We hope Laura Dern has a wild at heart and weird on top kind of birthday. The actress celebrates tomorrow, but we’re stealing our slice of cake a day early by taking a look at Dern’s relationship with director pal David Lynch. While the star has been busy filming Paul Thomas Anderson’s scientology-inspired drama The Master, her early career days were spent with the king of strange, Lynch. Dern’s appeared in three of the director’s films — keep in mind he’s only made 10 features since starting out in the late ’70s — and has been a unique, expansive female character in his canon, as this article from The Awl has also pointed out. It’s clear that there’s a depth to Dern’s dramatic allure Lynch greatly admires. While we hope to see the director take up with his muse once more, we thought it’d be a perfect time to celebrate a few other inspired collaborations. Click on to see some of our picks, and tell us yours, won’t you?
Last weekend, two new films opened by famous filmmakers who are, to varying degrees, getting the hell out of the film business. Haywire director Steven Soderbergh has been teasing his early retirement for months now; it’s somewhat comical, actually, the way he keeps adding in projects that he wants to do before his self-imposed exile. George Lucas, who spent decades getting Red Tails made, told The New York Timesthat he was retiring, at least from the business of making blockbuster films (maybe).
Soderbergh is 49. Lucas is 67. Making movies doesn’t have a mandatory retirement age, like fighting fires or flying planes. But should it?
Imagine what Drive would have looked like if it had been shot back in the ’50s, with a young James Dean replacing Ryan Gosling. How about a black and white version of The Hangover, recast with members of the Rat Pack? Or Trainspotting as a new wave masterpiece by Jean-Luc Godard? No, we’re not describing the results of a movie geek party game; we’re giving you the gist of an ongoing series by illustrator Peter Stults, which we just spotted over on The Daily What. Some of the resulting posters are more successfully executed than others, but they’re all pretty entertaining. Click through for a slideshow of our favorites from the series.
[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we're revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published August 10, 2011.] Earlier this summer, a shocking number of our readers flocked to read (and amend) our list of the harshest author-on-author insults in history. But you know who is even more childish, trifling, vindictive, and nasty than your favorite scribes? Your favorite filmmakers. These directors may not have quite the same precision with the written word as those rancorous authors, but when it comes to pettiness, they can’t be beat. After the jump, we’ll run down 30 of our favorite slights, slanders, and cheap shots from filmmakers both classic and contemporary; we’d love to hear yours in the comments.
Most poster art reflects the aesthetics of its creator — and Turkish designer Gizem Vural’s posters for the 30th Istanbul Film Festival definitely reflect her taste. But what’s really wonderful about her portraits of legendary filmmakers, from Alfred Hitchcock to Akira Kurosawa, is that they also reference the signature style of the directors themselves: Surrealist Luis Buñuel’s face is swirled beyond recognition, while Federico Fellini is rendered in bold colors and the kind of playful patterns we might find in his visually rich films. Enjoy the posters, found on Behance, after the jump, and visit Vural’s website to learn more about the 23-year-old designer’s work. Read More »
Godardloop — a video essay series from Keyframe, producer Michael Baute, and editor Bettina Blickwede — focuses on specific frames from French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard, that highlight several distinct themes in his filmography. Godard once said, “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun,” and the video loop titled Revolver proves he wasn’t shy about using firearms. However, a gun in a Godard film was more like a recontextualized prop that toyed with clichés. The loop entitled Cars should be self-explanatory if you’ve ever seen the filmmaker’s work, particularly Breathless or Week End. Head past the break for a look at both split-screen videos, and let us know if you enjoyed them as much as we did. Read More »
Jean-Luc Godard’s malevolent road movie Week End opened at Film Forum last Friday, which inaugurated a touring re-release of the ’60s title. The auteur’s torrid tale of auto-geddon — concerning a married couple who secretly plot to kill each other — is being presented in a new 35mm print from Janus Films. Journeying to the countryside — where they plan on reaping the inheritance of Madame’s dying father — the homicidal duo’s marital malaise spirals out of control. Of course, this is a very simplistic way to summarize Godard’s scathing satire, which elevates his characteristic cynicism and critique of bourgeois excess to delirious new heights. His intertitles even suggest the film was “found in a dump.”
Spitefully compelling, we have Week End’s original trailer to share with you — which will hopefully inspire you to get your body in a theater seat for this careering New Wave ride. Even if you’re not a Godard fan, its incredible 10-minute tracking shot should make this worthwhile — that is, if you care about filmmaking in the slightest. One footnote of forewarning for viewers of a sensitive disposition: please don’t hold us responsible if you never want to step foot in a vehicle, ever again, after watching this. Click on and hit the official website for release details.
“Sell out!” Such a subjective yet indicting little term, isn’t it? For most artists or film auteurs, lending their skills and image to commercial causes is… risky. It could mean image suicide! Scorned fans! Mocking scoffs! Yet, sometimes, it works out awesomely. Sometimes, the final results of these commissions are so nifty, so shameless, or just so perplexing, that they’re fairly un-mockable and even praiseworthy. From Banksy’s dark intro to The Simpsons to David Lynch’s Playstation commercial, here are some notable recent-ish instances of cultural figures selling out, psyching out their clients, or just making us go “aw.” Who’d we miss?
The ever-cheerful Jean-Luc Godard gave a rare interview to The Guardian this week, wherein, among other things, he held forth on the state of the film industry. “Film is over,” he proclaimed. “It’s sad nobody is really exploring it. But what to do? And anyway, with mobile phones and everything, everyone is now an auteur.” It’s certainly an interesting time for film — while Hollywood is trying to keep people in cinemas by (re-)embracing 3D and avoiding anything that looks remotely like a new idea, indie filmmakers are exploring the possibilities of web-based distribution and new methods of filmmaking. And it’s not just indie directors doing so, either. Join us as we have a brief look at five prominent directors who’ve been pushing the technological envelope in direction, marketing, and/or distribution.
Any interview with Woody Allen is a good read, full of quotable gems and ample endearing anxiety. But add French New Wave legend Jean-Luc Godard into the mix and you have a conversation between two of the world’s most brilliant living filmmakers. Godard’s short film Meetin’ WA, shot in 1986,is 26 minutes of Allen talking about his lifelong love of cinema (he loved theaters as a kid because he could “avoid the heat and avoid the light”); his gratitude to the media, which “has always been good to me, more than I deserve”; and the process of filmmaking, from perfect idea to deeply flawed final product. They even talk about their mutual appreciation for intertitles. The introduction to the movie is in French, but most of the interview is conducted in English — so rejoice, film nerds, after the jump.
