The last of the great auteur directors voices the role of a plastic grocery bag in a philosophical short film by much-tipped director Ramin Bahrani
A strange moment punctures the sentimentality of Robin Williams's 1998 drama-fantasy What Dreams May Come. Williams, the Orpheus-like character who trawls through hell in search of his wife, is stepping across what the film somehow manages to portray as a dull, unscary field of human heads. One of the heads calls out to him. It is Werner Herzog. "You're Klaus!" the Herzog head cries, confusing Williams with Klaus Kinski in a way nobody ever has or will again. "Welcome, welcome!"
If it seems like a bizarre cameo for the last of the great auteurs, consider that this is also the man who dragged Joaquin Phoenix from a mangled car, then took off before Phoenix could thank him, the man who got shot during an interview...
A strange moment punctures the sentimentality of Robin Williams's 1998 drama-fantasy What Dreams May Come. Williams, the Orpheus-like character who trawls through hell in search of his wife, is stepping across what the film somehow manages to portray as a dull, unscary field of human heads. One of the heads calls out to him. It is Werner Herzog. "You're Klaus!" the Herzog head cries, confusing Williams with Klaus Kinski in a way nobody ever has or will again. "Welcome, welcome!"
If it seems like a bizarre cameo for the last of the great auteurs, consider that this is also the man who dragged Joaquin Phoenix from a mangled car, then took off before Phoenix could thank him, the man who got shot during an interview...
- 4/8/2010
- by Chris Michael
- The Guardian - Film News
"Synecdoche, New York" is the best film of the decade. It intends no less than to evoke the strategies we use to live our lives. After beginning my first viewing in confusion, I began to glimpse its purpose and by the end was eager to see it again, then once again, and I am not finished. Charlie Kaufman understands how I live my life, and I suppose his own, and I suspect most of us. Faced with the bewildering demands of time, space, emotion, morality, lust, greed, hope, dreams, dreads and faiths, we build compartments in our minds. It is a way of seeming sane.
The mind is a concern in all his screenplays, but in "Synecdoche" (2008), his first film as a director, he makes it his subject, and what huge ambition that demonstrates. He's like a
novelist who wants to get it all into the first book in case he never publishes another.
The mind is a concern in all his screenplays, but in "Synecdoche" (2008), his first film as a director, he makes it his subject, and what huge ambition that demonstrates. He's like a
novelist who wants to get it all into the first book in case he never publishes another.
- 1/2/2010
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
Ramin Bahrani is the new great American director. After three films, each a master work, he has established himself as a gifted, confident filmmaker with ideas that involve who and where we are at this time. His films pay great attention to ordinary lives that are not so ordinary at all. His subjects so far have been immigrants working hard to make a living in America. His fourth film, now in preparation, will be a Western. His hero will be named Tom. Well, he couldn't very well be named Huckleberry.
The Old West, too, was a land of immigrants, many of them speaking no English. But Bahrani never refers to his characters as immigrants. They are new Americans, climbing the lower rungs of the economic ladder. There is the Pakistani in "Man Push Cart," who operates a coffee-and-bagel wagon in Manhattan. The Latino kid in "Chop Shop," surviving in a...
The Old West, too, was a land of immigrants, many of them speaking no English. But Bahrani never refers to his characters as immigrants. They are new Americans, climbing the lower rungs of the economic ladder. There is the Pakistani in "Man Push Cart," who operates a coffee-and-bagel wagon in Manhattan. The Latino kid in "Chop Shop," surviving in a...
- 3/25/2009
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
On top of this morning's announcement of the Independent Spirit Award nominees the Ifp have announced their nominees for the Gotham Awards. You will notice a few common themes such as love for Frozen River, Ballast and Rachel Getting Married. The one thing that really catches my eye is the nomination of Melissa Leo in the Breakthrough Actor category. Leo is credited on 77 projects over at IMDb with ten of those expected for future release. She has been acting since 1984 and is just now considered a breakthrough? What an interesting world those independent awards are. Here's the list of nominees. Best Feature Ballast Frozen River Synecdoche, New York The Visitor The Wrestler Best Documentary Chris and#038; Don: A Love Story Encounters at the End of the World Man on Wire Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired Trouble the Water Breakthrough Director Antonio Campos, Afterschool Dennis Dortch, A Good Day to...
- 12/2/2008
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
On Monday, October 20, Ifp has announced the contenders for the 18th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards and Lance Hammer-directed drama "Ballast" has dominated the nomination list, taking in 4 separate nods. The movie, which has won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival's Dramatic Directing Award for Hammer, is nominated for Best Feature, Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor and Best Ensemble Performance.
In the category of Best Feature, "Ballast" will be up against Courtney Hunt's "Frozen River", Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York", Thomas McCarthy's "The Visitor" and Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler". Meanwhile, for the Best Ensemble Performance category, the film's cast that include Micheal J. Smith Sr. will be competing with "Rachel Getting Married" ensemble led by Anne Hathaway, "Synecdoche" cast led by Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" ensemble, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, and "Visitor" cast led by Richard Jenkins.
Though garnering the most gongs for the 2008 Gotham Awards,...
In the category of Best Feature, "Ballast" will be up against Courtney Hunt's "Frozen River", Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York", Thomas McCarthy's "The Visitor" and Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler". Meanwhile, for the Best Ensemble Performance category, the film's cast that include Micheal J. Smith Sr. will be competing with "Rachel Getting Married" ensemble led by Anne Hathaway, "Synecdoche" cast led by Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" ensemble, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, and "Visitor" cast led by Richard Jenkins.
Though garnering the most gongs for the 2008 Gotham Awards,...
- 10/21/2008
- by AceShowbiz.com
- Aceshowbiz
- The Ifp announced the nominees for the 18th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards and not surprisingly, it is Lance Hammer’s Ballast that came out on top with four noms: Best Feature, Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor and Best Ensemble Performance. Hammer’s eloquent rendering of a fractured family tree is such a solid film that we can expect a repeat pattern in nominations for the Indie Spirit Awards. While nominations in many of the categories hold up well (Best Ensemble and both Breakthrough categories), it is the Best Feature category’s exclusion of Antonio Campos’ Afterschool and Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop and the inclusion of The Visitor and Frozen River that makes me wonder if the four person nominating committee had a different mandate for their selection process. While McCarthy’s film certainly has a collection of strong moments and Frozen River counts on a fine white-trash perf from Leo,
- 10/20/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
By Michael Atkinson
It's amazing to contemplate, but world cinema didn't really make serious feature films about children until after WWII; Vittorio De Sica's "Shoeshine" (1946) might've been the first. (You could stretch and consider Hal Roach's vivid and roughhewn "Our Gang" shorts as qualifying, and I wouldn't argue.) After the New Waves got rolling, of course, juveniles proliferated like rabbits on screen, but prior to that nearly the first half of cinema history had little or nothing to say about the bedeviled, often neglected, wide-eyed life of the pre-adult. Did cinema change with the war, or did we? Two new movies to DVD, Reha Erdem's "Times and Winds" (2006) and Ramin Bahrani's "Chop Shop" (2007), make their individual cases that little outside of the movie dynamic has changed at all, and that life as a 12-year-old in any corner of the globe is still subject to the grinding,...
It's amazing to contemplate, but world cinema didn't really make serious feature films about children until after WWII; Vittorio De Sica's "Shoeshine" (1946) might've been the first. (You could stretch and consider Hal Roach's vivid and roughhewn "Our Gang" shorts as qualifying, and I wouldn't argue.) After the New Waves got rolling, of course, juveniles proliferated like rabbits on screen, but prior to that nearly the first half of cinema history had little or nothing to say about the bedeviled, often neglected, wide-eyed life of the pre-adult. Did cinema change with the war, or did we? Two new movies to DVD, Reha Erdem's "Times and Winds" (2006) and Ramin Bahrani's "Chop Shop" (2007), make their individual cases that little outside of the movie dynamic has changed at all, and that life as a 12-year-old in any corner of the globe is still subject to the grinding,...
- 7/15/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
- Chop Shop Click here to read the review! "Striving for a doctrine that inhales and exhales pragmatism and due to a frame composition and handheld aesthetic that is absorbing and not distracting, with the assurance of a seasoned auteur, Bahrani guides a young non-actor into a docu-fiction territory and it takes all but five minutes for the tender aged, young protag played by Alejandro Polanco to bluff the viewer into believing that every facet of this fictionalized tale is absolute truth."...
- 2/27/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
- Today we have the poster premiere for Ramin Bahrani's critically praised Chop Shop. To be released via Koch Lorber at the Film Forum on Wednesday February 27th, this is what I had to say about Bahrani's excellent follow up to his debut film Man Push Cart after its world premiere at Cannes...: "offers a boundary-pushing portrait and how-to-guide for survival in a cross-section portion of a city where many walks of life intersect. With the same sort of microcosmic vibrancy, original location specific settings and similar age bracket point of views found in recent American independent cinema examples of David Gordon Green’s George Washington and Peter Sollett’s Raising Victor Vargas, this Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight selection gets in the mindset, the daily beat of a world that is unfamiliar, tragic and oddly comforting all at once. For those who thought that the popcorn bio interpretation
- 2/5/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
NEW YORK -- Koch Lorber Films has acquired all domestic rights to Ramin Bahrani's Festival de Cannes and Toronto fest selection Chop Shop.
The neo-realistic drama from Big Beach centers on a 12-year-old Latino orphan (Alejandro Polanco) working in a Queens auto-body repair shop. His bleak existence is brightened when his teenage sister joins him to live in the shop and the two attempt to forge a better life together.
Bahrani scripted Shop with Bahareh Azimi. Lisa Muskat (All the Real Girls), Marc Turtletaub (Little Miss Sunshine) and Jeb Brody (Sunshine Cleaning) produced the film. Peter Saraf (Adaptation) served as executive producer.
Shop, which premiered in the the Director's Fortnight section of Cannes in May, helped Bahrani earn an IFC/Acura Someone to Watch Award nomination at the upcoming Independent Spirit Awards.
The Iranian-American director gained acclaim for his 2005 feature Man Push Cart, which was also shot with mostly nonprofessional actors. His next project is the darkly comic drama Solo for executive producers Ted Hope and Anne Carey of This Is That Prods.
The neo-realistic drama from Big Beach centers on a 12-year-old Latino orphan (Alejandro Polanco) working in a Queens auto-body repair shop. His bleak existence is brightened when his teenage sister joins him to live in the shop and the two attempt to forge a better life together.
Bahrani scripted Shop with Bahareh Azimi. Lisa Muskat (All the Real Girls), Marc Turtletaub (Little Miss Sunshine) and Jeb Brody (Sunshine Cleaning) produced the film. Peter Saraf (Adaptation) served as executive producer.
Shop, which premiered in the the Director's Fortnight section of Cannes in May, helped Bahrani earn an IFC/Acura Someone to Watch Award nomination at the upcoming Independent Spirit Awards.
The Iranian-American director gained acclaim for his 2005 feature Man Push Cart, which was also shot with mostly nonprofessional actors. His next project is the darkly comic drama Solo for executive producers Ted Hope and Anne Carey of This Is That Prods.
- 12/13/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
AFI FestBig Beach
Iranian-American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has followed up his well-received Man Push Cart with another penetrating portrait of life on the outskirts of New York.
Very much of the Ken Loach school of social realism, Chop Shop is revealed through the mature-beyond-his-years, unblinking eyes of a 12-year-old Latino street orphan who scrapes together an existence working and living at one of the dozens of auto-body repair shops lining the fringes of Queens.
Impressively carried by nonactor Alejandro Polanco, the film -- screening at the AFI Fest as well as at this year's Festival de Cannes and Toronto International Film Festival -- should serve to further Bahrani's reputation as a director with a promising future ahead of him.
Located in the shadow of Shea Stadium, the area known as the Iron Triangle is a 75-acre stretch of scrap yards and car-repair joints where customers don't ask about the origin of their required parts in return for deep discount pricing.
It's here that the enterprising Alejandro has managed to carve out a living, steering fresh arrivals to his boss' garage and running errands while hawking DVDs and candy bars on the side.
He also manages to secure a job working in a lunch wagon for his 16-year-old sister, Isamar (Isamar Gonzales), sharing his cramped, unfinished room above the garage with her.
Much to Polanco's displeasure, Isamar is supplementing her income by turning tricks with truck drivers, but she ultimately buys into his dream of purchasing a rusted out roach coach and starting a business of their own.
Collaborating on the story with Nice, France-based writer Bahareh Azimi, Bahrani has etched a intriguing portrait of a fragment of society that would have otherwise gone unnoticed by the casual onlooker.
With young Polanco's fiercely determined, affecting performance leading the way, his fellow cast of nonprofessionals infuse this industrial wasteland with a surprising communal vitality, as Bahrani and his cinematographer Michael Simmonds (Jesus Camp) allow a welcome glimmer of hope to shine through that dusty, exhaust-ridden air.
Iranian-American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has followed up his well-received Man Push Cart with another penetrating portrait of life on the outskirts of New York.
Very much of the Ken Loach school of social realism, Chop Shop is revealed through the mature-beyond-his-years, unblinking eyes of a 12-year-old Latino street orphan who scrapes together an existence working and living at one of the dozens of auto-body repair shops lining the fringes of Queens.
Impressively carried by nonactor Alejandro Polanco, the film -- screening at the AFI Fest as well as at this year's Festival de Cannes and Toronto International Film Festival -- should serve to further Bahrani's reputation as a director with a promising future ahead of him.
Located in the shadow of Shea Stadium, the area known as the Iron Triangle is a 75-acre stretch of scrap yards and car-repair joints where customers don't ask about the origin of their required parts in return for deep discount pricing.
It's here that the enterprising Alejandro has managed to carve out a living, steering fresh arrivals to his boss' garage and running errands while hawking DVDs and candy bars on the side.
He also manages to secure a job working in a lunch wagon for his 16-year-old sister, Isamar (Isamar Gonzales), sharing his cramped, unfinished room above the garage with her.
Much to Polanco's displeasure, Isamar is supplementing her income by turning tricks with truck drivers, but she ultimately buys into his dream of purchasing a rusted out roach coach and starting a business of their own.
Collaborating on the story with Nice, France-based writer Bahareh Azimi, Bahrani has etched a intriguing portrait of a fragment of society that would have otherwise gone unnoticed by the casual onlooker.
With young Polanco's fiercely determined, affecting performance leading the way, his fellow cast of nonprofessionals infuse this industrial wasteland with a surprising communal vitality, as Bahrani and his cinematographer Michael Simmonds (Jesus Camp) allow a welcome glimmer of hope to shine through that dusty, exhaust-ridden air.
- 11/1/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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