America’s favorite pastime is getting another life onscreen.
In the wake of “Field of Dreams,” “Bad News Bears,” and “The Sandlot,” a new crop of baseball features have swung onto the field of latest releases. Adam Sandler’s long-awaited reunion with director Josh Safdie includes baseball memorabilia; Austin Butler is teaming up with Darren Aronofsky to play a former high school baseball prospect turned alcoholic bartender who gets caught up in a crime-fueled treasure hunt in “Caught Stealing”; and cinematographer Carson Lund made his directorial debut with adult rec team coming-of-age drama “Eephus,” which debuted at Cannes 2024.
Now, baseball is going the way of heartfelt family drama for “You Gotta Believe.”
The upcoming film is based on the true story of a Fort Worth youth baseball team that defied the odds to make it all the way to the 2002 Little League World Series. Ty Roberts directs the feature that...
In the wake of “Field of Dreams,” “Bad News Bears,” and “The Sandlot,” a new crop of baseball features have swung onto the field of latest releases. Adam Sandler’s long-awaited reunion with director Josh Safdie includes baseball memorabilia; Austin Butler is teaming up with Darren Aronofsky to play a former high school baseball prospect turned alcoholic bartender who gets caught up in a crime-fueled treasure hunt in “Caught Stealing”; and cinematographer Carson Lund made his directorial debut with adult rec team coming-of-age drama “Eephus,” which debuted at Cannes 2024.
Now, baseball is going the way of heartfelt family drama for “You Gotta Believe.”
The upcoming film is based on the true story of a Fort Worth youth baseball team that defied the odds to make it all the way to the 2002 Little League World Series. Ty Roberts directs the feature that...
- 6/25/2024
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, are among the films that will screen in CineMasters, the main competition of this month’s Munich International Film Festival (Miff), taking place from June 28 to July in Germany.
Fourteen films are in the running for CineMasters’ €50,000 Arri Award which is presented to the producers of the best international film. Further titles include Jia Zhang-ke’s Caught By The Tides, Rúnar Rúnarsson’s When The Light Breaks, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section last month, as well as Jaione Camborda...
Fourteen films are in the running for CineMasters’ €50,000 Arri Award which is presented to the producers of the best international film. Further titles include Jia Zhang-ke’s Caught By The Tides, Rúnar Rúnarsson’s When The Light Breaks, which premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section last month, as well as Jaione Camborda...
- 6/18/2024
- ScreenDaily
US filmmaker Carson Lund’s debut feature Eephus has been acquired for France by Capricci, with a theatrical release plotted for the first half of 2025.
London and Paris-based Film Constellation is handling world sales on the film that premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes last month.
The New England-set comedy drama unfolds as a construction project looms over a small-town baseball field, leaving a pair of Sunday league teams to face off for the last time over the course of a day.
The cast includes Keith William Richards, Wayne Diamond and Keith Poulson, with a voice cameo by celebrated director Frederick Wiseman.
London and Paris-based Film Constellation is handling world sales on the film that premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes last month.
The New England-set comedy drama unfolds as a construction project looms over a small-town baseball field, leaving a pair of Sunday league teams to face off for the last time over the course of a day.
The cast includes Keith William Richards, Wayne Diamond and Keith Poulson, with a voice cameo by celebrated director Frederick Wiseman.
- 6/6/2024
- ScreenDaily
Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.Find all of our Cannes 2024 coverage here.Eephus.Founded in 2011 by a group of college friends in Boston, Omnes Films is a production company that’s quietly created some of the most unique American movies of the last half-decade. Now based in Los Angeles, Omnes came to prominence in 2019 with Ham on Rye, a magical-realist coming-of-age fable set in suburban Long Island that solidified the collective’s four main players: director Tyler Taormina, cinematographer Carson Lund, producer Michael Basta, and music supervisor Jonathan Davies—all of whom have subsequently directed their own films under the Omnes banner.Omnes’s two latest projects, Eephus and Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (both 2024), directed by Lund and Taormina, respectively, both premiered in Cannes as part of this year’s Directors’ Fortnight—a programming decision further confirming the section’s renewed interest in American cinema following the inclusion of The Sweet East,...
- 6/4/2024
- MUBI
Illustrations by Maddie Fischer.For more Cannes 2024 coverage, subscribe to the Weekly Edit newsletter.Eephus.For all the thrills that come from watching the latest film by this or that renowned auteur, I don’t come to Cannes for confirmation, but for the pleasure of discovery. And nothing quite matches the exhilaration of reckoning with a new voice—the kind that jolts you out of your festival torpor and reminds you of all the beauty and magic the cinema can muster. As usual, those epiphanies were a lot harder to come by in the official competition than in the risk-friendlier Directors’ Fortnight, an independent sidebar born in 1969 as a counterprogram dedicated, per its mission statement, “to showcasing the most singular forms of contemporary cinema.” It is here that some of the greatest have shown their earliest stuff, an illustrious pedigree that’s flaunted before each screening through a short reel...
- 5/29/2024
- MUBI
Kodak, which had a momentous 2023 with more than 60 movies shot on film has gotten off to a promising start in 2024 with Luca Guadignino’s “Challengers” and Jane Shoenbrun’s “I Saw the TV Glow, which A24 released wide May 17. Upcoming releases include Jeff Nichols’ “The Bikeriders” and Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu.”
Meanwhile, Kodak premiered 33 movies shot on film at Cannes. These included nine winners, including Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which earned the Palme d’Or prize, Matthew Rankin’s “Universal Language”, which took the first Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award, and “Grand Tour,” which grabbed Best Director for Miguel Gomes. In addition, Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness” earned Jesse Plemons Best Performance by an Actor, and “Armand” won the Caméra d’or Prize for director Halfdan Ullmann Tondel.
Also, 16mm film continues to prove its popularity and relevance, with 26 of the on-film titles at the festival choosing it as their capture medium.
Meanwhile, Kodak premiered 33 movies shot on film at Cannes. These included nine winners, including Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which earned the Palme d’Or prize, Matthew Rankin’s “Universal Language”, which took the first Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award, and “Grand Tour,” which grabbed Best Director for Miguel Gomes. In addition, Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness” earned Jesse Plemons Best Performance by an Actor, and “Armand” won the Caméra d’or Prize for director Halfdan Ullmann Tondel.
Also, 16mm film continues to prove its popularity and relevance, with 26 of the on-film titles at the festival choosing it as their capture medium.
- 5/27/2024
- by Bill Desowitz
- Indiewire
Within the sports movies subgenre, there have been tons of baseball movies made over the decades. It is America's pastime, after all! There's even an entire book published this month about baseball movies and their legacy. So it would seem as if we've seen it all – every kind of baseball movie has been made before by someone at some point; even Richard Linklater made a modern classic a few years ago (called Everybody Wants Some) and we featured a video edit of the best movies. Lo and behold, we have another classic that has just come up to bat. Carson Lund's Eephus is a baseball movie we've never seen before. And it's genius. It's an "old dudes play ball" indie comedy and it's hilarious. I laughed my ass off watching this, it's more fun than actually going to a ball game, and there's plenty to analyze about what's happening...
- 5/27/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
The 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival has now concluded, with Sean Baker’s Anora taking home the Palme d’Or. While our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week––and far beyond as we provide updates on the journey of these selections––we’ve asked our contributors on the ground to share favorites.
See their picks below, and explore all of our coverage here.
Leonardo Goi (@LeonardoGoi)
1. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)
2. All We Imagine As Light (Payal Kapadia)
3. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
4. Anora (Sean Baker)
5. Eephus (Carson Lund)
6. Viet And Nam (Trương Minh Quý)
7. Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point (Tyler Taormina)
8. Black Dog (Guan Hu)
9. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
10. Good One (India Donaldson)
Read all of Leonardo’s reviews here.
Luke Hicks (@lou_hicks)
1. Anora (Sean Baker)
2. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
3. Oh, Canada (Paul Schrader)
4. Viet and Nam (Trương Minh Quý)
5. The Seed of the Sacred Fig...
See their picks below, and explore all of our coverage here.
Leonardo Goi (@LeonardoGoi)
1. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)
2. All We Imagine As Light (Payal Kapadia)
3. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
4. Anora (Sean Baker)
5. Eephus (Carson Lund)
6. Viet And Nam (Trương Minh Quý)
7. Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point (Tyler Taormina)
8. Black Dog (Guan Hu)
9. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
10. Good One (India Donaldson)
Read all of Leonardo’s reviews here.
Luke Hicks (@lou_hicks)
1. Anora (Sean Baker)
2. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
3. Oh, Canada (Paul Schrader)
4. Viet and Nam (Trương Minh Quý)
5. The Seed of the Sacred Fig...
- 5/27/2024
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Yogi Berra, perhaps the greatest catcher in history, is quoted in Carson Lund’s “Eephus,” a movie about players who, unlike Berra, are never going to trouble the Baseball Hall of Fame’s induction committee. To homage so lofty a legend in so humble a film is a pretty big swing. But one likes to think Berra would be tickled by the shout-out in this lovely little sundowner movie, during which a bunch of middle-aged casual players use the excuse of the last game of their season — and perhaps ever — to valiantly fight the dying of the light. After all, wasn’t he the guy who coined “The future ain’t what it used to be”?
The future sure looks different, suddenly, for the Adler’s Paint and Riverdogs adult-league teams who have played regularly at Soldier’s Field, the public pitch serving their small New England town, for years.
The future sure looks different, suddenly, for the Adler’s Paint and Riverdogs adult-league teams who have played regularly at Soldier’s Field, the public pitch serving their small New England town, for years.
- 5/21/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
IndieWire has published its Cannes 2024 Cinematography Survey. We analyzed the data to explore (again and again) that the nine-year-old camera, Arri Alexa Mini, is the most popular camera among Cannes filmmakers. Furthermore, interestingly, in its first appearance on the Cannes Cinematography Chart and jumped straight to second place, is the Arri 35.
The main cameras of Cannes 2024 are the Arri Alexa Mini and the 35. Cannes 2024 cinematography
The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival is taking place from 14 to 25 May 2024. IndieWire has reached out to the filmmakers behind 59 films screened in various categories in the festival. The DPs elaborated on the tools they utilized to tell their stories. Read the entire survey here.
Official poster of the 77th Cannes Film Festival featuring a still image from the movie Rhapsody in August by Akira Kurosawa (1991)
As the tradition calls, we took the data and filtered it to the cameras used, to explore tendency. Based on the info,...
The main cameras of Cannes 2024 are the Arri Alexa Mini and the 35. Cannes 2024 cinematography
The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival is taking place from 14 to 25 May 2024. IndieWire has reached out to the filmmakers behind 59 films screened in various categories in the festival. The DPs elaborated on the tools they utilized to tell their stories. Read the entire survey here.
Official poster of the 77th Cannes Film Festival featuring a still image from the movie Rhapsody in August by Akira Kurosawa (1991)
As the tradition calls, we took the data and filtered it to the cameras used, to explore tendency. Based on the info,...
- 5/21/2024
- by Yossy Mendelovich
- YMCinema
Diamonds Are Not Forever: Lund Looks Beyond America’s Favorite Pastime
Even with a full count of three balls and two strikes, it may seem like the stakes are low, but the never-mentioned patriarchal foundations are rife with uncertainty in filmmaker Carson Lund’s feature film debut. As a regular contributor to Tyler Taormina’s recent cinema of suburbia and nostalgia, working with the same reflections of the past in a short and very present window — it would be a huge oversight to peg this simply as a pinstripes and leather glove essay. Working within masculinist traits and rural mindsets parameters, Eephus is reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s seminal walk-and-talkathon Slacker.…...
Even with a full count of three balls and two strikes, it may seem like the stakes are low, but the never-mentioned patriarchal foundations are rife with uncertainty in filmmaker Carson Lund’s feature film debut. As a regular contributor to Tyler Taormina’s recent cinema of suburbia and nostalgia, working with the same reflections of the past in a short and very present window — it would be a huge oversight to peg this simply as a pinstripes and leather glove essay. Working within masculinist traits and rural mindsets parameters, Eephus is reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s seminal walk-and-talkathon Slacker.…...
- 5/20/2024
- by Eric Lavallée
- IONCINEMA.com
American filmmaker collective Omnes Films, in Cannes with Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve At Miller’s Point and Carson Lund’s Eephus in Directors’ Fortnight, has shared first details about its expanding slate.
Lorena Alvarado’s Venezuela-set Los Capítulos Perdidos tells of a young woman who returns to Venezuela where her grandmother is losing her memory and her father assembles a rare books collection. Alvarado’s family members play fictionalised versions of themselves.
Alexandra Simpson’s feature debut No Sleep Till takes place in a coastal Florida town threatened by an approaching hurricane where the locals insist on staying in their homes.
Lorena Alvarado’s Venezuela-set Los Capítulos Perdidos tells of a young woman who returns to Venezuela where her grandmother is losing her memory and her father assembles a rare books collection. Alvarado’s family members play fictionalised versions of themselves.
Alexandra Simpson’s feature debut No Sleep Till takes place in a coastal Florida town threatened by an approaching hurricane where the locals insist on staying in their homes.
- 5/20/2024
- ScreenDaily
“Please stop me if any of the terms don’t make sense.” A few days before his feature debut, Eephus, will premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight, Carson Lund is sitting on a rooftop terrace in Cannes and worrying I may not catch all the jargon. Understandably. A chronicle of the last baseball game played at Soldiers Field in Douglas, Ma before the grounds will be paved over and replaced by a middle school, the chat’s testing my—admittedly limited—knowledge of the sport. Yet how you’ll respond to Lund’s wistful film won’t depend on your level of inside baseball. It will depend on […]
The post “I’ve Always Been Interested in Making My Own Version of Goodbye Dragon Inn: Director Carson Lund on His Cannes-Premiering Eephus first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “I’ve Always Been Interested in Making My Own Version of Goodbye Dragon Inn: Director Carson Lund on His Cannes-Premiering Eephus first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 5/19/2024
- by Leonardo Goi
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
“Please stop me if any of the terms don’t make sense.” A few days before his feature debut, Eephus, will premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight, Carson Lund is sitting on a rooftop terrace in Cannes and worrying I may not catch all the jargon. Understandably. A chronicle of the last baseball game played at Soldiers Field in Douglas, Ma before the grounds will be paved over and replaced by a middle school, the chat’s testing my—admittedly limited—knowledge of the sport. Yet how you’ll respond to Lund’s wistful film won’t depend on your level of inside baseball. It will depend on […]
The post “I’ve Always Been Interested in Making My Own Version of Goodbye Dragon Inn: Director Carson Lund on His Cannes-Premiering Eephus first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “I’ve Always Been Interested in Making My Own Version of Goodbye Dragon Inn: Director Carson Lund on His Cannes-Premiering Eephus first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 5/19/2024
- by Leonardo Goi
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
In front of empty wooden bleachers on a late summer day in Massachusetts, two squads of out-of-shape, middle-aged men show up to play a game of baseball on what they all expect to be one of their saddest afternoons in recent memory. For decades, this recreational league has been the social glue that binds the men in this community together. But it’s all about to disappear when the local field is destroyed after the season, which ends today. So the men load their coolers up with cheap beer, spend copious amounts of time stretching, and prepare to give their summer haven a glorious send-off before they have to find something else to do with their weekends.
Carson Lund’s directorial debut shares its name with a slow-moving pitch that has largely been forgotten by modern baseball players — and it’s a fitting title for a film that embraces the...
Carson Lund’s directorial debut shares its name with a slow-moving pitch that has largely been forgotten by modern baseball players — and it’s a fitting title for a film that embraces the...
- 5/19/2024
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
If the perfect sports movie illuminates the fundamentals that make one fall in love with the game, there may be no better movie about baseball than Carson Lund’s Eephus. Structured solely around a single round of America’s national pastime, Lund’s debut feature beautifully, humorously articulates the particular nuances, rhythms, and details of an amateur men’s league game. By subverting tropes of the standard sports movie––which often captures peak physical performance in front of legions of adoring fans––Lund has crafted something far more singularly compelling. Rather than grand slams and no-hitters, there are errors aplenty and no shortage of beer guts and weathered muscles amongst the motley crew. Lund is more interested in examining the peculiar set of social codes that only apply when one is on the field, unimpeded by life’s responsibilities and entirely focused on the rules of the game.
Carrying an...
Carrying an...
- 5/19/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Most baseball movies are not, per se, about baseball. To take some examples: The Natural is about a prodigy overcoming trauma; Eight Men Out is about greed and corruption; Bad News Bears is a foul-mouthed coming-of-age flick; Bull Durham is all about Kevin Costner’s sex appeal; Moneyball carries the sport into the information age; and Field of Dreams (Costner, again) is haunted by the ghosts of baseball past.
First-time director Carson Lund clearly had this in mind when he made his feature debut Eephus, a movie steeped in nostalgia for the game itself, as well as what it represents for a bunch of men past their prime: the long afternoons in the sun, the trash-talking at the plate, the brewskies in the cooler and the kind of camaraderie you can only find in the dugout.
In many ways, this existential and increasingly surreal indie effort, which seems to be...
First-time director Carson Lund clearly had this in mind when he made his feature debut Eephus, a movie steeped in nostalgia for the game itself, as well as what it represents for a bunch of men past their prime: the long afternoons in the sun, the trash-talking at the plate, the brewskies in the cooler and the kind of camaraderie you can only find in the dugout.
In many ways, this existential and increasingly surreal indie effort, which seems to be...
- 5/19/2024
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Writing on Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island in 2010, Anthony Lane whipped a quote from Umberto Eco: “Two cliches make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us, because we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion.” Eco’s words resonate even stronger in Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point, a fascinating simulacrum of festive movies in which references to annual favorites are thrust together with about as much delicacy as the family it tenderly depicts. The island isn’t Shutter but Long, specifically a small town in Suffolk County where we meet four generations of the Bolsanos, a blue-collar family going through the motions and rituals of their annual get-together, adoring and enduring each other as best they can in what might be their last year in the family home. The filmmaker behind this delicate, strange, reflective bauble is Tyler Taormina, co-founder of the...
- 5/18/2024
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
It’s the holidays, and strings of gaudy rainbow lights twinkle from gables. In cozy living rooms, the elders doze in their chairs while middle-aged siblings bicker and booze it up around the dining table. Little kids squirm in makeshift beds trying to stay awake for Santa, while truculent teenagers sneak out into the suburban night to do secret teenager things. Ok, so there are no chestnuts roasting on an open fire — instead there is a salad bowl full of red and green M&Ms — but in almost every other respect, Tyler Taormina’s delightful stocking-stuffer “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” is as alive to the domesticated magic of the season as a classic carol. Taormina’s fondly multivalent, Millennial-Norman-Rockwell perspective incorporates a child’s experience of the holiday, overlaid with a teen’s and a parent’s and a grandparent’s and so on. It feels as though...
- 5/17/2024
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Three features into his filmmaking career, it’s evident that director Tyler Taormina loves faces — though not in the way of Bergman or Cassavetes. Unlike those art house paragons, he doesn’t isolate his characters in order to peer intently into their souls. He collects faces by the dozen and dreams up crowded tableaus.
His debut film, Ham on Rye, presented a mysterious and unsettling teen ritual in which the faces never connected to conventional stories. Five years later, Taormina is still inspired by group dynamics, and he’s still experimenting with the fusion of aesthetics and storytelling, but this time on more familiar terrain. Veering at times into sensory overload as it reconfigures the holiday-gathering template, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point can feel like a party that refuses to end, one that could have used some judicious streamlining. But it’s a memorably adventurous party, fueled by intense hopefulness,...
His debut film, Ham on Rye, presented a mysterious and unsettling teen ritual in which the faces never connected to conventional stories. Five years later, Taormina is still inspired by group dynamics, and he’s still experimenting with the fusion of aesthetics and storytelling, but this time on more familiar terrain. Veering at times into sensory overload as it reconfigures the holiday-gathering template, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point can feel like a party that refuses to end, one that could have used some judicious streamlining. But it’s a memorably adventurous party, fueled by intense hopefulness,...
- 5/17/2024
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Like any Christmas film worth the time it took to wrap, Tyler Taormina’s wry but melancholy “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” has a bone-deep understanding of why all the best holidays are so painfully bittersweet: They bring the evanescence of our lives into focus, crystallizing the passage of time, while slowing it down just enough for us to appreciate how much of it has already melted into memory. Unlike the rest of its way too crowded genre, Taormina’s contribution has precious little interest in doing anything else.
And god bless this movie for that, because its tinselly charm depends on conjuring a feeling so pure and hyper-specific that even the slightest flurry of a plot might threaten to dilute the effect. Even more so than Taormina’s previous features, “Christmas in Miller’s Point” is just happy to be an immaculately conceived vibe.
Instead of scenes, there are fleeting glimpses.
And god bless this movie for that, because its tinselly charm depends on conjuring a feeling so pure and hyper-specific that even the slightest flurry of a plot might threaten to dilute the effect. Even more so than Taormina’s previous features, “Christmas in Miller’s Point” is just happy to be an immaculately conceived vibe.
Instead of scenes, there are fleeting glimpses.
- 5/17/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
“Half the time I was directing, I also had a glove on my hand,” says filmmaker Carson Lund of making his feature directorial debut with the Cannes title Eephus.
The film, which is premiering in Directors’ Fortnight and is being sold worldwide by Film Constellation, follows a men’s New England recreational baseball team as they play their final game on their longtime field before its planned demolition.
From Pride of the Yankees to Bull Durham to Moneyball, baseball has a long and varied onscreen tradition. For his part, Lund wanted to take a different approach. “No baseball film, I feel, has ever really captured the rhythms of the game and what it feels like to actually play it,” says the director. “A lot of these films are ultimately about single characters, protagonists who are undergoing some sort of transformation and self-enlightenment over the course of a narrative. It’s...
The film, which is premiering in Directors’ Fortnight and is being sold worldwide by Film Constellation, follows a men’s New England recreational baseball team as they play their final game on their longtime field before its planned demolition.
From Pride of the Yankees to Bull Durham to Moneyball, baseball has a long and varied onscreen tradition. For his part, Lund wanted to take a different approach. “No baseball film, I feel, has ever really captured the rhythms of the game and what it feels like to actually play it,” says the director. “A lot of these films are ultimately about single characters, protagonists who are undergoing some sort of transformation and self-enlightenment over the course of a narrative. It’s...
- 5/16/2024
- by Mia Galuppo
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Omnes Films has a goal. “Our mission is to fill a void in modern cinema,” says its website. “Our films are passionate, ambitious works made by friends that favor atmosphere over plot and study the many forms of cultural decay in the 21st Century. Whatever the subject or genre, we seek projects that are original in conception and feel like they’ve never been made before.” It sounds wildly ambitious, and maybe it is, but Cannes audiences will be the judge of that when two of its films — Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point by Tyler Taormina and Eephus by Carson Lund — premiere in Directors’ Fortnight.
Taormina and Lund met at college in Boston, where the former was studying screenwriting and the latter film production. Lund, says Taormina, “was always like the crazily prodigious cinematographer. Everyone was very intimidated by this man.” Taormina, meanwhile, wanted to make kids TV. While waiting for a script to sell, Taormina had the idea for a loose indie called Ham on Rye (2019). Lund signed on as DoP, and Omnes was born.
Says Lund, “Omnes is a loose collective that’s becoming tighter. In college I made a short film called Omnes. It’s a sort of a Latin term that’s used often in theater by a director when he needs to get the attention of the cast and crew. And so, we started to tag our films as Omnes Productions. And then we said, ‘You know what? We should make this a real thing.’ So, we rebranded from Omnes Productions to Omnes Films. We wanted to really make it a cinema collective. We’re not an official company, in the sense that we don’t have an LLC or anything. To us, just a symbol of our friendship, our collaboration.”
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
First out of the gate was Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, based on the director’s experience of family gatherings in the early 2000s. “This movie came from many things,” he says, “but I think the genesis was watching my parents’ wedding video on their 30th anniversary. This was some years ago now, and it deeply moved me.”
“I started to revisit some home videos at that time,” he continues, “and I realized pretty quickly that I actually have a total incapability of watching them. I’m too sentimental. It’s too heavy for me to watch my family when we were all so much younger.” That was when the idea of making a Christmas movie came to him. “Once I had that, I knew it would be the way to go. Or, maybe I didn’t know, but I figured that it would be the way that I could reanimate and dwell in the sentimentality that means so much to me.”
Taormina’s film is notable for its striking barrage of kitsch pop classics, which cineastes will recognize from Kenneth Anger’s experimental 1963 film Scorpio Rising. “The option of using Christmas music was just an absolute no. That would’ve been a real cringe-worthy move. But I’m very inspired by Kenneth Anger, very much so, to the point where there’s a central scene in my previous film, Ham on Rye, which was originally conceived and shot to the song he uses in Kustom Kar Kommandos [1965].
“Anger has remained an inciting inspiration for all the work I’ve done so far,” he continues, “and, for this one, Scorpio Rising was there at the beginning. I think we subconsciously realized that this music from the ’60s would make perfect Christmas music, because groups like The Ronettes and so on and so forth went on to make all these famous Christmas songs, so you hear that sound and it immediately feels festive. So, it was kind of a cheat. And on top of that, which ones to choose was very fun for me, because I was actually really interested in how the lyrics of these songs speak so much to the themes of the movie, because the context for a lot of these songs is love and love lost, you know?”
Eephus
Lund, meanwhile, had been cooking up Eephus, a personal story of his own, about a baseball field that is being demolished to build an elementary school. “We shot Eephus five months before Miller’s Point,” he recalls. “Tyler, I believe, had conceived of Miller’s Point maybe a little bit before I started writing Eephus, though I know we were kind of discussing the ideas at a similar time. I wrote Eephus largely during the pandemic, over Zoom, with my two co-writers, Mike Bassa and Nate Fisher. And then eventually when we finally got to work together in a room, we felt like things moved a bit quicker.”
Read the digital edition of Deadline’s Disruptors/Cannes magazine here.
Most of Lund’s career has been as a cinematographer and an editor. “I’d made short films, but I’d never written many screenplays,” he says. “I’m very attracted to location and light — that’s sort of the engine for my creative process — I had stumbled upon an idea where that was sort of the emphasis. Eephus is almost a landscape film, in that respect. I play baseball, and I play in a Sunday League, like the one depicted in the film. I was looking for material that would be personal to me but that also scratched this itch of making a film that would track the process of day turning to night over the course of one afternoon in New England and in fall, which is to me the most beautiful time for baseball.”
The directors were taken aback when both films made it into Cannes. “Honestly,” says Lund, “when one of them got in, we thought, ‘Ok, maybe they won’t program both.’ I mean, we don’t want to look like we’re trying to corner the market! But it happened, and we’re thrilled and a little surprised, for sure. But I think it’s a testament to the Fortnight that they’re keeping their eye on these kind of homegrown, handmade, independent films from America. Films that have a kind of different tone and vision.”...
Taormina and Lund met at college in Boston, where the former was studying screenwriting and the latter film production. Lund, says Taormina, “was always like the crazily prodigious cinematographer. Everyone was very intimidated by this man.” Taormina, meanwhile, wanted to make kids TV. While waiting for a script to sell, Taormina had the idea for a loose indie called Ham on Rye (2019). Lund signed on as DoP, and Omnes was born.
Says Lund, “Omnes is a loose collective that’s becoming tighter. In college I made a short film called Omnes. It’s a sort of a Latin term that’s used often in theater by a director when he needs to get the attention of the cast and crew. And so, we started to tag our films as Omnes Productions. And then we said, ‘You know what? We should make this a real thing.’ So, we rebranded from Omnes Productions to Omnes Films. We wanted to really make it a cinema collective. We’re not an official company, in the sense that we don’t have an LLC or anything. To us, just a symbol of our friendship, our collaboration.”
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
First out of the gate was Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, based on the director’s experience of family gatherings in the early 2000s. “This movie came from many things,” he says, “but I think the genesis was watching my parents’ wedding video on their 30th anniversary. This was some years ago now, and it deeply moved me.”
“I started to revisit some home videos at that time,” he continues, “and I realized pretty quickly that I actually have a total incapability of watching them. I’m too sentimental. It’s too heavy for me to watch my family when we were all so much younger.” That was when the idea of making a Christmas movie came to him. “Once I had that, I knew it would be the way to go. Or, maybe I didn’t know, but I figured that it would be the way that I could reanimate and dwell in the sentimentality that means so much to me.”
Taormina’s film is notable for its striking barrage of kitsch pop classics, which cineastes will recognize from Kenneth Anger’s experimental 1963 film Scorpio Rising. “The option of using Christmas music was just an absolute no. That would’ve been a real cringe-worthy move. But I’m very inspired by Kenneth Anger, very much so, to the point where there’s a central scene in my previous film, Ham on Rye, which was originally conceived and shot to the song he uses in Kustom Kar Kommandos [1965].
“Anger has remained an inciting inspiration for all the work I’ve done so far,” he continues, “and, for this one, Scorpio Rising was there at the beginning. I think we subconsciously realized that this music from the ’60s would make perfect Christmas music, because groups like The Ronettes and so on and so forth went on to make all these famous Christmas songs, so you hear that sound and it immediately feels festive. So, it was kind of a cheat. And on top of that, which ones to choose was very fun for me, because I was actually really interested in how the lyrics of these songs speak so much to the themes of the movie, because the context for a lot of these songs is love and love lost, you know?”
Eephus
Lund, meanwhile, had been cooking up Eephus, a personal story of his own, about a baseball field that is being demolished to build an elementary school. “We shot Eephus five months before Miller’s Point,” he recalls. “Tyler, I believe, had conceived of Miller’s Point maybe a little bit before I started writing Eephus, though I know we were kind of discussing the ideas at a similar time. I wrote Eephus largely during the pandemic, over Zoom, with my two co-writers, Mike Bassa and Nate Fisher. And then eventually when we finally got to work together in a room, we felt like things moved a bit quicker.”
Read the digital edition of Deadline’s Disruptors/Cannes magazine here.
Most of Lund’s career has been as a cinematographer and an editor. “I’d made short films, but I’d never written many screenplays,” he says. “I’m very attracted to location and light — that’s sort of the engine for my creative process — I had stumbled upon an idea where that was sort of the emphasis. Eephus is almost a landscape film, in that respect. I play baseball, and I play in a Sunday League, like the one depicted in the film. I was looking for material that would be personal to me but that also scratched this itch of making a film that would track the process of day turning to night over the course of one afternoon in New England and in fall, which is to me the most beautiful time for baseball.”
The directors were taken aback when both films made it into Cannes. “Honestly,” says Lund, “when one of them got in, we thought, ‘Ok, maybe they won’t program both.’ I mean, we don’t want to look like we’re trying to corner the market! But it happened, and we’re thrilled and a little surprised, for sure. But I think it’s a testament to the Fortnight that they’re keeping their eye on these kind of homegrown, handmade, independent films from America. Films that have a kind of different tone and vision.”...
- 5/15/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
It’s the most exciting time of the year for a cinephile: the Cannes Film Festival is set to kick off next week, running May 14-25. Ahead of festivities we’ve rounded up what we’re most looking forward to, and while we’re sure many surprises await, per every year, one will find 20 films that should be on your radar. Check out our picks below and be sure to subscribe to our daily newsletter for the latest updates from the festival.
All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
After one film, Payal Kapadia is a name you should know––a fresh, intrepid voice in cinema. And in the wake of student protests turning the world upside-down, she’s an essential up-and-comer. Her lone feature to date, 2021’s A Night of Knowing Nothing, is an experimental immersion into India’s own student revolutions––a brutal awakening into the shockingly violent...
All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
After one film, Payal Kapadia is a name you should know––a fresh, intrepid voice in cinema. And in the wake of student protests turning the world upside-down, she’s an essential up-and-comer. Her lone feature to date, 2021’s A Night of Knowing Nothing, is an experimental immersion into India’s own student revolutions––a brutal awakening into the shockingly violent...
- 5/9/2024
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
European production and sales studio Vuelta Group has bought German producer Telepool from Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook.
The deal, struck through Vuelta subsidiary SquareOne, will see a combined business operating under the SquareOne banner. SquareOne and Vuelta Group Germany CEO Al Munteanu will lead the banner, with Michael Heyd serving as CFO and COO.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the combined group will boast a library of over 1,200 titles such as Drive, Intouchables, Olympus Has Fallen, Transporter 3 and the recently released One Life. It will form part of the growing Vuelta Group, which in July last year we revealed had formed through the acquisitions of SquareOne, Paris-based international sales firm Playtime Group and Nordic distributor-producer Scanbox.
Vuelta Group Chairman Jeromt Levy, who launched the group with $50M backing from an unnamed U.S. private equity firm, announced the news today along with Munteanu.
The deal, struck through Vuelta subsidiary SquareOne, will see a combined business operating under the SquareOne banner. SquareOne and Vuelta Group Germany CEO Al Munteanu will lead the banner, with Michael Heyd serving as CFO and COO.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the combined group will boast a library of over 1,200 titles such as Drive, Intouchables, Olympus Has Fallen, Transporter 3 and the recently released One Life. It will form part of the growing Vuelta Group, which in July last year we revealed had formed through the acquisitions of SquareOne, Paris-based international sales firm Playtime Group and Nordic distributor-producer Scanbox.
Vuelta Group Chairman Jeromt Levy, who launched the group with $50M backing from an unnamed U.S. private equity firm, announced the news today along with Munteanu.
- 5/8/2024
- by Jesse Whittock
- Deadline Film + TV
German distributor-producer SquareOne Entertainment, part of rising European film studio Vuelta Group, has acquired German film and TV production, distribution and licensing company Telepool, which was owned by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook.
The news was announced Wednesday by Vuelta Group chairman Jerome Levy and CEO of SquareOne and Vuelta Group Germany Al Munteanu.
Munteanu will spearhead the newly combined entity under the SquareOne banner with Michael Heyd serving as CFO/COO.
The newly combined SquareOne entity will boast a library consisting of over 1,200 titles such as “Drive,” “Intouchables,” “The Olympus Has Fallen,” “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” “Imitation Game,” “Lone Survivor,” “Book Club,” “Transporter 3,” “King Richard,” “Maurice the Tomcat” and the recently released “One Life” among others.
“For over 60 years, Telepool has been one of the leading global content houses and we are proud of the work we did with the company,” said Westbrook CEO Kosaku Yada.
The news was announced Wednesday by Vuelta Group chairman Jerome Levy and CEO of SquareOne and Vuelta Group Germany Al Munteanu.
Munteanu will spearhead the newly combined entity under the SquareOne banner with Michael Heyd serving as CFO/COO.
The newly combined SquareOne entity will boast a library consisting of over 1,200 titles such as “Drive,” “Intouchables,” “The Olympus Has Fallen,” “The Hitman’s Bodyguard,” “Imitation Game,” “Lone Survivor,” “Book Club,” “Transporter 3,” “King Richard,” “Maurice the Tomcat” and the recently released “One Life” among others.
“For over 60 years, Telepool has been one of the leading global content houses and we are proud of the work we did with the company,” said Westbrook CEO Kosaku Yada.
- 5/8/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy and Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
This holiday season is one where the offspring of iconic Hollywood families come together, apparently.
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” which is set to debut in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes, stars Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg, two film stars in their own rite who hail from respective auteurs Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Decade-plus indie staple Michael Cera leads the latest feature directed by Tyler Taormina; Cera also produces the ensemble family dramedy that marks Taormina’s follow-up to his 2019 coming-of-age comedy “Ham on Rye.”
Set during one Christmas Eve, a family gathers for what could be the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night wears on and generational tensions arise, one of the teenagers sneaks out with her friends to claim the wintry suburb for her own, per the official synopsis. Cera is seen donning a cop uniform in one of the first look images,...
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” which is set to debut in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes, stars Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg, two film stars in their own rite who hail from respective auteurs Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.
Decade-plus indie staple Michael Cera leads the latest feature directed by Tyler Taormina; Cera also produces the ensemble family dramedy that marks Taormina’s follow-up to his 2019 coming-of-age comedy “Ham on Rye.”
Set during one Christmas Eve, a family gathers for what could be the last holiday in their ancestral home. As the night wears on and generational tensions arise, one of the teenagers sneaks out with her friends to claim the wintry suburb for her own, per the official synopsis. Cera is seen donning a cop uniform in one of the first look images,...
- 5/6/2024
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
London- and Paris-based production, finance and sales outfit Film Constellation has boarded international sales on Titus Kaphar’s drama “Exhibiting Forgiveness.”
The film received strong reviews after its January premiere at Sundance in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section, and was picked up for North American distribution by Roadside Attractions, with plans for a wide theatrical release in the fall and awards campaign.
Film Constellation will screen the film for buyers in Cannes.
In the film, an artist finds his path to success derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, a troubled man desperate to reconcile. Together, they learn that forgetting may be harder than forgiving.
The directorial debut of visual artist Kaphar, “Exhibiting Forgiveness” stars André Holland, Andra Day, John Earl Jelks and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman gave the film a positive review, describing it as “a forceful drama free of feel-good fakery” and praising Holland’s performance as “fierce,...
The film received strong reviews after its January premiere at Sundance in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section, and was picked up for North American distribution by Roadside Attractions, with plans for a wide theatrical release in the fall and awards campaign.
Film Constellation will screen the film for buyers in Cannes.
In the film, an artist finds his path to success derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, a troubled man desperate to reconcile. Together, they learn that forgetting may be harder than forgiving.
The directorial debut of visual artist Kaphar, “Exhibiting Forgiveness” stars André Holland, Andra Day, John Earl Jelks and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.
Variety’s Owen Gleiberman gave the film a positive review, describing it as “a forceful drama free of feel-good fakery” and praising Holland’s performance as “fierce,...
- 5/3/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Sales and production house Film Constellation is launching world sales rights on U.S. comedy drama “Eephus,” directed by Carson Lund, set to world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight section in Cannes in May.
In the film, as an imminent construction project looms over a beloved small-town baseball field, a pair of New England Sunday league teams face off for the last time over the course of a day. Tensions flare up and ceremonial laughs are shared as an era of camaraderie and escapism fades into an uncertain future.
“Eephus” is the feature directorial debut of American filmmaker Lund, who also has a cinematography credit on another Directors’ Fortnight title, “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
“Eephus” is produced by Lund, Tyler Taormina, Michael Basta, David Entin and Gabe Klinger for U.S.-based Omnes Films, in collaboration with executive producers Michael Tonelli, Ashish Shetty, Brian Clark and Jim Christman of Magmys.
In the film, as an imminent construction project looms over a beloved small-town baseball field, a pair of New England Sunday league teams face off for the last time over the course of a day. Tensions flare up and ceremonial laughs are shared as an era of camaraderie and escapism fades into an uncertain future.
“Eephus” is the feature directorial debut of American filmmaker Lund, who also has a cinematography credit on another Directors’ Fortnight title, “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
“Eephus” is produced by Lund, Tyler Taormina, Michael Basta, David Entin and Gabe Klinger for U.S.-based Omnes Films, in collaboration with executive producers Michael Tonelli, Ashish Shetty, Brian Clark and Jim Christman of Magmys.
- 4/18/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Following the main lineups for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, a handful of sidebar slates have been unveiled, featuring Directors Fortnight, Critics Week, and Acid. Notable highlights include the Sundance favorite Good One (read our review here), Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point starring Michael Cera, the first film in over a decade from James White director Josh Mond, the Christopher Abbott-led It Doesn’t Matter, Eat the Night from Jessica Forever duo Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel, Carson Lund’s Eephus, Patricia Mazuy’s Visting Hours, The Hyperboreans, a new film from The Wolf House directors Cristobal Leo & Joaquin Cocina, Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century follow-up Universal Language, and more.
Check out the lineups below.
Cannes Directors Fortnight
Feature films:
“Ma Vie Ma Gueule,” Sophie Fillieres (France) – opening film
“A Son Image,” Thierry de Peretti (France)
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” Tyler Taormina (USA)
“Desert of Namibia,...
Check out the lineups below.
Cannes Directors Fortnight
Feature films:
“Ma Vie Ma Gueule,” Sophie Fillieres (France) – opening film
“A Son Image,” Thierry de Peretti (France)
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” Tyler Taormina (USA)
“Desert of Namibia,...
- 4/16/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The Cannes Directors’ Fortnight section has unveiled its lineup for the 2024 festival, which will open with This Life of Mine, the final feature from the late French director Sophie Fillières. The drama features Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose identity starts to unravel when she turns 55. Fillières died shortly after wrapping principal photography on the film and her children finished post-production.
There are four U.S. titles in the feature section of the non-competitive sidebar: Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, Carson Lund’s Eephus, India Donaldson’s Good One and Gazer from Ryan J. Sloan.
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, starring Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Francesca Scorsese. Ben Shenkman, Gregg Turkington, Sawyer Spielberg, Maria Dizzia and newcomer Matilda Fleming, follows four generations as they gather for what might be their last Christmas in the family home. Lund, who lensed Christmas Eve, makes his feature debut with Eephus,...
There are four U.S. titles in the feature section of the non-competitive sidebar: Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, Carson Lund’s Eephus, India Donaldson’s Good One and Gazer from Ryan J. Sloan.
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, starring Michael Cera, Elsie Fisher, Francesca Scorsese. Ben Shenkman, Gregg Turkington, Sawyer Spielberg, Maria Dizzia and newcomer Matilda Fleming, follows four generations as they gather for what might be their last Christmas in the family home. Lund, who lensed Christmas Eve, makes his feature debut with Eephus,...
- 4/16/2024
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The 77th edition of Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight will kick off with “This Life of Mine,” a dramedy directed by Sophie Fillières, a renowned French filmmaker who died last year. Presented posthumously, the film is headlined by French stars including Agnès Jaoui, Philippe Katerine and Valérie Donzelli. The independent selection, which has recently gone through a rebranding and is now spearheaded by artistic director Julien Rejl, will close with another French film, Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s “Plastic Guns,” an offbeat crime comedy headlined by popular actor Jonathan Cohen.
The lineup includes as many as four U.S. features, three of which are feature debuts, including India Donaldson’s coming-of-age film”Good One” which premiered at Sundance and garnered solid reviews. Set in upstate New York, “Good One” follows 17-year-old Sam as she joins her father and his oldest friend, Matt, on their annual backpacking trip in the Catskill Mountains. “Good One” has...
The lineup includes as many as four U.S. features, three of which are feature debuts, including India Donaldson’s coming-of-age film”Good One” which premiered at Sundance and garnered solid reviews. Set in upstate New York, “Good One” follows 17-year-old Sam as she joins her father and his oldest friend, Matt, on their annual backpacking trip in the Catskill Mountains. “Good One” has...
- 4/16/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the selection for its 56th edition heavy on films from first-time US filmmakers, South American titles, and talent including Isabelle Huppert, Michael Cera and Agnès Jaoui.
Artistic director Julien Rejl revealed the line-up at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 16) for the Cannes parallel section run by French directors guild the Srf.
Scroll down for the full selection
After undergoing a complete rebranding for last year’s edition complete with new artistic director Rejl and a new more inclusive female-forward name in French to La Quinzaine des Cinéastes, this year’s selection includes eight...
Artistic director Julien Rejl revealed the line-up at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 16) for the Cannes parallel section run by French directors guild the Srf.
Scroll down for the full selection
After undergoing a complete rebranding for last year’s edition complete with new artistic director Rejl and a new more inclusive female-forward name in French to La Quinzaine des Cinéastes, this year’s selection includes eight...
- 4/16/2024
- ScreenDaily
Cannes parallel section Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the line-up for its 56th edition running from May 15 to 23, at a press conference in Paris’ Forum des Images cultural center.
The section, launched in 1969 and overseen by the French Directors Guild, will present 21 feature films and 10 short films.
It is the second line-up overseen by Delegate General Julien Rejl, who took up the role last year.
Discoveries of his inaugural edition included Georgian director Elene Naveriani’s late coming-of-age drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry; U.S. indie film Riddle Of Fire by Weston Razooli, as well as Vietnamese filmmaker Phạm Thiên Ân’s 2023 Cannes Caméra d’Or winner Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell.
The 2024 edition will open with late director Sophie Fillières’ final feature This Life of Mine, starring Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose sense of self starts to unravel as she turns 55.
Fillières died shortly after completing the shoot and her...
The section, launched in 1969 and overseen by the French Directors Guild, will present 21 feature films and 10 short films.
It is the second line-up overseen by Delegate General Julien Rejl, who took up the role last year.
Discoveries of his inaugural edition included Georgian director Elene Naveriani’s late coming-of-age drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry; U.S. indie film Riddle Of Fire by Weston Razooli, as well as Vietnamese filmmaker Phạm Thiên Ân’s 2023 Cannes Caméra d’Or winner Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell.
The 2024 edition will open with late director Sophie Fillières’ final feature This Life of Mine, starring Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose sense of self starts to unravel as she turns 55.
Fillières died shortly after completing the shoot and her...
- 4/16/2024
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
In the beginning, and just for a little while, Tyler Taormina‘s “Ham on Rye” seems like every other no-budget suburban coming-of-ager you’ve ever seen, if maybe better shot. Carson Lund‘s superb cinematography, apparently influenced by photographers like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, picks out boys riding skateboards, borrowing Dad’s Volvo, and talking about the crucial importance of boning, like it’s a philosophy, like they’re the first ones ever to have had so original a thought.
Continue reading ‘Ham On Rye’ Is A Wonderfully Weird, Surreal Coming-Of-Age Satire [Review] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Ham On Rye’ Is A Wonderfully Weird, Surreal Coming-Of-Age Satire [Review] at The Playlist.
- 1/20/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- The Playlist
A stylish twist on the end-of-high-school dramedy, Tyler Taormina’s “Ham on Rye” offers the ethereal echoes of “The Virgin Suicides” with the gossamer veil of a humid summer’s day slowly lifting, but laced with notes of John Hughes on a steady micro-dose of LSD. That’s to say things are always off-kilter in this movie but the exact nature of whatever is the kink in this coming-of-ager never reveals itself. And while the narrative hardly goes into the fully unhinged direction it teases, it’s .
Director Taormina is a skillful young filmmaker, making his feature debut here. He’s working with mainly non-professional young actors with a simple setup: it’s the end of a high school year and a prom-like dance looms, along with its anticipatory jitters. A sprawling cast of teenage boys and girls is introduced in the opening scenes and the costumes and suburban setting suggest someplace middle-America,...
Director Taormina is a skillful young filmmaker, making his feature debut here. He’s working with mainly non-professional young actors with a simple setup: it’s the end of a high school year and a prom-like dance looms, along with its anticipatory jitters. A sprawling cast of teenage boys and girls is introduced in the opening scenes and the costumes and suburban setting suggest someplace middle-America,...
- 10/24/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
We’re pleased to share the exclusive trailer premiere for Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye, which will be released virtually on October 23rd in 20+ theaters nationwide. An unorthodox teen coming-of-age movie with an increasingly sinister twist whose details are best left unspoiled, Taormina’s debut feature premiered at last year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival before making its international premiere at Locarno. Dp and co-producer Carson Lund wrote an essay for us last year about the film’s microbudget production, and specifically four lessons learned from the process of making Ham on Rye, which deployed over 100 cast members on a number of outdoor locations with […]...
- 9/23/2020
- by Filmmaker Staff
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
We’re pleased to share the exclusive trailer premiere for Tyler Taormina’s Ham on Rye, which will be released virtually on October 23rd in 20+ theaters nationwide. An unorthodox teen coming-of-age movie with an increasingly sinister twist whose details are best left unspoiled, Taormina’s debut feature premiered at last year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival before making its international premiere at Locarno. Dp and co-producer Carson Lund wrote an essay for us last year about the film’s microbudget production, and specifically four lessons learned from the process of making Ham on Rye, which deployed over 100 cast members on a number of outdoor locations with […]...
- 9/23/2020
- by Filmmaker Staff
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Rites-of-passage comedy centres on bizarre ceremony at local delicatessen.
New York-based Factory 25 has acquired worldwide rights to Tyler Taormina’s Locarno Film Festival selection and coming-of-age comedy Ham On Rye.
Taormina’s feature directorial debut explores a suburban community where the fate of teenagers’ lives hinges on a bizarre ritual that takes place in the local deli. The film received its international premiere in Locarno on Aug. 10.
Haley Bodell, Cole Devine, Audrey Boos, Gabriella Herrera, and Adam Torres lead an ensemble of more than 100 performers, including non-actors, musicians, and Nickelodeon child stars from the 1990s.
Taormina wrote the screenplay...
New York-based Factory 25 has acquired worldwide rights to Tyler Taormina’s Locarno Film Festival selection and coming-of-age comedy Ham On Rye.
Taormina’s feature directorial debut explores a suburban community where the fate of teenagers’ lives hinges on a bizarre ritual that takes place in the local deli. The film received its international premiere in Locarno on Aug. 10.
Haley Bodell, Cole Devine, Audrey Boos, Gabriella Herrera, and Adam Torres lead an ensemble of more than 100 performers, including non-actors, musicians, and Nickelodeon child stars from the 1990s.
Taormina wrote the screenplay...
- 8/16/2019
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
The following guest essay on the making of Ham on Rye is from cinematographer Carson Lund. The film premieres at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival this week, and the official site is here. For independent filmmakers, Los Angeles is a city of contradictions: it’s both an ideal place to congregate with likeminded artists and craftspeople, and a truly daunting place to actualize on-location productions if you’re low on cash. Between inflated permitting fees, hefty fines for unlawful shooting, and a police force with plenty of experience enforcing these standards, there’s no shortage of ways in which the city formally discourages guerrilla […]...
- 2/5/2019
- by Carson Lund
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The following guest essay on the making of Ham on Rye is from cinematographer Carson Lund. The film premieres at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival this week, and the official site is here. For independent filmmakers, Los Angeles is a city of contradictions: it’s both an ideal place to congregate with likeminded artists and craftspeople, and a truly daunting place to actualize on-location productions if you’re low on cash. Between inflated permitting fees, hefty fines for unlawful shooting, and a police force with plenty of experience enforcing these standards, there’s no shortage of ways in which the city formally discourages guerrilla […]...
- 2/5/2019
- by Carson Lund
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
“The Shallows” hits theaters tomorrow, and you may be surprised by how good Jaume-Collet Serra’s survival thriller is. Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich calls it “unequivocally the best shark movie since ‘Jaws,'” adding that “this back-to-basics thriller either eliminates or reclaims all of the excess and gimmickry that have watered down the genre since Steven Spielberg first invented it.”
Read More: Review: ‘The Shallows’ Is The Best Shark Movie Since ‘Jaws’
Also enthusiastic is The Guardian‘s Jordan Hoffman: “What could have been mere summertime chum is actually one of the more cleverly constructed B-movies in quite some time,” he writes in his four-star review (out of a possible five). “Without an ounce of body fat on its script, the timing for this refreshing splash couldn’t be better, coming as it does during a deadening summer of flabby sequels. For a slick 87 minutes, ‘The Shallows’ delivers on its promise: Blake Lively,...
Read More: Review: ‘The Shallows’ Is The Best Shark Movie Since ‘Jaws’
Also enthusiastic is The Guardian‘s Jordan Hoffman: “What could have been mere summertime chum is actually one of the more cleverly constructed B-movies in quite some time,” he writes in his four-star review (out of a possible five). “Without an ounce of body fat on its script, the timing for this refreshing splash couldn’t be better, coming as it does during a deadening summer of flabby sequels. For a slick 87 minutes, ‘The Shallows’ delivers on its promise: Blake Lively,...
- 6/23/2016
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Ioncinema.com’s Top 3 Critics’ Picks offers a curated approach to the movie-going theatre dilemma: what would you recommend I see in theaters this month? This month we’ve got a diverse group: a Taiwanese, a Chilean, and a Winnipegger. Solid options….
The Forbidden Room – Guy Maddin/Evan Johnson
October 7th – NYC Release
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Awards & Fests: With world preems at prestige fests such as Sundance, Berlin, Tiff and Nyff.
What the critic’s are saying?: Slant Magazine’s Carson Lund found plenty to admire and points to “one of the principal joys of The Forbidden Room, too easily left unexplored when thinking about its labyrinthine structure, is admiring the utter lunacy of its storytelling idiosyncrasies—the way, for instance, every new character’s entrance is promptly trailed by a lovingly designed title card stating their name, the actor playing them, and often a succinctly worded personality trait.
The Forbidden Room – Guy Maddin/Evan Johnson
October 7th – NYC Release
Distributor: Kino Lorber
Awards & Fests: With world preems at prestige fests such as Sundance, Berlin, Tiff and Nyff.
What the critic’s are saying?: Slant Magazine’s Carson Lund found plenty to admire and points to “one of the principal joys of The Forbidden Room, too easily left unexplored when thinking about its labyrinthine structure, is admiring the utter lunacy of its storytelling idiosyncrasies—the way, for instance, every new character’s entrance is promptly trailed by a lovingly designed title card stating their name, the actor playing them, and often a succinctly worded personality trait.
- 10/1/2015
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Big news via Blu-ray.com. Carlotta Films and Carlotta Films Us will send a new 2K restoration of Jacques Rivette's Out 1 (1971), with Juliet Berto, Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Michael Lonsdale and Bulle Ogier, out to theaters before releasing a Blu-ray edition in France and the Us later this year. More silver discs under review: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on Jean Renoir's The River, J. Hoberman on Orson Welles's The Lady of Shanghai and Robert Montgomery's Ride the Pink Horse, Carson Lund and Jeremy Carr on a total of four films by Yasujiro Ozu, Imogen Sara Smith on Carol Reed's Odd Man Out and Howard Hampton on Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon. » - David Hudson...
- 4/22/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Big news via Blu-ray.com. Carlotta Films and Carlotta Films Us will send a new 2K restoration of Jacques Rivette's Out 1 (1971), with Juliet Berto, Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Michael Lonsdale and Bulle Ogier, out to theaters before releasing a Blu-ray edition in France and the Us later this year. More silver discs under review: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on Jean Renoir's The River, J. Hoberman on Orson Welles's The Lady of Shanghai and Robert Montgomery's Ride the Pink Horse, Carson Lund and Jeremy Carr on a total of four films by Yasujiro Ozu, Imogen Sara Smith on Carol Reed's Odd Man Out and Howard Hampton on Vincente Minnelli’s The Band Wagon. » - David Hudson...
- 4/22/2015
- Keyframe
How would you program this year's newest, most interesting films into double features with movies of the past you saw in 2014?
Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2014—in theatres or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2014 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2014 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch...
Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2014—in theatres or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2014 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2014 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch...
- 1/5/2015
- by Notebook
- MUBI
In today's roundup of news and views: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on Jean-Luc Godard, Rossana Rossanda on Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Alain Resnais, J. Hoberman on Jacques Tati and Stanley Kubrick, Peter Bogdanovich on Vincent Minnelli, Isla Leaver-Yap on Stan Brakhage, Alexandre Rockwell on John Cassavetes, Christoph Huber on Jean Rollin, Kiva Reardon on Denis Côté, Michael Guarneri on Lav Diaz, Mike D'Angelo on Les Blank, Patton Oswalt on Jerry Lewis, Grantland on Paul Thomas Anderson, Lankester Merrin on Paul Schrader, Nigel Andrews on Hayao Miyazaki, Carson Lund on Walerian Borowczyk, Budd Wilkins on Alain Robbe-Grillet and more. » - David Hudson...
- 12/29/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
In today's roundup of news and views: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on Jean-Luc Godard, Rossana Rossanda on Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Alain Resnais, J. Hoberman on Jacques Tati and Stanley Kubrick, Peter Bogdanovich on Vincent Minnelli, Isla Leaver-Yap on Stan Brakhage, Alexandre Rockwell on John Cassavetes, Christoph Huber on Jean Rollin, Kiva Reardon on Denis Côté, Michael Guarneri on Lav Diaz, Mike D'Angelo on Les Blank, Patton Oswalt on Jerry Lewis, Grantland on Paul Thomas Anderson, Lankester Merrin on Paul Schrader, Nigel Andrews on Hayao Miyazaki, Carson Lund on Walerian Borowczyk, Budd Wilkins on Alain Robbe-Grillet and more. » - David Hudson...
- 12/29/2014
- Keyframe
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