One of Manhattan's most distinct fashion emporiums gets its close-up in Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf's, Matthew Miele's documentary about the designers, buyers, window dressers and famous customers who make it a destination. Karl Lagerfeld, Oscar De La Renta, Diane Von Furstenberg, Christian Louboutin and Disconnect actor Marc Jacobs are among the fashion designers featured in this film, which has just unveiled a stylish new poster outfitted in the tasteful purple color — lilac, to be specific — of Bergdorf's shopping bags. more »
The German fairytale Snow White gets a retro reinterpretation in Pablo Berger's enchanting Blancanieves. Set in 1920s Spain and shot as a black-and-white silent film, the ivory-skinned beauty in this update (lush-lipped Macarena García) doesn't just do housework for a pack of idiosyncratic little dudes. She follows her beloved father's footsteps into the corrida to become a revered matador. more »
Long before Pope Benedict XVI stepped down as the head of the sexual scandal-scarred Catholic Church, the 18th-Century novelist and dramatist Matthew G. Lewis' was inspired to write The Monk, a gothic supernatural novel about a man of the cloth who is tempted and corrupted by (cue ominous music)...Satan! More than two centuries later, filmmaker Dominik Moll (Lemming, With A Friend Like Harry) has brought the cult classic to the screen starring Vincent Cassel as Brother Ambrosio, the titular Capuchin monk who is led way astray. more »
Park Chan-wook's reverence for Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch shines through in his English-language debut, Stoker. It's a tightly wound thriller with psychosexual undertones and shocking — yet artful — violence in which, it seems, no detail is accidental and the details, both visual and auditory, add up to a lavish cinematic experience. more »
I was disappointed to learn that War Witch's remarkable star, first-time actress Rachel Mwanza didn't get to meet her idol Beyoncé when she traveled to Los Angeles to attend the Academy Awards on Sunday. I hope that the film's producers and Sasha Fierce's handlers figure out a way to make it happen. Just think how good it would be for Beyoncé's brand. more »
Girls actor Alex Karpovsky is pretty great at conveying simmering annoyance with his tomahawk-like face, and he has plenty to be annoyed about in this exclusive video clip from the dark comedy Red Flag, which he wrote and directed. I hope the song that actors Onur Tukel and Jennifer Prediger are caterwauling in the car was improvised by them during filmmaking because it would be crap-tastic even if Adele sang it. (Please don't tell me Adele does sing it.) more »
The poster for Small Town Gay Bar filmmaker Malcolm Ingram's newest documentary, Continental, has been unveiled in time for its SXSW debut, and, well, it's just the ticket for a look back at one of gay culture's most iconic playgrounds of the late 1960s and 70s. more »
Pro tip, indie filmmakers: After you've lost precious blood, sweat and tears making your indie film passion project, don't blow it when it comes to getting your baby out there! Let big time producer Wallace Cotten show you what not to do — namely, let your goofball actors muck it up — unless you want to get stuck submitting your independent feature film to international film festivals in VHS form. Or "HD-VHS." It's not called "submitting" for nothing, people.
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Thank god for post-production. After the travails of casting, owning the director's chair and wrangling two unruly actors, the final shot is done. No more sets and arguments, it's now all about catching Zen in the edit room. Wallace Cotten begins to edit his masterpiece. Cotten recalls his favorite part of the post-production process and that means he doesn't have to see some particular people again - at least offscreen. Or does he? Much to his dismay, Don and Lizard Man are there to help out with "final cuts" and songs for the soundtrack. Watch it all play out in Episode 4 of Modern Imbecile's Idiot's Guide To Making Movies For Dummies presented by Slamdance TV!
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Rising U.K. actress Kaya Scodelario (Skins, Moon, Wuthering Heights) stars as a teenager who strikes up a friendship with her mysterious neighbor (Jessica Biel) in the drama Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes, which premieres in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Movieline's got your first look at the poster for the surrealism-tinged thriller featuring Scodelario, who will be one to watch this month in Park City.
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You've cast your low budget indie feature and navigated the ins and outs of directing a love scene. But how do you, intrepid independent filmmaker, wrangle two unruly actors bent on going off-script for the all-important emotional climax of your opus? Find out in Episode 3 of Modern Imbecile's Idiot's Guide To Making Movies For Dummies presented by Slamdance TV!
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So you've got your low-budget indie feature cast, for better and most definitely for worse. What next? Learn how to DIRECT the thing, Modern Imbecile-style, in the latest installment of Idiot's Guide To Making Movies For Dummies presented by Slamdance TV, in which Don and Lizard Man show Wallace the finer points of shooting a love scene.
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With indie cinema season kicking off next month in Park City, Slamdance TV is here to help with a five-part behind-the-scenes primer on making movies (for dummies) by Slamdance vets Kevin M. Brennan (It's a Disaster) and Doug Manley (Modern Imbecile's Planet World). First up this week, exclusively on Movieline: How to cast your low-budget indie feature, survive audition ad-libs, and find "yesterday's Robert De Niro, today."
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The payoff in this official trailer for Daniel Schechter's Supporting Characters is in the very last line, delivered by the always acerbic Kevin Corrigan (Pineapple Express). I'm not going to spoil it, so check it out for yourself. Along the way you may also feel like you're watching a preview for an episode of Girls since Alex Karpovsky has one of the lead roles in this film and Lena Dunham also makes a brief, tattooed appearance. (Karpovsky was also memorable as the very frank stand-up comic Ian Gilmore in Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me.) more »
How do you wrangle a movie set packed with Channing Tatum and dozens of his actor friends playing high school classmates catching up, knocking a few back, reuniting with lost loves, reliving teenage hell, and experiencing the awesome-to-mortifying highlights of any class reunion? You "embrace the chaos," says 10 Years director Jamie Linden (Dear John). "There were 15 28-year-old actors running rampant," he explains in Movieline's exclusive clip from the 10 Years DVD/Blu-ray, in stores today. "There wasn't much of a way to keep control."
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