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Issue #82 [Summer 2009]

25 Coolest Film Festivals: 2009
By Jennifer M. Wood
Depending on the era in which one grew up, what is “cool” can be a very different thing. But whether you watched James Dean on the big screen, were introduced to cinema through Quentin Tarantino or believe that great movies begin and end with Michael Bay, “cool” cinema takes us beyond the expected, captures the zeitgeist and changes the way we view the films that come along for us afterward. The same can be said for the 25 film festivals profiled below. With the help of hundreds of independent moviemakers, festival directors and fest attendees, we scoured the world to identify more than two dozen fests that are creating a truly unique film festival experience (for moviemakers and festival-goers).

Michael Mann Takes a Shot in the Dark
By Phillip Williams
Set mostly in Depression era Chicago, the picture, an adaptation of Bryan Burrough’s nonfiction book, follows the attempts of FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Bale) to hunt down notorious criminals John Dillinger (Depp), Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) and Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum).

Stuart Beattie: Screenwriter Revivalist
by Ryan Stewart
Sienna Miller should get an Oscar for the heels she wears in this film,” Stuart Beattie jokes of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra’s sultry villainess, who he says “runs around doing the same [action] stuff as the guys, but in heels. She’s amazing.”

Armando Iannucci Goes In the Loop
by Armando Iannucci
I‘ve always wanted to make a comedy. Ever since I sat in crowded cinemas and laughed at Annie Hall, Airplane!, This is Spinal Tap and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I’ve wanted to make grown-ups laugh with large groups of strangers in a darkened room. I knew I wanted to make a screwball comedy; a fast-talking, unstoppable burst of one-liners and sharp-mouthed characters. It was a tall order, of course; you need a good story for one of those.

(500) Days of Summer, Irony and Parentheses
by Scott Neustadter
On July 22, 2001—a Sunday if I’m not mistaken (and I’m not)—sometime between the hours of 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time), a monumental, cataclysmic, earth-shattering event took place in a restaurant in midtown Manhattan: I got dumped.

Lynn Shelton Celebrates Humpday
by Lynn Shelton
This year has been a bit surreal for me. Humpday is my third feature and the first of mine to be accepted into the Sundance Film Festival. I made the film on a shoestring budget in Seattle, the town where I live, with talented, wonderful friends whom I love—just as I have made my previous two movies.

On the Eve of Adam
by Max Mayer
In late November of 2008, I found out that Adam, the film I’d spent most of the past two years and parts of the previous four writing and directing, had been accepted into the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Park Chan-Wook's Thirst for a Great Vampire Movie
By Eric Kohn
Writer-director Park Chan-wook has emerged as one of the most provocative moviemakers of the last decade. Although not limited to the genre, his explicit horror movies—such as Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance—transcend the boundaries of such narratives by way of elegant camerawork and stories grounded in credible humanity. Chan-wook’s latest feature, Thirst, follows a well-meaning Catholic priest (Song Kang-ho) who is accidentally stricken with a disease that turns him into a vampire. As he slowly gives into his newfound desires, cultivating a deadly relationship with a curious young girl, the character’s plight becomes a fascinating symbol for human vices.

Adam Yauch’s Sure Shot
By Andrew Gnerre
We’ve all been indoctrinated—by inside sources, “Entourage” and Harvey Weinstein—into thinking we know how studio heads are supposed to act. Firing people for mis-hearing a lunch order, assaulting bystanders with an inexhaustible stockpile of profanities and barely getting by with blood pressure so high it would make Dick Cheney blush. But Adam Yauch must not have been paying attention.

A Decade Under the Influence of The Blair Witch Project
by Daniel Myrick
January evening in 1999, standing in front of the Egyptian Theatre in Park City, Utah, as the line of moviegoers snaked around the side of the building, I remember thinking, ‘Do I really want to witness this?’ It’s tough enough for me to sit through one of my own screenings with an unsuspecting audience, but when you’re told that the room is packed with potential buyers as well, the typical butterflies tickling your stomach quickly morph into screaming pterodactyls.

The Private Lives of Zoe Kazan
by Julie Jacobs
Butterflies in the stomach rarely plague Zoe Kazan who, unlike many actors, looks forward to the auditioning process. “I’m a very ‘take the bull by the horns’ type of person,” says the 25-year-old California native. “There’s so much about this business that’s out of your control. Auditioning is the time when you do what you can do, how you want to do it. Nobody else is in charge.”