Uma Thurman was “very nervous” to meet the director of ‘Oh, Canada!’The 54-year-old actress has worked with numerous filmmakers over her several decades in Hollywood but as she arrived to film the new drama film, admitted that she was wary of Paul Schrader because she is such a “big fan” of his to begin with.Speaking during a Q+A session at the New York Film Festival, she said: “I mean, Paul Schrader! I'm a really big fan of Paul Schrader. So to get to contribute, to lend myself to his piece, and get to see him working was a real, real privilege.“I was very nervous to meet him, you know, this macho filmmaker [who] made these legendary films.”Paul is known for directing hits such as ‘Blue Collar’, and ‘Light Sleeper’ but also wrote the screenplay for ‘Taxi Driver’, which earned a teenage Jodie Foster her first Oscar nomination.
- 10/7/2024
- by Jordan Beck
- Bang Showbiz
Paul Schrader might not be a Swiftie, but the veteran screenwriter-director admits that he’s in “awe” of the pop megastar.
“It’s not so much the music that entrances me, it’s the phenomenon. The Elvis-ness of it all,” Schrader told Variety. “You have to look in awe at how well she and her people have created this empire.”
The “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” scribe is at the Sarajevo Film Festival this week, where he’s the president of the features jury.
Schrader, who received a lifetime achievement award from the Bosnian fest in 2022, is also in town to promote his latest film, “Oh, Canada,” which reunites the “American Gigolo” writer-director with leading man Richard Gere after 40 years. The film competed for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Speaking about his prolific and lengthy career, Schrader looked back at the days of the...
“It’s not so much the music that entrances me, it’s the phenomenon. The Elvis-ness of it all,” Schrader told Variety. “You have to look in awe at how well she and her people have created this empire.”
The “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” scribe is at the Sarajevo Film Festival this week, where he’s the president of the features jury.
Schrader, who received a lifetime achievement award from the Bosnian fest in 2022, is also in town to promote his latest film, “Oh, Canada,” which reunites the “American Gigolo” writer-director with leading man Richard Gere after 40 years. The film competed for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Speaking about his prolific and lengthy career, Schrader looked back at the days of the...
- 8/21/2024
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Am I Ok? (Stephanie Allyne and Tig Notaro)
A romantic comedy that functions best as a fable of friendship and self-reflection, Am I Ok? is the kind of lightweight, amiable movie that just barely earns the emotional beats at the heart of its story. Set in Los Angeles, it follows the converging life events of two best friends, Lucy (Dakota Johnson) and Jane (Sonoya Mizuno), soul sisters with opposite personalities who tell each other everything—except for the big secrets they’ve been harboring from each other. How they respond to hearing them fuels Stephanie Allyne and Tig Notaro’s gentle and wobbly feature debut. – Jake K-s. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Dad & Step-Dad (Tynan DeLong)
Following the stellar comedy Free Time,...
Am I Ok? (Stephanie Allyne and Tig Notaro)
A romantic comedy that functions best as a fable of friendship and self-reflection, Am I Ok? is the kind of lightweight, amiable movie that just barely earns the emotional beats at the heart of its story. Set in Los Angeles, it follows the converging life events of two best friends, Lucy (Dakota Johnson) and Jane (Sonoya Mizuno), soul sisters with opposite personalities who tell each other everything—except for the big secrets they’ve been harboring from each other. How they respond to hearing them fuels Stephanie Allyne and Tig Notaro’s gentle and wobbly feature debut. – Jake K-s. (full review)
Where to Stream: Max
Dad & Step-Dad (Tynan DeLong)
Following the stellar comedy Free Time,...
- 6/7/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Oh, Canada debuting this week on the Croisette is high time to see lesser-seen Schrader on the Criterion Channel, who’ll debut an 11-title series including the likes of Touch, The Canyons, and Patty Hearst, while Old Boyfriends (written with his brother Leonard) and his own “Adventures in Moviegoing” are also programmed. Five films by Jean Grémillon, a rather underappreciated figure of French cinema, will be showing
Series-wise, there’s an appreciation of the synth soundtrack stretching all the way back to 1956’s Forbidden Planet while, naturally, finding its glut of titles in the ’70s and ’80s––Argento and Carpenter, obviously, but also Tarkovsky and Peter Weir. A Prince and restorations of films by Bob Odenkirk, Obayashi, John Greyson, and Jacques Rivette (whose Duelle is a masterpiece of the highest order) make streaming debuts. I Am Cuba, Girlfight, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Dazed and Confused are June’s Criterion Editions.
Series-wise, there’s an appreciation of the synth soundtrack stretching all the way back to 1956’s Forbidden Planet while, naturally, finding its glut of titles in the ’70s and ’80s––Argento and Carpenter, obviously, but also Tarkovsky and Peter Weir. A Prince and restorations of films by Bob Odenkirk, Obayashi, John Greyson, and Jacques Rivette (whose Duelle is a masterpiece of the highest order) make streaming debuts. I Am Cuba, Girlfight, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Dazed and Confused are June’s Criterion Editions.
- 5/14/2024
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
American Cinematographer Ed Lachman will be the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Camerimage Film Festival.
Lachman was born on March 31, 1946. His grandfather owned several vaudeville theatres in the 1920s, which were later converted into movie houses, co-managed with Lachman’s father, a film theatre distributor who later acquired a small cinema in Boonton, New Jersey.
Lachman’s extensive filmography includes numerous collaborations with directors such as Todd Haynes, Ulrich Seidl (Import/Export), Steven Soderbergh (The Limey and Erin Brockovich), Gregory Nava and Paul Schrader. He served as the cinematographer on Sofia Coppola’s debut feature, The Virgin Suicides, and lensed A Prairie Home Companion, Robert Altman’s last film.
He is a three-time Oscar nominee for Far from Heaven, Carol, and Pablo Larrain’s El Conde.
Lachman was born on March 31, 1946. His grandfather owned several vaudeville theatres in the 1920s, which were later converted into movie houses, co-managed with Lachman’s father, a film theatre distributor who later acquired a small cinema in Boonton, New Jersey.
Lachman’s extensive filmography includes numerous collaborations with directors such as Todd Haynes, Ulrich Seidl (Import/Export), Steven Soderbergh (The Limey and Erin Brockovich), Gregory Nava and Paul Schrader. He served as the cinematographer on Sofia Coppola’s debut feature, The Virgin Suicides, and lensed A Prairie Home Companion, Robert Altman’s last film.
He is a three-time Oscar nominee for Far from Heaven, Carol, and Pablo Larrain’s El Conde.
- 2/29/2024
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
In “The Idol,” the Weeknd plays Tedros, a Svengali character who does not possess a heart of gold or maybe even a personality. Early in his appearance, he sidles up to Lily-Rose Depp as Jocelyn, the title character. He whispers something to her.
“Welcome to my little shithole.”
I don’t think he was talking about his acting chops, but one never knows.
If you’ve spent the past three weeks in a coma or on Mastodon, “The Idol” is this summer’s buzzy show with all the buzz being horrific. Much of the bile has concentrated on the creepiness both on and off the set and my friends, they ain’t kidding. By the time Abel Tesfaye appears, our heroine, a Britney stand-in, has survived the death of her mother, flagging ticket sales, a possible psychotic break, and — this is not what I went to journalism school for — a social media bukkake scandal.
“Welcome to my little shithole.”
I don’t think he was talking about his acting chops, but one never knows.
If you’ve spent the past three weeks in a coma or on Mastodon, “The Idol” is this summer’s buzzy show with all the buzz being horrific. Much of the bile has concentrated on the creepiness both on and off the set and my friends, they ain’t kidding. By the time Abel Tesfaye appears, our heroine, a Britney stand-in, has survived the death of her mother, flagging ticket sales, a possible psychotic break, and — this is not what I went to journalism school for — a social media bukkake scandal.
- 6/5/2023
- by Stephen Rodrick
- Variety Film + TV
Willem Dafoe has played a goblin, a rat, a fool, and a fish, but according to Paul Schrader, it’s all par for the course of a great actor. Dafoe, who most recently transforms into a trapped art thief for claustrophobic psychological thriller “Inside,” revealed that Oscar winner Schrader told him it’s the best compliment to be compared to a farm animal.
“Paul Schrader says that all actors are like farm animals,” Dafoe said to The New York Times Style Magazine.”They like to work.”
Schrader directed Dafoe in 1992’s “Light Sleeper.” In total, Dafoe has worked with auteurs Wes Anderson, Robert Eggers, Abel Ferrara, and Yorgos Lanthimos for multiple films each.
“When you’re starting out, you feel like every film can ruin you,” Dafoe said. “Now I can take more risks.”
One of those risks include leading Lanthimos’ surreal upcoming film “And” opposite Emma Stone, who praised Dafoe’s approach to work.
“Paul Schrader says that all actors are like farm animals,” Dafoe said to The New York Times Style Magazine.”They like to work.”
Schrader directed Dafoe in 1992’s “Light Sleeper.” In total, Dafoe has worked with auteurs Wes Anderson, Robert Eggers, Abel Ferrara, and Yorgos Lanthimos for multiple films each.
“When you’re starting out, you feel like every film can ruin you,” Dafoe said. “Now I can take more risks.”
One of those risks include leading Lanthimos’ surreal upcoming film “And” opposite Emma Stone, who praised Dafoe’s approach to work.
- 3/4/2023
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
“I made a new life for myself from flowers,” marvels the green-thumbed Narvel Roth. “How unexpected is that?” To be fair, it’s about the only plausible thing that happens in Paul Schrader’s Venice Film Festival out of competition entry Master Gardener, an incredibly silly but fitfully entertaining noir-tinged drama that follows so neatly on from First Reformed and The Card Counter that it’s almost as if Schrader has patented his own sui generis subgenre, a mix of the sublime and the ridiculous that just about works if you’re prepared to walk the line with it.
Like the aforementioned titles, it’s another of Schrader’s “God’s lonely man” films, a concept exemplified in his screenplay for Taxi Driver. Master Gardener, however, has more of the melancholic tone of 1992’s Light Sleeper, and one can easily imagine Willem Dafoe in the lead, playing the dark angel with a disturbing past.
Like the aforementioned titles, it’s another of Schrader’s “God’s lonely man” films, a concept exemplified in his screenplay for Taxi Driver. Master Gardener, however, has more of the melancholic tone of 1992’s Light Sleeper, and one can easily imagine Willem Dafoe in the lead, playing the dark angel with a disturbing past.
- 9/4/2022
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
Ahead of the world premiere of Paul Schrader’s latest feature, Master Gardener, at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, the legendary screenwriter and director was nudged into casting a backward glance on his 50-year career in the movies. Next week in Venice, the auteur will receive an honorary Golden Lion for his contributions to cinema.
Early in the press conference, Schrader was asked which of the films he’s directed he thinks best represents him.
“You know, directors like and dislike their children for different reasons,” he replied. “Probably my favorite is Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, just because it’s the damnedest thing. I still can’t believe I ever made that film. The most personal for me is First Reformed or Affliction. The best stylistically, I think, is Comfort of Strangers. Cat People is kind of special. You know,...
Ahead of the world premiere of Paul Schrader’s latest feature, Master Gardener, at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, the legendary screenwriter and director was nudged into casting a backward glance on his 50-year career in the movies. Next week in Venice, the auteur will receive an honorary Golden Lion for his contributions to cinema.
Early in the press conference, Schrader was asked which of the films he’s directed he thinks best represents him.
“You know, directors like and dislike their children for different reasons,” he replied. “Probably my favorite is Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, just because it’s the damnedest thing. I still can’t believe I ever made that film. The most personal for me is First Reformed or Affliction. The best stylistically, I think, is Comfort of Strangers. Cat People is kind of special. You know,...
- 9/3/2022
- by Patrick Brzeski
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A man who met writer-director Paul Schrader at a campus event at their Michigan alma mater has filed a lawsuit alleging that Schrader later stole his ideas and used them in the film “The Card Counter.”
Mark Vanden Berge alleges in the suit that he met Schrader after a screening of “First Reformed” at Calvin University, a Christian college in Grand Rapids, in February 2018. He says he told Schrader about a treatment he was working on for a film called “Blown Odds,” about a gambler’s search for redemption, and asked Schrader for help developing it into a marketable screenplay.
According to the suit, Schrader told him to email him the treatment. Vanden Berge sent it to him, according to the suit, but never heard back from Schrader directly, though he says he was told that Schrader had received it.
“The Card Counter,” Schrader’s subsequent film, was announced in late 2019. It,...
Mark Vanden Berge alleges in the suit that he met Schrader after a screening of “First Reformed” at Calvin University, a Christian college in Grand Rapids, in February 2018. He says he told Schrader about a treatment he was working on for a film called “Blown Odds,” about a gambler’s search for redemption, and asked Schrader for help developing it into a marketable screenplay.
According to the suit, Schrader told him to email him the treatment. Vanden Berge sent it to him, according to the suit, but never heard back from Schrader directly, though he says he was told that Schrader had received it.
“The Card Counter,” Schrader’s subsequent film, was announced in late 2019. It,...
- 9/3/2022
- by Gene Maddaus
- Variety Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
For the 79th Venice Film Festival, artistic director Alberto Barbera has put together one of the most well-curated lineups of his career. Both studios and streamers are well represented.
Netflix scored an opening-night coup with Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, with buzz promising that it’ll wow the Lido, alongside Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn Monroe biopic, Blonde, with Ana de Armas; Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Mexican epic Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths; and Romain Gavras’ French action thriller Athena.
Studio fare is well represented by Warner Bros.’ Don’t Worry Darling from director Olivia Wilde; Focus has Todd Field’s Tár with Cate Blanchett and Mark Strong; MGM will debut Luca Guadagnino’s Timothée Chalamet-Taylor Russell starrer Bones and All; Searchlight presents The Banshees of Inisherin from Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri director Martin McDonagh; and Sony Pictures Classics will be...
For the 79th Venice Film Festival, artistic director Alberto Barbera has put together one of the most well-curated lineups of his career. Both studios and streamers are well represented.
Netflix scored an opening-night coup with Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, with buzz promising that it’ll wow the Lido, alongside Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn Monroe biopic, Blonde, with Ana de Armas; Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Mexican epic Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths; and Romain Gavras’ French action thriller Athena.
Studio fare is well represented by Warner Bros.’ Don’t Worry Darling from director Olivia Wilde; Focus has Todd Field’s Tár with Cate Blanchett and Mark Strong; MGM will debut Luca Guadagnino’s Timothée Chalamet-Taylor Russell starrer Bones and All; Searchlight presents The Banshees of Inisherin from Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri director Martin McDonagh; and Sony Pictures Classics will be...
- 8/30/2022
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Writer/director Eskil Vogt joins hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss a few of his favorite movies.
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
The Worst Person In The World (2021)
The Innocents (2022)
The Godfather Part II (1974) – Katt Shea’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Trust (1990)
Fight Club (1999)
Evil Dead II (1987) – Alex Kirschenbaum’s review
Gremlins (1984) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review
The Getaway (1972) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary
The Getaway (1994)
Junior Bonner (1972) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review
Star Wars (1977)
The Limey (1999)
Point Blank (1967) – John Landis’s trailer commentary
Out of Sight (1998)
The Hunger (1983)
Providence (1977)
Blind (2014)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
The Card Counter (2021)
First Reformed (2017) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review
Taxi Driver (1976) – Rod Lurie’s trailer commentary
Light Sleeper (1992)
American Gigolo (1980)
Notorious (1946) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review
Torn Curtain (1966)
Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Lolita (1997)
Deep Water...
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
The Worst Person In The World (2021)
The Innocents (2022)
The Godfather Part II (1974) – Katt Shea’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
Trust (1990)
Fight Club (1999)
Evil Dead II (1987) – Alex Kirschenbaum’s review
Gremlins (1984) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review
The Getaway (1972) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary
The Getaway (1994)
Junior Bonner (1972) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review
Star Wars (1977)
The Limey (1999)
Point Blank (1967) – John Landis’s trailer commentary
Out of Sight (1998)
The Hunger (1983)
Providence (1977)
Blind (2014)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
The Card Counter (2021)
First Reformed (2017) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review
Taxi Driver (1976) – Rod Lurie’s trailer commentary
Light Sleeper (1992)
American Gigolo (1980)
Notorious (1946) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review
Torn Curtain (1966)
Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Lolita (1997)
Deep Water...
- 5/10/2022
- by Kris Millsap
- Trailers from Hell
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
The Fever (Maya Da-Rin)
The Fever, director-cum-visual artist Da-Rin’s first full-length feature project, puts a human face to a statistic that hardly captures the genocide Brazil is suffering. This is not just a wonderfully crafted, superb exercise in filmmaking, a multilayered tale that seesaws between social realism and magic. It is a call to action, an unassuming manifesto hashed in the present tense but reverberating as a plea from a world already past us, a memoir of sorts. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
French New Wave
Dive into one of the most fertile eras of moving pictures with a new massive 45-film series on The Criterion Channel dedicated to the French New Wave. Highlights include Le...
The Fever (Maya Da-Rin)
The Fever, director-cum-visual artist Da-Rin’s first full-length feature project, puts a human face to a statistic that hardly captures the genocide Brazil is suffering. This is not just a wonderfully crafted, superb exercise in filmmaking, a multilayered tale that seesaws between social realism and magic. It is a call to action, an unassuming manifesto hashed in the present tense but reverberating as a plea from a world already past us, a memoir of sorts. – Leonardo G. (full review)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
French New Wave
Dive into one of the most fertile eras of moving pictures with a new massive 45-film series on The Criterion Channel dedicated to the French New Wave. Highlights include Le...
- 1/7/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will be factors in this year’s movie awards race.
“Over the years I’ve developed my own genre of films, and they typically involve a man alone in a room wearing a mask, and the mask is his occupation,” said The Card Counter filmmaker Paul Schrader, whose distinctive oeuvre includes classics of American cinema featuring internally tormented central figures in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, American Gigolo, Light Sleeper and First Reformed, the latter of which earned Schrader his first Oscar nomination.
“I take that character and run him alongside a larger problem, personal or social,” Schrader explained, detailing how nomadic gambler William Tell, the titular character of The Card Counter played by Oscar Isaac, fits the filmmaker’s mold. In this case, Tell’s serving a self-imposed penance driven by an overwhelming guilt.
“Over the years I’ve developed my own genre of films, and they typically involve a man alone in a room wearing a mask, and the mask is his occupation,” said The Card Counter filmmaker Paul Schrader, whose distinctive oeuvre includes classics of American cinema featuring internally tormented central figures in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, American Gigolo, Light Sleeper and First Reformed, the latter of which earned Schrader his first Oscar nomination.
“I take that character and run him alongside a larger problem, personal or social,” Schrader explained, detailing how nomadic gambler William Tell, the titular character of The Card Counter played by Oscar Isaac, fits the filmmaker’s mold. In this case, Tell’s serving a self-imposed penance driven by an overwhelming guilt.
- 12/23/2021
- by Scott Huver
- Deadline Film + TV
With fears our winter travel will need a, let’s say, reconsideration, the Criterion Channel’s monthly programming could hardly come at a better moment. High on list of highlights is Louis Feuillade’s delightful Les Vampires, which I suggest soundtracking to Coil, instrumental Nine Inch Nails, and Jóhann Jóhannson’s Mandy score. Notable too is a Sundance ’92 retrospective running the gamut from Paul Schrader to Derek Jarman to Jean-Pierre Gorin, and I’m especially excited for their look at one of America’s greatest actors, Sterling Hayden.
Special notice to Criterion editions of The Killing, The Last Days of Disco, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle, and programming of Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load, among the better debuts in recent years.
See the full list of January titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.
-Ship: A Visual Poem, Terrance Day, 2020
5 Fingers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1952
After Migration: Calabria,...
Special notice to Criterion editions of The Killing, The Last Days of Disco, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle, and programming of Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load, among the better debuts in recent years.
See the full list of January titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.
-Ship: A Visual Poem, Terrance Day, 2020
5 Fingers, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1952
After Migration: Calabria,...
- 12/20/2021
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Oscar Isaac had been waiting a long time to work with filmmaker Paul Schrader, and in The Card Counter, he found a much-longed-for opportunity to portray an antihero directly in the mold of the writer-director’s signature works including Taxi Driver, Light Sleeper and First Reformed.
“My relationship with Paul has spanned many, many years,” Isaac told moderator Dominic Patten at Deadline’s Contenders New York on Saturday. “One of my first auditions was for Paul in a little black box theater in the Valley somewhere for a movie that never ended up happening. I did get the part, but unfortunately it didn’t happen – and we kept in touch.”
The Contenders Film: New York — Deadline’s Complete Coverage
The Card Counter follows William Tell (Isaac), a military interrogator-turned-card player haunted by his past. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk (Tye Sheridan...
“My relationship with Paul has spanned many, many years,” Isaac told moderator Dominic Patten at Deadline’s Contenders New York on Saturday. “One of my first auditions was for Paul in a little black box theater in the Valley somewhere for a movie that never ended up happening. I did get the part, but unfortunately it didn’t happen – and we kept in touch.”
The Contenders Film: New York — Deadline’s Complete Coverage
The Card Counter follows William Tell (Isaac), a military interrogator-turned-card player haunted by his past. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk (Tye Sheridan...
- 12/4/2021
- by Scott Huver
- Deadline Film + TV
Could Another Streaming Service Be the Answer to Having Too Many Choices? This New Platform Hopes So
We’ve all been there: Endlessly scrolling through the hundreds of movies served to you by the Netflix algorithm — only to come to the conclusion that there’s just nothing to watch. Then on to Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video, or any one of the other major streaming services, only to be faced with the same problem.
What if the solution to the paradoxical problem of too many choices but nothing to watch lies in yes, another streaming service? The team behind a newly launched streamer, Curia, hopes that could be the case.
Rather than hundreds of options served up by technology, Curia wants to deliver “only the good stuff” by programming around 80 features a month in a rotating selection of collections like this month’s New York Stories, featuring “King of New York,” “Light Sleeper,” and eight other films that take viewers across the boroughs and through decades. For just $3.99 a month,...
What if the solution to the paradoxical problem of too many choices but nothing to watch lies in yes, another streaming service? The team behind a newly launched streamer, Curia, hopes that could be the case.
Rather than hundreds of options served up by technology, Curia wants to deliver “only the good stuff” by programming around 80 features a month in a rotating selection of collections like this month’s New York Stories, featuring “King of New York,” “Light Sleeper,” and eight other films that take viewers across the boroughs and through decades. For just $3.99 a month,...
- 9/22/2021
- by Chris Lindahl
- Indiewire
With a career spanning over 6 decades and more than 100 credits to his name, Koji Yakusho is one of the most renowned Japanese actors, with his success being rather evident in both his home country and internationally, particularly after his roles in “Memoirs of a Geisha” and “Babel”. A true chameleon of acting, Yakusho has played all kinds of roles in his career, always being convincing whether in horror, comedies, social dramas or samurai movies, whether in blockbusters or independent productions, whether on TV or even voice acting in anime. As a tribute to this remarkable actor, we present 20 of his best roles throughout his career, in chronological order.
1. Dark Society in the East
How many actors do you think can walk up to a woman and say “I want to fondle your breasts” and be accepted, in the same film that begins with them literally scraping crap off freshly excreted cocaine bags?...
1. Dark Society in the East
How many actors do you think can walk up to a woman and say “I want to fondle your breasts” and be accepted, in the same film that begins with them literally scraping crap off freshly excreted cocaine bags?...
- 9/16/2021
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
When the late Michael Been of The Call was working on the soundtrack to the 1992 film “Light Sleeper,” his then-teenage son, Robert Levon Been, later of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, would hide when the film’s director, Paul Schrader, came to Been’s home to check on the music’s progress.
“Everything was recorded in our house, DIY style, on analog, in the living room,” recalls Been, speaking from Vienna, Austria. “I was a snob and obnoxious and would say, ‘This is shit, this is good.’ I’d play a guitar or bass part and say, ‘Try this, try that.’ Sometimes my dad would use it. I was caught out a few times by [Schrader] who asked my dad if he was not paying him enough to bring in real musicians. But it stuck in his head enough where he might give me a call someday.”
Almost 20 years later, Schrader returns...
“Everything was recorded in our house, DIY style, on analog, in the living room,” recalls Been, speaking from Vienna, Austria. “I was a snob and obnoxious and would say, ‘This is shit, this is good.’ I’d play a guitar or bass part and say, ‘Try this, try that.’ Sometimes my dad would use it. I was caught out a few times by [Schrader] who asked my dad if he was not paying him enough to bring in real musicians. But it stuck in his head enough where he might give me a call someday.”
Almost 20 years later, Schrader returns...
- 9/10/2021
- by Lily Moayeri
- Variety Film + TV
“I have decided to keep a journal. Not in a word program or digital file, but in longhand, writing every word out so that every inflection of penmanship, every word chosen, scratched out, revised, is recorded. To set down all my thoughts and the simple events of my day factually and without hiding anything. When writing about oneself, one should show no mercy. I will keep this diary for one year; 12 months. And at the end of that time, it will be destroyed. Shredded, then burnt. The experiment will be over.” Searching narration binds Paul Schrader’s work, the lone ranger facing a crisis of faith, unable to shake off the past. The above dialogue introduces Ethan Hawke’s Reverend Ernst Toller at the beginning of First Reformed (2017). Schrader’s characters share their own folklore and throughout this mix their tales come and go. The lyrics take on the form of character too,...
- 9/9/2021
- MUBI
Whatever new could be said about Paul Schrader as an artist—curving around the extra-textual value in Kickstarter campaigns, Facebook posts, and tragic losses of final cut—is almost entirely on the back of First Reformed. A cultural smash first propelled by surprise of the he’s-still-got-it! variety that, as those things always do, faded, now denotes career reset—a generational shift for telling us his anxiety-ridden men of ‘70s and ‘80s landmarks stuck around to become the doom-scrolling generation whose problems are more global than personal. (Though obviously that too.) The catch of this conquest is a greedy fan (hello) alternately thrilled at the existence of another film and worried a final statement for the ages is rendered naught. A broken promise? Please; he owes us nothing. But Ernst Toller’s martyrdom is hard to sacrifice as a last note.
My fear of folly dissipated before The Card Counter‘s first shot.
My fear of folly dissipated before The Card Counter‘s first shot.
- 9/2/2021
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Writer/director Paul Schrader’s first movie since “First Reformed” is shaping up with an enviable cast, which now includes Tiffany Haddish, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker confirmed in a recent interview with The Metrograph. As previously announced, Oscar Isaac is set to lead the film currently titled “The Card Counter” as a gambler and ex-serviceman who tries to reform a young man looking to exact revenge on a mutual enemy. According to the interview with Schrader, Tye Sheridan and Willem Dafoe are also on board and the film is financed. (It’s repped by HanWay Films.)
Regarding Haddish, the fast-rising star who’s become a favorite of many an auteur, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Schrader said, “I love Tiffany. I’ve never met her, but I was on the phone with her for an hour. She’s a firecracker. It’s like talking to a live-wire connection. She’s very funny and,...
Regarding Haddish, the fast-rising star who’s become a favorite of many an auteur, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Schrader said, “I love Tiffany. I’ve never met her, but I was on the phone with her for an hour. She’s a firecracker. It’s like talking to a live-wire connection. She’s very funny and,...
- 1/31/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Amazon Prime Video is out with its list of everything new coming in November, and it includes the Amazon Original movie “The Report” starring Adam Driver and Annette Bening, coming Nov. 29.
Based on a true story, “The Report” is described as following idealistic staffer Daniel J. Jones (Driver), who is tasked by his boss Senator Dianne Feinstein (Bening) to lead an investigation of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, which was created in the aftermath of 9/11. Jones’ relentless pursuit of the truth leads to explosive findings that uncover the lengths to which the nation’s top intelligence agency went to destroy evidence, subvert the law, and hide a brutal secret from the American public.
The fourth and final season of “The Man in the High Castle” is out Nov. 1. According to Amazon’s description: “America will witness rebellion on both coasts as Juliana and Wyatt join forces with an...
Based on a true story, “The Report” is described as following idealistic staffer Daniel J. Jones (Driver), who is tasked by his boss Senator Dianne Feinstein (Bening) to lead an investigation of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, which was created in the aftermath of 9/11. Jones’ relentless pursuit of the truth leads to explosive findings that uncover the lengths to which the nation’s top intelligence agency went to destroy evidence, subvert the law, and hide a brutal secret from the American public.
The fourth and final season of “The Man in the High Castle” is out Nov. 1. According to Amazon’s description: “America will witness rebellion on both coasts as Juliana and Wyatt join forces with an...
- 11/1/2019
- by Margeaux Sippell
- The Wrap
Fall is upon us, and so is Hulu’s list of every title coming and going from the streaming service in November.
Among the list of arriving titles is a new episode of Hulu’s original monthly anthology series, “Into the Dark.” November’s episode is called “Pilgrim,” and claims to be inspired by true events — in which a woman invites a bunch of Pilgrim re-enactors over for Thanksgiving dinner. But things get spooky when the “actors” refuse to break character.
Other new arrivals include Season 5 of “You’re the Worst,” described as a modern look at love, the complete first seasons of “Dollface,” about a young woman re-entering the world of women, “The Accident,” which begins with a deadly explosion at a construction site, and “Love Island: Australia,” an answer to the U.K. and U.S. versions of the beloved reality dating show.
Also Read: Here's Everything New...
Among the list of arriving titles is a new episode of Hulu’s original monthly anthology series, “Into the Dark.” November’s episode is called “Pilgrim,” and claims to be inspired by true events — in which a woman invites a bunch of Pilgrim re-enactors over for Thanksgiving dinner. But things get spooky when the “actors” refuse to break character.
Other new arrivals include Season 5 of “You’re the Worst,” described as a modern look at love, the complete first seasons of “Dollface,” about a young woman re-entering the world of women, “The Accident,” which begins with a deadly explosion at a construction site, and “Love Island: Australia,” an answer to the U.K. and U.S. versions of the beloved reality dating show.
Also Read: Here's Everything New...
- 11/1/2019
- by Margeaux Sippell
- The Wrap
Amazon Prime Video has confirmed that the docudrama “The Report” will debut on the streaming service in November. This Oscar contender, which chronicles the Senate investigation into the CIA, stars Adam Driver as a dogged investigator and Annette Bening as the crusading Senator Dianne Feinstein. Also premiering is the heartwarming “Brittany Runs a Marathon” which, like “The Report,” debuted at the Sundance film festival to rave reviews.
Five original shows will be debuting new episodes on the streaming service in November. Among these is the sophomore season of the thriller “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” with John Krasinski taking on the title character played on film by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford. Back for its fourth season is “The Man in the High Castle,” which imagines a post-wwii world in which the Axis powers have won.
And in association with the NFL Channel, Amazon will continue to stream “Thursday Night Football,...
Five original shows will be debuting new episodes on the streaming service in November. Among these is the sophomore season of the thriller “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” with John Krasinski taking on the title character played on film by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford. Back for its fourth season is “The Man in the High Castle,” which imagines a post-wwii world in which the Axis powers have won.
And in association with the NFL Channel, Amazon will continue to stream “Thursday Night Football,...
- 11/1/2019
- by Paul Sheehan
- Gold Derby
“Can You Ever Forgive Me?” stunned us all with a Writers Guild of America Awards win for Best Adapted Screenplay on Sunday. Can it pull off another shocker this weekend — not at the Oscars, but at the Independent Spirit Awards?
The Spirits only has one screenplay category that combines original and adapted scripts. “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, written by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, is in second place in our combined odds behind Paul Schrader‘s “First Reformed,” and ahead of “Private Life” (Tamara Jenkins), “Sorry to Bother You” (Boots Riley) and “Collette”. “First Reformed” is the safe pick, as the film got a co-leading four nominations, including Best Picture unlike “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, and it’s a chance to honor Schrader, the scribe behind classics like “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull.”
But two of our Experts, Kevin Polowy (Yahoo) and Gold Derby’s own Tom O’Neil,...
The Spirits only has one screenplay category that combines original and adapted scripts. “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, written by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, is in second place in our combined odds behind Paul Schrader‘s “First Reformed,” and ahead of “Private Life” (Tamara Jenkins), “Sorry to Bother You” (Boots Riley) and “Collette”. “First Reformed” is the safe pick, as the film got a co-leading four nominations, including Best Picture unlike “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, and it’s a chance to honor Schrader, the scribe behind classics like “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull.”
But two of our Experts, Kevin Polowy (Yahoo) and Gold Derby’s own Tom O’Neil,...
- 2/23/2019
- by Joyce Eng
- Gold Derby
Playback is a Variety / iHeartRadio podcast bringing you conversations with the talents behind many of today’s hottest films. New episodes air every Thursday.
Paul Schrader is finally an Oscar nominee. Not that it’s anything he ever coveted. The 72-year-old filmmaker has carved his own path through the industry, a true writer-director packaging his projects independently, digging into the same themes that have kept his attention for more than four decades. With “First Reformed,” which brought him a nomination for original screenplay, he has encountered something utterly foreign to him: The long-haul awards campaign. His film debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2017 and here Schrader is, still promoting it a year and a half later.
Listen to this week’s episode of “Playback” below. New episodes air every Thursday.
Click here for more episodes of “Playback.”
“An independent film can have a very short life, sometimes as long as three or four days,...
Paul Schrader is finally an Oscar nominee. Not that it’s anything he ever coveted. The 72-year-old filmmaker has carved his own path through the industry, a true writer-director packaging his projects independently, digging into the same themes that have kept his attention for more than four decades. With “First Reformed,” which brought him a nomination for original screenplay, he has encountered something utterly foreign to him: The long-haul awards campaign. His film debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2017 and here Schrader is, still promoting it a year and a half later.
Listen to this week’s episode of “Playback” below. New episodes air every Thursday.
Click here for more episodes of “Playback.”
“An independent film can have a very short life, sometimes as long as three or four days,...
- 2/14/2019
- by Kristopher Tapley
- Variety Film + TV
Paul Schrader's Light Sleeper (1992) is showing June 9 - July 9, 2018 in the United States.Light SleeperPopularly known as the screenwriter of Taxi Driver (1976), Paul Schrader’s work in cinema extends well beyond this seminal collaboration with Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, from his beginnings as a film critic to his continued career as a director. When asked how his background as a critic influenced his work as a filmmaker he uses a telling example to outline the two modes of approaching the cinematic medium. Responding cautiously, he explains that for him the analytical impulses of the critic may be"as much for good as bad, maybe in fact more for bad. Because a critic in many ways is like a medical examiner. You know, you open up the cadaver, and you want to see how and why it lived. And a writer, a filmmaker, is, on the other hand,...
- 7/6/2018
- MUBI
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Paul Schrader's Light Sleeper (1992) is showing June 9-July 9, 2018 in the United States.In the opening sequence of Light Sleeper a man played by a pale-faced yet sleekly handsome Willem Dafoe is being chauffeured through the New York night. Beyond the windows of the car the lights of the city and traffic pass by reflecting on his impassive face, oversized piles of garbage litter the sidewalks and puddles of rainwater line the streets. He sees it all without touching it. On the soundtrack plays an achingly moody song with the line: ‘I trust my life in providence, I give my soul to grace.’ We don’t need the credits to tell us that we are in pure Paul Schrader territory: a man apart sheltered in a car at night, separated and shielded from the world.The man’s name...
- 6/22/2018
- MUBI
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
The Best of Blaxploitation
Funk. Soul. Ultra-hip. This month, FilmStruck is highlighting Blaxploitation cinema, a group of films made specifically for African American audiences in the 1970s just as black filmmakers were finally allowed to make Hollywood features. This collection features pivotal Black icons from unforgettable films such as Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Cleopatra Jones and Super Fly, presented alongside a discussion of the history of the genre with Malcolm Mays,...
The Best of Blaxploitation
Funk. Soul. Ultra-hip. This month, FilmStruck is highlighting Blaxploitation cinema, a group of films made specifically for African American audiences in the 1970s just as black filmmakers were finally allowed to make Hollywood features. This collection features pivotal Black icons from unforgettable films such as Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Cleopatra Jones and Super Fly, presented alongside a discussion of the history of the genre with Malcolm Mays,...
- 6/15/2018
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The writer-director Paul Schrader has gotten some of the most ecstatic reviews of his career for “First Reformed,” and though I’m not in the rapturous/masterpiece camp about it, I agree with the praise more than not. The movie, which stars Ethan Hawke as an upstate New York minister who is undergoing a crisis of faith/health/isolation/midlife woe, is an austerely unabashed and compelling oddball, a pastiche of “Diary of a Country Priest” and “Winter Light” and what you might call the Schrader Paradigm, the one derived from “The Searchers” that he used (and made iconic) in his screenplay for “Taxi Driver,” and then in “Hardcore” and “Light Sleeper”: the loner who goes down a blood trail of redemption, trying to rescue a ravaged maiden who was taken by the forces of sin but remains, in his mind, unspoiled.
That said, there’s an additional component to “First Reformed” that,...
That said, there’s an additional component to “First Reformed” that,...
- 5/28/2018
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Paul Schrader has been writing films since 1974. He’s been directing since 1977. And although he’s built up a formidable filmography of directed titles—Cat People, Affliction, American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters—Schrader is still most closely associated with his original Taxi Driver script. There’s so much lore about Taxi Driver because it announced Martin Scorsese was here to stay as a major voice in American cinema, it made Robert De...
Read More
Read Comments...
Read More
Read Comments...
- 5/18/2018
- by affiliates@fandango.com
- Fandango
Before he wrote and directed movies, Paul Schrader was a film critic, best known for his book “Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer.” Director Robert Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest” has always been a key film for Schrader, with Bresson’s ascetic Catholicism mirroring Schrader’s fully-absorbed Calvinism. And now Schrader has made “First Reformed,” a film that even freshman film students will be able to easily connect to this influential earlier movie.
“First Reformed” is about a country priest, and he keeps a diary. And, like the hero of Bresson’s film (and the Georges Bernanos novel on which it is based), he’s got stomach cancer.
There’s more than homage going on here, though. As Schrader’s hero takes a bleaker look at life, and considers committing an extreme act as a desperate attempt to find resonance and morality in the world, he stands...
“First Reformed” is about a country priest, and he keeps a diary. And, like the hero of Bresson’s film (and the Georges Bernanos novel on which it is based), he’s got stomach cancer.
There’s more than homage going on here, though. As Schrader’s hero takes a bleaker look at life, and considers committing an extreme act as a desperate attempt to find resonance and morality in the world, he stands...
- 5/16/2018
- by Alonso Duralde
- The Wrap
Premiering on last year’s fall film festival circuit, Paul Schrader’s dark, existential spiritual drama First Reformed is one of the director’s best films–perhaps the best–and, in great news, you’ll be able to see it sooner than expected. Picked up by A24 and initially pegged for a late June release, they’re moving it up to May 18 and now the first trailer has arrived.
Led by Ethan Hawke, he plays a reverend with a drinking problem in upstate New York whose church is preparing for a 250th anniversary celebration. When the pregnant wife (Amanda Seyfried) of a disturbed man comes for him to help, questions of his spiritual path and the world at large come crashing down in wholly unexpected ways. Of course, it feels like a follow-up to Taxi Driver in some light for Schrader, but it’s also its own clear-eyed beast.
“It...
Led by Ethan Hawke, he plays a reverend with a drinking problem in upstate New York whose church is preparing for a 250th anniversary celebration. When the pregnant wife (Amanda Seyfried) of a disturbed man comes for him to help, questions of his spiritual path and the world at large come crashing down in wholly unexpected ways. Of course, it feels like a follow-up to Taxi Driver in some light for Schrader, but it’s also its own clear-eyed beast.
“It...
- 3/29/2018
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Writer/director was talking ahead of Rotterdam Film Festival masterclass.
Source: Wiki Commons
Paul Schrader
Writer-director Paul Schrader, who will attend the International Film Festival Rotterdam on Monday (29 Jan) to give a Masterclass, has predicted that he will finish his career working in cinema - and he has warned that TV drama is not the haven for filmmakers that it recently seemed.
“I think I’ll finish out working for the cinema particularly now that television has lost some of its allure,” Schrader said. “You know, there are 500 scripted TV series now being made. Do you really want to get into that world?”
The veteran filmmaker added that the “so called freedom of TV is not as free as you might think”. He said that his latest feature, First Reformed (which premiered in Venice and which is screening at Iffr), could not have been made for television, which is why he plans to stick to making movies. “I think...
Source: Wiki Commons
Paul Schrader
Writer-director Paul Schrader, who will attend the International Film Festival Rotterdam on Monday (29 Jan) to give a Masterclass, has predicted that he will finish his career working in cinema - and he has warned that TV drama is not the haven for filmmakers that it recently seemed.
“I think I’ll finish out working for the cinema particularly now that television has lost some of its allure,” Schrader said. “You know, there are 500 scripted TV series now being made. Do you really want to get into that world?”
The veteran filmmaker added that the “so called freedom of TV is not as free as you might think”. He said that his latest feature, First Reformed (which premiered in Venice and which is screening at Iffr), could not have been made for television, which is why he plans to stick to making movies. “I think...
- 1/29/2018
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
Paul Schrader has been open about the original intentions for his most famous work, the screenplay to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. Writing it in the vein of Robert Bresson films like Diary of a Country Priest or Pickpocket, it was his full intention for the film to be directed in a similarly austere fashion. This writer perhaps doesn’t need to further recount what actually happened in the end result of one of the most famous American films of all-time, but nonetheless the multiple authors involved put it in a different direction.
It seems that some of Schrader’s own directorial efforts, be it American Gigolo or Light Sleeper, were certainly an attempt to complete the “Transcendental” experience to one degree or another. Yet four decades later, First Reformed — which, should be mentioned, also seems to be taking from Bergman’s Winter Light and Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice in the...
It seems that some of Schrader’s own directorial efforts, be it American Gigolo or Light Sleeper, were certainly an attempt to complete the “Transcendental” experience to one degree or another. Yet four decades later, First Reformed — which, should be mentioned, also seems to be taking from Bergman’s Winter Light and Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice in the...
- 9/18/2017
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
The Telluride Film Festival is about a lot more than Oscars. Co-directors Tom Luddy and Julie Huntsinger certainly set out to program the year’s likeliest Oscar contenders, including Joe Wright’s Gary Oldman vehicle “Darkest Hour,” Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” starring Saoirse Ronan, Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” starring Sally Hawkins, and “Battle of the Sexes,” starring a luminous Emma Stone as real-life hero Billie Jean King.
But Telluride was also a crucible for conversations about the state of the motion picture industry throughout the weekend, as Netflix and Amazon threw parties and checked out several high-profile movies without distribution — including Francis Ford Coppola’s musically-enhanced “The Cotton Club Encore” — that banked on the festival boosting their critical and audience cred before top buyers.
Here’s what we learned over the Labor Day weekend:
1. Christian Bale is fat.
The subject of two well-deserved weekend tributes...
But Telluride was also a crucible for conversations about the state of the motion picture industry throughout the weekend, as Netflix and Amazon threw parties and checked out several high-profile movies without distribution — including Francis Ford Coppola’s musically-enhanced “The Cotton Club Encore” — that banked on the festival boosting their critical and audience cred before top buyers.
Here’s what we learned over the Labor Day weekend:
1. Christian Bale is fat.
The subject of two well-deserved weekend tributes...
- 9/4/2017
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
The Telluride Film Festival is about a lot more than Oscars. Co-directors Tom Luddy and Julie Huntsinger certainly set out to program the year’s likeliest Oscar contenders, including Joe Wright’s Gary Oldman vehicle “Darkest Hour,” Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird,” starring Saoirse Ronan, Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” starring Sally Hawkins, and “Battle of the Sexes,” starring a luminous Emma Stone as real-life hero Billie Jean King.
But Telluride was also a crucible for conversations about the state of the motion picture industry throughout the weekend, as Netflix and Amazon threw parties and checked out several high-profile movies without distribution — including Francis Ford Coppola’s musically-enhanced “The Cotton Club Encore” — that banked on the festival boosting their critical and audience cred before top buyers.
Here’s what we learned over the Labor Day weekend:
1. Christian Bale is fat.
The subject of two well-deserved weekend tributes...
But Telluride was also a crucible for conversations about the state of the motion picture industry throughout the weekend, as Netflix and Amazon threw parties and checked out several high-profile movies without distribution — including Francis Ford Coppola’s musically-enhanced “The Cotton Club Encore” — that banked on the festival boosting their critical and audience cred before top buyers.
Here’s what we learned over the Labor Day weekend:
1. Christian Bale is fat.
The subject of two well-deserved weekend tributes...
- 9/4/2017
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Wil Jones Nov 15, 2016
Paul Schrader chats to us about Dog Eat Dog, working with Nicolas Cage, Richard Pryor, and Taxi Driver...
Paul Schrader’s place in film history is assured, just for the fact that he wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. But to only remember him for those two Martin Scorsese movies would be ignoring a nearly 30 year directing career.
From his brilliant 1978 debut movie Blue Collar - starring Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto as Detroit auto workers planning to rob a union boss - he has never shied away from controversy, both on screen and behind the scenes. All the way from Blue Collar, which had a notoriously racially-charged atmosphere on set, all the way through to 2013’s infamous Lindsay Lohan-starring The Canyons, the stories behind his movies have often been as interesting as the films themselves.
And despite turning 70 this year, he doesn’t...
Paul Schrader chats to us about Dog Eat Dog, working with Nicolas Cage, Richard Pryor, and Taxi Driver...
Paul Schrader’s place in film history is assured, just for the fact that he wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. But to only remember him for those two Martin Scorsese movies would be ignoring a nearly 30 year directing career.
From his brilliant 1978 debut movie Blue Collar - starring Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto as Detroit auto workers planning to rob a union boss - he has never shied away from controversy, both on screen and behind the scenes. All the way from Blue Collar, which had a notoriously racially-charged atmosphere on set, all the way through to 2013’s infamous Lindsay Lohan-starring The Canyons, the stories behind his movies have often been as interesting as the films themselves.
And despite turning 70 this year, he doesn’t...
- 11/7/2016
- Den of Geek
Paul Schrader has the outsized personality of a cigar-chomping studio mogul, the soul of a cinephile, and the Diy filmmaking ethos of a millennial. His career stretches back decades, but he never stops living in the moment.
He wrote “Taxi Driver” 40 years ago, kickstarting a collaborating with Martin Scorsese that continued with “Raging Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and “Bringing Out the Dead.” The former film critic also has forged his own path as a director, with seminal portraits of intense masculinity like “American Gigolo,” “Affliction” and the astonishing epic “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.” He’s never really slowed down.
His latest movie, “Dog Eat Dog,” might not look like the work of a veteran director. A wacky, discursive adaptation of Eddie Bunker’s 1995 novel (scripted by Matthew David Wilder), it takes the elements of a grimy heist movie and turns them inside out.
Read More: ‘Dog Eat Dog...
He wrote “Taxi Driver” 40 years ago, kickstarting a collaborating with Martin Scorsese that continued with “Raging Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ,” and “Bringing Out the Dead.” The former film critic also has forged his own path as a director, with seminal portraits of intense masculinity like “American Gigolo,” “Affliction” and the astonishing epic “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters.” He’s never really slowed down.
His latest movie, “Dog Eat Dog,” might not look like the work of a veteran director. A wacky, discursive adaptation of Eddie Bunker’s 1995 novel (scripted by Matthew David Wilder), it takes the elements of a grimy heist movie and turns them inside out.
Read More: ‘Dog Eat Dog...
- 11/5/2016
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
While still best-known for his screenwriting collaborations with Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and The Last Temptation of Christ), Paul Schrader has carved out a long, not entirely consistent, endlessly fascinating directorial career, the highlights of which include American Gigolo, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, and Light Sleeper — not to mention his delirious, Bruckheimer-produced Cat People remake. His latest — the “film of a free man,” so to speak — is Dog Eat Dog, whose ostentatious nihilism and political incorrectness may seem like a relic of the post-Pulp Fiction quirky-crime-film boom, but by the time it seemingly homages Seijun Suzuki in its finale, you know you’re in the hands of a pro.
In Toronto for the North American premiere, Schrader sat down with us to discuss the making of the film, the changing industry, and, of course, Nicolas Cage.
The Film Stage: Going into this festival, there were all these pieces,...
In Toronto for the North American premiere, Schrader sat down with us to discuss the making of the film, the changing industry, and, of course, Nicolas Cage.
The Film Stage: Going into this festival, there were all these pieces,...
- 11/2/2016
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
(Their last collaboration "Dying of the Light" was taken over and edited by the distributor.) Arclight Films and Pure Dopamine made the announcement Saturday at Cannes. "Dog Eat Dog" will start production in L.A. in October. Schrader ("Light Sleeper") and Matt Wilder are adapting the contemporary thriller novel "Dog Eat Dog" by Eddie Bunker, about three ex-cons from the underbelly of L.A. who are hired for a kidnapping. When the abduction is botched they go on the run, vowing to stay out of prison. “Ed Bunker is the crime writer's crime writer. He's in the pantheon and one of the main people who define modern crime writing,” said Schrader. “He lived the life and lived to tell the story. 'Dog Eat Dog' is Bunker at his best.” Producers are Mark Earl Burman and David Hillary of Pure Dopamine. Executive Producers are Gary Hamilton, Don Rivers, Tim Peternel,...
- 5/16/2015
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
Rowan Righelato: Voight's peepers contain an encyclopedia of evil intent. He can make a villain of himself with the slightest of squints
• Why I Love … the pink elephants from Dumbo, the opening titles from Human Traffic, the first fight in Fight Club, non-professional actors and the Jeff Daniels character in The Squid and the Whale
If, as Nic Ray said of cinema, "the melody is in the eyes", then Jon Voight is the Thelonious Monk of actors. Dissonant, off-key, jarring yet mesmeric, his fragmentary gaze is machine-tooled for his roster of late-career villains, as well as current TV series Ray Donovan. His charming psychopath, Mickey Donovan, reveals an encyclopedia of evil intent with the slightest of squints.
As a young man in Midnight Cowboy (1969), Voight's shaky eye contact brilliantly conveyed male prostitute Joe Buck's mix of damaged innocence and youthful bluster. Similiarly, that nervy demeanor nailed the character of...
• Why I Love … the pink elephants from Dumbo, the opening titles from Human Traffic, the first fight in Fight Club, non-professional actors and the Jeff Daniels character in The Squid and the Whale
If, as Nic Ray said of cinema, "the melody is in the eyes", then Jon Voight is the Thelonious Monk of actors. Dissonant, off-key, jarring yet mesmeric, his fragmentary gaze is machine-tooled for his roster of late-career villains, as well as current TV series Ray Donovan. His charming psychopath, Mickey Donovan, reveals an encyclopedia of evil intent with the slightest of squints.
As a young man in Midnight Cowboy (1969), Voight's shaky eye contact brilliantly conveyed male prostitute Joe Buck's mix of damaged innocence and youthful bluster. Similiarly, that nervy demeanor nailed the character of...
- 8/19/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Young design practice says it presented glowing duvets and pillows to Danny Boyle back in 2005
It was one of the most memorable moments of the Olympic opening ceremony, as 320 hospital beds were wheeled into the stadium and flickered to life. Aglow with illuminated duvets, the beds were arranged to spell out the logo of the Great Ormond Street hospital and the NHS, whose staff proceeded to burst into an acrobatic jive routine around trampolining children. But for young London design studio Loop.pH, the scene was strangely familiar.
"I designed a glowing duvet 10 years ago, when I was a student at the Royal College of Art," says Rachel Wingfield, co-director of Loop.pH, which specialises in light installations. "Danny Boyle spotted it and invited me in for a meeting in 2005 when he was working on the set design for the film Sunshine. He thought the illuminated bedding would look great...
It was one of the most memorable moments of the Olympic opening ceremony, as 320 hospital beds were wheeled into the stadium and flickered to life. Aglow with illuminated duvets, the beds were arranged to spell out the logo of the Great Ormond Street hospital and the NHS, whose staff proceeded to burst into an acrobatic jive routine around trampolining children. But for young London design studio Loop.pH, the scene was strangely familiar.
"I designed a glowing duvet 10 years ago, when I was a student at the Royal College of Art," says Rachel Wingfield, co-director of Loop.pH, which specialises in light installations. "Danny Boyle spotted it and invited me in for a meeting in 2005 when he was working on the set design for the film Sunshine. He thought the illuminated bedding would look great...
- 7/11/2013
- by Oliver Wainwright
- The Guardian - Film News
Welcome to The Best Movie You Never Saw, a column dedicated to examining films that have flown under the radar or gained traction throughout the years, earning them a place as a cult classic or underrated gem that was either before it’s time or has aged like a fine wine. This week we’ll be examining Light Sleeper, from writer/director Paul Schrader. The Story: 40-year-old drug dealer John LeTour (Willem Dafoe) is struggling with his place in life. A recovering...
- 6/7/2013
- by Paul Shirey
- JoBlo.com
If my predictions come out right, this year’s Sundance will be heavy on the porn thematic. Couple of Sundance editions back Soderbergh pulled out The Girlfriend Experience as the fest’s secret/surprise film and that was when several folks discovered starlet Sasha Grey. This year, we could find James Deen (that is Lohan’s bed-partner in the pic above) make the jump with Paul Schrader’s The Canyons. Schrader has been at the fest twice before with 92′s Light Sleeper and who could forget 98′s Affliction, but this Kickstarter funded item is perhaps part of a new wave of future Sundance entries – trending crowd-sourcing films from established auteurs. Production began in July, post-prod in September and we’ve witnessed a slew of media items since. The Lindsay Lohan vehicle/Bret Easton Ellis (The Informers cracked the fest line-up in 2008) could spill the most ink in Park City and...
- 11/19/2012
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Two powerhouse talents, director Paul Schrader (Affliction, Light Sleeper) and author Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho, The Rules Of Attraction), are currently filming Ellis' original script for The Canyons, starring Lindsay Lohan and male porn star James Deen. Today, they've unveiled a specially shot teaser for the film, which is kind of like a travelogue video of Los Angeles. Still, it's well shot and features good use of the song "Coming Down" by the Dum Dum Girls. Come out...
- 7/24/2012
- by Paul Shirey
- JoBlo.com
Willem Dafoe is magnificent as a lone hunter in this gripping existential drama set in the wilds of Tasmania
Hunting is a longstanding metaphor in the movies. From the great explorer films of the early years such as The Lost World and King Kong, through to westerns, and later classics such as The Deer Hunter and White Hunter Black Heart, directors have used nature and the chase to depict man confronting his inner self, wrestling with his wild ego and his civilised id.
The latest of these is The Hunter, an Australian film set entirely in one of the last great wildernesses, Tasmania. Not to be confused with Steve McQueen's last film of the same name (although I'm sure echoes are intended), it's based on a book by Julia Leigh, the writer who made her own debut as a film-maker at Cannes in 2011 with the neo-feminist erotic curio Sleeping Beauty.
Hunting is a longstanding metaphor in the movies. From the great explorer films of the early years such as The Lost World and King Kong, through to westerns, and later classics such as The Deer Hunter and White Hunter Black Heart, directors have used nature and the chase to depict man confronting his inner self, wrestling with his wild ego and his civilised id.
The latest of these is The Hunter, an Australian film set entirely in one of the last great wildernesses, Tasmania. Not to be confused with Steve McQueen's last film of the same name (although I'm sure echoes are intended), it's based on a book by Julia Leigh, the writer who made her own debut as a film-maker at Cannes in 2011 with the neo-feminist erotic curio Sleeping Beauty.
- 7/7/2012
- by Jason Solomons
- The Guardian - Film News
He has played goodies, baddies, creeps and goblins. But Willem Dafoe's latest film posed new challenges. He talks to Steve Rose about his hits, his flops – and the perils of skinning a wallaby
It is a perennial paradox. Studios spend vast sums of money bringing together the efforts of hundreds of skilled technicians, well-drilled actors and extras – yet cinema is often at its most compelling when simply showing an individual silently going about their business. There are countless examples: James Stewart stalking Kim Novak in Vertigo, David Hemmings poring over his prints in Blow-Up, Daniel Day-Lewis scrabbling underground in There Will Be Blood. We tend not to regard "just doing stuff" as acting – but perhaps making it all so absorbing is actually the hallmark of a great actor.
In his new movie The Hunter, released tomorrow, Willem Dafoe does "stuff" very well. His character is searching for the last Tasmanian tiger,...
It is a perennial paradox. Studios spend vast sums of money bringing together the efforts of hundreds of skilled technicians, well-drilled actors and extras – yet cinema is often at its most compelling when simply showing an individual silently going about their business. There are countless examples: James Stewart stalking Kim Novak in Vertigo, David Hemmings poring over his prints in Blow-Up, Daniel Day-Lewis scrabbling underground in There Will Be Blood. We tend not to regard "just doing stuff" as acting – but perhaps making it all so absorbing is actually the hallmark of a great actor.
In his new movie The Hunter, released tomorrow, Willem Dafoe does "stuff" very well. His character is searching for the last Tasmanian tiger,...
- 7/4/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Alfonso (Jeremy Ray Valdez) picks up a girl in a bar, or at least attempts to before seeing his brother Roman's (Yorlin Madera) car explode in a police chase. Tony (Michael Weatherly) finds a new fad, May 25th is national Tap Dance day and he wants to be prepared. Ladies are into parties. Ziva (Cote de Pablo) says McGee (Sean Murray) is wearing a tux as he's attending a wedding over the Internet. Tony: "I would be laughing if this wasn't so sad." Hey that's never stopped Tony from making fun before. He thinks McGee is taking technology too far, well he wasn't the one who started this whole technology revolution. There are some who would argue social networking sites etc take technology too far. Gibbs (Mark Harmon) gives McGee a minute to change and then tells him he's had his minute. At least he let McGee 'attend' the wedding.
- 8/23/2011
- by mhasan@corp.popstar.com (Mila Hasan)
- PopStar
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.