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" Lance Hammer began his filmmaking career working with the art department, designing the architecture of Gotham buildings used in Joel Schumacher's Batman films. His feature film debut as a writer and director might be seen as an aesthetic laying down of a gauntlet: art thrives best when developed far from any Hollywood departments. Written, cast, set and shot in a wintery Mississippi Delta locale, Ballast emerged from its premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival with top awards for Hammer's direction and Lol Crawley's cinematography." Brian Darr introduces his interview with Hammer - they talk about nonprofessional actors, documentaries and some of Hammer's own favorite filmmakers. Ballast is currently playing at New York's Film Forum and opens in selected cities on October 17.
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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: Paranoid Park, The Visitor and a lot more.
- What We're Watching: Slacker Uprising, Watership Down, Holy Modal.
- Explore: NYFF + contest winners.
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"The pleasing circularity of Gus Van Sant's masterful Paranoid Park is not only a function of the film's narrative structure but reflects the arc of its maker's career," wrote J Hoberman. "Few directors have revisited their earliest concerns with such vigor." Adds Manhola Dargis: "A haunting, voluptuously beautiful portrait of a teenage boy who, after being suddenly caught in midflight, falls to earth. " Marc Savlov: "breathtaking, heartbreaking, tragic, gorgeous, and true all at the same time. " |
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From the writer-director of the sleeper indie The Station Agent, comes this " heartfelt human drama that sneaks up and floors you" (Rolling Stone). "This is a film of our times - paranoid, heartbroken, disillusioned - and the rare recent American movie whose characters react the way actual people might," wrote Wesley Morris. One of our more underrated character actors, Richard Jenkins, is also superb at the center. |
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Michael Moore is a filmmaker/personality at war with himself. He clearly has an outsized ego -- as is evident by this new documentary, Slacker Uprising chronicling his "get out the vote" tour pre-election 2004, in which he is front and center all the way -- but he is also pretty clearly someone with a huge heart and a much-needed sense of anger at the state of things in Bush's America. Moore is one of those people who have undeniably done important work in provoking and spotlighting important issues... Read more >>
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The publication of Richard Adams' Watership Down in 1972 created a literary furor. An immediate and enormous best-seller in Britain and the U.S., the novel was one of those rare publishing anomalies that captures the imagination of just about everybody: a 429-page children's book suited equally, if not better, to adults, with glossary, map (complete with references) and peppered throughout with quotes from everyone from Shakespeare to Robert Browning, Thomas Hardy and the Duke of Wellington. The story is full of the things that we look for in good, gripping novels -- excitement, adventure, suspense, love, death, joy, sacrifice and commitment, with the capper of being highly intelligent and beautifully written. The heroes? A group of rabbits that must relocate its warren... read review >> |
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Those of you who who are looking for a fast-paced pop-centric, behind the scenes musical documentary may want to skip The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose. However, if you consider yourself a folk music fan, this humble film should sate your deep-rooted folksiness. It follows the 40-year struggle between a stubborn corporate music industry and a sub-culture that is now largely left behind. At the center of the struggle stand Holy Modal Rounders founders Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber... read review >> |
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Feeling Blu(-ray)
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