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Inside the 2015 Ida Documentary Awards (Full Winners List)
1 hour ago
Emceed by Tig Notaro at the Paramount Theatre, Saturday night's 2015 Ida Documentary Awards in Los Angeles handed top honors to Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Look of Silence," which made the Oscar shortlist earlier this week. This PGA-nominated followup to "The Act of Killing" has a winning streak going back to Venice 2014, where Oppenheimer collected five awards including the Grand Special Jury Prize. "Act of Killing" was Ida-nominated in 2013 but lost to Netflix's "The Square." Read More: Oscar Documentary Shortlist of 15 Revealed Director Matthew Heineman accepted the Courage Under Fire Award from his executive producer Kathryn Bigelow for Sundance winner "Cartel Land," which is on the Oscar shortlist. Other Academy shortlisters that scored Ida Awards include "Listen to Me Marlon," whose director Stevan Riley hopes the film will restore Marlon Brando's reputation; short doc "Last Day of Freedom" and Vidal vs. »
- Anne Thompson
Best of the Week: Toh!'s Top Ten Films of 2015, Ranking Tarantino, Interviews with Aaron Sorkin and Spike Lee, More
15 hours ago
Arthouse Audit: 'The Danish Girl' Scores at Holiday Box Office as 'Carol' Stays Strong How Howard Shore's 'Spotlight' Score Became His Most Haunting Work How Nyfcc Award Winner Ed Lachman Shot 'Carol' Through the Prism of '50s Photojournalism Icon of Cool Charlotte Rampling Talks '45 Years,' Sculpting Her Acting Muscles, and Working with Woody Allen IMDb's Annual Top 10 Movies and Top TV Shows (Exclusive) James Bond Creator Ian Fleming on Sean Connery, the Kennedys, and His Critics 'Joy' Marks a Reunion, Breaks New Ground for Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper and David O. Russell (Q&A) Meet Kazakhstan's Foreign Oscar Contender: 'Stranger' Director Yermek Tursunov (Trailer) Meet the Four Legends Bringing Back the British Invasion This Oscar Season National Board of Review Names Award-Winners, 10 Best of 2015 New York Film Critics Push Faves in Awards Season, 'Carol' Wins Four (Analysis) Oscar Documentary Shortlist »
- Matt Brennan
Toh!'s Top Ten Films of 2015 (Updated)
4 December 2015 1:42 PM, PST
Anne Thompson: 1. "Son of Saul." This unique World War II thriller comes from two holocaust obsessives, rookie Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes and New York poet Geza Rohrig, who makes his feature debut as Saul, a Jewish prisoner-of-war at Auschwitz in 1944. Nemes' tightly-focused camera follows the Sonderkommando's blinkered close-up Pov as he does the Nazis' dirty work and moves through the camp seeking to bury a young boy. The movie's immersive action and layered sound design reveal the hideous scale of the mass slaughter of Jews and is not soon forgotten. 2. "Mad Max: Fury Road" was dreamed up on an airplane by 70-year-old Down Under maverick George Miller, who shot the eye-popping digital cinema spectacle in the Namibian desert 35 years after his feature debut with the original "Mad Max." The writer-director does not follow any formula that any studio executive would recognize. It helps that Miller owns the "Mad Max" »
- TOH!
Toh! Ranks Quentin Tarantino's Films
4 December 2015 1:10 PM, PST
The trouble with ranking iconoclastic auteur Quentin Tarantino's nine features (including highly anticipated Christmas Day release "The Hateful Eight," which has screened for critics and awards voters) is that he plays with so many genres, styles, and subjects. Appropriately enough, considering that Tarantino's spent a career resurrecting B-movies, the difference between one viewer's trash and another's treasure can seem razor-thin. Is "Pulp Fiction" too much, or just the right amount of "much"? How do you compare the broad-as-a-barn alternate histories of "Inglourious Basterds" and "Django Unchained" with each other, much less with the simpler pleasures of "Jackie Brown"? Is "Kill Bill Vol. 1" or "Vol. 2" the "better" movie? Hell, are they separate movies in the first place? (We think so.) Still, however you slice and dice the order of the list, it's clear from our five contributors »
- TOH!
Watch: Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe Aren't Such 'Nice Guys' in Hilarious Red-Band Trailer
4 December 2015 11:09 AM, PST
Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe bring the heat—and not, as the latter defines it, "equanimity"—in the red-band trailer for director Shane Black's ragged, 1970s-set action-comedy "The Nice Guys," co-written with Anthony Bagarozzi. The shenanigans on display when Crowe's P.I. Jackson Healy (violently) enlists Holland March (Gosling) to help investigate the disappearance of a young woman in 1977 L.A. are reminiscent of Black's scripts for the "Lethal Weapon" franchise and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang." Gosling's high-pitched shriek when Healy breaks March's arm is one for the ages, as is his slapstick with a gun, a magazine, and a bathroom stall. The film, co-starring Kim Basinger (in full "L.A. Confidential" mode), Matt Bomer, and Margaret Qualley ("The Leftovers"), is due in theaters from Warner Bros. May 20, 2016. »
- Matt Brennan
First Look: Helen Mirren Commands 'Eye in the Sky' Co-Star Aaron Paul (Trailer)
4 December 2015 9:56 AM, PST
Mirren plays British Col. Katherine Powell, the commander of a top secret drone operation that spins out of control when the capture of a Kenyan terrorist turns into a targeted assassination—and a young child enters the kill zone. Pitched as a debate over the moral, political, and personal implications of modern warfare—a slightly worrisome angle, given how poorly didactic war dramas "Lions for Lambs" (2007) and "Rendition" (2007) fared in the midst of the Iraq War—"Eye in the Sky" is directed by Gavin Hood ('Tsotsi') and written by Guy Hibbert ('Prime Suspect'). Producers are Ged Doherty, Colin Firth and David Lancaster. The film co-stars Aaron Paul ("Breaking Bad") as an American pilot with his hand on the trigger thousands of miles away in Nevada, Alan Rickman as a British general, Jeremy Northam, and "Captain Phillips" breakout Barkhad Abdi. Distributor Bleecker Street has slated the film for a limited theatrical. »
- Matt Brennan
Toh!'s Favorite Top 10 Lists of 2015 (Updated)
4 December 2015 7:43 AM, PST
The popular, the obscure, and everything in between: the top ten lists of 2015 gathered here, from directors, critics, and publications, run the gamut. Read More: "How to Make a Ten Best List in Five Easy Steps" No surprise that John Waters included "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" on his—he was on the jury that awarded Best Actress at the Gothams to breakout star Bel Powley. Also no surprise, perhaps, is Cahiers du Cinema dismissing consensus (as usual) to select Nanni Moretti's "Mia Madre" as the best film of the year. Love the choices? Hate them? Let us know in the comments. Read More: "IMDb's Annual Top 10 Movies and Top TV Shows (Exclusive)" Read our continually updating list of lists below: Stephanie Zacharek, Time 1. "Spotlight" (Tom McCarthy) 2. "Phoenix" (Christian Petzold) 3. "I'll See You In My Dreams" (Brett Haley) 4. "Clouds of Sils Maria" (Olivier Assayas) 5. »
- Matt Brennan
How Howard Shore's 'Spotlight' Score Became His Most Haunting Work
4 December 2015 7:14 AM, PST
Howard Shore's score for "Spotlight" might be the highlight of his distinguished career, which has already earned him two Oscars for his epic "Lord of the Rings" work. The key inspiration after reading the script was conceiving it as a chamber piece for 10-piece orchestra, evoking the tragedy and triumph of Tom McCarthy's fact-based journo procedural. Read More: "Director Tom McCarthy Puts 'Spotlight' on Sexually Predatory Catholic Priests" "I look for the rhythms of the film, how the actors move, how dialogue is expressed, how the scenes are cut [and lit]," Shore said. He has worked with many of the musicians before, but not in a chamber format. There's piano/electric keyboards, harp, percussion, fiddle, accordion, electric bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar and two French horns. "Tom and I worked on thematic and motific ideas based on the story, such as 'Pressure of the Church,' 'City on the Hill, »
- Bill Desowitz
Look: Coen Brothers' 'Hail, Caesar!' to Open 2016 Berlinale; Cast Photos Are Divine
4 December 2015 6:49 AM, PST
The Coens usually go to Cannes, but the film's Feb. 5, 2016 release date means a big get for the Berlinale. Anything the brothers do, whether it hits theaters in the depths of winter or the heart of awards season, is sure to pique the interest of the cinephile set, and "Hail, Caesar!" is no different. Set at the height of Hollywood's Golden Age, the high-gloss period comedy follows a single day in the life of studio fixer Edward Mannix (Josh Brolin) on the fictional Capitol Pictures lot. The film also features George Clooney as movie star Baird Whitlock, kidnapped in the course of filming "prestige" epic "Hail, Caesar!"; Ralph Fiennes as director Laurence Lorenz; and Tilda Swinton as real-life gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. (By the looks of it, she could give Helen Mirren's Hopper, in "Trumbo," a run for her money.) Channing Tatum shows up in a sailor suit singing, »
- Matt Brennan
Barbra Streisand Set to Direct First Dramatic Feature in 20 Years
3 December 2015 3:10 PM, PST
Barbra Streisand is set to direct a biopic of 18th century Russian empress Catherine the Great from Kristina Lauren Anderson's Blacklist-topping script. It would be Streisand's fourth dramatic feature, and first since 1996's "The Mirror Has Two Faces." (The others are 1983's "Yentl" and 1991's "The Prince of Tides.") Produced by Gil Netter ("Life of Pi," "Sea of Trees"), the project focuses on perhaps the most powerful woman in Russian history: Catherine ruled the Russian Empire from 1762 to her death in 1796, a period sometimes referred to as the "Golden Age" of Russian nobility. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film's plot follows "a young, sensual Catherine trapped in an abusive marriage" who "utilizes her intelligence, fortitude and passion to rise to power." Oscar winner Streisand (Best Actress in 1969 for "Funny Girl"; Best Song in 1977 for "A Star Is Born") most »
- Matt Brennan
'Game of Thrones,' 'Mad Men,' 'Fargo,' and 'Transparent' Land WGA Nominations
3 December 2015 1:14 PM, PST
The Writers Guild of America leaned far in the direction of cable, premium, and streaming TV with its 2015 nominations: not a single broadcast program nabbed one of the coveted Drama Series or Comedy Series slots. Among the most-lauded series were newcomers "Better Call Saul" (AMC) and "Mr. Robot" (USA), both of which landed Drama Series and New Series nominations (the former was also nominated for Episodic Drama for its pilot, "Uno"). Netflix's "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" pulled off the same feat in the Comedy Series category. Read More: "The Anarchy of Influence: On 'Fight Club,' 'Mr. Robot,' and 'The Leftovers' (Video)" Nevertheless, some old favorites still shined, as Emmy winner "Game of Thrones" (HBO), the final season of "Mad Men" (AMC), and stalwart political satire "Veep" (HBO) all landed multiple nods. Expect many outlets' year-end TV top ten lists—including ours—to feature more »
- Matt Brennan
Sundance 2016 Celebrates 10 Years of New Frontier Program with Björk, Kendrick Lamar, and Immersive Vr
3 December 2015 12:59 PM, PST
The Sundance Film Festival will mark the tenth anniversary of its New Frontier program in 2016 with a lineup of films, live performances, virtual reality installations, and documentary and mobile Vr experiences—including "Double Conscience," a portrait of contemporary Compton, Calif. with a soundtrack by Kendrick Lamar, and "Stonemilker," a virtual reality collaboration between Vrse.works creator Andrew Thomas Huang and Björk. "We're celebrating 10 years of New Frontier," said Sundance director John Cooper. "We're seeing such rapid development in virtual reality (Vr) work, compared to last year, so much more, we watched hours of it." The Vr installation displays many approaches to this new form of storytelling, including "The Blue Encounter," which brings you face to face with a blue whale in the ocean, looking into its eyes. "I like the ones that go to a place, like Masai," said Cooper, "out on the »
- Matt Brennan
Watch: Aaron Sorkin on Taking Risks on 'Steve Jobs,' 'Molly's Game,' and 'Best of Enemies'
3 December 2015 11:33 AM, PST
"Steve Jobs" rests on an extraordinary text by "The Social Network" Oscar-winner Aaron Sorkin, who structures a dense, dialogue-driven narrative around three "ten-minute" run-ups to Apple co-founder Jobs' unveilings of the original Macintosh computer in 1984, his NeXt black cube in 1988, and the iMac in 1998. Sorkin and a gifted filmmaking ensemble bring to life this complex man, who five years after his death still fascinates the billions of people around the world who are in love with Apple products. It was a smart move to marry visualist Danny Boyle with Sorkin's 200-page screenplay (most are 100), largely set inside the bowels of three auditoriums. The movie rides the flow of Sorkin's dialogue with propulsive movement and varied settings, but it's easy to understand why then-Sony motion picture chairman Amy Pascal twisted herself into a pretzel over green-lighting the picture. There were too many risks for a studio head already on the ropes. »
- Anne Thompson
Why Pete Docter's Nyfcc Award Winner 'Inside Out' Was So Tough to Make Into Must-See Pixar
3 December 2015 10:43 AM, PST
Pete Docter is accustomed to working in a collaborative way with the Pixar dream trust on his films, from "Up" to "Inside Out." But as the director, he was the one on the line when a powerful emotion—fear—told him that the movie wasn't ready to hit its scheduled dates. It needed more time. After showing the film out of competition at Cannes this spring, where it roused both audiences and critics to enthusiastic ovations, "Inside Out" is now this year's leading contender for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, and just earned the New York Film Critics Circle's seal of approval to boot. But it isn't easy to take an original idea—what happens inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl when she turns toward adolescence—and mold it into an accessible, entertaining, lively, funny, unpredictable animated movie that plays well for both kids and adults. "Inside Out »
- Anne Thompson
The Oscars' Year of the Crucible: Evaluating the Top Cinematography Contenders
3 December 2015 10:32 AM, PST
1. "The Revenant": Emmanuel (Chivo) Lubezki has a great shot at three Oscars in a row for what's turned out be a survival trilogy in space ("Gravity"), in a theater and in the mind ("Birdman"), and in the wilderness ("The Revenant"). But "The Revenant" carries even greater metaphysical weight for director Alejandro González Iñárritu. It's about learning to co-exist with brutality and beauty, inspired by the life of frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonard DiCaprio), who's mauled by a bear and left for dead by a member of his hunting team (Tom Hardy). But he miraculously tracks him down in the bitter cold like a corpse rising from the dead. Lubezki shot exteriors in the Canadian Rockies and the tip of Argentina with natural light, Steadicam and the untested Alexa 65, the first large-format digital camera, for 360-degree, high dynamic range compositions with very wide lenses »
- Bill Desowitz
Nyfcc Winner Kristen Stewart Explains How She Held Her Own with Juliette Binoche in 'Sils Maria'
3 December 2015 7:18 AM, PST
It's hard to believe that Kristen Stewart turned 25 in April. With the "Twilight" franchise behind her, she has been enjoying the freedom to make her own choices without worrying about commercial considerations. She scored raves as Oscar-winner Julianne Moore's daughter in "Still Alice," and has lined up a healthy slate of movies, from Oscar-winners Woody Allen and Ang Lee to indies Kelly Reichardt ("Wendy and Lucy") and Drake Doremus ("Crazy Love"). Read More: "New York Film Critics Push Faves in Awards Season, 'Carol' Wins Four (Analysis)" Truth is, Stewart has always made smart calls. Clearly, she is no longer chasing such studio efforts as "Snow White and the Huntsman," a franchise she has left behind in more ways than one. And while some of her indie efforts ("On the Road," "Yellow Handkerchief," "Camp X-Ray") proved to be box office disappointments, they were noble ones—and she »
- Anne Thompson
Sam Mendes Talks Bond, 'American Beauty,' and Film vs. Theatre at BAFTA
3 December 2015 6:57 AM, PST
Sam Mendes remembers the moment he was about to collect the best director Oscar for his first film, "American Beauty," in 2000. "You have to imagine yourself surrounded by your heroes. I’m in The Shrine, and there’s David Lynch and Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg – and right, I’m going to win the Academy Award for my first movie. And Altman, Scorsese, Lynch have never won an Academy Award. You know it’s ridiculous. How do you justify that? How do you make that Ok? "I decided very early on to treat it like a kind of bank loan, that I would pay back over time, and I would eventually justify having won to myself and to my peers." Read More: "How They Pulled Off the 'Spectre' of Death Opening in Mexico City" Fifteen years on, the Englishman has probably completed his installments. "American Beauty" deserved its plaudits, »
- Demetrios Matheou
Sundance Programmers Unveil, Discuss 2016 Competition, Next Lineups (Exclusive)
2 December 2015 1:00 PM, PST
The 2016 Sundance Film Festival's U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Dramatic, World Documentary, and Next lineups are now set, featuring 65 films from 29 countries. (As usual, pending decisions from the Berlin International Film festival, more films may be added.) For the 2016 Festival, 120 feature-length films were selected, representing 37 countries and 48 first-time filmmakers (including 28 in competition). These films were selected from 12,793 submissions, up from last year, including 4,081 feature-length films and 8,712 short films. Of the feature film submissions, 1,972 were from the U.S. and 2,109 were international. 98 feature films at the Festival will be world premieres. For the opening day movies, World Cinema's "Belgica" (Felix van Groeningen), Chris Kelly’s "Other People" and Kevin Macdonald's documentary "Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang," Sundance director John Cooper and chief programmer Trevor »
- Anne Thompson and Matt Brennan
Meet Kazakhstan's Foreign Oscar Contender: 'Stranger' Director Yermek Tursunov (Trailer)
2 December 2015 12:38 PM, PST
Kazakh filmmaker Yermek Tursunov's "Stranger" evokes Akira Kurosawa's epic "Dersu Uzala" in exploring the lives of displaced nomads eking out a living in the harsh steppes, where they clash against imposing modernity. Tursunov wrote the screenplay — which is set in the 1930s and centers on orphan Ilyas (Yerzhan Nurymbet) who escapes famine and the clutches of the Soviet Union to live with the wild wolf population in the mountains — 25 years ago during his film school days in Moscow. It's the film he's been waiting to make ever since. "I thought this story was maybe very old, but after returning to it again, I understood my script was not old," said Tursunov during our interview. "It's modern, because these situations repeat." We sat down at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Tursunov, gentle and well-spoken even in imperfect English, world-premiered the film before it opened in Kazakhstan, where audiences are scarce and. »
- Ryan Lattanzio
Watch: 'Brooklyn' Nyfcc Winner Saoirse Ronan on Instinct, Insecurity, and Meaty Roles for Women: "It's getting better"
2 December 2015 12:35 PM, PST
The first time most of us saw Saoirse Ronan was in Joe Wright's British period war drama"Atonement," as the little girl who gets her sexy older sister (Keira Knightley) into a heap of trouble. It's been seven years since Ronan earned her first and only Oscar nomination. Since then she played a trained assassin in Wright's "Hanna," and acted for directors Peter Jackson ("The Lovely Bones"), Gillian Armstrong ("Death Defying Acts"), Peter Weir ("The Way Back"), Kevin Macdonald ("How I Live Now") and Wes Anderson ("The Grand Budapest Hotel"). When she inevitably returns to the Academy Awards—she won Best Actress at the New York Film Critics Circle—she'll be a young woman. In a way the movie version of Colm Tóibín's book "Brooklyn," nurtured for years by writer Nick Hornby, has been waiting for Ronan to grow up. She's now 21. When we talked about her growth as an actress, »
- Anne Thompson
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