It’s rare that a new American film feels genuinely alive with possibility from beginning to end. So many of the logistical, economic, and technological decisions that go into making a movie in the United States are designed to suffocate artistic vision in favor of audience accessibility. Which means something infinitely strange and fractured like Slow Machine feels all the more essential, an eccentric celluloid shape-shifter shot on 16mm that playfully upends the tropes of narrative storytelling.
Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo’s low-fi genre buster follows Stephanie (Stephanie Hayes), a Swedish, Brooklyn-based actress of experimental theater who meets a mysterious government agent named Gerard (Scott Sheperd). Instead of being thrown into a world of intrigue and clandestine operations, Stephanie must endure Gerard’s casual seductions and awkward theorizing, much of which revolves around his unseen fiancé’s thesis on narrative archetypes in pornography.
Their interactions are depicted mostly in flashback,...
Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo’s low-fi genre buster follows Stephanie (Stephanie Hayes), a Swedish, Brooklyn-based actress of experimental theater who meets a mysterious government agent named Gerard (Scott Sheperd). Instead of being thrown into a world of intrigue and clandestine operations, Stephanie must endure Gerard’s casual seductions and awkward theorizing, much of which revolves around his unseen fiancé’s thesis on narrative archetypes in pornography.
Their interactions are depicted mostly in flashback,...
- 6/3/2021
- by Glenn Heath Jr.
- The Film Stage
"What's her deal?" Grasshopper Film has unveiled a trailer for an intriguing, experimental indie film titled Slow Machine, the feature directorial debut of filmmakers Joe Denardo & Paul Felten. This premiered at the 2020 Rotterdam Film Festival last year, and also played at the New York Film Festival and Vienna Film Festival. After a brief relationship with intelligence agent Gerard ends terribly, tired & disillusioned actress Stephanie hides in a house where a band is working on a record, which proves to be less of an escape than she imagined. This one stars Stephanie Hayes, Scott Shepherd, Eleanor Friedberger, and Chloë Sevigny. Described as a "miniature epic of music, murder, espionage, and paranoia." Sounds freaky. This looks a bit too experimental for my tastes, but I still appreciate unique and creative cinematic work like this. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Joe Denardo & Paul Felten's Slow Machine, direct from YouTube: Stephanie, a restless and vibrant actress,...
- 5/13/2021
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
An out-of-the-blue surprise from last year’s festival circuit, Slow Machine is a simmering thriller, Rivettian game of shifting identity, musical documentary, and showcase for 16mm photography that puts the recent spate of “gritty” indies to shame. At its heart is the stunning newcomer Stephanie Hayes, supported by Scott Shepherd (seen next year in Killers of the Flower Moon), musician Eleanor Friedberger (more or less playing herself), and a haunting appearance by Chloë Sevigny.
Calling Slow Machine a discovery would undersell it by leagues, so it’s our fortune the film arrives June 4 via Grasshopper Film, who’ve debuted a trailer evincing why our summer preview said Joe DeNardo and Paul Felten’s feature “sets a high bar for the fertile experimental New York indie scene.” And good luck getting that music out of your head.
Watch the trailer below:
The post Chloë Sevigny and Eleanor Friedberger Open a World...
Calling Slow Machine a discovery would undersell it by leagues, so it’s our fortune the film arrives June 4 via Grasshopper Film, who’ve debuted a trailer evincing why our summer preview said Joe DeNardo and Paul Felten’s feature “sets a high bar for the fertile experimental New York indie scene.” And good luck getting that music out of your head.
Watch the trailer below:
The post Chloë Sevigny and Eleanor Friedberger Open a World...
- 5/13/2021
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Stephanie Hayes, Chloe Sevigny, Eleanor Friedberger and more star in the new trailer for Slow Machine, a thriller film co-directed by Joe Denardo and Paul Felten that saw its premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam last year. The film also screened at the New York Film Festival last October.
Slow Machine centers on Stephanie (played by Hayes), a disillusioned actress whose tumultuous breakup with an intelligence agent, Gerard (Scott Shepherd), leads her to wanting an escape. Stephanie decides to hide inside a house where a band is recording an album,...
Slow Machine centers on Stephanie (played by Hayes), a disillusioned actress whose tumultuous breakup with an intelligence agent, Gerard (Scott Shepherd), leads her to wanting an escape. Stephanie decides to hide inside a house where a band is recording an album,...
- 5/13/2021
- by Claire Shaffer
- Rollingstone.com
Grasshopper Film has picked up North American distribution rights to Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo’s “Slow Machine,” ahead of the film’s premiere at the 58th annual New York Film Festival this week.
Set to release theatrically next year, the film is billed as a “miniature epic” of paranoia, espionage, subterfuge, music and performance on 16mm. It first bowed at January’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, one of the few physical film fests to take place ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Slow Machine” follows Stephanie, a restless and vibrant actor, who meets a troubled counter-terrorism specialist who’s also an aficionado of experimental theater. Their relationship ends disastrously, and forces Stephanie to the ramshackle home of musician Eleanor Friedberger, where she’s haunted by violent memories of her past life.
“As moviegoers, we’ve seen the ‘Grasshopper Film’ logo in front of some of our favorite new and restored...
Set to release theatrically next year, the film is billed as a “miniature epic” of paranoia, espionage, subterfuge, music and performance on 16mm. It first bowed at January’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, one of the few physical film fests to take place ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Slow Machine” follows Stephanie, a restless and vibrant actor, who meets a troubled counter-terrorism specialist who’s also an aficionado of experimental theater. Their relationship ends disastrously, and forces Stephanie to the ramshackle home of musician Eleanor Friedberger, where she’s haunted by violent memories of her past life.
“As moviegoers, we’ve seen the ‘Grasshopper Film’ logo in front of some of our favorite new and restored...
- 10/8/2020
- by Manori Ravindran
- Variety Film + TV
The Fiery Furnaces have returned with their new song “Down at the So and So on Somewhere,” Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger’s first track together in 11 years.
The brother-sister duo previously teased their musical reunion — including a gig at the Pitchfork Music Festival, since canceled due to Covid-19 — as well as a collaboration with Third Man Records, which will release a 7″ single of the Fiery Furnaces’ new song backed by a vinyl-only B-side “The Fortune Teller’s Revenge.”
The Friedbergers’ first song together since 2009’s I’m Going Away was...
The brother-sister duo previously teased their musical reunion — including a gig at the Pitchfork Music Festival, since canceled due to Covid-19 — as well as a collaboration with Third Man Records, which will release a 7″ single of the Fiery Furnaces’ new song backed by a vinyl-only B-side “The Fortune Teller’s Revenge.”
The Friedbergers’ first song together since 2009’s I’m Going Away was...
- 6/18/2020
- by Daniel Kreps
- Rollingstone.com
Head over to Greenwich Village, go up Bleecker Street, just a few blocks past 6th Avenue, and then make a left. Keep walking until you get to 42 Carmine Street. That’s where you’ll find Rick Kelly. The Long Island native with the gray hair and the slightly oversized black t-shirt might be ambling around the retail section of the storefront, which he opened up in 1990. He might be talking to his elderly mom Dorothy, who balances the books, answers the phones and dusts the framed pics of Kelly standing...
- 4/24/2019
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
“Carmine Street Guitars” is a one-of-a-kind documentary that exudes a gentle, homespun magic. It’s a no-fuss, 80-minute-long portrait of Rick Kelly, who builds and sells custom guitars out of a modest storefront on Carmine Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, and the film touches on obsessions that have been popping up, like fragrant weeds, in the world of documentary. “Carmine Street Guitars” is all about the weirdly grounded pleasures of analog culture; about the glory of hand-made artisanal objects in a world dominated by mass corporate production; about the aging, and persistence, of old-school jazz and rock ‘n’ roll; about the fading of bohemia in a world of rising rents, omnivorous bottom lines, and chain-store values; and about how all those themes fuse into a Zen ideal of doing what you love and loving what you do.
The film sounds earnest and touching in a minor, twilight-of-the-’60s way.
The film sounds earnest and touching in a minor, twilight-of-the-’60s way.
- 4/20/2019
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Rick Kelly with Anne-Katrin Titze at Carmine Street Guitars on instigator Jim Jarmusch: "I really like The Limits of Control because there's some of my dialogue that's in that movie." Photo: Ed Bahlman
In Ron Mann's welcoming Carmine Street Guitars (a New York Film Festival highlight in Spotlight on Documentary), dedicated to Jonathan Demme, featuring the mastery of Rick Kelly and Cindy Hulej we go into the woods.
Jim Jarmusch, along with Eszter Balint, Patti Smith's Lenny Kaye, Bill Frisell, Charlie Sexton, Marc Ribot (Alexandre Moors' The Yellow Birds), Eleanor Friedberger, Christine Bougie of the Bahamas, Wilko's Nels Cline, The Roots' Kirk Douglas, Jamie Hince of The Kills, Lou Reed's guitar tech Stewart Hurwood, Dallas Good and Travis Good of The Sadies, who also composed the music for the documentary, all appear in the shop and play guitar except one.
Rick Kelly: "I really...
In Ron Mann's welcoming Carmine Street Guitars (a New York Film Festival highlight in Spotlight on Documentary), dedicated to Jonathan Demme, featuring the mastery of Rick Kelly and Cindy Hulej we go into the woods.
Jim Jarmusch, along with Eszter Balint, Patti Smith's Lenny Kaye, Bill Frisell, Charlie Sexton, Marc Ribot (Alexandre Moors' The Yellow Birds), Eleanor Friedberger, Christine Bougie of the Bahamas, Wilko's Nels Cline, The Roots' Kirk Douglas, Jamie Hince of The Kills, Lou Reed's guitar tech Stewart Hurwood, Dallas Good and Travis Good of The Sadies, who also composed the music for the documentary, all appear in the shop and play guitar except one.
Rick Kelly: "I really...
- 4/7/2019
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
"You got any guitars for sale?" Abramorama has debuted an official trailer for an indie music documentary titled Carmine Street Guitars, made by Canadian filmmaker Ron Mann, profiling the iconic guitar store in NYC where Rick Kelly makes custom guitars. Kelly has been making guitars at his Greenwich Village shop for decades, "using preserved and repurposed wood scavenged from historic New York buildings. His list of customers is legendary, and many — Patti Smith Group co-founder Lenny Kaye, Eleanor Friedberger, Charlie Sexton, Bill Frisell, director and part-time guitarist Jim Jarmusch — show up to perform, talk gear, and tell stories about everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Bob Dylan." The doc shows us five days in the life of the iconic Greenwich Village store, examining an all-too-quickly vanishing way of life. Looks quite inspiring. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Ron Mann's doc Carmine Street Guitars, direct from YouTube: Once the centre of NYC's bohemia,...
- 3/27/2019
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
It’s kind of amazing how much history Cate Le Bon packs into her music. The Welsh indie-rock artist’s great 2016 album Crab Day evoked the incisively loopy post-punk of Pere Ubu and the Red Krayola, the clattering epiphanies of the Raincoats and Lilliput, the Velvet Underground and Seventies Kraut-rock, as well as the homespun progginess of contemporaries like Stephen Malkmus and Eleanor Friedberger. Yet, Le Bon’s songs always feel utterly her own, cryptic and compact, errant yet conversational (even when she’s singing in Welsh), taking you to...
- 3/25/2019
- by Jon Dolan
- Rollingstone.com
Indie rock stalwarts Sebadoh offer an alternative to anxiety on their new song, “Celebrate the Void,” which will appear on their first album in six years, Act Surprised, out May 24th via Dangerbird Records.
“Celebrate the Void” begins as a brooding head-nodder marked by plodding drums and warbling guitar licks that turn into a heavy crunch when the chorus hits. Halfway through, however, the track gathers steam and transforms into a blistering rocker that wraps with the unexpected rallying cry, “Empty my my/Celebrate the void.”
In a statement, Sebadoh...
“Celebrate the Void” begins as a brooding head-nodder marked by plodding drums and warbling guitar licks that turn into a heavy crunch when the chorus hits. Halfway through, however, the track gathers steam and transforms into a blistering rocker that wraps with the unexpected rallying cry, “Empty my my/Celebrate the void.”
In a statement, Sebadoh...
- 3/1/2019
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Stephen Malkmus’ new album, Groove Denied, has some weird and cool electro-pop leanings, but it’s also got a handful of the chill guitar jams the former Pavement frontman is best known for. “Rushing the Acid Frat” is one of the best songs in the latter category, and now it’s got a trippy animated music video directed by Robert Strange of indie-pop group Superorganism.
Malkmus has said that “Rushing the Acid Frat” is based, in part, on a specific Deadhead-friendly frat he recalls from his undergrad days at the University of Virginia.
Malkmus has said that “Rushing the Acid Frat” is based, in part, on a specific Deadhead-friendly frat he recalls from his undergrad days at the University of Virginia.
- 2/20/2019
- by Simon Vozick-Levinson
- Rollingstone.com
It may not sound like groundbreaking stuff - a quaint documentary about a custom guitar shop in the heart of Greenwich Village - but make no mistake, Ron Mann’s latest laid-back documentary, Carmine Street Guitars, is the most unassuming, sneakily beautiful, goddamn treat of a film I have ever seen. Hyperbole? Nope, not to me! Will you feel the same way? That depends on many things about you, most obviously, what is your taste in music? Will the film’s cast of crazy cool customers appeal to you personally? Except at the end of the day it has very little to do with whether or not the film’s roster of musical treasures - local giants like Jim Jarmusch, Lenny Kaye, Bill Frisell, Eleanor Friedberger, Nels Cline,...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 10/12/2018
- Screen Anarchy
Bill Frisell, a member of John Zorn’s Naked City and the man who provided the music for the TV version of Gary Larson’s The Far Side, talks Fender Mustang guitars and The Astronauts in this exclusive clip of doc Carmine Street Guitars, which premieres next week in Venice.
The doc, which has its world premiere in Venice on September 3 before airing in Toronto and New York, was instigated by filmmaker and guitarist Jim Jarmusch and tells the story of the fabled Greenwich Village guitar shop.
Directed by Ron Mann (Altman), it follows custom guitar-maker Rick Kelly and his apprentice Cindy Hulej, who build handcrafted guitars out of salvaged wood from historic New York buildings. Fans have included Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Jarmusch.
The doc, which is exec produced by Gimme Shelter’s Carter Logan with music from The Sadies, feature Frisell, Nels Cline (Wilco), Kirk Douglas (The Roots), Eleanor Friedberger,...
The doc, which has its world premiere in Venice on September 3 before airing in Toronto and New York, was instigated by filmmaker and guitarist Jim Jarmusch and tells the story of the fabled Greenwich Village guitar shop.
Directed by Ron Mann (Altman), it follows custom guitar-maker Rick Kelly and his apprentice Cindy Hulej, who build handcrafted guitars out of salvaged wood from historic New York buildings. Fans have included Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Jarmusch.
The doc, which is exec produced by Gimme Shelter’s Carter Logan with music from The Sadies, feature Frisell, Nels Cline (Wilco), Kirk Douglas (The Roots), Eleanor Friedberger,...
- 8/30/2018
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
Kim Gordon isn’t typically a list maker. “It’s sort of the thing I hate but once I start getting into it, it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is fun,'” she says with a laugh. “I started out with the theme of classic breakup songs, but then it kind of morphed into the general relationship songs.”
Mostly, she came up with the theme because she thought it would be easy. “I listen to a lot of melancholy music,” she says, laughing. But it could have gone another way.
Mostly, she came up with the theme because she thought it would be easy. “I listen to a lot of melancholy music,” she says, laughing. But it could have gone another way.
- 7/23/2018
- by Kory Grow
- Rollingstone.com
Welcome to PeekTV, your daily look at the best that television has to offer. In each installment, we make three picks for the best shows to watch and…toss in a little extra.
The Weekend of May 19-21 What Happened Last Night?!
(Why is this man sulking? Find out what happened with last night’s TV picks.)
“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”
Season 3, Netflix
Synopsis: As Ben Travers put it in his season review: Through six episodes, Season 3 has shown far less reliance on the past and an invigorating interest in the future. It’s not that Kimmy’s time underground got stale so much as her rapid development into adulthood would inevitably require more time to be spent in the present. We’ve covered a lot of her arrested development, and now it’s time to see what kind of story an adult Kimmy has to tell. So far, it’s a damn good one.
The Weekend of May 19-21 What Happened Last Night?!
(Why is this man sulking? Find out what happened with last night’s TV picks.)
“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”
Season 3, Netflix
Synopsis: As Ben Travers put it in his season review: Through six episodes, Season 3 has shown far less reliance on the past and an invigorating interest in the future. It’s not that Kimmy’s time underground got stale so much as her rapid development into adulthood would inevitably require more time to be spent in the present. We’ve covered a lot of her arrested development, and now it’s time to see what kind of story an adult Kimmy has to tell. So far, it’s a damn good one.
- 5/19/2017
- by Steve Greene
- Indiewire
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.