If Larry Clark had ever found his way onto the Pine Ridge Reservation, he probably would have come away with a film like “War Pony,” which observes its young Native American characters hustling, skating and stealing drugs from otherwise distracted adults. Presenting such behavior without judgment, first-time directors Gina Gammell and Riley Keough developed this unvarnished portrait in collaboration with their actors, capturing something at once tragic and true about these kids, who are torn between Oglala Lakota traditions and the consumer culture around them.
A few years older than the hero of Chloé Zhao’s recent “The Rider” — a movie this one can’t help but resemble, at least superficially — Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) is like the slacker version of that American dreamer. He siphons gas from strangers’ tanks and goes around asking people if they want to buy a stolen PlayStation. He already has two kids by two different women.
A few years older than the hero of Chloé Zhao’s recent “The Rider” — a movie this one can’t help but resemble, at least superficially — Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) is like the slacker version of that American dreamer. He siphons gas from strangers’ tanks and goes around asking people if they want to buy a stolen PlayStation. He already has two kids by two different women.
- 5/21/2022
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Chloé Zhao would like to make one thing clear: The action scenes in “Eternals” are hers.
In recent years, some have suggested that the ability to use previs — that is, previsualization — allows special effects artists to sort out action scenes in 3D animatics long before production, while directors focus on other aspects of the story. Zhao relied heavily on previs for “Eternals,” which follows a team of cosmic superheroes across many millennia and action scenes that traverse beaches and cityscapes alike. However, she said she was involved in the process from the start.
“From day one, Marvel said, ‘Here are the tools we use. We need your version. We don’t want three different movies we want your movie,’” Zhao said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “They would be there to help me because I’ve never used these tools.”
On paper, Zhao is not the most obvious candidate...
In recent years, some have suggested that the ability to use previs — that is, previsualization — allows special effects artists to sort out action scenes in 3D animatics long before production, while directors focus on other aspects of the story. Zhao relied heavily on previs for “Eternals,” which follows a team of cosmic superheroes across many millennia and action scenes that traverse beaches and cityscapes alike. However, she said she was involved in the process from the start.
“From day one, Marvel said, ‘Here are the tools we use. We need your version. We don’t want three different movies we want your movie,’” Zhao said in a recent interview with IndieWire. “They would be there to help me because I’ve never used these tools.”
On paper, Zhao is not the most obvious candidate...
- 10/26/2021
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Michael Wolf Snyder, the sound mixer for a number of film titles, including Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland and The Rider, has died by suicide, according to a Facebook post from his aunt. He was 35.
Snyder’s aunt, Cathy Snyder, shared a post from the sound mixer’s father, David Snyder, in which he details finding his son’s body in his Queens, N.Y. home.
“Michael took his own life sometime in the last week, and it wasn’t discovered until I went to check on him Monday after he dropped out of contact for several days,” David Snyder originally wrote. “He has suffered from Major Depression for many years. For most people, this is an illness that waxes and wanes over the years. I’m sure it was difficult for Michael that he spent most of the last year alone in his small, Queens apartment, being responsible about dealing with the coronavirus.
Snyder’s aunt, Cathy Snyder, shared a post from the sound mixer’s father, David Snyder, in which he details finding his son’s body in his Queens, N.Y. home.
“Michael took his own life sometime in the last week, and it wasn’t discovered until I went to check on him Monday after he dropped out of contact for several days,” David Snyder originally wrote. “He has suffered from Major Depression for many years. For most people, this is an illness that waxes and wanes over the years. I’m sure it was difficult for Michael that he spent most of the last year alone in his small, Queens apartment, being responsible about dealing with the coronavirus.
- 3/6/2021
- by Alexandra Del Rosario
- Deadline Film + TV
Chloé Zhao has made three feature films to date, each of them blending narrative storytelling with non-fiction. Her debut, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, told the story of Native American siblings struggling to find their place in a changing world. The Rider cast cowboy Brady Jandreau as a version of himself, reliving the true story of his near-fatal head injury. And while her new film, Nomadland, casts professional actors like Frances McDormand and David Strathairn for the first time, it rounds out its ensemble with real ‘Nomads’; people who have taken to living in camper vans in what would be their retirement, forced instead to seek itinerant labor around the country to make ends meet.
All three films deal with survival and identity, and each of them pack an emotional punch that hits with greater fervor because of the lines Zhao blurs between fact and fiction. Based on Jessica Bruder...
All three films deal with survival and identity, and each of them pack an emotional punch that hits with greater fervor because of the lines Zhao blurs between fact and fiction. Based on Jessica Bruder...
- 2/8/2021
- by Joe Utichi
- Deadline Film + TV
The clouds have parted over Ojai, California, on November 7th, and Chloe Zhao can’t stop smiling. She’d planned to spend the dismal Saturday hunkered down inside, in postproduction on Marvel’s Eternals, due out later this year. But when the sun broke through, right after the news that Joe Biden had emerged as the winner of the presidential election that took place five agonizing days (or was it centuries?) prior, plans changed. Now, it was time for celebratory pizza and tiramisu from her favorite Italian restaurant — lactose intolerance be damned.
- 1/26/2021
- by Maria Fontoura
- Rollingstone.com
Imagine a place on the map so tied to its industries that when the work disappears, so does the place. This shouldn’t be so hard to imagine; it is, in so many ways, the story of America’s once-towering industrial cities. It could also describe the places beyond the gutted downtowns and main streets, areas whose populations hover in the low thousands, or hundreds, or even less — municipalities so diffuse that the eradication of the local identities, traditions, and people anchored to the geography can be literal. A zip code can be,...
- 12/4/2020
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
Cherien Dabis among executive producers.
Garrett Hedlund and Brady Jandreau will star in Reagent Media’s Iraq-set survival drama Outside The Wire, which Film Constellation will introduce to buyers at the Cannes virtual market.
UTA Independent Film Group represents North American rights to the story of an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves together in Iraq and must rely on each other to reach their final destination. Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star.
Outside The Wire marks the second screenplay from Paxton Winters (Pacified) and was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
Garrett Hedlund and Brady Jandreau will star in Reagent Media’s Iraq-set survival drama Outside The Wire, which Film Constellation will introduce to buyers at the Cannes virtual market.
UTA Independent Film Group represents North American rights to the story of an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves together in Iraq and must rely on each other to reach their final destination. Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star.
Outside The Wire marks the second screenplay from Paxton Winters (Pacified) and was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
- 6/18/2020
- by 36¦Jeremy Kay¦54¦
- ScreenDaily
Cherien Dabis among executive producers.
Garrett Hedlund and Brady Jandreau will star in Reagent Media’s Iraq-set survival drama Outside The Wire, which Film Constellation will introduce to buyers at the Cannes virtual market.
UTA Independent Film Group represents North American rights to the story of an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves together in Iraq and must rely on each other to reach their final destination. Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star.
Outside The Wire marks the second screenplay from Paxton Winters (Pacified) and was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
Garrett Hedlund and Brady Jandreau will star in Reagent Media’s Iraq-set survival drama Outside The Wire, which Film Constellation will introduce to buyers at the Cannes virtual market.
UTA Independent Film Group represents North American rights to the story of an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves together in Iraq and must rely on each other to reach their final destination. Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star.
Outside The Wire marks the second screenplay from Paxton Winters (Pacified) and was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
- 6/18/2020
- by 36¦Jeremy Kay¦54¦
- ScreenDaily
Cherien Dabis among executive producers.
Garrett Hedlund and Brady Jandreau will star in Reagent Media’s Iraq-set survival drama Outside The Wire, which Film Constellation will introduce to buyers at the Cannes virtual market.
UTA Independent Film Group represents North American rights to the story of an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves together in Iraq and must rely on each other to reach their final destination. Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star.
Outside The Wire marks the second screenplay from Paxton Winters (Pacified) and was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
Garrett Hedlund and Brady Jandreau will star in Reagent Media’s Iraq-set survival drama Outside The Wire, which Film Constellation will introduce to buyers at the Cannes virtual market.
UTA Independent Film Group represents North American rights to the story of an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves together in Iraq and must rely on each other to reach their final destination. Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star.
Outside The Wire marks the second screenplay from Paxton Winters (Pacified) and was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
- 6/18/2020
- by 36¦Jeremy Kay¦54¦
- ScreenDaily
Reagent Media has set Garrett Hedlund and Brady Jandreau for filmmaker Paxton Winters’ next feature, Outside the Wire, about an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves dependent on each other for their survival. The two are thrust together on a road trip through the perils of the new Iraq. What starts as a journey of hate, forces the men to face their fears and navigate each other to reach their final destination.
Outside the Wire is Winters’ second script, which was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star. Paula Linhares and Marcos Tellechea (Pacified) of Reagent Media are producing with Rick Rosenthal and Cherien Dabis serving as EPs. .Film Constellation is handling international rights with UTA Independent handling North American. Sales will launch at the upcoming Marché du Film Online.
Outside the Wire is Winters’ second script, which was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star. Paula Linhares and Marcos Tellechea (Pacified) of Reagent Media are producing with Rick Rosenthal and Cherien Dabis serving as EPs. .Film Constellation is handling international rights with UTA Independent handling North American. Sales will launch at the upcoming Marché du Film Online.
- 6/18/2020
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
Garrett Hedlund and “The Rider” star Brady Jandreau are set to star in an Iraq War drama from writer and director Paxton Winters called “Outside the Wire,” the film’s production company Reagent Media announced Thursday.
Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star in the film that will be presented to buyers at the Cannes Virtual Market. The film is the second script from Winters and was chosen as part of the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
The story for “Outside the Wire” follows an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves dependent on each other for their survival, as they are thrust together on a road trip through the perils of the new Iraq. What starts as a journey of hate, will force the men to face their fears and navigate each other to reach their final destination.
Also Read: Natasha Lyonne, Trevante Rhodes Join Lee...
Zahraa Ghandour is also attached to star in the film that will be presented to buyers at the Cannes Virtual Market. The film is the second script from Winters and was chosen as part of the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
The story for “Outside the Wire” follows an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves dependent on each other for their survival, as they are thrust together on a road trip through the perils of the new Iraq. What starts as a journey of hate, will force the men to face their fears and navigate each other to reach their final destination.
Also Read: Natasha Lyonne, Trevante Rhodes Join Lee...
- 6/18/2020
- by Brian Welk
- The Wrap
“Mudbound’s” Garrett Hedlund and “The Rider’s” Brady Jandreau have signed on to star in writer/director Paxton Winters’ “Outside the Wire,” alongside Zahraa Ghandour (“Baghdad in My Shadow”). Film Constellation is handling international rights with UTA Independent handling North American. Sales will launch at next week’s Marché du Film Online.
The story follows an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves dependent on each other for their survival, as they are thrust together on a road trip through the perils of the new Iraq. What starts as a journey of hate, will force the men to face their fears and navigate each other to reach their final destination. The movie is Winters’ second script, and was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
Paula Linhares and Marcos Tellechea of Reagent Media will produce, following on from their collaboration with Winters on...
The story follows an American soldier and an Iraqi insurgent who find themselves dependent on each other for their survival, as they are thrust together on a road trip through the perils of the new Iraq. What starts as a journey of hate, will force the men to face their fears and navigate each other to reach their final destination. The movie is Winters’ second script, and was chosen to participate in the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriter’s Lab.
Paula Linhares and Marcos Tellechea of Reagent Media will produce, following on from their collaboration with Winters on...
- 6/18/2020
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
"If there's something you wanna see, if there's something you wanna do, put your head down and go for it because... nobody knows when God's going to call their name." Oh my, what a beautiful short film. Holy Dog is a short film made by Shern Sharma starring American cowboy Brady Jandreau - the very same Brady who starred in the outstanding film The Rider. This is kinda a follow-up to that, following Brady after his traumatic injuring riding a bucking bronco. In this short, he heads down to the Patagonia highlands in South America. I just love how poetic and moving and inspiring Brady's words are. Especially the part about how people have "forgotten about just living" and how we can't choose our passions but we can embrace them. A must watch. Thanks to Vimeo Staff Picks for the tip on this short. Original description ...
- 5/1/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
It’s probably unfair to compare Annie Silverstein’s “Bull” to Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider,” but in a way it’s hard not to. Both premiered at the Cannes Film Festival: “The Rider” at Directors’ Fortnight in 2017, “Bull” in Un Certain Regard in 2019. Both are the work of female directors looking into the world of rodeo, albeit in very different ways. And both are quiet, naturalistic films that illuminate hardscrabble lives that aren’t often put at the center of motion pictures.
It’d be a tall order for “Bull” to replicate the success of “The Rider,” which won the top prize in Directors’ Fortnight, was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics and won the Gotham Independent Film Award as the year’s best indie. But “Bull” is a tough but affecting film, a slice of life that could itself have some life on the arthouse circuit.
Or, rather,...
It’d be a tall order for “Bull” to replicate the success of “The Rider,” which won the top prize in Directors’ Fortnight, was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics and won the Gotham Independent Film Award as the year’s best indie. But “Bull” is a tough but affecting film, a slice of life that could itself have some life on the arthouse circuit.
Or, rather,...
- 4/30/2020
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
This article about Chloé Zhao first appeared in the TheWrap magazine’s Oscar Nominations Preview issue.
“If an animal around here gets hurt like I did, they’ll get put down.” That key line from “The Rider” didn’t come from the mind of the film’s writer-director, Chloé Zhao. It came from her star, Brady Jandreau, whom she worked with to weave one of the most personal tales of the year — and a movie that was the surprise winner of the Gotham Award as the year’s best independent film, beating out contenders that included “The Favourite,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “First Reformed.”
After meeting Jandreau during the filming of her first movie, “Songs My Brother Taught Me,” Zhao knew she wanted to make her next project about him, but didn’t know what the storyline would be.
Then an unexpected tragedy provided the inspiration. A few...
“If an animal around here gets hurt like I did, they’ll get put down.” That key line from “The Rider” didn’t come from the mind of the film’s writer-director, Chloé Zhao. It came from her star, Brady Jandreau, whom she worked with to weave one of the most personal tales of the year — and a movie that was the surprise winner of the Gotham Award as the year’s best independent film, beating out contenders that included “The Favourite,” “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “First Reformed.”
After meeting Jandreau during the filming of her first movie, “Songs My Brother Taught Me,” Zhao knew she wanted to make her next project about him, but didn’t know what the storyline would be.
Then an unexpected tragedy provided the inspiration. A few...
- 1/8/2019
- by Jeremy Fuster
- The Wrap
Dear Oscar voters,
The time for you to pick nominees for the 2019 Academy Awards just started on January 7, and you’ve only got a week before voting closes next Monday on January 14. You’ve already spent the last few months juggling screenings, luncheons, receptions, and trying to remember how to switch the input on your TV to access your DVD player for all those screeners. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to suggest a few underdog actors and films you should consider if you haven’t already.
Or if you’re really pressed for time and can’t pop in any more DVDs, you could just take my word for it and vote for these contenders anyway. I won’t tell anyone.
Sign UPfor Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions
Elsie Fisher (Best Actress) and Josh Hamilton (Best Supporting Actor), “Eighth Grade...
The time for you to pick nominees for the 2019 Academy Awards just started on January 7, and you’ve only got a week before voting closes next Monday on January 14. You’ve already spent the last few months juggling screenings, luncheons, receptions, and trying to remember how to switch the input on your TV to access your DVD player for all those screeners. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to suggest a few underdog actors and films you should consider if you haven’t already.
Or if you’re really pressed for time and can’t pop in any more DVDs, you could just take my word for it and vote for these contenders anyway. I won’t tell anyone.
Sign UPfor Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions
Elsie Fisher (Best Actress) and Josh Hamilton (Best Supporting Actor), “Eighth Grade...
- 1/7/2019
- by Daniel Montgomery
- Gold Derby
The Rider director Chloé Zhao on Joshua James Richards: "It's done so well by the cinematographer that it feels like we just happened to be there. That's where the authenticity of the film comes from. It's actually that you have to do so much more work to make it look natural." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In the final instalment of my conversation with Chloé Zhao, the director of the 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award and National Board of Review winner, The Rider, and the star of her real-life fiction film, Brady Jandreau, we discuss the injuries Brady and his best friend Lane Scott have dealt with on their long road to recovery and acting with his father Tim Jandreau and little sister Lilly Jandreau as the Blackburn family.
Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with Lane Scott in The Rider: "Well, me and Lane have been like brothers since I was two and he was three.
In the final instalment of my conversation with Chloé Zhao, the director of the 2018 Gotham Independent Film Award and National Board of Review winner, The Rider, and the star of her real-life fiction film, Brady Jandreau, we discuss the injuries Brady and his best friend Lane Scott have dealt with on their long road to recovery and acting with his father Tim Jandreau and little sister Lilly Jandreau as the Blackburn family.
Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with Lane Scott in The Rider: "Well, me and Lane have been like brothers since I was two and he was three.
- 1/2/2019
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Anonymous Content has added Meredith Rothman to its management division, Variety has learned.
She joins the company from Mosaic, where she spent the last five years as a talent and literary manager. Rothman started her career working for casting director Francine Maisler and later worked as an assistant at Independent Talent Group in London. She also had a stint working for Ilene Feldman at the management company Ifa for two years.
Rothman’s clients include a number of performers and filmmakers who are part of a new and emerging generation of Hollywood talent. It is a roster that boasts KiKi Layne (“If Beale Street Could Talk”), Na-Kel Smith (“mid90s”), Alexa Demie (“Euphoria”), Nicholas Galitzine (“Chambers”), Brady Jandreau (“The Rider”), Sky Ferreira (“Twin Peaks”), Sophie Hyde (“Animals”), Jimmie Fails (“The Last Black Man in San Francisco”), Mikey Alfred (“Illegal Civ”), Tosin Morohunfola (“The Chi”), and Clara Mamet (“Two Bit Waltz...
She joins the company from Mosaic, where she spent the last five years as a talent and literary manager. Rothman started her career working for casting director Francine Maisler and later worked as an assistant at Independent Talent Group in London. She also had a stint working for Ilene Feldman at the management company Ifa for two years.
Rothman’s clients include a number of performers and filmmakers who are part of a new and emerging generation of Hollywood talent. It is a roster that boasts KiKi Layne (“If Beale Street Could Talk”), Na-Kel Smith (“mid90s”), Alexa Demie (“Euphoria”), Nicholas Galitzine (“Chambers”), Brady Jandreau (“The Rider”), Sky Ferreira (“Twin Peaks”), Sophie Hyde (“Animals”), Jimmie Fails (“The Last Black Man in San Francisco”), Mikey Alfred (“Illegal Civ”), Tosin Morohunfola (“The Chi”), and Clara Mamet (“Two Bit Waltz...
- 12/14/2018
- by Brent Lang
- Variety Film + TV
This week on the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, we sat down with directors who made smaller films that don’t have big awards campaigns but whose work should be remembered among the year’s best films.
Here’s a taste of the wisdom and insight each director shared about their filmmaking process.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast
Lynne Ramsay On Bouncing Back
In the winter of 2013-14, Lynne Ramsay disappeared to the Greek Island of Santorini to seek refuge after the traumatic experience of having to quit “Jane Got a Gun” right as production began, having concluded the producers would never let her make her version of the film she’d worked on for years.
“I found it quite peaceful and I could get quite focused, perhaps because I thought I was going to make a film and I didn’t and that was really painful,” said Ramsay.
Here’s a taste of the wisdom and insight each director shared about their filmmaking process.
Subscribe via Apple Podcasts to the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast
Lynne Ramsay On Bouncing Back
In the winter of 2013-14, Lynne Ramsay disappeared to the Greek Island of Santorini to seek refuge after the traumatic experience of having to quit “Jane Got a Gun” right as production began, having concluded the producers would never let her make her version of the film she’d worked on for years.
“I found it quite peaceful and I could get quite focused, perhaps because I thought I was going to make a film and I didn’t and that was really painful,” said Ramsay.
- 12/14/2018
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
Brady Jandreau on The Rider director Chloé Zhao: "When Chloé found out, a month and a half after my head injury I was training horses again, putting my life at risk, she wanted to capture that." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Gotham Independent Film Award and National Board of Review winner The Rider stars Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with his sister Lilly Jandreau and father Tim Jandreau, and friends Lane Scott, Cat Clifford, and Tanner Langdeau playing variations of themselves. Chloé Zhao's follow-up to Songs My Brothers Taught Me was also a highlight of the 55th New York Film Festival, winner of the Grand Prix Award at the Deauville Festival of American Cinema and the Art Cinema Award in the Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival.
Joshua James Richards films Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with Chloé Zhao directing
Shot by Joshua James Richards (Francis Lee's God's Own Country...
Gotham Independent Film Award and National Board of Review winner The Rider stars Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with his sister Lilly Jandreau and father Tim Jandreau, and friends Lane Scott, Cat Clifford, and Tanner Langdeau playing variations of themselves. Chloé Zhao's follow-up to Songs My Brothers Taught Me was also a highlight of the 55th New York Film Festival, winner of the Grand Prix Award at the Deauville Festival of American Cinema and the Art Cinema Award in the Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival.
Joshua James Richards films Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn with Chloé Zhao directing
Shot by Joshua James Richards (Francis Lee's God's Own Country...
- 12/13/2018
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Chloé Zhao’s rodeo drama bucks critically lauded contenders Roma and The Favourite at first significant event of awards season
Low key rodeo drama The Rider took the main prize at the Gotham awards as much hyped contenders such as Roma and The Favourite failed to make a major impact, in the first significant indicator of this year’s awards season.
The Gotham awards are given to independent films, and previous best feature winners – including Moonlight in 2016 and Call Me By Your Name in 2017 – have gone on to become major Oscar players. The Rider, directed by Chloé Zhao and starring real-life former rodeo rider Brady Jandreau, has been widely admired but was not expected to defeat The Favourite, the 18th-century-set comedy with Olivia Colman. Roma, the critically lauded Mexican film from Alfonso Cuarón was not nominated.
Low key rodeo drama The Rider took the main prize at the Gotham awards as much hyped contenders such as Roma and The Favourite failed to make a major impact, in the first significant indicator of this year’s awards season.
The Gotham awards are given to independent films, and previous best feature winners – including Moonlight in 2016 and Call Me By Your Name in 2017 – have gone on to become major Oscar players. The Rider, directed by Chloé Zhao and starring real-life former rodeo rider Brady Jandreau, has been widely admired but was not expected to defeat The Favourite, the 18th-century-set comedy with Olivia Colman. Roma, the critically lauded Mexican film from Alfonso Cuarón was not nominated.
- 11/27/2018
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
A little over two years ago, Chloe Zhao was in the badlands of South Dakota, working with a crew of five people and no professional actors, shooting real-life cowboys. The end result, “The Rider,” changed her life.
Her naturalistic Western, about a rodeo rider named Brady (Brady Jandreau) who suffers a debilitating head injury, won the top prize at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight section in 2017 and scored distribution with Sony Pictures Classics. It landed a Best Film nomination from the Independent Spirit Awards in early 2018, before it even hit theaters, and closes the year out with a Gotham nomination in the same category. And Zhao suddenly found herself in the unlikely position of fielding studio offers, one of which she accepted — Marvel’s “The Eternals,” a superhero movie about immortal beings.
So much has happened that Zhao, who grew up in Beijing and moved to the U.S. as a teenager,...
Her naturalistic Western, about a rodeo rider named Brady (Brady Jandreau) who suffers a debilitating head injury, won the top prize at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight section in 2017 and scored distribution with Sony Pictures Classics. It landed a Best Film nomination from the Independent Spirit Awards in early 2018, before it even hit theaters, and closes the year out with a Gotham nomination in the same category. And Zhao suddenly found herself in the unlikely position of fielding studio offers, one of which she accepted — Marvel’s “The Eternals,” a superhero movie about immortal beings.
So much has happened that Zhao, who grew up in Beijing and moved to the U.S. as a teenager,...
- 11/14/2018
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Two movies from Sony Pictures Classics presented at today’s The Contenders La at the DGA Theater reflect radically different worlds but have in common the challenge of being based on real-life events.
Actor John C. Reilly joined Deadline’s Pete Hammond to discuss the daunting challenge of portraying larger-than-life comedy star Oliver Hardy in Stan & Ollie alongside Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel, directed by John S. Baird from a script by Jeff Pope.
Hammond started off by joking with the audience: “So good to be in a room where I don’t have to explain who Laurel & Hardy are. Thank you for being old.”
Then Reilly joined him to talk about the hard work involved in creating the character underneath the fat suit and makeup that required two hours a day to get into and 45 minutes to remove. “He was a big guy his whole life, [but] he looked like...
Actor John C. Reilly joined Deadline’s Pete Hammond to discuss the daunting challenge of portraying larger-than-life comedy star Oliver Hardy in Stan & Ollie alongside Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel, directed by John S. Baird from a script by Jeff Pope.
Hammond started off by joking with the audience: “So good to be in a room where I don’t have to explain who Laurel & Hardy are. Thank you for being old.”
Then Reilly joined him to talk about the hard work involved in creating the character underneath the fat suit and makeup that required two hours a day to get into and 45 minutes to remove. “He was a big guy his whole life, [but] he looked like...
- 11/3/2018
- by Diane Haithman
- Deadline Film + TV
According to the Motion Picture Association of America, women buy half of all movie tickets sold.
Last year’s Oscars brought us just the fifth nomination in 90 years for a female director, Greta Gerwig for her solo directing debut, “Lady Bird.”
Out of the 100 top-grossing films of 2017, the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film found only 8 percent were directed by women.
As sad as those stats are after all that #MeToo talk and Frances McDormand’s firebrand podium speech demanding equality at the 2018 ceremony, there could be no one of the female persuasion competing at the Academy Awards this year. At least that is what the roster of names found on the combined predictions of nearly 1,800 Gold Derby Experts, Editors and Users reveals.
SEECheck out this gallery of the 12 actresses nominated for royal roles
If there is any good news, there are at least five women...
Last year’s Oscars brought us just the fifth nomination in 90 years for a female director, Greta Gerwig for her solo directing debut, “Lady Bird.”
Out of the 100 top-grossing films of 2017, the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film found only 8 percent were directed by women.
As sad as those stats are after all that #MeToo talk and Frances McDormand’s firebrand podium speech demanding equality at the 2018 ceremony, there could be no one of the female persuasion competing at the Academy Awards this year. At least that is what the roster of names found on the combined predictions of nearly 1,800 Gold Derby Experts, Editors and Users reveals.
SEECheck out this gallery of the 12 actresses nominated for royal roles
If there is any good news, there are at least five women...
- 9/28/2018
- by Susan Wloszczyna
- Gold Derby
Chloe Zhao’s impressive second film The Rider comes hot on the heels of her critically acclaimed first feature Songs My Brothers Taught Me, a film festival circuit favourite which went on to gain the young director a best picture nod at the 2016 Independent Spirit Awards. Staring real life Cowboy Brady Jandreau as a rodeo rider struggling to come to terms with a recent career ending injury, the film is a beautifully sparse, mournful and subtly acted modern Western which tells an honest story with a huge amount of tenderness and poetic realism.
Former rodeo star Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) lives in the South Dakota desert with his gambling addict father Wayne (Tim Jandreau) and sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), a vivacious teenager with learning difficulties. When a life-threatening head injury puts an abrupt end to his burgeoning career, Brady finds himself aimless and depressed about his future prospects. No longer...
Former rodeo star Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) lives in the South Dakota desert with his gambling addict father Wayne (Tim Jandreau) and sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), a vivacious teenager with learning difficulties. When a life-threatening head injury puts an abrupt end to his burgeoning career, Brady finds himself aimless and depressed about his future prospects. No longer...
- 9/14/2018
- by Linda Marric
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Where cinema once focused on underdogs winning against the odds, now films that focus on athletes in personal and physical crisis are showing the dark side of sports
Sports movies, like history, tend to be written by the victors. The Hollywood canon is packed with stories about winning – against all odds, at all costs, when it’s all on the line, in as noble and ruggedly masculine a fashion as possible. It’s the domain of guys like Burt Reynolds, Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone and Dwayne Johnson. But films such as Chloé Zhao’s The Rider are showing us the flipside of this mentality, which is not only that somebody has to lose, but that this stuff can really mess you up. You could call that more of an anti-sports movie, but given the cliches of the genreand a certain instability in ideas of American masculinity, there’s often a more interesting story.
Sports movies, like history, tend to be written by the victors. The Hollywood canon is packed with stories about winning – against all odds, at all costs, when it’s all on the line, in as noble and ruggedly masculine a fashion as possible. It’s the domain of guys like Burt Reynolds, Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone and Dwayne Johnson. But films such as Chloé Zhao’s The Rider are showing us the flipside of this mentality, which is not only that somebody has to lose, but that this stuff can really mess you up. You could call that more of an anti-sports movie, but given the cliches of the genreand a certain instability in ideas of American masculinity, there’s often a more interesting story.
- 9/10/2018
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
The Chinese-born director on reinventing the western, the power of limitation and why America feels like home
Born in Beijing in 1982, educated in England and New York, and now living in California, Chloé Zhao is the director of two striking films set in the American midwest. Her 2015 debut, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, was shot among the Lakota Sioux tribe in a remote reservation in South Dakota. Zhao’s second film, The Rider, returns there to tell the story of a real-life young cowboy called Brady Jandreau, who is getting back on his feet after a serious rodeo accident. The film won the top prize at the directors’ fortnight at Cannes.
How did The Rider come about?
After my first film, I went back to visit the Pine Ridge reservation a few times. When I saw Brady, who was working there, I just thought, wow he has a presence, I...
Born in Beijing in 1982, educated in England and New York, and now living in California, Chloé Zhao is the director of two striking films set in the American midwest. Her 2015 debut, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, was shot among the Lakota Sioux tribe in a remote reservation in South Dakota. Zhao’s second film, The Rider, returns there to tell the story of a real-life young cowboy called Brady Jandreau, who is getting back on his feet after a serious rodeo accident. The film won the top prize at the directors’ fortnight at Cannes.
How did The Rider come about?
After my first film, I went back to visit the Pine Ridge reservation a few times. When I saw Brady, who was working there, I just thought, wow he has a presence, I...
- 9/8/2018
- by Killian Fox
- The Guardian - Film News
Our resident VOD expert tells you what's new to rent and/or own this week via various Digital HD providers such as cable Movies On Demand, FandangoNOW, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and, of course, Netflix. Cable Movies On Demand: Same-day-as-disc releases, older titles and pretheatrical Life of the Party Breaking In Bad Samaritan The Rider On Chesil Beach (romantic...
- 8/8/2018
- by Robert B. DeSalvo
- Movies.com
Arriving on DVD and Digital HD today is one of the most heart-stirring, authentic films I’ve seen in the past year, Chloé Zhao’s remarkable drama The Rider. Starring first-time actor Brady Jandreau in a story loosely based on his life, he plays a cowboy who must deal with the struggle of the reality of his life’s passion after surviving a near-fatal head injury. Winner of the top prize at Cannes Director’s Fortnight, we’re pleased to present a deleted scene from the film, which finds Jandreau in his sister’s room being confronted with the effects of his injury.
“What does a cowboy do when he can’t ride?,” Ed Frankl said in our review. “Chloe Zhao’s absorbing South Dakota-set sophomore feature has its titular rider come to terms with such a fate, in a film that’s a beguiling mix of docudrama and fiction...
“What does a cowboy do when he can’t ride?,” Ed Frankl said in our review. “Chloe Zhao’s absorbing South Dakota-set sophomore feature has its titular rider come to terms with such a fate, in a film that’s a beguiling mix of docudrama and fiction...
- 8/7/2018
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Directed and written by Chloé Zhao, the critically-acclaimed, film festival darling The Rider gallops onto DVD and digital on August 7 from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Based on his true story, The Rider stars breakout Brady Jandreau as a once rising star of the rodeo circuit warned that his competition days are over after a tragic riding accident. The cast also includes Brady’s father Jim Jandreau and his sister Lilly Jandreau. Named one of the best films of 2018 (so far) by Variety, The Rider won the C.I.C.A.E. Award at the Cannes International Film Festival and Grand Prix Award at the Deauville Film Festival in 2017. Additionally, the film received five Independent Spirits Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, with Chloé winning the inaugural Bonnie Award.
The film is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an impressive score of 97% as of 6/11/18 and an 8.4 average score (from...
The film is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an impressive score of 97% as of 6/11/18 and an 8.4 average score (from...
- 8/6/2018
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The 2017 Cannes Film Fest was of a great year for films full of non-actors. Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” introduced us to the excellent talents of Brooklynn Prince and Bria Vinaite. Then Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider” uniquely told South Dakota cowboy Brady Jandreau’s real-life story with him playing a fictional version of himself.
Continue reading ‘A Prayer Before Dawn’ Trailer: Joe Cole Fights For His Life In Prison at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘A Prayer Before Dawn’ Trailer: Joe Cole Fights For His Life In Prison at The Playlist.
- 7/18/2018
- by Erica Bahrenburg
- The Playlist
At the halfway point of the year, it’s downright strange that the only 2018 release with a real chance of landing a Best Picture nomination at next year’s Oscars also happens to be the top-grossing film of the year.
But that’s only one of the reasons that “Black Panther” is such a phenomenon. A blockbuster hit that also feels like a landmark in ways that could conceivably register with Oscars voters next year, the Marvel release is potentially the first film since “American Sniper” in 2014 to land a Best Picture nod and also wind up in the top five of the yearly box-office chart. (And “American Sniper” made nearly all its money the following year.)
But “Black Panther” is by no means a sure thing, and its fate at the Oscars will depend on a myriad of factors between now and the end of the year. That’s...
But that’s only one of the reasons that “Black Panther” is such a phenomenon. A blockbuster hit that also feels like a landmark in ways that could conceivably register with Oscars voters next year, the Marvel release is potentially the first film since “American Sniper” in 2014 to land a Best Picture nod and also wind up in the top five of the yearly box-office chart. (And “American Sniper” made nearly all its money the following year.)
But “Black Panther” is by no means a sure thing, and its fate at the Oscars will depend on a myriad of factors between now and the end of the year. That’s...
- 6/28/2018
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
We always seem to get through the first half of the year a lot quicker than the second half, so here we are. Six months of cinema are behind us with another six months (and an annually unrelenting awards season) on the horizon. With that in mind, we’ve put our heads together to shout-out a number of films, performances, and achievements since January that deserve consideration at year’s end, lest they be forgotten by the upcoming onslaught.
Check out Tim Gray’s accompanying story summarizing the awards player so far and looking ahead at what’s to come this Oscar season.
(Note: This list only takes into account films that have been or will be released theatrically in the U.S. between Jan. 1 and June 30. Anything that has debuted at a film festival but not seen its commercial release yet is not eligible.)
Best Picture: “You Were Never Really Here...
Check out Tim Gray’s accompanying story summarizing the awards player so far and looking ahead at what’s to come this Oscar season.
(Note: This list only takes into account films that have been or will be released theatrically in the U.S. between Jan. 1 and June 30. Anything that has debuted at a film festival but not seen its commercial release yet is not eligible.)
Best Picture: “You Were Never Really Here...
- 6/21/2018
- by Kristopher Tapley and Jenelle Riley
- Variety Film + TV
Chloé Zhao’s breakout second feature film, “The Rider,” is based on the real life of the film’s star Brady Jandreau – a young rodeo rider who, after suffering a massive brain injury while competing, faces an existential crisis about his place in this world. In the film, Jandreau draws on his life experiences and is surrounded by a cast of his real-life family and friends, but his quiet and introspective character (Brady Blackburn) is the polar opposite of his real-life personality.
“Brady Blackburn is very somber, Brandy Jandreau isn’t – he’s the happy kid trying to make everyone laugh,” said Zhao when she was guest on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “When I first saw him, I didn’t speak to him. I was in the basement and he walked in and I just immediately thought, what a great face and the camera was going to love his face.
“Brady Blackburn is very somber, Brandy Jandreau isn’t – he’s the happy kid trying to make everyone laugh,” said Zhao when she was guest on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “When I first saw him, I didn’t speak to him. I was in the basement and he walked in and I just immediately thought, what a great face and the camera was going to love his face.
- 5/18/2018
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
Brady Jandreau as Brady Blackburn, in The Rider. Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Brady Jandreau stars as a rodeo star and horse trainer who faces a life crisis after a serious injury in director/writer/producer Chloe Zhao’s Western/cowboy drama The Rider.
In this sensitive family drama, the former rodeo star plays Brady Blackburn, a young rodeo star who suffers a serious head injury and is told by doctors he must never ride again. At first Brady wants to just ignore this grim diagnosis and tries to resume his previous life but it becomes clear he will need to come to grips with the facts. Even without his rodeo career, Brady cannot imagine how he will make a living without horses. The son of horse trainers, he has trained horses his whole life and riding is how he finds peace in the world. He cannot see a life without horses.
Brady Jandreau stars as a rodeo star and horse trainer who faces a life crisis after a serious injury in director/writer/producer Chloe Zhao’s Western/cowboy drama The Rider.
In this sensitive family drama, the former rodeo star plays Brady Blackburn, a young rodeo star who suffers a serious head injury and is told by doctors he must never ride again. At first Brady wants to just ignore this grim diagnosis and tries to resume his previous life but it becomes clear he will need to come to grips with the facts. Even without his rodeo career, Brady cannot imagine how he will make a living without horses. The son of horse trainers, he has trained horses his whole life and riding is how he finds peace in the world. He cannot see a life without horses.
- 5/11/2018
- by Cate Marquis
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Composer Nathan Halpern has scored dozens of the best documentaries of the last four years, including Sundance winner “Rich Hill” and the upcoming Netflix release “Joan Didion: The Center Will not Hold.” Halpern’s latest film, director Chloé Zhao’s “The Rider,” drew upon his experiences working in both nonfiction and narrative films. The Cannes breakout – one of the best reviewed film of 2018 – “The Rider” tells the real-life story of rodeo cowboy Brady Jandreau (the film stars Jandreau and his real-life family and friends) who finds new purpose in his life after suffering a massive brain injury.
IndieWire asked Halpern to take us through his collaboration with Zhao in creating a subtle, but deeply moving score that bridges the film’s mix of cinema vérité and a modern western.
In creating the musical score for “The Rider,” our primary intent was to help bring the audience into the emotional point...
IndieWire asked Halpern to take us through his collaboration with Zhao in creating a subtle, but deeply moving score that bridges the film’s mix of cinema vérité and a modern western.
In creating the musical score for “The Rider,” our primary intent was to help bring the audience into the emotional point...
- 4/27/2018
- by Nathan Halpern
- Indiewire
The best Westerns often come from outsiders. Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winner “High Noon,” Fritz Lang’s “Rancho Notorious,” William Wyler’s “The Big Country,” Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” — all from Germans and Austrians. And of course, Sergio Leone’s classics starring Clint Eastwood were filmed by an Italian in Spain.
Now we can add U.K. filmmaker Andrew Haigh and China-born Chloé Zhao to their number. Neither set out to comment on classic western genre tropes with “Lean on Pete” (A24) and “The Rider” (Sony Pictures Classics), both of which earned raves on the festival circuit before hitting theaters this month. They shot in the badlands of Colorado and South Dakota, respectively. And both filmmakers explore the relationship between young men, their horses, and the nature that surrounds them. (Their distributors are slowly rolling them out across the heartland.)
“The Rider”
New Yorker Zhao shot her 2013 documentary “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” in South Dakota.
Now we can add U.K. filmmaker Andrew Haigh and China-born Chloé Zhao to their number. Neither set out to comment on classic western genre tropes with “Lean on Pete” (A24) and “The Rider” (Sony Pictures Classics), both of which earned raves on the festival circuit before hitting theaters this month. They shot in the badlands of Colorado and South Dakota, respectively. And both filmmakers explore the relationship between young men, their horses, and the nature that surrounds them. (Their distributors are slowly rolling them out across the heartland.)
“The Rider”
New Yorker Zhao shot her 2013 documentary “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” in South Dakota.
- 4/17/2018
- by Anne Thompson
- Thompson on Hollywood
The best Westerns often come from outsiders. Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winner “High Noon,” Fritz Lang’s “Rancho Notorious,” William Wyler’s “The Big Country,” Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” — all from Germans and Austrians. And of course, Sergio Leone’s classics starring Clint Eastwood were filmed by an Italian in Spain.
Now we can add U.K. filmmaker Andrew Haigh and China-born Chloé Zhao to their number. Neither set out to comment on classic western genre tropes with “Lean on Pete” (A24) and “The Rider” (Sony Pictures Classics), both of which earned raves on the festival circuit before hitting theaters this month. They shot in the badlands of Colorado and South Dakota, respectively. And both filmmakers explore the relationship between young men, their horses, and the nature that surrounds them. (Their distributors are slowly rolling them out across the heartland.)
“The Rider”
New Yorker Zhao shot her 2013 documentary “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” in South Dakota.
Now we can add U.K. filmmaker Andrew Haigh and China-born Chloé Zhao to their number. Neither set out to comment on classic western genre tropes with “Lean on Pete” (A24) and “The Rider” (Sony Pictures Classics), both of which earned raves on the festival circuit before hitting theaters this month. They shot in the badlands of Colorado and South Dakota, respectively. And both filmmakers explore the relationship between young men, their horses, and the nature that surrounds them. (Their distributors are slowly rolling them out across the heartland.)
“The Rider”
New Yorker Zhao shot her 2013 documentary “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” in South Dakota.
- 4/17/2018
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
In a quieter weekend for the indie box office, Neon’s “Borg vs. McEnroe,” Janus Metz Pedersen’s film about the tennis rivalry between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe had a disappointing start, making only $50,135 for a per screen average of just $1,045. Numbers were weighed down in part by the film’s day-and-date digital release, with the film also available on Amazon Prime and iTunes.
The film starring Shia Labeouf and Sverrir Gudnason as the famed duo was released on 46 screens and has an 82 percent Rt score.
On the flip side, Sony Pictures Classics’ “The Rider” posted the top per screen average from its three-screen release. Directed by Chloe Zhao, the film made $45,268 for a PSA of $15,089.
Also Read: 'Rampage' Stomps Past 'A Quiet Place' for $34.5 Million Box Office Win
“The Rider” stars Brady Jandreau as a Lakota rodeo rider who hoped that his skills on a horse would lead him out of poverty on the reservation he lives on, but must come to a personal reckoning after serious head trauma forces him to end his rodeo career. The film has received critical acclaim with a 98 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
Also disappointing was the indie animation film “Sgt. Stubby,” which tells the true story of the titular Boston Terrier who became a hero during World War I for finding wounded soldiers in No Man’s Land, becoming the first dog to be promoted to Sergeant in the U.S. Army. While it had a 90 percent Rt score, it only made $1.1 million from 1,633.
Also Read: 'The Rider' Film Review: Lyrical Tale of Injured Rodeo Star Heralds a Major Talent
Finally, there’s Bleecker Street’s “Beirut,” a thriller starring Jon Hamm as a former U.S. diplomat who comes out of retirement to save a colleague from the group that killed his family in 1980s Beirut. Also starring Rosamund Pike and Dean Norris, the film made $1.6 million from 755 screens for a PSA of just under $2,200
Among holdovers, IFC’s “The Death of Stalin” added $460,000 from 325 screens in its sixth weekend to bring its total to $6.2 million. Amazon’s “You Were Never Really Here” expanded to 51 screens in its second weekend for $310,000 to bring its total to $497,000.
Read original story ‘Borg vs McEnroe’ Flounders at Indie Box Office While ‘The Rider’ Shines At TheWrap...
The film starring Shia Labeouf and Sverrir Gudnason as the famed duo was released on 46 screens and has an 82 percent Rt score.
On the flip side, Sony Pictures Classics’ “The Rider” posted the top per screen average from its three-screen release. Directed by Chloe Zhao, the film made $45,268 for a PSA of $15,089.
Also Read: 'Rampage' Stomps Past 'A Quiet Place' for $34.5 Million Box Office Win
“The Rider” stars Brady Jandreau as a Lakota rodeo rider who hoped that his skills on a horse would lead him out of poverty on the reservation he lives on, but must come to a personal reckoning after serious head trauma forces him to end his rodeo career. The film has received critical acclaim with a 98 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.
Also disappointing was the indie animation film “Sgt. Stubby,” which tells the true story of the titular Boston Terrier who became a hero during World War I for finding wounded soldiers in No Man’s Land, becoming the first dog to be promoted to Sergeant in the U.S. Army. While it had a 90 percent Rt score, it only made $1.1 million from 1,633.
Also Read: 'The Rider' Film Review: Lyrical Tale of Injured Rodeo Star Heralds a Major Talent
Finally, there’s Bleecker Street’s “Beirut,” a thriller starring Jon Hamm as a former U.S. diplomat who comes out of retirement to save a colleague from the group that killed his family in 1980s Beirut. Also starring Rosamund Pike and Dean Norris, the film made $1.6 million from 755 screens for a PSA of just under $2,200
Among holdovers, IFC’s “The Death of Stalin” added $460,000 from 325 screens in its sixth weekend to bring its total to $6.2 million. Amazon’s “You Were Never Really Here” expanded to 51 screens in its second weekend for $310,000 to bring its total to $497,000.
Read original story ‘Borg vs McEnroe’ Flounders at Indie Box Office While ‘The Rider’ Shines At TheWrap...
- 4/15/2018
- by Jeremy Fuster
- The Wrap
This article was originally produced as part of the Nyff Critics Academy. “The Rider” is now playing in limited release.
“You can overcome anything if you work hard enough” is an infectious idea, a brick in the foundation of the American Dream. But that depends on how accessible that dream is in the first place. The titular hero Brady Blackburn of “The Rider” confronts such boundaries as he pines to return to the rodeo pedestal.
Rarely do Native Americans faces command an onscreen presence. While the recent historical romance “A Woman Walks Ahead” empowers Native American voices, it still fits a pattern of regulating Native Americas as supporting players to white-centric narratives. On the other hand, Chloe Zhao’s gentle drama “The Rider” gives the spotlight to the Lakota face of Brady Jandreau, whose real-life head injury inspired the film.
Zhao shot “The Rider” and her first Lakota-centric feature “Songs My Brothers Taught Me...
“You can overcome anything if you work hard enough” is an infectious idea, a brick in the foundation of the American Dream. But that depends on how accessible that dream is in the first place. The titular hero Brady Blackburn of “The Rider” confronts such boundaries as he pines to return to the rodeo pedestal.
Rarely do Native Americans faces command an onscreen presence. While the recent historical romance “A Woman Walks Ahead” empowers Native American voices, it still fits a pattern of regulating Native Americas as supporting players to white-centric narratives. On the other hand, Chloe Zhao’s gentle drama “The Rider” gives the spotlight to the Lakota face of Brady Jandreau, whose real-life head injury inspired the film.
Zhao shot “The Rider” and her first Lakota-centric feature “Songs My Brothers Taught Me...
- 4/14/2018
- by Caroline Cao
- Indiewire
Chloé Zhao's first feature film, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, showed the beautiful and difficult life of a young man on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota; his relationship with his family, his clashes with white men, and his own decisions about his future. Returning to the same setting, The Rider tells another story of a young man whose dreams are thwarted just as they were about to come true. In this film, Zhao shifts her focus to those dreams, how a young man must reconsider his life, and whether to put his own desires ahead of the needs of his family. Brady (Brady Jandreau) was a rising star on the rodeo circuit, until an accident and head injury has left him sidelined,...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 4/13/2018
- Screen Anarchy
There's an epic magic-hour shot in Chloé Zhao's The Rider that's so gorgeous, every great Hollywood Western director might want to hang up their spurs. Real-life saddle bronc rider Brady Jandreau, a daredevil 20-year-old with a busted head, hand and hip, mounts a horse that could kill him. At his last rodeo, a stallion stomped on his skull. Jandreau barely survived, but his doctor's orders to never ride again are just a slower kind of death here on South Dakota's Lakota-Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation. But there he goes, galloping past the sunset.
- 4/13/2018
- Rollingstone.com
Filmmaker Chloe Zhao vaults into a rarefied atmosphere of filmmaking mastery with her stunning second feature, “The Rider,” a neo-Western about rodeo riding, hobbled masculinity and reflective grace that feels unlike anything else out there.
Its compelling singularity no doubt has something to do with its milieu –Native American bronc and bull specialists on the rodeo circuit who hail from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation — but it primarily derives from Zhao’s filmmaking choice to combine a deeply felt story and a risky-but-rewarding vérité approach. The result is at times heart-stoppingly effective, pulling us so close to some of the movie’s key characters that they begin to feel like family.
We meet Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) by way of the formidable stapling in his shaved head, a physical scar that forecasts the psychological journey ahead. A gifted young Lakota horse trainer, Brady had been an up-and-coming saddle bronc star until a horrible rodeo accident put him briefly in a coma, set him up with a metal plate, and incurred a doctor-ordered end to his riding days.
Watch Video: 'The Rider': How Brady Jandreau's Brush With Death Led Him to Hollywood (Exclusive)
At home he endures watching his dad (Tim Jandreau), with whom he often clashes, sell Brady’s beloved horse Gus to pay debts. Brady also gets loving support from his autistic sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau) and his rodeo pals. But he’s consumed by uselessness. Brady wants nothing more than to get back to training and riding, because his sense of incompleteness outside his life with horses is starting to feel like the worse injury. It’s a stubbornness doomed to embolden him, but what is he otherwise?
If you noticed that the actors’ last names are the same, it’s because Zhao is essentially telling Brady Jandreau’s story, starring Brady himself. After making her debut feature (“Songs My Brothers Taught Me”) at Pine Ridge, where she had ingratiated herself with the various tribes, Zhao got to know the laconic, horse-whispering Lakota cowboy before his accident, and witnessed his struggles afterward.
When she started putting together a version of Jandreau’s story as a film, Zhao made the decision to have everyone in Brady’s world play themselves. That included fellow professional rider Lane Scott, a rising star confined to a wheelchair after his own terrible accident, and visited onscreen in rehab by Brady. Their touching scenes eschew schmaltz for the more heart-tugging sensation of a lived-in camaraderie readjusted by tragedy.
Also Read: Cannes: 'The Rider,' 'A Ciambra' Win Top Prizes in Directors' Fortnight
Directors have used non-professionals since movies began, but what Zhao gets out of her 21-year-old real-life cowboy star — by turns stoically lost, humbled, loving, and defiant — is nothing short of miraculous. Jandreau’s is a true, camera-ready performance, filled with nuance, and it speaks to Zhao’s actor-whispering skills that it burns so brightly at the center of her film. Other movies have utilized non-actors to portray versions of themselves – one immediately thinks of Oscar winners Harold Russell and Haing S. Ngor – but they were intended to be elements in a larger, homogenized creation.
“The Rider” is fully Jandreau’s; it’s impossible to imagine it having the same impact without his committed, enveloping presence. He’s as powerful as any macho western protagonist stripped to the core — the gunfighter disarmed or the pioneer made homeless. That he’s Native American, pale-skinned but proud, only deepens the reconfiguring of this country’s myths that’s another undercurrent in “The Rider.”
See Photos: 17 Highest-Grossing Movies Directed by Women, From 'Mamma Mia!' to 'Wonder Woman'
“The Rider” also may be one of the best movies ever made about people and horses as a transcendent relationship. The documentary-infused scenes of Jandreau training and connecting with horses — the wild and ornery, the broken and fearful — are mesmerizing in their fluidity and intimacy, dramatizing a kind of tough love born of tradition and respect. Jandreau’s adoration of these animals is not only pulsating: it allows the horses to be flesh-and-blood co-stars in Brady’s story, not just four-legged accessories.
It’s all gorgeously photographed, too, by Joshua James Richards (“God’s Own Country”), who understands fully the magnetic power of a silhouetted horizon shot, a haunting landscape, or a close-up in a truck. And more importantly, that they all need to be seamlessly strung-together verses in the same evocative frontier poem.
The densely authentic space between neo-realism and documentary where “The Rider” exists is one of the most beautiful and affecting realms I’ve had the pleasure of visiting recently as a moviegoer. Having seen it twice — the first time unaware of its hybrid approach, the second time fully cognizant that I was watching real people in a form of healing re-enactment — the spell, I realized, was the same: a lyrical sense that life is lived and re-lived, acted out but ever retraced, and that to reclaim ourselves after a fall is perhaps what being human is all about. We live in identity-convulsive times, and I can’t think of a movie more attuned to the question “Who am I?” than this one.
Spiritual and earthy, forged in curiosity yet fortified with empathy, “The Rider” is why we go to the cinema, and it affirms Chloe Zhao as one of the most gifted new movie artists of our time.
Read original story ‘The Rider’ Film Review: Lyrical Tale of Injured Rodeo Star Heralds a Major Talent At TheWrap...
Its compelling singularity no doubt has something to do with its milieu –Native American bronc and bull specialists on the rodeo circuit who hail from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation — but it primarily derives from Zhao’s filmmaking choice to combine a deeply felt story and a risky-but-rewarding vérité approach. The result is at times heart-stoppingly effective, pulling us so close to some of the movie’s key characters that they begin to feel like family.
We meet Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) by way of the formidable stapling in his shaved head, a physical scar that forecasts the psychological journey ahead. A gifted young Lakota horse trainer, Brady had been an up-and-coming saddle bronc star until a horrible rodeo accident put him briefly in a coma, set him up with a metal plate, and incurred a doctor-ordered end to his riding days.
Watch Video: 'The Rider': How Brady Jandreau's Brush With Death Led Him to Hollywood (Exclusive)
At home he endures watching his dad (Tim Jandreau), with whom he often clashes, sell Brady’s beloved horse Gus to pay debts. Brady also gets loving support from his autistic sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau) and his rodeo pals. But he’s consumed by uselessness. Brady wants nothing more than to get back to training and riding, because his sense of incompleteness outside his life with horses is starting to feel like the worse injury. It’s a stubbornness doomed to embolden him, but what is he otherwise?
If you noticed that the actors’ last names are the same, it’s because Zhao is essentially telling Brady Jandreau’s story, starring Brady himself. After making her debut feature (“Songs My Brothers Taught Me”) at Pine Ridge, where she had ingratiated herself with the various tribes, Zhao got to know the laconic, horse-whispering Lakota cowboy before his accident, and witnessed his struggles afterward.
When she started putting together a version of Jandreau’s story as a film, Zhao made the decision to have everyone in Brady’s world play themselves. That included fellow professional rider Lane Scott, a rising star confined to a wheelchair after his own terrible accident, and visited onscreen in rehab by Brady. Their touching scenes eschew schmaltz for the more heart-tugging sensation of a lived-in camaraderie readjusted by tragedy.
Also Read: Cannes: 'The Rider,' 'A Ciambra' Win Top Prizes in Directors' Fortnight
Directors have used non-professionals since movies began, but what Zhao gets out of her 21-year-old real-life cowboy star — by turns stoically lost, humbled, loving, and defiant — is nothing short of miraculous. Jandreau’s is a true, camera-ready performance, filled with nuance, and it speaks to Zhao’s actor-whispering skills that it burns so brightly at the center of her film. Other movies have utilized non-actors to portray versions of themselves – one immediately thinks of Oscar winners Harold Russell and Haing S. Ngor – but they were intended to be elements in a larger, homogenized creation.
“The Rider” is fully Jandreau’s; it’s impossible to imagine it having the same impact without his committed, enveloping presence. He’s as powerful as any macho western protagonist stripped to the core — the gunfighter disarmed or the pioneer made homeless. That he’s Native American, pale-skinned but proud, only deepens the reconfiguring of this country’s myths that’s another undercurrent in “The Rider.”
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“The Rider” also may be one of the best movies ever made about people and horses as a transcendent relationship. The documentary-infused scenes of Jandreau training and connecting with horses — the wild and ornery, the broken and fearful — are mesmerizing in their fluidity and intimacy, dramatizing a kind of tough love born of tradition and respect. Jandreau’s adoration of these animals is not only pulsating: it allows the horses to be flesh-and-blood co-stars in Brady’s story, not just four-legged accessories.
It’s all gorgeously photographed, too, by Joshua James Richards (“God’s Own Country”), who understands fully the magnetic power of a silhouetted horizon shot, a haunting landscape, or a close-up in a truck. And more importantly, that they all need to be seamlessly strung-together verses in the same evocative frontier poem.
The densely authentic space between neo-realism and documentary where “The Rider” exists is one of the most beautiful and affecting realms I’ve had the pleasure of visiting recently as a moviegoer. Having seen it twice — the first time unaware of its hybrid approach, the second time fully cognizant that I was watching real people in a form of healing re-enactment — the spell, I realized, was the same: a lyrical sense that life is lived and re-lived, acted out but ever retraced, and that to reclaim ourselves after a fall is perhaps what being human is all about. We live in identity-convulsive times, and I can’t think of a movie more attuned to the question “Who am I?” than this one.
Spiritual and earthy, forged in curiosity yet fortified with empathy, “The Rider” is why we go to the cinema, and it affirms Chloe Zhao as one of the most gifted new movie artists of our time.
Read original story ‘The Rider’ Film Review: Lyrical Tale of Injured Rodeo Star Heralds a Major Talent At TheWrap...
- 4/12/2018
- by Robert Abele
- The Wrap
One might expect an interrogation of nostalgia in an American movie set among rodeo riders of South Dakota, but Chloé Zhao’s second film, The Rider, avoids grand questions about the status of American myths. Instead, Zhao grounds her setting of a dwindling cowboy culture in a humble and intimate story of a young injured rider, Brady (Brady Jandreau), during his pride-bruised recovery. Tying his identity to the cowboy ethos—not the thrill, the money, or the fame, but something deeper, if more vague—and with his mother dead, his father an old cowboy (Tim Jandreau) softened by drink and age, and a clique of comrades whose culture is to man up, Brady has few people he can tell of his worries. The lonesomeness of the Western hero becomes the simple shame of a young man not able to do what he thinks is expected of him, what he's built his satisfaction around.
- 4/12/2018
- MUBI
Here's a movie that's in no rush to work a path into your head and heart. It's the intent of Chinese-American filmmaker Chloé Zhao to carve a story out of the real lives of the people she puts on screen; her docu-fiction technique was what distinguished her striking 2015 feature debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me, set among the Lakota Sioux in South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Zhao's follow-up is set in the same area, and again uses non-pro actors to achieve a realism Hollywood can only dream of achieving.
- 4/12/2018
- Rollingstone.com
For the second week in a row, a horse centric movie is hitting theaters. That being said, they couldn’t be more dissimilar. We already spoke about Lean on Pete just a few days ago, and now The Rider gets its turn. Opening on Friday, it’s a character study that’s been making the film festival rounds for the better part of a year, building up fans and buzz with each stop. In fact, last year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards saw fit to give it a quartet of nominations. That should give you an idea the type of appreciation the flick has found. Having seen it last year at the New York Film Festival, I can report that it’s well founded praise. In many ways, The Rider feels like a documentary. You could be mistaken for that, just going by the IMDb synopsis, which reads: “After suffering a near fatal head injury,...
- 4/10/2018
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
The Rider Sony Pictures Classics Director: Chloé Zhao Screenwriter: Chloé Zhao Cast: Brady Jandreau, Tim Jandreau, Lilly Jandreau, Lane Scott, Cat Clifford Screened at: Review, NYC, 1/11/18 Opens: April 13, 2018 The other day an article in Huffington Post quotes a rural politician from the Midwest, a Democrat who regularly gets elected in a Republican […]
The post The Rider Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post The Rider Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 4/9/2018
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
Ladies and gentlemen, as I seem to find myself saying around this point each and every single year…time really does fly. Believe it or not, we’re now a full three months into the 2018 movie calendar, which means we’re literally a quarter of the way through the film slate for the year. Wow. That got me thinking about what the best of the bunch so far this year has been. Since now is the time when the film slate begins to transition into summer releases and counter programming independent fare ramps up, I thought it was the perfect time to praise the best of 2018 so far. Basically, anything that hit screens between January 1st and March 31st will be up for grabs here for my personal honors. Once again, here goes nothing! So far, 2018 has actually been on the stronger side of things, at least in my humble opinion.
- 3/30/2018
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
"I'm going to the rodeo." "You don't need to go ride today..." Sony Classics has debuted the second official trailer for the phenomenal film The Rider, which premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival and played at every other major film festival - Telluride, Toronto, Sundance. Written and directed by Chloe Zhao, this film is a "docu-drama" hybrid, and this trailer plays that up by pointing out "true stories", and "real people." The star of the film, Brady Jandreau, is a real cowboy and really hurt his head in real life, and the family in the film is also his real family. The Rider is about what happens when a cowboy is forced to figure out a different life. I saw this at the London Film Festival last year and loved it, and I can't recommend it enough. It's an exceptional film worth your time to discover. And if you...
- 3/12/2018
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
All you need to know about the Independent Spirit Awards before Saturday's ceremonyAll you need to know about the Independent Spirit Awards before Saturday's ceremonyAdriana Floridia2/28/2018 1:38:00 Pm
This weekend, March 3rd and 4th, there are two major award ceremonies happening in Hollywood.
Yes, the Oscars take place this Sunday, and most of the Internet has been talking about it for months. However, if the Oscars aren’t quite your scene, and if the kind of independent films that often get overlooked by the glitz and glamour of Hollywood are more in tune with your movie-watching tendencies, then you’ll definitely want to watch the Independent Spirit Awards this Saturday night.
The Indie Spirit Awards were founded in 1984, and they exclusively honour independent film. This year’s ceremony will be hosted by comedians John Mulaney and Nick Kroll, which guarantees a hilarious and entertaining night. Oftentimes nominations from the...
This weekend, March 3rd and 4th, there are two major award ceremonies happening in Hollywood.
Yes, the Oscars take place this Sunday, and most of the Internet has been talking about it for months. However, if the Oscars aren’t quite your scene, and if the kind of independent films that often get overlooked by the glitz and glamour of Hollywood are more in tune with your movie-watching tendencies, then you’ll definitely want to watch the Independent Spirit Awards this Saturday night.
The Indie Spirit Awards were founded in 1984, and they exclusively honour independent film. This year’s ceremony will be hosted by comedians John Mulaney and Nick Kroll, which guarantees a hilarious and entertaining night. Oftentimes nominations from the...
- 2/28/2018
- by Adriana Floridia
- Cineplex
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