Filmmaker

Spring 2013: Click here to read interviews with Frances Ha's Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, The Act of Killing's Joshua Oppenheimer, Before Midnight's Richard Linklater and more...

Featured

Rama Burshtein on Fill the Void

Fill the Void Fill the Void

There are few more unlikely and inspiring filmmaking success stories than that of Rama Burshtein. The 46-year-old New York City-born, Israel-based writer/director of Fill the Void had previously made handful of films specifically aimed at Jewish Orthodox audiences, but had defined herself primarily as a mother and a wife. Now she has become the first Israeli Orthodox woman to direct a film intended for those outside the Orthodox community. After going through the Sundance Screenwriting Labs, Burshtein’s debut feature had a remarkable festival run last year, world premiering without much fanfare at the Jerusalem Film Festival but then going on to play at Venice (where it won two awards), Toronto, New York, London and Sundance. It has since won seven Ophir awards (Israel’s equivalent of…  Read more

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Cannes 2013: Payne’s Nebraska and Puenzo’s Wakolda

Nebraska Nebraska

Alexander Payne’s Nebraska is an impressive achievement, a fresh and innovative take on that most familiar of genres, the road movie, one that takes conventions about the American heartland and turns them on their head. It’s also a story about a father and son learning to see and understand each other for the first time. The film opens with a shot of Woody Grant (Bruce Dern in what should be a performance that collects numerous awards) shuffling purposefully down a Billings, Montana, highway, his scraggly beard, limping gait and weathered face suggesting a man who has struggled for the little that he has. But this is undercut when we realize that Woody’s actions are part of a routine. He has…  Read more

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Cannes 2013: Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra and Refn’s Only God Forgives

Behind the Candelabra Behind the Candelabra

If Behind the Candelabra is Steven Soderbergh’s last film before he retires to pursue other interests, it serves as a fitting tribute to his fascination with celebrity and to his ability to depict complex emotional relationships in an accessible and engaging fashion. The film depicts the tumultuous relationship between Liberace (Michael Douglas) and his lover, Scott Thorson (Matt Damon), during the last few years of the pianist’s life, relating the story primarily from Scott’s perspective as he is welcomed to see behind Liberace’s widely recognized stage persona and to gain access to the person behind the image. When the film opens, we are introduced to Liberace at what is near the peak of his career. Adoring fans swoon as he…  Read more

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Bobbito Garcia on Doin’ It in the Park: Pick-Up Basketball

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By some estimates, over half a million people play pick-up basketball in the playgrounds of New York each year. In Doin’ It in the Park: Pick-Up Basketball, filmmakers and pick-up basketball enthusiasts Bobbito Garcia and Kevin Couliau set out to create the most comprehensive document of New York City’s summer, outdoor pick-up basketball scene by visiting 180 courts throughout all five of the city’s boroughs. Shot in a breakneck 75 summer days during 2011, their debut documentary has an immediacy and intimacy that speaks to its homemade vibe, even amongst former and current NBA players like Kenny Anderson and Brandon Jennings, regulars on New York’s playground courts. Helped no doubt by Garcia’s significant basketball world connections — he edits Bounce, a quarterly…  Read more

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Cannes 2013: Portraits of Purgatory

The Great Beauty The Great Beauty

Portraits of purgatory dot this year’s Cannes Film Festival, with movies that run the gamut in terms of styles and techniques: epic drama, cheeky comedy, documentary, animation, and surrealism. No matter what the setting, the plight is the same, with characters stuck in a cycle of emotional limbo where hope for happiness floats tantalizingly but incessantly out of reach. The most accomplished of the group is The Great Beauty, Paolo Sorrentino’s voluptuously crafted riff on La Dolce Vita and a masterful study of 65-year-old Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), a dilettante journalist still coasting on the acclaim of a single early-career novella, who has devoted his life to highbrow debauchery instead of literary craftsmanship. His home is Rome, his apartment a…  Read more

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Ten Lessons on Filmmaking from James Franco

James Franco in Cannes (Photo: Ariston Anderson) James Franco in Cannes (Photo: Ariston Anderson)

There’s a trend in actor-turned-director helmed films at Cannes this year, an impeccable direction of the people on screen. You can tell there’s a sense of trust and cohesive goal to create something great. One of the clearest examples of this is James Franco’s new feature film, As I Lay Dying, based on the great American classic by William Faulkner, the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her family’s quest to honor her wish to be buried in the town of Jefferson. The vivid characters have come to life on the big screen through Franco’s split-screen filmmaking, led by Tim Blake Nelson as the toothless father Anse, Logan Marshall-Green as the sullen son Jewel, Ahna O’Reilly as the fearsome…  Read more

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Filmmaking

James Franco in Cannes (Photo: Ariston Anderson) James Franco in Cannes (Photo: Ariston Anderson)

Ten Lessons on Filmmaking from James Franco

There’s a trend in actor-turned-director helmed films at Cannes this year, an impeccable direction of the people on screen. You can tell there’s a sense of trust and cohesive goal to create something great. One of the clearest examples of this is James Franco’s new feature…  Read more

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May 21, 2013

Columns

Frances Ha

Frances Ha — A Hammer To Nail Review

Frances Ha world premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. It is being distributed by IFC Films and opens theatrically on Friday, May 17, 2013. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. Just when it seems oh so skull-poundingly clear that the world…  Read more

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on May 16, 2013

Videos

Festivals & Events

The Great Beauty The Great Beauty

Cannes 2013: Portraits of Purgatory

Portraits of purgatory dot this year’s Cannes Film Festival, with movies that run the gamut in terms of styles and techniques: epic drama, cheeky comedy, documentary, animation, and surrealism. No matter what the setting, the plight is the same, with characters stuck in a cycle…  Read more

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on May 22, 2013

VOD Picks

  • upstream_color_xlg
    Upstream Color
    Independent
    Official Site
    5/7/2013 VOD
  • slp
    Silver Linings Playbook Comedy Drama
    The Weinstein Company
    Official Site
    4/30/2013 MOD

Interviews

We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

“Lack of Access Made Us More Artful:” Alex Gibney on We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

As a documentary subject, WikiLeaks couldn’t be in better hands than those of Alex Gibney. The Oscar-winning director of Taxi to the Dark Side, whose other films include Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Mea Maxima Culpa, has displayed an ongoing interest in…  Read more

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on May 21, 2013

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