Indieville : Watchy

Chris Columbus, protector of children.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:25:38 GMT

Some directors are automatic punchlines, their names synonyms for lousy. There's Adam Sandler cohort Steve Brill ("Without A Paddle," "Drillbit Taylor"), Eddie Murphy's favorite Brian Robbins ("Norbit," "Meet Dave") and of course Shawn Levy ("A Night At The Museum," "The Pink Panther," "Cheaper By The Dozen"), who pays the bills as perfunctorily as possible. The godfather of them all may well be Chris Columbus, a man so...(read more)

Pedaling towards revolution.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:59:30 GMT

We, as Americans, have failed to sufficiently appreciate and venerate the humble bicycle, which is why we all drive Hummers and 2012 is bearing down on us with global wrath. Or so I've been told. My point is that American cinema associates bicycles with bad people (think Mrs. Gulch a.k.a. The Wicked Witch of the West and her bicycle) or the poor and silly (like Jason Schwartzman's Albert Markovski in "I Heart Huckabees," pedaling his way through his daily futility). Indeed, aside...(read more)

Five camp moments from the Cold War.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which passed with less fanfare than you'd expect. The Los Angeles Times' Betsy Sharkey had a decent list of Cold War movies she digs, along with a lament for a past of clearly defined villainous foreigners and heroic Americans. But while you've probably heard of most of her picks or should've, where, then, are the truly bad examples of the Cold War on film, the hoariest detritus caught in a political culture trap...(read more)

A guide to Roland Emmerich's early work.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:05:00 GMT

I've had so much fun writing about "2012," I'm almost sad it'll actually be coming out next Friday. Almost. In a fairly amazing recent interview with Roland Emmerich, the schlock auteur explains he could get away with casting John Cusack because "I make movies where the movie itself is the star" and says it's totally cool that "2012" is a whopping 158 minutes because "The ten most successful movies of all time are all around three hours long. My...(read more)

Are you ready for 20,000 spoonfuls of terror?

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:49:00 GMT

In the pre-YouTube era, it was generally assumed that a short film was a director's calling card, a stepping stone to prove that talent and resourcefulness lay within and that great things could be obtained with a real budget. These days more people seem to be interested in watching YouTube videos than committing to a feature anyway -- hence the success of Richard Gale's "The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon." The weapon is a spoon, and the short's...(read more)

Crowdsourcing "Star Wars."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:07:00 GMT

Truffaut used to say that a movie should have four ideas a minute. Well, François, say hello to "Star Wars: Uncut", a full-length user-generated remake of "A New Hope" chopped up into 15-second segments -- four per minute. The result is a staggering 2,161 separate amateur directors overall, a major sugar-buzz of crowdsourcing, "Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation" turned viral and opened to the online masses. It's not done yet, but the trailer's below. If...(read more)

Welcome to Hugowood, where revolution rules.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:54:00 GMT

Hugo Chávez is having a movie moment. The Venezuela president is the subject of a fawning Oliver Stone documentary. He's had visits from Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Kevin Spacey. (And, of course, Tim Robbins, if it even needs to be said.) And, as I pointed out last month, his anti-golf politics have a lot in common with Alex Cox's "Repo Man" sequel -- trendy! And now, Chávez has got his own film studio -- La Villa del Cine -- and they're intent on pumping out movies that get...(read more)

Celebrating the musical apocalypse.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:12:00 GMT

Though it feels like it's been advertised since 2005, "2012" doesn't come out until November 13: John Cusack, buildings get destroyed, humanity struggles against itself, the nuclear family survives, etc, etc. And now we have a music video to go with all that rote destruction: Adam Lambert's "Time For Miracles." As a song, "Time For Miracles" is wan but inoffensive balladry: "I know this flame isn't dying," Lambert yowls, "so nothing can...(read more)

Kanye West's inner "Wild Thing."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:55:00 GMT

It's not a great time to be either Kanye West or one of his fans. After his umpteenth public freak-out, interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Awards, his tour with Lady Gaga was canceled, and rumors are flying that West is hiding out somewhere, doing his best to purge himself of the demons that make him act like a jackass in public. Spike Jonze to the rescue! Having now steered the story of one outburst-prone lad to box office success, the "Where the Wild Things Are" director has...(read more)

Potato, potato, potato.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:18:00 GMT

As a commenter elegantly added after Scott Tobias's review of "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" at the AV Club, "Thanks a lot, jerk. I would have appreciated a spoiler alert before describing the potato scene." Really, few other films are as spoiler-proof as Chantal Akerman's 1975 housewife saga, the complete plot of which could be described in two sentences. It's all in the watching, the tedium, the real-time observations of the daily routine of...(read more)

Play Lloyd Dobler off, Keyboard Cat.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:00:00 GMT

As part of the giant marketing campaign behind the latest Roland Emmerich apocalypse porn extravaganza "2012," Sony Pictures released a five-minute clip of the film showcasing just a few of the no doubt many ways mass destruction will be wreaked within its full run-time. And no sooner was that accomplished than some pseudonymous smartass used the footage to cut together an alternate "2012" excerpt, one which gets rid of all those distracting effects so that we can concentrate...(read more)

Mumblecore mocks itself.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:15:00 GMT

I guess one sign that you've really made it is when you can poke fun at yourself and it's not just an inside joke for your friends. With "Birthday Suit," a new three-minute short on "Funny or Die," mumblecore figurehead/sometime colleague Joe Swanberg achieves the latter, if only barely -- hanging at a 48% approval rating, "Birthday Suit" seems to be lost on some of the site's audience. In films like "Hannah Takes The Stairs" and "Alexander...(read more)

Those 30-Second Bunnies better watch their backs.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:05:00 GMT

There's a lot of garbage on College Humor (today's featured content: "Jake & Amir: Tampon"), but there's also England's Will Tribble, who's been churning out some way funny 60-second live-action parodies of famous movies that deserve your love. Tribble and his merry band of British film students are dedicated to summarizing film in one minute, in one take, with little "South Park" voices on the soundtrack blurting out key lines. The results are pretty impressive...(read more)

Indie Rock: A Love Story.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 14:20:00 GMT

There are people out there who leap on any chance to fling the epithet "hipster" as the ultimate insult. As a wise editor of mine once pointed out, all the adjective really means is "people in my scene who I don't like and don't want to identify with." But when a movie pops up with its title in all lower case, its lead roles cast from indie rock institutions, and its trailer kicking off with the line "Did you ever get your heart broken?" against some kind of...(read more)

Narcocinema: Mexico's drugsploitation genre.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:50:00 GMT

I'd never heard of narcocinema until I took a gander through Vice's substantive new film issue. Well, consider me schooled. Narcocinema is just what it sounds like: violent drug war movies shot in a manner that could be kindly dubbed "functional," frequently based on narcocorridos (drug songs). Only 18% of the Mexican population can afford to see movies in theaters, so most narcocinema features are shot digitally or on low-grade video straight for the "videohome" demographic...(read more)