Tuesday, November 11, 2014
The critically acclaimed drama, written and directed by Ruben Östlund, concerns the members of a picture-perfect Swedish family whose lives are thrown into utter turmoil when an avalanche hits the ski resort at which they're vacationing. Yet it's not so much the avalanche itself that throws their lives into chaos; rather, it's a choice made by the family patriarch that jeopardizes everything. (Revealing any more would be telling!)
Tags: movie , film , cinema , force majeure , VTIFF , burlington film society , vermont international film foundation , Image , Video , Web Only
Monday, November 10, 2014
VTIFF's executive director, Orly Yadin, reports a grand total of 4,706 admissions for the 2014 festival. That's a jump of 10 percent from the 2013 figures, which were 20 percent higher than the numbers from 2012.
"About a third" of this year's admissions, Yadin says, were technically unpaid, but that's actually a good thing. VTIFF (the acronym stands for both the festival and its parent organization, the Vermont International Film Foundation) now has about 150 members who pay at one of three levels. "Friends" and "Supporters" get discounts on festival tickets, among other perks, while "Patrons" get all-access passes with their membership payments.
Yadin is eager to attract more members, whose advance, lump-sum payments help the festival achieve greater economic constancy. "Stability is the most crucial thing for us," she says. "Until this year, all of our income had been unstable."
Tags: vtiff , film , movie , vermont international film festival , burlington , cinema , Image , Web Only
Friday, November 7, 2014
What You Missed
Matt (Matt Johnson, who also directed, produced, cowrote and co-edited) and Owen (Owen Williams) are two Canadian high school students making a movie. It's called The Dirties, and it's a revenge fantasy about destroying the bullies who dog them at school.
Matt, who has a basement full of movie posters, has stuffed his debut auteur effort with swaths of dialogue from Pulp Fiction and obscurer references to films like Irreversible. Owen is happy just to go along for the ride and "shoot" prop guns.
Tags: the dirties , matt johnson , owen williams , found footage , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Monday, November 3, 2014
Cinemania's 20th anniversary event, which runs November 6-16 at the luxe Imperial Cinema in downtown Montréal, boasts 55 films (a record for the fest) from all over the world, including works by established directors as well as talented newcomers. The festival's selections place an emphasis on French and Québécois cinema — but fear not, non-Francophones: All films will be screened with English subtitles.
Film lovers might recognize the names of François Ozon, Olivier Assayas, Benoît Jacquot or the Dardennes Brothers, all of whose latest films will screen at Cinemania. Also showing, among many others, is Abuse of Weakness, the latest film by the ever-controversial Catherine Breillat, a film that recently played at VTIFF.
Tags: cinemania , film festival , film , cinema , movie , festival , montreal , Image , Web Only
Saturday, November 1, 2014
I felt the same. The Pirates movies are, in my opinion, pretty dumb: big, needlessly complicated and bursting with messy and overwrought computer animation. Even the great Bill Nighy couldn't redeem those movies for me. But Rango is smart, funny and exceedingly enjoyable. Not long after seeing it in the theater (which, memorably, had a leak in its roof — a hilarious coincidence, given that the film's story revolves around water), I purchased the film on Blu-Ray, and have watched it several times since.
Tags: what i'm watching , film , movie , rango , blu-ray , high-resolution , resolution , dvd , Image , Web Only
Friday, October 31, 2014
This Week in Movies You Missed: Of course I have a Halloween movie for you — if you don't mind that this outrageous Spanish import is more funny than scary.
What You Missed
Deep in the woods, three witches are receiving a prophecy about the "chosen one." "A yellow sponge?" one says dubiously, reading the cards. "Jesus Christ? A green soldier?"
It all becomes clear in the next scene, set in Madrid, where we discover a fellow named José (Hugo Silva) robbing a gold dealer dressed as Jesus, complete with loincloth and crown of thorns. His accomplices have equally silly getups, including SpongeBob SquarePants and a green soldier. Oh, and he's brought along his 10-year-old son (Gabriel Delgado) so they can bond while aiming semi-autos at cowering employees.
Tags: alex de la iglesia , witching and bitching , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Announced by Eva Sollberger, Seven Days employee and creator of the long-running video series Stuck in Vermont, the awards celebrated the best and most innovative Vermont films and filmmakers submitted to the fest, as decided by VTIFF judges. (Not all of the Vermont Filmmakers' Showcase films had been screened at the fest at press time; judges viewed all submissions in advance of the festival.) A packed house at Burlington's Skinny Pancake noshed on noshables as Sollberger read the results from a small stage.
The big winner of the evening was "11 Paper Place," a charming, digitally animated film supervised by Daniel Houghton and featuring the talents of several of his film students at Middlebury College. "11 Paper Place" won the evening's two most prestigious prizes: the Ben & Jerry's Award, which goes to the Vermont film that most eloquently raises environmental issues; and the James Goldstone Award for the most promising emerging Vermont filmmaker. (Disclosure: Houghton is the spouse of Kids VT Managing Editor Megan James.)
11 Paper Place from daniel houghton on Vimeo.
Another multiple-award winner was Robert Fritz's feature-length supernatural drama Past Tense, which picked up the awards for both Best Acting and Best Screenplay."Dark Legacy," a short film about evil porcine spirits, won Best Cinematography; Rob Koier's "The North Star," a short about an escaping slave, won the Footage Farm USA award for its raising of important global issues. The ceremony concluded with an open invitation from Vermont PBS for Vermont filmmakers to submit their works to the network for its planned showcase of in-state cinematic talent on the new channel Vermont PBS Plus.
This was just Day One of the festival. VTIFF will screen nine more days of films, both local and global, at this 29th annual event.
Tags: vermont international film festival , vtiff , film , movie , film festival , 11 paper place , awards , Image , Video , Web Only
Friday, October 24, 2014
This week in movies you might miss: the "first Iranian vampire western."
You can kick off Halloween week in style by catching A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the debut feature from writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour, on Sunday, October 26, 10 p.m., at Burlington's ArtsRiot as part of the Vermont International Film Festival. (Tickets, $5-10.)
What You Might Miss
Somewhere in Iran, there's a place called Bad City dominated by a gigantic power plant and a fleet of idle oil wells. A place that appears to be inhabited mostly by pimps, whores, drug dealers, addicts and party girls.
Arash (Arash Marandi) is none of the above. He's a gardener with a sports car who likes to wear tight T-shirts and pose like James Dean. When his junkie dad (Marshall Manesh) runs afoul of a vicious dealer (Dominic Rains), he's in danger of losing everything he loves — but not for long.
Because someone else stalks the streets of Bad City. She (Sheila Vand) wears a chador and a Breton-stripe top like Jean Seberg in Breathless. She follows men. Quiet and demure, she invites them home with her. She decides for herself what they deserve. And she executes her judgment — sometimes with fang and talon.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Its sister festival to the north may sport a larger budget and a wider sampling of films, but the Brattleboro Film Festival is seriously bringing the cinema to southern Vermont.
With a program that spans more than 10 days, the third annual Brattleboro Film Festival, which will take over the town's historic downtown Latchis Theatre, features 31 films and a number of special events. Cinephiles who live halfway between Brattleboro and Burlington may find themselves torn, as the BFF and the Vermont International Film Festival overlap from October 31 through November 2.
In fact, the two festivals share more than the same space in the calendar. Five films — including the undersea documentary Angel Azul, the Brazilian animated feature The Boy and the World and the acclaimed documentary The Overnighters — will play at both fests.
Other films in the Brattleboro Film Festival hail from such countries as South Africa, Sweden and Japan, and include everything from anime to films about sex-centric road trips to a documentary about two of the royal families of American folk music. Fiction films, documentaries, features and shorts are all represented in a wide-ranging, diverse program.
Tags: film , movie , film festival , brattleboro , brattleboro film festival , cinema , Image , Web Only
Friday, October 17, 2014
This week in movies you missed: Why do people spend months turning their homes into Halloween scare houses? Why do they flock to tours of Jeffrey Dahmer's Milwaukee haunts? Why do they collect the autographs and artwork of serial killers?
Two recent Halloween-y documentaries, The American Scream and Serial Killer Culture, explore these questions about the fascination of fear.
What You Missed
In the small town of Fairhaven, Mass., trick-or-treaters can visit three elaborate houses of horrors created by passionate amateurs. Directed by Michael Stephenson (Best Worst Movie), The American Scream profiles them, with a special emphasis on family man Victor Bariteau.
An IT guy by day, Bariteau grew up in a religious home where Halloween wasn't observed. Determined to make up for lost time, he bought his home largely for its perfect trick-or-treating neighborhood. Now he painstakingly crafts gruesome models and animatronics to scare his neighbors, while his wife, two daughters and pet ferrets help out, with various degrees of enthusiasm.
Tags: serial killer culture , american scream , john borowski , michael stephenson , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only