David Fincher's 2002 film "Panic Room," starring Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Kristen Stewart, and Jared Leto, is one of the more stylish, taut thrillers of its decade. The cinematography by Conrad W. Hall and Darius Khondji captured light as it hung, sterile in the air, the sweeping, balletic camera movements giving the audience the experience of floating into cramped, enclosed spaces. "Panic Room" was Fincher's first film after 1999's "Fight Club," a maligned-at-the-time, MTV-inflected middle finger to '90s consumer culture that would only eventually find purchase in the pop consciousness after years of cult re-watching. "Panic Room," was a step back from something...
The post David Fincher's Overpreparation For Panic Room Was too Much For Its Stars appeared first on /Film.
The post David Fincher's Overpreparation For Panic Room Was too Much For Its Stars appeared first on /Film.
- 5/3/2022
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Write what you know, they say. But because Fred Durst once had a bad experience with a stalker, we now get the rank human patty that is the Limp Bizkit frontman and sometime director’s latest indulgence “The Fanatic,” a celebrity-terrorizing scenario that wants to be “Misery” but only creates misery.
Durst didn’t necessarily embarrass himself 10 years ago when he released his directorial debut, the admirably sensitive college drama “The Education of Charlie Banks”; he didn’t write the film, nor did his effort suggest hidden reserves of cinematic promise. “The Fanatic,” however, which Durst did have a hand in writing, is a brainless, exploitative folly which gives John Travolta free rein to mine the history of cringe-worthy autism portrayals for an offensively garish Frankenstein pantomime of unhinged obsession. It ultimately suggests this side-career of Durst’s should be well and truly snuffed out.
Travolta plays a childlike ultra-fan called The Moose,...
Durst didn’t necessarily embarrass himself 10 years ago when he released his directorial debut, the admirably sensitive college drama “The Education of Charlie Banks”; he didn’t write the film, nor did his effort suggest hidden reserves of cinematic promise. “The Fanatic,” however, which Durst did have a hand in writing, is a brainless, exploitative folly which gives John Travolta free rein to mine the history of cringe-worthy autism portrayals for an offensively garish Frankenstein pantomime of unhinged obsession. It ultimately suggests this side-career of Durst’s should be well and truly snuffed out.
Travolta plays a childlike ultra-fan called The Moose,...
- 8/26/2019
- by Robert Abele
- The Wrap
Some murder mysteries begin with murders; some begin with Mamie Gummer giving a lecture on a rooftop, arguing that all life springs from death, all death springs from life, and 90% of matter is invisible. “You can tell a lot by looking,” she tells her students. But in the world of “Out of Blue,” it’s the telling that takes up most of the running time, and it’s a little monotonous, if we’re being honest.
Patricia Clarkson stars as Mike Hoolihan, a detective investigating the death of astrophysicist Jennifer Rockwell (Gummer), who was shot in an observatory shortly after that opening lecture. Rockwell’s death is no ordinary murder. It looks suspiciously like the work of the never-captured but long since retired “.38 Caliber Killer.” And all of the suspects are spacey intellectuals who pontificate about highfalutin concepts like Schrödinger’s cat and alternate realities when they should be telling...
Patricia Clarkson stars as Mike Hoolihan, a detective investigating the death of astrophysicist Jennifer Rockwell (Gummer), who was shot in an observatory shortly after that opening lecture. Rockwell’s death is no ordinary murder. It looks suspiciously like the work of the never-captured but long since retired “.38 Caliber Killer.” And all of the suspects are spacey intellectuals who pontificate about highfalutin concepts like Schrödinger’s cat and alternate realities when they should be telling...
- 3/22/2019
- by William Bibbiani
- The Wrap
Author Martin Amis just can’t catch a break when it comes to seeing his novels adapted for the big screen. Last year saw the atrocious London Fields not so much get released as it did escape development hell. Now, after playing at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, another Amis adaptation hits theaters. It’s Out of Blue, which mixes the investigation of a death with an exploration of astrophysics. If that sounds like a tough pill to swallow, it is. Despite some interesting moments, Out of Blue is too hazy about its themes to work and ends up frustrating way more than it entertains. The movie is a police procedural, at least in name only, though it mixes in liberally some astrology chatter and other such astrophysical mumbo jumbo. When renowned astrophysicist and black hole expert Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer) is found shot to death in her observatory,...
- 3/22/2019
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
Without necessarily admiring the result, one can admire the wackadoodle ambition of Carol Morley’s “Out of Blue” (the missing definite article is itself a salutary warning about a plot that will misplace a whole bunch of articles en route to its mystifying finale). It’s not every filmmaker, after all, who’ll toss astrophysics, metaphysics, Martin Amis, cop procedurals, recovered memories, serial killers, family tragedies and a whole dress-up chest of unlikely costumes and props into the stratosphere on just her third narrative feature, and it’s the sort of reckless abandon we ought to applaud. But rather like Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, which is laboriously outlined twice during this glitchy, shambolic affair, the resulting admixture exists in a quantum state. Schrödinger’s beleaguered cat is both alive and dead; “Out of Blue” is, at all times, both sort of interesting and quite bad — equal parts workaday homage...
- 9/17/2018
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
“If a director is smart, he’ll give me the elbow room to paint.” So said Gordon Willis, who worked with some very clever directors indeed, who let him “paint” some of the most beautiful and influential movies of the 1970s and made an incalculable contribution to the Golden Age of New Hollywood. The sad news of his death yesterday at the age of 82 has robbed the world of one of the most important artists of the past fifty years.
Nicknamed ‘The Prince of Darkness’ by his fellow cinematographer Conrad Hall, Willis’s trademark was his use of shadows, not just in the composition of scenes but on actors’ faces. The interior scenes in The Godfather (1972) typify this stark technique, as do the underground car park scenes in All The President’s Men (1976), where Hal Holbrook’s “Deep Throat” is rendered faceless by Willis’s photography.
However, he was fond...
Nicknamed ‘The Prince of Darkness’ by his fellow cinematographer Conrad Hall, Willis’s trademark was his use of shadows, not just in the composition of scenes but on actors’ faces. The interior scenes in The Godfather (1972) typify this stark technique, as do the underground car park scenes in All The President’s Men (1976), where Hal Holbrook’s “Deep Throat” is rendered faceless by Willis’s photography.
However, he was fond...
- 5/19/2014
- by Cai Ross
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Los Angeles — In a week when North Korea posted a homemade video showing the U.S. Capitol building being destroyed by a missile, what more logical response could Hollywood offer than a macho thriller about a Secret Service agent who takes on North Korean terrorists who attack the White House? The first of two similarly themed action dramas set for this year ("White House Down" arrives in June), "Olympus Has Fallen" will put to the test the question of whether American audiences are ready, 12 years after 9-11, to watch, strictly as disposable popcorn entertainment, a film in which the United States and some of its most prominent landmarks are devastated by foreign terrorists.
The answer almost undoubtedly will be yes, as the tough-guy former agent played by Gerard Butler gets to kick a whole lot of badass butt while trying to rescue the president. Although this is the sort of...
The answer almost undoubtedly will be yes, as the tough-guy former agent played by Gerard Butler gets to kick a whole lot of badass butt while trying to rescue the president. Although this is the sort of...
- 3/20/2013
- by AP
- Huffington Post
When terrorists take down the White House (code name “Olympus”), a disgraced Secret Service agent attempts to rescue the president of the United States in Olympus Has Fallen, an electrifying and inspired action thriller from acclaimed director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day).
A small group of heavily armed, meticulously trained extremists launch a daring daylight ambush on the White House, overrunning the building and taking President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and his staff hostage inside an impenetrable underground presidential bunker. As a pitched battle rages on the White House lawn, former presidential security officer Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) joins the fray, and finds his way into the besieged building to do the job he has trained for all his life: to protect the president – at all costs.
Banning uses his extensive training and detailed knowledge of the presidential residence to become the eyes and ears of Acting President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) and his key advisors.
A small group of heavily armed, meticulously trained extremists launch a daring daylight ambush on the White House, overrunning the building and taking President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and his staff hostage inside an impenetrable underground presidential bunker. As a pitched battle rages on the White House lawn, former presidential security officer Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) joins the fray, and finds his way into the besieged building to do the job he has trained for all his life: to protect the president – at all costs.
Banning uses his extensive training and detailed knowledge of the presidential residence to become the eyes and ears of Acting President Allan Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) and his key advisors.
- 3/11/2013
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The Man on Lincoln’s Nose (2000), Daniel Raim’s short documentary about legendary production designer Robert Boyle (North by Northwest, The Birds), was nominated for an Oscar; Boyle himself received an honorary Oscar in 2008 at the age of 98. Over the course of several years, Raim continued to film Boyle in candid interviews and conversations with his production design colleagues (Henry Bumstead, Albert Nozaki, Harold Michelson) and cinematographers Haskell Wexler and Conrad Hall, and produced an equally engaging follow-up feature, Something’s Gonna Live (2010).
The film is a warm and contemplative portrait of the aging Boyle and his friends as they visit their old stomping grounds at Paramount Studios and converse about ways the industry has changed, and most importantly, the creative values they learned over the years and hope to preserve. Full of indelible clips, it’s an engrossing movie for movie lovers, and it has recently been released on...
The film is a warm and contemplative portrait of the aging Boyle and his friends as they visit their old stomping grounds at Paramount Studios and converse about ways the industry has changed, and most importantly, the creative values they learned over the years and hope to preserve. Full of indelible clips, it’s an engrossing movie for movie lovers, and it has recently been released on...
- 10/11/2012
- by Doug Cummings
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Directed by Lavinia Currier Starring
Kris Marshall, Isaach de Bankolé, Will Yun Lee & the Bayaka of Yandombe
Based on the memoir by Louis Sarno
(.Last Thoughts Before Vanishing from the Face of the Earth.)
New Release Date! October 28, 2011
Presented by Dada Films and required viewing, Lavinia Currier.s (The Passion in the Desert) breathtaking new film, Oka! is a fish-out-of-water tale of an ethnomusicologist from New Jersey who finds himself immersed in the colorful lives ofthe Bayake pygmies. Based on the memoir by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno, who has lived with the pygmies for over 20 years, Oka! transports audiences to the vast forest of the Central African Republic into the magical world of the Bayaka and lyrically captures their music, dance, humor and exuberance, as well as the harsh realities they endure.
The forest dwelling tribe of Bayaka pygmies is famed for its acute hearing (.Oka!. means .listen!. in their Akka...
Kris Marshall, Isaach de Bankolé, Will Yun Lee & the Bayaka of Yandombe
Based on the memoir by Louis Sarno
(.Last Thoughts Before Vanishing from the Face of the Earth.)
New Release Date! October 28, 2011
Presented by Dada Films and required viewing, Lavinia Currier.s (The Passion in the Desert) breathtaking new film, Oka! is a fish-out-of-water tale of an ethnomusicologist from New Jersey who finds himself immersed in the colorful lives ofthe Bayake pygmies. Based on the memoir by ethnomusicologist Louis Sarno, who has lived with the pygmies for over 20 years, Oka! transports audiences to the vast forest of the Central African Republic into the magical world of the Bayaka and lyrically captures their music, dance, humor and exuberance, as well as the harsh realities they endure.
The forest dwelling tribe of Bayaka pygmies is famed for its acute hearing (.Oka!. means .listen!. in their Akka...
- 9/30/2011
- by Melissa Howland
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
I've done a lot of interviews during my time at /Film, but I usually don't have the opportunity to interview cinematographers. However, when the offer came to chat with Roger Deakins, I jumped at the chance. Deakins has helped to craft some of the most memorable images in the history of cinema. His insanely accomplished filmography includes the likes of The Shawshank Redemption, Revolutionary Road, and A Beautiful Mind, not to mention many of the films of the Coen Brothers. This year, Deakins received an Academy Award nomination for his work in the Coen Brothers True Grit (his 9th nomination, although he hasn't yet won). He will also be the recipient of the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award. Below is an excerpted version of our lengthy conversation. Note that there is a quasi-spoiler for True Grit in the interview. Roger Deakins, thanks so much for speaking with us today.
- 2/10/2011
- by David Chen
- Slash Film
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