My first encounter with the work of Alex Ross Perry came in the fall of 2009, at a small festival of extremely low-budget and experimental movies in Chicago. Some friends, long since moved away and lost touch with, had talked me to going into the sole screening of a feature with an odd title. If memory serves, it was the only one in the program to have been shot and projected on film. The movie turned out to be Perry’s debut, Impolex, and though I dread the thought of revisiting whatever it is that I wrote about it at the time, this Thomas Pynchon-inspired surrealist comedy about a narcoleptic World War II soldier who wanders a forest in search of a V-2 rocket left a substantial impression. To be honest, it was probably just as important back then that Perry seemed like one of us. That is, video store people,...
- 4/21/2019
- MUBI
Only a filmmaker as talented as Alex Ross Perry could make a movie as misbegotten as “Golden Exits.” With his past features “Impolex,” “The Color Wheel,” “Listen Up Philip,” and “Queen of Earth,” Perry has established himself as one of American independent cinema’s best young writer-directors, equally interested in the quality of his images and the richness of his characters.
Continue reading Alex Ross Perry’s ‘Golden Exits’ Is A Collection Of Half-Realized Ideas And Characters [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading Alex Ross Perry’s ‘Golden Exits’ Is A Collection Of Half-Realized Ideas And Characters [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.
- 1/23/2017
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Independent film director Alex Ross Perry has a full slate of upcoming projects, including a new feature film and a yet-to-be-titled live-action “Winnie the Pooh” project, but he found the time to co-direct a music video for the duo Sleigh Bells with the band’s Derek E. Miller. The song is titled “I Can Only Stare” and it’s off their upcoming album “Jessica Rabbit.” The video was shot in 16mm and it features singer Alexis Krauss playing three different women. Watch it below.
Read More: Alex Ross Perry: Indie Filmmakers Can Afford to Shoot Film
Perry has directed four feature films so far. His first two films were “Impolex,” based off Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and “The Color Wheel,” starring Perry and Carlen Altman as two siblings on a road trip. He garnered much acclaim with his third film “Listen Up Philip,” which stars Jason Schwartzman...
Read More: Alex Ross Perry: Indie Filmmakers Can Afford to Shoot Film
Perry has directed four feature films so far. His first two films were “Impolex,” based off Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and “The Color Wheel,” starring Perry and Carlen Altman as two siblings on a road trip. He garnered much acclaim with his third film “Listen Up Philip,” which stars Jason Schwartzman...
- 10/26/2016
- by Vikram Murthi
- Indiewire
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit the interwebs. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
Everest (Baltasar Kormákur)
Curtain raisers seldom come more bombastic than the last two films to open the Venice Film Festival, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity in 2013, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman last year. Attempting to maintain that level of volume this year on the Lido is Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, a grand-scale, by-the-numbers 3D epic about the doomed 1996 expedition to climb the titular peak.
Everest (Baltasar Kormákur)
Curtain raisers seldom come more bombastic than the last two films to open the Venice Film Festival, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity in 2013, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman last year. Attempting to maintain that level of volume this year on the Lido is Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, a grand-scale, by-the-numbers 3D epic about the doomed 1996 expedition to climb the titular peak.
- 12/28/2015
- by TFS Staff
- The Film Stage
An interview setting as isolated and exotic as Mexico's Los Cabos Film Festival often means you're sitting down with talent in more comfortable, candid moods. Perched on a terrace overlooking the Pacific, I chatted with a relaxed Alex Ross Perry, joined by his trusted celluloid Dp Sean Price Williams. The budding November festival and industry hangout gave the filmmaker the retrospective Spotlight treatment. Perry knows it takes thick skin to break into Hollywood when you're a young New York indie far flung from the world of the studios. But how did his edgy indie oeuvre — Pynchon ode "Impolex" (2009), sibling road movie "The Color Wheel" (2011), scabrous literary comedy "Listen Up Philip" (2014) and this year's darkly funny Polanski throwback "Queen of Earth," which made its Mexican premiere at Los Cabos 2015 — land him a for-hire screenwriting gig at Disney? In April, it was announced that Disney, in its race to repurpose evergreen...
- 11/24/2015
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
In response to an Indiewire article which asked whether indie filmmakers can afford to shoot film, Alex Ross Perry explains below why shooting on film is affordable. It is quite simple and affordable to shoot a movie of almost any budget on actual, honest to god celluloid. Perhaps I'm not the best authority on the subject; I have never actually shot a film on a digital format. "Queen of Earth" is my fourth film; the first, "Impolex," was made in 2008 with a $15,000 budget and shot on Fuji 16mm film. So ever since then I've been getting asked, and really earnestly explaining in the hopes that my words mean something: how? Watch: Can Indie Filmmakers Afford to Shoot on Film? "Impolex" was shot in seven days. I think we bought 40 rolls of film. However many it was, the total was something like $2,500 and processing was another $3,000 or so. We got the...
- 8/27/2015
- by Alex Ross Perry
- Indiewire
The success we’ve had in preserving and distributing art of the past has had a somewhat calcifying effect on the present. This is not to say good work is not being done now; in the province with which we are primary concerned, dozens of very good (and a few truly great) films are made every year. How many of them truly belong to us? So many of our great modern films are meditations on the past – chiefly the 20th century – contextualizing or embalming an experience that is becoming, in more ways that strictly chronological, more and more removed from the present every day. How many more films, no matter how great, do we need about World War II or the late 1960s? How often do we need to be reminded of the giants of cinema courtesy of new filmmakers eager to revere them through imitation?
These thoughts occurred to...
These thoughts occurred to...
- 8/18/2015
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
Elisabeth Moss—today, an Emmy nominee for "Mad Men"—gives a batshit crazy performance as a frittering would-be artist, in post-breakup mode, who loses her mind while retreating lakeside with her bitterly supportive best friend (Katherine Waterston). Think "Persona" by way of "Repulsion," but with salad instead of the rabbit. Read More: Elisabeth Moss Goes Next-Level Insane in Alex Ross Perry's "Queen of Earth" Perry, who was recently tapped to write a live action "Winnie the Pooh" remake for Disney, previously wrote and directed "Impolex," "The Color Wheel" and "Listen Up Philip," which also starred a marvelous Moss. Creepy and emotionally graphic, "Queen of Earth" fits comfortably into the hysterical woman canon with the likes of Bergman's "Persona," Polanski's "Repulsion," Altman's "Images" and, yes, Allen's "Interiors." Throughout the film, Moss...
- 7/16/2015
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
Finally, Alex Ross Perry's audacious fourth feature film "Queen of Earth" has been picked up for Us distribution by IFC. Elisabeth Moss gives a wildly unpredictable, rangy lead performance as a woman blistered by a breakup who comes horrifically undone while retreating in a cabin with her bitterly supportive best friend (Katherine Waterston). Read More: Elisabeth Moss Goes Next-Level Insane in Alex Ross Perry's "Queen of Earth" Perry, who was recently tapped to write a live action "Winnie the Pooh" remake for Disney, previously wrote and directed "Impolex," "The Color Wheel" and "Listen Up Philip," which also starred a marvelous Moss. Creepy and emotionally graphic, "Queen of Earth" fits comfortably into the hysterical woman canon with the likes of Bergman's "Persona," Polanski's "Repulsion," Altman's "Images" and, yes, Allen's "Interiors." Throughout the film, Moss...
- 4/14/2015
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
If one needed to put any sort of auteurist stamp that can be put on Alex Ross Perry‘s features, they’d be well-advised to consider these films’ (for wont of a more expressive term) literary ties. Impolex: Pynchon and Gravity’s Rainbow. The Color Wheel and Listen Up Philip: Roth, mainly, along with William Gaddis’ The Recognitions […]...
- 4/7/2015
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Very clearly of the independent American cinema of the moment, and the New York scene in particular, Alex Ross Perry has nevertheless distinguished himself from his contemporaries with three singularly biting comedies—and now has set himself further apart with his latest: Queen of Earth, an intense dramatic departure. Viewers of Impolex, The Color Wheel, and most recently Listen Up Philip will recognize certain trademarks, among them a cast of entitled characters who treat each other horribly, as well as Sean Price Williams's stunning Super 16 cinematography, which here captures the damaged mental state of the film's protagonist with a blend of grainy pastel blues and greys contrasted with the earthly colors that make up the terrain surrounding its lake house setting. Taking cues from Polanski, Bergman, Fassbinder, and Kubrick, Perry imbues the film with an unsettlingly violent tone, made all the more discomforting in its restraint (this bubbling violence never manifests physically,...
- 3/3/2015
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
Richard Brody explains how F. Scott Fitzgerald was "undone" by mistaking screenwriting for writing. J. Hoberman reviews Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor (1963). Jonathan Rosenbaum explains why Rear Window (1954) is Hitchcock's "greatest movie." Calum Marsh considers the impact of the work of Derek Jarman. Todd Rohal is a big fan of Joe Sedelmaier, a director of commercials that became wildly popular in the 80s. Alex Ross Perry looks back on making his debut feature, Impolex. This and more news in the latest roundup. » - David Hudson...
- 6/14/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Alex Ross Perry's second feature, The Color Wheel (2011), is now playing on Mubi in the U.S. through March 23. Ignatiy Vishnevetsky wrote about it earlier on the Notebook.
Alex Ross Perry's first two features, Impolex (2009) and The Color Wheel (2011), climax with single-take rug-pulls—performance-intensive scenes which reveal the loneliness and longing that underpins Perry's freewheeling humor. The camera style developed by Perry and his regular director of photography, Sean Price Williams, is already actor-friendly, largely handheld, and composed mostly in eye-level, three-quarter profile close-ups. These climactic sequences, however, stretch this style to its limits—unfolding as a single close-up in Impolex, continually reframing from close-up to medium shot and back again in The Color Wheel—while also straining technical limitations. (Impolex and The Color Wheel were shot on 16mm, and both films' big long takes run almost as long as a standard 400' magazine.) What makes these sequences...
Alex Ross Perry's first two features, Impolex (2009) and The Color Wheel (2011), climax with single-take rug-pulls—performance-intensive scenes which reveal the loneliness and longing that underpins Perry's freewheeling humor. The camera style developed by Perry and his regular director of photography, Sean Price Williams, is already actor-friendly, largely handheld, and composed mostly in eye-level, three-quarter profile close-ups. These climactic sequences, however, stretch this style to its limits—unfolding as a single close-up in Impolex, continually reframing from close-up to medium shot and back again in The Color Wheel—while also straining technical limitations. (Impolex and The Color Wheel were shot on 16mm, and both films' big long takes run almost as long as a standard 400' magazine.) What makes these sequences...
- 3/14/2014
- by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
- MUBI
Alex Ross Perry continues his cinematic quest to test the limits of how far you can take the obnoxious misanthropy of your leading characters in Listen Up Philip. Explicitly set in the literary world for which the writer-director has indirectly evinced a great affinity in his previous, ultra-low-budget features, Impolex and The Color Wheel, this more ambitious venture focuses upon the willfully self-destructive impulses of a talented young novelist who simultaneously sabotages the potential success of his new novel and his love life, partly through his admiring relationship with a venerable older writer whose anti-social
read more...
read more...
- 1/29/2014
- by Todd McCarthy
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Eric Lavallee: Name me three of your favorite “2013 discoveries”…
Alex Ross Perry: 1) I finally saw Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema (10/30/13). Words fail me, but after sitting in a theater watching it for nearly six hours, I felt like the total sum of cinematic achievement had passed through me like a beam of light. 2) Trance a/k/a Der Fan (10/31/13, VHS at home). Very ashamed that this had eluded me for so long. This was the perfect finale to a small Halloween marathon. It seemed perilously not like a horror film, despite the looming certainty that something awful could happen at any moment. Eventually it does. 3) The Immigrant (10/09/13). I felt watching this film on a cold October morning a mere two days after finishing a five week film shoot that I was seeing a new classic. A film that will live a very long time and be very...
Alex Ross Perry: 1) I finally saw Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinema (10/30/13). Words fail me, but after sitting in a theater watching it for nearly six hours, I felt like the total sum of cinematic achievement had passed through me like a beam of light. 2) Trance a/k/a Der Fan (10/31/13, VHS at home). Very ashamed that this had eluded me for so long. This was the perfect finale to a small Halloween marathon. It seemed perilously not like a horror film, despite the looming certainty that something awful could happen at any moment. Eventually it does. 3) The Immigrant (10/09/13). I felt watching this film on a cold October morning a mere two days after finishing a five week film shoot that I was seeing a new classic. A film that will live a very long time and be very...
- 1/14/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Co-directed by Mark Peranson and Raya Martin, La última película is several things at once: a documentary pretending to be fiction (and vice versa), a reflexively cinephillic ode to materiality, a deconstruction and/or exploration of disparate forms, a meditation on the (false) apocalypse of the world and cinema, and an (experimental) comedy. Its one-line synopsis is as follows: "a famous American filmmaker travels to the Yucatán to scout locations for his last movie. The Mayan Apocalypse intercedes." Inspired by Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie and its subsequent documentary cousin The American Dreamer (both 1971), La última película taps into a sort of artistic freedom of spirit, an all-too-rare ecstasy of moviemaking-as-adventuring. It is a manifesto by implication for the liberation of film from convention, and as thought and life. Starring American independent filmmaker Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel, Impolex) and Gabino Rodríguez (Greatest Hits, Together) as the filmmaker protagonist's Mexican guide,...
- 12/9/2013
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
Production began in September, and post in October, so for Alex Ross Perry’s third feature film to be ready, he’ll have to had superpowers. Thankfully he has multi-tasker David Lowery to give him editing room pep talks. Significantly higher in budget than his micro budgeted Impolex (2009) and The Color Wheel (2011) put together, if included at the festival, Listen Up Philip holds the most eclectic ensemble of television people, indie starlets, the coolest Coppola and the wimpy man in Glengarry Glen Ross: Krysten Ritter, Elisabeth Moss, Jason Schwartzman, Jonathan Pryce, Dree Hemingway, Joséphine de La Baume and Kate Lyn Sheil.
Gist: The New York-set indie follows newly accomplished writer Philip (Schwartzman) and those affected by his poor decisions — in particular his successful art-photographer girlfriend Ashley (Moss).
Production Co./Producers: Washington Square Films’ Joshua Blum (Francine), Sailor Bear’s Toby Halbrooks, James M. Johnston & David Lowery (Ain’t Them...
Gist: The New York-set indie follows newly accomplished writer Philip (Schwartzman) and those affected by his poor decisions — in particular his successful art-photographer girlfriend Ashley (Moss).
Production Co./Producers: Washington Square Films’ Joshua Blum (Francine), Sailor Bear’s Toby Halbrooks, James M. Johnston & David Lowery (Ain’t Them...
- 11/20/2013
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Indie filmmaker Alex Ross Perry ("The Color Wheel," "Impolex") has announced his third feature, the New York-set comedy "Listen Up Philip".
Set in New York City, Perry says it's about "changing seasons and changing attitudes and people going up and coming down the chain of success and all the bumps and miseries that you hit on the way down and up."
Toby Halbrooks, James Johnston, and director David Lowery - the trio behind acclaimed Sundance entry "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" - will produce.
Source: The Film Stage...
Set in New York City, Perry says it's about "changing seasons and changing attitudes and people going up and coming down the chain of success and all the bumps and miseries that you hit on the way down and up."
Toby Halbrooks, James Johnston, and director David Lowery - the trio behind acclaimed Sundance entry "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" - will produce.
Source: The Film Stage...
- 2/21/2013
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Alex Ross Perry isn't your average overnight sensation. His debut feature, 2009's innovative quasi-adaptation of "Gravity's Rainbow" "Impolex," garnered some support at regional festivals, while his hilarious follow-up "The Color Wheel" followed a similar path, steadily developing appeal through word of mouth. Critical support for "The Color Wheel" in 2011 culminated with the movie topping Indiewire's annual critics poll for the Best Undistributed Film; last year, it finally made its way into theaters, opening the door for more audiences to discover Perry's mixture of wry comedy and perceptive characters. The squabbling brother and sister at the center of the black-and-white "The Color Wheel" comprised one of the more memorable onscreen duos among last year's releases, illustrating the filmmaker's unique ability to make viewers simultaneously laugh and cringe. The movie was eventually nominated for the John...
- 2/20/2013
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Leviathan. You may have heard the title by now. By the time it screened to press, the film had already gained some momentous hype, and I’m pleased to report it does not disappoint. Often exhilarating, Véréna Peraval and Lucien Castaing-Taylor‘s creation is a unique viewing experience—loud, disorienting, frightening, exciting and visually awesome. The best film from the main competition, at the very least, Leviathan (above) offers the sort of sensory adventure that cinema can but rarely does offer. Using cheap GoPro digital cameras, the filmmakers show us images and perspectives we’ve never seen before. Apparently, Apichatpong Weerasethakul did not like the film for having been unable to sense the presence of the directors within the film, which is valid, but for me an interesting part of this often alien encounter. For many critics, this was the movie to root for on the night of the awards ceremony,...
- 8/13/2012
- by Adam Cook
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The official juries for the 65th Festival del film Locarno have been appointed. The jury for the International Competition will include the American screenwriter, producer and director Roger Avary (Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, 1994; The Laws of Attraction, 2002), Seoul filmmaker Sang-soo Im (A Good Lawyer’s Wife, 2003; The Housemaid, 2010), French director, screenwriter and actress Noémie Lvovsky (La vie ne me fait pas peur, Silver Leopard “Youth Cinema” at Locarno in 1999; Camille redouble, 2012; Benoît Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen, 2012) and London-based Swiss curator and writer Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Gallery in London since 2006.
The jury president will be Thai filmmaker, screenwriter and producer Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Palme d’or at Cannes in 2010 for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives). Around twenty feature films will screen in competition.
The president of the jury for the ‘Filmmakers of the Present’ Competition will be the director from Chad Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Saison sèche,...
The jury president will be Thai filmmaker, screenwriter and producer Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Palme d’or at Cannes in 2010 for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives). Around twenty feature films will screen in competition.
The president of the jury for the ‘Filmmakers of the Present’ Competition will be the director from Chad Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Saison sèche,...
- 6/28/2012
- by NewsDesk
- DearCinema.com
A number of our favorite independent films of the year are screening this week at the Northside Festival, a Brooklyn-based film and music event that gathers a number of film organizations, includuing Filmmaker, to guest curate some of its programming. Filmmaker‘s night is Wednesday, when we screen in its New York premiere Andrew Neel’s wickedly funny King Kelly (pictured) and Jeremiah Zagar & Nathan Caswell’s haunting short, Remains, but there are a number of other favorites dotted throughout the schedule. For example, tonight there’s one of the best documentaries of the year, Ashley Sabin and David Redmon’s Girl Model (presented by Pov) as well Ryan O’Nan’s warm and spirited Ifp Lab project, The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best (presented by Oscilloscope and Rooftop Films). Also tonight is the Cuban artist doc Unfinished Spaces, which you’ll read about in the next issue of the magazine,...
- 6/18/2012
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Just a quick heads up to alert you to the fact that the excellent NoBudge film website — run by indie actor/director Kentucker Audley, one of our 25 New Faces in 2007 — is running an innovative “live screening series” featuring filmmaker Q&As, starting tonight. Eight films will screen during the next two weeks, and each night the director of that day’s featured film will do a Q&A online.
Programmed for the next two weeks are the shorts Cochran (James Gannon, 2009), Prom Queen (Ben Siler, 2007), Bruno (Sam Goetz, 2007), and Repeat (Donal Foreman, 2009). The features portion includes Seattle-based filmmaker Christian Palmer’s gritty 2010 drama William Never Married and Joe Lewis’s bohemian performance piece Tyler B. Nice, while the two most notable inclusions are Impolex, the 2009 debut from The Color Wheel‘s Alex Ross Perry, and Stephen Gurewitz’s Marvin Seth and Stanley, which just had its world premiere a week...
Programmed for the next two weeks are the shorts Cochran (James Gannon, 2009), Prom Queen (Ben Siler, 2007), Bruno (Sam Goetz, 2007), and Repeat (Donal Foreman, 2009). The features portion includes Seattle-based filmmaker Christian Palmer’s gritty 2010 drama William Never Married and Joe Lewis’s bohemian performance piece Tyler B. Nice, while the two most notable inclusions are Impolex, the 2009 debut from The Color Wheel‘s Alex Ross Perry, and Stephen Gurewitz’s Marvin Seth and Stanley, which just had its world premiere a week...
- 5/14/2012
- by Nick Dawson
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
I presume this article is from a ways back, but I only stumbled upon it yesterday: Jonathan Rosenbaum reprinted his reflections on the Edinburgh Film Festival from 1976. It’s a very long, in-depth piece, but if you want the hot, underground film content, scroll down to Rosenbaum describing a screening of Tom Tom the Piper’s Son causing a near riot and a review of Yvonne Rainer’s Film About a Woman Who….The L.A. Times has a lengthy piece on the ambitious “Alternative Projections” screening series on the avant-garde that just launched in Los Angeles.Mike Plante presents his fourth Cinemad podcast, this time chatting with the elusive James Fotopoulos. (And I mean that in terms of his work, not in terms of getting him on the phone for a chat.)I don’t know much about the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (Empac), but donna k.
- 10/16/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
In the mainstream film world, it seems like the art of the poster is long lost. The glory days of stylish art and creative interpretation has given way to big text and giant celebrity heads. But there is hope in the indie world, and from an unusual location.
Adrian Kolarczyk is in his early 20s, from outside of Krakow, Poland – and he makes movie posters. I met him through the Off + Camera Film Festival, a fest I help program an American film section for. Kolarczyk came to see a film we programmed, Alex Ross Perry’s Impolex. Easily one of the strangest films I’ve ever shown and definitely one of the most obscure, Kolarczyk loved it.
Kolarczyk was so taken that he created a poster for Impolex by hand. Its an amazing design, capturing the weird world of the film and harkening back to the vibe of great Polish...
Adrian Kolarczyk is in his early 20s, from outside of Krakow, Poland – and he makes movie posters. I met him through the Off + Camera Film Festival, a fest I help program an American film section for. Kolarczyk came to see a film we programmed, Alex Ross Perry’s Impolex. Easily one of the strangest films I’ve ever shown and definitely one of the most obscure, Kolarczyk loved it.
Kolarczyk was so taken that he created a poster for Impolex by hand. Its an amazing design, capturing the weird world of the film and harkening back to the vibe of great Polish...
- 10/13/2011
- by Mike Plante
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
This week’s Must Read: The Brooklyn Rail offers up a eulogy for Adolfas Mekas by gathering comments from the likes of P. Adams Sitney, Peggy Ahwesh, Ken Jacobs and other colleagues/contemporaries. Mekas passed away in May.The Guardian got a rare interview with Jean-Luc Godard who has declared that we are all auteurs now. Good.If you hadn’t heard, structural film pioneer Owen Land passed away last month, but news of his passing only came late last week. I think Lux has the best, most detailed obit for him. Although, the Office Baroque Gallery has a very passionate one — and I think initial word of Land’s death came from them.More Land: Making Light of It posts a scan of an interview with him conducted by P. Adams Sitney from Film Culture. (I actually happen to own two issues of Film Culture, one of which includes this great interview.
- 7/17/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Alex Ross Perry‘s debut feature film Impolex is opening tonight, July 15, for a one-week run at Brooklyn’s reRun Gastropub Theater, which is quickly becoming the go-to place for unique and quirky indie feature films. Perry and other special guests will be in attendance at tonight’s screenings at 7 and 10 p.m. You can buy tickets here.
Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film reviewed Impolex about a year ago and called it “a stripped down, intellectualized throwback to the classic midnight movies of the ’70s.”
The film is a surreal WWII adventure in which a soldier (Riley O’Bryan) wanders the forest looking for unexploded ordinance. On his quest, he interacts several unusual characters, including a woman who might be from his past and a talking, philosophical octopus.
Beginning tonight, the film will screen nightly until Thursday, July 21. Visit the reRun theater website for more info and to buy tickets.
Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film reviewed Impolex about a year ago and called it “a stripped down, intellectualized throwback to the classic midnight movies of the ’70s.”
The film is a surreal WWII adventure in which a soldier (Riley O’Bryan) wanders the forest looking for unexploded ordinance. On his quest, he interacts several unusual characters, including a woman who might be from his past and a talking, philosophical octopus.
Beginning tonight, the film will screen nightly until Thursday, July 21. Visit the reRun theater website for more info and to buy tickets.
- 7/15/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The Color Wheel is 83 minutes long. About 9 minutes and 40 seconds of those 83 minutes (i.e. roughly 1/9th) are taken up by a single shot, handheld, in which the cameraman (Sean Price Williams) only moves a few feet, but the characters of Colin (co-writer / editor / director Alex Ross Perry) and J.R. (co-writer Carlen Altman), seated on a couch, complete several transformations and a journey inward, piling on dialogue while stripping away their established personas. As a feat of form, performance and screenwriting, it's a fairly obvious showstopper—a great big narrative pirouette, grand jeté and cartwheel rolled into one, which betrays absolutely nothing that the film has (seemingly haphazardly, though actually carefully) established about the characters beforehand, and which accomplishes more in its 9 minutes and 40 seconds than most movies manage nowadays to do in their whole running times. That is: what's distinctive about the shot is not its duration, but...
- 6/19/2011
- MUBI
Impolex, directed by Alex Ross Perry, is a stripped down, intellectualized throwback to the classic midnight movies of the ’70s.
The defining characteristic of midnight movies is that they feature an overly determined, yet slightly befuddled main character wandering through an absurd universe, e.g. the great gunfighter El Topo taking on his spiritual betters; filthiest person alive Babs Johnson defending her title in Pink Flamingos; devoted lovebirds Brad and Janet having their relationship tested by Dr. Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and Henry Spencer trying desperately to hold onto his independence in Eraserhead.
In Impolex, Tyrone S. (Riley O’Bryan) is a World War II soldier wandering a forest, searching for unexploded ordinance. On his travels he runs into different odd characters, some Tyrone recognizes, but they feign ignorance of his existence; and others who claim they know him, yet Tyrone fails to recognize them.
Other than...
The defining characteristic of midnight movies is that they feature an overly determined, yet slightly befuddled main character wandering through an absurd universe, e.g. the great gunfighter El Topo taking on his spiritual betters; filthiest person alive Babs Johnson defending her title in Pink Flamingos; devoted lovebirds Brad and Janet having their relationship tested by Dr. Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show; and Henry Spencer trying desperately to hold onto his independence in Eraserhead.
In Impolex, Tyrone S. (Riley O’Bryan) is a World War II soldier wandering a forest, searching for unexploded ordinance. On his travels he runs into different odd characters, some Tyrone recognizes, but they feign ignorance of his existence; and others who claim they know him, yet Tyrone fails to recognize them.
Other than...
- 4/26/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The teasing is over! This here is the real deal. The moment we wait all year for: The lineup for the powerful, the mighty Boston Underground Film Festival, which is set to run March 25 to April 1. Now in its 12th year, Buff shows no sign of slowing down or taking it easy. In fact, this might be their most demented and transgressive edition yet.
There are homages to Giallo horror, tributes to the grand grindhouse tradition of sleaze and exploitation, sex and violence galore — both separately and together — plus, a resurrected ’80s slasher classic that all combine into an epic celebration of everything that is vicious and twisted in this world. But, in a fun way, ya know.
Alas, I haven’t seen any of the feature films that are playing this year, so I can’t offer any special recommendations of those. Although, there are many (most) that I...
There are homages to Giallo horror, tributes to the grand grindhouse tradition of sleaze and exploitation, sex and violence galore — both separately and together — plus, a resurrected ’80s slasher classic that all combine into an epic celebration of everything that is vicious and twisted in this world. But, in a fun way, ya know.
Alas, I haven’t seen any of the feature films that are playing this year, so I can’t offer any special recommendations of those. Although, there are many (most) that I...
- 3/12/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Of the seven features I watched in full whilst at the 2009 CineVegas Film Festival, it seemed that the bravest endeavors, those that took the greatest stabs into the unknown both formally and conceptually, were actually shot on film. If this isn’t notable enough in a space increasingly dominated by digital photography (and, all too often, an aesthetic indifference that fails to push beyond the ease of use of the tools), the fact that films like Impolex, Modus Operandi and Redland are all the first features of men either barely or not quite the age of 30 is astounding. While other young filmmakers exploit ever-changing technology to shrink production budgets and experiment with non-theatrical models of distribution, Alex Ross Perry, Frankie Latina and Asiel Norton have made uncompromising films that defy contemporary technological trends and notions of financial convenience. ...
- 6/16/2009
- by Karina Longworth
- Spout
If there's a throughline to the films screening within the various competions and sidebars at CineVegas, it's that those marked by qualities that would make them anomalies at other festivals here play as standard fare. You come here expecting to see genre hybrids (such as Alex Ross Perry's verite-style comic WWII fantasy Impolex, or Cory McAbee's half-animated space cowboy sci-fi musical Stingray Sam, about which much more later); stylish art films that push the boundaries of craft and form but may not offer the pleasures of a traditional narrative (see Asiel Norton's Redland -- or don't, if gorgeous experimental cinematography isn't enough to interest you in a story that drowns ...
- 6/14/2009
- by Karina Longworth
- Spout
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