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Steve Loff

News

Steve Loff

‘Caper’ Trailer: Friends Embark on an All-Night Odyssey to Fix a Sexting Mishap in SXSW Premiere
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There’s still one week left in Oscar season, but the film calendar waits for nobody. Days after Hollywood descends upon the Dolby Theater to see who emerges victorious from this year’s awards race, the independent film world will turn its attention to Austin when the 2025 SXSW Film and TV festival kicks off next week. The lineup is filled with major premieres, from headliners starring A-list talent to indies that could serve as launchpads for the next wave of exciting voices.

One of those films looking to make its mark on festivalgoers is Dean Imperial’s “Caper,” for which IndieWire can exclusively debut the trailer. A comedy about all of the opportunities that technology creates for men to misbehave, the sex comedy follows a group of friends who spend a night trying to ensure their gross private communications don’t bring down their careers by falling into the wrong hands.
See full article at Indiewire
  • 2/25/2025
  • by Christian Zilko
  • Indiewire
“How Would Frederick Wiseman Order This Procession of Images?”: Making Robert Kolodny’s The Featherweight
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Robert Kolodny’s Venice-premiering The Featherweight is the dramatic story of real-life boxer Willie Pep as he exits retirement to attempt a comeback in the ring — all as he’s shadowed by a documentary crew. The film’s action occurs two decades after Pep’s 1940s heyday, with Kolodny and his team, who include producer and screenwriter Steve Loff and editor Robert Greene, convincingly replicating the look and rhythms of 1960s verite documentary to meditate on both the past as well as the boxing film’s durability in the present. Wrote The New Yorker’s Richard Brody in his review, “It’s an instant classic of […]

The post “How Would Frederick Wiseman Order This Procession of Images?”: Making Robert Kolodny’s The Featherweight first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
See full article at Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
  • 9/28/2024
  • by Scott Macaulay
  • Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
“How Would Frederick Wiseman Order This Procession of Images?”: Making Robert Kolodny’s The Featherweight
Image
Robert Kolodny’s Venice-premiering The Featherweight is the dramatic story of real-life boxer Willie Pep as he exits retirement to attempt a comeback in the ring — all as he’s shadowed by a documentary crew. The film’s action occurs two decades after Pep’s 1940s heyday, with Kolodny and his team, who include producer and screenwriter Steve Loff and editor Robert Greene, convincingly replicating the look and rhythms of 1960s verite documentary to meditate on both the past as well as the boxing film’s durability in the present. Wrote The New Yorker’s Richard Brody in his review, “It’s an instant classic of […]

The post “How Would Frederick Wiseman Order This Procession of Images?”: Making Robert Kolodny’s The Featherweight first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
See full article at Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
  • 9/28/2024
  • by Scott Macaulay
  • Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The Featherweight (2023)
The Featherweight Review | An Artistic Boxing Drama About Willie Pep
The Featherweight (2023)
The Featherweight follows retired boxer Willie Pep as he tries to mount a career comeback while wrestling with a plethora of family and financial issues in 1964 Hartford, Connecticut. Shot in a pseudo-documentary, cinema verit style on grainy 16Mm stock, the characters break the fourth wall and speak directly to the camera as the plot unfolds. Director Robert Kolodny deserves top marks for creative filmmaking in his debut feature. He expertly recreates Pep's matches while intercutting classic newsreel footage and staged reaction shots. This slice of life perspective and an engaging ensemble keeps your attention span as a predictable narrative wears thin.

James Madio, forever immortalized as "Don't Ask" in Steven Spielberg's Hook as a child actor, stars as the loquacious and headstrong Pep, who won 229 fights, held the featherweight championship twice, and is widely considered as one of the greatest boxers of all time. We're introduced to the 42-year-old...
See full article at MovieWeb
  • 9/26/2024
  • by Julian Roman
  • MovieWeb
‘Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story’, Sundance Winner ‘In The Summers’ & Willie Pep Biopic Hit Theaters – Specialty Preview
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Fathom Events and Warner Bros.’ DC Studios are blasting off documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, a favorite from Sundance, and Music Box has the festival’s Grand Jury Prize-winner In The Summers among a handful of solid new release including The Featherweight about boxer Willie Pep, and Who’s Afraid Of Nathan Law? a doc following the heroic Hong Kong student activist.

DC, HBO Documentary Films and CNN Films acquired Super/Man out of the festival. It will debut in cinemas across the U.S. on Saturday with an encore presentation Sept. 25, Reeve’s birthday. Reeve’s definitive portrayal of Clark Kent/Superman over four films set the benchmark for the superhero cinematic universes that dominate cinema today. Warner is the home of Superman and the films that shot the unknown actor to stardom before a tragic horseback riding accident left him a quadriplegic dependent on a ventilator to breathe.
See full article at Deadline Film + TV
  • 9/20/2024
  • by Jill Goldsmith
  • Deadline Film + TV
James Madio
Thinking inside the box by Paul Risker
James Madio
James Madio and Ruby Wolf in The Featherweight Photo: courtesy of Pep Films LLC

Director Robert Kolodny's The Featherweight, written by Steve Loff, chronicles a brief period in the life of Italian-American boxer Willie Pep, played by James Madio. Set in mid-1960s Connecticut, Pep, the winningest fighter in boxing history, finds his personal life in tatters. Married to aspiring actress Linda Papaleo (Ruby Wolf), who is half his age, with a drug-addled son and financial pressures, Pep decides, now in his mid-forties, to come out of retirement and make a surprise return to the ring. Utilising an "observational nonfiction" approach, Kolodny and Loff set up the premise of a documentary crew following Pep around, giving an intimate view of his world as he prepares for his comeback.

James Madio in The Featherweight Photo: courtesy of Pep Films LLC

The Featherweight is a film of firsts - the feature...
See full article at eyeforfilm.co.uk
  • 9/20/2024
  • by Paul Risker
  • eyeforfilm.co.uk
‘The Featherweight’ Review: Lovingly Textured Faux-Documentary Charts a Champion’s Slide Into the Shadows
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An Emmy-nominated documentary cinematographer with credits including “Procession” and “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Robert Kolodny puts his expert eye for shooting nonfiction to playful narrative use in his feature directing debut “The Featherweight.” A meticulously designed, gutsily played biopic of world champion featherweight boxer Guglielmo Papaleo, better known as Willie Pep — covering not his 1940s glory days but his faltering attempt at a comeback two decades later — the film is convincingly fashioned as a candid all-access documentary, a promotional puff piece curdling before our eyes into an unintended study of mental breakdown.

So convincingly, in fact, that uninformed viewers chancing upon “The Featherweight” on the festival circuit may wonder exactly what it is they’re watching, not least if — in a realization of Pep’s own glumly stated fears — they have no idea who this once-celebrated sportsman was. Kolodny puts nary a foot wrong in his precise replication...
See full article at Variety Film + TV
  • 9/20/2023
  • by Guy Lodge
  • Variety Film + TV
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‘The Featherweight’ Review: A Poetic Tribute to Boxing Champion Willie Pep
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There’s a story that Willie Pep, the protagonist of Robert Kolodny’s feature debut The Featherweight, likes to tell. It’s about a match with a kid, who, so awed by the boxing champion, asks for an autograph. The request flummoxes Willie. “I say, ‘Kid, get away from me, we’re boxing tonight. What are people going to think?’” The crowd came to see a fight, he reminds the junior. They need to put on a show.

As Willie (played by James Madio) talks about this moment, he gesticulates and pulls his audience — a small group of friends — to play supporting roles. It’s clear why the boxer likes to recount this tale. Nostalgia tempts him. It directs his moods, prompts his long monologues and drives Willie, at age 42, to stage a comeback.

The Featherweight is a fictionalized account of the real-life two-time featherweight champion’s attempts to get back in the ring.
See full article at The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
  • 9/3/2023
  • by Lovia Gyarkye
  • The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and Singapore’s Golden Ratio Producing ‘Pep’ Boxing Biopic
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Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way Productions has teamed with Singapore’s Golden Ratio Films and Canada’s Blisspoint Entertainment to shoot “Pep,” a biopic of legendary mid-20th century featherweight boxer Willie Pep.

The film is poised to begin production in Hartford, Connecticut, Pep’s home-state, with Robert Kolodny directing from a screenplay by Steve Loff.

Pep, born Guglielmo Papaleo, had an extraordinarily long career spanning 26 years and nearly 2,000 rounds as a professional. Set in 1965, the film charts one of Pep’s comebacks, as he finds himself riddled with debt while supporting a wife half his age and a drug addict son in a single-family home.

“Band of Brothers” actor James Madio stars in the title role as Pep, alongside co-stars Keir Gilchrist (“Atypical”) who will play the role of Pep’s son, Billy Jr., and Ron Livingston (“Office Space”) as Pep’s business manager, Bob Kaplan. No female leads have yet been confirmed.
See full article at Variety Film + TV
  • 10/14/2021
  • by Patrick Frater
  • Variety Film + TV
Willie Pep Boxing Biopic Starring James Madio, Keir Gilchrist & Ron Livingston Set To Enter The Ring
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Exclusive: Willie Pep biopic Pep, starring James Madio (Band of Brothers), Keir Gilchrist (Atypical) and Ron Livingston (Office Space), will go before cameras next month, in the famed boxer’s hometown of Hartford, Ct.

Robert Kolodny (the cinematographer behind Netflix’s Procession) is directing the film from a script by Steve Loff, with Madio starring as the featherweight champion who was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990.

Pep is roundly considered one of the greatest fighters of all time. He knocked plenty of opponents out, but was brilliant defensively. The latter helped, given Pep fought professionally over 200 times over 26 years. Legend has it that he won the third round of his 1946 bout against Jackie Graves without throwing a single punch.

The sports drama picks up with Pep in 1965, after the limelight has faded. Living with his Italian immigrant parents, a wife half his age and a drug-addled...
See full article at Deadline Film + TV
  • 9/29/2021
  • by Matt Grobar
  • Deadline Film + TV
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