Nashville Film Festival ~ Our Jury Prizes

As some of you know I attended the Nashville Film Festival last week as a juror. I haven't ever truly mastered the How To of reporting from film festivals -- I marvel at the blogs who seem to have time to see five movies a day and socialize with other festivalgoers AND review all of them as if there are 48 hours in each day -- so you're getting my jury notes super late! This time I was on the Narrative Feature Jury which meant 16 movies crammed into less than a week. I tried to see other features outside my slate but my eyes begged for relief after just two (The Spectacular Now and I Am Divine -- more on those later) since I wasn't able to stay very long this year.

Nashville is one of the USA's oldest ongoing film festivals and it doesn't get enough attention in the media. One of the reasons is surely the concurrent Tribeca, a far starrier affair. Still, I'd personally argue that festivals like Nashville are more crucial to the good health of cinema and here's why...

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Scarlett Stays Super

...superhuman that is.

It appears that after her third stint as The Black Widow for Captain America: Winter Soldier (it's not just a cameo), Scarlett Johansson isn't ready to part with the super-powered set just yet.  

She'll be starring in Lucy as a woman who gains superpowers after being a mule for an experimental serum. It's a new project for director Luc Besson (who seems to be aiming for a big comeback after a quiet decade starting with Malavita this fall). This latest deal suggests she's content to stay in franchise mode for awhile longer still despite surely being one of the richest young actresses in the world what with so many spokesperson deals and big budget thesping already behind her at only 29 years of age. The size that nest egg must be by now (!) but maybe that's purposeful and her interests lie outside of acting like, say, Angelina Jolie. And since Angelina seems to have vacated the A List Action Heroine niche, someone's gotta fill it. 

But for those of us who fell in love with dreamy Scarlett early on it's kind of shocking in retrospect that Action would prove to be her genre of choice. That languorous Ghost Worldly Girl With the Pearl Earring Got Lost in Translation somewhere; how does that girl have all this energy to run around kicking ass? Wouldn't she rather sleep and pout and stare forlornly off into the distance? Doesn't it make you even more curious about the upcoming sci-fi but not that kind of sci-fi drama Under the Skin. Scarjo doesn't seem to have sizeable artistic ambitions -- or she's storing them up secretly for her 30s (she's still only 28!) -- so why did she opt to work with the very artful Birth director Jonathan Glazer inbetween all the green screens?

Time will tell... and hopefully reveal that movie. Still no release date for Under the Skin and hasn't it been in post for ages? At this point it's been almost a decade since Glazer trained his hypnotic camera on Kidman in catatonic grief crisis mode at the opera.

#ticktockticktock

Hot Docs: Interior. Leather Bar.

Reports from the 2013 Hot Docs Film Festival

Paolo here. Because I tend to overreact to thing I proclaimed that last year's Hot Docs film festival here in Toronto was 'overtly sexual'! As it turns out, last year's crop had more diverse topics: death, culture, loss, legacy. And the same can be said about the documentaries this year but we won't abandon the docs about sex. Here's one now, James Franco's Interior. Leather Bar.

[NSFW Franco provocations after the jump]

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Hot Docs: Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer

Amir here, reporting from the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto.

Most critics who take notes during screenings will testify that, at least once, they’ve encountered a film that renders their notes useless. Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer was one of those films, which is fitting since co-directors Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin manage to capture the anarchic spirit of Pussy Riot quite authentically. Having started my notes with a relatively balanced number of positive and negative points, I found myself with almost a page full of crossed-out complaints and a film I felt compelled and excited by in equal measure.

Pussy Riot, an HBO produced documentary, follows Nadia, Katia and Masha, the three leading members of the now infamous Pussy Riot movement – a group of feminists who organize spontaneous demonstrations against the totalitarian Putin regime in Russia. [more]

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A Voyage to the Link

Retronaut Amazingly sexist rejection letter from Walt Disney to an aspiring female artist
Technicolor Disney has reference photos for animation mashed-up with final art. Cool 
LA Times AMPAS may expand past 6,000 members this year. They're talking about diversifying and may relax their membership cap
Cinema Blend 80s/90s hitmaker Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction) to return after a long absence for another sexual thriller, this one about an open marriage and a trail of bodies. Expect big stars to headline as the troubled couple.
Out Soderbergh interviewing Soderbergh? The director's gay brother talks to him about Behind the Candelabra. (Someone remind me why this isn't opening in movie theaters again?)

Empire Ryan Reynolds for Tarsem Singh's Selfless? This only leads to one logical question...
My New Plaid Pants what kind of revealing costumes will Tarsem put him in? 
Variety Jane Fonda about to get the immortalizing hand-in-cement treatment
Playbill the revival of Cabaret on Broadway already has Alan Cumming returning as the emcee but they're obviously looking for a starry Sally. Initial rumors said Anne Hathaway but now Emma Stone is the rumor
Slate "the secret autobiography of Tom Cruise" ...what's behind the grinning mask?
Guardian Pedro Almodóvar calls I'm So Excited his "gayest film ever". Hmmm. It's also supposed to be some sort of metaphor for Spain's economic crisis.

one more thing...
I was just bitching about Into the Woods but the idea of a new movie musical version of Guys & Dolls sounds great. Especially since the original film version isn't exactly a "classic" outside of being, well, old. It's especially good news if both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Channing Tatum really are on board. But if it doesn't get a good director I'll worry. A lot. 

off cinema
i09 huge breakthrough in artificial skin. How long until we see Blade Runner style replicants? 
Gothamist last three days to see Edvard Munch's "The Scream" at MoMA. When I was last there I wrote about Tilda Swinton in a box but I neglected to tell you how embarrassed for everyone I was when I went to see The Scream. People were not looking at it but posing beside it with their Scream Face on (which always ended up looking more "Home Alone Face"). some people were so confused about the pose/provenance that they were doing Monkey See, Monkey Do. TRAGIC!  

Watching "Hugo" at MoMA

In the middle of a nearby exhibit about architecture, there's a 3D screen showing pieces of Hugo because of the famous train station set. My bestie snapped a photo of me unawares looking on (above). Some of the scenes they played weren't even set-specific though. Unfortunately this meant that I couldn't even escape Chloe Moretz at MoMA.

Also tragic!