To 'make it' in Hollywood, young actors used to kick-start their careers in television, sharpening their skills and earning notoriety (and maybe an Emmy or two) before frolicking in the greener grass of feature films. Today, with the growing budgets, themes, and imaginations of series TV, episodes have almost become mini movies, inspiring a newer generation of stars to not only gravitate toward television, but maybe even stay there — even as their careers take off. Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs epitomize this trend, two actresses who earned their comedy stripes on NBC's Community, a place where dreamatoriums come to life and paintball wars are aplenty. Meanwhile, the pair is also on the Tribeca Film Festival circuit this year — Jacobs with the dark indie comedy Revenge for Jolly! and Brie with tonight's Tribeca opener, the buzzy hit-in-waiting The Five-Year Engagement.
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Grainger David's The Chair is the only American filmmaker to make the shorts lineup cut for this year's upcoming Cannes Film Festival, though U.S. territory Puerto Rico also made the list for the first time with Mi Santa Mirada by Alvaro Aponte-Centeno. The Chair debuted last month at South by Southwest where it won the Short Film Jury Prize. The 12-minute film revolves around a mysterious outbreak of poisonous mold in a small town and one boy's attempt to understand his mother's death, his grandmother's obsession with a discarded recliner and the roots of this mysterious plague.
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The 2012 Tribeca Film Festival gets underway tomorrow, with all its promise of discovery, community... and totally random juries. The festival has announced its full list of luminaries who'll judge this year's competition slates — no doubt the only place where you'll find a collaboration between Kim Cattrall and Michael Moore, or see Whoopi Goldberg sharing a jury panel with Kellan Lutz, or the guy who discovered Justin Bieber possibly breaking a tie between Brett Ratner and Susan Sarandon. Like, huh? Check out the full spectrum of jurors (headed by jury president Irwin Winkler) after the jump.
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Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti’s films speak for introverted individual concerns at work in a group dynamic. In Dear Diary, a 40 year-old Moretti rides around Rome on his motorcycle trying to figure out just how much of a part he wants in a society where legendary poet/filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini has died and soap operas are insanely popular. Similarly, his latest film, We Have a Pope (a.k.a. Habemus Papum), concerns a reluctant cardinal (an excellent performance by Michel Piccoli) elected to be the next pope but is too nervous to assume the role. Pope, which opens Friday in limited release, originally screened in competition at last year’s Cannes Film Festival — to which Moretti is planning his return next month as the president of this year’s competition jury. Talk about group dynamics.
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The Tribeca Film Festival has announced The Avengers as the closing-night selection of its 11th annual event, where Joss Whedon's summer superhero blockbuster will have its New York premiere on April 28 — and for a good cause, according to Marvel and fest organizers.
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SXSW 2012 marked the starring screen debut of model-turned-actress Dree Hemingway – daughter of Mariel, great-granddaughter of Ernest, and at 24, a veteran of the fashion world -- as an airy Los Angeleno named Jane who befriends a cranky senior citizen (85-year-old newcomer Besedka Johnson) in Sean Baker’s Starlet, a surprisingly sweet tale comprised of a series of moving, naturalistic episodes … and one infamous hardcore sex scene. But as much as Starlet is a fantastically observed introduction to Hemingway, who possesses Evan Rachel Wood’s preternatural poise and Daryl Hannah’s leggy looks, sitting down with her in Austin – and indulging in a post-interview round of karaoke together -- offered greater insights into one of the more talked-about but hard-to-talk-about films of the fest.
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This week at SXSW Movieline caught up with director Gareth Evans, whose Indonesian martial arts actioner The Raid: Redemption is set to knock your socks off later this month courtesy of Sony Classics. (Haven’t heard of the martial arts form silat? You will, come March 23.) With his film steadily collecting kudos left and right, Evans is already thinking ahead to his Raid sequel (working title: Berandal), and an insane, dangerous-sounding four-on-one car fight he plans on working into the mix.
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Tuesday night the 2012 SXSW Film Festival jury awards went to Adam Leon's NYC-set drama Gimme the Loot and the rock doc-biopic Beware of Mr. Baker, about Cream/Blind Faith drummer Ginger Baker. Meanwhile, Audience Awards honored Megan Griffiths' Eden, whose star Jamie Chung (Sucker Punch) earned a Special Jury Award for her central performance as a human trafficking victim, and to documentary Bay of All Saints, about three single mothers living in an impoverished Brazilian bayside town. Full list of winners after the jump.
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Despite nabbing an Academy Award last year with her self-financed and controversial “Consider” campaign, Melissa Leo says that neither life, nor the frequency of juicy Hollywood offers coming her way, is much different now that she's an Oscar-winner. “The projects you think have been offered to me have not, I guarantee you,” she told Movieline this week at SXSW in Austin, where she and directors Melanie Shatzky and Brian M. Cassidy screened their minimalist character study Francine to critical applause. Still, Leo perseveres. And as the intimate acting showcase demonstrates, there’s plenty of reward to be had in smaller and more daring projects.
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It wasn't tough to spot Channing Tatum or Jonah Hill at the after party following the SXSW premiere of 21 Jump Street; they were the ones, beaming unselfconsciously in the middle of the crowd, wearing bicycle-cop uniforms. More specifically, wearing their costumes from the movie, in which they play a pair of bumbling rookie policemen sent undercover to high school -- a set-up that so delivers beyond its premise that the '80s Johnny Depp TV series adaptation is actually one of the best new films of 2012, comedy or otherwise.
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Those NMA TV wizards have done it again: Watch as the Taiwanese animators offer their take on the in-progress South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive festival ("If you're watching this animation, that likely means you're not at SXSW. You're probably not even cool enough to go"). Tears, hippie DJs, 21 Jump Street, bands the rest of the world will hear about months from now... it's all here!
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What could go wrong? Also: Ugh: "South By Southwest 2012 can be summarized thusly: An impossibly named marketing company called Bartle Bogle Hegarty is doing a little human science experiment called Homeless Hotspots. It gives out 4G hotspots to homeless people along with a promotional t-shirt. The shirt doesn't say, 'I have a 4G hotspot.' It says, 'I am a 4G hotspot.' You can guess what happens next. You pay these homeless, human hotspots whatever you like, and then I guess you sit next to them and check your e-mail and whatnot. The digital divide has never hit us over the head with a more blunt display of unselfconscious gall." [ReadWriteWeb]
One of the great perks about working out of the Alamo Drafthouse's next door hangout spot The Highball between SXSW films? Listening to the dynamic stylings of Cuban-born musician CuCu Diamantes during her soundcheck on the back room stage. The Grammy-nominated singer is in town with a pseudo-doc/fiction film in which she stars as herself, filmed with live concert footage; just listening to her rehearse bumped Amor Cronico onto my want-to-see list. Trailer after the jump!
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Three days into SXSW and the biggest winner so far has been Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s geek-pleasing meta-horror pic Cabin in the Woods, which Lionsgate releases in April. But also in town in search of a SXSW buzz bump is Lionsgate/Summit's Ethan Hawke-starring haunted house pic Sinister, which debuted as a “secret screening” Saturday night – not the most spectacular secret title possible, especially in contrast to hopeful speculation for a sneak Avengers or Hunger Games debut, and not entirely secret, but fine enough.
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Filmmaking brothers David and Nathan Zellner (Goliath) tackle the isolation and discovery of childhood in Kid-Thing, a naturalist East Texas-set fable about Annie (Sydney Aguirre), a lonely ten-year-old tomboy who discovers a mystery woman at the bottom of a well while playing by herself one day in the woods. Lending her distinctive voice to the proceedings is Oscar-nominated cult actress Susan Tyrrell (Forbidden Zone, Cry-Baby, Fat City) as the woman in the well, who may or may not be real – or harmless. Movieline spoke with Tyrrell and the Zellner bros. about their Sundance, Berlin, and SXSW selection, which screens in Austin today.
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