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ONCE
John Carney’s Once is the rarest of breeds, a modern-day
musical about love that doesn’t make you want to run
for the door and hurl. A budding relationship develops between
a musician and a recently divorced woman who become so madly
inspired by each other that they spontaneously break out into
song about their love. Despite what seems like the trappings
of an overly sentimental, lovey-dovey date flick, this film
managed to take Sundance by storm and please even the most
cantankerous critic. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irgolva interact
with such graceful casualness that they allow Once to overcome
cynicism and make for an exceptionally unique and personal
tale contemplating the universal search of finding our one
true love.
Read more about this film
in the Spring 07 edition of Filmmaker, out now!
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SEVERANCE
Severance follows the recent trend of movies like Shaun of
the Dead and Grindhouse by mixing gruesome horror with raucous
comedy. The story focuses on a group of mid-level sales managers
working for an international weapons manufacturer who are
given a vacation in the mountains of Hungary to work on team-building
exercises. Of course, the ironic twist in the film is how
these weapon merchants get a taste of their own medicine when
a pack of particularly crazy Eastern Europeans begins to pick
them off in subsequently macabre and witty ways. Although
essentially a standard slasher flick at heart, Severance strives
to be more by amusingly merging genres and has indie horror
sleeper hit written all over it.
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DUCK
FLIES UNDER THE RADAR
People have long been excited about the new Mexican cinema,
pointing to the three-film wave -- Guillermo del Toro's Pan's
Labyrinth, Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men and Alejandro
González Iñárritu's Babel -- that hit
theaters last Fall as proof of its dominance. But now the
directors are hoping to cash in on their zeitgeist. In their
LA Times' article, "Mexican Directors Offer Studios a
5-Picture Deal," Lorenza Muñoz and Claudia Eller
report, "Studios are being asked in the unprecedented
proposal to bankroll five movies, at least two of which are
expected to be in Spanish." And one more thing, not all
of the films will be directed by the big three directors.
Other Mexican directors, like Alfonso Cuarón's younger
brother, Carlos and Rodrigo Garcia (Things You Can Tell Just
By Looking At Her), will helm the projects. The price tag
for all this South-of-the-border talent? $100 million... |
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THE WRITING
ON THE WALL
I blogged about the L.A. Weekly piece, "Double Cross
at the WGA," which was an explosive account of the Writer's
Guild of America's policy of collecting and not always paying
foreign levies on behalf of member and non-member writers.
It's a complicated story but well worth following for several
reasons, not the least of which is what it says about our
current and possibly future system of copyright.
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TIME
REGAINED
If you're in New York you've got a few days left to catch
Guy Maddin's Brand upon the Brain, the director's spectacular
staging of his latest movie with a live chamber orchestra,
castrato, three live foley artists and an assortment of guest
narrators like Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and Isabella Rossellini.
Like all of Maddin's work, the film immerses itself in the
poetics of early cinema, applying the style this time to a
storyline that seems a mix of Dickens and gothic horror. But
what makes it a must-see is its rare event quality. When the
musicians start, the foley artists summon up the sounds of
wind, and the spotlight hits the narrator (last night it was
an excellent Crispin Glover), you do feel yourself within
a privileged moment echoing what audiences must have felt
decades ago...
Read
the complete stories at Filmmakermagazine's Blog... |
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THE
DIRECTOR INTERVIEWS - CHRISTOFFER BOE, ALLEGRO
Christoffer Boe likes Cannes. After graduating from the Danish
Film School in 2001, his student film Anxiety played at the
2002 festival, where it won a prize from French critics, and
then Boe returned to the Croisette the following year with
his debut feature, Reconstruction. A dazzlingly inventive
and playful film, Reconstruction's tale of love and parallel
universes in Copenhagen beguiled critics and was awarded both
the Camera D'Or and the Prix Regards Jeune. Boe was celebrated
as international cinema's most precocious wunderkind, and
his film played all around the world, plundering prizes –
including the prestigious FIPRESCI Director of the Year award
at San Sebastian Film Festival – wherever it went...
Click
here for the rest of the article
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