Nerve Insider

Browse by Tags

• New on Nerve, 11.30.2007: Film Reviews and a Q&A with Tamara Jenkins

  Today’s film reviews… The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: “Nobody with an ounce of empathy could fail to be moved by the true story of this volume's painstaking creation. Still, it's the real-life story, not the artistry involved in its telling, that does all the heavy lifting here.” The Savages: Tamara Jenkins who directed “the ticklish comedy Slums of Beverly Hills, came out nine long years ago — has finally made another movie. Her touch is equally assured here, in a very different context, and it's no crime (he damned with faint praise) if the result is solid rather than exciting, expertly covering all the expected restrained-indie bases.” Chronicle of an Escape: “The film belongs to that large, undistinguished subset of historical dramas that achieve little more than informing viewers that the events onscreen did in fact take place." Also new in the film lounge, we have an interview with the Tamara Jenkins, director of The Savages. “I definitely wasn't interested in a sentimental portrait or a sanctimonious portrait or a maudlin portrait. It was really important to be blunt and honest about it, but I think inherent in that is this sort of humor that courses through the movie simultaneous with the tragedy.” Posted Nov 30 2007, 11:45 AM by Sarah with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: film lounge, film reviews, film interview

• Playing Catch-Up: Film Reviews and a Q&A with Lili Taylor

  Welcome back! The Nerve offices were closed Thursday and Friday however we often publish on days we’re not in the office so there’s lots to catch up on from Friday. We’ll start with film. Fridays we publish film and DVD reviews as well as interviews. This week we had reviews of… I’m Not There: “When I'm Not There is good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's merely annoying.” Hitman: “Hitman is an insult to violent trash.” The Mist: "The Mist is a large-scale Twilight Zone episode. And despite some glaring missteps, it's a decent one." August Rush: "Even if you're not the musical type, you might suspend your disbelief long enough to be stirred." Feed (DVD): “Feed plays like a nostalgic political blooper reel — but not a particularly tight one.” We also had an interview with Lili Taylor. “I think I get the same feeling of meaning from psychology that I get from acting. Sometimes reading a good book about psychology, about the human condition, I feel filled up with a sense of meaning. And that's what acting can do, too, to me.” Want more? Visit the Film Lounge for all our movie coverage.     Posted Nov 26 2007, 11:15 AM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: film lounge, film reviews, peter smith, film interview, dvd review

• New on Nerve, 11.16.2007: Q&A with Bob Balaban

  According to Leonard Pierce Bob Balaban is “a small, dapper, bespectacled figure with the permanent air of someone who has misplaced his newspaper.”  Balaban has appeared in Capote, Seinfeld and produced Gosford Park, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. His IMDB profile lists 74 acting roles, and 35 producing, writing and directing credits. The man is prolific.   We interviewed him on the thirtieth anniversary re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which he played the cartographer David Laughlin. Balaban wrote a book about the making of the film. “We didn't know the reaction to the book would be so nice, but I can't see it ever happening again. How often do you get the opportunity to stand next to Stephen Spielberg and Francois Truffaut for nine months, chatting away?” Posted Nov 16 2007, 05:00 PM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: film lounge, film interview

• New on Nerve, 11.9.2007: A Q&A with Richard Kelly

  Peter Smith interviewed Richard Kelly, director of cult favorite Donnie Darko and the more recent Southland Tales. Pete didn’t like the director’s latest: “I saw [Southland Tales] last week, eager to love it, and I hated it. It is astoundingly misguided, a muddle of half-baked ideas, undeveloped characters and plots that go nowhere. I hated it so much that I almost think you should see it. This is the kind of movie that divides people. Its defenders will be as loud as its critics will be plentiful.” Kelly feels differently: “There's a very elaborate plot orchestration in this film. Moby is sort of the beating heart of this movie in terms of his score. It all weaves together in my mind, I think cause I've seen it so many times. Maybe because my colleagues and I, who've worked on the film for so long, have seen it so many times, we can see the film in hindsight, as opposed to seeing it in the immediate aftermath of a first viewing.”  Read the whole thing here. Posted Nov 09 2007, 11:58 AM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: peter smith, film interview, Richard Kelly

• New on Nerve, 11.2.07: An Q&A with Rob Perri, director of I'm Keith Hernandez

  Ada Calhoun interviews Rob Perri, director of the short film I'm Keith Hernandez,  an “extremely unauthorized documentary/satire [that is] a love letter to Keith and his undeniable sex appeal, an alpha-male cockiness seemingly out of date, but, as Perri argues, ripe for a comeback.” The film plays as a kind of manifesto for a return to that '80s idea of male sexuality. There was this way of being a sexy man in 1986 that doesn't apply now. Right. I think that has a lot to do with the Magnum, P.I. moustache. You had this burly guy and women were going crazy for that. Now, guys look like girls. They have petite features and they're all skinny, and most of these guy models are gay. When you grew a mustache during the filming of this movie, how did it change your dating life? It was really interesting. I attracted a lot of older women. Girls would start to make fun of me at first, but then I would project this confidence, like, "You're just a child and you don't understand." They would immediately switch and find that compelling.   Posted Nov 02 2007, 03:00 PM by Sarah with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: ada calhoun, film interview, mets, baseball

• "The second you don't look like Sam Riley anymore, the easier it is to convince yourself you're Ian Curtis."

  Will Doig interviews Sam Riley, who plays Ian Curtis in the New Joy Division biopic, Control . According to Will, Riley "has a great voice, and not just cause he's british. It's a nice smoky baritone. and his cadence was great. For instance, when he talked about Deborah and that whole part about portraying a man in front of that man's widow, he got very quiet and contemplative." What was it like meeting the widow of the man you were portraying? I was embarrassed, to be honest. I think we both thought it was fairly surreal. I was in their house, I had to sleep upstairs, I was wearing his clothes, and I'd be walking around their house and I'd bump into Debbie, and I almost wanted to say sorry. Sorry for portraying Ian? Yeah. For being an imposter or something. [Playing Ian in front of her] was like saying something about someone when they're standing right behind you - it was that kind of feeling. I could see she was nervous, but she was lovely. Visit the film's official site.  After the jump watch a video of Joy Division performing "Love Will Tear Us Apart." Read More... Posted Oct 30 2007, 11:22 AM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: film lounge, will doig, film interview, biopic

• New on Nerve, 10.26.2007: "The media has basically been co-opted and made rich" -- Brian DePalma

  Brian DePalma discusses his new film about the Iraq war, Redacted. From Phil Nugent's intro: The film takes off from an actual atrocity committed by U.S. soldiers in March of 2006: in the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl was raped and killed by five soldiers, who also murdered her parents and her five-year-old sister. The incident recalls the case of a Vietnamese woman whose rape at the hands of American soldiers during the Vietnam war served as the basis for De Palma's 1989 Casualties of War, a movie he struggled for years to finance. Seeing history repeat itself, De Palma decided to tap into his long-standing obsession with the filter of media and tell a story about soldiers in Iraq, driven psychotic by endlessly extended tours of duty, using his own mock-media syntax. The action of the film is seen through the camera of a soldier making his own video diary of his time in Iraq, through the footage of a French documentary crew, through various blog entries and YouTube postings, and even through security-camera feed.   Posted Oct 26 2007, 09:28 AM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: film interview, Phil Nugent, Brian DePalma

• New on Nerve, 10.19.07: "Hey, you're sexy! But you're kind of ugly!"

  Actors like you — Simon Pegg, Seth Rogen — you're depicted as schlubby sex symbols. How do you feel about that? Well, it's not great, to be honest. The whole idea of, "Paul Giamatti is kind of sexy." Well, yeah he's sexy. Ask his fucking wife or anyone he's ever laid. Is it surprising? No, because attraction doesn't come from abs and pecs. It comes from somewhere else altogether. If Penelope Cruz was a shit actress, no one would fancy her. It's that simple. Because the actresses who are beautiful and act like shit are going to be forgotten in about five days. So it's double-edged sword, because people are like, "Hey, you're sexy! But you're kind of ugly!" I'm not supposed to be happy about that.  Posted Oct 19 2007, 12:24 PM by Sarah with | with no comments Filed under: film, interview, film interview, lovable losers, Alexis Tirado