Rosemary’s Baby Artwork

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Perhaps the most underrated thing about Rosemary’s Baby are the excellent, if unnervingly creepy, posters for the film. In celebration of Criterion’s Blu-ray release, here are my two favorites:
Click below for the next:

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Homeland, Ep. 205: Q&A

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Would it be overstating it to say that between Mad Men’s ‘LSD Scene’ and the ‘Interrogation Scene’ in this recent episode of Homeland, the two most captivating moments in cinema this year came from television? In one short line, said with conviction by Claire Danes, all the truths that define Homeland are built: “Are you sure you’re not a monster?” The lines between a justified act of violence and a heinous act of evil are blurred. Is there actually a difference? Or only a difference in the justifications of who you serve? Would we call Carrie a monster for sneaking into a man’s home and invading his privacy? Is the USA made up of monsters for sending out hidden drone strikes? Is the interrogator who put a knife through Brody’s hand a monster for losing his temper? The plot of “Q&A” is simple: the CIA has 24 hours to interrogate Brody, get him to confess, and find out what Abu Nazir’s plans are, before people start to worry about him having gone missing. This episode ascends because of what transpires between Carrie and Brody in that interrogation room.

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Ava DuVernay on The Treatment

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

If you haven’t listened to film critic Elvis Mitchell’s podcast called “The Treatment,” I strongly recommend you subscribe. Mitchell dives into various topics about cinema with a huge array of both mainstream and obscure filmmakers.

Middle of Nowhere stands as one of the two or three best films I’ve seen all year. The more I hear from writer/director Ava DuVernay, the more I’m inspired by her. This candid interview with Mitchell illuminates the difficulties of making a small movie, especially those geared specifically towards the black community. There’s also a great deal of discussion about the notion of having a personal message, the importance of marketing in a studio-driven system, and sticking to who you are. Really good stuff if you have a second to listen.

LISTEN HERE

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Faulkner Quotes About Hollywood and Art

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Between worrying about my family in New York, reading constant updates about Hurricane Sandy, and reading great stuff about last night’s Homeland episode (review coming soon), I randomly stumbled upon this great list from Indiewire:

1.) “Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.”

2.) “The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.”

3.) “To me, all human behavior is unpredictable and, considering man’s frailty… and… the ramshackle universe he functions in, it’s… all irrational.”

4.) “The writer in America isn’t part of the culture of this country. He’s like a fine dog. People like him around, but he’s of no use.”

5.) “The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one… If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.”

William Faulkner worked in Hollywood’s Golden Age on films like The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. Being a huge fan of his fiction, I’ve always felt his films where great partially because of how they slyly thumbed their nose at the notion of Hollywood as a machine.  This list pretty much affirms this cynicism.

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A Bond Newbie’s Thoughts on 007: Die Another Day

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Short Take: The last of the Brosnan Bond movies feels just as safe and pedestrian as the one before it. However, Die Another Day lacks the memorable silliness of its predecessor, making the plot look like it’s only going through the motions.

I’d be lying if I said that I was unhappy to leave the Brosnan Bond’s. Like the other three, Die Another Day contains a hero who looks only partially interested in being there, inside of a plot that grew asinine instead of intriguing over an extra-long running time. A gadget-fest that uses entirely implausible means for characters to get into and out of often bombastic problems, Die Another Day seems like it was written with haste by people not completely convinced. As a result, the performances are equally disengaged, as though play-acting caricatures of action characters as opposed to letting them grow from within.

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Whedon on Romney

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Every four years things feel very patriotic around this time in autumn. What with celebrities and rich people giving us their opinions on the way our world should be governed. This year has been particularly weird. Debates have almost turned into punching matches and tweets are flying off people’s fingertips faster than the brain can process. It’s all just felt a little strange.

Jumping into the fray, The Avengers director Joss Whedon gave his dryly comedic endorsement of Mitt Romney (er, Barack Obama) in this short video. He joins Lena Dunham who earlier this week gave a similarly tongue-in-cheek endorsement of the President.

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Ava DuVernay’s DIY Film Marketing

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

As a former publicist for huge Hollywood movies (I, Robot, Spider-Man 2), Middle of Nowhere director Ava DuVernay comes at filmmaking from an interesting perspective. She’s an artist whose obviously experienced the importance of film marketing. A part of the process often lost on new filmmakers who otherwise have sweated through the miracle of actually getting their films made. With hundreds of ways to get your work seen on multiple platforms, the need to be fearless about selling yourself will be increasingly crucial.

At first I was disheartened to see DuVernay’s team outside the my theater desperately pleading with passerby to come see Middle of Nowhere. However, the more I saw the passion in these people, the more I was encouraged about the one-on-one exposure future films might experience.

In this video, shot a few years ago, DuVernay offers some helpful strategies for Indie film distribution and film festival optimization:

Also, one of the most exciting aspects of Middle of Nowhere is its vibrant cinematography. Click below to watch interviews with DuVernay and cinematographer, Bradford Young:

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Looking Closer at Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Cloud Atlas the movie is in the midst of having its moment in pop culture. This video offers a nice, quick look at the challenging source material. Hopefully the movie will succeed at getting a few more people to attempt the difficult and dense work of literature. It’s a bear.

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Everything Means Everything in DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

If I asked you to close your eyes and envision where “The Middle of Nowhere” might be, I’d guess you’d think somewhere in an open field or an empty road. Somewhere in Iowa or Nebraska perhaps. Certainly not the bustling street corners of a metropolis like Los Angeles or the cramped visitation rooms at a maximum security penitentiary. But in those margins are precisely where Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere exists. Or, really, inside the psychology of the people who inhabit those spaces. Middle of Nowhere also exists inside us, you and me, as a collective human living in this time and this place. It’s somewhere between the lofty hope for a better future and the tightening quick sand of right now. In some respects, Middle of Nowhere feels like a movie that can only have emerged at this moment in history. Yet, maybe the honest plight of the humans it conveys is a story that we’ve all been living for centuries.

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How Computers Built Prometheus

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Zac Petrillo

Earlier this week I mentioned that Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is a favorite for the Visual Effects Oscar. However, tepid reviews could leave Prometheus on the outside looking in. With the film amongst the compelling projects at the risk of being completely forgotten by audience and Academy Awards members alike, I want to try and shed light on the extraordinary craft it contains. See my earlier post on the sound.

This in-depth documentary explores the process by which the VFX team created a high-tech and entirely new (yet familiar) world for the film. To me, that heavenly blue color used in almost every scene, with its serene underpinning, feels like a welcoming hue not at all cautionary to the nightmares the film will behold by its end:

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