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Directors Josh and Benny Safdie are no strangers to the world of branded content. After all, Josh’s first feature, THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED (2008) was a byproduct of an agreement to produce a short piece for Kate Spade. The medium holds a particular benefit for their unique filmmaking style, devoid as it is of…
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Lebron James. Kobe Bryant. Carmelo Anthony. Lenny Cooke. In an alternate reality, these would all have been household names. For Lenny Cooke, unfortunately, this was not meant to be. It seems inconceivable that a man who can be mentioned in the same breath as these NBA titans never actually played against them as a member…
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The modest success of DADDY LONGLEGS (2009) and the prestige afforded by its Cannes debut wouldn’t quite launch Josh and Benny Safdie’s directing career into the stratosphere, but it would raise their profile significantly. Most filmmakers would leverage the moment to land a big studio film, but even at this relatively early stage in their…
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![Paul Thomas Anderson [Part 8]: Dystopian Dreamscapes](https://thedirectorsseries.blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2019-06-20-at-10.50.34-am.png)
PART 8: DYSTOPIAN DREAMSCAPES is the eighth installment of THE DIRECTORS SERIES’ examination into the films and careers of director Paul Thomas Anderson, covering his experimental Netflix collaboration with Thom Yorke, 2019’s ANIMA. This video is made possible in part by our generous supporters on Patreon. If you enjoyed this video, please consider supporting us!
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![Paul Thomas Anderson [Part 9]: “Summer Girls”](https://thedirectorsseries.blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/working-sequence.01_31_35_15.still045.jpg)
PART 9: SUMMER GIRLS is the ninth installment of THE DIRECTORS SERIES’ examination into the films and careers of director Paul Thomas Anderson, covering his series of collaborations with Haim via several music videos and his 2021 throwback feature, LICORICE PIZZA. If you enjoyed this video, please consider supporting us on Patreon!
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Notable Festivals: Cannes Award Wins: John Cassavetes Award, Independent Spirit Awards Parenthood is easily one of the most transformative experiences a person could go through. Overnight, one’s priorities — indeed, one’s entire world — radically realigns around the well-being of someone other than themselves. It is unfathomably rewarding and unimaginably challenging in equal measure. Simply…
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Formed in their college heyday at Boston University, the Red Bucket Films collective — comprised of student directors Josh & Benny Safdie, Zachary Treitz, Sam Lisenco and Brett Jutkiewicz — was experiencing the end of the 2000’s as their most prolific era. Like the New Hollywood generation of filmmakers before them, they found a particular…
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The advent of the digital revolution may well prove to be, quite effortlessly, the most destabilizing and transformative movement in the century-long history of cinema. More so than the arrival of home video — or perhaps even the transition of silent films to talkies — the introduction of digital technology into the production-to-exhibition pipeline would…
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For more than a decade, mainstream American cinema has been dominated by snarky supermen in leathery capes and synthetic jumpsuits designed to accentuate absurd muscle masses. Escapist fare rules the day, the natural outcome of an infinite feedback loop where the runaway costs of studio production require a “safe” product that appeals to as wide…
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As the enigmatic director Terrence Malick has gradually inched out more into the public eye, boosting the increased pace of his output with rare in-person promotional appearances, so too has he begun to engage with the wider ecosphere of the moving image. What was once a career marked exclusively by theatrical features, spaced many years…
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Notable Festivals: Cannes In my Catholic grade school, we were required to start each day with the Pledge of Allegiance like any other school. We would dutifully stand with our hands over our hearts, face the flag, and monotonously recite the words that had been hammered into our memory. We didn’t give much thought to…
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Director David Fincher’s tenure at Netflix has radically redefined the idea of what constitutes a “David Fincher film”. Once colloquially known by the public at large as the “serial killer director” due to the success of pictures like SE7EN (1995), ZODIAC (2007), and THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011), Fincher’s multi-year deal with the…