jeff nichols Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Ride 'em, cowboy! My pick of the week, Marquette Williams' Buckle Brothers, is not like any other Western you've seen. For one thing, it's a documentary. For another, it's about four young people from the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles and Compton, California, trying to make it on the modern-day Bill Pickett Rodeo circuit. They're an engaging, tenacious group, determined to rise above their surroundings and achieve something on their own -- and they love horses like nobody's business. The doc is compassionate but unflinching in showing the young bull riders' triumphs and failures. It's the antithesis of slick filmmaking.

The DVD is available from Indican Pictures. The film's official site has a gallery, trailer, and details on the featured riders: Lil Ron, Yah-Ya, Jazz and Mike. Director Williams and producer Marcus Franklin made the doc while working day jobs; the doc is truly a labor of love. The two filmmakers recently completed the thriller Unspeakable.

"Writer-director Jeff Nichols's Shotgun Stories is a tale of the South -- the flat fields and summer heat of Arkansas, where people struggle with the past every day," wrote James Rocchi in his review. "At heart, [it's] a film about people who discover what they have to let go of, and who confront the terrifying possibility of hope."

Jeffrey M. Anderson was slightly less enamored, but still quite complimentary of this tale of two families (with the same recently-deceased father) who come into conflict. Liberation Entertainment's DVD includes an audio commentary with Nichols, an audio track containing the isolated score by the band Lucero, production stills, and trailers. The film's official site has a trailer, stills, cast and crew information, and more.

After the jump: a family drama, and a John Sayles classic finally emerges.

A man sits on his bed in the half-light, shirtless. On his back is a series of little bumps, perhaps scars, possibly cigarette burns, or buckshot wounds? His co-workers at the fish hatchery take secret bets as to their origin. But for Son Hayes (Michael Shannon), they are part of a hurtful past, one that he is forever trying to get beyond. Son's name, as well as those of his brothers, Kid (Barlow Jacobs) and Boy (Douglas Ligon), no doubt came from their awful father, a kind of branding that they can never escape. We never meet this father. He dies at the beginning of Shotgun Stories. Son, Kid and Boy attend his funeral, and that's when the trouble starts. If not for that, life in this Arkansas small town probably would have gone on as always, with Kid sleeping in a tent in Son's backyard, with Boy living out of his van, and with the three of them getting together for beers. (There is a lot of beer drinking in this movie.)

Until recently, David Gorden Green was supposed to be directing Goat, an adaption of a memoir by Brad Land about his experiences with hazing endured while pledging to the Kappa Sigma fraternity. When I was interviewing Jeff Nichols, director of Shotgun Stories and one of the nominees for the John Cassavetes Award at the upcoming Film Independent Spirit Awards (for another outlet), I learned that Nichols' next project is taking over helming duties on Goat. Nichols said he also did some work on the script, for which he will also get co-writer credit along with Green.

It seems like a good fit for Nichols, who hails from Green's hometown of Little Rock (both filmmakers are also grads of North Carolina School of the Arts, which is producing a plethora of hot young filmmakers these days), and whose first film was, like Goat, set in the South and about relationships between men. No word on what Green will be directing next; he recently wrapped work on the stoner-ific Pineapple Express. Our own Erik Davis, as you may recall, loved the trailer for that one.

Could Stifler be getting all serious on us now? According to Production Weekly, Seann William Scott will star in Trainwreck, a film based on the Jeff Nichols memoir. Written and directed by Tod Harrison Williams, pic tells the true story of a recovering alcoholic with learning disabilities who struggles to find his place in the world.

Now, unlike another so-called "memoir", we're guessing this one's actually true. Scott will star alongside Gretchen Mole, with shooting to begin next month in New York. I'm just curious to see how Scott pulls this off without a ton of trusty sex-themed jokes. While the film's description doesn't exactly call it a drama, I'm pretty positive it's drastically different from anything he's ever done before. Well, if this doesn't work out for him, there's always Cockblockers to look forward to...or not.