It’s Veterans Day on Thursday, and inspired by the holiday and the men and women it honors, this week’s IFC News podcast turns to films about life after combat. We look at the differences and recurring themes of representations of on-screen veterans from “The Best Years of Our Lives” to “Stop-Loss.” DOWNLOAD MP3, 1:06:21 minutes,…
McKinney turned up at the film’s screening last night in New York (as part of DOC NYC), joining Morris on stage to discuss how her story was represented in “Tabloid.” McKinney, a former beauty queen, was arrested in England in 1978 for allegedly kidnapping and attempting to deprogram (using sex) a Mormon missionary. At the…
In the new issue of the New York Review of Books, literary bright young thing Zadie Smith reflects on “The Social Network,” Facebook, Jaron Lanier’s book “You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto” and the mystery of Mark Zuckerberg. Personally I don’t think Final Clubs were ever the point; I don’t think exclusivity was ever…
…the others involved in “No Strings Attached” might be. The film’s directed by Ivan Reitman (who’s rumored to be prepping “Ghostbusters 3″ next), it’s written by playwright and Fempire member Elizabeth Meriwether, and features Greta Gerwig and Mindy Kaling as the funny friends. Paramount Pictures will release “No Strings Attached” on January 21st.
The Cinema Eye Honors, devoted to highlighting the best of the year’s nonfiction films, have flipped for Lixin Fan’s fantastic “Last Train Home,” which follows a family of migrant workers as they struggle to stay connected while living separated by hundreds of miles. “Last Train Home” received the most nominations — seven — while Banksy’s…
“The Last Letter” (2002) Directed by Frederick Wiseman Soloist: Catherine Samie The famous documentarian made one of his rare side trips into narrative (his 1980 “Seraphita’s Diary” is, similarly, a type of one-woman show) with this 2002 film, in which Catherine Samie, the only castmember, plays Anna Semyonovna, a Jewish woman who’s been forced to…
This review originally ran as part of our coverage of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. “Four Lions,” the slippery first feature from British comedian/provocateur/fearless satirist Chris Morris, is going to win the above title by default. Few films indeed are willing to combine terrorism and comedy — I’ve always entertained a soft spot for the…
“Voodoo Mama Hot Sauce” is a short from filmmaker Marcos Kühne, who notes that he met Ifans on a feature that was shooting in his village of Deia, in Spain and convinced him to appear in his own short: We shot the film in a rundown, drug-ridden ghetto in Palma de Mallorca. Rhys was on…
While Davis Guggenheim’s education reform documentary “Waiting For ‘Superman’” is approaching $5 million at the box office, it’s also attracted some serious criticism for its one-sided championing of charter schools as succeeding where public schools fail. The must-read (and most damning) piece on the subject comes from Diane Ravitch at the New York Review of…
Movieline critic Michelle Orange (who’s also a contributor on this site) recently reflected on Justin Long’s reciting of a particularly stinging line from her review of “Going the Distance” on a late night talk show, and about the realities of being a critic in general. And yesterday the site’s contributing editor Mike Ryan has an…
Happy Election Day! While you’re waiting in line at your local polling place, take some time to enjoy this insane editorial by mystery novelist Andrew Klavan at the LA Times, who stretches in a perilous and alarming fashion to read into this year’s Pixar film a heated commentary on our current political climate: Last summer’s…
Last year, Joseph Gordon-Levitt ruled Sundance’s experimental, installation-based New Frontier Program with selections from his crowdsourced, collaborative hitRECord project. This year, the big name is everyone’s favorite adorably droopy-eyed multi-hyphenate James Franco, whose “Three’s Company: The Drama” is “a multi-media examination of the classic 70s sit-com” that Franco hopes will gives us “a slightly oblique…
Terry Gilliam and NASCAR — not a match you’d imagine the world was crying out for, but one it has been given nevertheless in the video below, “The Legend of Hallowdega,” which is less an ad than a branded film produced by Amp Energy Juice, sponsors of the Talladega 500. Gilliam directed the short, which…
One of the breakout directors of the ’90s thanks to his still-exuberant, edgy and dark 1996 drug story, Danny Boyle has gone on to an intriguing career of bringing his visually kinetic style to genres as varied as horror, sci-fi, romantic comedy and now semi-experimental tales of survival. On this week’s IFC News podcast, we…
Here are six concept-heavy suggestions for timely film-related costumes that require relatively little effort, wardrobe-wise. Mal from “Inception” Wear a cocktail dress. Overturn tables and throw drinks in people’s faces. When confronted about this, point at someone else in the room and claim to just be a manifestation of his or her guilt-ridden subconscious. Recovering…
Alison: Well, I’ve already confessed my fondness for the character of Kim Kelly and her first spotlight episode. As for 25 years later, I think what I’ll remember most about this series isn’t the near-beer, or “Lady L,” or Daniel’s track speech, or the Norseman, or Bill catching the fly ball, but Lindsay telling Sam…
Reviewed at the 2010 Abu Dhabi Film Festival. While not as freshly ripped from the nonfiction bestseller list as “The Social Network,” Doug Liman’s “Fair Game” is another film that transmutes real life events to the screen before they’ve had an opportunity to comfortably settle into something more like our idea of the set past.…
Best documentary at the Oscars is, like best foreign language film, the type of category that seems invented to be grumbled over, with selections and winners rarely reflecting the films everyone else in the world finds most worthy of praise. So it’s much less frustrating to look to organizations like the International Documentary Association for…
With “Saw 3D” being promised as the last in the series, are we finally seeing an end to the horror subgenre that was torture porn? This week on the IFC News podcast, we talk about the loose definitions of torture porn, whether “enjoyment” is the right word to describe the experience of watching such extreme…
Directed by Varon Bonicos (who also created the TV series “House of Boateng”), the documentary “A Man’s Story” spans an epic dozen years in the life of its subject, designer and larger than life fashion world figure Ozwald Boateng. The youngest and first black tailor to open a shop on London’s Savile Row, Boateng starts…
“Open Five,” a new film directed by Kentucker Audley and shot by mumblecore’s own Joe Swanberg, just had its premiere at the Indie Memphis Film Festival, and is now watchable online for free for a limited time. The official description of the film calls it “a blend of reality and fiction that follows the story…
Reviewed at the 2010 Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Before he directed 1988′s astounding “The Vanishing” and 1993′s astoundingly disappointing American remake of the same film, Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer made a trilogy of documentaries entitled “Land of the Fathers” that followed two Palestinian families through their experiences in 1974, 1978 and 1983 — the last,…
Shorts International has put a “Halloween Shorts” series up for purchase on iTunes, and one of the films, “Roar,” is available for a free download if you’re in the US or Canada. I’m still abroad and can’t actually see it myself, but “Roar,” directed by Adam Wimpenny, stars “Being Human” charmer Russell Tovey, which should…
While the latest film from “Babel” director Alejandro González Iñárritu has proven divisive among critics, everyone seems to agree that Bardem is damn impressive in the lead role of Uxbal, a Barcelona man trying to care for his two kids, manage his on-the-verge-of-falling-apart collection of underworld dealings and come to terms with his diagnosis of…
