Over at the fantastic retro cinema celebration series that is Trailers From Hell! , Joe Dante is currently running a Kickstarter to back the next batch of webisodes, which feature Dante and his “Grindhouse Gurus” — Eli Roth, Guillermo Del Toro, and John Landis, among others — dissecting their favorite genre fare of olde. And while a top pledge will get you all sorts of one-of-a-kind rewards ranging from lunch with Dante to the arachnid jaw from Starship Troopers , one prize in particular offers an opportunity so rare, someone had better jump on it, fast: A script reading by screenwriter Josh Olson . For $5,000 or more , an enterprising Kickstarter backer will get their script read and receive feedback from the History of Violence scribe who famously declared in the Village Voice editorial ” I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script ” that he — well, you know. “For a better understanding as to why Josh reading your script is so remarkable, we refer you to his legendary rant in The Village Voice ‘I Will Not Read Your #@$! Script,’ adds the Kickstarter page. Only one such prize is available for claiming, so hop to it! The Kickstarter campaign has 26 days to go… and presumably if the goal is not met, the Olson offer is off the table. Below, watch Olson’s Trailers from Hell guest spot , in which he goes deep on The Conversation : [ Trailers from Hell Kickstarter ]
If you were to condense the plot of November’s The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 into ten expository seconds for the uninitiated, it would go something like this: Aww, a vampire baby! Is she a monster? Ack, the scary Italians! Which is what the ridiculously short teaser trailer released today covers, in a nutshell. Who needs a full two and a half minutes when you can get all the vital information in the time it takes to say “Watch Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in a teaser for a trailer for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 ?” For those keeping score at home, the full Breaking Dawn Part 2 trailer will hit tomorrow – on Edward Cullen’s birthday. Breaking Dawn Part 2 hits theaters November 16.
The Invisible War director Kirby Dick at the Provincetown International Film Festival over the weekend. Any Day Now won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature over the weekend, while Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War won for Best Documentary at the Provincetown International Film Festival over the weekend. Starring alan Cumming and directed by Travis Fine Day revolves around a handicapped teen who is taken in by a gay couple. Invisible War meanwhile is a heart-wrenching look at rampant sexual assault in the U.S. military and the institution’s blatant disregard in addressing the little-known crisis. Festival attendees speculated that the feature will receive an Oscar nomination come awards season. David France’s How to Survive a Plague won the festival’s John Schlesinger Award given to a first time filmmaker. As previously announced, the 2012 Filmmaker on the Edge Award was given to Producer/Director Roger Corman. Actor Parker Posey received the Excellence In Acting Award. The Faith Hubley Career Achievement Award was given to director Kirby Dick. 2012 Provincetown International Film Festival winners: Any Day Now (directed by Travis Fine) – HBO Audience Award Best Narrative Feature. The Invisible War (directed by Kirby Dick) – HBO Audience Award Best Documentary Feature. DIK (directed by Christopher Stollery) – HBO Audience Award Best Short Film. How To Survive a Plague (directed by David France) – The John Schlesinger Award (given to a first time documentary or narrative feature filmmaker) Shoot the Moon (directed by Alexander Gaeta) – Jury Award / Student Short Film Who Lasts Longer (directed by Gregorio Muro) – Jury Award / Animated Short Film Tsuyako (directed by Mitsuyo Miyazaki) Jury Award / Live Action Short Film – Short Film Jury Honorable Mentions go to Installation , Teacher of the Year and Entry Denied
With a number of The Dark Knight Rises midnight screenings sold out across the country, you might be out of luck snagging a coveted opening night ticket at certain theaters. But who’s willing to pay as much as $120 for a single TDKR IMAX ticket just to be among the first to catch the Batman outing this summer? ScreenCrush reports on the recent rise in scalped offerings for Christopher Nolan’s latest: “Tickets to the midnight IMAX screenings are popping up on eBay and Craigslist for over $100; at times an almost 80% markup…A few ‘entrepreneurs’ are even selling groups of seats for $500.” Silly spending or essential expense? Sound off, Batfans. [ ScreenCrush ]
Watching a thriller requires a certain willingness to be a dupe. The whole idea is to give yourself over, and the ideal is to find yourself moving from scene to scene – as if you were cautiously exploring the rooms of a very mysterious house — asking, “And then what?” In the Paris-underworld thriller The Woman in the Fifth , director Pawel Pawlikowski is skillful enough to keep you wondering, from scene to scene, exactly what that what is going to be, and I was with the movie every step of the way, right until the final credits began rolling – at which point I realized that the whole thing made no sense whatsoever, and that none of my nagging questions about what the hell was going on would ever be answered. There’s a distinction to be made between being a dupe and being had. I know, I know, I’m being way too literal – The Woman in the Fifth is one of those movies of the “It was only a dream!” variety, designed to tickle our imagination as we ponder the distinction between what’s real and what’s only illusion. Some “It was only a dream!” movies work beautifully — The Wizard of Oz is one of them; Femme Fatale is another. But The Woman in the Fifth leaves a tantalizing trail of breadcrumbs only to lead us to…one last breadcrumb. I enjoyed watching Kristin Scott Thomas shimmer through the picture as a sultry viper woman, and I felt a kind of embarrassed tenderness for Ethan Hawke as his character tried to express himself in stubby blurts of bad French. But by the end, I only wished I had some stinky cheese rinds to throw at them. That may be less their fault than Pawlikowski’s. (Pawlikowski adapted the screenplay from Douglas Kennedy’s novel of the same name, which I have not read, though now I’m extremely curious – I need to read it to find out if it has an actual ending.) Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) is an American college professor who, as the movie opens, shows up in Paris to reconnect with his estranged wife (Delphine Chuillot) and the couple’s young daughter (Julie Papillon). The wife is none too happy to see him – she not only bars him from seeing his child, but calls the police on him. He runs off, boards a bus, falls asleep and awakens at the last stop — in a crap neighborhood, naturally – only to find that his bags have been stolen, though luckily he still has his passport. He makes his way to a shabby café where a tired-looking but beautiful Polish blonde named Ania (Joanna Kulig) waits on him cautiously. Ricks needs a room – is there one available? Ania waves him over to her bass, the café’s owner, the super-shady-looking Sezer (Samir Guesmi), who agrees to give him lodging but insists on keeping his passport as a formality. In his desperation, Ricks obliges without even a blink. That’s one of those deliciously ill-advised decisions that only fictional characters are allowed to make, and you can’t help wondering what it’s going to set in motion. During the course of the movie, Sezer gives Ricks a job, Ricks is forced to share a bathroom with a big black guy who won’t flush the toilet, and a mysterious femme fatale insinuates her way into Ricks’ life. That would be Thomas’s Margit, a mesmerizing creature who works as a translator. The two meet at a half-pretentious, half-pathetic literary party, and she slips him her card, urging him to call her. “Anytime after four,” she purrs. Up to this point, and really pretty much up to the end, The Woman in the Fifth is beautifully noirish. Shot by Ryszard Lenczewski – in Paris, no less! – the picture has a dull glow that’s both elegant and ominous. The performances are suitably low-key and intriguing: Hawkes’ Ricks is a walking pile of trouble, a man whose anguish virtually sweats through his pores. Hawkes is a shambling actor, often so understated that it looks as if he’s doing nothing, or as if he were simply on his way somewhere else and got caught up in a detour – I’ve always liked that about him. As for Thomas, I don’t believe there’s any beautiful actress working who looks more like a lizard – and I mean that as a compliment. Those heavy-lidded eyes, that patrician sculpted jawline: In The Woman in the Fifth , she looks as if she should be perpetually sunning herself on a rock, if only it wouldn’t wreak havoc on her aristocratic milky pallor. I loved watching The Woman in the Fifth . But the ending is both so oblique and so murderously obvious that I felt I’d been had. Where the devil were those stinky cheese rinds, which I know I should carry with me at all times? Pawlikowski – director of the 2004 My Summer of Love , which featured a then not-so-well-known Emily Blunt – guides us artfully through the picture, keeping us asking all sorts of questions, only to leave us at the wrong bus stop. With no luggage. Did I really just spend 90 minutes watching this thing, pretty much enraptured for most of the time? No! It was only a dream! If only.
Also rounding out Friday’s round up of news briefs, Harvey Weinstein receives UCLA honors, New York’s LGBT Festival sets its opener, the Austin Film Festival touts its record submission and California is chided for not doing enough to keep productions from ditching the state. Harvey Weinstein Receives UCLA Honors The Weinstein Company chief was feted by UCLA’s student directors as the school’s Champion Spirit Award recipient. The ceremony took place Thursday night at the Directors Guild of America as part of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television Film Festival. The award was created in 2010 recognizing a person in the entertainment industry who has “courage, integrity, insight and inspiration and is dedicated to fostering and nurturing emerging talent.” Recent winners include Stacey Snider and Roger Corman. Joshua Sanchez’s Four to Kick Off NYC LGBT Festival The film follows four people as they spend a holiday encountering life changing moments, both subtle and writ large and learn to cope with the lack of honesty in their lives. Closing the event will be Marialy Rivas’ acclaimed Chilean film Young & Wild . Based on the life of co-screenwriter Camila Gutiérrez, the film is a sexually-charged, stunning and energetic look at family and youth culture in contemporary Chile. The film was the recipient of the World Cinema Screenwriting Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. NewFest will take place July 27 – 31 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. Austin Film Festival Touts Record Submissions The event said it has received a record number of entries for its 19th annual Screenplay competition. 6,500 entries came in, up by 12% from last year’s 5,800. The 19th annual Austin Film Festival & Conference will be held Oct 18 – 25, 2012 in Austin, TX. Around the ‘net… Madagascar 3 Should Win Box Office Father’s Day Weekend New comers Rock of Ages and That’s My Boy are expected to perform modestly this weekend, which should see Madagascar 3 reigning at the box office, Variety reports . Christina Ricci Boards Australian Indie Set in an inner-city beset with riots, Ricci stars as an American drama teacher who forms a connection to a troubled Aboriginal teen. The project is the debut feature of writer-director Sarah Spillane, Deadline reports . Report Warns California Not Doing Enough to Keep Movie/TV Productions The Milken Institute says the state’s efforts to halt runaway production falls short even with an extension of the $100 million annual tax incentive, THR reports .
Just a week after crashing her car into a truck between filming on her would-be comeback flick Liz & Dick , Lindsay Lohan has reportedly been hospitalized after being found unconscious in her hotel, though her condition is unknown. “ABC7 has learned Lindsay Lohan was taken to hospital after being found unconscious at Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey,” ABC7 reported via Twitter. A follow-up Tweet from the outlet added : “Attorney tells ABC7 that ‘She’s fine.'” Developing… UPDATE: The New York Post has more: “Lohan not hospitalized but paramedics called after entourage couldn’t rouse her from sleep,” the paper Tweeted . And yet more from E! Online , who cites sources who say exhaustion and dehydration were to blame for the incident this morning: “Lindsay has been working a grueling schedule for the last couple of days,” Lindsay’s rep Steve Honig told E! News. “Last night she worked from 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. She was exhausted and went back to her room to sleep. Producers were apparently concerned and called the fire department and paramedics found her sleeping but determined that she was fine, just extremely exhausted and slightly dehydrated. “She is on her way home now to rest and will be back on set later today.” He added that no drugs or alcohol were involved in the incident. And TMZ , chiming in with the details: We’re told Lindsay wasn’t feeling well after complaining of exhaustion, she called someone from the Liz and Dick production team early this morning, and the team sent a private doctor to check on her. Before arriving, the doctor called the hotel and asked someone to check on Lindsay. Someone from the hotel went to her door, “checked on her” and determined she was “unresponsive.” The hotel then called 911. Lindsay’s rep says it was someone from the production team who called 911. Paramedics responded, and determined nothing was wrong with Lindsay. They left without transporting her to the hospital. Well, good. Sounds like a case of overblown media reportage, but the lesson here is this: If people around Lohan are so concerned that heavy sleep might be construed as unresponsiveness — and if Lohan’s working herself to the point of exhaustion, given her history — maybe the false alarm fuss should be taken as a warning, to Lohan, her team, and to those watching along at home. Nobody wants to see Lohan go out like Marilyn.
Also in Tuesday afternoon’s round up of news briefs, Magnolia Pictures and Strand Releasing each pick up a 2012 Tribeca Film Festival title, while Monique Gabriela Curnen and Kathy Baker join an indie thriller. Marina Abramovic nabs a French festival prize, Mark Cuban gives his two cents at a producers conference over the weekend and what to do about those pesky website responses… The British have an answer. Magnolia Pictures Nabs U.S. Rights to Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie The documentary about the seminal talk show host is directed by Ironbound Films’ Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy Newberger. Downey exploded made a splash onto the late ‘80s talk show circuit, uprooting the traditional format by turning debate of current issues into a brouhaha, earning the title “Father of Trash Television.” The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, will be released theatrically by Magnolia in the first quarter of 2013. Tribeca’s Yossi Heads to Strand Releasing North American rights to Tribeca Film Festival debut Yossi are going to Strand Releasing. The follow up to the successful Yossi & Jagger , the film follows the main character, Yossi played again by Ohad Knoller as he lives a solitary existence as a workaholic doctor in Tel Aviv. Strand’s Jon Gerrans negotiated the deal with Films Distribution’s Nicolas Brigaud-Robert. Monique Gabriela Curnen and Kathy Baker Join Model Home The actresses have joined indie the indie thriller to be directed by Patrick Cunningham. Cunningham co-wrote the screenplay, which marks his feature debut, with William Frank. The story explores the little-known practice of “live-in staging,” where recently evicted families are recruited to live in unsold properties. Marina Abramovic Takes Top Prize at 1st Champs-Elysées Film Festival The Sundance world premiere won the audience prize for feature-length film from the U.S. The audience prize for best short film from the U.S. went to Motherland by Shariq Siddiqui while best French short went to It’s a Miracl’House by Stéphane Freiss. Created by Sophie Dulac, the festival programmed some 50 films enabling Parisian audiences to discover the variety of productions available from France and the United States. Around the ‘net… Universal Talks with Duplass Bros for Same Time, Next Year Re-do The studio along with producers Walter Mirisch and Scott Rudin plan a remake of the 1978 romantic comedy and are negotiating with Mark and Jay Duplass to write the script with the possibility to direct the feature, Deadline reports . Common to Star in New Version of Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women He will lead the cast in an “urban update” of Francois Truffaut’s 1977 romantic comedy classic The Man Who Loved Women for writer and director J. Kevin Swain. Swain’s version will be set in Buenos Aires, Shadow and Act reports . 9 Best Things Mark Cuban Said at Producers Guild Conference Produce as long as you can market; TV triumphs over online in revenue; Online numbers are deceiving and so is Facebook… Indiewire details some of the mogul’s proclamations. Websites to be Forced to Identify “Trolls” by Brits Websites will soon be forced to identify people who have posted defamatory messages online. New U.K. government proposals say victims have a right to know who is behind malicious messages without the need for costly legal battles, BBC reports .
At the Seattle International Film Festival over the weekend to fete director and Lifetime Achievement honoree William Friedkin and present their NC-17 Southern-fried potboiler Killer Joe , actor Emile Hirsch spoke with Movieline about the “secret” movie he’d just shot with David Gordon Green ( Prince Avalanche , also starring Paul Rudd) and the experience of being on a Friedkin set, where the pressure to deliver on a tight schedule was palpable. “If you messed up your lines or something, Billy would make you pay a little bit,” Hirsch said. “You really didn’t want to mess up at all.” Hirsch’s Killer Joe character already suffers his share of punishment in the brutal black comedy, adapted from the play by Tracy Letts ( Bug ); he plays Chris, a trailer park-dwelling drug dealer who enlists a cold-blooded cop (Matthew McConaughey) to kill his mother. Things go awry, to say the least, drawing the entire morally-corrupt family (Thomas Haden Church, Gina Gershon, Juno Temple) into the fray, with violent consequences. “On set it was a high wire act,” Hirsch said, introducing Friedkin’s tribute event at the Seattle Film Festival. “He would be totally supportive of the actors to give the best performance that they could, but he let you know that you weren’t just playing with free time. You were here to shoot a movie very quickly and do the very best you could; he didn’t want you to give a great take on the tenth take when you sort of felt like it, he wanted you to give ‘the take’ the first time out. He would constantly remind you, ‘This ain’t a play, mo.’” Friedkin’s reputation preceded him before Hirsh went to meet for Killer Joe , the director’s latest feature following 2007’s Bug . “The chance to get to work with him was sort of intimidating, because you don’t really know what to expect,” recalled Hirsch to Movieline. “A lot of these legends are like, is this guy a legend for his movies or is he just some crazy maniac axe-murderer? But what he lived up to was the energy; he’s a combination of a tornado of energy but also this really specific intellect. He has so many stories and such insight, and is really quick on his feet and spontaneous and in the moment. He’s a really interesting mix of elements.” That’s not to say Friedkin wasn’t demanding, especially when it came to Hirsch’s more punishing scenes. His character is beaten by goons and bashed with canned goods — Killer Joe has a way with perverting even the most familiar of comfort foods — and Friedkin relished in pouring on the fake blood. “My character definitely has a bad week,” Hirsch laughed. “I think I felt the pressure in the sense that he doesn’t like to do a lot of takes, so there would be one or two takes that you’d know you would have and you wouldn’t want to blow your lines or not give your best performance. He would light that fire under you and there would be pressure, and you knew that if you fell off the high wire act, there wasn’t a net underneath — it kind of hurts, you definitely don’t want to fall.” Hirsch also discussed Prince Avalanche , the David Gordon Green-directed indie filmed under the radar last month near Austin, Texas. A remake of the Icelandic comedy Either Way , about two men on a road-striping crew, the film stars Hirsch and Paul Rudd and, as Hirsch told Movieline, his involvement sprang from another ill-fated project he and Green once hoped to make. “ Prince Avalanche — I didn’t actually realize it was a secret movie, I just thought we were making a really small movie that no one knew about. David had called me and I’d been wanting to work with him for years; we almost made a movie called Goat a while back. And it’s this kind of crazy, awesome cool script we shot with Paul.” Hirsch kept details under wraps, though he had this to say about the remake: “[Hirsch’s character] is kind of an interesting dude. It’s very similar to the original in a certain sense. It’s set outside Austin, in Texas. It’ll be an interesting mix of some real pathos mixed with some comedy.” Stay tuned for more with SIFF honorees William Friedkin and Sissy Spacek. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
So says Marvel superproducer Avi Arad , describing the spark between the on- (and rumored off-)screen Amazing Spider-Man couple: “On camera the chemistry is real. Those scenes are where Marc Webb really gets into his element. It’s the hardest thing to do and they do it. These two are like Hepburn-Tracy of modern time. It’s a war of brains that turns into attraction.” Does that make Spider-Man their Woman of the Year ? Discuss. [ ScreenCrush ]
