Movie Making

Hirakazu Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son engages with questions of family and identity, exploring what it means to be a father, using a plot device in which children from two different families are switched at birth, a detail that is only discovered when the sons are about to enroll in school. The film’s primary point of identification is Ryota, a young father and ambitious businessman who strives to provide for his family and also to ensure that his son will have every opportunity for success. This desire for success is conveyed from the very opening shot, in which Ryota’s son, …

Glenn Frankel’s The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend (Bloomsbury) has received more attention from the mainstream press than the average film book, and for good reason: it is an exceptional piece of writing and research. What’s more, it isn’t just a look behind the scenes of a famous movie; the author explores the notorious real-life incident that inspired Western author Alan LeMay to write his novel: the abduction of nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker by Comanche Indians in 1836. Hers was not a unique story, but it took on added significance because of her family background, and one relative’s refusal to give up on finding her. Frankel is an experienced journalist and... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Earlier today Scott wrote about Jodorowsky’s Dune, the Cannes doc about the legendary mystical auteur’s famous failed attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel for the big screen, so now is a perfect time to post the trailer for the director’s new film, which is also having its world premiere on the French Riviera. The Dance of Reality is Jodorowsky’s first film since 1990, but the 23-year layoff does not seem to have dulled the director’s visual flair, sense of the bizarre or, well, general weirdness. This trailer has French rather than English subtitles, but the images more than speak for …

Well, the big day has arrived. We woke up early to heavy rain and made a quick run for our morning pastries before putting on our Sunday finest for the screening. After trying to find a cab for the better part of an hour, we called and last-minute audible and decided to walk, torrential downpour be damned! We arrived mostly intact and a little worse for the wear, but were warmly greeted by the Semaine staff who whisked us back to the green room where we got to meet the other Critics’ Week filmmakers. At the theater, which was almost …

“I wanted to make something sacred and free,” says Alejandro Jorodowsky about his planned adapation of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction classic, Dune. Indeed, Dune will be more than just a movie, argue the director and his collaborators in Frank Pavich’s Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary that premiered Saturday in the Directors Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival. Says Jodorowsky in the film, “Dune will be the coming of a god.” There are several documentaries about nightmare shoots and even unmade films — Lost in La Mancha comes to mind — but Jodorowsky’s Dune is the only documentary I can think of …

Inspired by children’s books, The ABCs of Death is a wildly ambitious anthology that draws upon more than two dozen of the horror genre’s most creative, and macabre, directors from around the world (spanning fifteen countries) to bring you segments that range from provocative to hilarious. Under the auspices of the project, the filmmakers were each assigned a letter of the alphabet and then given the freedom to choose a word to craft their short film around. The only requirement was that it dealt with death. The result is a collection that Fangoria called, “a stunning roll call of some of the …

Given that James Franco’s adaptation of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying will be playing at this year’s Cannes, it seems appropriate to recall one of the novelist’s most famous quotations when thinking about two of the festival’s more memorable films. Reflecting on the conflicts over race and national identity that tore apart the deep south where he lived, Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun, “the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.” This persistence of the past — how it can haunt us in myriad ways — is central to two of the more powerful films at this …

Transmedia producers in Canada already have ways to network with and benefit from each other through organizations like the Toronto-based group Transmedia 101. But those specifically interested in creating web series just received an additional resource with the formation of the Independent Webseries Creators of Canada (or IWCC; CIWC in French). Serendipitously coinciding with the announcement of the Vancouver Web Fest, the IWCC is a nonprofit professional association that sees today’s web producers like the television pioneers of the 1940s and 50s: building a new branch of the entertainment industry in uncharted waters, but this time doing so in a …

Negotiating Cannes is a unique challenge, especially for someone attending the festival for the first time. Although the festival is commonly associated with red carpets and other assorted glamour, my clearest memories of the festival entail trekking from a borrowed condo in Antibes early in the morning — thanks to the monumental patience of my wife who drove me in — to queue up with other journalists for an 8:30 press screening (finding those lines the first couple of days is an entirely different matter). Rainy weather early in the festival also seemed to undermine Cannes’ reputation for sun and …

This year’s 66th Cannes Film Festival opened with a venerable love fest at the Jury Press Conference on Wednesday. Led by Steven Spielberg, this year’s panel drew an incredible mix of cinema talent Ang Lee, Nicole Kidman and Christoph Waltz, as well as Romanian director Cristian Mungiu and Scotland’s Lynne Ramsay. Spielberg and Lee admitted to the assembled press that they absolutely worshipped each other, despite being pitted up against each other at the Oscars this year. Although Spielberg said he was ready to judge, he claimed, “I look at this as two weeks of celebrating film, not two weeks …