The first thing you notice about Michael Cera in person is that he seems a lot smaller and skinnier than he does in the movies. Maybe it’s actually true that the camera adds ten pounds. He’s also even nicer and seemingly more vulnerable than the characters he plays, if that were actually possible. His role as Nick in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is nothing new for him, but because he’s so honest and innocent, it hasn’t gotten old. Yet. He’s like the Lloyd Dobbler for an entirely new generation.

Read on for our interview with Michael in Toronto to find out all about the Arrested Development movie, how he likes his coffee (and what that says about how he likes his men), and what Lindsay Anderson film’s soundtrack he should hav on his iPod, but doesn’t.

…Read more

Keven McAlester’s second documentary The Dungeon Masters, which takes a look at three people who run Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, was at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. It could have easily been a comedic film, poking fun at people who are generally called geeks or nerds, but it ends up becoming an intimate glimpse of personalities and situations that are often touching and tragic.

I sat down with Keven and talked to him about how he set about making this movie, how he got into documentary filmmaking and working with Lee Daniel, and how he was able to put together such a good look into the D&D lifestyle, despite having never played the game. Read on after the break for the interview.

…Read more

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Barry Jenkins’ film Medicine for Melancholy, and we’re lucky enough to have Barry be big fans of Spout as well. His little film has had a long journey since it premiered in Austin at SXSW earlier this year, and it’s continuing to take him around the world.

We spoke with Barry in Toronto about the genesis of the movie, what has happened since that first screening in Austin, how he found the actors, and if this film represents a love letter from him to the city of San Francisco. Read on for the full interview.

…Read more

One of my favorite things about film festivals is the chance you’ll have at seeing something that you’d probably never come across otherwise when you visit the multiplex or browse your rental queue. When the Toronto International Film Festival schedule was released last month and I saw Keven McMcAlester’s documentary about Dungeons & Dragons gamemasters, The Dungeon Masters, listed, I knew I had to see it. It wasn’t that I’d seen Keven’s earlier documentary about Roky Erickson, You’re Gonna Miss Me, and wanted to see this, nor did I want to see what fine cinematography Lee Daniel had crafted for the movie. No, I wanted to see this one for the geek in me. Heck, it even made Karina’s list of Films We’re Betting On for TIFF, and she doesn’t dole out the nerd love lightly.

Although Dungeons & Dragons came out in 1974, the game is still played across the world, and has directly contributed to the creation and success of online sword and sorcery games like World of Warcraft and EverQuest. Almost everyone you as about the game knows that there’s a certain nerdy/geeky vibe associated with it, although most people probably couldn’t tell you anything else about it. The Dungeons Masters attempts to show you the personalities behind the dice-rolling by taking intimate looks inside the lives of three different dungeon masters who, in effect, become the game themselves.

…Read more

Spout’s Paul Moore loved Bent Hamer’s newest film O’Horten at the Telluride Film Festival, and I got a chance to sit down with him in Toronto where his film was also playing. Besides having a name made for a heavy metal guitarslinger, Hamer is already a very accomplished director, having previously directed movies like Eggs, Kitchen Stories, and Factotum, and O’Horten is his fifth film to come to play in States.

Besides being a director, Hamer is also a writer, producer, and owner and founder of the BulBul Film Association in his native Norway. Read on to find out what inspired the film and why he feels like he’s still riding along with Odd Horten even today, or you can listen to the audio of the interview right here.

…Read more

It’s been just over a year since Danny Boyle’s sci fi film Sunshine came out, and it would be hard to imagine a more different film than Slumdog Millionaire, which has just premiered at both the Telluride and Toronto film festivals (and won the People’s Choice award at the latter). It’s an extremely touching love story set amidst the slums of Mumbai, and uses the Indian version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” as a catalytic backdrop.

Boyle definitely continues to mature as a filmmaker, and has somehow learned to be an excellent director of children––the performances he gets out of the young kids in both this movie and Millions are astounding. Despite his punk-rock roots, he claims to have gotten in touch with his innner hippy while shooting Slumdog in India. Read on to find out all about it, and why he might be driving a cab around London.

…Read more

A Cannes Director’s Fortnight and Karlovy Vary selection screening in TIFF’s non-fiction Reel to Reel program without fanfare, the Slovak hybrid doc Blind Loves is a lovely surprise. Music video director turned first time feature maker Juraj Lehotsky tracks four blind persons at various ages and life stages and, in a series of vignettes that blend observed fact with what appear to be staged recreations and dream-like fiction, offers an extremely intimate portrait of the navigation of personal relationships without sight.

The most in depth vignette centers on Peter, a middle aged piano teacher who sits with his ear to the TV “watching” skiing (he guesses the length of the jumps by counting the seconds between push off and landing) while his also-blind wife knits. At one point, Peter’s wife asks him to stand up so she can see how far her sweater-in-progress stretches over his “broad shoulders.” Peter sounds genuinely disappointed: “I thought I was slim.” This sly hint that Peter’s lifelong companion has a more intimate knowledge of his own body than he does is one of the more touching moments in a film filled with sneakily-presented touchstones of quiet devastation.
…Read more

Adam Del Deo and James Stern didn’t start out thinking they’d get into the documentary business, but Every Little Step marks their fourth documentary together as co-directors. It’s an emotional film that follows several hopeful dancer/singer/actors who hope to get cast in the 2006 revival of “A Chorus Line” on Broadway. I honestly didn’t think this would be too interesting of a film for me, having never seen the musical or the Michael Douglas movie version, but it was extremely compelling without taking a turn for a reality television style, which I’d feared would happen.

Stern, who also serves as the CEO for Endgame Entertainment, had earlier produced Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods which was a reality show about casting the “Legally Blonde” musical, and I still can’t believe that even exists. He’s worked on Broadway for many years, which helped him secure the legendary reel to reel recordings that consisted of show creator Michael Bennett in conversation with dancers. These tapes not only helped Bennett to create A Chorus Line, but they also serve as the backbone to the film.

Read on after the break to find out what it was like making this film, how they got the tapes, and what they think about the current state of documentary filmmaking in America.

…Read more

Every Little Step, James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo’s uber crowd-pleasing expose of the casting process for the recent Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, is both candy for confirmed theater nerds, and functioning propaganda for the uninitiated. Like the infinite repeating effect created by the show’s on-stage mirror, Stern and De Deo allow the structure of their film to take after the self-reflexive structure of the play. It’s a film about struggling dancers auditioning for a play about struggling dancers auditioning for a play which was initially based on the real experiences of the struggling dancers who played themselves, and the filmmakers play off this hall of mirrors beautifully.

…Read more

Tilda Swinton has made a career out of playing interesting characters, although her shrewish portrayal of Katie Cox in Burn After Reading probably won’t endear her to many. She plays the epitome of a controlling woman who has her CIA husband Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) sandwiched squarely under her thumb. Or there could be a cadre of career-minded women out there who’d want to use her as a role model, I’m not sure.

The film has been getting mixed reviews ever since its debut at the Venice Film Festival, although they all seem to laud the performances. Swinton performs adequately enough in the film, but she isn’t given much to do, and seeing her with George Clooney just makes me want to watch Michael Clayton all over again. I might even have to pull Orlando off the shelf and watch it again as well.

Find out what she had to say about working with the Coens, going up against Brad Pitt’s blonde hair, and what winning the Oscar did, or rather didn’t, for her career. It’s all waiting after the break.

…Read more

As the Toronto International Film Festival draws to a close, we talk with Karina Longworth and Kevin Kelly about their experience. The Coen Brothers’ new film Burn After Reading gets a mixed reaction, apparently it’s better if you get to see it with Adrien Brody. Brody’s new film, The Brothers Bloom, by Brick director Rian Johnson, is one of Kevin’s favorites.

The Fall, a lush surrealist epic directed by Tarsem (yes, he only goes by one name), is out on DVD. Adam and I mull it over, comparing it to the 1973 campy classic Zardoz, starring a half-naked Sean Connery.

Lastly, I interview Michelle Byrd, executive director of IFP about Independent Film Week, taking place in New York September 14-19. I should note that I accidentally mispronounced her name as “Boyd,” my apologies. It’s sort of funny if you imagine I have a strong Brooklyn accent for just that one word.

 

 FilmCouch 87 [42:01m]: Play Now | Download

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro, a listener shares his woeful Crispin Glover tale

5:12 - Kevin and Karina’s dispatch from Toronto

19:45 - The Fall

30:46 - Michelle Byrd interview

filmcouch-87

When you make the (brave? foolhardy?) decision to stay at a festival like Toronto past the half-way point, past the point where both major stars and hit-seeking journalists have gone home and the remaining premieres are usually less hit than miss, you do it because you hope that you’re going to be the one to catch a hidden masterpiece. Michael Winterbottom’s Genova may not qualify for use of the M-word, but for a film that made it through two of its three public screenings with zero buzz, it casts a lasting spell that comes as a pleasant surprise. (Ironically, perhaps, I walked out of the Genova screening and directly into David Poland, who wrote this post late last night lamenting TIFF’s problematic front-loading. All I’ll say is that though there are 6 or 8 or 10 films that I’m kicking myself for having missed, none of them were scheduled to screen for the press after Tuesday.)

Marianne (Hope Davis) steers the family car down an icy road. Her daughters Kelly and Mary (Willa Holland and Perla Haney-Jardine) play a giggly road trip game in the back seat. Mary innocently involves her mother in the game, and Marianne loses control of the car. Though teenage Kelly and pre-tween Mary survive unscathed, their mother doesn’t, and six months after a funeral where all involved seem more dazed than grief-stricken, their academic father Joe (Colin Firth) announces that they’re going to pack up and move from Chicago to Genova, Italy for a year. He’ll teach, the girls will learn a second language, and all will leave their grief behind and start new lives.

…Read more

Although Joel and Ethan Coen have been busy in Toronto talking about their newest film Burn After Reading, which opens tomorrow, last weekend the buzz around town was all about small crowds gathering at hotel entrances hoping for a glimpse of Brad Pitt. He definitely steals the movie, which is hard to do considering some of the talent that’s stacked up in this film.

On that note, I’ve gone back and forth on this movie in my own head. At first I didn’t care for it, then I kept thinking about the performances and realizing how good some of them are. George Clooney’s Harry Pfarrer is actually a pretty decent character, especially when he gets paired onscreen with Frances McDormand. Their dinner scene together works with a bit of Cary Grant / Katherine Hepburn spark.

However, despite the strong performances throughout the film, the plot drags on and by the time you come to the end, you find yourself thinking “Is that it?” When the writer and director end up being the same person, there’s not really anyone else you can fault for the final product. Miller’s Crossing is one of my top five films, and I never get tired of The Hudsucker Proxy or The Big Lebowski. Unfortunately Burn After Reading represents, for me, a misstep for the Brothers Coen. Read on to find out what they had to say about the film, winning the Oscar, and an Easter egg hidden on the Fargo soundtrack.

…Read more

When I sat down yesterday with Adria Petty, director of TIFF controversy-baiting, press magnet doc Paris, Not France, I asked her if she wanted to respond to some of the rumors as to why her film has mutated in the span of a week from a relatively normal festival entry into a mysterious object, destined to have a single screening in a form that––in the words of its sales agent, Cassian Elwes––”will probably never be seen again.” Before I could start ticking off the laundry list of reported factors––concerns from the Hilton camp, legal pressure from the record company who hired Petty to make a 20 minute DVD extra, clearance rights on the Beatles and Madonna and, well, Paris Hilton songs used within––Petty broke in.

“I’ll just tell you the truth,” she said. “The truth is that we just didn’t want the film pirated. There’s a lot of people involved in the film that own it or financed it. It was in a lot of different camps and different layers. And basically, at the end of the day, instead of having the whole thing canceled or pulled because of all these greedy or annoying people, Paris and I, who wanted the film to screen at Toronto and were honored by it, we were like, look let’s just do it once in one big theater. And then we put the night vision goggles in one time––because everybody is like, who pays for the night vision?”

Of course, every filmmaker who comes to a major festival is concerned about piracy, and many screenings at TIFF are patrolled by guards wearing night vision goggles to detect the use of recording devices. Piracy may have been an issue here, but in the above passage and elsewhere during our talk, Petty alluded that the major issue contributing to Paris’ “orphan” status may be its origin as a work of pure promotion. Warner Brothers Records didn’t want the film she turned in, but now, presumably because cigar-chomping execs look at a girl like Paris Hilton and see a walking dollar sign in a diamond tiara, it seems they’re afraid to let it go.

Excerpts from the interview, in which Petty sets Page Six straight, compares her film to Cocksucker Blues, and explains why Paris Hilton is not like Michael Jackson, follow after the jump.

…Read more