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Now that the 'dance is over - the Sundance Film Festival that is - GreenCine's got it covered sideways, slantways and every way you can think of, including an updated list of all Sundance Festival award winners from 1985(!) 'til this year, with links to GreenCine for films now out on DVD. Add to that the GreenCine Daily's expansive collection of posts about the just-concluded '08 fete, and you've got your reading cut out for you. |
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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: Donkey Kong, Quiet/Dance, and much more.
- What We're Watching: King of California, Rocket Science and Bertrand Blier.
- Service Highlights: Just a little tease...
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"This film about fierce competition among classic video-game players is a comic action epic in documentary form," wrote Michael Sragow. "It captures fear -- and heroism -- in a handful of dusty video games." One of Craig Phillips' picks for the very best of '07, but FilmThreat's Pete Vonder Haar went even further: "It’s not just one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen, it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Period." |
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"For all its air of casualness and the actors' unerring ability to deliver semi-improvised dialogue that sounds overheard, Quiet City is a formal movie, elegantly edited, whose images, both still and moving, are conjoined to a soundtrack that reduces the noise of the city to an evocative background hum, quiet but not silent," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. Released with Dance Party as part of a sort of 'mumblecore' doubleheader. (See more on GreenCine Daily.) |
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Writer-director Michael Cahill's King of California is a "little film" with a solid script that came and went from theaters in the blink of an eye - not a big surprise, given the oddball plot. While no classic, it certainly deserves an audience on home video. Michael Douglas plays Charlie, a wayward father and former jazz musician whose estranged, and much more together, teenage daughter Miranda (a most-appealing Evan Rachel Wood) picks him up upon his release from a mental hospital. She's been working at McDonald's instead of finishing high school because someone's got to bring home the McBacon. Her mother, his ex, a former hand model, ran off toot... Read review here >>
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The fiction-film debut of Spellbound director Jeffery Blitz, Rocket Science is, like its non-fiction predecessor, a finely wrought and authentic portrait of the world of unusual and gifted kids. Instead of plumbing the depths of the world of spelling bees this time around, Blitz tells a story about - among other things - high school debate teams. The film follows one Hal Hefner, a high school outcast marked by a profound stutter, played to squirming perfection by Reece Thompson, as he tries to overcome his speech disorder by joining the competitive debate team at his New Jersey suburb's high school. While you would be right if you noted that the film was somewhat derivative in its idiosyncratic style... read the rest here >> |
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Bertrand Blier is at it again: pushing those envelopes; surprising, delighting and confusing us; in short, shaking us up. This award-winning writer/director (César, Oscar, National Society of Film Critics and more), with 21 films to his credit, is now approaching age 70. From his first international hit Les Valseuses (titled Going Places here in the U.S., and which gave Gerard Depardieu his breakout role), to his Best Foreign Film Préparez vos mouchoirs, through Buffet froid, Beau-Père, Menage, Trop belle pour toi, and Un deux trois soleil, he has pretty consistently knocked around our ideas about men, women, love, sex, society and relationships. His latest, How Much Do You Love Me? (Combien tu m'aimes?) does it all over again, while providing succulent roles for a prestige cast... Read review >>
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Anyone interested in a live Oscar chat hosted by GreenCine and moderated by GC-approved geeky film bloggers? Well, just save that in your memory banks and mark your calendars. We'll have more on this soon. |
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