Rodney Ascher: Last News

Like Alexandre O. Philippe, Rodney Ascher is a director who pushes the interpretive limits of what a documentary can do, something he made abundantly clear with his 2012 film Room 237. Named after the mysterious hotel suite in The Shining, this festival favorite gave a platform to some of the most bizarre readings of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror imaginable. The theories raised ranged from the esoteric to the ridiculous, but Ascher’s straightforward, non-judgmental approach proved surprisingly effective; though it has long been debunked, the fanciful thought that Kubrick made the film to exorcize his guilt about faking the moon landing footage in 1969 is enticing and still hard to shake off.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor “Ghost Boy” director Rodney Ascher first learned about Martin Pistorius through the NPR podcast “Invisibilia.” “I remember hearing the story and thinking, ‘This is the kind of story that I would like to tell.’” The producers of the documentary, premiering Friday at SXSW, reached out to Ascher. They felt the same way: Pistorius’ story about a 12-year-old South African boy who emerges from a vegetative state with no memories, unable to move or speak, but all too aware of his surroundings, needed to be told. Ascher was keen to pursue the story.

Variety Staff Follow Us on Twitter If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. A book of movie reviews from an alternate dimension is set to beam down to Earth during this year’s Fantasia Festival. Filmmaker and artist Pat Tremblay is launching the new collaborative book “Terror in the Ailien Realms: Transdimensional Horror Movie Posters & Their Film Reviews” on July 28 at the Fantasia Festival. The debut event will include a live reading from some of Tremblay’s 50 collaborators. The book is now available for pre-order on his website. Tremblay explains the book’s concept in a press release announcing the project: “Drawn by the deep nostalgia of roaming video rental stores to find cool movies to watch by judging what its VHS box’s artwork would entice or beguile, filmmaker & artist Pat Tremblay has created a series of horror movie posters with the assistance of AI. He then proposed to talented individuals within the horror movie scene to write imaginary reviews for them. The result is a captivating mixture of styles, ranging from the enigmatic and alluring to the outrageously hilarious. The dimensional doors to the AIlien Realms have opened, and you can now read what horrific and crazy films this AI world has created, for better or for worse!”