Festival curators worked their way through 4,042 feature-length submissions — over 2,000 from the U.S. and nearly the same number from 31 different countries — to compose the 2012 in-competition list for the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. Competing in dramatic, documentary, and world cinema categories, the Park City fest’s lineup includes works focusing on the economic crisis — such as The Queen of Versailles, about a couple building their dream home who are facing foreclosure. Other stories find those we’re familiar with on screen going behind the camera — like Scott Pilgrim‘s Mark Webber who has directed/written The End of Love, about the devastating losses a young father faces. Hip Hop saves a Mexican girl who deals with her mother’s incarceration in Filly Brown and The Surrogate finds Martha Marcy May Marlene actor John Hawkes trying to lose his virginity. It’s definitely an eclectic mix at the Robert Redford-founded gathering, like always. While moviemakers are looking for buyers, festival goers will be gawking at stars like Michael Cera, Amanda Seyfried, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy, and Danny Glover. All are expected to make an appearance in Utah this year. Check out which films are in the U.S. Dramatic Competition category, and then head to /Film for the rest. Read More »
Last year, director Kevin Macdonald and producer Ridley Scott teamed up for an ambitious, globe-spanning undertaking. They challenged people all over the world to film a video snapshot of their life on a specific day — July 24, 2010 — and submit it via YouTube for potential inclusion in what would become the feature-length Life in a Day. More than 80,000 clips were sent in for the documentary, with 1,125 chosen for inclusion in the final product.
The result is a breathtaking overview of existence on Earth in the 21st century, spanning cultures, countries, and individual outlooks. Following its Sundance premiere this January, the film is going into limited release in theaters starting July 29; but prior to that, it will receive a one-night only premiere in cinemas all over the country this Sunday, July 24. Click through to watch the trailer, learn more about the film, and find where Life in a Day is screening near you.
Well, he can’t say he didn’t see them coming. The movie blogs are all over filmmaker Kevin Smith today, following the media event/premiere screening of his new film Red State at Sundance last night. Smith made plenty of enemies in the blogosphere last spring, when his studio buddy comedy Cop Out opened to some of the most scathing notices of the once-critical darling’s career. In a response not particularly notable for its maturity, Smith declared film critics irrelevant and vowed that he wasn’t letting critics see his films for free anymore. “Realized whole system’s upside down,” he tweeted. “So we let a bunch of people see it for free & they shit all over it Meanwhile, people who’d REALLY like to see the flick for free are made to pay? Bullshit: from now on, any flick I’m ever involved with, I conduct critics screenings thusly: you wanna see it early to review it? Fine: pay like you would if you saw it next week.”
Today we’re checking out the trailer for An Education, an upcoming period drama about a British schoolgirl (dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn Carey Mulligan) whose Oxford-bound future is thrown for a loop when she meets an older man. The preview is lush — ’50s costumes! London! Paris! Peter Sarsgaard! — and kind of reminds us of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which is not a reference we can make often. Read More »
Child abandonment and abuse has become a rather tired publicity trope, as demonstrated by the hordes of misery memoirs that grace the bookstore shelves. Recently, however, the tide has turned, and a host of provocative, thoughtful and altogether more engaging artistic offerings concerning the complexities of family life and childhood have come to the fore. Earlier this year, Polly Stenham’s new play Tusk Tusk , in which three children are left alone by their unstable mother in a new flat for days on end,received critical acclaim in London. Now, Tze Chun’s film Children of Invention(which screens at BAM tomorrow night) explores similar themes, albeit across the Atlantic, and with a pyramid scheme and the immigrant experience thrown into the mix. We sat down with Tze, the writer and director, to discuss the inspiration, challenges, and children that make this film so powerful.
A few nights ago, Jon Stewart made fun of Lou Dobbs for a recent tirade against illegal immigrants, exclaiming: “Illegal immigrants? Wake up, Rip Van Winkle! D’you fall asleep in June 2008? Nobody gives a shit about them anymore!”
We agree with him in the political sense — there are so many real scapegoats on which to blame our economic problems now! — but their stories might come back into full focus in the cultural sense, as this year’s first international critical darling, Sin Nombre, gains momentum. Centered around a runaway Mexican gang youth and his Honduran girl companion as they seek to cross the border into the US, Sin Nombre — Sundance Lab alumnus Cary Joji Fukunaga’s directorial debut — has already won Best Director and Best Cinematography at Sundance [Read our original Sundance coverage of it here].
We’ve read mostly rave reviews (spoiler-free excerpts linked after the jump), and we’re excited for its limited release this weekend — produced by Mexican superstar-sweethearts Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, directed by a first-time feature-filmmaker, and promising to be a watchable un-glossy “immigration” tale (of which there aren’t many), it sounds like it could be a new favorite.
