Lance Hammer Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Sure enough, the first week of December brings the first formal slew of awards nominations, today's coming from Film Independent's Spirit Awards. The Hollywood Reporter bring us the list of nominees, with dramas Ballast, Frozen River and Rachel Getting Married each tied for the most nominations (six a piece, including Best Feature; the other two nominees there are Wendy and Lucy and The Wrestler).

Now, these awards aren't necessarily Oscar precursors or anything -- some of these films are just too small -- but it's difficult to deny that the likes of Milk, The Visitor, The Wrestler, Rachel, River and documentary contender Man on Wire are all looking at the first of many nominations in the coming weeks, most of which I can safely say are or will be deserving. I can't speak for Ballast, but it's been earning attention in the indie world for months and months, so do as I do and keep an eye out for it.

The greatest assurance can only be taken once the Spirit Awards are awarded on February 21. See the full list of nominees after the jump.

Success Stories:
Happy-Go-Lucky (Miramax)
Religulous (Lionsgate)
Ballast (Alluvial/Required Viewing)

One Brit edged out another, as RockNRolla, Guy Ritchie's zippy yet utterfully forgettable "return to form" Brit crime flick, narrowly claimed the #1 spot among limited releases, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. To my mind, though, Mike Leigh's much riskier Happy-Go-Lucky ($20,000 per screen at four theaters) is the surprise winner in the independent world, with a strking lead performance by Sally Hawkins as a preternaturally cheerful schoolteacher who sounds as though she could set teeth on edge as easily as she warms hearts. I'm curious but wary. The film will expand wider on Friday; if you've seen it, is it a tonic for difficult times or a passive aggressive form of torture?

Speaking of possibly unpleasant experiences, I'm also surprised by the excellent returns for Larry Charles' Religulous. The doc has earned more than $6.7 million in just two weeks; A. J. Schnack of All these wonderful things points out that it's the first doc since Michael Moore's Sicko "to score back-to-back multi-million dollar weekends." I grew tired of Bill Maher's smirking, self-righteous ridicule years ago, but perhaps I'm in the minority. If you've seen the doc, are you a big fan of Maher? Or is it the subject matter that made it a must-see?

Lance Hammer's Ballast deserves a big hand. Not only did Hammer write and direct a highly-praised drama, he decided to take on distribution duties as well, opening it at a single Manhattan theater the weekend before last. The earnings were not stunning, but very respectable for picture without stars. It expands to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Washington, Philadelphia and St. Louis before the end of October, according to indieWIRE. Will you check out Ballast if it opens near you?

Talk about conflicted emotions! In a very fine article at indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman reports on filmmaker Lance Hammer's recent decision to pull out of a distribution deal with IFC Films for his Sundance award-winning feature, Ballast. While I'm heartened that Hammer is willing to place creative control ahead of financial concerns, I'm also discouraged that there appears to be little room in the current distribution landscape for Hammer's critically-acclaimed independent drama to find its audience.

Ballast details the lives and connections between a man, a woman, and her son. It won praise from our own James Rocchi -- "Cineastes, looking for an American film that offers something on-screen other than glossy consumerist fantasies, will embrace Ballast with the ardent fervor of a drowning victim offered a rope" -- even though James acknowledged the challenges the film would face in drawing viewers from "outside the film festival circuit."

Paris-based sales outfit Celluloid Dreams nabbed nternational rights (outside the US) at Sundance, and then IFC made a deal for US rights in February. But Hammer told indieWIRE that, while he wasn't thrilled with the prospect of not even recouping his production budget from the deal, he was "particularly dissatisfied with the lengthy terms of the contract." All things considered, Hammer decided to walk away: "It becomes difficult to justify giving up creative control."

It is winter in the Mississippi Delta, and the fields are fallow under dead skies and barren trees thrust up stark from the muck. If it were summer, the sky would be clear and the crops would be green and the soil would burn with life, but summer is far away. A boy moves across the mud and water, and he runs toward a flock of resting birds, making them jump to frightened flight tilting through the gray light, just to make them do it, just so something else knows he's alive.

Lance Hammer's Ballast, premiering at the Sundance film festival, is already earning comparisons to the work of European filmmakers like The Dardenne Brothers and Christian Mungiu -- the camera is hand-held, the emotions are at arm's length. Working with non-professional actors, using available light and actual locations, Hammer shows us a world and the people who live there. In time, we figure out how these people are connected, and how they fail to connect. Lawrence (Micheal Smith, Jr.) sits in a darkened home, silent, as a neighbor checks in because Lawrence and his brother haven't been seen in a while, while Marlee (Tarra Riggs) works hard to provide a life for her son James (Jimmyron Ross), even as he drifts towards trouble. There's a link between these three characters, but we are left to figure it out over time, just as they have to figure it out for themselves.

People mock 'Sundance films,' or joke that "'Sundance' spelled backwards is 'massive depression.'" The reality of the matter is that if mainstream film offers us escape, independent cinema offers a necessary escape from escapism. Movie characters don't seem to worry about paying the bills; most moviegoers do. But films like Ballast -- concerned with struggle, loss, poverty and wounded hearts -- are easily ignored and dismissed. Bruised from a fight, Marlee gets fired from her custodial job because her appearance would upset customers. She rages and despairs at the loss of a bad, low-paying job, because it's all she had, her firing literally adding insult to injury: "Like the motherf***ers even know that I'm there! I'm invisible to them." And she is invisible to them; Ballast doesn't just confront us with her howling pain, but also with our role in it.

Set in the here-and-now Mississippi Delta, Lance Hammer's Ballast follows a trio of characters -- a man in crisis and a single mother trying to keep ahead of disaster and her rootless son -- in a very American setting with a very European sensibility. It is one that evokes the Dardenne brothers, where the camera is hand-held but the emotions are kept at arm's length. Hammer spoke with Cinematical at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival about his decision to work with non-professional actors, the news that Ballast will be playing at this year's Berlin Film Festival, and what drew him to the Mississippi Delta for his debut: 'There's a sadness that lays upon the land (in the Delta) that's very moving to me. "

This interview, like all of Cinematical's podcast offerings, is now available through iTunes; if you'd like, you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:

After toiling for years in the studio system as a digital design associate (Batman & Robin), visual effects art director (Practical Magic), assistant art director (The Man Who Wasn't There) and, probably, a host of other jobs not yet recorded at IMDb, Lance Hammer completed his first feature film. Ballast will have its World Premiere at Sundance as part of the Dramatic Competition; its first screening is Saturday morning.

Hammer enlisted the assistance of Hollywood veterans like Andrew Adamson and Mark Johnson, who both serve as executive producers, and William Morris Independent is representing the film for US rights. Now indieWIRE reports that Celluloid Dreams has grabbed all international rights outside the US. The Paris-based sales outfit, which advertises itself as "The Directors' Label," has several other titles at Sundance, including the high-profile remake Funny Games, from Michael Haneke, and Alan Ball's Towelhead, as well as Dennis Gansel's The Wave, also screening in the Dramatic Competition.

Ballast is set in a Mississippi Delta township, where a man's suicide "radically transforms" three people and their respective relationships: a single mother (Tarra Riggs), her 12-year-old son (JimMyron Ross), and a man (Michael J. Smith, Sr.) on whose property they seek "safe harbor." The mother and the man have been feuding for a dozen years so, I imagine, sparks will fly.

One more piece of good news for the fledging feature director: Ballast has been selected for the competition at the Berlin festival next month. I'm sure we'll hear more about the film this weekend, after it starts screening at Sundance.