Indie film news, reviews, commentary, interviews, podcasts and more, updated throughout the week.
Subject Versus Approach at Cinevegas
By Matt Singer on 06/18/2009
The "Pioneer Documentaries" program of the CineVegas Film Festival claims to highlight films that capture "subjects who defy odds and expectations." And that's an appropriate enough description for the seven docs featured this year, whose focuses range from poker to the anti-aging industry, but it's also one that could be applied to over half the nonfiction films on the festival circuit today. A good subject can make a documentary, but it's how a film presents and treats that subject that sets it apart, as two films in the line-up with thematically similar subject matter and extremely different approaches demonstrate so... MORE »
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A Heart-Stopping (Literally) Premiere
By Stephen Saito on 04/30/2009
Filed under: Festivals, InterviewsIn a horror film, it's usually the audience that's freaking out, but that wasn't the case Saturday night at the Tribeca Film Festival, when Michael Cuesta's "Tell Tale" made its world premiere. Right as the stylish retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" reached its climax, one audience member's heart literally stopped, at least momentarily, as the film was suspended and an ambulance was called. (Though Cuesta initially suspected it might be a stunt on the part of Ridley Scott's production company, Scott Free, the director was later told it was likely a fainting spell or a transient ischemic... MORE »
SXSW 2009: "How Did We Get Away With That?"
By Stephen Saito on 03/19/2009
Filed under: Festivals"This movie's a comedy, I guess," director Jody Hill said in his introduction to "Observe and Report," the Seth Rogen-starring entry into the burgeoning mall cop genre. If Hill wasn't quite certain about what he had on his hands before the film played to a packed Paramount Theater, he could rest easy after the "weird-ass" character study pretty much killed it (both figuratively and all too literally at times, as Alison Willmore noted in her review on Indie Eye). By Tuesday morning, Hill and cast members Rogen, Faris, Michael Pena and Danny McBride were at the Austin Convention Center for... MORE »
SXSW 2009: The Winners
By Alison Willmore on 03/18/2009
Filed under: Festivals"Made in China," a comedy about a Texan boy who heads to Shanghai to capitalize on his novelty invention idea, and "45365," a documentary about everyday life in a small town in Ohio, took the top prizes at the 2009 SXSW Film Festival this year. Tennessee drama "That Evening Sun" and Katrina pet rescue doc "Mine" took the audiences awards. The full list of winners is below: Feature Jury Awards Documentary Feature: "45365," director: Bill Ross An inquiring look at everyday life in Middle America, the film explores the congruities of daily life in an American town Sidney, Ohio. Honorable... MORE »
SXSW 2009: "Bruno" and Kubrick
By Stephen Saito on 03/17/2009
Filed under: FestivalsA silence fell over the bus full of journalists that were being ferried from a preview of 20 minutes of Sacha Baron Cohen's latest comedy, "Bruno," over to see Sam Raimi's new horror film "Drag Me to Hell." The mood was so unexpectedly solemn that one prominent online journalist asked loudly, "Why is it so quiet in here?" to which another replied, "Because we're all traumatized." Indeed, what we had witnessed was true to the introduction given by a SXSW/Fantastic Fest staffer who said, "what you're about to see is rough footage...it's nasty," referring to the image quality before adding... MORE »
SXSW 2009: The "It" Factor
By Stephen Saito on 03/15/2009
Filed under: FestivalsThough he left out the explanation from his film for fear that it might sound too New Agey, Alex Karpovsky spent part of the Q&A that followed his documentary/concert film "Trust Us, This is All Made Up," talking about how his subjects, the Chicago-based improv duo of TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesi, believe in a universal superconsciousness that they simply call the "It." Jagodowski and Pasquesi weren't on hand to explain the shared wavelength themselves, but the gist is that if they can simply get their collective egos out of the way, their one-hour set comes naturally, as if it... MORE »
Graphic: The 2009 SXSW Film Family Tree
By Aaron Hillis on 03/05/2009
Filed under: FestivalsFrom its accidental 2005 birth to its 2007 peak and beyond, "mumblecore" (that DIY pigeonholing non-movement we hate to call by name, yet keep doing so anyway) always had two defining characteristics: a social-cum-artistic relationship between its filmmakers, and a direct link to the SXSW Film Festival. Two years ago this month, I half-jokingly decided to illustrate a chart depicting how incestuous the "m-word" scene had become, connecting the collaborators to each film and one another. Now, as SXSW 2009 approaches, IFC has asked me to update the chart with this year's players, and if the lineup reveals anything, it's... MORE »
Rotterdam 2009: The Wrap-Up
By R. Emmet Sweeney on 02/04/2009
Filed under: FestivalsThe Rotterdam Film Festival has had a history of promoting the weird, the obsessive and the cultish in cinema, and there's been little change as this year's edition reaches its close. They've programmed a survey of recent Asian horror films, complete with a "haunted house" installation, and they've maintained their loyalty to unfashionable provocateurs like Aleksei Balabanov, whose acerbic takes on Russian history have always made their way onto screens here. That's without even mentioning the festival's support of debut filmmakers, three of which just received a 15,000 euro ($22,500 U.S.) prize from the VPRO Tiger jury (Ramtin Lavafipour's "Be... MORE »
Rotterdam 2009: Carlos Reygadas and Guy Maddin
By R. Emmet Sweeney on 01/27/2009
Filed under: FestivalsThe 38th International Film Festival in Rotterdam has streamlined its program into three sections, but it hasn't lost its focus. The fest still throws its weight behind young filmmakers, and a previous beneficiary, Carlos Reygadas, has emerged as a central figure early on this year. He's credited as producer on two films, Carlos Serrano Azcona's "El Árbol" (2009) and Amat Escalante's "Los Bastardos" (2008), and he's presenting two of his own works as well. The first is "Serenghetti," a new feature-length video projected on an office building in the center of town, which joins outdoor loops by Guy Maddin and... MORE »
Sundance 2009: "Push" and "We Live in Public" Take the Top Prizes
By Alison Willmore on 01/25/2009
Filed under: Festivals"Push," Lee Daniels' adaptation of performance poet Sapphire's novel about an abused, illiterate teenager struggling to break free from her hellish homelife in Harlem, was the big winner at this year's Sundance Film Festival, picking up both the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, with star Mo'Nique earning a Special Jury Prize for Acting. Ondi Timoner's film about dot-com golden boy Josh Harris "We Live in Public" snagged the Documentary Grand Jury Prize, while in the World category, Kim Longinotto's "Rough Aunties" and Sebastián Silva's "The Maid" were given awards. The complete list of awards follows: The Grand... MORE »
Giant History with Patton Oswalt
By IFC on 01/23/2009
Filed under: FestivalsPatton Oswalt, at the Sundance Film Festival with the dark comedy "Big Fan," demonstrates his knowledge of exotic sports trivia by offering up the stories behind NFL greats like Ray "Wooden Socks" Flaherty and Arnie "Hamhocks" Herber. The flash 8 plugin was not detected. var so = new SWFObject("http://media.ifc.com/swf/ifc_generic_blog.swf", "gianthistory", "500", "375", "8", "#ffffff"); so.addParam("wmode", "transparent"); //change player width so.addVariable("pwidth", 500); //change player height so.addVariable("pheight", 375); //distinguish between different videos so.addVariable("s_movieID", "gianthistory"); //insert brightcove title id here so.addVariable("bctid", 8728079001); so.write("gianthistory"); MORE »
Video: "A Christmas Tale" at the New York Film Festival
By IFC on 10/13/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Videos"It could be sort of a slogan for this family: 'Let's get rid of melancholy'... They don't have time for melancholy. All of them are good fighters," said French director Arnaud Desplechin of his new film, an at turns lighthearted and deeply dramatic portrait of a family during the holidays that he compared in structure to an advent calendar. At the New York Film Festival press conference for "A Christmas Tale," Desplechin was joined by the legendary Catherine Deneuve, who plays the matriarch in the family and who affectionately compared the filmmaker to a "child in a playroom." The flash... MORE »
Interview: Darren Aronofsky on "The Wrestler"
By Aaron Hillis on 10/09/2008
Filed under: Festivals, InterviewsBy Aaron Hillis Brooklyn-born auteur Darren Aronofsky turned mathematical patterns and theories into a brooding thriller (1998's "Pi"), injected us with a bravura adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s reckless-addiction novel (2000's Oscar-nominated "Requiem for a Dream"), and raced against the clock of mortality in an ambitious love story spanning ten centuries (2006's unfairly maligned "The Fountain"). So what's a filmmaker's next move, having already zoomed a 26th century Hugh Jackman around the galaxy in an oversized soap bubble containing the Tree of Life? Curiously, you resurrect Mickey Rourke's career. One of the most wildly anticipated films of 2008, Aronofsky's humanist... MORE »
Video: "Waltz With Bashir" at the New York Film Festival
By IFC on 10/06/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Videos"This film was always meant to be an animated film. I never thought there was a chance to do it any other way -- not as a fiction film, and definitely not as a classic documentary film." Ari Folman, the writer/director of "Waltz with Bashir," described his unconventional and powerful doc about the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre and his personal involvement and memories of the incident to the press at the New York Film Festival. The flash 8 plugin was not detected. var so = new SWFObject("http://media.ifc.com/swf/ifc_generic_blog.swf", "waltzwithbashirnyff", "500", "375", "8", "#ffffff"); so.addParam("wmode", "transparent"); //change player width so.addVariable("pwidth", 500);... MORE »
Video: "Changeling" at the New York Film Festival
By IFC on 10/06/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Videos"I didn't know anything about it until I read the script," admitted Clint Eastwood at the New York Film Festival's press conference for "Changeling," his highly anticipated film based on the 1920s Wineville Chicken Murders and an incident in which the police tried to convince a single mother that the boy they had brought to her was her missing son, when he was actually a runaway looking for a free trip to California. Angelina Jolie plays the mother, while John Malkovich is the reverend who comes to her aid. Eastwood discussed making modern day L.A. look antique and how he... MORE »
Video: "Ashes of Time Redux" at the New York Film Festival
By IFC on 10/06/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Videos"It was almost like an odyssey, because we spent five years -- the first few years we had to retrieve material from different parts of the world." Wearing his signature sunglasses, Wong Kar-wai addressed the press after a New York Film Festival screening of "Ashes of Time Redux," the restored and recut version of his 1994 martial arts film "Ashes of Time," starring an unbelievable cast that includes Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Leslie Cheung and Brigitte Lin, who also appeared at the press conference. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle shared some memories of the original production, while Wong described visiting various locations... MORE »
Video: "The Wrestler" at the New York Film Festival
By IFC on 10/02/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Videos"If I knew it was going to take me 15 years to get back in the saddle and work again because of the way I handled things, I really would have handled things differently... Change, for me, didn't come easily. I didn't want to change, until I lost everything." Mickey Rourke's role as faded professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson in "The Wrestler" is rightly being hailed the comeback, and one of the best performances, of the year. At the film's U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival, he, co-star Marisa Tomei and director Darren Aronofsky ("Requiem for a... MORE »
Video: "Che" at the New York Film Festival
By IFC on 10/02/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Videos"It wasn't until the film was finished, right around Cannes, that I realized... it was about engagement versus disengagement," Steven Soderbergh told the press after a screening of his four-hour bio-epic "Che," which will make its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival later this week. In the video below, he speaks about the process of making the film and presenting a figure who's retreated into an icon for t-shirts and dorm room posters. The flash 8 plugin was not detected. var so = new SWFObject("http://media.ifc.com/swf/ifc_generic_blog.swf", "soderberghchenyff", "400", "300", "8", "#ffffff"); so.addParam("wmode", "transparent"); //change player width so.addVariable("pwidth", 400); //change... MORE »
Video: "Happy-Go-Lucky" at the New York Film Festival
By IFC on 09/30/2008
Filed under: Festivals, VideosPoppy, the main character of Mike Leigh's latest film, "Happy-Go-Lucky," is a 30-year-old elementary school teacher who lives in London and who's irrepressibly, almost unnaturally cheerful. As played by Sally Hawkins, she's a fascinating and divisive figure, endearing to some and grating to others. In the video below, Leigh and Hawkins, taking questions from the press at the New York Film Festival, insist that simply writing the character off as chipper is to be unfair to what Leigh has called his "anti-miserablist film": "The thing about Poppy is that to describe her as being unadulterated[ly] happy is not really to... MORE »
Video: "Hunger" at the New York Film Festival
By IFC on 09/30/2008
Filed under: Festivals, VideosSteve McQueen (not to be confused with the late "Bullitt" star) went from Turner Prize-winning artist to lauded filmmaker with his directorial debut "Hunger," about the 1981 Irish hunger strike in which IRA prisoners, led by Bobby Sands, tried to win political status by refusing food. "Hunger," which won the Caméra d'Or prize at Cannes, made its U.S. debut at the New York Film Festival, where McQueen sat down with moderator J. Hoberman of the Village Voice to address the press. In the video below, he talks about the origins of the film -- he was 11 years old when... MORE »
Debating Two Toronto Films
By Alison Willmore on 09/08/2008
Filed under: Festivals, PodcastsThe Toronto Film Festival is in full swing, and so this week on the IFC News podcast we argue over two of the films screening there: Spike Lee's World War II drama "Miracle at St. Anna" and Mike Leigh's North London comedy "Happy-Go-Lucky." Download now (MP3: 25:53 minutes, 23.7 MB) Subscribe to the podcast: [XML] [iTunes] MORE »
Video: "The Wolf Man" at Comic-Con 2008
By IFC on 07/28/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Videos"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... MORE »
Video: "The Spirit" at Comic-Con 2008
By IFC on 07/28/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Videos"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... MORE »
Video: "Watchmen" at Comic-Con 2008
By IFC on 07/28/2008
Filed under: Festivals, Videos"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... MORE »
Video: "RocknRolla" at Comic-Con 2008
By IFC on 07/25/2008
Filed under: Festivals, VideosStars 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... MORE »
The Doc Days of Summer
By Stephen Saito on 07/02/2008
Filed under: FestivalsLast year, "Young@Heart" caused ripples when it sold to Fox Searchlight to become the first distribution deal to emerge from the L.A. Film Festival, so perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise that the festival put documentaries front and center this year, even in a city where there's no shortage of name actors that most other festivals would deploy to lure audiences. Instead, one of the more anticipated star attractions in Los Angeles was a talk with HBO documentary czar Sheila Nevins, who participated in a wide-ranging conversation with L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein about her career of mixing... MORE »
L.A. Film Festival '08: Tragedy and Comedy, "Spaced" and the Reitmans
By Stephen Saito on 06/30/2008
Filed under: FestivalsBy Stephen Saito It's hard to say whether it's been the stifling heat or former Warner Independent chief Mark Gill's much-talked about "the sky really is falling" speech (published in full at indieWire here) that gave attendees of this year's Los Angeles Film Festival a sense of their own mortality. Then again, it could just be the way in which the effects of life-altering events have been examined in several of the festival's films, particularly in the narrative section. When Gill, now heading up the indie shingle The Film Department, spoke at the adjoining film financing conference on the first... MORE »
Wrapping Up Cannes 2008
By Matt Singer on 05/29/2008
Filed under: FestivalsBy Matt Singer It wasn't just the weather that was gloomy at the 61st Cannes Film Festival. By the time the skies above southern France briefly cleared for a few days during the second week of the festival, the international press corps had been infected by a mass plague, not unlike the one portrayed in this opening night selection "Blindness," done in reverse — instead of losing their sight, hundreds of journalists stumbled around in a fog, obliged to do nothing but look, and after 12-plus days of looking at a selection of tasteful, well-made and entirely bleak movies, society's... MORE »
Cannes 08: "The Class" Graduates With Honors
By Alison Willmore on 05/27/2008
Filed under: FestivalsThe 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival wrapped this past Sunday, having been the scene of big Hollywood premieres like "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and smaller but no less anticipated ones from filmmakers like the Dardenne brothers, Arnaud Desplechin and Atom Egoyan. In the end, it was a French film that won the Palme d'Or — the first homegrown feature to take the top prize since 1987's "Under Satan's Sun." The film, a late entry in the competition, was directed by Laurent Cantet, whose past work includes "Time Out" and "Heading South," and follows a year... MORE »
Cannes 08: James Gray on "Two Lovers"
By Erica Abeel on 05/26/2008
Filed under: Festivals, InterviewsBy Erica Abeel When was the last time you heard someone drop a mention of Jacques Lacan? (I'll pause if you need to refresh your memory of the name at Wikipedia). If the answer is never, you haven't sat down with the delightful James Gray, who was at Cannes with his new film "Two Lovers," starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw and Isabella Rossellini. In a stream-of-consciousness monologue that could pose a challenge to any interviewer, Gray also cited as influences Dostoevsky's novella "White Nights," Scorsese, Hitchcock, French poet Louis Aragon and a B-movie starring, uh... John Hodiak? There's... MORE »
