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Ed Burns Is Forever Indie
Edward Burns is no stranger to the world of indie film. He launched his career with the $25,000 The Brothers McMullen at the Sundance Film Festival back in 1995, during the dark, pre-digital days of 16mm cameras and now-foreign concepts like optical houses and film prints. In 2010, after seven larger-budget features as a writer-director, Burns returned to the low-budget arena with Nice Guy Johnny. He bypassed traditional distribution methods by releasing the film himself, first with a short festival tour and then with a simultaneous day-and-date rollout on VOD, DVD and Pay-Per-View. Now Burns is taking this new model even further with Newlyweds, which he produced for a staggering $9,000 sum.
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Sorry, Disney: Contraband Beats Beauty and the Beast 3-D to Number One
Crime drama Contraband had a better-than-expected opening weekend run at the box office, earning $24 million in three days and outpacing second-place finisher, Beauty and the Beast 3-D, by a substantial amount. The re-released Disney classic earned $18.4 million over the weekend—less than the 3-D release of The Lion King earned on its opening weekend last September, but still pretty good for a movie that's only one year shy of being able to buy itself alcohol.
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The Artist Comes Out on Top at the Golden Globes
At last night's Golden Globes, it was Oscar frontrunner The Artist that came out on top, winning three awards, including Best Picture—Comedy or Musical. Still, it's probably best to keep the film's name written in pencil on your Oscar ballot for now; though it was one of only two films to win multiple awards, the winner in the Best Picture—Drama category (this year, The Descendants) historically has a better chance at victory come Oscar night. Additionally, The Artist missed out in both the Best Screenplay and Best Director categories, in which Midnight in Paris and Hugo, respectively, walked away with the gold.
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Tarsem Singh Sees the Future
Cutting-edge director of Immortals embraces the middle ground with Mirror Mirror
Director Tarsem Singh is on a roll. With his international box office triumph Immortals still collecting receipts, and his newest picture, Mirror Mirror (“The Untold Adventures of Snow White”) being prepped for a March release, it’s fair to say that something is afoot in a directing career that has been “on the verge” for quite some time. Once the promising visual stylist who came out with a movie only now and then, Singh has set his sights on becoming a more constant force in moviemaking... and maybe a force to be reckoned with.
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Martin Scorsese and Steve James Pick up Nominations for the 2012 DGA Awards
Three days after receiving a Directors Guild of America (DGA) Award nomination for Hugo, Martin Scorsese has picked up another nomination from the guild, courtesy of his documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Scorsese's competition in the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary category consists notably of Steve James for The Interrupters. James' Hoop Dreams was famously snubbed by the Academy in 1995; this year, The Interrupters, despite receiving near-universal critical acclaim, was not included on the Academy's shortlist for Best Documentary nominees.
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The Ins and Outs of How to Sell a Banksy
When Christopher Thompson came across a work of art by Banksy—the infamous, anonymous street artist whose work sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars—he saw his acquisition as a twofold opportunity. First, there was a potentially huge amount of money to be made in selling the piece. Second, the effort it would take to find a buyer—getting it restored, authenticated and evaluated, all of which would require gate crashing the business world that's sprung up around the counterculture icon—would make for an interesting documentary. Four years later, co-directors Thompson and Alper Cagatay's debut film, How to Sell a Banksy, is finally complete.
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Robert Richardson’s 3-D Journey Back to the Future
Noted cinematographer gives the past a cutting-edge look in Martin Scorsese's Hugo
Martin Scorsese's Hugo takes audiences on a 3-D journey inside an underground train station in Paris during the 1930s. The story revolves around a 12-year-old orphan named Hugo, who makes a home for himself behind a wall at the station after his father dies. Hugo interacts with the owner of a small toy booth in the station, an eccentric girl, passengers on the platform and a mechanical man that his father created.
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Mark Friedberg Designs The Tempest
Mark Friedberg has served as production designer on some of the most visually striking films to come out in recent years, among them Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Julie Taymor's Beatles-infused musical Across the Universe. With his recent work on Taymor's The Tempest, Friedberg faced the challenge of rendering the magical island that serves as the locale for Shakespeare's strangest play using natural settings and locations. To celebrate the recent home video release of The Tempest, MM spoke with Friedberg about working with Taymor and creating a magical setting from a barren landscape.
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Five most anticipated films of Hollywood's worst month
Since the early 1990s, as the late season award contenders still linger in most cinemas, awaiting a surge in audiences as their prizes accumulate, a mid-winter onslaught of goofy genre fair begins to appear in cinemas the weekend after New Year's Day. The next couple of months generally become a veritable dumping ground for all sorts of sub-par studio projects, from would-be prestige films that just don't fit in the award season paradigm to other assorted misfits within the corporate conglomerates' tight-fisted slates.
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Tintin Leads the Pack in VES Awards Nominations
With all the buzz resulting from the Producers, Directors and Writers Guilds of America announcing the nominees for their respective awards, you might have missed yesterday’s announcement of the nominees for the Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards. Steven Spielberg’s performance capture epic The Adventures of Tintin was the most honored film, receiving six nominations. Among the live-action films to be honored, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and Transformers: Dark of the Moon came out on top with five nominations each.
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Directors Guild of America Announces Award Nominees
Scorsese, Hazanavicius and Fincher feel the love; Spielberg and Malick are out in the cold
The Directors Guild of America (DGA) has announced its five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film, sending Oscar prognosticators into a tizzy as they attempt to determine what effect the DGA nominations will have on the Oscar chances for both the films that received nominations and those that did not.
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The Devil Inside Triumphs at the Box Office
New release The Devil Inside beat out the competition—which consisted of a slate of nearly-a-month-old films and a few new limited releases—to come in number one at the box office, earning a rather impressive opening weekend gross of $34.5 million. Last week's number one film, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, fell to number two, and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows came in at number three. David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo held steady at number four with a weekend gross of $11.4 million.
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Writers Guild of America Announces Its 2012 Award Nominees
Tuesday saw the nominations for the 2012 Producers Guild Awards announced, and today, it's the writers' turn; the Writers Guild of America, West and the Writers Guild of America, East have announced the nominees for its 64th annual Writers Guild Awards, taking place on February 19th, 2012 in simultaneous ceremonies in Los Angeles and New York. Among the films nominated are Bridesmaids, which continues its impressive (especially for an R-rated comedy) streak of awards nominations, and Young Adult, written by Diablo Cody, who won the Writers Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2008 for Juno.
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Steven Spielberg Leads Producers Guild Award Nominations
Legendary moviemaker receives two nominations, one special achievement award
The Artist, considered by many to be a frontrunner for awards season supremacy come this February's Oscar telecast, is still going strong after being named the year's best film by multiple critics organizations. The silent French film, along with awards season favorites The Descendants and War Horse, is among the films nominated by the Producers Guild of American (PGA) for its 23rd annual Producers Guild Awards, taking place on January 21, 2012 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.
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Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol Outpaces the Competition
New Year's weekend proved to be quiet one at the box office, with Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol holding onto the number one spot for the second week running. Last week's runner-up, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, stayed in the number two position, while Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked rose one spot to number three.
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It’s Alive!: The Best in Performance Capture
Performance capture: It’s the wave of the future. This fascinating computer technology allows ordinary human actors to transform themselves into creatures or otherworldly characters that, just 15 years ago, would have been impossible to imagine. With the latest performance capture film, Steven Spielberg’s much-anticipated 3-D epic The Adventures of Tintin, hitting theaters today, MM thought it a perfect time to take a look back at our six favorite performances achieved through this ever-evolving technology.
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Movie Journalists: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
In David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, out in theaters today, Daniel Craig plays journalist Mikael Blomkvist; those who've seen the trailer (or read the book, or seen Danish director Niels Arden Oplev’s earlier film adaptation) know that he gets up to some stuff over the course of the film that they probably didn’t prepare him for in journalism school. In honor of the cinematic journalists—some good at what they do, some, er, not—from years past, MM presents our retrospective of movie journalists: The good, the bad and the ugly.
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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Fights Its Way to the Top
New release Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was able to nab the top spot at the box office, but it did so with a gross of only $40 million—substantially less than what many believed the film would rack up. Coming in second was fellow new release Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked. For Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, coming in third was rather impressive, given the movie only came out in 425 theaters; its opening weekend gross of $13.6 million gives the film a per-screen average of $32,000.
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Bah Humbug: 10 Best Anti-Christmas Movies
Tired of all the forced happiness and relentless cheer that accompanies the holiday season? You know the routine—those annoying Christmas tunes that play 24/7 (starting, of course, the day after Halloween), the well-meaning but saccharine TV specials and, of course, the sappy “feel good” holiday movies that flood the theaters this time of year? Trust us, we feel your pain. If you’re in the mood for something a little darker and edgier than the usual holiday fare, MM has the perfect cure for your Christmas woes.
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Culture and Transformation Come to the Rainforest with the Amazonas Film Festival
The Amazonas Film Festival, which took place from November 3-9, completed its eighth annual run with a rich cycle of features from around the globe. The festival takes place in the Brazilian city of Manaus, an urban island of some two million people situated right next to the Amazon rainforest, not far from where the Rio Negro and Solimões rivers join to form the Amazon River. Unique not only for its location, Amazonas distinguishes itself by focusing on a limited slate of eight feature films and just over two dozen shorts, with most screenings taking place in the majestic Teatro Amazonas, the Belle Époque opera house featured in Werner Herzog’s cult classic Fitzcarraldo.
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The Artist Leads Golden Globe Nominations
On the heels of yesterday’s announcement of the SAG Award nominees, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has today announced the nominations for the 69th annual Golden Globe Awards. Leading in nominations is The Artist, which received nods in six categories, including Best Director, Best Actor - Comedy or Musical and Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical. The Descendants and The Help, with five nominations each, weren’t far behind.
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Alex Stapleton Pays Tribute to a Hollywood Rebel
Considering her status as a first-time moviemaker, Alex Stapleton’s choice of subject matter for her debut film couldn’t be more apt. With her documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, Stapleton has constructed a tribute to the consistently revolutionary producer/director/writer Roger Corman, a man known for not only his influential body of film, but also for the importance he placed on supporting young, up-and-coming talent. The list of film icons who started their careers working with Corman is a long and impressive one that includes names like Scorsese, Coppola, Bogdanovich and Nicholson. Stapleton interviewed these moviemakers and more to make Corman’s World, which explores the impact of the legendary moviemaker and his cult film empire.
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The Help Leads the Pack with Four SAG Awards Noms
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) today announced the nominees for the 18th Annual SAG Awards, the only major awards given to actors where the nominees and winners are chosen by—wait for it—actual actors, in this case members of SAG. Coming out on top with four nominations was The Help, while The Artist—which has stepped up as an Oscar frontrunner after being named the year’s best film by the Boston Society of Film Critics, New York Film Critics Online and Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association—came in second with three nominations.
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New Year's Eve Rings in a Disappointing Weekend
New Year's Eve earned only $13.7 million in its first three days of release, but in a weekend where its only competition was a critically-disliked R-rated comedy and a month-old teen movie, it was still enough to propel the rom-com ensemble film to the number one spot. Fellow new release The Sitter earned only $10 million over the weekend, while The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 fell two spots to number three. Rounding out the top five were The Muppets and Arthur Christmas.
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Best Cinematic Little Siblings (Just Be Glad They’re Not Yours)
In David Gordon Green's The Sitter, out in theaters today, Noah Griffith (Jonah Hill) finds that buying cocaine for his girlfriend's party is made exponentially more difficult when he's babysitting three children at the same time. While it's possible for children in movies to be portrayed as adorable and innocent, it's usually more dramatic—and funnier—for them to be inveterate troublemakers. And, as any older sibling knows, no one causes more trouble than a little brother or sister. With that in mind, MM presents our list of five great movie little siblings.
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Actor Overload: Great Ensemble Casts of the Movies
Every once in a while a movie comes along with an ensemble cast so improbably spectacular that you just have to wonder who the director had to kill to get everyone on board. For Anglophiles, one such movie is Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, hitting U.S. theaters tomorrow. The spy thriller, based on the bestselling novel by John Le Carré, stars Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciarán Hinds and Tom Hardy. The film's smorgasbord of acting talent inspired us at MM to take a look at remarkable ensemble films from years past.
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Putting the Steel in Real Steel
In Real Steel, Hugh Jackman plays ex-boxer Charlie Kenton who, along with his estranged 11-year-old son, enters into the world of robotic boxing, now the standard after human boxing has been outlawed. Though Kenton starts off as a promoter for the new sport, he is faced with the additional challenges of scrounging up parts at junkyards to create his own robot—not the best way to create a quality end product. Many of the robots and robotic components for the film were designed and fabricated by San Fernando, California-based Legacy Effects, which creates live-action effects for films, commercials and television. For Legacy, no product is too small or too large.
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Spike Lee, Julie Delpy, Stephen Frears (and More!) to Premiere Films at Sundance
Following last week's dual Sundance announcements (of its competition and much of its out-of-competition lineup), the Sundance Institute has today announced the films screening in the Premieres and Documentary Premieres section of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, taking place from January 19-29 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Odgen and Sundance, Utah.
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Breaking Dawn - Part 1 Holds on to Top Spot for Third Week Running
Amidst a slew of fairly weak competition, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1's weekend gross of $16.9 million was enough to keep it in the number one spot for the third weekend in a row, despite a drop in box office receipts of nearly 60% since last weekend. So far, the movie has earned $247.2 million. The Muppets held steady in spot number two, while Martin Scorsese's Hugo rose two spots to number three. Rounding out the top five were Arthur Christmas and Happy Feet Two.
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Sundance Film Festival Announces Its 2012 Out-of-Competition Lineup
Following on the heels of yesterday’s announcement of the films selected to screen in the four competition categories of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, the Sundance Institute has announced the lineup for its out-of-competition categories: Spotlight, Park City at Midnight, NEXT <=> and New Frontier. Among the films now added to the lineup are Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim’s Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie and Aurora Guerrero’s Mosquita y Mari.
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Elizabeth Mitchell Shares Her Answers to Nothing
From playing supermodel Gia Carangi’s (Angelina Jolie) lover in Gia to her role as Juliet Burke in TV’s “Lost,” Elizabeth Mitchell has shown her talent and range as a dramatic actress. For Mitchell, the drives and desires of characters have always held a strong pull and served as the driving forces behind her preferred cinematic landscape. It was this passion that drew her to the complexities of her newest film, Answers to Nothing.
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The Countdown to Sundance Begins
The 2012 Sundance Film Festival announces films selected for its four competition categories
With less than two months to go until the annual electrification of the indie film scene that occurs courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival, the films selected for the festival's U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competition categories have been announced. Of the over 4,000 feature films submissions the festival received, only 110 were were selected; those lucky few represent 31 countries and 46 first-time moviemakers.
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Tribeca Film Festival Welcomes Frederic Boyer as New Artistic Director
Founded in 2001 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, the Tribeca Film Festival is unique in its origins: It is a film festival established to instigate the economic and cultural revitalization of lower Manhattan after the attacks on the World Trade Center while helping emerging and established moviemakers reach a broad range of viewers. A decade later, the festival has accomplished this and more, generating $725 million in economic activity for New York City and making its stamp on diversity by screening over 1,200 films from over 80 countries, attracting a widespread international audience in the process. As it nears it’s 11th year, the Festival has attracted a new artistic director as well: Veteran film festival executive Frederic Boyer.
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The Tree of Life and Beginners Split Top Honors at This Year's Gotham Independent Film Awards
It’s nearing the end of November, and awards season has begun! Last night the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) announced the winners of the 21st Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards at a star-studded ceremony in New York City. While the IFP managed to narrow down an expansive pool of excellent independent cinema to 29 nominations across seven categories, when it came time to determine the Best Feature winner, the five-person jury charged with its selection couldn't pick just one. For only the second time in Gotham's history, there was a tie, with The Tree of Life and Beginners splitting the top honor.
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Who’s Got Spirit?
2012 Independent Spirit Award nominees announced; The Artist and Take Shelter lead the pack with five each
With the Gotham Awards having taken place last night, awards season is now in full swing, and will stay that way until the Oscars air this February. For those who prefer their awards ceremonies a bit more laid-back than the evening gown- and tuxedo-filled affair that comes to the Kodak Theater annually, there's the Film Independent Spirit Awards, which honors the best in independent moviemaking. The 27th annual Spirit Awards ceremony, which will be held in a tent on the beach in Santa Monica, California, doesn't take place until February 25th—but luckily for those of you who can't get enough awards season coverage, the nominees were announced today.
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