Oscar Watch: Shortlisted Docs Stretch Non-Fiction Format

Gun violence. Poverty. Disease. Racism. As expected, documentary topics explored by this year's shortlist of Oscar contenders skew dark. The big surprise comes from the way some filmmakers have chosen to tell their stories. While movies like front runner 13th artfully blend talking head interviews and archival material in the grand PBS tradition, low-budget, high-concept documentaries Tower, Gleason and Cameraperson experiment with non-fiction formats in fresh ways.

Writer/Director Vincent Perez on his Timely, Devastating new Film Alone in Berlin

A somber, restrained World War II picture, Alone in Berlin, opens this week from director/actor Vincent Perez. Swiss by birth and of Spanish and German ancestry, Perez optioned the rights to Hans Fallada’s 1947 novel, Every Man Dies Alone, two years before an English translation in 2009 became a surprise bestseller in the UK and US. The story of Nazi resistance from a working class Berlin couple,

Director Chris Wedge on the Joys of Making Monster Trucks

Unlike Scrat, the nutty cartoon rodent who has shared his voice for nearly 15 years, Chris Wedge, 59, has claimed more than a few choice acorns throughout his career. He is the Academy Award-winning director of Bunny, a ground-breaking computer-animated short from 1999.  He co-founded  Blue Sky Studios, whose movies are distributed by 20th Century Fox. He directed the company’s first feature, 2002’s Oscar-nominated Ice Age, as well as 2005’s Robots and 2013’s 

Orange is the New Black Director Lev Spiro Talks Crazy Eyes

Lev Spiro has been behind the camera on some of the most successful shows on television. The impressive list includes Modern Family, Wizards of Waverly Place, Dawson’s Creek, and Arrested Development. In season 4 of Orange is the New Black, he had the high-pressure task of directing the backstory for fan favorite, Crazy Eyes.

Writer/director Mia Hansen-Løve on Things to Come

French actress Isabelle Huppert is reaping awards from critics’ groups for her roles in two films this year:  Elle, from Dutch provocateur Paul Verhoeven, and the quietly poignant Things to Come, from young French writer/directer Mia Hansen-Løve.

While Huppert’s audacious performance in Elle jut might earn the actress her first Oscar nod, it’s the delicate blend of youth and wisdom, melancholy and joy,

Writer/Director Garth Jennings Mixes Legendary Music & Animation in Sing

If you have ever watched American Idol or The Voice and wished that the contestants were animals instead of humans, then Sing is definitely playing your tune – or should that be ‘toon?  Writer/director Garth Jennings – the British filmmaker whose quirky vision graced the cult hit Son of Rambow as well as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy –takes his first stab at an animated feature,

Manchester by the Sea‘s Writer/Director Kenneth Lonergan—Part 2

In Part 2 of an interview with writer/director Kenneth Lonergan about his latest release, Manchester by the Sea, which opens Friday, the New York City native speaks about his penchant for acting in his own films, his choice of classical music to accompany a drama like Manchester by the Sea that is set in a working-class milieu and how the current political climate might affect his artistic vision in the future –

Talking to Manchester by the Sea‘s Writer/Director Kenneth Lonergan—Part 1

At 54, Kenneth Lonergan has experienced the highs and lows of the movie biz. The filmmaker has basked in the glow of having his directorial debut, 2000’s You Can Count on Me,  bestowed with rave reviews and two Academy Award nominations – one for his screenplay and the other for his leading lady, Laura Linney. And he has dealt with the frustration when  the running time of his more ambitious sophomore effort,

Oscar Watch: La La Land‘s Director Damien Chazelle & Star Emma Stone on Their Moving Musical

Oscar-nominated writer/director Damien Chazelle set out to make a genre film with La La Land.  Inspired by classic song-and-dance movies such as Singin’ in the Rain and Swing Time, he wanted to create an old-fashioned musical but “keep it grounded” in realism and contemporary Los Angeles.

“It was about trying to use real locations, use a lot of real spaces,

Mark Duplass on Stripping Away Artifice For Blue Jay

Mark Duplass readily admits he’s “a schmaltz hound.”

“I have it deep in me. I can put on Same Time, Next Year or Somewhere in Time and just go for it,” he says. “I’m a nostalgic and melancholic person and I normally try to curb that in my art because I feel like if I don’t, it’s going to run rampant over everything. With this movie,

Jonás Cuarón Talks About his Savagely Intense Film Desierto

Desierto, Mexico’s official submission as Best Foreign Language Film to the next Academy Awards, doesn’t seem a likely inspiration for Gravity, which won seven Oscars in 2014. But when young filmmaker Jonás Cuarón showed the first draft of the script to his father Alfonso nearly 10 years ago, the elder Cuarón said he wanted to make a movie like it  —  in space.

“Like Gravity,

Talking to the Director Robert Kenner & Writer Eric Schlosser About Command & Control

In September 1980, a Titan II missile bearing a nuclear warhead caught on fire in a Air Force silo near Damascus, Arkansas. The incident was reported at the time, but the full implications of the conflagration weren't widely known until Eric Schlosser's book, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, was published in 2013.

The author interviewed Harold Brown, then the U.S. Secretary of Defense;

Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson Creates Cinematic Memoir From Outtakes

Sifting through outtakes from some three dozen documentaries she shot over the years,  cinematographer Kirsten Johnson initially came up with a cinematic memoir she now calls the "trauma cut." Johnson, whose credits include Fahrenheit 9/11 and Oscar-winning Citizenfour and,  says "I reached out for material that had been the most haunting to me."

The New York filmmaker had plenty of disturbing stuff to pick from,

Talking to Veep‘s Emmy-Nominated Director About Art Imitating Life

Veep Assistant Director Dale Stern has been the creative right hand man to show creator Armando Iannucci for four seasons, steering the series toward critical and audience acclaim. In the fifth season, Stern took over the directing chair for a single episode that was so brilliantly executed it earned him an Emmy nomination. In mid-season standout Mother, Stern took on some of the darkest material the show has tackled and it turned out to be some of the funniest. 

YouTube-Inspired Director Used GoPro Cameras to Capture Ben-Hur Chariot Action

Before Timur Bekmambetov shot a single frame of the new Ben-Hur, he wanted to find out exactly what it felt like to be in the kind of four-horse chariot race that propelled its 1959 predecessor to 11 Academy Awards.

So the Russian director got behind the reins himself.

"I asked our stunt coordinator to let me ride the chariot, which was absolutely illegal because it's dangerous,"

Chatting With Kent Jones About his HBO Documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut

Airing Monday, August 8 on HBO, director Kent Jones’ documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut reveals the archival footage behind the titular directors’ legendary, weeklong series of interviews in Hollywood in 1962. A young Truffaut, who had only recently transformed his own career from film critic to filmmaker, traveled to Los Angeles to interview Alfred Hitchcock. He idolized the director, but at the time, Hitchock was widely perceived more as a popular entertainer than the visionary he is considered today.

Talking to Little Men Director & Co-Writer Ira Sachs

Like his 2014 film Love is Strange, director/co-writer Ira Sachs’ new film Little Men is a touchingly realistic examination of the relationships between people thrown together by circumstance. In Love is Strange, the economics of life in New York force a recently wed gay couple (John Lithgow and Alfred Molina) to live separately after Molina’s character loses his job. In Little Men, a struggling actor (Greg Kinnear) inherits a Brooklyn building from his father and moves his own family there.

Chatting With Writer/Director Patricia Rozema About Into the Forest

From her 1987 debut feature I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing to Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008), writer-director Patricia Rozema makes films with women characters that drive the action. But what’s unusual is how sanguine Rozema is about the always-looming issue of the dearth of central women’s roles and the financing obstacles most female-led films face, if they are not about Ghostbusters.

“You just never know what’s plain old getting-a-film-together difficultness and what’s because-it’s-girls difficultness.

Inspired by the Late Muhammad Ali, Gleason Doc Maker Captures an Athlete and His Disease

Documentary maker Clay Tweel first saw Steve Gleason on TV in 2005 when the feisty New Orleans Saints defensive back blocked a punt to win the team's first post-Katrina home game. Nine years later while promoting his film Print the Legend at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, Tweel saw Gleason on screen again but this time, the former athlete faced the camera from the confines of a wheelchair. The clip documented the ravages of neuromuscular disease ALS and reduced Tweel to tears.

Writer/Director Matt Ross on Captain Fantastic

Matt Ross is best known as an actor; besides dozens of films on his resume, he’s currently winning laughs and legions fans as narcissistic CEO Gavin Belson in the HBO comedy series Silicon Valley. Before that, Ross was a standout on HBO’s Big Love, playing Alby Grant, the creepy son of the polygamist cult leader played by Harry Dean Stanton.

A Juilliard School graduate, Ross made his feature film debut at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival with 28 Hotel Rooms.