“Reservation Dogs” started with a farewell.
The revelatory FX comedy from Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi picked up in Season 1 with Elora Danan (Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs), Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) and Cheese (Lane Factor) mourning their friend Daniel (Dalton Cramer), processing his suicide with petty theft and rebellion and a plan to run away from home. The show’s third and final season, premiering today, finds the res dogs cautiously forging their own paths — no longer afraid of losing each other and Daniel’s memory the way they were before visiting California. The four episodes screened for critics honor the show’s off-kilter humor and striking poignance, setting up a final farewell that will be equally bittersweet and triumphant.
The friends did make it to California in Season 2, wading into the ocean to say goodbye to Daniel after losing their car and communing with “White Jesus” (Brandon Boyd...
The revelatory FX comedy from Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi picked up in Season 1 with Elora Danan (Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs), Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-a-Tai), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) and Cheese (Lane Factor) mourning their friend Daniel (Dalton Cramer), processing his suicide with petty theft and rebellion and a plan to run away from home. The show’s third and final season, premiering today, finds the res dogs cautiously forging their own paths — no longer afraid of losing each other and Daniel’s memory the way they were before visiting California. The four episodes screened for critics honor the show’s off-kilter humor and striking poignance, setting up a final farewell that will be equally bittersweet and triumphant.
The friends did make it to California in Season 2, wading into the ocean to say goodbye to Daniel after losing their car and communing with “White Jesus” (Brandon Boyd...
- 8/2/2023
- by Proma Khosla
- Indiewire
Stella Meghie is feeling the love.
As “Sonic the Hedgehog” soared to number one over Presidents’ Day weekend, “The Photograph” made a solid $13 million. Catching up with Meghie early Saturday morning after the film’s debut, the writer/director/executive producer admitted she’d been looking at the numbers.
“I’m grateful people seem to like it, but you know, who knows?” Meghie told Variety during a phone conversation. “It’s hard to judge these things on their outcome, especially going back and forth between studio and indie [film], there’s just such different scales of what success means. It’s hard when you’re in the marketplace going up against like $100 million blockbuster films and you’re just like, ‘Where do I land? What constitutes success?’”
Meghie and the film, which carries a reported $15 million budget, also received a great deal of support from other black creators on social media,...
As “Sonic the Hedgehog” soared to number one over Presidents’ Day weekend, “The Photograph” made a solid $13 million. Catching up with Meghie early Saturday morning after the film’s debut, the writer/director/executive producer admitted she’d been looking at the numbers.
“I’m grateful people seem to like it, but you know, who knows?” Meghie told Variety during a phone conversation. “It’s hard to judge these things on their outcome, especially going back and forth between studio and indie [film], there’s just such different scales of what success means. It’s hard when you’re in the marketplace going up against like $100 million blockbuster films and you’re just like, ‘Where do I land? What constitutes success?’”
Meghie and the film, which carries a reported $15 million budget, also received a great deal of support from other black creators on social media,...
- 2/18/2020
- by Angelique Jackson
- Variety Film + TV
Despite an increasingly evolving black film landscape, we seem to still be facing an overwhelmingly higher ratio of heartrending or even tragic dramas over romantic fare. That’s why there was such a warm show of support on social media when the trailer for writer-director Stella Meghie’s “The Photograph” dropped.
It wasn’t just because it boasts A-listers like Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield; it was the fact that they look like they were happy and in love.
Of course, an awesome trailer with smiling black actors in it doesn’t always mean it’s a good film. But excellent cinematography and a charming script can definitely put it in the ballpark to become one.
“The Photograph” is a bit of an atypical romantic dramedy, in that it goes back and forth in time between two separate but related couples who are both struggling to navigate the love in...
It wasn’t just because it boasts A-listers like Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield; it was the fact that they look like they were happy and in love.
Of course, an awesome trailer with smiling black actors in it doesn’t always mean it’s a good film. But excellent cinematography and a charming script can definitely put it in the ballpark to become one.
“The Photograph” is a bit of an atypical romantic dramedy, in that it goes back and forth in time between two separate but related couples who are both struggling to navigate the love in...
- 2/13/2020
- by Candice Frederick
- The Wrap
DPs don’t often rank up to their title linearly. Mark Schwartzbard did. Trying to break into the industry after film school, he sent letters to productions but never heard back. He got an internship where he cold-called companies like Coca Cola and offered them product placement in return for Cola. Eventually, the production company he interned for offered him his first loader gig for deferred pay. He loaded and A.C’ed for years on features and commercials and eventually bumped up to camera operator. He pulled focus for the length of Borat and operated on Bruno. Dayplaying, he experienced such New […]...
- 12/25/2019
- by Aaron Hunt
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
DPs don’t often rank up to their title linearly. Mark Schwartzbard did. Trying to break into the industry after film school, he sent letters to productions but never heard back. He got an internship where he cold-called companies like Coca Cola and offered them product placement in return for Cola. Eventually, the production company he interned for offered him his first loader gig for deferred pay. He loaded and A.C’ed for years on features and commercials and eventually bumped up to camera operator. He pulled focus for the length of Borat and operated on Bruno. Dayplaying, he experienced such New […]...
- 12/25/2019
- by Aaron Hunt
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The most piercing comedy is often mined from the darker aspects of life, presenting our fears in a new, hopefully amusing light. While Demetri Martin‘s stand-up has tinges of this, represented in his lo-fi sketches and carefully constructed one-liners, his directing and writing debut Dean effectively melds, both on the page and stylistically, a dramatic backbone with his personal brand.
Setting the tone by opening in a cemetery, Dean (Martin) places flowers on his mother’s grave, alongside his father, Robert (Kevin Kline), hinting at a lingering certainty of death that occupies his character’s headspace. Working as a cartoonist in New York City, he’s trying to get his second book of illustrations off the ground, but keeps coming back to images of the Grim Reaper as he processes the loss of his mother and a broken engagement. If this all sounds rather dour, Martin’s approach is relatively upbeat,...
Setting the tone by opening in a cemetery, Dean (Martin) places flowers on his mother’s grave, alongside his father, Robert (Kevin Kline), hinting at a lingering certainty of death that occupies his character’s headspace. Working as a cartoonist in New York City, he’s trying to get his second book of illustrations off the ground, but keeps coming back to images of the Grim Reaper as he processes the loss of his mother and a broken engagement. If this all sounds rather dour, Martin’s approach is relatively upbeat,...
- 4/21/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
With the excess of low-budget, retreat-in-the-woods dramas often finding characters hashing out their insecurities through a meta-narrative, a certain initial resistance can occur when presented with such a derivative scenario at virtually every film festival. While Sophia Takal‘s psychological drama Always Shine ultimately stumbles, the chemistry of its leads and a sense of foreboding dread in its formal execution ensures its heightened view of a fractured relationship is a mostly successful one.
Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) is a rising actress, internally battling with the requested nudity for her various gigs, yet sheepishly enjoying the money and increased attention it brings as she makes her way into the spotlight. Meanwhile, her best friend, Anna (Mackenzie Davis), is struggling to break through in the same field, acting in anything that comes her way — even if it’s an avant-garde short that may or may not feature a paycheck. With the pair feeling disconnected over the past months,...
Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) is a rising actress, internally battling with the requested nudity for her various gigs, yet sheepishly enjoying the money and increased attention it brings as she makes her way into the spotlight. Meanwhile, her best friend, Anna (Mackenzie Davis), is struggling to break through in the same field, acting in anything that comes her way — even if it’s an avant-garde short that may or may not feature a paycheck. With the pair feeling disconnected over the past months,...
- 4/19/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The Comedy
Directed by Rick Alverson
Written by Robert Donne and Rick Alverson
2012, USA
The Comedy is an unpleasant twist on arrested development as in defined by the the notion of mental growth. Tim Heidecker, co-star and co-creator of the cult show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, stars in this bleak character study about a self-loathing, thirty-something Brooklyn hipster with sociopathic tendencies. The Comedy is a strange bird, a comedy of discomfort in which terrible people say and do rotten things to one another. Never before, have I spent 90 minutes with characters I despise and walked away feeling rewarded. The title describes not the film but the main character’s life, which he lives out as a of meta satire of life itself. This is a character portrait of a narcissist and nihilist; one of those great movies that is difficult to enjoy and met with harsh criticism,...
Directed by Rick Alverson
Written by Robert Donne and Rick Alverson
2012, USA
The Comedy is an unpleasant twist on arrested development as in defined by the the notion of mental growth. Tim Heidecker, co-star and co-creator of the cult show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, stars in this bleak character study about a self-loathing, thirty-something Brooklyn hipster with sociopathic tendencies. The Comedy is a strange bird, a comedy of discomfort in which terrible people say and do rotten things to one another. Never before, have I spent 90 minutes with characters I despise and walked away feeling rewarded. The title describes not the film but the main character’s life, which he lives out as a of meta satire of life itself. This is a character portrait of a narcissist and nihilist; one of those great movies that is difficult to enjoy and met with harsh criticism,...
- 1/6/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
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