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Frederick Wiseman’s Latest: “Inside the Secret World of London’s NATIONAL GALLERY”

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Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, now in his sixth decade of filmmaking, always gets good reviews but his latest, a film that immerses its audience in London’s National Gallery and we open November 21 at the Royal Theater, is garnering raves. From Manohla Dargis at the New York Times (“Like most of Mr. Wiseman’s work, the movie is at once specific and general, fascinating in its pinpoint detail and transporting in its cosmic reach.”), to Tim Grierson at Paste Magazine (“Nourishing and enthralling, NATIONAL GALLERY is the work of a man still invested in the arts, in the world and in people.”), to David Denby at the New Yorker (“Holds the movie viewer in a state of intense and pleasurable concentration”), even the toughest of critics are telling us that Mr. Wiseman’s latest is not to be missed.

The Daily Beast just published a good piece about the film by Tim Teeman:

Inside The Secret World of London’s National Gallery

“Frederick Wiseman’s entrancing ‘National Gallery’ roves freely around the great British institution, turning its lens on both visitors and the people that run the show.
“Observing the observers observing: there is a brave and remarkable poise to Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery, a three-hour documentary presently showing at New York’s Film Forum—before a wider release on November 21—which takes the viewer on an ambling, extremely nosey tour of London’s National Gallery, focusing on both visitors and the staff who run it.”The most wonderful thing about it, the moments Wiseman keeps studding the documentary with, are images of people looking at pictures on walls. This, unexpectedly, is fascinating: you watch as they/we crinkle our faces up, really looking at brushwork; or walk in front of a canvas, and then walk back; or quickly move on, and then return; or sit, rapt in contemplation; or look confused or elated, tired or utterly immersed.”Given the amount of explosions and dumb sex comedies on our cinema screens, how can you not applaud a three-hour film that explores our reception and appreciation of art, and how that art is curated, lit, and displayed for us?“National Gallery is Wiseman’s latest, burrowing journey into an institution in a film-making career that has spanned almost sixty years, including movies like High School (1968), Missile (1987), Central Park (1989), and La Danse (2009), about the Paris Opera Ballet. Wiseman goes to places or into the reality of a lived experience—a hospital, army basic training, or a police precinct—and quietly, without his presence overtly felt, interrogates and observes it.”There is something imperiously subversive about National Gallery. Unlike the loud, pantomimishly structured documentaries of today, the parade of freaks and freakish, combusting and self-combusting, and warzones in gruesome close-up, there is no dramatic arc, no salivating over conflicts, no set-ups. There are no captions explaining who anybody is, no explanations of what they are doing. There is no spoon-feeding of anything.”

Read the complete Daily Beast piece by clicking here.

Frederick Wiseman by Larry Busacca for Getty Images

PELICAN DREAMS in Newsweek: “Stuck with the Bill.”

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What’s it like to try to get to know a flying dinosaur? In PELICAN DREAMS, Sundance and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Judy Irving (“The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill”) follows a wayward California brown pelican from her “arrest” on the Golden Gate Bridge into care at a wildlife rehabilitation facility, and from there explores pelicans’ nesting grounds, Pacific coast migration, and survival challenges.

Newsweek Magazine just published this piece about the film. It begins, “‘A friend of mine was in this traffic jam,’ Judy Irving recalls. ‘She said, ‘You’ll never guess why I was held up on the bridge.” It’s not unusual for traffic to come to a stop on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge: There’s the ever-more-L.A.-like traffic, the occasional protest or suicide jumper. But in this case it was a pelican that stopped the show and Irving knew she had her next movie.”

http://vimeo.com/102655510
Judy Irving (filmmaker) & Gigi (pelican) in the aviary at International Bird Rescue.

Indiewire Interview with FORCE MAJEURE Filmmaker: “The tourists dressed up in neon colors, and the goggles, the well-to-do people who don’t have problems in their lives. I was fond of the idea of messing things up for those people.”

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On October 31 we open the Swedish film FORCE MAJEURE, Ruben Östlund’s wickedly funny and precisely observed psychodrama about a seemingly model married couple who suddenly find themselves in crisis after the husband does something extremely cowardly and selfish. Written and directed by Östlund (Play, Involuntary), the film was a word-of-mouth sensation at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where it won the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard. Östlund recently sat for an interview with Indiewire’s Ryan Lattanzio to talk about this top contender for the Foreign Language Oscar:

Indiewire: What initially interested you about a couple in crisis?

Östlund: It started with the avalanche: I had been skiing a lot and when I was between 20 and 25, I was making ski films in the Alps, traveling around Europe and in North America. Then I went to film school, and I left the ski world behind me, and I was trying to go back to the ski world, and to highlight the absurdity of that world. I was inspired by a YouTube clip of a group of people sitting at an outdoor restaurant filming an avalanche tumbling down the mountain. I was interested in the three seconds where it goes from “wow, beautiful” to nervous laughter to total panic.

Then I developed the idea and got to the point where someone said, “What if the father is running away from his wife and his kids when this happens?” Immediately I understood that this situation is raising questions about gender, expectations on gender, the role of the man and the role of the woman. If you see the ski resort, it’s totally constructed around the nuclear family. All the apartments are made for a mother, a father and their kids. It was a setup of holiday, the avalanche, the man doing something that is so forbidden when it comes to the expectations of the man, and that made me dive into the questions in between the relationships after this incident.

Ruben Östlund



I read sociological studies about airplane hijacking. You can tell from this study that the frequency of divorce is extremely high after airplane hijacking. It points out expectations about how we should behave in a crisis situation and when a man isn’t the hero he’s expected to be, couples have a really hard time getting over that.

What’s so absurd about the world of ski resorts?

The tourists dressed up in neon colors, and the goggles, the well-to-do people who don’t have problems in their lives. I was fond of the idea of messing things up for those people, having them meeting human mechanisms that you mostly see in war or a nature catastrophe: they don’t have any experience how they would react when in survival instinct mood. The ski resort itself is like a metaphor: there’s a constant struggle between man and nature. The civilized, trying to control the force of nature. The resort is always trying to stabilize the snow. There was something about that that fit the subject of the film very well.

To read the full interview, go to Indiewire.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjjzVbTBF8o

 

LIFE INSIDE OUT: “Boy’s Triumph Over Autism Inspires New Film”

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From the San Diego Union-Tribune, October 2, by Pam Kragen:

“Boy’s triumph over autism inspires new film: Actress writes movie that draws on her onetime mentoring relationship with San Marcos college student.”

SAN MARCOS — When he was a toddler, Cal State San Marcos freshman Julian Kalb overcame an autism-related communication disorder with the help of L.A. actress Maggie Baird. Fifteen years later, he’s returning the favor as executive producer for Baird’s new film — a drama inspired by their long-ago mentoring relationship.

“Baird co-wrote and stars in “Life Inside Out,” the story of a mother who helps her socially awkward son find himself through music. Baird produced the low-budget, independent film — which opens a weeklong run Oct. 17 at the UltraStar Cinema Mission Valley — with the financial support of family and friends, including Julian, 20, of San Marcos, and his father, Ken Kalb, of Rancho Santa Fe.

“When Maggie started working with Julian, she was his helper and now, flash-forward 15 years, and he can help his teacher make her dream come true,” said Kalb, a film buff and entrepreneur who has started several software and telecommunications companies. He said he and his son cashed in some of their Apple stock to invest in Baird’s movie.

The title, “Life Inside Out,” comes from a song lyric in the film about discovering your inner self, something experienced in life by Julian and on film by the fictional teen son.

http://www.vimeo.com/106452628

“It’s about living your life authentically and being seen for who you really are,” Baird said. “In the film, the mother is dealing with a child who has not found his thing until music clicks for him, and Julian was definitely an inspiration for that.”

The Kalbs first met Baird in the late 1990s, when they lived on the same block in the L.A. neighborhood of Los Feliz. At the time, Baird was a member of L.A.’s comedy improv group The Groundlings. Kalb asked her if she could do some improv and theater exercises with Julian to help him better express his feelings. Beginning at age 2, Julian could only speak by parroting lines from cartoons and movies and he was unable to carry on a conversation, Kalb said.

Baird said she had no training as a therapist, but she decided to improvise when she first sat down with Julian. When he started talking to her with scripted lines he’d memorized from a Charlie Brown television special, she responded to him as Charlie Brown’s arch-nemesis, Lucy.

“I saw a light go on in his eyes when he saw that I was buying into it and we had long conversations as those characters,” she said. “Gradually over time, I expanded the dialogue so he learned the natural give and take of conversation.”

Baird worked with Julian for two years until the Kalbs moved to Solana Beach. With his newfound love for theater, Julian went on to perform in more than a dozen youth-cast musicals with J*Company in La Jolla. The Torrey Pines High School graduate now lives on campus at Cal State San Marcos, where he’s majoring in visual and performing arts.

“When I get onstage, I don’t feel very nervous at all,” he said. “It’s fun creating a character. I would like to work behind the scenes in the film industry as an executive producer and maybe work as a voice artist.”

Baird stayed in touch with the Kalbs over the years, and said she’s been impressed by how Julian has blossomed.

“He’s funny and charming and is still an amazing mimic,” she said.

Baird began writing the “Life Inside Out” screenplay in 2012 with her friend and fellow singer/comedian Lori Nasso. It’s the dual story of a mother of three who rediscovers her love of music at an open-mic night, and her social outcast son Shane, who finds his own musical voice along the way. She co-stars in the movie with her real-life son, 17-year-old Finneas O’Connell, an actor and singer who fronts the L.A. band The Slightlys.

Since its release on the festival circuit earlier this year, “Life Inside Out” has won 10 awards, picked up a distributor and is opening this month in several cities around the country.

“I’ve been delighted at how well it’s been received,” Baird said. “Audiences have responded so positively. Men and women have come up to me and said over and over ‘this is my story.’ ”

Kalb said that when he and Julian agreed to invest in the movie, they did it out of gratitude and friendship, not expecting it would become a festival hit.

“It’s been a remarkable experience and such a nice surprise,” he said. “We gave Maggie the money because we love her and she’s a life force, not because we expected it to become wildly successful. We’re just happy to be a part of it.”

pam.kragen@utsandiego.com

"Life Inside Out" co-producers Ken and Julian Kalb with screenwriter and star Maggie Baird at the film's screening at the Hollywood Film Festival.

Pillar of the French New Wave, Long Unavailable for Exhibition in the U.S., HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR is Spectacularly Restored

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HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR is the late Alain Resnais’ seminal debut film. A pillar of the French New Wave, long unavailable for exhibition in the United States due to rights issues, HIROSHIMA has been spectacularly restored. We open the film on October 17 at the Royal, Playhouse and Town Center.

Employing a radical use of voice-over narration and quickly-flashbacked scenes, the film tells the story of a brief relationship in post-war Japan between a French actress, played by Oscar nominee Emmanuelle Riva (Amour), and a Japanese architect, played by Eiji Okada (Woman in the Dunes). The Oscar-nominated screenplay was written by Marguerite Duras, who in novels like The Lover, often dealt with European/Asian relationships. Twenty fourteen marks Duras’ centennial. Don’t miss this very special chance to see this gem of world cinema as it was meant to seen, in a dark room, on a big screen, with an audience!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLts830aLlw
Emmanuelle Riva

Interview: “Viggo Mortensen on THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY, LOTR and What His Movies Teach Him”

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On Sunday the Newark Star-Ledger published a very good piece by film critic Stephen Whitty about actor Viggo Mortensen and his excellent new thriller THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY. It provides a glimpse into his unusual history and thoughts on acting, including what he likes about his latest role: “What’s great about this kind of story, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It provokes conjectures about meaning and motivation. It’s always great as an actor to play someone with a secret, but here you have secrets inside secrets… all the characters are lying to some degree, at least to themselves, and that makes for some very interesting roles.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPKvfxN-3UI
Viggo Mortensen and director Hossein Amini on the set of THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Interview: MAY IN THE SUMMER Star-Writer-Director Cherien Dabis on Growing Up in Ohio and Jordan, Making a Movie in the Middle East, and Acting for the First Time

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This week we are very pleased to open MAY IN THE SUMMER, the new film by Amreeka writer-director Cherien Dabis. The film follows sophisticated New Yorker May to her childhood home of Amman, Jordan for her wedding. Shortly after reuniting with her sisters and their long-since divorced parents, myriad familial and cultural conflicts lead May to question the big step she is about to take. It’s a funny, one-of-a-kind movie that also provides a fascinating look at a very foreign and yet, because of the reach of U.S. culture and commerce, familiar place.

What was your initial inspiration for the script?

I grew up spending summers in Jordan with my mom and sisters. We’d stay with my grandparents’ where we slept on mattresses along the floor. It was cramped, there was no privacy and our personalities couldn’t have clashed more. The oppressive heat kept us confined under the same roof, which was just as well because we didn’t have anywhere to go anyway. It was a recipe for family drama.

My family in Jordan never came over to visit us in America. They couldn’t afford it. My cousins managed to come over one summer, as they managed to get a J1 Visa, but they had to work as Au Pairs to be granted the visas. So as a consequence, I didn’t get to spend that much time with them anyway, as they were working a lot. They enjoyed there time over here, though.

When I was 17, my parents separated, and that family rupture has always been a wound I’ve wanted to confront. My mom moved back to Jordan in order to be closer to family, and I found myself spending even more time there. Whereas in the small Ohio town where we lived for most of my younger years, I was considered Arab, in Jordan, I was seen as the American. It was an interesting paradox and a part of my identity that I wanted to explore.

MAY IN THE SUMMER actor-writer-director Cherien Dabis. Photo and interview courtesy of Cohen Media Group.

The subject of interfaith and intercultural marriage is a source of narrative conflict in the film. Can you discuss your direct or indirect experience with this and why you wanted to explore it?

I’ve certainly dated a fair share of people my mother has disapproved of. Attempting to reconcile her disapproval and subsequent prejudices with my own values and personal choices was undoubtedly a struggle large enough to inspire a screenplay. And yet it’s much greater than that. What could appear to simply be my own mom’s draconian belief system is really a symptom of a huge cultural problem: interfaith and intercultural marriage are not only frowned upon in Middle Eastern societies, they’re forbidden. I’ve seen it many times over up close and personal in my own family throughout the years. An uncle or cousin inadvertently creates a family scandal of epic proportions when they fall in love with someone of another religious or ethnic background. It’s an issue that speaks directly to the heart of a major conflict plaguing the Middle East, and therefore, an issue I wanted to explore.

How did you come to choose your primary cast?

I had worked with Hiam Abbass and Alia Shawkat on my first film, and it was such a great experience that I knew I wanted to work with them again. So when I started writing MAY, I immediately knew they’d be right for their roles.

I worked closely with NY-based casting director Cindy Tolan to find the other main cast members. We found actress Nadine Malouf (YASMINE) at an audition in the city. She was incredibly natural and her energy was vibrant, carefree, and fun-loving. She also had wonderful comic timing from the start. A lot of people seem to think that casting directors only hire people who look a certain way, however, that’s not always the case. For directors, they need an individual who can bring their character to life in the film. This means that a whole host of factors should be considered. To learn more about the perception that casting directors only hire attractive actors and actresses, it might be worth reading something like this Friends In Film blog post.

I’ve been a fan of Bill Pullman since Sleepless in Seattle. And while I thought he was the ideal actor for the part, I never realistically thought he would accept. On top of the fact that we were a small indie outfit, I knew I’d have to find someone adventurous enough to travel halfway around the world to shoot entirely in Jordan. I was beyond thrilled when I heard he wanted to do it.

We searched for over a year for an Arab American actor to play May and in the end, had a couple of candidates that we were seriously considering. At the same time, a friend of mine convinced me to audition for her film. We shot a scene from her film, and when she offered me the part, I started thinking about my own film. I was gun shy, but another friend encouraged me to put myself on tape. It was interesting, but I wasn’t convinced. So my friend sent my audition tape along with the auditions of the other actresses for the part to a neutral third party; someone I didn’t know; who knew nothing about the film. This person watched the auditions and wrote an incredibly candid paragraph on why I was the best choice for the part. I didn’t expect this at all but his argument was compelling enough that I called myself back (for another audition) and worked on it until I started to think it was – in fact – the best choice for the film. Eventually I shared my audition with the casting director and producers. Much to my surprise, they didn’t protest and seemed to think it was a natural choice. It made no sense! And the man who for all intents and purposes cast me, Hal Lehrman, became my acting coach. If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t think I would’ve ever had the courage to try it.

What were some of the most interesting challenges this created for you?

Putting myself in the position of actor / director for the first time left me in a much more vulnerable position than I would’ve ever thought. I often found myself struggling to manage my own natural insecurities. Thankfully, I was somewhat prepared for it. I had trained with Hal for a year and a half – specifically working on developing the skill necessary to go from directing to acting and back – constantly. As you can imagine, each requires a completely different mind-set, a very different approach. Directing requires complete control and awareness of what everyone is saying and doing. You’re looking at the big picture and seeing everyone’s point-of-view and yet translating it into the playable action for each actor. Acting, on the other hand, demands letting go entirely, allowing yourself to lose control and attempting to forget what’s about to happen. The way you do it is to immerse yourself in the details of your character’s experience of the story events. This continual shift in perspective created a very interesting challenge.

You shot the film in Jordan. Can you discuss the process that led to choosing Jordan and what it was like shooting there?

My mother is Jordanian, so I’ve spent the last 30 years travelling to Jordan. I’ve seen the country grow and change so remarkably that it’s shocking. One of the most surprising ways it’s changed is that it’s become incredibly Americanized. Twenty years ago, there wasn’t a remnant of anything American anywhere. Finding popular American brands at the supermarket was nearly impossible. Now American fast food chains, shopping malls and car dealerships nestle on every corner of Amman’s streets. The city epitomizes the convergence of my two identities in a strangely familiar and often hilariously contradictory way.

Given what little most people know and see of the Middle East, I chose to shoot in Jordan in order to show this highly unexpected Americanized side of the Arab world. I wanted to illuminate the endearing contradictions inherent within a culture so known for it’s disdain of American foreign policy and yet so admiring of American culture from KFC to JLo to Pirates of the Caribbean. And even still, Amman is a strong Islamic, Arab capital. Nowhere else in the Arab world can one find such a unique melding of ancient and modern, American and Arab.

Of course we encountered all kinds of logistical challenges during production. Jordan is quite a bureaucratic place, and its pace didn’t always agree with the speed at which our production needed to move. There was always a lag on approvals and permits and the process of getting them was often confusing and encumbered. On top of that, Jordan’s film industry is still relatively new and many resources need to be brought into the country from neighboring Lebanon. As the borders with Syria were closed due to the political unrest there, we had to limit our equipment because it had to be flown in as opposed to driven from Lebanon through Syria and into Jordan, the way it would normally and much less expensively be done. We had to bring in all of our key crew and our main and secondary cast flew in from New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London and Beirut.

And then there was the food poisoning and heat stroke. We were shooting at the height of summer in Jordan, and at the lowest place on earth, the Dead Sea, it was a whopping 114 degrees!

In terms of setting, was your choice of the Dead Sea as the site of the bachelorette party symbolic or significant to your mind?

Absolutely. I’ve been going there since I was a kid and wanted to capture the duality of what it is and what it’s become –a serenely quiet and peaceful place known for it’s soothing, healing waters yet surrounded by conflict and hostility with occupied Palestine a stones-throw away. (No pun intended.) And – perhaps the best part – home to enormous luxury resorts and spas known for their Spring Break-like party atmospheres. There’s a whole lot simmering beneath the surface and nothing is quite as it seems. For a movie aimed at portraying the contradictory nature of its setting, it would’ve been criminal not to set the bachelorette party there. Not to mention, as the lowest point on the face of the earth, it seemed the perfect location in which to bring the story conflict to a head.

There seems to be a growing cinema landscape in the region. Did you feel this and how did it impact you?

I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of the growing cinema landscape in the region for some time now. Ever since I shot my first short film in the West Bank back in 2005. It’s been amazing to see it change and grow. While I shot part of Amreeka in the West Bank, May in the Summer is my first feature shot entirely in the Middle East.

On the one hand, it can be frustrating to be a part of something that’s still in process. It means serious struggle due to the fact that there isn’t always the support necessary to make things happen the way you envision. It means taking on much more than one individual is physically capable of in order to produce what is intended. I think all my key crew who were brought in from the U.S. and Lebanon felt that.

On the other hand, it’s immensely gratifying to feel part of something new, to contribute to and be inspired by the growth of a burgeoning industry. Most films that shoot in Jordan shoot Jordan for another place – Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq. The stories for these films are mostly war-driven and set in villages and deserts close to the borders. May in the Summer was an American production not only shooting Jordan for Jordan, but also featuring the country as a character in the film and revealing it’s cosmopolitan side as well it’s natural and spiritual landscapes. In some ways, the film is a love letter to the country in which I partly grew up.