September 2008
The week on IFC.com: Flaming martians, Aki Kaurismäki and Fantasic Fest.
By Alison Willmore on 09/26/2008
Filed under: The week on IFC.comA round-up of what's been happening on the rest of IFC.com: + Interview: Wayne Coyne on "Christmas on Mars" - The Flaming Lips frontman on his first feature, the Large Hadron Collider, "90210" and space ovens. + Interview: Chuck Palahniuk on "Choke" - The "Fight Club" author on the latest adaptation of his work, making people faint and coded security announcements. + On DVD: Aki Kaurismäki's Proletariat Trilogy, "Shadow" - Michael Atkinson on Criterion's new set of three films from the Finnish master of deadpan and a "mysterious and rarely discussed work" from the Polish New Wave. + IFC News... MORE »
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Fantastic Fest 2008: "Ex Drummer."
By Alison Willmore on 09/25/2008
Filed under: Festivals, ReviewsInteresting that at a festival that celebrates visceral cinematic shocks -- the over-the-top splatter of "Tokyo Gore Police" and the "we dare you to walk out" boundary pushing of "Martyrs" and "Deadgirl" -- the two most disturbing films I saw weren't horror at all. The first is "I Think We're Alone Now," and the second Koen Mortier's feature debut "Ex Drummer," which wins the prize for moral decay. It's been compared to "Trainspotting," and, like that film "Ex Drummer" has visual style to burn and threads of seedy surrealism, but in terms of content it makes Danny Boyle's work look... MORE »
Fantastic Fest 2008: "I Think We're Alone Now."
By Alison Willmore on 09/24/2008
Filed under: Festivals, ReviewsLike "American Movie" and "Billy the Kid," Sean Donnelly's "I Think We're Alone Now" makes you squirm at its relationships with its subjects and its audience. I wouldn't say that, as a documentary, it's unethical, but it does focus on two people who suffer from unknown degrees of mental illness and, watching it, you have to wonder why they ever agreed to be filmed in the first place. Jeffery Deane Turner and Kelly McCormick are obsessed with, and in the case of the former, have also stalked former '80s star Tiffany. Tiffany is the faded pop center of their troubled... MORE »
Fantastic Fest 2008: "JCVD."
By Alison Willmore on 09/24/2008
Filed under: Festivals, ReviewsCentering your film on the tragedy of being famous is a iffy proposition -- it's not a topic to which the majority of the world will relate, and from any normal and honest perspective, the benefits of celebrity far outweigh any downsides. But director Mabrouk El Mechri has as his star the Muscles From Brussels himself, Belgian action icon Jean-Claude Van Damme, a man whose legitimate claims to fame were staked decades back, and who's now a figure of ridicule with a history of cocaine problems, four divorces, a tendency to spout ludicrous things in televised interviews and a recent... MORE »
Fantastic Fest 2008: "The Substitute."
By Alison Willmore on 09/22/2008
Filed under: Festivals, ReviewsPaprika Steen, the Danish actress best known for her roles in Dogme films like "Festen," "The Idiots" and "Mifune," is to die for in Ole Bornedal's horror-comedy "The Substitute." Like, she eats someone whole. She plays the forbiddingly named Ulla Harms, a substitute teacher who takes over sixth grade class 6B and whose hair-raisingly cruel instruction technique is augmented by what seem to be the abilities to read minds, balance pencils on their sharpened tips and force people to say nice things about her. In short, Ulla is an alien, a fact 6B, led by moody protagonist Carl (Jonas Wandschneider),... MORE »
Fantastic Fest 2008: "Seventh Moon."
By Alison Willmore on 09/21/2008
Filed under: Festivals, ReviewsThere was an episode of "The Maury Povich Show" in which people confessed to serious but laughable phobias -- birds, pickles, balloons -- after which, for scientific purposes, you understand, a PA would come out and confront them with their object of terror. As I watched a housewife be chased around a sound stage, shrieking, by an intern wielding a balloon, it occurred to me that the segment was one of the most awesome things I'd ever seen on TV, and also that, in a far-off way, I could relate to the woman. I can't stand the low-grade torture of... MORE »
Fantastic Fest 2008: Opening Night, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno."
By Alison Willmore on 09/20/2008
Filed under: Festivals, ReviewsThere's incredible (and welcome) cultural whiplash in sneaking away from the middle of the determinedly highbrow New York Film Festival to head to Austin for Fantastic Fest, an event that's most certainly not. Dedicated to horror, sci-fi, fantasy, cult and general genre fare, Fantastic Fest is the brainchild of Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League with support from Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles, with a line-up of international fanboy sprawl that this year includes everything from Icelandic LARPing comedy "Astropia" to Korean Leone homage "The Good, The Bad and The Weird" to a documentary about William Castle and sidebars focused... MORE »
Everybody's gone online.
By Alison Willmore on 09/15/2008
Filed under: WatchyFantastic Fest kicks off on Thursday, which is also when I'm headed over to Austin (hot damn!), but with beaming internet generosity the festival has already unveiled five features and five shorts from this year's line-up that can be seen, in their entirety and for free, online here. The features include Sean Donnelly's doc about Tiffany stalkers, "I Think We're Alone Now"; J.L. Vara's surreal noir "South of Heaven," starring filmmaking brothers Adam and Aaron Nee; and Reynald Bertand's comedy about an average man who discovers a face cream that temporarily turns him into a major celebrity, "La Creme." Those... MORE »
David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008.
By Alison Willmore on 09/15/2008
Filed under: MemoriamI read "Infinite Jest" in college. A friend passed it along, told me it was something she knew I'd like. Hefting the 1000-plus pages, I thought that I was duty bound, therefore, to hate it, and started reading right away to prove so -- such is the unfortunate person I was. And still am. I ended up finishing the book in three days, at the expense of class, sleep and any social interaction, devouring it in great gulps of prose, propping it open on the kitchen counter as I poked at some occasional ramen on the stove and unsteadily suspending... MORE »
The week on IFC.com: Diane English defends "The Women," remaking your own film.
By Alison Willmore on 09/12/2008
Filed under: The week on IFC.comA round-up of what's been happening on the rest of IFC.com: + Interview: Diane English on "The Women" - The director defends softening up George Cukor's 1939 "bitchfest" into a celebration of female friendship. + Review: "Burn After Reading" - Matt Singer calls the Coens' comedy "one of their zaniest, most immature films in the best possible way." + List: Remaking Your Own Foreign Language Film - Five international directors who rehashed their own work in good ol' American English. + Interview: Jamie Kennedy on "Heckler" - The actor/comedian leaps (sort of) into the "does criticism matter" fray and comes... MORE »
Watch your mouth.
By Alison Willmore on 09/11/2008
Filed under: In quotes"My apologies." --Viggo Mortensen, after going off about the things "that have been happening in the last eight years in this country," and being reminded that he's actually in Toronto, from the New York Times. "Contrary to what I was quoted as saying, I feel very proud of my country and through my work I have always tried to contribute to its culture within and outside Spain and to honour my people." --Javier Bardem backpedals after calling the Spanish "a bunch of stupid people" in an earlier interview, from the Indepedent. "My wife Tonya told me I may have hurt... MORE »
Trailering: Three "Nights."
By Alison Willmore on 09/11/2008
Filed under: TraileringThere are three different teaser trailers, or maybe they'd be better described as anti-trailers, for Joe Swanberg's "Nights and Weekends" up on the official site here -- like the film, they're without music, based instead around single conversations ("You kiss harder... than I recall") cut through with other footage. Here's my review from the SXSW premiere; it opens October 10th. For a trailer that's very much A Trailer, see this one for "The Soloist," director Joe Wright's first excursion into the present day after "Pride & Prejudice" and "Atonement," and extremely Oscar-baitey in a totally different way. Robert Downey Jr.... MORE »
September.
By Alison Willmore on 09/11/2008
Filed under: Memoriam"Man on Wire": Philippe Petit in 1974, © 2008 Jean-Louis Blondeau / Polaris Images MORE »
"Che" goes to IFC Films.
By Alison Willmore on 09/10/2008
Filed under: In the worksIt looks like those rumors that Steven Soderbergh's "Che" was going to be released by Magnolia Pictures were just that -- this is from the freshest press release: IFC Films has acquired all North American rights to Steven Soderbergh's epic "Che" starring Benicio Del Toro, produced by Laura Bickford and Benicio Del Toro and written by Peter Buchman. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival where Benicio Del Toro won the Best Actor Prize. It is currently screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be screening next at the New York Film Festival. "Che"... MORE »
"I would simply go to the Internet and watch real people having real sex."
By Alison Willmore on 09/09/2008
Filed under: In quotes"I was on a roll, so I kept going with it. I said, 'Look, if I were a 13-year-old boy, and I saw ['Zack and Miri'] on cable back in 1983? Yes, it would send me to the bathroom to jerk off. Now, as a 13-year-old boy, if I saw this movie? It would not titillate me. I would simply go to the Internet and watch real people having real sex. How can you possibly say this is too erotically charged when it's so obviously a comedy with people having over-the-top fake sex, when we can see examples of real... MORE »
Copyright infringement, sadistic streaks and Hitchcock.
By Alison Willmore on 09/09/2008
Filed under: ControversySheldon Abend was a literary agent who purchased the rights to "It Had to Be Murder," a 1942 short story by Cornell Woolrich that was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into "Rear Window." He died in 2003, but his estate endures and has finally noticed that the 2007 Shia LaBeouf thriller "Disturbia" is an awful lot like Hitch's film and filed a copyright infringement lawsuit. Abend was litigious in life, too: "It Had to Be Murder" has already been the basis of an influential copyright case, 1990's Stewart v. Abend -- that would be Jimmy Stewart, and there are more details... MORE »
Same old song?
By Alison Willmore on 09/08/2008
Filed under: Critic watchThe heart of the newest issue of Cineaste is a massive symposium on that favorite topic of debate of film writers -- print criticism versus online criticism, critics versus bloggers, and on and on. I'll 'fess up to only scanning it -- this used to be a treasured topic of mine as well, but lately it's seemed awfully insular, much retreading of old arguments with no ground gained (is there ground to be gained?), focused on medium when its content that's actually at stake. As laid out in the intro, print versus online is hardly the appropriate divide anymore: "A... MORE »
Rourke roars.
By Alison Willmore on 09/08/2008
Filed under: FestivalsDarren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," with Mickey Rourke starring as former pro Randy "The Ram" Robinson, is shaping up to be the film of the fall, having just won the Golden Lion for best film at Venice. The Silver Lion, for best director, went to Aleksey German Jr. for "Bumažnyj Soldat" (Paper Soldier) -- the complete list of awards is here. "The Wrestler"'s still without distribution, but that should change in the next day or two at Toronto -- Steven Zeitchik and Borys Kit at the Hollywood Reporter have been monitoring the sales talk, and note that as of this morning,... MORE »
Odds: It's the shoes.
By Alison Willmore on 09/04/2008
Filed under: OddsWonkette's Liz Glover caught up with Spike Lee at the DNC and posed to him the Mars Blackmon question. He reacts pretty well, considering. The New York Post's Lou Lumenick claims that Magnolia Pictures has signed to distribute Steven Soderbergh's "Che," with a December 12th release date. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere has heard that the fatally bad Danny Glover voiceover narration has been dropped from Fernando Meirelles' "Blindness." There are deep flaws in the film beyond that, but wow, was it awful. Michael Moore will release his new film "Slacker Uprising," which follows his 62-city, 2004 tour to... MORE »
"Oh, Lynch is way weirder than I am."
By Alison Willmore on 09/04/2008
Filed under: In quotesThe world in quotes: "Oh, Lynch is way weirder than I am. That's obvious." --David Cronenberg weighs in on the eternal question of which David is weirder, at Defamer. "You know how there's no Asian American players in the NBA yet? There are Asians -- Yao Ming, Wang Zhizhi -- but no Asian American has yet broken that barrier. My theory is that that guy exists or did exist who had the natural ability and the physiology and everything, but his parents were so fixated on him playing the piano or violin, studying for the SATs, that they didn't cultivate... MORE »
Chris Smith, Todd Solondz and the question of intent.
By Alison Willmore on 09/04/2008
Filed under: ControversyChris Smith's feature "The Pool" opened in New York yesterday, and today the Onion AV Club's Scott Tobias takes on his 1999 documentary "American Movie" as part of his "New Cult Canon" series, noting that "the main knock against the movie is that Smith is condescending to his subjects and carting them out exclusively so we can laugh at their ineptitude... At the risk of passing the blame, I'd say that any condescension brought to American Movie comes mostly from the viewer, not the filmmakers." I'd agree that Smith doesn't seem to have made the film with mockery of his... MORE »
Trailering: Sean Penn as St. Harvey Milk.
By Alison Willmore on 09/04/2008
Filed under: TraileringWhen the International Museum of GLBT History opened in San Francisco in 2003, its inaugural exhibit was entitled "Saint Harvey: The Life and Afterlife of a Modern Gay Martyr," and included, as its central relic, the bloodstained suit in which Harvey Milk was assassinated in 1978. There's an identical air of a commemoration of martyrdom in the trailer for Gus Van Sant's "Milk" (I mean, the music) which you can find here. The film's being looked at as Van Sant's return to straightforward narrative from the realms of "Paranoid Park" and his "death trilogy," but like the films that make... MORE »
Paris Hilton takes Toronto.
By Alison Willmore on 09/04/2008
Filed under: FestivalsAdria Petty's Paris Hilton doc "Paris, Not France" has been cut down to a single screening at its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Steven Zeitchik at the Hollywood Reporter rumored that this was because the heiress was so unhappy with the film that she was threatening legal action, but Karina Longworth at Spout wondered if it wasn't all just a savvy publicity stunt: It would be one thing if the Hilton camp has insisted that the film be removed from the festival completely... but they didn't. Instead, they've made tickets to Paris' single TIFF screening a hot commodity.... MORE »
Considering Nic Cage.
By Alison Willmore on 09/03/2008
"Bangkok Dangerous," the second U.S. film from Hong Kong sibling directorial team the Pang brothers, isn't being screened for critics -- this leaked clip provides a pretty good explanation as to why. Regardless, "Bangkok Dangerous" is a remake of an unexceptional Asian action flick of the same name (the Pangs' 1999 debut) notable for being about a deaf-mute Thai street urchin turned assassin who, in this new rendering, is neither deaf nor mute nor Thai, but who is played by Nicolas Cage. The awesome shamelessness of Cage's recent career has lead a few writers to giddily reflect on the once... MORE »
Life's like a movie - political edition.
By Alison Willmore on 09/03/2008
Filed under: In quotes"McCain's situation really does mirror Snakes On A Plane," posits David Poland at the Hot Blog, who goes on to present a bizarre and elaborate box office metaphor that I don't buy, but enjoyed anyway: "But then... it turns out that the only movie opening against it is a Denzel Washington movie. Yeah, he's a movie star and everyone seems to love him, but there also seems to be a glass ceiling when it comes to his grosses." Over at pullquote, the cinetrix sees some Palin movie parallels: "The patriotic, pro-life, pro-gun, pageant vet Alaskan governor shares DNA with the... MORE »
Goodbye, grey market.
By Alison Willmore on 09/02/2008
Filed under: MemoriamMike White has pulled the plug on SuperHappyFun, the great grey market movie site crouched under the dubious protection of the Berne Act with bootleg offerings of the obscure, the commercially undesirable, the unavailable and the out of print. He eulogizes: In actuality, I loved that the titles on SuperHappyFun were being ousted by legitimate release. My dream is that all of the two thousand films we once carried would be as easy to get as the latest hot release. I want a world where the grey market isn't necessary; where all movies are available via a massive movie server... MORE »
August is finally over, and other bits and pieces.
By Alison Willmore on 09/02/2008
Filed under: OddsAugust, it's been real. Jim Ridley on "Disaster Movie" at the Village Voice: "Best text message sent from my screening (it wasn't me, but I certainly sympathized): 'I want to die.' " But he's outdone by Nick Pinkerton, reviewing "College" at the same publication: "Nearly justifies traveling back in time to pre-emptively kill Edison, Muybridge, and the Lumière brothers." Steven Zeitchik at the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz blog suggests that if you want to see Adria Petty's Paris Hilton documentary "Paris, Not France," its Toronto premiere may be the only place to do it before the film is swallowed by... MORE »
Don LaFontaine, 1940-2008.
By Alison Willmore on 09/02/2008
Filed under: MemoriamYou do know who he is. Don LaFontaine was the voice of the voiceover for over 5,000 commercials, network spots and, of course, movie trailers, promising in tones of comforting, gravelly authority forthcoming drama, laughs, action and tears, almost certainly taking place "In a world..." From CNN: His favorite work was one he did for the 1980 film "The Elephant Man," he said in interviews, but whether the film was Oscar-caliber or a bomb waiting to blow, he handled every assignment equally. "My philosophy is that you have to really believe what you're reading, even if you think the film's... MORE »
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