America has always been too vast of a nation to account for all those who willingly go off the grid; in its thickets of forest and endless plains, there are bound to be a few who move to the margins and live off the land, in the great rugged individualist tradition. Be they the rural homeless, ardent survivalists, or various drifters, they isolate themselves from the mores of traditional housing and government rule.
Leave No Trace, Debra Granik’s latest feature, is about just such a pair of people. Will (Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) live a solitary, tightly-knit lifestyle in a national park outside Portland, where their home is a tent and Tom learns a variety of outdoor skills in order to be self-sufficient. Will is a bearded ex-military man with a pool of unknowable despair behind the eyes, but he’s a loving father and the center of Tom’s life. Unmoored from school, community, and wider society, Tom and Will cling to each other even when they are forced off of public land by police and attempt to adjust to an entirely different home. But Will is a broken man—almost monosyllabic with even the kindest strangers, and marked with PTSD that seems to manifest itself most as a paranoiac restlessness.
Granik’s unhurried, deeply naturalistic approach sees her camera linger on the careworn faces of army vets and RV park tenants, and on the wide green canopies of the Pacific Northwest. She’s intent on showing the remarkable kindness of the folks that father-and-daughter encounter on their travails: truck drivers who insist on checking the well-being of their hitchhikers; beekeepers willing to entertain a kid’s curiosity; fellow veterans who offer medical help to their compatriots both physical and mental.
This homespun sensibility is never overplayed, but sees an essential goodness in blue-collar middle America that is notable for its nuance. The film is not explicit about the politics of these marginal Americans—but it doesn’t take much imagination to work out. Will’s ex-military survivalism seems pretty strident, yet he—like all the others—exists outside the realm of the political. The film is all the better for its silence on the subject: the audience is left to mull the great incoherent gulf between the decency and generosity of these people, and their support for the most self-defeating and craven of social policies. It’s no surprise that when a bulldozer comes to raze a makeshift tent city, you can see someone’s stars and stripes being vacuumed into the wreckage.
Although Will is tragically misguided in some respects, he has also successfully raised a bright, curious, caring young girl in spite of it—and in the person of Tom, we are forced to reckon not only with a particular generational divide, but with a deeply American contradiction. Granik has exhibited a depth of feeling for these characters that is fair-minded and gentle, offering a nation’s most broken and isolated progeny a safe fictional harbor in her film.
"Watching someone take everything from you, it turns you into somebody else." STX Entertainment has debuted the first trailer for an action movie titled Peppermint, which is currently set to open in theaters in September at the beginning of the fall season. Peppermint is the latest from French director Pierre Morel (District B13, 96 Hours, From Paris with Love, The Gunman) and is about a fierce momma who becomes an assassin. Peppermint is a revenge story centering on a young mother who finds herself with nothing to lose, and now going to take from her rivals the very life they stole from her. Jennifer Garner stars, with John Ortiz, John Gallagher Jr., Juan Pablo Raba, Method Man, Tyson Ritter, and Annie Ilonzeh. This looks as expected from Morel - heavy on gritty action, a bit cheesy but still entertaining, and kind of badass.
Here's the first trailer (+ teaser poster) for Pierre Morel's Peppermint, direct from STX's YouTube:
Peppermint is an action thriller which tells the story of young mother Riley North (Garner) who awakens from a coma after her husband and daughter are killed in a brutal attack on the family. When the system frustratingly shields the murderers from justice, Riley sets out to transform herself from citizen to urban guerilla. Channeling her frustration into personal motivation, she spends years in hiding honing her mind, body and spirit to become an unstoppable force – eluding the underworld, the LAPD and the FBI- as she methodically delivers her personal brand of justice.Peppermint is directed by French filmmaker Pierre Morel, director of the movies District B13, 96 Hours, From Paris with Love, and The Gunman previously. The screenplay is written by Chad St. John (London Has Fallen, Replicas). STX Entertainment will release Pierre Morel's Peppermint in theaters everywhere starting on September 7th this fall. First impression?
"What did you do this time, Samantha?" Those pesky computer viruses! Always causing chaos. But not like this, never like this! Eldritch Code is an excellent, nerdy, Lovecraftian short film made by filmmaker Ivan Radovic, based on a story by Glen Cadigan & Chee from the Cthulhu Tales comic books. The story is about an IT guy who has to stop a computer virus before it gets out of hand and unleashes hell, but this ain't your regular virus. You'll see what I mean when you watch it. Eldritch Code stars Martin Hendrikse and Lisa Bearpark. I really dig the uber-geeky 90s vibe, the synth score, and real computer code, which all makes this massively entertaining to watch in a nice 10 minute package. Just don't download anything suspicious.
Thanks to Glen for the tip on this. Description from Vimeo: "A dedicated IT-guy must stop a computer virus from spreading, unaware about the cosmic horrors he is about to release." Eldritch Code is directed and created by filmmaker Ivan Radovic, who's based in Stockholm. With cinematography by Majaq Julen and music by David Ristrand. The short is based on "One of Those Days", a short story by Glen Cadigan & Chee which originally appeared in the comic book Cthulhu Tales #6, published by the Los Angeles based BOOM! Studios. Eldritch Code has spent the last year at over 30 film festivals in 14 countries, covering 4 continents. For more info on the short, visit their Facebook page. To see more shorts, click here. Thoughts?
The Sundance favorite brings a harrowing story out of the shadows.
Two-thirds of the way through HBO’s latest original film, Sundance standout The Tale, I had to take a break. I’d originally planned to cry, but instead I surprised myself by messaging my childhood best friend, asking her–much like Laura Dern’s character does with her former summer camp peers in the film–questions that were over a decade old but, if my shaking hands were any indication, still capable of pushing my body into a fight-or-flight response.
It is a privilege to demand or even imagine such a thing as an unbiased review, a reading of art that’s entirely divorced from one’s own unignorable experiences. In a nation where one in nine girls will become a victim of sexual abuse–and even the most spoiler-averse among our readers need to know that child rape is unflinchingly, prominently featured in The Tale–an interpretations of this challenging, singular film that was perfectly uninvolved would be rare-to-nonexistent, if it were even necessary at all. So that’s not what this is.
Unlike filmmaker Jennifer Fox–who courageously put her own name on The Tale’s protagonist, destroying any idea that this story is not true–I was never raped as a child. I did, however, find myself in a murky situation under the care of an adult male authority figure who I believe did not have my best intentions at heart, and who later left his position after murmurs of inappropriate incidents with multiple young girls, including me. When adults questioned me about my relationship with this man–I was around ten at the time, new to double digits–I was confused, scared, inexplicably guilty, and resoundingly naive about the complex nature of adult intentions.
The Tale’s press description notes that it explores “the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive,” and the myth-making conceptualization of the film is appropriate. Fox’s documentary filmmaking background might lead to The Tale’s only shortcoming, but as she grapples with a story that tackles the complexity of subjective narrative, it’s also the film’s greatest strength. On the one hand, a few modern-day pieces of the puzzle come across as underwritten: Jennifer’s fiance Martin (Common) is under-utilized and seems to be present mostly just for accuracy’s sake. On the other, never has the insidious malleability of female memory been explored so thoroughly and with such brutal honesty as in Fox’s narrative debut.
Dern stuns as a woman whose life is upended by the recovery of a traumatic chapter of her own history, but Fox’s indelible script and creative direction are what make the movie a standout. A scene during which Jenny’s running coach (Jason Ritter) corners her on a sofa initially appears comfortable, complete with a flickering fireplace. As Dern’s Jennifer dives further into the memory, a moment she recognizes as a transition from feigned platonic interactions to overtly sexual ones, it shifts disturbingly; now the room is dark, and the fireplace is cold and empty. These memory glitches happen again and again and clearly exist not for the sake of their visual style (horror movies often use similar techniques as a means to sensational ends), but as authentic psychological underpinnings that get at the shadowy heart of repressed trauma, the very fabric of the tale itself.
"How's it ever going to work?! You're scared!" FilmRise has debuted a full US trailer for the indie drama Dark River, the latest feature from British filmmaker Clio Barnard (The Selfish Giant, The Arbor). The film stars Ruth Wilson (of The Lone Ranger, Saving Mr. Banks, "Luther", "The Affair") as a woman who goes back to her farm in rural England. Following the death of her father, Alice returns to her home village for the first time in 15 years, to claim the tenancy to the family farm she believes is rightfully hers. She ends up in a stressful fight with her brother, played by Mark Stanley. The cast includes Sean Bean, Shane Attwooll, Steve Garti, and Una McNulty. This is a superb trailer that will make you curious to see this, with lovely music and strong performances. It's the same as the UK trailer, but we've added posters below.
Here's the new official US trailer (+ posters) for Clio Barnard's Dark River, direct from YouTube:
Following the death of her father, Alice (Ruth Wilson) returns to her home village for the first time in 15 years to claim from her estranged brother (Mark Stanley) the family farm she believes is rightfully hers. From acclaimed filmmaker Clio Barnard, one of the premier new voices in British cinema, Dark River is a taut and powerful psychological drama.Dark River is both written and directed by award-winning British filmmaker Clio Barnard, director of the film The Selfish Giant and the documentary The Arbor previously, as well as a few short films. The film first premiered at the Toronto, London, and Torino Film Festivals last fall, and it will play next at the Seattle Film Festival this June. FilmRise will then open Clio Barnard's Dark River in select US theaters starting on June 29th later this summer. Who's interested in seeing this film?
The director’s career has been paved with Ayn Rand’s toxic ideology.
This week, firebrand director Zack Snyderannounced his next project, an adaptation of Ayn Rand’s formidable objectivist tome “The Fountainhead.” The news was met with a chorus of bewilderedmoans from film twitter (as well as, somewhat confusingly, “The Force” author DonWinslow). For most, it was a baffling decision: A director coming off of a series of controversial financial bombs deciding to adapt the work of an equally controversial author, best known in Hollywood for a trilogy of increasingly poorly-received Atlas Shrugged movies that recast its leads after every entry.
But Snyder has long been hinting at the idea of a film based on Rand’s seminal work. Back in 2016, in the wake of disappointing box office returns for his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder told The Hollywood Reporter that he was working on a new adaptation of the book, almost 70 years after King Vidor tried his hand at the notoriously unwieldy text. “I’ve always felt like ‘The Fountainhead’ was such a thesis on the creative process and what it is to create something,” Snyder said at the time.
He’s not entirely wrong: “The Fountainhead” is indeed a thesis on the creative process. It’s also one of the most toxic works of fiction of the 20th century and the exact wrong piece of art for this political moment. It’s a work of fiction that has its hero casually rape its female lead, a violent assault that causes her to develop a romantic fixation with him, ultimately leading to their marriage. It’s hard to explain “The Fountainhead” to someone who hasn’t read it. It’s even harder to explain why anyone finds it powerful or arresting in any way.
But all that aside, Objectivism has continued to play an increasingly large role in Snyder’s films over the course of his career. This isn’t a hit piece; I think Snyder is a genuinely interesting filmmaker, and I find a confusing mess like Man of Steel far more interesting than a paint-by-numbers home run like Avengers: Infinity War. But the announcement of Snyder’s Fountainhead throws a large portion of his work into sharp relief, totally re-contextualizing movies like Watchmen or Batman v Superman.
Objectivism, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, is Ayn Rand’s philosophical system, conceived under the belief that the most powerful and moral purpose of human life is to pursue one’s own happiness above all else, with frequent disregard for the wants and needs of others. There is a reason it remains relatively obscure; most serious philosophical voices totally dismiss Objectivism as a system of thought. It is poorly thought out, openly selfish, and frequently toxic. Yet a certain sect of American political thinking (including our current Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan) worships at the feet of Ayn Rand, largely because her ideology gives them the perfect excuse to casually dismiss the concerns of the impoverished in favor of constantly enriching themselves and those like them.
This is the ideology that Snyder seems to subscribe to, and without making any moral judgments on the man himself, it is an ideology that has totally infected his filmmaking. Just look at a scene like this one in Man of Steel, in which Kevin Costner’s Pa Kent tells his adopted alien son Clark that his powers must be kept secret, even potentially at the cost of others’ lives.
Like ‘Band of Brothers’ before it, ‘The Terror’ promises to be one of the defining shows of the decade for British and American casting directors.
Every fan of film or television should already be a fan of The Terror. Our own Meg Shields, never far off the mark when it comes to genre-tinged film and television, lavished praise on the show when it first aired, calling out everything from its production design (“It is a wasteland, a collision of villain and atmosphere, and it is unnervingly beautiful”) to its performers (“There cannot be enough praises heaped upon The Terror’s cast”). Even then, her frequent compliments may not quite do the show justice. The cast that AMC has assembled for The Terror isn’t just great; it’s the sort of cast that echoes shows like Band of Brothers, a breakout opportunity across the board for the plethora of young actors comprising its ensemble.
Back in 2013, former Film School Rejects editor Kate Erbland wrote a piece for Mental Floss recalling the embarrassment of riches present in HBO’s Band of Brothers. While most fans will remember Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston in lead roles, the series also included minor parts for actors such as Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Tom Hardy, Dominic Cooper, and Simon Pegg years before they all broke through as Hollywood stars. A few years later, Hanks and Spielberg would follow suit with The Pacific, a series that brought Rami Malek, James Badge Dale, Jon Bernthal, Anna Torv, and more actors into the limelight. The pedigree of these shows — and the plethora of talent available to casting directors — made Band of Brothers and The Pacific the perfect breeding grounds for the next generation of Hollywood talent.
And be honest: doesn’t The Terror seem like the perfect format for future casting directors? On the one hand, the show accurately captures the upstairs/downstairs (above decks/below decks?) classicism of a bygone era in maritime exploration. On the other hand, it operates as a pure genre thriller, giving its actors a wide variety of emotional beats to try on for size. With a story that unfolds across multiple years — multiple rifts with Jared Harris‘s Francis Crozier over that timespan ensures characters will pivot between protagonist and antagonist and back again — The Terror also provides its cast with a perfect audition tape for a variety of film and television roles, be it period drama, horror film, or prestige Hollywood drama. This is not Game of Thrones, where most of the actors are already approaching the middle portion of their careers; this is a starting point for many actors, a place where their career can begin to gain some serious traction.
The creative team behind The Terror has admitted that they didn’t have actors in mind for the roles; instead, the casting directors were asked to find actors that had “intriguing nervous systems” and were willing to share the spotlight with each other over the course of the movie. This is the show’s biggest strength, almost to a fault. Given the breadth of young British talent on display in The Terror — and the fact that most characters end up bearded, unkempt, and scabbed over by the end of the series — there are times where the cast blurs together into one human-shaped mass of fear and creeping dread. Despite this, the emotional weight of the show never wavers. We learn to recognize actors as much by their eyes as by anything else; each actor prepares their version of a thousand-yard stare, and the nuance of their trauma is often the focal point of the show. It is a foregone conclusion that these men will die, and die badly. All that’s left to find out is how.
For the actors of The Terror, these performances are merely the next step in a slow evolution towards bigger and better roles. Aforementioned actors like Fassbender, Hardy, and Bernthal are strong examples of the work that casting directors will put into slowly nurture a client. In 2013, casting director Lora Kennedy spoke with Vulture about her work on Man of Steel and the fact that she had been trying to get Henry Cavill cast as Superman for years. Many times, the smaller and secondary roles allow actors an opportunity to build up their portfolio, and casting directors who become convinced of an actor’s star power will often find excuses to cultivate their career. “Get them in a movie in a smaller role,” Kennedy explains, “bring them back, bring them back, and then just slowly move them up.” None of the actors in The Terror are exactly neophytes; they’ve all put in years of work to get to this point, and for most of them, The Terror is the big move their careers have been waiting for.
And with repetition comes even more opportunities for success. Veteran producer Gavin Polone has previously written about the casting process as a reason why some of Hollywood’s best actors don’t always end up finding the right television role for their talents. “[If] a casting director is challenged for time, he or she will sacrifice auditioning new people and just stick to the familiar,” Polone explained in the article. “This is one reason why we end up seeing the same actors in so many shows.” This implies that there’s a certain threshold at which actors become bankable in Hollywood auditions; actors who have put in enough work to catch the eye of dedicated casting directors will become regulars for certain types of roles, and this, in turn, increases the likelihood that they’ll move from the ranks of the supporting actor to a name character or series lead.
Hollywood has already taken note of The Terror‘s talented cast. Tobias Menzies was announced as the new Prince Philip in Netflix’s The Crown a mere two days after The Terror aired on AMC. Adam Nagaitis, the show’s memorable non-bear villain, was added to the HBO miniseries Chernobyl just this past week. Liam Garrigan booked a series regular role on a sci-fi comedy by the iZombie crew. Dig through the majority of the cast credits on The Terror and it’s not hard to see the next generation of leading men and character actors poised for success. So make note of the cast of The Terror and keep an eye out for some of the cast. I wouldn’t be surprised to see us writing a similar article on the show’s quietly brilliant ensemble in a decade’s time.
Apple adds another original series to its impressive, star-studded streaming lineup.
The competition among streaming services is about to get a little more crowded. Apple has snatched up yet another promising series to add to its video streaming platform, which is set to launch as early as March 2019.
Deadline reports that Apple has given a straight-to-series order for the comedy series Dickinson, an inventive and modern take on the life of Emily Dickinson. Hailee Steinfeld is set to star as the eponymous poet. Screenwriter and playwright Alena Smith, who has also written for The Affair and The Newsroom, will pen the series.
Steinfeld first earned attention as an actress for her turn in True Grit, for which she earned an Oscar nomination at age 14. With notable roles since then in The Edge of Seventeen and Pitch Perfect 2, she brings significant star power to the series.
— Hailee Steinfeld (@HaileeSteinfeld) May 30, 2018
Dickinson is framed as Emily Dickinson’s “coming-of-age story,” focusing on her earlier life. Written with a feminist slant, the series will explore Dickinson’s growth as a poet within the constraints of society, gender, and family. Although set during Dickinson’s lifetime in the mid-1800s, the show will take on a “modern sensibility and tone.”
It’s exciting that Dickinson’s story will be brought to the small screen, but it will be even more interesting to see how Smith plans to present her famously reclusive life as a comedy. As a young woman, the poet was deeply depressed, spending most of her time alone and preoccupied with death — not exactly material that lends itself to humor. But Smith is an accomplished, capable writer who should be able to adapt wisely.
Apple adds Dickinson to an already robust lineup of original series, most of which are attached to big names. Let’s break down the confirmed projects (almost all of which have landed straight-to-series orders) that Apple has acquired for its streaming service:
With over a dozen original series in the works, Apple is certainly preparing to enter the streaming arena guns blazing. You can keep up with all their current and upcoming projects here.
Currently, Apple is home to two reality series. Planet of the Apps is essentially Shark Tank but for app developers, with a far less qualified panel of celebrity judges (what does Gwyneth Paltrow really know about software design?). Its other reality show, Carpool Karaoke: The Series, is a spin-off of the recurring bit from The Late Late Show where James Corden drives a celebrity around and sings. Neither show is particularly great, so Apple’s aggressive pivot to scripted series is a wise choice.
As exciting as many of Apple’s upcoming projects are, the sheer robustness of the lineup can be a little overwhelming. Fears that streaming could soon become oversaturated are perfectly valid. After all, Netflix just promised to produce 1,000 original series and movies by the end of this year.
But with streaming platforms racing to create more and more series, there are more opportunities for niche projects to thrive. When platforms create massive content catalogues, stories that elevate marginalized voices or speak to specific tastes are more likely to be given a chance. Though the seemingly endless stream of new content is overwhelming, it actually empowers viewers with choice.
With such a stacked catalogue so far prior to its launch, Apple will be a worthy opponent to streaming giants Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. May the best platform win.
The comic book adaptation few thought would happen, lands on the DGAF streaming platform.
After years of “maybes” and several “nos,” the television adaptation of Locke & Key is finally a reality. According to Deadline, our great savior Netflix is in final negotiations to bring the series to order. With a seemingly bottomless pit of money at their disposal, the streaming service dares to accomplish where others wavered. Someone may need to pick author Joe Hill off the floor.
Way back in 2011, FOX passed on a pilot for Locke & Key despite a soaring reception from fans at the San Diego and New York Comic-Cons. The episode was directed by Mark Romanek and starred Miranda Otto, Sarah Bolger, and Nick Stahl. MTV was briefly interested in bringing that version to their network, but they eventually chickened out as well.
A few months ago, hope was reignited. Hulu shot their own Locke & Key pilot. This time directed by IT helmer Andy Muschietti and starring Nate Corddry, Samantha Mathis, Owen Teague, and Danny Glover. Despite having already given the series a greenlight, and staffing an entire writer’s room, Hulu paused all their pilot orders. Hill and producer Carlton Cuse started banging doors at Amazon and Apple, but it was Netflix who answered.
What is so difficult about this project that negates television studios from pulling the trigger? While the comic book series never brought in an audience to rival caped crusaders like Batman, Joe Hill and Gabriel RodrÃguez’s horror saga inspired a fervent fanbase. The story encompasses several timelines and stretches over forty issues. Those that bothered to give it a whirl were hooked eternally.
The Locke family attempts to put their lives back together after a knife-wielding maniac murders their patriarch. They move into the historic Keyhouse, a New England mansion famous for its many passages and doors, some of which lead to diabolical dimensions when opened with the appropriate key. Certain keys can even unlock special abilities for their user. Cosmic, Lovecraftian nightmares lurk around every corner.
What begins as a simple, single-set spook story quickly escalates into an epic battle between good versus evil. The special effects budget would increase dramatically as they discover new keys and doors. A psycho killer brandishing a knife yields unnamable monstrosities and landscapes beyond human means of description.
A pilot may be easy to greenlight, but I would imagine scripts for Season 2 and beyond could make a suit think twice. Netflix laughs where services like Hulu and Apple might balk. They’re looking for challenges right now, and Locke & Key will deliver the goods.
Since Netflix has the most money to burn right now, they are the only ones with the confidence to back this family horror plot. Andy Muschietti is neck deep in IT: Chapter Two preproduction and will not be able to return to Locke & Key. He is remaining on board as Executive Producer alongside his sister Barbara Muschietti. The assumption is that Netflix will go back into development, and recast the series to their liking. Hopefully, one day, all these various false-starts will be collected on a real banger of a special edition.
Bryan Fuller reads the room and understands what Trump’s America needs better than most.
If you dare to venture onto the internet right now, all entertainment and news outlets are preoccupied with the Roseanne Barr situation. Mere hours after the television star tweeted her revolting, racist description of Valerie Jarrett (claiming she’s the consequence of “the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby”), ABC canceled her primetime show. The message was clear. The house of the mouse does not tolerate this sort of behavior.
Channing Dungey, ABC’s Entertainment president, issued a quick declaration regarding Barr’s comments.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”
And like that…she was gone. Barr has since issued an apology online, but the damage was done. Goodbye and good riddance.
Should we praise Dungey for taking such a stance? Maybe yes, maybe no. It was not hard to read the room after Barr’s Twitter bomb went off. Giving her show the boot was as much about good business as anything else.
We don’t want or need Roseanne’s brand of topical humor. The show has always fed on negativity, and while misery often loves company, America of the Now needs solutions rather than wallowing in self-pity. Exposing the pain of our society has a purpose, but this war of ideas has resulted in a bifurcated nation. Fighting fire with fire will only result in a heap of ash.
Bryan Fuller has a suggestion. I think we should listen to him. Taking to his own Twitter account, the showrunner extraordinaire chimed into this all-consuming conversation with another plug for his own lost sitcom.
Pushing Daisies was a magical whodunit romance that was killed before it’s time. The show starred Lee Pace as Ned, the pie man. Besides being a wizard of pastry, his touch also had the power to resurrect the dead. He used this gift to return a childhood crush (Anna Friel) to the land of the living, and together with the help of a private investigator (Chi McBride) and a co-worker (Kristin Chenoweth), the team solved a variety of murder mysteries.
Not the obvious switch for the domestic squabbles of Roseanne. But hear me out.
Pushing Daisies was just a few years too early. While American audiences in 2009 were used to a little oddity in their boob tube entertainment (Ally McBeal’s imaginary dancing baby, the resurrection of the Ninth Doctor), most households at the time could not handle too much whimsy. NCIS = good. NCIS + pies + reanimation = bad.
America can deal with it now. We understand genre mashup better than ever. We tolerated far too many seasons of Once Upon A Time because we couldn’t let go of Frozen. We schedule our lives around Game of Thrones and Westworld. Riverdale rules and The Good Place offers hope to the hopeless. Not only can we take weird, but we also crave it.
We live in an era where dead does not mean dead. What failed before can succeed today. If Twin Peaks can be resuscitated and return better than ever, Pushing Daisies has a helluva shot at finally capture mass attention. Bryan Fuller has been hustling a reboot for quite some time, and I think we’re finally ready to pay attention.
Pushing Daisies is the Star Trek of whimsical, romantic comedies. The show placed life and exploration of self on a pedestal. No wonder, Fuller tried his own hand at the starship Discovery. He is a creator that urges human connectivity and champions the truth of love conquering all. 2018 America yearns for those ideas whether they truly know it or not.
While Roseanne held a mirror to our anguish, Pushing Daisies offered a dream to strive towards. We may not want the dream, but we do need it. Otherwise, what’s the point of this whole mess?
The great Dane reflects on his latest and restores hope for Hannibal fans.
Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen is perhaps among the most adored actors working today. He has a certain quality that makes even his most evil characters surprisingly lovable. It’s nice to see that after achieving mainstream success with films like Rogue One and Dr. Strange, Mikkelsen still is not afraid to take risks. His latest, Arctic, is a first-time feature from director Joe Penna. Of course, you would never know from watching the film. Arctic is the best kind of survival thriller: smart, tense, and supremely entertaining. Mikkelsen stars in the only speaking role as Overgaard, a man surviving in the Arctic following the crash of his plane. It is unclear how long Overgaard has been stranded, but he seems to have managed to get the hang of things. With little hope of rescue, Overgaard spots a helicopter, which crashes in its attempt to rescue him. The crash leaves Overgaard with a new reason to live in the form of a critically injured young woman whom he must keep alive. Appropriately, I met with Mikkelsen on a pier on what was perhaps the hottest day of the Cannes Film Festival.
It’s pretty refreshing to see a survival film about someone who knows exactly what to do in his situation.
We don’t talk about it but he’s a flight engineer. So obviously he has some technical skill. I would say, he’s not that impressive. When you see films where people fuck up all the time they must be fucking idiots. I would have done the same as this guy. It’s all common sense what he’s doing. So when people do the other films, it’s like, nobody would do that. It’s not even normal people, they’re really dumb people. So yeah, we tried to make him have common sense.
We learn very little about Overgaard throughout the film. Did you discuss your own backstory for him?
We spent a little time on that. It’s not important to us. It’s important that what he did would be relatable for other human beings. We want viewers to think that they would do the same thing. We didn’t want it to be a story about reconciling with your father. We didn’t want that background. We didn’t want him to learn a big lesson. That for us would be too small of a story, not interesting. We do indicate that the idea of family is very important for him, so he might have a family back home. We didn’t want her to wake up and we didn’t want him to tell her a memory lane story about his family. We thought that would weaken what we were trying to do.
Do you think the arrival of this unconscious woman is important for Overgaard’s survival? He seems to have a new hope and motivation when she arrives.
Her presence is enormously felt. The humanity comes back in the film the second she’s there. He’s comfortable until she arrives. There’s a strange sensuality as well, which I found interesting. There’s a survival gene in us, and you see that not only with human beings but also with animals. Everything is projected on her. In many ways, she’s rescuing him. She’s the infant that he has to care for. But he does abandon her. He believes that she’s not going to make it so he goes on. What I did find interesting about the film is that he’s sort of the hero and the villain in one character. He’s the victim and the executioner.
Do you often think of your characters as heroes and villains?
I try to find a reason for what they’re doing. He also does make a choice that is heartbreaking for him. Every day as we speak, there’s somebody who looks at their partner who has Alzheimer’s and they decide to leave them because it’s too much. This man chooses to stay. I’m aware that I’m playing the villain in Bond and Dr. Strange. You need to have a reason for doing what you’re doing. It can’t just be, “because I can.” It doesn’t work if it’s just someone who’s laughing and wants to take over the planet for fun.
You mentioned a sensuality that comes with the arrival of the woman. There’s a strange, unconventional romanticism between these characters, as there often is in your work. Hannibal comes to mind of course.
I think that Hannibal and Will, Overgaard and – we call her driver’s license because that’s what he writes down. He thinks that’s her name. We couldn’t find a way to translate that into English. Anyways, they’re not really alive without each other. They are a piece of the puzzle for the other one’s soul. For that reason it becomes romantic. It could have easily been a man, it didn’t have to be a woman. We make it sensual in the sense that this is all we have. I need that hand. It’s not nice to die, but it’s really not nice to die without somebody holding your hand.
When you’re shooting a film like this in nineteen days, is it difficult to leave the character behind at the end of a day?
I think that it’s so much the character as is it the situation. When you’ve been in that situation for sixteen hours, it has an impact. You might just want to be alone. It can make you happy, it can make you sad, it can make you tired. I try not to bring the characters in and be pretentious about my kids calling me a different name. I like to leave the character and look at him. I like to see what we’ve done and talk about what we’ve done. It’s not always the case, but I try not to be pretentious about it.
Before we wrap up, I have to ask, what’s the update with Hannibal?
The update is that it’s back and forth all the time. [Hannibal and Arctic producer] Martha de Laurentiis was actually the reason I read Arctic. I had it lower in the pile, but she called me and said to move it to the top of the pile. She came in as a guiding angel. Three or four months ago we thought there was something happening with Hannibal. We got really close, but it didn’t happen. It’s still in the works, so who knows? I’m completely sure that everyone will abandon whatever else they are doing for Hannibal.
The Bluth family struggled while apart. Does bringing them back together recapture the magic of the original?
The years have not been kind to Arrested Development. After an iconic run of three seasons on the Fox network, it was canceled with little fanfare. The show was a critical darling, but never generated much of an audience. It wasn’t until years later in 2013 that Netflix, eager to resurrect any familiar property it could get its hands on, brought the family back together. Well, sort of.
Season four of Arrested Development was an experiment by series creator Mitchell Hurwitz. The actors involved with Arrested Development had all gone separate ways, which made sense after being off the air for seven years. There was no easy way to get all these actors back together for a new season of the show. The idea was to give the characters separate arcs and then edit it to appear as though they were all together. Hurwitz referred to it as a Rashomon-style narrative. That didn’t work for the Bluth family. The true magic of the series was the interactions between the performers, not the characters themselves.
After the disastrous season four and five more years of silence, perhaps we had seen the end of the Bluth family. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Netflix and Hurwitz released a remixed season four ahead of a brand new season of antics and guffaws. Season five promised that the cast would be brought together this time and be a true season of Arrested Development. Bringing everyone together makes a world of difference, but there is still something missing from these new episodes.
The crux of season five has Lucille Bluth (Jessica Walters) back in charge of the family. Set in 2015 and inspired by Donald Trump’s presidential bid, Lucille encourages Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) to run for Congress. This is a continuation of their plan to build a wall on the Mexican border, something that the show found funny even before the president used it in his campaign promises.
For audiences that never finished season four, the first two episodes of season five are spent recapping the forgettable season. Lucille 2 (Liza Minnelli) is deemed missing, and no one has seen her since the Cinco de Cuatro party. It would seem that Buster (Tony Hale) was the last person to see her and has been charged with her disappearance and suspected murder. Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) and his son, George Michael (Michael Cera) are still in an argument over their shared love interest Rebel Alley (Isla Fisher). They have awkward conversations and have trouble connecting. This is in addition to the fact that Michael is still trying to get away from his family but always comes back to them.
The other members of the Bluth family are around as well. Gob (Will Arnett) has become smitten with Tony Wonder (Ben Stiller) after their season four rendezvous. Buster has taken on the role of the Bluth family member in jail, a crucial element of any Arrested Development season. George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor) is suffering from an absent libido. Then there are the moments with Tobias (David Cross) and Maeby (Alia Shawkat).
Tobias is struggling to stay in the family pending his divorce from Lindsay. First, he becomes Lucille’s “theralyst” so they both get out of prison on good behavior. Then, he takes on roles of the other family members when they aren’t around. Presumably, this is a joke on the whole idea of season four with the actors not being available to shoot their scenes. The problem is that it isn’t funny. The best moments from Tobias have to do with his creative butchering of the English language and unique idiosyncrasies. His moments in season four have little of those elements and the writing staff has difficulty keeping his character relevant.
Maeby goes from being a spokesperson for her mother’s campaign to living as an old woman in the same old folks home used in Transparent. She is living in Lucille 2’s apartment and is accidentally getting into a relationship with Bluth competitor, Stan Sitwell (Ed Begley Jr.). Their relationship is already beyond uncomfortable, but reminding audiences who have seen Transparent of the issues surrounding both programs is bad form. The fifth season of Arrested Development was in the can before this trouble went down, but it is especially distracting.
The new season of Arrested Development can be described in two words: distracting and familiar. There are amplereasons the new season of Arrested Development is distracting. It is hard to separate the characters from the actors and that makes certain sequences uneasy. Laughing becomes almost impossible when you are cringing.
Season five feels exactly like season one of the show. There is a Bluth in jail, the family continuously lies to one another, and gags that were funny fifteen years ago are still being brought up. No doubt season one of the show is preferable to season four, but if they are just going to keep repeating storylines and situations, why continue with the series? Perhaps it is an issue with the rhythm of the actors in these roles. Few shows successfully return after multiyear absences and that could be a reason pieces of the show fail to work here like they used too. In the seven episodes available for review, there were few truly funny moments. Light chuckles sure, but Arrested Development used to be the funniest show on television. It is a shadow of that now.
The fifth season was split into two separate parts. The first eight episodes are available now and the remaining eight episodes will be launched later this year. Unless something changes in the second half, Arrested Development has returned only to feel like it did fifteen years ago. By that measure, the new season is a success, but this is a banana stand that needs some new flavors fast.
We explore why this game-changing actor deserves a bigger place in our cultural memory.
In the late 1940s and ’50s, a new dawn broke over Hollywood. In stark contrast to the archetypal “strong” and “silent” performances of the pre-war generation, men were increasingly being presented in rebellious new terms that highlighted their sensitivity and their introspection over the toughness favored by forebears like John Wayne and Gary Cooper. Leading the charge in this respect were three young catalyzers, each well-versed in the “Method” style of acting: Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Montgomery Clift.
Today, most of us are well-aware of the cult of Brando and Dean, whether we partake in their idolization or not. But curiously, the last of this game-changing trio has largely been forgotten today. This is somewhat baffling; career-wise, Montgomery Clift was no less successful than Brando or Dean. In fact, his carefully measured acting style tends to bear up better nowadays than Dean’s, which can strike as overly-theatrical at times.
During the ’50s, Clift’s substantial talents were in no need of the publicity that evades him today: he was often described as one of the finest actors of his time, and he earned four Oscar nominations in roles that saw him work with directing titans like Alfred Hitchcock and Fred Zinnemann and hold his own against giants of the screen like John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Brando and Elizabeth Taylor. He also left a lasting mark on the biz through his decision to delay signing a studio contract until he was two films-deep into his career, a tactic that would go on to revolutionize the way future stars negotiated with studios.
Clift first made his mark in Zinnemann’s 1948 film The Search, which saw him play an army engineer who grows close to a child refugee of the Holocaust while stationed in post-WW2 Germany. The part didn’t demand much specificity in terms of his character’s army work, but Clift nevertheless conducted extensive research into the role, interviewing military engineers and even rewriting some of his lines to better reflect their reality. His efforts contributed to giving The Search an almost documentary-like feel; remarkable considering its plot could easily have been framed in overly-sentimental terms.
Director Zinnemann, for whom The Search was a personal passion project, was impressed enough with Clift’s matching commitment to the job to hand-pick him for a part in From Here to Eternity, in which he plays a principled soldier who is bullied by his Captain for refusing to join the regimental boxing team. This performance as an alienated loner cemented Clift’s burgeoning reputation an actor naturally inclined towards nuanced, tragically sensitive depictions of masculinity – a star turn as close friend Elizabeth Taylor’s conflicted lover in A Place in the Sun had already distinguished him as such – leading to him earning his third Oscar nomination in five years.
Clift went on to transmit that same sense of inner turmoil in his portrayal of a priest whose safety is compromised by the Seal of the Confessional in Hitchcock’s I Confess, while other roles – including those as a surprisingly likeable fortune-hunter in The Heiress and one half of a will-they-won’t-they pair in Vittorio De Sica’s Indiscretion of an American Wife – fleshed out his repertoire, proving Clift to be more versatile than the shared themes of his best-remembered roles would suggest.
But as the persisting cult of Dean shows, whether rightly or wrongly, these days our retrospective interest in a person tends to lie more in psychological appeal than the strength of their work. Clift is a mine of intrigue in this respect, further begging the question as to why he remains so under-remembered.
From the outset of his career, Clift cut an idiosyncratic presence in Hollywood, keeping old friends, old clothes, and a tiny apartment in New York City as far away as possible from the typical society of a successful actor of the period. The strength of his self-confidence and the depth of his self-preservation fascinated the pre-directing Stanley Kubrick, who was one of few journalists to wrangle a meeting with Clift (as evidenced in Kubrick’s candid photo essay on Clift for Look magazine, aptly titled “Glamor Boy in Baggy Pants”).
Like Dean, Clift had relationships with men during an intensely homophobic period in Hollywood and came to be viewed as either a tortured soul or an inscrutable, enigmatic presence. Like Dean, Clift was involved in a car accident at a young age: an eerie twist of fate saw him fall asleep at the wheel and crash into a telephone pole less than eight months after Dean’s untimely death. Unlike Dean, however, Clift survived: the oft-told account of the scene of the crash has it that Rock Hudson pulled Clift from the mangled wreckage, and Elizabeth Taylor cradled him in her arms, saving him from choking by pulling his own teeth out of his throat.
There is something deeply “Hollywood” about this tragic image itself, as if it could have been the climactic scene in an impeccably cast drama of that period’s style. What followed for Clift was too messy for fiction, however; his former acting teacher Robert Lewis called it the “longest suicide in Hollywood history”. Extensive reconstructive facial surgery and months of rehabilitation repaired most of the damage, but Clift’s once-shining, youthful looks now had the weathered look of a much older man. Clift continued filming Raintree County, the shooting of which had been interrupted by his crash, but a deepening addiction to drink and painkillers made things difficult, and there were stories of unruly behavior that required police supervision of Clift. Nevertheless, the film did well, if only because it provided audiences with their first chance to see Clift’s changed appearance (some scenes had been filmed pre-crash, so comparisons on looks and strength of performance could easily be made). That transformation would continue to capture the imagination decades later: Joe Strummer of The Clash dedicated a song on the “London Calling” album to Clift, with the lyrics urging directors to “shoot his right profile” in order to mask the scars on the left side of his face.
His post-crash career was marred by his addictions, as well as deep-seated insecurities that undermined his once-easy confidence. Anecdotes from the set of his later films told of an actor who could barely remember his lines; even the use of “idiot boards” (placards bearing an actor’s lines placed out of view of the camera) on the set of Freud: The Secret Passion confounded Clift, who found it difficult to remember where they had been put. Performances like the ones he gave as a conflicted journalist in Lonelyhearts and as a Jewish soldier facing anti-Semitism in The Young Lions failed to garner much critical attention or initiate a much-needed comeback, despite being thematically similar to the kind of roles Clift was best at.
But beneath the changing face and the strain of addiction, Clift’s old talents still glimmered. The behind-the-scenes troubles on the set of Freud never bore through in his performance, which was praised for bringing unexpected emotional richness to the rather dry titular role. The same can be said for his haunting turn in The Misfits: although Clift sustained injuries on set and his memory problem threatened to rear its head again, his innate skill resurfaced to save the day. For Elia Kazan’s Wild River, Clift once again tapped into his latent actor’s instincts, imbuing his role as a reserved government employee with the same enigmatic air that had captured the imagination of his earlier audiences. And then there was his 12-minute-long turn as a cognitively disabled man in Stanley Kramer’s post-war courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg, which earned Clift his fourth (and final) Oscar nomination. Even now, in an acting landscape saturated with Method actors (a further example of the profound legacy Clift, Brando and Dean have had), Clift’s raw, intense performance as a victim of a Nazi sterilization program is particularly striking.
As with many of Clift’s morally complex performances, there is an urge to ascribe his mastery of conveying internal conflict to his own troubled life. That is, of course, the great trick Method acting plays on its audiences, and it’s why actors who favor that approach tend to enjoy such a hold over audiences’ imaginations. But Clift, an original pioneer of this live-in-character style of acting, has so far eluded proper appreciation, being forgotten in the annals of time amongst less revolutionary and less talented peers. The indelible legacy he left, and the persisting resilience of his performances — many of which hold up even better today than they originally did — demands this be rectified.
The director of ‘Pleasantville’ and ‘Ocean’s 8’ shares advice on finding your voice and courage as an artist.
Gary Ross will probably forever be known as the screenwriter who wrote Big, a movie that helped boost Tom Hanks’s career in the ’80s, earned both of them their first Oscar nominations, and has since become a comedy classic. That said, Ross isn’t one to stay within the bounds of what he knows will be a hit. He’s unafraid to try different kinds of works in a variety of genres.
Over the years, Ross has written and directed films based on historical events, including Seabiscuit and Free State of Jones, and he has adapted material, most notably “The Hunger Games” and “The Tale of Despereaux.” And while each of these has attained their own levels of success, with Seabiscuit especially receiving much acclaim and awards recognition (including a Best Picture nod), Ross appears to be at his best when working with original ideas, such as in the cases of Pleasantville and his script for Dave, which earned him his second Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. His most recent film, Ocean’s 8, seems to be a cultivation of these experiences, bringing together his own unique vision for a story spawned from an existing franchise.
As a seasoned writer and director who has found longevity in the business, Ross has given some advice over the years to future and fledgling filmmakers. We’ve gathered some of his best tips for success below.
Express Your Voice
There is a necessary business side to filmmaking, but at the end of the day, it’s also an art form that requires you to dig deep within yourself to find a story. In an interview with Unclean Arts, Ross advised young screenwriters to focus on this aspect of filmmaking rather than spend their time predicting the numbers:
“Don’t worry. You’ll always worry about selling, you’ll always worry about making it. But don’t try to work backwards from the audience. I mean, try to find something that is meaningful to you that you connect with emotionally as the first place. To do this as a calculus will not work, you can only do this organically from the way you feel as a person. That’s the only way it’s ever really going to work, because that’s your voice, and you have to find your voice, and you have to express it. That doesn’t mean there aren’t antecedents or genres or things that one needs to understand, or that are helpful to understand to integrate into the movie business and to have a career. But the first thing to do is to find something that you hook up with passionately, instead of something that you’ve selected calculatedly, because that will just never work.”
Be One With the Audience
Discussing his experience adapting “The Hunger Games” in an interview with Games Radar in 2012, Ross stressed the importance of thinking of yourself as both a filmmaker and an audience member of the material you are creating:
“In terms of pressure, I don’t know. I felt an excitement and opportunity to dive into something that I love. Anytime you write or direct anything, you are also the audience or the reader. You want to give them the same thrill you had when you first read the book.”
Be Brave
In an episode of the Austin Film Festival’s On Story in 2016, Ross discussed the significance of understanding the type of courage involved in filmmaking before taking on a project:
“Each part of the process needs to have its own spontaneity and life, but particularly bravery. It’s a medium that is completely about bravery, almost whistling in a graveyard in a sense. You need to be able to just sort of not cling to the previous step. It doesn’t mean bravery in terms of your bosses or the public or reviewers or anything like that, it means personal bravery to not be freaked, look at the thing, and be inventive and calm and open enough to be inventive and have a little bit of a chuckle that you just jumped out of the plane. Because if you don’t do that, you can’t do the job.”
Watch the whole episode below.
Build a Partnership with Your Actors
Ross studied method acting with the legendary Stella Adler, so he appreciates what it takes to be in front of the camera as well as behind it. He understands the importance of working with actors as equals, something that he values as a director. He told /Film in 2016 why this is beneficial to any filmmaker:
“I’m grateful for every day that I’m on a movie set. The way that I can discuss a scene with actors and the way I can investigate a scene in a way that you don’t necessarily push to play a result, but investigate process that has integrity, makes the actor a partner and pursue the various different meanings and the little corners of the tributaries or all the nuances that go into a performance. That’s what acting is about. It’s not just finding something that feels real. It’s finding the real truth. And there are many real truths. And there’s a lot of different options that you investigate in a partnership with the actor.”
Use Actual Locations
With today’s technology, recreating settings digitally is easier than ever. But is it better?
In an interview with Den of Geek in 2016, promoting his Civil War drama Free State of Jones, Ross expressed how using actual locations — more than even just physical sets in a studio — can further your connection to a story:
“The wonderful thing about practical locations is that they inspire you. Few people get inspired walking onto a soundstage, but when you take a boat out into the same swamp in which they hid and they fought and you walk through the duckweed and the mud and there are actual alligators and snakes, you get a real sense of what this was and what it felt like.”
Keep Your Characters Malleable
Characters that you bring to life will naturally resemble you in some manner. But you need to find some distance between yourself and your characters so that they become their own beings. In an interview with the American Film Institute in 2009, Ross suggested:
“One of the most important things to recognize or understand is, Scott Frank and I have a raging debate about this, but it’s important to understand that what you are trying to say, the author’s point of view, become clear to you what you’re trying to express, and then the characters become malleable to you in your own hand. And you also gain more distance on them and it becomes easier to fictionalize them and when it becomes easier to fictionalize them, it stops them from being so confessional, and then you don’t have that protagonist who’s like you, watching everything happening around him, and even though he’s the lead is the most passive character…”
Watch Ross share more writing advice below.
What We Learned
It’s clear that much of what shapes Ross’s insight on filmmaking is the fact that he often writes and directs his own films and has experience in areas such as acting and producing, too. Being able to see the story from different parts of the process seems to be an essential part of the job.
Understanding each of the steps to bringing a story to life will provide you with the confidence needed to be creative and make changes throughout that are actually effective and stay true to the story. Every filmmaker hopefully starts out as a fan of the work they’re creating, and keeping sight of that love for the story being told is essential at continuing your passion for making something that audiences can enjoy too.
"Love is a lesson learnt the hard way." Film4 in the UK has debuted an official trailer for an indie coming-of-age comedy titled Old Boys, from newcomer director Toby MacDonald. The film is another new updated adaptation of the classic play Cyrano de Bergerac, about a guy who tries to setup his friend with a girl. This film is set at a British boarding school and is about an awkward kid who helps setup the "school-hero" with the daughter of a visiting French teacher. Old Boys stars the talented Alex Lawther (from Freak Show, Ghost Stories, The Imitation Game) as well as Pauline Etienne, Jonah Hauer-King, Joshua McGuire, Denis Menochet, and Nicholas Rowe. This looks amusing and cute, perhaps worth a watch sometime.
Here's the first official UK trailer for Toby MacDonald's Old Boys, direct from YouTube (via TMB):
In this school-set re-working of Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, an awkward but imaginative pupil helps the handsome but spectacularly dim school-hero pursue the fiery daughter of a visiting French teacher.Old Boys is directed by British filmmaker Toby MacDonald, making his feature directorial debut after a few short films and other work previously, including episodes of "My Life in Film". The screenplay is written by Luke Ponte and Freddy Syborn, based on the play Cyrano written by Edmond Rostand in 1897. The film is set to premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival later this summer. For more info, visit the official website. No other official release dates have been set for this yet - stay tuned. First impression? Thoughts?
Keep Your Characters Malleable
