Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom is an impenetrable interviewee, shrugging off my most premeditated questions. I get it, how many ways can you talk about your creative process or the equipment you rented for a film? When I asked him what lights he used on Memoria, he named an Arri Skypanel and left the rest, “the usual,” to my imagination. As I learned from our talk on Suspiria, which he dialed into from his friend’s unruly wedding party via Skype, Sayombhu prefers flexibility, creating lighting environments that are open to how the director and actors react to them, each other, and the […]

Memoria Giovanni Marchini Camia and Annabel Brady-Brown, editors Fireflies Press, 2021 The book begins with the word “memoria” handwritten in gold on the blue cloth cover. The word appears again on the book’s first page, alone, black type on the white page, suggesting with its flourish of vowels a portmanteau of memory, history and cinema and calling to us from another language. “Memoria” is also the second word on the second page, just before the type slips into description: of glimmers, a window, boats, darkness, the cinema. There is a bang, a snap, and the snap of a picture, and […]

Is there any contemporary filmmaker — or any artist invested in the creation of images — who hasn’t been influenced, at least on some level, by the British writer John Berger? His Ways of Seeing, a semiotics-tinged analysis of imagery ranging from European oil painting to 20th century advertising, is a seductive and accessible introduction to critical theory, feminist film criticism and Marxist cultural commentary. Premiering at the Berlin Film Festival is the anthology film, The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger. Conceived of by Swinton and producer and literary critic Colin McCabe, the film captures the 89-year-old […]

“Why am I even allowed to say her name,” wondered comic Amy Schumer when starting a tribute to the actress at last night’s Gotham Independent Film Awards.  The story she has to tell begins with a part Schumer wrote for her forthcoming film Trainwreck — that of her boss, simply described in the script as “a goddess, like Tilda Swinton waiting at a baggage claim.” Schumer then tells of the first time she saw Swinton (Vanilla Sky, of all things) and pays tribute to Swinton’s singular screen presence, noting that the only thing cooler than watching her act is hanging […]

Last fall Jamie Stuart was conducting interviews for his NYFF51. He ran into the publicist handling Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive and asked if he could get a sit down with Tilda Swinton. The answer: yes, but time was tight. The result is the following short interview in which Stuart asked Swinton to just… well, you’ll see. At the end, she did indeed say it was her best interview ever. Cage by way of Glazer? Only Lovers Left Alive opens this Friday from Sony Pictures Classics. Camera: Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera, 2.5k RAW, ProRes 422 post conversion Lens: Canon […]

Set in and around a children’s summer camp off the coast of New England in 1965, Wes Anderson’s captivating Moonrise Kingdom is a movie about two 12-year-olds, young lovers who escape the adult world of counselors, parents and social workers to find a few magical moments in the film’s eponymous beachside paradise. A movie about childhood, Moonrise Kingdom is also, more importantly, a movie that feels of childhood. With its evocatively off-scale production design, tempered adult performances and moments of playful abandon, Moonrise Kingdom is stuffed with feelings and visions that, no matter what your age, transport you through time […]

Walking around the opening party you couldn’t help but hear the word “rebirth” a lot. As the most heavily pregnant person in the room, this made me jump, but I soon joined in the celebration. The 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival had just opened with William Friedkin‘s Killer Joe, and the evening was a definite success. Not everyone liked the film — there were questions about on-screen violence towards women in particular — but everyone agreed that as an opener, new festival director Chris Fujiwara had hit the right note. Smacked it right on the kisser, you might say. There […]

The title is ironic: The conversation never happens. (Kevin’s mom suggests it in a voiced-over letter to her husband, but, if it is even sent, it is — seemingly — ignored.) Eva (the chameleon-like Tilda Swinton, brilliant as ever) and Franklin (John C. Reilly) are the parents of a troubled boy who tortures his mother with line-crossing defiance. (He is played by three kids of different ages. The principal action revolves around the oldest, perfectly portrayed by Afterschool’s Ezra Miller as an intimidating glop of arrogant negativity.) Eva never wanted the unplanned child. She yells much more loudly than necessary during childbirth and appears desolate in her hospital bed. […]

That was quite surreal. I’ve been to just two events like that before, so the red carpet shenanigans, seeing so many “movie stars” and directors you’ve listened to on DVD commentaries, and being in a room with so many people you’ve tried to get financing from – is really a strange experience. The kind that makes you all wild eyed and sweaty palmed. But mostly I was really truly just very happy to be there and felt very safe that we weren’t going to win anything and that I was just lucky to be included, to be in the group, to […]