ArtCopy Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Sunday may be a day of rest, but not for the intrepid Cinematical crew, who cranked out reviews and posts between screenings and interviews. They weren't the only busy ones, of course!

Deals. Nothing closed, but Gregg Goldstein of Movie City News reported (very early) that David Mackenzie's sex comedy Spread, starring Ashton Kutcher and Anne Heche, excited distributors because of its commercial appeal. The Jim Carrey "gay prison love story" I Love You Phillip Morris premiered tonight and distribs are expected to be circling.

Cinematical Reviews, and An Interview. Erik Davis says Marc Webb's 500 Days of Summer, with Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt, is "an anti-fairytale" romantic comedy. (Did you watch the teaser trailer? Fox Searchlight will release it in July.) Erik was super impressed by the teen detective antics of the Derrick Comedy troupe in Mystery Team, which he calls "a silly, stupid, ridiculous comedy." Paul Solet's Grace inspired the inimitable Eric D. Snider to opine: "If you are the sort of person who might enjoy an effed-up gore-fest about a woman [Jordan Ladd] who delivers an undead baby, you can rest assured that Grace lives up to its potential." Scott Weinberg wrote about killer trees, Nazi zombies, and a cool celeb .

James Rocchi interviewed Antoine Fuqua, director of Brooklyn's Finest, a few hours before the film sold to Senator Entertainment. James was cool toward Doug Pray's doc Art & Copy ("essentially, an ad for advertising") but warmed up to Sophie Barthes' Cold Souls, with Paul Giamatti giving "what may be his best performance" as an actor who stores his soul. James also saw a "French-style ... transgendered revenge comedy," and lived to tell about it.

Blog Talk. My favorite quotes of the day, if you have a few more seconds, after the jump.

Art & Copy director Doug Pray offered during the film's Q&A at the Prospector Square theater that he didn't want to make a documentary that did nothing but re-play classic advertising, and he didn't want to make a talking-heads documentary. He achieved in both those aims, but there's also the uglier question of if he made a documentary at all. Backed by The One Club -- an organization, as the press notes observe, "dedicated to the craft of advertising" -- Art & Copy talks to some of the greatest names in the field and recounts their successes. Combining clips of ads with interviews with titans in the field like Dan Wieden (Nike's "Just do it"), Hal Riney (Ronald Reagan's "It's Morning in America") and George Lois ("I want my MTV!"), Art and Copy is meant as a celebration of creativity; it winds up being a circular tautology: Great advertising is great because it's great advertising. Art and Copy is, essentially, an ad for advertising -- all of the attractive features of the business are shown in a glorious and shining light, and any concerns or deeper questions are brought up briefly before being shoved away briskly, or, more often, simply left unasked.

It's unfortunate, really, because Pray's an inventive and quick-minded documentarian who can normally show the fullness and contradictions of a topic; Hype! chronicled the rise (and fall) of the Seattle music scene; Scratch captured the quicksilver world of turntablism and of DJ'ing; Big Rig showed the lives of America's truckers and their role in commerce. I was excited by the prospect of Art & Copy, if only because Big Rig did such a great job of showing how consumer goods get from point a to point b; I was hoping Art & Copy would examine exactly how the people at point a make the people at point b want their consumer goods. (And, yes, I was hoping for a little hint of Mad Men's bleak, chic look at the industry, as well; I'm not proud to say it, but it's still true.) Opening with the Oscar Mayer and Meow Mix jingles, Art & Copy then shows us ancient stone carvings, while one of the film's ad men notes that there's not much difference between modern advertisers and the ancients who painted "on the walls of caves." Well, actually, there is -- whoever painted the bison on the walls at Lascaux was not, in fact, attempting to sell bison at a tidy profit. Art tries to encourage you to think; advertising wants you to stop thinking and buy. (And trust me, I'm aware that as you read this, you scrolled past several ads telling you how you can lose weight fast and promoting Paul Blart: Mall Cop, so let me briefly mention that you can lose weight inexpensively and safely by eating less and exercising more, and that our own Nick Schager found Paul Blart: Mall Cop an uninspired mess of fat jokes.)

Once again, your friends at Cinematical will be braving the arctic cold in Park City, Utah to bring you the best and brightest from the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, which will be celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2009. The films in competition this year, spread across four different categories (Documentary Competition, Dramatic Competition, World Cinema Documentary Competition and World Cinema Dramatic Competition) were just announced and we've got 'em right here.

Among some of the highlights we have Doug Pray's doc Art & Copy about the advertising world, Good Hair (comedian Chris Rock examining African-American hair?), John Krasinski's (The Office) directorial debut Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Paper Heart (that secret Michael Cera flick we told you about), Cold Souls (with Paul Giamatti and Emily Watson) and An Education (from writer Nick Hornby). Festival director Geoffrey Gilmore noted that "This year's films are not narrowly defined. Instead we have a blurring of genres, a crossing of boundaries: geographic, generational, socio-economic and the like. The result is both an exhilarating and emotive Festival in which traditional mythologies are suspended, discoveries are made, and creative storytelling is embraced." Tomorrow we'll have the non-competition films.

Check out the entire slate (with descriptions) after the jump, then tell us what looks good to you.