News

Writer-director Alex Ross Perry is not a filmmaker who does things the easy way. From his black comedies like The Color Wheel and Listen Up Philip, to the intentionally abrasive Her Smell, and even his work writing Christopher Robin, a film that brings Winnie-the-Pooh characters into the real world, Perry is not someone who could ever be accused of being formulaic. But thats never been more true than in his absurdly convoluted and ingeniously crafted music documentary (sort of), Pavements. The indie slacker rock band Pavement is also a band that didnt take the conventional route to success, making Perry and Pavement a match made in lo-fi heaven, with director and band matching each others weirdness to great effect.

In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week: the music videos and films that Alex Ross Perry made for Ghost and Pavement. Alex Ross Perry is a rock and roll scholar. He knows his stuff when it comes to the history of music videos, recorded live shows and music-image-hybrids. This might be partly why after a string of successful indie-films in a diverse array of styles, like The Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip, Queen of the Earth and Golden Exits, he has been carving a niche that is all about the intertwinement of sound and vision. This niche started in earnest right around the release of Golden Exits. Alex Ross Perry directed his first...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

It’s probably an overstatement to call writer-director Ryan Martin Brown’s feature debut, Free Time, a “generation-defining movie.” Shot in 10 days with a cast of relative unknowns, the micro-budget comedy has more or less passed under the radar, premiering at a bunch of midlevel festivals and receiving a limited release in select U.S. cities. (It’s currently playing the Quad in N.Y. and the Landmark Westwood in L.A.)

And yet there’s something very much of the now in this cleverly concocted and occasionally hilarious tale of Generation Z malaise, which follows a disgruntled 20-something office worker who quits his job to join the post-pandemic great resignation, only to realize he has no idea what to do with himself once he’s out of work. Clocking in at a breezy 78 minutes, it’s the kind of down-and-dirty NYC indie we see less and less of nowadays,...

Trauma in all its facets -- experience, understanding, reconciliation -- and indie dramas are practically synonymous at this point. That, however, doesn’t make trauma or its natural consequence, mourning, or how it’s explored through film, any less relevant or meaningful. Add to that a culturally specific spin like writer-director Nathan Silver and his co-writer, C. Mason Wells, do via Between the Temples, and the experience on the audience’s side of the screen crosses over into the magically mystical and fantastically wondrous. Between the Temples centers on one Benjamin “Ben” Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman), a cantor for a reasonably well-attended Jewish synagogue in wintry upstate New York (Binghamton to be exact). Facing the...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Kate Lyn Sheil is a one-of-a-kind actor, like one of those rare lunar events you better grab the telescope for, lest you wait 60 years for that true blue moon. From her early mumblecore days when she seemed the Anna Karina to Joe Swanberg's Godard, or the Michelle Williams to Amy Seimetz's Kelly Reichardt, through intense horror films, myriad shorts, and quirky dramedies, Sheil has made a career out of tipping scales. A good film becomes very good when she crosses over, and great becomes greater.

Beloved in indie film circles, Sheil never ceases to surprise; she's like an advent calendar over time, revealing new treasures that retroactively redefine our presuppositions, all the while still impenetrable and impossible to fully know. The best actors are arguably like that. We love them to pieces, because we only see pieces, chameleonic shards in shifting light. You don't know Willem Dafoe or Meryl Streep,...

It’s not much of a spoiler to say that the final image of Sean Price Williams’s solo feature directorial debut, The Sweet East, is that of Talia Ryder’s Lillian nonchalantly strolling toward and past the camera, a smirk on her face. That’s effectively the whole vibe of the film, an odyssey that traipses through the world of white supremacist academics, PizzaGate conspiracy theorists, self-satisfied filmmakers, mixed-media artists of questionable talent, and religious zealots. And as these various figure heads of a post-whatever world aspire to approximate, at once, political and social fragmentation, reactionaryism, delusion, provocation, and apathy, there Lilian is, eyes like butterfly knives being toyed with by a bored teenager.

As a cinematographer, Price Williams made a name for himself working with filmmakers like Alex Ross Perry and Josh and Benny Safdie, lending their films an earthy sense of immediacy. On 16mm, his images burn...

In all the hubbub around Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming updates this week, nobody bothered to note that we’ve been here before. This isn’t first time a version of the company — or at least a version of it — killed off a finished project for the sake of a write-off with no regard for its creators.

Of course, it’s hard to look at the past when much there is to ponder in the present: “Batgirl” won’t come out but the scandal-ridden “Flash” somehow will; older HBO Max titles have been quietly booted from the service; executives on the earnings call proclaimed confidence in plans to jam together two vastly different streaming services into an amorphous new entity that still has no name.

But let’s step back for a moment and recall some recent history: Remember HBO Go?

Launched in the primordial streaming-war era of 2010, HBO Go...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Marlon Brando and Willy Kurant on the set of The Night of the Following Day (1969). The great Belgian cinematographer Willy Kurant has died. During his illustrious career, Kurant worked on films including Agnès Varda's The Creatures, Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Feminin, and Orson Welles' The Immortal Story. David Cronenberg has confirmed the title of his next feature film, Crimes of the Future. Sharing the same title as his film from 1970, the film is set to star Kristen Stewart, Lea Seydoux, and Viggo Mortensen.Robert Haller, the Anthology Film Archives Director of Libraries, has also died. As Afa points out in its tribute to Haller, "with 35 years at Anthology all told, only Afa’s founder Jonas Mekas could claim seniority over Haller!⁠⁠" After more than 100 years, Technicolor Post has announced its integration into Streamland Media's postproduction services,...

It’s been eight years since Amy Seimetz directed her first feature, “Sun Don’t Shine,” and her second film, “She Dies Tomorrow,” carries her imprint. Both films pull you into an off kilter, menacing dreamscape where unreliable characters are capable of doing just about anything. Appropriately enough, her film was my last press screening before lockdown.

Recovering alcoholic Amy (Seimetz alter ego Kate Lyn Sheil) rattles around her empty new Los Angeles house, hugging the floor, dropping the needle over and over on a Mozart requiem, and slugging back wine. When she gets a friend (Jane Adams) to come over, she tells her, “I’m going to die tomorrow.” Her friend starts to feel the same foreboding, and passes the contagion to her brother (Chris Messina) and his wife (Katie Aselton) at a birthday party. It shares the same absurdist and morbid humor as Luis Bunuel.

At the Soho House...

It’s been eight years since Amy Seimetz directed her first feature, “Sun Don’t Shine,” and her second film, “She Dies Tomorrow,” carries her imprint. Both films pull you into an off kilter, menacing dreamscape where unreliable characters are capable of doing just about anything. Appropriately enough, her film was my last press screening before lockdown.

Recovering alcoholic Amy (Seimetz alter ego Kate Lyn Sheil) rattles around her empty new Los Angeles house, hugging the floor, dropping the needle over and over on a Mozart requiem, and slugging back wine. When she gets a friend (Jane Adams) to come over, she tells her, “I’m going to die tomorrow.” Her friend starts to feel the same foreboding, and passes the contagion to her brother (Chris Messina) and his wife (Katie Aselton) at a birthday party. It shares the same absurdist and morbid humor as Luis Bunuel.

At the Soho House...

Mubi's series Shooting the Hip: The Cinematography of Sean Price Williams is showing June and July in many countries.Above: The Color WheelThe work of cinematographer Sean Price Williams has become synonymous with contemporary American independent cinema. What separates his filmography from his peers is his ability to shape shift with his various collaborators whether in different film frameworks of fiction and non-fiction, different genres, or just different aesthetics altogether. He is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Josh and Ben Safdie (Heaven Knows What and Good Time), but his credits include over ninety feature-length films and shorts— a body of work that when investigating further yields some of the most impressive images in the medium. With his versatile camera Williams brings an electric personal energy to wildly different films, making his name in the credits an enticement to any project.Often the stories about Williams start with...

Stephen King’s horror novel “The Dark Half” is getting the movie treatment at MGM with “Her Smell” director Alex Ross Perry on board to helm.

King wrote the book in 1989 about a novelist whose pseudonym comes to life as a murderous twin after his own pen name, Richard Bachman, was revealed.

MGM first adapted a film version in 1993 with zombie horror icon George Romero directing and Timothy Hutton starring. Hutton portrayed the best-selling author Thad Beaumont, who also sells grisly crime novels under the name George Stark. When the pseudonym is exposed, the author and his wife give the other author a ceremonial burial — resulting in George Stark coming alive and going on a murder spree. The movie was a box office flop, grossing $10 million from a $15 million budget.

King’s novels have been mined and mined again for Hollywood movies and TV shows, including 1976’s “Carrie,” “The Shining,...

My first encounter with the work of Alex Ross Perry came in the fall of 2009, at a small festival of extremely low-budget and experimental movies in Chicago. Some friends, long since moved away and lost touch with, had talked me to going into the sole screening of a feature with an odd title. If memory serves, it was the only one in the program to have been shot and projected on film. The movie turned out to be Perry’s debut, Impolex, and though I dread the thought of revisiting whatever it is that I wrote about it at the time, this Thomas Pynchon-inspired surrealist comedy about a narcoleptic World War II soldier who wanders a forest in search of a V-2 rocket left a substantial impression. To be honest, it was probably just as important back then that Perry seemed like one of us. That is, video store people,...

Alex Ross Perry is definitely a filmmaker that doesn’t like to be put in any sort of box. His early films were these odd, but really fun, comedies like “The Color Wheel” and “Listen Up Philip.” Perry came back with “Queen of Earth,” which is a thriller. He’s also a credited writer on the recent Disney film, “Christopher Robin.” And just last week, his punk rock musical drama “Her Smell” hit theaters.

Continue reading Alex Ross Perry To Write & Direct Feature Film Adaptation Of Stephen King’s ‘Rest Stop’ at The Playlist.

Stephen King's 2003 short story Rest Stop is being adapted for the big screen by Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell). Legendary Pictures has tapped Perry to write and direct the adaptation, which is being described as a "cat-and-mouse thriller." King originally wrote the story and had it published in Esquire Magazine 16 years ago. The short story went on to win the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 2004 and was later included in King's story collection Just After Sunset in 2008.

Alex Ross Perry has already made some changes to the source material, according to the brief Rest Stop synopsis. In addition to the cat-and-mouse vibe, it's a twisted journey of two women after an encounter at a rest stop, which swaps the genders from Stephen King's source material and adds an additional character instead of it just focusing on one. It isn't clear at this time if Perry will be keeping...

Legendary Pictures has tapped Alex Ross Perry to write and direct a new film adaptation of the Stephen King short story “Rest Stop,” Variety is reporting. The short story follows an author who flees the scene after overhearing and breaking up a domestic spat at a rest stop. Initially published in a 2003 issue of Esquire, “Rest Stop” won the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 2004. It also appears in King’s 2008 story collection “Just After Sunset.”

According to Variety, the film will be a cat-and-mouse thriller following the twisted journey of two women after an encounter at a rest stop. If that is the case, Perry’s script will evidently diverge from the source material in some ways, including swapping the genders of the main character and focusing on two characters instead of one.

Perry is coming off of a critical highlight of his career with “Her Smell,” a dizzying...

Alex Ross Perry will write and direct Legendary’s film adaptation of Stephen King’s short story “Rest Stop.”

King’s short, first published in Esquire magazine in 2003, won the national magazine award for fiction in 2004, and was later included in King’s 2008 collection, “Just After Sunset.” The movie is described as a propulsive cat-and-mouse thriller that follows the twisted journey of two women after a fateful encounter at a highway rest stop.

Craig Flores will produce through his Bread & Circuses banner, while Alex Garcia and Ali Mendes will oversee the pic for Legendary.

Another King property, “Pet Sematary,” starring Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz and John Lithgow, opened earlier this month to $25 million. The legendary author also has “It: Chapter Two” and “The Shining” sequel, “Doctor Sleep,” bowing soon.

Perry’s “Her Smell,” with Elisabeth Moss, Cara Delevingne and Dan Stevens, premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, and opened...

There’s a temptation to call “Her Smell” a greatest-hits compilation of the films of writer-director Alex Ross Perry. After all, it’s got the pitch-black humor of “The Color Wheel,” the narcissism of artists behaving badly from “Listen Up Philip” and the spectacle of Elisabeth Moss as a character spiraling out of control, just like “Queen of Earth.”

There’s more than a little nihilism in these films, delivered with those laughs that get caught in your throat, and Perry couldn’t be less interested in how likable or redeemable his characters might be. Something of a cult filmmaker until now, Perry calls things as he sees them, and he would appear to see them through the bleakest perspective possible.

But this is new material from the challenging auteur, one that reflects a deeper sense of maturity, displayed mainly in the idea of the possibility of redemption. Moss’ Becky Something,...

When Robert Greene first looked at the raw footage his longtime friend and collaborator Alex Ross Perry had brought him from the set of “Her Smell,” a familiar feeling began to bubble up in the editing room: They were about to make the greatest goddamn movie of all time. Greene, Perry’s regular editor, laughed at the way they characterized it at the time: “‘People are gonna compare this to “Boogie Nights,” but when we’re done, people are gonna forget how to even say the words ‘Boogie’ and ‘Nights.’ We’re gonna erase that shit from history because of what we’re doing!’”

Speaking over the phone from his house in Missouri, the editor remembered being preemptively stoked for post-production: “We had this incredible Elisabeth Moss performance, we had these amazing shots from [cinematographer] Sean Price Williams, the art direction was fucking spectacular, the lighting was gorgeous, the whole team had come together and delivered.

Looking for the next Alfonso Cuarón, Dee Rees or Damien Chazelle? AFI Fest’s New Auteurs and American Independents sections are the place to discover them.

Comprising 18 films, this year’s New Auteurs program features a diverse mix from around the world including China, Germany and India, with 11 female and seven male up-and-coming directors in the mix. Meanwhile, the American Independents section features 11 narratives and documentaries — five of which are directed by women.

According to AFI Fest director of programming Lane Kneedler, both sections are a showcase for emerging filmmakers, some of whom have a

few films under their belts, and display a diversity of storytelling styles and modes.

“What we really see as a part of our programming mandate is to support filmmakers who are taking their first tentative steps into their careers and still establishing their aesthetic,” Kneedler says. “Being there with these filmmakers early in their careers...

So about that title. It stinks. It’s pungent and rancid. “Her Smell” could have a positive connotation, but you just know that it doesn’t here. There’s a hostility to it, like an odorous barrier you’d have to get through in order to reach the woman exuding it. Viewers familiar with any of Alex Ross Perry’s previous films will probably be holding their noses as they walk into this one. Newbies might want to follow suit.

Perry knows what he’s doing. His work has always had the courage to be profoundly unpleasant. We’re talking about a guy whose breakthrough film (“The Color Wheel”) was a micro-budget 16mm road trip comedy that built to a sudden eruption of incest, and whose comparatively star-studded follow-ups have shined a light on some of New York’s shittiest people. The most “likable character” in his entire body of...

The first teaser for Her Smell is here. Elizabeth Moss has asserted herself as a truly tremendous performer on the small screen over the last decade or so. Starting with AMC's drama Mad Men and more recently in Hulu's acclaimed and award-winning series The Handmaid's Tale, Moss has made herself into an actress worth paying attention to whenever she's got a new project on the horizon. Such is the case with Her Smell, which is getting ready to make the festival rounds as awards season starts ramping up.

This initial teaser is actually a clip from the movie and sees Elisabeth Moss in an almost unrecognizable light. She disappears as a punk rock diva whose best days are long gone. We get a glimpse of her daily life, clearly clinging onto her past and making a show of herself for those who look more than fed up with her antics,...

Alex Ross Perry has, to put it lightly, an unorthodox résumé for a writer on an all-ages Disney movie. The indie writer-director and sometimes actor has become a film festival mainstay for penning stridently unlikable characters (Listen Up Philip, Queen of Earth), homages to Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon (The Color Wheel, Impolex) and an infamous incest scene (The Color Wheel). Sure, he once directed a music video for the rock duo Aly & Aj, who have worked on Disney projects, but that’s about as close as Perry came to catering to a juvenile audience before writing Christopher Robin, which bowed Friday....

Alex Ross Perry has, to put it lightly, an unorthodox résumé for a writer on an all-ages Disney movie. The indie writer-director and sometimes actor has become a film festival mainstay for penning stridently unlikable characters (Listen Up Philip, Queen of Earth), homages to Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon (The Color Wheel, Impolex) and an infamous incest scene (The Color Wheel). Sure, he once directed a music video for the rock duo Aly & Aj, who have worked on Disney projects, but that’s about as close as Perry came to catering to a juvenile audience before writing Christopher Robin, which bowed Friday....

After opening at No. 1 to $61 million, “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” will again compete for the top spot on the box office charts this weekend against Disney’s new release “Christopher Robin.” Box office trackers have projected that both films will make between $30 million and $33 million this weekend.

For Disney, this is by far the most modest release on its calendar in a 2018 so far, when it has crushed the competition with some of the most highly anticipated blockbusters of the decade. In the last 153 days, Disney has seen four of its films — “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Black Panther,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” and most recently “Incredibles 2” — gross more than $1 billion worldwide, with “Infinity War” becoming the first-ever summer $2 billion hit.

Also Read: Fox and Disney Shareholders Vote to Approve $71.3 Billion Merger

And last week, Disney tightened its grip on Hollywood even further by completing its purchase of 20th Century Fox,...

"People never make films about ordinary people who never do anything."

"They're out there..."

That first meta-statement comes from Naomi (Emily Browning), an Australian twentysomething with a work visa, a temp gig as an archivist's assistant and the sort of youthful bloom that attracts both wanted and unwanted attention. The reply is from Nick (ex-Beastie Boy Adam Horowitz), her married fortysomething employer who's currently doling out the latter; he finishes the sentence with "... and I could take you to one some time," which suggests that underneath his nice-guy facade, something potentially toxic this way lies.

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 Films of Alex Ross Perry

As we await distribution for Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, FilmStruck is presenting a selection of his first three features, Implox, The Color Wheel, and Listen Up Philip. Also streaming is a master class with Perry’s frequent editor (and excellent director in his own right) Robert Greene.

Where to Stream: FilmStruck...

Jerry Lewis inspired generations of comedians and comedic filmmakers, as many of immediate tributes in the wake of his death at 91 prove. One of the more recent directors to emerge in American cinema to cite his work is Alex Ross Perry, whose 2011 sleeper hit “The Color Wheel” was a wily black comedy that owed much to Lewis’ madcap performances. Perry’s followup, “Listen Up Phillip,” showed similar influences.

Reached for comment following the news of Lewis’ death, Perry shared the following statement on his relationship to Lewis’ work.

Whenever I would cite Jerry Lewis as an influence, I would qualify the statement by saying he inspired me more as a philosopher than a comedian. The remark would get a laugh but I would elaborate, with total sincerity. The intellectual drive of this man, from the very beginning of his career through his instantly-legendary Hollywood Reporter interview last year (his final masterpiece,...

Alex Ross Perry doesn’t usually go for “nice” characters — from the disaffected siblings at the heart of “The Color Wheel” to Jason Schwartzman’s gleefully abrasive title character in “Listen Up Philip” to the deeply destructive ladies of “Queen of Earth,” the filmmaker has never shown much interest in stories about people who treat each other well. With his intimacy drama “Golden Exits,” Perry strays from his typical fare of people behaving badly to, well, people behaving not quite as badly and certainly with more believable motivation.

Australian student Naomi (Emily Browning) is spending the spring in New York City — Brooklyn, specifically, as much of “Golden Exits” takes place within the confines of Perry’s own Cobble Hill neighborhood — working for Nick (Adam Horowitz, who is mostly out of his depth in the role), an archivist who takes a new assistant every semester to help him with his work.

Prolificacy can catch up to even the most dogged of artists. For writer/director Alex Ross Perry, one of the most distinct and sharp voices of his generation, Golden Exits is the moment his speed (this is his third feature in a three-year span) has caught up. The whole movie revolves about exhaustion – the exhaustion of carrying on youthful enthusiasms into middle age, of maintaining relationships that have lost their spark, of answering the same questions about your life for fifteen straight years. So, too, can one nearly feel the exhaustion in making it. The gradual plodding of the keyboard and lack of interest in revision permeate a 94-minute film that manages to be both well-structured and underwritten. I looked at his 2014 breakout film, Listen Up Philip, and saw a man who wanted to reach the heights of Woody Allen at his most creatively feverish and emotionally unsteady. Three years later,...

Only a filmmaker as talented as Alex Ross Perry could make a movie as misbegotten as “Golden Exits.” With his past features “Impolex,” “The Color Wheel,” “Listen Up Philip,” and “Queen of Earth,” Perry has established himself as one of American independent cinema’s best young writer-directors, equally interested in the quality of his images and the richness of his characters.

Continue reading Alex Ross Perry’s ‘Golden Exits’ Is A Collection Of Half-Realized Ideas And Characters [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

We’re always interested in indie writer-director Alex Ross Perry here at The A.V. Club. His nearly-no-budget sophomore feature, The Color Wheel, was one our favorite comedies of the current decade, and the subsequent Listen Up Philip and Queen Of Earth were both superb. So of course we’re eagerly anticipating his new film, Golden Exits, which will have its premiere at Sundance this weekend. (Our film editor, A.A. Dowd, will be sending in daily dispatches from the festival, starting later today.)

And, lo and behold, a brief teaser for the film has appeared—a teaser that contains absolutely no information about the film, and in fact consists of nothing but an unbroken shot of star Emily Browning singing “New York Groove,” a song made semi-famous by Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley during in the band’s 1978 experiment in testing the limits of its fanbase.

Still, we’ll ...

Filmmakers around the world harbor the same fantasy: I’m going to make a film so good that it will play the Sundance Film Festival, score rave reviews, sell in an overnight bidding war for a multi-million-dollar minimum guarantee to a major theatrical buyer, open in packed theaters around the country, and launch my career.

Right.

Truth is, this hardly ever happens. We checked in with a group of lauded Sundance filmmakers, all who are returning to the festival this year with new films, to glean what they learned the hard way from their Sundance experiences.

1. Manage expectations.

Alex Ross Perry (“Golden Exits”): My first time was with “Listen Up Philip” [2014], which was a huge step forward from my last movie, “The Color Wheel,” which I made for $25,000 with all my friends. This was a sizable, produced movie with a cast of well-known people [Jason Schwartzman, Elizabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce]. The first days was all...

Filmmakers around the world harbor the same fantasy: I’m going to make a film so good that it will play the Sundance Film Festival, score rave reviews, sell in an overnight bidding war for a multi-million-dollar minimum guarantee to a major theatrical buyer, open in packed theaters around the country, and launch my career.

Right.

Truth is, this hardly ever happens. We checked in with a group of lauded Sundance filmmakers, all who are returning to the festival this year with new films, to glean what they learned the hard way from their Sundance experiences.

1. Manage expectations.

Alex Ross Perry (“Golden Exits”): My first time was with “Listen Up Philip” [2014], which was a huge step forward from my last movie, “The Color Wheel,” which I made for $25,000 with all my friends. This was a sizable, produced movie with a cast of well-known people [Jason Schwartzman, Elizabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce]. The first days was all...

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.

American Honey (Andrea Arnold)

European directors have often faltered when crossing the Atlantic. Billy Wilder and Wim Wenders found things to say where Paolo Sorrentino could not. American Honey is certainly the former. Based on a 2007 article from the New York Times, it’s a backwater American road movie directed by an Englishwoman, Andrea Arnold, and shot by Irishman Robbie Ryan. We spot a few cowboys and gas stations and even the Grand Canyon,...

Out of all the projects to come out of Disney’s ongoing cycle of children’s lit remakes and fairy-tale spin-offs, few have been more intriguing than Christopher Robin, a largely live-action, decades-later sequel to A.A. Milne’s Winnie The Pooh stories that’s being scripted by Alex Ross Perry, the caustic indie writer-director of The Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip, and Queen of Earth. Some among the arthouse faithful had their fingers crossed in the hope that Perry might end up directing the film himself. After all, his Listen Up Philip producer, David Lowery, made a successful and similarly unlikely leap with Pete’s Dragon.

But alas, that’s not to be. As Variety reports, Christopher Robin is now set to be directed by Marc Forster. The Swiss journeyman director’s career has included the likes of Monster’s Ball, World War Z, The Kite Runner, and (relevant ...

The A.V. Club gets more music video press releases per weekday than we care to count, but only one of them has ever touted the influence of the wizard-haired cinematographer Robert Richardson’s signature white-hot toplighting. That would the e-mail announcing the video for Sleigh Bells’ “I Can Only Stare,” co-directed by the noise pop duo’s guitarist-producer, Derek Miller, and A.V. Club favorite Alex Ross Perry.

“I Can Only Stare” marks the first foray into music videos for Perry, the indie writer-director behind The Color Wheel (one of this fine publication’s favorite movies of the decade so far and favorite modern comedies), Queen of Earth, Listen Up Philip, and, bizarrely enough, Disney’s upcoming remake of Winnie The Pooh. It stars vocalist Alexis Krauss as a variety of “doomed women” and was shot by regular cinematographer, the gifted Sean Price Williams. (It turns out, he can...

Alex Ross Perry is mostly known for his handmade, lo-fi indie films such as “The Color Wheel,” “Listen Up Philip,” and “Queen Of Earth,” but he’s also been eager to go outside of that box. Disney gave the filmmaker a ring to write their brewing “Winnie The Pooh” movie, and now Perry is taking into the world of music videos, helming the promo for Sleigh Bells‘ “I Can Only Stare.”

Read More: Interview: Alex Ross Perry Talks ‘Queen Of Earth,’ ‘Winnie The Pooh,’ Unlikable Characters & More

Shot on 16mm film (Perry is very much devoted to the analog format), and co-directed by the band’s Derek E.

Continue reading Alex Ross Perry Goes 16mm To Direct New Video For Sleigh Bells’ “I Can Only Stare” at The Playlist.

Independent film director Alex Ross Perry has a full slate of upcoming projects, including a new feature film and a yet-to-be-titled live-action “Winnie the Pooh” project, but he found the time to co-direct a music video for the duo Sleigh Bells with the band’s Derek E. Miller. The song is titled “I Can Only Stare” and it’s off their upcoming album “Jessica Rabbit.” The video was shot in 16mm and it features singer Alexis Krauss playing three different women. Watch it below.

Read More: Alex Ross Perry: Indie Filmmakers Can Afford to Shoot Film

Perry has directed four feature films so far. His first two films were “Impolex,” based off Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and “The Color Wheel,” starring Perry and Carlen Altman as two siblings on a road trip. He garnered much acclaim with his third film “Listen Up Philip,” which stars Jason Schwartzman...

Factory 25 announced today the BricTV premiere of the comedy series “Dad Day” created by Craig Butta and James Mennella. The six-episode series marks the first narrative series produced by Factory 25 as well as the first series directed and staring Butta, whose previous acting credits include Alex Ross Perry’s “Listen Up Philip” and Charles Poekel’s “Christmas, Again.”

Read More: Factory 25 Acquires Wfmu Doc ‘Sex and Broadcasting’

The series follows Craig (Butta) and James (Artie Brennan) as they struggles with fatherhood and friendship in a continually gentrifying New York. The guys want James’ son Henry to be raised like an authentic New Yorker and each episode explores what exactly that means nowadays, and how to best instill local values in a place that doesn’t resemble your home anymore.

“Dad Day is a pure look at modern man in modern Brooklyn,” says director Alex Ross Perry. “Vulgar, sad and at times absurd,...

Nine years before he completed production on the multi-million dollar Disney remake of “Pete’s Dragon,” David Lowery was living out of the back of his car, editing corporate videos. The Dallas native directed his first feature, the little-seen “Lullaby,” at age 19. The ensuing years found him collaborating with a close-knit group of local film-savvy friends, but little in the way of upward mobility. “I never put a premium on making a living,” he told me in a recent phone conversation. “It was never one of those things that was important to me.”

Lowery’s work at the time suggests as much — it’s anything but commercial — and yet it provided him with an ideal platform for a massive career move as one of Disney’s newest secret weapons. “Pete’s Dragon,” a $60 million re-imagining of the 1977 live-action-animated musical film, has all the hallmarks of Lowery’s earlier work: a serene,...

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 the interwebs. 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 Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Everest (Baltasar Kormákur)

Curtain raisers seldom come more bombastic than the last two films to open the Venice Film Festival, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity in 2013, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman last year. Attempting to maintain that level of volume this year on the Lido is Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest, a grand-scale, by-the-numbers 3D epic about the doomed 1996 expedition to climb the titular peak.

An interview setting as isolated and exotic as Mexico's Los Cabos Film Festival often means you're sitting down with talent in more comfortable, candid moods. Perched on a terrace overlooking the Pacific, I chatted with a relaxed Alex Ross Perry, joined by his trusted celluloid Dp Sean Price Williams. The budding November festival and industry hangout gave the filmmaker the retrospective Spotlight treatment. Perry knows it takes thick skin to break into Hollywood when you're a young New York indie far flung from the world of the studios. But how did his edgy indie oeuvre — Pynchon ode "Impolex" (2009), sibling road movie "The Color Wheel" (2011), scabrous literary comedy "Listen Up Philip" (2014) and this year's darkly funny Polanski throwback "Queen of Earth," which made its Mexican premiere at Los Cabos 2015 — land him a for-hire screenwriting gig at Disney? In April, it was announced that Disney, in its race to repurpose evergreen...

The success we’ve had in preserving and distributing art of the past has had a somewhat calcifying effect on the present. This is not to say good work is not being done now; in the province with which we are primary concerned, dozens of very good (and a few truly great) films are made every year. How many of them truly belong to us? So many of our great modern films are meditations on the past – chiefly the 20th century – contextualizing or embalming an experience that is becoming, in more ways that strictly chronological, more and more removed from the present every day. How many more films, no matter how great, do we need about World War II or the late 1960s? How often do we need to be reminded of the giants of cinema courtesy of new filmmakers eager to revere them through imitation?

These thoughts occurred to...

Elisabeth Moss—today, an Emmy nominee for "Mad Men"—gives a batshit crazy performance as a frittering would-be artist, in post-breakup mode, who loses her mind while retreating lakeside with her bitterly supportive best friend (Katherine Waterston). Think "Persona" by way of "Repulsion," but with salad instead of the rabbit. Read More: Elisabeth Moss Goes Next-Level Insane in Alex Ross Perry's "Queen of Earth" Perry, who was recently tapped to write a live action "Winnie the Pooh" remake for Disney, previously wrote and directed "Impolex," "The Color Wheel" and "Listen Up Philip," which also starred a marvelous Moss. Creepy and emotionally graphic, "Queen of Earth" fits comfortably into the hysterical woman canon with the likes of Bergman's "Persona," Polanski's "Repulsion," Altman's "Images" and, yes, Allen's "Interiors." Throughout the film, Moss...

Finally, Alex Ross Perry's audacious fourth feature film "Queen of Earth" has been picked up for Us distribution by IFC. Elisabeth Moss gives a wildly unpredictable, rangy lead performance as a woman blistered by a breakup who comes horrifically undone while retreating in a cabin with her bitterly supportive best friend (Katherine Waterston). Read More: Elisabeth Moss Goes Next-Level Insane in Alex Ross Perry's "Queen of Earth" Perry, who was recently tapped to write a live action "Winnie the Pooh" remake for Disney, previously wrote and directed "Impolex," "The Color Wheel" and "Listen Up Philip," which also starred a marvelous Moss. Creepy and emotionally graphic, "Queen of Earth" fits comfortably into the hysterical woman canon with the likes of Bergman's "Persona," Polanski's "Repulsion," Altman's "Images" and, yes, Allen's "Interiors." Throughout the film, Moss...

If one needed to put any sort of auteurist stamp that can be put on Alex Ross Perry‘s features, they’d be well-advised to consider these films’ (for wont of a more expressive term) literary ties. Impolex: Pynchon and Gravity’s Rainbow. The Color Wheel and Listen Up Philip: Roth, mainly, along with William Gaddis’ The Recognitions […]...

Disney’s plan to wring every ounce of cash from its sizeable back catalogue continues today with news that the Mouse House is developing a live-action Winnie The Pooh movie. This week has already brought with it word that Mulan is getting similar treatment, which begs the question: when will this remake craze come to an end? Bearing in mind the studio has already marshalled successful live-action versions of Maleficent, Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella to the screen, that question answers itself.

Along with the project’s announcement, Disney has a filmmaker in place to usher the film along, and it’s an unusual choice for the family-friendly studio. Alex Ross Perry, writer and director of the low-fi Sundance gem Listen Up Philip starring Jason Schwartzman and Elisabeth Moss, has been tapped to write the adaptation. The film is angling toward a new take on A.A. Milne’s iconic world,...

Broken SpecsReaders of online criticism probably know the name Ted Fendt for his invaluable French translation work—on this site alone he’s published English-language versions of interviews (with director Jean Eustache and cinematographer Caroline Champetier) and pieces on Straub-Huillet, Bresson, Grémillon, and others. He’s also offered his own perceptive analysis of Paris Goes Away, Rivette’s half-hour Le Pont du Nord rehearsal, and compiled theauthoritative bibliography to Godard’s Goodbye to Language. Less visible, though, has been Fendt’s own work behind the camera—he currently has five narrative shorts to his name, works at once delightfully shaggy dog and rigorously formalist, and they look and feel like little else happening in American independent cinema right now. We’re thrilled to finally present the online premiere of his films Broken Specs (2012) and Travel Plans (2013) on Mubi.Reviewing Fendt’s choice of translation work, you can trace the seeds...

In interviews, actress Kate Lyn Sheil can come across as quiet and a bit shy. But make no mistake about it -- Sheil is driven as hell. How else to account for her spectacular rise as an indie darling over the past several years and her recent brush with fame thanks to a supporting role on the second and third seasons of "House of Cards"? Since coming out of nowhere in Alex Ross Perry's 2001 breakout indie "The Color Wheel" (her first feature project), Sheil has gone on to become a go-to actress for other budding indie auteurs including Joe Swanberg, Ti West, Adam Wingard, Rick Alverson and Amy Seimetz. She can currently be seen at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival in two projects: the short "Kiss Kiss Fingerbang" and the Visions entry "A Wonderful Cloud," directed by and co-starring a former boyfriend of hers, Eugene Kotlyarenko ("0s & 1s"). Coming up,...