Archive for the ‘Slamdance’ Category
Filed under: Slamdance, Theatrical Reviews
Animal Kingdom is a taut, Australian crime drama that some might accuse of being slow, but I accuse of taking the time to fully flesh out and develop characters. Crime films these days, especially in America, have a car chase, an explosion, or a gun battle every 2.5 minutes. There’s an entire mathematical formula developed for it. Okay, not really, but Stephen Hawking could probably generate one. You’re lucky if you fully understand a character these days, or really appreciate why they are heroic or creepy.
Director David Michod has created a well-paced, dark and moody thriller with this film, and the main reason it works is because it’s deliberately slowed down so you can peek inside the train cars that would normally be racing by, which lets you appreciate the performances from all of the actors, and particularly Jacki Weaver, who is pictured above. Sharp-eyed readers might recognize her as Minnie from 1975’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, but in Animal Kingdom she’s a ruthless and lethal matriarch of a crime family.
Filed under: Sundance, Slamdance, Festival Reports
Celebrity Sightings: The sightings become slim to none when any festival rounds up, so I’ll leave you with just two: First, Kevin Zegers — the Transamerica star is one of the leads in the stuck-on-a-ski-lift flick Frozen. And second, E!Online pits Naomi Watts and Katie Holmes in a winter fashion showdown.
Deals: Even though the celebs wave sayonara, the money is still changing hands. With the deal silence broken, Variety reports that The Weinstein Co. has grabbed Blue Valentine and is zeroing in on The Tillman Story. And according to Screen Daily, Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me should get bought soon.
Our Coverage: On Friday we got a new review and interview. First up, Kevin Kelly reviewed Exit Through the Gift Shop and wrote: “this is a film I wouldn’t have missed for the world, and it was my favorite documentary at Sundance this year, even if we didn’t get a hint as to Banksy’s real identity.” Kevin also sat down with the Duplass Brothers for a video chat about their Sundance pleaser Cyrus.
It might look like we’re slowing down, but there’s a slew more on the way — lead by a nice video chat with Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine — you know, the guys from Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, and the men from Firefly/Dollhouse and Repear, respectively.
Continue reading Sundance in 60 Seconds: Friday, January 29, 2010
Filed under: Documentary, Slamdance, Exhibition, Posters
As you all know, alongside Sundance there’s Slamdance, and Cinematical has just received this exclusive poster for William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, which is part of Slamdance’s Documentary Competition. Yony Leyser’s doc details Burroughs’ life as a Beat author and icon, and includes not only never-before-seen footage, but also a narration by Peter Weller, a soundtrack by Sonic Youth and the Patti Smith Group, and interviews with a whole lot of interesting folks like John Waters, Patti Smith, David Cronenberg, Amiri Baraka, Gus Van Sant… You can see the whole list on the poster in the gallery below, which includes not only the interview list, but of course — a cat. As fans know: “A cat’s rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. “
Burroughs at Slamdance + Ginsberg at Sundance … it’s a good, Beat-filled month to be in Utah. The film is screening Friday, January 22, 5:30 PM at the Main Screening Room, and Wednesday, January 27, 7:30 PM at the Gallery Screening Room.
Check out the full synopsis after the jump.
Gallery: William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: ‘William S. Burroughs: A Man Within’ Poster
Filed under: Independent, Slamdance, Exhibition
I’ve never been to Sundance, but I have seen the episode of Entourage where Queen’s Boulevard premieres at the film festival, which I do believe makes me an expert who can publicly bemoan how commercial the once independent fest has become. Okay, so maybe it doesn’t, but even an outsider like me can see Sundance doesn’t exactly represent what genuine independent cinema is like. And it seems the folks who run the Slamdance Film Festival every year would agree.
So if you happen to be in Park City, Utah in January between the 21st and the 28th, you might want to check out the Slamdance lineup below for some more strictly independent cinema, as opposed to the high-profile indies that seem to dominate the Sundance roster these days. You may recall that Slamdance was the fest that brought a little home video experiment called Paranormal Activity to the attention of the world. Who knows, maybe one of the titles below will someday dethrone it as the most profitable movie ever made.
Doubtful, but still worth a shot.
Continue reading A Look at Slamdance’s 2010 Comeptition Lineup
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Sundance, Slamdance, Fandom, Trailers and Clips
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Welcome to a new series here at Cinematical where we’ll shine a spotlight on different films premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in January.
A couple years ago I was fortunate to catch a short film called The Shirt by an up-and-coming director named Drake Doremus. At the time I remember my friend telling me that Doremus was destined to go on to bigger and better things, and one look at the somewhat dry, awkward-yet-endearing sense of humor in The Shirt was enough proof to suggest my friend was right. Cut to 2009 and Doremus’ new feature film Douchebag was just accepted to screen in competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival — this coming only one year since his last film, Spooner, premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. Needless to say, Drake Doremus is a name you’re about to become a lot more familiar with.
One thing I love about Drake is it’s completely obvious that he’s a hopeless romantic. While a bit frenzied and hilarious, all of his films feature a love story at their core, and Douchebag appears to be no different. We caught up with Drake shortly after the Sundance lineup was announced to ask him a few questions about his film.
Cinematical: Give us the “dude on the street” description of your film?
Drake Doremus: Two brothers who hate each other’s guts go on a road trip to find the younger brother’s fifth grade girlfriend.
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Sundance, Slamdance, Fandom, Trailers and Clips
Welcome to a new series here at Cinematical where we’ll shine a spotlight on different films premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in January.
A couple years ago I was fortunate to catch a short film called The Shirt by an up-and-coming director named Drake Doremus. At the time I remember my friend telling me that Doremus was destined to go on to bigger and better things, and one look at the somewhat dry, awkward-yet-endearing sense of humor in The Shirt was enough proof to suggest my friend was right. Cut to 2009 and Doremus’ new feature film Douchebag was just accepted to screen in competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival — this coming only one year since his last film, Spooner, premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. Needless to say, Drake Doremus is a name you’re about to become a lot more familiar with.
One thing I love about Drake is it’s completely obvious that he’s a hopeless romantic. While a bit frenzied and hilarious, all of his films feature a love story at their core, and Douchebag appears to be no different. We caught up with Drake shortly after the Sundance lineup was announced to ask him a few questions about his film.
Cinematical: Give us the “dude on the street” description of your film?
Drake Doremus: Two brothers who hate each other’s guts go on a road trip to find the younger brother’s fifth grade girlfriend.
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Sundance, Slamdance, Fandom, Trailers and Clips
Welcome to a new series here at Cinematical where we’ll shine a spotlight on different films premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in January.
A couple years ago I was fortunate to catch a short film called The Shirt by an up-and-coming director named Drake Doremus. At the time I remember my friend telling me that Doremus was destined to go on to bigger and better things, and one look at the somewhat dry, awkward-yet-endearing sense of humor in The Shirt was enough proof to suggest my friend was right. Cut to 2009 and Doremus’ new feature film Douchebag was just accepted to screen in competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival — this coming only one year since his last film, Spooner, premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. Needless to say, Drake Doremus is a name you’re about to become a lot more familiar with.
One thing I love about Drake is it’s completely obvious that he’s a hopeless romantic. While a bit frenzied and hilarious, all of his films feature a love story at their core, and Douchebag appears to be no different. We caught up with Drake shortly after the Sundance lineup was announced to ask him a few questions about his film.
Cinematical: Give us the “dude on the street” description of your film?
Drake Doremus: Two brothers who hate each other’s guts go on a road trip to find the younger brother’s fifth grade girlfriend.
Filed under: Slamdance, Exhibition
Sundance isn’t the only festival in Park City, Utah that brings in the audiences every January. There’s also Slamdance, the small fest “by the filmmakers, for the filmmakers,” for first-time feature directors making the most of limited budgets. It’s full of a lot of fun indie entertainment, and some great documentaries like 2008’s Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father. As Variety reports, this year there are ten narrative and eight documentary features, which will run from January 21-28.
This year has the usual new filmmakers, plus an added bonus of premiering Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything Is Going Fine. On top of that, the director will participate in their new Filmmaker Summit inviting “all filmmakers, both in Park City and virtually, to collectively craft a new charter for filmmaking, storytelling and content distribution, with and by the global filmmaking community.”
But the big news is the list of films. The roster includes Drones, the feature I’ve been dying to see, cooked up by Amber Benson and Adam Busch (Tara and Warren on Buffy, who are a real-life couple), The Scenesters, a dark comedy starring Sherilyn Fenn, and Cummings Farm, a flick about a group of people who try to achieve enlightenment through group sex. On the documentary side of things, there are features ranging in topics from Jelly Bellys and Jihads to William Burroughs — a little something for everyone.
Hit the jump for the entire list.
Filed under: Sundance, Slamdance, From the Editor’s Desk
You’ve already read the 378,000 posts we filed before, during and after this year’s Sundance Film Festival, but now I’m back to let you know what we left on the cutting room floor! What was going on when the Cinematical team wasn’t watching movies or writing about them? Where were we, who were we with and why did someone bring a farm animal with them? Fear not, I’m kidding — no farm animals were brought to Sundance (and if they were, whoever brought them kept the things hidden pretty well). So here’s some of what was left out of our coverage:
– While watching a Slamdance screener at one in the morning, Erik got pissed off, woke up James and asked him why films set in New York City never feature characters who have New York accents, with the exception of racist cops, gangsters or angry taxi drivers. James agreed. Erik then went off on Boston, and how every film set in Boston needs to feature the Bahston accent — but, for some reason, the New York accent always gets dissed. James and Erik agreed to write Spider-Man Begins, featuring Peter Parker with a thick New York accent (he grew up in Queens, after all).
– At four in the morning at some point over the weekend, James woke up Erik to tell him he was snoring. Erik spazzed out because he thought he was being mugged by a giant. From then on out — and because of his freakishly large shadow — James referred to himself as the Cloverfield monster whenever he had a few drinks in him. In fact, while outside on a balcony with Michael Pitt, James actually referred to himself as the Cloverfield monster. Everyone laughed.
Continue reading From the Editor’s Desk: Sundance Unrated Director’s Cut Special Awesome Edition
Filed under: Horror, Independent, Sundance, Slamdance, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie
When it comes to mockumentary type films, there are basically two kinds: good and bad; there’s just not a lot of middle-ground with this particular type of filmmaking. Paranormal Activity, which showed at Slamdance, the wild and crazy drunk cousin to the Sundance Film Festival, falls squarely into the “good” camp — particularly if your definition of “good” includes “will scare the pants off you” and “I had to sleep with the lights on after watching it.”
The central idea of the film is that it purports to show actual footage of, well, paranormal activity, in the home of the two protagonists, Katie and Micah, who are living their normal lives until weird things begin happening in their home. Katie, who believes she’s been haunted by an invisible, malevolent being since childhood, fears it’s followed her to her new home. Micah isn’t quite convinced there’s anything unexplainable going on, but he purchases a video camera to record their room at night, in an attempt to capture on film any paranormal activity and try to make sense of it. When the camera actually does capture some weird happenings, Micah is at first rather excited by what they have on film; as things escalate, through, both Katie and Micah fear that the entity haunting Katie could turn violent — or even deadly.
