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, and 2046 – are new to the label and presented here in vastly superior presentations to prior U.S. home video releases. The early films are […]
by Jim Hemphill on Mar 26, 2021 -
“God Bless Dwayne Johnson”: Richard Kelly on Southland Tales, 15 Years Later
Some films are not meant for the era in which they’re made. Such was the case with Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, a sci-fi epic from the provocative filmmaker whose first feature, Donnie Darko, premiered in 2001. Arriving five years into President Bush’s presidency, Kelly’s second feature debuted in Competition at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where it was received much like Bush’s tumultuous War on Terror. “More film maudit than the basis for a midnight cult,” film critic J. Hoberman observed in the Village Voice, his review being one of the few positive notices to follow the film’s disastrous world […]
by Erik Luers on Jan 26, 2021 -
The Handmaid’s Tale, Donnie Darko and The Mephisto Waltz: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Picks
Last month saw the premiere of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a television adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel documenting a future America in which women are oppressed by religious fundamentalists. The series has been garnering a lot of attention and acclaim, but it isn’t the first time filmmakers have tried their hands at Atwood’s dystopian classic; German director Volker Schlöndorff, working from a script by Harold Pinter, brought the book to the screen in 1990. His version of the story was considerably less well received at the time than Hulu’s, but it’s a compelling, distinctive film – one in which […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 5, 2017 -
“It Was a Long Uphill Battle”: Richard Kelly on Donnie Darko
A midnight movie for those not old enough to stay up past midnight, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko was, for a great number of millennial teens and college students, the ultimate cult classic. Along with Larry Clark’s Kids and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, I remember Kelly’s film being shared on home video like the Holy Grail, a movie viewed over and over again in sheer shock, fascination, and debate. A director’s cut followed three years later and only further mystified the film’s elaborate puzzle; subsequent ephemera — an explanatory book and an unwarranted sequel — cashed in on the growing fanbase. In 1988, a troubled suburban teenager (played by then-newcomer Jake Gyllenhaal) […]
by Erik Luers on Mar 30, 2017 -
Listen: Donnie Darko DP Steven Poster on his Career
Best known as Richard Kelly’s go-to cinematographer for Donnie Darko, Southland Tales and The Box, cinematographer Steven Poster will conduct a masterclass on Saturday at the Made in NY Media Center, run by Filmmaker‘s parent organization IFP. The day begins with a Donnie Darko screening and includes lunch. Curious to know more about Poster’s career beforehand? This half-hour podcast is pretty comprehensive, covering the childhood moment Poster decided he wanted to spend his life working with photography, his learning experiences at his career’s start as part of the second unit on Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, of course, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 12, 2014
