Two years ago Sundance opened with a Brett Morgen's animated doc "Chicago 10," and it's just been announced that the upcoming iteration of the festival (only 57 days to go!) will kick off with more animation -- "Mary and Max," a claymation drama, is the feature debut of Australian director Adam Elliot, who's otherwise known for a spectacular set of claymation shorts that includes "Harvey Crumpet," which won the 2003 Best Animated Short Oscar. My favorite is "Brother," from his "Family Trilogy" -- while it lasts, you can find it here on YouTube.

"Mary and Max" is voiced by Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Sundance's description:

Written and directed by Elliot, Mary and Max tells the tale of an improbable friendship between two very different people: Mary Daisy Dinkle (Collette) a lonely Australian eight-year-old, and Max Jerry Horovitz (Hoffman), a middle-aged New Yorker. Spanning 20 years and two continents, Mary and Max is a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, obesity, kleptomania, sexual difference, religious difference, agoraphobia and more. The film is narrated by Australian legend Barry Humphries and features cameos from Eric Bana, singer Renee Geyer and Australian music icon Ian "Molly" Meldrum along with Julie Forsyth and John Flaus.

The rest of the program will be announced on December 3rd and 4th.

[Photo: "Mary and Max," Icon Entertainment International, 2008]

By Alison Willmore in Festivals | Link | 1 Comments | Recommended (2)

Tags: Adam Elliot, Mary an Max, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sundance 09, Toni Collette

The collection of 15 docs on the Oscar shortlist unveiled yesterday look, all things considered, pretty good to me. Traditionally the award that's caused the most hue and cry, with outrageous omissions and disqualifications, arcane rules and seemingly random (or at least radically out of touch) selections, the Best Documentary Feature prize could actually come down to a group of films that 1) are good and 2) more than a handful of people have at least heard of and had the opportunity to see.

"Man on Wire," the most acclaimed documentary of the year, is probably also a favorite to win, should it make it down to the final five. Established filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Errol Morris and Steve James are on there next to festival circuit favorites like "In a Dream" and "They Killed Sister Dorothy."

By Alison Willmore in Awards | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (2)

Tags: documentaries, Oscars 2008

When folks begin wrapping up the year that was 2008, the most exciting (if still way up in the air, from a business perspective) trend has to be the rise of free streaming features online, whether they be "theatrical" premieres, a la Wayne Wang's "The Princess of Nebraska," Hulu's ad-supported library of older titles, or limited runs like "No End in Sight," which streamed in its entirely on YouTube until the presidential election.

The latest in the latter category is Michael Tully's 2007 documentary "Silver Jew," which for this week only can be seen in its entirety on Pitchfork. The film, which follows the famously reclusive musician and poet David Berman with his band the Silver Jews on their first-ever world tour, made its premiere at SXSW last year. Just short of an hour in length, it didn't have any luck with theatrical distribution, but an online bow like this at a site like Pitchfork serves as a nifty substitute that will hopefully direct people to buying it on DVD.

[Photo: "Silver Jew," Drag City, 2008]

+ One Week Only: Silver Jew (Pitchfork)

By Alison Willmore in Watchy | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (2)

Tags: Michael Tully, Silver Jew, streaming

Arnaud Desplechin's haute holiday tale "A Christmas Tale" is probably my favorite film of the year, barring a few yet-unseen stragglers like "Benjamin Button," and from the reviews it'll probably make plenty of critic top ten lists. Therefore Armond White at the New York Press dutifully dislikes it, though despite the requisite snipe at the hipster hoards, he can't summon much heat, sighing that the film is "the latest pretext for director Arnaud Desplechin to wax ironic," but allowing that "A Christmas Tale isn't repugnant, just regressive."

By Alison Willmore in Critic wrangle | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (1)

Tags: A Christmas Tale, Arnaud Desplechin

Half grimy portrait of Mumbai poverty, half fable by way of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," Danny Boyle's new film "Slumdog Millionaire" was a hit at Toronto, where it won the Audience Award, and is a solid candidate for a sleeper hit in the new "Juno" sense of the term, given that the film's from an established director and cost a reported $15 million (cheap!). Will it sleeper its way to an Oscar nomination? It's certainly edgily feel-good; as Manohla Dargis at the New York Times puts it, "this proves to be one of the most upbeat stories about living in hell imaginable." For her, the film's visual stunning if a little too calculating: "In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker's calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale)." Andrew Sarris at the New York Observer finds that it's actually the mismatching of sentiments that makes it work, writing that it's "precisely because the varied parts don't cohere as smoothly as they are supposed to in the ideal well-made film."

By Alison Willmore in Critic wrangle | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (1)

Tags: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire

RogerEbert.com has switched over from the usual four star rating system to a mix of stars and thumbs, which makes for an interesting repurposing of the two digit approval system over which the critic got into a tiff with Disney. The thumbs, which have been sort of replaced by "See It/Skip It/Rent It" on the new incarnation of "At the Movies," weren't going to see air time with Bens Lyons and Mankiewicz -- Ebert and the late Gene Siskel's family share ownership of the trademark -- so I suppose it's good to see them making an appearance somewhere.

Still, it raises an issue: The thumbs up/thumbs down were, love them or hate them, supposed to express the most basic breakdown of opinions on a movie: like it, dislike it, or split. Now they've been transformed into a kind of gradated system, in which two thumbs up is better than one thumb, which is better than one thumb down, which is a step above two thumbs down, which seems to encompass everything that received two stars or below. It's rather confusing, which goes against the entire simplified business of thumbage, but more importantly, it leaves out the one thumb up, one thumb down equivalent of a shrug. Which is precisely where such a large swath of films fall each year.

By Alison Willmore in Critic watch | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (3)

Tags: At the Movies, Roger Ebert

What's been happening on the rest of IFC.com:

      + List: Pass the Kool-Aid - Five Flicks That Aspired To Cult Status - Can a film like "Repo! The Genetic Opera" aim at and achieve cult status intentionally? Matt Singer examines five examples would indicate that becoming a cult film is something that has to be earned.

      + Bruce Campbell on "My Name is Bruce" - The B-movie icon famous for playing Ash in the "Evil Dead" movies gives Jean-Claude Van Damme a run for his money by starring as and directing himself in his new meta-comedy.

      + On DVD: "Billy the Kid," "No Mercy, No Future" - Michael Atkinson on Jennifer Venditti's adroit and honest documentary portrait of a working-class high schooler inflicted with Asperger's; plus, Helma Sanders-Brahms' odyssey of a schizophrenic young woman on the streets of Berlin.

      + Podcast: Actors as Themselves, Sort of - Matt Singer and I look at the actors with the self-awareness (and sense of humor) to attempt the meta-role that is playing a version of themselves on screen.

      + Opening This Week: Gay zombies, the literal Sundance kid and the Muscles From Brussels - Neil Pedley rounds up what's new in theaters.

Want these updates to be sent to you each week? Email us and we'll add you to our list.

[Photo: Bruce Campbell in "My Name is Bruce," Image Entertainment, 2007]

By Alison Willmore in The week on IFC.com | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (3)

Genius? Overrated? Jean-Claude Van Damme plays "himself" in Mabrouk El Mechri's meta-drama "JCVD," caught in a bank robbery gone wrong in a trip back to Brussels to recuperate. It's a film I enjoyed the hell out of, though general critical word is mixed, or perhaps just more bemused. At New York, David Edelstein calls it "the most amazing piece of acting I've ever seen by a martial artist. But the film itself doesn't rise above the level of a good try." Scott Tobias at the Onion AV Club sums the film up as "a canny piece of autobiography that looks at the man behind the legend and the legend behind the man," but finds that once "the film's self-reflexive moments disappear... JCVD looks too much like the recent duds from which Van Damme hopes to extricate himself."

By Alison Willmore in Critic wrangle | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (3)

Tags: JCVD, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Mabrouk El Mechri

Among a certain group of critics, the mere mention of Roberto Benigni's Holocaust... dramedy?... "Life is Beautiful" is enough to provoke hours of enraging ranting. It's doubtful that Mark Herman's "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" will endure in theaters or memory long enough to be worth such a reaction, but there's still plenty of outrage to go around. An adaptation of John Boyne's child POV novel about Bruno, whose Nazi-commander father is transferred by "the Fury", family is tow, to "Out-With," where "farmers" wearing "striped pajamas" mill around behind a fence, among them a young boy Bruno befriends, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" stars Vera Farmiga and David Thewlis.

By Alison Willmore in Critic wrangle | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (2)

Tags: David Thewlis, John Boyne, Life is Beautiful, Mark Herman, Roberto Benigni, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Vera Farmiga

The still from George A. Romero's new movie that's up at USA Today is a completely uninspiring glimpse of a zombie extra with blood on her face and matted hair. But in the accompanying article, Romero makes the new film, which IMDb has labeled as "Island of the Dead" though USA Today maintains it's untitled, sound like "Survivor: Zombie Edition": "It's about tribalism... There are two factions. It's the idea that even when faced with a crisis, tribal concerns about power control people's motives."

Romero also continues to affirm that the animated undead are the perfect gore-smeared slate on which to inscribe social commentary: "It's this whole idea of tribalism, that we can't pull it together. News reports about the presidential race still bring up religious topics or racism. That's pretty much the central theme."

By Alison Willmore | Link | 0 Comments | Recommended (3)

Tags: Bruce LaBruce, George A Romero, Island of the Dead, Otto; or Up with Dead People, Simon Pegg, zombies