The Sundance of Horror: L.A.’s Screamfest is Freakish Fun

L.A.’s Screamfest is assured of two things this year: it will once again be the biggest horror film festival in the United States, and it won’t draw the ire of the Professional Clown Club. There appear to be no murderous clowns in this year’s festival lineup.

If you’ve been following entertainment news over the past few days, you might have noticed the kerfuffle between the Professional Clown Club and FX’s American Horror Story,

The Life of the Mind: Making The Theory of Everything

In an introduction to a first edition of Stephen Hawking’s groundbreaking popular science book A Brief History of Time, Carl Sagan tells a story about how he happened to wander into the ancient ceremony of the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society. On that day, Sagan noticed in the front row a young man in a wheelchair very slowly signing his name in a book. “A book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton.

Spirits & Passion Collide in The Book of Life

Animator, painter, writer and director Jorge R. Gutiérrez has won Annies and Emmys for his animated television series El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera for Nickelodeon. His work caught the eye of another Mexican polymath, writer, director, producer and novelist Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim), who’s producing Gutiérrez ‘s feature debut The Book of Life, which bows this Friday, October 17. The Book of Life is an enchanting story of friendship,

What to Expect From Season Five of The Walking Dead

This Sunday at 9 p.m (EST), Rick, Daryl, Michonne and The Walking Dead gang are back. Cable’s most popular show has survived a rotating cast of showrunners (Scott M. Gimple is now their third) and the slings and arrows of disgruntled fans and critics (especially during season two's extended stay on Hershel's farm) by a zombie-like ability to maintain just enough momentum to keep fans interested. “The show reinvents itself every eight episodes,” said Gimple in AMC's production notes,

World War II Veterans Helped Fuel Fury‘s Realism

The most all encompassing war in history has been depicted on screen countless times. Filmmakers have been portraying the horrors, and heroes, of the "good" war, from D-Day to the Battle of the Bulge to Pearl Harbor, from every conceivable angle. In just six years, from 1939 to 1945, World War II took the lives of more than sixty million people, some 2.5% of the global population, and filmmakers have been grappling with the immensity of the war ever since.

Longtime Collaborators Helped David Fincher Find Gone Girl

The New York Film Festival kicked off with the world premiere of David Fincher’s Gone Girl last Friday, and boy, did it deliver. Fincher’s directing chops are never in question, and Gillian Flynn’s novel is perhaps perfectly suited for his particular skill set. Gone Girl combines his instinctual way around pitch-black thrillers (Se7en, Zodiac, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), and offbeat, grimy comedies (Fight Club) and delivers 148 compelling minutes without any evident lull.

Gone Girl at the New York Film Festival

The early reviews have already begun flooding in, and tonight, at 5pm, those of us in the press who haven’t attended a 20th Century Fox screening will be lining up outside Walter Reade Theater at the New York Film Festival for Gone Girl.

Director David Fincher has become one of the most reliably inventive filmmakers of his generation, and perhaps one of the best at adapting novels and short stories for the screen.

Composers Stand Out in Fall’s Most Exciting Films

Whiplash composer Justin Hurwitz recently told us that one his primary influences was legendary French musician Michel Legrand. "The early work he did during the French New Wave period, and on the Jacques Demy musicals, is some of my favorite film music ever. He's one of the most creative and inventive orchestrators alive."

This is coming from a creative and inventive orchestrator himself, who is a huge part of one of the most musically inventive films in recent memory.

The Ambitious, Beguiling The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to see your life through someone else’s eyes? In his ambitious feature debut, writer/director Ned Benson gives his characters this unique chance in the emotionally charged tale of love, loss and rediscovery that is The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. The film follows the relationship of estranged couple Conor (James McAvoy) and Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) from first blush to final breath as they try to regain the connection they once had.

Creating The Boxtrolls by Hand

The Boxtrolls is a stop-animation fable directed by Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable about the foul monsters who live beneath the cobblestone streets of Cheesebridge. The deal with this Victorian-era hamlet is that it’s obsessed by money and class, a posh place where the air is redolent with the stench of fine cheese. Chesebridgeians love their cheese, so this is exactly what the villainous Boxtrolls prey on—at night, they crawl out from their dank, fetid sewer homes and steal the residents of Cheesebridge’s precious cheese!

The 52nd New York Film Festival

Major film premieres from three of cinema’s most iconoclastic directors, a documentary about one of the most controversial figures in recent American history and some of the best of world cinema highlight the 52nd New York Film Festival, which runs from September 26 to October 12.

As the last major festival of the year, you might think NYFF’s main slate would be filled with films that have already played in any one of the fests that came before,

Building the Sensational Sets of The Maze Runner

One way to jumpstart your film career is to create your own mini-masterpiece, have it blow up on YouTube, and force Hollywood to come knocking. This was the case for animator/director Wes Ball, whose 2012 short film Ruin grabbed the attention of 20th Century Fox. Ball was called to a meeting where the longtime animator was asked to take the reigns on an adaptation of a popular 2009 sci-fi YA novel. While there, he successfully pitched them to turn 

Working Through Birdman’s Brilliant Contradictions

Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman, out October 17th, marks his first formal foray into the comedy world, but this film only strengthens his reputation for touching, intricately woven narratives. A little too intricate, perhaps, as Iñárritu’s focus on contradiction, validation, and all things meta blend into a swirling mass of crises for both viewers and characters alike. But worry not – Iñárritu has a plan, and Birdman proves to be a film that brings an audience closer to the story than they might expect.

As TIFF Draws to a Close, Films & Performances Drawing Heat

As the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) moves into its final weekend, and with Cannes, Venice and Telluride all in our rear view mirror, there's some considerable heat around specific projects and performances. And while the New York Film Festival will see a few more major premieres (David Fincher's Gone Girl and Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice), here are a few of the most talked about performances and films leading into fall and the release of most of the Oscar hopefuls.

Ruffalo & Tatum Wrestle With Difficult Roles in Foxcatcher

If you are unaware of the tragic true events that lie at the heart of the upcoming film Foxcatcher and want to remain blissfully unaware (good luck) going into the film, read no further. The film follows the story of the Schultz brothers, Dave (Mark Ruffalo) and Mark (Channing Tatum), two Olympic gold medal-winning wrestlers, and their relationship with the wealthy heir John du Pont (Steve Carell) who built a state-of-the-art wrestling facility on his mother's vast estate called Foxcatcher.

Hope Floats: The True Story Behind Dolphin Tale 2

There was almost no reason to expect that there could have been a sequel to Dolphin Tale, considering it was based on a true story and a sequel would invariably have to be fiction. Not that Hollywood is averse to sequels (or prequels, or trilogies, or origin stories, or re-imaginings), but the original Dolphin Tale was a special case.

Dolphin Tale was released in September, 2011, and told the story of Winter,

The Bold Adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild for the Screen

There is a moment in Cheryl Strayed’s memoir “Wild” where she has it out with her mother while hiking in Crater Lake National Park, Oregon—only by this point, her mother is dead, and the reckoning is with Strayed's own grief and anger on what would have been her mother's fiftieth birthday. Strayed catalogued some of the worsts things her mother had done, with dying at forty-five being the worst of the worst. These included occasionally smoking pot in front of her and her siblings,

DP Emmanuel Lubezki Soars Again With Birdman

Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki could credibly claim to have put together some of the greatest shots in modern filmmaking. By the early aughts he’d already worked with a slew of great American directors, including Mike Nichols (The Birdcage, 1996), Martin Brest (Meet Joe Black, 1998) Tim Burton (Sleep Hollow, 1999), and Michael Mann (Ali, 2001), to say nothing of the generation defining 1994 film Reality Bites,

Extreme Personalities: Four Fall Films About People on the Edge

Sociopaths, addicts, battle fatigued soldiers trying to hold onto their humanity—yup, summer blockbuster season is just about over. The fall is packed with films everyone's excited about, from Christopher Nolan's Interstellar to David Fincher's Gone Girl. Here are four films we're looking forward to that involve people dealing with extremes, internally and externally.

Whiplash – October 10

“There are a lot of movies about the joy of music,”

Moira Walley-Beckett: Emmy-Winning Writer of Breaking Bad‘s Best Episode

After the 14th episode in Breaking Bad’s final season aired, creator and showrunner Vince Gilligan called it “the best episode we ever had or ever will have.” Titled "Ozymandias" after Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, it was the third-to-last episode in the series, and it was the one that, more so than any other in the show’s incredible run, crushed viewers. Death, betrayal and, at long last, the removal of any lingering hope that Walter White might somehow keep his family.