LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Steven Soderbergh
built 655 days ago
Steven Soderbergh is a fan of the rock band Guided by Voices and its frontman Robert Pollard. Soderbergh wrote the foreword to the book Guided By Voices: A Brief History, Twenty-one Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll, written by James Greer. Pollard's song "Do Something Real" played over the Full Frontal credits and contributed six songs for his film Bubble.
Source:
Traveling far from the soap-bubble glamour of ''Ocean's Twelve,'' Steven Soderbergh proves himself, once again, to be among the most restless and inventive American filmmakers working today. ''Bubble,'' shot on high-definition video in a small town near the Ohio-West Virginia border, is a dour slice of realism with a lean, true-crime feel. Using a nonprofessional, local cast and a subtle, efficient script by Coleman Hough, Mr. Soderbergh constructs a tale of jealousy and claustrophobia involving three doll-factory workers. The drabness of their lives, and their inarticulateness, is perhaps a bit much, but the movie is absorbing and unnerving, and represents an admirable attempt on Mr. Soderbergh's part to shake off standard Hollywood clichés about provincial American life and use the movie camera to discover what -- and who -- is really out there. A.O. SCOTT
Source:
Steven Soderbergh has shown the ability in his films to look critically at social life, as well as individual desires and failings, including his own. The filmmaker was born in Georgia in 1963 and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Schizopolis is his fifth feature film and it represents something of a departure.
Source:
Traffic may end up being Soderbergh's best film. This hugely ambitious film (a remake of a celebrated mini-series) is multi-layered, ultra stylish (with a different filming approach and color scheme for each individual story thread), superbly acted and is one of the best explorations on the good and bad of the "war on drugs" ever made in any form. The film is harrowing, thrilling, surprisingly funny, wrenching and remarkably honest. Full of stand-out performances (Benicio Del Toro won an Oscar for his great turn) but the actors whose work stands out the most for me were Michael Douglas, Miguel Ferrar, Erika Christensen, Don Cheadle, Dennis Quaid, Amy Irving and a never-better Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Source:
Soderbergh is a more thoughtful and humane figure, a more serious artist, but he has not overcome the limitations of his time and social milieu. Or even, as far as one can tell, seriously attempted to, after his first few efforts. He conspicuously alternates between quasi-self-indulgent ‘personal’ works and blockbusters, as though cinema offered no other possibilities.
Source:
``Playful'' is not the usual word one might associate with Soderbergh, who runs to the somber and dark. But if Soderbergh had to repress a silly streak while making ``Kafka'' and ``The Underneath,'' here he's repressing nothing.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Steven Soderbergh