Documentary nominees take the deserved spotlight with 2012 non-fiction nominations unveiled by organizers of the Cinema Eye Honors Friday at AFI Fest with The Imposter and Searching for Sugar Man each receiving five nominations.
more »
Searching For Sugar Man, which tells the improbable story of how a singer-songwriter named Sixto Rodriguez rose, fell, and found superstardom in what amounts to a parallel universe, is an elegy in several keys. One is clear and familiar: Upon his excited discovery by a noted producer, the music business circa 1969 ate Rodriguez for breakfast, and a talent still acknowledged by his peers went to waste. The second is more personal, and although Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul leaves a distinct and ultimately frustrating berth around the man at the center of his documentary, it becomes poignantly clear that an abbreviated resume and a family to feed didn’t keep Rodriguez from living an artist’s life.
more »
As the 2012 Sundance Film Festival drew to a close with a flurry of sales, Movieline posed THE question to a panel of critics and bloggers: What was the best film of this year’s festival? While many of Sundance’s high profile offerings came and went with a whimper, a few notable titles rose to the top of Movieline’s poll; fest darling and Grand Jury Prize winner Beasts of the Southern Wild earned wild praise among our pundits, for example, but so too did some of this year’s more controversial entries. Hit the jump to see which top films the critics picked.
more »
Critic faves Beasts of the Southern Wild and The House I Live In took top Grand Jury Prize honors tonight at the Sundance Film Festival, where the John Hawkes Oscar hopeful The Surrogate and Kirby Dick's The Invisible War nabbed this year's audience awards. Also earning Sundance 2012 kudos were the music doc Searching for Sugar Man, Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk With Me, and the Aubrey Plaza starrer Safety Not Guaranteed.
more »
A quick update on the flurry of Sundance deal-making of recent days, with well-received documentaries and less acclaimed but star-driven (read: marketable) narratives sitting pretty with distribution agreements. Will this be, as pundits predicted, a high-volume buying year in Park City?
more »
“That was excruciating,” exhaled director Kieran Darcy-Smith as the lights came up on the Sundance opening night premiere of his first feature, the Australian dramatic thriller Wish You Were Here. The theater buzzed with appreciation, sure enough, and the film’s emotional blows strike as sharply thanks to strong performances by Joel Edgerton and Felicity Price. But movies like these almost always prompt that irksome question: Are we all at risk of suffering a case of the film festival goggles?
more »
FILM NEWS 