On Sunday, I got really, really excited about going to see the documentary Trouble the Water, which was playing in Brooklyn as part of the Sundance @ BAM series. But when I went to buy my tickets on Moviefone, the single showtime was sold out. "Oh well," I thought. "I'll just see it when it's officially released to theaters." Then I discovered that, despite winning the non-fiction Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival and despite garnering tons of great reviews, including one from New York Times critic Manohla Dargis calling it "one of the best documentaries in recent memory," the film had no domestic distributor.

Two days later, I'm finally relieved. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Hurricane Katrina doc has been picked up by Zeitgeist Films for a platform release beginning August 22. Fans of the film (including our own Kim Voynar, who picked it as her favorite at Sundance -- read her review here) should be happy that it will at least receive Oscar-qualifying runs in NYC and LA, because everyone who's seen it seems to agree that it will definitely get a nomination. Those of us who haven't seen it should also be happy that it's likely to be given a proper expansion, at least to the major U.S. cities.

Trouble the Water was directed by longtime doc producers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (Fahrenheit 9/11) and depicts the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina mostly through the eyes and camcorder of Kimberly Roberts and Scott Roberts, who shot footage before, during and after the storm and its subsequent effects.

... and they say to the bartender, "Bet you never expected the three of us would team up on a film?" The bartender takes a good look at the three, goes back to cleaning a glass and replies, "Nah, I kinda expected it." Then Dylan McDermott, Brian Presley and Charles Winkler (son of Irwin Winkler) walk into the bar, and go, "Now what if we told you the three of us were involved too -- with Charles directing! And it's called Streets of Blood!" The bartender, tending to his glass, simply replies, "Nah, expected it." Fed up, Charles Winkler throws down his fist and shouts, "And it's gonna be a damn good film too!" Bartender drops his glass in a fit of laughter, looks up and cries, "Now THAT'S something I did not expect!" Everyone laughs and Erik will never become a comedian. The end.

Variety tells us the film centers on two cops dealing with "the lawlessness of New Orleans in the post-Katrina environment." Production begins next month. Another post-Katrina story, huh? Is it just me or is Hollywood really milking Hurricane Katrina? Perhaps I see more of it because I attend a lot of film festivals, and currently there are tons of Katrina docs and narratives on the fest circuit. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you, it just seems like a lot and we're getting close to overkill. This one, however, does sound like it has promise. Plus I've always wanted to see Kilmer, 50 Cent and Stone together in one film. Why not, right?

One of my favorite films at Sundance this year was Trouble the Water. The film, directed by Michael Moore producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, was a collaboration with Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts, two residents of New Orleans who were trapped by floodwaters during Hurricane Katrina when the levees broke a few blocks from their home. Kim Roberts, who like many of New Orleans' poorer residents, didn't have the resources to evacuate when the hurricane hit, had just purchased a camcorder off the streets for $20 the week before the storm blew in, and she was able to capture some remarkable footage of the hurricane, the flood waters rising, and the aftermath as New Orleans residents tried to rebuild their lives.

I was disappointed that the film, which won the Grand Jury prize for documentary at Sundance, didn't get picked up during the fest. Word just came out this morning that Trouble the Water has been acquired by Maximum Films International for international rights. It's great news that the filmmakers have a deal for rights outside North America, but I really want to see the film get picked up for North American distrib as well, and it's surprising that none of the independent distributors have picked it up yet. With the right marketing campaign backing it up, Trouble the Water has "Oscar contender" written all over it. Where are THINKfilm or Magnolia? Come on guys, get on the ball here -- someone needs to pick this film up and get behind it, and get it out in North America as well.

The most powerful documentary I've seen at Sundance is Trouble the Water, a take on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath unlike anything I've seen. Combining footage shot by longtime Michael Moore collaborators Carl Deal and Tia Lessin with amateur video footage shot from the eye of the hurricane by New Orleans resident Kimberly Rivers Roberts (who received director of photography credit) the film shows the impact of Hurricane Katrina and what happened to the city's poorest residents both during and after the storm.

Roberts, who bought a camcorder off the street for $20 a week before the storm hit, intending to use it only to shoot family gatherings, captured the residents of the 9th Ward, one of the hardest-hit areas of New Orleans, as those who could got out and those who couldn't battened down the hatches in preparation for the storm. Roberts and her husband Scott were among those who were unable to evacuate the city because they had no transportation and no money to go anywhere. The mayor of New Orleans ordered the city evacuated, but there was no public transportation organized to get out those people who didn't have the means to do so on their own.

Many critics consider When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts to be the best documentary of 2006, but it wasn't eligible for the Academy Award because it was released on HBO rather than in theaters. Fortunately the film and its director, Spike Lee, are getting recognition from other places, such as the George Polk Awards, which honors the best in journalism from the previous year. Lee and producer Sam Pollard were named as winners of a television documentary prize, which they'll receive at the annual awards luncheon April 12.

As far as I can tell, a Polk Award for film or television documentary is rarely given -- the previous one was handed out in 1994 (though Fred Wiseman did win a career award in 2005 for his contributions to film journalism) -- so this is a very special honor. It is also probably a great convenience to Lee since Long Island University, which gives out the awards, is literally around the corner from the filmmaker's 40 Acres and a Mule production offices in Brooklyn (too bad the luncheon will be in Manhattan instead of on campus). Read Ryan's review of When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, and check out the doc, still airing on HBO and available on DVD.

"President Bush can kiss my ass, the United States government can kiss my ass, and St. Bernard Parish can kiss my ass." Random comment from a stranded resident of New Orleans in When the Levees Broke, the latest joint from Spike Lee. Clocking in at four hours and twenty minutes, this is a massive testimonial of first-hand pain, exhaustion and raw, bloody anger that mostly aims for the heart, instead of the head. Even the editing of this film is angry, occasionally cutting rapid-fire through nearly identical testimonials -- 'I heard a boom - there was a loud boom - there was this boom - then bang, this loud noise' -- as if to head-off anyone who might quibble with the survivors' memories. Survivor is the operative word here -- it's a Holocaust-style remembrance, with interviewees often too choked up to finish a sentence but determined to get it all out. In between the personal stories, Lee also reboots those images burned into our collective media brain. We see Spicoli paddling his dinghy and looters surfing away on flat screens. We relive the record needle-scratching moment when Kanye West opines that "George Bush doesn't care about black people," while Mike Myers stares blankly ahead.

The film is divided into four "acts," each about one hour, and the first three acts are almost entirely devoted to the detailed recollections of the victims, chosen for their proximity to the event, not because they possess any special oratory or analytical skills. Some of these talking heads give memorable testimony, some do not. One survivor gives out her phone number on screen -- 504.919.8699 -- and challenges Barbara Bush to call her and defend those asinine statements she made in the Astrodome. Another cuts through some nonsensical reconstruction estimates: "They're gonna repair in eight months what they couldn't build in forty years?" Lee does some of these people no favor by allowing them to expound on the fatuous belief that the levees were dynamited by the U.S. government to exterminate the black population of New Orleans. This canard is repeated ad nauseum throughout the film's first half, to its great detriment. We're also forced to endure the drooling crackpot Harry Belafonte, pushed in front of the camera to billow hot air about the greatness of Hugo Chavez, for some reason.

The current issue of New York magazine features an excellent six-page piece by Ariel Levy on Spike Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee. I started out just breezing through it, but quickly got sucked into Levy's excellently descriptive characterizations of Lee. Also, I learned some fascinating Spike Lee facts:

• He lives on the Upper East Side of New York City, and his children attend one of the toniest private schools in Manhattan;
• They also have a home on Martha's Vineyard, in an area called Oak Bluffs, a vacation spot for wealthy blacks since the 1930s;
• His wife, Tonya, was "marrying down" when she married him; Lewis' father, a prominent executive with Philip Morris, is a member of the Boulés, the "most elite social club for black men in the country"; her mother is a member of Links, basically the female equivalent. Lewis grew up amid the Blackristocracy;
• Lee and his wife are at the top of W.E.B. DuBois' "Talented Tenth" of black society; and
• Lee's wife, on why comparing Lee to Malcolm X is unfair: "Spike is not as malleable as Malcolm."

Check out the full piece, it's a well-written, fascinating glimpse at what Lee is like. Levy also talks a good deal about Lee's four-hour Hurricane Katrina documentary.

[ via Green Cine Daily ]

I guess fake disaster movies just aren't cool enough anymore. I mean, now that our generation has lived through some whoppers (seriously, though, Americans don't even know what a real disaster looks like), we just aren't settling for volcanoes in Los Angeles. And obviously, combining true stories, which audiences love, with cataclysmic destruction presented with stunning special effects, which audiences love even more, puts dollar signs in the eyes of Hollywood studios. It reminds me of Peter Gallagher in The Player pitching a straight-from-the-headlines movie about a horrible mudslide. "Triumph over tragedy," he explains, simply.

So Billy Ray, the writer-director who co-scripted that volcano in Los Angeles movie (Volcano), is currently focusing on true stories of real disasters. First, he tackled 9/11 by writing a script based on the book 102 Minutes, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn (I'm not sure what the status is on that project). And now he's about to take on Hurricane Katrina for a film he'll write and direct, called Hurricane Season. Based on Franklin Martin's documentary Walking on Dead Fish, the film will follow a Louisiana high school football team in the aftermath of the storm. Universal, the studio involved in the project, must have gold bars in their eyes, since adding a sports element to the true story/disaster combo (though Ray could avoid showing any hurricane action) should attract an even bigger audience.

Wow, I can't be the only one pleasantly surprised to find a trailer already online for Tony Scott's upcoming thriller Deja Vu. The film doesn't land in theaters until Thanksgiving, but it seems folks behind the scenes want to get this one off to a running start alongside some of the big summer films. Hey, I'm down.

Pic, which stars Denzel Washington, tells the story of an ATF agent who travels back in time to save a woman from being murdered, then accidentally falls in love with her. You may remember, back in February, Deja Vu became the first narrative feature film to be shot in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. Though, right after Katrina, director Tony Scott initially left the project, causing some to fear Denzel would also bail out, leaving Deja Vu very much up in the air. However, Scott jumped back onboard and the filmmakers re-worked the story to include a post-Katrina New Orleans. Now, five months after filming started back up, a brand-spanking-new trailer has hit the internet -- one that looks and feels like vintage Tony Scott, all gritty and what not. Man, am I glad he came back. Deja Vu is set to open on November 22.

Stevenson J. Palfi, a documentary filmmaker based in New Orleans and celebrated by the likes of Les Blank, has reportedly died via self-inflicted gunshot. Palfi was best known for a 1982 documentary called Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together (right), about several generations of New Orleans based musicians. Relatives say he had been severely depressed after Hurricane Katrina, which had detroyed his home, his neighborhood and most of his belongings. He had been living with his ex-wfie, Polly Waring, whose home was one of few spared n the Mid-City area where Palfi had lived, and was working on the final touches to his latest film. Called Songwriter, Unknown, it was a profile of composer (and friend of Palfi) Allen Toussaint; Palfi had been working on it for 15 years. A tribute to Palfi will take place on January 21, as part of Offbeat Magazine's "Best of the Beat" Awards ceremony at the New Orleans House of Blues. The suicide rate has supposedly skyrocketed in New Orleans since Katrina's early-September onslaught; according to the NY Times, that city's rate is now at least double the national average, a statistic made more staggering by the fact that New Orleans' post-Katrina population is surely smaller than that of any other major city.