Based on the novel by Robert Kaplow set during the Mercury Theatre’s famed production of Julius Caesar in 1937, “Me and Orson Welles,” the latest film from Richard Linklater, opens in November.
At the Empire blog, Helen O’Hara asks “Is low-budget sci-fi actually at an advantage?”
Director Margarita Jimeno spent more than five years following the Gypsy punk band, Gogol Bordello, around the world from their earliest rumblings in New York City to international notoriety. From Hoptza Films, “Gogol Bordello Non-Stop” opens later this month.
Jen Phillips of Mother Jones chats with directors Sara Ziff and Ole Schell about “the ugly side of the modeling biz” exposed in their documentary, “Picture Me: A Model’s Diary.”
One Film Wonder: In 1952, three years after his astounding “The Bicycle Thief,” Vittorio De Sica released the heart-rending neorealist classic, “Umberto D.” The title role of Umberto Domenico Ferrari, a pensioner brought to the brink in post-war Rome, was played by Carlo Battisti, a 70-year-old renowned professor of glottology — the science of linguistics — at the University of Florence, appearing in his only film role. Umberto’s closest companion in his dog, Flike. The powerful, wrenching film was not released in the United States for several years; it earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing (Motion Picture Story) in 1956 for Cesare Zavattini.
