Shot in New York City during the 2008 financial crisis, Steven Soderbergh’s feature The Girlfriend Experience was a cool movie about a hot topic. Ostensibly about a “new” kind of prostitution, where escorts would simulate the casual intimacy of a real relationship, it starred real-life porn star Sasha Grey even as it contained virtually no sex. But what began as a look at how the Internet enabled a new kind of solo entrepreneur sex worker — “As we were making the film, I didn’t consider [prostitution] as a metaphor for anything,“ Soderbergh said then — wound up a trenchantly austere […]

“For legal reasons, all of the footage with the mime troupe will have to be excised,” writes MGM “executive receptionist Tureen Patarga” to one Michelangelo Antonioni about his movie, Blow-Up. “Apparently one of the striped shirts worn by a cast member was originally created by the noted designer Hermoine Girth-Schnitt and was not cleared for use by the costume department.” Any on-set producer, particularly on a low-budget picture with lightly-staffed departments, has experienced that morning-of irritation: “Hey, is this okay to use? Can we clear this?” Usually it’s a rock-star poster, a t-shirt, or some ambiguous knick-knack foregrounded in the […]

Magic Mike XXL is not directed by Steven Soderbergh, who has retired from feature filmmaking. But what’s in a name? Magic Mike XXL is directed by Gregory Jacobs, Soderbergh’s regular 1st AD since 1993’s King of the Hill, is crewed by Soderbergh regulars (production designer Howard Cummings and set director Eric R. Johnson have been onhand since Contagion), and was shot and edited by the man himself. The trailer’s color palette — muted and dark, with strong golds and shadows — is accordingly exactly what you’d get from a Soderbergh film, and it even opens with the same ’70s WB Saul Bass-designed logo that […]

If you noticed that Steven Soderbergh watched Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 three times in 2014, here’s the reason why: he was working on his own recut. Just as he did with Raiders of the Lost Ark, Soderbergh has worked over Kubrick’s masterpiece and he’s posted his version over at his Extension 765 website. He sets the bar high for his adaptation: i’ve been watching 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY regularly for four decades, but it wasn’t until a few years ago i started thinking about touching it, and then over the holidays i decided to make my move. why now? I don’t […]

In a world of countless choices — and insistent demands by others on your viewing time — the simple act of choosing a movie, a TV show, a book, a play can be fraught with indecision. After all, you only have so many hours left… For fans of Steven Soderbergh looking to step away from the algorithmic in terms of their media consumption — or just anyone looking for insight on the relationship between that director’s inputs and his output — there is his year published media diet, a list of everything he consumed the prior year. 2014’s has just […]

A little belated in posting the latest installment from Steven Soderbergh’s guerrilla film school, but better than never, as the saying goes. Here, Soderbergh sets Steven Spielberg’s seminal blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark to an electronic tinged soundtrack and black-and-white wash. His reasoning is that a dialogue-free version allows the film to be appreciated as a master class in the elusive technique of staging. In my book, Fassbinder is the top of the heap as far as blocking goes, but Soderbergh makes the case for the other Steven in the following terms: I value the ability to stage something well because when […]

Independent filmmakers Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz will write and direct a Starz cable series, The Girlfriend Experience, based on Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film. The two also executive produce along with Soderbergh and Philip Fleishman. In Soderbergh’s feature, Sasha Grey starred as a high-priced escort providing a “GFE” — emotional intimacy along with sex. The new series will consist of 13 half-hour scripted episodes. Soderbergh and Kerrigan have worked together before, with the former producing the latter’s Keane. And Seimetz, director of Sun Don’t Shine, was one of four filmmakers cited by Soderbergh at his 2013 San Francisco Film Society […]

Here we have the longest trailer yet for The Knick, the 10-episode Cinemax series photographed and directed by the nominally-but-not-quite-yet-retired Steven Soderbergh. It’s still not clear what will go down in Soderbergh’s portrait of NYC’s Knickerbocker Hospital at the turn of the century. “More has been learned about the treatment of the human body in the last five years than was learned in the last 500,” Clive Owen promises in a strained voice, but the trailer’s imagery — sex, blood, rioting crowds — promises the kind of bad craziness ideally required to push serial narrative TV. Related: the director’s posted […]

“I saw Koyaanisqatsi in 1983, when it came out, so I was 20,” Steven Soderbergh explains in this interview clip about Godfrey Reggio’s influence on his work. “It was pretty significant to be that age and an aspiring filmmaker and to see that.” Soderbergh has long been vocal about his admiration for Reggio’s movies, having served as one of the presenters of the Qatsi trilogy as well for the director’s latest film, last year’s Visitors. The film is available for DVD, Blu-Ray and digital download purchase tomorrow.