Director Rob Reiner Talks Upcoming Biopic LBJ
Rob Reiner’s long list of directing credits includes An American President (1995), about the romance between a fictional widowed U.S. President (Micheal Douglas) and a lobbyist (Annette Bening) that was, in many ways, a precursor to the landmark TV series The West Wing (Aaron Sorkin wrote both).
Director Shapes Long Lost 16 Millimeter Footage to Shed Fresh Light on Jane Goodall
Shortly after documentary maker Brett Morgen finished Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck in 2015, National Geographic sent him half-a-century old footage taken in the wilds of Tanzania along with an invitation to profile chimpanzee-loving naturalist Jane Goodall. Morgen, who previously documented subversive mavericks including movie producer Robert Evans (The Kid Stays in the Picture), hippie radicals (The Chicago Ten) and the early Rolling Stones (Crossfire Hurricane),
Writer/Director Rebecca Daly on Exploring a Community on the Edge in Good Favour
For her third feature Good Favour director Rebecca Daly, working with co-writer Glenn Montgomery, left her native Ireland, where her first two films were set, for Belgium. She also centered her story more on an ensemble, in this case a remote religious community that’s upended when a young, mysterious man appears out of nowhere and joins them, rather than the more intimate stories anchored by female heroines of her first two films.
Daly’s debut feature was the thriller The Other Side of Sleep,
Oscar-Nominated Jesus Camp Directors Back With Searing new Netflix Doc One of Us
Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady earned an Oscar nomination for their 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, a searing expose of children being indoctrinated at an evangelical Christian summer camp called Kids on Fire. Now, for their sixth feature length collaboration, the documentarians explore another aspect of a strict religious sect and its effect on vulnerable members in One of Us. The film, a Netflix original documentary launching globally on October 20,
The Florida Project’s Young Stars & Director Discuss Dazzling new Film
The Florida Project shows a side of Disney’s influence on the Sunshine State that tourists rarely see from inside the glittery artifice of the Magic Kingdom in Orlando. Namely, the economic reality of those struggling to make ends meet as they are forced to reside in the budget motels populating roadside areas beyond the theme park.
Amazingly, the film offers an often upbeat view of this lifestyle since filmmaker Sean Baker — who made a splash by shooting his previous effort,
Director Donna Dietch on her Iconic Lesbian Romance Desert Hearts Criterion Release
Donna Deitch is a respected television director with a host of credits including her Emmy-winning, Holocaust-themed The Devil’s Arithmetic (1999). But it’s Desert Hearts, the groundbreaking lesbian romance she made 31 years ago, recently re-released and restored by Janus Films and the Criterion Collection, that allows Deitch to remember and also to look ahead.
“There have been so many screenings, so much press. It’s a strange but wonderful thing,” she says.
Director Sean Baker on The Florida Project‘s Kids on the Fringe
“If you like ‘The Little Rascals,’ you’re going to like The Florida Project.” That’s director Sean Baker, talking about his 21st century riff on the Depression-era comedy shorts featuring adorable mischief-maker George “Spanky” McFarland and his raucous gang.
Flash forward 85 years and Baker updates the kids-at-play theme, only this time the pint-sized heroes find their adventures amid the cheap motels located outside of Disney World. Once favored by tourists,
Artist & Populist Both: HBO’s Spielberg Goes Deep on a Living Hollywood Legend
Is Steven Spielberg a populist or an artist? Like his exemplar, the iconic director Alfred Hitchcock, critics have often pointed to Spielberg’s fame to detract from or overlook his artistic accomplishments. At what many consider the height of Spielberg’s career in the 1970s and 80s, the director was one of the best-known filmmakers in the world, as well as one of the highest-grossing, with movies like Jaws, E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark smashing box office records.
HBO Pulls Back the Curtain on Directing Legend in New Spielberg Trailer
Director Steven Spielberg reveals in a new trailer what drives his creativity, and it’s not your typical day in the office. The celebrated director has created some of the most popular, beloved, and iconic films of all time and now it’s his turn to tell his own story.
HBO documentary Spielberg puts the legend in front of the camera, along with a dizzying number of A-list stars. Documentarian Susan Lacy helmed the project,
The Last Movie: Character Actor Harry Dean Stanton, RIP, Finally Gets Lucky Title Role
Stealing scenes for more than half a century in some 200 movies and TV shows, Henry Dean Stanton has played everything from spaceship crew member (Alien) and psychotic criminal (Repo Man) to a Mormon patriarch with fourteen wives (Big Love). Instantly identifiable in his later years for haunted eyes suggesting a man who’s stared straight into the abyss and lived to tell the tale,
Director Stephen Frears on Directing Dame Judi Dench in Victoria & Abdul
Stephen Frears steered Helen Mirren to an Oscar as The Queen and landed Meryl Streep in the Best Actress circle last year for Florence Foster Jenkins. But when it comes to Judi Dench, who stars in his latest film Victoria & Abdul (opening Friday //Sept. 22// in New York and L.A.) the veteran British filmmaker brushes aside any suggestion that he contributed in any significant way to her bravura performance as England’s 81-year-old Queen Victoria.
Meet the Team Behind World’s First Fully Oil Painted Film, Loving Vincent
Every once in a while, a film comes along that profoundly alters how we perceive the images that flicker on the big screen. The animated biopic Loving Vincent , which recounts the final weeks of Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh’s life as a murder mystery, is definitely one of those game-changers. The Polish-U.K. co-production that opens Friday is the world’s first fully oil-painted feature. The project ,10 years in the making on a tight $5.5 million budget,
Talking to Legendary Organizer Dolores C. Heurta & Director Peter Bratt About Their Documentary Dolores
Not that many people know that Barack Obama’s “yes we can” slogan was translated from the Spanish “si se puede.” Even fewer know that the phrase, sometimes credited to United Farm Workers of America leader Cesar Chavez, was actually coined by the group’s co-founder, Dolores C. Huerta. This and much more is set straight in Dolores, the new documentary written and directed by Peter Bratt and executive produced by musician Carlos Santana.
How Documentary Now!’s Emmy Nominated Director Makes a Joke of Serious Films
Saturday Night Live is a mecca for comedians, where stars like Eddie Murphy, Amy Poehler, and Will Ferrell and writers like Conan O’Brien and Tina Fey took their careers to new heights. The show’s most memorable sketches have launched successful spin off projects like Wayne’s World and The Blues Brothers. Documentary Now! is one of the latest SNL inspired projects to unite the show’s alums outside Studio 8H.
Trophy Doc Takes Unflinching Look at World of Big Game Hunting
It takes a lot to rattle Brooklyn-based documentary maker Shaul Schwarz, who mingled with drug dealers to make his earlier feature Narco Cultura and weathered numerous war zones in his earlier career as a photojournalist. But two years ago, Schwarz was shaken to the core when he filmed game hunters killing an elephant in the wilds of Namibia. “That was really tough to be honest, because I’d never seen elephants before in the wild,”
Veteran Documentarian Joshua Z. Weinstein on his Yiddish Comedy Menashe
Making his scripted feature debut, director Joshua Z Weinstein drew not only on his background as a veteran documentary filmmaker but also on silent films. His Menashe is spoken nearly entirely in Yiddish, even though Weinstein speaks very little of the language, and it stars the largely unknown Hassidic comic and actor Menashe Lusting, whom Weinstein describes as “Chaplinesque.”
Yiddish was necessary because Menashe, a contemporary father-son story.
Writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton on Adapting Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle
Writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton re-teamed with his Short Term 12 star Brie Larson for The Glass Castle, based on Jeannette Walls’ best-selling memoir about her chaotic childhood. Walls’ parents struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, and their four children were often hungry and neglected. Larson plays Walls as a young adult, professionally successful as a gossip columnist in New York. As the film opens, we see her leave an elegant restaurant after dinner with her Wall Street fiancé and his prospective client. From her taxi,
Taylor Sheridan Talks his Chilling Directorial Debut Wind River
From actor (lawman David Hale on FX’s Sons of Anarchy) to acclaimed screenwriter (2015’s Mexican drug-war thriller Sicario, 2016’s Texas-set neo-Western Hell or High Water) to writer-director (Wind River, opening today), Taylor Sheridan has had quite a career trajectory since he first popped up on the Hollywood scene in the mid-90s as a TV acting staple. The 47-year-old Lone Star native considers his three feature films so far to be part of a trilogy that examines the state of the American frontier,
Talking to the Director and the Star of the Sensational Documentary Step
Ever since Step wowed them at Sundance, the documentary that follows an all-girls step-dance team at an inner-city charter school dedicated to helping female African-American students pursue a college degree has been winning fans at festivals. Even Michelle Obama gave her seal of approval to “Step” in May, when the Lethal Ladies squad from the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (BLSYW) performed at a National College Signing Day event in New York City.
Lisanne Skyler on her Warhol HBO Doc Brillo Box (3¢ OFF)
Most people are familiar with the groundbreaking artistry of the late Andy Warhol, known for replicating the packaging of popular consumer products. For filmmaker and documentarian Lisanne Skyler, Warhol’s take on pop culture hit close to home, even in it. Skyler’s parents bought a Warhol “Brillo Box (3¢ off)” for $1,000 in 1969 — managing to get him to sign it — and displayed it in their house for two years before trading it for another artwork.
