One of the better movie posters ever made is the Saul Bass design for Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining. The eye-catching yellow sheet with a horrified, pixelated face was one of the strangest things I’d seen in my young life when I first encountered it in a theater before The Shining opened. It remains a landmark of simple, effective design.
So it makes sense that the doc Room 237, from first-timer Rodney Ascher, would get a poster that ehoes the Bass design. Room 237 features five theories that explore what Kubrick really meant to say in his Stephen King adaptation. The first US teaser for the film referenced a teaser for Kubrick’s movie, and now the poster design follows suit. Check it out below, side by side with the Bass original. Read More »
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What is Frances Ha about? I’ve watched this trailer a couple times, and can’t quite tell you. Not because this is an Upstream Color situation, where the trailer is rather obscure, and the film it advertises is hardly typical. Rather, this Noah Baumbach film co-written by and starring Greta Gerwig looks like a pretty standard old-school indie, as it follows a young woman (Gerwig) who can’t quite get her life together.
There’s a synopsis below that will tell you a bit more, but really it’s just better to watch the trailer, which is spilling over with Gerwig’s winning charm, and the beat of David Bowie’s ever-infectious ‘Modern Love.’ Read More »
The producing team behind Martha Marcy May Marlene also put together Simon Killer, a film that follows a young man (Brady Corbet) as he skips off to Europe following a breakup, and gets involved with a prostitute. As the title of the film suggests, things don’t go very well. Germain liked the film very much at Sundance last year, and Simon Killer has been one of the films for which we’ve waited patiently for a theatrical release.
IFC Midnight has the film, and has released its first trailer today. Not long ago we saw a UK ad for the movie that pitched it very close to Martha Marcy May Marlene territory — a slow burn, with a tense buildup.
This trailer is much more energetic, driven by a pulsing electronic soundtrack and featuring a strobing, intense visual aesthetic. It’s a great piece of editing. Read More »
Sometimes it takes a long time for distributors to settle on a release plan for films they buy at Sundance. A couple of big 2012 titles are just now being teased to the public, for example. Take The Shining documentary Room 237, which just got a US trailer today in anticipation of a late March release.
Now here’s the trailer for Simon Killer. The indie thriller, directed by Antonio Campos (Afterschool) and starring Brady Corbet, whose appearance in the film was widely praised, has been dormant since IFC bought it last year. But now a UK trailer has surfaced, and it gives a pretty good taste of the uneasy story.
Simon Killer comes from the producers of Martha Marcy May Marlene, and has been likened to that film in the way that uncertainty and a clinical eye are used to create tension. The title alone should tell you that Corbet’s character is ultimately not the best guy around, but this trailer does a fine job of laying out some of what leads to the film’s climax. Read More »
An audience favorite film at Sundance and Fantastic Fest 2012 was Room 237, the documentary from Rodney Ascher that attempts to detail and unpack the various secrets of Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining. What messages did he code into the movie? (If any?) Is The Shining just a great horror movie, or does it really feature a hidden conversation about the genocide of Native Americans? That notion is just one of the theories in Room 237.
IFC picked up the film and will release it later this year as part of its IFC Midnight label. The first US trailer is out (the one we posted last year has been pulled) and it is an appropriately simple thing. It won’t take you long to figure out where this one is going, especially if you’re familiar with the teaser for The Shining, but that doesn’t make the payoff any less entertaining when it happens. Read More »
If you’re attracted to the idea of a fable-like vampire tale but don’t want to forego big splashes of blood and big, baroque emotional arcs, then Neil Jordan‘s Byzantium might be one to see. The film features Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan as mother and daughter, with the twist being that they share vampiric blood. They’re trying to maintain the undead version of a living in a small town, but when Ronan’s character sparks to a young man played by Caleb Landry Jones, things get out of control.
Jonny Lee Miller, Sam Riley, and Tom Hollander also show up in the story that marks Jordan’s return to vampires following his 1994 effort Interview With the Vampire. (There are also distinct shades of his 1984 fairy tale A Company of Wolves here, as well.)
Reviews of this one out of TIFF last year were mixed, but this new international trailer does a good job of setting up the film as something fun and a bit set off from the now-typical film depiction of vampires. Read More »
Good news, Stanley Kubrick fans. The fantastic and fascinating documentary Room 237 directed by Rodney Ascher will be released by IFC Films on March 29. The film, which premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, is an incredible look at secrets and theories buried in The Shining. Read our review here and check out the trailer below. Read More »
Posted on Monday, January 21st, 2013 by Angie Han
A few days after the kickoff the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, deal-making is in full swing. The well-reviewed drama The Spectacular Now, by Smashed director James Ponsoldt, is headed to newish distributor A24, while the crowdpleasing comedy Austenland, from Napoleon Dynamite writer Jerusha Hess, is nearing a deal with FilmDistrict. Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan‘s The Look of Love had a mixed reception, but that’s not stopping IFC Films from closing in on a deal; the distributor also released the pair’s last comedy together, The Trip. Meanwhile, Anchor Bay has picked up two narrative features so far, the Dermot Mulroney-starring The Rambler and Leland Orser‘s Morning. (The latter is not playing at Sundance.)
Over in the world of documentaries, music-centric films seem to be doing quite well. Showtime has acquired the broadcast rights to the two-part documentary History of the Eagles, which will air on the channel February 15 & 16. Also headed to television is Pussy Riot — A Punk Prayer, which has been snapped up by HBO Documentary Films. Finally, Twenty Feet From Stardom, which follows some of popular music’s greatest backup singers, will get a theatrical release by RADiUS-TWC. And in non-music news, AMC’s Sundance Selects has grabbed Dirty Wars, about America’s covert wars, and The Summit, about climbers scaling the most dangerous peak in the world.
Hit the jump to read descriptions of the films mentioned above.
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