Kick-Ass is Matthew Vaughn’s canny mainstream imagining of John Romita and Mark Millar’s Marvel Comic about a bunch of psychologically damaged homemade superheroes on self-empowerment rampage. Yes, I felt weird watching 11-year-old Chloe Moretz (she’s 13 now) take part in such violent shootouts. I also queasily admired Vaughn’s seemingly casual but ultimately quite calculated envelope-pushing. There’s some brutish B-movie splatter and the C-word too, but this is not transgressive filmmaking. (Indeed, while watching Kick-Ass I kept wishing I was watching the Takeshi Miike version.) Kinka Usher’s Mystery Men, adapted from Bob Burden’s comic, worked a similar concept over ten years […]
The South of France will be filled with familiar faces for this year’s Cannes Film Festival as the line-up was announced overnight in Paris. As previously announced Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood will open the festival. Notable names attending will include Woody Allen, Oliver Stone, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Jean Luc-Godard and Gregg Araki (full list of titles below). The one glaring omission is Terrence Malick‘s Tree of Life, though festival chief Thierry Fremaux says there more titles are expected to be announced as the festival approaches. The fest will take place May 12-23. IN COMPETITION: Tournee directed by Mathieu Almaric Des […]
I’m happy to welcome Mary Anderson Casavant to the blog. I’ll let her introduce herself below, and you can look forward to a series of posts from her on the documentary scene, focusing on the films featured at the Stranger than Fiction series unspooling at the IFC Center. First up is a conversation with filmmaker Liz Mermin. — SM I’d like to start by acknowledging that I am not a disinterested observer when it comes to Stranger Than Fiction. From 2005 – 2006, I worked as a freelance researcher for its founder and curator, Thom Powers, the current documentary programmer […]
In early films like In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, writer-director Neil LaBute made it something of his stock in trade to examine dysfunctional relationships and uncomfortably intimate cruelties with vicious humor and a Mamet-like flair for acerbic, acid-tongued dialogue. Even later films such as Nurse Betty and The Shape of Things highlighted LaBute’s ongoing fascination with all the grotty stuff of human interaction–deceit, betrayals, hurtful candor, and hidden perversities–making for dramatic conflict poised somewhere between Greek tragedy and the visceral, skin-prickling plays of Harold Pinter. In addition to his filmography, LaBute is also an accomplished […]
If you think that DSLRs haven’t caught on for filmmakers in a big way yet, think again. Following up a series of Twitter posts by its director, the website Peta Pixel reports that the season finale of House has been shot on the Canon 5D. The site compiles director Greg Yaitanes’ tweets into an impromptu interview (a neat journalistic trick I will make a point to try sometime), including this summation of his experience: “i loved it and feel it’s the future. cameras that can give you these looks.” Check out Peta Pixel for the whole conversation. The episode airs […]
The IFP has announced the ten projects selected for its Documentary Lab. The Lab will take place April 12-16 in New York City and will include five-days of intensive workshops and mentorships from working professionals. The list of projects are below. Lear more at ifp.org. 25 To Life William Brawner was infected with HIV before he turned two and kept it a secret for over twenty years. Now he seeks redemption from the women of his promiscuous past and embarks on a new phase of life with his pregnant wife, who is HIV-negative. Fellows: Michael L. Brown (Director, Producer); Yvonne […]
It’s hard to go head first into film noir and not regurgitate the themes, styles, dialogue and characters from the past. But Noah Buschel in his latest cleverly dances around the genre to tell a story of a man who’s hit rock bottom and how he unknowingly redeems himself. Set in the modern day, Michael Shannon gives one of his best performances in a budding career as a gifted character actor with his portrayal as sauced Chicago private eye John Rosow. When we meet Rosow he’s extremely hung over and gets a call to do a job tailing a guy […]
Most of the TV reviewers who reviewed David Simon’s new HBO series Treme were shown the first three episodes. I only caught the first, last night, on its premiere. Directed by Agnieskza Holland, the post-Katrina series set in the world of New Orleans musicians was undeniably gorgeous to look at and listen to. It took the fairly bold approach of not kickstarting with any huge central incident but rather sketching a tableaux of characters defined, in part, by their attitude toward a city that has been irrevocably changed. If The Wire was about characters defined by either their resistance or […]
Before this post, a full disclosure: I have sat on numerous panels in the last year, including Woodstock, SXSW, the Conversation NYC, and the IFP’s Script to Screen. Many of these panels have had something to do with “new models” or “the future of independent film.” My panel at Script to Screen was different because it was simply a one-on-one with writer/director Terry George, and it gave me some of the best advice: when trying to write seriously, disconnect your internet router and pack it away. In my experience sometimes panels can be really stimulating and provocative, and sometimes they […]
I got a kick out of Bette Gordon’s blog post “Remembering the Past, Segueing into the Future” over at Truly Free Film. Gordon remembers the 1983 premiere of her feature Variety, for which she and producer Renee Shafransky rented the now-demolished and condo-ized Variety cinema, a porn house, on 3rd Avenue and 13th St. I attended that premiere and one of my memories was of the woman who sat next to pulling out her New York Times and placing it underneath her as she sat down. So, of course, I laughed when I read this: In the 80’s, there was […]