Sundance Dispatch #3

Hello all,

Just wrapping up a five film day and a good one at that.

PUSH: BASED ON THE NOVEL BY SAPPHIRE

Sixteen year old Precious is faced with unbearable circumstances locked in a world of violence, incest and poverty. Through one opportunity taken she begins to piece together an alternate future for herself. The issues attacked in the film are monumental but the script and the performances keep everything on an honest, human scale. I loved it.

SHOUTING FIRE: STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF FREE SPEECH

An exploration of the incredible complexity that surrounds free speech. The documentary combines historical cases including the New York Times struggle to publish the Pentagon Papers and contemporary cases including a New York City principal forced to resign after discussion the word "intifada" with a reporter. Very thoughtfully made.

REPORTER

Film maker Eric Daniel Metzgar follows two time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof to the Congo as he works to pull back the curtain on the world of chaos created by war and poverty much like he did in Darfur. An incredible look into the process of one reporter and his personal mission to create a call to action from his readers.  Fantastic score. 

THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE

I was eager to check this out after a day of weighty subjects. R.J. Cutler was given remarkable access to Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, and her staff as they prepare to publish the hugely important September issue of the magazine. The delight of this documentary was Vogue creative director Grace Coddington who's remarkable eye for storytelling through fashion images is truly remarkable. It was, as expected, a fun watch but the unexpected artistry of Coddington added a richness to the film that was a real treat.

RUDO Y CURSI

The film reunites Y Tu Mama Tambien costars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna as brothers who's skill at soccer gets them out of small town Mexico and into the big life as professional athletes in Mexico City. Badly prepared for their success and its associated temptations they struggle with navigating the choppy waters of their own fame.

That's it for today.  Better hit the hay so I can get back to it bright and early tomorrow.  If you have a chance, go check out the video created for the "Live at Sundance" series on the Sundance website. It features our very own Toby Leonard plus a few Belcourt staff and board cameos if you watch closely.

--Stephanie Silverman

Sundance Dispatch #2

Opening night hoopla aside, we get into the reason for the whole thing, them films.


THRILLA IN MANILA
Behind the rivalry of one-time friends who become famously bitter enemies, it wasn't just the namesake fight that pitted Mohammed Ali against Joe Frazier. For those of us unfamiliar with the backstory, THRILLA gives a detailed insight into one of the greatest fights in history from mostly Frazier's point of view. Thoughts return to James Toback's TYSON (also playing here), the one-sided confessional spin that Ali never had.

MOON
In the future, the world's energy problems are solved by mining helium from the moon. All it takes is a HAL-like machine and Sam Rockwell. And Sam Rockwell. And Sam Rockwell again. Take 2001 and SOLARIS, PRIMER and TIMECRIMES, mix them in a blender, throw in a pinch of family life, the Tennessee Titans logo (??), throw it in a blender, garnish it with right-wing radio, and you have MOON.

HUMPDAY
HUMPDAY is basically a post-mumblecore riff on OLD JOY. It's set in the same region, the same characters, ahem, male-bonding - two old friends: the newlywed and the traveler who shows up one day who even looks similar to Will Oldham - but it's as if they've consciously taken any perceived homoerotic subtext from OLD JOY and ran amok with it. You can almost imagine how the idea for the film came about. It's probably not unlike the scene that sets the film in motion when the two guys, drunk at a small party, decide to make a film on a dare. In the film, it's two straight guys making gay porn, but in reality it's HUMPDAY. The thing is that it's funny as hell and it works.

TAKING CHANCE
Kevin Bacon plays a Marine analyst with a degree of guilt over his cozy office job. Feeling inadequate while other Marines fight on the ground in Iraq, he volunteers to escort the body of a fallen soldier from Dover to Wyoming. It's a powerful with a solid performance from Bacon and is for some reason going straight to HBO.


Shortly, I'll be taking in BIG RIVER MAN, which was mentioned a few posts back in our mentions of Nashville representation at this year's festival. Much more to come, and hopefully we'll hear from fearless Belcourt Managing Director Stephanie Silverman who is also here navigating the screenings and black ice on the sidewalk (my poor scraped hand)....

--Toby Leonard

Sundance Dispatch, #1

Ahoy, you 3-degree-weather neighbors....Did we leave at the right time or what? It's a balmy 35 in Park City, UT where the 2009 Sundance Film Festival kicked off last night with the opening night screening of MARY AND MAX, a full-length animated Aussie offering from the filmmaker who brought us the claymation short HARVEY KRUMPET a few years back. Without delving too much into detail, this decidely non-kid-oriented film involved two very lonely pen pals: a nerdy girl in Oz and an overweight New Yorker with Asberger's Syndrome. We're mixed on the result itself, but agree that Philip Seymour Hoffman (voice of New Yorker) can do no wrong.

While the hordes pile in to the snow covered ski town, we're feeling like old hats having already been here for three days. Why? The Art House Convergence, of course. It's what happens when you gather 30+ arthouse delegates in one Salt Lake City hotel and bask in the firing of group synapses. There are independent booksellers organizations, independent grocers and on and on, but there's never been an independent cinema consortium. Spurned on by the Sundance Institute, who initially brought 14 of us together back in '06 for its Art House Project, the group took on a life of its own over the last few years and the Belcourt is proud to be involved in a leadership role.

So went Tuesday and Wednesday in Salt Lake. Yesterday, we had a few morning sessions and then shuttled up to Park City to an opening day industry reception at the New Frontier on Main, the video/art/science/media installation arm of the festival's programming. All we can say is WOW! Personal faves were MOTHER + FATHER, which was basically two separate rooms (separated by gender), each with six monitors/audio channels, each with an iconic actor or actress' excerpted sections from a film where they played a mother or father (think Faye Dunaway in MOMMIE DEAREST or Steve Martin in FATHER OF THE BRIDE). The excerpts played against each other to create a whole that commented on the hilarities and frustrations of parenthood. As they were in 12 minute loops, it was easy to get caught up and not know where it began or ended. By far the most fun was TAMPER: GESTURAL INTERFACE FOR CINEMATIC DESIGN, Oblong Laboratories' exhibit. These are the people that developed the software in MINORITY REPORT whereby Tom Cruise shuffled through mountains of data on a digital screen with the shift on the hand. Two big screens and a ceiling full of sensors allow the gloved user to sort through a handful of full length feature films and pull off set pieces or people and drag them onto a seperate screen, creating their own looped film. Imagine grabbing Charles Bronson from the end of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and juxtaposing a two-second grimace into an office complex from PLAYTIME, adding ashtrays from OLDBOY etc - endless fun. I found myself all alone with this this thing and its creators, engrossed in its wonders, when I felt a strange presence behind me (and the heat of a camera) leering at my creation. It was he they call Bob, the whole damn shindig's fatherhead: Robert Redford. Naturally, I stepped aside and gave him the floor. Not one to be starstruck as most of us Nashvillian take pride in avoiding, I couldn't help hiding behind a camera and snapping a pick of the young genius giving Bob the rundown...crappy cell-phone pics. A good day, and we're just getting started.
P.S. - Not to gloat, but would you believe that it's 30 degrees warmer in the high elevations of the Rockies than it is in Nashville? Stay warm...
--Toby Leonard

Ein, Zwei, DIE !!!

Blame the holidays if you will, or perhaps a degree of slackery, but we've not been active as of late on the posting. That said, there's a lot going on right now as we prepare for the Sundance season which starts with the Art House Convergence in Salt Lake City, Jan-13-15 and then the Sundance Film Festival itself which runs from the 15th through 23rd. But I digress. The real point is that, while combing the interwebs for trailers of Sundance films, we stumbled across the discovery of what could turn out to be the best tag line of 2009, and from a Norwegian midnight offering with hot and horny collegiates, snowmobiles and the graves around a former Nazi outpost. WOW! Sign me up!

Consider this, and check out Trailer Spy for the next round of Sundance flicks.

Dead Snow Trailer

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them..

8 cans to ship them all and 32 reels to bind them! The complete The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is hanging out in our hall ready for screening this weekend.

Nashville filmmakers head to Sundance

The Sundance Film Festival lineup was announced over the last two weeks and features some familiar folk to us here at the Belcourt...very familiar. This may get confusing, so bear with me: Let's start with Brent Stewart's short film THE DIRTY ONES, playing in the shorts program. We showed his documentary THE LONELY back in May as a companion piece to Harmony Korine's MISTER LONELY, the film shoot that it documents. Brent also served as cinematographer and editor on fellow Nashvillian James Clauer's THE ALUMINUM FOWL, a short that made it into the 2006 Sundance Film Festival (and onto our screens later that year). James also will return to Sundance this year having done camera work on a feature film in the Documentary section, BIG RIVER MAN, which chronicles endurance swimmer Martin Strel's trek down the Amazon River. Additionally, both THE DIRTY ONES and ALUMINUM FOWL also share both a cameraman, filmmaker Michael Carter who also shares editing on THE DIRTY ONES, and a producer in new proud parent Harmony Korine. Additionally, THE DIRTY ONES stars Harmony's wife Rachel and the sound mix was done by Belcourt projectionist alumnus Jim Reed. Kudos, gentlemen.

In celebration of all of this, here is THE ALUMINUM FOWL:



--Toby Leonard

No dream is ever just a dream. Notes on Eyes Wide Shut.

As promised, here is my scrawly labyrinth of notes as used for the Wednesday, December 3rd screening of Eyes Wide Shut.