Stacy Wall of Imperial Woodpecker directed this spot in which L.A. Clippers’ superstar forward Blake Griffin plays a pickup game of basketball, inexplicably choosing as his teammate a youngster who calls himself D’arryl Drain, aka Dr. Drain. The lad’s specialty comes in the form of high-arching jump shots–unfortunately, those jumpers are errant and don’t even get a trace of net. Clearly, this kid’s game doesn’t match his swagger.
But there’s method to Griffin’s madness as he gives the ball to a wide-open Drain. He predictably lofts a shot headed for nowhere until Griffin plucks out of the air what unintentionally serves as an alley-oop pass and dunks the ball through the hoop. We then see one successful Drain-to-Blake slam dunk connection after another in the summer hoops game.
“Blake and Drain” was created by Wieden+Kennedy, New York, for the launch of the Jordan Brand’s shoe, the Super.Fly 2
The Hottest Ticket At Sundance: Writer-Director Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”
Rose Byrne plays a mother in the midst of a breakdown in the experiential psychological thriller "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You."
Anticipation was high for the A24 film, which will be released sometime this year. Its premiere Friday at the Sundance Film Festival was easily the hottest ticket in town, with even ticketholders unable to get in. Those who did make it into the Library theater were treated to an intense, visceral, inventive story from filmmaker Mary Bronstein that has quickly become one of the festival's must-sees.
Byrne plays Linda, who is barely hanging on while managing her daughter's mysterious illness. She's faced with crisis after crisis, big and small — from the massive, gaping hole in their apartment ceiling that forces them to move to a dingy motel, to an escalating showdown with a parking attendant at a care center. The cracks in her psychological, emotional and physical wellbeing are become too much to bear.
"I'd never seen a movie before where a mother is going through a crisis with a child but our energy is not with the child's struggle, it's with the mother's," Bronstein said at the premiere. "If you're a caretaker, you shouldn't be bothering with yourself at all. It should all be about the person you're taking care of, right? And that is a particular kind of emotional burnout state that I was really interested in exploring."
Byrne and Bronstein went deep in the preparation phase, having long discussions about Linda with the goal of making her as real as possible before the quick, 27-day shoot. Byrne said she was obsessed with figuring out who Linda was before the crisis. The film was in part inspired by Bronstein's experience with her own daughter, but she didn't want to elaborate on the... Read More