IndependentFilm Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Independent film isn't really independent film anymore. We've got big studios who created "independent" arms to bank on that slice of cinema, and we've seen indie films with budgets in the bazillions. (Or, at least, the millions.) It's gotten to the point where true home-grown fare will have to find a new moniker to make their own, or fight to the death to reclaim "independent" from the monied studio types. But for now, we've just got confusion ... and Strong Bad to clear things up.

It's been a while since I sat down and watched the snarky animated icon's e-mail videos, and I'm thinking it's time to catch up. Ex-Cinematical scribe Eric Kohn's Twitter alerted me to this gem from the Homestar Runner camp, where Strong Bad talks film festivals, and more specifically, the divide between "independent" and "indie" films. It's awesome.

To Strong Bad, those two names are "locked in a civil war." Strong Sad's "independent" ways come from the "lifer, artist type" who might even go so far as to make a "faux-money" production (the use of Monopoly money for cash). Pom Pom, meanwhile, is the "indie" dude -- "slicker, catchier" to the young 20-somethings, the "tech-savvy hipster." From there, Strong Bad talks about the artistic leaps Strong Sad makes for his art, while Pom Pom gets busy with a faux-hand-made feature with catchy names and pencil-drawn opening credits.

Snarky, it most definitely is -- but it also rings so very true.

As many of you are undoubtedly aware, I'm a sucker for a good historical epic, especially if it's set in that darkest of ages. Though the medieval period is the subject of thousands of books, and everyone knows something about the Black Death or the 100 Years War, few movies ever tackle those history-shaking events. But we might be getting one according to Variety, who reports that London's Independent Film is bringing Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt to the big screen.

Everyone knows Agincourt from Shakespeare's Henry V, but it's never gotten much cinematic attention outside of Kenneth Branagh which is surprising. After all, movies with hungry, dysentary-riddled underdogs who defeat a larger, more powerful force is the stuff of every war movie ever made. Plus, this is the battle that medieval chroniclers claimed killed chivalry (as if it ever existed), and supposedly gave us the two-fingered (well, one if you're American) salute. But really, "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" isn't nearly as poetic and inspiring when you remember that the English were invading France purely for their own gain. Not exactly the Battle of Thermopylae, or Valley Forge, you know?

Luckily, by using Bernard Cornwell's bestselling novel, they can play fast and sympathetic thanks to it being centered around a fictional, chivalrous archer named Nicholas Hook, who joins King Henry on his quest for the French crown, and winds up at Agincourt. Luckily, his personal saint happens to be St. Crispinian, so he's got that going for his survival odds. Agincourt is being adapted by Michael Hirst, the pen behind Showtime's The Tudors and Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth. He's a good fit for the book, and will be able to balance Cornwell's meticulous military descriptions with blood, glory, and medieval romance. It won't be accurate, but it'll probably be a really good watch! It's slated to begin shooting in spring 2011.

Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, a semi-autobiographical film about a Brooklyn family's experience with divorce, was the sleeper indie hit of 2005, and after its success Baumbach shot to prominence as a director to watch. His highly anticipated follow-up effort, Margot at the Wedding, returns to similar themes of family love and loathing; it stars Nicole Kidman as Margot, a high-strung writer who, along with her son Claude (Zane Pais), goes on a pilgrimage of sorts to her childhood home, where her estranged sister (Baumbach's wife Jennifer Jason Leigh) is marrying an unemployed painter (Jack Black) she just met. Baumbach -- who, it must be noted, bears an uncanny resemblance to Adrien Brody -- sat down with us in Toronto to talk about New York, family dynamics and just what's up with all those masturbation scenes.

Cinematical: After Squid and the Whale, a lot of people looked at you as a Brooklyn artist, the way they might look at someone like Jonathan Lethem. Did you have any temptation to make another movie set in Brooklyn, or did you deliberately move away from that?

Noah Baumbach: It wasn't deliberate or not deliberate -- I started writing this movie and it became what it was. It wasn't a response to anything in particular. I feel a real connection to Brooklyn, certainly, because I spent 20 years of my life there, but I don't think of myself as a Brooklyn artist any more than I think of myself as a male artist. I will say that when people would respond to Squid with a kind of Brooklyn-centric reaction I was pleased with that, because obviously Brooklyn means a lot to me.

So you've made an independent film. Worked your butt off filming it around your day job, maxed out your credit cards financing the damn thing, probably pissed off a few friends and relatives along the path of your filmmaking obsession. What to do with the finished product (besides submitting it to the usual round of film festivals, natch)? PBS's Independent Lens -- a "film festival in your living room" --  wants to see the fruits of your labor for their 2007-08 season. Although the series is primarily focused on documentaries, they'll also consider dramas, experimentals and shorts. You have until September to get your submissions in, so stop battling with your editor and music director and get those last-minute edits done, already.  Want more info? Go get it over here.

Winner of the Snakes on a Plane Award for most forthright title, Caveh Zahedi's fictionalized documentary I Am a Sex Addict has come to the big screen after fifteen years of production, setbacks, disasters and difficulties. The passage of time hasn't changed the tense of the title -- Zahedi may be recovered for years, but he's still got impossibly conflicted feelings and desires about sex -- and in many ways the slow crawl to the finish line enabled I Am a Sex Addict to have a sweep and scope that a lot of modern navel-gazing self-made films lack. 

As a subject (or leading man – the film straddles the line between the real and the re-created), Zahedi's a pretty unlikely figure: Bold but bashful, larger-than-life but small of stature, smart enough to be incredibly aware of how stupid many of his actions are. Those dichotomies run throughout the film, making I Am a Sex Addict repellent-yet-riveting: You don't want to watch Zahedi open up the aperture of the camera and spill his guts onto the frame , but he's so open -- and fascinating, and frank about his self-destruction and majestically pathetic -- that you can't help but watch. Of course, the fact that Zahedi's got a slow-fuse, deadpan delivery that makes him look like a neurotic Buster Keaton doesn't hurt his watchability. …