ballast Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Up
If there is one disc sure to fly off shelves this week, it's this one. The Pixar film made instant fans out of most viewers, and agonizingly ripped the rest of our hearts out with the love story opening. In her review, Jette Kernion said Up is "a very good movie that defies demographic categorization." By now, your minds are probably made, but if not: Buy it. Also on Blu-ray.

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The Ugly Truth
How do you follow up comments about Knocked Up being a little bit sexist? By producing and starring in a film that teaches a smart and successful woman the "ugly truth" of life from a notorious chauvinist, naturally. In his review, Jeffrey M. Anderson wrote that this romcom "actually knows next to nothing about dating advice, the behaviors of men and women, or much of anything else romantically human." Skip it and save yourself. Also on Blu-ray.

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Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut
We all knew this was coming -- the step above the director's cut, the disc for uberfans of the graphic novel -- a version of the film with all of The Black Freighter interspersed as it was in print. Grab this, and you should have everything you need from the big-screen cinematic experience. If you adore all things Watchmen, Buy it. Also on Blu-ray.

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The Accidental Husband
When he wasn't spending time in Watchmen's blood and carnage, Jeffrey Dean Morgan was becoming Uma Thurman's Accidental Husband. Another one of those floofy romcoms, this flick takes Uma back to her Cats and Dogs days, but this time, she gets the radio show and the man. I imagine. Do you care? Skip it.

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Also out: Robsessed, Love Finds a Home, A Christmas Proposal, The Christmas Clause, Spread, Summer's Moon, The Echo, Hurt, The Gambler, the Girl and the Gunslinger, The Line, Bad Guys

Most of us complain about the Academy Awards, which will be presented next Sunday, but most of us can't do anything about them. In the first place, most of us can't even vote for them!

Ah, but the Independent Spirit Awards are different: almost anyone can vote for them. All you have to do is become a member of Los Angeles-based Film Independent (annual membership: $95) and then register to vote.

The Film Nest has an interesting article on someone who went through the process. Film Independent members in general have no input into the nomination process, but after the nominations were announced, members could choose to receive DVD screeners of the nominees or attend special, one-time-only screenings at a local theater. Ultimately only eight of the 30-plus nominated films were made available on screeners, so conscientious voters had to trek down to the theater if they hadn't already seen the nominees.

With all the attention given to the Oscars, and more recently to the Berlin film fest and the concurrent European Film Market, "it may be easy to forget that the Independent Spirit Awards happen next weekend," as Matt Dentler blogs, He discusses the nominees for Best Feature (Ballast, Frozen River, Rachel Getting Married, Wendy and Lucy, The Wrestler) and other categories, and gives his thoughts on who might win. There's a lot of "Who knows?" inherent in the Spirit Awards, and part of that is because voting is so much more open than the Academy.

That openness is just one of the reasons why the Spirit Awards are so much fun to watch. The awards will be presented in Santa Monica, California, next Saturday afternoon, February 21, and you can watch the show live on cable channel IFC and rebroadcast later that evening on AMC.

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?

Did you hear there are like a million new films opening in wide release today? Well, there are. Some of them are pretty good, too. But just in case that's not enough to keep you occupied, here's the Indie Spotlight with several more titles that might interest you, most of them in limited release and a bit under the radar.

Now, "indie" can be a hard thing to pin down. Bill Maher's Religulous (opening today on 500 screens) might qualify, but you've probably already heard about it. Same goes for Blindness (1,700 screens). You don't need me for those. Instead, here are the five that we're shining the indie spotlight on: Allah Made Me Funny, An American Carol, Ballast, Kidnap, and Rachel Getting Married.

Rachel Getting Married
What it is: One of the big hits at the Toronto International Film Festival, it's a naturalistic drama about an addict (Anne Hathaway) who gets out of rehab just in time for her sister's wedding.
What they're saying: Cinematical's James Rocchi had almost nothing but good things to say about it in Toronto, particularly with regard to the screenplay and Hathaway's performance. (There's a bit of Oscar buzz around both.) At Rotten Tomatoes, the film stands at a solid 76%.
Where it's playing: New York City (Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, City Cinemas, Regal Union Square), Los Angeles (ArcLight Sherman Oaks, ArcLight Hollywood, Laemmle Playhouse in Pasadena, Edwards Westpark in Irvine, The Landmark), and International Falls, Minn. (Cinema 5).
More info: Sony Classics' official site.

Ballast
What it is: A bleak drama about life and death among the lower classes on the Mississippi Delta.
What they're saying: Cinematical's James Rocchi praised the film at Sundance (and interviewed the writer/director, Lance Hammer, here). At Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of the critics agree with The Rocch. It won prizes for its directing and cinematography at Sundance, too.
Where it's playing: New York City (Film Forum).
More info: The official site says it will expand to "select cities" in two weeks.

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."

For those who live in and around the New York City area, tonight the Sundance Institute launches their very popular series at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), in which they'll screen a whole bunch of films (22 features, 36 shorts) from this year's festival over the course of the next eleven days. Yours truly will be in attendance this evening for American Teen, followed by a prom-themed after party. A doc about teens? The prom? I'm soooo there!

Other films of note that will be screening include Man on Wire, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Choke, Frozen River, Captain Abu Raed, American Son, Anvil! The Story of Anvil and Ballast, among others. This Sunday, Cinematical's Eric Kohn will be on hand for Sundance Shorts Sunday, featuring 12 hours of short film programs, Q&As with filmmakers and more. He'll report back on what he sees, hears, learns, etc.

They're screening some excellent films this year and I believe tickets are still available for most, so definitely swing by the official website and check out the scene. Sundance Institute at BAM runs from May 29 through June 8. (And if you make it down there tonight, do say hello!)

Bunches of "B" news for you:

• When trying to bring together many years of life, one will often focus on a certain aspect that links it all. For the 80-year-old French filmmaker Agnès Varda, that is beaches. Variety reports that she has a new documentary feature on the way called Les plages d'Agnes. She says of the film: "If you open people, you'll find landscapes. In my case, you'll find beaches." How sandy! Roissy Films has picked up the doc's overseas rights, and the film will screen at Berlinale this year.
• Meanwhile, Variety has posted that Toshiaki Karasawa is going to head up Toho's science fiction trilogy 20th Century Boy. With a solid $57 million budget (which sounds much more impressive as 6 billion yen), the film will shoot in a number of countries, from the US to China, with the first flick to be released on August 30. Based on the comic by Naoki Urasawa, Boy focuses on the creepy premise of "a store manager (Karasawa) who wrote a prediction about the end of the world when he was a teenager, which seems to be coming true." The project also features Etsushi Toyokawa and Takiko Tokiwa.
• To wrap things up, there's some more Ballast news for you. It already got a solid review from our James Rocchi at Sundance, and an international deal with Celluloid Dreams. Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the stateside rights have been picked up by IFC. With a deal in the six-figure range, the company will give the film a day-and-date release through First Take, IFC network, and VOD. It may be a dark and heavy piece of cinema, but it still looks worth the time. However, there's no word, yet, on a release date.

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: