Tag: Craig Johnson

Film Feature: SFFILM 2018 Festival Spotlights #4

Wrap up: 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival 

The 61st San Francisco International Film Festival ended last Tuesday, but many of its offerings will find their way to your neighborhood cinema in the near future. We conclude our coverage of this year’s Fest by taking a look at four of the Fest’s films that you may want to keep your eye out for in the coming months (our previous coverage posts can be found here, here, and here). And if you’re curious to see which Fest films took home awards this year, you can see all the winners here. In the meantime, we’ll see you next year for SFFILM #62! 

1.) Sorry to Bother You  (USA 2018, 107 min. Centerpiece)

Detroit (Tessa Thompson) and Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield) join with striking workers at their telemarketing firm in Oakland.

Oakland rapper and artist Boots Riley got the hometown reception from the Festival this year, as his debut feature film was given a first-of-its kind, dual-venue Bay Area premiere at two of the Bay Area’s most iconic and beloved theaters: Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater and San Francisco’s Castro Theater. The movie had previously premiered at Sundance, where it garnered a Grand Jury prize nomination, but its Bay Area premiere definitely felt more special. Riley’s film centers on Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield, Get Out), a new employee at a telemarketing company in downtown Oakland (exteriors were shot around Kaiser’s Franklin Street building) whose rise up the corporate ladder doesn’t come without cost, to himself, his girlfriend (Tessa Thompson), and his friends, colleagues, and community. While inarguably entertaining, Riley’s film has a definite first attempt feel: elements of political satire, social criticism, surrealist comedy, outrageous sci-fi, and sweet romance often overlap to an extreme, coming dangerously close to burying the picture beneath its own everything-but-the kitchen-sink weight. Comedically deft performances from Stanfield and Armie Hammer, as a villainous corporate head, though, are appealing enough to make the flaws of Riley’s jam-packed screenplay forgivable.

Sorry to Bother You will open in the Bay Area on Friday, July 6th.

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Film Feature: Carrie’s Top 10 Films of 2014

Spinning Platters film critics present their top 10 films of 2014

Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2014. Here is Carrie’s list, presented in alphabetical order. And you can see Chad’s list here.

1.) Boyhood

Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane are outstanding as a mother and son who grow and change together.

Filmed intermittently over 12 years, Richard Linklater’s film chronicling a boy named Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from ages six to 18 in real time is both a technical marvel and a cinematic masterpiece. There has been nothing like it before on screen, and there will no doubt be nothing like it again. Utterly unique in scope and vision, the film lets us watch a life develop in front of our very eyes, with all of its attendant hopes, dreams, achievements, and disappointments. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke play Mason’s parents, changing and growing right alongside him and his older sister (Lorelei Linklater). An absolutely dazzling achievement that will leave you breathless and awed, Linklater’s picture is sure to be the one to beat for Best Picture come Oscar time. (You can also read Gordon’s full-length review here).

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Spinning Platters Interview: Bill Hader & Kristen Wiig & Craig Johnson, “The Skeleton Twins”

Screen Shot 2014-09-08 at 9.47.23 PM

At the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, I sit with a group of other writers around a table as the audible antics begin approaching outside the door.  SNL veterans Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, along with director Craig Johnson, are splitting each others’ sides with jokes and voices.  They are tired and somewhat giddy from a day of press, supporting their incredible new film, The Skeleton Twins, and they loosely greet us with smiles and how ya dos.  Bill chucks a muffin from that morning down the hallway, comically screaming ‘This BETTER BE GOOD!’.  Bill and Kristen feed off each other’s energy, a polite and friendly Craig Johnson between them, and they all take a deep breath and search around the table for who’s first to dive in…

———-

Craig, you co-wrote the script with Mark Heyman, and I heard he’d been working on the script for eight years.  How did the final cut of the film differentiate from the original script?

Craig Johnson:  Well, we actually had a couple versions of it that were unfinished that were all over the place.  We had one where Milo was a drag queen. (To Bill) I haven’t even told you about these versions of it.  There was a road trip element.

Kristen Wiig: Maggie was a cat. (laughing)

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