Talihina Sky: Doc looks past Kings of Leon image
The skinny-jeans-wearing rock band whose smash hits include “Use Somebody” and “Sex on Fire” might not seem the most natural choice to have a thoughtful documentary made about them. But director Stephen Mitchell has known the three brothers and a cousin since they were just small-town Oklahoma boys. read more
Janie Jones: All In the Family
One of the best-known aphorisms about writing, “Write what you know,” has led to plenty of terrible screenplays by self-absorbed Hollywood hopefuls. But David Rosenthal turned personal experience into a compelling story. read more
Honoring Richard Linklater: A Slacker Turns Twenty
Paste's Michael Dunaway talked to Parker Posey, Jason Reitman, Greg Kinnear, Miranda Cosgrove, Keanu Reeves and Ethan Hawke about Slacker and the rest of Linklater’s oeuvre. read more
Pam Grier: Being Jackie Brown
Talking to Pam Grier is like talking to Jackie, Foxy and Coffy all in one. She sounds positively joyful that Quentin Tarantino’s underappreciated gem Jackie Brown is finally coming to Blu-Ray. Her speech is punctuated with coos and chuckles, and the whole conversation takes on a vibey, ’70s-era groove. read more
Rachel Nichols Lifts A Bird of the Air
Rachel Nichols, star of blockbuster action films like GI Joe, Conan, and the upcoming I, Alex Cross, had a pretty simple reason for wanting to play a mousy librarian in a small offbeat indie called A Bird of the Air. It made her laugh. read more
Drive: Nicolas Winding Refn's Hollywood Ride
Nicolas Winding Refn’s new film Drive was born out of the most unlikely confluence of forces, including Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford and REO Speedwagon. read more
Schuyler Fisk: The Collaborator
Nepotism runs amok in the entertainment world, and when you hear that someone like Schuyler Fisk, the daughter of actress Sissy Spacek, is a singer/songwriter and actor, you might be forgiven for keeping your expectations low. But there’s no need. read more
Kickstarter Pick of the Week: The Crisis of Being Dr. Adam Porter
Every week Paste brings you a Kickstarter project that’s worth your time to explore. Kickstarter, as most of you know, is the crowdsourcing site that helps creatives find funding for their projects. In addition to giving donors the satisfaction of helping bring those projects to life, it also gives them the opportunity to earn production credit, advance copies of films and albums, and other fabulous rewards. You can, of course, learn more here. This week’s Kickstarter Pick of the Week comes from friend of Paste and Ridley Scott protege Paul Stone, who you last met in this Paste profile, where... read more
My Perestroika: The Soviet Generation
Robin Hessman doesn’t have a quick and easy answer to your questions about what it was like living through the fall of the Soviet Union. “Whenever a Russian expresses any kind of nostalgia,” she explains. “or longing for anything from the past, Westerners will gasp and get nervous, like this person is a Communist and wishes a return to the Soviet Union. And it’s much more complicated than that. read more
San Francisco Silent Film Festival Wrapup
The 2011 San Francisco Silent Film Festival came loaded with potential scene-stealers. A long-lost John Ford film screened. I Am Cuba director Mikhail Kalatozov’s rare 1931 Russian propaganda reject The Nail in the Boot wowed festival-goers with its brilliant photography and editing, accented by the great accompanist Stephen Horne. New restorations introduced many films—including Douglas Fairbanks in Mr. Fix-It—to North American audiences for the first time. And The Matti Bye Ensemble’s accompaniment unforgettably brought out the pounding circus nightmare of Victor Sjöstrom’s classic He Who Gets Slapped.... read more
Senna: The Life of a Racing Legend
Asif Kapadia wasn’t even that big a racing fan when he began making Senna, one of the best sports documentaries of recent years, which rolls out this month to theaters around the country. But like many sports fans of a certain age, he knew the basic outline of the plot. read more
Best of What's Next: Bellflower Director Evan Glodell
Someone described Bellflower this way: “It’s kind of like an edgier 500 Days of Summer, except when she leaves him, instead of getting all sad and mopey, he starts building a monster car with flamethrowers and blowing shit up...” read more
RJ Mitte: The White Heart Of Breaking Bad
Roy Frank “RJ” Mitte is hard-working young man and a dedicated actor, and if he occasionally has to swallow some fake vomit to bring his show some added realism, then that’s what he’s prepared to do. For Season 2 of the award-winning AMC drama Breaking Bad, Mitte was filming a scene... read more
Exclusive First Look: Poster for A Bird Of The Air
We’re excited to bring you an exclusive first look the the movie poster for A Bird of the Air, the directorial debut of longtime actress Margaret Whitton (Major League, 9 1/2 Weeks). The film is about Lyman (Jackson Hurst), a loner working the graveyard shift for the Courtesy Patrol. When a green parrot flies in to his trailer he becomes obsessed with finding its owner, which leads him to Fiona (Rachel Nichols). She has been eyeing Lyman from a distance and decides to help with his parrot search, whether he wants her to or not. Along with her basset... read more
Paste mPlayer Issue 4 Is Live!
This week’s mPlayer sports future Hulk Mark Ruffalo on the cover, with additional features on Iron & Wine, The Old 97’s, Breaking Bad’s RJ Mitte, Peter Bjorn & John, comedian Kyle Kinane, Steve Earle and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.... read more
Paste mPlayer Issue #3
This week's issue features one of our favorite bands, My Morning Jacket. Paste editor-at-large Jay Sweet has stalked their progress so closely these last seven years that we’re thankful Jim James hasn’t tried to get a restraining order. In a 4,500-word story that spans 13 encounters in five cities, Sweet was the fly on the MMJ wall as the band worked its way up through the ranks. read more
Focus on Terrence Malick: Days of Heaven
For all of its claim to slight improvisational moments and location shooting, Badlands on the screen was a tightly scripted, traditionally well-crafted movie. Like a good short story it featured easily identifiable themes and motifs, understandable characters and after some consideration motivations for their choices. Not only that, it worked in a recognizable genre and adhered pretty well to its conventions. Sure, it was artistically daring, but it did so within what was still a fairly recognizable framework. Like a short story in The New Yorker, it’s polished and brilliantly made but not altogether new.... read more
Salute Your Shorts: ShortsLab
Since the beginning of Salute Your Shorts, one of the primary reasons for this column has been to support the creation and appreciation of short films. You wouldn’t necessarily think that this would be necessary, but short films, while much more easily accessible due to YouTube and the nigh-infinite other streaming video services, remain critically neglected and weirdly ghettoized. For some reason there’s an assumption that if a movie is 70 minutes long it’s worth $10 of your money to see in theaters while if it’s 45 minutes long it isn’t even worth your time.... read more
Catching up with... Martin Kelley, writer/producer of Step Off
Hollywood has certainly produced its share of hip hop movies, but the level of authenticity has been… shall we say, somewhat mixed. In far too many cases, creative control has been wrested from anyone in the project with firsthand knowledge of the scene, and the result has been a long series of films that are more about standard story arcs dressed up in hip hop costumes than about truly exploring the richness of the culture or the places than spawn it. Martin Kelley’s new film Step Off couldn’t be more different. It’s a truly indie feature, and it’s deeply rooted... read more
Focus on Terrence Malick: Badlands
Warning: This essay contains spoilers In Badlands’ epilogue, when all the killing is over and our protagonists have finally been caught, one of the police officers asks him, “You like people?” Kit responds, “They’re okay.” This answer strikes the officer as a bit odd, so he follows it up with, “Then why’d you do it?” Kit’s first response is simple: “I don’t know.” This dialogue sets down the stakes for the film and what it’s trying to implicitly answer: Why did these two seemingly normal people go on a cross-country killing spree, and what is it that makes theirs so... read more
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