Few movies slated to be released in 2013 are as highly anticipated as Ridley Scott's The Counselor. It stars an amazing cast (Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, to name a few), it's helmed by a very talented director, and is based on a script by Cormac McCarthy (The Road, No Country for Old Men).
Terri held the honor of the Centerpiece Film at the San Francisco International Film Festival this year. It's directed by Azazel Jacobs, written by Patrick DeWitt and stars John C. Reilly, Creed Bratton and Jacob Wysocki. Terri first screened at Sundance and had locked down distribution even before that. During my time at the SFIFF, I was lucky enough to catch up with Azazel and Creed to talk to them about their film. Check it out below.
Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower was one of the most talked about films at SFIFF 54. I personally loved the film, read my review here. It’s a powerful portrait of human-trafficking and government cover ups that took place in Bosnia in the early 2000s. It’s gritty and compelling, and you should definitely check it out. Larysa sat down with me to discuss her film. She talks about how she found the story, casting the film, the real life Kathy Bolkovac and much, much more. Here’s what she had to say.
Watching The Whistleblower is not an easy experience. It's a bit like getting kicked in the stomach. While it's based on a true story, the story of Kathryn Bolkovac, it's even more unnerving to hear director Larysa Kondracki speak about how she had to tone down the remarkable turn of events to make it believable at all.
The idea of telling very complex and adult stories through the eyes of children has a lot of promise. Especially if the filmmakers take children seriously and don't write them off as incapable emotionally and intellectually. This is what Romain Goupil tried to do with his latest film Hands Up, for which he also wrote the original screenplay. Unfortunately, the film falls short of the device's potential.
Terri (Jacob Wysocki) is a morbidly obese young man in high school who has recently decided to stop wearing anything but pajamas to school. It's clear he has stopped trying to fit in at a place he will never be able to. Principal Fitzgerald (Reilly) takes an interest in the socially deteriorating Terri and begins meeting with him on a weekly basis.
Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris is currently on the festival circuit with his new film Tabloid, about a former Ms. Wyoming who may or may not have kidnapped a Mormon missionary, chained him up in a 'love cottage' for three days and raped him. At least that is one version of the story out of many. What I do know is that I couldn't be more excited about Tabloid.
Recently, Mr. Morris sat down with me at Hotel Huntington in San Francisco and let me pick his brain about the project. His long time collaborator and producer of the film, Julie Bilson Ahlberg, was also in attendance. Check it out below.
It's difficult to label what the group that the film Sound of Noise follows does. I guess it could be called art. Or music. But it's closer to terrorism at first glance. Not so much the kind with religious endorsement. While dangerous, no one dies and no one blows themselves up on a bus. But it does invite a fair amount of chaos and there's a humorous element to it as well.
Amadeus (Bengt Nelsson) is a tone deaf police officer. He's the child of very successful classical musicians, and his little brother Oscar is a world famous conductor. Amadeus hates music. One day he's called on to the scene of a crashed and abandoned van that is ticking, next to an embassy. A bomb is the feared reality, but it turns out to only be a metronome. Next, Amadeus is called to a hospital, where a man staying there had been wheeled into an operation room by a group of six people dressed like surgeons only to be gased, and used as an instrument.
When I told a movie buff friend of mine I would be attending SFIFF, I asked him if there were any movies he thought I should pay attention to. Among the films he listed, he mentioned Alejandro Chomski's Asleep in the Sun saying ,"the Argentines often start with artiness and inexplicably end up with real art." I'm surprised as how well that description fits the film.
The setting is the serene and idyllic 1950s, where Lucio (Luis Machín) works as a watchmaker in his childhood home he inherited at his parent's passing. He lives there with his wife Diana (Esther Goris) whom he adores to no end. She's troubled, however with unnamed mental illness. She is overly preoccupied with dogs and overly attached to a professor named Standle (Enrique Piñeyro), whom she visits frequently. Noticing her condition, Standle approached Lucio suggesting that she visits a "phrenopathic" clinic which will cure her in a matter of days, not over weeks, months, or years. Lucio resists, as he's been separated from her before during hospitalizations in an attempt to get well. But he eventually gives in, and Diana goes willingly, and with hope.
Tabloid tells, without a doubt, the most batshit crazy, strangest story I think I've ever heard told in documentary form. My jaw dropped during the first few minutes of the film, and I remained in an entertained state of shock throughout the remainder. Errol Morris, who directed Tabloid is coming off his last film, the extremely poorly received Standard Operating Procedure, and he has firmly reminded us all why he's an Academy Award-winning director.
