MCN Originals Archive for September, 2010
DVD Wrap: Prince of Persia, Letters to Juliet, Killers, The Black Cauldron, Cemetery Junction, and more…
In Hollywood’s Cathedral of Concepts, the Reverend Jerry Bruckheimer presided over the marriage of a beloved amusement-park attraction to the classic swashbuckler. Nine months later, the fruit of their union arrived in the form of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Other children would follow. At the same church, seven years later, Reverend Bruckheimer would unite a popular action-packed video game with a direct descendant of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad, with the result being Prince of Persia: The Sand of Time.
Read the full article » 2 Comments »TIFF Dispatch Day Five: It’s Kind of a Funny Film Festival Story …
So tonight I want to talk a little bit about something interesting that’s happening at the fest around the film It’s Kind of a Funny Story, directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. I was catching up with indieWIRE’s Day Four Hot Topic, where film critics drop in the Film Lounge to chat about What’s…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Frenzy on the Wall: Robert Rodriguez – Exactly What We Thought He Was
It seems that with every new Robert Rodriguez film folks talk about how he wasted all the promise that was evident in El Mariachi. To which I say, “huh?” The film shows a lot of ingenuity – in the sense that he made it for so little money – but not a whole lot of originality. The fact that he basically re-made that film two times says a lot about the kind of filmmaker that he is, too.
Read the full article » 7 Comments »TIFF Review: Made in Dagenham
The film with the strongest “female empowerment” vibe at TIFF may just be Made in Dagenham, a film about the feminist movement taking over an unlikely corner of working class England in 1968, when female factory workers who sewed seat covers for the Ford Motors plant went on strike. For once, we have a film…
Read the full article »TIFF Dispatch Day Four: Mixed Bag
I ran into a friend today who mentioned that he was enjoying these dispatches and wanted me to keep writing them. So here you go, this one’s for you. Today was a real mixed bag for me, screening-wise. I logged about four hours sleep last night and woke up with my head aching and stuffed…
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Confessions of a Film Festival Junkie
One anticipated film that Toronto received the very first look see is Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter. It screened yesterday for press including the army of junket scribes that attend about 20 interview roundtables during TIFF’s opening weekend. They were grumbling about the filmmaker only doing two interviews during his stay and having to go to New York in October for the official press junket.
Read the full article »TIFF Dispatch Day Three: The Best Laid Plans
I’ve finally gotten myself to the point of feeling more or less fully immersed in my Toronto routine (read: catching my sleep in four hour power sessions, fueling on coffee and Balance bars all day when there’s no time to eat between back-to-back screenings and Starbucks runs out of paninis, spending so much time in…
Read the full article »TIFF Review: The Illusionist
The Illusionist, Sylvain Chomet‘s animated adaptation of an unproduced script by French comedic legend Jacques Tati, is a sad, soulful, touching tale about a vaudeville magician past his prime and his friendship with a young girl. Chomet, who previously made the excellent The Triplets of Bellville (which referenced Tati’s Jour de Fête), uses his uniquely…
Read the full article »TIFF Review: Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, revisits an iconic character originally played by Bruce Lee (in Fists of Fury) and Jet Li (in Fist of Legend). Here, Donnie Yen reprises the role of Chen Yen from a 20-episode 1995 television series version of Fists of Fury. This time around, Chen Zhen returns…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Confessions of a Film Festival Junkie
Toronto has also evolved along these lines. It runs arguably the best programmed cinematheque in North America, touring film programs and underwrites scholarly research and publications that otherwise would be marginalized. The Lightbox marketing employs the catch phrase: The House That Film Built and, considering past good works, it should be a home base that’s both state of the art and sturdy.
Read the full article »TIFF Review: Biutiful
When a great director has teamed repeatedly with a brilliant writer over the course of a career, one has to ponder how much the unique chemistry of two artistic minds working on a common canvas shapes the quality of the end result. Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s films Amores Perres, 21 Grams, and multiple-Oscar nominee Babel (which…
Read the full article » 3 Comments »Digital Nation: Bran Nue Dae
It’s taken nearly 20 years for Bran Nue Dae to make the leap from the stage to the movies. The semi-autobiographical musical was written by Broome native Jimmy Chi and his band Kuckles, based on their own experiences. Chi’s broad Aboriginal/Asian ancestry reflects the ethnic diversity of the pearling and tourism town, which is on the far northwestern corner of Australia.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »TIFF Dispatch Day One: Ups and Downs
I’m starting to feel settled and in the groove now that I’m getting acclimated to being back in Toronto. It was just about a year ago that I attended my first day of the fest going full force and then wound up being taken by ambulance to the hospital on Day Two, where I spent…
Read the full article » 1 Comment »TIFF Review: Behind Blue Skies
Swedish film Behind Blue Skies very strongly reminded me of Holy Rollers, Kevin Asch‘s Jesse Eisenberg-starrer about a young, fresh-faced Hasidic Jew whose greed lures him into a scheme to transport ecstasy from Amsterdam into the US using other young Hasidics as mules. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, as I actually…
Read the full article »Wilmington on Movies: I’m Still Here, Soul Kitchen and Bran Nue Dae
Okay. Here’s my opinion. I think they had us on. Obviously. Totally. To me (and to lots of others) this looks like a Borat-style mix of a fake central character (Phoenix travestying himself) and a fake premise with some (maybe quite a few) real reactions from the real world around him. (How many, who can tell?)
Read the full article » 5 Comments »Confessions of a Film Festival Junkie
Try as I may, I’ve yet to conquer the feeling of apprehension that floods through me as the countdown to the Toronto International Film Festival enters the single digit phase. It is a wholly irrational emotion but it nonetheless persists.
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Never Let Me Go actors Carey Mulligan & Andrew Garfield
DP/30: Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield chat with David Poland about their new film (some spoilers)
Read the full article » 22 Comments »DVD Wrap: The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, That Evening Sun, Why Did I Get Married, Too?, The Exploding Girl, Solitary Man … and more
The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond: Blu-ray That Evening Sun Movies put into limited release in the dead zone between December 26 and New Year’s Eve share certain traits. They tend to feature stars whose work has previously been recognized by the folks at AMPAS, but whose commercial prospects don’t warrant an expensive marketing campaign….
Read the full article » 1 Comment »Interview: The Savory Sound of Fatih Akin’s Soul Kitchen
Music is both architecture and pulse in Fatih Akin’s tasty, generous farcical food-com, “Soul Kitchen.” Music’s there from the start of writing the script, he tells me, as well as confessing a nasty addiction to something called “vinyl.”
Read the full article » 2 Comments »Wilmington on DVDs: Solitary Man, Crumb, THX-1138, Macgruber and Caravaggio
PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW Solitary Man (Three Stars) U.S.; Brian Koppleman & David Levien, 2010 The thing that fascinates people about a serial seducer like Ben Kalmen (magnificently played by Michael Douglas in A Solitary Man) is his speed of conquest. What could take the average man, even in our liberated society, several months…
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