Olive Eye Films

07/25/2017

To find a kiss of yours

01/11/2017

Listen to this wonderful conversation:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/axe-files-david-axelrod/id1043593599?mt=2&i=1000379336119

Download past episodes or subscribe to future episodes of The Axe Files with David Axelrod by CNN for free.

01/09/2017

Here's the film everyone should see and share.

https://youtu.be/RK8xHq6dfAo

Watch the new trailer for , based on the incredible untold true story. Starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer & Janelle Monáe. In theaters ...

03/10/2016

The story of a family's flight from the Khmer Rouge ... And healing.

11/13/2015

Today is a proud day. Gore and the Reality crew will be sharing climate change solutions in 8 regions around the world. I served as producer on 18 of the videos you'll see when you tune in. Click here and enjoy.

Please share widely if you feel inspired.



https://www.climaterealityproject.org/24hoursofreality

10/27/2015

Filming at our nation's 1st net zero school.

07/12/2015

Mississippi G #%&mn! You must see this fine, touching film about a troubled American musical genius and activist right away. On Netflix and .

03/22/2015

Bob Garfield in the third, On the Media
Segment below, describes Robert Durst " ... (W)andering obliviously
to the bathroom in a cold sweat with a hot mike," before muttering to himself, "What have I done? Killed them all, of course." Don't you love great broadcast writing? Simon is smiling in heaven.
http://www.onthemedia.org/index.xml

WNYC’s weekly investigation into how the media shapes our world view. Veteran journalists Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield take a closer look at what the news media does and doesn’t say, and the impact that has on our society.

02/09/2015

Here's Michael Weber, screenwriter of The Fault in Our Stars, paying it forward.

12/05/2013

When you saw Crazy Heart, the first film Scott Cooper directed –-- you had to be asking yourself, “Who is this guy?”

Now we know. Out of the Furnace confirms Cooper as one of our top, personal filmmakers in an age of $300 million cartoons. No wonder everyone wants to work with him.

Set in a rusting, post-racial steel town, Furnace features Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Willem Dafoe, Zoe Saldana, Forrest Whitaker, Sam Shepherd, Tom Bower and tons of locals from Braddock, Pa. wearing real faces etched with defeat. They all crush it. Especially Christian, Woody and Casey who’s never overshadowed in his scenes with brother, Bale. It’s a breakout role for Casey.

Yes, it’s bleak. It’s also touching, funny, rueful, and nasty and it explodes in your face like a string of firecrackers.

But Out of the Furnace simultaneously tells the stories of brave people facing hard choices and caring for each other. Cross cut that with bare-fisted fight clubs, biracial love, post-Iraq stress disorder and seven flavors of crystal m**h and you’ve got a tale of the other America, like Crazy Heart, like Winter’s Bone, hardscrabble, poignant and true. Let Us Now Praise Scott Cooper and his gifted ensemble. They’re the real deal.

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/outofthefurnace/

From Scott Cooper, the critically-acclaimed writer and director of Crazy Heart, comes a gripping and gritty drama about family, fate, circumstance, and justice. Russell Baze (Christian Bale) has a rough life: he works a dead-end blue collar job at the local steel mill by day, and cares for his termi...

10/11/2013

Nebraska is an instant, indelible American classic. It's Walker Evans meets
David Letterman. It's Orson Wells meets Woody Allen. It's better.
There is no discussion. This film is everything Woody Allen ever wanted to do, mixing the texture of his beloved City, and his affection for the human
beings that made him the Woodman. Payne does all this and much more for the
American West - (Nebraska is not the Midwest. It's as far west as Texas) -- and the Great Plains and, doubtless, his own, burned-out family.

And he does it with more restraint, with humor both deeper and more rueful.
Payne puts the sorrow back in the tropes, literature's highest calling, in the words of Harold Bloom. He wrings plaintive Americana out of every "extra," every Winslow Homeresque perfect cowfield, every busted street sign.

Payne limns his world's grotesques without making them grotesqueries: The
blank looks. The superficial conversations about cars and bars and houseplants. The crushed dreams. (At the PGA after panel, Payne said, "extras make the movie," and his are spot on.

It's a great, understated screenplay, and a guaranteed Oscar nom for Bruce's performance - the performance of a lifetime: A long, quirky lifetime
in the movies. Shout outs to Will Forte and all of the muted sadness and
unarticulated longing he brings to his role as Dern's son. And huge thumbs
up to June Squibb - $10 says she'll get nominated too, if only for telling
her inlaws to go eff themselves, and for flashing her, ahem, ladylike parts at the tombstone of a former suitor. Stacy Keach is always good, and I won't
blame him for playing a dick. The black and white cinematography is perfect. And Bob Odenkirk: Oh my god. He's funny just
smirking blankly at daytime TV.

10/10/2013

nebraska will join the film pantheon quicker than you can say Bruce Dern. It's an American Masterpiece. It's his Manhattan. Even better. And Bruce's performance is a certain Oscar contender.

08/24/2013

Here's my take on Blue Caprice.

The film was surprising, elegaic, leisurely and terrifying. I've never seen or heard of a piece about an African American serial killer, and neither do I think has anyone else. The influences of In Cold Blood, Elephant, and Wong Kar Wei are palpable and pleasurable. So is the influence of Terrence Malick. Blue Caprice is both a horror film and a father / son love story. It's nothing short of beautiful. That's strange for a film this disturbing. The use of nature, the sociology of homeless people, black and white, living on the fringe of society is moving.There are shades of John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London in here, but through African American eyes. I also felt the influence of the television series, Homeland in treating the military details of snipers. I feel we are living in a cultural moment in which African American artists' voices are increasingly heard, and this gorgeous, upsetting film seems to be part of that trend. The performances of the lead father and son characters, Isaiah Washington and Tequan Richmond are commanding and exquisitely restrained. It's just an incredibly courageous film. But don't see it unless you are unafraid to descend into madness within the mind of a serial killer, and to feel your heart break with the loyalty of a young man's need for his dad.

http://bit.ly/bluecapricefilmtrailer

The "Blue Caprice" trailer was released this week. The movie is a narrative film inspired by the 2002 Beltway "D.C." sniper attacks. Former "Greys Anatomy

08/05/2013

I just saw the film that is going to sweep the academy awards. Forest Whitaker is commanding. He could easily, *easily* get another Oscar. Oprah is amazing. *She* will get nominated. Terrence Howard is off the hook. Lenny Kravitz is great. And the incidental and supporting guys and gals go on, and on, and on: Alan Rickman as Ronnie and Jane Fonda as Mommy Reagan. Liev Schrieber as LBJ ( yes, he briefs his aids while he's commode-mounted), Robin Williams as Eisenhower, John Cusack as Richard Nixon. I want to stand up and cheer for about an hour. You heard it here first. http://bit.ly/thebutlerisamazing

Directed by Lee Daniels. With John Cusack, Forest Whitaker, Lenny Kravitz, David Oyelowo. An African-American eyewitnesses notable events of the 20th century during his tenure as a White House butler.

05/26/2013

I'm willing to watch this kind of film just to see what it is. I'm willing to watch The Rock with Vin Diesel, which is like The Hulk meeting The Thing. Yes, the 6th outing delivers. It's part Fast and Furious, part Mission Impossible, part Avengers, part Transformers. Plenty of cars, guns, fancy crashes, explosions and leaps of faith. It brings the noise. But here's the kicker: It ends in Grace. The Fast family gathers around a picnic table for a barbecue and prays. It's amazingly touching and effective, and casts the previous 95 minutes of Fury in a warming light. Nice surprise.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dKi5XoeTN0k

Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Like us on FACEBOOK:http://goo.gl/dHs73. Subscribe to INDIE TRAILE...

05/09/2013

We are going to blow you away, here. Julian and I love Iron Man 3. We love comic books and super heroes. I think they are very important for young people's sense of themselves, like Greek myths, and fairy tales. This 3-quel doesn't just boast the best special effects yet, it has Ben Kingsley, Guy Pierce, and Rebecca Hall, a way cool premise in which the always-compelling Downey has to prove himself as a super cool, deft, smart guy *without* his red suit, and a framing device in the noble tradition of the late 20th century's best lit. Why does the NY Times bother to watch this kind of film, if they don't like stuff that blows up? The LA Times' and NPR's chief film critic Turan gets it just right. It rocks. Full stop. Listen below.

http://bit.ly/olivefilmslikescomix

Iron Man 3 once again features Robert Downey Jr. as the tech-savvy superhero in red. Billionaire Tony Stark, who is uncharacteristically anxious since the events of 2012's The Avengers, must face down a domestic terrorist without backup from his friends.

05/05/2013

Filming the ancient rice fields of Cambodia.

21st century tools record 10-thousand-year-old rice farms. In Cambodia.

05/05/2013

Filming New Year Baby in Angkor Wat

Filming New Year Baby in Cambodia. Tough and inspiring shoot.

05/05/2013

The Real Cannonball is rolling again.

Filming One Lap - aka the Real Cannonball -- in Colorado. Look at that sky.

05/05/2013

Our embarrassing families.

05/05/2013

Fire season is coming.

02/02/2013

My verdict - I can't stop watching. It's evil and addictive.

http://bit.ly/houseocards

Netflix Inc. 's strategy of simultaneously releasing all 13 episodes of its new political drama "House of Cards" is generating social media buzz -- with well over 10,000 mentions since the show's debut just after midnight Friday.

01/13/2013

These two should do a film together: Beasts of Amour?

Emmanuelle Riva ("Amour") and Quvenzhané Wallis ("Beasts of the Southern Wild"). Photo by Godlis

12/10/2012

I will confess I took my wife to Les Miz. She loved it. I ... not so much. The question is, Why?


http://www.vulture.com/2012/12/david-edelstein-on-les-miserables.html

The film's tasteless bombardment would, under most circumstances, send audiences screaming from the theater, but the film is going to be a monster hit and award winner, and not entirely unjustly.

12/05/2012

Tarantino's latest just devastated me, along with a theater full of PGA producers.

http://bit.ly/olivedjango

Set in the South two years before the Civil War, DJANGO UNCHAINED stars Academy Award(R)-winner Jamie Foxx as Django, a slave whose brutal history with his former owners lands him face-to-face with German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Academy Award(R)-winner Christoph Waltz). Schultz is on th...

12/05/2012

RIP Dave Brubeck

http://bit.ly/olivefilmstakesfive

Dave Brubeck - Take Five

12/04/2012

Saw this with the Guild last night, and it is truly on the money. Another home run from K-Big and Boal.

http://bit.ly/olivedarkthirty

For a decade, an elite team of intelligence and military operatives, working in secret across the globe, devoted themselves to a single goal: to find and eliminate Osama bin Laden. Zero Dark Thirty reunites the Oscar(R) winning team of director-producer Kathryn Bigelow and writer-producer Mark Boal ...

11/29/2012

Truly inspiring ... I've seen it twice. How about you? Have you seen Beasts?

The Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award winner for visual arts transformed filmmaking as he assembled a new myth out of Hurricane Katrina

11/13/2012

Jack Gilbert just died at 87. He wrote great poems.

Jack Gilbert's Great Poem
The Abnormal Is Not Courage

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossible, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.

11/13/2012

Rain

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.


I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain.

R.I.P. Jack Gilbert. On why poetry: "Not because it’s sad, but because it matters."

Read the full interview with the American poet here: http://tpr.ly/ew6BTl.

11/02/2012

The National Guard distributing food on the Lower East Side

11/02/2012

The NatIonal Guard distributing food on the Lower East Side

11/02/2012

Heading to Bialystoker synagogue in the flooded Dark Zone.

10/24/2012

One of the most powerful film experiences I've ever had. I almost can't believe what I saw.