Bicoastal Tool of North America and managing director Phillip Detchmendy have parted ways.
Bicoastal Tool of North America and managing director Phillip Detchmendy have parted ways. No word yet as to a successor to Detchmendy…..Longstanding London production house Godman is slated to close its doors in the next month or so. Plans call for the company to complete its current slate of projects before winding down operations. The shop intends to honor all of its financial obligations…..Southwest Productions, with offices in Albuquerque and New York, has added comedy director Alan Blake, formerly of Blake & Co., London. The move marks his return to commercial production after having worked on longform TV and movie projects. Blake now resides in Connecticut….Director/digital cinematographer John Allardice has joined Sway Studio, Los Angeles. He previously was at Digital Domain, Venice, Calif., where he ran previsualization on spot projects and had some feature project involvement as well…..
Review: Writer-Director Andrea Arnold’s “Bird”
"Is it too real for ya?" blares in the background of Andrea Arnold's latest film, "Bird," a 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams) rides with her shirtless, tattoo-covered dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan), on his electric scooter past scenes of poverty in working-class Kent.
The song's question — courtesy of the Irish post-punk band Fontains D.C. — is an acute one for "Bird." Arnold's films ( "American Honey," "Fish Tank") are rigorous in their gritty naturalism. Her fiction films — this is her first in eight years — tend toward bleak, hand-held verité in rough-and-tumble real-world locations. Her last film, "Cow," documented a mother cow separated from her calf on a dairy farm.
Arnold specializes in capturing souls, human and otherwise, in soulless environments. A dream of something more is tantalizing just out of reach. In "American Honey," peace comes to Star (Sasha Lane) only when she submerges underwater.
In "Bird," though, this sense of otherworldly possibility is made flesh, or at least feathery. After a confusing night, Bailey awakens in a field where she encounters a strange figure in a skirt ( Franz Rogowski ) who arrives, like Mary Poppins, with a gust a wind. His name, he says, is Bird. He has a soft sweetness that doesn't otherwise exist in Bailey's hardscrabble and chaotic life.
She's skeptical of him at first, but he keeps lurking about, hovering gull-like on rooftops. He cranes his neck now and again like he's watching out for Bailey. And he does watch out for her, helping Bailey through a hard coming of age: the abusive boyfriend (James Nelson-Joyce) of her mother (Jasmine Jobson); her half brother (Jason Buda) slipping into vigilante violence; her father marrying a new girlfriend.
The introduction of surrealism has... Read More