Spring
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Eight Shorts From SXSW 2017
As the 2017 edition of SXSW comes to a close, here’s a list of eight short films I saw that are worthy of your attention. There’s no clear throughline apparent here: documentary work investigating the infected water supply of the DC water crisis, midnight selections featuring mannequin heads that come to life to suck face, and miscellaneous narrative shorts that cover everything from the ending of a romantic relationship to a bond formed during an impending school shooting. Many will continue to screen on the festival circuit throughout the year, and some will be made readily available online before you know it. […]
by Erik Luers on Mar 20, 2017 -
Dispatches from Toronto & Camden
Toronto Film Festival 2014 By Scott Macaulay Early in Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s resolutely unsentimental Still Alice, the eponymous Columbia University linguistics professor (Julianne Moore) visits a neurologist to discuss the memory issues she’s been having. “I’m going to tell you a name and address, and I want you to remember it,” he says. “John Black, 42 Washington Street, Hoboken.” After a few basic cognitive tests, he asks Moore to repeat the address. She stumbles, apologizes; she just got distracted. The doctor smiles and nods. Moore is brilliant in this scene, as she is throughout the film capturing, Kübler-Ross- […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 20, 2014 -
Five Questions for Spring Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead
“Before Sunrise with a supernatural twist” is how Toronto programmer Colin Geddes preps us for Spring, the second co-directed feature by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. In their earlier Resolution, the two explored themes of friendship and substance abuse within a twisty, ironic horror narrative. Here, as Geddes indicates, they decamp for abroad, settling their film in Italy where a young American traveler (Lou Pucci) falls for a beautiful German woman (Nadia Hilker). A (“terror”) romance follows. Below, we talk to the two directors about shooting abroad and trying to stay original when working within the horror genre. Spring has […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 5, 2014 -
MEDIA CURRENT: YOU SHOULD BE PARANOID
Sometimes paranoids are right to worry. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) recently exposed a common practice long hidden by wireless carriers: they track your every keystroke and movement through software known as Carrier IQ (CIQ). As Franken warned, “The average user of any device equipped with Carrier IQ software has no way of knowing that this software is running, what information it is getting, and who it is giving it to—and that’s a problem.” Carrier IQ, located in Mountain View, CA, was founded in 2005 and is backed by a group of VCs. Its software is installed on about 150 million […]
by David Rosen on Dec 22, 2011
