OFCS members don’t just write film reviews. Here are several articles you might find interesting.
Interviews
Matthias Schoenaerts – Far From the Madding Crowd
Robert Hoffman
Kristen Lopez @ Journeys in Classic Film
- Excerpt: Technicolor specialist Robert Hoffman talks The Unfinished Dance and other color wonders.
Thomas Vinterberg – Far From the Madding Crowd
Tom Green & Joe Dempsie – Monsters: Dark Continent
Festivals: General Coverage
19 Movies to Watch: Independent Film Festival Boston
Norm Schrager @ Meet In the Lobby
“And That’s How I Got To Be Rich”: George Lucas and Stephen Colbert on the New ‘Star Wars,’ Critics, and Those Special Editions
The Best and Worst Films of the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival
The Best and Worst Films of the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival
Brad Bird and Janeane Garofalo on Computer Animation, ‘Mission: Impossible,’ and Imagining the Future
How ‘True Detective’ Shot McConaughey’s Monologues and Other Revelations From Cary Fukunaga’s Tribeca Talk
“It’s Why People Don’t Pick Their Nose on CNN”: Words of Wisdom From Shia LaBeouf, Producer
“There’s No Prescription”: Christopher Nolan and Bennett Miller on Influences, Fatherhood, and the Ending of ‘Inception’
Festivals: Individual Reviews
‘CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap’ at Tribeca
Goodfellas’ at Tribeca
Grandma’ at Tribeca
Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi
- Excerpt: demands audiences to separate what is trending from what is true.
Hot Docs 2015: Radical Grace
- Excerpt: The world is changing faster than ever before and its institutions must change with it. Radical Grace provides a fascinating snapshot of that change in progress.
Hot Docs 2015: Western
- Excerpt: “If they’d do within the Beltway what they force everyone else to do along the border, we’d be a much better country.”
Hot Docs Review: ‘Being Canadian’
Pat Mullen @ Point of View
- Excerpt: What the Canadian equivalent to American cheese?
Hot Docs Review: ‘Daughter of the Lake’
- Excerpt: The film presents water as a life source, but it ultimately asks the audience if this source should have a limited lifespan or one that flows in an endless cycle.
Hot Docs Review: ‘Deprogrammed’
- Excerpt: Film looks at ‘deprogrammer’ Ted Patrick, who extracted members from cults and treated brainwashing in unorthodox ways.
Hot Docs Review: ‘How to Change the World’
- Excerpt: Thrilling and inspiring
Hot Docs Review: Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
- Excerpt: Doc elevates the art form.
Hot Docs Review: ‘Stay Awhile’
- Excerpt: n a stroke akin to 2013’s ode to back up singers 20 Feet from Stardom, Edwards brings the lives and music of The Bells into the spotlight.
Hot Docs Review: ‘The Amina Profile’
- Excerpt: Scarier than anything in ‘Citizenfour’
Hot Docs Review: ‘The Cult of JT Leroy
Hot Docs Review: ‘Tig’
- Excerpt: Tig’ opened the 2015 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
‘Live From New York!’ at Tribeca
‘Maggie’ at Tribeca
Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
Monty Python at Tribeca
Roseanne for President’ at Tribeca
Sugar Coated
- Excerpt: Director Michele Hozer gets the recipe just right in this doc about the dangers of excess sugar.
Tribeca Film Festival 2015: “Dirty Weekend”
Kenji Fujishima @ The House Next Door
Tribeca Film Festival 2015: “In Transit”
Kenji Fujishima @ The House Next Door
Tribeca Film Festival 2015: “Sleeping with Other People”
Kenji Fujishima @ The House Next Door
Tribeca Film Festival 2015: “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “Anesthesia”
Kenji Fujishima @ The House Next Door
Tribeca Film Festival 2015: “Virgin Mountain” and “Sworn Virgin”
Kenji Fujishima @ The House Next Door
Tributes
Richard Corliss (1944-2015)
Awards Coverage
Oscar Preview: Weekend of Apr. 24-26, 2015
- Excerpt: A look at the Oscar chances of “The Water Diviner.”
Television
The Americans: Dimebag
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
Bates Motel: Persuasion
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
Bates Motel: The Deal
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
Bates Motel: Un-Breakable
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
Gotham: Beasts of Prey
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
Gotham: Under the Knife
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
Essays
Bloodsucking Straights: Inherent Vice and the Undeath of Counterculture
Andrew Wyatt @ The Curator Magazine
- Excerpt: Perhaps most the confounding truth uncovered by Larry “Doc” Sportello during his investigation is the extent to which the language, symbols, and very ranks of 1960s counterculture have been wholly infiltrated and subverted, its “claim jumped by evildoers,” in the memorable phrasing of the film’s chimerical narrator, Sortilège.
Destroy All Monsters: The Ghettoization Of Miles Morales As SPIDER-MAN
Luchino Visconti’s Activist Cinema
- Excerpt: His reputation today rests largely on his beautifully sculpted his portraits of life in the aristocracy and the social world of the rich and titled in films like Senso (1954), The Leopard (1934) and Death in Venice (1971), worlds he knew intimately from his own life, yet he began his film career with a film that has been called by some the first masterpiece of neorealism.
Make Movies the Adam Sandler Way With Flavorwire’s Happy Madison Productions Mad Libs!
- Excerpt: If you pay enough attention to these movies (a bit of an ask, I know!) you’ll notice some, um, patterns to their storytelling and creation. To demonstrate, we got our hands on the secret formula for Happy Madison’s success — and now you can pitch movies to Sandler and co. too, via that old road-trip fave, the Mad Lib.
No Hiding: Mohammad Rasoulof
- Excerpt: Mohammad Rasoulof is the very model of the filmmaker as defiant activist, an Iranian artist who confronts injustice and repression through his cinema knowing full well the consequences of such an act.
Orson Welles: The Enigmatic Independent
- Excerpt: … for all his fascination with the dark hearts of flawed heroes and fallen leaders, Welles was an artist by nature and an optimist at heart.
Rene Clair’s Hat Trick
- Excerpt: … it was like Clair burst forth upon the international scene fully formed. But that’s because his final silent film—and his first comic masterpiece—The Italian Straw Hat (1927) did not arrive stateside until much later, and then in a version cut by an entire reel.
‘ The Sopranos,’ ‘Mad Men,’ and How Our Obsession With Series Finales Is Hurting TV
- Excerpt: And that’s why it’s so infuriating to read clueless inventories of “loose ends we hope Mad Men wraps up” and “what needs to be resolved in the final season” (yes indeed, what needs to be resolved), as though this is a show that’s ever been about tidy conclusions and clean resolutions; that’s why complaints about recent episodes not going exactly where we think they “should” (from websites or fans or, worse, websites aggregating fans) are so headache-inducing — because Mad Men has never been about fan service.
When Did Film Get So Cynical About Journalism?
- Excerpt: One could argue that the noticeable shift in how movies portray journalists has lined up almost precisely with the rise of tabloid journalists, who target and smear such figures as, say, ‘True Story’ producer Brad Pitt and star James Franco. But that’s ignoring the obvious influencer: movies are more cynical about journalists because people are more cynical about journalists, and people are more cynical about journalists because of journalists doing cynicism-worthy shit.
Why Not Everything Is a Reboot (Except Everything Kind of Is)
- Excerpt: So when Franich writes about “retcon optimism,” he’s talking about reboot culture, in which our enthusiasm for franchises that have long since passed their expiration date is fed by constant assurances that no, don’t worry, they’re starting over, they’ll get it right this time. It’s a tacit understanding between those who make movies (and TV, and video games, and so on) and those who consume them that as long as they keep going back to the basics, we’ll keep ponying up our hard-earned dollars, viewership, and loyalty.
Why the Old-School Movie House Is Worth Fighting For
- Excerpt: How do increasingly anachronistic single screens like the Ziegfeld stay in business? And, what’s more, should they?
Reviews of Short Films
O Rebocador
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Portuguese Short Film Review
A Outra Vida
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Portuguese Short Film Review
Other Articles
Aqui, em Lisboa
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Portuguese Feature Film produced by IndieLisboa – International Independent Film Festival.
Book vs. Movie: Which One Wins? Part 1: The Movie
Brando Estate Holding “One-Eyed Jacks”?
Hollywood Legends Up Close and Personal
Betty Jo Tucker @ Movie Addict Headquarters
- Excerpt: A lively podcast with Joan Kramer and David Heeley discussing “In the Company of Legends,” their terrific book about the many film star documentaries they worked on together.
International Star Power: Famous Foreign Actresses
Robert Cashill @ Biography.com
- Excerpt: On Penelope Cruz and other overseas actresses who made good in Hollywood.
The Least-Anticipated Summer Movies of 2015
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
Monday Memo: PBS Decides to Keep Docs in Primetime, Doug Block’s D-Word Goes 3.0
Jordan M. Smith @ Stranger Than Fiction
Rabo de Peixe
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Portuguese Documentary Feature Review
The Morning After: Apr. 27, 2015
- Excerpt: Short reviews of “Home,” “American Splendor” and “Jupiter Ascending.”
