Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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JAMES FRANCO & GUS VAN SANT ON “MEMORIES OF IDAHO”
One of the free programs at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival that caught our eye was James Franco and Gus Van Sant‘s installation, Memories of Idaho, which acts as a meditation on Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and its lead actor River Phoenix. Here’s a discussion Franco and Van Sant had this past weekend with Noah Cowan at the Bell Lightbox about Memories of Idaho. If you’re in Toronto the installation will be at the Lightbox until Sept. 18. Here’s more about it from the TIFF release: In 1991, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and its […]
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OPENING NIGHT FILM & PANELISTS CHOSEN FOR FILM INDEPENDENT FORUM
Drake Doremus‘ Sundance Grand Prize winner Like Crazy will be the opening night film for the 7th annual Film Independent Forum, according to the non-profit. Taking place Oct. 21-23 at the Director Guild of America in L.A., Like Crazy (which Paramount Vantage opens on Oct. 28) will kick off the the three-day forum for emerging and established independent filmmakers that covers production, distribution, documentary and new media. Speakers for the 2011 Film Independent Forum include: Sara Bernstein, HBO Documentary Films Laura Bickford, producer, Duplicity, Che Josh Braun, Submarine Lisa Callif, Donaldson & Callif, LLP Juan Devis, KCET Public Media Arthur […]
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SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL U.S.A. THEATERS ANNOUNCED
In 2010 the Sundance Institute began Sundance Film Festival U.S.A. where a handful of films from that year’s fest screened in select theaters nationwide on one day during the festival. Today Sundance announced the theaters that will take part in the 2012 edition on Jan. 26. The cities and theaters participating are: –Ann Arbor, MI – The Michigan Theatre –Boston, MA – Coolidge Corner Theatre –Brooklyn, NY – BAM –Chicago, IL – Music Box Theatre –Houston, TX – Sundance Cinemas Houston –Nashville, TN – Belcourt Theatre –Orlando, FL – Enzian Theater –San Francisco, CA – Sundance Kabuki Cinemas –Tucson, AZ […]
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FAMILIAR PLEASURES AT TORONTO: “YOU’RE NEXT” AND “SLEEPLESS NIGHT”
When you go to a film festival, you’re hoping for the new — films with a radical cinematic language, or content you’ve never seen before. A film that might have provided that to me at the Toronto International Film Festival has proven elusive. (I missed, for example, Steve McQueen’s Shame — the only oversold press and industry screening I’ve encountered so far.) But sometimes in your quest for new sensations you can be gobsmacked by the familiar, especially when it’s done very, very well. Indeed, the two most satisfying films I’ve seen so far at the festival are straight-up and […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #17
Second #799, 13:19 “Jeffrey can connect different worlds,” David Lynch has said. “He can look into Sandy’s world, he can look into Dorothy’s world, he can get into Frank’s world.” The secret subtext to this scene is Life Begins for Andy Hardy (1941), starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, number 11 in the movie series, where Andy learns that adult life is dark and impure and trip-wired with temptation and so struggles mightily to gear-shift his life into reverse. Andy, in New York, away from his future wife Betsy Booth (Judy Garland), is tempted by the “wolfess” Jennifer Hicks (Patricia […]
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TORONTO: WOMEN IN CHAINS
I heard a woman complaining in the women’s bathroom after Trishna. “But she just did what he said for two hours! It was like looking at a sphinx.” Later that day I found myself staring into the eyes of a thirteen-year-old Russia girl named Nadya as she dutifully trudged across the floor, on display in front of a group of Japanese fashion designers, close to paralyzed with alienation and helplessness. The latest by Michael Winterbottom, Trishna follows Freido Pinto as a very poor oldest daughter of a rural Indian family in an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Victorian novel Tess […]
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MAGNOLIA NABS BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT’S “GOD BLESS AMERICA”
Deadline reports that Magnolia Pictures has bought the world-wide rights for Bobcat Goldthwait‘s latest dark satire, God Bless America. The film will be released through Magnolia’s genre label, Magnet, with a VOD premiere in 2012 followed by a theatrical release. Premiering at this year’s TIFF Midnight Madness section, the film follows a 45-year-old man (Joel Murray) and a teenage girl (Tara Lynne Barr) as they go on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque rampage after the country unites in the ridicule of a simpleminded contestant on a television singing competition. “I feel like the American Empire is starting to crumble, and we’re […]
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IFP & FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER UNVEIL EMERGING VISIONS
The IFP and the Film Society of Lincoln Center have announced a collaborative program to take place during this year’s New York Film Festival called Emerging Visions. According to the press release, Emerging Visions will take place Oct. 3 at Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center with 25 emerging filmmaking talents attending with a documentary or narrative feature that has been selected from IFP and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s talent pool. They will be paired with an established director or producer who will mentor them through the current filmmaking landscape, offering guidance and connections to filmmakers on both […]
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TORONTO IS A PUZZLE
This is my first time at TIFF, and I have to admit, it is a puzzle. Look at this picture — that’s only the press and industry screenings! Notice the puzzlement and confusion of the professionals, even. I also find the transportation system puzzling, and spend a lot of time in taxis. Everyone likes to complain about traffic in Toronto and it is de rigeur to show up to a screening at the AMC Theatres panting and sweating. I had two films premiere this weekend (three cheers!!) and they were very well-received (three cheers!!) But mostly every buyer I meet […]
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THOUGHTS ON “CONTAGION”
Steven Soderbergh has dubbed Contagion his “Irwin Allen movie,” but if his pandemic thriller shares something with the films of that great creator of ‘70s melodramatic spectacle, it has more to do with financing and star power than emotional content. In Allen’s films, Hollywood A-/B+ royalty were introduced in varying stages of personal turmoil — crises that earthquakes, burning buildings or capsized ocean liners resolved in assorted manners (including that ultimate resolution, death). Despite their carnage, Allen’s films were humanist at their core. Appropriately for our de-humanized, digital age, Soderbergh’s coolly professional film deploys real movie stars — you won’t […]
