[Sundance Interview] Gareth Evans (Director of The Raid 2: Berandal)
[Ruby Hornet will be at Sundance Film Festival 2014 providing coverage of the festival's 30th year. Keep it tuned to Ruby Hornet this week as we share reviews, interviews, photos, and more at one of the country's largest film festivals.]
It's no secret that I and the majority of the Ruby Hornet staff are huge fans of Gareth Evans' The Raid: Redemption. The sleeper hit made major waves across film communities with its unabashed love for martial arts and tight storytelling that complemented the action rather than took away from it. Redemption was the little film that could, making more than 20x its budget, as well as garnering very favorable reviews from critics. When The Raid 2: Berandal was announced, excitement over the expansion of the film ran high, with many salivating at the promise of "more," in all senses of the term (budget, runtime, characters, fight scenes, etc.). My review highly regarded Evans' second film of the franchise, Berandal representing everything right when it comes to a film sequel.
During Sundance, I had a chance to sit down the director himself alongside a few other esteemed film journalists as we racked his brain with questions ranging from how fight scenes were planned, the editing process for the film, his influences behind Berandal, and much more. If you were a huge fan of The Raid: Redemption and can't wait until The Raid 2: Berandal hits theaters next March, I highly recommend reading through the interview for more insight behind one of the year's most anticipated films. However, a word to the wise: there are Berandal spoilers, so be cautious!
[SXSW Interview] John Karna and Dan Beers (Premature)
[Ruby Hornet will be covering SXSW from March 7th to March 16th. Follow along as we bring you exclusive film reviews, photos, daily features, and interviews with filmmakers, actors, and musicians!]
Dan Beers' (FCU: Fact Checkers Unit) feature-length directorial debut, Premature, put a spin on the typical raunchy high school sex comedy. Equal parts Groundhog Day and American Pie, the comedy was about a high school Senior having to re-live the most important day of his life until he ultimately gets it right. If a misstep is taken, all he needs to do to escape is a trigger in the form of physical stimulation... I think we all know what that means.
Following my interviews with Adam Riegler and Alan Tudyk, I had individual talks with Premature's lead actor John Karna and writer/director Dan Beers. John and I talked about the film being his first paid film role, being filmed in his underwear, and the intricacies of having an artificial wet spot applied to said underwear. Dan and I talked about some of his inspirations behind the film, working with the cast, and also the intricacies of having an artificial wet spot applied to John's underwear. As was the theme of the day, I also discussed Alan Tudyk's mustache with each of them. Enjoy!
[SXSW Interview] Adam Riegler and Alan Tudyk (Premature)
[Ruby Hornet will be covering SXSW from March 7th to March 16th. Follow along as we bring you exclusive film reviews, photos, daily features, and interviews with filmmakers, actors, and musicians!]
Dan Beers' (FCU: Fact Checkers Unit) feature-length directorial debut, Premature, put a spin on the typical raunchy high school sex comedy. Equal parts Groundhog Day and American Pie, the comedy was about a high school Senior having to re-live the most important day of his life until he ultimately gets it right. If a misstep is taken, all he needs to do to escape is a trigger in the form of physical stimulation... I think we all know what that means.
During SXSW this year, I was able to sit down with some of the cast and Beers himself to discuss Premature. In this first part of a two-part feature, you can read my interviews with actors Adam Riegler and Alan Tudyk (Firefly) as we separately discussed their roles in the film, interactions with the rest of the cast, and in the case of Tudyk, the outstanding mustache he himself (!!!) grew for the role. Enjoy, and keep an eye out for the second part with lead actor John Karna and writer/director Dan Beers later this week!
[SXSW Interview] Emmy Rossum and Fatima Ptacek (Before I Disappear)
[Ruby Hornet will be covering SXSW from March 7th to March 16th. Follow along as we bring you exclusive film reviews, photos, daily features, and interviews with filmmakers, actors, and musicians!]
Before I Disappear was a huge hit at SXSW 2014, winning the SXSW Film 2014 Audience Award in the Narrative Feature Competition category. This doesn't come as a huge surprise, considering the film is based on the short film Curfew, which itself won the Academy Award for Best Short Film - Live Action in 2013.
Returning for the feature-length film was Curfew actress Fatima Ptacek. Joining her this time around is Shameless star Emmy Rossum. During SXSW, we had the chance to interview the duo about their roles in the film, as well as what it was like to adapt such a successful short into an equally successful feature length film.
Watch the full video interview with Emmy Rossum and Fatima Ptacek below, and expect more from Before I Disappear later this week. Enjoy!
[SXSW Interview] Hannah Marshall and Hugh Sullivan (The Infinite Man)
[Ruby Hornet will be covering SXSW from March 7th to March 16th. Follow along as we bring you exclusive film reviews, photos, daily features, and interviews with filmmakers, actors, and musicians!]
The Infinite Man was one of the first films I watched as part of this year's SXSW, jumpstarting my film experience for 2014 on a very high note. The Australian film, which you can read more about in detail in my review, is about one inventor's scheme to salvage a romantic weekend after his thorough plans fall apart. Of course, when time travel is involved, things can get a little out of hand.
In my interview with director Hugh Sullivan and actress Hannah Marshall, we discussed the nature of time travel films, how relationships are kind of like their own sci-fi stories, and some specific details behind The Infinite Man itself. Be warned: there are some spoilers in the interview, so please proceed with caution. I hope you enjoy this truncated version of the interview below. We'll be sure to include some of the more explicit spoiler stuff when The Infinite Man is fully released.
[CIFF Interview] Diego Quemada-Diez (La Jaula de Oro)
[Ruby Hornet will be attending the 49th Chicago International Film Festival from 10/10 - 10/24. Be sure to follow along as we bring you coverage from the longest-running competitive international film festival in the country. You can find all of our coverage from this year's CIFF here.]
La Jaula de Oro was one of my favorite films of this year's Chicago International Film Festival. The story about three teenagers escaping Guatemala to achieve their dreams in America was a captivating look at the struggle many migrants face in their journey for a better life. It was recently awarded the Chicago International Film Festival's Gold Hugo, which is given to films making their American premiere during the festival. I had the chance to meet with La Jaula de Oro's director Diego Quemada-Diez to discuss some questions I had about the film, the back story behind the film's production, and his personal thoughts on American immigration policies.
[Album] The O'My's: "A Humble Masterpiece"
The O'My's have been a mainstay around the Chicago music scene for six years now. In that time they have done everything from shows to hip-hop production, and last Friday celebrated their latest album, A Humble Masterpiece, at a raucous release party at Subterranean and today on Ruby Hornet and iTunes. The core duo of Maceo Haymes and Nick Hennessy provide the backbone for the cross-genre group that blends the sounds better than anyone in the Midwest. I was able to catch up with Maceo for a few questions the other night, read more and listen to the full stream of the album below.
Jake: Tell me about putting together A Humble Masterpiece?
Maceo: The album was recorded over a year and some months, some of which is recorded with Blended Babies, a good portion was recorded at our own house. It was a pretty interesting process we went through a lot of different phases of what we were trying to do and deciding if we wanted to do a certain sound and then just saying fuck it and make it and figure out what songs, so as of right now we still have like eight songs that are already recorded.
Jake: Does that mean we can expect another release soon?
Maceo: More so we just have them. We're just sitting on tons of fucking music, not a bad thing. It's kind of hard, it's like sitting on your hands.
Jake: Is it a quality control thing or just waiting?
Maceo: It's less about quality control. All the other songs are songs that I think are great but they didn't make it to the album because once we got the thirty-some odd songs we had to work with and then cut down, especially when putting together an album, you try to put together a sort of cohesive element or sound. That was mostly the reason for putting those eleven songs on the album and now we're figuring out what to do with the other ones. Mostly because we just want to get them out, you know? I'm not afraid that that was all of our creative juices, I just want to put it out so it's relevant, relevant to me personally. Just get it done and then I can move on.
Jake: Tell me about the production side of things with The O'My's.
Maceo: We've been doing production, we collaborate with a lot of different groups in the city, a lot of rappers and all different sorts of musicians, singers. For us it just made sense. To A: collaborate with them, but also because we make our own music and it's all live instruments and we have a sort of sound, producing for them has been interesting. We sort of stepped away from calling it The O'My's on the production side, just because it's terribly confusing, like 'these guys make rap music too?' It's been cool, the summer especially was really fucking awesome because we have a home studio and that's where we record everything and so the amount of talented people that were coming in from all around the city was a really cool thing to be a part of, I felt blessed to be a part of that.
Jake: Do you feel as though being in Chicago, eventually working with hip hop is inevitable?
Maceo: I don't think it's inevitable for everybody. It depends on the type of music you make and also the community you're a part of or connected to. Like, me and Nicholas are both super hip hop heads since the beginning, since before I sang or did any of that stuff. I've always been involved in hip hop, whether it was break dancing, DJ'ing, producing Nick threw graffiti. So in terms of who we're friends with in the scene, we're definitely way more close with the hip-hop community Lots of the live music scene in Chicago, we definitely have connections there but our roots are in hip-hop, at least community-wise.
Jake: What's next for The O'My's now that the album is out in the world.
Maceo: Next is gigging. Now that the album is done we're going to do a couple shows in the city but also go out east and west coasts. We've got a little East coast tour at the beginning of December and then probably West coast beginning of the year. Just gonna gig around with the album. The past year we've been gigging, but our focus hasn't been on performing, it's been on mostly just recording. Live shows are an integral part of our sound. What made the release show so fun for us was being able to play all these songs that we'd recorded with the band because most of the recordings, the band wasn't all there at the time. Different members of the band had different relationships with the album. It's cool to transfer that sound and make it something live. The project then takes on a whole other life, which is a lot of fun.