Cinematical

The Night Listener is a Hitchcockian version of Shattered Glass, the story of what happens when sketchy journalism and mental instability collide. Robin Williams plays a pretentious NPR storyteller (think: Ira Glass of This American Life) who is introduced by telephone, by his publisher/agent, to a gifted young novelist named Pete.

Peter, played by Rory Culkin, has escaped a life of pornographic pedophilia imposed on him by his parents (in their basement studio), to complete the great American novel. However, he is now dying from AIDS (apparently from being raped by straight men during the making of pornos) and his dying wish is to have his story published. Given the recent "Frey" around fictionalized biographies, the story is timely.

Williams' character Gabriel, recently shaken by a breakup with his HIV-positive lover, develops a deep phone relationship with the budding novelist and his adoptive mother Donna, played by Toni Collette (who is also featured in the Sundance '06 selection Little Miss Sunshine).

As the story unfolds Gabriel starts to doubt the authenticity of Pete--and his mother's--claims. Gabriel is forced to look inward as well, knowing that he has taken many liberties in his storied, storytelling career. As you can guess, it's not enough for our protagonist to just wonder if he's being duped. Nope, he's got to hit the road and travel to Wisconsin to get to the bottom of this mystery. Cold landscapes, dank basements, dark shadows, and other creepy devices ensue.

At 90 minutes the film has a nice, suspenseful pace, and doesn't go for the cheap thrill. The tension is built while we try to understand the psychosis. Based on the book by Armistead Maupin, the story includes plenty of plot twists. Highly recommended for those who like intelligent thrillers--or Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Others on The Night Listener: Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter was intrigued by the film, which he says "bristles with intriguing thoughts about the realm of fiction, how one loves, [and] issues of identity...". Our own James Rocchi was also impressed, calling the film "a strand of story strung out into the dark, coaxing us along as it unravels and leading us to think about who we are." Variety's David Rooney, however, was less interested in a work he calls "tediously solemn," and totally lacking "tension or dramatic structure."

The plummeting price of digital cameras and editing software, combined with the death spiral of network news, has resulted in a booming documentary offering over the past couple of Sundances. The public loves the genre, and like a William Gibson novel, it seems like everyone is now recording everything. If there's a conflict, obscure sport, or flamboyant personality you can be sure someone, somewhere, is making it into a documentary, and the result is a crop of boring-to-serviceable documentaries that are occasionally more suited for cable distribution than theatrical.

I thought for sure Clear Cut: The Story of Philomath, Oregon would fall into the television news documentary category, but was pleasantly surprised that the films excellent pacing and structure made it truly a film--not a Frontline episode.

Clear Cut, tells the story of a timber town in transition: as the blue collar jobs leave, the liberal information workers move in. They bring with them some unwelcome values including what locals perceive as a pro-environment, pro-gay, and ...

Some Sundance posts from around the blogosphere.

• Bai Ling gyrating in public with Lizzie Grubman--nuf said.
• Spin and Stir reviews Black Gold
• A photo essay of furry boots at Sundance--cute.
• I don't know what iMeem actually is, but they may have the first Paris Hilton sighting.
• Mark is a great blogger, but he needs to get Nick to shoot the lock off his wallet and spring for a decent camera!
• PSA, You're going to read this blog post 100x this week: "We waited for two hours inside of a cold tent. They didn't let us in.."

BTW: If you want to get in touch with me or Karina during Sundance you can email jason at calacanis dot com, or karina at cinematical dot com. Please send in any celeb photos from main street, your reviews of films, links to blog posts, and anything else you think we might be interested in.

Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, is a documentary about the punk/pop band derived from Super8 films shot by drummer Stewart Copeland. Sounds promising based on the level of access the director has to his subjects and the fact that the band broke up at the top of their game. After the break up fans were left with only their memories of a hard rocking Sting, who traded a kick-ass band for a life of Jazzy interludes on Light FM and sellout Jaguar commercials. In fact, sell out would be a kind assessment of Sting in the minds of most Police fans.

The film starts as the Police head out on their first US tour in the late seventies. This consists of long shots driving down the road and people cavorting in hotel rooms--nothing we haven't seen before. The voiceover from Copeland reveals little, and 40 minutes into the film I'm left wondering if anything will ever happen.

During all this time we're subjected to grainy, shaky video with horrible sound. It would be easy to forgive the poor quality of the video if it captured some rocking early performances, but the director/cameraman was too busy playing the drums at too many performance,s I guess.

Predictably the crowds develop from single digits to six figures, but the characters don't develop at all. The Police haven't said more than 20 lines to the camera 45 minutes into the film, and most surprisingly no one is taking drugs, fighting, or running around naked with groupies. Sting--who you would think would be an interesting person--has nothing to say.

Others on Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out: Variety's Dennis Harvey was decidedly unimpressed, calling the film "a trite, whitewashed-to-blankness vanity project."

Picking what films you want to see based on the Sundance catalogue is challenging. Frankly, I pick what films to see largely based on what people are talking about in the press room (the volunteers are a great source of information). The catalogue is written from a fans' perspective. In fact, it's written by the Sundance selection committee, so it's even more than a fans' perspective--it's the opinion of someone who pushed to have the film in the festival above thousands of other films. It makes sense that they would be glowing.

At the start of Sundance you're really picking films based on the talent, the director, the title, and the photo--that's the truth. It's impossible to know which first time directors will breakout, that's the majic of Sundance and that magic occurs over five days. No one would ever have selected Napoleon Dynamite as something they "had to see" based on the catalogue, for example.

That being said, here are my seven in no particular order.

All Aboard: Rosie's Family Cruise

Wow, a documentary about Rosie at Sundance--that's got legs (at the very least to base a drinking game on). The film was one of three films that still had tickets availble to the public today. The other two were the Shorts Selection and TBD. When your film is neck and neck with "TBD" on the available ticket list you know something is up. This film has camp written all over it, but who knows... I'll try and keep an open mind.

(more after the jump)

Inspired by Karina and Ryan doing the IM review thing I talked to one of my peoples in the industry who has good taste in films (I know, hard to believe right?) and he gave me this quick IM review:

jasoncalacanis: what did you think of War of the Worlds
industry insider: i say it's a classic
Jasoncalacanis: i heard it was great....
Jasoncalacanis: give me a five line off the record review for Cinematical...
industry insider: when i say it's classic Spielberg, think jaws not ET
industry insider: aliens get on screen less than 10 minutes in
industry insider: and from there it's nonstop setpieces
industry insider: the end is a bit too cute and tight
industry insider: and cruise can't pull off the dysfunctional dockworker dad character
industry insider: but it doesn't matter
JasonCalacanis: 1 to 10?
industry insider: 8

There you have it folks.

As you may—or may not—know, the blog you are now reading belongs to the Weblogs, Inc. Network (WIN).

The Weblogs, Inc. network features over 80 independent, unfiltered bloggers producing over 1,000 blog posts a week across 75 industry leading blogs that include Engadget, Autoblog, and TVSquad. We figured we would skim the cream and give you some of the top posts from a number of these sites—as determined by our bloggers—in one easy to read post each week.

Tons of linkage after the jump… enjoy!

Engadget has Creative Zen Vision about Microsoft "breaking some new ground" with a… Battlebot (?!) walking around with Sony Ericsson's new W600 Walkman Phone and chatting up how the Nintendo Revolution won't support HD.

AdJab covers AutoTrader's attacks, on Heinz one-liners, marooned on Gilligan's Island and then

Richard Linklater leveraged the animation techniques first pioneered by Bob Sabiston and Tommy Pollotta in their 14-minute short Roadhead back in 1998, in the existential Waking Life. Indie film fans were intrigued by that effort, however, not half as intrigued as scifi fans will be when they see the dementedly cool trailer for A Scanner Darkly, staring Keanu, Winnona, Woody, and Downey. The film is based on the a story by Philip K. Dick.

PlasticBoy sums it up "I try not to get excited about movies before I've seen them anymore, in order to avoid setting myself up for disappointment, but it's hard to resist with this one."

Xeni points out Rustmonkey Productions' alternate trailer for the film (still on the right) which they created for a pitch a couple of years ago:

May, 21, 2004: Pesco pointed pal Erik Davis working on the film:

View the trailer.

Chris Rock let out a shout out to Broooooooooklyn at the end of the show…. was it his last? Will he be back next year after busting on Jude Law?!?!!? Will Sean Penn kick his ass at the Vanity Fair party?!?! Is Rock to raw for LA?! What do you think?

Now they have Beyonce teamed up with Josh Groban. Chris Rock let's Jaz-Z know not to leave his women alone with Josh.