James Franco is everywhere. This week he’ll be travelling to Oz with Sam Raimi, and next week he’s heading to Spring Break with Harmony Korine. A few years ago, he was at 30 Rock shooting a documentary about Saturday Night Live. The film, Saturday Night, offered viewers unprecedented access behind the long-running sketch comedy show and garnered rave reviews when it hit the festival circuit in 2010. Since then the movie seemingly disappeared, leaving documentary and comedy fans clamouring for some kind of update.
Franco has finally given us that update, and the news is encouraging. Though the film was wrapped up in some rights issues, it has a new distributor and they’re currently figuring out how to release it. “It will come out,” said Franco. Read More »
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“From the moment it launched just three short weeks ago, it was so clear to us that six-second loops of video, edited in-phone, and posted in real time was and will be the future of film distribution.” So says Oscilloscope’s “Minister of Informative Updates” Bruce Farnsworth, who is currently releasing the upcoming film, It’s A Disaster, on the Vine video app.
Obviously, he’s joking.
What’s not a joke is that the Oscilloscope Vine account (accessible through their Twitter @OscopeLabs) is releasing a sizeable amount of It’s A Disaster, Todd Berger‘s upcoming apocalyptic comedy starring David Cross and Julia Stiles. Check out a few examples below and read the full release. Read More »
Ever been the new person at a small party where there are awkward tensions and undercurrents of conflict that you’re aware of, but have no part in? That’s where the character played by David Cross finds himself in Todd Berger‘s film It’s a Disaster. Cross’s character shows up to a “couples brunch” with his new girlfriend, played by Julia Stiles.
Things are obviously weird, and they progress to a point where a lot of people would wish for just about any excuse to get out of the situation. And then the attendees find out that the party might be their last. That changes the uncomfortable scenario just a bit, as decorum and inhibitions fully dissolve.
Check out a trailer below. Read More »
American Psycho, Big Love, and American Horror Story actor Matt Ross makes his feature writing and directing debut with 28 Hotel Rooms, which played Sundance this year to considerable acclaim and is soon opening via Oscilloscope. The film follows the tumultuous courtship of a couple played by Chris Messina (Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Away We Go) and Marin Ireland (Homeland), and this first trailer for the movie is an occasionally raw illustration of the life they try to lead together. It is quiet, rough, and slightly not safe for work (thanks to a bit of sex) but also fairly compelling. Read More »
Today Adam Yauch, originally known to many as MCA of the Beastie Boys, passed away at 47. He was diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and was declared cancer-free months later. The precise cause of his passing is yet to be reported.
We don’t often comment on the passing of figures in the music scene, but for several generations Yauch was part of the gateway to great films and music. Years ago I loved picking apart the ingredients in sample-heavy songs. Beasties tracks were a treasure hunt; if something had stuck with them long enough to make it into a track, it was probably worth looking into. Way before the internet was an easy to way to learn about forgotten media, Yauch and the Beastie Boys (with help from Spike Jonze) pointed the way to films like The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three, and Danger: Diabolik. There was a bigger lesson in there, too: everything was fair game, every experience fed back into others. It’s all connected.
Yauch also founded Oscilloscope Laboratories, part of which is the film label that in the past few years has consistently distributed movies worth seeing: We Need to Talk About Kevin, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Bellflower, Dear Zachary, A Film Unfinished, The Messenger, and William S Burroughs: A Man Unfinished, just for starters. Oscilloscope has Wuthering Heights, Samsara, and Shut Up and Play the Hits coming up. Being part of the effort to bring those movies to audiences would be a great legacy even without the decades of influence Yauch had with the Beastie Boys.
We’ve reached a point where we see stunning images every day. Current camera technology combined with the instant delivery method of the internet means there is no shortage of eye-popping visuals to take in on a regular basis. We’re constantly being given new ways to look at the world around us.
Because our world is truly wondrous, there is still power in the magnificent image. In the documentary Samsara, Baraka director Ron Fricke uses 70mm photography to explore and define “the links between humanity and the rest of nature.” A trailer for the film is below, and it is stunning. Read More »
If you’re feeling a little Halloweened out today, maybe jump ahead a few months to Christmas. That holiday has a laundry list of films we traditionally watch and, last year, a new one fought its way onto the list: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. The Finnish film from director Jalmari Helander is about an archaeological dig that unearths the real Santa Claus. And Santa is not at all jolly. It’s now available on Blu-ray and DVD and we’re excited to debut some exclusive, original illustrations that were used in the film. Check them out after the jump. Read More »
In the past decade Andrea Arnold has emerged as a promising art-house filmmaker, even if she has only two features to her name. Her 2009 film Fish Tank rightfully impressed many, thanks in no small part to Michael Fassbender’s effective performance. (His follow-up to Hunger.) And if her 2006 film Red Road is less impressive overall, it is photographed and assembled so beautifully that I couldn’t help but be drawn in to the dour, lonely world it depicts. Track down her Oscar-winning 2005 short film, Wasp, too.
Arnold’s command of visual language is enough to make me automatically interested in any new film she delivers, even if said new film is a version of the well-worn Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights. The picture premiered at Venice and played TIFF, where it was picked up by Oscilloscope for US distribution. That means we’ll get a chance to see it at some point in the next year. For now take a look at a dreamy, seemingly Malick-influenced teaser trailer, below. Read More »
