Movies

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      How Naomi Watts and Elle Fanning Stay Hungry

      by

      Naomi Watts: Elle impressed me the first time we met [while making the 2015 film “3 Generations,” in which Watts plays the mother of Fanning’s character]. She was 16, but with such emotional intelligence. When I was trying to get my start in my late 20s, I was already being told I was too late. They said, “You’d better get going. You’ve got only seconds left!” I think that’s changed — for the better, obviously. We’re now seeing women in their 50s carry films. There even seems to be a bit more movement in the opposite direction, like aging is suddenly trending.On the CoverWatts wears a Bottega Veneta dress, $6,600, and boots, price on request, bottegaveneta.com; and Ana Khouri earrings, price on request, anakhouri.com. Fanning wears a Bottega Veneta dress, $20,000.Hart Lëshkina. Styled by Tess HerbertWith women, but never with men, “ambition” always gets labeled an ugly word. I’ve always been hungry, and that’s what got me here. I spent many years under the radar, not getting jobs — just tiny bits here and there — until David Lynch gave me an incredible role [in 2001’s “Mulholland Dr.”]. Had I not maintained that level of determination or ambition, whatever you want to call it, I would have packed it in and just tried to find something else. Knowing why you love what you do is important. What’s feeding you that makes you keep coming back for more?Watts wears a Bottega Veneta dress. Fanning wears a Bottega Veneta dress.Hart Lëshkina. Styled by Tess HerbertWatts wears a Bottega Veneta dress; and Ana Khouri earrings.Hart Lëshkina. Styled by Tess Herbertculture banner More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      How a ‘Succession’ Actress’s Daughters Joined the Family Business

      by

      In the first film Mouna and Lina Soualem made with their mother, Hiam Abbass, personal attachments went out the window: “There’s no time for that.”Hiam Abbass: I see you both as a continuation of my path, in a way. But I didn’t plan it. As a mother, I just wanted you to do what you wanted to do.Lina Soualem: Mouna, you always knew you would be an actress. I felt that because both our parents [their father is the French Algerian actor Zinedine Soualem] acted, I would never be as good as them, so I started working in journalism first. I think I had to go through that to find my voice.Mouna Soualem: I love your discipline and commitment [as a filmmaker], Lina. You don’t let go when you want something. It’s different being an actor, when so much is out of your control and sometimes you must let go or you’ll go crazy.H.A.: We can also let go in order to be somebody else. The first time the three of us collaborated, for my film “Inheritance” (2012), I was playing a mother, and you two were playing my daughters. When we’re on set, though, I don’t relate to you both as my daughters, just as you don’t relate to me as your mom. There’s no time for that.culture banner More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Lessons From Gina Prince-Bythewood on the Set of ‘The Woman King’

      by

      Gina Prince-Bythewood: When Thuso first auditioned for “The Woman King,” I thought, “This is Nawi” [one of the film’s leads, a warrior in training], but there were still other people she had to meet with, so I said, “Good luck with your career.” We laugh about it now, but to her that sounded like a death knell. Once we were on set, my admiration for her only grew. You see her going toe-to-toe with Viola [Davis] and Lashana Lynch. Plus I could give her harder and harder fight elements — she’s someone who has the desire to be great and who puts the work in until she is. In the big Oyo battle, her character has this sequence with a machete tied to a rope that I didn’t know how we were going to do without a stunt double. Well, Thuso learned it. She took that rope everywhere with her.culture banner More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      What Laura Dern and Diane Ladd Have Learned From Each Other

      by

      Ladd wasn’t sure she wanted her daughter to act. But Dern grew up going to work with her mother — and soon they were sharing the screen. Laura Dern: The great news about the endless challenges you had raising me as a single parent is that, when you brought me with you on location, I got an up-close view of what it really means to be an actor. Diane Ladd: When I was doing “A Texas Trilogy” at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 1976, you were 8 and sat with me during rehearsal. At one point the play’s director said, “Diane, you didn’t move there.” I said, “I know where I moved,” and you said, “No, Mother, he’s right.” You were really paying attention. I didn’t want you to go into acting. It’s a hard business for anyone but, as a woman, they really judge you, and for a lot more than the work. I said, “Laura, be a lawyer. Nobody cares if your backside’s too big when you’re a lawyer.”culture banner More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      Book Review: ‘Honey, Baby, Mine,’ by Laura Dern and Diane Ladd

      by

      Laura Dern and her mother, Diane Ladd, both made careers in the movies. In “Honey, Baby, Mine,” they drop names, rehash arguments and lean on each other.HONEY, BABY, MINE: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding), by Laura Dern and Diane LaddWhen Diane Ladd is diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and given six months to live, her daughter Laura Dern looks at her and thinks, “You can’t die.” Determined to increase her mother’s lung capacity and life span, Dern gets the doctor’s permission to take Ladd on daily 15-minute walks, distracting her mother by asking questions about the past.Transcripts of those conversations are the beating heart of “Honey, Baby, Mine,” the actresses’ joint memoir, which also includes photographs, recipes, memorabilia and short, interspersed chapters written by each woman.They commiserate over the timeless frustrations of their industry, while also reflecting on what has slowly changed. Dern recalls visiting her mom’s sets as a child, catching the acting bug when Martin Scorsese asked her to appear as an extra in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Allowing a child on the set was still frowned upon nearly two decades later, when they worked together on “Rambling Rose” (for which they became the only mother-daughter pair ever to have been nominated for Academy Awards for the same film) ‌and had to advocate for their director to be allowed to nurse her baby at work.By the time Dern co-starred in the 2017 TV mini-series “Big Little Lies,” actors’ children were so commonly present that, she writes, “we had effectively created a … day care.” Along the way, they toss about glittery names, among them Tennessee Williams, Norman Mailer, Shelley Winters, Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon (who also provides the foreword). If you’re in it for the stargazing, you’ll be rewarded with plenty — but that’s not what lingers most after the telling.As actors, Dern and Ladd have spent decades peeling back layers to reveal their characters’ fears and desires. It’s when they turn that focus to each other and themselves that something remarkable emerges.At first it seems a bit repetitive. Mother and daughter reminisce, joke and bicker, circling back to the same topics: the craft of acting, the strange experience of fame, the infinite doubts and compromises of motherhood.On one walk-and-talk, they tell funny anecdotes about Ladd’s mother, “Grandma Mary,” a wisecracking Mississippi divorcée who assisted with Dern’s upbringing after Ladd divorced Dern’s father, the actor Bruce Dern. Mary defied her era’s Southern Belle stereotypes, rejecting racism and classism in favor of everyday advocacy for equality. Her daughter and granddaughter learned a lot about independence from her, they agree.Then the tone shifts. On a later walk, Dern admits that she often resented being left with her grandmother while Ladd was away for work. A suddenly emotional Ladd says she sometimes felt unfairly burdened with the responsibility of supporting not only her daughter but her mother, “working 12-hour days making the money to pay the rent, buy her clothes, put food in her mouth for her to go get entertained and travel and play with you.” Emboldened by each day’s revelations and driven by their abiding love for each other, they wade into deeper confessions. The book is at its most memorable and affecting when they work up the courage to excavate heavy, sharp-edged emotional artifacts.Neither has forgotten the time Ladd slapped a teenage Dern in the kitchen of their home, though each remembers the moment differently. They reopen a bitter argument about the time Ladd took Dern’s young son for a significant haircut without her permission; neither party is ready to back down, still. They revisit the time Dern, racked with grief over her divorce from the musician Ben Harper, yelled, “You have no idea what I’m feeling right now!” and upended a sofa — and how her mother responded by making tea and reminding her that her scoliosis made it unwise to lift such heavy things. Eventually they confront Ladd’s greatest pain, a nearly unendurable loss she experienced as a young mother. They yell, grow quiet, accuse and forgive, allowing us to witness their relationship evolving, walk by walk. Ladd’s health improves. Dern draws even closer to her mother. For them, the experiment proves successful. For readers, it may depend on what we come for. I recommend going into “Honey, Baby, Mine” curious about the origin stories, separate and intertwined, of two prolific artists who pushed through private challenges — are pushing through still — while forging lives in the public eye.Mary Laura Philpott is the author, most recently, of the memoir “Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives.”HONEY, BABY, MINE: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding) | By Laura Dern and Diane Ladd | Illustrated | 256 pp. | Grand Central Publishing | $32 More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Happy 100th Birthday, 16-Millimeter Film

      by

      The format was initially a boon to amateurs. Now, with moviemaking gone digital, it’s the choice of auteurs like Darren Aronofsky and Kelly Reichardt.One hundred years ago, the Eastman Kodak Company introduced a shiny new camera that promised to revolutionize moviemaking. The company had been selling filming devices for more than two decades by then, but this novel contraption — the Ciné-Kodak camera, sold with the Kodascope projector — offered a new thrill: the ability to make and screen movies at home, with no special expertise.The technical marvel, however, wasn’t just the camera but also the film inside. Until 1923, the film used most commonly in motion pictures was 35 millimeters wide. That year, Kodak produced a new format that was only 16 millimeters. The image wasn’t as sharp when you blew it up on the big screen, but it allowed for smaller, cheaper and more portable cameras.16 millimeter ushered in a new era of movies made outside the Hollywood system. Regular folks could now record their own lives, journalists and soldiers could film in the midst of war, and activists could shoot political documentaries in the street. Until digital video arrived in the late 1990s, 16-millimeter film was the mainstay of the amateur or independent filmmaker, requiring neither the investment nor the know-how of commercial cinema.Last week, at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which holds thousands of 16-millimeter reels in its collection, the film archivist Elena Rossi-Snook projected some shorts for a group of undergraduates from Marymount Manhattan College. As the projector whirred, a beam of light cut through the darkened room, painting the screen with scenes from the 1946 animated “Boundary Lines,” a stirring movie by Philip Stapp about social integrity in the wake of World War II. That was followed by “The End,” an antiwar stoner comedy directed by a teenager, Alfonso Sanchez, in 1968. The third film, “Black Faces” from 1970, was an ebullient, one-minute montage of portraits of Harlem residents.These productions, precious documents of the lives and concerns of ordinary Americans, have endured, Rossi-Snook explained, because their makers had relatively cheap and convenient access to film, a medium that can last hundreds of years if stored properly.Natalie Portman in “Black Swan,” another Aronofsky film shot on 16 millimeter.Niko Tavernise/Fox Searchlight PicturesToday, 16 millimeter is no longer optimal for the amateur filmmaker. Analog film is increasingly expensive, fewer and fewer labs can process it, and the format doesn’t allow the nearly unlimited shooting and instant playback that video does. But even as it turns 100, 16 millimeter still has a unique look that neither 35-millimeter film nor video can rival.When projected on the screen, analog film has a three-dimensional, pointillist texture called “grain,” a product of its synthetic makeup. There is more grain in 16 millimeter than in 35 millimeter, resulting in a fuzzier, flickering picture. In the 20th century, that was a drawback for professional filmmakers seeking crisp, theatrical images. But today, as high-definition media saturate our lives, some directors choose 16 millimeter precisely for its rougher look. It reminds us that what we’re watching is not the world as is, but filtered and transformed, with great creativity, through a chemical process.The filmmaker Darren Aronofsky has shot several movies on 16-millimeter film, including “The Wrestler” (2008), “Black Swan” (2010) and “Mother!” (2017). But when he was making his debut feature, “Pi” (1998), 16 millimeter was a necessity, not a choice. The resolution of available digital cameras wasn’t good enough for feature filmmaking at the time, and Aronofsky couldn’t afford 35 millimeter. But he and his cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, soon realized that 16 millimeter — especially the high-contrast stock they used called reversal film — emphasized the hallucinatory style of “Pi,” a black-and-white psychological thriller that delves into the obsessions of a paranoid number theorist.“We decided to really lean into 16 millimeter,” Aronofsky said in a phone interview. “I wanted the big grain and the contrast-y look. It’s funny, because we just had the 25th anniversary of the film, and we blew it up for IMAX. And the IMAX people were nervous because of how grainy it was. They wanted to know if I wanted to clear out some of the grain with computer technology. And we said, absolutely not. We loved the look of it.”Several TV shows from the late ’90s and early 2000s, including “The O.C.” and “Sex and the City,” used Super 16, a variation of 16 millimeter with a larger picture area that gave them a sense of real-time immediacy. The first 10 seasons of “The Walking Dead” were also largely shot on 16 millimeter to capture the grimy, crumbling feel of classic horror cinema.The cinematographer John Inwood, who filmed 150 episodes of the comedy “Scrubs,” recalled that 16-millimeter cameras, which are smaller and lighter than their 35-millimeter counterparts (and even many contemporary professional video cameras), were crucial in developing the series’s frenetic mockumentary style.“It was good for ‘Scrubs’ because we moved the cameras a lot, and we were sometimes in tight spaces,” he told me. “We shot in an actual hospital, the former North Hollywood hospital, and we shot in every square inch of it, even down to the morgue.”Chadwick Boseman in a flashback to the Vietnam War in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods.” The director wanted those scenes to look as if they were archival newsreel footage.NetflixAs digital cameras have become sharper and more versatile, many filmmakers have turned to 16 millimeter to evoke the analog past and the blurry, precarious nature of memory. In an interview with Gold Derby, Newton Thomas Sigel, who filmed Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” (2020), said the director had insisted to Netflix that they use 16-millimeter reversal film for the sequences set amid the Vietnam War, despite the costs and logistical challenges. The film had to be shipped from Vietnam to an American lab for processing, and by the time the crew members could see what they had shot, Chadwick Boseman’s acting schedule had already ended. But Lee was adamant that the scenes look authentic, like archival newsreels filmed in the field in the 1970s.The veteran cinematographer Ed Lachman used Super 16 on two of his collaborations with the director Todd Haynes, both of them period dramas: the mini-series “Mildred Pierce” (2011), and “Carol” (2015), which garnered him an Academy Award nomination.On both projects, the format was chosen to mimic photographic images from the 1940s and ’50s, and the grittiness of postwar America. But Lachman realized that the grain also brought “tension to the surface of the image,” paralleling the repressive qualities of the characters in both “Mildred Pierce” and “Carol.”For Lachman, the appeal of 16 millimeter transcends nostalgia. It comes down to cinema’s status as an art, meant to stylize rather than simply reproduce reality. He likened film to painting, and grain to brushstrokes. “The grain changes in each frame with exposure,” he said. “It’s like breathing, almost like an anthropomorphic quality.”Kelly Reichardt turned to 16 millimeter after video shots of the snow looked too flat.Sony Pictures ClassicsThe filmmaker Kelly Reichardt recalled that when she started shooting her 2016 feature, “Certain Women,” she didn’t have the budget for 16 millimeter. But when she and her cameraman, Christopher Blauvelt, did test shoots in Montana, where the film is set, Reichardt was horrified at how “flat” the snow looked on video.“With film stocks, things weren’t so real looking,” Reichardt said. “A lot of it is grain, and 16 has more grain than 35. So when you blow it up, you don’t get the hard lines that you get in HD, which is what you see in sports.”A grant ultimately allowed Reichardt to shoot “Certain Women” on 16 millimeter. It made the production more laborious, but the results — soft, textured images of wide roads, snowy mountains and grassy plains, all shimmering with light, dust and shadow — made it worth it.“I guess it’s about beauty, in a way,” Reichardt said. “I remember on ‘30 Rock’ they did a little thing where Lemon walks in front of the HD camera, and it’s like, she’s a skeleton hag. You know? You see every single thing. It’s very unforgiving. For nature, too.” More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Tribeca Festival Unveils 2023 Lineup With Chelsea Peretti, Michael Shannon and More

      by

      Chelsea Peretti, Michael Shannon and Randall Park, among others, are making their directorial debuts at the annual New York event, set for June.Films directed by performers like Chelsea Peretti, Michael Shannon and Randall Park will be a focus of the 2023 Tribeca Festival, organizers said Tuesday as they announced the event lineup. Also on the schedule will be the premiere of a Marvel documentary about the iconic comic book writer Stan Lee.This year’s festival, which will run in Lower Manhattan from June 7 to 18, will include 109 feature films from 127 filmmakers across 36 countries. Among those filmmakers will be 43 first-timers.“The Tribeca Festival is a celebratory event that honors artists and uplifts attendees, and this year is no exception,” the festival’s co-founder, Jane Rosenthal, said in a statement, adding that the event will offer “storytelling as a powerful tool of democracy, activism and social awareness.”Peretti, an actor perhaps best known for her work on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” will bring to Tribeca the world premiere of “First Time Female Director,” a comedy she also wrote about a woman filmmaker struggling to fill the shoes of her male predecessor.Shannon went behind the camera for “Eric LaRue,” a world-premiere drama in which parents grappling with the fallout of their son’s shocking crime seek solace in rival religious congregations.And Park, whose acting career took off after he landed a starring role in the television sitcom “Fresh Off the Boat,” will take “Shortcomings” to Tribeca after it screened earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival.Also in the lineup will be the world premieres of “Maggie Moore(s)” by John Slattery; “Fresh Kills” by Jennifer Esposito; and the North American premiere of “The Listener” by Steve Buscemi.The Marvel documentary “Stan Lee,” from the director David Gelb, will be among the 53 nonfiction features at the festival.The festival is known for its live events and several are scheduled for the 2023 edition. Sara Bareilles will perform after the world premiere of “Waitress, the Musical — Live on Broadway!,” which features her music and lyrics. Gloria Gaynor will perform following the world premiere of the documentary “Gloria Gaynor: “I Will Survive.” And a conversation with Dan Rather and the director Frank Marshall will take place after the world premiere of the film “Rather.” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      Hollywood Writers Approve of Strike as Shutdown Looms

      by

      The writers have not gone on strike in 15 years, and the vote gives their unions the right to call for a walkout when their contract expires on May 1.Hollywood is getting ever closer to a shutdown.The unions representing thousands of television and movie writers said on Monday that they had overwhelming support for a strike, giving union leaders the right to call for a walkout when the writers’ contract with the major Hollywood studios expires on May 1.The unions, which are affiliated East and West Coast branches of the Writers Guild of America, said more than 9,000 writers had approved a strike authorization, with 98 percent of the vote.W.G.A. leaders have said this is an “existential” moment for writers, contending that compensation has stagnated over the last decade despite the explosion of television series in the streaming era. In an email last week to writers, the lead negotiators said that “the survival of writing as a profession is at stake in this negotiation.”With two weeks to go before the contract expires, there has been little sign of progress in the talks. In the email, the negotiating committee said the studios “have failed to offer meaningful responses on the core economic issues” and offered only small concessions in a few areas.“In short, the studios have shown no sign that they intend to address the problems our members are determined to fix in this negotiation,” the email said.The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of Hollywood production companies, said in a statement that a strike authorization “should come as no surprise to anyone.”“A strike authorization vote has always been part of the W.G.A.’s plan, announced before the parties even exchanged proposals,” the statement said. “Our goal is, and continues to be, to reach a fair and reasonable agreement.” It added, “An agreement is only possible if the guild is committed to turning its focus to serious bargaining by engaging in full discussions of the issues with the companies and searching for reasonable compromises.”The last time the writers went on strike was in 2007, and that strike lasted 100 days.Nick Ut/Associated PressIn recent weeks, Hollywood executives have begun preparing for a strike, both by stockpiling scripts and by getting ready to produce a torrent of reality series, which do not need script writers. David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns the Warner Bros. film and TV studios as well as HBO, said at a news media event last week that he was hopeful a deal would be reached. He added that “a strike will be a challenge for the whole industry.”Still, he said, the company was fully prepared if there was a walkout.“We’re assuming the worst from a business perspective,” he said. “We’ve got ourselves ready. We’ve had a lot of content that’s been produced.”A strike authorization does not guarantee writers will take to the picket lines in two weeks. In 2017, a last-minute deal was struck with the studios not long after 96 percent of the writers voted to authorize a strike. The last time the writers went on strike was in 2007. That stoppage dragged for 100 days, into early 2008, and cost the Los Angeles economy an estimated $2.1 billion.If a strike begins in early May, late-night shows like “Saturday Night Live” and talk shows hosted by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers will go dark immediately. It would take a strike of several months before viewers began to notice an effect on scripted television series and movies.The streaming era has resulted in a significant rise in the number of scripted television series that are produced, but writers say working conditions have not kept pace.“Writers are working more weeks for less money,” said Eric Haywood, a veteran writer and producer, and a member of the W.G.A. negotiating committee. “And in some cases, veteran writers are working for the same money or, in some cases, less money than they made just a few years ago.”In some cases, veteran writers are working for the same money or, in some cases, less money, than they made just a few years ago,” said Eric Haywood, right, a veteran writer and producer, and a member of the W.G.A. negotiating committee. Sarah Stacke for The New York TimesThe timing of the talks has an added complexity given the current financial challenges for all media and entertainment companies.Over the last year, share prices for those companies have nose-dived after Wall Street began questioning why many streaming services were losing billions of dollars a year. The studios are quickly trying to make those streaming services profitable, after years of focusing primarily on growth. The shift is coming at a cost.Disney is in the midst of 7,000 job cuts. Warner Bros. Discovery, confronting a debt load of about $50 billion, shelved projects and laid off thousands of workers last year. Other media companies are taking similar cost-cutting measures.The writers do not appear to be sympathetic.“The current status quo is unsustainable,” Mr. Haywood said.The writers have taken particular aim at so-called minirooms. There is no one definition of a miniroom, but they have proliferated in the streaming era.In one example, the studios will convene a miniroom before a show has been picked up by a studio and scheduled to air. A small group of writers will develop a series and write several scripts over two or three months.But because the studios have not ordered the series, they will use that as justification to pay writers less than if they were in a formal writers’ room, union leaders said. And given the relatively short duration of the position, those writers are then left scrambling to find another job if the show is not picked up.One union leader likened minirooms to “labor camps” during the negotiations, according to two people familiar with the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.A W.G.A. spokesman said the reference was not literal and had come during a presentation lasting an hour and a half.“Development work has always been paid at a premium because you’re coming up with the idea,” Ellen Stutzman, the chief negotiator for the W.G.A., said in an interview. “If you’re going to have these rooms before you pick up a show or a season, you should pay writers a premium.”The writers have also said residuals — which Ms. Stutzman called “the profit participation of the middle-class writer” — have been affected in the streaming era. Before streaming, writers could receive residual payments whenever a show was licensed, whether that was for syndication, an international deal or DVD sales.But in the streaming era, as global services like Netflix and Amazon have been reluctant to license their series, those distribution arms have been cut off and replaced with a fixed residual, Ms. Stutzman said.“If an overwhelming majority of the content writers create is for the streaming platforms where they are completely cut out of global growth and success, that is a very big problem,” she said. More