Indie Flick

By Renee Lucas, November 29th, 2010

People who love independent films will absolutely love this gift. Based in New York City, Film Movement is a full service distributor of award-winning independent and foreign films. Its film-of-the-month-club makes it easier for independent and international movie lovers to see some of the world’s award-winning cinema, and today there is a 15 percent discount on everything on its website. Use coupon code BLACKFRIDAY2010 to get a 12-month gift subscription, which is now only $114.74 with free shipping.

Hand-held soap operas: Aaron Rose for Incase

By Jake Flanagin, November 4th, 2010

Fake Love is the second film in a series of three to be released by director Aaron Rose, all shot entirely on the iPhone 4. Using the included high definition camera, Rose has created what he calls a “teen soap opera,” with an accompanying photo essay also shot using the iPhone 4.

TomTom goes ‘back to the future’ with TRON

By Jake Flanagin, October 28th, 2010

Los Angeles-based jewelry label TomTom is set to release a collection of futuristic pieces inspired by the world of TRON – a 1982 classic, science fiction film set in a universe of virtual reality. The line will be a collaboration between TomTom and Walt Disney Pictures, as part of a promotional campaign for Disney’s upcoming December 17th release of TRON: Legacy in theaters, the next chapter in the film franchise.

Trailer: I’m Still Here

By Eva Medoff, August 17th, 2010

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard of Joaquin Phoenix’s descent into madness, aka performance art. Whether or not Phoenix really did intend to retire from acting, grow a Zach Galifianakis beard and embark on a rap career (or simply engage in some sort of public prank), there’s still a documentary following the whole spectacle, I’m Still Here, directed by Phoenix’s brother-in-law Casey Affleck. And now, a ridiculous, vaguely philosophical teaser trailer has arrived to whet our appetites (watch after the jump). We’re just wondering whether it’s worth seeing for sheer camp value.

Trailer: Serge Gainsbourg Biopic

By Eva Medoff, August 16th, 2010

The trailer for the Serge Gainsbourg biopic, simply titled, Gainsbourg, has hit the Internet. With frightfully dramatic, stereotypical instrumental music and appearances from all the key players (Bardot, Birkin), the clip is an ostentatious, deliciously over the top rendering of the life of the French musician. While we can’t say this is dramatic gold (perhaps the story of a musician who rises out of despair into a life of wild success and hedonism has been told one too many times), it certainly looks like great fun.

What’s Happening This Week

By Eva Medoff, August 9th, 2010

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

Netflix This: An Unmarried Woman

By Eva Medoff, August 9th, 2010

If you were born after 1978, the year An Unmarried Woman came out, then chances are you haven’t even heard of it. And yet, in some ways, you have. If you’ve ever seen any movie about a divorcée, a middle-aged, single woman or a group of friends liberated by their own independence, then you’ve seen bits and pieces of An Unmarried Woman. But more than the story of a woman whose husband leaves her for a younger woman (which it is), the movie is also a quintessential New York film, marveling in the street-scapes and the pulse of the city nearly as much as its characters. A predecessor to Sex and the City? You could sat that.

What’s Happening This Week

By Eva Medoff, August 2nd, 2010

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

What’s Happening This Week

By Eva Medoff, July 26th, 2010

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

Trailer: Howl

By Eva Medoff, July 15th, 2010

If James Franco has been surfing a wave towards a mixture of high brow avant garde figure and A list movie star, then Howl is the climax of his transformation. Franco plays Allen Ginsberg in a movie based on the poet’s most famous work and the beat writers surrounding it. It’s the 50s, and the social tides are just beginning to churn: the Howl is deemed profane and a lawsuit seeks to block its distribution. Jon Hamm takes a turn as Ginsberg’s defense attorney Jake Ehrlich, while Mary Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels and David Strathairn play the squares (the latter two appear in Good Night and Good Luck, a movie that shares the same beautiful black and white cinematography). If it feels a bit similar to Milk, that’s because it is: the filmmaker’s directed the documentary on which that film was based. Excited yet?

The Kids are All Right: A Review

By Eva Medoff, July 13th, 2010

The Kids Are All Right, the first mainstream feature from indie director Lisa Cholodenko, is getting rave reviews from nearly every media outlet. So you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that this review is a positive one. Walking into the film, we already expected to love it, for two reasons: we’re beyond obsessed with Cholodenko’s last effort, Laurel Canyon, and we’re wont to over-expose ourselves to trailers and reviews (and thus, the good vibes). Cholodenko has an almost supernatural ability to strike realistic dialogue and turn somewhat small, quiet and yet infinitely tangled human experiences into riveting character studies. With solid performances from Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Mia Wasikowska, there was really no way this film could fail.

What’s Happening This Week

By Eva Medoff, July 12th, 2010

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

Trailer: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

By Eva Medoff, July 9th, 2010

The trailer is out (with Spanish subtitles, no less) for Woody Allen’s latest neurotic, intellectual, adulterous ensemble cast romantic comedy (though this one takes place in London, not New York), You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. And with Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones and Slumdog’s Frieda Pinto, the cast isn’t too shabby. The story follows two couples with shaky marriages. The elder husband leaves his wife, prompting her to seek out the advice of a fortune teller (hence, the title), while Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin’s characters seek some fun outside their union. Crazy, tangled love mix ups? Check. Older men attracted to younger women? Check. Must be a Woody Allen film. Read on for the trailer.

Let Me In Trailer

By Eva Medoff, July 6th, 2010

The trailer for the American remake of the Swedish childhood goth love story Let the Right One In, changed to Let Me In, is finally out. Yes, vampires are the theme, but Twilight this is not. For one thing, the subjects haven’t yet hit puberty, and for another, the targeted audience is not hormonal teens, but adults. And this time, the vampire isn’t the guy, but the girl. The pint-sized assassin from Kick Ass, Chloe Moretz, takes the lead as said vampire, while the kid from The Road, Kodi Smit-McPhee, plays her human counterpart (the fabulous Richard Jenkins rounds out the cast). Film buffs who idolized the dark original film are already nervous about this American adaptation, and we’re a bit worried too. The trailer seems to focus more on action and gore than the actual relationship; watch it after the jump and let us know what you think.

Winter’s Bone: A Review

By Eva Medoff, July 1st, 2010

Winter’s Bone is a meticulous film. The slightly grungy look of the light, as if there’s a dirty filter in front of the lens coloring the world slightly yellow and altogether less hopeful, is meticulous. The faces of the secondary characters, worn and mean and looking like they don’t quite belong in this century, are meticulous. Jennifer Lawrence, who plays our heroine, Ree Dolly, is meticulous because she walks around in jeans nearly worn through at the knee, teaches her siblings how to skin squirrels and spits when she’s angry. Although Winter’s Bone takes place in modern day, it feels like an entirely different world. The Missouri that 17-year-old Ree inhabits is a place where broken down cars are collectibles, cooking meth is a common profession and people refer to family members as “kin.”

I Am Love: A Review

By Eva Medoff, June 28th, 2010

We’ll admit it: drawn in by the visually lush scenery and hypnotizing Mad Men-esque clothes in I Am Love’s trailer, we assumed the film took place sometime in the mid-century. Something like A Single Man with Tilda Swinton, in Italian. But when Swinton’s character carefully handled a plastic CD case, we we’re pulled out of a period lull into the modern day. Such a realization, one third of the way into a film, can be disorienting; but like the sexual and philosophical liberation that Swinton’s character undergoes, the change seemed to pull the movie into a whole new realm. I Am Love is part family saga (The Godfather, without the crime), part foodie film (Julie and Julia, with eroticism) and part feminist manifesto (insert any movie involving a housewife and an affair). But because this film has Swinton, who blossoms from a shyly prim rose into the stark, avant garde crane we usually see on the red carpet, it manages to rise above any cliched plot points.

What’s Happening This Week

By Eva Medoff, June 28th, 2010

Have You Heard?

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

What’s Happening This Week

By Eva Medoff, June 21st, 2010

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

Trailer: Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere

By Eva Medoff, June 15th, 2010

While Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette was something of a “love it or hate it” experience, we were in the “totally worship it and listen to the soundtrack every day” category. That’s why it’s so momentous that the trailer for her followup, Somewhere, is finally out. This returns to more of a Lost in Translation vibe, which is fine by us. Stephen Dorff plays a melancholy bad boy actor whose life is meaningless until his adolescent daughter, played by Elle Fanning (yes, the Fannings are taking over the world) is dumped on his doorstep. The trailer is a quiet exploration of this situation, with suitably lo-fi music from Julian Casablancas and the emotional imagery that Coppola does so well. Enjoy it after the jump—and hold your breath until December when it comes out.

What’s Happening This Week

By Eva Medoff, June 14th, 2010

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

A Review: Ondine

By Eva Medoff, June 14th, 2010

Fairy tales aren’t just for children. Or at least, that’s what director Neil Jordan wants us to believe with his new film, Ondine. Starring the brilliant Colin Farrell and his real-life love Alicja Bachleda, Ondine tells the story of a down-on-his-luck fisherman who pulls a woman from the water in his net. She might be an almost-victim of drowning, or she might be a selkie: the Irish version of a mermaid, who takes the form of a seal underwater and a woman on land. Amidst a backdrop of ocean, sky and land so similar in color it’s hard to tell the difference, not only does this possibility seem plausible, but likely.

Netflix this: My Own Private Idaho

By Eva Medoff, June 8th, 2010

Watching My Own Private Idaho, it’s easy to see the predecessor of the modern day hipster. The 1991 film, a follow up to Gus Van Sant’s professional breakthrough with Drugstore Cowboy, is about hustlers on the streets of Portland who wear dirty old boots, aviators and motorcycle jackets. The only difference between them and their modern descendants, perhaps, is that they also live in decrepit, abandoned hotels, exploit their bodies and are actually able to smoke inside diners. But the movie is much more than its setting or its fashion. It’s also a remake of Shakespeare’s Henry the V, a tale of unrequited love and, most of all, an examination of vulnerability: River Phoenix’s character is narcoleptic, leaving him at the mercy of his body and brain wherever he goes.

What’s Happening This Week…

By Eva Medoff, June 1st, 2010

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

Los Angeles Film Fest Tickets on Sale

By Eva Medoff, June 1st, 2010

This year, the Los Angeles Film Festival is a study in inclusion. There’s something for everyone: the witty family dramedy The Kids are All Right from indie queen Lisa Cholodenko, computer-animated Despicable Me representing the Pixar generation, Jonah Hill and John C. Reilly’s dark comedy, Cyrus, for those of the Apatow persuasion and, of course, the world premier of tween dreams, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. While we can’t say that LAFF has the pure recognition value of, say, Cannes, we think this roster might turn some heads—and tickets, on sale today, are sure to be a hot commodity.

Netflix This: Laura

By Eva Medoff, May 28th, 2010

Film noir is a term that’s tossed around a lot. Several recent movies have been championed as the return of the genre, but with the exception of Joseph Gordon Levitt’s brilliant high school caper Brick, we haven’t seen anything to touch the likes of Chinatown or The Big Sleep. One sometimes overlooked addition to the field is the 1944 film Laura. Directed by Otto Preminger and starring two similarly overlooked actors, Dana Andrews (a leading man also known for the excellent post-war film The Best Years of Our Lives who lost most of his career to alcoholism) and Gene Tierney (a classic beauty along the lines of Ingrid Bergman who lost most of her career to mental illness) the movie is an excellent example of the plot twists, intrigue and intense emotions of film noir.