Sundance 2016: Review Roundup, Part IV
Welcome back. You’ve already read parts I, II and III of our Sundance film review roundup.
Let's begin with Whit Stillman's Jane Austen adaptation, Love & Friendship. While you might be thinking, another Austen adaptation, keep in mind Stillman is the man who brought you Metropolitan and Last Days of Disco, and is uniquely suited to bring out Austen's biting humor,
Another Absurd Cameo Revealed in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
As we wrote on Tuesday, there has been an endless cascade of reveals of secret cameos in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Perhaps the best is Daniel Craig's turn as the initially petulant Stormtrooper keeping an eye on a captured Rey. You remember that scene, right? The one where Rey tries out her Obi-Wan Kenobi skills? Obi-Wan famously told a Stormtrooper in the first Star Wars,
Sundance 2016: Review Roundup, Part III
We’re back with part III of our Sundance film review roundup. You can read parts I and II to catch up on all the films we've looked at thus far.
“Meet the She-Wolves of Wall Street,” writes Variety’s Guy Lodge about Meera Menon’s sophomore feature, Equity. Menon’s “refreshingly female-skewed financial thriller proves that the women of Wall Street can be just as cold-heartedly corrupt as the boys.”
Watch The Birth of a Nation‘s Nate Parker’s Potent Short Film
This is the power of the Sundance Film Festival, it can turn a talented artist like Nate Parker into a sensation over night. As the undisputed King of Sundance this year with The Birth of a Nation, a film Parker wrote, directed, and starred in—after nurturing the project for 7 years and using $100,000 of his own money to find financing—the man has earned this moment. And as it happens when a filmmaker suddenly becomes an object of fascination,
Sundance 2016: Nate Parker’s Huge Night & More
We wrote yesterday about the rapturous response to Nate Parker’s Sundance-shaking Nat Turner biopic, The Birth of a Nation. Today, reports are flooding in that the whopping, festival record-setting $17.5 million offer the film got from Fox Searchlight was actually less than what Netflix was willing to part with.
THR reports that writer, director and star Parker, who had put $100,000 of his own money into the film to fly around the country in an attempt to find financiers (he eventually had a dozen investor groups,
Sundance 2016: A Roundup of Reviews, Part II
Let’s take a look at what the critics are saying about some of the films that have premiered at Sundance.
Nate Parker and Tony Espinosa in 'The Birth of a Nation.' Photo by Elliot Davis. Courtesy Sundance Film Festival.
Earlier today, we took a look at Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation,
Sundance 2016: Fox Searchlight Nabs Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation
Nate Parker, writer, director, and star of The Birth of a Nation's seven year commitment to his labor of love has paid off in a distribution deal with Fox Searchlight Pictures, The Wrap reports. Parker's epic is currently the talk of Sundance. The Hollywood Reporter Rebecca Ford writes that Parker’s film earned a rapturous standing ovation at its' premiere in Eccles theater in Park City,
Sundance 2016: A Film Review Roundup
Earlier we looked at some of the films that have premiered at Sundance that have found homes in a variety of studios, from IFC to Amazon. Now let's take a look at some of the films reviews coming out of the festival this year, perhaps gleaning what will be next on the bidding block.
Vulture's Bilge Ebiri has written that Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea,
Sundance 2016: Complete Unknown, Morris From America & More are Sold
As the first major film festival of the year, and arguably one of the most important on the ever expanding festival circuit, the Sundance Film Festival is something of a taste maker. Studios small and large vie for the distribution rights of a number of films, while unknown talents can, in a single Park City night, become hot commodities. Here's a look at the news coming out of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Before we get into what films have sold thus far,
Talking to the Writer/Director of the Epic Balkan Western Aferim!
It’s a safe bet that you’ve never seen a movie quite like Aferim!
An epic Balkan Western shot in 35mm black-and-white, Romanian director Radu Jude’s third feature earned a Silver Bear for best director at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival and was the Official Selection at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.
Aferim! (an Ottoman Turkish expression that apparently translates as “bravo!” and is used ironically in the film) is set in the barren landscape of mid-19th-century Wallachia.
Dates Set for Dates for Star Wars: Episode VIII & Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Walt Disney Studios has announced new release dates for two of their biggest upcoming films, hoping (and very likely) to recapture the magic that The Force Awakens managed in its mid-December slot.
Owing to the crazy huge success of J.J. Abrams first installment in the new trilogy, Star Wars: Episode VIII, originally scheduled for release on May 26, 2017, will now debut on December 15,
Watch Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Extended Look
And the final piece of last night's "DC Films Presents: Dawn of the Justice League" on The CW that we want to share with you is the three minute deep-dive into the film that's going to bring the Justice League to the big screen, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Director Zack Synder, and Batman and Superman themselves, Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill, discuss the evolution of their characters and why,
Check out the First Footage of Wonder Woman in Action
You probably already know that Wonder Woman, played by Israeli actress Gal Gadot, has a pretty decently sized part in the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. While her involvement in the film was always known, we finally got to see her in action, briefly, in the most recent trailer. And ironically, when she arrives it wasn't Superman (Henry Cavill) whose hide she saves at the nick of time,
Pee-wee is Back in new Trailer for his Netflix Original Film
“Heh, heh,” time for a winter’s giggle and bit of zany whimsy. Pee-wee Herman is hitting the road after a 30 year hiatus, and it's as if time stood still for the childlike Pee-wee. Netflix just released the first 39-second trailer for its original film, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, in all its Rube Goldberg glory. This feature will star the ageless Paul Reubens, reprising the role he created in the mid-1980s for his television show,
Writer/Director Andrew Haigh on his Quiet, Devastating 45 Years
Writer-director Andrew Haigh jokes that his new film 45 Years is a sequel to Weekend, his 2011, intimate look at a hookup between two young gay men that develops into more. Sure, 45 Years is about a long heterosexual marriage between Kate and Geoff Mercer (Charlotte Rampling, nominated for an Oscar for her performance, and Tom Courtenay) but it’s still about the nuances,
10 Cloverfield Lane and the Year of J.J. Abrams
Eight years ago, television impresario JJ Abrams triggered the biggest marketing juggernaut since The Blair Witch Project with a short, unassuming teaser for a then-unnamed horror film. Appearing in front of Michael Bay’s highly anticipated Transformers, the trailer featured familiar comedy faces in Lizzy Caplan and T.J Miller and clocked in at less than two minutes long. Despite its minimal length, the teaser didn’t lack in impact as it depicted the devolution of a casual house party into apocalyptic mania,
Spike Lee’s Michael Jackson Doc Coming to Showtime
Did you know that there are lyrics in Michael Jacskon's seminal "Don't Stop Until You Get Enough" that pertain to…Star Wars? Don't believe us? You can check out the lyrics here, you can hear them in the trailer below, and you can revel in the fact that the chorus for Jackson's first huge hit goes like this: Keep on with the force don't stop/Don't stop 'til you get enough.
Reporters Corner J.J. Abrams After Panel to Talk Star Wars Rumors
At some point, you sort of want to feel bad for J.J. Abrams. Okay, you don't, but the guy has moved the Star Wars franchise into the future admirably, after years of work and the most intense pre-release media scrutiny, possibly in film history, and he's still getting pigeonholed by reporters at events that have nothing to do with Star Wars. Poor guy! (Not really).
Abrams was at the Television Critics Association for a panel on his upcoming Showtime series
Writer/Director Michael J. Larnell on Cronies, His Inspirations & More
The NYU Production Lab helps finance a handful of student and alumni films every year. This past year, one of those films was the Spike Lee executive produced Cronies, which was a 2015 Sundance hit, and a first feature from NYU graduate Michael J. Larnell, who was one of Spike's students. Larnell wrote, directed, produced and edited it while earning his MFA at Tisch. Not too shabby a start for the young man.
Cronies is set in Larnell's hometown of St.
Marvel Nabs Ryan Coogler to Direct Black Panther
The Motion Picture Association of American hosted an evening with director Ryan Coogler after his breakout directorial debut, Fruitvale Station. Coogler was still fresh out of film school, and Fruitvale Station, which he wrote and directed, had recently won the Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Feature and Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic Film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, and, a few months later,
