tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36256116516559119502010-03-16T17:41:44.681-04:00Webmasterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03643468321632241172noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-65683078702497123472009-03-25T23:06:00.005-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.275-05:00

Severe Clear premiered at SXSW this week, five years to the day after the US invasion of Baghdad. Back then, Kristian Fraga was just one of millions, watching events unfold on cable news. First Lieutenant Mike Scotti was crossing the Iraqi border in an artillery tank, and he had a video camera. Severe Clear is a chronicle of the Baghdad invasion culled from over 60 hours of this footage, edited

Scott Macaulayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728573558664904533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-25333525735652765132009-03-24T12:17:00.004-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.275-05:00

Gerald Peary is not a cell phone person. He has witnessed a quarter century of films and criticism, from when Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris drew their lines in the critical sand to the currently expanding blogosphere. Gerald Peary is old school. A working film critic for 25 years, his work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Toronto Globe and Mail, The Chicago Tribune, Film Comment,

Scott Macaulayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728573558664904533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-69896546382168415492009-03-18T01:34:00.005-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.275-05:00

There is an actual college Creative Nonfiction class in Lena Dunham’s Creative Nonfiction, which premieres in the Emerging Visions section at SXSW this week. There is also the actual Dunham, who plays both Ella, a college student trying to get a grip on an ambiguous non-starter romance, as well as the heroine in the 16mm-filmed representation of the John Waters/fairy-tale screenplay Ella is

Scott Macaulayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728573558664904533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-25535623692316973932009-03-15T17:00:00.000-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.275-05:00

David Russo’s The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle is not your average Seattle-based, night-shift janitors eating self-heating cookies as unwitting test subjects male pregnancy special effects-peppered butt fish movie. The film’s official synopsis is: “When Dory’s life seems like it’s going down the drain, a strange ‘new life’ takes shape inside him and he learns that sometimes you don’t

Jason Guerrasiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14958031172216065142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-72042439485719069772009-03-15T15:00:00.000-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.276-05:00

There is almost no dialogue in the first half of David Lowery’s feature debut, St. Nick. A young boy and a girl enter an abandoned house, clean it up, build a fire, forget to open a window and fill the house with smoke, figure out a chimney and watch the embers turn into flames. They sleep, they forage for food; somehow they survive, until reality starts bearing down on them. It’s not clear why

Jason Guerrasiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14958031172216065142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-14704361329729748822009-03-14T17:00:00.000-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.276-05:00

When Jody Lee Lipes set out to follow his friend Brock Enright prepare a solo art show for the prestigious Perry Rubenstein gallery, he knew he wasn’t going to change anyone’s opinion about contemporary art. If you hate the art world, you might still hate it after watching Enright’s strenuous, stressful and altogether bizarre chronicle of several months putting a solo show together. But you have

Jason Guerrasiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14958031172216065142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-13388774516172636842009-03-14T15:37:00.007-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.276-05:00

Even if you consider yourself a literate, well-viewed, cinema completist, you may not remember the name “Steven Prince.” I could jog your memory and tell you that he was influential to the films of Quentin Tarantino, Rick Linklater, and, most directly, Martin Scorsese, and the name still might not ring a bell. If that’s the case, don’t stress — I didn’t recognize the name either, even though I

Scott Macaulayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04728573558664904533noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-82847612372181831192009-03-14T15:00:00.000-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.276-05:00

It was a calculated move on Brett Gaylor’s part to not only make a movie about fair use, intellectual property and copyright, but to make a movie that you could dance to. It begins as a case study of the mashup musician Girl Talk, whose music is comprised of thousands of samples from artists as disparate as Madonna, Elton John, Rihanna, the Jackson 5 and Muddy Waters (and doesn’t hesitate to try

Jason Guerrasiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14958031172216065142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-74049183845014639042009-03-12T10:01:00.002-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.276-05:00

If there were to be a mumblecore parade, Joe Swanberg would be the man in the shiny red convertible, waving to onlookers and trailing a team of baton twirlers in his wake. His films – LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights & Weekends – have helped to define a genre that was never supposed to be a genre at all. Alexander the Last, his latest, was executive produced by Noah Baumbach and stars Jess

Jason Guerrasiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14958031172216065142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-51289672795792617122009-03-12T10:00:00.005-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.276-05:00

In Breaking Upwards, Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones play a young New York couple named Daryl and Zoe. The film was written by the two of them, plus Peter Duchan, directed by Wein, and produced by all three. Zoe plays an actress, starring in an Off-Broadway play; Julie White plays Daryl’s mother, and was cast after appearing in an Off-Broadway play with Lister-Jones. To say that this film is

Jason Guerrasiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14958031172216065142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3625611651655911950.post-72813357817968466132009-03-12T09:50:00.001-04:002010-02-25T14:45:53.277-05:00

Ry Russo-Young’s You Won't Miss Me was one of our favorite films at Sundance this year. It is a free-wheeling, lyrical but sometimes jarring depiction of a few months in the life of young and struggling New York actress navigating both harsh auditions and her own chaotic emotional relationships. The film has a deceptively casual feel as it avoids obvious plot points and melodramatic narrative

Jason Guerrasiohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14958031172216065142noreply@blogger.com0