It's the day before Christmas Eve, and if you're anything like me, you're probably wondering, "Hey! What will be the next quirky and still totally by-the-book comedy with an almost-famous cast to be marketed as an indie film, complete with a Sundance premiere?" Well, just in time for your consideration, here is the trailer for Cedar Rapids, in which Ed Helms plays a naive man who leaves his small town for the first time only to be schooled in the ways of getting drunk, screwing and fighting by the wacky John C. Reilly.
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November means many things to many people, but to me, it's an excuse to get excited for Sundance! Wooo! Movies! Altitude sickness! And right on cue, the festival has sent along word of its selections for the 2011 New Frontier program -- its repository of multimedia installations, avant-garde experiments and actorly diversions into visual art. And a year after Joseph Gordon-Levitt raised the stakes on Main Street, here comes James Franco and his riff on '70s TV to blow everyone out of the water.
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Critics at Cannes loved Oliver Assayas' five-and-a-half-hour chronicle of Cold War terrorist Carlos The Jackal. Nonetheless, five-and-a-half-hour movies are pretty tough to get pumped about. That is, unless they have amazing trailers like this one.
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Controversial documentary Catfish is taking the Paranormal Activity marketing route: Distributor Rogue Pictures has set up a website where expectant fans can vote to bring the film to their city. Current standings show Fresno, Calif., leading the pack with 17 percent of the vote, followed by Orlando with 10 percent. Absecon, N.J., brings up the rear with less than 1 percent of the vote. Guess they won't have to worry about anyone spoiling the secret. [What Is 'Catfish'?]
The upcoming documentary Catfish is undeniably well-made, but is it undeniably real? That's the debate that gripped Sundance this past January; here at Movieline, we're notably skeptical, and though the film induced a bidding war before landing at Rogue Pictures, I've talked to several studio suitors who weren't wholly convinced, either. Now the film's trailer has come out, and you can start deciding for yourself.
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So everyone's gotten over yesterday's Inception hype and has apparently moved on to something smaller called Life in a Day -- a collaboration between directors Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald that will comprise a bundle of user-generated clips shot and uploaded to YouTube on July 24. The finished product will premiere next January at the Sundance Film Festival. Today's PR blitz calls Life the "first user-generated feature-length documentary film shot on a single day" and a "historic global film experiment." Which wouldn't be so off-base -- if it were true.
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Have you completed a film this year that could be tomorrow's fishy documentary, woman-pulverizing drama, or emo-fascist awards contender? You're in luck, as submissions opened today for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Here's hoping you're more Precious than Hamlet 2. [Sundance]
Last year, Movieline kicked off a five-part series that took you inside the Sundance Labs, a famous incubator for writers, directors and new projects that has launched talents like Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson. Is there an up-and-comer on that level in the list of new projects released today? It may be too soon to tell, but there are a couple of recognizable names there already.
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One of the hot button documentaries this year at Sundance was 8: The Mormon Proposition, which examines the Mormon Church's role in passing the anti-gay Proposition 8 in California and happens to be narrated by the openly gay, prominently ex-Mormon writer/director Dustin Lance Black (Milk, the upcoming What's Wrong with Virginia). The film will be released in theaters, on demand and through digital download channels June 18th, but until then, Movieline has your first look at its poster.
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If you've got 30 minutes and the ability to get through the rest of your work day essentially wrecked by heart-rending meet-cute robot romance, then consider hightailing it over to the Web site now hosting Spike Jonze's short film I'm Here. And I do mean "hightail," because from the looks of it, the movie is a limited-edition-viewing situation closely monitored by Jonze's patrons at Absolut Vodka.
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Apparition, the small U.S. distributor bringing you the pre-riot grrrl pop confection The Runaways next weekend, is back in the Kristen Stewart business, having paid a reported seven figures for domestic rights to Welcome to the Rileys -- the first second feature from Jake Scott (Ridley's son) that, like Runaways, also debuted at Sundance.
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It was the first and arguably the only great drama of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival (sorry, Blue Valentine!), and at last, Australia's instant-classic crime drama Animal Kingdom is coming to U.S. theaters courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics. Writer-director David Michôd's feature debut won last month's Grand Jury Prize in Sundance's World Dramatic Competition; a release date was not announced, but late summer-early fall seems to be the likeliest window.
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The gruesome Sundance darling Splice may have finally found a distribution home with... Joel Silver? The megaproducer, whose genre label Dark Castle Pictures generally outputs through Warner Bros, has reportedly roped the Adrien Brody/Sarah Polley genetic-mutation thriller into his stable with a summer release on 3,000 screens and a P&A commitment upward of $35 million. Without spoiling anything about the film, I'd guess the hope here is for long-term franchising; it's got the potential. Developing... [Deadline]
After stirring festival crowds at Sundance and elsewhere over the last year, the recently Oscar-nominated animated short film Logorama has finally made its debut online. No one was sure if and/or when this day would ever come, if only because the nature of the short -- set in a world composed entirely of unlicensed corporate logos -- opened itself up to more than 2,500 potential lawsuits from the represented brands. (What, McDonald's might not approve of Ronald McDonald as a psychopathic, potty-mouthed fugitive?) And for all anyone knows, the two NSFW clips after the jump still might disappear shortly -- which is all the more reason to get a look now and find the David Fincher cameo hiding in plain sight.
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indieWire reports The Weinstein Co. has closed its deal on its second Sundance acquisition: the well-received Pat Tillman documentary, The Tillman Story. Let's hope this thing gets a release sometime in our lifetimes, and that the original title (I'm Pat F--king Tillman) doesn't spook TWC into employing a marketing campaign revolving around a square-jawed stick-figure in a football helmet.[indieWire]
