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19 Oct
| One of my favorite low-key films this year has been That Evening Sun, a sort of deep Southern gothic drama that pits two men against one another in a battle of wills. Written and directed by Scott Teems, the film stars Hal Holbrook and Ray McKinnon as the two men. Holbrook’s performance is deep, nuanced and determined. The film is part of a trio of recent films about old men and their willpower, alongside Gran Torino and Get Low. It’s refreshing in this day of awful young male model ‘leading men’ to see old guys lighting up the screen. Now That Evening Sun has a distributor and a new trailer, which you can check out after the break. The distributor has been set for a few weeks now, but the pickup, by Freestyle Releasing, got by me somehow. No matter; at least the film will get seen, even if Freestyle’s relatively … |
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19 Oct
| The novel American Rust is on track to be turned into a film, and while the subject matter and tone are called “unrelentingly downbeat,” reporting on the forward movement gives me hope. Because I see a cousin to films like Days of Heaven in this story of friends trying to escape both an accidental murder and their a decaying Pennsylvania town. With the writer/director duo behind The Motorcycle Diaries tackling the book, I hope the eventual film will have some of the same uncanny beauty that made the downbeat films of several decades back so great. Variety reports that Walter Salles and Jose Rivera are attached to direct and write the script from Philipp Meyer’s debut novel. Scott Stuber is producing and he’s got a first-look deal with Universal, though if the book and eventual film are as downbeat as most say, I’d be surprised if Universal picked up the … |
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17 Oct
| What the world needs now is another vampire movie like I need two holes in my neck. Of course, it’s going to get one, and a whole lot more than one. Perhaps the most interesting one on the cards, however, is a big screen adaptation of Moira Buffini’s play A Vampire Story to be called Byzantium. The play was commissioned as part of the NT Connections program in London last year and I’m not even the tiniest bit surprised the movie adaptation is coming. The official synopsis follows after the break. Bear in mind that this is the official synopsis of the stage play, and the eventual film could be anywhere from identical to radically altered. It also gets into light spoiler territory after the second paragraph. |
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16 Oct
| Obviously, the staff at /Film collectively views Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are with a certain reverence. The film is simply a win all around, tastefully exploring and modernizing the notions of imaginative nostalgia and vice versa that are so often exploited these days in the name of “geekdom” and “hipsterdom.” On a related note, I’ve always found it a bit profound that Ain’t It Cool and Vice magazine were started within two years of one another (‘96 and ‘94, respectively); both went on to make a positive, DIY impact on culture in the aughts unlike anything in new media this side of negative influencers like Matt Drudge and Rupert Murdoch. Back then, I remember thinking that Austin’s Harry Knowles was fat off movies (and ’shrooms?) and the Brooklyn staff at Vice was lithe off drugs and deadlines, but there was something in common: they both ignored Old Media … |
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16 Oct
| Note: The following will contain minor spoilers for the movie Where The Wild Things Are and will assume that you know the plot of the book it’s based on. Let’s get this out of the way: Where The Wild Things Are is not a film for everyone. While Warner Bros. might hope to position this as a kids’ film, it lacks many of the trappings you might expect from the genre; Max doesn’t go on some grand quest with the Wild Things and, just like the book, not that much changes in the real world by the time you reach the end of the story. Even the aesthetic of the world, laden with its warm yet monochromatic look, doesn’t lend itself to conventional notions of whimsy. But what the film lacks in convention, it makes up for faithfully capturing many elements of the childhood experience, complete with its resplendent wonder as … |
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16 Oct
| Will Ferrell is set to star in a $10 million independent dramedy, Everything Must Go, based on a work by renown, late short story author Raymond Carver entitled “Why Don’t You Dance.” The project marks the feature debut of newcomer Dan Rush, a former commercials director whose screenplay for Everything was included on last year’s insidery Black List. Ferrell will play “a relapsed alcoholic” who loses his job, and naturally, his wife gives the heave-hoe too, leaving the character to launch a four-day yard sale on their lawn. The character’s main objective: generating quick beer money. Script Shadow via Playlist has called it his “favorite script” (ever?) and is totally perplexed at the casting. His worries revolve around a hypothetical that sees a studio re-cutting the film to heighten the comedic aspects. Shadow concludes with, “but there’s some real weight to this character and I think we’ve seen from Will Ferrell in the … |
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15 Oct
| When press releases and news articles first appeared with details of new distributor Apparition, one thing stood out: Tree of Life, the upcoming and as yet very mysterious new film from lone wolf director Terrence Malick, was planned for release on Christmas Day. This seemed wildly optimistic, as the film’s production had been kept so tightly under wraps that we barely know what the film is about, and had no reason to believe it was done. That skepticism turns out to be well-founded, as the film has been pushed to an undetermined release in 2010. Anne Thompson got the details from Apparition head Bob Berney, who hasn’t yet seen the currently unfinished film and says “I can’t tell you when it will come out.” In some situations, a new distribution head saying he hasn’t seen one of the films on his slate would be insane, but this is Malick. The director … |
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15 Oct
| It appears that David Schwimmer is leaving the comedy genre for his latest directorial project, Trust, a dark drama starring Clive Owen and Catherine Keener. (And yes, typing out that last sentence did seem a bit trippy.) Owen and Keener will play parents who are shocked to learn that their teenage daughter (played by Liana Liberato) has been victimized by a sexual predator who she met in an online chat room. The film will explore the impact of that event on their family life. Schwimmer certainly isn’t the first person I’d think of to take on a project like this. His first feature, Run Fatboy Run, was a mess of a comedy that even the likes of Simon Pegg and Dylan Moran couldn’t save. He’s most recently been working on the Little Britain USA series (which is apparently good, but I haven’t seen), and he’s also had previous experience TV episodes … |
Animated Series From Jonah Hill Greenlit by Fox. William H. Macy Drama, Shameless, Set for Showtime.
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15 Oct
| Last week, we discussed the surprising, albeit less surreal in 2009, news that Fox had picked up an animated TV pilot based on the characters of subversive comic book legend Peter Bagge. Today, the network has greenlit another new animated series, this one from Jonah Hill, who will co-write, provide voice work, and executive produce. Details after the jump… A title for the series was not announced in the trades, but a logline was released. The lead character is “a 7-year-old socialite who acts and talks like an adult—and finds himself out of his element when forced to attend public school.” Though in its own way, Mike Judge and Fox’s King of the Hill (now concluded) was ahead of its time in this arena, you gotta love a new wave of depression-era shows referencing class and wealth in America, including the other series discussed below. It wasn’t specified whether Hill would voice the rich … |
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13 Oct
| Update: It looks like the studio is hunting down this trailer online and removing it from various sites. We’ll see if we can get another version of it up soon. You will watch this trailer and believe you’ve been transported to another decade. This three minute promo for The Expendables—Sylvester Stallone’s latest project as writer/director/star—has pretty much everything you’d want from a cheesy as all hell ’80s action flick. A group of tough guys gathered to take out some military leader, check. A mysterious female contact who they can’t trust, check. Explosions and said tough guys leaping away from those explosions in slow motion, you bet your ass. And perhaps most telling that this film knows exactly what it wants to be, you have Dolph Lundgren referencing Showdown in Little Tokyo with “Bring it happy feet!”—this time with Jet Li in the place of the dearly departed Brandon Lee. I suppose at this … |
