The first weekend of the Toronto International Film Festival comes to a close with two films finding distribution deals. Earlier today IFC landed the first major deal of the fest with a seven-figure deal for the James Gunn-directed wannabe superhero dark comedy Super, starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon and Liv Tyler. And just announced moments ago, The Weinstein Company inked a U.S. deal (and some foreign territories) north of $3 million for Dirty Girl. Starring Juno Temple, Dwight Yoakam, Milla Jovovich and Willam H. Macy, the film, directed by Abe Sylvia, follows a young girl through her journey […]
After reading a few small articles on wind energy in the Delaware County Times, the New York City-based video and commercials editor Laura Israel, who retreats to a 16’ by 16’ cabin outside the town of Meredith in said county, thought she might do something for the green movement and get a wind turbine—and not have to pay for electricity in the bargain. “I went on the internet and realized, ‘Wind energy is not what I thought.’ I was editing at a place where a guy was doing a tv segment on it as part of green. I told him […]
Toronto, the IFP Filmmaker Conference hot on its heels, the New York Film Festival, and, for us, the close of our Fall issue — the season has begun. We’ve already begun work on the magazine, and I’m getting ready to go Toronto, where I’ll join Howard Feinstein and Livia Bloom contributing to the magazine and blog. Of course, the best part of any festival experience is the serendipitous discovery, the word-of-mouth gem you were tipped to or the film you randomly walked into that turned out to be great. I hope to be telling you about some of those over […]
Tiny Furniture director Lena Dunham, one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of 2009,” will write, direct the pilot for, and co-executive produce a new HBO series exec produced by Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner, reports Nellie Andreeva at Deadline Hollywood. The piece says the series “is expected to feature autobiographical elements” From Deadline: “Lena has a unique, truthful comic voice,” Apatow said. “I am excited to work with her and learn from her.” Konner said she was “obsessed with working with Lena” since HBO’s entertainment president Sue Naegle gave her a copy of Tiny Furniture. “She has a staggeringly […]
Ten years ago, François Ozon’s dark, Hitchcock-tinged melodrama See the Sea caught the attention of American film critics. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin marked him as “an impressive new filmmaker with a flair for implicit mayhem.” In the 12 features since then, Ozon has expressed his mayhem in various genres (musicals, fairy tales, magical realism, period romances, etc.), with different cinematic influences (Chabrol, Fassbinder, Renoir, Pasolini, etc.) and in a range of production scales. But central to all his films is a deep sense of the essentially conflicted nature of emotional relations, be it the comic sadomasochism of Water […]
Here are a few articles, links and videos that caught my eye this week: The shape of documentaries to come may be revealed by Prison Valley, which won the second FRANCE24-Radio France International Web Documentary Award last week. From France 24’s article about the new media doc by David Dufresne and Philippe Brault: Created by David Dufresne and Philippe Brault, the striking multimedia production takes viewers to the heart of Canon City, “a distant place that is home to 36,000 souls and 13 prisons.” Produced by the French company Upian and distributed by Arte.tv, Prison Valley, is an interactive journey […]
I loved Jeff Mizushima’s delicate, entirely charming, and vaguely emo-ish Etienne! when I saw it last year after its CineVegas premiere. I wound up putting Jeff in our “25 New Faces” simply because the film’s sensibility seemed so different to me. I also loved its formally-bold second-half narrative shift and director Caveh Zahedi’s last-reel appearance in a scene that could have been taken from a Peter Handke novel. The film receives its East Coast premiere at the Brooklyn gastropub theater reRun beginning tomorrow for a one-week run. You can reserve tickets here. Here’s what I wrote last year: Writer-director Jeff […]
Not many first-time independent filmmakers land a coveted spot in the Sunday arts section of The New York Times and an interview on The Leonard Lopate Show. But 33-year-old Lixin Fan, a Chinese-born Canadian immigrant who splits his time between Montreal and Beijing, has generated a lot of interest among editors at major dailies and business publications alike for his documentary Last Train Home, a film about the annual New Year’s pilgrimage of 130 million migrant workers from Guangzhou province to their homes and seldom-seen families in the rural provinces. China’s status as an economic powerhouse regularly makes front-page […]
Producer Gavin Polone’s presumably ex- current assistant has made one of those Xtranormal videos where you submit text and use the service to make a robotically-voiced animated short. This was sent to me this week by a friend who attested to its validity, and now, Nikki Finke gets confirmation from Polone (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Zombieland) himself. He is quoted, “Sadly, it isn’t altogether untrue. People seem to like it. Maybe it will inspire an HBO series about me?” Some enterprising curator should assemble the best of these Xtranormal videos. They’d make an oddly compelling full-evening show.
“I wanted to be a dancer,” says Fred Astaire, wheezing out a tune on a harmonica with his gangly frame draped casually over a medical couch. “Till I was psychologized.” Astaire plays doctor—a shrink, of all things—in Mark Sandrich’s Carefree (1953), a little-known screwball comedy gem as antic and goofy as Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (1938) with dance. And what dance! Accompanied by an Irving Berlin score, Astaire and Rogers are at the top of their game in the tale of a therapist (Astaire) who must find the root of the commitment phobia that plagues his new patient (Rogers). […]