14 articles from 2009
A Serious Man and the odd movie out
29 November 2009 1:30 PM, PST
| The Guardian - Film News
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A Serious Man may be getting rave reviews – but it's like nothing the Coens have made before. Joe Queenan on weird one-offs and the directors who make them
About halfway through the very funny, very disturbing, very ethnic new film A Serious Man, the modern-day Job who is the serious man in question climbs up on to the roof of his ghastly 1960s Minneapolis suburban home and tries to adjust the antenna to improve his TV reception. Beleaguered on all fronts – conjugally, professionally, medically – Larry Gopnik, a dorky physics professor who may be about to lose his job and is very likely to lose his family, is a bright, principled Jewish man whose children have begged him to fix the antenna so they can watch F Troop, an idiotic 1960s comedy. Many of Larry's travails unfold as songs from Jefferson Airplane's seminal 1967 LP Surrealistic Pillow play in the background.
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- Joe Queenan
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Herzog to Head Berlin Film Festival
19 November 2009 10:26 AM, PST
| The Wrap
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By ScreenDaily
Werner Herzog will head the jury at the upcoming 60th Berlin International Film Festival (February 11-21).
The German auteur has made over 50 films during a career which has spanned almost 50 years, including "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" (Special Jury Prize, Cannes 1975), "Fitzcarraldo" (1982, Silver Palm in Cannes for Best Director), "Cobra Verde" (1987) and "Rescue Dawn" (2006).
Read more at ScreenDaily.
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- Brent Lang
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Werner Herzog: The Movieline Interview
18 November 2009 7:00 AM, PST
| Movieline
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You might expect a legendary director like Werner Herzog to have an intimidating presence; after all, Herzog often seems to be drawn to incredibly outsized lead characters, and his films like Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo are volatile feats in themselves. When I met with Herzog this month, however, he was friendly and charming, quick to smile and even eager to tease. His newest film is the Nicolas Cage starrer Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, and if that title recalls the 1992 Abel Ferrara film Bad Lieutenant that inspired it, rest assured that Herzog has made a loopy crime drama that stands on its own.
During our conversation, Herzog had plenty to say about drugs, film school, casting, Cage, and women, and he said all of it in his own delightful, inimitable way. For as much fun as Lieutenant is to watch, it's even more fun to talk to its maker.
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Werner Herzog: The Hollywood Interview
17 November 2009 10:22 PM, PST
| The Hollywood Interview
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Werner Herzog Brings The Music Back
By
Alex Simon
Academy Award-nominated German film director, screenwriter, actor and opera director Werner Herzog was born Werner H. Stipetić on 5 September 1942 in Munich. His family moved to the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang in the Chiemgau Alps after the house next to theirs was destroyed during bombing towards the close of World War II. When he was twelve, he and his family moved back to Munich. The same year, Herzog was told to sing in front of his class at school and adamantly refused. He was almost expelled for this and until the age of eighteen listened to no music, sang no songs and studied no instruments. He would later say that he would easily give ten years from his life to be able to play an instrument. At fourteen, he was inspired by an encyclopedia entry about film-making which he says provided
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- The Hollywood Interview.com
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Tiff ‘09: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
24 September 2009 7:42 PM, PDT
| SoundOnSight
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My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
Directed by Werner Herzog
Respected iconoclastic auteurs Werner Herzog and David Lynch collaborate on this drama, with Herzog as director and Lynch as executive producer. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is inspired by the harrowing true story of Mark Yarovsky (Michael Shannon), a graduate student at Uscd who, after being cast as the lead role in a Sophocles production, went on to stab and kill his mother with an antique sabre in his neighbor's living room. William Dafoe stars as Detective Hank Havenhurst, who is called to the home where the murderer has barricaded himself in his house and taken two hostages. Across the street, Brad's mother lies dead, found sprawled in a pool of blood, and slowly a string of Brad's friends arrive on the scene, among them his girlfriend (Cloe Sevigny) and his theater-director pal (Udo Kier). Slowly,
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- Ricky
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Sign Up For Film School With Professor Werner Herzog
24 September 2009 8:45 AM, PDT
| Cinematical
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Plenty of aspiring filmmakers hope to learn from their idols; few ever get the chance. But come January 2010, Werner Herzog fans will not only be able to study the ins and outs of film composition with the man behind such films as Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and the upcoming two Toronto Film Festival entries Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, they'll get to pick up even more useful skills -- like lock-picking, avoiding gunfire, and "the neutralization of bureaucracy." And all for the low, low price of $1,450!*
Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School will last just one weekend in January, but what a weekend (and chunk of change) well spent: the idea seems to be not only to prepare the would-be auteur for on-the-fly filmmaking in difficult and perhaps dangerous parts of the world, but for Herzog to school his students in literature,
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- Jen Yamato
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Werner Herzog: Scariest film professor ever?
23 September 2009 1:14 PM, PDT
| EW.com - PopWatch
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Digital video camera, $500. Weekend seminar, $1,450. Getting abused/inspired by legendary director Werner Herzog? Priceless.
Herzog –- who just directed the new Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans starring Nicolas Cage –- is getting back to his non-Hollywood roots by starting a guerilla filmmaking school. Rogue Film School’s first long weekend seminar (at a reasonable $1,450) will be held in January in Los Angeles, with other locales to follow. Don’t expect shooting and editing tips, the school’s website says topics will include “the art of lockpicking and…the exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully.” Herzog himself says: "The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted; it is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum...” Surviving participants will get a signed copy of Herzog’s Conquest of the Useless.
This is the infamously
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- Wendy Mitchell
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Tiff ‘09: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
20 September 2009 12:28 PM, PDT
| SoundOnSight
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My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
Directed by Werner Herzog
Respected iconoclastic auteurs Werner Herzog and David Lynch collaborate via this drama, with Herzog as director and Lynch as executive producer. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done is inspired by the harrowing true story of a man Mark Yarovsky (Michael Shannon), a graduate student at Uscd who after being cast as the lead role of a production of Electra, went on to stab and kill his mother with an antique saber in his neighbor's living room. William Dafoe stars as Detective Hank Havenhurst who is called to the home where the murderer has barricaded himself in his house and taken two hostages. Across the street, Brad's mother lies dead, found sprawled in a pool of blood, and slowly a string of Brad's friends arrive on the scene, among them his girlfriend (Cloe Sevigny) and his theatre
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- Ricky
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Werner Herzog's Lost Bad Lieutenant Journals
3 August 2009 12:46 PM, PDT
| Vanity Fair
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Earlier this summer HarperCollins released Conquest of the Useless, Werner Herzog's production diaries from the filming Fitzcarraldo (1982). Shot for over two years on location in the depths of the Amazon jungle, Fitzcarraldo tells the story of a deliriously ambitious attempt to build an opera house in the depths of Peru. The madness of the plotline mirrors that of the filming itself, which pits both men against the senseless chaos of nature. Illuminating very little about the actual production process, Herzog’s diaries reveal an artist “hypnotized by his own imagination,” to quote Sunday’s New York Times book review of Conquest. That’s all good and well, but here at VFDaily, we pride ourselves in the most exclusive materials and are therefore pleased to report our man in Louisiana (who may or may not exist) recently slipped us excerpts (which may or may not be made up) from the
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Vacillating Voiceovers: A History of Unreliable Narrators
16 July 2009 8:39 AM, PDT
| ifc.com
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We trust the movies. We have to. Most of them only work if we look up at the images changing 24-times-a-second in front of us and believe that they reflect some sort of objective reality where a man can fly his house to South America or alien robots can transform into cars. Even when a movie is told entirely from a character's perspective, we assume that the intimacy cinema provides to hear a person's thoughts or see things the way they do affords us some safety from deception. We are wrong. People lie; the movies can too.
Some movies take that trust and exploit it, or prey on it, or play with it. In "(500) Days of Summer," a man named Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) falls in love with a woman named Summer (Zooey Deschanel). The film begins with Tom's friends sitting him down and asking him to explain what happened in his relationship with Summer,
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- Matt Singer
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Herzog Speaks on 'Fitzcarraldo' In New Book
6 July 2009 4:23 AM, PDT
| Rope of Silicon
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Over the July 4th weekend I finally saw Werner Herzog's much praised 2005 doc Grizzly Man and while I was watching I couldn't help but think about how amazing it would have been had Herzog been given the chance to put together a camping trip with Grizzly Man protagonist Timothy Treadwell and the famed Herzog collaborator Klaus Kinski. I don't think Kinski would have been afraid of a grizzly bear and I have a good feeling he may have eaten Treadwell before the grizzlies ever had a chance to all while yelling obscenities at Treadwell's pet fox. Both men were (and still are) eternally fascinating and deserving of Herzog's eye as it didn't take me long to realize why Treadwell's story fascinated Herzog to the point of piecing together 90 minutes of Treadwell's amateur footage into a feature-length doc and it was worth every minute.
Bringing this little story back to the headline,
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- Brad Brevet
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Werner Herzog’s Diaries Excerpted Online
29 June 2009 11:35 AM, PDT
| Spout.com
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In Coppola's house on Broadway. Outside the wind is howling, whipping the laurel bushes. The sailboats in the bay are lying almost flat, the waves sharp-contoured and restless. The Alcatraz Light is flashing signals, in broad daylight. None of my friends is here. It is hard to buckle down to work, to shoulder this heavy burden of dreams. Only books provide some measure of comfort.
The NYTimes.com has published an excerpt of Werner Herzog's Conquest of the Useless, his diary of the making of Fitzcarraldo.
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- Karina Longworth
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“Nazis. I hate these guys.”: 15 WWII Movies Worth Watching Before You See Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
26 May 2009 4:10 PM, PDT
| FilmJunk
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Who knew that the Nazis -- one of the most brutal regimes in the history of brutal regimes -- would be responsible for such fun, mind-blowingly awesome entertainment? The second I see a dude in a grey German uniform and an eye patch enter the frame, I’m like ‘Whoa. That Nazi is going to provide me a great amount of entertainment this evening’. So, with Inglorious Bastards having recently premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, I figured I'd put together a list of some awesome WW2 films as a resource for anyone wanting to beef up their WW2 film knowledge before checking out Tarantino's self-proclaimed 'masterpiece'. It's worth noting that I focused on older films -- pre-1980 for the most part -- and only the stories featuring Nazi's. It was tough to cut this down to 15 films, but I'm sure you all will be able to come up with
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- Jay C.
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Hey Folks Celebrity On Set Blow-Ups aren't Uncommon
3 February 2009 3:19 AM, PST
| Rope of Silicon
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I just saw Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo on January 26 and have yet to watch Herzog's documentary My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski but have always known about this special little clip from it and felt now was probably the best time to bring it to the table as Klaus Kinski has his own on set tantrum. Both Fitzcarraldo and My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski are available on NetFlix Instant Play in case you are interested. Roger Ebert, whom I believe is good friends with Herzog, has a great review of Fitzcarraldo here, it really is a one-in-a-million kind of film.
On top of that I bring you the infamous Lily Tomlin and David O. Russell vids from the set of I Heart Huckabees as well as a remix of Bale's blow-up as found at Hollywood-Elsewhere.
Klaus Kinski on Set of Fitzcarraldo
Lily Tomlin and David O. Russell - Part One
Lily Tomlin
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- Brad Brevet
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14 articles from 2009
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