tennessee Tagged Articles at Cinematical

State of Play
A Russell Crowe-starring thriller that entangles 3 deaths, Washington politics, old-school journalism, and new wave blogging, State of Play is by far your best mainstream choice this week. In his review, Jeffrey M. Anderson said: "it's probably the best newspaper/journalism movie in years," and "State of Play moves well, with grace and intelligence as well as a measure of scrappiness and a sense of working by the seat of one's pants." Buy it. Also on Blu-ray.

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Tennessee
A movie co-starring Mariah Carrey might not seem like a noteworthy piece of cinema, but it's more than meets the eye. The film focuses on woman and her brothers who set out to find their estranged father in hopes that he will help save their leukemia-suffering sibling. In his review, Joel Keller said: "Tennessee isn't action-packed, but it has a story that should keep you engaged from start to finish." Rent it.

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Unwigged & Unplugged Live Concert DVD
This isn't exactly a film, but seeing that Unwigged and Unplugged was the costume-free tour of Spinal Tap, mixing the band's hits with the musical numbers from A Mighty Wind, it's definitely worth mentioning here. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer sound great with nothing more than their voices and guitars, and add a lot of anecdotes in for good measure. Buy it.

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Also out: Impact, Methodic, Bring it On: Fight to the Finish

Ah, the road film. The formula is tried-and-true: usually two people, taking to the back roads of America in order to get somewhere by a certain time or for a particular reason. Along the way, cars break down, trains are jumped, and quirky characters are encountered. It can be funny, sweet, or darkly dramatic. But the formula rarely strays. Because of this, the key to a good road film is what happens during the journey. You want to see lessons learned, growth, and bonding. But you also want to see interesting characters and maybe a good car chase thrown in, too.

Tribeca seems to have at least one of these films every year. Last year it was Chasing 3000. This year, it's Tennessee, a slow-moving but sweet story of two brothers who go back home to find their abusive father; what they find, though is that there's more than one reason to go home.

We're going to have plenty of Tribeca Film Festival coverage here as the festival revs up in the next week. In the meantime, if you're fortunate enough to be headed to the pricey, exclusive fest, Variety has posted a primer to the movies that have a good chance of getting picked up for distribution based on their reception there -- movies that are "piquing interest among execs." Making the list are the William H. Macy comedy Bart Got a Room; a psychological thriller called From Within that sounds oddly similar to this summer's The Happening; a documentary about a senior citizen hip hop dance team called Gotta Dance (also known as Young@Heart 2); Tennessee, a road movie starring Mariah Carey; and 6 others.

Not too much is known about most of these, but I can tell you that Bart Got a Room features the big screen debut of one Brandon Hardesty, who became a YouTube sensation by posting dead-on reenactments of famous movie scenes in which he played all the characters. He's one of the few instances of YouTube popularity that stems from actual talent -- he's an amazing impressionist, and a really funny guy -- so I'm thrilled for him. I hope the movie's good.

Stay tuned for Erik Davis's dispatches from Tribeca, including his own must-see list.

Continuing our pre-coverage of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, above you will find a clip from the indie film Tennessee, aka that flick co-starring Mariah Carey as a struggling singer/diner waitress. The clip originated over at New York Magazine (where you can also find clips for a few other Tribeca films), and the sound is a little off-sync in the conversion above. Tennessee isn't all about Mariah, though, as it centers on two brothers who embark on a journey from New Mexico to Tennessee to find their estranged father. Adam Rothenberg and Ethan Peck play the brothers; the film was directed by Aaron Woodley from a script by Russell Schaumburg.

Despite a very successful music career, Carey has yet to break out in a big way on the big screen -- with films like Glitter, Wisegirls and State Property 2 not doing much to bolster her appeal as an actress. However, sometimes a role in a small indie film can help a career find its way back on track, so we'll see how far Tennessee takes her. For more on when it's playing and where, check out the film's Tribeca fest page here.

Last year, we told you how Mariah Carey was gearing up to star in a new indie film as an aspiring singer/waitress who ditches her abusive husband to join two brothers on a road trip. Unfortunately, it's not Glitter 2 -- no, this one is called Tennessee, and it's currently filming all over Nashville where Carey was heard belting out the tunes at a local spot called Second Fiddle. Yes folks, Mariah Carey has officially gone country ... but only for this movie, we think.

Not only did she share the stage with Mickey Raphael (who plays harmonica for Willie Nelson), but she sang a song she co-wrote with Nelson specifically for the film called "Right to Dream." According to Tennessee director Aaron Woodley, the film crew -- wait for it -- wept as Carey sang the song, adding "It's very moving, especially in the context of the film and her character." Now, I haven't been on too many movie sets -- and I wasn't present while they were filming Glitter, WiseGirls or State Property 2 -- but is it common for a film crew to openly weep while shooting a scene? Or, perhaps they wept for a different reason? Shooting wrapped Friday, and I'm sure we'll see Tennessee wind up in one or two film festivals later this year ... unless, of course, it goes straight to DVD.

[via Pop Candy]

• Breaking News - Hong Kong action director Johnny To delivers this watchable Woo-alike about a police force that loses the support of the public when a robbery goes bad and is covered by a local news program. The set pieces are pretty tight, even if the drama and the statement To tries to make about the power and responsibility of the media doesn't fully come through.
• Free Enterprise: Special Edition - A self-effacing turn akin to Marlon Brando's in The Freshman and Pauly Shore's in Pauly Shore Is Dead is William Shatner, sending up the cult of personality that has followed him since the original Star Trek series ended its five year mission two years early in 1969. When fanboys Rafer Wiegel and Eric McCormack meet their boyhood idol, he is far from the super-cool man for all seasons they have long worshiped. He's bent on staging a one-man musical version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, a great running joke that culminates in the brilliant payoff that is the Shatner/The Rated R rap duet, "No Tears For Caesar". Writer-director Robert Meyer Burnett has created a love letter, not just to Trek, but to anyone who has ever loved anything with fanatical passion, and this long-overdue 2-disc treatment gives it the respect it was not afforded when it was first released in 1999. Check out the Pop-Up Video style trivia track, which annotates the geekery, new special effects, the making-of feature Where No Man Has Gone Before, and the unaired TV pilot, Café Fantastique, which features the real fans who inspired this smart, hardy-har-har trek. A sequel, My Big Fat Geek Wedding, has been listed on the IMDB for nearly 3 years now, and Mindfire Entertainment's website features a rudimentary mention of it, though no firm details are available as yet.
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Special Edition - Death, and the gloomy heft that comes with it, visits Hogwarts in the fourth and most satisfying installment in the ongoing series so far. When an evil thought vanquished literally rears its ugly head again, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson) team up to expose it. Like the overwhelmingly dark Revenge Of The Sith, this is the first to bear the PG-13 rating (for "sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images"), though its decidedly down ending makes it feel more like The Empire Strikes Back. It is not unreasonable to expect studio Warner Brothers to keep their three leads on through Harry Potter and the As-Yet-Unwritten-and-Untitled Year 7 Story. This, of course, is despite the fact that they will be in their early 20's by then, but let us not forget that at least one of the 90210 kids was practically eligible for Social Security by the end of that run. Even at 157 minutes, the book has still been truncated, but it is doubly encouraging to know that kids will know what is missing and will sit still for that long in order to be able to go on smartly about it. The second disc is chock-full-o' extra goodies, and is available in full- and widescreen editions. A single disc version is also available.

Despite the fact that Glitter (not to mention her skanky wardrobe) has rendered Mariah Carey a perpetual cinematic punchline, she's been hired to star in Tennessee, an indie drama from Lee Daniels, the producer of Monster's Ball. While Daniels claims to have been impressed by Carey's performance in a movie called WiseGirls, the hiring was also admittedly motivated by the massive success of The Emancipation of Mimi (Carey's most recent album) so perhaps he's thinking more of ticket sales than quality.

In the film, to be directed by Aaron Woodley, Carey will play a mixed-race waitress (she "struggles with all sorts of issues because of" her ethnicity) who "sets off with two brothers to find their estranged father." The brothers are hoping to get their father reengaged with the family, specifically their younger brother, who is suffering from leukemia. How cool would it be if Mariah wears, like, big sweatshirts and baggy pants and acts her ass off? Yeah, not very likely. I know.