If you’ve ever wondered about how some of those would-be stars get on “American Idol,” here is a film about some who don’t. “Great World of Sound” is a movie about an outfit that buys ads in the papers offering free auditions to new talent, and then tries to sell them a “professional recording session” that will produce a CD allegedly distributed to radio stations and record companies. To some degree, this offer is real. To a very small degree. We actually even see one of the clients in the “professional” studio. But the real point is to get the […]
Blogging from last year’s Sundance I wrote that “if I could give an award to the camera delivering the most impact on screen at Sundance 2011, it would go to RED One.” That was then. In the 12 months since, ARRI’s Alexa has all but conquered TV series production in the U.S., and now you can add a dozen low-budget indie films at Sundance too, like the bittersweet romcom Celeste and Jesse Forever, starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg and photographed by David Lanzenberg. Sony’s new budget-friendly F3 made a splash at Sundance as well, responsible for Spike Lee’s Red […]
(Jess + Moss world premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. It opens theatrically at the reRun Gastropub in New York City on Friday, February 17, 2012. If you are not in NYC, don’t worry, as it is now available on VOD at the following outlets: YouTube, iTunes, Sundance Now, and Amazon. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) While there are many pressing existential questions, to my mind, this is one of the most significant: can one make a truly effective film about aimlessness and boredom without that film becoming excruciatingly aimless and boring in its own right? […]
Monsanto, the agriculture biotech company maligned in such docs as Food, Inc. and King Corn, found renewed opposition this month with the launch of an online petition gone viral called “Tell Obama to Cease FDA Ties to Monsanto.” The petition protests the president’s 2009 appointment of the company’s former VP, Michael Taylor, to the position of senior advisor to the FDA. That this years-late call to action has inspired more than 380,000 signatures attests to the toxicity of this particular marriage between government and a multinational corporation. If you’ll remember, Monsanto is the company that brought us DDT and Agent Orange, both of […]
SXSW announced today the lineups for their Midnighters and Shorts programs. The Midnighters section pulls together a batch of genre-heavy world premieres, including Spanish found-footage horror sequel [REC] ³ GENESIS and dark comedy Girls Against Boys, as well as proven festival favorites V/H/S and John Dies at the End. The shorts program meanwhile is as extensive as ever, featuring 135 selections including works from James M. Johnson, Jeremiah Zagar, Bill Plympton, Dustin Guy Defa, and Josh and Benny Safdie (who present their Sundance Jury Prize winner The Black Balloon.) The full lineups: MIDNIGHTERS Scary, funny, sexy, controversial – provocative after-dark […]
There is a longstanding debate in the non-fiction filmmaking community about the nature of documentary films; is the mission of the documentary to tell the truth and nothing but or do the requirements of cinematic storytelling allow for flexibility in the service of story? As a passionate viewer of non-fiction filmmaking, I have always drawn a line between cinema and reportage; on the one hand, reality must provide the underlying structure of documentary film, but unlike news gathering and reporting, films should have the license to manipulate things like chronology and the way in which information is presented in order to create […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Wednesday, January 25 9:45 pm –EcclesTheatre, Park City] I remember watching the end of Hannah and her Sisters as a teenager, when Woody Allen finds out he’s not going to die from a terminal illness and then fails at a suicide attempt. How does he find the will to live again? He walks past a theater where a Marx Brothers comedy is playing, he slips in and loses himself in the magic of Duck Soup, and all his problems melt away. Of course, right? I mean, what better way for a person to celebrate life than to go […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Tuesday, January 24, 3:00 pm –Yarrow Hotel Theatre, Park City] I’m not an independent filmmaker; so-called independent filmmakers—all the more so documentarians—are some of the most dependent people around. We depend on funders and characters, on permission-givers and gatekeepers, on our own (free) will, determination and hubris—not to mention on the weather. A film teacher I once had gave me the one really truly valuable lesson in all my MFA: “You want to make a movie?” she asked us. Yes, we nodded. “Then go out and tell everyone you know that you’re going to make a movie.” Otherwise, she […]
While on the plane to Salt Lake City, it occurred to me that it might be fun to do Park City coverage as a live blog from the perspective of someone who’s never been there before. I have a press pass for Slamdance, so I’m mostly covering that. 21 January; 2:36pm Another screening. February (Nick Singer): A short about a guy with some plumbing problems. It’s well-shot, but you really get the sense that it’s more an exercise in cinematography than anything resembling a story. The Sound of Small Things (Peter McLarnan): A film about a marriage in decline, McLarnan’s […]
Following the adventures of two mismatched salesman hawking vanity recording deals for a small Southern recording label, Craig Zobel’s 2007 Sundance picture Great World of Sound is a beautifully crafted debut feature, emotionally rich and with a sagacious perspective on America’s escalating obsession with fame. And in the months following its release, the banter between the two men, and the hapless vocalists aiming for an America’s Got Talent-style brass ring by way of a cheaply-produced studio single, must have made the film seem like a comedy to those who missed its lacerating moral critique. That’s because, as Zobel notes below, […]