I saw and reviewed James Toback’s Tyson at its world premiere at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and the docu-confessional certainly left a lasting impression … for the wrong reasons. Mike Tyson himself walked down the long aisle of the Lumiere theater after the screening to both a rapturous standing ovation from the home crowd, and a dimly heard protest cry of “rapist!” drifting down from the balcony (a female film critic later took credit for the latter). Suffice it to say, that contradiction made that Cannes premiere … uh … memorable, regardless of the content of the film.
Almost a year later, there seem to be as few contrasting voices in regards to Tyson as there are in regards to Tyson within the film itself. The way this non-conventional nonfiction film, and what a cynic might see as the nefarious project behind it, has been accepted by the media virtually unquestioningly, even appreciatively (see the 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, higher than the current rating for the latest film from the critically beloved Dardennes brothers), cements that Cannes premiere as a crucial moment in documentary evolution. That night in May, the freak show aesthetic that marks salacious, nonfiction-in-name (if questionably in content) VH1 product like Flava of Love, Celebrity Rehab and Confessions of a Teen Idol, slipped seamlessly into Cannes, en route to a US arthouse release from the same company that brought you very classy recent Oscar nominees Frozen River, Waltz with Bashir and The Class. That night, any remaining distinction between the lowbrow non-fiction of reality TV and the rarefied space of the world’s most revered film festival ceased to exist.
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Here’s our running tally of each of the distribution deals announced just before, throughout the course of, and just after the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. We will update this post whenever new information comes in, so bookmark it and keep checking back for the newest latest.
The 2009 Sundance Film Festival doesn’t kick off until Thursday, but there are already a few acquisitions and other news of note to report:
- Sony Pictures Classics has picked up both James Toback’s documentary Tyson (which Karina saw at Cannes) and Carlos Cuaron’s Rudo y Cursi. SPC co-president Michael Barker explained the reason for pre-buying: “It’s an advantage to have a company attached, to be able to answer questions, knowing what you’re going to do with it.” SPC also has Davis Guggenheim’s new doc, It Might Get Loud, at the festival.
- Though not U.S. distributor-related, congratulations must go out anyway to Cherien Dabis (who recently was interviewed on SpoutBlog’s Media Diet) for selling Canadian and international rights to her new Sundance-bound film Amreeka to Entertainment One.
- The documentary short you’ll be watching ahead of Thursday’s festival opener, Mary and Max, is actually a commercial for Sundance sponsor Honda. It will be one of the three shorts that have just gone up today on the automaker’s “Power of Dreams” website.
Interview with Chris Bell who made Bigger, Stronger, Faster –opening tonight. A doc going way beyond body building into the essence of an unspoken American pastime: Cheating. Karina reports back on Cannes and everything the media missed that it shouldn’t have: Tyson, Frontier of Dawn and Everything is Fine.
FilmCouch #72 - Karina on Cannes, Kevin on steroids [31:03m]:
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FilmCouch #72 - Karina on Cannes, Kevin on steroids
Bigger, Stronger, Faster; Tyson; Frontier of Dawn; Everything is Fine
For all the talk about how this was a mediocre year at the Cannes Film Festival, I think I personally saw a higher ratio of good to garbage than is my festival norm. Maybe I’m being Pollyanna-ish; maybe I just went in with lower expectations. Regardless: though certainly I saw films too mediocre to merit mention, it seemed like every day brought at least one new movie that deserved to have the living hell championed out of it. The following list is thus not ranked necessarily by absolute quality, but by how fervently I feel the need to shout the praises of the film in question––in some cases, in opposition to overwhelming derision or indifference.
1. Everything is Fine (above) — This French-Canadian drama, about a suicide pact between four teenage friends and the enigmatic boy left behind, was the true undiscovered gem of this year’s Market. Both cautiously romantic and devastatingly sad, its greatest achievement is the way in which it naturalisticaly depicts a teenager’s personal tragedies (those legitimately large and those that just seem that way) without condescension nor nostalgia. As far as I know, it left the Marche without any form of U.S. distribution.
2. Frontier of Dawn –– It wasn’t the most maligned film in competition––nothing could top the press corps’ universal disdain for Wim Wenders’ The Palermo Shooting––but Philippe Garrel’s richly-layered story of the ultimate doomed romance may have been the most misunderstood. Those who complain of the supernatural turn taken by Garrel’s epic in its third half (and, particularly, the silent-era effects used to achieve it) mostly refuse to engage with the film on its own terms. See my full review here.
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