Authors — Jason Guerrasio

Lilah Vanderburgh, Bitch

BITCH. This article is part of Filmmaker’s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage. Bitch, the kinetic, black-and-white, Harold Lloyd-meets-Jello Biafra love story, is one of the most visually sophisticated and stylized films to emerge from that Sundance short film-factory, Columbia University’s MFA Film Program (eight shorts screening at the festival this year!). The film’s director, Lilah Vanderburgh, is obsessed with skater culture, punk-rock, underground comics, and displays the hip film literacy of another director with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture. (Is it taboo to compare a young director to Tarantino? Who cares — in this case, it’s deserved). This film will […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 19, 2007
READY TO DANCE

It’s finally here. And Filmmaker is on the scene at the Sundance Film Festival to report on all the films we can possible see and everything else that goes on outside of the screenings. Along with dedicating this blog to our coverage, as an added bonus this year we’ve created a seperate page to the festival. Click here to check it out.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 18, 2007
WU-TANG FOREVER

Though most of my time will be spent watching films at Sundance next week, for those going to Slamdance I highly recommend seeing Casey Suchan and Denis Henry Hennelly’s amazing doc Rock The Bells. Since its premiere at Tribeca last year the film has gained great reviews on the festival circuit and I hope their good fortune continues next week as it will be in competition for Best Doc. Chronicling the Rock The Bells festival that took place in San Bernardino, California in 2004 that boasted the reuniting of the complete 9-member rap group, The Wu-Tang Clan, we are given […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 12, 2007
SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST ANNOUNCES ’07 SLATE

Running March 9-17 in Austin, Texas, SXSW announced its Opening Night Film will be Scott Frank‘s crime thriller The Lookout, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Isla Fisher and Jeff Daniels. Other titles playing at the fest include Dollan Cannell‘s 638 Ways To Kill Castro, Lauren Lazin‘s The Last Days of Left Eye and Joe Swanberg‘s Hannah Takes The Stairs. And a panel that’s sure to draw attention will be a case study on the YouTube craze Lonelygirl 15. The three creators will be present.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 3, 2007
A New Humanity

CLIVE OWEN AND JULIANNE MOORE IN CHILDREN OF MEN. Set in 2027, Alfonso Cuarón’s latest picture, Children of Men, takes place in a bleak England where it’s been 19 years since the last baby was born. Mankind’s future seems grim, and most of the world has devolved into anarchy. Random security checks and bombings have become an everyday occurrence as Great Britain franticly tries to protect its island from illegal immigrants. Theo, played by Clive Owen, spends his days in a drunken haze, often escaping the city to smoke pot with his old hippie-friend Jasper (Michael Caine) in the country. […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 22, 2006
FOUR EYED MONSTERS WINS UNDISCOVERED GEMS FILM SERIES

Susan Buice and Arin Crumley‘s Four Eyed Monsters has won the 2006 Sundance Audience Award for the eight-month long indieWIRE: Undiscovered Gems Film Series. The series’ co-presenters The New York Times and New York-based digital cinema network Emerging Pictures (co-founded by IFP Board Member Ira Deutchman), in association with the California Film Institute and The Sundance Channel, made the announcement last night. Winning the prize gives the movie the opportunity for a theatrical release through Emerging Pictures and a TV premiere on Sundance Channel. The award is valued at $100,000. The Undiscovered Gems Series is based on indieWIRE‘s annual list […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 16, 2006
SUNDANCE ANNOUNCES 2007 SCREENWRITERS LAB PROJECTS

Below is the list of feature film projects accepted to the annual Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab. The Lab, which has grown to become as prominent in the indie world as the Festival, has an impressive list of past projects including Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Requiem For A Dream and Raising Victor Vargas. And in January recent projects from the Lab like Four Sheets To The Wind, Red Road and Year of the Fish will have their moment to shine as they all will be playing at the Festival. The projects selected for the 2007 January Screenwriters Lab are: THE […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 14, 2006
SEEING DOUBLE

The Golden Globes were announced today and the big news are the duel nominations given out to Clint Eastwood for Best Director (Flags of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima) and Leonardo DiCaprio for Best Actor (Drama) (The Departed, Blood Diamond). As always it would have been nice to see The Hollywood Foreign Press think outside the box and give nominations to say Ryan Gosling for Best Actor or Pedro Almodovar for Best Director instead of taking the safe route but I guess that would be asking too much. The Globes will take place on January 15 on NBC. And […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 14, 2006
IWO JIMA TOPS NBR

With the Gothams passed out last week and the National Board of Review giving their top nods last night, the award season is beginning to blossom. The NBR named Clint Eastwood‘s second film on World War II this year, Letters From Iwo Jima, its Best Film (scroll down for full list). Shot around Southern California in 33 days on a substantially lower budget than Flags of our Fathers, most believed Iwo Jima – which is in Japanese and its only actor familiar to American audiences is Ken Watanabe – was to play second fiddle to its star-studded predecessor. But when […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 7, 2006
REPRIEVE FOR GIBSON?

Though many in Hollywood publicly (and privately) swore they’d never work with Mel Gibson or see his movies again, with his latest violent epic Apocalypto set to hit over 2,000 screens this weekend, can a good movie wipe the slate? Can positive reviews from Variety and Rolling Stone — with more sure to come and possibly Oscar buzz — erase Gibson’s hateful words? Sharon Waxman examines this question in The New York Times today. An excerpt: The problem posed by Mr. Gibson touches on an age-old question of whether an artist’s personal behavior ought to be a factor in judging […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 5, 2006

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