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Don Hertzfeldt recommended First Man (2018) in Movies (curated)

 
First Man (2018)
First Man (2018)
2018 | Biography, Drama, History

"Years ago I was on the Sundance jury and handed an award to a bright young Damien Chazelle for one of his short films, which naturally means I can now take credit for his entire career. Honestly though I don’t know how he keeps topping himself. When I was little, I saw “The Right Stuff” and was enthralled. Even after three hours I wished it didn’t have to end and could continue telling the story of the space race in such amazing fashion all the way to the moon landing. Now, over thirty years later, I finally got my wish. “First Man” crackles with energy and dread – the direction, the sound design, the edit, cinematography, it just felt so sharp and right in every department. It’s Mr. Chazelle’s strongest work to date and maybe my favorite film of the year."

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J.K. Simmons recommended Whiplash (2014) in Movies (curated)

 
Whiplash (2014)
Whiplash (2014)
2014 | Drama

"A little Whiplash anecdote is, of course, like everybody else, I had no idea who Damien Chazelle was. Jason Reitman was the one who sent me the script, in an email, for Whiplash. He sent me both the short and the feature script and just said, “Read this,” and obviously it’s from Jason so I’m gonna read it. It was again, obviously, probably one of the most brilliant scripts I had ever read and one of the best fits in terms of the character that I really immediately understood and felt like I could wrap my brain around and pull off. They said, “The writer-director would love to meet you,” and we set up a lunch, and Damien and I sat down and immediately basically agreed on everything, except he didn’t know that I had a musical background, so he was talking about how we’d have body doubles and we’d have somebody coaching me on how to wave my arms around like a conductor. And I said, “Hey, we don’t need that because actually, that’s one of the arrows I have in my quiver.” That was one of those moments where it felt like kismet, that Damien was like, “Oh, my God.” He said, “When Jason and Helen suggested you for this part, I immediately thought that’s a great idea, but I had no idea that you actually had those kinds of abilities.” And also, he didn’t write the script for me, but he wrote it with Miles Teller in mind from the beginning, and didn’t know that Miles had been playing drums since he was 15 years old."

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