Cinematical

School may be out for the summer, but documentaries about teens may become a hot topic anyway. Nanette Burstein's American Teen, focusing on seniors at a small town in Indiana, was a smash at Sundance and will hit theaters on July 25. Caroline Suh's Frontrunners, about four teens running for elective office at a prestigious high school in New York City, had its world premiere at South by Southwest and has just been picked up for distribution by Oscilloscope Pictures, according to indieWIRE.

Distributor Paramount Vantage has been promoting American Teen like crazy over the past couple of months, so marketing Frontrunners as something different and worthwhile will be the challenge for Oscilloscope, which is the distribution arm of Oscilloscope Laboratories. The company was founded by Adam Yauch, who's best known as one of the Beastie Boys. Frontrunners will be just their third release (after Gunning For That #1 Spot and Flow); Yauch said in a statement: "I was taken by its Rushmore meets Spellbound meets Election quality."

Frontrunners will open at New York's Film Forum on October 15, well-timed to capitalize on election fever, followed by a national theatrical release before hitting DVD next year. Kim Voynar saw the film at SXSW and compared it unfavorably with American Teen, though she says she enjoyed the film overall despite her frustrations. We'll see how audiences react in three months. Until then, the official site has a trailer and more information.

While researching my post on the Metropolis missing footage that's been discovered in Argentina, I missed a vital tidbit of information. (My brain is still leaking, sorry.) The tidbit? Kino International officially confirmed to The Digital Bits that their upcoming Blu-ray of Metropolis will include the newly-discovered footage, and that a standard definition DVD would also be released. Ta-da!

One of our readers, Eric, noted that Kino's Restored and Authorized Edition DVD, released in 2003, "actually makes sense," plot-wise, and recommended it highly. (Thanks, Eric! I've already ordered my copy.) By coincidence, Kino announced in May that they would begin offering their titles in Blu-ray in 2009, and then said that Metropolis would be their first title offered in the high-definition format, per High-Def Digest, though they did not provide details on a release date, technical specifications, or supplements.

In the UK, Eureka released a Region 2 DVD edition in 2005. DVD Beaver did a detailed comparison between Kino and Eureka and found the Eureka release to be superior: "This appears to be a classic example of PAL-NTSC ghosting derived from improper conversion." If you know what that means, you'll want to read their entire article before making a purchase decision -- and note, of course, that you'll need a region-free DVD player for the Eureka version. Film critic Glenn Kenney recommends the Eureka edition, by the way.

Others will choose to wait for Blu-ray, but whatever your decision, now would be a good time to get caught up with Metropolis so you can fully appreciate the new missing footage. If you need any more convincing, check out the clips and trailer at Kino's site.

Could a cute children's movie about an adorable furry animal ignite change in a country noted for its official cultural restraints? Kung Fu Panda has enjoyed robust returns at the Chinese box office, which prompted a top cultural advisor to bemoan: "Why didn't we make such a film?"

As reported by Variety, Wu Jiang, a key member of the CPPCC Standing Committee, noted: "The film's protagonist is China's national treasure and all the elements are Chinese." The committee recommended that the government "relax its control in order to accelerate the reform and opening up of the cultural market and to enhance China's cultural influence in the world."

Though China produces hundreds of movies every year, most have been described as "stodgy propaganda pics" -- check out a recent post by Grady Hendrix at Kaiju Shakedown to see a few examples -- and only a select few achieve visibility at international festivals. Director Lu Chuan (Kekexili: Mountain Patrol and the upcoming Nanking Nanking) says the problem lies with the government itself, which stifles the creativity of Chinese filmmakers. He wrote in China Daily that he tried to make an animated film for next month's Olympics in Beijing but finally gave up: "I kept receiving directions and orders on how the movie should be like. The fun and joy from doing something interesting left us, together with our imagination and creativity."

Will the Chinese government be making any changes soon? Don't count on it. Sun Zhonghuan, another member of the CPPCC Standing Committee, says that Hollywoood studios have another big advantage: Kung Fu Panda's $130 million budget is nearly 100 times the cost for an average Chinese film. "We might have the ideas," he said, "but we lack the structure to realize them."

Strangers are staring at me. No, I'm not paranoid, and I'm not a beautiful person. But ever since I saw Linda Linda Linda, a sweet yet perceptive film about the dreams and aspirations of high school girl musicians, the title song has been stuck in my head. The toughest part? It's sung in Japanese. So now I find myself singing "Linda Linda. Linda Linda Linda" and humming the insistently memorable tune over and over again. It's just so darn catchy. (Check out the clip from the movie.)

I don't really mind, though, because I loved the movie, which follows three Japanese girls who recruit a Korean exchange student to become their singer so they can perform at an important school function. And I'm not alone in loving the song, which was originally recorded by the seminal punk band The Blue Hearts in the 1980s. (Watch this clip for evidence.) Japanese pop culture expert Patrick Macias says on the DVD that the song is still a karaoke favorite and that learning all the words makes foreigners instantly cool (or words to that effect).

Songs from movies have gotten stuck in my head before. Way back when, I found myself constantly singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and then I became a John Williams freak, humming and tapping my fingers to music from Jaws, Star Wars, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I hated disco, so I worked very hard to keep all those songs from Saturday Night Fever out of my head.

Flakes is a neighborhood breakfast fantasy -- a funky, retro shop dedicated to cereal. You walk in, pick your crunch of choice, and are instantly served a bowl of cereal that you can enjoy with the quirky members of your community. But it's not all Corn Flakes and Cheerios -- there's a large wall of selections from the new to the old, discontinued, and hard-to-find varieties. It's history in a bowl, served without the capitalist cleanliness.

In a film, there's a number of ways this can play out that could make for a memorable and lovable indie experience. However, while Flakes mixes the worlds of High Fidelity, Reality Bites, Clerks, and Empire Records, it does so without the verve and life that made each of those lovable classics.

Can a director best known for bloody bullet ballets pull off a historical action epic? We'll know later this week when John Woo's Red Cliff rolls out across Asia. The film's full-length running time of more than four hours has been split in two; the first part opens in China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Taiwan on Thursday, with a release in Malaysia next week and Japan in November, according to Variety. Part two is set to debut next January.

Red Cliff, based on the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which has been adapted for television and film multiple times), is the fulfillment of a dream for Woo, who first tried to make it nearly 20 years ago. The title refers to a battle involving more than a million soldiers that brought an end to the Han Dynasty in 208 AD, resulting in the division of China into three kingdoms. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Fengyi, Chang Chen and Lin Chiling star.

Woo has been staging elaborate action sequences for many years, but hasn't tackled a project of this scale and historical sweep before. An international version, expected to run about two and a half hours, will be completed by January. No US distributor has yet been set. To get fully caught up on this sometimes-troubled production, reportedly budgeted at $80 million, read our previous reports from February 2006, September 2006, April 2007 (1), April 2007 (2), August 2007, February 2008 (trailer), and June 2008.

You can go to a studio for money, get a grant, or put yourself into massive debt to make a movie. Or, you can reach out to the world via the Internet. Jam! reports that Canadian television director Casey Walker (Adrenaline Project) has hit the net to get funding for his new film -- Free For All...but you!

Citing the difficulty new Canadian filmmakers face when trying to get funding through Telefilm (and you thought the tax credit issues were the only challenge...), Walker decided to sell frames of his film. For $10 a pop, you can buy a frame of the movie, get a credit in the film, advertisement rights on his website, and part of the profits if the film is a success (My Million Dollar Movie.com). So far, the man has made almost 200 grand, so he's doing something right.

I'm thinking this funding technique should also help in the wake of Bill C10. See, this project isn't the type to appeal to those allergic to alternative lifestyles. It's the story of a young geek who does his friend a favor and moves in with the friend's new crush. Of course, he starts to fall for the girl ... but wait! She has a 7-way relationship. The "7-sided relationship seems ideal -- casual sex with anyone inside the group -- anytime, anywhere. It's been ten years and no one has ever cheated." But things start to change -- the girl deals with her interests outside of the group while the geek deals with orgies in his home. Basically, if Young People F**king caused a ruckus, this definitely should.

I confess my temporary insanity: the news that missing footage from Fritz Lang's Metropolis had been discovered in Argentina, as detailed in the Guardian and elsewhere a few days ago, did not initially make my head spin. (I blame the blasted summer heat, which has made my brains melt.) Shaking off a weekend of lazy moviewatching has now convinced me that this may be the most significant movie news of the year.

Metropolis has always struck me as a classic more to be admired than loved -- difficult to follow, easy to be amazed by the stunning visuals, and in general, to be awed by its vision of a future society gone hellishly wrong. Roger Ebert acknowledged that the plot "defies common sense, but its very discontinuity is a strength." He noted that Lang's original version had not been seen for many years, "chopped by distributors, censors and exhibitors, key footage was lost" but that didn't keep it from influencing everything from Alphaville to Blade Runner to Dark City to Gotham City.

David Hudson detailed the discovery at GreenCine Daily and, as usual, compiled numerous links to coverage of the story. His updates indicate that the footage represents about 85% of what was considered lost forever, and that the 16mm copy is "in terrible shape," though there are high hopes that good quality images can be drawn from the material. As David wrote: "Still!"

Peter Bradshaw wonders if the missing footage would "explain" the movie or "just make it more baroque, more mysterious, and more mad than ever"? It looks like we'll all be able to see for ourselves, eventually. As Glenn Kenny writes, what's next? The Magnificent Ambersons? Greed? What's your dream restored classic?

As with so many successful screenwriters, John August's work might be more familiar to you than his name. He wrote Go, Charlie's Angels, and a trio of Tim Burton films -- Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride -- before making the mind-bending indie flick The Nines (pictured). He directed it, too (his first feature in that capacity), so he had even more personal attachment to it when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.

A few days ago, August posted an entry on his blog in which he dissects his experience with The Nines and uses it to shine some light on the nerve-racking, dog-eat-dog world of independent filmmaking. Clearly this business is not for the faint of heart. He lists what he calls "the Graduating Class of 2007," 21 buzz-generating films from Sundance that year, including his own. All but one were bought by distributors ... and almost all of them totally tanked at the box office.

That's not very encouraging, especially considering these were the cream of the Sundance crop. Only five on his list made more than $1 million in theaters, and many didn't even crack $100,000. The Nines (which was pretty decent, by the way, definitely worth checking out) got a cursory theatrical release in a couple cities, where it made a paltry $63,165, then eventually found its way to DVD.

From global warming to toasting a presidential candidate? Davis Guggenheim, who won an Academy Award for his documentary An Inconvenient Truth, is reportedly working on a film about Senator Barack Obama that will be shown during the Democratic National Convention in late August, according to The Huffington Post.

Guggenheim was seen accompanying Obama during his visit to Butte, Montana, on Friday afternoon. Guggenheim said only that he was traveling with his son and doing some interviews, though a tipster told a reporter the film shoot was on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the convention. An Obama staff member later told the New York Post that "elements of what [Guggenheim] is shooting may be used," but declined to be more specific.

The Huff Post article says that Davis Guggenheim's father, Charles Guggenheim, chronicled John F. Kennedy, though IMDb shows that Charles Guggenheim won an Academy Award for Robert Kennedy: Remembered, a live action short subject that was compiled from footage that Guggenheim had shot over the years.

An Inconvenient Truth didn't move me as it did many others, but it would be interesting to see if Guggenheim could make something that would liven up the convention broadcast. No word on whether Senator John McCain has recruited any Academy Award-winning documentary filmmakers, though Variety described him as "a major movie freak" back in January 2007; he picked John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate as his favorite political film.

Hmm, I don't remember any of this week's noteworthy indie DVD releases playing at theaters in my area, so why don't we catch up together and decide what to rent? Listed (roughly) in order of critical favor:

Chop Shop (pictured). Second feature by Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart) is a coming of age story set in a New York junkyard. Cinematical review (entirely positive): Kim Voynar. DVD features: audio commentary with director and actors, rehearsal footage, and trailer.

The Tracey Fragments. Ellen Page stars in Bruce McDonald's harrowing drama. Cinematical reviews (both positive): Erik Davis; James Rocchi. DVD features: behind the scenes footage and interviews with McDonald and Page, entries from the "Tracey: Re-fragmented" contest, a selection of images by photographer Matt Sullivan, and trailer.

Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. Julien Temple's doc on the influential Clash musician. Cinematical reviews (both frustrated): Kevin Kelly; Jeffrey M. Anderson. DVD features: audio commentary with Temple, 100 minutes of additional interview footage, and trailer.

American Zombie. Grace Lee's horror comedy depicts the ordinary, day to day challenges of life as one of the undead. Cinematical review (disappointed): Jette Kernion. DVD features: audio commentaries, behind the scenes footage, deleted scenes, and trailers.

Sleepwalking. Family drama about a young girl dealing with life after her mother abandons her; with Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb, Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, and Dennis Hopper. Cinematical reviews (both negative): James Rocchi; Jeffrey M. Anderson. DVD features: "making of," and trailer.

What's the formula for success? Teens, drugs, Ben Kingsley kisses and 90s nostalgia, evidently. Jonathan Levine's The Wackness scored the best per-screen average of the weekend -- $24,166 -- at six theaters in New York and Los Angeles, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo.

On the other hand, French thriller Tell No One packed them in without any of those elements, earning $20,120 per-screen at eight theaters, according to Leonard Klady's estimates at Movie City News. As somebody once said: C'est la vie.

At the one theater in Los Angeles where it opened, the box office went Kabluey for the film with the same name ($7,900 in receipts) while Alex Gibney's entertaining, if schematic, doc, Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, made $7,307 per screen at 26 theaters celebrating independence across the nation.

Not as many were interested in Holding Trevor ($3,400 per-screen at 2 theaters) and audiences declined interest in Diminished Capacity ($2,830 per-screen at 4 theaters). You can read more about all these releases in Indie Spotlight, the new column by Eric D. Snider.

Notable holdovers include Trumbo ($4,233 per-screen average, 6 theaters, 2nd week of release); Mongol ($3,490 per-screen, 253 theaters, 5th week); Brick Lane ($3,451 per-screen, 31 theaters, 3rd week); Roman de Gare ($2,400 per-screen, 37 theaters, 11th week), and The Visitor ($2,017 per-screen, 176 theaters, 13th week).

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl broke into the overall top 10, expanding to more than 1,800 theaters and drawing $1,953 per screen -- but that's a very disappointing figure after the gangbusters box office of its very limited first two weeks of release. The film has grossed more than $6.1 million so far.

If you still haven't watched any of the million documentaries about the Iraq War because you're still not quite ready for that kind of subject matter, you might want to check out Full Battle Rattle. It is a documentary, and it is related to the Iraq War, but you may consider it more like a simulation of a documentary about the Iraq War than an actual example. Think of it as like a practice piece until you can handle the real deal.

How is Full Battle Rattle different from the rest, you ask? Well, it's not set in Iraq or even in the Middle East. It takes place in America, in California's Mojave Desert, to be exact. It's there that the U.S. military has built a bunch of fake Iraqi towns, complete with fake Iraqi people, some of whom are played by actual Iraqi immigrants, others of whom are played by soldiers preparing for combat before being deployed overseas.

And then there are the other thousands of soldiers who basically play themselves on the unscripted side of partially scripted training exercises designed to simulate possible scenarios that they'll be faced with once they're shipped out to Iraq. In a way, watching the simulations documented in the film is like watching Civil War reenactments, except that in this case it's more like pre-enactments.

Let's face it, family dramas are universal: one generation raising the next, the young resisting the old, conflict, tears, intense feelings, "you don't let me," "why don't you," and so forth. Watching Sunflower, a Chinese film from 2005 that finally hit DVD last week, I had the feeling that director Zhang Yang (Shower, Quitting) must moonlight as an alchemist. Working with very familiar, common elements, he makes something fresh and new.

Joan Chen (The Last Emperor, Twin Peaks) may be the most familiar face in the cast; she has quietly turned in one marvelous performance after another over the past 10 years outside the US studio system. (Check out the devastating, difficult The Home Song Stories.) Here she plays the pivotal role of Xiuqing, left to raise Xiangyang, her young son, after her husband Gengnian (the equally memorable Sun Haiying) is sent to a labor camp in 1967.

Gengnian returns from camp unable to continue his career as a painter, and so he transfers his artistic ambitions to his son, who wants nothing to do with this stranger who has taken over the household. Gengnian has a powerful will, though, and is determined to see his son succeed, whether he wants to or not.

The story takes place over four different eras of recent Chinese history as Xiangyang grows into a man and eventually contemplates fatherhood himself; Zhang Yang drew from his own life experiences for inspiration. Sunflower is simply told. The rich period details look gorgeous (Christopher Doyle served as visual consultant) and each episode leads inexorably to the next.

The DVD from New Yorker Video includes a "making of" feature and the original theatrical trailer. Sunflower is perfect for a summer evening's rental, a contemplative consideration of love, destiny, and the strongest bonds of all.

Talk about conflicted emotions! In a very fine article at indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman reports on filmmaker Lance Hammer's recent decision to pull out of a distribution deal with IFC Films for his Sundance award-winning feature, Ballast. While I'm heartened that Hammer is willing to place creative control ahead of financial concerns, I'm also discouraged that there appears to be little room in the current distribution landscape for Hammer's critically-acclaimed independent drama to find its audience.

Ballast details the lives and connections between a man, a woman, and her son. It won praise from our own James Rocchi -- "Cineastes, looking for an American film that offers something on-screen other than glossy consumerist fantasies, will embrace Ballast with the ardent fervor of a drowning victim offered a rope" -- even though James acknowledged the challenges the film would face in drawing viewers from "outside the film festival circuit."

Paris-based sales outfit Celluloid Dreams nabbed nternational rights (outside the US) at Sundance, and then IFC made a deal for US rights in February. But Hammer told indieWIRE that, while he wasn't thrilled with the prospect of not even recouping his production budget from the deal, he was "particularly dissatisfied with the lengthy terms of the contract." All things considered, Hammer decided to walk away: "It becomes difficult to justify giving up creative control."