January 2007
21 posts
Wrapping Sundance - The 40,000 foot view
For those who’ve slept through Sundance and it’s 125 entries this year, or would rather the wheat be separated from the chaff, so to speak - check the winners list and then proceed at your leisure, from the executive summary material, to the day by day minutiae.
— Karina Longworth offers three overlooked gems, and five films most likely to hit your local theater. Bonus: a...
Updated - 'The Departed' sequel rumors, and a tip...
To pile rumors onto previous rumors, The L.A. Times and Variety are both running stories in conflict with an earlier report from MTV news, straight from The Departed star Mark Wahlberg’s mouth. While MTV wrote that Martin Scorsese was the driving force behind looking into the plausibility of both a sequel and a prequel to the film (as did their source material - Hong Kong’s Infernal...
Casual Browsing: Me and You and Every Film We...
Los Angeles: Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know) needs your help (MySpace) in rehearsing an upcoming multi-media performance to include elements of audience participation, although it appears that the real deal - her third presentation of Things We Don’t Understand and Definitely Are Not Going To Talk About, will take place in New York for a (possibly sold out) performance in...
Online Video Selections: 'This American Life',...
— NPR’s Ira Glass talks to the Sundance Channel about the upcoming television adaptation of This American Life, coming to Showtime. Includes brief cuts of the show.
— Vintage Woody Allen clips from The Dick Cavett show, circa 1971. The two talk Play it Again, Sam and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex - then Bergman, Antonioni, Freud, Particle Physics, and a host...
Video: Gervais Meets...Larry David, Christopher...
In 2006, Ricky Gervais hosted sit downs with three of his favorite comedians - Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld), Christopher Guest, and Gary Shandling for the UK’s Channel 4. Talking about the creative process, their influences, and the nuts and bolts of comedy - it’s a love-fest full of clips from their respective works, anchored by Ricky’s effusive hero-worship (he...
Non-continuing Oscar coverage
Your 2007 Academy Award nominations, if you’ve missed them thus far. Not a lot of surprises, although I’m pleased to see Kate Winslet and Jackie Earle Haley receive attention for their turns in Little Children.
Little Miss Sunshine being among the Best Picture hopefuls should not be a surprise for anyone paying attention to the massive media-blitz put on by Fox Searchlight. The Little...
Sundance: Day 5 - The Talk of the Town
With well over 100 films of all shapes, sizes, and genres (and more than a few defying description) screening in Park City at the moment, only a small percentage are fated to successfully navigate from the festival circuit to your local art-house or cineplex. Not the best indicator of a film’s worth or substance, but someone with deep pockets has to want to pick up and distribute the films...
Sundance: Day 3 & 4, in Video
The Sundance Channel currently has over 30 short videos - directors profiles, interviews, and street scene dispatches from the Four Eyed Monsters duo on their YouTube page. Selections include a sit down with Gina Gershon and Steve Buscemi for paparazzi dramedy Delirious, and Jeffrey Blitz, director of high-schooling coming of age (in the vein of Thumbsucker) story, Rocket Science.
IFC News on...
Sundance: Day 2
Continued accumulation of daily dispatches from Park City, updated throughout the day:
“In advance of the Monday night Sundance debut screening of Hounddog (aka “The Dakota Fanning Project”), which contains a graphic scene of Fanning (who was 12 at the time) being raped, the Catholic League is calling for a federal investigation of possible child pornography, the biggest controversy...
Conjecture: 'Departed' Trilogy
As one of the few actors to play a role in The Departed not to meet the business end of a point blank shot to the head, Mark Wahlberg has made an offering to the rumor mill, telling MTV News that Martin Scorsese is out making the rounds, checking for interest among actors - like Robert De Niro, while hashing out the possibilities for his first sequeled franchise - a sequel and a prequel actually,...
Sundance: Day 1
I’ll be compiling the best reviews, features, interviews, and video coming out of the Sundance Festival, from today until the 28th. One post per day, updated a few times thoughout the day and night:
“The problem with Black Snake Moan isn’t the incendiary nature of the material…The problem is simply one of time structure: The amount of time Lazarus ministers to Rae is just...
HBO, updated
Details on HBO’s 2007 lineup coming out of their presentations to the Television Critics Association last week:
The final season of The Sopranos and the second-half of season three for Entourage premiere on April 8th. The airing of the ninth and final episode for The Sopranos will coincide with the premiere of David Milch’s post-Deadwood project - John From Cincinnati, meaning that,...
Sundance '07 Primer
Everything you’ve wanted to know about Redford’s bohemoth of a festival, starting January 18th - beginning with the Official lineup/guide:
“You say Disney and it conjures up a whole raft of associations. Sundance does the same thing on the smaller scale…. It’s the hipster’s Disney.” - Wired (via Zigzigger)
Half of all Sundance shorts will be downloadable from iTunes at $1.99, with most of the...
‘Synecdoche’: Kaufman makes directorial debut with...
With his name attached to Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, plus a screenwriting Oscar for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it seems that penning well-received scripts for Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry has created some film-casting capitol for Charlie Kaufman, trying his hand as a first time director.According to The Hollywood Reporter, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton and Tilda Swinton...
The Shape of Things to Come
Rounding up a few forward looking pieces - some early, pre-Sundance buzz for the new year:
The L.A. Times gathers 2007 prognostications from 17 entertainment writers and industry types. Within, Cinematical declares Black Snake Moan, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz (Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright), Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry to be the most talked about...
Casual Browsing: Zoo Moan
What are people lusting after more at this very moment? Hot Gadget Porn, by way of Apple? Or the lascivious prospects of Black Snake Moan? (Trailer. Site.) It’s a rhetorical question, but stay with us - Film Comment’s Nathan Lane reviews the latter anyway:
“Ricci’s performance is so fearless, specific, and blazingly committed it carries the second half of the picture over the...
Dunst in a Gondry directed Blondie biopic?
Through deductive reasoning, our friends over at Film Ick have come up with what looks likely to be another new picture for director Michel Gondry. Kirsten Dunst was rumored to have been considering the role of Debbie Harry in a Blondie biopic since October. Now, in an interview featured in New Zealand website Stuff, Dunst mentioned that her next project was to be with Gondry, playing “a...
'Inland Empire' Trailer Two
Don’t expect to gain any more understanding of what David Lynch’s self-distributed, 2 hour, 52 minute Inland Empire is all about from this recently released, french-subtitled trailer than you would after viewing the first trailer, or possibly from the film in it’s entirety, for that matter,
Meeting, Greeting, Roundtables, Matchmaking
— “You don’t want to have a guy fall in front of a tank because you’d make a tortilla” - cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki on Children of Men. Variety profiles the men and women behind the cameras from many of the year’s best - Little Children, The Departed, Volver, The Last King of Scotland, United 93 (9 more, listed here at bottom), talking directors notes,...
Quickly now - Notes
— The Weinsteins picked up the rights to Todd Haynes I’m Not There, a Bob Dylan biopic (who coincidentally, was just busy trying to shut down another Weinstein biopic). The Dylan authorized picture is to be produced by Killer Films’ Christine Vachon, who wrote about how Haynes had originally conceived the project in her latest book, A Killer Life.
— Ang Lee apologizes to...
Online Viewing: 'Extras', 'Idiocracy', Michael...
— Ricky Gervais in BBC export to HBO: Extras - Season Two. Yahoo features a 12 minute preview of Ep. 1 (Pop Candy). Premiering January 14th, the new season features appearances by Orlando Bloom (in preview), Daniel Radcliffe, Chris Martin, Sir Ian McKellen, and David Bowie (featured - archives).
— Arrested Development’s Michael Cera in Impossible is the Opposite of Possible,...