darius goes west Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Academy Shortlists 15 Docs
Filed under: Documentary », Foreign Language », Independent », Politics », Oscar Watch », Religious », Cinematical Indie », War »
Documentary filmmakers deserve much more love and attention than they receive. One way to get more attention is to make the list of 15 documentaries short-listed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Variety has this year's list and cites three Iraq War-themed films as being "center stage": Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro's Body of War, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight (which Cinematical's Kim Voynar gave high marks when it played at Sundance) and Richard Robbins' Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.Kim is a self-styled "documentary dork" -- her words, not mine -- and wrote a column two months ago about films she thought "have (or ought to have) a shot at Oscar gold." She included No End in Sight, as well as the following docs that all made the short list: Sean Fine and Andrea Nix-Fine's War/Dance, Michael Moore's Sicko, Daniel Karslake's For the Bible Tells Me So, and Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's Nanking. Kim was pulling for Logan Smalley's Darius Goes West, which sadly did not make the list. Other notable exclusions included David Singleton's In the Shadow of the Moon and Seth Gordon's The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.
Here are the remaining eight that did make the list. First, the ones we've covered so far: Tony Kaye's Lake of Fire, Richard Berge and Bonni Cohen's The Rape of Europa, Weijun Chen's Please Vote for Me and Peter Raymont's A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman. Next, the ones we haven't seen yet: Steven Okazaki's White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which has played on HBO), Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side (due for release in January), Bill Haney's The Price of Sugar and Tricia Regan's Autism: The Musical.
Now the Academy's Documentary Branch will review the 15 films and narrow the list still further to the final five nominees, which will be announced on January 22.
'Darius Goes West' Wins Two More Awards
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », Awards », Exhibition », Oscar Watch », Other Festivals », Cinematical Indie », AFI Dallas »
I just got a note from Barbara Smalley, mother of Darius Goes West director Logan Smalley, that the little documentary that could (which is, as I've previously raved, one my my fave indie films of the year) won both the Best Documentary (juried) award and yet another audience award at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Film Festival, which just wrapped. I've lost track at this point of how many audience awards Darius has won, but I think it's worth noting that the film was up against some tough competition for the juried award; other films competing in that category included The Devil Came on Horseback and For the Bible Tells Me So, either one of which could end up on the Oscar shortlist.Barbara reports that Darius Weems and twelve of his friends attended the fest, held in Birmingham, Alabama, that Saturday night's screening at the Civil Rights Institute's theater was standing room only, with people turned away, and that the film got a standing ovation at the end. When one of Darius's friends mentioned Darius had just turned 18 on Thursday, the crowd sang him "Happy Birthday." What a nice reception for a great film and a great young man.
I hope the good folks at the Academy are paying attention to this film. With the remarkable audience response it's generated at fest after fest this year, Darius Goes West deserves Oscar consideration, and I hope it gets it. If you've not yet had a chance to catch the film yourself, you have lots of opportunities coming up. The film is slated to play six fests in the near future, and also has a 14-city tour that just started. Check the film's official website to see if Darius is rolling into a theater near you, and if it is, don't miss the chance to catch it.
Get more info on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, which Darius is fighting, right here, and on Charley's Fund, the designated charity for profits from the film, over on the Charley's Fund website.
Film Clips: What's Up, Docs?
Filed under: Documentary », Awards », Sundance », Telluride », ThinkFilm », Fox Searchlight », Politics », Oscar Watch », Columns », Film Clips », Toronto International Film Festival », Cinematical Indie », AFI Dallas », Paramount Vantage »
The Toronto International Film Festival is over, we have a couple months respite before Sundance, so naturally thoughts turn to the Oscar race. While I'm as curious as anyone else which films will end up garnering the big nod (and I will be really surprised if Juno doesn't get a few noms, especially for screenwriting), as an indie girl I'm most interested in the docs and foreigns. I'm a documentary dork, and one of the things I most look forward to covering at any given film fest is the doc slate -- which, as both David Poland and Anne Thompson have noted in post-Toronto columns, have been weak this year relative to the past couple years. No one really seems to be sure why this is, exactly, although the surprising success of March of the Penguins in 2005 fueled an interest in documentaries that led, perhaps, to a bit of a glut.
The trouble with documentaries is that, penguin love aside, docs are not something your average person is going to go out of their way to shell out ten bucks to see at a theater. Rent from the video store or add to your Netflix queue, perhaps, but when you're looking for a film to see on date night, the depressing topics that tend to make up much of the available documentary fare are not really the first thing that comes to mind. When's the last time you said, "Hey, honey, I know what to do tonight -- let's get dinner at that place over in Little Italy we like, and then let's go see that new Iraq war doc!" Given a choice between a bummer doc and, say, Superbad, most folks are going to opt for the laughs over the conscience-pricking dose of reality.
With New Fest, Londoners Can Declare Their Independence
Filed under: Comedy », Documentary », Drama », Independent », Other Festivals », Cinematical Indie »
Sure, you could travel to Sundance in the dead of winter and suffer frostbite for your trouble, or visit any one of dozens of conveniently-located festivals in the US screening independent films. But doesn't it sound more exciting and exotic to hop on a cross-Atlantic overnight flight so you can arrive in Swinging London just as the brand-new Declaration of Independence Film Festival gets underway? (Gotta love the cheekiness of the name, though the logo is a bit abstract for my taste.) Friday, June 1 marks the first day of screenings for the inaugural edition of the fest, which promises "the very best in new independent cinema from the USA and Canada." Many of the films are receiving their International Premiere (i.e., screening for the first time outside their native country) and a number are still awaiting distribution deals in the US, so this looks like a great opportunity for Londoners and stray cinema tourists to catch up.For a first-time fest, the programmers assembled a very decent line-up. Of the features, Paul Fox's Everything's Gone Green and Jeff Lipsky's Flannel Pajamas have both been released in the US; other titles that I've seen and can recommend include Reg Harkema's Monkey Warfare (an entertaining comedy/drama about aging Canadian bohemians), Daniel Casey's The Death of Michael Smith (intriguing, stylish, sometimes confusing mystery/crime drama), and Matthew Nourse's The Pacific and Eddy (which I haven't seen, but it's "filmmaking haiku" according to Variety). Among the documentaries, Kim enjoyed Darius Goes West: The Roll of His Life when it played at AFI Dallas; the others are less familiar to me, but the subject matter (including musicians, comedians, lottery winners, a civil rights attorney, and real-life Mexican superheroes) is nicely varied. Check out the festival's web site for more details.
AFI Dallas Interview: Darius Goes West Director Logan Smalley
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », Festival Reports », Interviews », Cinematical Indie », AFI Dallas »
Darius Goes West is a documentary about 15-year-old Darius Weems, who has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a progressive and terminal illness that takes the lives of its victims in their late teens to early 20s. The film follows Darius and his 11 closest friends on a 7,000 mile RV road trip as they travel from their hometown of Athens, Georgia to California, to show Darius the world outside of Athens and, they hope, to get MTV to fix up Darius' wheelchair on the show Pimp My Ride. Logan Smalley, the director of the film and Darius' close friend, was kind enough to take time out of a busy fest schedule to talk to Cinematical about the film.
Cinematical: When did you decide you wanted to make a film out of this road trip with Darius? Was that the plan from the beginning?
Logan Smalley: I was there the first day Darius got his wheelchair at the summer camp we'd originally met at – we first met when he was five years old. I first met him through his brother Mario, who had DMD as well, and Mario was in my group. So I've known Darius since he was five. And around fifth grade, he was making the transition from a walker to a wheelchair, and it was during the summer that he was making this transition and I was there. And as his counselor at the time it was my job to help make him feel good about it. It's kind of like a kid getting glasses, times a hundred. It's a big physical change for all his peers. And it was my job to make him feel cool about it, and one of the things we thought about was putting chains on the wheels and spray-painting them, you know, make it look cool. But way before we got around to doing that, he accepted it, being in the chair. It was way easier for him to get around.
More after the jump ...
AFI Dallas Dispatch #2: More Docs, Edward Furlong and Awesome Anime
Filed under: Independent », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports », HBO Films », Cinematical Indie », AFI Dallas »
Lots has been happening here in Dallas since the last dispatch I wrote up. I've seen several docs here: Where the Sun Rises, Darius Goes West, and Rape of Europa, and today I saw The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah, Paprika, and Living and Dying. Let's talk about the docs first, because docs are one of my favorite genres. There aren't quite as many playing at this fest as I'd like, and most of the doc screenings have been a bit lightly attended. I've talked to a few locals about this, and what I keep hearing is that Dallas folks haven't really been exposed much to the idea of documentaries as entertainment, as opposed to something you're forced to watch for a class or catch on PBS because nothing else is on and you have insomnia.So I want to plug some docs I've really enjoyed here so far. Where the Sun Rises, helmed by Grace Phan, is about Xanana Gusmao, former guerrilla leader and current president of East Timor, the world's youngest independent nation. Where the Sun Rises isn't about war and politics, though, it's about the healing power of forgiveness, and Gusmao's journey from hate to love and genuine forgiveness.
AFI Dallas Review: Darius Goes West
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports », Cinematical Indie », AFI Dallas »
You may think you've seen all the road trip movies you'll ever want to see in your lifetime, but trust me on this: Darius Goes West is not your average road trip flick. The film is a documentary about 15-year-old Darius Weems, who has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, the most common type of MD. Duchenne is always fatal, killing the boys who have it by their late teens to early 20s. Darius watched his older brother, Mario, die of Duchenne, and he knows he faces the same fate, and yet his attitude is so positive, so sunny and bright, that other people are drawn to the infectious orbit of his radiant personality.
Darius had a dream: To have his wheelchair pimped out on MTV's Pimp My Ride, so that he can expose millions of young people in the MTV generation to muscular dystrophy, and motivate them to help find a cure for the devastating disease. But Darius wants more than that. He's never been out of the town of Athens, GA in his life, and he wants to see some of the world before he dies. So he and his 11 best friends concoct a plan: To take a roadtrip to California and back in an RV, and along the way to film a documentary about their trip, exploring how accessible to the disabled America really is.
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