Singing for his Supper: 7 Questions With Icon John Waters

How many of us can say we really did it our way? Frank Sinatra sure seemed like he did. Who else? Who else seemed to not only live the life they wanted to lead, but a life that was in many ways counter to the way everybody else was doing it? Sinatra certainly did it his way, but he was hardly an outlier—he had a whole pack.

You know whom I’m driving towards, because if you’ve got this far you’ve already read the title...

Famed Scientist Elizabeth Loftus on Plausibility of Four Mind-Bending Films

Christopher Nolan has made two mind-blowing films in which the psyches of his characters were chessboards at best, battlefields at worst. Memento made Nolan something of a household name—by the time he made Inception, he was one of the leading directors in Hollywood.

Elizabeth Loftus PhD. is not a household name (few scientists are), but she’s well known in the scientific community as an expert on memory. She’s a professor at the University of California,...

A Q&A With Producer & Filmmaking Powerhouse Christine Vachon

Christine Vachon is one of the most important film producers in New York.  She has maintained close relationships with a bevy of influential filmmakers while shepherding some of the most challenging, dark and often beautiful films into the world. She has helped provide a voice for directors who might otherwise have been marginalized—she has helped provide some of the juiciest (and most harrowing) female roles to actresses from Julianne Moore to Cate Blanchett to Hillary Swank,...

Talking With Legendary Director William Friedkin

William Friedkin, legendary director of The French Connection (1971), which won him the Best Director Oscar, and The Exorcist (1973), one of the greatest horror films of all time, recently published his memoirs, The Friedkin Connection, a candid look at his early life and his long movie career.

We caught up with him as he was touring the country to promote his book, as well has host several screenings of his late 70’s masterpiece,...

Film Historians on the Landscape of Cinema During the Civil Rights Era

Today marks the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. Leaders from all over our country are gathering in D.C. to mark the occasion, with a speech at the end of the day's proceedings by President Obama.

As we wrote yesterday, there are powerful documentaries on the civil rights movement available on DVD that, truly, every American should watch. What we started wondering was what narrative films we were being made at the time that might have had an impact,...

5 Civil Rights Docs: Celebrating 50th Anniversary of March on Washington

Tomorrow marks the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington. President Obama will deliver a speech on the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King gave one of the most famous, and moving, speeches in American History—his iconic “I Have a Dream” address.

This past July, Louis Menand wrote a moving, harrowing article for The New Yorker entitled “The Color of Law,” that investigated voting rights for African Americans, on the heels of the recent Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Shelby v...

Talking to Jane Lynch About her new Film Afternoon Delight

Since premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Jill Soloway’s provocative comedy about sex, marriage and finding oneself, Afternoon Delight, has garnered praise (Soloway won best director at this year's Sundance Film Festival)  — with many singling out Jane Lynch’s performance as one of the fest’s best. Afternoon Delight follows Rachel (Kathryn Hahn), a hip, Silver Lake, California, mom with a lackluster sex life, who takes in a homeless stripper (Juno Temple) to spice things up...

The World’s End, Drinking Buddies, & You’re Next: Weekend Watch List

Movie calendars no longer really mean what they used to. Yes, movies with Academy Award aspirations do get back loaded and released during the fall and early winter. Yes, summer is still blockbuster season, a fact as immutable as gravity or Woody Allen releasing a movie a year. Yet assuming you can guess the relative quality of a film based on the date it was released is getting harder and harder to predict.

Take late August, for example...

Creativity in Hollywood: Film Visionaries On Creative Process And Inspiration

Unlike most films and television shows, inspiration is not available on-demand. In the highly creative realm of movie-making, a good idea can catapult careers, spark motion picture franchises, and make cinematic history.

Inventing the next film can mean laying the groundwork for brilliant movies and television, from Inception, Taxi Driver, The Master, or Edward Scissorhands.

Of course, caveats abound. Coming up with brilliant ideas isn’t exactly a science and oftentimes,...

Filmmaking 101: Vimeo’s Fantastic Video School

The Vimeo Video School is committed to helping budding filmmakers learn the tricks (and most importantly, techniques) of the trade through their series of lessons, tutorials, and advice. The Vimeo staff create the videos, as well as pulls tutorials, Q&As and films from the larger Vimeo community into their curriculum. They’re not only informative and fun, they’re also, blessedly, free.

A lot of the filmmakers we’ve spoken to over the past year said more or less the same thing at some point in the conversation—it’s never been easier to make your own film...

The World’s End: What’s Behind our Apocalypse Obsession?

Edgar Wright’s The World’s End (premiering August 23) is not the first, second, third or fourth film to come out this year about an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic world. A cursory glance of 2013's film slate would suggest we are currently suffering from a collective panic attack about our prospects on the planet. This is the End, World War Z, Pacific Rim,...

Your Big Break: Hollywood Studio Programs for Emerging Writers

How hard is it to make it as a screenwriter in Hollywood? Watch the Coen brothers Barton Fink or Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard or last year’s Seven Psychopaths for a clue. All three films focus on a struggling screenwriter. All three, while wildly different and wonderfully perverse (in their own specific ways) get at the beating black heart of the unknown screenwriter’s soul—that your soul is for sale, so long as you can get your script made...

Breaking Bad, Austenland, JOBS: Your Schizophrenic Weekend Viewing Guide

Summer’s winding down, folks. So you really need to maximize all the relaxing you can do before the inevitable crush of obligations and stress that is fall, the holiday season, and the end of the year bears down on you.

August is the midday nap of the calendar. It’s a month for whiling away hours in repose. Movie theaters offer one of the last spaces on our hyper-connected planet where you’re obligated to silence your smart phone and be quiet for two hours...

Austenland Latest in our Centuries-Long Love Affair With Jane

Sony Picture Classic’s Austenland (coming out tomorrow), based on the novel by Shannon Hale (who also co-wrote the script with director Jerusha Hess), is the latest film to be inspired by the legendary 19th century English novelist. Austenland is about a woman named (naturally) Jane (Keri Russell) who is so obsessed with Austen (and “Pride and Prejudice” in particular, and Mr. Darcy very particularly) that she decides to spend her life savings on a trip to an English resort that caters to Austen-crazed women,...

The Science of Streaming: How You’re Able to Binge-Watch Breaking Bad

We’ve come a long way since the days of rushing to Blockbuster on a Sunday evening to avoid paying the late fee on that VHS rental of Independence Day. Now, with a decent Internet connection and a few clicks of your mouse you can legally and easily stream and download movies to just about any device–something that your 90s-self would have probably assumed to be the sole reserve of science fiction.

“If you were to go back a decade and tell people that the Internet would be fast enough to stream video they wouldn’t believe it...

Meet the Makers Behind Disneytoon Studios’ Airborne Adventure, Disney’s Planes

Close your eyes. Imagine you’re in the air flying, not a cloud in sight. It’s just you and a blue pastel-colored endless sky and then, suddenly, you shift gears and enter a high-speed race with two fighter jets. You’re propeller-to-propeller with your opponents and just as you’re about to gain the lead, you smell… manure?

That’s how Dusty Crophopper, star of Disneytoon Studios’ new animated feature film, Disney’s Planes,...

From Kathryn Bigelow to Martin Scorsese, Filmmakers & Their Inspirations

In 2010, the British Film Institute published a wonderful book entitled “Screen Epiphanies: Filmmakers on the Films that Inspired Them.” We found this book after one of those rabbit hole web searches that began with this fantastic article by Martin Scorsese in The New York Review of Books that began with a recollection of the film that made him want to devote his life to the medium.

Inspired by Scorsese and BFI,...

George Mastras on Writing & Directing One of Breaking Bad’s Best Episodes

George Mastras has been a criminal investigator for the public defender’s office in Washington D.C., a counselor at a juvenile correctional facility during the crack epidemic of the 1990s, a litigator in New York, and a defense attorney in Los Angeles. Then he quit, bought a one-way ticket to China and backpacked around the world for two years. He wrote a novel while he was in Indonesia that was published by Scribner in early 2009 to very good reviews...

Writer/Director/Producer/Star Lake Bell on In a World…

In the dramedy 'In a World…', out August 9, writer/director/producer/star Lake Bell visits the voiceover industry as a newbie competing for the same gig as her industry-veteran father. Here, Bell, who has delivered memorable acting turns in such movies as No Strings Attached and It’s Complicated, talks about writing the script for her feature-film directorial debut, why she loves trailers, and what “voice” annoys her most.

The Credits: What insight can you offer about voices and accents?...

Retired Director of NASA’s International Space Station on Plausibility of Elysium

The idea of putting all of Earth's richest people in space permanently has its appeal. Some very much would like to go, and a few of us would like to send them there.

Is such a thing possible, though? To build a huge, permanent, self-sustaining home-off-of-home?

Director Neill Blomkamp, the man behind the fantastic aliens-as-refugees film District 9, uses that idea in his new film Elysium (which opens August 9) to explore the relationship between the have-lots and the have-nots...