Fan Dies From Cardiac Arrest At Toronto Blue Jays Game Thursday’s game between the White Sox and Blue Jays was delayed after a fan went into cardiac arrest down the left-field line at Rogers Centre. He was later pronounced dead at the hospital. According to “the man in white,” who was tweeting from the game, a fan performed CPR on the ailing man first and then medics took over after reaching his location. Medics continued to perform CPR as he was carted off the field, and the game resumed after he was taken off. City-TV reported after the game that he died in the hospital. The White Sox were on the field before the game was delayed. “It was not a good sight,” White Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis said afterwards. “I saw some medics jump out around the dugout and run over. Then I saw a doctor or whoever was going, just pushing on the chest over and over and over. I thought maybe they were reviving him and then they next thing you know, they kept going and going.” The identity of the man has yet to be released. Source
Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel will tie the knot at a private, luxury resort in Montana this month , sources close to the couple have told Celebuzz. The happy couple, who have been together since 2007 with the exception of a brief breakup last year, will say “I do” at Yellowstone Club in Big Sky. Total Recall star Biel, 30, insists she’s done “almost nothing” to plan for her big day. Maybe so, but it seems someone has taken care of it for her! The 13,450-acre private ski-and-golf resort has become a hub for the rich and famous, including Justin Timberlake, 31, who owns a home there. It already housed a party for the couple who celebrated their New Year’s engagement with a party for 40 friends and family earlier this year. Now the place will become the venue for something even bigger as Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel make it official in style – their style. “They have vacationed there many times before both in summer and winter and absolutely adore the location,” said one family source. “It’s away from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood and it’s absolutely beautiful there … The laid back lodge feel is totally their vibe.” [Photo: WENN.com]
Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel will tie the knot at a private, luxury resort in Montana this month , sources close to the couple have told Celebuzz. The happy couple, who have been together since 2007 with the exception of a brief breakup last year, will say “I do” at Yellowstone Club in Big Sky. Total Recall star Biel, 30, insists she’s done “almost nothing” to plan for her big day. Maybe so, but it seems someone has taken care of it for her! The 13,450-acre private ski-and-golf resort has become a hub for the rich and famous, including Justin Timberlake, 31, who owns a home there. It already housed a party for the couple who celebrated their New Year’s engagement with a party for 40 friends and family earlier this year. Now the place will become the venue for something even bigger as Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel make it official in style – their style. “They have vacationed there many times before both in summer and winter and absolutely adore the location,” said one family source. “It’s away from the hustle and bustle of Hollywood and it’s absolutely beautiful there … The laid back lodge feel is totally their vibe.” [Photo: WENN.com]
From the time it detonated public consciousness at Sundance last January, Benh Zeitlin’s dazzling magic realist feature debut Beasts of the Southern Wild has occasioned its own peculiar brand awe and wonder. After winning the grand jury prize and an award for best cinematography in Park City, the movie continues to conquer the world. Last month at Cannes, it captured the prestigious Camera d’Or for best first feature. Fox Searchlight acquired the movie during Sundance and is preparing the movie’s national rollout with platform opening runs in New York and Los Angeles on June 27th. It has been very heady times for the 29-year-old Zeitlin, the New York-born, New Orleans-based filmmaker who made the (reportedly less than $1 million film) under the auspices of his film collective, Court 13. Zeitlin developed the script at the Sundance Lab with the playwright Lucy Alibar, inspired by her play, Juicy and Delicious . He also collaborated on the evocative, bluegrass score with Dan Romer. Most impressively, Zeitlin does marvelous work with the nonprofessional ensemble, the most electrifying is the movie’s remarkable six-year-old protagonist Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), who also narrates the movie. Set in the southern coast of Louisiana in a fictional dispossessed community known colloquially as “the Bathtub,” named for its pervasive, ramshackle clutter and populated by sharecroppers, bootleggers and itinerant musicians, the movie follows the tough-minded, industrious young girl and her father, Wink (Dwight Henry), as they desperately try to hold on to their threadbare existence despite warnings of impending storms and government orders to evacuate. Her mother having “floated away,“ Hushpuppy exists in a state of perpetual motion. The story is more anecdotal than linear, shaped by a succession of incidents and discursive moments related through the girl’s fevered consciousness. During an interview, Zeitlin talked about the movie’s creation, his influences, and his work with the nontraditional actors. More than 3,500 young girls auditioned for the lead role. Quvenzhané Wallis is expressive and dynamic, but you couldn’t have know that beforehand. What was it about her that made you cast her? I met her on the first call back. We had eight different casting teams. When she first walked in, she was defiant towards me. Most of the times you figure you can easily puppeteer a kid, but she was not like that at all. She was refusing to do this thing that I asked her to, because she didn’t it was right. I wanted her to throw something at somebody, and she said, ‘No, that’s not right to throw something at somebody you don’t know.’ She was the youngest person we looked at. She snuck into the audition. She was five-years-old and six was our cutoff. I just thought, she’s going to bring her own morality, her own worldview, to the part. What was your collaboration like? I worked with her like an actor. Movie sets are sometimes very stressful, high-pressure environments. Children don’t respond if it doesn’t feel like a game, if it doesn’t feel fun, it makes them uncomfortable. A lot of work was done to play during the shoots, and once we set up everything about the shot, we‘d come and throw water bottles back and forth, or she‘d mess up my hair. She stayed a kid. The material originated as a play, and you developed the script at the Sundance Lab. How did the script change? We came to the Sundance Lab with a raw first draft. It was something I wrote in two weeks, more a pack of ideas. It was at the lab that we found what the film was about. You had to discipline your choices and find the core. I had great imagery, a cow flies through someone’s roof, but I couldn’t find a connection to the heart of the story. The film became this emotional experience of how do you survive losing the things that made you. What about literary or other film influences. I was reminded of the escaped convict story in William Faulkner’s Wild Palms , or the tenant farmers in Jean Renoir’s The Southerner. I haven’t read or seen those. I tried not to watch a ton of fiction films. I was largely inspired by documentaries and people writing about the South. I’m extrapolating tons of things from the world and creating a pastiche. Interestingly enough, the further away the film plays from Louisiana, it’s seen in the context, as something magical or realistically a portrait of their life. What about your own early experiences in New Orleans? I went there a couple of times when I was a kid, the first time when I was about 13, and I was very haunted by it. There’s conflict, a heightened reality. Everything felt connected. In New Orleans, something there just resonates, both a joyousness and a darkness. When I came back, I felt, as though, this is where I come from in some very abstract way. You come back and you recognize certain aspects, like people who comes from the outside walking into a book that you love. When I was making an earlier, live-action short [ Glory at Sea ], a local guy named Jimmy Lee auditioned for a part and then he came back four hours later, carrying a bunch of stuff, like Greek columns. He said, ‘I heard you were making a boat out of junk, and I figured you could use this.’ That’s what the film is about, manifesting itself in our lives. A guy starts building and it transforms the thing, this crazy mission, and the story was reflecting that. You shot the movie in super-16mm, and the image is definitely more stable and the colors more vibrant. I’m a sentimental bastard. My first [live-action] short, I shot in 16mm and cut it on a flatbed. I realize for most people, the [differences] are totally imperceptible, but there is something magical about a series of still pictures linked, and a little bit of magic that is lost when digital turns it into something else. The grittiness of the [super-16mm] image fits ‘The Bathtub.’ One of the ideas [of the community] was there’s no technology. Hushpuppy had never seen a keyboard, for instance. Also, film is organic, and in order to get good photography in the location, it’s the easiest and cheapest way. To get digital to look right, you have to light it like crazy, and where we were shooting, on the backend of boats, 15 miles off the coast, there was no data managing. You can’t get power, and you can’t control scrims or bounce boards. You can still point and shoot [super-16] on location, and the image really holds together. The movie has been a sensation. You’re about to go into a very brutal marketplace, are you concerned about a backlash at all? I never really worry about what people are going to think. Obviously I care about what people think. I’m very proud of it and I’m very happy with it. Once I feel good about it along with the rest of the crew, that the movie expressed what we’re trying to express, I’m not worried about it. I believe in the film. It’s honest and says what I want it to say. We all know it’s an amazing ride we’re on, and it could explode. Beasts of the Southern Wild opens in limited release this week. Follow Movieline on Twitter .
From the time it detonated public consciousness at Sundance last January, Benh Zeitlin’s dazzling magic realist feature debut Beasts of the Southern Wild has occasioned its own peculiar brand awe and wonder. After winning the grand jury prize and an award for best cinematography in Park City, the movie continues to conquer the world. Last month at Cannes, it captured the prestigious Camera d’Or for best first feature. Fox Searchlight acquired the movie during Sundance and is preparing the movie’s national rollout with platform opening runs in New York and Los Angeles on June 27th. It has been very heady times for the 29-year-old Zeitlin, the New York-born, New Orleans-based filmmaker who made the (reportedly less than $1 million film) under the auspices of his film collective, Court 13. Zeitlin developed the script at the Sundance Lab with the playwright Lucy Alibar, inspired by her play, Juicy and Delicious . He also collaborated on the evocative, bluegrass score with Dan Romer. Most impressively, Zeitlin does marvelous work with the nonprofessional ensemble, the most electrifying is the movie’s remarkable six-year-old protagonist Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis), who also narrates the movie. Set in the southern coast of Louisiana in a fictional dispossessed community known colloquially as “the Bathtub,” named for its pervasive, ramshackle clutter and populated by sharecroppers, bootleggers and itinerant musicians, the movie follows the tough-minded, industrious young girl and her father, Wink (Dwight Henry), as they desperately try to hold on to their threadbare existence despite warnings of impending storms and government orders to evacuate. Her mother having “floated away,“ Hushpuppy exists in a state of perpetual motion. The story is more anecdotal than linear, shaped by a succession of incidents and discursive moments related through the girl’s fevered consciousness. During an interview, Zeitlin talked about the movie’s creation, his influences, and his work with the nontraditional actors. More than 3,500 young girls auditioned for the lead role. Quvenzhané Wallis is expressive and dynamic, but you couldn’t have know that beforehand. What was it about her that made you cast her? I met her on the first call back. We had eight different casting teams. When she first walked in, she was defiant towards me. Most of the times you figure you can easily puppeteer a kid, but she was not like that at all. She was refusing to do this thing that I asked her to, because she didn’t it was right. I wanted her to throw something at somebody, and she said, ‘No, that’s not right to throw something at somebody you don’t know.’ She was the youngest person we looked at. She snuck into the audition. She was five-years-old and six was our cutoff. I just thought, she’s going to bring her own morality, her own worldview, to the part. What was your collaboration like? I worked with her like an actor. Movie sets are sometimes very stressful, high-pressure environments. Children don’t respond if it doesn’t feel like a game, if it doesn’t feel fun, it makes them uncomfortable. A lot of work was done to play during the shoots, and once we set up everything about the shot, we‘d come and throw water bottles back and forth, or she‘d mess up my hair. She stayed a kid. The material originated as a play, and you developed the script at the Sundance Lab. How did the script change? We came to the Sundance Lab with a raw first draft. It was something I wrote in two weeks, more a pack of ideas. It was at the lab that we found what the film was about. You had to discipline your choices and find the core. I had great imagery, a cow flies through someone’s roof, but I couldn’t find a connection to the heart of the story. The film became this emotional experience of how do you survive losing the things that made you. What about literary or other film influences. I was reminded of the escaped convict story in William Faulkner’s Wild Palms , or the tenant farmers in Jean Renoir’s The Southerner. I haven’t read or seen those. I tried not to watch a ton of fiction films. I was largely inspired by documentaries and people writing about the South. I’m extrapolating tons of things from the world and creating a pastiche. Interestingly enough, the further away the film plays from Louisiana, it’s seen in the context, as something magical or realistically a portrait of their life. What about your own early experiences in New Orleans? I went there a couple of times when I was a kid, the first time when I was about 13, and I was very haunted by it. There’s conflict, a heightened reality. Everything felt connected. In New Orleans, something there just resonates, both a joyousness and a darkness. When I came back, I felt, as though, this is where I come from in some very abstract way. You come back and you recognize certain aspects, like people who comes from the outside walking into a book that you love. When I was making an earlier, live-action short [ Glory at Sea ], a local guy named Jimmy Lee auditioned for a part and then he came back four hours later, carrying a bunch of stuff, like Greek columns. He said, ‘I heard you were making a boat out of junk, and I figured you could use this.’ That’s what the film is about, manifesting itself in our lives. A guy starts building and it transforms the thing, this crazy mission, and the story was reflecting that. You shot the movie in super-16mm, and the image is definitely more stable and the colors more vibrant. I’m a sentimental bastard. My first [live-action] short, I shot in 16mm and cut it on a flatbed. I realize for most people, the [differences] are totally imperceptible, but there is something magical about a series of still pictures linked, and a little bit of magic that is lost when digital turns it into something else. The grittiness of the [super-16mm] image fits ‘The Bathtub.’ One of the ideas [of the community] was there’s no technology. Hushpuppy had never seen a keyboard, for instance. Also, film is organic, and in order to get good photography in the location, it’s the easiest and cheapest way. To get digital to look right, you have to light it like crazy, and where we were shooting, on the backend of boats, 15 miles off the coast, there was no data managing. You can’t get power, and you can’t control scrims or bounce boards. You can still point and shoot [super-16] on location, and the image really holds together. The movie has been a sensation. You’re about to go into a very brutal marketplace, are you concerned about a backlash at all? I never really worry about what people are going to think. Obviously I care about what people think. I’m very proud of it and I’m very happy with it. Once I feel good about it along with the rest of the crew, that the movie expressed what we’re trying to express, I’m not worried about it. I believe in the film. It’s honest and says what I want it to say. We all know it’s an amazing ride we’re on, and it could explode. Beasts of the Southern Wild opens in limited release this week. Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Ninja Thief steals Purse, Car From IHOP And this idiot was caught on tape. Police say a sneaky thief grabbed an employee’s purse and car at a South Salt Lake IHOP restaurant on Sunday. The incident was caught on the restaurant’s surveillance video system, as the thief ducked and crawled behind the store counter to grab the employee’s purse. Police say the thief walked out of the restaurant on 2100 South 307 West and stole the employee’s silver 4-door 2003 Chevy Impala that was located in the parking lot using the keys found inside the purse. The victim, a 22-year-old female IHOP employee told police that when she was ready to leave work at 7:00 a.m., she discovered that her black leather purse was missing from under her workstation and her car was gone. Police say investigators viewed the restaurant’s surveillance video, and saw the suspect, dressed in motorcycle garb as she entered the restaurant just before 5:00 A.M. and headed to the restroom. As the suspect walks past the workstation, police say she looked back, checking the location of the employee’s purse. Just moments later, police say the suspect walked toward the door as if to leave and looked over her shoulder to check for the employees. Police say the suspect then crouched down on the floor and made a “Spiderman/Ninja” crawl back to the workstation, stole the purse and walked out the door. Police say the suspect walked in the restaurant and stole the purse in less than two minutes. The employees told police that the suspect arrived at the restaurant on a motorcycle or scooter with another person who stayed outside. Police say it also appears that the suspect had planned out the heist and knew the location of the purse. Police described the suspect as a young woman in her early 20s, with brown hair, wearing a black leather jacket, black helmet, and dark denim jeans. SMH. Sounds like an inside job to us! Source
To say that That’s My Boy is a step up from the recent output of Adam Sandler and his company Happy Madison Productions really is to suggest only that the film isn’t likely to be screened as some sort of new Guantanamo interrogation technique. Jack and Jill , Zookeeper , Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star — these movies aren’t merely bad, they’re sandpaper-on-skin excruciating, unfunny to the point of inspiring hostility toward whoever’s chosen to make them. Sandler, once upon a time, was king of a winning kind of anarchic, gleeful stupidity — Billy Madison holds up so well (seriously, it does) because it feels like it’s just every idiotic gag that he and his buddies could come up with while crowded around a table littered with bongs and beer cans, crammed into an hour and a half. These late features have an undercurrent of misanthropy — their silliness isn’t inclusive, its confrontational and unpleasant, as if it was a chore to have to be bothered to actually make the movie in order to get everyone paid. That’s My Boy , which was directed by Sean Anders (of Sex Drive ) from a script by Happy Endings creator David Caspe, isn’t nearly as problematically hateful (with the exception of the introduction, which I’ll get to later). It’s a celebration of vintage ’80s dirtbaggery, a beer-guzzling, bird-flipping rebuke to contemporary calorie-counting, omega male meekness that finds Sandler back in only somewhat worse-for-wear form as an agent of chaos. He plays Donny Berger, an aging Massachusetts party boy (the phrase “wicked” gets a workout) whose onetime fame/infamy has faded along with his income until he finds himself facing three years in jail for failing to pay his taxes unless he can come up with $43,000 by next week. Donny’s only got a few bucks to his name and no prospects to speak of except for his long estranged son, played by Andy Samberg — and while he’s reluctant (and skeptical) about going to the kid for money, he cuts a deal with trashy talk-show host Randall Morgan (Dan Patrick) to squeeze one last bit of cash out of his past celebrity by agreeing to stage a family reunion with the boy and his mom. Donny’s child has grown into a neurotic, successful hedge fund manager who now goes by Todd — he’s rejected the name (Han Solo) given to him by his young dad, as well as the man’s negligent parenting techniques and lifestyle. Todd is set to marry Jamie (Leighton Meester) out on Cape Cod, where they’re all staying in the luxurious summer home of Todd’s boss Steve (Tony Orlando). Thanks to a wedding announcement in the paper, Donny knows where to find them, and turns up with an overnight (garbage) bag, forcing Todd to hurriedly declare Donny his long-lost best friend, as he told everyone his parents both died in an explosion when he was young. Straight man isn’t a good use for Samberg’s comedic gifts — he seems too at ease with himself to play what’s essentially a role for Michael Cera (whom he does eerily channel in some of his early scenes). Todd is awkward and uptight — he carries an extra pair of underwear around with him as a kind of security blanket — and likes to show off his ability to multiply large numbers in his head (he always precedes his answers with a robot-style “bleep bleep bloop”), but Samberg still comes across as the guy most likely to have a joint to share at the back of a party rather than as a fawning nerd. That’s My Boy is Sandler’s show, anyway, and his Donny somehow charms everyone with his constant beer-drinking, dick jokes and insistence on bringing back the Budweiser commercial catchphrase “Whassup?” Donny loves strip clubs (his favorite also serves breakfast) and his old pal Vanilla Ice (who is to this movie what Al Pacino was to Jack and Jill , albeit with less range). And he slowly worms his way back into his son’s heart and just a little bit into ours, culminating with a bachelor party montage that’s the film’s high point and its biggest celebration of trashed troublemaking. That’s My Boy is Sandler’s raunchiest movie — its approach to sex is enthusiastic and juvenile and the opposite of the squeamishness of Bucky Larson . Three-ways are had with grandmothers, wedding dresses are defiled, sticky post-masturbatory tissues are flung everywhere and a late twist takes the film into what has to be new territory for a gross-out comedy. While maybe half of the jokes actually land, there’s a cheery expansiveness to these antics — everyone’s better when being a sloppy but genuine mess than when being a controlling phony. In other words, this is a film that finds poorly chosen, impulsive back tattoos endlessly hilarious. Which brings us back to the intro, and the reason Donny is famous for the first place — a sequence that may kill the movie for some before it even gets going. That’s My Boy starts in 1984, when Donny’s a junior high student played by Justin Weaver who ends up getting seduced by his teacher Miss McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martino). She takes his virginity and carries on an affair with him until they’re discovered by the entire school at an assembly — at which point the kids and faculty members applaud young Donny for his prowess in “living the ultimate teenage boy’s fantasy.” It’s this Mary Kay Letourneau-style scandal that makes Donny into a celebrity and a hero for men everywhere because he managed not just to sleep with his teacher but to knock her up before she heads to jail. This isn’t a scenario completely resistent to comedy — 30 Rock included a similar storyline (using the same famous actress the film does for its present-day version of the seductress — if you’re unfamiliar, the reveal’s worth leaving her name unmentioned), and it was funny and oddly sweet. But here, both the focus on the world’s celebration of this act of statutory rape and the actual portrayal of an adult woman coming on to a 12-year-old boy in the name of laughs is spectacularly uncomfortable and troubling. That’s My Boy insists that Donny was not a victim, that what happened was every boy’s dream, but the film makes the (unintended?) case that he was permanently warped by the incident, left stunted and half-formed. No matter how much good-hearted licentiousness follows in the rest of the movie, the opening sequence brings a unshakable sourness to the whole affair. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
To say that That’s My Boy is a step up from the recent output of Adam Sandler and his company Happy Madison Productions really is to suggest only that the film isn’t likely to be screened as some sort of new Guantanamo interrogation technique. Jack and Jill , Zookeeper , Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star — these movies aren’t merely bad, they’re sandpaper-on-skin excruciating, unfunny to the point of inspiring hostility toward whoever’s chosen to make them. Sandler, once upon a time, was king of a winning kind of anarchic, gleeful stupidity — Billy Madison holds up so well (seriously, it does) because it feels like it’s just every idiotic gag that he and his buddies could come up with while crowded around a table littered with bongs and beer cans, crammed into an hour and a half. These late features have an undercurrent of misanthropy — their silliness isn’t inclusive, its confrontational and unpleasant, as if it was a chore to have to be bothered to actually make the movie in order to get everyone paid. That’s My Boy , which was directed by Sean Anders (of Sex Drive ) from a script by Happy Endings creator David Caspe, isn’t nearly as problematically hateful (with the exception of the introduction, which I’ll get to later). It’s a celebration of vintage ’80s dirtbaggery, a beer-guzzling, bird-flipping rebuke to contemporary calorie-counting, omega male meekness that finds Sandler back in only somewhat worse-for-wear form as an agent of chaos. He plays Donny Berger, an aging Massachusetts party boy (the phrase “wicked” gets a workout) whose onetime fame/infamy has faded along with his income until he finds himself facing three years in jail for failing to pay his taxes unless he can come up with $43,000 by next week. Donny’s only got a few bucks to his name and no prospects to speak of except for his long estranged son, played by Andy Samberg — and while he’s reluctant (and skeptical) about going to the kid for money, he cuts a deal with trashy talk-show host Randall Morgan (Dan Patrick) to squeeze one last bit of cash out of his past celebrity by agreeing to stage a family reunion with the boy and his mom. Donny’s child has grown into a neurotic, successful hedge fund manager who now goes by Todd — he’s rejected the name (Han Solo) given to him by his young dad, as well as the man’s negligent parenting techniques and lifestyle. Todd is set to marry Jamie (Leighton Meester) out on Cape Cod, where they’re all staying in the luxurious summer home of Todd’s boss Steve (Tony Orlando). Thanks to a wedding announcement in the paper, Donny knows where to find them, and turns up with an overnight (garbage) bag, forcing Todd to hurriedly declare Donny his long-lost best friend, as he told everyone his parents both died in an explosion when he was young. Straight man isn’t a good use for Samberg’s comedic gifts — he seems too at ease with himself to play what’s essentially a role for Michael Cera (whom he does eerily channel in some of his early scenes). Todd is awkward and uptight — he carries an extra pair of underwear around with him as a kind of security blanket — and likes to show off his ability to multiply large numbers in his head (he always precedes his answers with a robot-style “bleep bleep bloop”), but Samberg still comes across as the guy most likely to have a joint to share at the back of a party rather than as a fawning nerd. That’s My Boy is Sandler’s show, anyway, and his Donny somehow charms everyone with his constant beer-drinking, dick jokes and insistence on bringing back the Budweiser commercial catchphrase “Whassup?” Donny loves strip clubs (his favorite also serves breakfast) and his old pal Vanilla Ice (who is to this movie what Al Pacino was to Jack and Jill , albeit with less range). And he slowly worms his way back into his son’s heart and just a little bit into ours, culminating with a bachelor party montage that’s the film’s high point and its biggest celebration of trashed troublemaking. That’s My Boy is Sandler’s raunchiest movie — its approach to sex is enthusiastic and juvenile and the opposite of the squeamishness of Bucky Larson . Three-ways are had with grandmothers, wedding dresses are defiled, sticky post-masturbatory tissues are flung everywhere and a late twist takes the film into what has to be new territory for a gross-out comedy. While maybe half of the jokes actually land, there’s a cheery expansiveness to these antics — everyone’s better when being a sloppy but genuine mess than when being a controlling phony. In other words, this is a film that finds poorly chosen, impulsive back tattoos endlessly hilarious. Which brings us back to the intro, and the reason Donny is famous for the first place — a sequence that may kill the movie for some before it even gets going. That’s My Boy starts in 1984, when Donny’s a junior high student played by Justin Weaver who ends up getting seduced by his teacher Miss McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martino). She takes his virginity and carries on an affair with him until they’re discovered by the entire school at an assembly — at which point the kids and faculty members applaud young Donny for his prowess in “living the ultimate teenage boy’s fantasy.” It’s this Mary Kay Letourneau-style scandal that makes Donny into a celebrity and a hero for men everywhere because he managed not just to sleep with his teacher but to knock her up before she heads to jail. This isn’t a scenario completely resistent to comedy — 30 Rock included a similar storyline (using the same famous actress the film does for its present-day version of the seductress — if you’re unfamiliar, the reveal’s worth leaving her name unmentioned), and it was funny and oddly sweet. But here, both the focus on the world’s celebration of this act of statutory rape and the actual portrayal of an adult woman coming on to a 12-year-old boy in the name of laughs is spectacularly uncomfortable and troubling. That’s My Boy insists that Donny was not a victim, that what happened was every boy’s dream, but the film makes the (unintended?) case that he was permanently warped by the incident, left stunted and half-formed. No matter how much good-hearted licentiousness follows in the rest of the movie, the opening sequence brings a unshakable sourness to the whole affair. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The Los Angeles Film Festival opens Thursday night with Woody Allen ‘s To Rome with Love and the event even scored the presence of the director himself — at least, according to reports. But after the spectacle of opening night carries into the main core of the festival’s selection, new and established filmmakers from around the world will be screening their latest in the festival’s various sections. Movieline asked filmmakers in the LA Film Festival’s Narrative and Documentary competitions to share some thoughts on their work. Also take a look at their trailers and be in the know… Dead Man’s Burden , directed by Jared Moshé [Narrative Competition] Synopsis : Opening with a startling act of violence, this tense, classically crafted indie Western takes place in the aftermath of the Civil War on a hardscrabble homestead in New Mexico where the McCurry clan has been struggling to survive. Martha McCurry sees salvation in selling the family farm, against the wishes of her father. With the patriarch’s death, she seizes her opportunity, but her plans are upset by the unexpected return of her brother Wade, a defector to the Union Army long thought dead. Jared Moshé’s impressive first feature depicts a family in the lethal grip of its own civil war. [Courtesy of Los Angeles Film Festival] Comments by Jared Moshé : Why Dead Man’s Burden is worth checking out at LA Film Festival : I hope audience will check out my film at LAFF because they’re interesting in a story that explores a country divided by the Civil War through the lens of a family it ripped apart. After the Civil War, America embraced the Western as a myth to reunite the North and the South. We looked West for a fresh start. And we got one. But wounds still festered darkly beneath the surface. Dead Man’s Burden looks at those wounds and what it would take to heal them. Also, they might want to see a classic western on the big screen. Tales from the set… Well, we shot on location at the end of a two-mile dirt road that became a clay pit every time it rained. More than once we had trek up on foot – sometimes in the dark with jumper cables. There was no cell phone reception and a limited amount of film. Dust was everywhere and in everything. We were making a period piece with strong-willed horses; attention seeking goats that would eat anything and everything; chickens that loved to hang out in the production office; and black powder guns that actually fired except when we needed them to. Making a western was a living a western. Thoughts about the trailer… With the teaser we hope to convey a sense of the world you’ll be entering when you go to see Dead Man’s Burden . This is a classic Western with vast open spaces captured on a wide screen with cowboys who ride tall in the saddle, nefarious bankers playing the angles, and women who… well, maybe you’ll just need to see the film. — Four , directed by Joshua Sanchez [Narrative Competition] Synopsis: Over the course of a steamy 4th of July night, four people discover the difficulties of making an honest connection with someone else when they are trapped by the lies they tell themselves. In Joshua Sanchez’s psychologically and ethnically complex adaptation of an acclaimed Christopher Shinn play, a father and daughter, each enshrouded in loneliness, reach out for sexual intimacy: he with a nervous, self-hating teenage boy, she with a smooth-talking wannabe homeboy. Wendell Pierce, Aja Naomi King, EJ Bonilla and Emory Cohen shine in this touching, sometimes raw depiction of the evasions, power games and isolation of everyday American life. [Courtesy of Los Angeles Film Festival] Comments by Joshua Sanchez: Sanchez gives his take on the film : A steamy July 4th night brings four people together in two tales of seduction and conflicted desire. Joe is a black, middle-aged, married man out on an Internet date with June, a white teenage boy. Abigayle is Joe’s precocious daughter, out herself with a hot, wisecracking, Latino basketball player named Dexter. As the two couples get to know each other intimately, their realities are tested, and the outcome is bracing. Based on the play by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie-winning playwright Christopher Shinn, Four stars Wendell Pierce, acclaimed for his roles in the HBO series The Wire and Treme and Emory Cohen from NBC’s Smash . Why audiences should check out Four at LA Film Festival : The performances in this film are going to blow people away. The characters are not easily defined and challenge the audience to think about their own lives in unexpected ways. FOUR is based on a play that is beautifully written piece about four people who are struggling to connect with others and with themselves. Tales from the set : We shot the film in the summer of 2011, almost exactly a year ago. It took about five years and lots of fits and starts to make it. The shoot was intense and mostly shot at night in cars. We had a lot of long nights on process trailers that nearly drove me crazy. But I think the performances and visuals in this film speak for themselves and draw people into the world we worked hard to create. We shot the film in lots of long take close-ups and close-up two-shots. I was inspired a lot by Faces and Kids , both of which are films set on one night with four main characters. Thoughts about the trailer… For this one minute teaser, I wanted to create a sense that the film is a ride you go on over the course of one night. I think it sets up the characters and the situation nicely, while hinting at some of the drama that will unfold, while not giving away too much. — A Night Too Young , directed by Olmo Omerzu [Narrative Competition] Synopsis: On a snowbound New Years Day, two gawky, innocent 12-year-old boys are asked to buy vodka by Katerina, a young woman they barely know, and the two men who accompany her: one her reluctant lover, the other his friend who wants to be her lover. The boys bring the booze to her apartment, and so begins a night they’ll never forget, as they become silent pawns in the strange sexual power games that grown ups play. This finely polished gem of a comedy, by gifted 26-year-old Czech director Olmu Omerzu, subtly shifts from humor to menace to dream, compelling the audience to watch with the same wide-eyed fascination as these two bewildered boys, who will never be quite so innocent again. [Courtesy of Los Angeles Film Festival] Comments by Olmo Omerzu: Omerzu gives his take on the film : In a New Year’s Night two boys on the edge of puberty end up together with two men in a young woman’s apartment. Here they become witnesses and at the same time tools for the invidious relation games of the adults. David, Katerina and Stepan are torn between seduction, lust and yearning for love, which ultimately leads to hurt and disappointment.With the break of dawn each of them is at least one night older. Why audiences should check out A Night Too Young at LA Film Festival : A Night Too Young is not a typical coming-of-age story. I would label it as some kind of allegory, where the child’s world is reflected in the adult world and vice versa. Each child character has his own adult representative, an adult alter ego. The parallels between the child and adult characters allow us to work out what each child will be like when they’re grown up. Tales from the set : The very first shooting day was actually the “love” scene between Katerina and the boy – it was necessary because of the location planning – so it was a real icebreaker for the actors. From that moment the mood on the set was relaxed. Thoughts about the trailer… We wanted to create the feeling of urgency and uncertainty, to leave the viewer with questions to be answered. We believe the trailer is disturbing and energizing at the same time, also thanks to the selection of music. — The Iran Job , directed by Till Schauder [Documentary Competition] Synopsis: Director Till Schauder spent a year in Iran with journeyman American pro basketball player Kevin Sheppard, who signed on to play for the upstart Iranian Super League team A.S. Shiraz as one of two non-Iranian players (his roommate is a giant Serb). This lively, well-told tale is not simply a standard “fish out of water” sports doc: it’s also a snapshot of the radical fissures in Iranian society. Sheppard, a gregarious charmer, makes friends wherever he goes and forms a fascinating relationship with three strong, independent Iranian women who bristle at the restrictions of an oppressive theocracy. Their touching, unlikely bond makes for an illuminating study in cross cultural understanding. [Courtesy of Los Angeles Film Festival] Comments by Till Schauder: Schauder give the spiel on the film : The Iran Job follows American basketball player Kevin Sheppard as he accepts a job in one of the world’s most feared countries: Iran. Why audiences should check the film out at LA Film Festival : Because Kevin will make you laugh in spite of the prospect of playing in a country that’s supposedly full of illegal nukes and Islamic terrorists. In the process he will challenge your expectations about a hated nation – from the perspective of a duh-rag wearing, hip-hop loving, cross-culture-curious American athlete. With the world’s attention laser-focusing on Iran, and elections just around the corner, this is a critical time to take a fresh look at Iranians. Tales from the set : I filmed Kevin in Iran over several visits, while my wife Sara, who’s also the producer of the film, was back in Brooklyn, pregnant with our second child. On my last trip – in the run-up to Iran’s controversial presidential election – I was informed that I had made it onto a “black list” (for reasons still not clear to me), and was put in detention in a kind of “hotel-prison” inside the glitzy new Tehran airport. So while Sara was at home, 5-months pregnant with kid number 2, I was stuck in Tehran hand-shredding some not-so-cool-documents-when-you’re-stuck-in-Iran and flushing them down the toilet. I was sent back to New York on the next plane — a stroke of luck in retrospect given the number of filmmakers and journalists recently arrested in Iran. I’m still not allowed back in, which is a shame because I’d really like to take my kids there, and of course share the film with the people in Iran. And further thoughts… People are people everywhere in the world. If we focus on that we’ll find a way to work around our differences. Stay tuned for Movieline’s coverage of the LA Film Festival , which kicks off tonight with Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
The Los Angeles Film Festival opens Thursday night with Woody Allen ‘s To Rome with Love and the event even scored the presence of the director himself — at least, according to reports. But after the spectacle of opening night carries into the main core of the festival’s selection, new and established filmmakers from around the world will be screening their latest in the festival’s various sections. Movieline asked filmmakers in the LA Film Festival’s Narrative and Documentary competitions to share some thoughts on their work. Also take a look at their trailers and be in the know… Dead Man’s Burden , directed by Jared Moshé [Narrative Competition] Synopsis : Opening with a startling act of violence, this tense, classically crafted indie Western takes place in the aftermath of the Civil War on a hardscrabble homestead in New Mexico where the McCurry clan has been struggling to survive. Martha McCurry sees salvation in selling the family farm, against the wishes of her father. With the patriarch’s death, she seizes her opportunity, but her plans are upset by the unexpected return of her brother Wade, a defector to the Union Army long thought dead. Jared Moshé’s impressive first feature depicts a family in the lethal grip of its own civil war. [Courtesy of Los Angeles Film Festival] Comments by Jared Moshé : Why Dead Man’s Burden is worth checking out at LA Film Festival : I hope audience will check out my film at LAFF because they’re interesting in a story that explores a country divided by the Civil War through the lens of a family it ripped apart. After the Civil War, America embraced the Western as a myth to reunite the North and the South. We looked West for a fresh start. And we got one. But wounds still festered darkly beneath the surface. Dead Man’s Burden looks at those wounds and what it would take to heal them. Also, they might want to see a classic western on the big screen. Tales from the set… Well, we shot on location at the end of a two-mile dirt road that became a clay pit every time it rained. More than once we had trek up on foot – sometimes in the dark with jumper cables. There was no cell phone reception and a limited amount of film. Dust was everywhere and in everything. We were making a period piece with strong-willed horses; attention seeking goats that would eat anything and everything; chickens that loved to hang out in the production office; and black powder guns that actually fired except when we needed them to. Making a western was a living a western. Thoughts about the trailer… With the teaser we hope to convey a sense of the world you’ll be entering when you go to see Dead Man’s Burden . This is a classic Western with vast open spaces captured on a wide screen with cowboys who ride tall in the saddle, nefarious bankers playing the angles, and women who… well, maybe you’ll just need to see the film. — Four , directed by Joshua Sanchez [Narrative Competition] Synopsis: Over the course of a steamy 4th of July night, four people discover the difficulties of making an honest connection with someone else when they are trapped by the lies they tell themselves. In Joshua Sanchez’s psychologically and ethnically complex adaptation of an acclaimed Christopher Shinn play, a father and daughter, each enshrouded in loneliness, reach out for sexual intimacy: he with a nervous, self-hating teenage boy, she with a smooth-talking wannabe homeboy. Wendell Pierce, Aja Naomi King, EJ Bonilla and Emory Cohen shine in this touching, sometimes raw depiction of the evasions, power games and isolation of everyday American life. [Courtesy of Los Angeles Film Festival] Comments by Joshua Sanchez: Sanchez gives his take on the film : A steamy July 4th night brings four people together in two tales of seduction and conflicted desire. Joe is a black, middle-aged, married man out on an Internet date with June, a white teenage boy. Abigayle is Joe’s precocious daughter, out herself with a hot, wisecracking, Latino basketball player named Dexter. As the two couples get to know each other intimately, their realities are tested, and the outcome is bracing. Based on the play by Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie-winning playwright Christopher Shinn, Four stars Wendell Pierce, acclaimed for his roles in the HBO series The Wire and Treme and Emory Cohen from NBC’s Smash . Why audiences should check out Four at LA Film Festival : The performances in this film are going to blow people away. The characters are not easily defined and challenge the audience to think about their own lives in unexpected ways. FOUR is based on a play that is beautifully written piece about four people who are struggling to connect with others and with themselves. Tales from the set : We shot the film in the summer of 2011, almost exactly a year ago. It took about five years and lots of fits and starts to make it. The shoot was intense and mostly shot at night in cars. We had a lot of long nights on process trailers that nearly drove me crazy. But I think the performances and visuals in this film speak for themselves and draw people into the world we worked hard to create. We shot the film in lots of long take close-ups and close-up two-shots. I was inspired a lot by Faces and Kids , both of which are films set on one night with four main characters. Thoughts about the trailer… For this one minute teaser, I wanted to create a sense that the film is a ride you go on over the course of one night. I think it sets up the characters and the situation nicely, while hinting at some of the drama that will unfold, while not giving away too much. — A Night Too Young , directed by Olmo Omerzu [Narrative Competition] Synopsis: On a snowbound New Years Day, two gawky, innocent 12-year-old boys are asked to buy vodka by Katerina, a young woman they barely know, and the two men who accompany her: one her reluctant lover, the other his friend who wants to be her lover. The boys bring the booze to her apartment, and so begins a night they’ll never forget, as they become silent pawns in the strange sexual power games that grown ups play. This finely polished gem of a comedy, by gifted 26-year-old Czech director Olmu Omerzu, subtly shifts from humor to menace to dream, compelling the audience to watch with the same wide-eyed fascination as these two bewildered boys, who will never be quite so innocent again. [Courtesy of Los Angeles Film Festival] Comments by Olmo Omerzu: Omerzu gives his take on the film : In a New Year’s Night two boys on the edge of puberty end up together with two men in a young woman’s apartment. Here they become witnesses and at the same time tools for the invidious relation games of the adults. David, Katerina and Stepan are torn between seduction, lust and yearning for love, which ultimately leads to hurt and disappointment.With the break of dawn each of them is at least one night older. Why audiences should check out A Night Too Young at LA Film Festival : A Night Too Young is not a typical coming-of-age story. I would label it as some kind of allegory, where the child’s world is reflected in the adult world and vice versa. Each child character has his own adult representative, an adult alter ego. The parallels between the child and adult characters allow us to work out what each child will be like when they’re grown up. Tales from the set : The very first shooting day was actually the “love” scene between Katerina and the boy – it was necessary because of the location planning – so it was a real icebreaker for the actors. From that moment the mood on the set was relaxed. Thoughts about the trailer… We wanted to create the feeling of urgency and uncertainty, to leave the viewer with questions to be answered. We believe the trailer is disturbing and energizing at the same time, also thanks to the selection of music. — The Iran Job , directed by Till Schauder [Documentary Competition] Synopsis: Director Till Schauder spent a year in Iran with journeyman American pro basketball player Kevin Sheppard, who signed on to play for the upstart Iranian Super League team A.S. Shiraz as one of two non-Iranian players (his roommate is a giant Serb). This lively, well-told tale is not simply a standard “fish out of water” sports doc: it’s also a snapshot of the radical fissures in Iranian society. Sheppard, a gregarious charmer, makes friends wherever he goes and forms a fascinating relationship with three strong, independent Iranian women who bristle at the restrictions of an oppressive theocracy. Their touching, unlikely bond makes for an illuminating study in cross cultural understanding. [Courtesy of Los Angeles Film Festival] Comments by Till Schauder: Schauder give the spiel on the film : The Iran Job follows American basketball player Kevin Sheppard as he accepts a job in one of the world’s most feared countries: Iran. Why audiences should check the film out at LA Film Festival : Because Kevin will make you laugh in spite of the prospect of playing in a country that’s supposedly full of illegal nukes and Islamic terrorists. In the process he will challenge your expectations about a hated nation – from the perspective of a duh-rag wearing, hip-hop loving, cross-culture-curious American athlete. With the world’s attention laser-focusing on Iran, and elections just around the corner, this is a critical time to take a fresh look at Iranians. Tales from the set : I filmed Kevin in Iran over several visits, while my wife Sara, who’s also the producer of the film, was back in Brooklyn, pregnant with our second child. On my last trip – in the run-up to Iran’s controversial presidential election – I was informed that I had made it onto a “black list” (for reasons still not clear to me), and was put in detention in a kind of “hotel-prison” inside the glitzy new Tehran airport. So while Sara was at home, 5-months pregnant with kid number 2, I was stuck in Tehran hand-shredding some not-so-cool-documents-when-you’re-stuck-in-Iran and flushing them down the toilet. I was sent back to New York on the next plane — a stroke of luck in retrospect given the number of filmmakers and journalists recently arrested in Iran. I’m still not allowed back in, which is a shame because I’d really like to take my kids there, and of course share the film with the people in Iran. And further thoughts… People are people everywhere in the world. If we focus on that we’ll find a way to work around our differences. Stay tuned for Movieline’s coverage of the LA Film Festival , which kicks off tonight with Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
