Posted Jun 27th 2008 8:02AM by Eric D. Snider
Filed under: Animation, Classics, Comedy, Drama, Foreign Language, Gay & Lesbian, Independent, Exhibition, Columns, Cinematical Indie, The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar
A bit of math tells me that after this weekend, 2008 will be halfway over. But here at
The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar, we prefer to think that 2008 has only halfway
begun. There are still six months left to participate in the many cool film-related events that happen every week outside the nation's multiplexes! If you know of something coming up -- special screenings, retrospectives, mini-festivals, etc. -- send me a link! My e-mail is Eric.Snider (at) Weblogsinc (dot) com.
This week, even if
WALL-E is what you've always
Wanted, try to make room in your life for these...
INDIE THEATRICAL RELEASES
- Gunnin' for That #1 Spot is a doc about the nation's top high school basketball players competing in a tournament -- and the film was directed by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch, so you know it's hip. Cinematical's Scott Weinberg gave it a rave review at Tribeca. It opens today in places where basketball is big, just in time for the NBA draft: New York, L.A., Phoenix, Portland, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C.
- Finding Amanda stars Matthew Broderick as a TV producer who goes to Las Vegas to convince his niece (Brittany Snow) to enter rehab. Our Erik Davis tried to find something nice to say about it at Tribeca but was unsuccessful. Opens today in NYC, L.A., Chicago, Boston, Philly, D.C., San Francisco, and Palm Desert, Calif.
After the jump, more indie theatrical releases, plus the city-by-city list of special events....
Continue reading The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar: June 27-July 3
Posted Jun 26th 2008 12:31PM by Kim Voynar
Filed under: Gay & Lesbian, Independent, Casting, RumorMonger, Fandom, Cinematical Indie
Well, this is a bit of a bummer. I've been waiting, it seems like forever, to see when Jack and Diane, Bradley Rust Gray's endlessly gestating "lesbian werewolf" movie that Ellen Page was supposed to star in, would finally go into production. As I wrote waaaaaaay back in September, the film is supposed to be about:
"Jack and Diane, two teenage lesbians, meet in New York City and spend the night kissing ferociously. Diane's charming innocence quickly begins to open Jack's tough skinned heart. But, when Jack discovers that Diane is leaving the country in a week she tries to push her away. Diane must struggle to keep their love alive while hiding the secret that her newly awakened sexual desire occasionally turns her into a werewolf."
Continue reading Oh, Man! Ellen Page is Off the Lesbian Werewolf Flick?
Posted Jun 17th 2008 9:02PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Gay & Lesbian, Distribution, Exhibition
As proclaimed by then-president
Clinton, June is Gay and Lesbian Pride Month. Pride festivities and parades are gearing up across the world with a flurry of color and rainbows, but lately, it's been about more than just extravagant celebration. Gay marriage is now legal in California, and more people are coming out, like the indirectly out
Jodie Foster. Yet, as a new article by
Reuters reports, these advancements are not doing anything for the LGBT box office take.
Sure, they're talking about a lot of indie films no one has heard of, but it's not like all of those films are worth just small whispers of existence (where the only people who have heard of it worked on it). The article specifically mentions
C.R.A.Z.Y., the 2005 film from Jean-Marc Vallee.
Continue reading Discuss: Having Gay Pride Doesn't Help the Box Office
Posted Jun 6th 2008 9:04PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Gay & Lesbian, Romance, Fandom, Home Entertainment, Friday Night Double Feature
It's June, which means the countdown is on until the cute little rugrats and tempestuous teens get released from school to wreak havoc in the home and on the streets. That means that there is not much time left to make use of the long nights of studying, the friendly sleepovers, and the hours at school. In some places, school's already out, and the mayhem has already begun!
So, tonight's double feature is all about getting a night of sweet silence and cinematic sexiness with your partner of choice. There will be no
Mulholland Drive, because a few moments of supreme sexiness don't make up for the overall feel. Instead, this is about movies that have more than one saucy scene, and should get you in the mood for post-film shenanigans. Obviously, it's pretty much impossible to pick the best of, because there are so very many good examples --
Bliss, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Nine 1/2 Weeks, The Story of O, Basic Instinct, Dangerous Liaisons, Crash, Like Water for Chocolate...
But I'm going to go with a little bit of bondage, and a little bit of literature. I give you:
Secretary and
Henry & June.
And this is your obvious warning: What follows has sexual and adult content and language.
Continue reading Cinematical's Friday Night Double Feature: Getting Sexy Before School Lets Out
Posted Jun 4th 2008 3:15PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Drama, Gay & Lesbian, Independent, Casting, Cinematical Indie
There's a new indie film on the way with a pretty vague description and a fun cast, but there may be more to it.
Variety reports that
Adam Salky is directing a new indie film called
Dare, written by
David Brind. Fresh off of
Dragonball,
Emmy Rossum is starring, with
Alan Cumming,
Sandra Bernhard,
Ashley Spring,
Ana Gasteyer,
Rooney Mara, and
Cady Huffman also in the cast.
They have described it as a movie "about three privileged high school seniors who decide they can no longer ignore their deepest needs and take the biggest risk of their lives." However, it looks like there's a bit more to it, if this is anything like the short film that Brind wrote and Salky directed, also called
Dare. It's about a high school senior named Ben who is crushing on Johnny, a "bad boy" that also goes to his school. "After Ben gives Johnny a ride home one night, the boys end up in Johnny's swimming pool and have an encounter that breaks the rules and blows Ben's mind." How this then translates into three, and becomes the biggest risk of their lives, I don't know. Since Rossum is starring, does this become some sort of love triangle?
The film is currently filming in Philadelphia.
Posted May 30th 2008 8:02AM by Eric D. Snider
Filed under: Animation, Classics, Documentary, Drama, Foreign Language, Gay & Lesbian, Independent, Other Festivals, Columns, Cinematical Indie, The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar
Welcome to
The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar, a weekly list of events for movie lovers who want to go beyond the mainstream and the multiplexes. If you know of something cool going on near you -- retrospectives, revivals, film fests, etc. -- send me the info at Eric.Snider (at) Weblogsinc (dot) com and we'll include it in the calendar.
Today, on about 3,000 screens, you can see a quartet of libidinous, superficial women drink and shop their way through Manhattan. Or, on just a few screens, you can see these...
INDIE THEATRICAL RELEASES
- Savage Grace is a true, tawdry story about a socialite (Julianne Moore) and her weird relationship with her weird son. Cinematical's Kim Voynar reviewed it somewhat favorably at Sundance; Nick Schager is less flattering in his review. (For what it's worth, I'm more on Nick's side on this one. It's icky.) Opens today at the IFC Center and Clearview's 62nd & Broadway in NYC.
- The Foot Fist Way, a low-budget R-rated comedy about a Tae Kwon Do teacher, premiered at Sundance way back in 2006, then might have slipped into oblivion had it not been noticed by Will Ferrell and his collaborator Adam McKay. They've championed the film into getting released, and by all accounts it's a pretty funny movie. Opens today in New York and L.A.; expands in the coming weeks.
(After the jump, more indie theatrical releases, and a city-by-city list of other events....)
Continue reading The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar: May 30-June 5
Posted May 2nd 2008 11:02AM by Eric D. Snider
Filed under: Classics, Comedy, Drama, Foreign Language, Gay & Lesbian, Independent, Other Festivals, Columns, Cinematical Indie, The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar
Today is the semi-official start of the Summer Blockbuster Season, but don't despair!
The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar is here to fill you in on cool stuff happening outside the multiplexes in the coming week -- the perfect antidote to mainstream ennui. If you know of something interesting going on near you -- retrospectives, special screenings, etc. -- please let me know! Point your e-mail thingee at Eric.Snider@Weblogsinc.com and I'll put it on the calendar.
INDIE THEATRICAL RELEASES
- I don't know if famed critic-hater David Mamet still counts as "independent," but I'm including his new film, Redbelt, here just in case. It's a heady drama about a martial-arts instructor who gets tangled up with a Hollywood film shoot, a misfired policeman's gun, and several other things. ME LIKEY. Opens today on a few screens in New York and L.A.
- Son of Rambow was, hands down, the best film I saw at Sundance last year. It was snatched up by Paramount Vantage, which for some reason sat on it until now. It's a funny, creative, and sweet story about two British kids in the mid-'80s who film their own homemade version of First Blood (aka Rambo I). Cinematical's James Rocchi reviewed it at Sundance 2007 and loved it too, in case my word isn't good enough for you. It's in a few theaters today, with more to come.
After the jump, more indie releases in theaters, and a list of special events happening around the country....
Continue reading The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar: May 2-8
Posted May 1st 2008 9:32AM by Elisabeth Rappe
Filed under: Comedy, Gay & Lesbian, Romance, Casting, Newsstand
I saw into the casting future, and it was through Dlisted.
The Hollywood Reporter has announced that
Rodrigo Santoro, last seen tall and glittery in
300, has been cast as
Jim Carrey's lover in
I Love You,Phillip Morris.
He is not the titular Phillip Morris, however. That honor still belongs to
Ewan McGregor. If you have forgotten the plot of this love caper, a married Jim Carrey is sent to prison, where he falls in love with his cellmate. When Morris is released, the infatuated Carrey escapes three times to be with him. Somewhere in the middle, though, he hooks up with Santoro.
While this is just now hitting the legitimate newswire, on Tuesday Dlisted had a photo of
the happy couple. (Don't ask me what I was doing on Dlisted, I don't have an answer!) So he has already been in the film long enough to get a wardrobe -- if that counts as wardrobe.
Since this is from the team of
Bad Santa, and has Leslie Mann as Carrey's dumped wife, I think there's potential even with the erratic Carrey. And I'm anxious to see McGregor in a bonafide comedy, as he was by far the best thing about
Down With Love. And it is rather fitting that he's the man Carrey changes teams for -- McGregor has topped that list for most of the guys I know. I bet we'll be seeing the full monty, too.
Posted Apr 28th 2008 3:02PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Documentary, Foreign Language, Gay & Lesbian, Theatrical Reviews
There is one moment in
Tanaz Eshaghian's Be Like Others that starts by plucking at our insistent hopes for happiness. Hungry for love and affection from his family, Ali Askar tells a story about being thrilled when his father insisted that Ali have breakfast with him. While it was such a simple action, it was one with insistence that Ali had never seen before. This act seemed full of the loving camaraderie and acceptance that the young man had dreamed of. His father poured them tea, but Ali refused to drink it; he realized that this wasn't a warm act of fatherly love. This wasn't a breakthrough moment in their relationship. Ali's father was trying to kill him with rat poison. His father would rather kill his son than allow him to get the sex change that he yearns for.
But it is more complicated than a transsexual wanting a sex change. In Iran, this matter is complicated because homosexuality is punishable by death, and transgendered lifestyles are not an option. However, sex changes are not only permitted legally -- they are also subsidized by the government. It is this strange path of religious, political, and social ruling that Eshaghian focuses on in
Be Like Others. She does not argue the particulars of this strange rationale, but rather shows the life and world of those who live it -- lives that reveal a flawed and chilling system for dealing with differing gender preferences and sexuality.
Continue reading Hot Docs Review: Be Like Others
Posted Apr 17th 2008 5:02PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Drama, Gay & Lesbian, Independent, Casting, Cinematical Indie
After being a disco roller rink creator in Broadway's
Xanadu,
Playbill.com reports that
Cheyenne Jackson (
United 93) is joining a
new indie film called
Shifting the Canvas.
Cabin Fever writer/director
Chuck Griffith is bringing the feature together, which "tells the story about a group of artists living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn who struggle to maintain a rather dysfunctional family of friends in a post-9/11 world challenged by gentrification, deception, and sterilization." More specifically, it's a city story of bohemians in Brooklyn, art, relationships, and all that metropolitan flavor.
Jackson will play Jens, a young, gay, Wall Street type who comes to New York from the South, and struggles to adapt to his newfound sexuality. But he's not the only guy attached to this feature. There's
Kids in the Hall alum Scott Thompson, John Paul Pitoc, who dated Claire in
Six Feet Under, Gedde Watanabe -- better known as Long Duk Dong from
Sixteen Candles, Matthew Montgomery, Erykah Badu, and more.
Production on the feature won't begin until June 1. However, one Mr. Duk Dong does have another movie coming out this week that you can check out. He's playing the Hotel Manager in
Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Posted Mar 18th 2008 5:02PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Comedy, Gay & Lesbian, Independent, Casting
It's not about that Canadian comic strip, nor is it a remake of one of the handful of movies that have the same title. Taking that same wedding phrase, the upcoming
For Better or For Worse is a gay wedding screwball comedy written by
Eric Kops,
Brad Rowe, and
Joshua Tunick, with Kops as the creator, Rowe as the producer and star, and Tunick as the director.
But the real kicker here is the cast.
The Hollywood Reporter has posted that
Janeane Garofalo,
Rebecca Gayheart,
Stanley Kamel,
Ruta Lee, and
Patrick Muldoon have signed on for the film. Oh, and those '80s TV stars?
Soliel Moon Frye and
Chad Allen have also signed on for roles. Yes, in one movie, we have both Punky Brewster and
Our House's David Witherspoon... who also happened to play "Brian" in a few episodes of
Punky. Be still my '80s heart.. Luckily Rudy, or Ralph, or Mallory isn't involved.
The flick follows "a grounded pair of grooms whose family threatens to go off the rails at their nuptials." Strangely enough, the grooms don't seem to have been cast yet, but the rest of the people make up the craziness -- Punky is all grown up as a lesbian minister who will preside over the ceremony, Lee will play one of the grooms' moms, Muldoon will take on the jilted ex role, with Allen being his new lover, Kamel will play a closeted neighbor, Gayheart will be, believe it or not, a wallflower sister, Rowe will take on the gig of family-man brother, and Garofalo will play Rowe's nanny, "who has a bombshell to drop."
It's sounds wacky, fun, and a bit irresistible due to its players. Now the question is: do the grooms show up in this, or is it all about the crazy group of family and friends?
Posted Mar 13th 2008 7:02PM by Eric D. Snider
Filed under: Drama, Gay & Lesbian, Independent, SXSW, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Cinematical Indie
As Jasper, the narrator and protagonist of
The Lost Coast, begins to describe the events of Halloween night, he says, "We found a dead body -- but more on that later." You know it's an eventful night when discovering a corpse isn't even the lead story.
In this moody, occasionally dreamlike drama, it's not what happens to Jasper and his friends that's important, so much as what happens within Jasper's soul. Yes, most of the drama here is internal, and while writer/director Gabriel Fleming falls prey to some of the missteps typical of new filmmakers, he gets a lot right, too, with a lot of emotional insight.
The film is constructed around an e-mail that twentysomething Jasper (Ian Scott McGregor) is writing to his fiancee overseas, in which he explains what happened the previous night. We gather from his tone that the events were of some importance, and the fact that it was Halloween in San Francisco -- one of the most raucous nights in a raucous city -- suggests there may have been shenanigans (if you know what I mean).
Continue reading SXSW Review: The Lost Coast
Posted Mar 3rd 2008 4:33PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Comedy, Gay & Lesbian, RumorMonger
The secret was let out back in
October of 2006 --
Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno would follow in the wake left by Borat. Since then, news about the production has been almost nonexistent. In
May of last year, Defamer spies saw Baron Cohen and his Bruno entourage at a Foreign Trade Association luncheon. But that was it, until now. A new
Defamer source says that the actor was spotted doing his shtick in Sherman Oaks on February 21.
The source says [sic]: "He was dressed in tight leather black pants with a bedazzeled g-string showing. his hair was frosted blond and straight. He was interviewing parents with their children pretending to be an german / austrian ad agent looking for a child to do a car commercial. He asked questions like : are you willing to film your child with ants? bees or wasps? dogs? ect. very funny."
If both of these sources are to be believed, it looks like the wacky actor is spreading out the filming. I imagine Baron Cohen's time is being split between Bruno, family Q-T, and his other gigs. While it would be nice to get some solid news, it's probably better this way until the film is wrapped and ready. Still, I'm getting antsy. But how about you?
Are you ready for Bruno?
Posted Feb 27th 2008 3:32PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Drama, Gay & Lesbian, Independent, Romance, Sports, Cinematical Indie, Trailers and Clips
Yesterday, I wrote about the upcoming movie
Shelter, which will star Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. But did you know that there's almost twenty "Shelter" films listed over on
IMDb? Some are foreign, a couple were on television, and the rest all just have the same name. (I guess no one checks their title on that wonderfully handy database.) While one gears up to get bloody, another is going into limited release this April.
I was alerted to this other project by a certain Mr. W, who was reading
Cinematical and was so excited to see that I was writing about
Shelter. Then he saw that my
Shelter wasn't his
Shelter. This other movie, all wrapped up and waiting for the big screen, is a romantic sports drama written and directed by
Jonah Markowitz, and it's just as worthy of a post.
The story: Although he has dreams of going to art school, a young surfer named Zach works in a crappy job and helps take care of his sister's son. When his best friend's older brother Shaun comes home and the two fall for each other, Zach is caught between his own passions and his family's needs. It looks like a great film, and it's already won a bunch of awards at Gay & Lesbian fests -- from Best Film and Best Cinematography to Favorite Feature. But don't just take my word for it, or the word of all the people behind the films 6 awards, check out the trailer after the jump.
Continue reading Films of the Same Name: 'Shelter'
Posted Feb 15th 2008 8:32PM by Monika Bartyzel
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Gay & Lesbian, Deals
No, this isn't a biblical tale about a hairy dude who collects animals while God wipes out the human race. This is about a television show called
Noah's Arc, which had two seasons on the Logo television network. Centering on a collection of gay African-American men, the show dealt with social issues like same-sex marriage and parenthood, HIV awareness, sexual curiosity, etc. My favorite thing --
Wikipedia says that it's been cited as a version of
Sex and the City, Queer as Folk, and -- wait for it --
The Golden Girls. How the last one fits in -- well, that's beyond me, but it's enough to make me want to see the show. (Anyone know!?)
After two seasons and a cliff-hanger finale,
The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Logo has greenlit a feature film based on the series, called
Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom. The film will pick up where the cliffhanger left off, and was written by series creator and director Patrik-Ian Polk and John R. Gordon. According to the show's
MySpace blog, which is only viewable to friends, location scouting has begun in Canada, it will be released in late 2008 or early 2009, and could lead to more sequels and maybe television specials. THR, meanwhile, says production will begin next month.
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