Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Scott Hicks’ Shine(1996).
1996 was a monumental year for independent film. It began with a Sundance Film Festival that, according to Peter Biskind’s book Down and Dirty Pictures “would go down as Ten Days That Shook the Indie World,” because of the tremendous buying frenzy that occurred, including the infamous acquisition of The Spitfire Grill by Castle Rock for $10 million. The year then transpired with a slew of popular specialty titles that boosted business at many arthouse multiplexes while also exposing them as being unsuited for large crowds (the boom in indie film attendance was something I experienced first hand, having that year begun my first career at NYC’s Angelika Film Center). And the year ended (in 14-month Hollywood terms) with an unprecedented number of specialty films receiving nominations for Academy Awards.
Most astonishing, certainly, was the fact that four of the five Oscar nominees for Best Picture were specialty titles, one of which had been discovered at Sundance. The film, Shine, might not have had a chance at such an honor, however, if Miramax and Harvey Weinstein had gotten their way. …Read more
Money makes the world go round, and it also drives the plot most of the films of Danny Boyle. Slumdog Millionaire, as you can guess by the title, is no different. It greases the wheels of Boyle’s plots, and forces characters to do things they wouldn’t otherwise even consider. Unfortunately cash doesn’t really play a part in 28 Days Later or Sunshine, probably because zombies don’t really shop that often, and the Sun doesn’t take credit cards, but every one of his other films has a pile of money at the heart of the story. …Read more
Finally the infamous toilet scene from The Spirit, shown last month at Comic-Con, has been leaked online. And it’s just as bad as I imagined. Actually, it’s worse. Our own Kevin Kelly, who liveblogged the clip, described the setting as “extremely muddy and watery,” but I’d go so far as to say that stuff looks like shit. Considering the fact that a toilet is involved, I’m sure it is indeed shit, literally. I don’t think there’s been so much excrement in a movie since Trainspotting.
Now that I’ve seen the clip, I have to believe the makers of The Spirit actually mean for it to be humorous, but I wonder if those on stage (writer-director Frank Miller, producer Deborah Del Prete and actors Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson and Jaime King) realize that the audience is laughing at the scene, not with it. OK, maybe some of the panel attendees seem to actually be enjoying the footage, but I definitely hear some awkward reactions in there, as well.
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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Each day this week, Christopher Campbell will take a look back at a “classic” film that played the Sundance Film Festival. Today’s installment: Scott Hicks’ Shine (1996).
