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WAITRESS
Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress, brings us Keri Russell as
a small-town waitress, who upon learning she is pregnant realizes
she wants to leave her jealous husband (Jeremey Sisto). Russell
gives the best performance of her career, a strong calling-card
for future feature film work. Director Shelly appears as one
of Russell’s eccentric co-workers, a luminous performance
that sadly would be her last . Quirky and touching in nature,
Waitress could very well be the next Little Miss Sunshine,
that little indie film that could.
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AWAY
FROM HER
Away from Her is Canadian actress Sarah Polley’s debut
as writer/director, the story of a man forced to institutionalize
his wife due to Alzheimer’s disease, and then loses
her again to a love affair with a fellow patient. Veteran
Julie Christie - whose touching lead performance has been
receiving Oscar buzz – is joined by Olympia Dukakis
and Michael Murphy, rounding out a stellar cast. Polley, perhaps
best known for her work in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter,
and Zack Snyder’s hip remake of the horror classic Dawn
of the Dead, makes the move to directing with her usual poise.
Read more about both these
films in the Spring 07 edition of Filmmaker, out now!
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GOING
MOBILE
If you've picked up our Spring issue you may have read the
sidebar in our “Option Overload” Line Item ("Cell
Capture") where Dutch filmmaker Cyrus Frisch describes
how he made his latest film Why Didn’t Anybody Tell
Me It Would Become This Bad In Afghanistan with a cell phone.
Which as far as we know is a first. It goes without saying
that this is a shooting format that’s probably a decade
before its time (at the least), but after seeing the film
at the Tribeca Film Festival (it made its World Premiere at
Rotterdam) the other day, this extremely experimental film
running 70 minutes long with almost no dialogue is one of
the most creative things I’ve seen done with cinema
in quite some time... |
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IFP MARKET
CALL FOR ENTRIES
The IFP Market is a national program connecting projects with
financiers, producers & programmers before they’re
completed & on the festival circuit. More than 1,000 industry
professionals attend the IFP Market for pitch meetings, speed
dating meetings, screenings, and social events. Each year
approximately 200 projects are invited to participate (50%
docs; 50% narrative screenplays) and take one-on-one meetings
with potential financing partners or co-producers. In 2006,
more than 1,800 pitch meetings were arranged with buyers on
behalf of filmmakers. Deadlines begining May 4. Click
here for more information
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THOUGHTS
ON CENSORSHIP; OR THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
A number of things that have dominated the news recently -
most notably the tragic events at Virginia Tech and the death
yesterday of former MPAA honcho Jack Valenti - got me thinking
about censorship and the perceived effect of films on viewers.
If we are to believe the news media, Park Chan-wook's Oldboy
is (at least partly) to blame for the VT killings, a claim
that not only reeks of sensationalism but, as Dave Kehr said,
is "faintly racist." Sky News has said that Cho
Seung-Hui "repeatedly watched [Oldboy] in the days leading
up to the massacre", something which in turn reminded
me of an incident in my native Scotland back in 2002...
Read
the complete stories at Filmmakermagazine's Blog... |
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THE
DIRECTOR INTERVIEWS - RAY LAWRENCE, JINDABYNE - By Nick Dawson
Ray Lawrence pulled one of world cinema’s most surprising
disappearing acts. His debut film, Bliss (1985), an adaptation
of Peter Carey’s novel co-written by Lawrence and Carey
himself, played in competition at Cannes, garnered rave reviews
and dominated the Australian film awards. Lawrence joined
Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi and Bruce Beresford as an Australian
director worthy of global attention - but then did not make
another film for 16 years. However, when his sophomore effort,
Lantana, finally came out in 2001, it cemented Lawrence as
one of the most important and distinctive voices in contemporary
cinema. The movie featured superb performances from Geoffrey
Rush, Anthony LaPaglia and Barbara Hershey, and utilized the
format of a slow-burning murder mystery to examine the emotionally
dysfunctional lives of a group of people connected to the
homicide...
Click
here for the rest of the article
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