The Screengrab : sundance

Screengrab Q&A: James Toback

Nicole Ankowski — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:00:00 GMT

By Emily Wilson

It's been over twenty years since Mike Tyson became boxing's youngest-ever Heavyweight Champion of the World. In the decades since, his demons outnumbered his titles, and the former bruiser became better known for his addictions, ear-biting and uncontrollable temper than for his victories in the ring. Filmmaker James Toback (The Pick-up Artist, Fingers, Bugsy) aims to bring some nuance to that image with his new documentary, Tyson. And he may succeed; the film was lauded at Cannes and Sundance, with Tyson himself saying, "I'm afraid of how much money and how much pussy I'm gonna get."

A self-styled provocateur, Toback has always been able to raise a tempest around himself and his extensive network of celebrity associates — perhaps because the line between him and his subjects, between his art and his life, has never been clear. As a young journalist in 1971, he was assigned a piece about Jim Brown; he ended up moving in with the football-legend-turned-actor and writing a memoir about the endless orgies at Brown's house. His film career, in many ways, has continued to blur that line, with extra provocation whenever possible. One scene in 1999's Black and White finds Tyson himself — as himself — politely deflecting the advances of a pushy Robert Downey Jr., before suddenly and shockingly punching him in the face.

The same charisma Tyson displays in that unforgettable moment animates Toback's new documentary, essentially one long interview with a very willing subject, interspersed with impressive archival footage. Tyson opens up about his childhood, turbulent relationships, addictions, prison, and the intimate, twenty-year-long relationship he and Toback have shared. It's a mesmerizing film, and perhaps Toback's best. Nerve spoke with Toback about friendship with a man whom many consider a monster.

You've known Mike Tyson for over twenty years. How did you first meet?
It was quite unexpected. He came to the set of The Pick-up Artist to meet Robert Downey Jr. He and I started talking, and we hit it off. We took a long, long walk at five in the morning through Central Park. He'd just met Jim Brown, and I had lived up at Jim's house for a couple of years. He was fascinated to find out about all the wild activities there. I told him about my flip-out on LSD when I was his age, nineteen. He was very interested in the whole notion of madness and what it meant to go crazy. His mind was very curious, in particular about that subject. I wasn't all that surprised when, years later, he flipped out, when he was in solitary confinement. In fact, he told me the first thing he thought was, "This is what Toback was talking about."

How did you stay in touch? Did you meet up or call one another?
I'd call him out of the blue. Or I'd get a call at four in the morning and he'd say, "Jim Toback, Mike Tyson." And two hours later we'd say goodnight.

Did you always talk about heavy subjects?
Yes. There was no small talk ever. Not a syllable. Very much like in the movie.

How did you decide to make this film?
It was clear to me we'd have some extremely interesting episodes together, and over the years we did. They just happened organically. There was this constant sense of invention and renewal. I felt when he came out of prison after the long stay, that would be a great time to use him because he was — and still is — an icon in the hip-hop world. I was doing [this movie about hip-hop] with the Wu-Tang Clan, Black and White. He fit very naturally within the framework of the film.

In Black and White there's a scene in the gym where he speaks in a self-reflective, meditative way about murder and humiliation in prison. I thought that voice, if I find the right cinematic style, would make a great self-portrait, filtered through my own aesthetic. I talked to him about it right away and he was all for it. It was just a question of finding the right time.

And what made this the right time?
The death of my mother, which made me feel I had to get to work on something right away or I'd have a real problem functioning at all. And he'd just been arrested for cocaine possession and was in rehab. I thought: this is going to be a period of time he can indulge in self-analysis and reflection, without having the kind of fractured, frantic life he usually has.

Do you feel you had a lot in common?
In some odd way, by making a movie about him, it raised all these subjects that all of my movies deal with: identity, and the loss of it; madness; sex; love; crime; money; death. The less likely the scenario, the more interesting it is to me. So to take a subject, namely Mike Tyson, where the backgrounds and the origins and any number of [other] superficial differences would suggest a lack of communion — and then to find there are these rather fascinating connections — made it all the more interesting.

Some of the film is painful for Tyson; he cries at certain points. Why did he agree to make this film?
First of all, clearly, he is shy on one level. But he's one of the most famous people in the world, and it's not by accident. He has a need to be known and to be understood. I think that was part of it, but I think he has a confessional nature, too. Strict Catholics find a confession booth sufficient to answer that need. Maybe Tyson's needs are a bit more unusual.

In the movie he talks about his tumultuous relationships with women.
Numerically he's had so many experiences with women, you'd almost have to say the law of averages would suggest there'd be a certain amount of problems. If your life revolves around five or ten women, you might be able to get away with a pretty tranquil existence. But at five or ten thousand, you're gonna have some mistakes.

How will this film changes people's preconceptions of Mike Tyson?
There are quite a few people who go in with a conception of him as a convicted rapist and ear-biter. And when they come out, they feel a sense of shock — that he has moved them the way he has, and that they feel that they know him in a way they didn't expect to.

Did you consider interviewing Tyson's friends, or critics, for the film?
No. It only could have been this kind of movie. I had no interest at all in making the movie that was a poll of various people's views. The whole idea was to take advantage of this opportunity, to have a special, personal perspective about himself.

You say you think of him as a figure out of Greek tragedy.
Well, he's the one who said, "It's like a Greek tragedy; the only problem is, I'm the subject." As in classic Greek tragedy, you have a large-scale figure who has risen against all odds by dint of his own capacity, strength and ability — and then has brought himself down by an act of hubris.

What was his act of hubris?
Thinking he could get away with anything — handle problems and challenges that needed rigorous discipline [without that discipline]. Thinking he could get away with succeeding in the way he had, because of his [past] discipline.

How do you feel about the film?
You know, you have a general feel for what a movie is supposed to be when you start it — and [afterwards] you might feel you fulfilled it, or almost fulfilled it or, didn't come close to fulfilling it.

In this case, I think it's probably the first time it actually went beyond what I could have imagined. I didn't know it was possible to feel that. I look at it, and my imagination of what it might be is less than what it is. Whereas in previous films, I felt like this is what I wanted, or this isn't quite what I wanted. Or, in the case of Love and Money, this isn't close to what I wanted.

Tyson opens in select cities this Friday. James Toback is being honored, along with Robert Redford and Francis Ford Coppola, at the San Francisco International Film Festival, running April 23 to May 7.

Screengrab Review: "Gigantic"

Nick Schager — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Brian (Paul Dano) is a single 28-year-old who sells luxury mattresses out of a sparsely furnished Manhattan loft. He likes to get together with his elderly dad (Ed Asner) and older brothers (Ian Roberts and Robert Stanton) at a forest cabin to drink shroom-enhanced tea and wander about the woods. And ever since he was a little boy, he’s dreamed of adopting a Chinese baby to call his own. He’s oh-so-very odd, and so too is Gigantic, a borderline insufferable trifle that dispenses quirkiness with its every gesture and breath. Apparently weaned on little more than Sundance-style indies, director Matt Aselton proves a prime practitioner of eccentric pap, from Brian’s first encounter with flighty, peculiar Harriet (Zooey Deschanel) – whose faux-adorable nickname is Happy, and who falls asleep on one of Brian’s establishment’s beds after coming to pick up a $14,000 mattress for her wealthy dad (John Goodman) – to a climactic family reunion, Chinese tyke included, in which Harriet is told that normality is an illusion right before she takes some whacks at a Muammar al-Gaddafi-shaped piñata.

Brian and Harriet fall for each other primarily because Aselton’s script (co-written by Adam Nagata) is under the impression that weirdness attracts. In terms of the narrative, such a notion holds true, though there’s little that’s attractive (or even tolerable) about these nondescript bores, who despite their crying, moping and rambling about, haven’t been conceived beyond an embryonic, idiosyncrasies-only stage. To escape the blunt blather of Harriet’s father, whom Goodman vainly attempts to embody as a larger-than-life caricature of kooky affluence, Harriet nonchalantly asks Brian “Do you have any interest in having sex with me? Now?” It’s a providential proposition for Brian, given that his active efforts to adopt a foreign child make him something like the anti-Viagra, and he thus readily agrees. Away the two go to dad’s station wagon to get it on, thus initiating a romance that soon involves torpid cutie-pie banter, Harriet anxiously puking in a bathroom, a break-up, and a final reconciliation that – given the duo’s inability to exude anything other than self-conscious indie-kid coolness – strikes one as more tragic than uplifting.

Aselton’s direction expresses Brian’s detachment from his surroundings (and Harriet) through lifelessly studied compositions. Just as his visual style is frequently inert, his leads’ performances are lethargic, with Dano’s somnambulistic routine accentuating the fact that Brian is a cipher posing as a real person, and Deschanel’s kooky, off-center shtick so self-satisfied and, at this stage in her career, so hackneyed that everything she says or does registers as phony. Gigantic’s central romance is paper-thin, and feebly complemented by meandering digressions like the aforementioned drugged-out family gathering and a business meeting between one of Brian’s siblings (Roberts) and Japanese executives that takes place at a massage parlor where they’re all receiving “happy endings.” Along the way, metaphors compete for attention, with the drowning rats of Brian’s scientist friend eventually ceding ground to a mysterious homeless man (Zach Galifianakis) who periodically stalks, and then viciously pummels, Brian. Unsurprisingly, he’s the film’s most relatable and empathetic character.

Trailer Review: 500 Days of Summer

Paul Clark — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Anyone else getting a Garden State vibe off this trailer? Sure, there’s that leaden voiceover, which sounds vaguely like the narrator was trying channel Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving. But otherwise, there’s the offbeat-cute male lead pursuing the free-spirited woman, set against plenty of quirky backdrops. No doubt this vibe was intentional on the part of Fox Searchlight, looking to turn their latest Sundance title into an arthouse hit among the indie-rock set (which band will change the characters’ lives this time?). Of course, I’m willing to give anything with Zooey Deschanel a chance (I have to- it’s a condition in my Screengrab contract), and I’ll definitely take Joseph Gordon-Levitt over a mopey Zach Braff. But still, this looks like the sort of kinda-sorta romance that has turned the “Sundance movie” into a hidebound genre unto itself. And after a quick scan of IMDb revealed that the “Summer” of the title references Deschanel’s character’s name, I have no reason to believe that my early assessment of the movie is too far off base.

Trailer Review: The Informers

Paul Clark — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:00:00 GMT

This, the latest Bret Easton Ellis adaptation to come out of Hollywood, is making its premiere at Sundance this week. As with all Ellis adaptations, this movie has to toe a very tricky line, trying doing justice to Ellis’ stories of hard-partying, disaffected people while coming off as something more than empty hedonism. The closest a filmmaker’s gotten so far is Mary Harron with American Psycho, not just because she could confine herself to one character’s viewpoint but also because her constitutional inability to buy into the world Patrick Bateman was selling allowed her to find the satire. Alas, The Informers looks to be closer to the Less Than Zero approach, with Gregor Jordon turning Ellis into a cautionary tale for the ennui that plagues L.A.’s privileged classes. That said, the cast looks pretty solid- why shouldn’t it be, given the number of showy parts to be found in Ellis’ works?- and it’s always nice to see Billy Bob Thornton in a meaty role instead of simply playing one-dimensional weirdos or cops.

Trailer Review: Sunshine Cleaning

Paul Clark — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

In many ways, Sunshine Cleaning appears to exemplify the worst characteristics of today’s Sundance-ready movies- a premise that marries the edgy with the cutesy, populated by Hollywood up-and-comers looking for a little indie cred. And I’d be lying if I said this trailer put my misgivings about this movie at rest. Yet I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist seeing this, given the combination of the adorable Amy Adams, the scorching Emily Blunt, and the ever-reliable Alan Arkin. Normally, I don’t see movies just for the cast, but this one just hits too many of my sweet spots for me to dismiss (I’m not proud). I didn’t really care for Little Miss Sunshine, the producers of whom are also responsible for this film, but as long as Sunshine Cleaning is better than its predecessor, I’ll be OK with it.

Will Ferrell and the Retro Boys

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 22:00:00 GMT

The Associated Press just got the memo: the 1970s are funny! "Platform shoes, leisure suits, fondue, fro picks. What used to be cool is now the stuff of comedy. When it comes to period comedies, the '70s are the equivalent of Victorian-era costume drama. While serious-minded filmmakers are forever reaching back to the time of royalty clad in waistcoats and dressing gowns, comedians are more likely to cull from the less halcyon days of disco and sideburns."

The AP article runs through the history of Me Decade-based comedy, from movie parodies like I'm Gonna Git You Sucka! to the long-running sitcom That '70s Show to the one movie that really got it right, Dazed and Confused. Not surprisingly, Will Ferrell is singled out as one of the movement's leaders, given his retro roles in Anchorman and now Semi-Pro. "Whenever I look back at old photos and this and that, it just seems like such an alien time," Ferrell said. "The '80s are funny too, and I guess we'll look back and the '90s will be funny too, but the '70s are holding strong."

While we're all waiting for that wave of hilarious '90s-based humor, we might as well point out the obvious reason Ferrell and his cohorts are so fascinated with the '70s: that's when they grew up. (Farrell even confesses "I was so into the bicentennial. No joke. I bought a Liberty Bell necklace that was pewter. It was like a prized possession.") The new issue of Sight and Sound takes a look at Farrell and his somewhat more respectable contemporaries in "Indiewood" or "The Frat Pack" — Wes Anderson, Alexander Payne, Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, etc. — and finds the '70s influence alive and well.

"Many of them had emerged from Sundance in the mid-1990s and they shared that elusive 'indie sensibility' even as they moved into studio production; there were rumours that, like the much-mythologised Movie Brats of the 1970s, these guys hung out together. . . The comparison, and the self-consciousness, were almost inevitable since the rebels arrived on the backlot at the peak of 1970s retro — in music and fashion as well as in film culture." The piece goes on to note that Indiewood was influenced not only by the Movie Brats, but MTV and SNL in equal measure, which is where Ferrell comes in. Indeed, the Semi-Pro star finds an unlikely defender in the notoriously prickly David O. Russell, who served as an executive producer on Anchorman: "I am a comedy snob, and Will Ferrell is sublime." We think he means "groovy."

Yesterday's Hits: The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Paul Clark — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago, our own Scott Von Doviak checked in with Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, the seemingly MIA directors of the 1999 sleeper hit The Blair Witch Project. But what of the film itself?

What made Blair Witch a hit?: The Blair Witch Project was the breakout hit of the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. This micro-budgeted, documentary-style horror movie came seemingly out of nowhere to scare the pants off the festival-hardened audience, and was promptly snapped up by Artisan Entertainment, a fledgling distributor looking for a hit. For months afterward, the Sundance buzz became deafening, as word of this mysterious indie — allegedly "the scariest movie ever" — began to spread. With the aid of an Internet-heavy campaign — fueled primarily by the film's then-groundbreaking Web site, which treated the film it advertised as a legitimate documentary, complete with backstory about the Blair Witch legend — word of mouth for Blair Witch was at its peak in time for the film's late-July release.

What happened?: Unfortunately for the film, the Internet giveth, and the Internet taketh away. Blair Witch rode the buzz to a rock-solid $30 million opening-weekend gross, on its way to a $140 million domestic take. However, no sooner had audiences seen the film en masse than the backlash began. Many complained that the film wasn't scary; others, that the advertising had been a bait-and-switch, tricking them into believing the events of the film were real. Still others were rendered nauseous by the movie's handheld camera work. That the film was released during the height of the postmodern horror subgenre (e.g. Scream) didn't help matters. Blair Witch's unconventional, un-ironic style made it ripe for cheap, easy satire, as in 2000's Scary Movie.

But perhaps the most basic reason for the film's waning popularity is the cyclical nature of the genre itself. Horror has a loyal fan base, but particular subgenres go in and out of fashion. The mini-wave of Blair Witch-inspired doc-style horror soon gave way to more elegant chillers, inspired by summer 1999's other horror sleeper, The Sixth Sense, which boasted not only a buzz-friendly twist but also didn't supposedly cause some audience members to vomit. The Blair Witch brand name had lost most of its luster by release of the 2000 sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (more on this later).

Does Blair Witch still work?: Oh my, yes, although not quite as originally advertised. It's certainly scary, but most of its scares are psychological rather than visceral. Much of the film's effect comes from the fear that we may one day suddenly find ourselves lost, far from civilization, and ill-equipped to make our way home. In the film, the characters find themselves in precisely this situation, and their minds have already begun to unravel by the time the scares come. It might not contain many popcorn-spilling shocks, but long after more conventional horror movies fade from the memory, the slow-burn fright of Blair Witch lingers. It's a tough movie to shake.

In addition, Blair Witch's filming was ingenious. To begin with, Sanchez and Myrick didn't employ a full screenplay, instead mapping out a 35-page outline of Blair Witch lore for actors Heather Donohue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leonard to use as background, then trusting them to improvise on camera. The actors — all portraying aspiring filmmakers — were also tasked to operate the cameras and sound equipment themselves, giving their footage an un-polished feel that works to the film's advantage.

By the time the cast went to shoot their scenes in the woods, the filmmakers had almost completely left them to their own devices. As the cast wandered through the woods shooting footage, the filmmakers followed at a distance, approaching their cast only at night while they slept, to leave fresh food and filming supplies, set up the film's memorably vague fright objects — stick figures, rock piles, a bundle of sticks of sticks containing a nasty surprise — for the next day's shoot, and to provide the scares that would awaken the cast from their slumber. By giving so much of the control of the film over to the cast, The Blair Witch Project has a verisimilitude that has yet to be surpassed in the faux-documentary genre.

Sundance: The Final Roundup

Scott Von Doviak — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:51:00 GMT

It’s all over except for the long lines at security in the Salt Lake City airport. The awards were handed out last night by a jury featuring Quentin Tarantino and Marcia Gay Harden, and the top honors went to a couple of politically-charged pictures that flew under the radar for most of the festival. The grand jury prize for drama went to Frozen River, writer-director Courtney Hunt’s film about two women smuggling immigrants across the Canadian border. The top prize for documentaries went to Trouble the Water, about New Orleans families struggling in the aftermath of Katrina.

But that’s not all. As Kenneth Turan notes, awards were handed out like Halloween candy this year, with top audience prizes going to The Wackness and Fields of Fuel. Other notable recipients include American Teen (for dramatic directing), Man on Wire (for world documentary) and Choke (special jury prize for ensemble cast). Over at Slamdance, a documentary about a Neil Diamond cover band (Song Sung Blue) was the big winner.

In addition to its award, The Wackness picked up a distributor. Per the Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures Classics will ensure that you get the opportunity to watch Ben Kingsley and Mary-Kate Olsen swapping spit.

And on that note, that’s a wrap for this year. Let’s hit the slopes!

Sundance Roundup: Day 10

Scott Von Doviak — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 20:46:00 GMT

The grumbling continues as Sundance winds down, with the L.A. Times documenting these signs of festival fatigue: “a man snoring loudly through a morning screening of the steroid documentary Bigger, Faster, Stronger; festival volunteers exchanging flu remedies; journalists plotting their escapes days ahead of schedule.” Marketing execs are whining about the lack of “standout” films, which might actually mean the focus this year was on challenging, hard-to-pin-down fare rather than commercially viable movies. Black is white, up is down, and the suits aren’t having any of it!

In keeping with the unpredictable nature of this year’s edition of Sundance, Sony Pictures Classics has bought the rights to Baghead – you remember, the mumblecore horror movie – for a cool million bucks. If you have any lo-fi genre scripts in the drawer – The Hefty Bag from Outer Space, perhaps – this might be the time to dig them out and start shooting.

The “triumph of the little guy” storyline continued on other fronts, as well. What Just Happened? is not only the question many Sundance hopefuls are now asking themselves, it’s the name of one of those big buzz movies that left town without a peep. Barry Levinson’s movie industry satire starring Robert De Niro comes up wanting when compared to smaller-scale show biz spoof The Deal starring and co-written by William H. Macy, says Chris Knight of Canada’s National Post. One reason the Levinson picture may not have sold, Variety explains, is that this thing called the Internet on which “bloggers” publish their thoughts on such films is having an influence on potential buyers. Sounds like crazy talk to us.

Sundance Roundup: Day 9

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

As Sundance 2008 winds down, a consensus seems to be emerging that this year’s edition of the hallowed film festival was actually something of a bummer. The movies that came in with the most hype and the biggest names attached mostly ended up slinking out of town with no buzz and no deal. Festival director Geoff Gilmore poo-pooed the pre-fest conventional wisdom that the writers’ strike would lead to a buying frenzy, telling the Hollywood Reporter, “The notion that people would respond to one crisis by possibly creating another just seemed silly to me.”

The Boston Globe’s Ty Burr writes that “a free-floating cynicism had already been hardening into This Year's Attitude. To be impassioned about a movie was to be suspect, at least in the festival's early going.” Burr reserves most of his praise for the documentaries, notably Young@Heart, about these unlikely rock and rollers:

If you’ve been wondering when the first mumblecore horror movie would arrive, wonder no more! Indiewire has the scoop on Baghead, in which a group of friends sharing a mountain cabin are menaced by, yes, “a stranger with a rumpled brown paper bag over his head.” Actually, that does sound kind of scary.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 9

Peter Smith — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:05:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

As the festival winds down, some quick notes on movies I didn't have time to address earlier. (I'm gonna include the walk-outs here, despite the wrath of one reader who believes that saying anything at all about a movie you didn't see from start to finish constitutes dereliction of duty. Obviously, you should take such judgments with a grain or two of salt — and maybe an entire shakerful in the case of Ballast, which I'll very likely see again, and in full, at some point. But at the same time, you can get a mighty strong sense of a film in thirty-five to forty minutes.)

Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North (Documentary Competition): Painfully earnest young woman with unbearably whiny voice — she narrates, alas — discovers that her esteemed ancestors were slave traders, corrals nine relatives for self-indulgent journey to sore spots from the family's past. For hardcore aficionados of liberal white guilt only. (W/O)

Time Crimes (Park City at Midnight): I'm a sucker for time-travel stories, but even I had trouble warming to this Spanish gloss on 2004 Sundance prizewinner Primer, in which a middle-aged schlub travels ninety minutes into the past and finds himself engaged in unwitting battle with other versions of himself who've developed wildly divergent agendas. Ineptly directed, for the most part, and the concluding twist is singularly unsatisfying. Come back, Shane (Carruth).

The Wave (World Cinema Dramatic Competition): German filmmaker Dennis Gansel turns the true story of a high-school history experiment gone awry into a glossy, pulse-pounding thriller, employing methods almost as fascistic as those of The Wave itself. Intentional irony? One can't help but be riveted by the spectacle of ordinary teenagers willingly submitting to autocratic rule — their überhip teacher is attempting to demonstrate that the Nazis weren't anomalous monsters — but earmarking one kid as emotionally unstable from the get-go means that we're just twiddling our thumbs as we await the inevitable moment when he finally snaps.

What Just Happened? (Premieres): Hollywood made yet another mildly lacerating self-portrait, that's what. Loosely based on the memoirs of producer Art Linson (Fight Club, Into the Wild, several Mamet films), it boasts the most relaxed De Niro performance in ages and a smattering of truly hilarious jokes, most of them involving out-of-control entitlement. Too bad Bruce Willis, sporting a Grizzly Adams beard that he refuses to shave prior to the start of filming on a new picture, isn't nearly as funny as Alec Baldwin must have been in real life. (Read Linson's equally diverting book for the lowdown; it happened on 1997's The Edge.)

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Dramatic Competition): Michael Chabon's complicated first novel has been reduced (by Dodgeball's Rawson Marshall Thurber) to a simple bisexual love triangle, with two major characters — Arthur and Cleveland — melded into one, and another, the improbably named Phlox, distorted almost beyond recognition. And yet the movie still almost kinda works, mostly because Peter Sarsgaard commits himself so fully to his ludicrous bad-boy manipulator that we, like the dazed young protagonist, are completely taken in.

Downloading Nancy (Dramatic Competition): I'd had about enough of this repugnant exercise in nihilism at the point when Maria Bello, playing a masochistic housewife who's hired a stranger she found on the Internet (Jason Patric) to torture and kill her, walks barefoot into a mouse trap, over and over and over, shrieking with laughter each time it snaps on her toes. By all accounts from those who stuck it out, it gets much, much worse thereafter. At least the "revelation" that she was sexually abused as a child isn't saved for the final reel. (W/O)

Sundance Roundup: Day 8

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:31:00 GMT

This thing has been going on for a week now and people are ready to get the hell out of Park City. As Aaron Barnhart writes, “tempers are wearing thin. People are getting tired of waiting out in the cold. Volunteers have had it with annoying moviegoers.” So let’s say you’re some hot shot celebrity or big time acquisitions executive on the scene at Sundance. You’ve already filled two suitcases full of swag, and you can’t bring yourself to sit through one more movie today, so now what?

How about taking a ride in an algae-powered Mercedes? As a tie-in to the Sundance documentary Fields of Fuel, biotech firm Solazyme is introducing their product by “tooling around Park City, Utah in a Mercedes Benz C320 diesel,” according to Wired.

Driving around thinking about algae is sure to make you hungry, and that’s where the celebrity chefs of the Food Network come in. We’re not sure if algae is on the menu, but the Salt Lake Tribune can fill you in on all the big names who’ve been feasting on Giada De Laurentiis' “classic Italian comfort food, including tagliatelle pasta with short-rib ragu and a mocha semifreddo ice-cream dessert.”

And yes, there are still movies being shown. Causing one of the biggest commotions is Downloading Nancy, starring Maria Bello as a married woman who meets another man (Jason Patric) on the Internet. That’s about the most innocuous description possible, judging from the first round of reviews. Here are some pull-quotes to whet your appetite:

“An excruciating experience.” – Film Threat

“A film that's beyond difficult to watch.” - Filter

“A low-grade snuff film. It was like the film was raping my face.” – Cinema Blend

On second thought, maybe it’s time for another ride in that algae car.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 8

Peter Smith — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

My guess is that a lot of the people reading this have at least one screenplay in progress. Might I make a suggestion? You know that Big Secret you've got lurking somewhere in the third act — the traumatic past incident that retroactively explains your characters' troubling present-day neuroses? Ditch it. Lose it. Nuke it. You don't need it. It doesn't help.

Had I made this plea a year ago, perhaps we might all have been spared the ordeal of Sunshine Cleaning, one of the big-buzz titles in this year's Dramatic Competition. Directed by New Zealand native Christine Jeffs, whose mildly promising debut Rain now seems a distant memory (she also made Sylvia, the inert Plath biopic starring Gwyneth Paltrow), it stars Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, both in reasonably fine form, as hard-luck sisters who start a new business wiping up the blood and viscera that accumulates at crime scenes. The ick factor makes for a few funny moments, but, alas, screenwriter Megan Holley has more serious issues in mind. Both young women seem devoted to their father (Alan Arkin, reprising his labored shtick from that other Sunshine movie), but Mom is nowhere in sight. Might our heroines possibly be working through some personal issues related to the discovery of a bloody, horrific mess? And isn't that conveeeenient. People, this sort of Freudian nonsense is killing narrative fiction. Characters are far more intriguing and memorable when their behavior can't be reduced to the sum of their childhood traumas. Just let them be however screwed up they are; we'll happily speculate about the cause. (Case in point: the underrated Margot at the Wedding.)

Unfortunately, I failed to get into Sugar, which all reports suggest boasts the same impressive degree of relaxed naturalism as Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's previous Sundance triumph, Half Nelson. But it sounds like the antidote to the Sunshine Cleanings that infest this festival.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 7

Peter Smith — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:30:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

The hottest ticket at Sundance 2007 — for the increasingly desperate press, if not for the general public — was Hounddog, in which Dakota Fanning played a barefoot farm girl so desperate for tickets to see Elvis Presley that she was willing to strip naked and gyrate around à la The King, only to get brutally raped for her trouble. Many fewer journalists flocked to see this year's less sensationalistic Phoebe in Wonderland, starring Dakota's equally precocious younger sister Elle — which is a shame, since it's a much more interesting film, albeit somewhat muddled. Phoebe's dangerous obsession isn't Elvis but Alice: Her mother (Felicity Huffman) has been working for years on a Lewis Carroll dissertation, and Phoebe desperately wants the lead role in her grade school's production of Alice in Wonderland, to be directed — sort of — by a singularly bizarre new drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson). So badly does Phoebe want the part, in fact, that she devises an elaborate system of games and rituals designed to secure it for her. She paces the school hallway for hours, carefully avoiding any cracks in the floor. She hops up the stairs at her house, then hops down twice, backwards, then up again, then a half-turn, clapping, then repeat. She washes her hands again and again and again, until they bleed.

Writer-director Daniel Barnz plays a rather pointless game of keep-away with Phoebe's condition, which isn't named until the movie's final moments, but I'll respect his wishes. (I'm pretty sure it's two comorbid conditions, actually, though the script doesn't specify; if I tell you that she also shrugs her shoulders a lot and occasionally repeats other people's sentences, that should clinch it for the neuro-heads.) Barnz's goal here — quite an admirable one, in an after-school special kind of way — is to suggest that such conditions are only the extreme end of a continuum upon which we all reside. But he also wants to make a more general plea for tolerance, so we get a subplot about an effeminate little boy in Phoebe's class who wants to play the Red Queen in drag and is immediately labeled queer. And he also wants Clarkson's drama teacher to be one of those Dead Poets Society educational martyrs who encourage kids to chuck all rules and regs before being marched to the guillotine by some humorless authority figure (here, inexplicably, Campbell Scott, who can't do humorless with a gun to his head). And he also wants to beguile us with Gilliamesque fantasy sequences, at which he sucks, quite frankly. The main reason to see Phoebe in Wonderland is for yet another astonishing Fanning performance. How these little girls are able to summon such powerful reserves of fear and anguish and terror, I have no idea. I'm not really sure I want to know, to be honest.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance, Part 6

Peter Smith — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

Has Billy Crudup ever successfully portrayed an ordinary human being? There's something vaguely otherworldly about the guy — a guileless quality that makes him best suited for playing befuddled innocents, like the childlike heroin addict Fuckhead in Jesus' Son. Pretty Bird, the directorial debut of equally oddball actor Paul Schneider (All the Pretty Girls), finds Crudup in full-on Ed Wood mode as a gladhanding entrepreneur who persuades a buddy with a large savings account (David Hornsby) and an unemployed aerospace engineer (Paul Giamatti) to help him build a futuristic "rocket belt." For a while, Crudup's deliberately stilted line readings and panoply of quizzical expressions are amusing enough to carry the film, especially given Giamatti's apoplectic support and a typically stonefaced comic turn from SNL's Kristen Wiig. Thing is, though, Schneider based his screenplay on a true story, one that takes a surprisingly dark turn. Major characters wind up dead, kidnapped and imprisoned. And yet the film's tone never really wavers from goofball geniality. Schneider presents us with a gaggle of one-dimensional caricatures, then expects us to actually care about what happens to them; as the disjunction between style and content grows wider and wider, the actors' antics — Crudup's in particular — start to feel laborious. File this one under Fascinating Failure, and mark Schneider down as a talented eccentric who needs someone a little more grounded, à la David Gordon Green, to prevent him from escaping Earth's atmosphere.

Sundance Roundup: Day 7

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Not surprisingly, the news of Heath Ledger’s death has put something of a damper on the Sundance fun over the past twenty-four hours. Ledger’s former paramour Naomi Watts cancelled all press appearances today in advance of the midnight screening of Funny Games, Michael Haneke’s American remake of his own 1997 film. Meanwhile, some knucklehead decided a post-screening Q&A would be the appropriate time to ask Josh Hartnett for his thoughts on the tragedy. Goodness knows we were all waiting on the word from Hartnett; now we have closure.

In other Funny Games news, the Salt Lake Tribune notes an unusual guerrilla marketing campaign on the streets of Park City. Is it really a good idea to supply potential audience members with eggs before a screening? Why not pass out rotten tomatoes while you’re at it?

Audiences are on a Sugar buzz, says the L.A. Times, crowding into screenings of the latest effort from Half Nelson filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. It’s the story of a Dominican baseball player “recruited to play for a Kansas City farm team, but his overwhelming excitement is soon muted when he finds himself far from home in all-white Bridgetown, Iowa, with no English skills and a naivete about U.S. culture.”

Over at Slamdance, the hot ticket is Paranormal Activity, which is either the next Blair Witch Project, the next Cloverfield, or the next Slamdance movie you’ll never hear about again. According to New York magazine, the audience “screamed at all the right places, then chain-smoked cigarettes outside Slamdance’s ramshackle Main Street HQ in order to decompress.” With any luck, no one interrupted them to ask about Heath Ledger.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance, Part 5

Peter Smith — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:15:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

You know it's a strange year at Sundance when the best movie you've seen was directed by the guy responsible for Jerry Springer's crass bid at big-screen stardom. Can't say I much blame Neil Abramson for omitting Ringmaster from his press kit bio, but his latest film, American Son, more than atones for that admittedly grievous sin. Just please don't immediately click the hell outta here when I tell you the premise: Mike (Nick Cannon), a young Marine fresh out of whatever the jarheads call basic training, spends a four-day furlough in Bakersfield, CA, visiting friends and family — none of whom know that he's shipping off to Iraq the moment he returns to base. I know, I know. Really, though, this isn't an Iraq movie. Think of it more as 25th Hour with combat duty in lieu of prison. Nothing that happens, least of all Mike's "character arc," is especially revelatory, but the film boasts an immediacy and specificity that puts most of this year's other American indies to shame. It's a rare film in which you genuinely feel as if you've just been plunked down in the middle of a life in progress; every character, no matter how small or insignificant, seems to have an existence that extends beyond the requirements of that particular scene. Even Mike's hesitant romance with a Latino girl he meets on the Greyhound into town (Melonie Diaz, who's become the breakout actor from Raising Victor Vargas) mostly succeeds in avoiding cliché. Screenwriter Eric Schmid has a knack for introducing salient aspects of Mike's background — his parents' messy divorce; his brother's descent into criminal behavior — without belaboring them or turning them into pat psychological explanations; he also has a strong feeling for the reckless anomie that tends to overcome young adults trapped in small towns and devoid of realistic prospects. In the unlikely event that the film does get picked up, though, I hope they find a better title for it than American Son, which makes it sound like precisely the sort of grandiose, tendentious Thesis Statement that Abramson, Schmid and the cast so deftly avoid.

Sundance Roundup: Day 6

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:45:00 GMT

The wallets have finally opened in Park City, as the L.A. Times reports a trio of high profile sales: Choke, based on the novel by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk, has sold to Fox Searchlight for $5 million, while Focus has ponied up twice that much for the rights to Hamlet 2 (a sequel centuries in the making, no doubt), and new player Overture Films has secured domestic rights to “bittersweet drama” Henry Poole is Here, starring Luke Wilson.

That’s good news for the “Focus on Film” movement, “a salvo fired at the publicity-starved companies that lure celebrities and media with an avalanche of products,” as the Times also reports. Yes, for some it’s all about the gift bags, and the “Brand-dance” luxury lounges are as popular as ever this year. If you’re looking for a free diamond-encrusted iPod case, Park City is the place to be.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh caused a stir when star Sienna Miller referred to the titular city as “Shitsburg,” but all may be forgiven now. Per the Tribune Review, Pittsburgh Film Office director Dawn Keezer was on hand for the Sundance premiere and gushed, “It's absolutely amazing. Pittsburgh looks stunning. It's literally a picture-postcard to the city of Pittsburgh.”

Always on the lookout for the next trend, The Hollywood Reporter declares suicide this year’s hot Sundance topic. “Geoff Haley's The Last Word looks at a writer (Wes Bentley) whose business is drafting people's suicide notes, including one for a despondent Ray Romano. In I Always Wanted to Be a Gangster, an already suicidal teenage girl tries to kill herself while being held hostage. And in The Wackness, one character attempts to re-create James Mason's famous walk into the ocean in A Star Is Born. And those are just the funny films.” We could die laughing.

Sundance Shorts The Web

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

While our own Scott Von Doviak and Mike D'Angelo continue to do terrific reportage from and about the Sundance Film Festival, other sites are likewise turning in their own stories about America's most fancy-pants film fest. Sorry, Scott and Mike -- we tried to tell them you guys have got it covered, but they just keep on writing stories. One of those stories, over at Wired, concerns the inexplicable path of web-based video as it concerns Sundance.

Wired reports that, their own hype to the contrary, Sundance has been slowly backing off of internet programming; since debuting their online film content in 2001, the number of streaming videos has dropped from fifty to ten. While the festival's directors talk a good game, and plan on releasing 35 more shorts via iTunes and other content providers after the event wraps, some industry insiders say the timing couldn't be worse, with indie film already in a slump due to Hollywood's struggles and the burden of the writer's strike.

Jason Silverman, the author of the piece, goes on to cast some suspicion on the whole notion of Sundance as indie-film savior, noting that in the year just passed, only 121 of the 3600 feature films released had their debut at the festival. While it's still clearly the destination location for indie hopefuls, its retreat from the web may mean that it's entirely up to Hollywood, a location not historically friendly to independent filmmakers, to find a way to make money on the internet. Ian Calderon, the Sundance director of digital programming, talks a good game about how the festival tries to highlight and support new technologies, but admits "We aren't good at engineering outcomes".

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 4

Peter Smith — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

Just a few minutes into Ballast, Lance Hammer's methodically withholding feature debut, I already felt confident of two things. One, I wasn't going to like this movie. Two, everybody else would, for reasons having little to do with Hammer's artistry and a great deal to do with his sensibility. Sure enough, shortly after I bailed at the end of reel two, weary of the film's mannered silences and artless shakycam, I found Robert Koehler's Variety rave, which predictably declared Hammer "a humanist artist" and praised his film for "engag[ing] audiences' best human responses." (As opposed to, say, their arachnoid responses.)

Alas, since I don't subscribe to the self-congratulatory notion that a film's worth hinges on the degree to which it reflects your own worldview, thereby making you feel good about yourself for admiring it — a phenomenon I've dubbed "soup kitchen cinema" — I can't join in the hosannahs. My friend Noel Murray of the Onion AV Club, who stayed to the end (and was somewhat underwhelmed), assures me that Ballast does eventually shake off its sub-Dardennes torpor and achieve some genuine power. But let me briefly recount the moments that made me decide I'd seen more than enough. (This will involve some mild spoilers concerning events that happen in the first few minutes, which you're likely to encounter anyway if you're so much as skimming other reviews/synopses.)

After a brief, lyrical pre-title sequence, we discover Lawrence (inexpressive nonprofessional Micheal J. Smith, Sr.), a heavyset black man, sitting on the couch in the darkened living room of a dilapidated house, just staring into space. A neighbor appears, first knocking and then, when Lawrence fails to respond, opening the unlocked front door and stepping inside. The neighbor, a middle-aged white guy, is looking for someone who turns out to be Lawrence's twin brother, and finds him lying dead in the bedroom, an apparent suicide. Naturally, the neighbor has questions for Lawrence, but Lawrence says nothing. He just keeps staring into space. Eventually, as the neighbor calls 911, Lawrence silently stands and walks out the front door, without so much as a glance at the neighbor; through the open door, we can see him disappear around a corner.

At which point I had to restrain myself from saying aloud "Aaaand gunshot in five. . . four. . . three. . ." I wasn't 100% certain whether Lawrence was about to return with a gun and blow the neighbor away or just shoot himself offscreen. But Hammer's setup for an "unexpected" act of violence couldn't possibly have been more clumsily blatant. If you don't know that a nonresponsive, near-catatonic character who abruptly leaves the room is about to do something horrific, you can't have seen very many movies in your life.

One offscreen gunshot later, Lawrence is in the hospital, having survived his suicide attempt. We get a series of brief, uninflected shots showing his surgery, his recovery, his discharge. (This is all in the film's first five to ten minutes.) People speak to Lawrence, but he never says anything in return. Weeks have now passed — we hear from a doctor that Lawrence was unconscious for ten days — and the same neighbor shows up, wanting to know whether Lawrence is okay; he's also come to return Lawrence's dog, which he's been looking after since the "accident." Lawrence opens the door when the neighbor knocks and then just stands there, silent, for the entire scene. Are you okay, Lawrence? Silence. I brought your dog back, figured you'd want him now. Silence. I guess I'll just keep him a while longer, then. Silence. You sure you're okay? Silence. All right then.

I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. We're not talking here about the melancholy expressionism of a Tsai Ming-liang or the perverse whimsy of a Kim Ki-duk. This is by no means a deliberately stylized world in which a mute character violates no rule of verisimilitude. Hammer is aiming for raw naturalism, and we're apparently expected to believe not only that Lawrence's behavior is a credible expression of grief (which I might buy in the immediate aftermath of his brother's death, but not weeks later following a lengthy hospital stay), but that the neighbor, who in all respects appears to be an ordinary guy, would simply accept these unmistakable signs of mental imbalance, never once pressing or protesting.

Ask yourself how you would react if someone you knew just stood there like a statue, making no response of any kind to anything you said. This nonsense bears no relationship whatsoever to genuine human behavior — it's just a novice filmmaker's misguided notion of what might constitute badass minimalism. That so many people seem prepared to take it seriously only shows how far good intentions will take you.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 3

Peter Smith — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:15:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

So far no good on the Dramatic Competition front — which is a bit of a bummer, since those are the movies I came here to see, for the most part. I must confess that I didn't even last halfway through buzz magnet The Wackness, which expends most of its creative energy in its title, leaving writer-director Jonathan Levine with nothing to do but find jokes predicated on our knowledge that we're no longer living in 1994. ("Does this have anything to do with Kurt Cobain?" asks Ben Kingsley's pothead shrink of a patient.) Apparently, Kingsley makes out with an Olsen twin after I hit the exit; somebody more tuned into the zeitgeist than myself will have to explain why this is a big cultural event. Other Competition titles are such well-intentioned mediocrities that badmouthing them feels like kicking an injured dog, and word on Good Dick, which I was planning to see this afternoon, is so toxic that I'll likely wind up defecting to some obscure foreign film.

On the other hand, this year's documentaries continue to impress, and I say that as someone who much prefers fiction to nonfiction when it comes to cinema. Slingshot Hip Hop, an energetic portrait of the burgeoning Palestinian rap scene, features a bevy of great music and spotlights a truly sobering irony: In a genre that thrives on collaboration — name any significant hip-hop single of the last few years that doesn't include the word "Feat." — it's hard to create and sustain a movement when you're not permitted to travel ten short miles to meet the peers who've inspired you.

Even more politically trenchant is the articulate policy debate called Secrecy, which tackles what is arguably the key question of the information age — namely, how do we reconcile freedom and security? Directors Peter Galison and Robb Moss don't attempt to hide their belief that the U.S.'s government's increasing obsession with classification does more harm than good, and is being used today primarily as a means for the executive branch to avoid accountability. To their credit, however, they also give ample screen time to former CIA and NSA employees, who make a strong case for the opposing viewpoint — so strong, in fact, that I left the movie feeling as if the problem might be inherently insoluble. Like many expository docs, Secrecy sometimes feels more like an animated book than a movie, despite attempts to jazz things up via animated interludes and a propulsive score; you can't help but feel as if the surface of this enormous subject has barely been scratched. But much more than last year's bizarrely overpraised, in-case-you-missed-several-years-worth-of-the-news compendium, No End in Sight, this evenhanded act of advocacy is required viewing for the hundreds of millions of us who have consented to be governed.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 2

Peter Smith — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:05:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

Persepolis didn't impress me much as a coming-of-age memoir, but even I, filing one of the few dissenting reviews amidst the tsunami of fervent acclaim, had to admit that its monochromatic animation style was stunning to behold on a frame-to-frame basis. If you, like me, are partial to stark black-and-white drawings, but would rather watch some poor dude being used as an insect incubator than a little girl in a chador singing "Eye of the Tiger," keep an eye out for Fear(s) of the Dark, a French-financed omnibus horror film that provides six renowned artists and illustrators with a forum to explore their personal phobias, using any graphic tool save for color. As with any collection of shorts, quality varies widely; a couple of the entries here are little more than gorgeously baffling, and one amounts to a predictable sick joke. But Charles Burns — he of the aforementioned insect bit — turns in a hilariously grotesque tribute to EC's classic Weird Science/Weird Fantasy line of comics, complete with boldfaced irony and (it was the ‘50s) unapologetic misogyny. And the final segment, animated by Richard McGuire and set in a time-honored Old Dark House lit only by a roving candle and the embers of a dying fire, is simply one of the most eye-popping exercises in contrast ever attempted on the big screen. In a way, it's too dazzling to be scary — it's hard to get nervous about offscreen bumps and creaks when you're marveling at the way McGuire captures a bottle of booze rolling across the floor via only the light that reflects off of its white label. Sundance has buried Fear(s) of the Dark in its little-attended New Frontier section (why not Park City at Midnight?), so you may not see a whole lot of coverage from other sources. But for devotees of innovative animation — and the severely colorblind — this is a must-see.

Sundance Roundup: Day 5

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Nobody loves an overnight success story more than us, but it’s much more satisfying when filmmakers who have put in their time in the trenches finally get their moment in the spotlight. That’s particular true in the case of Austin’s David and Nathan Zellner, who have been plugging away for more than a decade since their feature debut, 1997’s indescribably zany Plastic Utopia. In a just universe, that tale of mimes and waffles would have made them the kings of indie comedy, but after the even more bizarre follow-up Frontier (shot entirely in the made-up Bulbovian language) failed to catch on, the brothers turned their attention to short films. Slowly they’ve built up a reputation, as each of the last three Sundance festivals has showcased one of their shorts (including last year’s Aftermath on Meadowlark Lane).

The payoff arrives tonight, as their new feature Goliath premieres in Park City. As David Zellner tells the Austin American-Statesman, “It's a whole other universe than being here with a short film, when you're sort of under the radar. We're learning as we're going this time.” Here’s the trailer, featuring Dazed and Confused alum Wiley Wiggins:

Elsewhere in Sundance land, the stars were out for U2 3D, which is not the story of R2-D2’s cousin, but a U2 concert film. The band and their pal Al Gore were in attendance, the Toronto Star confirms, and the rapturous reception suggest the movie may be a step up from the dismal Rattle and Hum – either that, or as Bono notes, "There's a lot of love and Irish whisky in the air.”

The Hollywood Reporter is disappointed to report that the big bidding wars have still failed to materialize. American Teen is garnering offers in the $2-3 million range, but it’s mostly the documentaries that are generating buzz so far.

Sundance Roundup: Day 4

Scott Von Doviak — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Can Sunshine strike twice? Does that even make sense? Sunshine doesn’t actually strike, does it? It more sort of, uh, shines. Shines like gold. Box office gold! (Now I’m getting back on track.) Two years ago, Little Miss Sunshine was the belle of the ball at Sundance, selling for more than $10 million and going on to become a genuine mainstream hit. This year’s festival hasn’t seen any big money sales yet, although as the L.A. Times reports, “buyers were starting to circle several well-received movies available for distribution.”

Among those movies is Sunshine Cleaning, which the AP notes bears some resemblance besides the title to the 2006 breakout hit. “Like its predecessor, Sunshine Cleaning revolves around a quirky family with communication problems, stars Alan Arkin as a grandpa encouraging a cute kid to succeed, and features a sun-drenched Albuquerque, New Mexico setting.” Cleaning also co-stars Emily Blunt; Entertainment Weekly has a Q&A with her here.

We previously noted the preponderance of British films at this year’s festival, but there’s no shortage of American films – or at least, films with American in the title. “American navel-gazing has rarely been deeper or more intense,” says the Globe and Mail. “In the documentary category, we have An American Soldier, a documentary about a talented army recruiter. Then there's American Teen, another documentary about four Indiana teenagers in their senior year of high school; Made in America, Stacy Peralta's documentary about crime-ridden South Central Los Angeles; and I.O.U.S.A. about the American debt crisis. In the features category, there are several dramas, including Birds of America, Anywhere, USA and American Son,” the Canadian newspaper gleefully reports.

Speaking of our neighbors to the north, a documentary about a Canadian heavy metal band has provided a front-runner for our favorite title of the fest. Via Cinematical, it’s Anvil! The Story of Anvil. Really says it all, doesn’t it?

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 1

Peter Smith — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:50:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

Sundance is playing things close to the vest this year, for some reason. Upon my arrival late Thursday night — too late, alas, to catch the opening-night attraction, In Bruges, which everyone who did see it seems to think is ill-served by its hyperactive trailer — I picked up a copy of the Salt Lake City Weekly, expecting to find my friend Scott Renshaw's capsule reviews of perhaps two dozen films that had been screened for local press before the festival proper even began. Instead, there only was a page of wild guesswork, advance screenings having apparently been scuttled. Nor were Friday's press screenings particularly appetizing, as most of the morning and afternoon was devoted to soporific-sounding selections from the World Documentary section. Did I really want or need to learn anything further about Mumia Abu-Jamal? (In Prison My Whole Life.) Would Up the Yangtze, about China's Three Gorges Dam project, be any more illuminating than Jia Zhang-ke's 2006 Venice prizewinner Still Life, just now opening in limited U.S. release? Hoping the homegrown docs might be more energizing, I stuck my head into Traces of the Trade, a personal-essay film in which the director and nine relatives tour the locations where their ancestors purchased slave labor with rum and molasses, but fled after forty minutes of unbearably self-indulgent white-liberal guilt.

As I write this, most of the potentially heavy hitters are still to come. Today, however, people are buzzing, with good reason, about yet another documentary, Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. (Full disclosure: I roomed with Marina at Cannes a few years ago, though we barely spoke since I tend to fall asleep at festivals within fifty-two seconds of hitting my room.) As the title suggests, the film focuses on Polanski's 1977 arrest for "unlawful sexual intercourse" (plea-bargained down from rape) with a thirteen-year-old girl and his subsequent flight from justice just hours before he was due to be sentenced, resulting in what may well be lifelong exile in France. Even for those familiar with the general details of the case, though, Wanted and Desired will likely prove revelatory. Zenovich dutifully provides basic psychological context for Polanski's odious conduct — mom murdered by Nazis, pregnant wife slaughtered by Manson Family — and wittily illustrates various points with well-chosen clips from Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Tenant, and other favorites. Ultimately, however, she's less interested in Polanski's crime than she is in the outlandish farce of judicial corruption that the banal crime somehow inspired. If you've ever run into a celebrity and found yourself instantly transformed into a babbling cretin, this fascinating film will provide some solace: At least the celeb's life and freedom weren't in your shaking hands.

Sundance Roundup: Day 3

Scott Von Doviak — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Today’s Sundance buzz is all about Sir Ben Kingsley making out with one of the Olsen twins in a phone booth. No, it’s not the aftermath of a particularly out-of-control Park City bash – just a scene from The Wackness, in which Kingsley plays a psychiatrist who trades his services for weed and hooks up with another of his dealer’s clients, played by Mary-Kate Olsen. Per the Associated Press, Olsen “said she'd been worried about pulling off Kingsley's hairpiece during filming but pronounced the make-out session ‘fun.’” Good to know.

Unknown director Amy Redford was on hand for the premiere of her film The Guitar yesterday. Her father, a fellow named Robert, said all the right things to the Salt Lake Tribune. “She will probably have a rougher time than anybody…She did it on her own.”

We told you yesterday’s hot ticket would be Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, and sure enough, the Weinstein Company has swooped in and purchased the international rights to the documentary. Domestic rights remain available if you’re interested.

Or maybe you just want to look at the pretty people. Entertainment Weekly’s photo gallery includes Mary-Kate snuggling with Colin Farrell. Sorry, Sir Ben.

Sundance Roundup: Day 2

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Robert Redford addressed the troops last night as the Sundance Film Festival kicked into gear. He hailed the filmmakers as “agents of change” and warned those desperately seeking buzz to expect the unexpected, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. He might have a point, as this L.A. Times look at last year’s highly touted Sundance crop portends.

The buzz-seekers went on to ignore Redford’s advice anyway. With the WGA strike dragging on, studios are eager to find readymade product to fill holes in their release schedules. The first big deal has already been made, with HBO snapping up the rights to The Black List: Volume One, a documentary collaboration between photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell. For a handy cheat sheet of the rest of this year’s buzz flicks, head over to Defamer.

If you’re looking for something to see in Park City tonight, the highlight looks to be Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired at the Holiday Village at 6:15 pm. Co-writer/director Marina Zenovich writes about her experiences making the documentary for Filmmaker. If midnight movies are more your speed, George Romero’s Diary of the Dead screens later tonight.

Sundance Roundup: Day 1

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:30:00 GMT

The 2008 Sundance Film Festival kicks off tonight in Park City, Utah with the world premiere of In Bruges. The directorial debut of playwright Martin McDonough, it’s the story of two London hit men (Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson) cooling their heels in the titular Belgian city. For the Independent, it’s the harbinger of a new British invasion, as the first of 23 UK-made films to play this year’s fest.

This year’s Sundance crop is expected to be lighter in sprit than the 2007 edition, according to the New York Times, “offering more comedy and optimism than last year’s batch, which contained many darkly hued films about the Iraq war.” Meanwhile, at the Treasure Mountain Inn at the top of Main Street, Slamdance keeps chugging along – no longer the upstart but still the rebel, according to Variety.

Other than that, there’s not much going on today besides the usual schmoozing, swag-bag hoarding and snow-tubing expeditions. During this calm before the storm, you can refresh your memory of Sundance history with this handy FAQ from the L.A. Times. And if you can’t make it to Park City this year, you’ll miss out on the parties, but you can still catch some of the films: the festival’s official website will be offering up one short for free viewing each day.