Scott Z. Burns
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“I Think Everything is the Director’s Fault”: Steven Soderbergh on The Laundromat, LLCs and Systemic Corruption
Ever the productive workhorse, Steven Soderbergh has released two movies on Netflix this year. The first: High Flying Bird, a sharply scripted drama set behind the scenes at the NBA that follows a canny sport agent whose end game is to shift the financial power from white owners to black players, i.e. to seize the means (or balls) of production. The second: The Laundromat, a Big Short-style anthology film about the Panama Papers leak that explains the proliferation of offshore bank accounts and tax havens, specifically those provided by the firm Mossack Fonseca, and follows the victims of these global […]
by Vikram Murthi on Sep 19, 2019 -
TIFF 2019, Day 1: Parasite, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Pain and Glory, The Report
For P&I-accredited attendees without the scratch to make it to Berlin/Cannes/Venice (let alone Telluride, with its $780 cost of press entry), day one of TIFF is traditionally a marathon catch-up march through their biggest titles, often scheduled in competing Sophie’s choice slots, with the big-name world premiere titles coming later. All this year’s Cannes main slate awardees are in the program minus two (the pointed omissions are Jessica Hausner’s Little Joe and the Dardennes’ Young Ahmed). This year’s Palme d’Or went to Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, which is fine by me: he certainly deserves some kind of significant honorific at this point. Bong’s career […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 5, 2019 -
Watch: Kathryn Bigelow’s Elephant Poaching Short Last Days
Written by Steven Soderbergh’s frequent collaborator Scott Z. Burns and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, Last Days is a grimly succinct argument against buying materials made out of ivory and other products from endangered species. Trafficking in endangered species is the fourth largest illegal business in the world, behind drugs, weapons and human trafficking, and the short links their sale directly to last year’s Al Shabaab attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall. There’s disturbing footage of the mass shooting included and bloody animation of elephant slaughter as well, so brace yourself. The short film’s official site is here.
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 8, 2014
