How Oscar Nominated Winter on Fire Director Crowd Sourced the Revolution
Oscar-nominated documentary Winter on Fire started with a phone call director Evgeny Afineevsky received at home in Los Angeles from his friend, Russian producer Den Tolmor. "Den called me from Kiev and said 'History is being made, come over here right now.'" Afineevsky heeded the call and a couple of days later landed in a city whose people would indeed change the course of Ukrainian history. Starting in November 2013, ordinary civilians forced out corrupt Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych over the course of a bloody 93-day revolution that drew nearly a million protestors to Kiev's Maidan Square.
Berlinale 2016: A Recap
With Meryl Streep presiding over the festival’s international jury, the 66th Berlinale handed out awards yesterday and drew to a close. The Golden Bear went to Fuocoammare, or Fire at Sea, a tragic and topical Italian-French co-production from the director Gianfranco Rosi. Taking place on the Sicilian island Lampedusa, the documentary thoughtfully and powerfully examines the ongoing refugee crisis, through the lens of a 12-year-old Italian boy,
Berlinale 2016: Director Gina Abatemarco on her Beautiful, Haunting Doc Kivalina
In the early 1900’s, the U.S. government opened schools for Inuit communities across the Alaskan Arctic. Hardly a noble act, the schools were a vehicle for forcing the settlement of tribes who had been living traditional nomadic lifestyles up until the Bureau of Indian Affairs demanded they enroll their children in those schools, thereby drastically altering these nomadic communities’ way of life. Director Gina Abatemarco’s documentary Kivalina, which opened at the Berlinale this week,
Talking to Director Stephen Hopkins About Race
Race tells the incredible story of the track and field athlete Jesse Owens and how he came to win four gold medals in front of Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. We talk to the director Stephen Hopkins about why he considers Race more a political thriller than a sports film, the parallels between Nazi propaganda and social media and how he knew he’d found the right actor to play Owens. Do you think audiences will be surprised about how little they know about the details of Jesse Owens’
Berlinale 2016: Jude Law Works the Good and Bad in Genius
Opening yesterday at the 66th Berlinale was Genius, a reflective tale of extreme talent and the monstrosity that can be wrought by it, based on the short creative life of early 20th century writer Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law). The movie is the directorial debut of British theater director Michael Grandage, who does an admirable job re-creating New York on the edge, crashing from Jazz Age paradise into slummy Great Depression chaos (Wolfe’s first novel,
10 Cloverfield Lane Hides Subliminal Images in New Trailer
For those of you who saw Deadpool over President's Day weekend, you also got a chance to see the new trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane, the horror/thriller/sci-fi romp by J.J. Abrams production company Bad Robot. Now the film was already shrouded in secrecy, so the news emerging from the latest trailer is, if not surprising, at least interesting. According to ScreenCrush,
Midnight Special Tests Information-Free Waters at the Berlinale
Science fiction, thriller, or family drama? Jeff Nichols’ latest film, Midnight Special, which opens this week after premiering at the Berlinale, absorbingly mixes all three genres. Lead actor and perpetual Nichols collaborator Michael Shannon is a valiant dad on the run, trying to save his eight-year-old son, Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), from both a religious cult and the US government. These two entities are equally fervent — if sometimes mysteriously so —
The Wild Hail, Caesar! Press Conference at the 66th Berlinale Film Festival
An unwitting, kidnapped communist. A gay (or so implied) tap dancing undercover agent. Very angry rival twin gossip columnists. These are George Clooney, Channing Tatum, and Tilda Swinton in Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest, Hail Caesar!, which doesn’t have quite the gravitas of, say, No Country For Old Men, or even A Serious Man, but more than makes up for that in chuckles,
Chatting With How To Be Single Director Christian Ditter
How To Be Single, starring Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson and Leslie Mann, is the perfect anti-Valentine’s Day option for singles in need of some fortification. We talk to its German director Christian Ditter about filming in New York for the first time, encouraging the actors to improvise and signing on to direct Netflix’s Girlboss.
Do you want to tell me a little bit about how this project came about for you?
New Teaser Hints at Opening Shot of Star Wars: Episode VIII
Principal photography officially began on Star Wars: Episode VIII at Pinewood Studios in London on February 15, 2016. The teaser announcing this news had one very interesting reveal—either this could be one of the opening shots of Episode VIII, or, writer/director Rian Johnson was on set for the very final shot of The Force Awakens. Considering The Force Awakens was very much J.J.
Jesus Returns (Again) to the Big Screen in Risen
Another year, another dramatic Bible rendering. The latest in a pantheon of Jesus film depictions, the movie Risen opens on February 19, dramatizing Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. The action is seen through the eyes of some of the bad guy Roman non-believers, Clavius (Ralph Fiennes) and his assistant, Lucius (Tom Felton), who are tasked with finding out where exactly Jesus disappeared to after crucifixion. More action than spiritual reflection, many red paludamentums are angrily swung around during the sturm and drang that ensues in the hunt for Christ’s body.
Talking to Writer-Director Tobias Lindholm About his Oscar-Nominated A War
The third big-screen collaboration between Danish writer-director Tobias Lindholm and actor Pilou Asbaek, A War follows a company commander through the horrors of Afghanistan and back to Denmark, where he's put on trial for alleged war crimes. The movie, an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film, has a semi-improvisational style and features mostly nonprofessional performers. Lindholm's two previous movies, R and A Hijacking,
Warner Bros. Names Ryan Coogler First Creative Talent Ambassador
Ryan Coogler's young career continues to move in interesting directions. The writer-director burst onto the scene in 2013 with Fruitvale Station, a Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award winner at Sundance. This past year, he co-wrote and directed Creed, again teaming up with Fruitvale star Michael B. Jordan as the titular son of Apollo Creed, who goes on to become a protegé of Rocky Balboa.
How Deadpool’s Tight Budget Helped Create a New Kind of Marvel Film
To understand how we ended up with the wisecracking, dirty-talking, unapologetically murderous Deadpool we already know and love- thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign- we have to go back to the origin story of this origin story.
The project had been kicking around at Fox for more than a decade when in July, 2014, two minutes of test footage was leaked on the web, portraying a very different kind of superhero.
The Jungle Book Super Bowl Breakthrough Spot Now Online
Did you catch the cool "breakthrough" Super Bowl spot for The Jungle Book? If you missed it, Walt Disney Pictures has brought it online, and it does a great job of furthering interest in director Jon Favreau’s upcoming live-action take on Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale. It's a pretty nifty fit to create a 3D feel to a teaser that's actually not. Check it out here. What's more, there's also a new full-length trailer,
Super Bowl 50: Jason Bourne is Back
The team behind Bourne 5 has kept the film as mysterious as the skills the titular hero woke up having in the very first movie. The return of Matt Damon to the title role, along with The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass, meant that whatever the film was going to be,
Director Tim Miller Talks What Makes Deadpool Special in new IMAX Featurette
Deadpool will finally deliver all the quips, banter and NSFW bon mots we've been enjoying in tiny bites as a full scale, feature length meal on Friday, February 12. Director Tim Miller, who has been attached to the project since 2009, explains in this new featurette why Deadpool is the perfect Marvel hero for right now. And this being an IMAX featurette, Miller also explains why the film’s best seen on the biggest of big screens.
The New International Trailer for Gods of Egypt is Deliciously Over the Top
Director Alex Proyas's Gods of Egypt is one of those films that seems to revel in its' own absurdity. And we don't mean that pejoratively. Proyas is an ambitious director, as his work on Dark City, I, Robot and Knowing proves. The man clearly loves the weird and wild side of storytelling, and has infused his sci-fi narratives with genuine passion.
DreamWorks Kung Fu Panda 3’s Chinese Version a 1st for Studio
For the first time DreamWorks Animation has created two versions of a film – one especially for the Chinese market. Kung Fu Panda 3 is the first release from the Shanghai-based Oriental DreamWorks, which worked closely with the Californian team. The film’s characters are animated so that their speech is in sync with both English and Mandarin.
The franchise has been embraced by China – the first Kung Fu Panda grossed $26 million in 2008,
Boba Fett! Code Names! The Rogue One Rumor Mill is Alive & Well
What you already know about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the next addition in Disney's Star Wars canon, is probably pretty limited. You know it's the first film in Disney's upcoming release schedule that's not a part of the Skywalker saga trilogy, to which The Force Awakens was the first, and you know it's about the band of rebels who stole the plans for the Death Star, which were eventually uploaded to R2D2 and set the events of the very first
