July 2008
List: Ten Novels and Short Stories That Would Make Good Movies
Thursday, July 31, 2008 | 8:43 AM
By Maud Newton
Adapting fiction for the screen has always been a tricky endeavor. For every "Apocalypse Now," "The Big Sleep" or "Rebecca," there are scores of butchered classics and box office duds, and in recent years, Hollywood has only continued to perfect its reverse-alchemy process, transforming narrative gold into the dullest, heaviest lead, topped off with a giant packet of saccharine.
For details, see Roland Joffe's "The Scarlet Letter," featuring a pearl-bedecked, shiny-bodiced, utterly vacuous Hester Prynne, or the soul-sucking "Love in the Time of Cholera," which drove the Guardian's John Patterson to call for a ban on the making of all movies based on books. It's easy to sympathize. We're talking, after all, about the machine that reduced Zoë Heller's brilliantly satirical "Notes on a Scandal" -- a teacher's obsessive chronicle of her female colleague's affair with her young male student -- to a cautionary tale with all the subtlety of "Fatal Attraction."
Still, the best fiction can offer what most industry vehicles don't: a compelling narrative, vivid characters, surprising but realistic plot twists -- and sometimes all three. It's hard not to imagine how "The Secret History" and "A Confederacy of Dunces" would play out as films, had they not gotten sucked into the black hole of pre-production. Some books -- like Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men," so stripped-down novelistically, it tended to read like stage directions -- actually work better on screen.
Julian Jarrold recently took his own cinematic run at Evelyn Waugh's magnum opus "Brideshead Revisited," contending with not only the daunting original text but the beloved 1981 miniseries. Amid all the reviews and speculation, I've been thinking about novels and short stories I'd like to see adapted. Ten of my top picks are below. Add your own wish list in the comments.
Interview: Mike Mills on "Beautiful Losers"
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 | 9:25 AM
By Aaron Hillis
He's designed scarves for Marc Jacobs and the iconic cover of Air's "Moon Safari" album, directed music videos for Moby, Pulp and Blonde Redhead, helmed two features to date (the Sundance hit "Thumbsucker" and the SXSW doc "Does Your Soul Have a Cold?"), had graphic art exhibitions and commissioned ad campaigns all around the globe, and played with members of Cibo Matto and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in the short-lived '90s East Village supergroup Butter 08. If people still confuse prolific artist-filmmaker Mike Mills with the R.E.M. bassist of the same name, it's because it's easy to believe the same man could've done it all.
Mills features prominently in NYC gallery curator-turned-director Aaron Rose's "Beautiful Losers," an entertaining doc celebration of the D.I.Y. talent (Shepard Fairey, Harmony Korine, Ed Templeton, the late Margaret Kilgallen, et al.) who took part in Rose's titular museum exhibition. Emerging from the fringe of subcultures like skateboarding, graffiti bombing, hip-hop and punk, these passionate outsiders became art stars entirely by accident, but who's complaining? In support of the film, Mills spoke with me about art, L.A. wildlife, and pirate school. [UNEXPECTED WARNING: "The Dark Knight" spoiler ahead.]
Interview: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham and Courtney Hunt on "Frozen River"
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 | 10:02 AM
When Melissa Leo went home for Christmas last year, she took a copy of "Frozen River" to show her family. It was a month before the film would go on to pick up the Grand Jury Prize for drama at Sundance, but those closest to Leo wasting no time in observing that "this is different." Therein lies part of the charm of Courtney Hunt's debut feature, a thriller that veers with the same reckless abandon in its narrative as its two leads do behind the wheel of a rickety Dodge Spirit, ferrying illegal immigrants across the St. Lawrence River in the trunk. "Homicide" alum Leo and Misty Upham play Ray and Lila, the prickly pair of single mothers/smugglers who struggle to make ends meet by forming an unlikely partnership that utilizes Ray's car and Lila's status as a Mohawk protected from the cops by her residency on tribal land. As a director, Hunt had to be even more resourceful in translating "River" from its previous incarnations — first, as a poem, then a short film — into a feature that could be shot over 24 days in sub-zero conditions in Plattsburgh, New York. The result is a chick flick that Quentin Tarantino could love — and does, as Hunt, Upham and Leo recently told me during a sit-down at, ironically enough, the Los Angeles Film Festival.
On DVD: Wholphin No. 6, "Perils of the New Land"
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 | 9:23 AM
Chances are you've never seen a wholphin (a rare hybrid of dolphin and false killer whale), or a Wholphin, the short film DVD magazine emanating on a subscription basis from the Dave Eggers/McSweeney's publishing factory. But it might be the most relentlessly fascinating and inventive showcase for new short films in the country. Not that it has much competition — shorts can appear haphazardly on auteurist-minded DVDs or on public television or the Sundance Channel, but otherwise there's no dependable cultural outlet for them, and they are for the most part considered cinema non grata in the culture at large. Movies began in the short form, but quickly shorts became nothing more than ballast for features, and then, come the '60s, were not even that. (Anthology-style TV series may count — think of each "Twilight Zone" episode as a 24-minute short — but look how that format has fallen out of favor as well.) Filmmakers continue to make them, largely as résumé-builders, but a substantial audience has never been acculturated to appreciate them.
IFC News Podcast #87: Has Comic-Con Nuked the Fridge?
Monday, July 28, 2008 | 3:44 PM
By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore
125,000 fans and fanboys struggled their way through traffic jams and back home through epic airport delays in order to attend the just-wrapped Comic-Con 2008. But amidst all the movie hype, some attendees grumbled that this was the year the convention finally lost sight of the comic books it was actually started to showcase. This week on the IFC News podcast, we look at what's changed for Comic-Con, why it's gotten so much press attention this year and which movies everyone's been talking about.
Download now (MP3: 32:17 minutes, 29.5 MB)
[Photo: "Watchmen," Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008]
Panel footage from Comic-Con:
"The Wolf Man," with Benicio Del Toro and make-up artist Rick Baker
"The Spirit," with director Frank Miller and Samuel L. Jackson
"Watchmen," with director Zack Snyder, Billy Crudup, Carla Gugino and others
"RocknRolla," with director Guy Ritchie and Gerard Butler
Video: "The Wolf Man" at Comic-Con 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008 | 11:08 AM
"I've been making myself up as a wolf man since I was ten years old," claimed legendary make-up artist Rick Baker, who's won six Oscars for his work in films as varied as "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," "Ed Wood" and "An American Werewolf in London." He's a natural fit, then, for director Joe Johnston's update of the 1941 Universal horror film starring Lon Chaney Jr. Those classics "were the films that made want to do what I do," Baker announced at the Comic-Con panel for the new film. "When I heard they were doing 'The Wolf Man,' I actually went to somebody I knew at Universal and said 'I have to do this movie. I really want to do this movie.' And, fortunately, they listened."
The gracious Baker described "The Wolf Man," which opens on April 3rd, 2009, as "pretty old school," praising the studio's choice to have an actor in make-up playing the lead instead of making the character computer-generated. Joining Baker on the panel were Emily Blunt, who plays female lead Gwen Conliffe, and the wolf man himself, Benicio Del Toro, who found his way to the role after his agent spotted a poster for the original movie in his house.
Take a look at video clips from the panel below:
More from Comic-Con 2008: The "Watchmen" panel with director Zack Snyder, stars Billy Crudup and Carla Gugino and others; the "RocknRolla" panel with director Guy Ritchie and star Gerard Butler; "The Spirit" panel with Frank Miller and Samuel L. Jackson.
List: The Ten Most Slanderous Cinematic Slights*
Monday, July 28, 2008 | 9:52 AM
Usually when an actor or filmmaker reveals who inspired them in their creation of a character, it's the type of politically correct answer sure to offend no one. Johnny Depp had no problem explaining how he channeled Keith Richards for his role as Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean"; Dustin Hoffman sent up his pal, producer Robert Evans, in "Wag the Dog." But in a business where backbiting is common and screenwriters are urged to "write what you know," it's been a longstanding tradition to say the cruelest things about others under the guise of art. In a summer that will have Tom Cruise applying his considerable cackle to a Sumner Redstone surrogate in "Tropic Thunder" and a manscaping-derelict Bruce Willis doing his meanest Alec Baldwin impression in the adaptation of producer Art Linson's Hollywood tell-all, "What Just Happened?", we thought it was high time to look at a few ways filmmakers have exacted revenge, both personal and professional, through their movies in recent times.
Sofia Coppola vs. Cameron Diaz
The film: "Lost in Translation" (2003)
In Sofia Coppola's otherwise reserved study of two kindred spirits in Japan, there was nothing subtle about Kelly, the hyperactive American actress who flirts with Jon, the shaggy photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi) of Scarlett Johansson's Charlotte. Seemingly proud of having "the worst B.O. right now," Kelly works up a sweat just trying to get Jon and Charlotte into "power cleanses" over drinks, during a break from promoting her latest action movie, the reason she's in town. She's also eager to tell Jon that she's staying at the hotel under the pseudonym "Evelyn Waugh," which as Charlotte mutters a moment later is the name of a man. Coppola has acknowledged that the film has some autobiographical bits to it — she had spent considerable time in Tokyo, and her father, Francis, once starred in commercials for Suntory Whiskey, the brand that Bill Murray's movie star is hawking across the Pacific. But Coppola denied that the flighty blonde (played with no lack of energy by Anna Faris) had anything to do with Cameron Diaz, who starred in her then-husband Spike Jonze's "Being John Malkovich." If actions speak louder than words, it might be no small coincidence that Jonze and Coppola split shortly after "Lost in Translation" was released in 2003.
Video: "The Spirit" at Comic-Con 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008 | 8:45 AM
"I first met Will Eisner on a street in Vermont, when I was bicycling back home with a bunch of new comic books," began Frank Miller, comic book artist turned co-director, alongside Robert Rodriguez, with 2005's "Sin City." "The Spirit," an adaptation of Eisner's long-running crime-fighter comic strip, finds Miller going solo behind the camera for the first time. During the Comic-Con panel for the film, Miller spoke of how he eventually met Eisner in person and began a 25-year-argument with him over captions.
Miller was joined on the panel by Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the film's villain, The Octopus, a character who in the comic remained unseen except for a pair of distinctive gloves. "It's a real honor to be able to put flesh and bones and voice and attitude to The Octopus, [who's] only been a pair of hands since 1930-something," a beaming Jackson said, going into how he and Miller decided on the look of the character, who apparently sports a sort of Nazi-inspired outfit. Also on stage is Jaime King, who played Goldie in "Sin City" and will play Lorelei Rox, "the angel of death," in "The Spirit," which is set to open on Christmas this year.
Take a look at video clips from the panel below:
More from Comic-Con 2008: The "Watchmen" panel with director Zack Snyder, stars Billy Crudup and Carla Gugino and others; the "RocknRolla" panel with director Guy Ritchie and star Gerard Butler; the panel for "The Wolf Man" with award-winning make-up artist Rick Baker and stars Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt.
Video: "Watchmen" at Comic-Con 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008 | 8:13 AM
"That seems like... a crazy idea," "300" director Zack Snyder said upon being offered the adaptation of "Watchmen," Alan Moore's revered graphic novel that's defied all earlier attempts to be brought to the big screen. "Once they asked me, I kinda felt responsible -- even if I said no, they would have moved on, and then whatever happened to the movie, I still would have had my chance... If the movie, for whatever reason didn't turn out, it would have been still my fault. So I figured, might as well make it my fault anyway."
The hotly anticipated superhero film isn't headed to theaters until March 6, 2009, but a recently released trailer has fans chomping at the bit. At Comic-Con's panel for the film, Snyder reassured the crowd that he's attempted to stay as true to the graphic novel as possible, with "Watchmen" artist Dave Gibbons at his side, claiming that "It's just the stuff of dreams, really, to have something step out of your head and become real."
Also joining them were Billy Crudup, who plays the omniscient Dr. Manhattan and who described the challenges to figuring out "how you pretend to be the 6'4" buffed-out master of matter while you're a 5'9", 40-year-old jackass playing dress-up." Patrick Wilson, who plays Night Owl, and Carla Gugino and Malin Ackerman, who play the first and second incarnations of the Silk Spectre, additionally spoke about their characters and why "Watchmen" won't be your average superhero movie.
Take a look at video clips from the panel below:
More from Comic-Con 2008: The "RocknRolla" panel with director Guy Ritchie and star Gerard Butler; "The Spirit" panel with Frank Miller and Samuel L. Jackson; the panel for "The Wolf Man" with award-winning make-up artist Rick Baker and stars Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt.
Opening This Week: A doc on beauty culture and an acclaimed Sundance drama
Monday, July 28, 2008 | 7:37 AM
By Neil Pedley
This week's offerings find twilight twenty-somethings longing for love in Los Angeles, "The Mummy" franchise heading East and a gruesome subway slasher trying very hard not to scare people clean out of the theater, at least not before the movie actually starts.
"America the Beautiful"
At 12, Gerren Taylor was a bright young model who strolled the catwalk of Fashion Week in Los Angeles. By 13, she was considered a has-been. Director Darryl Roberts traces Taylor's early entrance and exit from the runway to paint a far larger picture of the inner workings of the fashion industry, examining the class system of models and the advertisers and designers who relentlessly manufacture a feeling of negative self-image among consumers and then prey upon it to get us to dip into our wallets. Through interviews with fashion industry experts, the first-time documentarian learns that beauty isn't skin deep — it's retouched, glossed over and as a business, just plain dangerous.
Opens in limited release.
Interview: Margaret Brown on "The Order of Myths"
Friday, July 25, 2008 | 4:56 PM
Mobile, Alabama is home to the country's oldest Mardi Gras celebration, an event that consumes the city with parades, masked balls, mystic societies and the coronation of the year's king and queen. Well, kings and queens -- as revealed in Margaret Brown's astonishingly good documentary "The Order of Myths," Mobile, a city composed of near-equal African-American and white populations, sees two separate and racially segregated celebrations unfold side by side with little contact between them. The film peers into the many strata and segments of Mobile society as Carnival preparations accelerate, painting a detailed and unsparing portrait of modern life balanced with not always pleasant history and tradition. Brown, whose first film, "Be Here to Love Me," looked at the life of Texan singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, is tackling a more personal topic here -- she grew up in Mobile, and brings to the film the rueful insights of someone intimate with the city's pageantry and problems. After its premiere at Sundance, "The Order of Myths" garnered acclaim at Silverdocs and at the SXSW Film Festival, where I got a chance to talk to Brown about moon pies, Mardi Gras and how much of herself she decided to put in her film.
What made you choose the Mobile Mardi Gras as a topic?
I've always wanted to do something in Mobile, because it's where I'm from. I thought it was going to be a narrative. I went down there to research, and started meeting people, and just thought, "This is actually a great moment in living history that needs to be captured," so I decided to make it into a documentary.
My last film, "Be Here to Love Me," was a movie about someone who died in 1997, so I wanted to make a vérité film, or primarily vérité, that wasn't dependent on recreating things. I wanted to film an event so I could see what that was like as a filmmaker, go into something and not know what would happen.
Video: "RocknRolla" at Comic-Con 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008 | 11:37 AM
Stars Gerard Butler, Jeremy Piven, Idris Elba and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges joined director Guy Ritchie for yesterday's presentation on "RocknRolla," Ritchie's first film since infamous bomb "Revolver," which took two years to reach U.S. shores. "RocknRolla," which is about the Russian mob in London, is the film that everyone's hoping represents a return to form for the director who first made a splash with snappy urban crime films like "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch."
Mostly, though, all eyes were on Butler, who offered chocolates to the crowd of adoring female fans and answered questions on the nature of his role and whether it was as physically challenging as his part in "300." Piven, in turn, offered his own fan service, saying "I'm completely overwhelmed by everyone's focus and their dedication. I'm in honor of all of you and I celebrate each and everyone one of you -- and I would like to do that personally, I'm in a service position for all of you. I would give you chocolate -- I have no more chocolate left. But I am going to take my shirt off."
While "RocknRolla" is set to open October 3rd, many were already looking forward to Ritchie's next film, "Sherlock Holmes," which promises (threatens?) to give a contemporary spin to the classic character, who'll be played by Robert Downey, Jr. "It's like James Bond in 1891," producer Joel Silver offered. "It's an action picture, it's seeing Holmes the way he always should have been seen."
Take a look at video clips from the panel below:
More from Comic-Con 2008: The "Watchmen" panel with director Zack Snyder, Billy Crudup and Carla Gugino; the panel for "The Spirit," with director Frank Miller and Samuel L. Jackson; the panel for "The Wolf Man" with award-winning make-up artist Rick Baker and stars Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt.
List: Counting Down Ten Sadly Underseen Films
Thursday, July 24, 2008 | 4:12 PM
By Aaron Hillis
Lists are breezy reads, but there can be an unfortunate disposability to the data because arbitrarily numbered "Ten Best" somethings or "Five Things You Should Know About" whatevers literally demonstrate quantity's domination over quality. And now that I've sucked all the fun out of the room, here's a practical but otherwise unranked list of ten auteurist gems — nine of which are already on DVD — that deserve their layers of dust blown off. (Sorry, "Zero Effect" and "11 Harrowhouse," but the list dictates the rules!)
"One From the Heart" (1982)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
The fires of over-ambition still smoldering in his belly after "Apocalypse Now," Francis Ford Coppola's follow-up was a decadent fiasco that bankrupted him, and might have seemed at the time as if the director had returned half-mad from the Filipino jungles. Epically staged on the Zoetrope studio lot, Coppola's hypertheatrical Vegas romance-cum-musical fantasy stars Frederic Forrest and a frequently nude Teri Garr as a working class couple who still can't get it right by their fifth anniversary. Garr runs off to the Strip and into the arms of singing waiter Raul Julia, Forrest romps off with sultry acrobat Nastassja Kinski (whose dance inside a jumbo cocktail glass must've inspired Dita Von Teese's renowned burlesque act), but the live-ins still pine for one another — often behind lit scrims that cleverly open "walls" into their disparate scenes within the same shot. It's obvious why the film sunk upon release — its leads are a bit milquetoast and the clunky drama old fashioned even by 1980s standards. But between its extravagant set pieces popping out our eyes with every neon hue in legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro's crayon box, and the smoky-bluesy score — crooned by its Oscar-nominated songwriter Tom Waits (!) in duet with Crystal Gayle (!!) — the film now invokes warm nostalgia for both vintage musicals and an era in which Coppola still shot for the rafters.
Feature: Gotham City, A Visual History
Wednesday, July 23, 2008 | 1:51 PM
By Matt Singer
Since 1940's "Batman" #4, and his first movie serial three years later, the Caped Crusader has called Gotham City his home. On screen and on the printed page, its visual representation has changed quite a bit over almost 70 years. At times, the look of the metropolis has been an afterthought; at others, directors have paid more attention to Gotham's appearance than to the characters living in it, and its latest appearance, in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight," may be its most unusual yet. (None the least for sparking a heated New York/Chicago debate.) Here's a look at eight movies full of gargoyles, dark alleys, and, yes, big naked statues.
Batman (1943)
Directed by Lambert Hillyer
Production Designer: Uncredited
This bargain basement production didn't even bother giving the Dynamic Duo a Batmobile, letting them make do with a generic black sedan, so it's no surprise Gotham is equally indistinct. The "Gotham City Foundation" is just a backlot street, and the chase scenes look an awful lot like the Bronson Canyon back roads where the '60s "Batman" would eventually house its Batcave. The only memorable location is Gotham's "Little Tokyo" where the serial's shockingly racist narrator informs us "a wise government" has rounded up all the residents and sent them off to internment camps, turning it into a "virtual ghost street." It makes for a nice contrast with the numerous scenes set on streets with some un-Gotham-like white picket fences; apparently, Mayberry is one of the town's rarely discussed suburbs.
List: Scenes For, or Not For, Really Intense Loners
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 | 10:16 AM
By Dan Kennedy
YOU'RE A REALLY INTENSE LONER WHO NEEDS NOBODY
Scene in "Repo Man" when Emilio Estevez tells Kevin to quit singing the 7-Up theme song, shoves him into a display of cans, then walks backwards out of store with both middle fingers extended toward the advancing security guard.Scene in "Superbad" when Seth asks Evan, "What, so I gotta sit here and eat my dessert alone like I'm fuckin' Steven Glansberg?" (Cut to the aforementioned Steven Glansberg eating alone at another table.)
Bill Murray on the ride from airport to hotel upon arrival in Tokyo in the opening credits of "Lost in Translation."
Interview: Jay and Mark Duplass on "Baghead"
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 | 9:15 AM
By Aaron Hillis
A quick refresher for the six of you who need it: "Mumblecore" (c. 2005 - 2007?) is the hastily designated catch-all for a loosely allied circle of young American filmmakers utilizing a low-budget, documentary-esque shooting style for their talky DIY indies. Regardless of whether you like any of the individual films, odds are you're either (a) tired of hearing that overhyped word, (b) have never heard it before now, or (c) one of the Duplass brothers. Actor/filmmakers Mark and Jay Duplass — whose witty road-trip dramedy "The Puffy Chair" became one of the first m-word successes — are quite comfortable with their association to that so-called movement/genre/clique, and why shouldn't they be, considering Sony Pictures Classics has released their follow-up feature? (Talk about mumble-score, har har!)
"Baghead" stars Steve Zissis, Ross Partridge, Greta Gerwig and Elise Muller as four friends and wannabe thespians who hole up in a cabin for a weekend of collaborative screenwriting on their dream project... until a mysterious stalker with a paper bag on his head shows up. Reminiscent of the Duplasses' inventive shorts about relationships, their unusual new genre mash-up is prankish one moment, scary and suspenseful the next, and it's for the best to give nothing else away. Mark and Jay occasionally finished each other's sentences while yakking about lovable losers and the meta-aspects of promoting their film, but let's get down to brass tacks:
On DVD: "Satantango," "Eagle Shooting Heroes"
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 | 8:17 AM
The behemothic, almost impossible to see, hardcore-critic-exalted art film legends keep coming at us on DVD — will there be any Holy Grails left? — but it's likely that no movie has been awaited as intensely and with as high expectations as Béla Tarr's "Satantango" (1994). Finally, after literally years of rumors and broken promises and restoration troubles, Facets has brought this cathedral of a movie to disc, and we can all explore its frontiers at will. Not that we all will — "Satantango" is one of those films that, because of its size (nearly seven hours), form (long-take extremism) and weighty thrust (ambiguous Hungarian existentialism), has always worn the mantle of being a cinephiles' test case, an experience that separates the apostles from the pretenders. Maybe Tarr made it with that in mind — by its very nature, the film intends to be an immersive trial. You don't just watch "Satantango" — you live it, your biorhythms adjust to it, and the upshot is not what you'd call a walk on the bright side of the street.
IFC News Podcast #86: Squandering Comedic Talent
Monday, July 21, 2008 | 9:08 AM
By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore
Finding a good vehicle for a great comedian can be tough -- the ability to be funny doesn't always come hand in hand with the ability to act, and the film needs to work with a comedian's persona and particular strengths. A few recent or upcoming films have done brilliantly bad jobs of this -- most notably "Run Fatboy Run," with Simon Pegg, but to a lesser extent "The Rocker" with Rainn Wilson and "Hamlet 2" with Steve Coogan. This week on the IFC News podcast, we look at ten past films that have, in different ways, squandered the comedic talent attached to them.
Download now (MP3: 32:39 minutes, 29.8 MB)
[Photo: "Run Fatboy Run," Picturehouse Entertainment, 2007]
Opening This Week: Docs on teens, tightropes and tradition
Monday, July 21, 2008 | 8:37 AM
By Neil Pedley
With blockbusters taking a week off after "The Dark Knight" so thoroughly conquered the box office and its core audience descends upon Comic-Con in San Diego, an outstanding array from the indie scene offers plenty of alternative viewing.
"American Teen"
Her longtime collaborator Brett Morgen may be out of the picture, but "The Kid Stays in the Picture" co-director Nanette Burstein infiltrated the cliques, classrooms and hallways of an Indiana high school for her first solo doc, which netted her a directing award at Sundance earlier this year. Burstein follows a cross section of Warsaw High's senior class for 10 months in pursuit of their respective ambitions and priorities, and discovers that bonding at the library during Saturday detention is no way to communicate when text messaging and IM can be just as intimate.
Opens in limited release.
List: Once more, from the top! Five comic book reboots
Thursday, July 17, 2008 | 4:27 PM
By Matt Singer
When the "Batman" movie franchise had grown too swollen with campy performances and benippled costumes to survive, Warner Brothers went back to the drawing board. But they didn't just bring on a new director or actor to play Batman; they restarted the entire franchise. And if 2005's "Batman Begins," directed by Christopher Nolan, could have been written off as an elaborately reimagined prequel - since Tim Burton's 1989 "Batman" did not fully explain how Bruce Wayne became Batman or feature "Begins" villains the Scarecrow or Ra's Al Ghul - there could be no lingering doubt with Nolan's new Bat-follow-up, "The Dark Knight," where we get a totally new take on The Joker, courtesy of the late Heath Ledger.
Starting over a movie franchise based on a comic book from scratch is a fitting move; comic books have been doing the same thing for years. When these lumbering behemoths of backstory become too unwieldy, or sales get too bad (or, most often, a deadly cocktail of the two) then it's time to start the series over from scratch (or at least to pretend like the old comics never happened and retell them again for a new audience). Here are five notable examples:
Interview: Brad Anderson on "Transsiberian"
Thursday, July 17, 2008 | 2:35 PM
By Aaron Hillis
By now, writer/director Brad Anderson ("Session 9") must be bored to death of people asking him about Christian Bale's monumental weight loss for "The Machinist," perhaps the most memorably disturbing image from his still-under-the-radar career. (Could this be the same Brad Anderson who once made quirky rom-coms like "Next Stop Wonderland" and "Happy Accidents"? Indeed, it is.) After taking on episodes of "The Wire" and "Masters of Horror," Anderson returns to features with the moody, diabolically suspenseful "Transsiberian," starring Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer as an American couple on a church-sponsored charity mission in China who soon face moral dilemmas and enigmatic strangers on the titular train to Russia. Of course ol' Hitch came up in my conversation with Anderson, but so did Dostoyevsky, hipster thrillers and the in-the-works adaptation he wishes he could've made. [WARNING: Major spoilers ahead!]
Interview: Josh Hartnett on "August"
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 | 5:58 PM
By Aaron Hillis
In the mere decade he's been filling movie screens, 30-year-old actor Josh Hartnett has already worked in both mega-budget studio flicks ("Pearl Harbor," "Hollywood Homicide") and with auteurs like Sofia Coppola ("The Virgin Suicides"), Robert Rodriguez ("The Faculty," "Sin City") and Brian De Palma ("The Black Dahlia"). Maintaining his stance with one foot in Hollywood, the other currently leaning more heavily in Indiewood, Hartnett's latest — which he also co-produced — is a time warp back to New York during the summer of 2001. Only marginally a pre-9/11 film, director Austin Chick's "August" is an implosive study in hubris set against the backdrop of the dot-com economic meltdown. Hartnett plays Tom Sterling, a narcissistic millionaire CEO who is far more concerned with his materialistic rock star image than he is for Landshark, the sinking ship of a company that he began with his brother Joshua (Adam Scott). Hartnett chatted with me about the film, why he considers himself a gambler, and being intimidated by co-star David Bowie.
On DVD: "Times and Winds," "Chop Shop"
Tuesday, July 15, 2008 | 4:49 AM
It's amazing to contemplate, but world cinema didn't really make serious feature films about children until after WWII; Vittorio De Sica's "Shoeshine" (1946) might've been the first. (You could stretch and consider Hal Roach's vivid and roughhewn "Our Gang" shorts as qualifying, and I wouldn't argue.) After the New Waves got rolling, of course, juveniles proliferated like rabbits on screen, but prior to that nearly the first half of cinema history had little or nothing to say about the bedeviled, often neglected, wide-eyed life of the pre-adult. Did cinema change with the war, or did we? Two new movies to DVD, Reha Erdem's "Times and Winds" (2006) and Ramin Bahrani's "Chop Shop" (2007), make their individual cases that little outside of the movie dynamic has changed at all, and that life as a 12-year-old in any corner of the globe is still subject to the grinding, merciless self-involvement of the adult world.
List: Subbing In - Strange Moments in Replacement Actor History
Monday, July 14, 2008 | 4:08 PM
By Matt Singer
When adventurous treasure hunters Rick and Evelyn O'Connell return for their third film, this summer's "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," one of them will look a bit different than they had previously. That's because Evelyn was once played by Rachel Weisz, who passed on this sequel and was replaced by Maria Bello. Likewise, the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes from "Batman Begins" continues in this summer's "The Dark Knight," without Katie Holmes; Maggie Gyllenhaal fills in there.
It's a busy year for actors replacing other actors in sequels — we've already had a new Hulk (Edward Norton) and this fall, we'll have a new Punisher to match (Ray Stevenson) — so it's a good time to look back at some of the most notable substitutes. Sometimes new actors in old roles can make a huge impact; Antonio Banderas broke through with American audiences with "Desperado," but he was the second "El Mariachi" after Carlos Gallardo. Other times, you can change a performer and no one notices; a dozen guys have played Jason Voorhees' in 11 "Friday the 13th" movies. As a general rule though, if the replacement calls attention to itself either on or off screen (as in all six of our examples), your movie's already in trouble.
IFC News Podcast #85: From Screen! To Stage! To Screen!
Monday, July 14, 2008 | 3:51 PM
By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore
Once upon a time, successful musicals went from the stages of Broadway or the West End to Hollywood for lavish film adaptations, yielding everything from "Oklahoma!" to, more recently, "Dreamgirls" and this week's "Mamma Mia!" But it's become just as common for movies to inspire musical theater productions -- hello, "Xanadu" -- with sometimes more dubious results. This week on the IFC News Podcast, we look at the musical world of stage-to-screen, screen-to-stage, and that rare but growing category of screen-to-stage-to-screen, suggest films that would make great or terrible Broadway shows, and wonder why anyone every greenlit "Carrie - The Musical."
Download now (MP3: 37:07 minutes, 33.9 MB)
[Photo: "Mamma Mia!", Universal Pictures, 2008]
Opening This Week: British gangsters, mock doormen, Lou Reed
Monday, July 14, 2008 | 9:19 AM
By Neil Pedley
This week sees the opening of "The Dark Knight." Advance marketing and coverage might have you believe that that, apparently, is all, but there are other films coming out this week well worth your time. (Besides, "The Dark Knight" is totally going to be sold out.)
"A Very British Gangster"
With Britain in the midst of a youth crime epidemic, Irish investigative reporter Donald McIntyre takes an unflinching look at Dominic Noonan, a granddad of the English gangland who's spent over half his life behind bars. Having legally changed his name to Lattlay Fottfoy (an acronym of the Noonan motto — "Look After Those That Look After You; Fuck Off Those That Fuck Off You"), the openly gay head of Manchester's most notorious crime family shows off his gentler side as a man who uses his reputation to position himself as a "problem solver" more concerned with the state of his local community than his own image.
Opens in New York and Los Angeles.
Interview: Johnnie To on "Mad Detective"
Friday, July 11, 2008 | 11:43 AM
Since the formation of his Milkyway Image production company in 1996 in Hong Kong, Johnnie To has been the most imaginative (and prolific) director of genre films in the world. Mainly known stateside for self-reflexively stylish gangster flicks like "The Mission" (1999) and "Exiled" (2006), he's also produced a slew of hit romantic comedies (including the delirious 2002 supernatural love story "My Left Eye Sees Ghosts"). Whatever the subject, his films hum with the skill of a committed craftsman, every shot jiggered for maximum lucidity and intensity. There's no wasted motion in a To film -- every gun crack or eye-poke carries the weight of the character behind it.
To's collaborated with screenwriter and Milkyway co-founder Wai Ka-Fai on his most daring projects, including the bodybuilding Buddhist thriller "Running on Karma" (2003), and they reteam again for "Mad Detective," which recently screened at the New York Asian Film Festival and which opens in New York on July 18th. A knotty noir about a burnt-out cop (Lau Ching Wan) who claims he can see people's inner personalities as distinct individuals, it shoehorns black comedy and psychological musings into its pistol operatics. I got the chance to chat over email with Mr. To about the film as well as his sublime new pickpocket tale "Sparrow" (also a part of this year's NYAFF, and currently without U.S. distribution), and his next project, a remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's "Le Cercle Rouge."