David Cronenberg loves Fellini but still thinks life is meaningless; with a new podcast, Quentin Tarantino continues to stay busier than you or me; inspiration from a true one-man-band moviemaker who sweat and bled for his art. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.
New Demystified: For the latest episode of Demystified, Jordan Graham, the “writer-director-and-everything-else one-man show” of Sator, talks candidly about the seven year journey to making his cabin horror film. Seriously, he even built the cabin himself for $1,500. But this story has a happy ending as Sator played Fantasia Film Festival on its way to finding distribution. Watch the story below.
Candid Cronenberg: For MovieMaker, Jordan Ruimy interviewed Crimes of the Future writer-director David Cronenberg at Cannes, and the result is a wide-spanning talk that touches on Cronenberg’s love of Fellini, CG drool and what he really thinks about those Cannes walkouts. At one point, he calls himself “an atheist and existentialist” — those guys are always fun at parties… Crimes of the Future, starring Cronenberg-muse Viggo Mortensen, is out now in select theaters, from NEON.
Also Out in Select Theaters, from NEON: Italian-American Jonas Carpignano’s latest Calabria-set film, A Chiara. Carpignano explained to MovieMaker how an elaborately-staged 18th birthday party he attended in the region inspired the set piece that kicks off A Chiara. For anyone looking to make observational narratives with documentary elements, it’s a mustread. And his Calabrian trilogy remains a mustwatch.
Thing I Learned: While we’re talking NEON, I learned from the recent IndieWire Screen Talk Cannes podcast that the distributor have released the last two Palme d’Or winners with Parasite and Titane and now have a third in Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness. After 2017’s The Square (which Magnolia Pictures released), Triangle of Sadness is Östlund’s second Palme win.
Recommendation: Watch Watcher: Chloe Okuno previously directed a segment of the horror anthology V/H/S/94, and with Watcher she makes her proper feature directorial debut. The voyeur thriller stars scream queen Maika Monroe as an actress new to Bucharest who might be getting stalked by the creepy silhouette watching her from across the street. We spoke to Okuno and Watcher DP Benjamin Kirk Nielsen about how they staged those two apartments and how they used different camera techniques to create the feeling of Monroe’s character Julia being watched.
You Might Have Heard: This past Tuesday, ARRI announced a brand new camera, the ARRI ALEXA 35. The demonstration in Los Angeles at the DGA Theater was full of mesmerizing footage. We caught up with Oscar-winning DP Erik Messerschmidt, who shot one of ARRI’s commissioned short films, to get his thoughts on the camera. He also teases whether we can expect Fincher’s The Killer this year. Check out the ALEXA 35 guided tour below or the more thorough keynote speech here.
Tarantino Sure is Busy: Between remodeling the Vista theater in Los Angeles, releasing a film history book titled Cinema Speculation in October, and now starting a new podcast with Roger Avary, Quentin Tarantino is running circles around us all. Tarantino and Avary “first met and bonded while working together at the fabled Video Archives movie rental store in Manhattan Beach, California,” Deadline reports and the podcast, titled The Video Archives Podcast, is “based on the long-closed store’s collection of close to 8,000 VHS tapes and DVDs, which Tarantino now owns.”
Blast from the Past: There is a live-action Twisted Metal adaptation in the works for Peacock. As an adolescent, I was a fan of the original Playstation series, which, from my recollection, mostly featured decked-out cars driving around firing missiles and Gatling guns off at each other. But I will admit the logline and the casting announcements, which include Will Arnett, Neve Campbell and Thomas Haden Church, have me intrigued about this one.
Fire of Love: No, it’s not the title of a new Cat Powers track, it’s the Sundance-premiering documentary about a pair of volcanologists who sprint around the globe capturing jaw-dropping footage of erupting volcanoes (both of the red and gray varieties). Fire of Love was the opening night film at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival last week, and while I don’t think the love story at its center quite connects in the intended way, the footage makes up for that narrative defenciency. Take a look.
Main image: David Cronenberg at the 2018 Venice Film Festival. Courtesy of Shutterstock
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