The South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Conference and Festival unveiled its lineup of 109 features including 69 world premieres Thursday. The festival, which overlaps with SXSW's music and interactive programs, also includes 14 North American and five U.S. premieres. SXSW will screen eight films each in its Narrative Feature and Documentary Competitions.
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At the Seattle International Film Festival over the weekend to fete director and Lifetime Achievement honoree William Friedkin and present their NC-17 Southern-fried potboiler Killer Joe, actor Emile Hirsch spoke with Movieline about the “secret” movie he’d just shot with David Gordon Green (Prince Avalanche, also starring Paul Rudd) and the experience of being on a Friedkin set, where the pressure to deliver on a tight schedule was palpable. “If you messed up your lines or something, Billy would make you pay a little bit,” Hirsch said. “You really didn’t want to mess up at all.”
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David Gordon Green's remake of Dario Argento's 1977 horror pic Suspiria was once set to star Natalie Portman, re-envisioning Argento's stylish tale of a young woman who discovers spooky goings-on at her boarding school. Now Green has found his lead in 15-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman, who herself spooked audiences in her 2009 breakout film The Orphan, and most recently nabbed a role as the sadistic tribute Clove in The Hunger Games. But that's not all! A report out of Cannes reveals that a line-up of European veterans will be joining Fuhrman -- or menacing her -- in the pic.
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What's the Film: The Sitter (2011), new on DVD and Blu-ray via 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Why it's an Inessential Essential: Director David Gordon Green’s transition from being an American indie darling to a reviled slacker-comedy pumper-outter is kind of astonishing. One minute, he’s being praised for being the Terrence Malick-inspired director of such films as George Washington and All The Real Girls; the next he’s being put down for making lazy pot comedies like Your Highness and The Sitter. But the thing of it is: Green’s comedies don’t deserve to be compared to good movies.
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With both an Oscars appearance and a No. 1 movie within the last month, Jonah Hill's 2012 is on pace to exceed even his stellar 2011. And the folks behind The Sitter know it, dropping the David Gordon Green-directed comedy on DVD and Blu-ray this week for prime placement amid Jonahmania. But they also know, as Green mentioned in interviews last year, that the 81-minute movie yielded a trove of deleted scenes — one of which Movieline is debuting right here and now.
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Every performer must pay their dues, but with this week’s old school-flavored ghost pic The Innkeepers character actor Pat Healy cashes in over a decade of memorable supporting turns and guest spots for the spotlight at an auspicious moment in his career. Having popped up in a number of great films over the years (Magnolia! Ghost World! Rescue Dawn!) Healy stars with Sara Paxton in the Ti West film as a sardonic desk clerk at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, where spooky happenings are afoot; meanwhile, Healy also earned writing credits on the award-winning In Treatment and recently took Sundance by storm with Craig Zobel’s controversial Compliance. And to think: It all began with the one-two punch of My Best Friend’s Wedding and Home Alone 3…
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Movieline didn't set out to discuss the finer points of creature genitalia at length with award-winning director David Gordon Green, but standing opposite the filmmaker and a plate of cookies at the tail end of his Your Highness press day, all bets were off. Possessed of a laser focus and a restless energy, Green has carved an eclectic career path for himself ranging from sensitive dramas (George Washington, All the Real Girls) to raunchy comedy (HBO's Eastbound & Down, Pineapple Express). Featuring pedophile gags, stoner jokes, ridiculous medieval accents and the aforementioned Minotaur schlong, Your Highness -- co-written by friend and star Danny McBride -- is decidedly not one of those highbrow affairs.
Fans of Dario Argento's cult 1977 thriller Suspiria who are a bit wary of the upcoming Natalie Portman-starring remake, take note: Writer-director David Gordon Green would like to put your minds at ease. Catching up with Movieline while discussing his new stoner comedy Your Highness, the versatile filmmaker emphasized a commitment to faithfulness and shared plans to recreate specific scenes and dialogue from the original. Most exciting of all? He's got the rights to the original Suspiria score by prog-rock band Goblin -- and he intends to use it.
Another day, another Natalie Portman authenticity scandal. But this one isn't about how much dancing the Oscar-winner did or didn't do in Black Swan; it's of even more significance, to a certain segment of the movie-going audience: Did Portman use a butt double in her upcoming medieval comedy, Your Highness?
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