The trailer for Lars von Trier’s Antichrist has hit Vimeo (see it here after the jump). If patented Lars Von Trier creep applied to what seems like an old-school horror formula doesn’t pique your interest, the final money shot probably will. Unless you have something against a naked Willem DaFoe thrusting atop Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is herself mounted on a tangle of muddy tree roots and froze, anonymous limbs!
The general consensus seems to be that this film will probably be at Cannes. So will I! I will report back.
Welcome to the first in our second annual series of SXSW previews! As the festival approaches we’ll be asking filmmakers to spill the superficial details about their films, to tell us all the deep personal details of what makes them tick, and –– new this year! –– reveal who they had to sleep with, in the incestuous conspiracy-minded secret society that is the wider SXSW community, in order to get their film programmed at the festival.
Chosen as our first preview simply because I very much support the naming films after Flock of Seagulls songs, Modern Love is Automatic is the debut directorial effort from Zach Clark, who edited SXSW 2006 entry Dance Party, USA. Above, check out the stylish, winky trailer for the movie. Below the jump, Clark describes his Emerging Visions entry as a “a No-Wave Douglas Sirk movie”, professes his love for salsa and “Three’s Company style misunderstandings”, and drops the name of a Bollywood-related work-out video that I feel I must purchase immediately.
Ray Pride points to a trailer for 13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, a DVD from Plexifilm featuring 13 of Warhol’s 16mm, single-shot portraits of his superstars and Factory drop-ins (including Dennis Hopper, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick and Nico), set to original songs composed by ex-Luna/Galaxie 500 frontman Dean Wareham and his wife/bassist Britta Phillips. Plexifilm says it’s the “first ever authorized DVD release of films by Andy Warhol,” and in addition to the basic DVD, they’re also offering a $250 limited edition package, featuring “a deluxe gatefold LP-style package with an exclusive poster and booklet,” as well as an archival print from a frame from your choice of one of the screentests. Or you can just watch the pretty trailer over and over for free.
Downloading Nancy — the Mario Bello-starring, Christopher Doyle-lensed psycho-sexual-tech drama that was much-maligned at its Sundance premiere in 2008 but vehemently defended by Michael Lerman in his Most Misunderstood Films of 2008 piece — finally has a release date and a trailer.
With the movie opening in New York tomorrow, Kino has posted a trailer for Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Manon YouTube. If you haven’t seen the film, I think this clip is a pretty strong encapsulation of its overall mashup of slapstick and melancholy. Also, the reviews a starting to roll in, and J. Hoberman’s got a must-read take at the Village Voice. “Although my most vivid memories of Aza Jacobs are as the unnamed infant installed in a crib in a Johnson City apartment and called, for what seemed like a very long time, “Mr. Baby,” I’ve known his parents for nearly 40 years,” he writes. “And so, while I cannot evaluate Momma’s Man with an outsider’s clarity, can vouch for the authenticity…”
The Playlist point to this “teaser” trailer for David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which spins on the wildly exciting premise that the wisdom and life experience of an old man could travel in the body of a young(ish) Brad Pitt. The trailer is long, slow, and almost dialogue free. We can only hope the movie follows suit.
“The opening 20 minutes of Dai Nipponjin are the most boring 20 minutes in the history of cinema.” That’s Grady Hendrix, selling one of the films he’s selected for the New York Asian Film Festival (the final lineup was just released today), on this podcast at The House Next Door. If that doesn’t have you marking your calendars, allow Grady to continue:
The first 20 minutes are like, him shopping, him complaining about how his wife divorced him and how he hates his job and his government salary isn’t very good, and he’s just this idiot…and then they pump 50,000 amps through his nipples and he turns into this giant super hero in purple underwear and beats up monsters…This is like the porno version of Cloverfield. You find out what happens when giant monsters go into heat. Which isn’t pretty.
Before I get too deep into my Cannes coverage, it seems like it would be useful to explain the difference between the Marche du Film (AKA the market) and the festival proper. The Cannes Film Festival is what most people think of when they think of Cannes––it’s the flashy, sophisticated, exclusive showcase for the world’s finest and most famous filmmakers, and it’s curated within an inch of its life. The market is kind of like a free-for-all sideshow. There are no red carpet premieres or filmmaker Q & A’s, and most of the films play in tiny screening rooms in hotels or the Palais. Every film (or portion of a film––producers will sometimes screen show reels in order to raise funds or entice distributors before production is completed) in the Marche is for sale, and none have been vetted by a screening committee. This allows for an extraordinarily wide spectrum of quality. Earlier today, IFC announced that they’ve purchased US distribution rights to Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours, a film that’s not in the Festival but is screening in the Marche with no restrictions on what kind of market badge holder is allowed to see it. But such a classy title screening quietly in the market seems to be unusual. More typical Marche fare includes Jean Claude Van Damme mock-biopicJCVD and Repo! The Genetic Opera, a horror musical starring Paris Hilton and Paul Sorvino; for whatever reason, both of these titles are screening by invitation only.
I have a market pass this year, and I spent much of my first two days in town meticulously combing through the market guide, taking note of both the surprise gems (I didn’t know there WAS a new Olivier Assayas film until I saw it listed in the guide) and the weirdly irresistible crap. Over the next few days, I’ll be highlighting some of the biggest WTF?s that this year’s Marche has to offer. And where better to start with weirdly irresistible WTF? crap than with Uwe Boll? I didn’t know HE had a new movie until I saw it in the guide, either.
Twitch has a trailer for Tokyo!, the omnibus film with contributions from Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon Ho which will premiere next week at Cannes (ed. note: ahhh! I’m going to the South of France next week!). As far as trailers go, it’s not much of anything––it’s basically just footage of the directors working, interspersed with the title flashing on the screen––but I know a lot of people are excited about this movie, so I thought it was worth a re-blog.
Exciting times! Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man has spread through the festival circuit like a deadpan, unexpectedly emotionally resonant virus (see our interview and review from Sundance) on its way to eventual theatrical release via ThinkFilm. Now, Jacobs’ previous film, The GoodTimesKid, is screening in Brooklyn for free on Monday night, as part of the Brooklyn Independent Cinema series at Barbes.
The GoodTimesKid, which stars Jacobs himself opposite girlfriend Sara Diaz, was famously shot on 35mm stolen from the truck of a big Hollywood production; the film’s tagline works the procurement of the tools of production into the narrative by branding it “a story about stolen love and stolen identities, shot on stolen film.” The fact that this is a DIY production even becomes the subject of the trailer, which consists of a montage of shots of the actors, slating each scene with a hand clap.
I’ve embedded that trailer above; theoretically, there are a number of clips from the film on MySpace, but due to the, um, ideosyncrasies of MySpace video, I haven’t been able to get any of them to load.
Winner of the SXSW Wholphin Award (and rapturously reviewed for us at the festival by David Lowery), there’s not a single short film on the circuit more eagerly anticipated (by me, at least) than Glory at Sea. As director Benh Zeitlin is still recovering from injuries sustained en route to the film’s SXSW premiere, Sea’s next screening has been postponed until May. But in the meantime, via Twitch, we can watch the trailer. See above.
Butterknife creator Joe Swanberg returns to SXSW with his fourth feature in as many years, Nights and Weekends. This one is co-written, co-directed and co-stars Greta Gerwig, of Hannah Takes the Stairs and Baghead fame, and it was shot by Matthias Grunsky, the man behind the camera on both of Andrew Bujalski’s features. Check out the trailer above, and Greta’s answers to the 4 Questions We’re Asking Everybody below.
Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.
Nights and Weekends is When Harry Meets Sally meets DIE HARD without the cuteness or the explosions. It is a collaboration between Joe Swanberg and myself, with Kent Osborne, Lynn Shelton, Jay Duplass, and Elizabeth Donius in the mix. That synopsis leaves out just about everything.
Do you have a day job/a non-filmmaking occupation that raises money for your filmmaking efforts? Tell us about it.
My non-filmmaking jobs have been tutoring kids for the SATs, being a club kid, catering, babysitting, and looking for change under my couch.
Judging by its trailer alone,Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie seems to approach its mythic subject from an angle that sounds, well, atypical. A documentary portrait of Bigfoot hunters in Applachian Ohio, the doc ties the pursuit of these probably fictional creatures to the area’s decaying economy and a shared desire to transcend the everyday. You can watch that trailer above; director Jay Delaney answers the 4 Questions We’re Asking Everybody below.
Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.
It’s like American Movie meets Grizzly Man! As the title hints, it’s about more than just Bigfoot. Through the experiences of two amateur Bigfoot researchers in southern Ohio, Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie provides a look at how the power of a dream can bring two men together and provide a source of hope and meaning that transcend the harsh realities of life. The feature doc grew out of a short doc I made back in 2001 – American Dream – about these two local Bigfoot researchers in my hometown. The short haunted me for years thereafter, and I always wanted to revisit the project in greater depth.
I see a tremendous amount of honesty in Dallas and Wayne’s story, and it raises so many questions in my mind. My connection to the story stems largely from its ability to capture the contemporary state of the American Dream in old Appalachian steel towns like Portsmouth, Ohio. Although the economies there face some real challenges, people like Dallas and Wayne find a way to hold onto their dreams and keep hope and faith alive.
Daniel Stamm’s Emerging Visions entry A Necessary Death looks like it has the potential to be one of the more controversial titles on this year’s SXSW Film Festival slate. The documentary-style feature tracks a film student who places an ad on Craig’s List in order to find a determinedly suicidal individual to film in the days leading up to the fatal act. Judging by the trailer (embedded above) and the film’s brief, enigmatic SXSW synopsis, it seems as though Death could be reasonably situated within a trend that Eric Kohn cited last month at Slamdance, of “YouTube generation filmmakers” seeking “to tell fictional stories within a documentary framework.” We shall see when the film premieres in Austin on March 8. In the meantime, watch the trailer above, and see Stamm’s answers to the 4 Questions We’re Asking Everybody below.
Tell us about your movie. Who did you work with, why did you make it? Give us the reductive, 25-word or less, “It’s like [pop culture reference a] meets [pop culture reference b]!” pitch, then explain what the quick and dirty sell leaves out.
The quick and dirty sell is:
“Documentary Filmmaker looking for suicidal individual to follow from first preparation to final act.” Cut from 142 video tapes, this film sheds light on the tragedy following the infamous internet ad.
That may be 31 words but at least they don’t leave anything out, so I am saving words overall. I am also saving words where why I made the movie is concerned. I was fascinated by the story and I saw that others were just as stunned by it. That’s really it.
I worked with an incredible cinematographer, Zoltan Honti, whom we had to wait for every now and then because he was working with Vilmos Zsigmond on Brian dePalma’s or Woody Allen’s sets. Switching back and forth between the glossy look of Black Dahlia and the grittiness of A Necessary Death can’t have been easy. But that is how good he is. Well worth waiting for.
I was lucky enough to get to work with award-winning editor Shilpa K. Sahi and casting director Mali Finn. Mali cast films like Titanic, Matrix, and L.A. Confidential. She was a wonderful woman who sadly passed away last year.
The score was written by Morgan Kibby of the Romanovs and Jonathan Leahy of the Broken Remotes - both of which I couldn’t be a bigger fan of. Leonard Cohen wanted Morgan for his world tour. She said no and set out on her own tour with M83. Kids these days. No respect. …Read more
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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