Posted Dec 3rd 2009 12:15PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Comedy, Austin, Interviews, George Clooney
My interview with
Up in the Air director
Jason Reitman in October was one of the most meta interviews I've ever done. Before the interview started, Reitman took my photo with his iPhone. He told me only "I'm not sure if that's going to work, what I'm doing with that, but if it does, you'll be thrilled with the results." I'm still in suspense.
In addition, my interview took place right after a
Film School Rejects interview (check it out, Reitman name-checks
Cinematical) in which Cole Abaius spent 10 minutes discussing the pie charts the
Juno and
Thank You for Smoking director
had been posting to Twitter. Reitman kept track of which questions interviewers asked him most -- I caught him tallying things in a little notebook during our interview -- and posted the stats online frequently. Roger Ebert has also written
about the pie charts. Cole and I had been reading Reitman's Twitter feed before our interviews, and not only knew about the pie chart but found out that he had just been enjoying lunch at the Salt Lick, one of the best known BBQ joints in Central Texas.
So that may explain why Twitter, pie charts and barbecue keep creeping into the following
Cinematical interview with Jason Reitman. I hope it's as fun to read as it was to be there in person. The above photo is from the red carpet the evening after the interview, when
Up in the Air was the closing-night film for Austin Film Festival.
Continue reading Interview: Jason Reitman, 'Up in the Air'
Posted Nov 4th 2009 1:32PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Festival Reports, Austin
In Austin, you can set your watch by the fall film festivals. We don't just have SXSW in the spring. Starting around Labor Day, it feels like we have a film festival practically every week, from Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) to the Austin Polish Film Festival, Austin Asian American Film Festival and of course Fantastic Fest. One of the oldest and biggest of these local autumn fests is
Austin Film Festival (AFF), which spans eight days and seven screening venues, and includes a screenwriters' conference. In 2009, AFF celebrated its 16th year.
AFF focuses on screenwriters even in its film programming selections, as was evident with the opening-night film.
Serious Moonlight is best known as the last script written by the late actress/filmmaker Adrienne Shelly. I admit I
wasn't fond of the movie, but director
Cheryl Hines was a trip -- mock-vampy on the red carpet (as shown above), and full of excitement about her film. Her screening was up against heavy competition: Matthew Weiner brought an episode of
Mad Men to the festival and didn't reveal which one until just before it screened. (It turned out to be this season's "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" episode.) Weiner also was featured in panels during the conference portion of AFF.
Continue reading Austin Film Festival 2009: The Wrap-Up
Posted Nov 1st 2009 3:02PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Documentary, Theatrical Reviews, Austin
It's not uncommon to hear people discussing -- or complaining about -- the ways in which Hollywood celebrities are involved in politics, whether they're airing their opinions during a concert or speaking in public on behalf of a politician.
Barry Levinson (
Diner,
Good Morning Vietnam) thought this was an interesting enough topic to address in his documentary
Poliwood, which focuses on the 2008 national Democratic and Republican conventions. Unfortunately, the documentary shows us little that we haven't already seen, and tends to preach to the converted.
Poliwood is subtitled "a Barry Levinson film essay," which signals us that this will be a more personal style of documentary. Levinson opens the movie with shots from his 1990 feature film
Avalon and uses this footage to discuss the ways American lives have changed because of television. His focus is on the Creative Coalition, a non-partisan organization of celebrities that focuses on issues such as arts education. The documentary shifts to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, where Creative Coalition members such as Anne Hathaway, Tim Daly, and Ellen Burstyn talk about how they include politics in their lives. It's especially surreal to see Richard Schiff at the convention after his role on
The West Wing -- in one scene, someone from the Clinton administration walks up to him and says "You played me!" -- but Schiff handles it all with good humor.
Continue reading AFF Review: Poliwood
Posted Oct 29th 2009 8:32PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Comedy, Magnolia, Theatrical Reviews, Austin
The first thing everyone seems to mention about
Serious Moonlight is that its screenplay is the last one written by the late
Adrienne Shelly. Actress
Cheryl Hines, who had a role in Shelly's film
Waitress, is making her feature directorial debut with the dark comedy, which stars Meg Ryan and Timothy Hutton. The movie opened Austin Film Festival this year. It sounds like a sure-fire comedy, but unfortunately it just left me with a headache.
Serious Moonlight focuses on a married couple, Louise (
Meg Ryan) and Ian (
Timothy Hutton), who are supposed to meet in their country house for a rendezvous, but both arrive a day early. Louise wants to surprise her husband, but finds out that he also has a surprise: he's leaving her. She refuses to accept this, and ends up cracking him on the head with a vase, binding him with duct tape, and refusing to let him loose until he comes to his senses and realizes how much he loves her and wants to stay with her.
Continue reading AFF Review: Serious Moonlight
Posted Oct 26th 2009 9:03AM by Jen Yamato
Filed under: Comedy, RumorMonger, Fandom, Scripts, Newsstand, Austin
Earlier this month we told you that "Arrested Development" creator Mitch Hurwitz was scripting an absolutely for-reals, big-screen
Arrested Development movie, and that he would direct it himself. Speaking at a writing panel this weekend at the
Austin Film Festival (where he appeared alongside Steven Zaillian and
AD executive producer Ron Howard), Hurwitz
dropped a few more hints about what exactly we might be seeing plot-wise, and it sounds like somebody in the Bluth family (or heck, maybe all of 'em) will be heading to prison.
Honestly, it's hard to tell what Hurwitz meant when he briefly gave in to moderating producer Marcia Nasatir's prodding at the "Art of Storytelling" panel in Austin. According to
Austin 360, "Hurwitz relented to Nasatir, and said that there would be a
heavy jail presence and then made jokes about the inclusion of TARP money, a nod to the inability of a film to be as timely as television due to lag times in production and release."
Over at
Collider, Matt Goldberg wonders if the Bluth family real estate business could easily lead into a comical plotline about the current housing crisis. Methinks you're onto something, Matt. Might we see another Bluth in prison orange? If so, I vote for putting a Bluth other than George Sr. or Gob behind bars, because the last time Will Arnett went to the slammer, well... we got
Let's Go to Prison. (I know I shouldn't punish the
AD universe for that stinker, but the negative association lingers.)
So what do you think, Cinematicalites? What could Hurwitz's "heavy jail presence" mean for the Arrested Development movie? Posted Jul 3rd 2009 4:33PM by Jenni Miller
Filed under: SXSW, Distribution, DIY/Filmmaking, Austin
So you wanna rake in the indie cred in Austin at next year's South by Southwest Festival? You have a skootch more than a week left to submit proposals for panels and/or rate the ones that have already been submitted for SXSW. But lucky for you, the
SXSW Panel Picker is at your fingertips any time of the day or night. This cool new tool allows for everyone to have a say in what panels get okay'd for the festival.
According to
the official site, "SXSW thrives on the creative intersection that takes place when great minds get together, and we feel the Panel Picker truly celebrates that. We believe that the real experts at SXSW are the people who bring the event to life - you, the thousands of people who attend every year. You know what you want to see, so this is your chance to help make that happen."
Previous panels include
"The Incredible Shrinking (Expanding?) Film Critic Profession," which featured Cinematical's very own Scott Weinberg,
"From Script to Screen," a Stanley Kubrick discussion, and much more. Get on your horse and head over 'cause the Panel Picker closes its doors on July 10th.
You can also stay up to date on all the latest SXSW-related film news and reviews over at
the official blog. They gave Erik Davis'
earlier post on the real girl behind SXSW's indie hit
500 Days of Summer a nice shout out, too. Even if you don't get your very own panel, you should do yourself a favor and hit up the festival since it's filled to the gills with enough media to burn your retinas and pop your eardrums. Plus, you can eat some BBQ with the peeps you Tweet at. Hey, just sayin'.
Posted Oct 26th 2008 5:03PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Austin
October in Austin might mean the Texas-Oklahoma game to some people, or the welcome end of triple-digit temperature hell to others, but for movie lovers it brings us a week of
Austin Film Festival, which celebrated its 15th year last week. I can remember when the festival was limited to one hotel and a couple of movie theaters, and the films were just something to do at night after the screenwriters' conference. This year, the conference spread out over several venues and the film festival itself, which lasts a full week, screened films in nine different locations around town.
The Paramount Theatre, which seats about 1,200 people, was packed for the opening-night film,
W., with actor
James Cromwell in attendance. This was a specially apt venue for the Oliver Stone film because if you walk outside the Paramount and look down the street, there's the State Capitol. The Governor's Mansion -- well, what's left of it right now -- is in walking distance of the theater. If we could only have blocked off Congress Ave. (hah), we could have posed Cromwell with the Capitol prominent in the background. Cromwell not only stuck around after the film for a Q&A, but stayed for the screenwriters' conference the next day to lead a conversation-style session about acting.
Continue reading Austin Film Festival Wrap-Up
Posted Oct 31st 2007 8:07PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Comedy, Documentary, Theatrical Reviews, Austin, HBO Films, Cinematical Indie
Oh, what times we live in, that we can enjoy foul-mouthed documentaries like
The Aristocrats and
F**k. I grew up equating "documentary" with "National Geographic," so any nonfiction film that uses four-letter words or would shock my mom, automatically makes me smile a little. As a result, I was slightly biased toward
Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project from the moment the film's subject uttered his first profanities during a stand-up routine.
Rickles reportedly has been reluctant to have his live performances recorded until now, but let director
John Landis shoot part of his Vegas show. The documentary uses the footage from Rickles' stand-up act as a springboard for a biography and filmography of Rickles, a superficial discussion about intentionally offensive comedy, and a general reflection upon Las Vegas and how it's changed in the past 40 years or so.
Continue reading AFF Review: Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project
Posted Oct 29th 2007 12:02PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Comedy, New Line, Scripts, Austin, Interviews, Cinematical Indie
Austin Film Festival doesn't only show movies, but also includes a screenwriters' conference. This year, the lineup included
Jon Hurwitz and
Hayden Schlossberg, who wrote
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and have written and directed the upcoming sequel, currently known as
Harold and Kumar 2. (First they were going to Amsterdam, then they were escaping from Guantanamo Bay. Maybe next they'll be searching for a crystal
skull bong.)
Hurwitz and Schlossberg sat down with moderator Josh Weiner and an audience of conference attendees to discuss both the
Harold and Kumar movies, and used clips from the first movie to share various lessons they learned in screenwriting.
The first clip shown was the scene in which Harold (
John Cho) encounters Maria (
Paula Garces) in the elevator, both in his fantasy world and in reality. Hurwitz said the scene was pivotal to the movie because it introduced Maria as a romantic interest, which provided something for the audience to connect with in a movie that otherwise has a fairly slight storyline. In fact, the impact of the scene ultimately caused the ending to be reshot.
Continue reading AFF Panel: 'Harold and Kumar' Writers Share Tips, Discuss Sequel
Posted Oct 24th 2007 11:02AM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Documentary, Theatrical Reviews, Austin, Cinematical Indie
So if Borat Sagdiyev had been a British vegetarian who thought all chain stores were an embodiment of The Man -- nah, that's a totally unfair way to describe
America Unchained, which screened at Austin Film Festival. The narrator of this documentary is far less over-the-top than Borat, but he's still engaging enough to save the film from terminal earnestness.
British comedy writer/performer
Dave Gorman is our tour guide on this film. He tells us that the last time he took a tour of the United States, he was booked in big-chain hotels and ended up eating primarily in chain restaurants. He decides that this time he wants to see the "real" America, so he plans to drive from L.A. to New York (coast to coast) without giving any money to "The Man" -- no buying from any kind of chain, be it a hotel, fast-food restaurant or most difficult of all, a gas station. Gorman and his original director/camera operator set off from California in a car they didn't buy from a chain, either ... a 1975 Torino station wagon, which looks like the family car from my childhood when we took long road trips ourselves (not unlike the Griswolds in the first
Vacation movie).
Continue reading AFF Review: America Unchained
Posted Oct 22nd 2007 3:09PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Drama, Foreign Language, Theatrical Reviews, Fox Searchlight, The Weinstein Co., Austin, Cinematical Indie
Earlier this year,
Under the Same Moon (originally titled
La Misma Luna) was bought at Sundance by Fox Searchlight and The Weinstein Company for a surprisingly high amount of money. It's understandable because underneath the film's unsubtle messages about undocumented Mexican workers working to survive in the U.S., it's essentially an old-fashioned family melodrama. I caught the film at Austin Film Festival this year, and it's currently scheduled to hit theaters in March 2008.
Rosario (
Kate del Castillo) is a young immigrant from Mexico living and working in Los Angeles to support her nine-year-old son Carlitos (
Adrian Alonso), who lives with Rosario's mother in Mexico. He hasn't seen his mother in four years and misses her terribly. Meanwhile, Rosario is trying to scrape up enough money for a lawyer to help her bring Carlitos to America legally. When his grandmother dies, Carlitos decides to cross the border himself and travel to Los Angeles to find his mother, because he's scared she'll forget about him. He encounters an unlikely lot of helpers and companions during his attempt, including American college students (America Ferrera and Jesse Garcia) who want to make extra money smuggling children over the border, and Enrique (Eugenio Derbez), a migrant worker who has no desire to deal with a small child on his hands.
Continue reading AFF Review: Under the Same Moon
Posted Oct 21st 2007 2:02PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Documentary, Theatrical Reviews, Austin, Cinematical Indie
I grew up in the New Orleans area, so I can't resist movies set in that location, especially documentaries. The only problem is that I worry about seeing anything involving the term "post-Katrina" in a theater, because I'm always worried I'll end up in tears or enraged in public. Fortunately,
Don't Eat the Baby: Adventures at Post-Katrina Mardi Gras kept me more amused than sad, but at the same time managed to accurately represent the problems that South Louisianians faced in the six months after the hurricane and ensuing floods.
Don't Eat the Baby focuses on the ways in which New Orleanians dealt with Mardi Gras in 2006. The city was devastated, with much of its population forced to live elsewhere, and for many people it seemed inappropriate to spend money and other resources on a big celebration. Still, the large parade organizations (called krewes) wanted to roll, the mayor and other politicians hoped that the festivities would draw tourism and thus bring needed revenue to local businesses, and many New Orleanians simply wanted to take a little time to forget about the bad things in their lives, and celebrate as they have done every year.
Continue reading AFF Review: Don't Eat the Baby: Adventures at Post-Katrina Mardi Gras
Posted Oct 21st 2007 11:05AM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Documentary, Theatrical Reviews, Austin, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Cinematical Indie
I'm not a comic-book reader, so I didn't know much about the subject of
Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist before seeing the documentary at Austin Film Festival. I knew he was the creator of
The Spirit, a comic-book series that Frank Miller is adapting into a feature film ... and that's about all I knew. Fortunately, the documentary filled in many of the blanks for me about Eisner and provided some interesting details about the artist's life.
Eisner is credited for being one of the pioneers in the comic-book form -- as the film's title indicates, he believed in making the comics sequential, giving them an ongoing storyline, which was not standard back in the 1930s when he started work as an artist. His character The Spirit was not a traditional superhero with crazy superpowers, but an ordinary guy in the smallest of masks, who happened to fight crime. During WWII and afterwards, Eisner created military instructional manuals that were drawn in a comic-book style to make them interesting and easy to understand. Later in life, he created more dramatic, personal comic books (
A Contract with God) that he dubbed "graphic novels," and paved the way for this type of work to be taken seriously.
Continue reading AFF Review: Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist
Posted Oct 11th 2007 12:02PM by Eric D. Snider
Filed under: Documentary, Foreign Language, Gay & Lesbian, Independent, Austin, Other Festivals, Cinematical Indie, The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar
Welcome to
The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar, a weekly look at what's happening beyond the multiplexes all around North America. If you know of something indie-related happening near you -- a local festival, a series of classic restored films, lectures, workshops, etc. -- send the info to me at Eric.Snider(at)weblogsinc(dot)com and I'll add it to the list. (Please put "Cinematical" somewhere in the subject line so I can easily separate you from the spam.)
Atlanta: The
Urban Mediamakers Film Festival, running today through Sunday, is a combination of under-the-radar movie screenings and workshops for independent film professionals -- though if you're just a film lover and you only want to see the movies, that's fine, too.
Austin: Is it nothing but festivals in this town?! South By Southwest, Fantastic Fest, and now the more intuitively named
Austin Film Festival... don't you crazy Texas kids have jobs? Just kidding. You kids are great, with your film festivals, and your hipster music scenes, and your Alamo Drafthouses. AFF began last night and runs through Oct. 18, with a few dozen features, documentaries, and shorts. Of note: The centerpiece film is
Juno, which people have been
going crazy about since it premiered at Telluride last month.
After the jump, more fests and events in L.A., NYC, Philly, Portland, and elsewhere....
Continue reading The (Mostly) Indie Film Calendar: Festivals Big and Small, and Karen Black Live!
Posted Oct 31st 2006 6:02PM by Jette Kernion
Filed under: Comedy, Independent, Theatrical Reviews, Austin, Cinematical Indie
The screening of
Chalk I attended was the only sold-out movie I encountered at Austin Film Festival, and it was on a Tuesday night after the conference had ended. I heard that the previous night's showing of the feature film sold out as well -- and this was at the Arbor's largest screen. Was it because the movie won AFF's narrative feature award? Or was there some sort of word-of-mouth building in town among Austin educators, since teachers were the focus of this film? Before the movie started,
Chalk's director
Mike Akel asked how many teachers were in the audience, and I saw a large show of hands. It probably didn't hurt that
Chalk was filmed in Austin, either.
Chalk uses that mock-documentary style found in
The Office to focus on a group of high-school teachers (and one former teacher, now a vice principal) struggling to deal with their jobs in the course of a school year. There's the brand-new teacher, Mr. Lowrey (
Troy Schremmer), who can't maintain control of his classroom; a comically ambitious, extroverted teacher, Mr. Stroope (co-writer
Chris Mass); the short-haired, strident gym teacher, Coach Webb (
Janelle Schremmer); and continually overworked vice-principal Mrs. Reddell (
Shannon Haragan). The situations are usually played for laughs, but there are a few touching moments, particularly with Mr. Lowrey as he tries to connect with his students. Since they occasionally look right in the camera and talk to us, we know who has a little crush on whom, who's about to lose their mind, and who wants to strangle certain other teachers.
Continue reading AFF Review: Chalk
Next Page >
Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams Reunite for 'Mission Impossible 4'
'Big Top Pee-Wee': The Original Benicio Del Toro Wolfman
Spin-ematical: New on DVD and Blu-ray for 2/9
Watch This: Brilliant Oscar-Nominated Short 'Logorama'
Chris Nolan to Lead 'Superman' Reboot!?
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
