SoulPower Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Indie Roundup reviews the past week of news from the independent film community and provides a peek at what's coming soon.

Opening. Three indie flicks open on Friday: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte's terrific music doc Soul Power, Chris Nahon's live-action adaptation of anime horror thriller Blood: The Last Vampire, and a reissue of Francois Truffaut's 1969 crime romance Mississippi Mermaid, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve. After a good start in New York and Los Angeles (see below), action thriller The Hurt Locker expands into 50 selected markets.

Deals / Articles of Interest. Our friends at indieWIRE reported on three recent acquisitions with upcoming theatrical releases planned: Chris Fuller's critically-acclaimed teen drama Loren Cass (Kino; July 24); Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, with Robin Wright Penn and Alan Arkin (Screen Media, October); and Dror Zahavi's thriller For My Father (Film Movement, Winter 2010). Eugene Hernandez considers Chris Anderson's new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price and suggests that Anderson's "ideas and examples" are applicable to the "evolving marketplace for movies."

On-Demand Viewing. Anne Thompson posted a clip at Variety for Michael Almereyda's post-Karina drama New Orleans Mon Amour, with Elisabeth Moss and Christopher Eccleston. I saw it at SXSW last year and couldn't get into its very deliberate pacing; its virtues might be better appreciated on a smaller screen. It debuts on cable VOD on July 15. Blogging at The Huffington Post, filmmaker Adam Hootnick compares recent events in Iran with the situation in Gaza after Israel's withdrawal from its settlements in 2005. That's the subject of his film Unsettled, which is now available on iTunes and Amazon VOD.

After the jump: Indie box office results -- and a year-to-date report.

James Faust loves movies. That's a good thing, especially since he's the Director of Programming for the AFI Dallas International Film Festival, which wrapped its third edition last week. Some film programmers will brook no negative comments about their selections, but James was quite willing to listen when I questioned his sanity for picking Oskar Roehler's Lulu & Jimi, an out-of-control, absurdist melodrama that veers from one mad scenario to the next.

He readily admitted that he and a friend were the only two people laughing when the film played at Sundance, but he defended some of the same things that I had derided. James is a pleasant, humble man, but he's not about to back down just because you don't agree with him. That same spirit is evident in some of the films in the program. Jeffrey Levy-Hinte's terrific Soul Power, in which music history comes alive, consists of footage shot in 1974 as final preparations were being made for a music festival in Zaire, intended to accompany the "Rumble in the Jungle" boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers, and other notable musicians appear; it made me nostalgic for the days when Ali spoke his mind.

Judging from the crowds lining up in advance, AFI Dallas sells far more individual tickets than passes, which means that completely different audiences show up from one film to the next (as opposed to, say, SXSW, where you start to recognize fellow pass holders in line). So a late evening screening of Daniel Burman's Empty Nest drew a Spanish-speaking crowd that reacted more strongly than I did. Still, I liked the picture that Burman created of a long-married couple (Oscar Martínez and Cecilia Roth) dealing with life, and each other, after their children leave home.