Todd Haynes

Started by MacGuffin, November 20, 2003, 10:38:28 AM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

wilder


wilder

Half Of Todd Haynes' 'Wonderstruck' Will Be Presented As A Silent Film
via The Playlist

For most of his career, Todd Haynes has specialized in intimate dramas and character studies, films that might be small in scale, but ring through with large emotion. However, his next feature, "Wonderstruck" promises to be his most ambitious outing yet. While he's once again put some tremendously talented actresses in key roles — Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams — the story revolves around children, and even more, is split between two time periods. If that wasn't enough, Haynes has one more trick up his sleeve.

Based on the book by "Hugo" author Brian Selznick's the film will be set in in two different time periods, and focusing on two children — Ben in 1977, who runs away from his family in Minneapolis and heads to New York City, and the deaf Rose in 1927, who also plots an escape from her home in New Jersey to the big city, to see her favorite actress, Lillian Mayhew. And for the latter setting, Haynes will be shooting it in the style of a silent film, according to Deadline. Deaf actress Millicent Simmonds has been cast as Rose for that portion of the film, and the director will use a number of other deaf actors for this section of "Wonderstruck," to better capture Rose's perception of the world.

"Wonderstruck" is being produced by Amazon Studios.

wilder

Todd Haynes To Direct Documentary On The Velvet Underground, Prepping Amazon Series
via The Playlist

Todd Haynes has had a long running interest in the world of music and the personalities that populate it. The director's early short film "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" made him one to watch, he explored the '70s glam scene with "Velvet Goldmine," and tried to capture the enigmatic Bob Dylan with "I'm Not There." All of these projects were cinematic visions of their subject, but now Haynes is taking a more straight-ahead approach to one of rock 'n roll's most influential acts.

The director is taking a walk on the wild side with a documentary about The Velvet Underground. The project is in pretty early stages, but Haynes says it will "rely certainly on [Andy] Warhol films but also a rich culture of experimental film, a vernacular we have lost and we don't have, we increasingly get further removed from." Extensive research is being planned along with interviews with the surviving members, but the absence of frontman Lou Reed, who passed away in 2013, will certainly be a big hurdle to overcome.

Meanwhile, Haynes is putting another pot on the stove, and heading back to TV with a new project at Amazon. The filmmaker would only reveal that the brewing series will "re-examine a figure who maybe we forget how radical they were in their thinking because they were so incorporated into our culture and outlook as a modern society."

Could this be The Source Family project that was announced a couple of years back? It seems to fit, given that they promoted natural health, vegetarian diets and more in the 1970s, when those ideas were a bit more outside of the mainstream.

WorldForgot

Happy Birthday, Todd Haynes






wilder

Todd Haynes To Direct And Produce 'The Velvet Underground' Feature Docu For Polygram, Verve
via Deadline

Todd Haynes announced today that he will team with Polygram Entertainment and Verve Label Group for The Velvet Underground, a feature documentary on about one of the most influential rock bands of all time.

Haynes, along with Christine Vachon, announced the news today with a first look video at Sir Lucian Grainge's 2018 Artist Showcase. Haynes will direct and produce the documentary which will trace multiple threads leading to the band's formation and their impact on music and global culture.

Fresh off of Wonderstruck, The Velvet Underground marks Haynes' first documentary project. Through drama, though, Haynes has explored such music and literary legends as Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Karen Carpenter, Jean Genet and Arthur Rimbaud.

A Killer Content and Motto Pictures Production, the film's producers include Haynes, Vachon, Julie Goldman, Chris Clements, David Blackman for Polygram Entertainment, and executive producers Danny Bennett for Verve, and Carolyn Hepburn. The film has received the support of founding Velvet Underground member John Cale and Laurie Anderson, the artist and partner of the Velvet's late Lou Reed.

wilder

Todd Haynes Will Direct A Series About Freud For Amazon Studios
via The Playlist

While in France, the director revealed he has yet another project in the works with Amazon Studios: a series on famous neurologist Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. Fun fact, Haynes is actually an avid reader of Freud's work as detailed in this interview with INTO magazine. The director will likely reunite with Lachman for the project. Presumably, it's a mini-series, but no other details were offered from the tweets several journalists wrote during Cannes.

A series on Freud would be the second collaboration with Amazon Studios, the company that released "Wonderstruck." Haynes spoke about the series months ago, but wouldn't reveal much. At the time he said the series would, "re-examine a figure who maybe we forget how radical they were in their thinking because they were so incorporated into our culture and outlook as a modern society" which makes more sense now that we understand he's talking about Freud.

The Amazon series would seem to overtake at least one project in the works, a limited series based on events that really occurred in the early '70s in L.A. based on the 'The Source Family' documentary that he announced in 2015.

wilder

Another where-are-you-Criterion


Fall 2018 TBD

Far From Heaven (2002) is coming to blu-ray from Kino



Cathy is the perfect 50s housewife, living the perfect 50s life: healthy kids, successful husband, social prominence. Then one night she surprises her husband Frank kissing another man, and her tidy world starts spinning out of control. In her confusion and grief, she finds consolation in the friendship of their African-American gardener, Raymond - a socially taboo relationship that leads to the further disintegration of life as she knew it. Despite Cathy and Frank's struggle to keep their marriage afloat, the reality of his homosexuality and her feelings for Raymond open a painful, if more honest, chapter in their lives.



Alethia

Brilliant film. Saw it again last year and was swept away.

wilder

Todd Haynes to Direct Drama 'Dry Run'
via Variety

Todd Haynes is set to direct Participant Media's "Dry Run," a movie based on the New York Times Magazine article about the lawyer who took on the chemical company DuPont.

Participant and Mark Ruffalo are producing the pic from a rewrite by Mario Correa. Matthew Carnahan penned the first draft. Sources say Ruffalo is also considering starring in the film as the lawyer, but negotiations have yet to begin.

Based on Nathaniel Rich's New York Times Magazine article "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare", the untitled film centers around Robert Bilott, who had been practicing as a corporate defense attorney for eight years when he took on an environmental lawsuit against the chemical company DuPont. The suit turned into a battle exposing a decades-long history of chemical pollution.

Haynes has spent most of his career developing his own projects and rarely meets for open directing assignments like this one. The history of the Du Ponts, however, holds similarities to some of the flawed characters Haynes has depicted in previous films like "Far From Heaven," "Carol," and the Bob Dylan drama "I'm Not There."

WorldForgot

Double'd SAFE (1995) on Criterion'z edition with a Super 8 oldie on middle school depression, 78'z The Suicide.

Materialist annui, quiet intimacy flipped on a dime, self help self harm, spaces photographed on Todd Haynes' Carol White'z telepathic plane. She listens and feels for everyone but herself, or herself has begun to slip before the reel beginz, and this distrust spreadz thru The Valley in 1987 out into our chemical dependency at a consumer level, a matter of social and emotional perception which Haynes extends to AIDS, panic and prep, and sexual repression.

A great bad trip, one of those.


wilder

June 29, 2021

Poison (1991) on blu-ray from Zeitgeist



Three intercut stories about outsiders, sex and violence. In "Hero," Richie, at age 7, kills his father and flies away. After the event, a documentary in cheesy lurid colors asks what Richie was like and what led up to the shooting. In the black and white "Horror," a scientist isolates the elixir of human sexuality, drinks it, and becomes a festering, contagious murderer; a female colleague who loves him tries to help, to her peril. In "Homo," a prisoner in Fontenal prison is drawn to an inmate whom he knew some years before, at Baton juvenile institute, and whose humiliations he witnessed. This story is told in dim light, except for the bright flashbacks.

wilder

Natalie Portman And Julianne Moore To Star in Todd Haynes 'May December'–Cannes Market
Deadline

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore are set to star in Rocket Science's May December for Carol director Todd Haynes. The screenplay was written by Samy Burch with the story by Burch and Alex Mechanik. Rocket Science is handling international sales beginning at the Virtual Cannes Market. UTA Independent Film Group and CAA Media Finance are representing the U.S rights.

Jessica Elbaum and Will Ferrell of Gloria Sanchez Productions and Christine Vachon (Shirley, Dark Waters) and Pam Koffler (Dark Waters, Colette) of Killer Films will produce alongside Portman and Sophie Mas under their MountainA banner. Principal photography is scheduled to commence next year.

Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie Atherton-Yu and her husband Joe (twenty-three years her junior) brace themselves for their twins to graduate from high school. When Hollywood actress Elizabeth Berry comes to spend time with the family to better understand Gracie, who she will be playing in a film, family dynamics unravel under the pressure of the outside gaze. Joe, never having processed what happened in his youth, starts to confront the reality of life as an empty-nester at thirty-six. And as Elizabeth and Gracie study each other, the similarities and differences between the two women begin to ebb and flow. Set in picturesque and comfortable Camden, Maine, May December is an exploration of truth, storytelling, and the difficulties (or impossibility) of fully understanding another person.

Yes

Velvet Underground is great. Haynes, the maestro, has almost a primal deep understanding of music. But it truly works because he captures an era by using form specific to the era. Discursive editing, split screen, disorienting sound. This is almost a Warhol film

wilder


'Superstar': Todd Haynes Says His Banned Carpenters Movie May Finally Get An Official Release
The Playlist

What's Todd Haynes up to since his first documentary, "The Velvet Underground," about the iconic band, won over critics at Cannes last year and audiences on AppleTV+? He has "May December" on deck, announced at the virtual Cannes market last June, which reunites the director with Julianne Moore and will be his first time working with Natalie Portman. But Haynes may also have another film coming out soon too, and it's one that fans of the director have wanted for a long time.

In an interview with EW, Haynes disclosed that his short film, "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," had recently been remastered, and he's hopeful about a future release. "It has been remastered by UCLA and Sundance a couple years ago," said Haynes, "and it looks so beautiful. Every time I see it now, I'm just like, Oh, man, I'm so lucky that we have this version out there." As for the movie's potential rerelease, Haynes said, "Yes, it'll happen. It's not something we're working on at the moment, but it's going to happen — it will happen, yeah."

So, why is a new release of "Superstar" so exciting? Well, the short is a holy grail for Todd Haynes fans. The experimental film uses Barbie dolls along with documentary footage to depict the last seventeen years of Karen's musical career as she struggles with both anorexia and the limelight of the pop music industry. But the movie's been banned from circulation since Richard Carpenter, Karen's brother and the other half of the musical group The Carpenters, filed a lawsuit against Haynes in 1990, which the director lost. Since then, the film has been next to impossible to see.

But now, Haynes thinks he can give the movie the release it deserves at some point. "There have been some legal opinions written about the film that seem favorable to a way through," he said. "But there's a lot more work that I need to do that I haven't had time to, which is annotate the film and provide all of the sources of information and so forth. It's been shown a couple of times, not announced publicly, and not for any fee, not for any ticket, under the terms of its cease and desist."  

It's nice to hear "Superstar" still has its secret screenings every now and then, as it feels very in line with Haynes' experimentalism and connection to underground cinema earlier in his career. But an official release of "Superstar" would also be a coup for Haynes, as critics see the short as a major touchstone in the director's career.

So, with any luck, Haynes will focus on "Superstar" after finishing work on "May December." The director's latest follows a married couple who buckles under the pressure when an actress comes to live with them to do research for a film about their notorious tabloid romance from twenty years before.