GREG’s:

BRIGHTON ROCK – based  on a Graham Greene novel, features a breakout performance by newcomer Andrea  Riseborough who should be on everyone’s radar (she had 3 films at the fest  including Never Let Me Go).  Also features the follow up performance from  Control star Sam Riley, and he’s amazing in this as well!  The film will  come out in the UK in February, no US date.

KABOOM – Classic Greg  Arraki – oversexed bi-sexual young cast of upcomers (Thomas Dekker, Juno  Temple, Hayley Bennett, Roxanne Mesquida) ,  end of the world  conspiracies, and amazing soundtrack (XX, Yeah Yeah Yeahs).  This film  will come out in the US in February.

DIRTY GIRL & WHATS WRONG WITH  VIRGINIA – While not perfect films, they were notable for me because of the breakout performances of Juno Temple in Dirty Girl –  her first real  starring role after small parts  in Atonement, The Other Boleyn Girl,  Year One, etc.  Dustin Lance Black’s directorial debut (after winning the  screenwriting Oscar for Milk) featured a breakout performance by Australian  newcomer Harrison Gilbertson – he holds his own oppositte Jennifer Connelly.  We’ve already shot Harrison for VMan by Terry Richardson.  Juno’s film  was picked up by Weinstein Co and Virginia is still waiting on  distribution.

MARNI’s:

BLACK SWAN (and GK’s) – doesn’t fall  short of hype.  Natalie Portman was incredible, and Vincent Kassell was  sexy and seedy as ever.  Mila Kunis also gave a rather sultry, excellent performance, but her role was more about  being a piece to the bigger puzzle.  This movie is seriously American  Psycho meets The Fly meets the NYC Ballet.

WHEN YOU MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER – Woody  Allen’s latest out this month.  Gemma Jones (aka Bridget Jones’ mother)  and Anthony Hopkins steal the show, playing a quirky, newly divorced couple going  through their own senior-life crisis.  Josh Brolin was his amazing smarmy self, Naomi Watts was great, Frieda Pinto (smaller role) was also respectable, and  Lucy Punch (newcomer) was hysterical.  The story was honest, clever,  funny and sits with you for a while.

127 HOURS – Danny Boyle’s latest  triumph, based on the true story of hiker Aron Ralston.  Basically 90  minutes of watching James Franco (I predict Oscar bound) trapped in a ravine  and goes to extraordinary measures to save his own life.  Small roles  with Kate Mara, Clemence Poesey and Amber Tamblyn.  Boyle made this film totally modern, authentic and entertaining (and even funny at times!).   Normally you couldn’t pay me enough to voluntarily see a film like this,  but Franco is so brilliant and lovable you root for him from start to finish.   Just be prepared not to breathe until the last ten minutes.  And  don’t go on a full stomach.

ONES TO WATCH:

The boy from Dustin  Lance Black’s Who’s afraid of Virginia – Harrison Gilbertson

Haley  Bennett, Juno temple, Thomas Dekker and Roxane Mesquida from Gregg Araki’s  Kaboom

Natalie Portman and Vincent Kassell in black swan. Fave movie of  fest

James Franco in Danny Boyle’s 127 hrs. Oscar bound,  swear

Gemma Jones and Anthony Hopkins in Woody Allen’s How to Meet a  Tall Dark Stranger

Aaron eckhart, Nicole Kidman, Diane Wiest, and Miles  Teller sopmething in John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole

Vera Farmiga  and James Caan in Henry’s Crime

Blue Valentine- Michelle Williams and  Ryan Gosling. Both unreal.

(Director Alex Mar on the set of her documentary, American Mystic)

Jauretsi: Major congratulations. First, can you tell us a bit about your background in Directing/Filmmaking?

Alex Mar: I took a really untraditional route into filmmaking.  I have a background in TV and journalism, but I actually started out in video and performance art. Inspired by some of the renegades like Joan Jonas and Mike Kelly, I moved to Amsterdam out of college to make work. While I was there, I hoodwinked some of the top Dutch actors into making strange little art films with me. I remember shooting a musical number in the gear room of an 18th-century windmill in the middle of the night — we had to dodge the blades while lighting the scene. And then there was the dream sequence we shot in the dungeon room of a bordello on the edge of town — when I first approached them about using the space, the madame thought I was looking for a job.

(American Mystic)

J: Describe your 3 characters, a quickie breakdown — and the “why” and the “how” you chose these people to tell this bigger story?

AM: Kublai, a farm hand in upstate New York, is training to communicate with the dead; Chuck, a Lakota Sioux in the South Dakota badlands, is returning to the scarring ritual of sundancing; Morpheus, a pagan priestess, is building a witches’ sanctuary off the grid in northern California.

Finding the right balance for the film was a huge challenge.  I spent six relentless months traveling the country casting, from rural Tennessee to the mountains of California.  I visited with snake handlers, witches’ covens, and a whole range of underground religious groups in different regions, at one point assimilating into a community that required that I live as a covered woman, waking up to milk goats at 5am.  It’s hard enough to try to capture people’s spiritual beliefs in images, but it’s another thing to try to find subjects sympathetic and accessible enough to make some of these exotic practices relatable to a broader audience.

(American Mystic)

J: As a fellow documentarian, I can imagine your individual war stories making this — funding challenges, the joy of completing a vision, resource limitations, deadlines, emotional epiphanies. Can you explain the struggle yet the beautiful ride, and if you learned anything about “the process” to share with other filmmakers?

AM: There were definitely physical challenges — sweating through 104-degree days, or sleeping in abandoned boats buried in the dirt on tarantula-infested land.  And since this was my first feature, I certainly had moments when I doubted whether or not what I was shooting would even become a movie.  But the biggest revelation for me was learning that you simply cannot shove people out in the world into some idea you have — you miss great things that way.  After a certain point, no matter how stylistic your approach is, the subjects shape the film, and the project takes on a life of its own. For a control freak, this was a pretty major breakthrough.

J: What were you doing the day you got the phonecall for the Tribeca Film Festival? What went through your mind when it got accepted?

AM: I was actually getting out of a matinee of Audillard’s “A Prophet” at an Upper West Side arthouse theater, surrounded by old ladies.  I had a slew of texts and voicemail messages.  When I rang one of the programmers back, I did my best to play it cool: “Well, I’m very pleased, thank you, isn’t that nice.”  I actually think it was brave of them to support a film that refuses to pass judgment on people’s spiritual beliefs.

J: Can you explain what you intend your audience to feel when they walk away from watching this film?

AM: You may have almost nothing in common with another person, but we’re all connected by the need to believe our lives have meaning.

J: What’s next for you?

AM: A strange, beautiful horror film I’ve written.  We’ll be shooting later this year.

———————

To purchase tickets for American Mystic at the Tribeca Film Festival, go to:
Tribeca Film Festival / World Documentary Features

Here’s the progress report so far:

Cyrus looks like another film that Marisa Tomei kicks serious ass in. In this one, she pairs up with love interest, the awesome John C. Reilly. The trailer pretty much says it all. Marni, who is at Sundance right now combing through films for our magazine editors has this to say: “I just saw Cyrus, written and directed by the bothers Duplass. Such a funny and clever film. John C Reilly was unreal, and Jonah Hill was genius as the creepy, closet evil son”

Catfish is described on slashfilm.com as “a documentary about a young New York City photographer who is contacted on Facebook by an 8-year-old painting prodigy from rural Michigan. He becomes deeply enmeshed in her life, even falling in love with her older sister–that is, until a crack appears in her story.” In the words of our Marni, “Catfish was such a crazy, unexpected, and touching ride– a must see for sure.”

To hear the directors speak of the film, go to: Making of Catfish.

(Catfish)

Marni was also crazy about Please Give, Nicole Holofcener (writer/director of Walking and Talking, Lovely and Amazing and Friends with Money). Additional cast is Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall and Catherine Keener. Voicefilm.com refers to her films as a “less prolific, estrogen-producing Woody Allen”. Marni says “the film was classic Nicole Holofcener. It doesn’t disappoint. Amanda peet steals the show”.

(Amanda Peet in Please Give)

We shall be posting Greg Krelenstein’s picks in the next few days as well.
J

On Wednesday the web started to percolate with word that Banksy had hit Sundance. Yes, the graffiti art that popped up in Park City, Utah, over the last couple of days was courtesy of everyone’s favorite anonymous street artist. But here is what the movie bloggers failed to figure out: This time, the art was just a sideshow to a film directed by the reclusive Banksy, Exit Through the Gift Shop, a surprise addition to the Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off on Thursday.

Set to premiere on Sunday night, Exit Through the Gift Shop is about an eccentric French shopkeeper and amateur filmmaker who was so obsessed with Banksy that he wanted to make a documentary about him. But the British-born Banksy turned the tables and made a film about the effort to film him.

Courtesy: Interview Magazine