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Doug Pray Gets Surfwise
The past few years have seen a boon in the number of documentaries that focus on senior citizens out to prove it's not age that matters but state of mind. It was Doris "Granny D." Haddock in Marlo Poras' Run Granny Run, a chorus of elderly folks who tugged at the heartstrings of Stephen Walker's Young @ Heart and a group of more than a dozen 60-plus dancers that became the NBA's first senior dance team in Gotta Dance. There are a few more that can be added to that list for sure, but few that will make you feel as invigorated and inspired as Doug Pray's Surfwise.
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Garth Jennings Channels His Inner Rambow
Director Garth Jennings and his friend and producer Nick Goldsmith, who work under the moniker Hammer & Tongs, have been toying with video cameras for a while now. They got their start in music videos, breaking onto the scene with 1999’s award-winning video for Blur’s “Coffee and TV,” a semi-tragic story of a milk carton’s search for a missing person. Now, after successfully helming one of the most anticipated film adaptations of all time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Hammer & Tongs have returned with Son of Rambow, a smaller, more personal story about the exploits of two kids in the 1980s making a movie and the highs and lows that come with even the smallest of productions.
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Harry Potter’s World Comes to a City Near You
It’s really impossible to hear something like “sorting hat” or “invisibility cloak” and not feel at least a little of the allure of Harry Potter's universe. When the films brought the J.K. Rowling books to life, it was through the costuming, set design and props. In 2009, “Harry Potter: The Exhibition” will bring 10,000 square feet of artifacts from the enchanting films to 10 or more cities around the world over a five-year period.
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Iron Man Comes Out Fighting in London
As U.S. audiences start counting down the days until Iron Man, one of this spring's most anticipated movies, is released in theaters on May 2nd, film fans across the pond got a sneak peek at hero in action when the film premiered yesterday at the Odean in London's Leicester Square.
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She’s The Boss
The rise of the actress-director
Two of last year’s more critically acclaimed films—Sarah Polley’s Away from Her and Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in Paris—were directed by women who first gained renown for their on-screen performances. Now, a new pair of films—Helen Hunt's Then She Found Me and Jada Pinkett Smith's The Human Contract—also happen to be made by actress-turned-directors.
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The Dark Knight Wins MovieTickets.com Challenge
This summer is unusually packed full of comic book and graphic novel adaptations, starring old favorites and some fresh faces. In light of this trend, MovieTickets.com ran a poll asking which superhero will win the summer's number one spot. Here’s what the online community had to say:
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Steven Sawalich Finds His Music Within
Eight years ago, director Steven Sawalich was so inspired by hearing Richard Pimentel, the Vietnam veteran who helped to pass the Americans With Disabilities Act, give a speech at a conference that he introduced himself to Pimentel after the engagement and told him that they should make a movie of his life. And so Music Within, Sawalich's directorial debut starring Ron Livingston, Melissa George, Hector Elizondo and Rebecca DeMornay, was born.
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Peter von Puttkamer's Psychedelic Odyssey
Moviemaker goes from "Peyote to LSD" in new documentary
With High Definition becoming the norm in living rooms around the world, the television documentary business is becoming more relevant than ever. Now that televised images look better than real life, documentarians like Peter von Puttkamer are the tour guides of the 21st century. In his latest effort, “Peyote to LSD: A Psychedelic Odyssey” set to air April 19 on The History Channel, Puttkamer takes viewers on a long, strange trip chronicling the history of hallucinogens.
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Nick Stoller Can't Forget Sarah Marshall
Longtime fans of Judd Apatow will recognize a few familiar moments in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, out in theaters Friday, April 18. From an awkward reunion of sorts for lead actor-writer Jason Segel and his “Undeclared” love Carla Gallo to Segel’s uncontrollable sobbing over a girl who has left him for another man, the movie borrows a few tricks from Apatow’s television series “Undeclared.” “I think this is a story that we started telling eight years ago on the TV show that no one saw and that we’re completing now on the bigger screen, with full frontal male nudity,” jokes Marshall director Nick Stoller. Together with Segel, who appeared in a handful of episodes of the 2001 college comedy, Stoller had been a force behind the series.
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William Savage's Crash Course in Klunkerz
With films from studios' “independent” divisions coming to replace genuine independent cinema in the minds of many, it’s reassuring to know that there are still moviemakers out there willing to max out their credit cards to get their first feature made. William Savage is one of those moviemakers. For his directorial debut KLUNKERZ, a documentary that chronicles the creation and ascent of the mountain bike in Marin, California, Savage reached into his own pocket (or rather, the bank’s own pocket) and is now doing his best to market the film himself and pay off the loans.
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Independent Spirit
Independent moviemakers explain the inspirations behind their most recent films.
Six independent moviemakers talk of the state of independent moviemaking today and explain the inspirations behind their most recent films.
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Football Hits and Misses—Hollywood Style
Ah, springtime. That special time of year that can mean only one thing to all of you inveterate sports fans out there in movieland... Football season? Okay, so maybe spring is usually reserved for a sport of a more bucolic and placid nature, but so what? We here at MM rarely conform to the demands of the calendar—and neither does George Clooney, whose latest directorial effort, Leatherheads, hits theaters today. In honor of this latest entry into the football movie genre, we're revisiting some of the genre’s hits, misses and fumbles.
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Lucy Walker Scales Everest for Blindsight
Making a movie at sea level is hard enough, so for director Lucy Walker to complete Blindsight in the thin air of Mount Everest is doubly impressive. The documentary captures the attempted ascent of Everest by six blind Tibetan teenagers, led by blind mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer. With the film in the midst of a limited U.S. theatrical run, Walker took some time to speak with MM about the challenges posed by documentaries, high altitude and the Chinese government.
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David Schwimmer Makes Fatboy Run
It’s impossible to talk of David Schwimmer and not mention "Friends", the ‘90s sitcom that helped to define the decade’s comedic expectations and much of its sensibility. But it’s been four years since Ross Gellar stopped paying weekly visits to audiences around the world and Schwimmer is on to bigger things.
For years now he has toiled away in theater (co-founding Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre Company) and television, both in positions seen and unseen. Over the course of the ten years "Friends" was on the air, Schwimmer directed 10 episodes of the hit series, but in ways similar to his theater directing credits, it was always a “controlled environment. You never have to worry about sound, for instance, or changes in the weather—it suddenly raining for two hours after you start filming.” Yet, on the set of his feature directorial debut, Run, Fatboy, Run, Schwimmer encountered that and much more.
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Patricia Riggen Crosses Borders
Immigration has been a hot topic of debate in this country for the past decade (just ask Lou Dobbs) and with this fall’s election just around the corner, it may even be the deciding factor in determining our next president. But if you think that Patricia Riggen’s feature film debut, Under the Same Moon, is a controversial or political vehicle for discussing such views, think again.
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The Jesus Guy Inspires First-Time Director
A man who travels around the world to preach doesn’t usually find favor in the modern-day era of technology and skepticism. But the “Barefoot Evangelist” defies expectations. He has attracted the attention of "20/20" and Time Magazine and is now the subject of commercial director Sean Tracey’s first documentary feature, The Jesus Guy. The title suits the man who has renounced his possessions, goes by no other name than “What’s Your Name?” and has visited 47 states and 13 countries during his 16-year evangelical journey. In The Jesus Guy, Tracey maintains an objective eye to follow What’s Your Name? as he encounters believers and non-believers alike. The film has garnered praise from film festivals around the country and has inspired Tracey to continue on the path of moviemaking.
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Anthony MInghella: 1954 - 2008
Sometimes an artist creates a work you love so much that he or she just become an integral part of your life, etched in your psyche and on your heart, without your ever even having come into actual contact with the person. That is an artist's job—to move and in many ways define you—and when you have a true artist, as Anthony Minghella was, they leave an imprint on your life that never fades.
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Michael Haneke Plays Funny Games With Naomi Watts
Writer-director returns to the scene(s) of an earlier crime
A family is traveling to their country vacation home. As they drive, the parents take turns playing “guess the classical composer” (Schubert? Brahms?) with the CD player. Their son laughs approvingly in the back seat. The scene couldn’t be more bucolic or benign, until Mom slips in a new musical selection—and over the soundtrack, we hear a loud, jarring skitter-metal tune from avant-garde musician John Zorn. The happy trio looks peaceful and content; viewers, meanwhile, try to recalibrate their central nervous systems.
That opening of Michael Haneke’s 1997 meta-thriller Funny Games was the first indication that the German director’s pitch-black examination of screen violence wasn’t planning on playing by the rules. It’s such an effective sneak preview of the horrors that lie on the horizon in this house invasion tale that it’s not surprising Haneke repeats the sequence in Funny Games U.S., a remake of his breakthrough movie. If it wasn’t for the fact that the original’s Austrian leads have been replaced by Tim Roth and Naomi Watts, you’d swear the projectionist had thrown on the first version by mistake: The scene is replicated with such scrupulous fidelity that it’s almost a carbon copy. As is the next scene. And the next. And the next…
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Gus Van Sant Gets Paranoid
Indie maverick connects with teenage self in latest film
Gus Van Sant is the perfect picture of an American independent moviemaker. He grew up on both coasts—in Portland, Oregon and Darien, Connecticut—before earning a degree at the Rhode Island School of Design, and then settled in Portland, where he still lives and works. He made his first big impression in 1985 with Mala Noche, the slyly subversive story of a gay man with a crush on a Mexican immigrant who’s wrong for him in just about every way.
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Zak Penn's Grand Experiment in Comedy
In-demand screenwriter steps behind the camera for The Grand
Sure Zak Penn can write you a surefire blockbuster. He has proven that time and again with X-Men, Electra, Fantastic Four, etc. But that's not all he can do. The Grand, an improvisational comedy set in the world of competitive poker that he wrote and directed, contains neither a superhero nor a highfalutin special effect. But what the film lacks in terms of big-budget luxuries it makes up for with those erstwhile and less marketable traits: Intelligence, wit and originality.
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Zak Penn: Things I’ve Learned
"On the blockbuster summer movies, writing subplots that intersect with the main plot in the third act can be the difference between a good script and a bad one" and other lessons learned from one of Hollywood's most in-demand screenwriters.
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David Gordon Green Makes Snow Angels
Exploring the unique collaboration between director and actor
When i began working with Kate Beckinsale on Snow Angels, we were trying to find elements rooted in reality that could give her character of Annie anchors of emotion—humor, frustration, aggression and sympathy. I knew that once cameras were rolling, we wanted a high degree of improvisation, particularly when it came to confrontational scenes with her estranged husband, Glenn (played by Sam Rockwell). So we needed to design as much background for her as time would allow.
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Jumper's Doug Liman: Things I've Learned
He made indie film history with the classic Swingers, showed the real life of players on the Los Angeles rave scene in Go, made action movies cool again with The Bourne Identity and introduced Brad to Angelina on Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Now Doug Liman is sitting pretty atop the box office with the teleportation tale, Jumper, starring Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson. Here, Liman shares a few of the lessons he's learned in Hollywood.
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Double Indemnity to Along Came Polly: The Greatest Insurance Films
As the world continues its discussion of this year's Oscar winners and losers, the Insurance Information Institute has put together its own list of movies worth celebrating—those film in which insurance plays a starring role (a couple of them have even garnered Oscars of their own). Over the past 65 years, these films have featured Hollywood legends including Edward G. Robinson, Cary Grant and Faye Dunaway and in more recent years, popular actors such Jack Nicholson and Jennifer Aniston.
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Deconstructing Penelope
Mark Palansky's philosophy of film
Blockbuster moviemaking would be the expected career path of one of Michael Bay's former employees, but Mark Palansky has never been one for doing the "expected" thing. In facting, spending the early part of his career on the sets of such big-budget projects as Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and The Island, helped this Toronto native make the most of a $12 million budget on the quirky Penelope.
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Oscar’s Biggest Winners
On Oscar night, it's when the telecast ends that the real fun begins. MM catches a glimpse of some of the night's biggest winners—Daniel Day-Lewis, Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard, Diablo Cody and Joel Coen—at Oscar night's biggest event, the Governors Ball.
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Juno Storms the Spirit Awards
Juno cleaned up at Film Independent's Spirit Awards last night, taking home awards for Best Feature, Best First Screenplay for Diablo Cody and Best Female Lead for Ellen Page. Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Best Male Lead award for Tamara Jenkins' The Savages, with Jenkins herself taking the Best Screenplay Award. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly claimed two of the night's top honors, including Best Director for Julian Schnabel and Best Cinematography for Janusz Kaminski. Irishman John Carney's Once won for Best Foreign Film and Cate Blanchett matched director Todd Haynes' Robert Altman Award with her own for Best Supporting Actress for I'm Not There.
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MovieMaker Goes for the Gold
Academy members may have the final say on who will walk away with the gold at this Sunday’s Oscar ceremony. But that doesn’t mean that we here at MM can’t have a little fun getting in on the action, too. Here, five editors and longtime contributing writers weigh in on Oscar’s hits, misses and most egregious snubs!
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Oscar-Winning Perspectives on Producing
A century and a half of advice from some of the most respected names in the business
When a movie achieves critical success, the credit usually goes to the director, writer and/or actors. But what about the force of nature whose passion, dedication and vision see the project through from concept to distribution?
What about the ultimate multi-tasker, the backbone of the picture—the producer? The fact is that even the most successful Hollywood producers are usually not household names. And most moviegoers have only the vaguest notion of what a producer really does.<
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The Signal: A Collaboration in Three Parts
Three young directors who took Sundance by storm with their experiment in cinematic collaboration share the spotlight once again with an essay on the process
A hit at Sundance, The Signal offers a new chapter in the world of cinematic collaboration as three directors each take a turn in the director's chair.
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Arthur Max Sets the Scene in American Gangster
It took many years and several college degrees before Arthur Max began his work in film. Fortunately, audiences didn’t know what they were missing. Originally a lighting designer for the stage, Max turned his sights to the screen after experimenting with varied forms of theater production. Commercial work shortly led to his first feature film, Se7en, directed by David Fincher. The gritty city streets and the gruesome crimes of the biblically-inspired killer were the bones of this thriller—a genre Max has since become family with, subsequently working on Panic Room and American Gangster. It is this latest movie which brought the art director his second Academy Award nomination.
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Alan Menken is Enchanted by Oscar
Eighteen-time Academy Award nominee goes for gold once more in 2008.
For years Alan Menken has been charming children and adults alike with songs and scores for some of cinema’s most beloved movies. His work, often synonymous with Disney animation, has led to eighteen Academy Award nominations, eight of which he won. From the catchy tunes of Little Shop of Horrors to the cult numbers of Newsies, Menken continually eases himself into the lexicon of movie music. This season he was at it again. With the animation/live action hybrid Enchanted, Menken has earned three of the five original song nominations the Academy bestows each year.
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BAFTA Award Winners Announced
This year’s British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award winners are official. In addition to the results that have become commonplace this awards season (Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem winning Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively), there were a few surprises, namely Atonement’s win for Best Picture. The British romance certainly benefited from a little home field advantage, beating out consistent frontrunners No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood to reclaim some of its post-Golden Globes momentum, right in time for the Oscars.
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Tom DiCillo Recalls Johnny Suede
Before Brad Pitt was a star he was Johnny Suede, the title character of indie writer-director Tom DiCillo's (Living in Oblivion) directorial debut. More than 15 years after its original release, the film has been newly released on DVD by Anchor Bay. As a new audience discovers this hidden gem, DiCillo recounts the highs and lows of the making of the movie—and the frustration of having the film taken away from him and reedited. Lucky for him—and audiences everywhere—this DVD is a director's cut.
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Julian Schnabel Paints The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
In his latest picture, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, artist-moviemaker Julian Schnabel returns to familiar terrain while managing to explore a new landscape. Like his previous outings, Basquiat and Before Night Falls, the film is a biopic—the story of an artist living on the margins of life, searching for his voice. The true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, one-time editor of Elle France, The Diving Bell brings us deep into the inner life of its main character, a man who, flush with all the trappings of worldly success, is suddenly felled by a debilitating stroke.
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Kodak at Cannes
Since 1987 Kodak has been the official partner of the Cannes Film Festival, sponsoring the Camera d’Or prize that is awarded yearly to the best feature film by a first-time director. The tradition continues in 2008 when, for the fifth consecutive year, the festival will also hand out the Kodak Discovery Prize for Best Short Film.
“Cannes draws a huge number of filmmakers from all over the world every year, which gives Kodak a great opportunity to host our customers and show them how committed we are to the industry and to motion picture innovation,” says Kim Snyder, Kodak’s president and general manager of the Entertainment Imaging Division.
Posted 05.8.08 | News/Commentary | No comments yet...
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