Criterion's great leap forward.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | 4:37 PM
The Criterion Collection has made the jump into streaming video with their new Online Cinematheque, and they've provided an adorably low-tech video to explain their new high-techiness here.
Basically, 19 of the films in their library are now up for week-long streaming rentals for $5, the cost of which you can apply toward buying the DVD in their store, should you feel the burning need to then own a physical copy -- and they're working on releasing more. Among the films you can rent on demand at the moment: "Clean, Shaven"; "The Spirit of the Beehive"; "Sweetie"; and "General Idi Amin Dada."
The site's also now joined at the hip with The Auteurs, which is still in beta, but has begun showing select Criterion films for free in ad-supported "online festivals."
How this ambitiousness will pan out remains to be seen. Honestly, I do feel more inclined to impulse-buy myself a week of, oh, Stuart Cooper's "Overlord," which I've guiltily meant to see for a while now and never managed to, than most of the offerings on VOD-for-pay movie services at the moment. So, hey, they've got my fiver.
+ Welcome to Criterion's Online Cinematheque (Criterion)
"I'm going to Bollywood!"
Tuesday, November 25, 2008 | 12:31 PM
Paul Schrader, who actually has a movie coming out this year -- "Adam Resurrected," whose circus/Holocaust combo dooms it to "The Day the Clown Cried" associations -- is going with the latest trend and heading to Bollywood. "I've been getting indie movies made for 20 years," he told the Hollywood Reporter. "But I take a good look around and what I see is a barren, barren place -- in terms of the financial community, in terms of audiences, in terms of distribution. It's cold out there." But it's warm and friendly in Mumbai!
"Extreme City," his project, will apparently be in English and Hindi, a thriller about an American in India working on a kidnapping case who gets mixed up with gangsters. Before you ask: "There likely will be some musical numbers."
"Screw you guys, I'm headed to India!" has become the refrain of the year: Jennifer Lynch, whose loony serial killer thriller "Surveillance" screened at Cannes in May, is finishing up Bollywood-Hollywood co-production "Hisss," which will offer Irfan Khan and a snake woman. Danny Boyle's Mumbai-set "Slumdog Millionaire" (which has a dance number of its own) has a decent shot at getting a Best Picture nomination. And if you can't go to Bollywood, it can come to you -- Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are making appearances in the Hollywood-set Indian production "Incredible Love," while Snoop Dogg has a cameo in and performed a song for "Singh is Kinng."
Plus, as the HR piece points out, "DreamWorks is, of course, now financed by India-based Reliance Big Entertainment." Next year, the cool kids will be headed to Lagos, as India will be so 2008.
[Photo: Mallika Sherawat in Jennifer Lynch's "Hisss," Venus Records & Tapes, 2009]
+ Paul Schrader: Bollywood, here I come (Hollywood Reporter)
In the works: Opposite George Clooney.
Monday, November 24, 2008 | 2:39 PM
Who's starring opposite George Clooney in Jason Reitman's new film "Up in the Air," about a man in pursuit of his millionth frequent flier mile? Variety says Vera Farmiga will play "will play a businesswoman who develops a romantic relationship with Clooney's character through meetings in airports and hotels around the country." [Variety] The Hollywood Reporter claims Anna Kendrick, the policy debating femme fatale from "Rocket Science," "has nabbed the coveted female lead." [Hollywood Reporter] Presumably Kendrick, who's still playing a convincing high schooler, won't be vying for Clooney's romantic affections.
Adam Elliot's claymation "Mary and Max" will open Sundance.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008 | 1:58 PM
Two years ago Sundance opened with a Brett Morgen's animated doc "Chicago 10," and it's just been announced that the upcoming iteration of the festival (only 57 days to go!) will kick off with more animation -- "Mary and Max," a claymation drama, is the feature debut of Australian director Adam Elliot, who's otherwise known for a spectacular set of claymation shorts that includes "Harvey Crumpet," which won the 2003 Best Animated Short Oscar. My favorite is "Brother," from his "Family Trilogy" -- while it lasts, you can find it here on YouTube.
"Mary and Max" is voiced by Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Sundance's description:
Written and directed by Elliot, Mary and Max tells the tale of an improbable friendship between two very different people: Mary Daisy Dinkle (Collette) a lonely Australian eight-year-old, and Max Jerry Horovitz (Hoffman), a middle-aged New Yorker. Spanning 20 years and two continents, Mary and Max is a journey that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, obesity, kleptomania, sexual difference, religious difference, agoraphobia and more. The film is narrated by Australian legend Barry Humphries and features cameos from Eric Bana, singer Renee Geyer and Australian music icon Ian "Molly" Meldrum along with Julie Forsyth and John Flaus.
The rest of the program will be announced on December 3rd and 4th.
[Photo: "Mary and Max," Icon Entertainment International, 2008]
The short list.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 | 11:25 AM
The collection of 15 docs on the Oscar shortlist unveiled yesterday look, all things considered, pretty good to me. Traditionally the award that's caused the most hue and cry, with outrageous omissions and disqualifications, arcane rules and seemingly random (or at least radically out of touch) selections, the Best Documentary Feature prize could actually come down to a group of films that 1) are good and 2) more than a handful of people have at least heard of and had the opportunity to see.
"Man on Wire," the most acclaimed documentary of the year, is probably also a favorite to win, should it make it down to the final five. Established filmmakers like Werner Herzog, Errol Morris and Steve James are on there next to festival circuit favorites like "In a Dream" and "They Killed Sister Dorothy."
"What if I went on tour this time?"
Monday, November 17, 2008 | 2:33 PM
When folks begin wrapping up the year that was 2008, the most exciting (if still way up in the air, from a business perspective) trend has to be the rise of free streaming features online, whether they be "theatrical" premieres, a la Wayne Wang's "The Princess of Nebraska," Hulu's ad-supported library of older titles, or limited runs like "No End in Sight," which streamed in its entirely on YouTube until the presidential election.
The latest in the latter category is Michael Tully's 2007 documentary "Silver Jew," which for this week only can be seen in its entirety on Pitchfork. The film, which follows the famously reclusive musician and poet David Berman with his band the Silver Jews on their first-ever world tour, made its premiere at SXSW last year. Just short of an hour in length, it didn't have any luck with theatrical distribution, but an online bow like this at a site like Pitchfork serves as a nifty substitute that will hopefully direct people to buying it on DVD.
[Photo: "Silver Jew," Drag City, 2008]
+ One Week Only: Silver Jew (Pitchfork)
Critic wrangle: "A Christmas Tale."
Friday, November 14, 2008 | 11:03 AM
Arnaud Desplechin's haute holiday tale "A Christmas Tale" is probably my favorite film of the year, barring a few yet-unseen stragglers like "Benjamin Button," and from the reviews it'll probably make plenty of critic top ten lists. Therefore Armond White at the New York Press dutifully dislikes it, though despite the requisite snipe at the hipster hoards, he can't summon much heat, sighing that the film is "the latest pretext for director Arnaud Desplechin to wax ironic," but allowing that "A Christmas Tale isn't repugnant, just regressive."
Critic wrangle: "Slumdog Millionaire."
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 | 5:39 PM
Half grimy portrait of Mumbai poverty, half fable by way of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," Danny Boyle's new film "Slumdog Millionaire" was a hit at Toronto, where it won the Audience Award, and is a solid candidate for a sleeper hit in the new "Juno" sense of the term, given that the film's from an established director and cost a reported $15 million (cheap!). Will it sleeper its way to an Oscar nomination? It's certainly edgily feel-good; as Manohla Dargis at the New York Times puts it, "this proves to be one of the most upbeat stories about living in hell imaginable." For her, the film's visual stunning if a little too calculating: "In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker's calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale)." Andrew Sarris at the New York Observer finds that it's actually the mismatching of sentiments that makes it work, writing that it's "precisely because the varied parts don't cohere as smoothly as they are supposed to in the ideal well-made film."
All thumbs™.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 | 12:51 PM
RogerEbert.com has switched over from the usual four star rating system to a mix of stars and thumbs, which makes for an interesting repurposing of the two digit approval system over which the critic got into a tiff with Disney. The thumbs, which have been sort of replaced by "See It/Skip It/Rent It" on the new incarnation of "At the Movies," weren't going to see air time with Bens Lyons and Mankiewicz -- Ebert and the late Gene Siskel's family share ownership of the trademark -- so I suppose it's good to see them making an appearance somewhere.
Still, it raises an issue: The thumbs up/thumbs down were, love them or hate them, supposed to express the most basic breakdown of opinions on a movie: like it, dislike it, or split. Now they've been transformed into a kind of gradated system, in which two thumbs up is better than one thumb, which is better than one thumb down, which is a step above two thumbs down, which seems to encompass everything that received two stars or below. It's rather confusing, which goes against the entire simplified business of thumbage, but more importantly, it leaves out the one thumb up, one thumb down equivalent of a shrug. Which is precisely where such a large swath of films fall each year.
The week on IFC.com: The artificial cult movie, playing yourself and Bruce Campbell.
Friday, November 7, 2008 | 4:56 PM
What's been happening on the rest of IFC.com:
+ List: Pass the Kool-Aid - Five Flicks That Aspired To Cult Status - Can a film like "Repo! The Genetic Opera" aim at and achieve cult status intentionally? Matt Singer examines five examples would indicate that becoming a cult film is something that has to be earned.
+ Bruce Campbell on "My Name is Bruce" - The B-movie icon famous for playing Ash in the "Evil Dead" movies gives Jean-Claude Van Damme a run for his money by starring as and directing himself in his new meta-comedy.
+ On DVD: "Billy the Kid," "No Mercy, No Future" - Michael Atkinson on Jennifer Venditti's adroit and honest documentary portrait of a working-class high schooler inflicted with Asperger's; plus, Helma Sanders-Brahms' odyssey of a schizophrenic young woman on the streets of Berlin.
+ Podcast: Actors as Themselves, Sort of - Matt Singer and I look at the actors with the self-awareness (and sense of humor) to attempt the meta-role that is playing a version of themselves on screen.
+ Opening This Week: Gay zombies, the literal Sundance kid and the Muscles From Brussels - Neil Pedley rounds up what's new in theaters.
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[Photo: Bruce Campbell in "My Name is Bruce," Image Entertainment, 2007]
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