For many adults, The Sleeping Beauty, whether in Charles Perrault’s original telling or the Brothers Grimm’s, is the quintessential fairy tale. It has spawned countless retellings in the form of animated films, ballets, and children’s book adaptations. Now, iconoclastic director Catherine Breillat tackles the tale but on her own terms. For Breillat, The Sleeping Beauty is a doorway into the world of childhood fantasy in general as her young princess, cursed to die on her 16th birthday, travels through time and space, going on a series of adventures that underscore the fearlessness of a child’s imagination — and the adult […]
James Marsh first became a household name in the States after winning the 2009 Oscar for Best Documentary for his film Man on Wire, a “heist” picture about the French tightrope walker, Philippe Petit, who traversed a line between the twin towers in 1974. That film’s use of genre, its stylistic flair, and its fusion of fiction and documentary elements can be witnessed as early as Marsh’s 1999 film Wisconsin Death Trip, about the tragedies that befell a small town of Wisconsin at the turn of the 20th century. Marsh stays true to form in his latest documentary Project Nim […]
(Project Nim is being distributed theatrically by Roadside Attractions. It opens in theaters July 8, 2011. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) In December of 1973, a two-week old chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky was taken from the arms of his mother and given to a human family in the hopes of settling a raging intellectual debate. In a famous study, the linguist (and now-famous political philosopher) Noam Chomsky had asserted that language acquisition was solely the domain of human beings, an innate quality existing within and discovered by humans through experience and exposure to language, which combined to […]
A Dutch protectorate tucked near the very bottom of the Caribbean, Aruba is a small, arid, resort powered island that, despite its idiosyncrasies, may feel at times, especially along its sunbather packed eastern shores, like any other tourist satellite (although a particularly intoxicating one it is). Still, woe is he who gets caught in the all too ubiquitous American simulacrum, one of decidedly marked-up Five Guys fries and T.G.I. Friday’s chicken fingers, of cheeseburger “specials” at Hooters with beef that taste like copper. Of course, this is a film festival on a beautiful tourist trap, so there’s a lot of […]
John Carpenter has a well-earned reputation as the Master of Horror, even if the legendary director’s still-growing body of work has encompassed everything from TV biopics (Elvis) to sci-fi thrillers (The Thing, Escape from New York) and the occasional action-comedy (Big Trouble in Little China). Early on, he just seemed to have his finger on the pulse of something, well, evil. If you came of age in the late ’70s, before cable and home entertainment systems made R-rated movies easily accessible to viewers of any age, the dread-inducing, nightmarish trailers on network television for films like Halloween and The Fog […]
In keeping with a bit of our theme from last week we tackle the subject of using our films to make a larger audience aware of a subject or group, and in turn gain a network of people we would have never come in contact with. If crowdsourcing is a way to gain a new following and engage an audience in the filmmaking process, then social change can do the same thing, but also give back to a community or group in more ways than just one narrative film can. It can also serve to engage a larger network in […]
The appearance of a fictional version of the President of the United States is a hallmark of many genre films, particularly of the earthly disaster variety, in which the impending destruction of the planet, or at least the country warrants a visit from our Commander-in-Chief. In some cases, the character is a way for the filmmaker to get into some mild politics, to take a sly jab at a particular administration through spoofing or lampoonery. In other cases the POTUS depiction has an element of wish fulfillment, in which the filmmaker projects his ideal leader in a crisis situation. Like […]
Now up on our VOD Calendar are titles available for the month of July. Some of the highlights: Duncan Jones‘ fantastic thriller Source Code, Cannes winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, David Robert Mitchell‘s impressive debut The Myth of the American Sleepover and Michael Tully‘s Southern Gothic tale Septien. For titles from previous months go to our VOD Calendar homepage.
(The 10th anniversary of Dark Days will be re-released through Oscilloscope Laboratories beginning Friday.) Things keep happening that make me feel old. No I don’t have any major age-related illnesses. I haven’t been getting copies of AARP magazine in the mail. “Are you even 30 yet?” is still a legitimate question to ask me upon any encounter. For the record, I’m not (yet) 30, but still I can’t help getting the creeping sense that, in the words of LCD Soundsystem, “I’m losing my edge.” Upon learning that the Cinema Village was going to open British documentarian Marc Singer’s seminal 2000 […]
One of Canada’s hottest filmmaking prospects for much of the aughts, Toronto-based Ed Gass-Donnelly made a reputation for himself as a prolific short filmmaker, making the festival rounds with several shorts during the first half of the decade. He broke through as a feature director with his 2007 drama This Beautiful City, a look at five disparate citizens of Ontario’s largest metropolis that is at once a sprawling ensemble piece and an intimate investigation into ordinary lives intertwined by extraordinary events. A favorite at that year’s Toronto International Film Festival, it went on to be nominated for four Genie Awards […]