Director Dana Adam Shapiro has joined Little Minx@RSA Films for representation. Shapiro co-directed (with Henry Alex Rubin) and served as a producer on Murderball, a documentary about quadriplegic rugby players who go on to compete in the Paralympic Games in Athens.
Murderball was an Oscar nominee for best documentary feature and received assorted honors, including the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Beyond filmmaking, Shapiro’s experience also includes having served as editor of Spin, a founder of Icon magazine, and as a novelist.
On the latter score, Shapiro’s The Every Boy (Houghton Mifflin) tells the story of a 15-year-old boy’s death and his father’s attempt to learn about his son through his diaries. Plan B Entertainment, Brad Pitt’s production company, and Paramount Pictures plan to make the book into a film. Shapiro is slated to write and direct the adaptation.
Rhea Scott, president of Little Minx, said that she was put in touch with Shapiro by RSA Films’ president Jules Daly. Scott was impressed with Shapiro’s work and personal demeanor. “He was straightforward, sharp, not full of himself at all, and just very smart,” said Scott of Shapiro.
Scott added that by being a documentary filmmaker, Shapiro brings an extra dimension to the Little Minx roster. The director conversely is looking forward to the extra dimension–in terms of depth of production support and access to varied talent–that Little Minx can provide him. He noted, “For Murderball, we shot more than 200 hours of digital footage over two-and-a-half years with a two man crew. So when Rhea started talking about DPs, ADs, ACs, PAs, gaffers, grips, storyboards, I felt like a kid walking into the chocolate factory.”
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