Declare Your Independents: Volume 3
GITS development assistant Wendy Cohen here, and welcome to yet another edition of Declare Your Independents, our new series highlighting the latest developments in the world of independent film.
This week…
Paramount Launches Division For Acquiring Indie Films, Hires IFC’s Jeff Deutchman As Director of Acquisitions.
The new trailer for David O. Russell’s American Hustle.
Spike Lee defends his Kickstarter campaign.
Why “The Spectacular Now” Is Better Than Your Average Coming-of-Age Movie.
Once again, a reminder from last week’s post:
- Scott and I encourage any of you who go to see an independent movie to post your reactions to the film in these posts. Good, bad, indifferent, whatever. If there’s a film you want to recommend, do it. Use your words to inspire readers to transport themselves into a local cinema.
- When you go to the theater, why not whip out your cellphone and snap a shot of something that demonstrates you were there? A photo of the movie poster in the lobby. A shot of your ticket stubs. An image of the movie theater itself. You and your iconoclastic indie film freaks.
- For any conversations on Twitter re: this initiative, let’s use these two hashtags: #independents and #declareyourindependents
- While we’re at it, why not add our photos to CydM’s fantastic Pintrest page for everyone to enjoy?
- And if we come up with a nifty Declaration of Independents, we could try to make it go viral. If you were going to write a Declaration of Independents, what would you include? What if we made it a video manifesto?
We can’t make this work without your participation. Share your experiences with the community so we can open up readers to the fantastically diverse, exciting and evolving world of independent film. We’ll all be extremely grateful that you did!
A Special Shout Out from Scott: Mission Park, the first film from San Antonio-based company Armando Montelongo Productions will have a limited release in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and San Antonio on Sept. 6.
For more info, go here.
INDIE SPOTLIGHT: MOVIES TO SEE IN THEATERS THIS WEEK
OPENING FRIDAY (8/2)
With sly humor and an intensity of feeling, THE SPECTACULAR NOW (directed by James Ponsoldt) creates a vivid, three-dimensional portrait of youth confronting the funny, thrilling and perilous business of modern love and adulthood. This is the tale of Sutter Keely (Miles Teller), a high school senior and effortless charmer, and of how he unexpectedly falls in love with “the good girl” Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley). What starts as an unlikely romance becomes a sharp-eyed, straight-up snapshot of the heady confusion and haunting passion of youth — one that doesn’t look for tidy truths. The film was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber (500) DAYS OF SUMMER and also features wonderful supporting turns from Brie Larson, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Listen to an exclusive Q&A with director James Ponsoldt below:
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/scott-myers-15/james-ponsoldt-q-a-the[/soundcloud]
Set over the course of a weekend tournament for chess software programmers thirty-some years ago, this film transports viewers to a nostalgic moment when the contest between technology and the human spirit seemed a little more up for grabs. We get to know the eccentric geniuses possessed of the vision to teach a metal box to defeat man, literally, at his own game, laying the groundwork for artificial intelligence as we know it and will come to know it in the future.
Read Flavorwire’s interview with director Andrew Bujalski here.
While calculating young movie producer Christian (James Deen) makes films to keep his trust fund intact, his actress girlfriend, Tara (Lindsay Lohan), hides an affair with an actor from her past. But Christian becomes aware of her infidelity, which leads the young Angelenos into a violent, sexually-charged tour through the dark side of human nature.
Read director Paul Schrader’s interview with the Tribeca Film Festival here.
EUROPA REPORT follows a contemporary mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa to investigate the possible existence of alien life within our solar system. When unmanned probes suggest that a hidden ocean could exist underneath Europa’s icy surface and may contain single-celled life, Europa Ventures, a privately funded space exploration company, sends six of the best astronauts from around the world to confirm the data and explore the revolutionary discoveries that may lie in the Europan ocean. After a near-catastrophic technical failure that leads to loss of communication with Earth and the tragic death of a crewmember, the surviving astronauts must overcome the psychological and physical toll of deep space travel, and survive a discovery on Europa more profound than they had ever imagined.
A sculptor living in German-occupied France forges an unlikely friendship with a young refugee who is fleeing Franco’s army in this tender drama from writer/director Fernando Trueba (The Miracle of Candeal, Chico & Rita). The year is 1943. Eighty-year-old artist Marc Cros (Jean Rochefort) has survived two wars, and bore witness to far more horrors than he wishes to recall. Marc has long given up sculpting, but when his wife (Claudia Cardinale) happens across a desperate fugitive named Merce (Aida Folch), the pair agree to shelter her in his studio. Meanwhile, long after Marc thought possible, inspiration strikes. Now as Merce poses for Marc’s final sculpture, a powerful bond forms between them.
Read the interview with director Fernando Trueba here.
The Bow Bells Care Home is under threat and the McGuires — Andy, Terry, and Katy — need to find some way to keep their Grandfather and his friends in the East End where they belong. But, when you’re robbing a bank, zombie invasions make things a lot harder. And, let’s face it, they need all the help they can get when their bank-robbing experts turn out to be Mental Mickey and Davey Tuppance. As contractors to an East London building site unlock a 350-year old vault of seriously hungry zombies, the East End has suddenly gone to hell and the Cockney way of life is under threat. Equipped with all the guns and ammo they can carry, it’s up to the gang to save the hostages, their Grandfather, and East London from zombie Armageddon.
Murielle (Emilie Dequenne) and Mounir (Tahar Rahim) love each other passionately. Ever since he was a boy, the young man has been living with Doctor Pinget (Niels Arestrup) who provides him with a comfortable life. When Mounir and Murielle decide to marry and have children, the couple’s dependence on the doctor becomes excessive. Murielle finds herself caught up in an unhealthy emotional climate that insidiously leads the family towards a tragic outcome.
After their mother escapes from Sydney to Margaret River in the 1970’s, the two Kelly brothers spend their youth searching for the perfect wave. Out of necessity the family launches a backyard surf business — re-thinking board design, crafting homemade wetsuits and selling merchandise out of their van. Battling big waves, small town conservatism and criminals, the brothers give rise to a global brand. A story of passion, corruption, friendship and loyalty, deadly addictions and fractured relationships, DRIFT tells a tale of courage and the will to survive at all odds.
Co-directors Ron Frank and Mevlut Akkaya explore America’s rich legacy of Jewish comics from New York’s Catskill Mountains and beyond. Featured funnymen include Jackie Mason, Sid Caesar, Mort Sahl, and Jerry Stiller.
“Rising from Ashes” is a feature length documentary about the first Rwandan National Cycling Team and their six year journey to the Olympic games in London. It’s not about the bike. It’s about second chances, how our past doesn’t have to define our future, and the impossible triumph of the human spirit over one of the world’s most devastating genocides.
Einstein once said: “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live.” In the past five years, billions of honeybees simply vanished for reasons still obscure. If the bees keep dying, there will be drastic effects for humans as well: more than one third of our food production depends on pollination by honeybees and their lives and deaths are linked to ours.
NOW IN THEATERS
A hilarious satire about the culture surrounding youth baseball leagues in Los Angeles, this fully improvised film also features a who’s who of notable comedians and actors including Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman), Fred Willard (Modern Family), Bob Odenkirk (Saturday Night Live), J.B. Smoove (Saturday Night Live), Gina Gershon (How to Make It in America), Kerri Kenney-Silver (The New Normal), Jami Gertz (The Neighbors), Timothy Olyphant (Damages), Richard Kind (Argo), Steve Agee (The New Girl), David Sheridan (The Love Boat), Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding).
Listen to an exclusive Q&A with director Jeff Garlin below.
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/scott-myers-15/jeff-garlin-q-a-dealin-with[/soundcloud]
In this Sundance favorite Michael Cera (Juno, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) invites an eccentric woman on a road trip with his friends. His devil-may-care journey however soon becomes a battle of wills, as the two lock horns before they try a hallucinogenic concoction.
Read /Film’s interview with Cera and writer/director Sebastian Silva here.
This weekend, Declare Your Independents by checking out one of these movies in a theater near you!
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