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Todd Solondz doesn’t make happy movies, but he does occasionally make pretty hilarious ones. In flicks like “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Happiness” and “Life During Wartime,” the writer/director has wallowed in the desperation and depression of numerous outsider character with darkly humourous results. For his upcoming film “Dark Horse,” Solondz appears to be sticking to…
Variety reports that David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” will premiere at the 68th Venice Film Festival, which begins on August 31. The film, Cronenberg’s first since 2007′s “Eastern Promises,” stars his frequent collaborator Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung, and Keira Knightley as the woman they both want. I can’t decide;…
Tonight at 12:15 p.m. ET we are showing the brilliantly twisted or, shall we say, slightly off, comedy “Spanking the Monkey”. Directed by David O. Russell and starring Jeremy Davies (of “Lost” and “Justified” fame) the movie tells the tale of a very close relationship between an invalid mother and her son who is home…
As a way of celebrating this year’s nominees for the Spirit Awards in the weeks leading up to the ceremony, we reached out to as many as we could in an effort to better understand what went into their films, what they’ve gotten out of the experience, and where they’ve found their inspiration, both in…
The title track for Todd Solondz’s latest film “Life During Wartime” was the result of a four-way collaboration between Beck, Devendra Banhart, composer Marc Shaiman and Solondz himself who penned the lyrics. Freak folk wizard, Banhart, who takes the lead vocals on the track called Solondz “One of the great luminaries,” in an email to…
Some directors burst out of the gate with fully formed visions and debuts that set Sundance aflame. Others take longer to firm up their perspectives and filmmaking identity. (And, of course, many, many others don’t get going at all.) “Your Early Work” is an occasional feature in which we’ll take a look at an established…
“Exploitative,” “mean-spirited” and “misanthropic” are just three of the many severe adjectives that tend to pepper discussions about the acidic work of Todd Solondz. The New Jersey-born indie filmmaker arrived on the scene in 1995 with the bitterly funny “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” courted critical accolades and controversy with 1998′s sharp-fanged “Happiness,” and further established,…
As Tolstoy didn’t quite write, “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own movie.” Inspired by “Dogtooth,” the new, critically acclaimed Greek film featuring what has to be a record-breakingly dysfunctional familial unit, this week’s IFC News podcast is all about the movies’ fondness for troubled, messed-up, maladjusted and flat-out…
The Toronto International Film Festival ends tomorrow, but most journalists have already skipped ahead to extrapolating trends. There’s much loose talk about potential Oscar front-runners — “Up In The Air” apparently has a lock — and much free-floating despair about the tough climate for making, purchasing and marketing indie films. But at least one person…
The stately New York Film Festival, which runs this year from September 25th through October 11th, has just announced its stately slate, made up of many familiar names and very few surprises. To be fair, New York isn’t really a festival one looks to for surprises, but I’d hoped what was an arguably weaker Cannes…
Chris 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…
By Aaron Hillis Wisconsin-born filmmaker Chris Smith’s 1996 debut feature, “American Job,” got his foot in the door at Sundance, but it was 1999′s “American Movie,” about a luckless amateur filmmaker in production on a low-budget horror flick, that earned him the Grand Jury Prize in Park City, putting his star on the indie-film map.…
Danny Boyle’s new film “Slumdog Millionaire,” a comedy about a Mumbai orphan who gets on the Hindi version of “Who Wants to be A Millionaire?”, was set to premiere at Toronto in distribution limbo after Warner Independent Pictures went away. No longer — Fox Searchlight is partnering with Warner Bros. to give the film a…
