All posts by Max Weinstein
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Festival Beat: Elevated Programming Makes Jury Duty Fun at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival 2019
Having narrowly escaped jury duty this past spring, I volunteered myself for another. No, not for a DUI case like the one I nearly had...
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Hollywood Ending: Quentin Tarantino on Making Movies, Finding Love, and Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood
The first time Quentin Tarantino and I connect, he offers me an apology. “I’m not trying to be flaky,” he insists, in a tenor that’s...
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Fantaspoa 2018: Genre Moviemaking’s Heart Beats Louder, Longer, and Livelier in Porto Alegre, Brazil
“Once I get started, I won’t be able to stop.” It’s 1 a.m. in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and I’m sandwiched between Larissa, the Fantaspoa International Fantastic Film Festival staffer who’s just picked me...
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Slamdance Film Festival 2018: Park City’s Other Annual Film Fest Dances to its Own Drummer, Busts Some New Moves
If 2018 was the year Sundance struggled to answer how much of its DNA is market-driven and how much of it is art-driven, for the...
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Cinequest Film & VR Festival 2018: Trends Are Set, Not Followed, At This Silicon Valley-Based Multimedia Showcase
While a chilly drizzle washed away late winter with early spring in downtown San Jose, a record-breaking attendance of 105,000-plus poured down on the 28th...
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Desert Eagle: How Coralie Fargeat Shot Revenge in the Moroccan Desert, Preserved Her Creative Freedom, and More
If you’d have told film critics five years ago (or maybe even just last year) that a rape-and-revenge film released in 2018 would be lauded...
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FilmQuest 2017: This Mormon Country Genre Fest Makes Every Outsider Feel at Home
A piercing white patch of light trapped between pitch black sky, glowing ethereally against the silhouettes of a mountain-perched farmhouse and one twisting, leafless tree:...
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Tacoma Film Festival 2017: The Odds Of Meeting Your Next Creative Partner Are High At This Northwestern Indie Hub
Like ships coming in to dock at the city’s urban port, burgeoning moviemakers arrived at Tacoma Film Festival’s 12th annual edition to import their diverse...
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“Society is the Monster”: Jordan Peele on Racism as Horror, Writers’ Block and More at 2017 Film Independent Forum
“Any good scary moment or scene is not very intellectual for me. It’s from the gut. It’s a feeling. It’s a vibe,” says Get Out writer-director Jordan Peele,...
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Portland Film Festival 2017 Preview: Co-Founder Josh Leake Teases Highlights, Diverse Programming, and More
With this year’s edition of the Portland Film Festival kicking off tomorrow, we spoke with co-founder and executive director Josh Leake about what to look...
Summer 2019
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Guide 2019
Summer 2018
Year in MovieMaker
Inside the Issue: Acting
Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker: Richard Dreyfuss
American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stand By Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus… even while reading like a what’s what of cinema, those titles are just a handful...
1Inside the Issue: Directing
Cold Piece of Work: Richard Linklater Braves Greenland Hurricanes for Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette opens with the answer to its titular question. In an impressively executed overhead shot, the camera gazes down onto placid Antarctic waters as...
Inside the Issue: How To
How They Did It: The Farewell Writer-Director Lulu Wang Shares Secrets to Turning Your Life Story into a Memoir Movie
The week before production started on The Farewell—my sophomore feature about a young woman (Billi, played by Awkwafina) and her family’s attempts to keep their grandmother’s cancer diagnosis hidden...