Given the Labor Day weekend, most of this week’s high-profile home-video releases are TV box sets timed to promote the new seasons of such returning favorites as The Good Wife and Grey’s Anatomy . That doesn’t mean film lovers are out of luck: there are new editions of beloved comedies from two very different directors who both managed to be brand names in their chosen fields. HIGH: The Navigator: Ultimate Edition (Kino Classics; $29.95 DVD/$34.95 Blu-Ray) Who’s Responsible: Directed by Buster Keaton and Donald Crisp from a story by Clyde Bruckman, Joseph Mitchell and Jean Havez; starring Keaton and Kathryn McGuire. What It’s All About: Keaton stars as the rich and thoroughly useless Rollo Treadway, who has his chauffeur drive him across the street so he can propose to the equally wealthy and spoiled Betsy O’Brien (McGuire). She turns him down, but through a series of complicated circumstances, the two of them find themselves alone on a ship in the middle of the Pacific. Things start out disastrously — she boils a giant pot of water to cook one egg — but they figure out a way to survive, just in time to face attack by angry islanders. Why It’s Schmancy: Academics, list-makers and cinematic know-it-alls of every stripe champion Keaton’s The General as one of the greatest silent comedies ever made, but I’ve always preferred this 1924 slapstick-heavy nautical epic. From the early scenes of the two young dilettantes trying to figure out who else is on the boat to Keaton’s underwater antics in a pre-SCUBA diving suit — which he later turns into a raft — The Navigator shows the legendary director in top form and makes the perfect movie to show to someone who’s never seen a silent movie before. Why You Should Buy It (Again): The “Ultimate Edition” marks the Blu-Ray debut of this classic, although both the Blu-Ray and the DVD releases include the HD master from the original 35mm negative, tinted to the filmmaker’s specifications. Both editions also include an orchestral score by Robert Israel, a featurette on the making of the film and Keaton’s ongoing fascination with boats as a source of comedy. Feature-length audio commentary by silent film historians Robert Arkus and Yair Solan, a photo gallery, and the audio of “Asleep in the Deep,” a 1913 hit song referenced in the film, gives this package some real depth. LOW: Zotz! (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment; $20.95 DVD) Who’s Responsible: Directed by William Castle, written by Ray Russell, based on the novel by Walter Karig; starring Tom Poston, Jim Backus, Margaret Dumont. What It’s All About: College professor Jonathan Jones (Poston) finds an ancient amulet and discovers that he can use it to slow down time, cause great pain and even (when it’s pointed at someone and the title of the film is uttered) kill people. Jones tries to pass the talisman along to the Department of Defense, but the government agents think he’s nuts. The Soviets, however, want to get their hands on it, and wackiness ensues. Why It’s Fun: Zotz! marked something of a departure for Castle, best known for thrillers and horror movies like The Tingler , The House on Haunted Hill , Homicidal and 13 Ghosts . What really made Castle famous was his love of gimmicks, whether it was insuring his audiences against death by fright, wiring theater seats to buzz unsuspecting patrons or unleashing a giant inflatable skeleton to fly through the theater. With Zotz!, he toned things down a bit, merely handing out replica medallions to audience members. Still, it’s a silly and entertaining comedy, featuring a rare lead role for legendary TV second banana Poston, best known as the doofus foil to Bob Newhart on his various hit sitcoms. Why You Should Buy It (Again): Sony is offering the film through its movies-on-demand (i.e., they don’t make it until you buy it) label “Choice Collection,” which in this case means there aren’t any extras. If you’re interested in Castle, you should instead spring for the William Castle Film Collection box set, which features Zotz! and several other Castle classics as well as a great documentary on the huckster filmmaker: Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story . Alonso Duralde has written about film for The Wrap , Salon and MSNBC.com. He also co-hosts the Linoleum Knife podcast and regularly appears on What The Flick?! (The Young Turks Network) . He is a senior programmer for the Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles and a pre-screener for the Sundance Film Festival. He also the author of two books: Have Yourself A Movie Little Christmas (Limelight Editions) and 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men (Advocate Books). Follow Alonso Duralde on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Also in Tuesday morning’s round-up of news briefs, a 3-D newcomer tops the weekend’s Specialty Box Office among newbies. Roman Coppola ‘s second directorial effort with Charlie Sheen is headed to theaters. And, the Locarno Film Festival appoints a new Artistic Director following the sudden departure of its former head. Venice Golden Lion Watch at Festival Midpoint: The Master Dominates Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is emerging as the favorite half-way through the Venice Film Festival. Of the eight films that have officially screened, the post-war “relationship opus set agains the backdrop of a religion that resembles Scientology has received the best score in a festival poll of critics,” Deadline reports . Second Hobbit Movie Re-Named The third installment in the upcoming Hobbit movie trilogy, The Hobbit: There and Back Again will be released worldwide in July, 2014. That will be only seven months after the second film will be released. The second installment also has a new title, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug arriving December 13, 2013. It was originally titled There and Back Again . The first movie, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens December 14th of this year, Reuters reports . Specialty Box Office: Flying Swords 3-D Tops Newcomers; Samsara , Sleepwalk with Me Expand Strong New specialty movies mostly coasted through the holiday weekend, with newcomers ranging from fairly solid to weak in their Labor Day bows. Indomina Releasing’s IMAX 3D opener Flying Swords of Dragon Gate soared to the top of the pack with a decent $8,333 average for its opening in 15 locations, while Millennium’s Little Birds launched in one theater, grossing $8,314, Deadline reports . Roman Coppola’s Charles Swan III Heads to Theaters Roman Coppola’s A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III starring Charlie Sheen will roll out in theaters in February. NYC-based A24 picked up rights to the film, while digital platform FilmBuff will handle domestic digital distribution. Set in L.A. the comedy follows a graphic designer (Sheen) whose breaks and needs find repair after his girlfriend leaves him, TOH reports . Locarno Names Italian Journalist as New Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian, an Italian journalist, author and festival programmer will take over as the Locarno Film Festival’s Artistic Director following the sudden departure of Olivier Pere on August 27th, THR reports .
Worlds collide in the raunchy comedy For A Good Time, Call… , the sweet and salty tale of two reluctant roommates ( Ari Graynor and Lauren Anne Miller) tentatively building a friendship as they embark on a phone sex business venture together. It’s a long-awaited starring vehicle for Graynor and Miller and a warmly funny offering in the current wave of raunchy R-rated female-driven comedies – and For A Good Time, Call… also marks the anticipated debut of shorts filmmaker Jamie Travis ( The Patterns Trilogy , The Saddest Boy in the World ), who here earns the distinction of inspiring Justin Long ‘s performance in the film and getting to direct Kevin Smith jerking off in his feature debut. All of the above may surprise those who’ve followed Travis’s work over the past decade, during which time the Toronto-based filmmaker burst onto the film festival scene with award-winning, impeccably-crafted short films (highly recommended and viewable here ) that dealt effectively in nostalgic sensibilities, a Wes Anderson-like mise en scene, and a stylistic formalism largely absent from his fast-talking lady comedy. But after years of searching for the right project, Travis fell for the script by real life friends Miller and Katie Anne Naylon and subsequently launched into his first feature on an incredibly packed 16-day shooting schedule. After premiering at Sundance and debuting in limited release this weekend, For a Good Time, Call… expands to additional cities on September 7. “I honestly don’t know how to direct a movie unless I love it,” Travis offered, looking back on the film. “I feel like that love needs to drive you, and without it what are you doing?” I fell in love with your Patterns trilogy and your short films, so when I heard that you were directing For A Good Time, Call… I was very intrigued — I’d been wondering when we’d see a feature from you. You must have been surprised that I was making what people will refer to as a “phone sex comedy!” It definitely wasn’t the kind of film I thought I was going to direct. I thought of myself as directing something I wrote myself because all of my short films, including the Patterns trilogy, are written from a personal place. So it was a great surprise when I read the script. Knowing it was a phone sex comedy, I didn’t know what to think. I was so pleasantly surprised by how sweet it is, and how it shows female friendship in a way I don’t think enough movies show. It took a vehicle like phone sex and hung female friendship on it in such a grounded way. I just loved it, so I couldn’t say no! You must have been reading a lot of scripts over the years. Yeah – I had been reading so many scripts, and had gotten a lot of interest from American agents and eventually signed with WME, all from my films being at the Toronto Film Festival and Sundance. And I found that in particular it was The Saddest Boy in the World that people could see how I could kind of go in a commercial direction from that. The Patterns Trilogy is pretty out there; I feel like that’s for a very specific kind of audience, which apparently is you, Jen Yamato. It is! But it’s funny, I had been reading scripts for five or six years and hadn’t taken a meeting on anything. There was nothing I was interested in, I was growing increasingly skeptical that I was ever going to direct someone else’s script, and then I read this one and fell in love with it. It was just so funny to me, it bounced off the page in a way that I hadn’t experienced reading other people’s scripts. I immediately knew that I was the right person to direct it. I felt like I got it, and I also could see a really bad version of the movie in the hands of the wrong person who didn’t really get it, and I felt like I got it. I immediately connected it to these great ‘80s movies with Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn — Outrageous Fortune is a particular favorite of mine — and I loved that there’s a fine line of groundedness and also camp, a full-on female spirit. There’s a tricky tone to nail here. It’s a very sweet story about friendship between women, but it’s also raunchy, and that so much better reflects what real women are like than historically most movies about or for women have been. I mainly spend my time with girls — or more correctly, women — and my girlfriends talk dirty! They are brutally honest. And you’re right, I never see that in movies in a way that feels authentic to me. This script was written by two best friends, Lauren Miller and Katie Naylon, and they put so much of themselves into this script. You could really feel that, and it informed the whole project that it was loosely based on their real relationship. There’s this great quote from you, where the story goes that as you were lobbying for the directing job, you told Katie and Lauren, “You cannot let a straight man direct this movie.” [Laughs] I mean, certainly there are other people who could have directed this movie, I’m sure. But I did feel that as a gay man, and I don’t want to speak for all gay men, I have a certain reverence for women that is completely uncomplicated by sexuality or sexual tension. And I felt like that’s the spirit the film needed. It’s funny, because all the girls in this film — Ari, Lauren, and Katie, the writer — they all have their gay BFFs, and I felt like that perspective of reverence for women and for the kind of truthful aspects of female relationships — and I feel like I really get female relationships — I feel like a lot of that access comes because I am a gay man. You’re right — watching the film, I realized how so many of these scenes of phone sex or even just Katie and Lauren becoming close could easily have gone in another direction. That was my fear. This whole film was kind of a high wire act in tone. How do we have fun and keep it funny and keep it light and raunchy, but also find a way to keep the focus on the friendship between the girls? When I read the script I could see that someone, maybe a straight man, could read it in a whole other way, and could aim to titillate the audience or objectify the girls in their phone sex calls, and I hated that version of the movie in my mind. So I think I used this whole “a gay man must direct this movie” as a bit of a ploy to get the job, but at the same time it was my way of saying you guys have a sensitive tone here, and it would be very easy for it to go off the grid. But I’m sure there are many straight men out there who have great insight into female relationships. For me, it’s something I see among the gay men that I know; we just love women in a way that’s really uncomplicated. Speaking of which, I love the story of how Justin Long “found” his character. He plays Katie and Lauren’s mutual best friend, and after a conversation with you he decided he’d like to model the character on… you. How did you feel about that? Are you kidding me, I felt great about it! I basically wanted that, deep down in my subconscious mind. When that was the direction he wanted to take it in, I was very pleased. We had been talking about how to keep the character away from the stereotypical gay character that we see, and for me the most important part was not sexualizing the character as the lascivious gay man who’s chasing tail — because I’ve never been that guy, and those are not the gay men that I’m attracted to as friends or otherwise. I like the wholesomeness of [the character] — he has his own thing, he’s a budding comedian, and his real thrust in the film is trying to get his two best friends to be friends, which is a very human impulse to me. I remember we were having our first phone conversation and we were talking about the character and he might have mentioned hair extensions at one point and I was like, “Oh my God dear, no!” I think as soon as I responded to whatever he said about hair extensions he caught onto my voice and told me he liked the quality of my voice. And from then on he was following me around on set on the first day kind of mimicking my physical behavior, which was a little uncomfortable but I was also so busy making the film in the scenes that he was not in that I didn’t have enough time to feel terribly weird. But I think deep down in my subconscious it was very healthy for my ego. [Laughs] When you watch Justin’s scenes, do you recognize something familiar? It’s funny because I do see some of myself onscreen in him, and how could you not like that as a director? That calls to mind another tidbit about the production, which is that you shot it on an insanely fast schedule — something like 16 days? I know! It’s crazy. It was 16 days. My first short film, Why the Anderson Children Didn’t Come To Dinner , is on Vimeo, and that was a 16 minute film that I shot in 16 days. So here I am shooting a 90-minute feature in 16 days – I have never worked that quickly, but you do what you need to do to tell the story. I knew that my usual style of filmmaking, which is very visual and the directorial voice is very present — I knew that I couldn’t just plunk my so-called trademark aesthetic on this movie. It had to be looser, and the strength of the movie was going to be on the performances and the comedy so we had to take a really simplified style to it because otherwise we wouldn’t have a movie! You may notice there aren’t so many wide shots in the movie, and that’s because when you have a scene between two people and you have 20 minutes to shoot it, the close-ups, in a comedy like this where it’s all about engaging the audience with the characters, are important. So there were a lot of sacrifices made to make this film in 16 days, but at the same time the 16-day schedule forced us to have this indie spirit. We were making this film which, based on its synopsis, is really a commercial comedy but it was made in a very indie way and I think that informs our approach and our spirit. I see that everyone was loving what they were doing in this film and I think that’s important. That separates it from the average studio comedy. Has it been tempting to make a feature that is more in the voice of your short films, the style that had become your signature? The thing is, I’m also bored with my own voice! I’m still doing what I love and what feels natural to me, and I do see a lot of my voice in For A Good Time, Call… — but every project is different. For example, there’s a project that I’m in love with right now where there’s a lot of room for my voice and it is kind of a perfect balance between a formal, stylized world and we’re inside the head of a really interesting, very special teenage character. Is it tempting to do something like I’ve done in the past? I feel like I want to meet in the middle. I want to write it myself, and writing is the hardest and most emotional part of the process for me. I’ve really found a comfortable nook in directing; my confidence has really grown and if I love a project and know how I want to execute it, it feels very natural to me. So I’m not at a point where I want to write right now. I’m getting a lot of opportunities, reading really great scripts, and had such a good experience working with collaborators so I’m following that path. But on the other hand I would never choose a project for money or do a completely broad studio comedy. If it doesn’t engage me on the page, I don’t consider it. And I don’t really consider what I do a job; I’m able to make a living in commercials and I love making commercials, and it enables me to not have to make my filmmaking decisions based on money. Five years from now I’ll probably be directing Mission to Mars 5 or something and maybe we’ll talk again, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. [Laughs] I honestly don’t know how to direct a movie unless I love it. I feel like that love needs to drive you, and without it what are you doing? That said, Jamie Travis’s Mission to Mars 5 would be the most beautiful installment of the franchise. [Laughs] That’s the thing — I do get to jump outside my own style in commercials, and if I got a 30-second commercial that was Mission to Mars -esque I would take it on and be so excited about it. But films are different; you put yourself into it so much, and I think there are only so many film projects that a director can make in their life. You have to be careful about your decisions. After Sundance, there were opportunities for sex comedies and it was like, well, hold on — I’m not a sex comedy director. I’m just a director. And while I see myself directing horror films or comedies or thrillers in the future, I really do love the idea of exploring different genres, it’s all about the first experience of reading the script. If it’s not the equivalent of reading a piece of literature, I’m not even going to consider it. It’s fun, as a longtime Jamie Travis fan, to see your world and the raunchy Judd Apatowian R-rated comedy world collide as it does particularly in your cameos. The cameos were a combination of our amazing casting directors in LA and our personal relationships. Obviously we got Seth because he is Lauren’s husband, and Kevin has a relationship with Lauren and Seth. To give you a sense, when I first came down to LA I was living with Lauren and Seth. This was a low-budget movie — I was the house guest who wouldn’t leave, so there was a real spirit there of everyone helping each other out and figuring out this movie. What was it like, in your big first feature, to direct Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen jerking off? Everyone was jerking off in this movie! Working with Seth was amazing — the cameos in particular were very much improvised. A lot of this movie, because we shot in 16 days, is not as improvised as you’d think. But the cameos were very much so. Seth is a brilliant comedic actor and you never know what he’s going to say. He always says something better than you could possibly imagine and takes it to places you didn’t see it going. And Kevin Smith, he came to set for I think three hours one day — we sat him down in the car and Ari was in the back seat saying her lines and I was talking to him through a walkie. What notes do you possibly give Kevin Smith as he’s, shall we say, in flagrante? He just invented it on the spot! In those situations where you’re working with comedic minds like that, it’s more like taking the elements of what they said and trying to refine it or combine the great thing they said here with the great thing they said there. But really with them and Ken Marino and Martha MacIsaac, it’s really about letting them go and shooting and shooting. That’s what we did, and it worked out for us. For A Good Time, Call… is in limited release. Watch Jamie Travis’s Patterns 3 , via Vimeo: Patterns 3 from Jamie Travis on Vimeo . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Michael Clarke Duncan, best known for his Academy Award-nominated turn as the prison inmate John Coffey in The Green Mile , died Monday weeks after suffering a heart attack on July 13. Duncan had been hospitalized since the attack, with fiancee Omarosa Manigault confirming his passing in a statement today. Duncan began his career as a celebrity bodyguard before breaking into Hollywood with roles like Bear in Armageddon and Coffey in The Green Mile which capitalized on his imposing stature, booming voice, and often gentle demeanor; after earning numerous accolades for his performance opposite Tom Hanks in the Frank Darabont film, Duncan went on to notable roles in films like The Whole Nine Yards , Planet of the Apes , The Scorpion King , Daredevil , Sin City , and The Island . Here’s a look back at Duncan’s work in The Green Mile . I loved watching Duncan in lighter moments – there was something wonderfully warm about him, a twinkle in his eye that hinted he was having a blast within every scene. Even on the red carpet, as in this completely random May 2012 interview from YouTube revealing that he’d never had a drink in his life, that spirit was infectious. [ NY Daily News ]
The Telluride Film Festival offers a bright spotlight, showcasing a small selection of films over Labor Day weekend just as summer movies give way to a more serious season of cinema. Later this year, moviegoers will be talking about Bill Murray as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Marion Cotillard as a woman who loses her legs to a killer whale and even a small town story starring Zac Efron as an aspiring NASCAR racer and Dennis Quaid as his father, an Iowa farmer. Those three films – Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson , Jacques Audiard ‘s Rust and Bone and Ramin Bahrani’s At Any Price – lead a roster of acclaimed and anticipated new movies that will screen at this weekend’s tony Telluride Film Festival. Telluride’s annual lineup is famously revealed just as attendees arrive in the Colorado mountain town for the four-day event. Even so Gary Meyer, one of the heads of the festival, privately previewed the lineup for a few journalists earlier this week and then swore them to secrecy. Telluride attendees consider movies sacred. Spoilers are frowned upon. “So, what do you think?” Meyer asked as he detailed the lineup for the 39th annual festival. “It was pretty much down to the wire,” he added about this year’s roster. He also teased that he and festival directors Tom Luddy and Julie Huntsinger have a surprise screening up their sleeves. It will screen in a still to be named slot some time between tomorrow and Labor Day. So now it can be revealed that even as it screens in the Venice Fest this weekend the anticipated American indie At Any Price will be unveiled in Telluride before heading to the Toronto International Film Festival next week. Filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has created a family drama that also explores globalization and Big Agriculture. In addition to Quaid and Efron, the film stars Heather Graham and Kim Dickens. Bahrani is expected to fly in from Venice in time for this weekend’s showings of the film here in Colorado. Also making the trek from Italy to Telluride will be French filmmaker Xavier Giannoli. His latest is described by the Telluride festival as a Kafkaesque tale. In Gianoli’s latest, Superstar , top name French actor Kad Merad plays the everyman. One day he wakes and heads to work only to discover that he’s famous. He has no idea why people are asking for his autograph and snapping his photo with their mobile phones while he rides to work on the Paris Metro. The comedy also stars Cecile de France who gained domestic attention for her turn in last year’s Dardenne Brothers drama, The Kid With A Bike . Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson was a safe bet for Telluride lineup prognosticators. It stars local Laura Linney, a festival fixture. In the film she stars alongside Bill Murray, appearing as FDR’s younger, distant cousin, Margaret Suckley. Linney’s character guides guests – in this case the King and Queen of England in 1939 – at Roosevelt’s residence in rural New York State and also falls for FDR. The new film will next head to the Toronto Film Festival. Sally Potter’s Ginger and Rosa will make the same journey. It stars Elle Fanning and Alice Englert as best friends in the 60s growing up and experiencing the anxieties and excitement of the era. The cast is rounded out by Timothy Spall, Oliver Platt, Annette Bening, Alessandro Nivola and Christina Hendricks. Also on tap are Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha starring Greta Gerwig and Michael Winterbottom’s Everyday with Shirley Henderson. Both will also go from Telluride to the Toronto fest next week. Telluride will pay tribute to a pair of European actors this weekend. Marion Cotillard will be honored and appear here alongside her latest, Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone from this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Also acclaimed at the French fest this year was Mads Mikkelsen. He turned heads for his starring role in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt and has also been on the fest circuit in Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair . Both films will screen in Telluride this weekend as festival salutes the Danish leading man. About three dozen new feature films will screen at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend, complemented by classic and retrospective entries, as well as short films, film oddities and even some Looney Tunes cartoons in honor of the 100th anniversary of director Chuck Jones’ birth. The 39th Telluride Film Festival Premieres Lineup : The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark, 2012) Amour (Michael Haneke, Austria, 2012) At Any Price (Ramin Bahrani, US, 2012) The Attack (Ziad Doueiri, Lebanon/France, 2012) Barbara (Christian Petzold, Germany, 2012) Breaking the Frame (Marielle Nitoslawska, Canada, 2012) Carriere 250 Meters (Juan Carlos Rulfo, Mexico, 2012) Celluloid Man: A Film on P.K. Nair (Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, India, 2012) Cinema Jenin (Marcus Vetter, Germany/Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory, 2012) Doueiri , Lebanon/France, 2012) The Central Park Five (Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon, US, 2012) Everyday (Michael Winterbottom, UK, 2012) Frances Ha (Baumbach, US, 2012) Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen (Gyorgy Palfi, Hungary, 2012) The Gatekeepers (Dror Moreh, Israel, 2012) Ginger and Rosa (d. Sally Potter, England., 2012) The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark, 2012) Hyde Park on Hudson (Roger Mitchell, US, 2012) In Search of Emak Bakia (Oskar Alegria, Spain, 2012) Jonathan Miller (David Thompson, UK, 2012) Journal de France (Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougaret, France, 2012) The Iceman (Ariel Vroman, US, 2012) Love, Marilyn (Liz Garbus, US, 2012) Me and Me Dad (Katrine Boorman, UK, 2012) Midnight’s Children (Deepa Mehta, Canada/Sri-Lanka, 2012) Mikis Theodorakis, Composer (Klaus Salge and Asteris Kutulas, Germany, 2012) No (Pablo Larrain, Chile, 2012) On Borrowed Time (David Bradbury, Australia, 2012) Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl, Austria, 2012) Piazza Fontana (Marco Tullio Giordana, Italy, 2012) Pilgrim Hill (Gerard Barrett, Ireland, 2012) A Royal Affair (Nikolaj Arcel, Denmark, 2012) Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard, France, 2012) The Sapphires (Wayne Blair, Australia, 2012) Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, Canada, 2012) Superstar (Xavier Giannoli, France, 2012) Wadjda (Haifaa Al Mansour, Saudi Arabia, 2012) What is this Film Called Love? (Mark Cousins, Ireland/Mexico, 2012) The Telluride Film Festival takes place August 31-September 3. Follow Eugene Hernandez on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Also in Wednesday afternoon’s round-up of news briefs, Rialto Pictures picks up theatrical rights to French company StudioCanal’s massive library for the U.S. Indie Eden heads to theaters. Animation distributor has Oscar ambitions for several titles. And “Digital Hollywood” producer is dead of apparent suicide. Rialto Pictures Acquires U.S. Theatrical Rights to France’s StudioCanal’s Massive Library The New York-based company which specializes in classic film re-releases, celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, has signed a 3 year agreement with StudioCanal to handle the U.S. theatrical distribution of over 2,000 international classics owned by the French media giant. The film library is one of the largest in the world, includes classic films by Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Claude Chabrol, Abel Gance, Vittorio De Sica, Alain Resnais, Mike Nichols, Jacques Tati, Akira Kurosawa, Bertrand Tavernier, Orson Welles, and many others. Megan Griffith’s Eden Heads to Theaters Jamie Chung ( Premium Rush ) Beau Bridges and Matt O’Leary star in the true story about a Korean-American teenager, dubbed Eden, who was smuggled into Las Vegas and imprisoned as a sex slave. She ensured her own survival by carving out power and influence within the organization that imprisoned her. Phase 4 Films picked up North American rights to the film, which it will release in early 2013. GKIDS to Offer 4 Titles for Oscar Consideration The animated distributor said it will feature four film to compete for the 2010 Best Animated Feature Oscar and the 2012 Annie Awards. The company is planning Oscar-qualifying L.A. runs in November for From Up On Poppy Hill , Le Tableau , The Rabbi’s Cat and Zarafa . “All four films are unique and wonderful, each in their own way, and we look forward to sharing them with Academy voters and audiences across North America,” said GKIDS head Eric Beckman. Around the ‘net… Michael Douglas to Play Ronald Reagan in Indie Titled Reykjavik , Douglas is in talks to play the 40th President of the U.S. The story takes place over a few days in 1986 when Reagan met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland’s capital on an arms treaty. Participant Media will finance the $10 million project, THR reports . The Artist Director Eyes Paramount’s Will The Artist won multiple Oscars including Best Picture this year and he is perhaps looking to Paramount project Will . The story revolves around an NGO worker in Chechnya, Deadline reports . Digital Hollywood Producer Brian Gerber Found Dead Gerber died of an apparent suicide Monday. He was founder and organizer of Digital Hollywood’s bi-annual content summit, which aims to “bring the world of content creators into the fold of digital production, marketing and technology,” LA Weekly reports .
Director John Hillcoat spent ample time in the the American South, the setting for his latest bootlegging drama Lawless . Starring Shia Labeouf , Tom Hardy , Gary Oldman , Guy Pearce , Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska , the film is inspired by the true-life stories of Matt Bondurant’s own family in his novel, The Wettest County in the World and adapted for the screen by rocker Nick Cave. Lawless begins its roll out in the U.S. Friday. A native of Australia and raised in Canada, Hillcoat nevertheless seems at home in the U.S., or at least feels in the know when it comes to non-studio filmmaking. In Cannes ahead of its world premiere in May, Hillcoat sounded off on the arduous undertaking of film that is story-driven and not reliant solely on gimmickry. Without mentioning any specific examples, he lamented that the business of motion pictures has crowded out filmmakers who use plot as a vehicle for entertainment. “I’m interested in stories in America and Australia or anywhere really, but the state of this is pretty tough now,” he said. “My world [of filmmaking] is medium budgets with characters and story. Those are not words you can use right now in the U.S., unfortunately.” The director of The Road (2009) and The Proposition (2005) and a host of music videos by artists including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bush, Depeche Mode and Nick Cave (who adapted the screenplay for Lawless after previously collaborating with Hillcoat on The Proposition), said there is one medium that dominates storytelling, at least in America. “Television has picked up characters and drama,” he said. “Hopefully this will filter back into films once again.” Though his story is set against Depression-era Appalachia, Hillcoat sees Lawless as a parallel to a litany of social crises that have arisen in subsequent decades after the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution effectively ended the federal prohibition against alcohol. “There are a lot of parallels to today with the economic crisis, today’s Mexican cartels, heroin in New York, crack and cocaine in the ’80s and the war on drugs. All this feeds back to Prohibition in the ’30s.” [ Movieline first published a version of this article at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival ]
Are exorcisms culturally specific? The concept behind The Possession , a solid, Jewish-inflected B-movie riff on The Exorcist from director Ole Bornedal , can’t help but leave you wondering. Sure, a Catholic priest can attempt to take care of a demon, but when your child’s inhabited by a dybbuk — a malevolent spirit from Jewish folklore — you might need someone who can specialize. At one point in the film, frantic father Clyde Brenek ( Jeffrey Dean Morgan ) drives a few hundred miles from the suburb in which he, his ex-wife Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick) and two children live to Borough Park, Brooklyn, to locate a rebbe who can help his family. It’s a supernatural argument for the benefit of living in more diverse communities. The dybbuk in question has been captured and imprisoned in the old, engraved box that Clyde buys at a yard sale for his youngest daughter Emily (Natasha Calis). The audience has already seen the muttering entity, which is able to inflict physical harm regardless of whether its victims open the box, wreak havoc on its previous owner, but Emily sees only a mysterious find with which she can furnish her empty room in her dad’s new house. Bornedal is a Danish director who’s gone back and forth between Hollywood and his homeland. He ended up remaking his own theatrical debut — a 1994 thriller about a Copenhagen law student working as a late-shift watchman at a morgue — into the identically titled and inevitably not as good 1997 film Nightwatch with Ewan McGregor. His specialty is putting an arch, unexpected twist on genre in films such as The Substitute, in which a 6th grade class realizes their chipper new teacher is an alien, and Just Another Love Story, a noir in which a married man allows himself to be mistaken for the fiancé of a wealthy woman who’s suffering from memory loss after an accident. The narrative running alongside the paranormal events unfolding in The Possession is about divorce and how it can affect children. While teenager daughter Hannah (Madison Davenport) deals with her parents’ breakup and her mother’s subsequent new relationship with orthodontist Brett (Grant Show) with disaffected detachment, Emily still holds on to a tremulous hope that the two will get back together. When she does figure out how to open the box, which turns out to be filled with strange keepsakes, dead moths and a creepy, foggy old mirror, the behavioral changes brought on by the dybbuk are interpreted by those in her life as an adolescent response to the domestic shakeup. Emily grows moody and distant, she spends a lot of time in her room and she acts out at school. Her mother takes her to a child psychologist, not an exorcist. The Possession is produced by Sam Raimi, and, at its best, has some of the throwback appeal of Raimi’s last theatrical release, Drag Me to Hell . Its intent is not ironic, but its creepiness, which includes eyeballs rolling back in their sockets, clouds of insects appearing around the house and a little girl suddenly speaking like a guttural adult, is the kind that provokes nervous giggles and the clutching of the person next to you, not nightmares. When Clyde tracks his feral demon-daughter through the bowels of a hospital, the audience at my screening let out a knowing sound as he approached an open door leading to a dark room — and let out pleased laughter when he used the paltry light of his cell phone to see just what sort of worst-case stuff was stored in there. Morgan gives a sturdy performance as a man whose career as a college basketball coach has taken precedence over his family, and who’s only now realizing that he’s about to lose those he loves as a result. But it’s Calis who steals the show as the possessed girl: She moves between ominous, dead-eyed glares and flickers of vulnerability, letting slip some foreboding tears right before the dybbuk makes her do something awful. Also showing off an unexpected screen presence is the musician Matisyahu, who plays the soft-spoken and slightly unconventional son of the rebbe from who Clyde seeks help. Tall, thin and quietly authoritative, Matisyahu’s character Tzadok comes with Clyde when no one else will help him because he believe it’s his duty to save a life when given the opportunity. He provides a nice alternative to the Father Merrin type — you know, the kind of guy who has no patience for hugging things out until the whole getting-the-dybbuk-back-in-the-box ceremony is taken care of. And there’s no better time to watch Matisyahu try than the current dog days of August. This variation on the demon child subgenre has enough of the familiar and the new to be a decently good time at the movies. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Ryan Gosling is graduating from actor/coloring book muse to writer-director with his directorial debut, How To Catch A Monster , from his own script – and he’s recruited Drive co-star Christina Hendricks to play the lead. So what’s the Baby Goose’s first foray behind the camera about? Described as a “modern day fairytale” with elements of “fantasy, noir, and suspense,” Monster sounds like a cousin of sorts to Nicholas Winding Refn ‘s Drive , which followed Gosling’s coiled-up Driver in a seedy tour through Los Angeles. Hendricks co-starred in Drive as Blanche, the pouty femme fatale who gets wrapped up in a job gone wrong before taking a memorable powder in a motel bathroom. Monster , produced by Marc Platt and Adam Siegel (two of the producers on Drive ), will be courting buyers at the Toronto Film Festival next month, with filming to start next spring. Per press release, via Indiewire: ” How To Catch a Monster weaves elements of fantasy, noir, and suspense into a modern day fairytale. Set against the surreal dreamscape of a vanishing city, Billy, a single mother of two, is swept into a macabre and dark fantasy underworld while her teenage son discovers a secret road leading to an underwater town. Both Billy and Bones must dive deep into the mystery, if their family is to survive.” [ Indiewire ]
So Mitt Romney has been nominated as the Republican party’s presidential candidate. To quote Robert Redford’s money line from The Candidate , “What do we do now?” Even if you plan to watch his extremely fit, catfish-wrangling running mate Paul Ryan speak tonight and Mr. Bain Capital himself on Thursday, there’s a big holiday weekend to wade through before President Obama and the Democrats stage their own dog-and-donkey show beginning Sept. 4 in Charlotte, NC. In other words, it’s a good time to watch some good movies, and, given that the 2012 presidential smackdown is about to go into overdrive, Movieline asked one of the sharpest political analysts we know, Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s The Last Word and an Emmy-winning former producer and writer for The West Wing , to pick five essential movies for our readers to watch in preparation for the 2012 race. His choices are after the break. Now do your homework. 1. The Candidate (1972): If you watch only one movie about American politics, it must be The Candidate . The movie is 40 years old but remains flawlessly up to date and tells you everything you need to know about how campaigns really work. 2. The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979): Alan Alda wrote and starred in this 1979 movie that shows the reality of life for a senator and includes a performance by Meryl Streep at the beginning of her brilliant career. 3. Wag the Dog (1997): Barry Levinson’s brilliant and funny imagining of the collision of politics, sex scandals and war includes hysterical and thoroughly real performances by Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Denis Leary. 4. Election (1999): Election wants to show how bitter, nasty and cynical politics can be — so, of course, it is about the election of a high-school class president. Reese Witherspoon’s stunning 1999 performance led to much bigger offers for her. 5. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939): Frank Capra’s film is the first important entry in American political film history. Jimmy Stewart’s performance is indelible and this is the only movie ever shot in the US Senate. Follow Lawrence O’Donnell on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
