The plot of the Duplass Brothers‘ latest film, The Do-Deca Pentathlon, more or less sells itself. In 1990, two brothers competed in a series of 25 events to decide who was better and fractured their relationship in the process. The film picks up over twenty years later when circumstances have pushed them back together to finally settle the score. The hope is, somehow, there will be a clear winner this time, lifting the black cloud that’s hovered over both of their lives.
And while that premise could easily have been a huge, broad comedy with big set pieces, under the pen and eye of Jay and Mark Duplass, The Do-Deca Pentathlon is deeply personal tale that pushes the humor back in favor of humanity. Read More »
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Chances are if you read this site, you spend a lot of your time thinking about movies that are on the horizon. Whether it be through reading, discussion or just general anticipation, movies that you haven’t seen are of the utmost importance. Then, once you see the movie in question, a few days pass, and it’s on to the next thing. The positive side to this mindset is you always have something to look forward to. The negative is you can sometimes forget about the great films you’re already done with.
For example, when Natalie Portman came out to award Best Actor at the Oscars last week, it took me a second to put two and two together. Of course, Portman deservidely won Best Actress the year before for her role in Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan. That made me think of Black Swan again, which I hadn’t done in several months and, wouldn’t you know it? Some really cool behind the scenes photographs from that film taken by Ray Lewis are now online. Do a little reminiscing and check them out below. Read More »
Say the name “Alfred Hitchcock” to people and the first thing they think of is Psycho. Everything about the 1960 thriller has become iconic: the actors, the shots, the plot twists. More than any of the director’s other films, it’s the most often referenced and talked about. Which is why Fox Searchlight is moving ahead with a film called Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho which will be about exactly what the title suggests. Anthony Hopkins has been attached to play the director for some time and we recently heard Helen Mirren would play his wife, Alma. That’s now confirmed.
The other two leads, who’ll play the leads of Psycho itself, have also just been cast. Scarlett Johansson will play Janet Leigh and James D’Arcy (Master and Commander, W.E.) will play Anthony Perkins. Read more after the jump. Read More »
WonderCon, usually a staple of Northern California, has migrated south for one year only. The 2012 edition takes place March 16-18 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, CA. While not the pop culture powerhouse of its San Diego counterpart, WonderCon’s Saturday schedule does include some very cool movie related panels. Plus, unlike Comic-Con, tickets are still available just over two weeks before the event. Read about the panels and more after the jump. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012 by Angie Han
Briefly: The problem with following film news but not attending the Sundance Film Festival is that each year, there are a few highly praised titles that take forever to hit regular theaters. Take Sound of My Voice, for example. Though it helped mark Brit Marling as one of the hottest talents to emerge from last year’s event, non-festivalgoers will have waited for over a year to watch the movie by the time it finally gets a theatrical release this April.
Thankfully, Fox Searchlight is moving a bit faster on this year’s most buzzed-about film, Benh Zeitlin‘s Louisiana-set fantasy drama Beasts of the Southern Wild. The company snapped up U.S. distribution rights following Beasts‘ first screening, and it’s now slated the Grand Jury Prize winner for a limited release on June 29. Still a few months away, but it could be so much worse. While you wait, revisit Germain’s review of the film, and check out Zeitlin’s earlier short film Glory at Sea.
As for cinephiles abroad, while we don’t have all the details on international releases of the film just yet, there’s some good news for Spanish folks. Arthouse Golem Distribucion has just picked up all Spanish distribution rights to Beasts, in a deal with Toronto-based sales company eOne Films International.
[Sources: Box Office Mojo Twitter, Variety]
One of the most-praised films at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival was Sound of My Voice, starring and co-written by Brit Marling (Another Earth). The film, directed by Zal Batmanglij, follows a couple as they attempt to infiltrate and learn about a cult, led by a charismatic woman with a rather outrageous claim about her own history. Fox Searchlight picked up the film later in 2011, but has taken time to plan a release schedule.
Now, just more than two months out from release, those of us who weren’t at Sundance in ’11 are getting a taste of the film. A two-minute clip hit yesterday, and now we’ve got the first ‘chapter’ of the movie; that is, the opening twelve-minute segment. Have a look below. The footage will make sense out of the handshake iconography in the poster (seen above). Read More »
One of my favorite movies of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival was Zal Batmanglij‘s Sound of My Voice, a microbudget dramatic thriller which is about a couple who infiltrate a cult in the San Fernando Valley. But the story has a tiny bit of a science fiction as well — the leader of the group is a woman named Maggie (Brit Marling) who claims to be a time traveler from the year 2054. The couple sneak cameras into the cult hoping to expose her scam. You can read my lengthy review here (I’ve tried my hardest to keep it spoiler free). Fox Searchlight acquired the film sometime after last year’s festival, and has been figuring exactly how to market and release such a unique movie.
As the April 27th 2012 release date approaches, Searchlight is beginning their marketing push. Today they have released the first two-minutes of the film as a clip on Apple.com — you can watch it after the jump. Tomorrow we will be exclusively be posting the entire first 12 minutes of the film (the entire first chapter of the story) before it is released on the official website later this week. So please, watch out for that.
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As I’ve started to read about the Sundance film Beasts of the Southern Wild (check our review here), what keeps coming to mind is something like the early films of David Gordon Green filtered through the sensibility of author China Mieville. The film shows us the world through the eyes of a six-year old girl, but that world isn’t quite ‘real.’ It is the creation of director Benh Zeitlin. His landscape is based in part on a post-Katrina Louisiana landscape, but it also has many other elements, some realistic and some fantastic, woven into its fabric.
But rather than looking to some esoteric and possibly way off-base comparison to get an idea of what Beasts of the Southern Wild might be like, let’s look back to the 2008 short film from the same director. Glory at Sea is also by Zeitlin, and like his new feature the short is also set in a landscape that is at least influenced by the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina. But this is no When the Levees Broke; rather it is a film that uses images that suggest a devastated Louisiana as part of a story about following faith and vision even in the aftermath of apocalypse.
Zeitlin breaks many rules of shooting low-budget indie films: he shoots with kids, and on the water, and with a couple of wild, homemade sets. Well, ‘sets’ is a loosely applicable term, but you’ll see what I mean. Glory at Sea is a pretty fantastic 25-minute short, and I highly recommend giving it a look. Read More »
