The Next Two Weeks in Awards Season (January Edition)

Sunday January 3

National Society of Film Critics Awards

Monday January 4

ACE (American Cinema Editors) Eddie Award Nominations

North Carolina Film Critics Society Awards

Georgia Film Critics Society Nominations

Tuesday January 5

PGA (Producers Guild of America) Nominations

ADG (Art Directors Guild) Nominations

Denver Film Critics Society Nominations

Wednesday January 6

WGA (Writers Guild of America) Nominations

ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) Nominations

Thursday January 7

CDG (Costume Designers Guild) Nominations

USC Scripter Nominations

Alliance of Women Film Journalists Awards

Central Ohio Film Critics Awards

Friday January 8

BAFTA Nominations

AMPAS Nomination Voting Closes

Georgia Film Critics Society Awards

Saturday January 9

Houston Film Critics Awards

Sunday January 10

Golden Globe Awards

Monday January 11

Denver Film Critics Society Awards

Tuesday January 12

Visual Effects Society Nominations

Gay & Lesbian Critics Dorian Awards Nominations

CAS (Cinema Audio Society) Nominations

DGA (Directors Guild of America) Nominations

Wednesday January 13

Makeup & Hairstyling Guild Award Nominations

Razzie Award Nominations

Thursday January 14

Oscar Nominations Announced

The Next Week in Awards Season

Thursday December 10:

Golden Globe Nominations

Friday December 11:

Detroit Film Critics Society Nominations

Saturday December 12:

European Film Awards

Sunday December 13: 

San Francisco Film Critics Society Awards

Monday December 14:

(BFCA) Critic’s Choice Awards Nominations

Online Society of Film Critics Awards

Dallas-Fort Worth Critics Association Awards

Chicago Film Critics Nominations

Tuesday December 15:

Detroit Film Critics Society Awards

Phoenix Film Critics Nominations

Kansas City Film Critics Society Nominations

Wednesday December 16:

AFI Awards

Chicago Film Critics Awards

Austin Film Critics Association Nominations

 

 

 

 

 

The Next Two Weeks in Awards Season

Tuesday December 1

National Board of Review Awards

Annie Award Nominations

Satellite Awards Nominations

Wednesday December 2

New York Film Critics Circle Awards

Saturday December 5

Washington DC Area Film Critics Nominations

Sunday December 6

LA Film Critics Circle Awards

British Independent Film Awards

Boston Society of Film Critics Awards

(probably New York Online though they have not yet confirmed a date)

Monday December 7

Online Society of Film Critics Nominations

Washington DC Area Film Critics Awards

Tuesday December 8

NAACP Image Award Nominations

Wednesday December 9

SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Nominations

Thursday December 10

Golden Globe Nominations

Friday December 11

Detroit Film Critics Society Nominations

Saturday December 12

European Film Awards

Sunday December 13

San Francisco Film Critics Society Awards

Monday December 14

BFCA (Critics Choice Awards) Nominations

Online Society of Film Critics Awards

Dallas-Fort Worth Critics Association Awards

Chicago Film Critics Nominations

(Probably St. Louis Critics Awards as well, but they have not yet confirmed the date)

Tuesday December 15: 

Phoenix Film Critics Nominations

Kansas City Film Critics Society Nominations

Wednesday December 16:

AFI Awards

Chicago Film Critics Nominations

Austin Film Critics Association Nominations

 

San Diego has not set a date yet but will likely be in this two-week period as well

 

Narrative Fiction Project: Serial Killer on the Loose

For our narrative, we worked to creative a comedic horror film with minimal dialogue. Minimal dialogue meant minimal opportunities for actors to mishandle the scenes. Neither actor had much experience with acting. Mac (our “murderer”) had acted in one short before (where he ironically also played a serial killer.) Pat (our victim) had done a small amount of Elon Tonight work, but had never really stretched himself. Over the years, my directing had pretty much been limited to focusing on technical aspects, and letting my actors wing it. Here, I tried to stretch myself a little bit as far as directing goes. I worked with Mac on a variety of blank stares and soulless expressions to create maximum ‘serial killer’ appeal. For the most part, he knew how to play that character, though. Creepy is not that difficult to play. The main area I had to coach him on is the speed with which he speaks. The scene in the bathroom and the scene on the couch were entirely incoherent in early takes, because all of his words bled into one another. Aside from speaking to quickly, however, he worked fairly well. Working with Pat was a different story. Pat was…stiff. And I wasn’t really sure how to get him to loosen up. It wasn’t that he wasn’t comfortable around the director. He’s a close friend, but short of giving him a line reading (and then even after doing so), I just could not, for the life of me, get him to seem a little more…natural with the lines. In the end, I tried to cut his scenes as best I could to give his deliveries a more natural exchange. But also, I didn’t really have a motivation for him. I joked around a bit with motivation (you want to make some kickass eggs or you need to take an explosive dump), but really, in a film like this, those WERE the extent of his motivations, which weren’t much to play with. Another area I had to deal with was keeping the actors motivated on set. The only way I could get Pat on set was to deliberately withhold the length of time I thought the shoot would take to get him on set. He imagined he would be in and out in two or three hours. I did not comment on this notion. I instead plied him with free food to keep him going. It was difficult keeping both actors going as the night got late. I had to keep joking about, keeping them comfortable, lowering the thermostat, etc so as to make them feel as at home and not uncomfortable as possible. Finally, this shoot forced me (to an extent) to focus on blocking. Pat had to bend down in certain ways to make the next shot work (like when Mac appears behind him the first time). Mac had to stand in the exact right place in the doorway, and hit his marks for focus on scenes where he entered into frame.

In short, this was an all around informative experience, even if it didn’t involve directing particularly complex parts.

See the full film here.

Documentary Project: Renaissance Fair

The process of making documentaries has always been a difficult experience for me. Although there is plenty of creative freedom to be found in the post production of the doc, the actual shooting tends to be very uncontrolled. As a filmmaker, you are largely unaware of what your subject is going to say, if they are going to say the kinds of things you want them to say so you can tell the story you intended, etc. When shooting B-roll on a shoot like this, since you do not know the whole story, yet, you are unsure if the B-roll you are capturing will adequately underlay your story. On top of that, on an almost “man on the street” shoot like ours, you lack any of the controlled lighting of a narrative film, which means much of the image comes down to framing. When shooting, subjects move about in the frame as they speak, and you don’t want to stop them to reframe and thereby ruin their thought process. Of course there was the guerrilla aspect as well. We could not record strong audio because of rules preventing video recording within the fair, a problem that obviously would not have existed on a narrative shoot. In short, it is the absence of control that has always frustrated me in the doc process. In a way, that lack of control stimulates creativity, however. You have to find a way to tell a story with what you have, with what you did’t plan in advance for. Documentaries also offer the age old “stranger than fiction” mentality. I can honestly say, I would not have created a man in my head who says “he is himself” when he dresses like a pirate and speaks to a mechanized dragon on his shoulder, or the two well spoken educators who get their freak on with their daughter on the weekends by dressing up as butterflies and gouls and attending renaissance fairs. And let’s not forget the shirtless wolf pelt man who talks about how far the United States has come since the Renaissance. These people are such vivid characters, ones more ludicrous than many I would write about. At the same time, when the stories are “true,” it can be difficult to find conflict. These people were unequivocally happy about their situation. Everyone interviewed refused to point at ANY dark side. In a narrative, we could have manufactured some conflict. In a documentary, you can manufacture conflict, or at least emphasize a smaller conflict, but only if your subjects give you SOMETHING to work with. You are entirely at their mercy. In short, making a documentary was an exasperating, but informative experience, that challenged my group in the best way possible.

View the video here

2015-16 Awards Schedule (Updating Regularly)

I update throughout the season, and try to include everything as dates are announced, including smaller regional critics groups.

November:

1- Hollywood Film Awards

3- British Independent Film Award Nominations

14- AMPAS Governors Awards

24- Independent Spirit Award Nominations

30- Gotham Awards

December:

1- National Board of Review Awards

1- Annie Award Nominations

1- Satellite Awards Nominations

2- New York Film Critics Circle Awards

5- Washington DC Area Film Critics Nominations

5- IDA Documentary Awards

6- LA Film Critics Circle Awards

6- British Independent Film Awards

6- Boston Society of Film Critics Awards

6- New York Film Critics Online Awards

7- Online Society of Film Critics Nominations

7- Washington DC Area Film Critics Awards

8- NAACP Image Award Nominations

9- SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Nominations

10- Golden Globe Nominations

11- Detroit Film Critics Society Nominations

12- European Film Awards

13- San Francisco Film Critics Society Awards

14- BFCA (Critics Choice Awards) Nominations*

14- Online Society of Film Critics Awards

14- Dallas-Fort Worth Critics Association Awards

14- Chicago Film Critics Nominations

15- Detroit Film Critics Society Awards

15- Phoenix Film Critics Nominations

15- Kansas City Film Critics Society Nominations

16- AFI Awards

16- Austin Film Critics Association Nominations

16- Chicago Film Critics Awards

20- Kansas City Film Critics Society Awards

21- Utah Film Critics Awards

22- Phoenix Film Critics Awards

23- Florida Film Critics Awards

28- North Carolina Film Critics Society Nominations

28- Alliance of Women Film Journalists Nominations

29- Austin Film Critics Association Awards

These don’t yet have dates, but are typically always in December:  Boston Online, Toronto Critics, San Diego Critics, Indiana Film Journalists, Las Vegas Film Critics, Southeastern Film Critics, St. Louis Critics, Black Reel Awards, Nevada Film Critics

January:

3- National Society of Film Critics Awards

4- ACE (American Cinema Editors) Eddie Award Nominations

4- North Carolina Film Critics Society Awards

4- Georgia Film Critics Society Nominations

5- PGA (Producers Guild of America) Nominations

5- ADG (Art Directors Guild) Nominations

5- Denver Film Critics Society Nominations

6- WGA (Writers Guild of America) Nominations

6- ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) Nominations

7- CDG (Costume Designers Guild) Nominations

7- USC Scripter Nominations

7- Alliance of Women Film Journalists Awards

7- Central Ohio Film Critics Awards

8- BAFTA Nominations

8- AMPAS Nomination Voting Closes

8- Georgia Film Critics Society Awards

10- Golden Globe Awards

11- Denver Film Critics Society Awards

12- Visual Effects Society Nominations

12- Gay & Lesbian Critics Dorian Awards Nominations

12- CAS (Cinema Audio Society) Nominations

12- DGA (Directors Guild of America) Nominations

13- Makeup & Hairstyling Guild Award Nominations

13- Razzie Award Nominations

14- Oscar Nominations Announced

15- London Film Critics Circle Nominations

17- BFCA Critics Choice Awards

17- London Film Critics Circle Awards

19- Gay & Lesbian Critics Dorian Awards

23- PGA Awards

29- ACE Eddie Awards

30- SAG Awards

31- ADG Awards

These don’t have dates, but are always typically January: Vancouver Film Critics, Houston Film Critics, North Texas, Oklahoma Film Critics, Iowa Film Critics

February:

2- Visual Effects Society Awards

5- NAACP Image Awards

6- DGA Awards

6- Annie Awards

13- WGA Awards

13- Academy Scientific and Tech Awards

14- BAFTA Awards

14- ASC Awards

20- Makeup & Hairstyling Guild Awards

20- CAS Awards

20- USC Scripter Awards

23- CDG Awards

23- AMPAS final voting closes

27- Razzie Awards

27- Independent Spirit Awards

28- Oscars

The Conversation (1974) Review

The 1970s brought Francis Ford Coppola to the Oscars many times, most notably for the Godfather films and Apocalypse Now. Alongside this trio of recognizable masterpieces, however, lay another quieter Oscar nominated Coppola outing: The Conversation.

The Conversation invites the viewer into an eerily prescient look at world where expert surveillance teams work for both private and governmental sectors to monitor conversation with the latest technology. Anyone with the cash can acquire expert surveillance, regardless of the morality behind the practice. Within this world stands Harry Caul (Gene Hackman in a career-best performance) as a highly secretive loner, who has made a name for himself as one of the best in the business. When Caul’s assignment leads him to believe he has provided recordings that will lead to a murder, however, he must confront his long-dormant conscience and decide whether he can live with his constant passivity, or if he must get involved.

The Conversation typically pops up in conversations regarding Walter Murch’s sound design. Though Murch is best known for his flashier sound design in Apocalypse Now, his work in the Conversation may stand as his crowning achievement. Utterly immersive and groundbreaking, Murch’s mix becomes a character itself within the film, slowly beckoning the viewer in through choppy, difficult to decipher audio recorded in the opening conversation, and gradually revealing more information as time goes on, not unlike the film itself. The squeak of rewinding tape serves to transition scenes as well as provide tension, while the overall audio warps and distorts as the film descends into surreal dream-like sequences. Much plays with the tone of recorded line deliveries on replays, showing how the same phrase can mean two very different things depending on one’s preconceptions. Even without the film’s other merits, Murch’s work alone would warrant a viewing.

Fortunately, The Conversation boasts many other positive attributes. Cinematographer, Bill Butler opts to capture much of the film through wide lenses ominously peering in, offering the film an appropriately voyeuristic feel. His framing incorporates a recurring motif of walls, to show Caul’s separation from the rest of the people in his world, as well as depicting Caul all alone in numerous wides. The lifting is gritty and dirty, in keeping with the seedy world at the film’s center.

David Shire’s score proves to be somehow innocuous to the point of uncomfortable (an intentional choice), lending an even greater sense of unease to the film.

It is Hackman, however, who truly makes the film soar. Often, characters drive the story, but here, Hackman’s character is the story. He deftly manages to imbue an almost autistic man with palpable sorrow, yet also believable madness. Caul is not an inherently sympathetic character, yet through Hackman, he is fully realized. It is the rare performance that appears to be a pure synthesis of actor and character, one is not discernible from the other. Although Hackman’s Popeye Doyle won him the Oscar and is regarded as his crowning performance of the ’70s, it is Harry Caul that reminds the world just what a gem Hackman at his prime was.

The film is certainly a slow burner, but its payoff, as well as a fascinating central character make it more than worth watching. The Conversation may not be remembered in the same way Coppola’s other 70’s efforts are, but it certainly marks an impressive entry in the Coppola canon.

The Imposter (2012)is Review

The expression, ‘stranger than fiction’ has rarely found a use as fitting as describing Bart Layton’s 2012 documentary, The Imposter.

In 1994, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay disappeared while walking home from basketball practice. His family mounted an extensive, desperate search for his whereabouts, but ultimately considered him dead. Three years later, they received a call from Spain, where officials claimed to have found their boy, alive and well, albeit psychologically traumatized. Barclay’s family unwittingly rescued, and procured American citizenship for 24-year-old serial imposter, Frédéric Bourdin, who fooled his way past government officials in Spain and the United States into the home of a grieving family who overlooked obvious inconsistencies, who were willing to believe anything if it meant seeing their boy again. And that was just the beginning.

The Imposter is geared to read cinematically. It is a documentary in the strictest sense of the word, in that it includes actual archive footage, and narrates the progress by using interviews with Bourdin and Barclay’s family, but beyond those documentary trappings, it is as a cinematic as the likes of The Usual Suspects. Layton peppers the film with stylish recreations of events as recalled by both Bourdin and Barclay’s family, giving the film an air of pure narrative cinema. Cinematographers Erik Alexander Wilson and Lynda Hall give these sequences an astonishing life, using off-kilter framing, and moody lighting to create a sense of unease and dread, while also maintaining a sense of aesthetic beauty. The echoey sound design further heightens tension, while Andrew Hulme’s extraordinary edited evokes the pacing and stylish fluidity of the likes of The Social Network. Phrases from interviews bleed into recreated footage, lending the film a stylish meta sensation. All of these factors combine to create something that is incredibly suspenseful to watch. More importantly, the use of recreations allows the film to tell its story with a sense of immediacy. With many documentaries, the events are depicted in hindsight through recollections. Here, the ability to see events unfold, and truly understand the complexity of Bourdin’s plan, and the ways he outsmarted and played officials in both countries is astonishing. Watching the events unfold, even as the viewer knows they are watching the work of a sociopath, it is difficult not to feel invested. The Imposter conjures an unheard of amount of suspense for a documentary. The term “white knuckle thriller” is thrown around too often, yet The Imposter is the type of film that warrants the description.

The film’s musical cues evoke, once again, The Usual Suspects, leaping between quick violin stroke suspense beats to a twisty, unfolding sound of menace, eerily similar to the tune played over Suspect’s ending montage.

It isn’t just the film’s impressive cinematic style that makes it so gripping, however. The story is so utterly fascinating and compelling, that it likely would have been immersive, even without half of its style. Bourdin is mesmerizing to watch. He is utterly charming, and visibly unrepentant. He describes his techniques with a sense of glee, yet manages to humanize his actions by implying he was merely seeking the kind of acceptance from families he received as a child. His evident sociopathy does not render him two-dimensional. Here is a character who could have gotten away with his ploy, had he not sought out media attention and talk shows. He reached a point where he was ‘free’ from major suspicion, and intentionally placed himself back under scrutiny. He is utterly fascinating.

The supporting cast of characters prove equally interesting. Private Detective, Charlie Parker who begins digging deeper into the story seems to have leaped directly from the pages of a seedy crime novel, while the Barclay family seems…off. They appear both as a family who was desperate to ignore all obvious signs of wrongdoing in their desperation to have a son once more…and yet also appear as though they may have been hiding something. Perhaps they accepted an obvious imposter into their homes to avoid suspicion for something darker. Finally, the incompetent government bureaucrats are almost amusing to watch. They were so desperate to not rock the boat, and to believe a “child,” that they ignored obvious inconsistencies, because nobody wanted to be “that person” who accused a traumatized child.

Bourdin is just so brilliant, and his horrific story so ghoulishly compelling, that the film is a difficult one to look away from. It is rare that a documentary could have a twist ending…this one has several. It provides the kind of drive and adrenaline that is seldom found in the documentary world. Through its impeccable aesthetics, pacing, and interesting story to boot, The Imposter stands as one of the most compelling documentaries I have ever had the pleasure to view. It is gripping, terrifying, and heartbreaking.

Fear: An Experimental Film

The goal of our film, Fear, is to recreate an atmosphere of dread and, of course, fear. Not unlike David Lynch’s introduction to a world of filth and crime in Blue Velvet through a journey into the canal of a severed ear, we begin the film by drawing the viewer into the terrifying maw of a hollowed tree trunk. Most of the shots at this point of the film work to beckon the viewer downward, be it moving downward on a jib, or sliding downward on a dolly. You are going down. Down into a world of pure fear. We ultimately opted to keep the aggressively blown out and loud audio recorded from the camera during a run on the car mount because it sounded not unlike the roar of a monster. It is jarring and terrifying, and makes the uneasy silence that follows it all the more unsettling. Many of the following shots are composed to make the viewer feel uncomfortable, focusing on barbed wire, spiders, and spiderwebs, as well as shots captured with wide 16 MM lenses so as to give a deep, lonely, and uncomfortable feel. A young woman enters, running, running from something, terrified. We deliberately worked to cut the sequence of her running somewhat choppily so as to increase her sense of agitation. Otherwise, her fleeing would have seemed too fluid, too safe. When the woman reaches the bridge, we used a dutch tilt to increase the unease, and then shot her face up close with a 16 MM, so as to create an extremely jarring fish-eye effect. This world of fear is meant to seem almost as though it is another world entirely. Rain comes and goes without warning. Nature acts by its own rules. Lightning flashes violet. The bridge, the turning point for losing oneself to fear is lit a cowardly violet. After the woman loses herself to fear, the audience is finally permitted to escape, the way they came. We shot each of the shots leading in also moving out, and effectively mirrored the opening. The sound is different though. Something is lost. The viewer and the woman, whoever is experiencing fear is more alone than other.

Finally, we overlaid the entire sequence with a poem pertaining to losing oneself to fear. This haunting delivery was ultimately the glue that held the film together. We had to work to mix her reading with the ominous background track we had laid in, as well as the various natural sound effects we had added so as to give the film a surreal, lonely, atmospheric feel, but also to ground it in reality. Mixing these many layers of sound was one of the most difficult aspects ultimately.

In short, Fear is a terrifying journey into the very heart of fear, loss of identity, and loneliness. The fear that we once imagined as a fast-paced wall of terror slowly developed into a slow burning pensive look at fear through loneliness and isolation. The nature surrounding the woman emphasized the loneliness and isolation of the elements, of being surrounded by empty earth. It goes to show that fear can manifest itself in many ways. Some less obvious than others.

You can view it here.

Samsara (2011) Review

Ron Fricke has made a name for himself in the world of experimental and documentary cinema with his wordless, haunting time-lapse features. With his previous films, Baraka and Koyaanisqatsi, he focused on human atrocities and damage towards nature, while also demonstrating the world’s natural beauty. With Samsara, he continues this focus, but with a 21st century outlook, and a focus on rebirth and renewal. Using wide lenses and 70 MM film, he spent five years traveling across the globe, shooting his latest look at existence.

Fricke opens the film with a three minute sequence of Balinese dancers moving about, each of whom maintains perfect, unblinking eye contact with the camera for the duration of the dance. The sequence is haunting and uncomfortable, and establishes Fricke as someone who will himself refuse to look away from the uncomfortable aspects of humanity. He then follows the dance sequence immediately with an explosion, as if to say “this is the old culture…and now it’s gone. Thank you western civilization.” For even as the film refrains from ever speaking any dialogue or offering context to its images, it does not invite one to solely draw their own conclusions from the footage. The film has been intentionally edited to tell a story, to consistently illustrate the destruction wrought by certain aspects of consumerism and industry. Fricke finds endless variations of circular movement (visitors to Mecca, Americans on an exercise bike, guests at a water park, cows on a spinning wheel in a dairy farm, and a Buddhist Monk’s prayer mat) to demonstrate the cyclical nature of rebirth and destruction wrought by society. He punctuates the films with death masks from cultures around the world, corpses from atrocities, buildings destroyed by bombs, punctuated by montages of Baptisms. The juxtapositions would make Kuleshov proud. By his editing, these unrelated images work together to tell a very clear story about Samsara, the endlessly spinning Hindu wheel of life.  His look at humanity examines more than merely life and death, however. It also links cultures together. In one particularly disturbing sequence, the film looks in unflinching detail as chickens are slaughtered by a machine that moves through the flock, grinding chickens up, and ejecting the corpses onto a conveyer belt, which are then sliced up in mass in a meat production plant. The sequence is difficult to watch, and made more horrifying, when the birds-eye wide shot of the factory interior transitions into an identical overhead shot of a Costco, with customers buying meat in bulk. The same montage includes workers marking up meat, which is paired with a clip of a plastic surgeon marking up a man’s large cut for liposuction. The choices of these clips is both disturbing and creative, if remarkably un-subtle. On other occasions, the film depicts an African village where children proudly play amongst guns placed alongside an American family where the 10 year olds proudly show off their own firearms. He seems to be making a statement about the similarities of everything humanity does, no matter where in the globe.

The film also includes a fascinating choice of sounds. Often only the music carries the film, yet there are many moments of recorded sounds of wind blowing, the brass clinking of bullets, and trumpets blown on camera make their way into the sound-scheme. The music does much of the talking, however. There is one sequence where a man plasters himself in clay and food coloring, which trumpets explode with the sounds of a feral animal in the score, acting as sound effects for the man on screen. Throughout, Lisa Gerrard, of Gladiator fame, provides haunting vocals to underlay much of the footage.

One could talk about the cinematography in the film, but really, the film IS the cinematography. The film is watchable because of its lush images. The sheer amount of footage required for every sequence, and the creativity with which it was done is astonishing. Fricke, who also acted as Director of Photography for the film uses wide lenses to emphasize the extraordinary depth in many of his wide shots. Shots of Angkor Wat in Cambodia are particularly astonishing. He relies on natural lighting, but spends all day shooting, so as to capture nature at all the right times (there is quite a bit of “Magic Hour” work here.) His closeups are equally haunting, though. The tattoos, eyes, and painted Frescoes captured in lush detail are mesmerizing. Fricke is clearly a master of image composition. He knows how to choose the most beautiful areas of nature, but he also knows how to position and frame a shot, to make these locations look the best they possibly could.

In short, Samsara is mesmerizing to watch, if utterly lacking in subtlety and a little overlong. It paints a caustic yet simultaneously worshipful look at humanity and existence. It seems to be saying look how beautiful the world and life are. I want to preserve them. Much of the footage juxtaposition suggests that in Fricke’s eyes, this preservation may not happen. But his bookends for the film, of Buddhist monks creating lavish sand paintings that they immediately destroy and start over on, suggests that he is trying to let humanity know, that even if we destroy ourselves, the wheel of Samsara will keep turning and start us over again. Life finds a way.