The partygoers entered the large, black fabric cave in single file, balancing their drinks in hand and squatting low in order to sit at the computer inside. They typed away, sharing stories about sleepless nights for “A Journal of Insomnia,” a cloud-based, digital art project produced by Hugues Sweeney, head of French-language interactive media at the National Film Board of Canada.
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They come in waves — family from Colorado, friends from Brooklyn, loyal producers, all passing through the door of a Toronto hotel room to share congratulations with filmmaker Derek Cianfrance on the debut of his third feature film, the highly-anticipated and acclaimed working-class drama The Place Beyond the Pines. The film stars Ryan Gosling as a circus stunt motorcycle rider who takes to bank robberies in order to provide for his infant son and Bradley Cooper as the Schenectady, NY, cop who aims to stop his string of robberies.
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It takes only one Academy Award for critics to claim a resurgence of genre, and when The Artist won the 2012 Oscar for Best Picture, it was heralded as signaling the return of an interest in black-and-white silent film. Blancanieves, the latest film from Spanish director Pablo Berger (Torremolinos 73) would seem to be a continuation of that (rather small) trend — except Berger’s film was already in production at the time of The Artist’s release. Rather than owing its creation to The Artist’s success, then, Blancanieves points to a simultaneous, transoceanic interest in black-and-white silent film, outside of the usual film-school experiments.
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LOS ANGELES — Often, I find museum exhibitions that have to do with celebrity or Hollywood culture to be a shameless attempt to generate a blockbuster-sized crowd who, flocking to the museum in droves, boost attendance numbers for the year. That being said, the massive installation Stanley Kubrick at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art transcends the sticky landscape of vapid popular culture and embraces a filmmaker that many would term artist. The exhibition, which was originally curated by the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt was brought to LACMA in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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In an email, a friend of mine mentioned a show taking place at the Kitchen next week: The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, created by the filmmaker Sam Green, with live music by indie rockers Yo La Tengo. The subject matter seemed like solid geeky/arty fare, but what stood out to me in the event description was the phrase “live documentary,” in quotes. Given the subject matter and the indie music, the first thing to come to mind when guessing what that might mean were the live, touring shows created in the past couple of years by the public radio programs RadioLab and This American Life. Then again, it was being presented at the Kitchen, a venue that has a history of presenting fairly aggressive work spanning visual, performance, and literary arts.
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The dust has now begun to settle in the wake of the release of Spring Breakers, director Harmony Korine’s highly anticipated and now much-debated crime drama about four college co-eds who go on a crime spree during a holiday in Florida. By now, even if you haven’t seen the movie, you probably know a few things about it.
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I’ve seen it twice, and it still makes my brain feel like it’s been violated in some sublime way. Visually, The Master is an incredibly beautiful piece of work: the effect of filming a reported 80 percent in glorious 65mm. The movie is saturated with color and tone courtesy of cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr., with editing by Leslie Jones and Peter McNulty, who paced the visuals against Jonny Greenwood’s (of Radiohead) odd, whacked-out, jazzed-up staccato soundtrack.
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PARK CITY, Utah — Close your eyes and picture America’s most famous ad man, the fictional Don Draper of the cable TV hit Mad Men. Now push aside your favorite scenes of Don’s bedroom antics, bourbon-fueled lunches, and persuasive client pitches and think: over five seasons of storytelling, what has the dashing ladies’ man done that’s truly made an impact on the world outside his agency office suite?
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In 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences sparked a flurry of debate when it was announced that the Best Picture category for the Oscar would be expanded from five to ten nominees. According to then-academy president Sid Ganis, the increased number would “allow Academy voters to recognize and include some of the fantastic movies that often show up in the other Oscar categories, but have been squeezed out of the race for the top prize.” Much of the discussion hinged on whether a lengthened list of nominees would somehow diminish the prestige of the award — that year genre films like Avatar and District 9 were recognized alongside more traditional Oscar-bait like An Education and The Hurt Locker. The legitimacy of the Academy Awards, some critics declared, was diminished.
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“When I paint, I feel happy, so it’s a good way to start my mornings, to just paint on something, and what better place than my face?” says Inocente Izucar in the Oscar-nominated documentary short Inocente, which follows the life of the 15-year-old artist. Each day she coils curls of vibrant colors with delicate accents around her eyes, and her paintings are equally vibrant with their richly colored abstract forms and playful creatures. Yet Inocente’s life is anything but, as the undocumented teenager has spent the majority of her life homeless or in shelters with her mom and two younger brothers.
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