News from IFC

6 articles

21 August 2008 12:56 PM, PDT

By R. Emmet Sweeney

Anna Faris may finally be getting her due. After years of fearless and sparkling work in lowbrow spoofs and indie doodles, she's starring in and executive producing a big Hollywood comedy, "The House Bunny." Whether it's worthy of her talents is yet to be seen, but it definitely heralds a new stage in her circuitous career, one in which she can start calling her own shots. If given the chance, she's capable of out-dumbing Judy Holliday and out-ditzing Carole Lombard, or at least give them a run for their heiress money.

With the Apatow boys dominating the comedy circuit, there's been little room for feisty female comediennes. Apatow's art is based on absurdist riffs on macho man-children, the women serving as sullen straight gals. There are some exceptions, of course (Kathryn Hahn's sex-starved wife in "Step Brothers," Molly Shannon's boozehound in "Talledega Nights"), but

20 August 2008 7:33 AM, PDT

By Matt Singer

As far back as last February, the press began speculating about a supposed lesbian tryst between the stars of Woody Allen's new film "Vicky Christina Barcelona." Under a headline reading "Sapphic Steam," the New York Post's Page Six announced that they'd learned from an anonymous source that the scene between Scarlett Johansson and Penélope Cruz was "extremely erotic" and that when the film reached theaters audiences would "be blown away and even shocked." Various news agencies picked up the story. Some even distorted it further; one website assured its readers in no uncertain terms that "Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz will have lesbian sex in Woody Allen's new film," as if the actresses were bypassing any notion of dramatic pretense and doing the scene purely for their own sexual gratification.

Even after "Vicky Christina" played the Cannes Film Festival last May, rumors of the combustible chemistry between the stars continued,

Matt Singer

20 August 2008 6:59 AM, PDT

By Aaron Hillis

Last December, I met filmmaker Azazel Jacobs at a coffee shop just down the street from the Tribeca loft he grew up in, and where his parents . avant-garde cinema icon Ken Jacobs and longtime collaborator Flo . still rent. Though he now lives in L.A.'s Echo Park neighborhood, Aza was back in NYC for final tweaking on his third feature, "Momma's Man," before its unveiling at Sundance '08. The reason for our meeting was mostly professional, as Benten Films (a DVD label I run with film blogger Andrew Grant) had fallen in love with Jacobs' previous film, "The GoodTimesKid," starring his real-life girlfriend Sara Diaz, "I'm Going to Explode" writer/director Gerardo Naranjo, and himself. (Benten will release "The GoodTimesKid" in early 2009, so let the shilling stop here).

Several months later, after a distribution deal with ThinkFilm fell through and Kino picked up the slack, "Momma's Man

Aaron Hillis

19 August 2008 6:35 AM, PDT

By Michael Atkinson

Who is Lech Majewski? Among other things, he's something of a newfound challenge for the critic and budding cinephile. A tireless and passionate Euro artiste of a kind that gets often relegated to the "underground" or "experimental" categories in this country, but who also employs old-fashioned surrealism and sometimes nets name actors like Viggo Mortensen (pre-"Lotr"), Majewski does everything on his films but make the coffee, and thus they are his works, uncorrupted by business and audience. Which may be the trouble . based upon the set of features released by Kino, Majewski may be one of the most pretentious filmmakers alive and working. Or is he a visionary? What separates the two quantities, except taste and argument? When does Majewski's brand of rampaging, overtly symbolic experimentalism dip below the line of transformative art and into nonsense? "Gospel According to Harry" (1994) attacks modern society's materialistic failures at

Michael Atkinson

18 August 2008 12:25 PM, PDT

By Matt Singer and Alison Willmore

The season of troubled (but incredibly box office-friendly) superheroes, of IMAX, of fanboys attacking critics, of women (hey!) wanting to see films after all, of some incredibly stupid comedies, of summer is coming to a close. This week on the IFC News podcast, we look ahead to fall and offer ten picks of indie films we're looking forward to, as well as word on ones we've already seen.

Download now (MP3: 29:56 minutes, 27.4 Mb) Podcast feeds: [Xml] [iTunes]

[Photo: The Coen brothers' "Burn After Reading," Focus Features, 2008]

Alison Willmore

18 August 2008 6:39 AM, PDT

By Neil Pedley

This week finds Shakespeare meeting Sexy Jesus, a crash course in Czech history alongside a totalitarian demolition derby, apocalyptic sea monsters and Fred Durst trying to get in touch with his fuzzy side.

"Cthulhu"

Director Dan Gildark certainly isn't lacking for confidence. Whereas most first-time filmmakers would turn to the well-worn territory of twentysomethings and their quirky quarterlife crises for subject matter, Gildark has opted to tackle H.P Lovecraft's sprawling, heady, quasi-religious mythos from the short story "Shadow over Innsmouth" instead. Jason Cottle stars as Russ, a history professor who returns home to Oregon to execute his late mother's will and discovers his father is the leader of the coastal town's apocalyptic cult that centers on the fabled Cthulhu, an extraterrestrial deity that exists in a state of torpor at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. When Russ learns a mass sacrifice may be in the offing,

Neil Pedley

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