6300 Results for “Open ”
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“TAKE SHELTER AND WEEKEND” — A HAMMER TO NAIL REMINDER!
(Visit the official websites for Take Shelter and Weekend to find out when they will be playing on a big screen near you.) Though I often complain about how content oversaturated and short-attention-span diseased our lives have become and how these factors have directly hindered the ability for any independent film to gain even a fraction of legitimate theatrical traction anymore, the truth is that at Hammer to Nail, we share in the guilt. We post reviews on/around the day of a film’s initial theatrical release in either NY/LA and don’t continue to remind readers when these films open in […]
by Michael Tully on Oct 6, 2011 -
“CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN” IS ALWAYS A GLASS MOSTLY EMPTY: ON “THE IDES OF MARCH”
Note: the following piece contains spoilers. One time in my fleeting youth, I encountered George Clooney in the Warner Brothers screening room on 53rd Street after a National Board of Review screening of Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German. This is before I had, despite my ongoing poverty and lack of renown, spent ample time around movie stars and the merely sort-of famous at sundry locations, both foreign and domestic, becoming relatively at ease in their strange company. I still often felt not unlike the protagonist of Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, as he follows William Holden through a blustery New Orleans afternoon, sensing some […]
by Brandon Harris on Oct 6, 2011 -
THE 33RD PIA FILM FESTIVAL
The 33rd edition of the PIA festival wrapped on Friday, September 30. A week and an half in the rather dowdy National Film Theatre saw a slew of hipsters, film students, pedants, critics and film fans making their annual pilgrimage to check out the newest of the new – with hopes of discovering the newest and best of the Japanese film scene. PIA has played host to the first-time efforts of such folks as enfant terrible Sono Shion as well as the more gentle international festival favorite, Naomi Kawase. Recently they’ve been nurturing the career of whipsmart indie wunderkind, Yuya […]
by Nicholas Vroman on Oct 5, 2011 -
NICK AUGUST-PERNA, CHRIS DAPKINS, CARLO MIRABELLA-DAVIS, “THE SWELL SEASON”
After winning the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2008 for John Carney’s breakout hit Once, real-life sweethearts Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová (who co-starred in the Independent Spirit Award–winning film) hit the road with their band, the Swell Season, for what was to have been an exultant, roof-raising tour of the U.S., Ireland, and Europe. Instead, though greeted enthusiastically by thousands of new fans at sold-out shows, the crazy-in-love couple found themselves strained and ultimately divided by the exposure, a bittersweet trajectory charted in the new documentary, The Swell Season, which opened Silverdocs in June. For the film, co-directors […]
by Damon Smith on Oct 5, 2011 -
WRAPPING WOODSTOCK 2011
Forget that the world economy is inching precariously close to tanking, yet again. Forget that new film festivals are also streaming out of the starting gate. “The inaugural Singafest Asian Film Festival hits Westwood this weekend,” the email proclaims. So just how many festivals are there? “First Palo Alto Film Festival opens with a bang.” The emails won’t stop. A lowball count is 4,000 worldwide, although doubling, possibly tripling, that number is probably closer to reality. Forget that we know all the top-tier festivals, the celebrities attending, the films winning, and the festival race-chatter: Toronto is up and Venice is […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Oct 4, 2011 -
The Blue Velvet Project, #24
Second # 1128, 18:48 1. “The first thing I need,” Jeffrey tells Sandy, “is to get into her apartment and open a window that I can crawl into later.” As it turns out, this plot line never develops, as Jeffrey spots a key to Dorothy’s apartment which he takes instead. It seems like a minor point, the window, (although in the apartment in his bug overalls Jeffrey does glance twice at the window above Dorothy’s sink) and we soon forget about it. It’s one of those moments in Blue Velvet that only obliquely and in the most obscure ways references […]
by Nicholas Rombes on Oct 3, 2011 -
Take Shelter — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Before world-premiering in the dramatic competition at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, Take Shelter was picked up by Sony Classics. It went on to win the Grand Prize at Critics Week, as well as the FIPRESCI Prize, in Cannes. It opens theatrically in New York City and Los Angeles on Friday, September 30, 2011. Visit the official website to learn more.) [DISCLAIMER: I am very good friends with several of the key collaborators involved with the Take Shelter production. Ordinarily, I would absolve myself from writing a review based on far more tenuous connections, but in this particular case, I […]
by Michael Tully on Sep 29, 2011 -
MORE IS MORE: THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL (PART ONE)
The New York Film Festival is “the most famous and prestigious in the country,” according to the website of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It may well be–though I think San Francisco and Telluride might balk at the statement. And the term the country only technically leaves out Toronto. Superlatives aside, this 49th edition, quite a good one overall, is nothing if not admirably ambitious. No longer can the NYFF be accused of replicating Cannes, or of including a disproportionate number of gallic films. What is called the Main Slate, the core of the festival, is, however, top-heavy with […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 28, 2011 -
IFW: AS WE GO ALONG…
Dear Gentle Reader, Tommy Minnix here again, after our first day of meetings at the No Borders section of Independent Film Week. Firstly, a big thanks to John Sylva, Susan Wrubel, and the IFP team and volunteers for their amazing coordination of dozens (hundreds even?) of industry and filmmakers, all shuttling from one table to the next to spend a brief but critical 25 minutes getting to know each other. From inside the elevator before the doors opened, it sounded like a beehive. And when you walked into the room, it could have been with all the activity. Writer/director Dean […]
by Tommy Minnix on Sep 26, 2011 -
IFW: NOT ALONE
I suspect that just about everyone who is at IFW this week applied for the chance to meet with buyers, distributors, and financers, and so I expected that I would spend my midweek blog focusing on those meetings and letting prospective Spotlight on Documentary participants know what a great opportunity this is. Well the good news is: it is true! IFW is a great chance to meet one-on-one with people you may otherwise only be able to contact through the abyss of their “info@____.com” company inbox. That is what makes IFW unique, and, particularly for New York-based filmmakers, many of […]
by Madeleine Sackler on Sep 26, 2011
