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Darren Aronofsky and Mila Kunis Reveal Their Dark Sides
By Joe Leydon
So what’s it all about? Well, like Pi, his 1998 breakthrough indie feature, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is a drama about an obsessive protagonist poised on the brink of madness while pursuing perfection. Like Requiem for a Dream (2000), his critically acclaimed sophomore effort, Aronofsky’s latest film focuses on the desperate frenzy of a character whose fantasies are intruding on reality. And like The Wrestler (2008), his sentimentally gritty tale of a has-been grappler who repeatedly returns to the ring, Aronofsky’s much buzzed-about drama about a ballerina who gets in touch with her dark side is the story of an artist who quite literally suffers for the sake of art.
20 Coolest Film Festivals: 2010
By Jennifer M. Wood
After all the postcard printing, press pandering and promo piece plastering you do in preparation for a festival screening, sometimes you just want to have a little fun. So take a seat for 20 of the world’s coolest film fests.
David O. Russell Takes On The Fighter
by Aaron Hillis
From his darkly comic take on incest (Spanking the Monkey) to the neurotic quest for a man’s biological parents (Flirting with Disaster), a wild Gulf War action-satire (Three Kings) and an absurdist farce about philosophy itself (I ♥ Huckabees), the films of Spirit Award-winner David O. Russell are too idiosyncratic, ambitious and sharp-witted to make us wait six years for the next to arrive. But indeed we have, and at first glance, what’s most surprising about the boxing biopic The Fighter is that it’s Russell’s first directorial effort where he didn’t also write the script.
127 Hours with Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy and Christian Colson
By Eric Kohn
Many people are familiar with the amazing survival tale of Aron Ralston, the mountain climber whose life was irrevocably changed in 2003, when his arm became trapped under a boulder for five days until he managed to amputate it with a dull knife. Now the subject of Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours, an adaptation of Ralston’s 2004 memoir, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, the ordeal has been turned into an uplifting adventure-thriller starring James Franco.
Shana Feste’s Nanny Diaries
By Joe Leydon
Like many (if not most) moviemakers before her, Shana Feste—writer-director of The Greatest and the forthcoming Country Strong—relied heavily on diligent networking to launch her career. The big difference in Feste’s case is that she went about the business of making contacts while minding babies. Babies, that is, with parents in the right places.
Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful Life
by Peter N. Chumo II
Over the course of just three feature films, Alejandro González Iñárritu has established himself as an international director whose work addresses both social issues and the most personal yearnings of the human soul. Conceived with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, these films have examined how chance and accident connect disparate characters in surprising and heartbreaking ways
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