Slamdance »

1. Twiddle thumbs while waiting for bidding wars to break out -- So Senator Entertainment has already landed domestic distribution for Antoine Fuqua's cop drama, Brooklyn's Finest (they'll probably do right by it and sit it on a shelf right next to All the Boys Love Mandy Lane); now, it's just a matter of waiting for Fox Searchlight to snatch up their next sleeper in waiting, and for either Focus or Paramount Vantage to pick up the rights to something they can't quite turn a profit on *cough1* *cough2*. Modest comfort comes in the form of Searchlight already planning a late-summer release for 500 Days of Summer, and of Sony Pictures Classics reportedly calling dibs on Sam Rockwell's sci-fi drama, Moon. Keep those ears and eyes open, folks.

2. Monitor some seriously similar, sometimes simultaneous Twitter action -- For starters, there's our crew: Snider, then Davis, then Rocchi, and (lastly but not least-ly) new convert Weinberg. Then you have the Onion folks, your CHUD, the IFC one-two, the Spout reps, our HitFix homies, not to mention your /Film and your Film School Rejects and your First Showing (these fellas happen to be sharing accommodations, so expect much echo). Daily posts? Facebook status updates? Please. With a minute-by-minute play-by-play, who needs to go outdoors?

Not long ago I wrote about a movie premiering at the Slamdance Film Festival called Spooner, starring Matthew Lillard, and during said post I mentioned that Spooner director (and Cinematical friend) Drake Doremus had previously written and directed an awesome short film called The Shirt back in 2006. Unfortunately at the time The Shirt was not available to watch online, but earlier today Drake read the post and was cool enough to throw the short up on YouTube so that you fine Cinematical readers can enjoy its beautiful absurdity. What's it about? It's about this dude who's trying to find the kind of shirt that will change his life. We'll let you know how Spooner turned out a bit later in the week, so for now check out The Shirt below and the trailer for Spooner (find info on how to purchase Slamdance tix over here) after the jump.

WARNING: This short contains foul language and two brief sexual acts, but no nudity.

Talk all you want about Sundance, but some of my favorite films often come out of the Slamdance Film Festival, Sundance's illegitimate dorky little half-cousin. While Sundance features clean, glamorous "message movies" starring people you're very familiar with, Slamdance films are a little rough around the edges; cultish with a touch of fanboyish flavor. Oh, and their docs are always very good. Last year saw Dear Zachary come out of Slamdance, and the year before was The King of Kong. One of the docs entering the 2009 Slamdance Film Fest with a little buzz behind it is Zombie Girl: The Movie, a doc about a 12-year-old girl who attempts to make her own feature-length zombie flick. Not only is it ridiculously hard to make your own feature-length film on a shoestring budget (I know from experience), but imagine if it was a horror movie ... and you were 12. Check out the trailer below, and learn more about Zombie Girl: The Movie over on its official website.




Check out the Spooner trailer after the jump ...

Every year during the Sundance Film Festival, there's another quieter festival doing its thing in Park City called Slamdance. Both fests run at the same time, though one is this really big, stylish, celebrity-spottin' hip-to-be-seen scene, while the other is a warm, welcoming place to settle down with friends and take in some quality independent entertainment. Needless to say, though they're both located in the same neighborhood, these are two very different festivals -- different vibes, different venues, different merch. And although we here at Cinematical primarily cover Sundance, we will try to get to as many Slamdance flicks as we can come January.

Speaking of, the fest just announced their slate for 2009 and it includes some fine-looking little nuggets. Among some of the flicks enjoying their world premiere are the new one from those Broken Lizard dudes, The Slammin' Salmon, about an owner of a restaurant who, indebted to the mob, decides to hold a contest to see which waiter can earn the most money in one night. Also on the sched is Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead, a wacky-sounding opening night flick called I Sell the Dead, and a bunch more. Check out the list of films (along with descriptions) after the jump, then let us know which ones you want us to review for you from Park City.

For more on Slamdance '09, click here.

Despite having previously established my feelings about this weekend's Quarantine, I must confess a new willingness to give it a fair shot later tonight. Regardless, this week's Cinematical Seven is all about first-person horror movies, with a couple of oh-so-subjective stipulations:

• We're leaving The Blair Witch Project (1999) out of this. It might not have been the first of these movies, but it was undeniably the most successful and influential. There are only seven slots here, and I feel like everyone has already made clear whether they find this scary or just stupid (I fall in the former grouping, though I say this having not seen the flick since my teens). If you still feel the need to take BWP to task, comment away.
• Also omitted will be The Last Broadcast (1998), which drew mild controversy at the time of its release for its similarity to Blair Witch. I'm only not writing about it because the copy of it sitting just over on my shelf here has remained unwatched. My bad.
• The previous film by the guys behind Quarantine is The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007), which -- being in the hands of the Weinsteins -- has not yet seen the light of day beyond a couple of festivals. Having not attended any of said festivals myself, I'll just sit here and guess that it'll get dumped to DVD (probably under the Dimension Extreme label), and not any earlier than next year at that.

Now, on with the list...

With five nominations, it looks like Superbad will be the star of the 2008 MTV Movie Awards, and its three jubilant male leads -- Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse -- deserve the kudos. But one major talent behind the whole affair has stayed relatively anonymous while these young up-and-comers bathe in the spotlight: Director Greg Mottola. The erstwhile independent filmmaker, responsible for some of the best installments of Arrested Developed and Undeclared, launched his career a solid decade before the rise of Judd Apatow with a charming little low budget comedy called The Daytrippers. Starring Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, Parker Posey and a host of other fantastic character actors, the film follows a wildly dysfunctional family over the course of a single day, as Davis, playing a worrisome housewife, tries to track down her unfaithful husband (Tucci).

Mixing warm humanity with pitch-perfect screwball timing, Daytrippers marked the sort of debut that told you a filmmaker had a big career ahead of him. After a modest premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival, it landed at Cannes, barely got a theatrical release and promptly vanished thereafter. Mottola turned to TV work, and slipped out of the film scene for a good ten years. These days, it's no easy task to track down Daytrippers on DVD -- you can nab second-hand copies on Amazon for decent rates, but not a single retail outlet carries it. Aside from the occasionally airings on cable, the movie has vanished.

My favorite part of attending a film festival comes when you discover a smaller film that hits you in a way that almost forces you to throw up everything you know about the flick whenever someone asks. They could be, like, "So, how ya feeling today?" And then you can't help but answer, "I'm good ... but you HAVE to see this friggin' film. It's called (insert the title) and it's unbelievable -- easiest the best thing I've seen in the history of best things I've seen ... times a gabillion!"

Okay, maybe you don't flip out like that -- but you get the idea. So far this year I've hit up Sundance, Slamdance and SXSW, with plans to soon visit the Gen Art Film Festival here in New York, as well as Tribeca soon after. Thankfully, I've seen two films that absolutely rocked my world, and if I could use every other post just to write about them -- in the hopes all of you will go see these films, and champion them -- I would. But I can't. So from time to time, I will pop in, mention the titles and hope something sticks. As of right now, these are the two films I am championing this year: The Hottie and the Nottie and ... just kidding. Kidding, people. I'm KIDDING! God! Chill out.

AnyWAY, here are the two films: Dear Zachary: a letter to a son about his father (Slamdance) and The Promotion (SXSW). The first is a gripping, tear-jerker of a documentary from a very cool dude named Kurt Kuenne. Alex from First Showing went to see Zachary at SXSW on my recommendation and it blew him away. It will blow you away. Fingers crossed a deal comes soon ... and you bet I'll be back telling you all about it.

The Promotion, on the other hand, is all the way on the other end of the spectrum. It's a comedy. A dry comedy ... where Seann William Scott plays the straight man -- go figure. Not sure if the Weinstein Co. know they have a little gem in their basket; hopefully Kirk Honeycutt didn't scare them stupid. This one is set to come out on June 6, so make sure you're there.

Which films are you absolutely nutty about this year -- to the point where you stop random strangers in the street to tell them all about it?

I have a big "Park City genre report" on the way, but here's some good news that has forced me to jump the gun just a little bit. One of the coolest surprises I saw last week was a Slamdance entry called Paranormal Activity. Now, being that I'm a ravenous horror nerd, I'd already heard (and read) a little bit about the flick -- and I was aware that there was strongly positive buzz from the hardcore horror hounds -- but I wasn't really prepared for how quietly, confidently creepy the flick would be.

I won't spoil anything, but I will say that Paranormal Activity is a great little horror flick, and it sure looks like the people at DreamWorks agree with the horror press. According to Variety, DW has acquired all domestic and remake rights to Paranormal Activity, which basically means we'll see a solid DVD release for the original, and a glossier remake that's not bad, but not as good as the original. The horror fans get two movies, everyone involved gets paid, and it's a nice story all around. Score one for the little guy who made a good movie. (Feel free to check out Kim's review here, and my full review right here.)

Congrats, Oren!

When it comes to mockumentary type films, there are basically two kinds: good and bad; there's just not a lot of middle-ground with this particular type of filmmaking. Paranormal Activity, which showed at Slamdance, the wild and crazy drunk cousin to the Sundance Film Festival, falls squarely into the "good" camp -- particularly if your definition of "good" includes "will scare the pants off you" and "I had to sleep with the lights on after watching it."

The central idea of the film is that it purports to show actual footage of, well, paranormal activity, in the home of the two protagonists, Katie and Micah, who are living their normal lives until weird things begin happening in their home. Katie, who believes she's been haunted by an invisible, malevolent being since childhood, fears it's followed her to her new home. Micah isn't quite convinced there's anything unexplainable going on, but he purchases a video camera to record their room at night, in an attempt to capture on film any paranormal activity and try to make sense of it. When the camera actually does capture some weird happenings, Micah is at first rather excited by what they have on film; as things escalate, through, both Katie and Micah fear that the entity haunting Katie could turn violent -- or even deadly.

You've already read the 378,000 posts we filed before, during and after this year's Sundance Film Festival, but now I'm back to let you know what we left on the cutting room floor! What was going on when the Cinematical team wasn't watching movies or writing about them? Where were we, who were we with and why did someone bring a farm animal with them? Fear not, I'm kidding -- no farm animals were brought to Sundance (and if they were, whoever brought them kept the things hidden pretty well). So here's some of what was left out of our coverage:

-- While watching a Slamdance screener at one in the morning, Erik got pissed off, woke up James and asked him why films set in New York City never feature characters who have New York accents, with the exception of racist cops, gangsters or angry taxi drivers. James agreed. Erik then went off on Boston, and how every film set in Boston needs to feature the Bahston accent -- but, for some reason, the New York accent always gets dissed. James and Erik agreed to write Spider-Man Begins, featuring Peter Parker with a thick New York accent (he grew up in Queens, after all).

-- At four in the morning at some point over the weekend, James woke up Erik to tell him he was snoring. Erik spazzed out because he thought he was being mugged by a giant. From then on out -- and because of his freakishly large shadow -- James referred to himself as the Cloverfield monster whenever he had a few drinks in him. In fact, while outside on a balcony with Michael Pitt, James actually referred to himself as the Cloverfield monster. Everyone laughed.