August Evenings

This week, Patton Oswalt's a fan, Rob Zombie's a sequel remaker and Anna Wintour just is.

“The September Issue”
While infamous Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour might’ve been the inspiration for novelist Lauren Weisberger’s mocking 2003 page-turner “The Devil Wears Prada,” and its subsequent 2006 screen adaptation, Emmy Award-winning documentarian R.J. Cutler’s insider account demonstrates that the Devil will wear whatever Ms. Wintour damn well tells him to. Neither the explosive exposé that fans hoped for, nor the sycophantic puff piece that cynics feared, this film finds Cutler and his crew stalking the Vogue offices in the run-up to fashion’s most defining publication, capturing how one dictates to a $300 billion-dollar-a-year industry on exactly how it’s going to be.
Opens in New York; opens in limited release on Sept. 11th.

“Still Walking”
Despite the language barrier, the latest from noted Japanese helmer Hirokazu Kore-eda, with its bittersweet portrait of familial dysfunction between grieving parents and alienated children all underscored by an acoustic guitar, will likely find an adopted home with fans of so-called “Sundance films.” In what’s become an annual gathering to commiserate the death of their eldest son who died saving a drowning child, the Yokohama clan reluctantly make nice amidst an atmosphere of thinly veiled disappointment and simmering mutual resentment. In Japanese with subtitles.
Opens in New York and available on VOD.

“Taking Woodstock”
Taking one of the defining events of a generation and whittling it down to the story of how it served to singularly define one man, director Ang Lee and longtime writing/producing partner James Schamus team once again to give life to the autobiography of Elliot Tiber, who was instrumental in the production of the landmark music festival. Demetri Martin stars as the closeted, confused twenty-something who turns into a countercultural hero almost by accident, with Emile Hirsch, Eugene Levy, Liev Schreiber and Paul Dano amongst the hippie helpers who aid his efforts to make the show happen.
Opens in New York and Los Angeles on August 26th; expands wide on August 28th.

“We Live in Public”
From the only two-time Grand Jury Prize winner in Sundance history, director Ondi Timoner, this alarming documentary about the times we live in underwent a ten-year evolution from a simple document of a curious social experiment to an unflattering reflection of both our vanity and our growing addiction to voyeurism, all through the gaze of online guru Josh Harris, who’s been dubbed the “digital Andy Warhol.” Timoner follows Harris as he invites the lonely and the loony to live their lives in the public eye in a sprawling underground bunker, and she sketches the fine line between self-promotion and self-destruction that says as much about where we’re headed as where we currently are.
Opens in New York.

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