The Films of 2007

[Cinesimilitude]

IMDB

I didn't see Lord of War, so I don't know how similar this may be to that, but I haven't been more excited about a film based on a trailer since The Life Aquatic.

Trailer

[Antoine Doinel]

Lord Of War was surprisingly good and the humor and morals much more subtle than what is on display here.

The trailer doesn't do much for me. It comes off as High Fidelity set in the Middle East (not in a good way). And I'm not sure I need to see Hilary Duff doing an accent.....

[Cinesimilitude]

Lord Of War was surprisingly good and the humor and morals much more subtle than what is on display here.

The trailer doesn't do much for me. It comes off as High Fidelity set in the Middle East (not in a good way). And I'm not sure I need to see Hilary Duff doing an accent.....

Cusack wrote this film, and the only other films he's written (High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank) are some of my favorite films of all time. This literally does look like a merging of the two films, with topical humor. Also, Duff looks pretty hot with black hair.

[The Invunche]

Danish filmmaking at its best.

Trailer

[Napoleon]

Future criterion?

[flyonthewall2983]

Trailer. Looks funny.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Trailer. Looks funny.

Yeah, looks intriguing. I like the cast: Ben Kingsley, Luke Wilson, Phillip Baker Hall, Bill Pullman and Dennis Farina. Téa Leoni looks to be the only weak spot.

[pianocrash]

Official site

Animated, nearly black & white anthology featuring: Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre di Sciullo, Jerry Kramsky, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuire, Michel Pirus, & Romain Slocombe.

Coming hereditarily close to being color-blind too many times, as well as being a fan of cartoon screaming, I find news of this film quite exciting. I only wish they hadn't made Charles Burns' segment so digitally jarring (if that really is final footage in the "teaser" montage). We'll see.

[Antoine Doinel]

I dunno, looks like a poorly conceived mish mash of genres. Nothing in the trailer made me even chuckle. That said, I also like the cast (except Tea Leoni) so maybe I'll rent it when it comes to DVD.

[mogwai]

I haven't read very many graphic novels, but I was quite fond of this one. From the trailer it certainly seems like they got the visual look of it down. Looking forward to it.

[DrewReiber]

Oh god it wants to be a John Carpenter movie so bad and it just looks awful.

[Cinesimilitude]

Check it out, a full movie intentionally on youtube

They probably won't need our support as the site giving them money for free sign ups will be hit by atleast 100,000 youtube viewers, just thought I'd let you guys know about it.

[Oedipax]

Have to say I thought this was one of the worst films I've seen in quite a while (I watched a DVD copy, so it wasn't just the bad YouTube quality). The film had no sense of visual style, but was more like an endless assemblage of shots moving from one 'aesthetic' to another without any rhyme or reason. The central conceit is way too precious for anyone past their early 20s to take seriously, and I find the film overwhelmingly narcissistic (and I say this as someone who put The Brown Bunny in his top 20 films on YMDB - so much the better if a narcissist makes a good film, as Godard said).

What's really offensive to me about the movie (and would concern me greatly as a filmmaker, though it clearly hasn't bothered the Four Eyed crew) is that the story and hype surrounding this film is so much more about marketing it in every way, shape and form on the internet than it is about the film itself. Such relentless, shameless, tactless self-promotion shouldn't be regarded as 'indie'; it's simply runaway capitalism co-opting things yet again. These kids don't know much about cinematic art, but they're great at selling themselves.

[domino harvey]

Have to say I thought this was one of the worst films I've seen in quite a while (I watched a DVD copy, so it wasn't just the bad YouTube quality). The film had no sense of visual style, but was more like an endless assemblage of shots moving from one 'aesthetic' to another without any rhyme or reason.

I only made it about ten minutes in so it's completely unfair for me to agree, but I agree. This is like the worst case scenario of composing a film entirely out of "I love these kinds of shots!"-mentality. This isn't very nice but I'll say it anyways-- instead of hiring your friends, real movies hire actors who look, you know, not like someone's friend. The couple behind it all seem nice enough and I applaud them on their marketing, but... a cunnilingus joke, in 2007, really?

[flyonthewall2983]

Looks cute.

[Jeff]

Yikes. I can't believe this finally found a distributor. I can say without hyperbole that Duck is one of the most profoundly awful films I have ever seen. It's bad in that uncomfortable, squirm-in-your-seat sort of way. It's contrived, sentimental, and horribly written. I saw it way back in November of 2005 at the Denver Film Festival, and I suppose the filmmaker has been looking for distribution ever since.

More than anything, it made me feel bad for Phillip Baker Hall, an actor whom I really enjoy, and who was present at the screening. If nothing else, I got to talk to Hall for a couple of minutes, and he was kind enough to sign my Secret Honor DVD.

Critic Walter Chaw was at the same screening I was. Here is his zero-star capsule review.

[flyonthewall2983]

Trailer.

[Antoine Doinel]

Saw this trailer before Rescue Dawn and it quickly degenerated into standard, flimsy, dramatic rom-com territory.

[dadaistnun]

The novel is wonderful. I'm sort of surprised that Charles Baxter hasn't been adapted to the screen before.

I suspect this could end up like the Benton-co-scripted Empire Falls: a respectable enough adaptation but missing that indefinable quality that makes the novel so enjoyable. (Of course, Russo helped with the EF script, so maybe that's why it was as good as it was.) If The Feast of Love is a hit and gets people to seek out Baxter's novels and short stories, great.

[Steven H]

Since getting excited about the Polish Animation DVD that recently came out, I wanted to make a post devoted to links and information pertaining to Yuri Norstein's "in the making" film, The Overcoat. I don't think I'm alone in considering it the most highly anticipated work out there (or at least "one of" the most), though I'm sure many of the older fans out there have gotten tired of waiting for the nearly thirty years it's been in production. However, Norstein has stated that he expects the film to be released in a half hour version with a soundtrack later this year. I decided to start a thread in the New Films section because it sounds like he really wants to have this version out there, though of course he may eventually add to it, this seems more like a "real release" than what he's done before (i.e. the 20 mins or less shown at museums in the past.)

Thanks to the very informative wikipedia article for a lot of this information, and in case you haven't seen it, there are two (extremely low res) clips of The Overcoat here and here, that *show* you why its taking so long, and there are a few other resources that just tell you, such as this article/interview from 2005, in the Washington Post:

When will "Overcoat" be finished?

"This 'Overcoat' film began at the most inappropriate time of perestroika," Norstein says, referring to the period before the breakup of the Soviet Union, when money for artists dried up. "I always had difficulty with my bosses doing it on time and the removal of fees. But I never gave up on the film."

In the meantime he's done some work with Myazaki Hayao, Winter Days (Mayazaki also dedicated an exhibit to Norstein at his Animation museum), and teaching. Here's an interview in Russian about his involvement in the Winter Days project. There's a lot of insight into his working methods, if you can work your way around a translation (at one point he says that working on Winter Days was more difficult than The Overcoat, comparing it to the speed of sound to light.)

[Lino]

Norstein has stated that he expects the film to be released in a half hour version with a soundtrack later this year.

Well, if that comes true, it's going to definitely be one of the most historical dates in animation history ever. I personally never thought I'd ever get to see it, not in the way it was meant to be seen, anyway.

To say that I'm looking forward to see it is an understatement.

[Jem]

There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand... and they're pissed off!

IMBD:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0779982/

Official site

Apple trailer

Weta workshop info

[colinr0380]

It is not surprising if you've seen what they've had to endure from New Zealand filmmakers!

[flyonthewall2983]

Trailer.

[Antoine Doinel]

The trailer didn't do much for me. The story comes off as a more polished, but as simplistic, Death Sentence. However, as usual, Mark Ruffalo looks like he's going to give another great performance.