Festivals
Video: "A Christmas Tale" at the New York Film Festival
Monday, October 13, 2008 | 10:38 AM
"It could be sort of a slogan for this family: 'Let's get rid of melancholy'... They don't have time for melancholy. All of them are good fighters," said French director Arnaud Desplechin of his new film, an at turns lighthearted and deeply dramatic portrait of a family during the holidays that he compared in structure to an advent calendar. At the New York Film Festival press conference for "A Christmas Tale," Desplechin was joined by the legendary Catherine Deneuve, who plays the matriarch in the family and who affectionately compared the filmmaker to a "child in a playroom."
For more coverage of the New York Film Festival, click here.
Interview: Darren Aronofsky on "The Wrestler"
Thursday, October 9, 2008 | 11:53 AM
By Aaron Hillis
Brooklyn-born auteur Darren Aronofsky turned mathematical patterns and theories into a brooding thriller (1998's "Pi"), injected us with a bravura adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s reckless-addiction novel (2000's Oscar-nominated "Requiem for a Dream"), and raced against the clock of mortality in an ambitious love story spanning ten centuries (2006's unfairly maligned "The Fountain"). So what's a filmmaker's next move, having already zoomed a 26th century Hugh Jackman around the galaxy in an oversized soap bubble containing the Tree of Life?
Curiously, you resurrect Mickey Rourke's career. One of the most wildly anticipated films of 2008, Aronofsky's humanist drama "The Wrestler" will close this year's New York Film Festival. But even before it officially opens in December, the Oscar buzz for Rourke as past-his-prime wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson is already starting to be deafening (and rightly so). Shot with handheld verité techniques that put you right up in Rourke's fascinating mug, the film chronicles the dreary decline of a once-famous '80s ring legend as a heart attack forces him into retirement and existential crisis. With his ridiculous blonde extensions and overuse of both tanning beds and steroids, "The Ram" is a tragic anti-hero to root for, especially as he attempts to connect with a fading stripper (Marisa Tomei) and his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood). I spoke with Aronofsky about his tremendously entertaining new film, how Axl Rose helped out, and why he couldn't hit Rourke in the head on-set.
Video: "Waltz With Bashir" at the New York Film Festival
Monday, October 6, 2008 | 6:25 PM
"This film was always meant to be an animated film. I never thought there was a chance to do it any other way -- not as a fiction film, and definitely not as a classic documentary film." Ari Folman, the writer/director of "Waltz with Bashir," described his unconventional and powerful doc about the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre and his personal involvement and memories of the incident to the press at the New York Film Festival.
For more coverage of the New York Film Festival, click here.
Video: "Changeling" at the New York Film Festival
Monday, October 6, 2008 | 6:17 PM
"I didn't know anything about it until I read the script," admitted Clint Eastwood at the New York Film Festival's press conference for "Changeling," his highly anticipated film based on the 1920s Wineville Chicken Murders and an incident in which the police tried to convince a single mother that the boy they had brought to her was her missing son, when he was actually a runaway looking for a free trip to California. Angelina Jolie plays the mother, while John Malkovich is the reverend who comes to her aid. Eastwood discussed making modern day L.A. look antique and how he comes up with musical themes for his films.
For more coverage of the New York Film Festival, click here.
Video: "Ashes of Time Redux" at the New York Film Festival
Monday, October 6, 2008 | 6:00 PM
"It was almost like an odyssey, because we spent five years -- the first few years we had to retrieve material from different parts of the world." Wearing his signature sunglasses, Wong Kar-wai addressed the press after a New York Film Festival screening of "Ashes of Time Redux," the restored and recut version of his 1994 martial arts film "Ashes of Time," starring an unbelievable cast that includes Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Leslie Cheung and Brigitte Lin, who also appeared at the press conference. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle shared some memories of the original production, while Wong described visiting various locations around the globe to find prints of the film, including a warehouse owned by a San Francisco theater owner that was "almost like 'Raiders of the Lost Ark."
For more coverage of the New York Film Festival, click here.
Video: "The Wrestler" at the New York Film Festival
Thursday, October 2, 2008 | 5:24 PM
"If I knew it was going to take me 15 years to get back in the saddle and work again because of the way I handled things, I really would have handled things differently... Change, for me, didn't come easily. I didn't want to change, until I lost everything." Mickey Rourke's role as faded professional wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson in "The Wrestler" is rightly being hailed the comeback, and one of the best performances, of the year. At the film's U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival, he, co-star Marisa Tomei and director Darren Aronofsky ("Requiem for a Dream") discussed what drew them to a wrestling picture and what goes into training to act as a wrestler (or, for Tomei, a stripper) on screen.
For more coverage of the New York Film Festival, click here.
Video: "Che" at the New York Film Festival
Thursday, October 2, 2008 | 5:21 PM
"It wasn't until the film was finished, right around Cannes, that I realized... it was about engagement versus disengagement," Steven Soderbergh told the press after a screening of his four-hour bio-epic "Che," which will make its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival later this week. In the video below, he speaks about the process of making the film and presenting a figure who's retreated into an icon for t-shirts and dorm room posters.
For more coverage of the New York Film Festival, click here.
Video: "Happy-Go-Lucky" at the New York Film Festival
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 | 3:15 PM
Poppy, the main character of Mike Leigh's latest film, "Happy-Go-Lucky," is a 30-year-old elementary school teacher who lives in London and who's irrepressibly, almost unnaturally cheerful. As played by Sally Hawkins, she's a fascinating and divisive figure, endearing to some and grating to others. In the video below, Leigh and Hawkins, taking questions from the press at the New York Film Festival, insist that simply writing the character off as chipper is to be unfair to what Leigh has called his "anti-miserablist film": "The thing about Poppy is that to describe her as being unadulterated[ly] happy is not really to understand her at all."
More videos from this press conference after the jump.
Video: "Hunger" at the New York Film Festival
Tuesday, September 30, 2008 | 2:08 PM
Steve McQueen (not to be confused with the late "Bullitt" star) went from Turner Prize-winning artist to lauded filmmaker with his directorial debut "Hunger," about the 1981 Irish hunger strike in which IRA prisoners, led by Bobby Sands, tried to win political status by refusing food. "Hunger," which won the Caméra d'Or prize at Cannes, made its U.S. debut at the New York Film Festival, where McQueen sat down with moderator J. Hoberman of the Village Voice to address the press. In the video below, he talks about the origins of the film -- he was 11 years old when the strike took place: "It was one of those moments where things just stick in your head -- an event where it sort of resonates."
More videos from this press conference after the jump.
IFC News Podcast #93: Debating Two Toronto Films
Monday, September 8, 2008 | 9:08 AM
By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore
The Toronto Film Festival is in full swing, and so this week on the IFC News podcast we argue over two of the films screening there: Spike Lee's World War II drama "Miracle at St. Anna" and Mike Leigh's North London comedy "Happy-Go-Lucky."
Download now (MP3: 25:53 minutes, 23.7 MB)
[Photo: "Miracle at St. Anna," Touchstone Pictures, 2008]
Video: "The Wolf Man" at Comic-Con 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008 | 11:08 AM
"I've been making myself up as a wolf man since I was ten years old," claimed legendary make-up artist Rick Baker, who's won six Oscars for his work in films as varied as "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," "Ed Wood" and "An American Werewolf in London." He's a natural fit, then, for director Joe Johnston's update of the 1941 Universal horror film starring Lon Chaney Jr. Those classics "were the films that made want to do what I do," Baker announced at the Comic-Con panel for the new film. "When I heard they were doing 'The Wolf Man,' I actually went to somebody I knew at Universal and said 'I have to do this movie. I really want to do this movie.' And, fortunately, they listened."
The gracious Baker described "The Wolf Man," which opens on April 3rd, 2009, as "pretty old school," praising the studio's choice to have an actor in make-up playing the lead instead of making the character computer-generated. Joining Baker on the panel were Emily Blunt, who plays female lead Gwen Conliffe, and the wolf man himself, Benicio Del Toro, who found his way to the role after his agent spotted a poster for the original movie in his house.
Take a look at video clips from the panel below:
More from Comic-Con 2008: The "Watchmen" panel with director Zack Snyder, stars Billy Crudup and Carla Gugino and others; the "RocknRolla" panel with director Guy Ritchie and star Gerard Butler; "The Spirit" panel with Frank Miller and Samuel L. Jackson.
Video: "The Spirit" at Comic-Con 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008 | 8:45 AM
"I first met Will Eisner on a street in Vermont, when I was bicycling back home with a bunch of new comic books," began Frank Miller, comic book artist turned co-director, alongside Robert Rodriguez, with 2005's "Sin City." "The Spirit," an adaptation of Eisner's long-running crime-fighter comic strip, finds Miller going solo behind the camera for the first time. During the Comic-Con panel for the film, Miller spoke of how he eventually met Eisner in person and began a 25-year-argument with him over captions.
Miller was joined on the panel by Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the film's villain, The Octopus, a character who in the comic remained unseen except for a pair of distinctive gloves. "It's a real honor to be able to put flesh and bones and voice and attitude to The Octopus, [who's] only been a pair of hands since 1930-something," a beaming Jackson said, going into how he and Miller decided on the look of the character, who apparently sports a sort of Nazi-inspired outfit. Also on stage is Jaime King, who played Goldie in "Sin City" and will play Lorelei Rox, "the angel of death," in "The Spirit," which is set to open on Christmas this year.
Take a look at video clips from the panel below:
More from Comic-Con 2008: The "Watchmen" panel with director Zack Snyder, stars Billy Crudup and Carla Gugino and others; the "RocknRolla" panel with director Guy Ritchie and star Gerard Butler; the panel for "The Wolf Man" with award-winning make-up artist Rick Baker and stars Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt.
Video: "Watchmen" at Comic-Con 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008 | 8:13 AM
"That seems like... a crazy idea," "300" director Zack Snyder said upon being offered the adaptation of "Watchmen," Alan Moore's revered graphic novel that's defied all earlier attempts to be brought to the big screen. "Once they asked me, I kinda felt responsible -- even if I said no, they would have moved on, and then whatever happened to the movie, I still would have had my chance... If the movie, for whatever reason didn't turn out, it would have been still my fault. So I figured, might as well make it my fault anyway."
The hotly anticipated superhero film isn't headed to theaters until March 6, 2009, but a recently released trailer has fans chomping at the bit. At Comic-Con's panel for the film, Snyder reassured the crowd that he's attempted to stay as true to the graphic novel as possible, with "Watchmen" artist Dave Gibbons at his side, claiming that "It's just the stuff of dreams, really, to have something step out of your head and become real."
Also joining them were Billy Crudup, who plays the omniscient Dr. Manhattan and who described the challenges to figuring out "how you pretend to be the 6'4" buffed-out master of matter while you're a 5'9", 40-year-old jackass playing dress-up." Patrick Wilson, who plays Night Owl, and Carla Gugino and Malin Ackerman, who play the first and second incarnations of the Silk Spectre, additionally spoke about their characters and why "Watchmen" won't be your average superhero movie.
Take a look at video clips from the panel below:
More from Comic-Con 2008: The "RocknRolla" panel with director Guy Ritchie and star Gerard Butler; "The Spirit" panel with Frank Miller and Samuel L. Jackson; the panel for "The Wolf Man" with award-winning make-up artist Rick Baker and stars Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt.
Video: "RocknRolla" at Comic-Con 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008 | 11:37 AM
Stars Gerard Butler, Jeremy Piven, Idris Elba and Chris "Ludacris" Bridges joined director Guy Ritchie for yesterday's presentation on "RocknRolla," Ritchie's first film since infamous bomb "Revolver," which took two years to reach U.S. shores. "RocknRolla," which is about the Russian mob in London, is the film that everyone's hoping represents a return to form for the director who first made a splash with snappy urban crime films like "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch."
Mostly, though, all eyes were on Butler, who offered chocolates to the crowd of adoring female fans and answered questions on the nature of his role and whether it was as physically challenging as his part in "300." Piven, in turn, offered his own fan service, saying "I'm completely overwhelmed by everyone's focus and their dedication. I'm in honor of all of you and I celebrate each and everyone one of you -- and I would like to do that personally, I'm in a service position for all of you. I would give you chocolate -- I have no more chocolate left. But I am going to take my shirt off."
While "RocknRolla" is set to open October 3rd, many were already looking forward to Ritchie's next film, "Sherlock Holmes," which promises (threatens?) to give a contemporary spin to the classic character, who'll be played by Robert Downey, Jr. "It's like James Bond in 1891," producer Joel Silver offered. "It's an action picture, it's seeing Holmes the way he always should have been seen."
Take a look at video clips from the panel below:
More from Comic-Con 2008: The "Watchmen" panel with director Zack Snyder, Billy Crudup and Carla Gugino; the panel for "The Spirit," with director Frank Miller and Samuel L. Jackson; the panel for "The Wolf Man" with award-winning make-up artist Rick Baker and stars Benicio Del Toro and Emily Blunt.
L.A. Film Festival '08: The Doc Days of Summer
Wednesday, July 2, 2008 | 9:31 AM
Last year, "Young@Heart" caused ripples when it sold to Fox Searchlight to become the first distribution deal to emerge from the L.A. Film Festival, so perhaps it shouldn't have come as a surprise that the festival put documentaries front and center this year, even in a city where there's no shortage of name actors that most other festivals would deploy to lure audiences. Instead, one of the more anticipated star attractions in Los Angeles was a talk with HBO documentary czar Sheila Nevins, who participated in a wide-ranging conversation with L.A. Times columnist Patrick Goldstein about her career of mixing high class projects like the recent doc "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" with, well, "Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal," which premiered at the festival hours after Nevins finished up. (The latest from "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, which follows Fleiss's construction of "a stud farm" for women, actually went awry to the point that Nevins steps in to interview Fleiss.)
L.A. Film Festival '08: Tragedy and Comedy, "Spaced" and the Reitmans
Monday, June 30, 2008 | 10:02 AM
It's hard to say whether it's been the stifling heat or former Warner Independent chief Mark Gill's much-talked about "the sky really is falling" speech (published in full at indieWire here) that gave attendees of this year's Los Angeles Film Festival a sense of their own mortality. Then again, it could just be the way in which the effects of life-altering events have been examined in several of the festival's films, particularly in the narrative section.
When Gill, now heading up the indie shingle The Film Department, spoke at the adjoining film financing conference on the first Saturday of the festival, he decried the indie film marketplace as standing on the brink of oblivion, saying, "if you decide to make a movie budgeted under $10 million on your own tomorrow, you have a 99.9% chance of failure." On that basis, it's possible that "Winged Creatures," an ensemble drama that made its world premiere at a secret screening, might have a chance. With a cast that reads like the list of 2007 Oscar nominees — Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Hudson, Jackie Earle Haley, not to mention Guy Pearce, Dakota Fanning and Kate Beckinsale — it's the type of high-profile and high-minded indie production that audiences have been seeing a lot of lately, whether it was Whitaker's own recent ensemble drama "The Air I Breathe" or the film "Creatures" clearly aspires to be, "Crash."
Wrapping Up Cannes 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008 | 12:32 PM
By Matt Singer
It wasn't just the weather that was gloomy at the 61st Cannes Film Festival. By the time the skies above southern France briefly cleared for a few days during the second week of the festival, the international press corps had been infected by a mass plague, not unlike the one portrayed in this opening night selection "Blindness," done in reverse — instead of losing their sight, hundreds of journalists stumbled around in a fog, obliged to do nothing but look, and after 12-plus days of looking at a selection of tasteful, well-made and entirely bleak movies, society's rules were breaking down into sweaty anarchy. Those waiting in line for press screenings, always ready to devolve into contentious, multilingual shoving matches, were especially cranky. The traditional applause during a film's closing credits was muted at best, nonexistent or drowned out by boos at the worst. Walking out of a screening on the second Friday morning of Cannes 2008, a colleague turned to me and sighed, "I'm tired, I'm sick of movies, and I'm trapped here." That sense of imprisonment was no doubt fostered by a Cannes slate that included plenty of people wasting away behind bars, including the opening night selections, Fernando Meirelles's "Blindness" and Steve McQueen's "Hunger," respectively from the competition roster and the Un Certain Regard sidebar.
Cannes 08: "The Class" Graduates With Honors
Tuesday, May 27, 2008 | 5:11 PM
The 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival wrapped this past Sunday, having been the scene of big Hollywood premieres like "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and smaller but no less anticipated ones from filmmakers like the Dardenne brothers, Arnaud Desplechin and Atom Egoyan. In the end, it was a French film that won the Palme d'Or — the first homegrown feature to take the top prize since 1987's "Under Satan's Sun." The film, a late entry in the competition, was directed by Laurent Cantet, whose past work includes "Time Out" and "Heading South," and follows a year in the life of a teacher in an inner city Parisian school. Opening remarks from jury Sean Penn, who told the press that "We are going to feel very confident that the filmmaker of [the winning film] was very aware of the times within which he (or she) lives," had many guessing that one of the fest's many somber-themed flicks would end up getting lauded, but Cantet's critically acclaimed work was also applauded for being enjoyable and entertaining. Here's a complete list of the prizewinners.
Cannes 08: James Gray on "Two Lovers"
Monday, May 26, 2008 | 1:29 PM
By Erica Abeel
When was the last time you heard someone drop a mention of Jacques Lacan? (I'll pause if you need to refresh your memory of the name at Wikipedia). If the answer is never, you haven't sat down with the delightful James Gray, who was at Cannes with his new film "Two Lovers," starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw and Isabella Rossellini. In a stream-of-consciousness monologue that could pose a challenge to any interviewer, Gray also cited as influences Dostoevsky's novella "White Nights," Scorsese, Hitchcock, French poet Louis Aragon and a B-movie starring, uh... John Hodiak? There's a sense that Gray's in a hurry to put across his ideas now, since later can be a long time coming, given the gaps between his films. Bowing in 1994 at age twenty-four with "Little Odessa" (which took the Silver Lion in Venice), he didn't produce "The Yards" till 2000, "We Own the Night" following in 2007. He's emblematic of those creative strivers in it for the long haul, living with the material of his films for years; keeping his focus, determination and confidence, and, one would hope, some other means of financial support.
"Two Lovers" not only treads on the heels of last season's "Night," it moves away from the filmmaker's previous dark, violent films centered on Russian mobsters to explore a modern love story set in Gray's beloved Brighton Beach, Brooklyn locale. After a suicide attempt, Leonard Kraditor (Phoenix), an attractive but troubled guy, moves back with his parents in Brooklyn. Enter two women: ravishing blonde shiksa (Paltrow) who's involved with a married man and promises big trouble; and the daughter (Shaw) of his dad's new business partner, who's not only lovely, but eager to take care of fragile Leonard. An adept storyteller, Gray fleshes out the classic conflict between romantic rapture and the sensible choice. Critical response was mixed, but one thing's been clear: Gray, a three-time contender at Cannes, receives more esteem from the French than at home.
Cannes 08: The Dardennes on "The Silence of Lorna"
Thursday, May 22, 2008 | 3:59 AM
By Erica Abeel
Ever since "The Promise" in 1996, the prospect of a new film from Belgian siblings Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne has been cause for rejoicing. Impeccably constructed, uncompromising and emotionally searing, the Dardenne brothers' films give voice to a population often despised or ignored: illegal aliens, slumlords, corrupt officials and smalltime criminals. To their characters the brothers bring a compassionate view born of the understanding this underclass has, in part, been created by society's higher-ups. And though the pair might deny it, their films also suggest an ingrained Christian vision through insisting on the transformative possibility of the most debased being.
"The Silence of Lorna," their latest portrait, which premiered in Cannes, has failed to elicit the rapturous response received by some of the earlier work, such as the 2005 Palme d'Or winner "The Child." Yet despite an exposition that some found lengthy, the Dardennes bring great resonance to this fable of a young Albanian immigrant caught in a terrible dilemma who struggles to redeem herself. As in "The Promise," the film focuses on the machinations forced on illegals hoping to grab a morsel of the world's wealth — in this case through fake marriages for citizenship. This time the brothers have placed their camera in the more gentrified city of Liège, rather than their grimy industrial hometown of Seraing. Lorna has become a Belgian citizen through her sham marriage to junkie Claudy (Dardenne regular Jérémie Renier). A local mobster who engineered the union is planning to kill Claudy with a staged overdose so Lorna can remarry a Russian mafioso. But when Claudy threatens to start using drugs again, the two have passionate sex and form a sudden bond.
I got chance to speak to Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne in the Unifrance pavilion following the premiere of their film Happily for journos, Luc is forthcoming and responsive; Jean-Pierre is famously less so, often parrying questions that he seems to regard as, well, unanswerable.
Gallery: Cannes, May 19th-20th, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 | 11:08 AM
Angelina Jolie, Peter Coyote and Maradona — here are photos from Monday, May 19th and Tuesday, May 20th at the Cannes Film Festival. For more Cannes coverage, check out ifc.com/cannes.
IFC News Podcast #77: Cannes Midpoint
Monday, May 19, 2008 | 2:07 PM
By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore
The 2008 Cannes Film Festival is halfway through, and so this week on the IFC News podcast we're coming to you straight from France to discuss the festival so far, a few of the films we've liked and Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," on which we're very divided.
Download now (MP3: 33:59 minutes, 31.1 MB)
[Photo: "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," Weinstein Co., 2008]
Gallery: Cannes, May 18th, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008 | 1:03 PM
Bullwhips, boats and karaoke — here are photos from Sunday, May 18th at the Cannes Film Festival. For more Cannes coverage, check out ifc.com/cannes.
Gallery: Cannes, May 17th, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008 | 7:03 AM
Press conferences, Penélope Cruz, Mike Tyson and live music at the beach — here are photos from Saturday, May 17th at the Cannes Film Festival. For more Cannes coverage, check out ifc.com/cannes.
Cannes 08: Walter Salles on "Linha de Passe"
Sunday, May 18, 2008 | 1:24 AM
By Erica Abeel
The abiding humanism we've come to expect from Walter Salles is abundantly present in "Linha de Passe," his luminous competition entry in this year's Cannes. Co-directed with Daniela Thomas, the film explores the Brazilian underclass through the lives of four brothers who live with their mother on the outskirts of teeming São Paulo. But though the family leads a hardscrabble life in an unforgiving milieu, "Linha" is no "City of God." The brothers may skirt violence and crime, yet they struggle to reinvent themselves, continuing to search, however misguidedly, for a way to rise above their circumstances.
One son (Vinícius de Oliveira from Salles's "Central Station," sole actor in a cast of non-pros) hopes to use soccer as his ticket out. A second braves the mockery of friends and family to embrace religion and assist a local pastor. Touchingly, the youngest boy, fathered by a black bus-driver, becomes obsessed with learning to drive a city bus. The matriarch — a sort of Latin Mother Courage — is middle-aged, worn, and, shockingly, pregnant, yet she manages to support the family as a housekeeper and hews to her own brand of morality.
Shot in a breathless quasi-documentary style and often indifferently lit, "Linha" alternates close-ups with rocketing rides down São Paulo's jammed roadways. There's a sometimes uneasy mix of lyricism — conveyed through the repeated motif of raised hands — and gritty realism. Unlikely to do the boffo business of "The Motorcycle Diaries," "Linha" is nonetheless an inspiriting installment in Salles's ongoing examination of Brazil.
Gallery: Cannes, May 14th-16th, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008 | 6:33 AM
The red carpet set-up, the city at night, Jack Black kung fu and a trip to the local market — here are photos from Wednesday, May 14th through Friday, May 16th at the Cannes Film Festival. For more Cannes coverage, check out ifc.com/cannes.
Cannes 08: Fernando Meirelles on "Blindness"
Thursday, May 15, 2008 | 12:17 PM
By Erica Abeel
Take it as a sign of some general anxiety disorder gripping the planet, but Cannes 2008 kicked off on a distinctly somber note. In "Blindness," the fest opener by Fernando Meirelles, civilization as we know it goes to hell and back when a group of urbanites in an unnamed city succumb to an epidemic of mysterious blindness. Only a character known as The Doctor's Wife (Julianne Moore, in a powerful turn) remains immune to the malady. Finding herself a leader in a world of savagery and chaos, she helps forge a new form of community that takes the film to a happier place (cue Kumbaya on the soundtrack).
Based on the celebrated allegorical novel by José Saramago, the film displays the ability first demonstrated by Meirelles in "City of God" to choreograph large groups of beleaguered folks through explosive situations. He's ably assisted by an international cast — who were coached by an expert in blindness — that also includes Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Alice Braga. In adapting this story, Meirelles confronted a daunting new task: finding an equivalent in cinema, the visual art par excellence, to convey the milky white sightlessness visited on his characters. Add to this the challenge of both bringing a human face to nameless characters who are generic stand-ins for humankind and striking a balance between gripping drama and the wider philosophical connotations of blindness intended by Saramago.
Whether or not Meirelles successfully met these challenges has been a hot topic of debate on the Croisette. I sat down to speak with the engaging, forthcoming filmmaker following the premiere of his film.
Live from Cannes, It's IFC
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 | 12:21 PM
The third annual Cannes Cam is a go — check it out for a live, 24/7 stream of the red carpet of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. IFC News host Matt Singer will be around for all of the major premieres, providing commentary along with a rotating cast of special guests that includes New York Times critic A.O. Scott, Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League and Variety's Anne Thompson.
You can find the Cannes Cam here.
Tribeca '08: Tracey Hecht on "Life in Flight"
Thursday, May 8, 2008 | 9:28 AM
[For complete coverage of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, check out IFC's Tribeca page.]
There's a moment late in "Life in Flight" when Will (Patrick Wilson) tells his young son, "I haven't been paying a lot of attention lately." It's a difficult thing to admit for the harried husband and father, who spends most of the film kowtowing to his wife Kate (Amy Smart), who'd rather see him land a major commission for his architectural firm than have him attend their son's biodiversity science fair. As Will finds out, such choices have left him with the life he might once have imagined for himself, but not one he wanted. Though he's become a successful architect, the lines that have defined his life have become blurred, particularly when he meets Kate (Lynn Collins), a free-spirited designer. Writer/director Tracey Hecht knows something about those kinds of decisions, having recently broken away from a career in design to make her feature debut, which made its world premiere at Tribeca, and had time to talk about her own career path and why there's something for everyone to take away from her first film.
Tribeca '08: James Mottern on "Trucker"
Monday, May 5, 2008 | 10:19 PM
[For complete coverage of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, check out IFC's Tribeca page.]
It's typical to assume when you sit down with a director that they have a love of film, but in James Mottern's case, his enthusiasm for the medium is infectious. When asked why he cast the perennially underrated Michelle Monaghan as the lead in his first film, "Trucker," he'll simply ask in return, "Did you see 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang'?" That leads to a conversation about the little-seen 2005 drama "Winter Solstice" and the way Monaghan caught his eye in the background of a scene, and the next thing you know, you're talking about the way her eyes crossed in a segment for "North Country." That attention to detail is what might also be most impressive about Mottern's nuanced directorial debut, which premiered at this year's the Tribeca Film Festival. Though he'll rattle off his influences and the films he loves from the 1970s with reckless abandon, Mottern's "Trucker" is an original concoction that stars Monaghan as a mother whose hard living is interrupted by retaking custody of a young son she left long ago, with enough cursing between the two to make, well, a trucker blush. Mottern recently sat down to talk about his gritty character study, his war against sentiment and why n