Steve Jobs (4/4) @ New York Film Festival 2015 #NYFF

New York Film Festival has been known to bring some amazing films to its audience, and this year is no exception. After screening of "The Walk" last week, this weekend's highlight was the upcoming Danny Boyle movie, Steve Jobs. This is a long awaited project written by Aaron Sorkin, based on the book by Walter Isaacs.  

Steve Jobs is being portrayed by Michael Fassbender, who looks nothing like Steve Jobs, but still does and amazing job of embodying the character, the man, the legend. In fact by the end, in third act, he does start to even look like him. Kate Winslet has given an excellent performance as Joanna Hoffman, bringing the depth and strength of the character, who many may not be even familiar with. Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, is truly the Woz we know. No wonder he himself loved Seth's performance. Jeff Daniels as the infamous John Sculley, brings a new shade to the person who many may not believe. But he really makes Sculley appear much more human and normal. Rest of the supporting cast is also brilliant and has done a great job.

The movie written by Sorkin does not follow traditional story telling. It focuses on 30 mins, behind the scenes of 3 big launches with Steve Jobs - the Macintosh, NeXT computers and iMac. It has couple flashbacks tied to the dialogues but not a lot. Sorkin has done beautiful job in consolidating Jobs in 3 chapter. The movie flows through well written dialogue, beautiful imagery and wonderful performances. Boyle's direction of Sorkin's script does not seem like an easy job, but just like a conductor, who carries the orchestra amazingly well, which becomes this beautiful masterpiece of a movie. 

It does manage to humanize the man, but still focuses on the iWorship. The scenes between Steve and Joanna/Woz/Sculley/Lisa/Andy are very well crafted and well acted. The tension, the excitement, the joy, the pain, the thrill is all there. Movie seems to slow down at few times, due to lot of dialogue, but manages to pace through just in time to not get boring. The 30 min scenes move fast and have a lot to offer. Each scene with almost same character is still very different. Even shot differently from 16 mm, to 35 mm to Alexa. The movie not only looks beautiful but feels beautiful. The music and score also compliments the music perfectly.

Watch this movie if you're a fan, follower or just appreciator of Steve Jobs, OR if you love different but interesting filmmaking. And if you don't like Steve Jobs or Apple, just wait for a movie about Microsoft/Google or OpenSource!

FSLC ANNOUNCES ANA VAZ AS THE 2015 KAZUKO TRUST AWARD RECIPIENT

Vaz’s film Occidente is a selection of the Projections section in the 53rd New York Film Festival

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces Ana Vaz as the 2015 Kazuko Trust Award Recipient. The grant is presented by the Kazuko Trust and the Film Society, in recognition of the  excellence and innovation of an artist’s moving-image work. Vaz’s latest short film, Occidente, will premiere on Friday, October 2 and Saturday, October 3 in Program 3 of this year’s Projections section, running October 2-4 and sponsored by MUBI. Visit filmlinc.org/nyff for more information. 

The Kazuko Trust was established upon the death of Kazuko Oshima, a Patron of the Film Society who loved film, and experimental film most of all. It was her wish to contribute to this area of the film world after her passing, by awarding the Film Society with a $50K grant for the purpose of creating a scholarship fund for worthy experimental filmmakers featured in NYFF's Projections. In addition, a seat in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center was named in her honor.

In 2012, Laida Lertxundi and Michael Robinson each received $5,000 grants during the Trust’s inaugural year, and in 2013, the committee awarded Dani Leventhal with a $10,000 grant. Last year, Jean-Paul Kelly was given a $10,000 grant. The 2015 committee includes Projections curators Dennis Lim (Director of Programming, Film Society of Lincoln Center), Aily Nash (independent curator), and Gavin Smith (Senior Programmer, FSLC and Editor-in-Chief, Film Comment); Rachael Rakes (Programmer at Large, Film Society of Lincoln Center); and Christopher Stults (Associate Curator, Film/Video, Wexner Center for the Arts). 

Rakes says: “Brazilian artist and filmmaker Ana Vaz combines film and video, ethnography and speculation, precise photography and found footage in her series of short, carefully crafted works. Vaz’s pieces often explore the meeting points between personal and geographic history in the post-colonial sphere, documenting place without the signals of exact physical orientation, but with a heightened sense of memory and time. Her latest work, Occidente, presents a mesmerizing cycle of establishing moments: the outside spaces of sea life, plants, and monuments, and variations on the domestic space of the table—all of which give over to a sense of locality that is at once subjectively knowing and voyeuristic, visually transmitting the scars of the past in the surfaces of the present."

Reflecting on her practice, Vaz says: “The work in itself does not exist, there is no whole or wholesomeness, what exists is a series of gestures, a multiplicity of perspectives, a savage mode of thinking, a history that is not his and that incarnates itself into a patchwork of materials and resources—moving or still, phrased or shot, imprinted or traveling. I want to disorganize, to dissociate through association—to bring things together in order to undo their normative state. A multiple becoming through film or otherwise, an untying of historical thinking and monolithic prose, a becoming that renders narration an art of trickery, of cheating and betraying both sight or sound only to permanently decolonize our modes of thinking.”

Ana Vaz was born in Brazil in 1986. A graduate of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Le Fresnoy - Studio National des Arts Contemporains, she was also a member of SPEAP (an experimental Art and Politics research group), a project conceived and directed by Bruno Latour. Her films have screened at a number of international film festivals including the New York Film Festival (as part of Views from the Avant-Garde, Toronto (Wavelengths), Visions du Réel, Media City, Ann Arbor, Images, Videobrasil, Buenos Aires Biennial of Moving Image, Premiers Plans, Melbourne International Film Festival, as well as solo and group shows at Rosa Brux (Brussels), Museum of the Republic (Brazil), Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Jeune Création (Paris), and Temporary Gallery (Cologne). In 2015, she was awarded the Grand Prize for the international competition at Media City Film Festival as well as the Main Prize at Fronteira International Documentary & Experimental Film Festival for Occidente. Ana currently lives in Paris where she is developing a medium-length film with the aid of the CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques) and will be a resident at Triangle Association (NYC) in Spring 2016. Her films are distributed by Light Cone.

Tickets for Projections are $15 for General Public; $10 for Members & Students, and a $99 Projections All Access Pass will also be available for purchase. Visit filmlinc.org/NYFF for more information. Additional NYFF special events, documentary section, and filmmaker conversations and panels will be announced in subsequent days and weeks.

The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring top films from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Kent Jones, also includes Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming; Marian Masone, FSLC Senior Programming Advisor; Gavin Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Film Comment; and Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Film Comment and Sight & Sound. 

Tickets for the 53rd New York Film Festival went on sale to Film Society patrons at the end of August, ahead of the general public. Learn more about the patron program at filmlinc.org/patrons. Becoming a Film Society Member offers the exclusive member ticket discount to the New York Film Festival and Film Society programming year-round plus other great benefits. Current members at the Film Buff Level or above enjoy early ticket access to NYFF screenings and events ahead of the general public. Learn more at filmlinc.org/membership.

For even more access, VIP Passes offer buyers the earliest opportunity to purchase tickets and secure seats at the festival’s biggest events including Opening, Centerpiece, and Closing Nights. VIP passes also provide access to many exciting events including the invitation-only Opening Night party, “ An Evening With…” Dinner, Filmmaker Brunch, and VIP Lounge. Benefits vary based on the pass type.

For more information about purchasing VIP Passes, go to filmlinc.org/NYFF or contact patrons@filmlinc.org.

For more information, visit: www.filmlinc.org

FSLC announces Robert Zemeckis's THE WALK as the opening night selection of NYFF53

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced that Robert Zemeckis’s The Walk will make its World Premiere as the Opening Night selection of the upcoming 53rd New York Film Festival (September 25 – October 11), which will kick off at Alice Tully Hall. A true story, the film is based on Philippe Petit’s memoir To Reach the Clouds and stars Golden Globe nominee Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit, the French high-wire artist who achieved the feat of walking between the Twin Towers in 1974. The Walk will be the second 3D feature selected for the Opening Night Gala since Ang Lee’s Life of Pi in 2012 and also marks Zemeckis’s return to the Festival after Flight, the 2012 Closing Night Gala selection. Today’s announcement coincides with the release of the film’s trailer, which can be viewed at movies.yahoo.com. The film will be released in 3D and IMAX 3D on October 2, 2015.

New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said: “The Walk is surprising in so many ways. First of all, it plays like a classic heist movie in the tradition of The Asphalt Jungle or Bob le flambeur—the planning, the rehearsing, the execution, the last-minute problems—but here it’s not money that’s stolen but access to the world’s tallest buildings. It’s also an astonishing re-creation of Lower Manhattan in the ’70s. And then, it becomes something quite rare, rich, mysterious… and throughout it all, you’re on the edge of your seat.”
 
Robert Zemeckis added: “I am extremely honored and grateful that our film has been selected to open the 53rd New York Film Festival. The Walk is a New York story, so I am delighted to be presenting the film to New York audiences first. My hope is that Festival audiences will be immersed in the spectacle, but also to be enraptured by the celebration of a passionate artist who helped give the wonderful towers a soul.”
 
Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group Chairman Tom Rothman said: “On behalf of TriStar and Sony, I want to thank Kent and the NYFF for this great honor. The Walk is a love letter to the Twin Towers, which through the unique magic of cinema, come back to vibrant, inspiring life. But it is also a universal story of the determined pursuit of impossible dreams, told by one of our greatest living filmmakers, and the NYFF has always been a place where such dreams come true.”
  
The film also stars Academy Award® winner Ben Kingsley, James Badge Dale, Ben Schwartz, Steve Valentine, Charlotte Le Bon, Clement Sibony, Caesar Domboy and Benedict Samuel. Directed by Zemeckis, the screenplay is by Robert Zemeckis & Christopher Browne, based on the book To Reach the Clouds by Philippe Petit, and produced by Steve Starkey, Robert Zemeckis, and Jack Rapke.
 
The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring top films from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Jones, also includes Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Programming; Marian Masone, FSLC Senior Programming Advisor; Gavin Smith, Editor-in-Chief,Film Comment; and Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Film Comment and Sight & Sound.
 
NYFF previously announced Luminous Intimacy: The Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, the first-ever complete dual retrospective of the experimental filmmakers works that will include the world premiere of Dorsky’sIntimations, a new untitled work, and New York premieres of Summer, December, February, and Avraham.
 
Tickets for the 53rd New York Film Festival will go on sale in early September. Becoming a Film Society Member at the Film Buff Level or above provides early ticket access to festival screenings and events ahead of the general public, along with the exclusive member ticket discount! To find out how to become a Film Society member, visit filmlinc.com/membership.

For even more access, VIP Passes and Subscription Packages give buyers one of the earliest opportunities to purchase tickets and secure seats at some of the festival's biggest events including Opening, Centerpiece and Closing nights. VIP passes also provide access to many exciting events including the invitation-only Opening Night party, “ An Evening With…” Dinner, Filmmaker Brunch, and VIP Lounge. Benefits vary based on the pass or package type purchased. VIP Passes and Subscription Packages will go on sale Tuesday, June 9. For information about purchasing Subscription Packages and VIP Passes, go to filmlinc.com/NYFF. 
 

New York Film Festival Opening Night Films

2014    Gone Girl (David Fincher, US)
2013    Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, US)
2012    Life of Pi (Ang Lee, US)
2011    Carnage (Roman Polanski, France/Poland)
2010    The Social Network (David Fincher, US)
2009    Wild Grass (Alain Resnais, France)
2008    The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
2007    The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, US)
2006    The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK)
2005    Good Night, and Good Luck. (George Clooney, US)
2004    Look At Me (Agnès Jaoui, France)
2003    Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, US)
2002    About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, US)
2001    Va Savoir (Jacques Rivette, France)
2000    Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, Denmark)
1999    All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
1998    Celebrity (Woody Allen, US)
1997    The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, US)
1996    Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, UK)
1995    Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, China)
1994    Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, US)
1993    Short Cuts (Robert Altman, US)
1992    Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland, France)
1991    The Double Life of Veronique (Krysztof Kieslowski, Poland/France)
1990    Miller's Crossing (Joel Coen, US)
1989    Too Beautiful for You (Bertrand Blier, France)
1988    Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
1987    Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov, Soviet Union)
1986    Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, US)
1985    Ran (Akira Kurosawa, Japan)
1984    Country (Richard Pearce, US)
1983    The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, US)
1982    Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany)
1981    Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, UK)
1980    Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, US)
1979    Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy/US)
1978    A Wedding (Robert Altman, US)
1977    One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, France)
1976    Small Change (François Truffaut, France)
1975    Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, Italy)
1974    Don’t Cry with Your Mouth Full (Pascal Thomas, France)
1973    Day for Night (François Truffaut, France)
1972    Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, France)
1971    The Debut (Gleb Panfilov, Soviet Union)
1970    The Wild Child (François Truffaut, France)
1969    Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, US)
1968    Capricious Summer (Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia)
1967    The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria)
1966    Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia)
1965    Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, France)
1964    Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, USSR)
1963    The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, Mexico)
 

For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com