Indieville
August 2008 - Posts
The week on IFC.com: In praise of b-movie leads; "Lost"'s Ken Leung.
Fri, Aug 29 2008 4:31 PM
A round-up of what's been happening on the rest of IFC.com: + List: If the Slipper Fits... Five Cinderella Reinventions - Matt Singer on five more unconventional takes on the Cinderella story, from Leonardo da Vinci as the fairy godmother to a cell phone filling in for a lost slipper. + Interview: Ken Leung on "Year of the Fish" - The New York actor best known for his role on "Lost" talks about superstition, his Chinatown childhood, being an Asian-American actor and his new film "Year of the Fish." + Video: Impact Film Festival at the DNC - IFC's political correspondents check in with filmmakers Stuart Townsend (there with "Battle in Seattle"), Stefan Forbes ("Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story") and the director of the Impact Film Festival, which has just wrapped in Denver and now heads to St. Paul for the RNC. + On DVD: "Please Vote for Me,"...
In the works: John Lennon, the movie; "The Strangers 2: Strangerer."
Fri, Aug 29 2008 10:42 AM
There've already been two recent films about his assassin, so it seems to be time to take on the considerable challenge of the man himself -- Turner Prize-nominated artist Sam Taylor-Wood will make her directorial debut with John Lennon biopic "Nowhere Boy," written by "Control" screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh and apparently focusing on his early life. Here's hoping that, like "Control," the film ends up with an unknown playing its subject. [Hollywood Reporter] Rogue Pictures is working on a sequel to "The Strangers," with Liv Tyler expected to return, and general hopes it could become a "Saw"-style horror franchise. [Variety] indieWIRE's Eugene Hernandez paid a visit to some of the filmmakers shooting at the DNC, among them "Kurt Cobain About A Son"'s AJ Schnack, "A Lion In the House"'s Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, "We Are Together"'s Paul Taylor, "My Country, My Country"'s Laura Poitras, and "They Killed Sister Dorothy"'s Daniel...
Odds: "Slumdog Millionaire" finds a distributor, Todd Solondz makes a sequel.
Thu, Aug 28 2008 5:47 PM
Danny Boyle's new film "Slumdog Millionaire," a comedy about a Mumbai orphan who gets on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be A Millionaire?", was set to premiere at Toronto in distribution limbo after Warner Independent Pictures went away. No longer -- Fox Searchlight is partnering with Warner Bros. to give the film a theatrical release on November 28th. Meanwhile, at her blog at Variety, Anne Thompson writes that "One film that is negotiating a final distribution deal is Steven Soderbergh's four-hour-plus, two-part Che," and adds that "I'm betting that the film will wind up in the hands of 2929 Entertainment moguls Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, who backed Soderbergh's 2005 day-and-date experiment, Bubble." Todd Solondz, whose last film was back in 2004 -- "Palindromes" -- will be making "an untitled part-sequel, part-companion piece to his controversial dark comedy 'Happiness.' " [Variety] Manoel de Oliveira was heckled at the...
Timing is everything.
Thu, Aug 28 2008 5:23 PM
Mike Scott at New Orleans' Times-Picayune notes the impeccable taste Lionsgate is showing in releasing "Disaster Movie" on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, August 29th: Around these Katrina-scarred parts, Aug. 29 is still -- and will be for some time -- a black-armband kind of day. For Lionsgate studios, however, Aug. 29 isn't quite as sacred. For them, the third anniversary of the day the levees were breached and New Orleans slipped under is something on the order of perfect timing: a ripped-from-the-headlines release date for the big-screen, low-concept spoof "Disaster Movie." Oops. [Hat tip to Nikki Finke] Also in honor of the occasion, Slate's rerunning Josh Levin's unsparing piece on "Disaster Movie"'s spoof-specializing director-writer team Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer from earlier in the year, when "Meet the Spartans" graced theaters with its presence: Isn't it massive consumer fraud to charge $10.50 for a barely hour-long movie? Perhaps,...
"Kurt Russell is to the right of Attila the Hun."
Thu, Aug 28 2008 4:48 PM
Quotes from the interview circuit: "No one seems to mention that the President of the United States in Escape from New York is British! [Laughs] We made up some story about him being the love child of Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. That didn't make it into the movie because Kurt Russell is to the right of Attila the Hun. He actually doesn't think we should have to pay for roads--unbelievable. But we're friends because we respect each other's work ethic. He's a wonderful guy; I love him." --John Carpenter on political disillusionment at Time Out New York. "You know, at a certain point, especially in a movie like The Big Lebowski, you've got to think ahead. At a certain point, we had to sit down and say, 'All right. it's gotta be somebody's fucking toe.' And that was before we actually got to the scene that discloses it, but well...
Product placement.
Thu, Aug 28 2008 4:25 PM
There's an interesting piece at the Guardian from David Cox, who sees end times-signs in the fact that Shane Meadows' "Somers Town" (which, I know, enough already) was paid for by Eurostar: "A fateful Rubicon has been crossed," he declares. Meadows didn't extract money from Eurostar to facilitate a project of his own. He agreed to place his skills at the service of one of theirs. Of course, plenty of directors make commercials, and there's nothing wrong with that. Advertising tries to sell us something, and it doesn't pretend otherwise. Somers Town, however, carries no warning message, like the 'Advertorial' banner atop of every page of a sponsored newspaper supplement. Corporate authorship isn't acknowledged until the very last line of the credits, and then simply by the word 'Eurostar' attached to a copyright symbol in tiny type. For its £750,000 or so, the company bought not just an advertisement, but...
Telluride's quiet year.
Thu, Aug 28 2008 1:33 PM
The unique Telluride Film Festival, which (in)famously asks that you place your trust in it, purchase your pass and book inordinately expensive lodging in its small Colorado mountain town before ever knowing what films will be there, kicks off Friday, and has just announced its line-up. Due to the writers strike, this year's festival seems to be low on major premieres -- "Juno" and "Walk the Line" are among the films to have first screened there, though this year's sneak peeks are still a secret. Paul Schrader's "Adam Resurrected," a film about a circus performer (Jeff Goldblum) forced to perform for the head of a concentration camp, will premiere there, as will Tim Disney's "American Violet," a drama starring Will Patton and Tim Blake Nelson. Plenty of films from Cannes, including "The Good, The Bad and the Weird" and "O'Horten," are also in the line-up. Filmmakers David Fincher and Jan...
"Burn After Reading": The trades say yes! And no!
Wed, Aug 27 2008 1:58 PM
The early reviews of the Coens' "Burn After Reading," which opens the Venice Film Festival tonight, are out, and they're up, down and all over the place. Todd McCarthy at Variety thinks the film finds the brothers C retreating "to sophomoric snarky mode," bemoaning the fact that the "seriously talented cast has been asked to act like cartoon characters." The Coens' script, which feels immature but was evidently written around the same time as that for "No Country," is just too fundamentally silly, without the grounding of a serious substructure that would make the sudden turn to violence catch the viewer up short. Nothing about the project's execution inspires the feeling that this was ever intended as anything more than a lark, which would be fine if it were a good one. As it is, audience teeth-grinding sets in early and never lets up. Kirk Honeycutt at the Hollywood Reporter...
In the works: Aaron Sorkin and Facebook are now friends.
Wed, Aug 27 2008 1:43 PM
Aaron Sorkin has a Facebook page. It says that Aaron Sorkin is writing a Facebook movie: Welcome. I'm Aaron Sorkin. I understand there are a few other people using Facebook pages under my name--which I find more flattering than creepy--but this is me. I don't know how I can prove that but feel free to test me. I've just agreed to write a movie for Sony and producer Scott Rudin about how Facebook was invented. I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I've started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she's been dead for 33 years.) Rudin has confirmed this with Dan Kois at New York's Vulture blog, shaking my world view with regard to people claiming to be celebrities on the internet. What...
"I knew then that the SOB was going to be a 'star.' "
Tue, Aug 26 2008 3:51 PM
The world in quotes: "I knew then that the SOB was going to be a 'star,' " --Christopher Plummer's thoughts (and judicious use of quotation marks) on having to give understudy William Shatner a chance at his role in a 1956 stage production of "Henry V," after a one-night stand dislodged a kidney stone and put him in surgery, at Page Six. "The event for London could never have the same political clout as Beijing; we should find a way to be self-advertising. Considering the British traditions of free speech and the individual, and the British suspicion of organised crowds, we would want to avoid the Leni Riefenstahl connotations which were there in Beijing. And the ceremony was too long." --Peter Greenaway on how London should handle its Olympic opening ceremony, at the Telegraph. "I'm very unhappy with the film. I never had a chance to do one scene the...
Hands on a Hard Body: "It's a contest, they say, of stamina..."
Tue, Aug 26 2008 11:43 AM
"Hands on a Hard Body" director S.R. Bindler has put his riveting 1997 doc about a Texas car dealership competition up in its entirety on Google Video -- you can watch it here. The film's been out of print on DVD for ages -- a narrative remake was slated to be Robert Altman's next production until his passing, a project that's likely since faded away. Bindler, incidentally, directed and co-wrote his friend Matthew McConaughey's new film "Surfer, Dude," set to open in Austin next week. While you're at it, Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter" is up with the usual "limited commercial interruption" on Hulu here. And Tod Browning 1932 "Freaks" is streaming on Archive.org here (and on Google Video here), and has been generating pointed debate as to whether or not the film actually is in the public domain. According to some, the rights to the film were...
"Salò" returns to earth.
Tue, Aug 26 2008 10:23 AM
The original 1998 Criterion release of "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom," Pier Paolo Pasolini's notorious, oft-banned final film (he was murdered shortly after its completion), was withdrawn because of licensing issues, making the DVDs that did make it onto the market fetishized objects unto themselves, commanding hundreds of dollars on eBay and Amazon, more if still sealed. The film became overshadowed by its own rarity. But today Criterion finally rereleases the film in a two-disc set with three accompanying docs, interviews and essays from, among others, Neil Bartlett and Catherine Breillat. So how does "Salò" hold up in these days when the teens take in torture while munching popcorn at the multiplex and even Kermit the Frog is down with coprophagia? Well, Ain't It Cool's Harry Knowles reassures that it's still "Fucked beyond all belief." Dennis Lim, writing at the LA Times this weekend, writes that "its extreme,...
Trailering: NYC, Chinatown, the RAF and Auschwitz.
Mon, Aug 25 2008 5:05 PM
Here's the teaser for "New York, I Love You," Gotham's answer to the 2006 anthology film "Paris, Je T'aime." It's still unfinished, but the trailer -- which includes both a Regina Spektor song and one from Feist, surely breaking some kind of indie waif proximity rule -- does contain an irritating abundance of characters generalizing about the city. "This is the capital of everything possible," declares one, not realizing that any true portrait of New York would involve far fewer frou-frou proclamations like that and more dollars and cents discussion of real estate. Fatih Akin, Yvan Attal, Shunji Iwai, Scarlett Johnansson and Brett Ratner are among the twelve directors contributing, as is Shekhar Kapur, who took on the installment left unfinished by the late Anthony Minghella. The film's screening as a work in progress at Toronto, and won't reach theaters until February 13th of next year. There's a trailer for...
Zack and Miri go to Austin.
Mon, Aug 25 2008 1:41 PM
I've never been to the Toronto Film Festival. We've traditionally left it the realm of IFC Canada -- but this year I am headed to Fantastic Fest in Austin, and couldn't be more pleased. The country's fiercest genre festival has already announced two waves of films; among the selections the U.S. premieres of "Ong Bak" director Prachya Pinkaew's "Chocolat," meta Muscles from Brussels mockumentary "JCVD" and "Deadgirl." The most recent round of news is that king fanboy Kevin Smith will be bringing "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" there as the opening night film, to be followed up by the Air Sex World Championship. [Photo: "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," Weinstein Company, 2008] + Kevin Smith to Kick Off Fantastic Fest 2008 (FantasticFest.com)...
The week on IFC.com: Azazel Jacobs and The Clash, Woody Allen and sex.
Fri, Aug 22 2008 4:47 PM
A round-up of what's been happening on the rest of IFC.com: + Feature: An Appreciation of Anna Faris - R. Emmet Sweeney wonders when the comedienne "capable of out-dumbing Judy Holliday and out-ditzing Carole Lombard" will finally get her due. + Feature: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (in Woody Allen's Movies) - Matt Singer on the 40 years Allen has spent making "movies about sex without ever actually featuring it." + Interview: Azazel Jacobs on "Momma's Man" - The director of the acclaimed Sundance feature starring his real-life parents as something like themselves would rather just talk about The Clash. + Video: Ludivine Sagnier - A quick interview with the star of "A Girl Cut in Two" and the upcoming "A Secret." + On DVD: Lech Majewski, "Brand Upon the Brain!" - Michael Atkinson on the Polish filmmaker who "may be one of the most pretentious filmmakers...
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