William Friedkin
-
Trailer Watch: William Friedkin’s Final Film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
The trailer has arrived for the late William Friedkin’s final film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, a remake of the well-worn Herman Wouk source material. This time, the ensemble cast includes Kiefer Sutherland and the late Lance Reddick, while the film reportedly confines itself to three locations for the entirety of its telling. The film joins the Paramount+ platform next month.
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 22, 2023 -
Seizure, Midnight Express and Platoon: An Excerpt from The Oliver Stone Experience
[Editor’s note: the following interview is an excerpt from Matt Zoller Seitz’s The Oliver Stone Experience, out September 13 from Abrams Books. This excerpt from Seitz’s book-spanning interview with the director covers Stone’s life and career from his first feature, Seizure, through the production of Midnight Express and his initial, frustrated efforts to get Platoon made.] I had a nightmare, and it became the basis of Seizure. It came to you all in a dream? Yeah, it did. It felt like a fever dream. A father ends up betraying his son, like a coward, and runs away and wakes up, and of course he thinks it’s all […]
by Matt Zoller Seitz on Aug 30, 2016 -
Killers in Italy and the Forest
Wake Up and Kill A seminal crime movie from one of Italy’s most important and underrated directors of the 1960s, Wake Up and Kill represents a fascinating intersection between the neorealist films that preceded it and the explosion of Italian genre fare to follow. Directly inspired by then-recent headlines, the picture tells the story of Luciano Lutring (Robert Hoffmann), an armed robber known as the “machine gun soloist,” who committed over a hundred heists in Italy and France. In real life, Lutring became a sort of folk hero, but in director Carlo Lizzani’s riff on events that had taken place […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2016 -
Watch: William Friedkin Visits Criterion’s Offices
In the latest edition of “a famous person visits the Criterion Collection’s offices,” William Friedkin drops by to browse. Sighting Sunday Bloody Sunday, he remembers that as another film nominated for Best Picture the year he won with The French Connection. Segeuing from memory to pro-digital polemic, he says that the Criterion’s editions preserve films as they were meant to be seen, unlike movie theaters, where prints are “scratched up.” He also praises “one of Walter Huston’s greatest performances, The Devil and Daniel Webster” and talks up Jules Dassin’s Brute Force. “I never thought I’d see this again,” he says, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 7, 2014 -
Venice 2013 Critic’s Notebook: Gravity and Sorcerer, a Strange Alchemy
While international film festivals, especially those of the calibre and history of Venice (this year celebrating its 70th edition), are most commonly seen as a golden opportunity to catch new cinema from contemporary filmmakers, many offer meaty and mightily tempting repertory programmes loaded with restorations. This year’s Cannes festival, for example, featured restored prints of Vertigo, Hiroshima Mon Amour and Borom Sarret (the first film by a black African: Ousmane Sembene), among sundry others. Venice, as ever, has its own Classics strand, with 29 restorations (and documentaries on cinema), including works by Chantal Akerman, Nagisa Oshima and Satyajit Ray. However, the […]
by Ashley Clark on Aug 31, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: James Franco & Travis Matthews’ Interior. Leather Bar
One of the more fascinating projects in the Sundance New Frontiers section this year is Interior. Leather Bar, by writer/director/actor James Franco and director Travis Matthews. Here’s the synopsis: In order to avoid an X rating, 40 minutes of gay S&M footage was rumored to be cut and destroyed from the 1980 film, Cruising. Inspired by the mythology of this controversial film, filmmakers James Franco and Travis Mathews collaborate to imagine their own lost footage. Amid the backdrop of a frenzied film set, actor Val Lauren reluctantly agrees to take the lead in the film. Val is repeatedly forced to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 19, 2012 -
Killer Joe — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Killer Joe world premiered at the 2011 Venice Film Festival. It is being distributed by LD Entertainment and opens theatrically on July 27, 2012. Be forewarned, gentle viewer: this one has an NC-17 rating! Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) As I get older with each passing year, I’ve begun to process the world—and, by extension, cinema—in a different light. While I’m not turning into an outright prude, I am becoming much less tolerant of art and entertainment that takes a condescending and contemptible attitude towards humanity. On an ethical, theoretical level, there’s no denying that the way […]
by Michael Tully on Jul 26, 2012 -
WHY IS WILLIAM FRIEDKIN TURNING INTO ALI G?
William Friedkin’s first major movie in a long time, Killer Joe — a Texas noir based on the Tracy Letts play of the same name — is being released in just over a month, and as a result the legendary director has been a lot more visible. In addition to popping up at a string of festivals with the film, Friedkin is now an active presence on Twitter. A week or two ago, Friedkin posted the above (completely mind-blowing) Instagram picture of himself as Ali G on his Twitter feed, and then at the currently running Edinburgh International Film Festival […]
by Nick Dawson on Jun 26, 2012 -
EIFF 2012: NEW BEGINNINGS
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 […]
by Hope Dickson Leach on Jun 24, 2012 -
SEATTLE FILM FEST CLOSES ANOTHER SPRAWLING, MONTH-LONG AFFAIR WITH AWARDS
When you go to the Seattle International Film Festival, you hear often that it is the largest, most highly attended film festival in the United States. 460 Films! 25 Days! 70 Countries! 160,000 attendance! Bigger is better! However, as I learned during the dying days of this year’s event, what makes SIFF one of the country’s more interesting festivals isn’t its size per se. Sure, other than pre-Rutger Wolfson Rotterdam, I can’t think of a festival that has approached this level of sprawl. So one can with relative fleetness dispense with the “this is my grand theory of modern cinema in […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 12, 2012
