Interviews
THE KIDS AREN’T ALL RIGHT: An Interview With Submarine Director Richard Ayoade
The Gronvall Files British actor, writer, and director Richard Ayoade turns 34 this month, around the time that his feature directorial debut Submarine—a big hit in the U.K.–arrives on this side of the Atlantic. Based on the acclaimed novel by Joe Dunthorne, the movie is a whip-smart coming-of-age comedy set in Wales, about a very…
Read the full article » No Comments »Digital Nation: ‘Viva Riva!’ … think ‘Harder They Come’ in Africa
Remember the jolt of excitement you experienced watching “The Harder They Come,” “City of God” and “Amores Perros” for the first time? How raw depictions of violence, sex, corruption and poverty flowed organically from the directors’ choices of actors, locations and music, whose singularity couldn’t have been faked or synthesized? These stories may have been…
Read the full article » No Comments »Interview: Jodie Foster’s Tango With Depression In The Beaver
Jodie Foster’s directed a third feature. The one with Mel Gibson and the beaver hand-puppet? The Beaver is a rich fable about depression and fear and hope, piercing, personal, bruised. (I think it liked it more than a few opening week critics.) While Gibson’s two roles are his best (and most intense) in memory, other…
Read the full article » No Comments »The Gronvall Files: Tops in His Division: An Interview with Win Win Director Tom McCarthy
By Andrea Gronvall Who says you can’t go home again? Actor/writer/director Tom McCarthy, inspired by his memories as a high school wrestler in his hometown of New Providence, New Jersey, collaborated with his close friend and former wrestling teammate Joe Tiboni, a lawyer and first-time screenwriter, to create the funny and heartwarming new indie feature…
Read the full article » No Comments »The Gronvall Files: Richard Press and Philip Gefter: Partners Behind Documentary Bill Cunningham New York
By Andrea Gronvall As a breed, film critics are generally sartorially challenged, but I’ll freely admit to enjoying Vogue, Vanity Fair, and the style coverage in The New York Times–particularly the “On the Street” column that’s photographed, written, and composed by the paper’s long-time fashion chronicler Bill Cunningham. A colorful collage revealing trends Cunningham spots…
Read the full article » No Comments »Spotlight: Ari Gold on Adventures of Marketing Adventures of Power
Three years ago, filmmaker Ari Gold made a little film called Adventures of Power, a quirky comedy about a dorky air drummer (played by Gold himself) who pursues his air drumming dream all the way fro New Mexico to New … Jersey where he battles Adrian Grenier for a $2000 smackeroos. Unfortunately for Gold, the…
Read the full article » No Comments »“The Film That Changed My Life”: Richard Kelly On Brazil
Robert K. Elder’s latest book, “The Film that Changed My Life,” came together as he met filmmakers as part of his regular writing assignments, and then got them to expand on one film that changed their lives, and what form that “change” took. Among the thirty equally appealing conversations, Kevin Smith talks Slacker; Danny Boyle,…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »The Gronvall Files: Good Company: A Conversation with The Company Men Director John Wells
As this year’s Sundance Film Festival unfolds, one of the films that made a splash there a year ago, The Company Men, John Wells’s feature directorial debut, is gathering steam in its commercial rollout. The acclaimed writer-producer behind TV hits like ER and The West Wing, as well as Southland (which found a new home…
Read the full article » No Comments »Interview: In Arm’s Way With Danny Boyle
In 127 Hours, Danny Boyle doesn’t present Aron Ralston as any kind of idealist of the great outdoors, or as a man surmounting the wilderness. Rather, the climbing enthusiast who was trapped for days in a Utah canyon by a fallen boulder is a blithe young man who may have reached the limits of his…
Read the full article » No Comments »Digital Nation: Four Lions
Besides December 7, 1941, two other dates will live in infamy as long as wars against tyranny are fought. Americans will continue to mark September 11, 2001, for as long as there are people who can recall the sight of New York’s World Trade Center crumbling into ash and dust. For Britons still wary of…
Read the full article » No Comments »A Conversation with Tamara Drewe Director Stephen Frears
Interview by Andrea Gronvall – We shot it late in the year–in September, not in mid-summer. By September the sun was starting to get low in the sky, so that’s when it looks especially beautiful. And this [the story] had to cover all of the seasons, so you wanted a time of the year that gave you the most possibilities.
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Digital Nation: Down Terrace
One of the knocks against portrayals of organized crime in American movies and television is that they tend to make criminality look like a reasonable career choice, until the bullets and subpoenas start flying, anyway. The same applies for the use of drugs, alcohol, tobacco and firearms. It’s fun until it isn’t. There’s nothing even…
Read the full article » No Comments »Digital Nation: Barry Munday
As red herrings go, it’s tough to beat castration. The title character of Chris D’Arienzo’s truly offbeat comedy, Barry Munday, undergoes just such an operation. It’s required after the father of a promiscuous teenager slams a trumpet into crotch of the two-bit, happy-hour lothario in a movie theater. Poor Barry didn’t even have time to…
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Catfish directors Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman, star Nev Schulman
DP/30 – The dynamic trio of filmmaker/subjects from the Sundance sensation Catfish talk with David Poland about how and why they made the film.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Interview: The Savory Sound of Fatih Akin’s Soul Kitchen
Music is both architecture and pulse in Fatih Akin’s tasty, generous farcical food-com, “Soul Kitchen.” Music’s there from the start of writing the script, he tells me, as well as confessing a nasty addiction to something called “vinyl.”
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Bright Star, director Jane Campion, actor Ben Whishaw (TIFF ’09)
The complete version of this interview got lost in the shuffle. Apologies. Never too late, I guess.
Read the full article » 5 Comments »The Gronvall Files:Going the Distance from Fact to Fiction with Director Nanette Burstein
Change is good, although it’s not always easy to reinvent oneself. But New York filmmaker Nanette Burstein, a Best Documentary Feature Oscar nominee for On the Ropes (which she co-directed with Brett Morgen), doesn’t miss a step in her transition from nonfiction film to narrative features.
Read the full article » No Comments »The Gronvall Files, An Interview with Lisa Cholodenko, Director of The Kids Are All Right
Family Matters : An Interview with Lisa Cholodenko, Director of The Kids Are All Right We may only be halfway through the year, but one thing you can bet on: come the end of December, Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right will score among many 2010 Top Ten lists. The director made a huge…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Mark Hopkins Director of Living in Emergency
In this podcast, Noah interviews Mark Hopkins, director of the documentary Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors without Borders. They talk about real-life heroes, The Hurt Locker, Apocalypse Now, and the shocking reality of many non-Westerners’ lives. Listen to Noah Forrest Podcast with Mark Hopkins
Read the full article » No Comments »Interview with Juan Jose Campanella: The Eyes Have It
This year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film went to an Argentine romantic crime thriller that few people beyond Academy voters and film festival goers were lucky enough to have seen: The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de sus ojos), directed by Juan Jose Campanella, a filmmaker who calls both New York and Argentina home….
Read the full article »
