Perhaps in an effort to piggyback on the success of the delicate and moving Noi, we now have another Icelandic drama in local theaters. But if Noi was informed by Iceland’s harsh climate, volcanic substrata and geographic remoteness, The Seagull’s Laughter has more in common with universal themes of individual isolation in small backwards communities. […]
David Fellerath
Bio: David Fellerath is INDY Week's culture and sports editor.Email: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/dfellerath
Posted inFilm & Television
Meet the monster
Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film By Peter Biskind Simon & Schuster, 2004, 560 pp. Thanks to the Internet, cable television and information-packed DVDs, today’s movie-going audiences are savvier than ever. Gone are the days when fans were content to simply watch movies as they rolled off the assembly […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Evil blooms
French filmmaker Claude Chabrol makes films that perform like irresistible but bad lovers. Seductive, mysterious, dangerous are his movies, but more often than not, they leave us unfulfilled. Like Brian DePalma, Chabrol has a knack for wooing audiences with tales of sex, deceit and murder without quite finishing the job. Yet, so sweet is the […]
Posted inFilm & Television
FilmBeat
While Triangle film fans line up for the eclectic offerings of the Hi Mom! fest in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, another more traditional festival will be taking place some 75 miles west of here. It’s called the RiverRun International Film Festival. Employing the institutional and intellectual might of the North Carolina School of the Arts […]
Posted inArt
Skinny cats and underdogs
Now that the Full Frame colossus has lumbered away to sleep off its biggest feast-ival yet, the Triangle’s biggest little film party will get underway at various locations in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. In its seventh annual incarnation, the Hi Mom! Film Festival is devoted to promoting aesthetically adventurous low-budget films, and judging from an […]
Posted inNews
In clowns, golf and dancing dogs
This Wednesday, UNC film instructors in the communications department will put aside their notes and step down from the podium. Instead of lecturing on other people’s films, members of the communications faculty will display their own work. Longtime faculty member Hap Kindem will screen Suzy Whaley: Qualified for Life, his new short documentary about a […]
Posted inFilm & Television
FilmBeat
The Full Frame fest last weekend was truly sensational. It was a remarkable and charmed event–everyone I encountered throughout the weekend professed to be thrilled with the consistently high quality of the programming. Ticket sales set new records, and there were 16 sellouts. Many of the filmmakers were in attendance, as were acquisitions people. The […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Love among the ruins
There’s a rather raw scene near the end of the Australian drama Japanese Story in which a woman sits sobbing in a bathroom stall. She punches the solid wall next to her, and then punches it again, hard. She cringes and it looks like it really hurts. It’s the most wrenching and believable moment in […]
Posted inGuides
The frame goes wide
The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, now entering its seventh year, is feeling the ground shifting beneath its feet. The object of its adoration is no longer ghettoized, if not quite upgraded to Beverly Hills, and the form is becoming an increasingly visible and viable commercial medium. Furthermore, as documentaries become more popular, the very […]
Posted inGuides
A field of documentaries from tobacco road
A field of documentaries from tobacco road Durham’s starting to look like the epicenter of Southern filmmaking these days, as four locally produced docs will hit the screens this weekend at Full Frame. Leading the charge is Brett Ingram and Jim Haverkamp’s Monster Road, a film that’s been steamrollering through festivals since it premiered at […]
