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Sundance News 01/16/09: Redford Offers Hope

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 10 months ago
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  • Robert Redford’s opening address yesterday offered a hopeful horizon. Though this year’s festival (and independent film in general) may face hard times, at least the Obama presidency is here. “This could be a very inspiring time for artists,” he told the crowd. And the concurrence (not coincidence) of the inauguration happening at the same time as Sundance, “draws attention to the fact that we’re going to be seeing changes coming when it comes to art.”
  • Focus Features’ James Schamus also brings hope that passion for films could beat the empty wallet woes: “I’ve lost money on movies I’ve loved and acquired and made money on movies I’ve loved and acquired. I’ll overpay this year if I feel like it.”
  • Update on the SAG controversy: Anne Thompson posts the guild’s response to the waiver “issue.” And if you want it more heated than that, check out the snowballing discussions from Nikki Finke and Patrick Goldstein.
  • Sundance vet and regular Gregg Araki on the Prop 8 controversy: “a Sundance boycott would end up being a profound disservice to the gay civil rights movement as a whole.” Plus, the filmmaker takes a look at this year’s gay-themed films at the fest.
  • Sundance and iTunes have gotten together again to make 10 of this year’s festival’s shorts available for free download during the event.
  • Defamer’s Stu VanAirsdale lists this year’s “10 Celebrities With the Most to Lose,” with Spread star and online Sundance game show host Ashton Kutcher in the most “severe” position.
  • E! ups the initial buzzed about titles to 25. Anyone want to go to 50?
5 Filmmakers Who Deserve an Economic Bailout

5 Filmmakers Who Deserve an Economic Bailout

Christopher Campbell
By Christopher Campbell posted 12 months ago
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Catherine Hardwicke hit one out of the park for female directors this past weekend, but she had a lot of help. Not only was she working with a pre-sold property, she also had a very manageable budget of $37 million. Quite different from the $2 million she had to work with on Thirteen a few years back. Of course, she had similar budgets on Lords of Dogtown ($25 million) and The Nativity Story ($35 million), and both were box office disappointments. Still, she’s going to keep on being trusted with more money — if Summit is smart they’ll keep her on for at least the first Twilight sequel, which will surely come with a higher price tag — and as long as she continues with genre films, she’s sure to remain a profitable director.

Not every talented filmmaker does well with more money. Danny Boyle, for instance, typically bombs with bigger budgets. And a lot of foreign auteurs strike out when handed costly studio-produced genre or franchise pics (Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection is a favorite example). But there’s the occasional filmmaker who, like Steven Soderbergh or Christopher Nolan, can make something worthwhile out of any budget they’re allotted. And then there are the many indie filmmakers who quickly find themselves at home with modestly priced broad comedies, such as the case with Seth Gordon easily transitioning from the Slamdance doc The King of Kong to the star-studded Hollywood holiday pic Four Christmases, out this week.

Who will be the next small-scale filmmaker to successfully rise up and prove him or herself worthy of bigger budgets? SpoutBlog has selected five directors we’d like to see given an economic boost, each because he or she would likely deliver something more interesting and popular than the usual Hollywood product.

…Read more

Working Girls (and Boy): Our Five Favorite Movie Hookers

Working Girls (and Boy): Our Five Favorite Movie Hookers

Lauren Wissot
By Lauren Wissot posted 1 year ago
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From the turn-of-the-century Northwest to seedy 70’s NYC, from an 80’s morgue to 90’s Japan to the modern-day midwest, the oldest profession in the world is onscreen to stay. Here are five timeless performances that are worth the peep show.

Julie Christie as Constance Miller in Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Julie Christie is exhilarating in her Oscar-nominated turn as the smart and sexy Constance Miller, a no-nonsense businesswoman in the wild and wicked Northwest who just happens to be in the business of selling sex. In fact, it’s Warren Beatty’s dream chaser John McCabe who is the bimbo to Miller’s sly fox. Like a whore himself, he needs the professional madam’s charms and chops to make a living more than she needs him as a partner in their bordello/tavern venture. Sex-positive feminism at its finest.

…Read more

LAFF Diary: Another Classic From Minneapolis

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago
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I grew up in Los Angeles and have fractured but fierce memories of seeing movies in Westwood, the theater-packed micro-city surrounding UCLA, in which the Los Angeles Film Festival is now based. I think I saw Jurassic Park four times at the Avco. I know I saw my first Lubitsch movie (Design for Living) at UCLA. Yesterday I was standing in line at Rite Aid and had some kind of out-of-body flashback experience of getting ice cream at the same Rite Aid after my mother took me to a matinee of Flight of the Navigator. I’m sure people go to film festivals in their hometowns all the time and don’t think it’s weird at all, but I get painfully nostalgic. I, like, went to school and stuff, but hanging out in these theaters for entire summers is how I fell in love with movies.

Funny, then, that I’ve been here for almost two full days and I haven’t yet been able to see a single film. Part of this is a scheduling issue––I got in too late on Monday to make it to a screening, and I had already seen many of the films that played yesterday, including Medicine for Melancholy and The Pleasure of Being Robbed. I did actually try to make a screening of Largo, the documentary about the famed Fairfax club, but I, um, went to the wrong theater by mistake and missed it. And then, there were parties to go to. More on that, with photo evidence, after the jump.

…Read more

Sundance: Non-Competition Picks

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago
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picture-2.png

Yesterday, I made a list of five films amongst Sundance’s four competition slates that I’m particularly excited to see. Today, here’s a look at another film films that I’m looking forward to, culled from the Spectrum, New Frontier, and Park City at Midnight sidebars. This list was MUCH harder to weed down to five, and as you’ll see, I had to cheat a bit. Here we go…

Momma’s Man (Directed by Azazel Jacobs, Spectrum)

Excerpt From the Official Synopsis: “Humorous and poignant, Momma’s Man wrestles with universal themes, but its strength lies in its deeply personal details. Writer/director Azazel Jacobs cast his own parents and shot the film in their apartment, where he grew up.”

Why I’m Interested: Jacobs “own parents” are Flo Jacobs and experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs; in the film’s press notes, he says he cast his own family because he “couldn’t picture anyone else in their bed, in their kitchen, or in their place (although Peter Falk and Shelly Duval would be in my movie-movie version of it).” If the notion of the guy who made Star Spangled to Death channeling Columbo isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what would be.

…Read more

BlogNosh 12/05/07

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago
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  • I was gonna do a whole post on this, but I’m totally late for a screening, so I’ll let Stu do the honors: “Only a couple months after the sturm und drang accompanying news that Gregg Araki’s cult fave Smiley Face was doomed to a quick Los Angeles release and subsequent video dumping by distributor First Look, word arrives at Reeler HQ that the Anna Faris stoner farce will indeed get a two-week New York run starting Dec. 26 at IFC Center.”
  • “If a movie could ‘adopt’ a movie, then Fight Club would use Frownland as a recruitment film, after which I would have signed up instantly.” Chale Nafus is happily infuriated by an Austin screening of Ronnie Bronstein’s feature. Via Agnes Varnum.
  • Mike Patton of Faith No More made monster noises for I Am Legend.
  • Diablo Cody is getting a divorce. She broke this news via encrypted tattoo. Luckily, an awards blog broke the code!
  • Adriana Falcão of Brazil has won that YouTube/Fox Searchlight/Juno short film contest thingy. I didn’t get to her short; I attempted to watch three others and, uh, stopped.

Redacted, Southland, Margot. New in Theaters.

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 2 years ago
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Here’s a look at the notable films opening this week that we’ve previously covered here on SpoutBlog:

Smiley Face Dumped To DVD

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 2 years ago
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Back in April, Kevin and Paul devoted half an episode of FilmCouch to Gregg Araki’s Smiley Face, a winning stoner comedy starring Anna Faris that earned lukewarm critical reviews, but was a hit with audiences at SXSW and Sundance. “I giggle just thinking about,” Paul said at the time. “[It's] the funniest stoner flick I have ever seen.”
Smiley’s distributor, First Look, had initially planned a platform release beginning on April 20 (get it? 420? Get it?), but that date came and went and Araki’s film still hadn’t made it to North American theaters. After the film played at Toronto a couple of weeks ago, it looked as though First Look might be gearing up for a new release date. But yesterday, MTV’s Larry Carroll confirmed that Smiley Face will open on just one screen in Los Angeles, before First Look dumps it on DVD.

This news has already sparked a mild eruption of outrage across the web. …Read more

People at SXSW: Gregg Araki (Smiley Face)

Paul Moore
By Paul Moore posted 2 years ago
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Paul interviews Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin) after the screening of Smiley Face at SXSW 2007. Hands down, one of the funniest movies of the year. Richard Linklater makes a surprise appearance.

 
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