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Nicky Katt, the actor best known for his performances in Dazed and Confused and Boiler Room, died by suicide, according to his family.

Katt’s sister, Elise Ravenscroft, confirmed the cause of her brother’s death in a statement shared with Deadline. “Today, with the heaviest of hearts, I share the devastating news of my brother’s passing. He died by suicide after battling with depression — one that he fought bravely but quietly.”

She also expressed dismay that details about Katt’s death were “made public without my consent at...

Nicky Katt, the actor who appeared in films like Dazed and Confused, Boiler Room, and subUrbia, has died at the age of 54.

Katt’s attorney John Sloss confirmed the actor’s death to the Hollywood Reporter; no cause of death was provided.

The South Dakota-born Katt appeared frequently on the big screen in the Nineties and early 2000s, ofter playing tough guy or antagonistic roles. As a child actor, Katt appeared in Gremlins and The ‘Burbs before his breakout role as high school bully Clint Bruno in director Richard Linklater...

Nicky Katt, an actor recognized for his work in film and television across several decades, died on April 8 in Burbank. He was 54. His death was confirmed by friends and attorney John Sloss. Official confirmation and cause of death have not been publicly disclosed.

Katt began performing as a child, with early appearances on television and small roles in Gremlins and The ’Burbs. He went on to become a regular presence in films that favored intense, edgy characters. He was known for portraying antagonists, loners, and unpredictable figures, often grounding those performances in realism and sharp timing.

One of his most widely recognized roles came on Boston Public, where he played Harry Senate, a geology teacher assigned to a group of troubled students in a basement classroom referred to as “the dungeon.” The series, created by David E. Kelley, aired in the early 2000s. After three seasons, the character was written...

Nicky Katt, who played teacher Harry Senate on “Boston Public” after starting as a child actor and going on to play an assortment of tough guys in movies including “Dazed and Confused” and “Boiler Room,” died April 8 in Burbank. He was 54.

The Los Angeles medical examiner’s office reported that the cause of death was suicide.

His death was reported by his friends and by attorney John Sloss.

Often playing heavies and villains, Katt worked with Richard Linklater, appearing in “Waking Life,” “SubUrbia” and “School of Rock.” For director Steven Soderbergh, he appeared in “The Limey” as Stacy the Hitman, as Hitler in “Full Frontal,” and had one of his final roles in “Behind the Candelabra.” Christopher Nolan cast him in “Insomnia” and “The Dark Knight,” in which he played a S.W.A.T. team member.

On “Boston Public,” Katt played the popular geology teacher Harry Senate, who taught troublemaker kinds in “the dungeon.

It’s hard to believe, but four-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke has celebrated almost four decades in the film business. Hawke made his film debut in Joe Dante‘s 1985 film, “Explorers.”

Although an accomplished Tony-nominated stage actor, Hawke is primarily celebrated for his work in movies. He is one of the few performers who has been a double Oscar nominee in both the acting category (“Training Day” and “Boyhood”) and writing (“Before Sunrise” and “Before Midnight”). Hawke has also been nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards (“Training Day” and “Boyhood”), as well as a Golden Globe nod for “Boyhood.”

Unquestionably, Hawke’s most notable film collaborations have been with writer/director Richard Linklater, who had the ability to bring out something extra in him. In three “Before” films — “Before Sunrise” (1995), “Before Sunset” (2004) and “Before Midnight” (2013) — Hawke broke hearts all over the world as Jesse with his relationship with Julie Delpy‘s Céline.

Ethan Hawke has an impressive filmography thanks to his long-standing career in Hollywood. Making his film debut with Explorers in 1985, he continues to expand his portfolio with a new project, Blue Moon. This project is quite special also because he is reuniting with Richard Linklater, who will be directing the movie.

Ethan Hawke in Training Day / Warner Bros. Pictures

However, their reunion wasn’t an easy task. In a new interview, the former delved into the project details, stating that the director made him wait for over a decade, and the reason will surprise you.

Richard Linklater Made Ethan Hawke Wait for 12 Years for Blue Moon

Ethan Hawke is no stranger to long-term collaborations, especially with acclaimed director Richard Linklater.

Their previous collaboration includes Before Sunrise trilogy, Boyhood (2014), Waking Life (2001), and Last Flag Flying (2017) among others. The duo is bringing another interesting project, Blue Moon, which has an interesting backstory for the actor.

Richard Linklater‘s filmography is nothing if not varied, having made searing dramas to stoner comedies, from play adaptations to rock n roll movies, and even a rotoscope animated film or two. Most significantly he took experimental chances on several films, which are among the most remarkable works in the past two decades.

One of those experiments, the trilogy of “Before” films with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy brought Linklater his first two Academy Award nominations for Best Screenplay, and he was nominated for three more Oscars for 2014’s “Boyhood” — for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Also for “Boyhood,” Linklater won his first two Golden Globe Awards (for Best Film Drama and Best Director) and was nominated for a third for his screenplay.

Linklater has always got some project in some form of production, and is currently working on the upcoming “Merrily We Roll Along,” which will be shot over the next 20 years.

In his latest podcast/interview, host and screenwriter Stuart Wright talks to filmmaker Gabriel Foster Prior about his sci-fi comedy The Bystanders starring Seann Walsh and “3 Films That Have Impacted Everything In Your Adult Life,” which includes:

London To Brighton (2006) Wings Of Desire (1987) Waking Life (2001)

“3 Films That Have Impacted Everything In Your Adult Life” is about those films that made you fall in love with film. The guest selects their trio of movies and we talk for 5 minutes, against the clock. When the alarm goes off for five minutes we move on to the next film.

The Bystanders is out now and available to stream and download on the major platforms

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A Scanner Darkly is a 2006 science fiction film directed by Richard Linklater, based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick. One of the key techniques used in A Scanner Darkly is rotoscoping, a process that involves tracing live-action film frames into animation. The film's visual style may not have aged well, and the film's focus on dialogue and character development may not have resonated with audiences.

Nearly 20 years ago, Keanu Reeves starred in A Scanner Darkly, a movie adapted from the Philip K. Dick story of the same name. Written and directed by independent film wunderkind Richard Linklater, the movie is a remarkably faithful adaptation of the story as originally envisioned by Philip K. Dick. The acclaimed author is known for other legendary science fiction stories that became classic films, like Blade Runner or Minority Report. A Scanner Darkly is a very different story that centers around drug addiction,...

Richard Linklater's Apollo 10 : A Space Age Childhood is a fantastic animated film that ranks among the most underrated movies of the 2020s. An icon of American independent cinema, Linklater has been one of the world's greatest filmmakers for the past thirty-plus years. Linklater's latest film, the action romantic comedy Hit Man, has earned critical acclaim while dominating Netflix as one of the streaming service's most-watched films since its debut on June 7th. Due to Linklater's insistence on predominantly working on low-budget independent movies, his films have rarely achieved the box office status they deserve. Sadly, Linklater is one of many world-renowned auteurs who have struggled to finance his films in recent years. As a result, Linklater has struck distribution deals with Netflix for his previous two projects, Hit Man and Apollo 10 : A Space Age Childhood. However, whereas Hit Man has been a massive success, Apollo 10 : A...

Glen Powell is already making an impact in Hollywood with his impeccable projects that well showcased his acting prowess. However, the actor is yet far from achieving one record that Ethan Hawke and Hitman director Richard Linklater will attain with the upcoming project that they’re set to collaborate on.

Glen Powell in Hit Man (image credit: Netflix)

It is quite a great feat as the actor-director duo have already collaborated on numerous projects that even actor-director duo, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese have yet to attain.

Ethan Hawke and Glen Powell’s Hitman director Richard Linklater Will Work on the 9th Project Together

Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater have long been collaborating on projects that produced some of the most critically acclaimed films over the last three decades. From bringing innovative narratives to authentic character portrayals, their partnership has continued to expand the horizon of storytelling on the big screen cinema.

Deadline reports that Ethan Hawke is set to reunite with Richard Linklater once again for Blue Moon, a drama which dives into the final days of Lorenz Hart, one half of the songwriting team Rodgers & Hart.

In addition to Hawke, Blue Moon will also feature Margaret Qualley (The Substance), Bobby Cannavale (Ezra), and Andrew Scott (Ripley). Production will kick off in Dublin, Ireland this summer. Sony Pictures Classics has acquired the worldwide rights for the project, which has been scripted by Robert Kaplow. The film will be set “primarily in Sardi’s Restaurant on March 31, 1943, the opening night of Oklahoma!, which marked Rodgers’s first collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II as Hart’s replacement.“

“Robert, Ethan and I have been developing this story for over a decade and are excited and grateful that the time has come to bring this to life,” Linklater said in a statement. A spokesperson for...

At the heart of Richard Linklater's last film, Hit Man, is Glen Powell's performance as Gary Johnson. Gary, a real-world individual whose career is detailed in a Texas Monthly piece by Skip Hollandsworth -- the same writer-editor whose article on Bernhardt "Bernie" Tiede became Linklater's much-acclaimed Bernie -- was a "mild-mannered" community college professor in Houston, Texas, who had the extraordinary side hustle of being a hit man, or at least pretending to be one, aiding police in catching individuals looking for extralegal methods of problem handling. Donning various disguises, Gary would facilitate one-on-one meetings with his would-be employers. All the while, the recorded conversations would be a strategic attempt on Gary's part to hear the magic words that could lead to an arrest.

Linklater's film, co-written and co-produced by its star, Powell, takes Gary's stranger-than-fiction life and embellishes it with a breezy charm that will be familiar...

How often do you see a film that doesn’t put a foot wrong? I’m talking about Richard Linklater’s Hit Man here, which is, by far, the most exciting film that I’ve seen in recent times. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that there’s not a single dull second in this dark comedy, which is co-produced and co-written by Glenn Powell, who also aces the title role. Even though it seems like the part is tailor-made for a certain Ryan Gosling, Powell makes it his own and hits it out of the park. What further helps is his stunning chemistry with Adria Arjona, who plays Madison. While the story, which is loosely based on the life of fake hitman Gary Johnson, is not particularly hard to follow, Linklater puts a philosophical spin on it, which only enhances the whole thing. The director’s signature style of deftly written,...

There arent many filmmakers as closely associated with the rise of the independent cinema movement as Richard Linklater. Linklaters low-budget comedies Slacker and Dazed and Confused proved that financial constraints didnt matter if there were memorable characters and dialogue. Linklater hit one of the creative peaks of his career with his 1995 romance film Before Sunrise, which chronicles the relationship between the American writer Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and the French girl Celine (Julie Delpy). While they were characters that Linklater would eventually revisit in the films official sequels, Hawke and Delpy reprised their Before Sunrise roles in the strange animated film Waking Life.

Hit Man stars Glen Powell as the eccentric Gary Johnson, a real-life person who posed as a killer-for-hire to help the police catch potential criminals. Richard Linklater and Glen Powell's script is cleverly constructed, even if the dialogue can be pretty embarrassing and unrealistic, and the film relies on some weak tropes (especially in the beginning). Despite Hit Man being genuinely ridiculous and its characters being arguably psychotic, it's very fun, unpredictable, and delves into complicated themes of identity, fantasy, and the nature of self.

Richard Linklater continues his work with Netflix on Hit Man, an extremely more accessible movie than his last film, Apollo 10. It's so seemingly mainstream, in fact, that it stars Glen Powell, the handsome young actor du jour, whose work opposite Sydney Sweeney in Anyone but You and Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick has quickly made him a star. Before those movies, Powell starred in...

It’s generally understood that science fiction stories say more about the moment in which they were written than the future that they dare to imagine. That’s why it doesn’t matter that we’re long past the original setting of futuristic classics like Blade Runner or even Back to the Future Part II, as these stories remain fascinating precisely because of their dated perspectives on the future.

Of course, that’s not to say that there aren’t a handful of technological prophets out there who can tap into universal fears and anxieties that continue to be relevant no matter how far our species marches into the future. A great example of this is Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly, a timeless autobiographical parable about paranoia and America’s war on drugs disguised as a sci-fi novel.

And while the book may not have been one...

Glen Powell’s journey to superstardom began in a creative writing class at Austin’s Westwood High School. He was the only one of the kids who was trying his hand at writing screenplays.

“My teacher, Dr. [F.J.] Schaak was like, ‘Hey, you love writing screenplays. There is no better guy than Richard Linklater. Study all of his movies,'” the actor told IndieWire.

Through Schaak, Powell, who’d already been pursuing acting — his name is still written on the dressing room wall of Austin’s Paramount Theatre, where he performed in “The Sound of Music” as a teenager — met Linklater as well. And Linklater’s longtime editor Sandra Adair spoke to his class.

“I remember watching ‘Waking Life’ in his class, and obviously ‘Dazed,'” Powell said. “And we were sitting there going, ‘Man, this guy can do ‘Before Sunset,’ all these things,’ and we were just like, ‘This guy can kind of do anything,...

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Video: Hollywood Insider YouTube Channel

Oscar Snubs: 10 Actors Denied Their Worthy Oscar Best Actor and Best Actress Awards (In No Specific Order) Ethan Hawke

With four nominations and a league of amazing films under his belt, it is both a shame and a surprise that we haven’t seen an oscar in Ethan Hawke’s hands. Wearing many hats, Hawke is known for directing and writing alongside his acting career. My first introduction to Ethan Hawke was Reality Bites, also starring the intriguing Winona Ryder and Ben Stiller.

Quite a poignant film for these trying times, as the theme revolves around young adults trying to forge their path in a world where entry-level jobs are unpromising--even with a degree it seems bleak to find a respectable career coming out of college. A greasy-haired Ethan Hawke is the ultimate 90’s grunge heartthrob, a coffee-house guitarist filled...

Tech noirs blend sci-fi technology with film noir's moral ambiguity, exploring societal issues in a futuristic setting. Directors like Ridley Scott and James Cameron shaped the tech noir genre, leading to masterpieces like Blade Runner and The Terminator. Films like Strange Days, A Scanner Darkly, and Minority Report delve into themes of prejudice, surveillance, and free will in dystopian worlds.

From Blade Runner to The Terminator to Ghost in the Shell, some of the greatest science fiction movies of all time belong to the fan-favorite “tech noir” subgenre. Tech noirs combine the futuristic technology of science fiction with the moral ambiguity of film noir. They often have a neon-drenched aesthetic, an intriguing mystery, and an ethically questionable antihero at the center of their storylines. Tech noirs give filmmakers an opportunity to explore societal issues from the present day, like human identity, technocracy, and the dangers of artificial intelligence, in a speculative sci-fi setting.

Taking a cue from the genre-melding impulse of the music at its heart, They Shot the Piano Player initially gives every appearance of being pure fiction. The plot of this animated film by Spanish directors Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba follows Jeff Harris (voiced by Jeff Goldblum), a journalist from New York City who’s been commissioned to write a book on bossa nova. Immersing himself in the music in preparation for a trip to Rio de Janeiro, he hears a solo by Brazilian jazz pianist Francisco Tenorio Jr. and gets sidetracked. The innovator of samba jazz, it turns out, disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Buenos Aires just before the 1976 military coup, and Jeff decides to fill in the blanks.

The setup, then, has all the trappings of a detective story, with an amateur sleuth in obsessive pursuit of an unsolved mystery. In Rio, Jeff’s friend João (Tony Ramos...

Zack Snyder is creating his own cinematic universe with his new film, Rebel Moon, tying it to his previous film, Army of the Dead. Connecting seemingly unrelated films in the same universe is a growing practice among filmmakers, as seen with Ridley Scott's Prometheus connecting to Blade Runner. Filmmakers like Richard Linklater, Jacques Demy, and Kevin Smith have also crafted their own connected universes through recurring characters and themes.

In a recent interview, filmmaker Zack Snyder confirmed that his new movie, Rebel Moon, takes place in the same universe as his Army of the Dead movie, making him one of a handful of directors to craft his own cinematic universe. Snyder is no stranger to cinematic universes as he was previously the key creative voice behind what was known at the time as the Dceu. However, this is different, as Snyder is crafting a universe based on his original films,...

Recently, a Polish film was released that created a sensation in its home country. From the breathtaking visuals to the story behind its conception, The Peasants is as much of a work of art as any film before it. Sony Pictures Classics certainly thinks so, and they want you to see it. For many people, movies have become so similar and pedestrian that they beg for something new to come along and save cinema. The good thing is that this happens more often than we actually admit. The Peasants may be the latest to do so.

Let's take a look at the film, what it's doing differently, and why Sony is so excited for audiences to finally see The Peasants.

A Nobel Prize-Winning Novel Set in a Small Village

The Peasants is a film based on a four-part, Nobel Prize-winning novel by Wladyslaw Reymont. The book was written in the...

Two of the most acclaimed American filmmakers, Francis Ford Coppola and Richard Linklater, are looking for distributors for their latest films, which premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival. Both films have received positive reviews from critics and audiences, but have not secured any deals yet.

Francis Ford Coppola’s film, Megalopolis, is an epic science fiction drama that follows an architect who wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia after a devastating disaster. The film features an ensemble cast, including Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza, Shia Labeouf, Jason Schwartzman, Grace VanderWaal, Kathryn Hunter, Talia Shire, Dustin Hoffman, Giancarlo Esposito and D. B. Sweeney. Coppola wrote the screenplay in the 1980s and has been trying to make the film for decades. He finally managed to finance the film with his own money, investing over $100 million of his own fortune. Deadline...

Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” received a spirited five-minute standing ovation on Tuesday night, as the director handed out high fives.

The action comedy, which stars Glen Powell, received cheers from the beginning, with the crowd clapping throughout the film during various scenes.

During the standing ovation, Linklater looked overwhelmed by the applause, mouthing “thank you so much” and holding his hand to his heart. After the applause lasted several minutes, Linklater exchanged high fives with those near him, including his partner Christina Harrison and their daughter.

Linklater spoke at the film’s Venice press conference about working so closely with Powell on “Hit Man,” saying, “We never quit working on this movie. We worked all weekend, we worked all night. We were shooting in New Orleans and we never went out. I think we went out to eat once.”

“Hit Man” received strong reviews out of Venice, with Variety...

The anxiety around A.I. is strong at the moment and that’s completely understandable given the way it can be seen to take existing art to generate something entirely new. It raises questions about what the future of being an artist means when there is software out there that can potentially, for argument’s sake, create original work. Director Patrick Hanser Aka the musical artist Bacará has created a music video for his latest single Cores (Colours) using A.I. software but rather than striving for an artificially created realism he uses it as a way to blend an amalgamation of classic styles, drawing from the work of everyone from Kandinsky to Picasso to create a kaleidoscopic smorgasbord of artistic sensibilities. Dn caught up with Hanser to discuss the creation of his video, the lengthy experimentation period he needed to work through, and his thoughts surrounding the future of art and A.

Impressively bleak animated Hungarian sci-fi feature White Plastic Sky imagines a grim dystopia a hundred years from now where, like in Soylent Green (1973), older people are harvested at age 50, turned into trees so that they can become food for the younger generation. Except in this movie, the high-tech cannibalism is no state secret waiting to be blurted out by Charlton Heston, but a fact of life universally accepted phlegmatically by all. It only becomes a problem for protagonist Stefan (Tamas Keresztes) when his wife Nora (Zsofia Szamosi) decides to undergo the “implantation” procedure at age 32, having lost the will to live since the death of their child.

Made using a striking blend of rotoscope-traced live actors and intricate CG-drawn background designs to build a richly detailed world, this could build a cult following off a warm reception in Berlin.

Rotoscoping is a technique that dates back to the earliest days...

Released in 2010, Nolan’s groundbreaking film is widely celebrated for its dazzling visuals and engaging plot. “Inception” follows the life of Dom Cobb (Leonardo Dicaprio) and his team of dream extractors as they undertake a series of heists inside dreams.

It explores issues like memory, manipulation, identity, and loyalty; all blended to create a captivating story that has revolutionized how we think about movies.

Christopher Nolan created this masterpiece that combined great cinematography, fantastic performances, and a unique complex storyline. By separating dreams from reality with his signature style, Nolan introduced us to something special in cinematic history.

The journey through different levels of the subconscious is one of a kind and leaves moviegoers with their complexity to unravel long after the film ends.

In this blog post, we explore some of the best mind-bending movies like “Inception,” going deep into similar realms and other mind-boggling sci-fi films for you.

"Undone" is impressive for many reasons, but its ability to combine wildly different genres might be the biggest. On the one hand, there's the stark depiction of listless 20-year-old Alma Winograd-Diaz (Rosa Salazar) and her family drama, which makes the show so emotionally affecting. On the other, there's the wild time and space-bending sci-fi adventure featuring the ghost of her late father, Jacob Winograd (Bob Odenkirk). In the show's first season, after a car accident gives Alma the ability to traverse space and time, she embarks on a multi-dimensional journey to try to solve the mystery of her father's death.

To help pull off such an ambitiously innovative project, "BoJack Horseman" alums Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy used rotoscoping — an animation style created by tracing over real footage. This same technique was used by Richard Linklater in his movies "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly," and was chosen for "Undone" by Dutch animator Hisko Hulsing,...

It's important to remember that animation is not a genre, but rather a medium. It's a medium that can take on so many different forms, from hand-drawn 2D and computer-animated 3D to stop-motion puppeteering. Nowadays, you can even splice together several still frames of paintings to create fluid, animated movement.

However, it seems like rotoscoping — or the process of drawing over live-action frames and animating them separately — is not considered an animation process. At least, it isn't according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' animation committee.

According to IndieWire, "Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood" director Richard Linklater was notified that his rotoscope animated movie was rejected from campaigning for Best Animated Feature Film for what the Academy considered "extensive use" of live-action footage. It also contends that any animation style that "could be mistaken for live-action" has to go through a thorough review by the committee.

Richard Linklater’s “Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood” revisits the 1969 moon landing through the memories of a boy who imagines traveling there himself. It premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in March and surfaced on Netflix the next month after a qualifying run. To depict the nostalgic journey at the center of the movie, Linklater utilized a complex blend of 2D animation styles and employed nearly 200 animators in Austin and Amsterdam over nearly two years.

However, in early July, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ animation committee rejected the Netflix-produced project for Oscar consideration in the category of Best Animated Feature Film.

In a letter from the committee explaining the decision, which was shared with IndieWire, the committee wrote that the Academy “does not feel that the techniques meet the definition of animation in the category rules” due to the “extensive use” of live-action footage.

While the...

One year after a column in the Paper of Record announced that “we aren’t going back to the movies”… it kind of feels like we are. Yes, the film and exhibition industries remain incredibly volatile and difficult to predict, yet it’s undeniable that in the summer of 2022, audiences began returning to cinemas in droves. And not just to superhero movies. The success of crowdpleasers like Top Gun: Maverick and Elvis acts like a balm for movie lovers, and the sleeper success of truly innovative indies like Everything Everywhere All at Once should leave you downright giddy.

Cinephiles really do have a lot to savor as we enter the dog days of summer and the moviegoing season winds down. It is also in this exact moment, where we inhabit the deep breath between Hollywood spectacle’s biggest months and the beginning of awards season in September, that we find...

As of this writing, filmmaker Richard Linklater has directed three animated features: 2001's "Waking Life," 2006's "A Scanner Darkly," and the brand new "Apollo 10 1⁄2: A Space Age Childhood." In all three cases, Linklater employs an animation technique called rotoscoping, which involves filming live-action actors and then animating directly onto their movements. This allows for imagined backgrounds to come to life ("Apollo 10 1/2" recreated the suburban living rooms of the 1960s without having to build sets) or casual bodily mutation (as with the dreamlike tour guide characters of "Waking Life" who pulse and vibrate). In "A Scanner Darkly," adapted...

The post How School of Rock Pushed Robert Downey Jr. to Star in A Scanner Darkly appeared first on /Film.

When talking to the cast and crew behind Amazon Prime Video’s trippy series Undone, the last thing you want to do is ask about the rotoscoping of it all too early.

First deployed in the early 20th century, rotoscoping is an animation technique in which artists paint over live-action footage to make the movement of animated characters appear more realistic. Deployed strategically and sparingly in films like Cinderella and Mary Poppins, director Richard Linklater revolutionized the concept in the modern era with fully digital rotoscoped feature films like Waking Life in 2001 and A Scanner Darkly in 2006.

Per Prime Video, Undone is first TV series to fully utilize the technique, so naturally you’d want to ask about it when stars Rosa Salazar, Angelique Cabral, Constance Marie; creator Kate Purdy; and director Hisko Hulsings sit down at Den of Geek video studio during SXSW to discuss the upcoming second season of the show.

“Apollo 10 1/2” (currently streaming on Netflix) is the latest time machine from Richard Linklater.

Instead of traveling to the immediate past (like “Boyhood”) or the 1970s (like “Dazed and Confused” or “Everybody Wants Some!!”), Linklater instead sets his sights on a suburb of Houston, Texas, in the late 1960s. The space race is heating up, the Apollo missions are about to begin, but there’s one problem – they built the space capsule a little too small. That’s when some NASA guys (Glen Powell and Zachary Levi) enlist a kid named Stan (Milo Coy) to be the actual first man, er, child, on the moon. Lovingly narrated by Jack Black, it’s just as much a catalogue of the time as it is a pint-sized space odyssey – everything from what was running on television to the way people drank their beers is lovingly detailed.

And what makes it even...

There was a party at the moon tower, but Richard Linklater got stuck with the bill. Or at least that’s how it felt to the Austin-based writer-director, one of the principal architects of the American independent movement whose work has launched a string of A-list careers.

The creator of Hollywood hits like “School of Rock” and “The Bad News Bears” remake, as well as laid-back prestige enterprises like “Slacker,” “Waking Life,” and the “Before” trilogy, spoke to The Daily Beast while promoting his latest, Netflix’s nostalgia-rich animated delight “Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood.” When the topic of the 1993 classic “Dazed and Confused” came up, it clearly touched a nerve.

“Where’s my money?” he asked. “How come a movie that cost less than 7 million has 12 million in interest against it?”

In addition to giving us a string of quotable lines, “Dazed and Confused” was the ostensible screen debut for Matthew McConaughey,...

Growing up in the NASA hub of Houston, Richard Linklater remembers the pervasive impact the first moon landing had on his childhood. He fuses those memories with fantasy in his new movie, the animated “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” (currently streaming on Netflix).

Linklater even likens it to a cinematic scrapbook: It’s both a nostalgic snapshot of the ordinary suburban childhood he experienced and the extraordinary scientific achievement he witnessed. In fact, he describes it as “A Portrait of a Free Range Childhood,” in which his alter ego, fourth grader Stan, fantasizes about making his own secret trip to the moon.

“Getting to do this was wonderful in a ‘You Are There’ realism,” Linklater said, referring to the Walter Cronkite-hosted educational TV series about American history. “It was a significant moment in time that will be remembered forever: when humans first left the atmosphere of their...

This review of “Apollo 10 1/2” was first published on March 13, after its screening at SXSW.

Richard Linklater digs into his own salad days for “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood,” an animated feature that fondly recalls the NASA moment in a way that’s more reminiscent of “Amarcord” or “Crooklyn” than of “First Man.”

As a kid who was born in 1960 and grew up in the suburbs of Houston, like the film’s young hero, Linklater had a front-row seat to the race to the moon. In this delightfully evocative exercise in nostalgia, he captures the way that children will remember historic events in the context of what else was on TV, which siblings got to sit on the couch, and how your favorite song made you feel.

The story here is ostensibly about young Stan (voiced by Milo Coy), a schoolboy recruited by NASA (because of his...

With the Oscars in the rearview, it’s time to turn our sights to some fresh content. Or, in the case of Netflix’s April slate, old content that suddenly feels pretty fresh when stacked up next to titles like “The Power of the Dog” and “Don’t Look Up,” which by this point have worn out their welcome.

While Judd Apatow fans will be flocking to the streamer for the release of his pandemic-themed ensemble comedy “The Bubble,” there are alternatives for those who aren’t quite ready to laugh at the events of the past two years — especially in the context of a Hollywood movie set facing down Covid-19 protocols and CGI-driven hijinks.

That film drops April 1, but another high-profile premiere from an American filmmaker also lands on Netflix: ” Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” Texas auteur Richard Linklater’s first return to animation since 2006’s “A Scanner Darkly.

Richard Linklater’s “Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood” is so nostalgic, personal and picture-perfect in imagining Houston in 1969 that it feels like it must be an autobiography of the Texan director. But Linklater explains that, like all his films that feel effortlessly conversational and natural, it’s all carefully constructed to bring you into that fantasy.

“You’re so pulled into the specifics that seem so personal that you buy the fantastic element that makes it seem real,” Linklater told TheWrap. “There’s still tricks you can do as a storyteller to lull the audience and pull them into a headspace. I kind of do that with a long take in actors: oh it must be real, it’s all so real. It’s not. It’s all written and rehearsed. Everything is a magic trick.”

“Apollo 10 1/2,” which premieres at SXSW, is one of his best tricks in years.

When Richard Linklater was in second grade, he became enthralled by the historical moment that was happening right in his Houston backyard as NASA prepared for the Apollo moon landing. Decades later, it occurred to Linklater that he was probably the only filmmaker who remembered the excitement of that moment and was also that geographically close to NASA, a realization that led to his latest feature as writer-director, Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood. Combining the delicate observational eye and ear of Boyhood with the more fantastical animated approach of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, Apollo 10½ tells the […]

The post “I Think for Every Story There is a Hidden Way to Tell it Best, and Your Journey is to Try to Find It”: Director Rick Linklater on Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

When Richard Linklater was in second grade, he became enthralled by the historical moment that was happening right in his Houston backyard as NASA prepared for the Apollo moon landing. Decades later, it occurred to Linklater that he was probably the only filmmaker who remembered the excitement of that moment and was also that geographically close to NASA, a realization that led to his latest feature as writer-director, Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood. Combining the delicate observational eye and ear of Boyhood with the more fantastical animated approach of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, Apollo 10½ tells the […]

The post “I Think for Every Story There is a Hidden Way to Tell it Best, and Your Journey is to Try to Find It”: Director Rick Linklater on Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s been 16 years since Richard Linklater last made a film in the art style he helped popularize with movies like Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006). At the time, he thought he’d taken the rotoscope technique—where animators draw artwork, frame by frame, atop live-action footage—as far as he personally could with a film that featured Keanu Reeves losing his grip and perception on reality.

And yet, when thinking back to his own halcyon days as a child growing up in the Houston suburbs during a time of technological innovation and wonders—the time of the Apollo 11 mission and when a man walked on the moon—he realized his own nine-year-old understanding of the world wasn’t that different from, say, Keanu’s dream life. And exploring that paradox is what gives his ultimately semi-autobiographical reverie, this weekend’s Netflix release of Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood,...

Richard Linklater combines his affinities for rotoscoping and depicting the quiet magic of childhood in a wonderful paean to late-60s idealism

Richard Linklater is looking back from outer space at childhood’s blue remembered hills in this intensely enjoyable and sweet family movie for Netflix. It’s a rotoscope animation digitally based on live action; in its way, it is every bit as cultish and hallucinatory as the ones that Linklater has made before, like Waking Life from 2001 and A Scanner Darkly from 2006.

A 10-year-old boy called Stan is growing up in a Houston suburb in the late 60s in a big family with a dad employed in a lowly admin job at Nasa. Stan is obsessed (like everyone) with the Apollo 11 moon mission, and has a vivid fantasy or hallucination that he has been picked by Nasa agents to be a test astronaut for a top-secret dummy-run moon landing,...

It would be tempting to call Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood a collection of Richard Linklater’s greatest hits. The film is a casual look back at a specific time and place, like Dazed and Confused (1993) and Everybody Wants Some!! (2016). It employs the whimsical rotoscope-style animation of Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006), and it makes effective use of Jack Black, who has done his best work with the director in School of Rock (2003) and Bernie (2011).

But the film is more than just a pastiche of Linklater’s trademarks. Instead, it’s an opportunity for the director to bring his unique abilities to a story that is deeply specific yet captures the mood of an entire generation. It’s a nostalgic ode to life at the center of the space race and a celebration of childhood, optimism and the complexities of growing up American.

Black narrates as Stan, an...

It’s another giant week of television, with many movies and TV sharing an overlapping space theme – Marvel Studios’ “Moon Knight” is about a superhero (Oscar Isaac) who transforms under the cover of darkness; Richard Linklater returns to his youth (and the initial United States space program) in “Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood;” and “Moonshot” features a YA romance that plays out via a voyage to the red planet.

On with the television! To infinity and beyond!

Marvel Studios

“Moon Knight”

Wednesday, March 30, Disney+

Marvel Studios’ latest Disney+ original series (its sixth) is a relatively deep cut character – Marc Spector (played by Oscar Isaac), a man who, depending on the comic book run, is truly inhabited by a deity from ancient Egypt or just deeply unhinged mentally. We are introduced to Spector via one of his alter egos, sheepish British museum employee Steven Grant (Isaac goes full Dick-Van-Dyke-in-“Mary...

Barely over two years ago, the Den of Geek staff was mere days away from heading to Austin when the inevitable happened: SXSW and all its strange and glorious intersections of film, music, technology, games, and more was canceled due to the then only dawning Covid-19 pandemic. A virtual alternative eventually went forward some months later, and there was a virtual SXSW in 2021 as well, but to concede things haven’t been the same in Austin is an understatement.

Which is perhaps why nearly every face, and every person we spoke with, over the last several weeks in the Texas state capital seemed to have an incorrigible grin on their face. Be they fans or filmmakers, actors or music artists, or even just folks walking down the street, the thrill and good vibes was everywhere. SXSW is back where it once belonged.

During that time, we were able to get...

A delightful meditation on childhood in the summer of 1969 set literally in the shadows of NASA’s central operations in Houston, Richard Linklater’s contemplative and vividly animated Apollo 10 ½ A Space Age Childhood reflects on the filmmaker’s own experiences. It captures the joy and wonder of childhood through the eyes of Stan, a ten-year-old who fantasizes about being recruited for “space camp” by NASA. His father (Bill Wise), a frugal but caring man, has uprooted his family from the city to a newly built suburban development in the shadow of the Astrodome and Astroworld amusement parks. Black’s adult narrator fills in the blanks for us with whimsical, nostalgic details that highlight just how dangerous childhood can be between abusive coaches, parents that thought nothing of allowing the kids to ride in the back of a pick-up truck at 70 miles an hour, and playing with explosives.

The first animated...

Richard Linklater’s periodic forays into animation have been distinctively imaginative, and that goes double for Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood. A nostalgic but not in the least sentimental look at Texas life when the American space program was at full thrust, this highly personal but entirely accessible account of growing up in a culture both historically momentous and banal has something to offer all audiences in terms of its vivid portrait of a very specific place and time. But most receptive of all will be viewers in their 60s and beyond who have personal memories of the July 20, 1969, moon landing and of a milieu both memorable and banal.

Linklater calls this project “a memory of a fantasy” as well as a mixture of fantasy and reality, and everyone who was around at the time will certainly have their own recollections of that unique...

There’s a genuine, welcome sense of play to Richard Linklater’s “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” and it’s present right off the bat, from the opening frames. This Netflix production marks the filmmaker’s return to rotoscope animation, the ingenious and striking drawn-over-the-top method that he brought into the mainstream with “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly.” The technique’s real-but-not qualities were just right for those films, cranking up their (respectively) dreamlike and paranoid qualities; here, the M.O.

Continue reading ‘Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood’ Review: An Amiable, Rambling Memoir Film from Richard Linklater [SXSW] at The Playlist.