Also in Wednesday morning's round-up of news briefs, director Ben Wheatley boards a project set in the 17th century. Scott Derrickson eyes a paranormal police thriller. And the Toronto International Film Festival's Capital gets a deal.
more »
This morning's horrific Colorado multiplex shooting, which left at least 12 attendees of a midnight Dark Knight Rises screening dead, has prompted an ongoing wave of reactions from Hollywood to the White House and beyond.
more »
Some say taking a critical eye is patriotic. Others will flatly disagree or at least disagree when the opinion runs counter to their own. In the lead-up to celebrating the country's 236 years since independence ML is spotlighting the critical eye calling for change - acts that are very American. For every image of the country as that "Shining City on a Hill" there are perceived dissenters over American exceptionalism on screen. War, health care, the death penalty, poverty, racism have all been tackled in one form or another by Hollywood and beyond. Some of course consider these films a political/cultural "attack," while others say they're merely a "call to arms" to right a wrong, lending transparency to perceived ills in an open society. Perhaps some of the most successful films that take on culture and politics straddle both sides of a debate that opposing sides can call their own. Forrest Gump is probably one of the best examples in relatively recent times. But there are others that have taken decidedly more ideological bent and made waves doing so. Here are six we picked - undoubtedly, depending on one's interpretation, the list goes on...
more »
Also in Tuesday morning's round up of news briefs, Elissa Greer joins FilmDistrict's exec team, comic book writer Alan Moore is looking to collaborate on film, big-name directors and others come out in defense of Wikileak's Julian Assange and BAFTA revamps its nomination and voting rules.
more »
Actor George Clooney once confessed to Oscar-winner Michael Moore that he used the filmmaker's debut Roger & Me as a dating litmus test. Or so Moore told an audience at the Walter Reade Theater in New York, where the hit 1989 documentary had a special screening Tuesday night.
more »
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.
more »
Today in the NY Times, David Carr has an intriguing look at the notorious 28-minute "documentary" When Mitt Romney Came to Town, a piece of presidential-campaign propaganda so slick and evocative that it brings to mind the work of contemporary Hollywood pros. Perhaps most notably, Carr writes, the film implicates Romney in a kind of "vampire capitalism" -- which calls for some perspective from the Oscar-winning director of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Bill Condon. Naturally.
more »
The New York Times reported Sunday that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' documentary branch is tweaking its qualification rules once again, allowing only theatrical nonfiction feature films that have been reviewed by the NY or LA Times to be considered for Oscar nominations. Furthermore, voting on nominees will be expanded to the entire 166-member Documentary Branch (as opposed to individual committees), and the Academy as a whole can vote for Best Documentary, regardless of how or where members saw the nominated films. The revisions have prompted more than a little hand-wringing around the doc community -- for no especially good reason, alas. Here's why:
more »
Earlier today we were tickled by tales of Bob and Harvey Weinstein's genius early '80s sexifying shenanigans, but this afternoon brings allegations of shady accounting and legal chicanery lobbied by none other than former collaborator Michael Moore, who claims the Weinsteins deceived him out of millions in profits from his 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Naturally, we wonder: What's this mean for the Oscar race?
FILM NEWS 
