the year my parents went on vacation Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Jeffrey M. Anderson's 400 Screens 400 Blows - The Smell of Fear
Filed under: Columns », 400 Screens, 400 Blows »
Not many people care to admit it, but Hollywood is run by fear. Fear is an emotion generated by things that are not known or understood, and in the movie business, no one ever knows what's going to happen. (William Goldman was right when he said, "Nobody Knows Anything.") All those accountants, producers, publicists, entertainment TV shows, ad campaigns, etc. are all an attempt to get a handle on the unknown, an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Anything can happen. The world's biggest movie star can jump up and down on a couch and suddenly become a weirdo outcast. Or the star of a dismal turkey like Showgirls can turn around and find herself cast in a Woody Allen film. This fear, in essence, is why so many movies are so bad. The more investors and business people try to control their investment, the more they clamp down on it, and the more it gets smothered.
See, movies can live and breathe like an organic life form, but they have to have a chance. If brave producers step back and let the movie come to life in the hands of a genuine artist, they could wind up with something extraordinary like Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men (229 screens), a film that somehow pleased critics both highbrow and middlebrow, won a handful of Oscars and has nearly grossed $75 million. This film has already entered the cultural canon as a classic of cinema. More or less the same can be said of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (224 screens), which, having lost the Oscar for Best Picture, is now in a position of being an underrated underdog. But those are exceptions to the rule. No one is immune to the fear: a few years back the Coen Brothers teamed up with sleazy producer Brian Grazer, of all people, and came up with their first dud, Intolerable Cruelty.
Indie Weekend Box Office: 'Band's Visit,' 'In Bruges' Outpace Newcomers
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Foreign Language », Horror », Independent », Sony Classics », Box Office », Focus Features », The Weinstein Co. », Cinematical Indie »
What a quiet weekend for indie films! Two holdovers performed very well, while several newly-opened films faced difficulty in attracting audiences. In its second week of release, The Band's Visit (Sony Pictures Classics) expanded from seven to 13 theaters and enjoyed a per-screen average of $9,769, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The Israeli film may sound like a traditional culture-crossing crowd-pleaser (tiny Egyptian police orchestra gets lost en route to a gig, spends the night in a tiny rural Israeli town, everyone learns important life lessons), but the material is deftly handled to produce a very satisfying and thoughtful entertainment. Also in its second week out, In Bruges (Focus Features) stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hit men cooling their heels in Belgium after a job gone wrong. James Rocchi said it moves "in unexpected directions which are the kind of unexpected that you do not actually expect." Specialty audiences turned out in good numbers to see it, to the tune of $8,178 per screen at 112 locations.
'The Year My Parents Went on Vacation' Gets Distribution
Filed under: Comedy », Drama », Foreign Language », Independent », Trailer Trash », Distribution », Cinematical Indie »
After making a successful round on the film festival circuit from Brazil to Cannes, The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, otherwise known as O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias, has been picked up for domestic distribution by City Lights Pictures. Directed by Cao Hamburger, from a script he collaborated on with a number of other screenwriters, the movie dives into the military dictatorships of South America in 1970, and how one 12-year-old boy deals with the issue while dreaming of soccer. Vacation stars Michel Joelsas as Mauro, the young kid who is sent to his grandfather's when his parents have to go on vacation (a trip which is actually them going underground -- they're left-wing militants). Unfortunately, his grandfather dies before the kid arrives, and he's stuck in an apartment building full of strangers, with no way to contact his parents. His grandfather's old, Jewish neighbor, Shlomo, takes Mauro in. The kid then deals with his new community, the absence of his parents, his soccer passions in the midst of the 1970 World Cup and of course, the pressures of dictatorship.
The film looks great, and the reviews seem to back it up. Twitch said it "is one of the best movies to come out of Brazil since Cidade de Deus," while Variety described it as a "sensitive, delicate and involving" film that is "silky-smooth." You can check out the trailer, a making-of clip, pictures and even clips of music from the movie (which I wish sites did more of) over at the film's official website -- which is, conveniently, in English.
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