Sundance Report: Quick Hits
1/28/2007 5:00:00 PM
 | | Samantha Morton in Expired |
- Expired stars Samantha Morton and Jason Patric as the universally hated people responsible for checking parking meters and writing tickets. The two have little in common besides their jobs and shared loneliness but enter into an extremely dysfunctional relationship anyway. Jason Patric is absolutely outrageous as Jay, the biggest prick you may ever meet. I can honestly say I probably haven’t laughed as hard in a movie theater since Napoleon Dynamite. If you saw his character in Neil Labute’s Your Friends and Neighbors you may have an inkling of what you’re in for, but this character is a much bigger loser, and the performance much more nuanced. The writing is heartfelt and real but ends up meandering into the repeat spin cycles these relationships eventually take on. I think a genuine opportunity for an off-beat comedy was missed here. This is a once-in-a-lifetime character that ends up being misused trying to make a larger life statement. I would have loved to see the movie completely center on Jay, his misdeeds, abuse of power and the ridiculous comments that come flying out of his mouth.
- Despite some very believable performances and relevant subject matter, Weapons was my least favorite narrative film this week. Extremely derivative (Put Kids, Boyz in the Hood and Pulp Fiction in a blender…) and lazy filmmaking could be a big part of that. However, I can easily see people in the same age range as the characters (14-20) responding to seeing unfiltered images of themselves on screen. This movie won’t win any awards but if marketed correctly don’t be surprised if it sells a lot of tickets to that big teenage movie-going demographic.
- Congratulations to Jason Kohn and Manda Bala for a much deserved win in the Documentary category. I have to say I’m always a little disappointed when the jury picks a dramatic winner (Padre Nuestro) that I haven’t heard a single thing about all week. The same thing happened last year with Quinceanera. Not to take anything away from either film (I have seen neither) but there were a host of films in competition this week that sparked audiences coming out of the screenings and around town into enthusiastic conversation. You can’t really debate the democratic system that elects the Audience award (determined by ballots collected at the end of screenings) but Grace is Gone seems a very easy choice for an audience as intelligent, cinematically sophisticated and open to new vision and ideas as the one at Sundance.
--Bryan Whitefield
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Sundance Report: Whitefield On The Go-Getter
1/28/2007 3:00:00 PM
 | | Lou Taylor Pucci in The Go Getter |
The Go-Getter stars Lou Taylor Pucci (Thumbsucker) as Mercer, a disoriented kid who steals a Volvo station wagon from a car wash and sets out on the road to find his long lost and much older half-brother to deliver some important news. Along the way he receives a call from the car’s owner (Zooey Deschanel) and begins a kind of long-distance relationship with her. The movie, inspired in part by Godard’s Band of Outsiders (the French master’s most light-hearted film) is about youthful innocence and the loss of such through real experience. In that sense, it does play into a familiar road movie formula. But while the concept has been used before, and there are times where you have to see past some improbable circumstances, writer/director Martin Hynes has a gift for writing original scenes and dialogue. And his actors, particularly Pucci, are excellent.
Everything in the film, from the naturalistic camera work to a soundtrack largely fueled by M.Ward, goes towards showing the world through the eyes of young Mercer, straight-forward, honest and often times funny. It rides a thin line between heartfelt and sentimental, but for me its air of youthful optimism was infectious, and I was actually rooting for a happy ending rather than cringing at the thought of one. Zooey Deschanel gives another instantly believable performance, and although I generally find it distracting when movies populate themselves with known actors in spot parts, in this case Jena Malone, Bill Duke and Maura Tierney all add to the film’s momentum.
The Go-Getter had to be my most enjoyable movie experience this week. For one its lighter tone and lack of emotional sucker punches felt like a breath of fresh air after the usual darkness, broken relationships and tragedy on display in many of the films screened at Sundance. Also, despite the Focus on Film campaign that is the festival’s theme this year I’ve seen more empty seats than ever at screenings. I’m not sure whether to attribute this to the horrible ticketing system, less popular films or simply lower attendance, but it was a little disheartening not to see the usual wait list lines walking in and to have at times entire sections of a theater unfilled. The Go-Getter however, screened at the Library theater (which is actually the Park City public library) without a single empty seat for the screening. And at least 75% of those seats stayed filled throughout the Q&A with Martin Hynes and his producers afterwards. Walking out, I felt a tangible buzz of positive conversation that I always hope translates into a larger audience, but is in itself what makes Sundance special for people who love movies – finding other people who feel exactly the same way.
--Bryan Whitefield
 | | Empty seats at Sundance. Who knew? |
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Sundance Update: Awards
1/28/2007 2:00:00 PM
The Grand Jury Prize for Documentary: MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET), directed by Jason Kohn.
The Grand Jury Prize for Drama: PADRE NUESTRO, directed by Christopher Zalla.
The World Cinema Jury Prize for Documentary: ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS (VORES LYKKES FJENDER)/Denmark, directed by Eva Mulvad and Anja Al Erhayem.
The World Cinema Jury Prize for Drama: SWEET MUD (ADAMA MESHUGAAT) /Israel, directed by Dror Shaul.
The Audience Award for Documentary: HEAR AND NOW, directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky.
The Audience Award for Drama: GRACE IS GONE, directed by James C. Strouse.
The World Cinema Audience Award for Documentary: IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON/United Kingdom, directed by David Sington.
The World Cinema Audience Award for Drama: ONCE/Ireland, directed by John Carney.
The Directing Award for Documentary: Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine, directors of WAR/DANCE.
The Directing Award for Drama: Jeffrey Blitz, director of ROCKET SCIENCE.
The Excellence in Cinematography Award for Documentary: Heloisa Passos for MANDA BALA (SEND A BULLET)
The Excellence in Cinematography for Drama: Benoit Debie for JOSHUA.
Documentary Editing Award: Hibah Sherif Frisina, Charlton McMillian, and Michael Schweitzer for NANKING.
The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: James C. Strouse for GRACE IS GONE.
Special Documentary Jury Prize to NO END IN SIGHT, directed by Charles Ferguson, “in recognition of the film as timely work that clearly illuminates the misguided policy decisions that have led to the catastrophic quagmire of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.”
Special Drama Jury Prize for Acting: Jess Weixler in TEETH, and Tamara Podemski in FOUR SHEETS TO THE WIND.
Special Jury Prize for Singularity of Vision: Chris Smith, director of THE POOL.
Special World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize: HOT HOUSE/Israel, directed by Shimon Dotan.
Special World Cinema Drama Jury Prize: THE LEGACY (L’HERITAGE)/France, directed by Géla Babluani and Temur Babluani.
Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking: EVERYTHING WILL BE OK directed by Don Hertzfeldt.
Jury Prize in International Short Filmmaking: THE TUBE WITH A HAT/Romania, directed by Radu Jude.
Honorable Mentions in Short Filmmaking:
DEATH TO THE TINMAN, directed by Ray Tintori
THE FIGHTING CHOLITAS, directed by Mariam Jobrani
MEN UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER BETTER (MARDHA HAMDIGAR RA BEHTAR MIFAHMAND)/Iran, directed by Marjan Alizadeh
MOTODROM/Germany, directed by Joerg Wagner
SPITFIRE 944 directed by William Lorton
t.o.m./United Kingdom, directed by Tom Brown and Daniel Gray.
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Sundance Report: D’Angelo Reviews Lots Of Films
1/27/2007 9:12:59 AM
A few other drive-by assessments as we head for the home stretch:
- I don't understand why some people are excited by Teeth, Mitchell Lichtenstein's Troma-style tale of an aggressively virginal young woman (Jess Weixler) with vagina dentata. The film delivers as many bloody penile stumps as anybody could possibly desire, but that's all it delivers—assign the premise to 100 random aspiring filmmakers and 96 of them would turn in a movie exactly like this one, though perhaps with fewer shots of newly dickless males bellowing directly into the lens. AUUUGGGGHHHH! AUUUGGGGHHHH! Zzzzz....
- Even had it stuck assiduously to the facts of the horrific real-life case on which it's based, Tommy O'Haver's An American Crime, starring Catherine Keener and Ellen Page, would have been little more than pointless, retch-inducing wallow in torture porn. What O'Haver does with his film's climax, however—I'll describe it only as a mock-cathartic fake-out—may be the single most repugnant cinematic "ploy" (for lack of a better word) I've ever seen. No amount of good intentions can possibly justify such a vile, sadistic betrayal of the viewer's trust.
- Like most people, I got a little sick of Parker Posey during the mid-'90s, when it seemed like she was in every third indie film on the market. As the lead in Zoe Cassavetes' romcom Broken English, however, she taps into the loneliness and desperation beneath her brittle persona; this is the first time in my memory that she's ever come across as a plausible human being. Too bad she's been paired with Melvil Poupaud, the most narcissistic actor in all of France (which is like being the most opportunistic politician in all of Congress).
- I wound up bailing on Martin Hynes' The Go-Getter, mostly because I was starving and knew I had a tight turnaround between that film and Zoo. But while I was plenty exasperated by his screenplay's concussive wackiness—the plot sees Thumbsucker's Lou Taylor Pucci impulsively steal a car for a road trip and then forge a long-distance phone relationship with the vehicle's weirdly tolerant owner, played by the disembodied voice of Zooey Deschanel—Hynes clearly has serious chops as a director. If he can dial it down a few notches while maintaining The Go-Getter's hazy, lyrical, asymmetrical visual style, he'll have something really special.
- I have now skipped Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, the avant-garde documentary about the titular soccer star, at three different festivals. (Previously, Cannes and Toronto.)
--Mike D’Angelo
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Sundance Report: D’Angelo on Rocket Science
1/26/2007 6:00:00 PM
With the festival gradually winding down, now seems like a good time to belatedly address a handful of films that I just didn't have time to write about during the initial onslaught. Chief among these is Rocket Science, a quirky high-school comedy that borrows a few plot elements from Election and much of its sensibility from Wes Anderson, yet still somehow comes across as fresh and original, if perhaps a bit strained. It helps that writer-director Jeffrey Blitz, best known for the hit documentary Spellbound, sets the film in a distinctive milieu that's largely been ignored or misrepresented in movies: the cutthroat world of policy debate (a.k.a. Oxford debate). This is a world I happen to know exceedingly well, having gotten as far as the California state championship tournament in 1984 and 1985 , and while Blitz uses debate only as a backdrop and a narrative engine, he does make an effort to depict it accurately. In particular, he acknowledges the existence of "spreading," a delivery technique so rapid-fire that most untrained spectators are lucky if they comprehend half of what's being said. (You can see why the movies favor the laid-back, conversational style of presidential debates.)
Rocket Science's awkward protagonist, Hal Hefner (the winning Reece Daniel Thompson), wouldn't seem to be prime debate material, since he's afflicted with the most debilitating stutter since Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda. Nonetheless, he's recruited by debate club star Ginny Ryerson, who claims to see an argumentative fire burning deep within him and is determined to stoke it by any means necessary. A type-A Gorgon in the Tracy Flick mold, Ginny is played by Anna Kendrick, the young actress whose remarkable poise and versatility made her castmates in Todd Graff's Camp look like rank amateurs by comparison; she more than fulfills her promise here, nailing the character's forthright duplicity and verbose, supersonic monologues. Blitz, for his part, continually steers the movie in unexpected directions, which can be both exhilarating and maddening—his determination not to succumb to cliché pays hilarious dividends throughout, but also ultimately makes Rocket Science feel more like a collection of sharp sketches than a bona fide film. And, of course, it goes all sappy at the end. Knock that shit off, comic filmmakers! Leave the life lessons to Lasse Hallström, if you please.
--Mike D'Angelo
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Video of the Day 2: Edward Scissorhands, the Musical
1/26/2007 5:00:00 PM
This will, without a doubt, be one of the strangest musicals ever. Presenting a preview of Matthew Bourne's "dance-play" of Edward Scissorhands.
(Hat tip: Panayides Optical House.)
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Achtung! German Film Honcho Displeased With German Film Critics
1/26/2007 3:15:00 PM
Germany’s filmmakers are launching an attack on Germany’s film critics. Guenter Rohrbach, president of the German film association, wrote an essay in Der Spiegel asking, “Do we even need them, these elite self-promoters who turn pirouettes around our films?…Is the meager praise they occasionally give worth all the suffering they inflict, all the damage they do to us?"
Apparently, this missive was inspired by the negative critical response to two recent, high-profile releases: Tom Tykwer's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and Dani Levy's comedy Mein Fuehrer: The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler, both of which have done well at the box office.
This is fairly typical wounded-ego stuff. Filmmakers are totally dependent on critics when they make small movies that need exposure, but then turn around and gripe about how critics aren’t necessary once they graduate to making big pictures with multi-million dollar marketing campaigns.
I wonder what Rohrbach thinks of the lead actor of Mein Fuehrer, who himself has been very critical of the film? More significantly, if these films are doing so well at the box office, then clearly the critics aren’t having a negative effect on audiences. So really, the only reason to complain about the critics is because it’s hurting these filmmakers’ fragile egos. Just come out and say it: You can’t take criticism.
This nonsense gets tossed around quite a bit, but seriously, can you imagine people in the book world arguing that they don’t need literary critics? (Ignore for a moment the fact that if lit criticism vanished many, many novelists themselves would lose like half their income.)
And I say this as someone who put Tykwer’s Perfume on my Top Ten list for 2006…
--Bilge Ebiri
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Quote of the Day: Sarah Silverman Craps, Dreams
1/26/2007 2:30:00 PM
”I think I'm the crapper and the dreamer. It kills me that I fart and shit in an episode. I love aggressively stupid humor, but it was so embarrassing. The truth is, I do wish all the nations were part of one world and our religion was love. But I'm also the retard. To quote you.”
- Sarah Silverman talks to the Village Voice’s Michael Musto about her new show, as well as her…um, inverted vagina.
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Griping About Thieving Janitor Movies…
1/26/2007 1:45:00 PM
Y’know, the custodial profession deserves our respect. They clean up our shit (literally), scrub the floors of our nasty-ass schools and office buildings, and then pretend that half the incriminating junk they find during the regular performance of their duties never existed. That last bit, of course, suggests that Hollywood in particular should have some respect for the janitors of the world, given the amount of blow, fake accounting ledgers, and dead extras these poor blue collar schlubs have to dispose of on a daily basis.
So why oh why are we now getting two films going into production about janitors stealing? News comes in today that Queen Latifah is negotiating to join the cast of Mad Money opposite Diane Keaton. The film, a remake of the British heist comedy Hot Money, “follows well-off housewife Bridget (Keaton) forced back into a job as one of the night janitors at the Federal Reserve bank when her husband gets fired. Stuck with a mortgage and debt, she figures out a creative way to get money and lots of it with the help of other people in the crew. Latifah will play one of them.”
That, of course, comes on the heels of news that Brett Ratner will be directing a film starring Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock about janitors in a Trump building planning to rob the Donald silly. I suppose getting big movie stars to play janitors is somewhat flattering, but does this mean that these underpaid workers will now also have to endure half-playful, half-tense, “Now, you’re not gonna rob me, are you?” jibes from their richer-than-god employers?
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Sundance Report: Whitefield Goes On The Road With Judas
1/26/2007 1:00:00 PM
The press release for On The Road With Judas reads:
”On The Road With Judas is a film based on a novel, written by a writer, played by actors, about the real characters and the actors playing those characters in this story. It is also about crime, love and David Lee Roth.”
That’s about as a clear a picture as I can paint in terms of what this film is about. It’s actually a lot simpler and less confusing when you’re sitting in the theater enjoying what is easily one of the most original and interesting movies I’ve seen in some time. J.J. Lask has taken his straightforward novel and split it in half, giving each main character in the book an alter-ego, including himself as the author J.J. Lask (played by Kevin Corrigan) and his soundtrack, which is full of covers of easily recognizable songs from the 80s and 90s. J.J. appears in the film himself, but only as a talk-show host who interviews both sides of the character coin.
New Yorkers will recognize several locations as well as familiar faces like Leo Fitzpatrick, Bobbito Garcia, and the late Harold Hunter, but for the most part Judas is filled out with names you don’t know and few faces you will recognize. That is no accident. In today’s Q&A Lask addressed this directly, saying, “Frankly, I’m a little sick of independent films with stars in them. Those don’t feel like independent movies to me, they feel like studio side projects. Everything we did with this project, from casting, to set design, to the poster, was meant to be a film, to be cinema.” If that reads pretentious, don’t worry. This movie stands up to that claim in every sense.
 | | Director JJ Lask |
This movie reminded me a lot of Michel Gondry’s Science of Sleep, which I saw here last year in the same theater, with its absurdity and the similar sense of suspended reality. What I really like about both those films is that no matter how far off the map you go, it always points back to reality and real emotions. Is that something that was important to maintain?
J.J. Lask: I think you always have to get back to reality somehow.
I liked the comment you made at the Q&A where you said the film is basically about one moment in a relationship, and that everything else echoes out from that.
JJL: Exactly. It’s always the non-moments in life that you remember the most. When you didn’t call that girl or you met a girl at the party but then you never saw her again… And it’s those little moments in life that to me are the most important and the most fun to explore. Not graduating college… those are supposed to be the big moments but when you look back they’re really not.
Can you talk a little about the story of the film? It started as a novel…
JJL: Yeah, I wrote the book. It took five years to write partly because I work. I go to work every day to edit commercials. And with that kind of job you don’t get a lot of time to write. I always wanted to make movies so after the book came out I was trying to adapt it into a film and that’s when this idea came about.
To basically just skew it and split it…
JJL: Yeah, in an effort to do something really original and different.
So you assembled a cast and some money and started making the movie, and from what I heard you worked mostly without a script?
JJL: Yeah. The actors read the book, then we did rehearsals where I would ask them questions and they would answer the questions based on the book. We rehearsed about five times with every actor, and then we put the actors together or separately in the different interview settings. We did that for about seven days. Then we took six months and edited all that together.
So you shot everything flat and then went back and chopped it up. That makes sense, because I was wondering how you could possibly keep that story line organized in your head.
JJL: Yeah, no way. We chopped it all up and then started scripting scenes based on the book and the interviews as well as new scenes based purely on the interviews that have nothing to do with what’s in the book.
How did you cast this movie?
JJL: Well, Kevin Corrigan [Lask’s alter-ego in the film] was never cast. He’s been a friend for a long time, and he was always going to be involved with the project. So having him on board lent some legitimacy and helped us get other people involved. But when you’re depending on seven lead actors, because it is an ensemble piece, even though Aaron Ruell [a barely recognizable Kip from Napoleon Dynamite] is the main character, all of those actors and characters are important.
You also shot a lot on real locations. Is that more of a challenge?
JJL: Ben Strikeman [the director of photography] and I spent a lot of time looking for locations that would work. Then Jennifer Dagen, our set designer, did a phenomenal job creating Serra’s apartment. We watched a lot of Woody Allen films, to try and emulate some of the authenticity that he gets creating people’s apartments. We didn’t want a set. The only set we built was the talk-show set.
And where did you get some of these props that we see throughout the movie? [The film is full of recently outdated items like disk drive Macs, answering machines, beepers, etc.] On eBay?
JJL: Yeah, we scoured eBay and TekServe in New York City. eBay makes filmmaking easier.
This is your first film and your first film festival – what has your experience with Sundance been so far?
JJL: First of all, it’s an honor to be here. People are now saying, “J.J. Lask, filmmaker, blah, blah, blah.” Well that’s a pretty big title. I have an enormous respect for film as an art form and I don’t really consider myself a “filmmaker” yet, because I think that’s a title you have to earn. I just made one small movie. I’ve seen a lot of great movies where that person’s second movie is crap and that filmmaker title gets snatched back from them very fast. So I’m not going to call myself a filmmaker just yet. If I can get two or three or even four that people like then I’ll start to think of myself as a filmmaker but for right now I still consider myself a little, lowly writer.
Well, I have bad news for you, you’re not making it any easier on yourself when you make something this fresh and this personal and this original. Then you have to start all over from scratch?
JJL: I know. And then when you add Whoopi Goldberg and Danny DeVito into the next one…
You’re just going to go ahead and put that out there right now?
JJL: Yeah, I’m looking to make a Danny DeVito vehicle. Maybe something with Bernie Mac…
But is it nice, after all that work, to bring the film here and get a good reception? Because you got a very warm reception today.
JJL: It’s humbling. I was very nervous, but it makes you want to work harder. I’ve worked really hard. Basically every weekend for the last 12 years, trying to learn editing and the language of film, on top of being a writer. And I think if you want to avoid your second film being crap, then you have to be prepared to work really hard, and I’m going to do that.
-- Bryan Whitefield
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