Filmmaking

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 Filmmaking
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 Filmmaking
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 Filmmaking
James C. Strouse, Grace is Gone

GRACE IS GONE. This article is part of Filmmaker’s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage. Certain films arrive at Sundance with a special type of anticipation, whether it’s due to star presence, subject matter, timeliness, or some ineffable quality that is the stuff of buzz. At Sundance 2007, Grace is Gone is one of those films. The directorial debut of James C. Strouse, who wrote Lonesome Jim (the Steve Buscemi-directed film screened at Sundance in 2005), the film tells the heart-wrenching story of a father, played by John Cusack, who must find a way to tell his children that their mother has […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 20, 2007 Directors
Cherien Dabis, Make a Wish

MAKE A WISH. This article is part of Filmmaker’s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage. Supported by numerous prestigious grants — including the Jerome Foundation’s New York City Media Arts Grant, the New York State Council on the Art’s Electronic Media and Film Distribution Grant, and National Geographic’s All Roads Film Project Seed Grant — Itmanna (Make a Wish), the most recent short film by writer/director, Cherien Dabis, will quickly follow its Sundance bow with screenings at Berlin and the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival. A former media activist and public relations specialist in Washington D.C., Dabis is the daughter of Palestinian/Jordanian immigrants, […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 20, 2007 Directors
JENKINS RETURNS WITH THE SAVAGES

With one full day in the books the talk around Main St. is about Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages. On an eight year hiatus from making features (her last being Slums of Beverly Hills), Jenkins returns with The Savages screening in the Premieres section. Funny yet touching, the story follows two siblings who are forced to interrupt their self-absorbed lives to take care of their ailing father. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman (could you think of a better tandem?) play the siblings who finally have to give a damn about their father (stage vet Philip Bosco) after years of non-communication […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 20, 2007 Filmmaking
Fellipe Barbosa, Salt Kiss

SALT KISS. This article is part of Filmmaker’s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage. Salt Kiss, the second short film by writer/director Fellipe Barbosa to screen at Sundance (following last year’s La Muerte Es Pequena), has none of the tropes commonly associated—by Americans—with “Latin American” cinema. That means no knife-fights, gambling, gang violence, or overt poverty. Yet Salt Kiss is absolutely a Latin American film—Brazilian, to be exact—because its creator told a film straight from his heart, and yes, he happens to be from Brazil. In truth, Salt Kiss shares much more with two fine American independent films released in recent years—Sideways […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 19, 2007 Directors
Hope Dickson Leach, The Dawn Chorus

THE DAWN CHORUS. This article is part of Filmmaker‘s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage. Hope Dickson Leach’s short film, The Dawn Chorus, tells the story of two siblings who annually reenact—with other survivors—the plane crash that killed their parents. An MFA thesis film for Columbia University’s Film program (where Hope graduated with honors), The Dawn Chorus explores the process of grieving and, hopefully healing. A former assistant to Todd Solondz, Hope’s short films have played at festivals around the world, from London and Edinburgh to Boston and Austin. The Dawn Chorus screens in Shorts Program 1, and the film’s path to […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 19, 2007 Directors
Nanobah Becker, Conversion

CONVERSION. This article is part of Filmmaker‘s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage. Conversion, the ambitious second short film by Nanobah Becker, clocks in at only nine minutes, and is described simply tantalizingly as: “Christian missionaries make a catastrophic visit to a Navajo family.” Becker’s first short, Flat, has screened in festivals internationally, and she is a recipient of a 2005 Sundance Institute Ford Fellowship and a 2006 Media Arts Fellowship for her feature screenplay, Full. Conversion will play in Shorts Program V at Sundance. Can you say a little bit about your background? Where you’re from? Age? Education? Film experience prior […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Jan 19, 2007 Directors
"RISK FACTORS" IS RIGHT!

It’s kind of ironic that I’m here picking up the hotel’s free Wi-Fi and blogging on the second floor of the Sundance headquarters while waiting in a long line for my press credentials, which are delayed due to the festival’s internet being down (and the festival computers having lost a large number of photo files). So far, our small Filmmaker crew has, in less than 24 hours, been hit by said internet failure, food poisoning, lost luggage (along with the entire Delta flight I was on), and a missing condo owner (who was holding the keys). So it looks like […]

By Scott Macaulay on Jan 19, 2007 Filmmaking

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