Authors — Scott Macaulay

RUMSFELD’S FAVORITE IN DRAMATIC COMPETITION?

As you can tell from my post below, I didn’t like the Sundacnce Competition film Grace is Gone. At the time, I thought I was in the minority but in the last few days a number of reviews and criticisms have come out faulting the film for its disingenuously “even-handed” use of the Iraq war to kickstart what is ultimately a conventional indie film road movie. The weird thing about the movie is that star John Cusack has been a vocal opponent of the war, and my guess is that its makers are also sensitive anti-war folk. (I don’t know […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2007
THE PLAN B’ERS

Two more interviews by James Ponsoldt up on our Sundance home page. David Kaplan talks about his animated The Year of the Fish. And: Chris Zalla discusses his Padre Nuestro.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2007
TEMPORARY INSANITY

Mike White’s comedy The Year of the Dog, which premiered in Sundance this week in the Premieres section, shares a premise with the similarly titled Joan Didion memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking. That is, when one is grieving, one experiences a kind of insanity, the “magical thinking” of Didion’s title. One’s relationship to the rest of society as well as one’s self is occluded by the memory of the deceased. Of course, Didion’s departed was her husband, the novelist John Gregory Dunne. It’s typical of White’s unsettling wit that the protagonist of his film – a retiring and unmarried […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2007
FAUST FOUNDER DIES

I was saddened to see over at Pitchfork Media that Uwe Nettelbeck, one of the founders of the great German art rock group Faust has died. Here’s Pitchfork: Nettelbeck, a producer and one-time music journalist, founded Faust in Wümme, Germany in 1971. The group was one of Virgin Records’ first signings and went on to record several highly-influential albums over the next few years, including the seminal Faust and Faust IV, before disbanding in 1975. Several of the original members have since regrouped under the Faust banner to tour and record. No further details of Nettelbeck’s death are known at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2007
MESSAGE RECEIVED

If you’re only checking out this blog, make sure to click over to James Ponsoldt’s interviews with the three directors of the American indie horror pic The Signal, which was bought here at Sundance by Magnolia Pictures.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2007
"AN INSANE FEEDING FRENZY"

Ann Thompson at her Risky Business blog has been detailing what she calls “an unexpectedly insane feeding frenzy” at the Sundance Film Festival. Midway through the first weekend people were saying that this seemed to be a weak year at Sundance and that sales would be slow. Then, all of a sudden, a number of unexpected titles caught the fancy of audiences and distributors. There has been one big sale (Son of Rambow to Paramount Vantage for $7 million), several medium sized ones (Grace is Gone and Dedication, both to the Weinstein’s for $4 million or so), and heartening pickups […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2007
PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

Now that both public and the politicians are denouncing the war in Iraq, documentaries like Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight, premiering in Sundance’s Documentary Competition, are simply essential. The inevitable withdrawal of U.S. troops is sure to prompt attacks by the real “bitter enders” –- administration officials and neo-cons who will pin the war’s failures on an American lack of resolve – and Ferguson’s sober and straightforward documentary is the necessary rebuttal. Recalling that old piece of screenplay advice, “There are no third act problems,” Ferguson takes us back to the run-up to the war and the months following […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2007
GRACE NOTES

Anne Thompson at her Risky Business blog is reporting that the Weinstein Company has bought James Strouse’s Grace is Gone here at Sundance, beating out Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics. The price was not announced, but it’s rumored to be around $4 million. I’ll write more in detail about the film, which I saw at last night’s press screening, later, but here’s my quick take. In general, I found Richard Corliss’s Time mag broadside, “Sundance Movies are Bad for You,” unsupported and churlish, but if there’s one film that some of his criticisms might apply to, it’s this one. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 21, 2007
MARRIAGE TAX

What are the odds that 2007 would see not one but two documentaries about people whose lives and relationships are transformed when they are blinded by acid thrown in their faces? Gary Tarn’s brilliant Black Sun, which Peter Bowen has written about for the current issue of Filmmaker, uses the attack on writer Hugues de Montalembert as an opportunity to consider the subject of sight in all its dimensions – practical, philosophical and even ethical. Dan Klores’s Crazy Love (produced and co-directed by Fisher Stevens) takes a different approach. Such issues of sight and seeing are almost afterthoughts in what […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2007
LOVE BITES

I’ll write more about it later, but I liked Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Dramatic Competition entry, Teeth, a very clever and deftly handled horror comedy that literalizes the myth of the vagina dentata. One can summon up a lot of filmic references — Cronenberg, Stuart Gordon, and the recent Saved — but Lichtenstein has taken an outrageous concept and realized it with his own blend of campy humor, splatter gore, and emotional realism. Props to lead actress Jess Weixler too.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2007

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