We're just over six weeks away from the Sundance Film Festival, and it's shaping up to be a fun fest. I love film festivals, and thankfully, haven't yet gotten so jaded that I don't get excited when fest lineups are announced (seriously, if I ever get to the point that I'm not excited about the possibility of finding a wonderful film or two a fest, someone please just shoot me and put me out of my misery). We've already told you about the competition films and the Midnight offerings, which Scott Weinberg will be covering extensively for us at Sundance, once he recovers from his deep disappointment at the lack of horror there this year.
Now it's time to unwrap the big, shiny packages labled "Premiere", "Spectrum" and "New Frontier" and take a peek at what's inside ...
I speak of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival "Park City at Midnight" selections. In previous year the PCM program introduced me to the wonderful horrors of The Descent, Hard Candy, High Tension, May, Saw and Three Extremes.... But next year's line-up seems alarmingly short on the scary stuff. Obviously I cannot make any judgments about the program before I see the films, but going only on the genres and the plot synopses, it seems that next January's Midnight picks are much more comedic in nature. Well, comedies and general weird stuff is what it looks like. Here's the breakdown:
Fido -- Andrew Currie's "Romero meets Sirk" farce earned a small amount of positive buzz at Toronto, which is where James and I sat together and had a really good time with the flick. (Kim liked it too!) Lionsgate is currently preparing a release date for the film, but now we know why they were taking their time on that front.
The Signal -- "A mysterious signal is being transmitted from all media devices in the city of Terminus, provoking murder and madness within the psyches of its inhabitants." Sounds promising. And check out the trailer!
Sk8 Life -- Apparently it's a Can8ian indie about a bunch of sk8ers who band together to save their beloved hangout from dem0lition.
Smiley Face -- Anna Faris stars as a girl who eats some crazy pot brownies and has a day full of wacky Araki misadventures. And check out the cast!
The Ten -- Some of the old State members got together to do a comedy anthology based on The Ten Commandments. Again, the cast is absolutely jam-packed with colorful folks.
We Are the Strange -- Apaprently someone called it "Monsters Inc. meets The Nightmare Before Christmas inside of a retro Japanese video game." Hmm, OK. The trailer certainly promises something ... yeah, strange.
So there's one I've seen already, two promising comedies, an animated brain-twister, an indie that uses 8s instead of As, another piece of brain-rust from Crispin Glover ... and a Gregg Araki ensemble comedy? Which leaves The Signal as my one small beacon of late-night horror. Ah well, a cool-looking line-up all the same, even if it's not as blood-drenched as I'd hoped it would be. (Plus there's always a few genre titles mixed in amidst the more "highbrow" programs.)
I've become something of a Nick Broomfield junky lately. Thanks to Michael Moore, I had otherwise become averse to documentary filmmakers who appear in their work, but Broomfield has charmed me unlike anyone else (save for maybe Ross McElwee), and so I make an exception for his work. Years ago, when Jon Ronson discussed these filmmakers, whom he calls "Les Nouvelles Égotistes" in Sight and Sound, he called this charm "faux-naïfery," but regardless of how genuine Broomfield is, he is always entertaining and he is always a curious and primarily objective journalist. Comparatively, he is more focused than McElwee and less rabble rousing than Moore. The fact that Broomfield's new doc, Ghosts, has been picked to screen at Sundance in January, has me very sorry that I won't be making it to the festival this year.
My appreciation for Broomfield may fall some in the future, though, if news of his next project has any validity to it. The North County Times has mentioned a casting call for a film being credited to Broomfield to be made about the Iraq War experience. This call is for members or veterans of any military branch who served in Iraq, and will be held in San Diego this Saturday and in Yuma, Arizona, this Sunday. Aside from my confusion over the story's reference to Broomfield as being "the maker of Jarheadand Fast and the Furious 3" and my slight problem with the use of the masculine term "servicemen", I have a major issue with the project as it is described. I don't mean my usual issue with the over-abundance of Iraq War vet docs being made, I mean some things stated in a telephone recording that I listened to after calling the film's casting hotline. An unprofessional-sounding woman stumbles through the recording and eventually gets to the point that the production is looking for real vets rather than actors because of a desire for improvisation based on real accounts. Oh, and she says that the film is scripted and that those picked for the film will be paid.
None of the information that I have found about this "documentary" seems to technically be descriptive of a non-fiction film. Does this mean that we should question all of Broomfield's previous films, which include Kurt & Coutney, Biggie and Tupac and two docs about Aileen Wuornos? Sure, you could say that no documentary should be taken as truth, but there is a good line between disbelief and distrust.
I am still waiting to hear from Broomfield's people to see if they confirm or deny this unfortunate report. Let's hope they can explain what this is all about.
Sundance Film Festival director Geoff Gilmore announced the lineup of films that will be screening at the 2007 festival today, and said that choosing the 64 films that will appear in the four competition categories (dramatic, documentary, world cinema dramatic and world cinema documentary) was harder this year than ever before. While that's a bit like someone saying "You guys are the best crowd ever!" they definitely did have more films to choose from for the same number of slots, so who can blame him? They received 3,287 films for consideration this year, the most in the festival's 39-year history.
122 total films were chosen (not all of them screen in competition), and 82 of them will be world premieres. That's a heck of a lot of movies over two weeks. If you've ever attended Sundance in the past, then you know how difficult it is to get tickets. Passes are expensive and sell out quickly (in fact, only one level of pass is currently left, the $2500 Express Pass-B), however individual tickets will go on sale the week of January 9. You can pre-register right now through January 4 on the Sundance FIlm Festival website to receive a random, lottery-style time that will allow you to log in and purchase tickets that week.
Sundance is one of my favorite film festivals because of the sheer volume and variety of films that you are able to pick and choose from. Plus it's a chance to meet the filmmakers, other film lovers, and to experience it in beautiful Park City, Utah. The last two years that I've gone it was with minimum preparation and usually as a last-minute decision, but I've still managed to see at least 15 films in about five days each time. It's well worth the trip and enduring the cold to step out of your own world and into a creative environment, if just for a little while.
You can download a PDF file of all the 2007 Sundance Film Festival selections here. The festival runs from January 18th through the 28th -- time to start picking and choosing!
Maggie Gyllenhaal is my type of actress. I started following her when she was an ever-lovable Satanist make-up artist in Cecil B. Demented. The film inspired me to make my only memorabilia purchase, fighting tooth and nail on eBay for her character's eyelash curler, beating out a girl who ultimately decided her money would be better spent on the branding iron she actually wanted to use. Since then, Gyllenhaal has picked some great films, has been forgiven for the not-so-great, and is now a two-time best actress winner, scoring the Best Actress prize at the Stockholm Film Festival.
Maggie received the top prize for her portrayal of Sherry Swanson in Sherrybaby, a film by Laurie Collyer that Jeffrey M. Anderson reports also grabbed the Best Film award from the jury. These aren't the first bits of praise to come for the film. Our own Kim Voynar gave a great review earlier this year during Sundance, and it gained nominations both there and at the Gotham Awards. Sherrybaby, in short, is the story of a woman trying to reconnect with her daughter after a prison sentence. However, it's also an incredibly serious and heart-wrenching film that made the Sundance Q&A a river of tears.
This just could be Maggie's ticket to an Oscar, although anything is possible in a ceremony that raises Brockovich above Burstyn. Nevertheless, I think it's safe to say that she's got a long career ahead of her. She's on a steady train forward, which isn't stopping for elevator shenanigans and party girl diversions.
Animated movies still haven't fully made the transition from family oriented fare to a more "adult" state of mind. The New York TimesprofiledBrett Morgan's (The Kid Stays in The Picture) Chicago 10, an animated documentary that tells the story of the infamous 1969 trial of the Chicago Seven as possibly the next step in animated films.
In 1968, eight student protest leaders and counter-culture figures were charged with conspiracy to incite violence at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Originally, the group was comprised of eight defendants including Abbie Hoffman,Jerry Rubin and Black Panther Party activist Bobby Seale -- Seale's case was later separated from the group. It took two years and a series of appeals for the seven defendants to finally be found not guilty of the charges. Morgan's film uses motion capture animation to re-create the events of the trial. He says, "I didn't want the film to be a valentine to the '60s. I didn't want to see a bunch of old men talking about how vibrant they were in their youth -- they'd be looking at their grandfathers." Morgan worked with original trial transcripts for the film with voices provided by Mark Ruffalo, Hank Azaria, and Nick Nolte
The news is good for Morgan, because there is already speculation of a bidding war when the film opens up the Sundance Film Festival. Set for a 2007 release, we'll have to see if Morgen can successfully blend his style of flashy animation with political commentary.
Being associated with Oscar is a very good thing indeed. Films that win an Academy Award (or many) will typically see a boost in ticket sales. Before that, the nomination alone benefits their box office performance. Now it appears that simply being shortlisted has its advantages, too. One day after the Academy released its narrowed-down list of feature documentary contenders, ThinkFilm announced they've picked up the rights to one of the films on that list. The company will distribute The Trials of Darryl Hunt, which was produced by HBO Films and directed by Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg. The doc premiered last January at Sundance and in April it won the audience award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.
It tells the story of Darryl Hunt, a black man who was tried and convicted for the rape and murder of white newspaper reporter Deborah Sykes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1984. Hunt was sentenced despite there being no physical evidence, simply off a testimonial given by a former Ku Klux Klan member. After ten years, in 1994, a DNA test cleared Hunt of the charges, yet he wasn't released from prison for another eight years.
The film would probably make for a good, though upsetting, double-header with the 2005 Sundance Special Jury Prize winner After Innocence, which examines the difficult process of re-entering society following, and despite, being exonerated. Unfortunately, such a double-header will likely never happen on television, since After Innocence was produced by HBO competitor Showtime. After Innocence was also shortlisted for the doc feature Oscar last fall, but didn't garner a nomination. Still, it did okay in limited release and gets occasional play on Showtime (including this Thursday morning). The Trials of Darryl Hunt, which was set to premiere on HBO sometime in 2007, will now get a theatrical and DVD release courtesy of ThinkFilm.
Do we need another documentary about the 1968 Democratic National Convention? More importantly, after almost 40 years, do we need even one film about that turbulent week in August? The answer to both questions is, yes. The thing is, aside from Medium Cool, which is only part-documentary, I can't think of any docs that actually focus specifically on the convention and the infamous protests/riots that ensued in Chicago at the time (that doesn't mean there are none). And as far as the significance and relevancy of such a film, well, in my opinion it could serve us an inspiration for young people looking to take action in 2008.
Anyway, there is a new film about the DNC, and it is called Chicago 10. The doc, which was directed by Brett Morgen, has just been announced as the opening film for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. It may seem strange for a nonfiction film to kickoff the fest, but it isn't the first time. In 2004, Stacy Peralta'sRiding Giants was the opener.
Chicago 10 reportedly tells the story of the DNC protests thoroughly, including the courtroom trial of the "Chicago 7" a year later, using an innovative style combining animation, archival footage and interviews. The film will also feature music from the period as well as revolutionary music of today, which is likely meant to parallel the current political atmosphere with that of the late 1960s.
The rest of the Sundance line up will be announced after the Thanksgiving weekend.
In an attempt to make it seem as if they're once again revolutionizing indie filmmaking, The Sundance Institute and Robert Redford announced today at a press conference in New York a new program called The Global Short Film Project. What's happening is The Sundance Film Festival has teamed up with GSMA (described as "an association of mobile phone service providers") and commissioned six independent filmmakers (all of whom have presented work at the Sundance fest in the past) to create short films specifically designed to play on cell phones. Heck yeah, Sundance has officially gone mobile, folks!
The filmmakers involved are Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow), Maria Maggenti (Puccini for Beginners), Cory McAbee (The American Astronaut) and Jody Hill (The Foot Fist Way). The films will premiere at the 3GSM World Congress (which appears to be some sort of gigantic mobile orgy) in Barcelona this February. Following the event, they will most likely be made available to download on your phone. However, more details will be announced as the Sundance fest draws closer. We're not sure what Redford intends to do with this new project (aside from obtaining a ton of free minutes from his cell phone provider), but here's hoping The Reeler's frightening prediction of a "Mobile Phone Auteur Lab" does not come true. Even if its description as a "rigorous series of workshops dedicated to expertly lighting and framing your drunk, passed out friends for future laughs and/or blackmail" would be a hilarious scenario to poke fun at. Ahh, Redford -- what will he come up with next?
If you feel like you've been hearing a lot of news lately about movie distribution deals, that's because the annual American Film Market (AFM) has been going on in Santa Monica for the past week. The AFM website claims that more than $800 million in deals are made every year at the industry event. Three more distribution deals have just been announced:
The Weinstein Company bought the U.S. distribution rights to Death Defying Acts, a feature about the life of illusionist Harry Houdini. Perhaps the recent success of The Prestige and The Illusionist inspired the deal. The film is directed by Gillian Armstrong and stars Guy Pearce as Houdini, who becomes involved with a psychic played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. One of the writers is Tony Grisoni, whose writing credits include Brothers of the Head, Tideland, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Armstrong is good at turning a biography into an interesting movie, as with My Brilliant Career, and the combination of her direction and Grisoni's writing has suddenly made me twice as interested as I would normally be in a film about Houdini. (Okay, Guy Pearce was also an influence.) TWC intends to premiere the film at Cannes in 2007.
Palm Pictures picked up the North American rights to distribute Solo Dios Sabe (Only God Knows), a Brazilian drama that debuted at Sundance earlier this year. Palm plans to release the film in theaters in early 2007. The film stars Alice Braga (City of God) and Diego Luna (Y Tu Mama Tambien) as a Brazilian student and Mexican journalist travelling together.
Strand Releasing acquired the North American rights to White Palms, a Hungarian movie about young gymnasts. The movie is Hungary's entry in the Academy Awards' Foreign Language Film category for 2006. Strand is apparently betting the movie will make the cut to the final Oscar nominations and subsequently garner more publicity. White Palms sounds fascinating to me, as it contrasts Eastern European and North American methods of training young athletes in gymnatics. I'm looking forward to the chance to see the film.
It is going to be tough for awhile, looking up at the Trustposter on my wall. For as big a fan of Hal Hartley's films as I am, I was taken aback by the news this morning that actress Adrienne Shelley, who starred in Hartley's films The Unbelievable Truth and, of course, Trust, was found dead in her office on Wednesday evening. The cause of death is still unknown, even after an autopsy was performed Thursday, though police are awaiting more results from that autopsy.
I always thought of Shelly as an important part of the New York independent film scene, not just for her Hartley roles, which were her first, but also because she never really broke into Hollywood despite all the buzz she received in the early '90s. She called New York home and even titled her first directorial feature Sudden Manhattan. Her second film, I'll Take You There won her a best director award at the U.S. Comedy Festival, and her third, Waitress, which stars Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion, just recently finished shooting. As far as acting, she'd recently appeared in Factotum, but she was more interested in focusing on writing and directing, and taking care of her 3-year-old daughter. It is unfortunate that we'll never get to see how successful her filmmaking career could have been.
Shelly was waiting to hear whether or not Waitress would screen at Sundance in January when she died. I'd like to suggest that the festival not only give the film a slot, but also give her a special tribute of some kind as well.
I knew I should have caught Alpha Dog at Sundance. If it feels like we've reported more on the controversy surrounding the film than on the film itself, well, we probably have. While the movie was filming, Jesse James Hollywood, otherwise solid citizen who just happened --oops! -- to end up on the FBIs Most Wanted List as the suspected ringleader in the kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz, was tracked down in Brazil. Hollywood is fictitiously portrayed in the film by Emile Hirsh. Hollywood, living up to his name, promptly made headlines for considering legal action to stop the film's distribution on the grounds that it might portray him in a negative light. I don't know about you, but I hate it when I kidnap and murder someone and then people take that the wrong way.
Then there was the whole drama around distrib, with New Line wanting to roll the film out slowly, and director Nick Cassavetes wanting the big-time treatment any film starring Justin Timberlake surely deserves, and taking the film to Universal instead. Now, just a little over a week after the full trailer for the film was released, comes word that one of Hollywood's attorneys last Friday filed a lawsuit against Universal in federal court, seeking a court order that the film not be released until after Hollywood's trial.
The suit raises interesting legal questions, pitting Hollywood's right to a fair trial squarely against the First Amendment. Lawyers of murder defendants have tried unsuccessfully in the past to block made-for-television films from airing before their client's trials. Heck, you'd think Hollywood would be grateful -- O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers only had made-for-tv movies to complain about; his is getting a theatrical release starring a former boy-band frontman. Geez. Hollywood's attorney, James Blatt, says, "I've seen this movie, and it depicts Mr. Hollywood in an extremely negative light." Well, duh. Would you expect a film about the murder and kidnapping of a teenager to portray the alleged bad guys as misunderstood Boy Scouts? Hollywood and his attorney might worry more about the actual quality of the film -- it didn't get glowing reviews at Sundance.
What do you think about all this controversy around Alpha Dog? Does it make you want to see the film that much more? Chances are good you'll still get to see it in early 2007; it's pretty unlikely that a federal judge is going to block it. But how do you feel about movies being made about murder cases that haven't gone to trial yet? If Alpha Dog does, in fact, create the impression that Hollywood isn't a good guy, is that unfairly judging him before his trial, effectively painting him as guilty without benefit of a trial?
I know I sound like my dad, but when I was a kid, music and buzz about music couldn't move at the speed of light, via music blogs, MP3s and filesharing; it moved from town to town in photocopied 'zines, 45's, and gear-crammed Ford Econoline vans that smelled like dude. American Hardcore, adocumentary by Paul Rachman based on the book by Steven Blush, revisits that time, and celebrates it through a rag-tag mix of old, blurry footage, new, slightly blurry interviews and loud, fast music. Specifically, American Hardcore is subtitled "The History of American Punk Rock 1980-1986," and offers an interesting counter-timeline for the early '80s. History, they say, is written by the winners; American Hardcore offers a few chapters from people who were, in fact, proud to be 'losers,' then and now, if that was defined by being set against the mainstream of consumerism and conformity.
American Hardcore isn't the most polished documentary you've ever seen -- there are plenty of interviews where the microphone cord sticks out on the subject's shirts like an undone zipper, or a spoken phrase is mixed with the huff and bluster of the wind. But then again, punk rock was never about sonic perfection: It was (and is) about emotional intensity, and American Hardcore has that in van loads, and delivers with onetwothreefour! power. All the usual suspects are interviewed here -- Henry Rollins of Black Flag, Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat, Greg Hetson of The Circle Jerks -- but there are also interviews with more marginal figures (or, more precisely, figures on the margins of the margins) like Vic Bondi of Articles of Faith, who sums up Hardcore's response to the Reagan era: "Everyone was saying it was 'Morning in America'; someone had to say 'It's fucking midnight!" In fact, the interviews are strong enough that Rachman wisely forgoes a narrator (And who would you get to narrate this film, anyhow? It's not really a gig for Morgan Freeman) and relies instead on the people who were there, the old VHS tapes plundered from some closet and a few wisely-chosen video graphics.
Los Angeles, as any filmmaker can tell you, can be a tough town for independent films. We love independent film here at Cinematical, and so we will do our part to make sure film fans on the left coast know when good indie films are opening near them. This weekend there are (at least) two indie films with West Coast openings.
Man Push Cart, which is going into its third week in New York City with strong per screen numbers, opens today in Los Angeles and Pasadena at Laemmle Theaters and at the Fallbrook 7 in West Hills. Man Push Cart, directed by Ramin Bahrani and starring promising newcomer Ahmad Razvi, tells the tale of a former Pakistani pop star who sells coffee and donuts out of a NYC push cart to make a living. This beautifully understated film was one of my favorites at Sundance earlier this year, and was also a fave of Roger Ebert, who liked the film so much he featured it at his own Overlooked Film Festival. If you're in NYC, the film moves this weekend from the Angelika to Village East Cinemas.
Also opening on the West Coast this weekend in Los Angeles and San Francisco is Georgia Lee's Red Doors, a film about a dysfunctional Chinese-American family whose patriarch is struggling to find meaning in life following his own retirement, and his daughters growing up. Lee and her producers financed this film themselves rather than compromise with studios on having the family be Asian-American and having one of the daughters have a lesbian romance, and they have worked overtime to market their film at the grassroots level on a tiny indie-film budget. There will be two premiere parties for the film this weekend: In San Fran, the party will be at Thai Stick tonight, and in Los Angeles there will be a party at Garden of Eden on Saturday. The cast and filmmakers will be attending screenings and doing post-show Q&As throughout opening weekend as well.
Red Doors will play in San Fran at The Clay Theater; in Los Angeles at The Music Hall, The Pasadena Playhouse, and The Encino Town Center; and is still playing New York at The Village East Cinemas. Need more info, or want to bring a whole group along? Check out the film's website.
If you go see either film, come back and let us know what you thought about them!
Remakes are always defended in ways that make the general public appear as idiots. Old films are remade because people don't remember, foreign films are remade because people don't like to read subtitles and documentaries are remade because they teach us stuff. But any documentary that can be remade as a dramatic feature is different from docs that just teach us stuff. They already have an engaging narrative and interesting characters -- otherwise producers wouldn't see the remake potential. Rather than finding new ways to market enjoyable docs to moviegoers, I guess it's easier to do the remake, so filmmakers have an easy movie to make and sell, therefore providing two films to be profited on.
I guess the reason that I'm even more angry this time is because Murderball, which has inspired an upcoming project for director James Mangold, is probably the most entertaining, most easily accessible documentary that has ever existed. Sure it teaches us stuff, but it's also hilarious, action-packed and feel-good. Besides, nobody could play lead murderball (aka wheelchair rugby) player Mark Zupan in a way that would better his own appearance in the Oscar-nominated, Sundance-winning doc. Certainly not Eminem, who expressed an interest last year.
Well, wow. That's pretty disappointing.
I've become something of a 
Maggie Gyllenhaal is my type of actress. I started following her when she was an ever-lovable Satanist make-up artist in 
Animated movies still haven't fully made the transition from family oriented fare to a more "adult" state of mind. The New York Times 
Being associated with Oscar is a very good thing indeed. Films that win an Academy Award (or many) will typically see a boost in ticket sales. Before that, the nomination alone benefits their box office performance. Now it appears that simply being shortlisted has its advantages, too. One day after the Academy released 
Do we need another documentary about the 1968 Democratic National Convention? More importantly, after almost 40 years, do we need even one film about that turbulent week in August? The answer to both questions is, yes. The thing is, aside from 
In an attempt to make it seem as if they're once again revolutionizing indie filmmaking, The Sundance Institute and 
If you feel like you've been hearing a lot of news lately about movie distribution deals, that's because the annual American Film Market (AFM) has been going on in Santa Monica for the past week. The 
It is going to be tough for awhile, looking up at the 
I knew I should have caught 
Los Angeles, as any filmmaker can tell you, can be a tough town for independent films. We love independent film here at Cinematical, and so we will do our part to make sure film fans on the left coast know when good indie films are opening near them. This weekend there are (at least) two indie films with West Coast openings. 
Remakes are always defended in ways that make the general public appear as idiots. Old films are remade because people don't remember, foreign films are remade because people don't like to read subtitles and documentaries are remade because they teach us stuff. But any documentary that can be remade as a dramatic feature is different from docs that just teach us stuff. They already have an engaging narrative and interesting characters -- otherwise producers wouldn't see the remake potential. Rather than finding new ways to market enjoyable docs to moviegoers, I guess it's easier to do the remake, so filmmakers have an easy movie to make and sell, therefore providing two films to be profited on. 
