The premise of Michael Rees’ latest comedy short Middle Sized Things is so delightfully off-kilter that it needs to be seen to be fully grasped. It follows a guest speaker at college who’s presenting his core thesis, the notion that the properties of scale have no direct correlation with something’s moral status. It’s a conceptual idea that makes no sense whatsoever but Rees uses the confidence and determination of his cocksure academic to expose the fragile ego underneath which, combined with an ensemble cast who sell the ridiculousness of the situation wonderfully, makes the short a must-see. With Middle Sized Things having arrived online, Dn joined Rees for a conversation about his creative process as a comedy writer/director, his aversion to sitting on ideas for too long, and the benefits his experience as an editor brings to his filmmaking.
Where did the concept for Middle Sized Things come from?...
Where did the concept for Middle Sized Things come from?...
- 8/22/2023
- by James Maitre
- Directors Notes
Exclusive: Actress Alexi Wasser (Poker Face) has made her feature directorial debut with Messy, a relationship comedy she also wrote and leads, which is now in post. Others appearing alongside her include Adam Goldberg (The Equalizer), Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), Mario Cantone (And Just Like That…), Ione Skye (Beef), Jack Kilmer (Palo Alto), Michael Panes (We Bought a Zoo), Ruby McCollister (Search Party), Dion Costelloe (Blue Bloods) and Merlot.
Aiming for a run on next year’s festival circuit, Messy follows the life of brutally self-aware, promiscuous, love addict Stella Fox (Wasser), who moves to New York after a devastating break up, and all her disappointing romantic dalliances over the course of a summer.
Wasser produced the film alongside the New York-based production company Simone Films, founded by Rebekah Sherman-Myntti and Kj Rothweiler. Bart Cortright served as its cinematographer.
“I call it a comedy of disappointments, very much based on my life,...
Aiming for a run on next year’s festival circuit, Messy follows the life of brutally self-aware, promiscuous, love addict Stella Fox (Wasser), who moves to New York after a devastating break up, and all her disappointing romantic dalliances over the course of a summer.
Wasser produced the film alongside the New York-based production company Simone Films, founded by Rebekah Sherman-Myntti and Kj Rothweiler. Bart Cortright served as its cinematographer.
“I call it a comedy of disappointments, very much based on my life,...
- 6/7/2023
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
This year’s Cannes Film Festival was hardly a letdown from a U.S. distribution standpoint. From Netflix’s surprise acquisition of Todd Haynes’ “May December” to Neon nabbing the Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall” and Mubi picking up Aki Kaurismaki’s “Fallen Leaves,” there was no shortage of indications that several Cannes highlights will make their way to American audiences in the months ahead.
Nevertheless, this remains a tricky time for anyone in the acquisitions business, and some of the gems from this year’s lineup still need homes. Here are a few key ones for buyers to consider.
Ryan Lattanzio contributed to this story.
“The Breaking Ice” “The Breaking Ice”
A sweet and shimmeringly beautiful sad hot people film about how life can flow and then freeze and then thaw into something entirely new if you let it, Anthony Chen’s “The Breaking Ice” finds...
Nevertheless, this remains a tricky time for anyone in the acquisitions business, and some of the gems from this year’s lineup still need homes. Here are a few key ones for buyers to consider.
Ryan Lattanzio contributed to this story.
“The Breaking Ice” “The Breaking Ice”
A sweet and shimmeringly beautiful sad hot people film about how life can flow and then freeze and then thaw into something entirely new if you let it, Anthony Chen’s “The Breaking Ice” finds...
- 5/31/2023
- by Eric Kohn and David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
In The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, Ann, a lugubrious New Yorker, sleepwalks through her daily life––colorless job, perennially disappointed parents––while maintaining a long-term sub/dom relationship with an older man. She visits her Jewish family, goes to yoga, and attempts some Internet dating. Invariably she winds up in her boyfriend’s lifeless brownstone. Executive-produced by Sean Baker, this is the feature debut of writer-director Joanna Arnow, a Brooklyn-based actor and filmmaker who made a name for herself as a wry observer of millennial sex lives and stasis with a couple of award-winning shorts: Bad at Dancing (2015) and Laying Out (2019). In Dancing, Arnow sat naked on the floor, casually asking for advice from a friend having sex right in front of her. The sense that everyone around you is getting their shit together (and maybe getting laid) is present again here; yet eight years hence,...
- 5/22/2023
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Click here to read the full article.
If, as Tolstoy put it, happy families are all alike, that’s probably because they’re opaque to the rest of us, for whom friction and rifts are as much a part of the kindred experience as love. Jesse, the hyper-observant only child at the center of Ricky D’Ambrose’s The Cathedral, takes in all the specifics of his unhappy family — not just his parents’ divorce when he’s 10, not just his father’s ongoing struggles, financial and otherwise, but the awkward silences and generational baggage, the rite-of-passage celebrations straining toward grace. The writer-director-editor’s microbudgeted sophomore film, now streaming on Mubi, juxtaposes remembered interactions and still-life shots with a deliberate, elliptical precision, the minor-key notes building to a chord that resounds with the ache of lost time and unexpressed emotions.
Through the eyes of the filmmaker’s alter ego, an artist in...
If, as Tolstoy put it, happy families are all alike, that’s probably because they’re opaque to the rest of us, for whom friction and rifts are as much a part of the kindred experience as love. Jesse, the hyper-observant only child at the center of Ricky D’Ambrose’s The Cathedral, takes in all the specifics of his unhappy family — not just his parents’ divorce when he’s 10, not just his father’s ongoing struggles, financial and otherwise, but the awkward silences and generational baggage, the rite-of-passage celebrations straining toward grace. The writer-director-editor’s microbudgeted sophomore film, now streaming on Mubi, juxtaposes remembered interactions and still-life shots with a deliberate, elliptical precision, the minor-key notes building to a chord that resounds with the ache of lost time and unexpressed emotions.
Through the eyes of the filmmaker’s alter ego, an artist in...
- 9/16/2022
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Here’s your daily dose of an indie film, web series, TV pilot, what-have-you in progress, as presented by the creators themselves. At the end of the week, you’ll have the chance to vote for your favorite.
In the meantime: Is this a project you’d want to see? Tell us in the comments.
[Blank] My Life
Logline: “[Blank] My Life” is a surreal, comedic webseries which follows Susan on her quest to find love and simultaneously not end her life.
Elevator Pitch:
In the second season of this acerbic, dreamy show, “[Blank] My Life,” Susan is more lost than ever and in a last ditch effort to find herself falls in love with a dull lawyer. Meanwhile, her best friend Brendan is applying to acting grad school to try to get the hell out of this dead-beat city called New York. In a vignette quest, the two of them encounter sexually woke baby-sitting charges,...
In the meantime: Is this a project you’d want to see? Tell us in the comments.
[Blank] My Life
Logline: “[Blank] My Life” is a surreal, comedic webseries which follows Susan on her quest to find love and simultaneously not end her life.
Elevator Pitch:
In the second season of this acerbic, dreamy show, “[Blank] My Life,” Susan is more lost than ever and in a last ditch effort to find herself falls in love with a dull lawyer. Meanwhile, her best friend Brendan is applying to acting grad school to try to get the hell out of this dead-beat city called New York. In a vignette quest, the two of them encounter sexually woke baby-sitting charges,...
- 10/19/2016
- by Steve Greene
- Indiewire
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