Filmmaker Debbie Lum sets off to make a documentary about men with Asian fetishes and unexpectedly finds herself in the middle of the story, acting as a bridge in a relationship between a 60-year-old American man and his 30-year-old Chinese bride.

— ‘Seeking Asian Female’ Takes A Close Look At A Fetish : Code Switch

Photo: Susan Munroe/Seeking Asian Female

In her classic ’60s documentary, Shirley Clarke profiles a loquacious 33-year-old gay hustler who dreams of having a nightclub act. Her subject could hardly be more complex — and in examining him, she raises important questions about the relationship between fact and fiction.

— Peeling Away The Layers In A ‘Portrait Of Jason’

Photo: Milestone Film

theparisreview:

“In 1951, Vivian moved to New York at twenty-five-years-old and worked in a sweat shop for a while until she would become a nanny for the next forty years on and off. When she had days off, she would walk the streets of Chicago or New York, most often using her Rollieflex camera, photographing everyone and everything from the well-dressed shoppers to homeless people and even her own reflection.”

Messy Nessy Chic highlights the photography of Vivian Maier, whose work was unseen until bought at a Chicago auction by real estate agent and historical hobbyist John Maloof. Check out more of her photography here and watch the trailer for the upcoming documentary film, Finding Vivian Maier.

Mystery, intrigue and steller street photographs. — heidi

Few films trying to capture a child’s experience of an adult world manage to nail the details. In real life, kids aren’t typically the precocious sorts espousing wisdom beyond their years — kids fidget, they ask questions, they get scared. They act like kids.

So it’s nice that, despite some cliched rhythms, the flawed-ex-con-makes-good drama LUV gets the details of childhood-cut-short heartbreakingly right. Writer-director Sheldon Candis, drawing on his own childhood relationship with his Baltimore drug dealer uncle, crafts a poignant and believable relationship between 11-year-old Woody (Michael Rainey Jr.) and the man he idolizes, his Uncle Vincent (Common).

‘LUV’ - An Ex-Con Hero With Feet Of Clay

Lanita Jacobs teaches anthropology at the University of Southern California, and often lectures on how African-Americans are portrayed in film and on television. Jacobs says casting the fair-skinned Zoe Saldana, then darkening her with makeup and giving her a prosthetic nose and an Afro wig, is particularly offensive to women who have had to struggle with acceptance because of their own dark complexions.

— Controversial Casting For A Nina Simone Biopic

via Get A Hollywood Studio To Green Light Your Picture, In 29 Easy Steps : Planet Money

Tim Burton Pies Spin Fantasy Into Sugar And Art

(Source: npr)

I would say, ‘Tell me about what happens at the end of the world,’ and she would describe her vision of that, which was these crazy things with people’s hands falling off and their clothes burning up and the light in the sky turning on and off really fast, like all these visions that she has. And I remember — this is just one example — but I remember asking her, ‘If all these things were your fault, what would you do?’ And she said, ‘I would just try to fix it. I would do whatever I can to fix what I broke.’ And then I said, ‘What would you do to fix it?’ And she said, ‘Well, I would always brush my teeth. I would listen to my parents.’

— ‘Beasts’ Finds Its Heart In A 6-Year-Old Heroine 

(Source: npr)

What Nora Ephron Taught Me About Love In The Movies

“Ephron wrote fairy tales that spun things that really happen – reconciliation over time, mysterious chemistry, complex and loaded friendships, love after grief and loss – into things that don’t happen, or don’t happen very much. But I always recognized in those stories pieces of people I knew and conversations I had had; they were like choral compositions where everything else is just pretty sounds, but you can pick out the alto line because you sang it in choir fifteen years ago. ”

(Source: npr)

Aaron Sorkin remains my favorite writer of dialogue in American television and film. His workplace-banter scenes are like perfect little songs; there are times when I think he is as good at playing with words and rhythm as Cole Porter. Stretching back to ‘A Few Good Men’ and the way it teased out a playfulness in Tom Cruise that I had never seen, I have believed he has an almost unmatched ability to build sentences and scenes that hit you like the Rube Goldberg machines in OK Go videos: You look at them in wonder and almost want to clap your hands when they’re over, simply because they have been executed with such love, energy and style.

— Sorkin’s ‘Newsroom’ Is No Place For Optimism 

(Source: npr)