Editing by Frances Vega

DineL.A.’s Restaurant Week is underway and if you’re anything like us the foodie inside of you is overwhelmed with excitement!

With over 300 restaurants participating in the event by offering prix fixe lunch & dinner menus, it’s the perfect opportunity to treat yourself and finally try that restaurant you’ve been eyeing for months. Participating restaurants stretch the from Santa Monica to Pasadena and everywhere in between, so the options can seem overwhelming, but the menus posted on the dineL.A. website make it easier to narrow down your selections. While the $15-$20 lunch menus and $29-$49 dinner menus might entice you to head right to the biggest names in town, Restaurant Week is also a great way to explore your neighborhood a bit more and try a meal that would have been much more of a splurge any other week of the year.

For our Restaurant Week pick we chose the dinner menu at Osteria Mamma in Hollywood, and we were not disappointed. The Sgamberata salad with tiger shrimp and arugula, Linguine alla Carbonara, and the Tiramisu were the stand-out favorites from the night. The mustard dressing on the Sgamberata was the perfect compliment to the peppery arugula, and the Carbonara sauce on the linguine wonderfully rich without being overwhelming. Paired with the included glass of wine and finished off with Tiramisu, the menu is an excellent sample of the delicious fare Osteria Mamma has to offer.

All of the selections on the Restaurant Week menu are available at Osteria Mamma year-round, so don’t miss out on the chance to try them while the deal lasts!

The pioneer revenge movie “The Revenant” emerged as the Oscar front-runner on Thursday with 12 nominations but the big news once again was over how the Academy shut out actors of color from the industry’s biggest honors.

For yet another year the Academy’s picks seem to be getting more and more homogenized. As the nominations were announced, people noticed that all 20 contenders for acting awards were white and that films with black themes had been left out of the best picture category, critics and movie goers began asking how the movie industry’s top awards could exclude so many great showings from people of color a second year in a row.

While Jennifer Lawrence walked off with the fourth nomination of her career for her role in “Joy,” a film with mixed reviews, Will Smith’s celebrated performance in “Concussion” received nothing. The only actor nominated for “Creed” was somehow not lead Michael B. Jordan but Sylvester Stallone, and “Dope,” brilliantly written by Rick Famuyiwa and starring Shameik Moore, was snubbed completely. “Tangerine,” a film shot entirely on an iPhone (which this writer feels that alone should have been enough to snag a best cinematography nomination for Sean Baker and Radium Cheung) was also notably absent from the nominations list, along with the breakthrough performances by Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez going unrecognized by the Academy.

Yes, we saw a few movies driven by actors and directors of color that were nominated by the Academy, but it was for the work of their white colleagues.

“For the two black movies that made over $100 million at the box office, touched a nerve and are artistically fresh, only white people were nominated. How does that work?” producer and academy member Stephanie Allain said to the Los Angeles Times; referring to “Creed” and “Compton.”

Sylvester Stallone was nominated for supporting actor for his performance in Warner Bros.’ “Creed,” but the film’s black writer-director, Ryan Coogler, and black star, Michael B. Jordan, were not. Similarly, “Straight Outta Compton’s” white writers Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff were nominated for best original screenplay, but no one else in the film was recognized.

Last year, the Academy also received a lot of backlash after it selected an all-white group of acting nominees for the first time in years. The group’s acting branch, which chooses the nominees in those categories, did not recognize David Oyelowo, who gave what many thought was the best performance of the year as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in “Selma.” The film also failed to make the cut on the director list, spurring the social-media movement #OscarsSoWhite. With the same thing happening again this year, the hashtag was revived on social media and the new hashtag #OscarsStillSoWhite also emerged after the announcements

Last year the academy responded with a pledge to do better, but while last year’s controversy was mainly over one film being omitted (and the exclusion could have been explained away by campaign-specific factors), things feel different this time around. Academy members this year had a strong pool of movies to draw from and still ended up with an all-white ballot.

In June, the academy invited 322 new members, a large and demographically broad group that reflected a move toward “a normalization of our membership to represent both the industry and the country as a whole,” academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs said at the time. In November, Boone Isaacs also announced a new initiative, A2020, designed to promote inclusion within its staff.

Even though the academy’s leadership is taking steps at inclusion, the voting members as a whole have proved slow to change. But, when it comes to diversity, the film world in general is dragging behind television. Last year, a record 18 black performers were nominated for Emmy Awards and this year’s Oscar snubs become even more upsetting coming as they do on the heels of the Golden Globes, which managed to nominate a diverse mix of actors, writers, and directors in both television and film.

The Academy needs to decide what the Oscars are all about—if the awards are meant to celebrate the best, most innovative work in the industry then it needs to widen its scope as TV has done.

“On every measure, film is a couple steps behind TV,” said Darnell Hunt, director of UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “This is, unfortunately, a reflection of the academy itself. The academy is white and male, so we have a taste culture that’s only going to recognize certain types of projects.”

The demographics of the academy aren’t likely to change anytime soon as the 6,261 Oscar voters serve for life, so even large new classes of voters would only move the needle slightly and it’s hard to give the academy a pass because “film drags behind TV,” when you consider other industry nominations.  Both the Screen Actors and Producers guilds nominated “Straight Outta Compton” for their top prizes, and SAG also nominated the Idris Elba film, “Beasts of No Nation,” for its cast and Elba for supporting actor. When you compare the picks by the major industry unions to the academy the whiteness of their choices this year become even more notable.

However, for all the outrage over the acting nominations, the omission of minority actors two years in a row is an aberration in recent Academy history. The last time there were only white acting nominees for two consecutive years was in 1997 and 1998.

Just two years ago the same Academy awarded best picture to “12 Years a Slave” and voted one of its stars, Lupita Nyong’o, best supporting actress.  But “12 Years a Slave” had a narrative that resonated deeply with voters, and even though they were big wins, handing out an award to people of color every now and then is not enough to many.

“Every time I say the same thing: Until we get a position of power, with a green-light vote, it’s not going to change,” Spike Lee said in an interview a few hours after the nominations came out. “We may win an Oscar now and then, but an Oscar is not going to fundamentally change how Hollywood does business. I’m not talking about Hollywood stars. I’m talking about executives. We’re not in the room.”

Which snubs were you most shocked by? Let us know in the comments and see the full list of nominees below.

BEST PICTURE

The Big Short

Bridge of Spies

Brooklyn

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

=============================

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Bryan Cranston, Trumbo

Matt Damon, The Martian

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs

Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl

=============================

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Cate Blanchett, Carol

Brie Larson, Room

Jennifer Lawrence, Joy

Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years

Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn

=============================

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Christian Bale, The Big Short

Tom Hardy, The Revenant

Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

Sylvester Stallone, Creed

=============================

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight

Rooney Mara, Carol

Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

=============================

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM

Anomalisa

Boy and the World

Inside Out

Shaun the Sheep Movie

When Marnie Was There

=============================

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Carol

The Hateful Eight

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Sicario

COSTUME DESIGN

Carol

Cinderella

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

=============================

DIRECTING

The Big Short

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

=============================

DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)

Amy

Cartel Land

The Look of Silence

What Happened, Miss Simone?

Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom

=============================

DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)

Body Team 12

Chau, beyond the Lines

Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness

Last Day of Freedom

=============================

FILM EDITING

The Big Short

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Revenant

Spotlight

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

=============================

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Embrace of the Serpent

Mustang

Son of Saul

Theeb

A War

=============================

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING

Mad Max: Fury Road

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out

the Window and Disappeared

The Revenant

=============================

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

Bridge of Spies

Carol

The Hateful Eight

Sicario

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

=============================

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

“Earned It,” Fifty Shades of Grey

“Manta Ray,” Racing Extinction

“Simple Song #3,” Youth

“Til It Happens To You,” The Hunting Ground

“Writing’s On The Wall,” Spectre

=============================

PRODUCTION DESIGN

Bridge of Spies

The Danish Girl

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

=============================

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)

Bear Story

Prologue

Sanjay’s Super Team

We Can’t Live without Cosmos

World of Tomorrow

=============================

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)

Ave Maria

Day One

Everything Will Be Okay (Alles Wird Gut)

Shok

Stutterer

=============================

SOUND EDITING

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Sicario

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

SOUND MIXING

Bridge of Spies

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

=============================

VISUAL EFFECTS

Ex Machina

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

=============================

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

The Big Short

Brooklyn

Carol

The Martian

Room

=============================

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

Bridge of Spies

Ex Machina

Inside Out

Spotlight

Straight Outta Compton

“Mustang,” the debut film from director Deniz Gamze Erguven, sounds like it should be about a wild untamed horse, and while in reality it follows five young sisters, in many ways the title is the perfect description for the defiance and spirit the girls show towards their repressive world.

The orphaned girls are being raised in a strict community by their grandmother and uncle in Northern Turkey. The film opens on the last day of school, as the five girls bid tearful goodbyes to a teacher moving to Istanbul. As the day comes to a close the girls decide to take the long way home  so they can run through the beach and celebrate with their classmates. When innocent piggy back games are mistaken for inappropriate behavior by a neighbor, however, their playful world is shattered. In the words of youngest sister Lale (Günes Sensoy), “everything turned to shit.”

Their scandalized neighbor accuses the girls of pleasuring themselves on the shoulders of their male classmate and grandmother in turn, sends them to be examined by a doctor to prove their virginity. Things only get worse from there when their uncle beats them for acting like whores and removes anything that might “pervert them” from the house. All make-up, computers, and telephones get locked away as the first step in an isolation that gradually ramps up as the film progresses.

The girls are forced into shapeless brown dresses while a parade of aunts comes through the house, in a non-stop Home Ec workshop that Lale’s voiceover refers to as a “wife factory.” After the girls sneak out of the house together to attend an all-female football match, the wedding plans intensify and the two oldest sisters, Sonay (Ilayda Akdogan) and Selma (Tugba Sunguroglu) are married off in a double ceremony. While the remaining sisters continue without the older two, it is revealed that Uncle Erol is molesting Ece (Elit Iscan), and after a period of behavior Lale refers to as “dangerous” Ece unexpectedly kills herself. With only Nur (Doga Zeynep Doguslu) and Lale left in the house, Nur becomes the next in line to be married off. The night of the wedding Lale takes a stand, staging an escape that leads both Lale and Nur to Istanbul where they are reunited with their teacher.

The “Virgin Suicides” comparison is inevitable, as much for the premise as for the details of the film itself. The dreamy cinematography of the opening scenes echoes “The Virgin Suicides,” though in this film the girls aren’t seen through anyone else’s lens. Instead the audience sees them as they are—teenage girls. “Mustang’s” tone abstains from wispy meditation and instead gives a direct and naturalistic narrative that laments the girls’ woes while also celebrating their rebellion in the face of a repressive environment.

The title reflects the girl’s collective spirit. The sisters find a way to break past every roadblock their family sets in their way, continuing to do things on their own terms. Though Sonay and Selma are pushed into marriage, Sonay negotiates with her grandmother and happily marries her boyfriend. Ece’s suicide functions as her choice not to participate in the life her family has laid out for her, and Nur and Lale choose to run away. Of the five, only Selma concedes to a life she doesn’t want.

The film masterfully depicts simultaneously both the prison that patriarchal values create and the power within each individual to subvert the system.

“Mustang” is now playing in limited release.

Written By: Deniz Gamze Erguven & Alice Winocour

Directed By: Deniz Gamze Erguven

Starring: Günes Sensoy, Ilayda Akdogan, Tugba Sunguroglu, Elit Iscan, & Doga Zeynep Doguslu

Grade: A

The rumors are true, Lena Dunham has confirmed that the sixth season of “Girls” will be its last.

HBO formally announced the news that the show has been renewed for a sixth and final season during the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour on Thursday. Fans were already prepared for the news, as the news was leaked to E! News earlier this week and Dunham herself had previously alluded to the possibility that the Emmy-winning show may end in previous interviews.

In a radio interview with Elvis Duran in September, Dunham stated, “I started working on this show when I was 23, and now I’m going to be 30 so it kind of feels right that this show kind of sandwiched my 20s and then I go off into the world.”

In a statement to EW, Dunham further explained her desire not to drag the show out through too many seasons. “It’s always been important to us that we know and understand when it’s time to wrap it up. It is about a very specific time in life and we don’t want to push past that or overextend it. We’re going to feel it out.”

In the official press release announcing the series’ end, HBO president Michael Lombardo, praised Dunham and the show creators on the work they’ve done over the last few years, saying they gave HBO a “signature series of rare wit and intelligence. They are exceptional talents, and I can’t wait to see what Lena, Jenni and Judd have in store for the final seasons of this unique show, and look forward to working with them on future projects.”

Distraught fans should take heart in knowing that though the show’s end is in sight, the final season will not premiere until 2017. In the meantime, season 5 premieres on HBO February 21^st so there are still two full seasons of “Girls” on the horizon.

“Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” the debut feature by Chloe Zhao, explores the complicated and emotionally fraught relationship between a community and their home. The film screened at AFI FEST on November 10^th.

The film, shot and largely cast on location, follows two siblings living on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the months immediately following their estranged father’s death — a famous rodeo cowboy who before his untimely death, had very minimal involvement in their lives.  He spent much of his time drinking and impregnating other women, he had fathered 25 kids by nine or so “so-called wives.”

As the film begins the siblings learn their father’s just died a predictable drunkard’s death in an accidental fire. The story develops as a slice-of-life where we slowly get a picture of life on the reservation through Johnny (John Reddy) & Jashaun’s (Jashaun St. John) experiences.

The two rely on each other for support, having grown up without their father and a mother that is generally absent from view, Johnny takes over the role of caretaker.  He sells bootlegged alcohol to make money. The cinematography reflects the emptiness felt throughout the reservation, with frequent shots of wide-open landscape. The cloud looming over the horizon is Johnny’s plans for his future—he wants to move to Los Angeles with his girlfriend Aurelia (Taysha Fuller) once they graduate to follow his dream of being a boxer while she attends college.

Though obviously torn over the decision to leave the reservation and his family, Johnny is aware that the options open to him if he stays on the reservation are limited. In the face of that future, Johnny begins bootlegging on a larger scale to save the money necessary for his move though it puts him in dangerous situations and on the radar of rival bootleggers. It also takes much of his time away from Jashaun.

With Johnny more and more absent, Jashaun begins spending time with a new friend, Travis (Travis Lone Hill), who’s been newly released from prison. In exchange for the promise that he’ll make her a pow-wow dress, Jashaun helps him with his small business selling clothing hand-painted with his designs.

After Johnny and Jashaun find out about their dad’s sexual escapades they start connecting with their half-siblings at various points in the film. Jashaun seeks out the half-brother who her father had lived with, and finds closure in a conversation about their father. Another half-brother seeks Johnny out and continually offers him a job in his stepfather’s garage to get him out of bootlegging. The alternative family bonds explored in the film illustrate at once the lack of parental presence yet also the strong sense of community on the reservation.

Eventually the confrontation between Johnny and the rival bootleggers comes to a head, leaving him beaten and his car torched, erasing his chances of getting to Los Angeles. In the end, Johnny doesn’t leave with Aurelia, and the film closes with him reflecting on the bonds that will leave him tied to the reservation, whether he stays or goes.

In an AFI fest Q&A, Zhao spoke about her experience as someone without a strong sense of home due to the fact that she moved around a lot as a child. She stated that she wanted to make a film that explored the ways in which a person’s home could be “freeing and trapping at the same time.” The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is a particularly poignant setting for such an exploration; the reservation is the home that has been forced upon the community, and in many ways reflects the injustices that have been thrust upon Native American communities. Characters such as Travis reflect the incarceration cycle on the reservation, and the presence of bootleg alcohol throughout the film highlights the community’s struggle with alcoholism. It would have been easy for Zhao to only paint a negative picture of the reservation, but of course “home” is always more complicated than meets the eye.

Written and Directed By: Chloe Zhao

Starring: John Reddy, Jashaun St. John

Grade: B+

The title character in “James White” is a good guy with some pretty bad habits. James (Christopher Abbott) is a young, self-centered but-sometimes-gentle, New Yorker who combats the terror of grown-up responsibility with copious amounts of booze and misadventures like picking fights in bars.

The film follows James in the months that follow his estranged father’s death, and lead up to the end of his mother Gail’s (Cynthia Nixon) battle with cancer, two devastating events that are difficult even for a well adjusted person, but for James –who already has his own issues– it’s a building storm. In the opening scene of the movie, he stumbles out of a pulsating nightclub early in the morning and drunkenly makes his way to his mother, Gail’s (Cynthia Nixon) apartment, who’s hosting a shiva for his estranged father. It’s pretty safe to say that showing up late and plastered to your father’s memorial is a good sign you might need to make some changes in your life.

Considering how inconsiderate he proves to be early on in the movie, it’s easy to hate James, but Abbott’s performance makes you aware that James’s bad behavior stems from fear; deep down he has a warm heart. Throughout the film James appears to be a barely-contained storm as he first grapples with his father’s death, and then with the possibility of his mother’s death. We also see how he struggles to care for her while he can barely take care of himself. The film artfully explores the flip side of single parenting; while many films have delved into the challenges of raising a child alone, few have depicted the difficulties of caring for a dying parent alone. Multiple scenes mirror each other, highlighting the role-reversal that has occurred between mother and son, early on in the film Gail calms James down with a breathing exercise, and late in the film as Gail’s health begins to deteriorate James uses the same breathing exercise to calm her down.

Cynthia Nixon gives an outstanding performance as Gail, weaving in and out of lucidity as her condition worsens. Nixon gives one of the year’s most heart-rending screen performances and the scenes showing the bond between Gail and her son make James more relatable to the audience.  A heartbreaking scene between James and his mother in the bathroom simultaneously showcases this role-reversal and the depth of love between the two of them. For all his partying, forgetfulness, and irresponsibility James truly is doing the best he can to care for Gail while being obviously overwhelmed by the task. It’s hard not to be sympathetic to someone who fights as hard as he does to help his delirious mom navigate through the labyrinthine health care system, and who comforts her when she’s sweating and puking through the night.

“James White” is the debut feature of writer-director Josh Mond, Josh Mond introduced his film at the AFI Film Festival this past week saying “I hope you feel something.” Post-screening Mond told the audience, “I wanted to make a film that punches you in the face, and then in the gut.” James White does exactly that, evoking a fit of rage and grief that will knock the wind out of you. It also has a sense of immediacy, and an unexpected commitment to narrative—much of that is due to the cinematography, shot hand-held, which keeps a laser-tight lens on James for much of the film.  We see those shots often quickly going in and out of focus. The focus seems to be an extension of him at times— following James as he takes off on a tropical vacation (“When I come back, I will be ready for life,” he insists), has a frenzied romantic fling with a teenager, and tries to parlay a few sloppy hand-written short stories into a regular gig writing for a magazine edited by one of his dad’s old business associates. The shots depicting things James either can’t or won’t deal with are often blurred.

Christopher Abbott absolutely shines in this role; even in scenes with a camera angled tightly to his face and with minimal lines he manages to capture the full range of James’ emotions. James is volatile and messy, but also fiercely protective and loving towards his mother, all of which is superbly captured by Abbott’s performance.

A lot happens in “James White,” all related to the hero’s inadequate understanding of what it means to be an adult, but if he’s going to at least try at least he does so as it relates to his mother.

Written & Directed By: Josh Mond

Starring: Christopher Abbott, Cynthia Nixon & Scott Mescudi

Grade: A+

James White opens in theaters November 13^th.

“The Overnight” centers around Alex (Adam Scott) and Emily (Taylor Shilling), recent transplants from Seattle, as they settle into their new life in LA. When their son RJ makes a friend at the park, they accept his dad Kurt’s (Jason Schwartzman) dinner invitation assuming best case scenario, they’ve made a friend. Worst case scenario, they wasted an evening.

The evening that does ensue goes far past what the couple envisioned. Kurt and his wife Charlotte (Judith Godrèche) are on the weird side of perfect, with a gorgeous house, despite their strange taste in film and art. After dinner, Kurt and Charlotte convince their guests to let RJ sleep upstairs with their son so that the party can continue. The night takes a turn, as drinking, pot smoking and skinny-dipping begins. Early on it becomes obvious that Kurt and Charlotte have an ulterior sexual motive for the evening, though the details aren’t made clear until the film’s end. In between, both couples let loose and explore topics that are normally taboo, from body image issues to the struggles of marital monogamy.

It’s rare to see a film that allows adults to inhabit a sexual space so often reserved for teenagers. While it’s refreshing to see “grown-ups” air their insecurities on screen and admit to struggling with such universal issues, the casual tone only allows for the film to get so deep. A wild scene where Alex and Kurt show off their manliness (or not so manliness on Alex’s part), may be the most memorable scene for the slapstick humor, but only touches on male ego and insecurity. How do you go about making friends when you’re too old to meet them at school? How do you balance a sex life with parenthood? How do you stay responsible while still remaining open to new experiences? Writer/director Patrick Brice artfully mixes these questions in with comedic moments so the existential dilemmas are never overwhelming. Though the evening doesn’t go as any of the characters had planned, there’s the sense that each emerges stronger after their shared night.

The light hearted nature of the film as well as the stellar cast does allow room for forgiveness in the less stand out moments. The chemistry between the actors allow each to bring out the best in the other, giving Scott, Schwartzman, Schilling, and Godreche each their own narrative and moments. As the film progresses, the four keep playing off one another as one outrageous unexpected event leads to the another. While the climax (ahem) of the film is a bit lackluster compared to bigger parts of the film, the realism of the moment keeps the film in check.

Written & Directed By: Patrick Brice

Starring: Adam Scott, Taylor Schilling, Jason Schwartzman, Judith Godrèche

Grade: B+

It’s 1969, during the height of the Vietnam War and Charlie is on his way to Michigan Tech University while his best friend Derek is anxiously counting the days until he becomes eligible for the draft. Before the two friends are forced to face their inevitable futures they decide to take a final adventure as kids. Together they embark on a 1,300 mile bike ride along Lake Superior. Thus begins the epic adventure that is director Edd Benda’s feature film debut, “Superior.”

The film debuted at the Dances with Films Festival in Los Angeles on June 5th. Hollywood Times Square recently got the chance to sit down with Benda, producer Alex Bell and cast members, Thatcher Robinson and Paul Stanko to discuss the film, shooting on-location, and making the world a better place.

So the film is set in Michigan, are you all from the Midwest?
Benda: I’m from the Midwest and one of our producers Steven Halstead is also a Midwest guy, but yeah as the writer and director that’s where I drew my inspiration.

I read that the film is inspired by a true story?
Benda: It is, it’s inspired by my uncle Carl and his cousin who took this bike ride in 1971, this 1,300-mile ride around Lake Superior. That kind of became the backdrop for me to tell a lot of stories within one. My dad is one of nine kids and they grew up, as Paul described it, in the “Footloose” household with no dancing and kind of a lot of restrictions on entertainment, so their source of adventure was to go out and create their own. And so what “Superior” became was kind of a conduit, a patchwork quilt if you will, of all their respective childhood adventures.

 Since the original bike ride was in 1971 was there a particular reason why you set the movie in 1969?
Benda: In setting it against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Vietnam War draft, in researching and really beginning to understand that time period, 1969 kind of became an important crux for all of that in the United States. While the film isn’t about that and isn’t singularly dealing with that, it was important to create that environment and that community.

I appreciated that the film didn’t favor the Michigan Tech path, but it kind of paints a bleak picture of both paths, with all the imagery of death and literally sleeping in coffins…
Stanko: It’s interesting, when I got the script I actually saw it as an incredibly optimistic story, where it’s two young men seizing this moment in their lives to either surrender themselves to their futures and just go their separate ways, or you know, to take one last great adventure and really quite literally take their story into their own hands. I think particularly for my character Derek, there’s a big crossroads that he’s at in life and the choice is either a bleak future where people continue to force him in the directions that they believe he’s only suited for or there’s a chance to break free and be his own man. I think that the story and Ed’s directions and Alex’s cinematography really do a wonderful job of capturing those moments that we all have in our lives where we can either choose to continue down the path that’s easy or the path that’s been set for us, or break away and try to make our own adventure in this world. To me it’s a story of optimism and hope and that you’re never locked on to one road, there’s always a divergent path to take.

Yeah, you see that in the cinematography, there’s always literally crossroads and other paths.
Stanko: Crossroads! Yeah totally!

Benda: Alex here is our cinematographer so he certainly had that in mind.

What was the filming process like for you, on location in Michigan?
Stanko: Oh man, how much time do you have?

Robinson: How many bugs can you write about?
Benda: It’s a story that spans almost a month, on June 19^th 2014 we loaded up three sedans, a pickup truck, and a trailer and we drove 3600 miles 3.5 days to this remote region in the upper peninsula of Michigan, where the reward for everybody weathering that journey was the 11 of us then crammed into a tiny little cabin where we got to live for the next month. So then we were in Michigan for 28 days; we filmed for 21 of them. We really built in a lot of time to kind of enjoy where we were, which was important to me and I think reflected a lot in the film is everybody had a strong sensibility of where we were and what we were doing. And then at the end of those 28 days we loaded up our 3 sedans and our pickup truck and our trailer that all had nicknames, and drove back to Los Angeles and I think one of my favorite moments of that road trip and simultaneously one of the most heartbreaking was we stopped in Barstow at a Chipotle to have lunch, and it was an unnecessary stop. We could have continued all the way to Los Angeles but we stopped to have this meal that we didn’t need because I believe, and I think that was reflected by a lot of our crew, is it was hard to come to grips with being back in Los Angeles and being back in the urban sprawl in the city because we lived this adventure for a month and I loved every minute of it, and it was hard to come back to reality.

Robinson: I’d say the buzzword if you need to describe or if you even can describe this whole process, the filming process, the production process in just a word it’s adventure. There’s no part of this film that isn’t an adventure and it continues! Even here at dances with films!

So what are you guys working on next?
Benda: Alex Bell and I have been working together for a while now and we have a few potential films down the pipeline, none of them far enough down the road to discuss at great lengths. Superior has been our singular focus for the last year and a half and will continue to be for the time being, but I look forward to having another Beyond the Porch production for the two of us. And certainly working with Paul and Thatcher a whole lot more in my career. This isn’t the last film. This is just the first one.

Robinson: As of now I have a tiny role in a film in August which I’m shooting for about a day in the bay area and from there on out there’s stuff maybe next year. But right now [the focus is] getting better in acting class. There’s always something to do, it’s never something where you can sit back and wait for the next thing.

Stanko: I am in a Harry Potter fan franchise called “Severus Snape and the Marauders,” and I play a young Remus Lupin in that, so that’s coming out in October. I’m also in a play right now called “Might as Well Live” that’s going up at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. It’s been amazing. That’s one of the great things about being in Los Angeles and I think these guys will agree with me, as an independent artist and that’s very much the circuit we’re a part of, there are wonderful opportunities. Dances with Films is a great one for film and Fringe is great for theater, but this is a city that really allows people to make art and to tell stories and it’s just cool to be here.

Bell: I do a lot of documentary work with the Salvation Army, so when the Nepal earthquake struck, they sent a team out to do disaster relief work and to set up displacement camps and get food distributions and medical aid, so I was part of a team that went out there to document that. Less than a week after the earthquake hit I was on the ground for 10 days getting to capture people making a difference in this world, so that was pretty cool and I’m right now preparing for a big event in London this month.

Stanko: See, Alex is out there making the world a better place while I’m pretending to be a wizard.

You know, everybody makes the world a better place in their own way.
Stanko: Yeah, right? That’s great.

There’s a scene where you, Paul, stop by the river and you leave something there and the camera pans on it but then it never really cuts back to what was left.
Benda: Earlier in the film they talk about being pragmatic with what they pack and we have kind of a brief little joke where Paul as the character Derek has severely overburdened his bicycle so when we stop by the stream it’s Derek acknowledging, ‘Alright I packed way too much stuff’ and he had to leave some stuff behind, he had to leave a lot of what he brought and really simplify his ride.
Stanko: It kind of was like in my mind, that was the moment that I let go of all the comforts and the things that I think I need to be successful and to survive, and the reality is all you need is a best friend and a bike and a hell of a lot of gumption. So that’s Paul Stanko’s esoteric and philosophical answer, that was the burden of life that we left behind.
Benda: That’s how I wrote it of course.

“Raw” and “Unflinching” get thrown around in coming-of-age film descriptions all the time, but “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” truly captures the experience of teenage sexuality without shying away from anything.

The film is set in San Francisco in 1976 and follows 15-year-old Minnie (Bel Powley) as she explores her sexuality—beginning with an affair with her mother’s boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgard).

Minnie narrates the film through diary entries recorded on cassette tapes, with a straightforward tone that is set from the film’s opening line– “I had sex today.” Minnie holds nothing back in her thoughts or actions, she unabashedly states how much she likes sex and wonders aloud to her diary if Monroe happens to be masturbating to her at that very moment. While Minnie’s sexual exploration isn’t limited to her relationship with Monroe it’s clear that he’s the one she’s the most emotionally invested in.

The narration is enchantingly lyrical, perfectly capturing the angst and sexual frustration of being a teenager, and the cinematography brings life to the comics and sketches Minnie expresses herself through. Since the film is told in Minnie’s own voice there’s no judgment placed on her choices, making it the incredibly rare film that allows a teenage girl to be a sexual being without lasting negative repercussions. When, in one scene, Minnie and her best friend give strangers blow jobs for five dollars, no one pins a scarlet A on their chests. Instead, Minnie realizes she doesn’t like the feeling she’s left with afterwards and they decide not to do it again. Minnie’s sexual experimentations serve their purpose as learning experiences without having to come back to haunt her later on. Even when her affair with Monroe is discovered, despite her mother’s shock and anger there’s no lasting blame placed on Minnie. Instead, she’s given the space to realize on her own that she wants more than Monroe, and when the relationship ends it is with the sense that this is Minnie’s own choice.

Bel Powley’s performance is stunning. She holds nothing back in her portrayal of Minnie, leaving the audience with an image of a three dimensional teenage girl, who’s flawed and wonderful all at once.

The Diary of A Teenage Girl hits theaters August 7, 2015

Written by: Phoebe Gloeckner & Marielle Heller

Directed by: Marielle Heller

Starring: Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgard, Kristen Wiig

Grade: A

Emily Ting’s name has shown up in movie credits as a producer for years, but it wasn’t until recently that she decided to take a stab at directing. In her directorial debut, “It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong,” Ting examines the concept of emotional cheating and the parameters that define exclusive relationships.

Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg star in the romantic indie flick, as Ruby and Josh.  Chung plays Ruby, an Asian American woman whose visit to Hong Kong is shaped by a random encounter she has while trying to meet up with her friends.  Greenberg portrays Josh, an American expat who leads Ruby on a seemingly romantic journey through the streets of Hong Kong. After spending the night getting to know each other and strolling through the cityscape, a miscommunication between the two sends them each on their own way, but it’s not the last time the universe puts them together.

“It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong,” premiered at the LA Film Fest on June 12th, and Hollywood Times Square got to sit down with Ting and the cast to discuss the film and the inspiration behind it.

So the film is pretty autobiographical, right?
Emily Ting: Yes so, on one level I am a toy designer so Ruby’s job is very much my day job and I was also able to plug a couple of my favorite toys, Justin Beaver and Moos Like Jagger. But in addition to just like having the same job, I channeled a lot of myself into the Ruby character in terms of what I was feeling when I was living in Hong Kong as an expat, you know the irony of being Asian, being a fish out of water in Asia, so all of that was very autobiographical. And you know on top of that the whole thing was inspired by a real life encounter. So there’s so much of me in this film for sure.

So how did you, Bryan and Jamie, get involved with the project?
Jamie Chung: Bryan worked with Emily on two different projects, I met Emily on one of the two that she was a producer on, and this is the way I remember the story, you [Bryan] tell it differently, but–
Bryan Greenberg: We’ll let Emily tell it
Ting: So we were at the Kitchen premiere in LA, and I was chatting with Bryan and he’s like ‘Oh are you working on anything new’, ‘Well yeah I have this script about this Asian girl who goes to Asia and its like an interracial love story,’ and Bryan’s like, ‘Did you know my girlfriend’s Asian?’ I was like ‘Yeah I think I do,’ so I did that very like sly Hollywood thing like, ‘Do you mind passing the script along to Jamie.’
Chung: See!
Ting: But that’s only because it was written as a British expat originally, but then when I sent it to him I said ‘Look, if you guys wanna do it together, its so easy to re-write the part’, and to cast a real live couple, that would be the dream.
Greenberg: I guess we’re both right.
Ting: It’s a dream come true to be able to work with a real life couple. Like I know its difficult for you guys, but for me as a director I’m like, ‘Oh they already love each other,’ like they don’t have to pretend to be falling in love because when you’re making a romance chemistry is like the biggest factor, and you can’t engineer chemistry you either have it or you don’t. They clearly have it cause they’re getting married, so for me I just like turned the camera on and they just exuded so much chemistry it was like ‘Oh my god this is like rom-com gold.’
Greenberg: And the first time we read it, when she gave us the script we just read it because we were like ‘I dunno, I don’t even know if she can write’, because I’ve only worked with her as a producer.
Ting: You were reading it as a favor.
Greenberg: We’re like, ‘Let’s just read it, lets just read it out loud and then we’ll know what to tell her.’ And honestly we were like, this script is good, like we loved the concept, the dialogue was really smart and the characters were refreshing, the setting was refreshing and interesting and real and honestly, I think Jamie is an unbelievable actress and shes never really gotten the chance to be like this romantic lead. She always talks about like ‘Man I really wanna do one’ so I was just really excited for Jamie to really get chance to shine because I think she’s so good in this movie, so charismatic, and audiences haven’t seen that side of her so it was really an honor to be able to work with her and see her. She’s so good in this movie.

What I loved about it is like, in other romances they kind of fast forward through the part where they’re actually falling in love until they get to a conflict or something, but the whole movie is just you guys, and the moments that make you fall in love with each other.
Chung: I really do think the hardest part about this film wasn’t anything towards the ending, like the second act was easy for me personally, you know emotionally but the hardest part was unknowing each other, that moment when they first meet. I do think there still is like a hint of familiarity, you know what I mean? But I think that was the most challenging part.
Greenberg: Yeah we got separate hotel rooms.

Did you? I was going to ask!
Greenberg: Yeah no, we stayed in different rooms.
Chung: He was totally fighting it in the beginning. But he was like, ‘This was actually a good idea.’
Greenberg: I didn’t want that! I was like ‘What, we’re going to Hong Kong together and you wanna get separate rooms?’ That sucks!
Chung: But I looked at it as like, we’re working 12 hours.
Greenberg: And she was right, because honestly we needed a break.
Chung: I don’t know any couple who works together and then goes home.
Greenberg: And it was a rough shoot because it was hot, and we were shooting on location, and it was hot.
Ting: Did he mention it was hot?
Greenberg: And you know with the crew, not everyone spoke English, not everyone spoke Cantonese so it was not the easiest shoot, so it was nice to have a little downtime. And maybe it did build the chemistry a little bit.

When you guys were acting were there moments where you forgot it was supposed to be Ruby and Josh and it just felt like Bryan and Jamie?
Ting: I will say in the Temple Street Market there were definitely moments where you were like ‘Hey Bryan, look at this!’
Chung: Oh I know! And I was like ‘Oh shoot are using sound?’ But that moment was like, literally us, like we were trying to shop.
Greenberg Yea, that was cool because she would just let us go and we were improv-ing a lot
Ting: That was all improv.
Chung: The haggling part I am genuinely terrible at, but I was really trying to buy a selfie stick.
Greenberg: And you did, you bought that one.
Chung: I did, I bought it. I took it home.
Greenberg: It’s a little dated now ‘cause selfie sticks are so big.
Chung: But back then you could only get it in Asia.

Another thing I really loved about the film was how it plays with time, and even in the title obviously, the film is concerned with timing, were there ever moments where you tried to intentionally play with the time or did you just let the pace of the city do that for you?
Chung: It was super intentional, you were like ‘Jamie needs a watch, you need to be looking at it.’
Ting: Because the whole thing takes place over the course of two nights and we shot it over two weeks,  [we needed] to keep everything consistent throughout like this is one night. And the thing with shooting everything exterior in the start of typhoon season is that you can’t control the weather. And it rained every single day that we were there but somehow when we would roll cameras it would stop.
Greenberg: Well we had a blessing ceremony
Ting: We did! We slaughtered a pig.
Chung: We didn’t slaughter the pig
Ting: The pig was already slaughtered.
Chung:: We ate the pig.
Greenberg: So you know you show up on set and usually you get your call sheet and its like where you have to be for rehearsal, and then we got the call sheet and its like ‘Okay you have the blessing ceremony’, and we were like ‘what?’ And this is something that they do for every film, it’s a blessing ceremony ceremony with this pig–
Ting: That’s slaughtered beforehand, and roasted, and then we get it.
Greenberg: It was a very interesting experience but apparently it worked ‘cause it did not rain.

What are you guys working on next? Do you have any upcoming projects?
Chung: Do we? You [Bryan] have some stuff in the works that you cant really talk about. I have some stuff that I don’t wanna jinx. We have Flock of Dudes at the LA Film Festival, and he just put out an album.
Greenberg: Yeah I just put out an album two weeks ago called Everything Changes, yeah I’ve got a couple things in development.
Ting: I have a couple scripts that I’ve been attached to to direct that we’re trying to go out to cast soon and find financing, but I feel like wuth a lot of these indie projects, they’re not real until you have money so there’s almost no point talking about it. We’ll see what happens.