Written by Alison Willmore, the all-seeing Indie Eye blog reads the news so you don't have to. (Well, maybe just the A & E section).
Alison Willmore
is the editor of IFC.com's film coverage and one of the site's video hosts. Follow her at twitter.com/indie_eye
Email: ifcblog (at) ifc dot com
April 2008
Tribeca '08: "Let the Right One In."
By Alison Willmore on 04/30/2008
Filed under: Festivals, ReviewsRed on white on white, Tomas Alfredson's "Let the Right One In" is a moody, surprising Nordic pre-teen love story about a bullied boy, Oskar, and the girl who moves in next door, Eli — a vampire. And it's not the perky goth fable it sounds like it could be — Oskar's a monochromatic, friendless lad who plays with a knife and dreams of killing everyone who's tormented him, while Eli's eating habits leave her and the surrounding walls smeared with gobs of blood. Set in an ice-encrusted Swedish backwater, the film is centered in the apartment building in which... MORE »
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"Blindness" is in.
By Alison Willmore on 04/29/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Rumors"Blindness," the new film from "City of God"'s Fernando Meirelles, was one of the major omissions the industry was buzzing about when the Cannes line-up was announced last week. Now it looks like the film will be opening the festival — from the Toronto Star: The Cannes Film Festival has selected Blindness, produced by Toronto's Niv Fichman, for its coveted opening night slot on May 14, the Toronto Star has learned. This dark $25 million epic - about an unnamed city struck by a unique plague in which 90 per cent of the population go blind - is a three-way... MORE »
Tribeca '08: "Somers Town."
By Alison Willmore on 04/28/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Reviews35-year-old director Shane Meadows seems unruffled by the burdens of being the current great hope of British cinema. "Somers Town," his sixth film and best yet, is all the finer for its modesty — shot in black and white and coming in at a neat 75 minutes, the tale of the friendship between two teens in the North London neighborhood of the title reaches for nothing beyond its grasp and is, because of it, just about perfect. Meadows reunites with Thomas Turgoose, the fierce little thirteen-year-old he made the star of "This is England" after the kid demanded for five... MORE »
Tribeca '08: "Playing."
By Alison Willmore on 04/25/2008
Filed under: Festivals, ReviewsFor his tenth feature, "Jogo de Cena" (Playing), documentarian Eduardo Coutinho placed an ad in the paper calling for Rio de Janeiro women over the age of 18 with stories to tell to come to an audition. Naturally, everyone has a some kind of story to tell, but the subjects he selected were all particularly driven to perform, either because of a burning need to recount something that happened to them in the past or because they harbor aspirations toward acting. "Playing" is composed entirely of interviews conducted on a bare stage, monologues of women's stories in tall type, of... MORE »
Odds: Salman Rushdie as a doctor, Paul Verhoeven on Jesus.
By Alison Willmore on 04/23/2008
Filed under: OddsSalman Rushdie turns up in a somewhat jarring cameo as an obstetrician in Helen Hunt's directorial debut "Then She Found Me" — he's not bad, but his presence does throw you, as would, I suppose, Tom Stoppard playing a firefighter, or Joan Didion delivering a few lines of advice as a sage aunt. New York investigates the curious casting. At indieWIRE, publicist Jeremy Walker, on the eve of a move to California, reflects on the indie publicity game: Publicity is an optimist's game, but only to a point. You can't really be a publicist for "risky" movies without liberally trafficking... MORE »
Peter Scarlet talks Tribeca.
By Alison Willmore on 04/23/2008
Filed under: Festivals, WatchyHaving taken advantage of none of the past weeks' advance screenings, I'm going to be heading into many a Tribeca film come tomorrow, and possibly turning around and heading right back out of a few, given my luck in the past with parsing the festival's daunting line-up. All of IFC.com's Tribeca coverage, including interviews and videos, will be gathered here; in the intro piece, below, Matt and I talk to the fest's executive director Peter Scarlet. The flash 8 plugin was not detected. var so = new SWFObject("/static/bc/ifc_generic_blog.swf", "cinemaeye", "380", "295", "8", "#ffffff"); so.addParam("wmode", "transparent"); //change player width so.addVariable("pwidth", 380);... MORE »
"It's been axiomatic that documentaries are incapable of presenting the entire truth since the Lumière brothers..."
By Alison Willmore on 04/23/2008
Filed under: In quotesAnother tour around the interview circuit: "It's been axiomatic that documentaries are incapable of presenting the entire truth since the Lumière brothers first pointed a camera at workers leaving a factory, then got them to leave all over again for a second take." —Guy Maddin on the blurry line between doc and narrative at the Village Voice "[C]ome on! Planet of the Apes? It was so below what we were doing!" —Dan Richter on playing the ape with the bone at the beginning of "2001: A Space Odyssey," at New York "That had one of the best martial-arts fight scenes... MORE »
Creative differences.
By Alison Willmore on 04/23/2008
Filed under: VersusJames Caan has left David O. Russell's political comedy "Nailed." From the Hollywood Reporter: The trouble started Wednesday on the first of Caan's two days of shooting the role of a U.S. speaker of the house who chokes to death on a cookie. Russell asked him to cough as he choked, but Caan argued that the character couldn't cough and choke to death at the same time. Russell suggested that they shoot it both ways, but the actor expressed distrust that his version would be considered and left the South Carolina set. A spokesman for Caan wouldn't confirm or deny... MORE »
More Cannes: Un Certain Regard, midnight and special screenings.
By Alison Willmore on 04/23/2008
Filed under: FestivalsHere's the official announcement from the festival. (See this previous post for the competition line-up.) Another addition to the big out-of-competition premieres: Korean director Kim Ji-woon's western "The Good, the Bad, and the Weird" — "The Host"'s Song Kang-ho is "the Weird." You can find the full line-ups for Un Certain Regard and the midnight and special screenings are after the jump. A few call-outs: "Wendy and Lucy" is the new film from "Old Joy" director Kelly Reichardt; James Toback chugs along, making films I have so far been totally unable to appreciate; and Jennifer Lynch, whose "Surveillance" is one... MORE »
An Ebertfest without Ebert.
By Alison Willmore on 04/23/2008
Filed under: FestivalsIt seems Roger Ebert won't be making it to the 10th anniversary of the Illinois film festival he established after all. He writes: After consulting with my doctors, I have decided it may not prudent to try to make the journey today with a fractured hip. Sigh. I was really happy with this one. The films, the guests, the friends. Chaz, Nate Kohn, Mary Susan Britt and I had all the pieces in place. The only tweak I didn't have time for was a proper full-length review of "Shotgun Stories." It was on the to-do list. What I'm using now... MORE »
Cannes 2008: The Competition.
By Alison Willmore on 04/23/2008
Filed under: FestivalsAt long last! Premiering out of competition will be, as expected, "Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull," as well as Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" and everyone's favorite "Kung Fu Panda." The closing night film may still be the already announced "What Just Happened?" from Barry Levinson — or maybe not — and the opening night film has yet to be announced. Some of the goodies down below — Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut "Synecdoche, New York," the one American film many had called ahead of time; Clint Eastwood's Changeling"; Steven Soderbergh's "Che," which, given talk that the... MORE »
Australia!
By Alison Willmore on 04/22/2008
Filed under: WatchyBaz Luhrmann is vodcasting about the making of "Australia," that Oz fuck explosion starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, thousands of cattle and World War II, as part of Apple's "Set to Screen" series on iTunes. The film, Luhrmann's first to follow the Red Curtain Trilogy, is in post-production now, and is due in theaters in November. There are only two behind-the-scenes installments up so far for download, an intro and a piece focusing on the on-set still photographer, but both offer glimpses of a film that looks devotedly and unabashedly epic, [Photo: "Australia," Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, 2008] + Baz... MORE »
Who killed the incomprehensible Russian threequel?
By Alison Willmore on 04/22/2008
One more NY Comic Con tidbit: Russian-Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov made his name with "Night Watch," that epilepsy-inducingly excessive fantasy blockbuster about good and evil battling it out in the streets of modern Moscow that beat out "The Lord of the Rings" at the Russian box office. "Day Watch," the film's somewhat less fun and certainly less intelligible sequel, did even better on its home turf, racking in a reported $32 million. So what's become of "Dusk Watch," the planned third film in the trilogy? Bekmambetov, at the New York convention with shiny graphic novel adaptation "Wanted," was asked about... MORE »
Everyone's gone green.
By Alison Willmore on 04/22/2008
The Walt Disney Company has established a new production banner, Disneynature, through which it hopes to put two new nature docs a year to theaters starting in 2009 with "Earth," then on to "Oceans" and "Chimpanzee." Despite the apparently enviro-angle, Brook Barnes at the New York Times points out this move is mainly just business-savvy: Disney hopes that nature's broad appeal will help the studio expand overseas. The company's films have long been successful in foreign countries, but Disney faces cultural barriers in some developing markets like China and India. Nature documentaries, with film gathered from around the globe, cross... MORE »
Talking to yourself.
By Alison Willmore on 04/22/2008
The spring issue of The Threepenny Review has a symposium on the various forms of editing, with contributors ranging from Walter Murch to literary critic Christopher Ricks. Most aren't online — fortunately, one of the few that is is from documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. He gives a nicely grounded explanation of how he shapes a film from footage: The editing is finally finished when I go through the film and try to explain to myself why each shot and sequence is in the film. I have to express in words both my rational and non-rational decisions. Since I like talking... MORE »
Silly Billy goes national.
By Alison Willmore on 04/22/2008
Andrew Jarecki's anguished "Capturing the Friedmans" started as a doc about birthday clowns — its central figure, David Friedman, first caught Jarecki's eye as Silly Billy, a successful New York magician, clown, balloon twister and children's entertainer with what turned out to be one hell of a personal history. Friedman's day job was eventually explored in Jarecki's "Just a Clown,", a slight, lighthearted doc short overwhelmed with burdens of context — it's offered as an extra on the "Capturing the Friedmans" DVD. Like Silly Billy's website ("Silly Billy received loads of press including a feature story in the New Yorker,... MORE »
Del Toro's "little movie" and Miller's adaptation.
By Alison Willmore on 04/21/2008
Filed under: RumorsTwo rumors from the past weekend's New York Comic Con that caught my eye: JoBlo.com reports that Guillermo del Toro, at the convention to push "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," announced that he's working on a project called "Saturn and the End of Days": What he calls his final movie about "childhood and horror", it tells the tale of the Apocalypse, as seen through the eyes of a small child going to and from the grocery store. "What would happen if the Apocalypse was viewed while you were doing errands," Del Toro pondered. "You go back and forth and nothing... MORE »
De la Iglesia goes to Oxford.
By Alison Willmore on 04/21/2008
"The Oxford Murders" seemed an uncharacteristically buttoned-down choice of project for fearless Spanish cult film director Ãlex de la Iglesia, he of the lurid and hilarious "The Day of the Beast" and the dedicatedly nasty "Ferpect Crime." Shot in English in the U.K., the new film features Elijah Wood and John Hurt as a grad student and professor tracking down a serial killer by means of mathematical and philosophical concepts. It opens this week in the UK (ThinkFilm is set to distribute in the U.S. and has yet to attach a date), and at the Guardian, Alex Cox describes his... MORE »
"I played the male, when I am not playing a hermaphrodite."
By Alison Willmore on 04/21/2008
Filed under: In quotesA tour round the interview circuit: "I am a ham. It makes people laugh when I play the male. So I played the male, when I am not playing a hermaphrodite." —Isabella Rossellini on depicting insect mating habits in "Green Porno," at the New York Times Magazine [Rossellini also discusses the "gigantic genitals" of insects at AMC's Shootout blog.] "My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die." — David Mamet at Vanity Fair "[S]ecretly that I am very unhappy to not have two towers being built, because I could offer to... MORE »
"Expelled" at the box office.
By Alison Willmore on 04/21/2008
Did all the controversy-courting work for Ben Stein's critically unloved anti-Darwinist documentary "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"? The film, which opened last weekend against Morgan Spurlock's equally pop if not so rampantly right-wing "Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?", racked up over $3 million at the box office.Two reads, the first from Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood, who doesn't call this a success: [T]he per screen average for Friday was a low $1,145 and for Saturday $940 (and $2,830 for the entire weekend), showing there wasn't much pent-up demand for the film despite an aggressive publicity campaign on right-wing... MORE »
Pron.
By Alison Willmore on 04/18/2008
Today also marks the release of "Zombie Strippers," whose title was probably also its pitch and its own self-contained marketing plan. The film, which stars former porn actress Jenna Jameson and Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund, has to earn bonus points for purportedly being based on Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros." Jameson, who made her non-porn acting debut in the 1997 Howard Stern biopic "Private Parts," talks about the film's hidden political (yes!) agenda at San Francisco Chronicle: "'I think that was the biggest draw for me,' she says of writer-director Jay Lee's unabashed Bush-bashing amid copious rending of clothing and flesh. 'When... MORE »
Critic wrangle: "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?"
By Alison Willmore on 04/18/2008
Filed under: Critic wrangleOn to another doc in Morgan Spurlock style, this one actually made by Morgan Spurlock. "Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?" attracted a lot of attention when the Weinstein Company picked it up on the basis of just 15 minutes of footage shown to buyers at Berlin last year, and later because of rumors that Spurlock actually, you know, found bin Laden. Well, he didn't (it was a big ask), and the doc's been generating lukewarm reviews since its premiere at Sundance, and similar ones now that it's receiving a theatrical release. The major complaint from critics seems... MORE »
Critic wrangle: "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed."
By Alison Willmore on 04/18/2008
Filed under: Critic wrangleThe dark side of the festival circuit? Never quite getting over bouts of mystery festival flu. To take my mind off my persistent, certainly tubercular cough, here's a quick look at some of the finer points from reviews of Ben Stein's fascinatingly loopy creationist doc "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," a film that's attracted most of its controversy due to who hasn't been allowed to see it at advance screenings. Jeannette Catsoulis at the New York Times calls the film "one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time," adding: "Mixing physical apples and metaphysical oranges at every... MORE »
Trailering: The wackness of being an American teen.
By Alison Willmore on 04/15/2008
Filed under: TraileringNew on the trailer front: I remember emerging from the Sundance press screening of Jonathan Levine's "The Wackness" feeling like I had just come off a three-day bender. It's messy and silly and either awesome or terrible, and it has, as long promised, a scene in which Ben Kingsley and Mary-Kate Olsen make out — see the trailer here. It's set to open July 3. And another from Sundance — "American Teen" is the documentary chronicle of a year in the life of four Indiana high school seniors from Nanette Burstein, who last directed "The Kid Stays in the Picture."... MORE »
Janet Pierson takes over SXSW.
By Alison Willmore on 04/14/2008
Filed under: FestivalsFresh off the wires: SXSW is pleased to announce that Janet Pierson has accepted the position as Producer of the SXSW Film Festival and Conference, the Austin, TX based event founded in 1993. Matt Dentler, who has acted as SXSW Film Festival Producer since 2004 will be moving to New York City to pursue a new career to head the marketing and programming operations of Cinetic Digital Rights Management. [Co-founder and Senior Director of SXSW Film Louis] notes that "SXSW Film has been privileged to have Matt Dentler working for it; the event has benefited extraordinarily from his leadership. We... MORE »
Sarasota.
By Alison Willmore on 04/14/2008
Filed under: FestivalsI was lucky enough to get to spend the past few days at the Sarasota Film Festival, which was a kick-ass mix of an ambitious and wide-ranging film line-up from programmers Tom Hall and Holly Herrick, lavish, gown-and-tux-and-shrimp cocktail parties, and downtime on the beach. I was on the jury for the Narrative Feature Competition, along with John Kochman of Unifrance and Ligiah Villalobos, writer/producer of "La Misma Luna." After some solid deliberation, we ended up giving the prize to Lee Isaac Chung's very fine "Munyurangabo," which follows a pair of boys, one an orphan and the other estranged from... MORE »
The New York Asian Film Festival strikes back.
By Alison Willmore on 04/08/2008
Filed under: FestivalsMy favorite sign of summer — the New York Asian Film Festival is, as they put it, "back like a bad dream." It'll be running from June 20 through July 6 this year. The line-up so far (descriptions theirs): SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO - we unleash the beast a full month before it hits movie theaters: Takashi Miike's berserk, bloody, out-of-control English-language spaghetti western, guest-starring Quentin Tarantino. Full of female gunfighters, clockwork wheelchairs, razor sharp samurai swords and tiny fetuses growing inside blooming flowers this is the Takashi Miike movie Variety calls "one of his wildest ideas yet." And they're right.... MORE »
Observations on the passing of Charlton Heston, movie star.
By Alison Willmore on 04/07/2008
Filed under: In quotes, Memoriam"Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing 'Ben-Hur' and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the '50s and '60s, has died. He was 84." —AP "Few films thrilled me -- or scared me -- as much as 'Soylent Green,' in which his character realizes that the stuff keeping the human race alive is made from other human beings: 'Soylent Green is people!' By then, he had played Moses and saved an entire people from destruction. Things didn't look good in 'Soylent Green,' but somehow, I thought, surely Charlton... MORE »
Critic wrangle: "The Flight of the Red Balloon."
By Alison Willmore on 04/04/2008
Filed under: Critic wrangleHou Hsiao-hsien's first film outside of Asia, the luminous "The Flight of the Red Balloon," uses Albert Lamorisse's 1956 children's short "The Red Balloon" as a counterpoint to its scarce story of a frazzled Parisian single mother (Juliette Binoche) navigating personal troubles, a career in puppetry and the raising of her seven-year-old son with the help of the Chinese film student (Song Fang) she's hired as a nanny. My review from Cannes last year (written before the film was acquired by our sister company IFC Films) is here. I love "The Flight of the Red Balloon," and so do most... MORE »
"We always deal in envelopes."
By Alison Willmore on 04/03/2008
Aaron Hillis has an interview with my beloved Wong Kar-Wai over on the news site: You co-wrote ["My Blueberry Nights"] with crime novelist Lawrence Block. How did your collaboration work? I'm a big fan of Larry, and especially his books [with his popular private eye character] Matthew Scudder. Our collaboration is more like the business in his book, because we're very secretive. We didn't talk much; we didn't meet much. I explained to him about my idea and then he would just say "Okay." A few days later, he'd come back with a draft. We'd meet in a restaurant, and... MORE »
"Fitna" fallout.
By Alison Willmore on 04/02/2008
Reuters is reporting that the Taliban has claimed responsibility for two attacks on Dutch forces in Afghanistan. The reason? Retaliation for "Fitna," the inflammatory short film from Dutch politician Geert Wilders that suggests the Qur'an incites violence. In a communique posted on Web sites used by militants dated April 1, the Taliban said its Shura Council Leadership announced reprisal operations against Dutch forces because "one of the members of the Dutch parliament produced a film that hurts Islam, and he published it with bad intentions". Barely published it — no Dutch television station would touch it due to security concerns.... MORE »
Manhattan GoGoGo.
By Alison Willmore on 04/02/2008
Filed under: FestivalsThe Wachowski brothers' "Speed Racer" has been confirmed as the Tribeca Film Festival's closing night film. It'll screen Saturday, May 3rd at the BMCC TPAC in Lower Manhattan, and "several of the cast members will be in attendance." Sayeth the press release: "Warner Bros. has been a big part of the Festival many times over the years and we are thrilled that the Wachowskis and producer Joel Silver are bringing Speed Racer to us this year to close the Festival," said Jane Rosenthal, co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival. Well, it's not the strongest of New York tie-ins, but maybe... MORE »
To watch: Page, Cage and the Coreys.
By Alison Willmore on 04/01/2008
Filed under: WatchyEllen Page sings "Zub Zub" in a "Juno" deleted scene at Daily Motion. For those who haven't been keeping track, that's the song written by Diablo Cody, a version of which, sung by Page, will be featured on "Juno B-Sides: Almost Adopted Songs," which is getting an iTunes release on April 8th. [Via Fimoculous.] A trailer for "Bangkok Dangerous," the Pang brothers film that had such a troubled time shooting due to the 2006 Thailand coup d'état, is here. Some day, I will put together a pictorial essay on the hair of Nicolas Cage from role to role, and this... MORE »
Endangered species list.
By Alison Willmore on 04/01/2008
Filed under: Critic watchAt the New York Times, David Carr looks over the damage left from this latest round of film critics ankling their publications or having their publications ankle them. "For those of us who are making work that requires a kind of intellectual conversation, we rely on that talk to do the work of getting people interested," said Mr. Rudin, who produced "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood," two Oscar-nominated and critically championed films last year. "All of the talk about 'No Country,' all of the argument about the ending, kept that film in the forefront of... MORE »
"I can't help but be autobiographical in everything I do."
By Alison Willmore on 04/01/2008
The world in quotes: "We make different kinds of movies. I don't have the technical knowledge he has. He's got a vision, and his films are very testosterone-fueled. Mine are much more from a female point of view, and I can't help but be autobiographical in everything I do." —Madonna tells Vanity Fair about the difference between her films and Guy Ritchie's. "My race is important to me, but when people were asking me who I would want to play me in a movie, I wasn't saying Jet Li or Chow Yun Fat. I was saying Topher Grace." —Jeff Ma,... MORE »
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