« Toback Hints 'Vendetta,' 'Bambi' Better Than Acid | Main | Media Bistro Presents: Mastering The Opposite of Oscar-Winning »
March 08, 2006
Reeler Link Dump: Four Screenings Today Edition
Ensnared in the catch-22 requiring continuous productivity yet disallowing blogging in movie theaters, I might be sort of scarce around these parts today. The New Directors/New Films press screenings kick off in earnest this morning with three features in quick succession, with an unrelated preview down the block at 6 p.m. I would think of it as job security if it did not make it near-impossible for me to do my job.
Meanwhile, there is plenty else going on around town:
--The Tribeca Film Festival is celebrating its fifth year by making it even more challenging for attendees to get from venue to venue. A new partnership with AMC Loews establishes theaters as far north as Loews Lincoln Square 12--five miles uptown from the festival's epicenter at the Regal Battery Park. No word yet on car rental discounts for the festival's duration, but American Express is a sponsor, and, you know, membership has its privileges. Or something.
--The news of Tribeca's expansion means Joaquin Phoenix now has that many more options in his no-nonsense quest for New York real estate.
--In his ill-conceived bid to be Takashi Miike's prolific, shitty American analogue, horror hack Eli Roth (above) now has no fewer than five films in development through 2007. Lest you wish he would go away after Hostel 2, Scavenger Hunt, The Box and The Bad Seed, Roth's latest threat is to adapt Stephen King's tech-zombie novel Cell for Dimension Films. In an e-mail exchange with Ain't It Cool News, the filmmaker enthusiastically revealed a project that you just know will be about as appealing as bird flu:
I fucking LOVE that book. Such a smart take on the zombie movie. I am so psyched to do it. I think you can really do almost a cross between the 'Dawn of the Dead' remake with a 'Roland Emmerich' approach (for lack of a better reference) where you show it happening all over the world. ... I'm so excited, I wish the script was ready right now so I could start production. But it'll get written (or at least a draft will) while I'm doing HOSTEL 2, and then I can go right into it. It should feel like an ultra-violent event movie. FUCK this is gonna be so damn fun!!!!!!! I can't wait!!!!!
Wow!!!!! I can't wait either!!! To fucking kill myself!!!!!
--It might be time to come to terms with the fact that we have lost Woody Allen to Europe. Insert breathless sobbing here.
--Both GreenCine's David D'Arcy and the Village Voice's Ed Halter offer up some nice coverage of the Whitney Biennial's film component.
--Also in the Voice: Michael Musto quasi-liveblogged the gay Oscars that weren't:
The show turned out to only be a moderate gropefest for the gays, tempered by the fact that Brokeback Mountain had peaked too soon and became abandoned by lily-livered trend pirates afraid to endorse out-of-wedlock buggering outside of their own. ... But as painful as it all was, I was still glued to the set, reveling in the timeless thrill of seeing four people lose in each category.
Each category except Best Song, that is, in which the Academy could only find two people secure enough in their talent to face the indignity of losing to Three 6 Mafia. Now that is fortitude.
--The New York Underground Film Festival kicks off tonight at Anthology Film Archives with Jim Finn's Interkosmos, while the rest of the slate gets going in earnest Thursday evening. Beyond the experimental films, shorts, documentaries and no-budget narratives strung through the program, the NYUFF also offers viewers a wonderful opportunity to find their inner alcoholic film snobs at one of several nightly afterparties. Meet me there this weekend and introduce me to yours.
Posted by stvanairsdale at March 8, 2006 08:34 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.mcnblogs.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/882