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13 articles
The Sandbox: Breathing New Life Into Old Formulas
6 November 2009 8:12 AM, PST
Like indie films, indie games are free to take chances that their mainstream competitors can't, but in exchange have to work with limited financial resources that put a crimp on grand stabs at novelty. Because of that, indie games tend to stake out a unique ground where convention and experimentation meet. As seen in "Braid" and the wealth of kick-ass downloads for the iPhone, they tend to take risks within the confines of recognizable genres, whether they're "Mario"-esque run-and-jumpers, puzzlers or combat-strategy games. Putting fresh twists on the familiar has seen some thrilling results from these under-the-radar works. That's definitely the case with "Trine" and "Machinarium," two excellent new indie releases that show what a bit of imagination and artistry can do for the same old formulas.
"Trine," developed by Frozenbyte and published by SouthPeak Games for the PC and, as of two weeks ago, the PS3, is about »
- Nick Schager
20 Ways to Get Your "Arrested Development" Movie Fix*
5 November 2009 7:09 PM, PST
*Until they actually make the movie
Forget Scientology or Heaven's Gate. Today, the biggest cult in our country may very well be the teeming masses anxiously awaiting the return of "Arrested Development." After years of rumors and dashed hopes, it seems the beloved TV show will finally, for real, this time, be reincarnated on the big screen.
But don't break out your Cornballers yet: the film isn't set to hit theaters until 2011. How will you last that long? While you can treasure your DVD collection of all three seasons (or, for that matter, catch re-airs on IFC), you'll probably want to vary things up in the year-plus before we get sweet relief. Off the top of your head, you might know to watch Michael Cera in "Juno," but where can you find Judy Greer in a role as crazy as Kitty Sanchez? Will Arnett as a man as bumbling and self-involved as Gob? »
- Matt Singer
Hal Holbrook's Sunny Disposition
5 November 2009 12:14 PM, PST
At 84 years young, actor Hal Holbrook has had drama coursing through his veins for over a half-century, going back to when Ed Sullivan had him on TV to perform a piece from his beloved one-man play, "Mark Twain Tonight." But Holbrook remains prolific in his twilight years, especially after receiving a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for "Into the Wild." He can most recently be seen headlining director Scott Teems' gorgeously atmospheric "That Evening Sun," in which he steals the show as an irritable Tennessee coot named Abner Meecham. After escaping a nursing home to find his land has been rented out by his lawyer son (Walton Goggins) to bad apple Lonzo Choat (Ray McKinnon) and his family, Abner decides to squat on the property anyway, and the southern-fried tensions soon rise. With an avuncular delivery reminiscent of his Twain characterization, Holbrook phoned from California to talk about the »
- Aaron Hillis
Pushing Richard Kelly's Buttons
5 November 2009 8:29 AM, PST
When "Donnie Darko," writer-director Richard Kelly's ominous sci-fi tale of teen angst, premiered at Sundance in 2001, its oddball ambitiousness was generally dismissed. When it was eventually picked up for distribution, it had a weak theatrical run, but grew into a massive cult hit on DVD, paving the way for a double-disc director's cut and Kelly's even bolder follow-up, "Southland Tales." Similarly panned at its 2006 Cannes premiere, that pitch-black sociopolitical (and yes, sci-fi) satire about the end of the world was edited down, but still polarized critics and audiences, which proves that you can't set out to make a cult classic -- only the test of time has that power, meaning the film might still find new life in years to come.
In a fascinating career leap, Kelly has taken his penchant for logic-bending science fiction from Indiewood to the Big Show, as Warner Bros. has produced "The Box," his »
- Aaron Hillis
The Many Meanings of Chris Smith's "Collapse"
4 November 2009 12:04 PM, PST
"Collapse," the title of Chris Smith's new documentary, is a loaded word that applies to the film in a variety of ways. Its obvious implication concerns its main subject Michael Ruppert, a former police officer who turned in his gun and badge for a library card and a newsletter-turned-web site called From The Wilderness, which prizes itself on intensely researched investigative work about government corruption, corporate malfeasance and suspicious activity in every corner of the globe. When presented with the idea that he's a conspiracy theorist, he quickly replies, "I deal in conspiracy fact." And the facts he presents in "Collapse" are both overwhelming and chilling, as he lays out the ways the world is headed towards economic and environmental Armageddon.
"Collapse" could also refer to how Smith has wasted no time in releasing the documentary -- it's been only eight months since he first met Ruppert for a »
- Stephen Saito
Holiday Preview: Anywhere But a Movie Theater
4 November 2009 11:14 AM, PST
More Holiday Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Repertory Calendar] [Anywhere But a Movie Theater]
On Demand
IFC Films (with whom, full disclosure, we obviously share a parent company) will be delivering new films all holiday season to homes across the country through their Festival Direct and Sundance Selects labels. These include the cross-cultural romantic dramedy "I'll Come Running" (Nov. 4), Josiane Balasko's farce "A French Gigolo" (Nov. 6), the Inuit tribal drama "Necessities of Life" (Nov. 11), the Brit crime thriller "Adulthood" (Nov. 18), the Indian love story "Return to Rajapur" (Nov. 25), the Christopher Masterson-Bijou Phillips celibacy satire "Made for Each Other" (Dec. 2), "Harry Potter" helmer David Yates' gritty two-part drama "Sex Traffic" (Dec. 2 and 9), the Korean comedy "Night and Day" (Dec. 23) and "The Ghost" (Dec. 30).
Meanwhile, in the newly launched Sundance Selects series, there's a pair of harrowing documentaries VOD premieres: Kief Davidson's coming-of-age boxing doc "Kassim the Dream" (Nov. 27) and the unvarnished biopic "Nick Nolte: No Exit" (Dec. »
- Stephen Saito
Trailer Premiere: "I'll Come Running"
4 November 2009 11:08 AM, PST
Here's an exclusive first look at the trailer for "I'll Come Running," the debut feature from Spencer Parsons, a multi-continent romance starring Melonie Diaz ("Be Kind Rewind," "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints") and Jon Lange. The official synopsis:
Pelle (Lange) wants a change of scenery. Another day, another place, another postcard, another girl... But is Veronica (Diaz) really just another girl? It was only supposed to be a stolen, sweaty day together in Texas, and all they have in common is too many hours watching "The Simpsons." But when circumstance brings Veronica to Pelle's door in Denmark, this "casual" fling shakes things up for his best friend and family as well. Comedy and tragedy entwine in "I'll Come Running" a broken romance about what happens when a stranger accidentally changes your life.
"I'll Come Running" opens Wednesday, November 4th, exclusively on IFC Festival Direct. »
- IFC
Your Holiday Indie Film Preview
4 November 2009 8:26 AM, PST
2009 is about to end with a bang, though probably not the apocalyptic kind predicted in the long-awaited adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" or Chris Smith's terrifying doc "Collapse," though those will both be playing at your local arthouse. Instead, audiences will be able to enjoy a winter of wildly different indie film offerings to reflect the wildly different tastes of moviegoers as we leave one decade and move into another. (There are also many different ways to watch them, as you can tell from our Anywhere But a Movie Theater section.)
From November through January, there will be musicals ("Nine"), comedies (Broken Lizard's "The Slammin' Salmon") and stop-motion animated wonderments ("A Town Called Panic") to entertain and new films from Michael Haneke, Pedro Almodóvar, Richard Linklater, Terry Gilliam and Werner Herzog to ponder. And if new movies aren't necessarily doing the trick, you can always cozy »
- Stephen Saito
Head Games
4 November 2009 4:18 AM, PST
Bearing a snarky, double-take title and a premise like a glazed pig on a platter, Grant Heslov's "The Men Who Stare at Goats" can't help but get us salivating -- be it Chayefskyian satire or schizoid paranormal headtrip or Coenesque destiny farce, we'll gobble it down, especially if it is, as this movie is, based on reported fact. American military new age telekinetic absurdism! The brown-acid substance of reporter Jon Ronson's book by the same name is the dizzying crucible at hand -- too ludicrous and all true to resist, and yet so much the sum of its chortlesome vignettes that filming it would require either the cargo-cult undergroundism of a Craig Baldwin or the imposed narrative arc of an over-punctuated Hollywood biopic. Regrettably, Heslov and screenwriter Peter Straughan and producer/star George Clooney have opted for the latter. Which is to say, the madness has been dressed for dinner, »
- Michael Atkinson
Holiday Preview: A Repertory Calendar
3 November 2009 1:01 PM, PST
Tim Burton invades New York, New Italian Cinema hits Los Angeles, Harold and Kumar spread holiday cheer in Austin and everywhere you look, they're celebrating All Tomorrow's Parties -- just some of the holiday film fun you can have this winter at your local repertory theater.
More Holiday Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Repertory Calendar] [Anywhere But a Movie Theater]
New York
92YTribeca
In November, the 92YTribeca Screening Room will have some special guests in the house when it hosts the already sold out "A Conversation with Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman" on November 10th, with the two longtime collaborators discussing their latest film "Fantastic Mr. Fox." But tickets are still available for the night before (Nov. 9th), when actor Ben Foster and director Oren Moverman will screen their acclaimed new post-war drama "The Messenger". Much of the rest of the month is devoted to Cinema Tropical's Ten Years of New Argentine Cinema series with screenings of Adrián Caetano's immigration »
- Stephen Saito
Schizo Miracles
3 November 2009 5:59 AM, PST
Samuel Fuller had one of the most fascinating of Hollywood careers -- a 50-plus-year self-mythologizing rampage that began with scriptsmith work in the mid 1930s at the age of 24, evolving into one of the most distinctive auteurs America has ever produced, writing/directing some 25 movies and having a hand in writing 25 more, helplessly manufacturing himself into a crusty man's-man Hollywood gadfly in the process, readily available for manic interviews and iconic appearances in young auteurs' self-conscious films.
There are always corners in his career that you, whomever you are, haven't yet explored (honestly, any single Fuller film remains half-experienced if you've only seen it once), and so the new Sony set of Fulleriania is a prize, beginning as it does with "It Happened in Hollywood" (1937), Fuller's first screenplay credit, and an utterly freakish, Charlie Kaufman-esque launch of meta-ness that centers on Hollywood's discomfiting transition from silents to talkies, barely »
- Michael Atkinson
Submitted For Your Approval...
2 November 2009 8:28 AM, PST
...a "Twilight Zone" podcast. Richard Kelly's new film "The Box" shares source material with an episode of the series, which got us wondering about why there haven't been more movies made from "Twilight Zone" episodes. This week on the IFC News podcast, we suggest six episodes we could see getting fleshed out into features, and discuss films that, while not directly related to Rod Serling's series, are definitely "Twilight Zone"-esque.
Download: MP3, 54:59 minutes, 50.3 Mb
Subscribe to the podcast: [iTunes] [Xml] »
- Alison Willmore
Thinking Outside the Box
2 November 2009 7:51 AM, PST
A week loaded with oh-so-worthy awards season contenders is offset with the comic relief of Jim Carrey's performance captured flailing, George Clooney's self-deluded staring, and the teasing promise of an affordable(!) trip to the ballet.
Download this in audio form (MP3: 16:59 minutes, 15.6 Mb)
Subscribe to the In Theaters podcast: [Xml] [iTunes]
"The Box"
You could make the argument that if Richard Kelly could only get the whole world to come over to his house and listen to his record collection, he might not feel the need to make films at all. That said, his fall from grace following the flop of "Southland Tales" was so total that he went from the director anointed as the hipster's David Lynch to the arthouse M. Night Shyamalan overnight. With much riding on this comeback, Kelly has turned to Richard Matheson's short story "Button, Button," previously immortalized as an episode of "The Twilight Zone, »
- Neil Pedley
13 articles
