Virtual Reality Cronenberg, Horror Anthologies and Turkish Rip-Off Cinema: The 19th Fantasia Film Festival

Now in its nineteenth year, the Fantasia International Film Festival is known as one of the premier destinations for exciting genre cinema. With a focus primarily on horror, Asian genre fare, and more indescribable film art, this three-week Montreal festival annually takes over Concordia University and other venues to entertain in provocative fashion. And while there are many goings-on taking place concurrently within the city (such as the massive Just For Laughs comedy fest and Osheaga’s live music performances), Fantasia always seem to hold a special place in the province of Quebec. “We’re not a subtle event,” co-director Mitch Davis noted […]

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Little Things Mean a Lot: Alex R. Johnson’s Two Step

A visibly irritated, middle-aged leader of a small-town criminal syndicate lectures a younger, much more junior member of his band of thugs. The latter has just informed him that he might be able to rustle up a portion of the 10 grand he owes him over the next few days. “I don’t live in a $10,000 world of maybes, Webb,” says the boss, Duane (Jason Douglas). I live in Texas.” (The troubled and troubling sociopath Webb is played by James Landry Hebert, a man who will be going places.) Don’t look for logic in the sage’s upbraiding. The statement is […]

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One Brick at a Time: the Post-Production of A LEGO Brickumentary

A LEGO Brickumentary, a documentary that looks at the culture and appeal of the LEGO building block, opens July 31. Like many historical documentaries, this project involved working with a wide range of archival footage, but it also made use of footage shot with a wide range of modern cameras — in one case, all shooting the same event. Co-producer and post-production supervisor Chad Herschberger of Milkhaus talked to us about the work they did on this documentary and the ins and out of post-production work, including animating faces on LEGO bricks, moving media between Avid Media Composer and DaVinci […]

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The Five Terrors of Filmmaking

Filmmaker 25 New Faces Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck’s latest feature, God Bless the Child, premieres at IFP’s Made in NY Media Center on Friday, August 7th and runs through the 13th. Robert, Rodrigo, Producer Laura Heberton and many special guests will be there in person. Tickets are available here. The film will be digitally released on many platforms on August 18th and is already available for pre-order on iTunes. Below, Machoian and Ojeda-Beck open up about what terrifies them when they make a film. 1. Never Getting to Day One of Production. Our biggest fear is getting trapped in […]

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Trailer Watch: Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth

From the copyright notice to the ominous voiceover, the latest trailer for Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth plunges us into the world of ’60s/’70s arthouse psychological horror — mid-period Bergman, Polanski and Allen’s Interiors, for example. Here, Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men, Top of the Lake) retreats to the lakeside home of her best friend, played by Katherine Waterston (Inherent Vice), to recuperate after twin emotional jolts. There’s history, however — the lingering after effects of another weekend at this house spent one year earlier. Wrote Scott Foundas in Variety: The flashbacks in Queen of Earthh are like little Proustian […]

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“I Just Like Doing My Job”: DP Roger Deakins on Working with the Coens, Digital vs. Film and His Most Difficult Shots

It was fitting that, in the year that the Coen Brothers presided over the Cannes jury, lens makers Angénieux chose Roger Deakins as the subject of their tribute at the festival. Born in Torquay, England, Deakins is best known for his collaborations with the Coen Brothers, having shot all their movies since Palme d’Or winner Barton Fink. He’s also shot three films for Sam Mendes, including the blockbuster Skyfall. At Cannes, he also had a film in competition, Sicario, his second collaboration with Denis Villeneuve, and at the festival it was announced that they would team up again for the […]

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Trailer Watch: Lenny Abrahamson’s Room

Fall festival season means trailers are dropping at an ever quickening pace, and here’s one that was recently announced as a TIFF premiere, Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank follow-up, Room. Based on the novel by Emma Donoghue, Room stars Brie Larson as a woman who raises her child in captivity after having been kidnapped at a young age. A24 will release the film on October 16.

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Borscht Corp Retrospective This Week at the Made in New York Media Center

There are many places to find air conditioning in New York City this weekend, but, if you ask us, you should seek it at the Made in New York Media Center, where IFP’s Screen Forward is mounting a five-night Borscht Corporation retrospective. Borscht, if you don’t know, is the wildly creative, culturally prescient and litigation-inviting collective of Miami filmmakers (and their friends) who are behind some of today’s best short films and certainly one of our best film festivals. Headed by Lucas Leyva and Jillian Mayer, Borscht produces a semi-annual Miami festival centered around commissioned short films as well as […]

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“As a Film Community, We are Moving Away from a Culture of Scarcity and Toward a Culture of Plenty”: Emily Best on She Does Podcast

Emily Best is the founder and CEO of Seed&Spark, a crowdfunding and distribution platform for independent filmmakers. She’s also the publisher of Bright Ideas Magazine. Emily has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in crowdfunding for film and contributed to over 300 campaigns to date through Seed&Spark. She brings experience from producing live theater and running restaurants to the film industry, and she lets us into the world of investors and film distribution. Emily travels to festivals and conferences around the world on the #stayindietour and was named one of the 2013 Indiewire Influencers, 2014 New York Women of Influence, […]

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“A Freudian Tale of the Boy, the Adult and the Old Man”: Stevan Riley on Listen to Me Marlon

Since his death, Marlon Brando has become a legend, but the actor and the man himself have gotten lost. British director Stevan Riley’s documentary Listen to Me, Marlon attempts to restore the person underneath the myth. To some extent, that’s an impossible task; even Brando himself, heard on self-recorded audio tape, talks about how movie audiences project themselves into actors. Drawing on hundreds of hours of tape recorded by Brando, as well as other audio and video sources, Riley assembles the autobiography the actor never gotten around to writing. Instead of interviewing other actors and directors about the Method, Elia […]

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