February 2009
58 posts
Who Is On Twitter? →
soupsoup:
via Sasha Frere Jones
people who are just back from a really awesome run
people who are involved with “computers”
DJs
DJs at the airport
DJs who are drunk
Also: Sasha Frere-Jones
January 2009
75 posts
SPRING BREAKDOWN Review, Sundance 2009 →
Variety’s Todd McCarthy received mixed reviews for his Sundance 2009 wrap-up piece, in which he lumped together the festival’s two biggest narrative hits, Push and An Education, as…
Porn, Love and Tambor: SXSW 2009 Panels Take Shape →
The first round of SXSW 2009 Film panels have been announced at SXSW.com. They include a roundtable with the director (John Hamburg) and stars (Paul Rudd, Jason Segal, Rashida Jones) of…
Sundance 2009: Our Complete Coverage →
The five-day post-festival grace period is up, so it’s time for us to put down our pencils and put a close to our coverage of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. We had a smaller team on the…
Downloading Nancy Gets Trailer, Release Date →
Downloading Nancy — the Mario Bello-starring, Christopher Doyle-lensed psycho-sexual-tech drama that was much-maligned at its Sundance premiere in 2008 but vehemently…
Paul Blart: Mall Cop Gets Roped Into Critic... →
In the world of writing — not unlike that of sports or other businesses — those who can, do, and those that can’t, become film reviewers who take perverse pleasure in tearing down the…
At Least Joan Didion No Longer Hates Film Critics →
I think the phrase I used was “petit-point-on-Kleenex,” and a lot of it seemed to have that situation. But no, I think people know more about film now than they knew then. And I think…
THE MISSING PERSON Review, Sundance 2009 →
(With Sundance wrapped and an intimidating backlog of films to write about, I’ll be publishing a number of brief capsule reviews over the next few days. If a specific title piques your…
MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY Review →
Visually more sophisticated than the bulk of features to yet come out of the new wave of DIY independent American cinema, narratively smoother and yet still boundless in mold-breaking…
Twitter = New Media Cinema Verite? →
Thinking about the art and process of documentary filmmaking, and then thinking about how people “document” their lives via Twitter — can you envision ways you might use Twitter as part of your…
Che is just like Teletubbies →
…the structure of the film reminded me of that most formalist of children’s programming: the Teletubbies. For those of you who’ve never had a chance to experience the show, it’s important to…
Jason Calacanis IS Dante, in "Inferneto"
alexbalk:
I feel I’m within my rights as pundit to reconstitute the idea of Asperger’s to explain my own experiences and thoughts. Although I’ll understand it if you, as someone affected in some way by Asperger’s, claim your right to flame me for “hijacking” the disease. Such is the life of linguists in the age of sound-bites over debate, and skimming over reading. If you do choose to flame me,...
Sundance Critical Consensus Goes to PUSH →
indieWIRE polled a number of critics and bloggers (including yours truly) on their favorite films and performances at this year’s Sundance, and the results are in: the pros think the jury…
IFC Releases Final Trailer For 'The Objective' →
Beyond the break you’ll find the final trailer for Daniel Myrick’s The Objective. From the co-creator of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, CIA Agent Benjamin Keynes, three days after 9/11 reconnaissance…
“…The Final Victory of Los Angeles…” →
Shared by Karina
Thanks to BKS for forwarding me this story on the end of a sartorial era at New York’s famed 21, which I guess will soon be allowing men to turn up in the pajamas Jimmy Stewart…
John Landis Sues Michael Jackson Over... →
So Michael Jackson has sold the rights to his “Thriller” song and video as a Broadway musical, right? [ed. we just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to report it the first time] Yes,…
'Once' Couple's Oscar-Gilded Romance Ends In... →
They stole America’s hearts, an Oscar and no less than $9 million of box-office loot. Less than a year later, star-crossed Once songwriters/lovers Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová are done for.…
Mary Poppins: 45th Anniversary Edition: DVD Review →
Shared by Karina
Best line: “he “Whistle While You Work” residue of domestic slavery that colors “A Spoonful of Sugar” aside, Mary Poppins is basically Long Day’s Journey Into Matriarchy…
AN EDUCATION Review, Sundance 2009 →
(With Sundance rapidly wrapping up and an intimidating backlog of films to write about, I’ll be publishing a number of brief capsule reviews over the next few days. If a specific title…
COLD SOULS, Interview w/director Sophie Barthes,... →
Set in alternate-universe present day versions of frozen-over Russia and the Manhattan theatrical intelligensia (the latter resembling something Charlie Kaufman might have come up…
Sign of the Times: Announcing Damon Frugal... →
Gramercy: Apparently one night of discount dining at Craft wasn’t enough for chef/owner Tom Colicchio and chef Damon Wise. Just two weeks ago the pair launched Damon: Frugal Friday, a once…
Prelinger Archives in Los Angeles 1/31/2009 →
The Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles is presenting “An Evening With The Prelinger Archives” on January 31, 2009 at 7:30 pm. The Prelingers are very cool archivists of industrial films and “…
Shared by Karina
Some conservatives would be happy with a character in a major, Oscar-nominated film who speaks their values without coming off as a cartoon. But not this guy!
Aaron Sorkin really pisses me off.
And not for the reasons you might think.
Yes, he’s a liberal’s liberal. And he epitomizes all that Big Hollywood rails against. He infuses his politics into everything he writes. He...
Spock in the White House →
Shared by Karina
Um … is he saying that Barack Obama should be vice president, and someone who gets angry a lot should be President? Like, um, Joe Biden? Those more comfortable than I mixing…
CHILDREN OF INVENTION Review, Sundance 2009 →
(With Sundance rapidly wrapping up and an intimidating backlog of films to write about, I’ll be publishing a number of brief capsule reviews over the next few days. If a specific title…
WE LIVE IN PUBLIC Review, Sundance 2009 →
“I was the smartest kid in town, and the reporters knew it,” brags Josh Harris in We Live in Public, Ondi Timoner’s documentary on the rise and fall of the Internet’s first (and still its…
WORLD’S GREATEST DAD director Bobcat Goldthwait,... →
In the director’s statement slipped into the press notes for his Robin Williams-starring Sundance entry World’s Greatest Dad, Bobcat Goldthwait says it took him 25 years in show…
Sundance Fistfight! DIRT Gets Dirty. →
About an hour ago, text messages started to fly around Park City, regarding an altercation between film critic John Anderson and producer (and Big Lebowski inspiration) Jeff Dowd in the…
THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE and Steven Soderbergh at... →
Steven Soderbergh was on hand at the Eccles Theater in Park City tonight to screen a “work-in-progress” cut of his latest low-budget digital picture for HDNet Films, The Girlfriend…
PAPER HEART Review, Sundance 2009 →
The art of awkward goes too far with Paper Heart, the quasi non-fiction narrative in which comedian Charlyne Yi travels the countryside interviewing The People about love, while…
THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE Review, Sundance 2009 →
Initially, The September Issue comes off as something like the Teen Vogue segments of The Hills (though her royal highness Anna Wintour is swapped in for cut-rate LA imitation Lisa Love, the MTV…
Stella Schnabel, YOU WON’T MISS ME Interview,... →
Stella Schnabel previously appeared in two films directed by her father, Basquiat and Before Night Falls, but in Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me, Schnabel makes her debut as…
HUMPDAY: Interview with Lynn Shelton →
We’re almost 48 hours into the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and Humpday seems to be the biggest break-out hit thus far — and according to Mike Jones at Variety, it could very…
MOON Review. Sundance 2009. →
A small, personal story wrapped in the trappings of classic sci-fi epic, Moon manages to be both derivative (most notably, of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, but with only a touch of that…
HUMPDAY Review. Sundance 2009. →
I’ve been accused in the past of having knee-jerk negative reactions to crowd-pleasers, and those accusations have not always been without a kernel of truth: it’s true that I tend to be…
THE ONLY GOOD INDIAN. Sundance 2009 Preview... →
Kevin Willmott, director of controversial Sundance title CSA: Confederate States of America, returns to Park City this year with The Only Good Indian, a Spectrum selection period piece…
HUMPDAY. Sundance 2009 Preview w/Director Lynn... →
Director Lynn Shelton’s follow-up to My Effortless Brilliance, Sundance Dramatic Competition entry stars Mark Duplass (HumpdayThe Puffy Chair) and Joshua Leonard (The Blair Witch Project…
PETER AND VANDY. Sundance 2009 Preview w/Director... →
Peter and Vandy, starring Jess Weixler (Teeth) and Jason Ritter and adapted by director Jay DiPietro from his own play, hops around in time to show a romance’s beginning and end…
BASHIR, CLASS, MONKEYS make Foreign Film Oscar... →
The Carpetbagger has posted the nine semi-finalists for the Best Foreign Film Oscar Nomination. Comparing this list to the list of 67 films submitted for consideration by their countries…
“Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak relies on magic rather than technology, but...”
– 2009 Tech Predictions: Five Technologies That Could Go From Movies To Reality | SpoutBlog (via porcupineschool)
ONE MINUTE TO NINE in theaters, on HBO late 2009 →
My favorite non-fiction film at SXSW 2008 was Tommy Davis’ One Minute to Nine, a haunting portrait of a mother’s last few days at home with her family before she heads off to prison for…
BIG RIVER MAN. Sundance 2009 Preview w/Director... →
John Maringouin’s first documentary feature, Running Stumbled, was praised by Michael Tully as “a startling achievement” and “one of the stronger anti-drug pieces of cinema…
YouTube Cracking Down on Critical Video Essays →
Kevin B. Lee, who wrote for us about the best music videos of 2008 and whose video essays I’ve linked to of several times in the past, just informed me that his YouTube account has been “…
UNMADE BEDS. Sundance 2009 Preview With Director →
Alexis Dos Santos‘ World Dramatic Competition entry Unmade Beds follows a Spanish guy named Axl and a Belgian girl named Vera who meet in London and, according to the catalogue…
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: the backlash begins →
We’ve never been big fans of Slumdog Millionaire here at the SpoutBlog. Kevin Buist was first underwhelmed with Danny Boyle’s hyperactive Mumbai game show movie at Telluride, where he…
Sundance Deals 2009 →
Here’s our running tally of each of the distribution deals announced just before, throughout the course of, and just after the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. We will update this post whenever new…
Golden Globes: 8 Moments That Transcended Cynicism →
We all like to make fun of the Golden Globes, even when the telecast *doesn’t* involve the bequeathing of an unusual amount of power to Billy Bush. So prepare to have your mind blown: there…
“The general attitude seems to be, “We don’t know who this broad even is, so why...”
– On Sally Hawkins, from my round-up of the 8 Golden Globes Moments That Transcended Cynicism.