The Oscar-nominated short film 9, created by Shane Acker, is currently being adapted into a full-length film by Focus Features. The film adaptation is produced by Tim Burton, with top-caliber actors providing voice talent (including Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly and Crispin Glover).
The original short film on YouTube
The trailer for the Burton-backed film adaptation
Director Gus Van Sant has kept himself busy making half-hearted, pseudo artsy fartsy movies for the past few years. Hopefully this will be his return to form. The synopsis for Milk , as provided by Apple’s trailer site:
Academy Award nominee Gus Van Sant directs Academy Award winner Sean Penn as gay rights icon Harvey Milk. Mr. Milk (1930-1978) was an activist and politician, and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in America; in 1977, he was voted to the city supervisors’ board of San Francisco. The following year, both he and the city’s mayor George Moscone were shot to death by another city supervisor, Dan White. Mr. Milk was previously the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary feature “The Times of Harvey Milk,” but “Milk” – filmed on location in San Francisco – is the first non-documentary feature to explore the man’s life and career.
Trailer: http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/milk/
Milk opens November 26, 2008.
According to NYMag:
The script is 165 pages long and follows a squad of American soldiers called the Bastards — a guerrillalike force who travel behind German lines in 1944, striking terror into the hearts of Nazi soldiers. The Bastards are headed by Lieutenant Aldo Raine — the role we’d imagine Tarantino is hoping to land Brad Pitt for — described by the script as a “hillbilly from the mountains of Tennessee,” who has around his neck a scar from where he survived a lynching. (”The scar will never once be mentioned,” Tarantino writes.) In a parallel story, Inglorious Bastards follows a French Jewish teenager named Shosanna who survives the massacre of her family and flees to Paris, where she winds up running a movie house during the Nazi occupation.
The film will, presumably, go into production very soon if Quentin’s promise of a Cannes debut next year is to be believed.
It’s always a shame to see a promising documentary setup fumbled in the execution, and unfortunately, Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot is a shining example of fumbled execution. Director Adam Yauch (better known as MCA of the Beastie Boys) divides the running time of his hoops doc into three interweaving parts: telling the back stories of eight talented young basketball players vying for a shot at the big time, exposing the seedy underbelly of professional basketball’s scouting process, and showing footage of the aforementioned hoopsters battling it out at the Elite 24 Hoops Classic in Rucker Park. While each of these parts is compelling in its own right, Gunnin’s problem lies in its inability to explore each with sufficient depth or complexity.
Director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) interviews a plethora of subjects for this highly-anticipated bio doc on the life of Hunter S. Thompson. Narrated by Johnny Depp. Of course.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson opens this Friday, July 4 in limited release.
Old but certainly still good, this short was written and filmed by Miranda July shortly after the completion of her first feature film, the excellent Me and You and Everyone We Know. Starring John C. Reilly, Mike White, July herself, and Chuy Chavez (the Director of Photography on Me and You), the 3:45 short film asks the question, “Are you the favorite person of anybody?”
In Kabluey, Salmon (played by writer/director Scott Prendergast) moves in with his sister-in-law (Lisa Kudrow) to help raise his ill-tempered nephews while his brother serves in Iraq. To make ends meet, he takes a job as a giant blue corporate mascot attempting to sell office space in a nearly-empty office building, and quickly finds that having a secret identity has its advantages.
So maybe the trailer isn’t so great, but the film has a very positive buzz coming off of the festival circuit, with some suggesting Kabluey could be this year’s ‘Little Indie Film That Could’ in the vein of My Big Fat Greek Wedding or Little Miss Sunshine.
Kabluey opens in New York this Friday, July 4, with an expanding limited release to follow.
When Did You Last See Your Father? is a poignant (but ultimately forgettable) account of the rocky lifelong relationship between a father and son. The acting is solid and the story is sound, but director Anand Tucker focuses too much on the less interesting elements of the father-son relationship and never delves deeply enough into the fascinating ones. Tucker orchestrates a symphonic tugging of heart strings that is incredibly effective, but so pitch-perfect it has the unintended side effect of making the film feel contrived.
When Did You Last See Your Father? is rated PG-13 and currently in limited release.
Fox has secured the North American rights to distribute S. Darko , the upcoming sequel to the grossly-overrated 2001 cult favorite Donnie Darko . Daviegh Chase will reprise her role as Donnie’s younger sister, who is now 18, and on a roadtrip with her friend when she becomes ‘plauged by bizarre visions’. Chris Fisher, who previously directed the critically-acclaimed Nightstalker and the beloved classic, Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders , will helm. Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly is not involved in the production of the sequel. The film’s budget is set at $10 million and will begin filming May 18.
Source: Donnie Darko sequel S. Darko starts shooting May 18 - ScreenDaily.com
Super High Me sounds interesting on paper. “Stoner comedian Doug Benson abstains from marijuana for 30 days and then consumes a large quantity of the drug for 30 days.” Ohhhhh man, right? Alas, all you really learn from the experiment is that Doug Benson likes marijuana.
Vignettes that build a case for federally de-criminalizing medical marijuana add some gravitas to the proceedings, but the film undercuts its own argument by exploiting a doctor’s signature for a decidedly non-medical purpose.
Super High Me is rated R and begins screening nationwide on April 20 (heh).
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