Indieville : Festivals

Film Programming: A New Wilderness for Former Film Critics.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:35:00 GMT

Only two days removed from the announcement that Newsweek's David Ansen would be taking over as the artistic director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, the L.A. Weekly's chief film critic Scott Foundas has taken the Associate Program Director gig at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where he had previously served as part of the New York Film Festival's selection committee. Whether or not Foundas' position at the Weekly will actually be filled remains to be seen and all of this comes...(read more)

TCM, now a film festival.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:36:00 GMT

There are over 700 film festivals worldwide, but only a few are devoted entirely to showing old movies -- which is odd, considering that these days, it's just as hard to see most older films in a theater as it is to see any of the new festival darlings. Those that do exist tend towards the obscure and specialized. MoMA's annual "To Save and Project" series (which is now in progress) alternates between the well-known (say, a new print of Cassavetes' "A Woman Under The Influence"...(read more)

"Metropolis," as it was meant to be seen! (For real, this time.)

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:42:00 GMT

Few movies are as incomplete yet overwhelmingly influential as Fritz Lang's 1927 "Metropolis." Any movie you've seen with enormous, gigantic architecture set in an ominous future or a mythical past -- "Brazil," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "The Fifth Element," even this year's "The International" -- stole some of its moves from Lang's skyscrapers and underground dens. Brutally cut upon release and restored and re-released an impossible amount...(read more)

The academics are running the asylum.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:12:38 GMT

On her way out at Spout, Karina Longworth noted a few days ago that the film blogosphere can feel like "hundreds of traffic-chasers, who are essentially blaring the same thing, at the same time, all day long." She doesn't like it one bit. And such was the attitude Focus Features CEO/Ang Lee's screenwriter James Schamus brought to his keynote speech at the London Film Festival. Noting he preferred to skip the usual topics of "the challenges of our digital future, new distribution...(read more)

What's the matta with "Schmatta"?

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:40:00 GMT

Marc Levin is still finding pins under the floorboards of his loft in New York's Garment District. He ended up digging far deeper to find the hook for his latest doc about the economic crisis -- "Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags," a startlingly prescient history of the clothing industry from 7th Avenue to Bangladesh which airs on HBO on October 19th, having made its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September. Like a lot of American industries, the "schmatta"...(read more)

Pedro Almodóvar holds bilingual court.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:23:22 GMT

The latest film from Pedro Almodóvar, "Broken Embraces," closes the New York Film Festival after coasting in on a wave of mediocre advance word. The most common complaint has been that Almodóvar is blatantly recycling himself, throwing around the same motifs as always (mothers and sons, melodrama, intimations of abuse) to lesser effect. But whatever, with Almodóvar and star Penélope Cruz in attendance, this was the conference with the most star power; multiple TV crews were on stand-by...(read more)

Michael Haneke's abiding sadness.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:55:00 GMT

Michael Haneke's fondness for scolding didacticism just don't work for some people, myself among them. But "The White Ribbon" is a whole other thing, a movie where anything dreadful that can happen will, just to prove that people are so terrible you can't even count on them not to turn into ***, or something like that. Set in a small German town in the year leading up to WWI, the movie doesn't let up from the first shot, in which a doctor breaks his arm when his horse trips...(read more)

One from the heart for Lee Daniels.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:35:00 GMT

"Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" is, in theory, the miserable story of the titular 300-pound teenage girl (Gabby Sidibe), who's raped into having two children by her dad and abused by her mother (Mo'Nique) until she meets an inspirational teacher (Paula Patton) who changes her life. In practice, the New York Film Festival's centerpiece film is a slickly effective melodrama -- the kind of movie where a dream sequence of someone having her ear kissed inevitably...(read more)

Harmony Korine's found footage film.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Whatever you think of art film's designated provocateur, it's hard to imagine anyone less famous than Harmony Korine getting a movie into major festivals that was conceived of only four months before, shot in two weeks, and consists mainly of dudes in old-person masks fellating tree branches, drinking wine bottles and -- yes, indeed -- humping trash. But such is "Trash Humpers," 74 plotless minutes that gain value from a dedication to the shoddiest of VHS aesthetics; the film was...(read more)

Keeping the barbarians at bay.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:20:00 GMT

Every year someone makes a fuss over how snobbish/exclusionary/whatever the New York Film Festival is; this year's money quote came from Jeffrey Wells, who complained that the festival committee had become "a gathering of Trappist monks who've been slurping too much goat's milk with their granola." (I keep meaning to bring mine to the screenings and forgetting.) It's nothing new -- as Michael Guillen points out in his review of "Film Festival I: The Festival Circuit...(read more)

Alain Resnais on the death of cinema.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:00:00 GMT

At age 87, Alain Resnais has produced one of his boldest films. "Wild Grass," which opened the New York Film Festival on Friday, is just wild, blending the audacity of "Punch Drunk Love" with the mindbinding qualities of Charlie Kaufman. The film's about a married man (André Dussollier) who finds a woman's (Sabine Azéma) stolen wallet and becomes obsessed with her -- it reads like farce, but it's far, far stranger, a portrait of romantic willfulness staving off death...(read more)

Fantastic Fest: Nothing But Butts at "RoboGeisha"

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:30:00 GMT

In Fantastic Fest's famous secret screenings, the identity of the movie being shown isn't revealed until it's about to begin. While it's a gamble, it's one that prompts devotees to line up for year-in-advance VIP badges -- past secret screenings have included the first-ever looks at "There Will Be Blood," "Apocalypto" and other high profile premieres, But, as festival head/impresario Tim League remarked in his intro, this year's first secret screening,...(read more)

A small festival buzzkill.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:45:00 GMT

According to a widely cited number from Film-Releases.com I can't actually find on their site, American distributors will release 40% fewer films this award season, compared to last year. (This figure presumably doesn't take into account the five-plus niche releases flooding New York and LA -- and nowhere else -- every week.) For those lucky enough to be able to attend this fall's film festivals, you can make up the drought there; the rest of us are left reading along in order to see...(read more)

Celebrating Labor Day with Michael Moore.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:23:34 GMT

Happy Labor Day! Here, let Michael Moore make you feel better about working. Most of us, now more than ever, would prefer not to lose our jobs; Moore, on the other hand, views permanently severing himself from his financiers as something to be desired. As Arifa Akbar reports from the Venice Film Festival in The Independent, Moore mocked Paramount for funding his latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," saying, "Why would these companies give money to me, a guy who is diametrically...(read more)

Sundance gets more annoying.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:53:14 GMT

So Sundance woke up all sweaty and hungover a few days ago and apparently decided it was time to change its ways. The quirky Fox Searchlight acquisitions, the earnest Amerindie movies like "Sin Nombre" going nowhere slowly but self-righteously...something didn't feel right. Was this the same festival that gave us Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino? No. No it wasn't. It was fat and out of shape. It needed...mumblecore! Hence, as indieWIRE reports the first major act under new...(read more)