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Flavorwire Interview: ‘We Steal Secrets’ Director Alex Gibney on Julian Assange and the Wikileaks Backlash to His Film

By Jason Bailey on

In his riveting new documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks, director Alex Gibney (the prolific Oscar winner behind Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer) tells two stories: the thriller-like ascendency of the organization and the troubling questions it asks about government transparency, and the crumbling of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, which plays like something out of Greek tragedy — the transformation of an admirable idealist to a paranoid propagandist, injecting his own legal woes into the lofty aims of his organization, and conflating them. Gibney was unable to procure an interview with Assange; “Julian wanted money,” Gibney explains in the film, though Assange was willing to exchange his interview for information on the other people Gibney was talking to. The filmmaker refused, and We Steal Secrets has been under fire from Wikileaks supporters since it was unveiled at Sundance last January. I asked Gibney about that backlash, the importance of the story, and related troubling matters of transparency in the Obama administration. … Read More

Film

The 10 Best Movies About Lovers on the Run

By Jason Bailey on

Good news for cinephiles: the kind folks at Criterion were kind enough to restore and release (on DVD and Blu-ray, along with the expected goody basket of bonus features) Terrence Malick’s Badlands, which is out this week. It’s mostly notable as Malick’s debut feature, but it was also a cornerstone picture of one of cinema’s most durable subgenres: the “lovers on the run” movie, in which an attractive young couple hits the road, fleeing their unfortunate crimes (and/or committing more), with the law in hot pursuit. If you’re in the mood for a marathon, we’ve got a few suggestions after the jump. … Read More

Film

Behind-the-Scenes Photos of Oscar-Winning Directors at Work

By Tom Hawking on

The Oscars are just around the corner, and we’re very much looking forward to sitting down this Sunday night and watching them unfold. (Much more excited than we were about the Grammys, anyway.) The point of interest, as ever, will be who walks away the Best Director award — even with the golden age of the auteur long behind us, the director’s chair continues to hold a certain mystique, as do the people who occupy it. It’s intriguing to watch directors at work, to see how differently they translate their ideas into reality, and in this vein, we’ve collected some fascinating behind-the-scenes photos of the most distinguished directors to receive the Best Director award over the years. And Mel Gibson. … Read More

Film

The Embarrassing Early Films of Oscar-Winning Directors

By Jason Bailey on

Argo, Ben Affleck’s third feature film, is looking more and more like a lock for the Best Picture prize at Sunday’s Oscars, and even if the man himself didn’t get a Best Director nomination, it’s still a remarkable culmination of one of the most fascinating second acts in Hollywood. The actor-turned-director seemed shockingly confident and assured in his first feature, 2007’s marvelous Gone Baby Gone, but as The Playlist reminded us this week, his first film (pre-Good Will Hunting, even) was a 1993 short inventively titled I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Ηung Ηer on a Μeathook & Νow I Have a Three-Picture Deal with Disney. It is, as is often the case with these things, not very good, and (to his credit) Affleck is the first one to admit it: “It’s horrible. It’s atrocious. I knew I wanted to be a director, and I did a couple of short films, and this is the only one that haunts me. I’m not proud of it. It looks like it was made by someone who has no prospects, no promise.” But Affleck can take comfort in the fact that he’s not the only filmmaker with a cinematic skeleton in his closet: we found eight auteurs who rose to the Best Director Oscar from rather humble cinematic beginnings. … Read More

Film

10 Famous Directors on Movie Violence

By Emily Temple on

The Internet has been abuzz this week about Quentin Tarantino’s explosive interview with a British journalist for Channel 4, in which the director snapped after being asked why he didn’t think film violence and real violence were connected. “Don’t ask me questions like that. I’m not biting. I refuse your question,” he retorted. “I’m not your slave and you’re not my master. You can’t make me dance to your tune. I’m not your monkey.” Though he goes somewhat off the handle, Tarantino is right about one thing — he has been asked about violence quite a bit. And so have many other directors that use it in their films. After the jump, we’ve collected a few of their answers, which range from quippy to sincere, to get a better view of how violent Hollywood views itself. Any good quotes we’ve missed? Add to our list in the comments. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. If you were as taken with this cover of New York magazine as most of the world was, here’s Dutch photographer Iwan Baan describing how he captured the stunning image. [via Poynter]

2. MTV will air a fundraising special on November 15th called Restore the Shore. The one-hour show will feature cast… Read More

Film

10 Contemporary Cinematographers You Should Know

By Jason Bailey on

Movie lovers around the world were saddened last week by news of the death of Harris Savides, the acclaimed cinematographer best known for his collaborations with Gus Van Sant (on Milk, Elephant, Gerry, Last Days, Restless, and Finding Forrester), but whose credits also included Zodiac, The Game, Somewhere, American Gangster, Whatever Works, and Birth. Savides was a true artist, one who brought a distinctive eye and sense of craft to his work, and merged his unique sensibility with the directors he collaborated with. But the cinematographer is often an underappreciated and overlooked part of the filmmaking process, their gifts and style too often solely attributed to their directors.

In an attempt to acknowledge some of the other true artists in Savides’ field, we put together a brief survey of some of the most important working cinematographers today; in the interest of keeping it manageable, we’ve confined ourselves to those who work primarily in American film, and those who are still prolific in the industry. Our list is after the jump, and we welcome your favorites in the comments. … Read More

Film

Flavorpill’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to Flavorpill’s streaming movie guide, in which we help you sift through the scores of movies streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and other services to find the best of the recently available, freshly relevant, or soon to expire. This week, we’ve got great titles from the likes of Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Buster Keaton, J.J. Abrams, Oliver Stone, Max Ophuls, Gaspar Noé, and the creators of Mystery Science Theater 3000; check them all out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More

Film

10 Unfortunate Intersections of Movies and Real Life Events

By Jason Bailey on

The new Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn/Jonah Hill comedy The Watch is out tomorrow, though that’s not the title it was written, shot, and originally marketed under. Somewhere between page and premiere, it lost its original title and saw its marketing focus shift; as has been known to happen, the events of the world off-screen either changed events on-screen, or colored our response to them. After the jump, we’ve assembled ten films that unexpectedly intersected with real life, and what happened to them as a result. … Read More

Film

10 Once-Great Directors Who’ve Lost Their Touch

By Jason Bailey on

Rob Reiner has a new movie in theaters this Friday; it’s called The Magic of Belle Isle, it stars Morgan Freeman and Virginia Madsen, and it is just plain terrible. This shouldn’t come as a surprise at this point in the Reiner filmography; after a hot streak that included the likes of This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, and Stand By Me, Reiner went cold after 1995′s The American President and hasn’t made a great movie since. It happens — for every Scorsese that maintains a consistent quality for decades on end, there are plenty of filmmakers who don’t (even such greats as Hitchcock, Wilder, Chaplin, and Hawks were turning out clunkers at the end of their distinguished careers). In fact, we took an inventory, and dug up 10 more contemporary filmmakers who have gone cold; check them out after the jump, and add your own in the comments. … Read More