12.29, 9 am Pacific Update: On 12.22 I posted a rundown of 2015 films that seem fairly promising. A few other films were posted by commenters over the next day or so. Here’s another rundown with an attempt to break them into unfair categories but…call it a work in progress, like anything else. We’re talking … Read more
I was ready to run a piece about Jon Turtletaub‘s Last Vegas (CBS Films, 11.1) after catching it two weeks ago but it wasn’t cool to post, embargo-wise, until two days ago. Now I can’t seem to get it up. All I know is that I was expecting a piece of throwaway jizz, and it’s … Read more
I riffed a week or two ago about moments in movies that just shut things down like that. You may be happy, unhappy or undecided about a film you’re watching, but along comes one of these moments and whap…you’re gone. Because you’ve just seen a harbinger of twenty or a hundred or a thousand similar … Read more
By the usual spitball standards, here are some of the new Sundance 2010 standouts — premieres, spotlight, midnight, etc. — that were announced a couple of hours ago. The coolest-sounding are Floria Sigismondi‘s The Runaways, the Joan Jett/birth-of-’70s-girl-rock biopic with Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, and Untitled Duplass Brothers Project, which co-director and co-writer Mark … Read more
Apologies to Washington Times writer Sonny Bunch for my not responding to an interview request last week to talk about film grain. A decent piece resulted. He wound up quoting Some Came Running‘s Glenn Kenny and the Criterion Collection’s Lee Kline. Kline blows smoke, however, by saying the choice is strictly between removing or not … Read more
Having now seen the wonderfully vivid and deeply affecting Criterion Collection DVD of Terrence Malick‘s Days of Heaven, it needs to be said that Criterion producer Lee Kline misrepesented the truth of what this DVD contains in a ridiculously over-amped piece that he posted on the Criterion website on 8.16. With Malick himself presiding over … Read more
Coast-to-coast alarm bells are ringing in DVD-aficionado circles in response to yesterday afternoon’s posting about the forthcoming Criterion Collection DVD of Days of Heaven (due 10.23), which has been described by producer-technician Lee Kline as deliberately unsweetened and “very different” from the previous version due to the input of director Terrence Malick, who wanted it … Read more
The Spirit of Radio Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion (Picturehouse, 6.9), based on Garrison Keillor’s radio show with a script by Keillor, is a backstage look at the goings-on during the final broadcast of America’s most celebrated radio show. The film played Friday night (3.10) at the kickoff of South by Southwest in Austin, … Read more
Has It Down Today (Friday, 10.4) is Peter Sarsgaard Meditation Day, if you want to think like that. You know…thoughts of who he is and how sharp his mind is, what he’s got stewing inside, what that easy smile and those hooded eyes really indicate deep down, where’s he’s heading. Sarsgaard, 34, has two new … Read more
Bob Berney’s Picturehouse Films has shelled out $3.75 million to be the distributor of Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, a feature based on Garrison Keillor’s radio show. Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly costar. Berney caught the film at a distributor screening in … Read more
It’s looking like Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, based on a script by Garrison Keillor about various eccentrics taking part in the final broadcast of Keillor’s radio show, isn’t entirely a Robert Altman film. A 7.20 report by St.Paul Pioneer Press‘s Chris Hewitt suggests that the still-rolling production is some kind of collaboration between … Read more