Believe it or not, Charlie Sheen is not the only entertainment entity capable of making headlines right now. The Tribeca Film Festival has done so by announcing its tenth annual competition line-up, with entries featuring everyone and everything from Elton John to Toni Collette to cockroaches. Click through for the chosen submissions from the world narrative, world documentary and viewpoint categories.
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If you thought the SXSW couldn't get any bigger this year, surprise! You were wrong. The festival has announced even more additions to its lineup, including closing night film The King of Luck, a documentary about Willie Nelson from director Billy Bob Thornton. Also added to the ledger: A work-in-progress cut of Bridesmaids, the upcoming HBO special The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway, and short films from Harmony Korine and Park Chan-wook -- the former of which will feature Die Antwoord. Expect to see your Twitter feed dominated by SXSW-related fun when the fest begins on March 11.
Whoa. Word just over the Movieline transom announces that the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival will open with a free outdoor screening of Cameron Crowe's documentary The Union, a world premiere about the recent collaboration between Elton John and his early-career idol Leon Russell. Not bad! Better still: Elton will follow the screening with a live performance. Did I mention it's free? Read on for details.
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Back in simpler, snowier times in January at the Sundance Film Festival, The Big Pony Fragrance Collection by Ralph Lauren made its digital debut with a fragrant twist on sound and cinema. The opening-night celebration showcased a short film developed by filmmaker and photographer Bruce Weber, as well as a live performance by OneRepublic, the pop rock band whose hit song "Secrets" serves as the soundtrack to the film.
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There are just two days of screenings left at the Berlinale -- the prizes are awarded on Sunday -- but today is my last day at the festival, my day of reckoning. This is the point at which I look back on everything I've seen and, more wrenchingly, tote up everything I wanted to see but missed. While I've tried to chase down most of the films screening in competition here, day by day my colleagues have been feeding me recommendations from the Panorama and Forum sections of the festival, which showcase films that generally have smaller budgets and take larger risks. I didn't get to see many of those pictures, and that's where my deepest regret lies.
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Filmmaker, writer, performance artist, what-have-you Miranda July ambled onto the scene in 2005 with her debut film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, which became a surprise arthouse sort-of smash. Since then, July has published a book of short stories, created art projects for the Venice Biennale, and put together a performance piece. She's working hard at becoming the Woody Allen of the "Meh" Generation, and she's getting closer, and not for the better, with her new picture The Future, which premiered at Sundance and is one of the competition films at the Berlinale.
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I'm a sucker for modern-day reinterpretations of Shakespeare, a la Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, not because Shakespeare necessarily needs to be modernized, but because I'm always amazed at how much retooling, rejiggering and restuffing he can withstand: His work is like a magic carpet bag that never gets filled to capacity or worn out.
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Now that everyone has grown tired of touting the allegedly thrilling promise of 3-D, we may have some chance of figuring out exactly what its future might be. While I still think 3-D is almost less than a gimmick (I'm even skeptical about what Martin Scorsese might do with it), I'm beginning to think that its real promise, whatever that might be, lies not in big-budget filmmaking like the lame-brain Sanctum but in the hands of directors working on a more modest scale who simply have a good idea and a spark of enthusiasm for the medium.
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When I realized that German director Ulrich Köhler's Sleeping Sickness was about Germans in Africa -- strangers in a strange land, don't you know? -- my first thought was "Uh-oh." Though I know I should always be up for yet another exploration of the deep-rooted colonialist tendencies of white Europeans, I often find that the tired point-making of such movies exhausts me. (Not even Claire Denis, one of my favorite living directors, could ensnare me with her recent White Material, in which Isabelle Huppert plays a Frenchwoman who refuses to abandon her plantation in an unnamed African nation riven by racial conflict.)
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The problem with having festival commitments is that there are days when you can manage to see only one movie before deadline, while your colleagues are seeing two, three or -- heaven forbid -- more. But the sting, or at least the vague feeling of inadequacy, is lessened when that one movie exceeds your expectations. Margin Call is a thriller of sorts (though it's also something of a comedy, albeit a grim one) set in the early days of the financial crisis, a fictionalized but all too believable account of one crucial day at a Wall Street investment firm. It's also the debut feature of writer-director J.C. Chandor, and while it hits a few false notes, it's still a remarkably assured piece of filmmaking. You may not think you want to sit through a nondocumentary film about the financial meltdown -- I sure didn't. But Margin Call, like money itself, is weirdly seductive; it wheedles you into caring about characters you don't particularly like, without ever expecting you to approve of their behavior.
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The burgeoning Greta Gerwig Dynasty expands for the second time in as many days as Movieline offers your first look at the actress's forthcoming SXW festival premiere The Dish and the Spoon. I think this is... what, the 15th? 16th? film Gerwig is set to appear in this year -- or at least the fourth behind No Strings Attached, Arthur and Whit Stillman's comeback Damsels in Distress. So what sets this one apart? It looks a little... intense, for starters. But in a good way!
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Yes, airline security is a major pain in the ass, and the food is not to be believed (was that whitish blobby mass of hormones supposed to be chicken?), but to paraphrase the marvelous and eminently reasonable Louis C.K., I have experienced the miracle of manned flight and am now in Berlin, where, after extracting euros from a hole in the wall (miraculous!), having a nap and attending to some random business, I'm ready to start moviegoing in earnest tomorrow.
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If the promise of seeing Jodie Foster's Beaver, Duncan Jones' Source Code, or Ti West's Innkeepers didn't already have you planning a trip to Austin for SXSW, get a load of the 130-film full slate unveiled on Wednesday, featuring Sundance favorites, global narratives, rock docs, spotlights on emerging talent, new efforts from the post-mumblecore gang, Romain Gavras's angry redhead flick, Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood, Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and -- deep breath! -- much, much more.
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In Mark Pellington's divisive Sundance entry I Melt With You, Jeremy Piven plays a hard-partying Ari Gold-type reuniting for one crazy weekend with three college besties (Thomas Jane, Christian McKay, and Rob Lowe). But Pellington's psychological thriller is much darker than its Hangover-esque premise suggests, and as it takes the turns that alienated many critics in Park City, Piven plumbs intensely complex emotional depths. He spoke with Movieline about the polarizing film, his anti-Ari Gold roots, and -- why not? -- Miley Cyrus.
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How will Carla Bruni's bread-holding skills be received by the Cannes crowd? Festival organizers have announced that Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris will open the 64th annual Festival de Cannes on May 11. "Midnight in Paris is a wonderful love letter to Paris", said Festival director Thierry Frémaux in the press release. "It's a film in which Woody Allen takes a deeper look at the issues raised in his last films: our relationship with history, art, pleasure and life. His 41st feature reveals once again his inspiration." As Guy Lodge pointed out on Twitter, the last Allen film to open the fest was Hollywood Ending. Fingers crossed for a better result. [Deadline]
