The show is a kind of comedy of manners, tracking Bronstein’s private investigator from professional foibles and communication breakdowns on the streets of Brooklyn, to the blissful home life he shares with his adorable wife (played by Ronnie’s real-life wife Mary, who co-starred in Frownland). It’s sort of like Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Early Years, except Larry’s a detective, and Cheryl can actually stand to be around him.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you interviews with the cast and crew of Butterknife every Friday. We’re doing this as an email chain: I sent Joe some questions, he sent Ronnie some questions, Ronnie sent Mary some questions, and so on. Below the jump, you’ll find my interview with Joe. Check out the Butterknife page on Spout, and check back here next week for some Joe-on-Ronnie action. But not in, like, a dirty way. You know what I mean.
Erin at Steady Diet of Film has some notes on the Sundance lineup, including: “Why is rape as a weapon in war the new issue du jour? Hmm…”
Filmbrain reports that “the finishing touches are being applied to Benten Films’ second release, Quiet City & Dance Party, USA: Two Films by Aaron Katz.” The cover looks gorgeous.
Tom Hall recommendsMr. Warmth, John Landis’ documentary on Don Rickles, which premieres this Sunday night on HBO: “When I read that the documentary was included in this fall’s New York Film Festival line-up, I was skeptical of its place in the program. Having seen the film (and experienced the amazing press conference with Mr. Landis after the screening), I can say that its portrait of a lost era of American “show business” is both moving and deeply felt. And, obviously, laugh out loud funny.”
“Just over 20 years ago, I thought of killing myself. Or rather, the thought was suddenly present in me, like an unwanted ghost.” So begins an amazing–and amazingly personal–post at Michael Atkinson’s Zero For Conduct, in which he talks of his own battles with said ghost in relation to the suicides of several slightly bolder-faced names, particularly Spalding Grey.
We didn’t do a New in Theaters last week, and many Thanksgiving releases are expanding this weekend, so this is basically a recap of every film we’ve reviewed that’s been released in the past two weeks.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Paul was “blown away” by Julian Schnabel’s latest at Telluride; at NYFF, Karina called the film “an almost excessively beautiful aestheticization of misery [that's] often a little too good at conveying Baudy’s isolation within his own head.” Check out today’s podcast, which includes an interview with Schnabel from Telluride, and an argument between Karina and Paul.
The Savages: At Telluride, Paul called Tamara Jenkin’s long-awaited feature follow-up to Slums of Beverly Hills “a really rich movie, full of dark humor you have to develop when things aren’t funny.”
Starting Out in the Evening: Karina caught Andrew Wagner’s second feature in Denver and had this to say: “[Evening] unfolds in comfortably-worn indie drama territory: New York academics and struggling artists collide cross generations, their almost complete lack of self-awareness failing to keep them from brutally criticizing and actively manipulating one another…but Lauren Ambrose and Frank Langella make each moment on that path feel startlingly real.”
Protagonist:Guest SpoutBlogger Pamela Cohn on Jessica Yu’s experimental tackling of Euripedes: “Juxtaposing live interviews with four different male characters, and using archival footage of their lives intercut with highly-stylized scenes of puppets reciting Euripides‘ in the original Greek acting out the tragedies being narrated on-screen, Yu orchestrates a provocative and deeply-thoughtful chorus based on the structure of a Greek tragedy…yes, it is quite challenging to watch, but far from boring.”
Yet another filmmaker moonlighting as an ad director: Harmony Korine directed the above TV advert for Thornton’s, a British department store chocolate store [thanks, Marie!]. There are some unmistakeable Korine touches here (and even vague references to images from julien donkey-boy and the upcoming Mister Lonely–which, by the way, is AWESOME). But still, it’s somewhat ironic that I’m able to show you a more-or-less conventional, Holiday season-timed TV ad directed by the bad boy of 90s independent cinema, and a short film made specifically for the web by a canonized, old-guard, Oscar winning filmmaker that goes out of its way to upend standard conceptions about online advertising. Interesting, no?
Martin Scorsese has never been shy about aligning himself with brands, but when the offer came in to shill Freixenet sparkling wine, he must have momentarily flashed back to Orson Welles’s Paul Mason commercials. There’s a difference between taking home a paycheck, and prostrating your legacy to a bald-faced, half-assed cash-in, remembered for all eternity via the YouTube dissemination of regrettable outtakes.
It’s no wonder, then, that this elaborate Freixenet ad directed by and starring Scorsese barely announces itself as an ad until the final minute or so.
The concept: Scorsese the tireless film preservationist finds three pages of an unproduced Alfred Hitchcock project called The Key to Reserva; Scorsese the filmmaker decides to film the pages “the way [Hitchcock] would be making it then, only making it now.” The ensuing short combines elements of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, The Birds, and probably countless other Hitchcock films; there are just two, extremely fetishistic, shots of the product. Watch it here.
We interview Julian Schnabel, director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, opening tonight. Karina and I cross wires on its watch worthiness. We also interview Brian Poyser, director of Dear Pillow. It’s a complicated, divisive, raw look at porn leading Kevin and I into some verbal wrastlin’.
The writers and the studios have lifted the press blackout on strike talks just long enough to reveal that negotiations have hit a wall, after the studios offered a deal worth “$130 million in additional compensation to scribes over three years,” and the scribes kindly asked them to suck it. In fact, according to Variety, the WGA asked for a four day moratorium to think it over, and then went to the press with a “point-by-point deconstruction of the deal points only hours after adjourning.” Talks are still scheduled to resume on Tuesday, but there are rumors that the AMPTP has about had it with the writers, and may soon switch gears to focus on hammering out a deal with the DGA.
Lions For Lambs cost $35 million to make, and is expected to barely clear $20 million domestically. Not the best start for Tom Cruise’s revamped United Artists. Cruise’s partner Paula Wagner spins it like this: “You have to look at us as a start-up company. We had zero assets. The cupboard was bare. Now we have one movie in our library, a movie we are very proud of.”
With only one film opening in wide release this weekend, Enchanted is expected to stay on top of the box office.
Fox barely released Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, but now they’re partnering with something called Redux Beverages to release a line of energy drinks called Brawndo, named after the puke-green beverage that replaced water (and destroyed all agriculture) in the film’s future world.
Charlie Wilson’s War: Jeff Wells is cranky that the HFPA has declared it eligible for nominations in the Musical/Comedy categories at the Golden Globes; LIBERTAS is pissed that it’s “premised on a whopper of a lie that undercuts the entire film turning it into yet another 2007 piece of liberal propaganda.” Pick your own battle, I guess.
Future of Classic informs us that today would have been Busby Berkeley’s 112th birthday. They offer a list of “five things you might not have known about” the dance director of the greatest psychedelic-socialist musical numbers of the 1930s; oddly, the fact that he was a raging alcoholic didn’t make the list. Oh well. Too bad YouTube appears to be broken, because I bet I could find a clip from Take Me Out to the Ballgame that would prove it.
Part Two of the Sundance 2008 slate just arrived. As with yesterday’s announcement, I’ve pasted the meat of the press release after the jump; first, here’s what I percieve as highlights right off the bat:
Be Kind Rewind: I kind of expected Michel Gondry’s latest to show up here, just because January 25 would have been a *really* weird release date otherwise. Plus, Gondry’s The Science of Sleep was one of the fest’s big sales in 2006, although it’s actual US release didn’t get as much attention as I would have liked to have seen.
Baghead: Jay and Mark Duplass’ long-awaited follow-up to The Puffy Chair, co-starring Hannah Takes the Stairs‘ Greta Gerwig.
Goliath: Is the David Zellner who wrote and directed this the same David Zellner who makes short films with his brother, including the much-beloved Aftermath at Meadowlark Lane, which played before Low and Behold at Sundance last year? IMDb offers no help, so shout if you know the answer. UPDATE: Yup, same Zellners. Thanks, Matt!
Momma’s Man: Directed by Ken Jacob’s son Azazel, starring his dad as (wait for it) “Dad.”
Funny Games: Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his own 1997 film. It’s a Midnight selection, which could be good or bad.
Blind Date: The second of three planned films based on the work of slain Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (the first was Steve Buscemi’s Interview). Stanley Tucci directs himself and Patricia Clarkson.
Towelhead: This was called Nothing is Private when it premiered at Toronto to hugely divisive reviews. Directed and written by Alan Ball, it became known colloquially as The One Where Aaron Eckhart Has Sex With the 13-Year-Old Arab Girl. It has the questionable honor of uniting Roger Friedman and The Reeler in mutual hate.
August: A period piece about the end of the first dot-com boom (!), featuring a cameo from my former boss as himself.
The Black List: A documentary about Black America, written by and starring sometime film critic Elvis Mitchell.
Made in America: A “first-person look at the notorious Crips and Bloods,” via Dogtown and Z Boys‘ Stacy Peralta.
The Merry Gentleman: Michael Keaton (yes, the “I’m Batman” Michael Keaton) directs himself and Kelly McDonald in this drama about a woman who “stumbles into a curious relationship with a depressed hitman.”
Savage Grace: Tom Kalin’s telling of the Barbara Daly Baekeland murder case, starring Julianne Moore. A Cannes 2007 leftover.
Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?: I missed this one on first-skim. It’s Morgan Spurlock’s long-awaited sophomore effort. IMDb still ha it listed as Untitled Hunt For Osama Documentary; this new title seems to be pretty self-explanatory.
The West Side, a web series by Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and Zachary Lieberman, defies online video stereotypes in virtually every meaningful way. It’s not a quick-and-shoddy, webcam-in-a-dorm-room production; there are real scripts, costumes, score and locations. It’s presented in wide screen, in crisp, meticulously lit and After Effected black-and-white. Plus, it’s a Western, a period piece, and a gangster fantasy. But it’s also a truly independent production, produced with more ingenuity than cash, taking inspiration from existing genres but twisting them to fit its own unique iconography and mythology.
This is likely one of the reasons for the four month gap between the debut of the first episode (which I wrote about here) and the posting, this week, of the second. In the interim, the filmmakers’ blog has become an essential read, not just for details on their tech struggles and triumphs, but as a source for tips and tricks for DIY filmmakers making work specifically for the web.
This is truly a serialized work, so if you haven’t seen Episode One, watch it here before moving on to Episode 2. They’re not embeddable, but that’s okay, because they look really pretty on the plain white page.
Full disclosure: Ryan and I both used to work for this company, but we’ve never met.
With 49 days to go until the opening night of the Sundance Film Festival, expect to see some space here devoted to previews of some of the films I’m particularly interested in. The first thing that really caught my eye upon skimming the schedule was Derek, a film about Derek Jarman directed by Isaac Julien. Executive produced by actress/Jarman muse Tilda Swinton and produced by film historian Colin MacCabe, the World Documentary Competition entry purports to “combine document with fiction, and experiment with narrative” to fashion “a timely reappraisal and celebration of the work of one of Britain’s most important artist filmmakers.” There’s a bit of an expanded synopsis on Julien’s web site. After Sundance, the film will be part of an exhibit devoted to Jarman curated by Julien, at the Serpentine Gallery in London.
I’m generally fan of what I know of Jarman’s work, but I’m mostly interested in this because lately I’ve been kind of a sucker for non-fiction films that take huge liberties with documentary form. In a recent interview with BOMB magazine, Julien actually spoke of Derek not as a documentary, but as “a strange kind of biopic about [Jarman's] life.” All in all, it’s classification in the doc competition seems a little strange, but it maybe another sign of Sundance 2008’s swing towards a more adventurous programming attitude. Strange Culture, another non-fiction film involving Swinton that incorporated narrative elements, premiered at Sundance last year in the marginalized Frontier sidebar, which I thought was unfortunate–it was hands down the best documentary I saw at the festival last year, but got little attention out of competition.
Jarman, who died of AIDS in 1994, is fairly well represented today on YouTube. More after the jump.
Twitch links to this animated Beringer ad directed by Oliver Gondry, as evidence that the recently announced animated collaboration between Michel Gondry and his son is not “purely a case of nepotism and fatherly favor.” But I’m pretty sure Oliver Gondry is not Michel Gondry’s son, but his brother. My previous research suggested that the son working on the film is 16 year-old Paul Gondry; meanwhile, a search for “Oliver Gondry” turns up several references to the above time-lapse music video, which would seem to have some vague stylistic similarity to the Beringer ad, and which is alternately credited to “Oliver Gondry” and “The Gondry Brothers.” Am I wrong? If you’ve got any airtight info on the Gondry family tree, do pass it along.
The Sundance Lineup: What does it all mean? The Hollywood Reporter’s story grumbles that a high percentage of filmmakers who got the call “seem to come out of nowhere”; you may call it a good day for independent film, but they seem to think it’s a red flag. Meanwhile, at Variety, noted blog skeptic Todd McCarthy doesn’t quote Geoff Gilmore directly on the matter, but says the Sundance director “suspects that the blogging phenomenon that has unleashed a torrent of personal opinion online may, in a way more metaphorical than literal, have influenced the filmmakers.”
Anton Corbijn’s Controlswept the British Independent Film Awards last night, taking five trophies, including Best British Independent Film. Julien Temple’s Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten took the doc prize.
Woody Allen has had a falling out with Mediapro, the Catelan production company that was to shepherd three upcoming Allen films, including the already-shot Vicky Cristina Barcelona. There was a bit of controversy last summer during the filming of Vicky, when it was revealed in the local press that 10% of the movie’s budget had been paid by the city of Barcelona.
Erin at Steady Diet of Film
We didn’t do a New in Theaters last week, and many Thanksgiving releases are expanding this weekend, so this is basically a recap of every film we’ve reviewed that’s been released in the past two weeks.
Fox barely released Mike Judge’s 
The Sundance Lineup
