Actualités

Title: Punching the Clown Directed By: Gregori Viens Starring: Henry Phillips, Ellen Ratner, Matthew Walker, Audrey Siegel, Guilford Adams, Evan Arnold, Mark Cohen, Mik Scriba Punching the Clown grew from a documentary director and writer Gregori Viens made with co-writer and star Henry Phillips back in 1997. The plan was to turn it into a fictionalized narrative feature and while they did find a super chic production company to fly them to London and Paris to secure financing, that’s about as far as they got. From there it was a typical indie filmmaking experience resulting in maxed out credit cards and the entire thing being shot on a semi-professional Panasonic Hpx [...]...

At a loss on what to review this week for the neo-noir retrospective, I solicited suggestions from Pajiba readers via my Facebook page. My colleague, Brian Prisco, suggested writer-director James Kerwin's Yesterday Was a Lie (2008). At the time, having not read his post on Netflix Watch Instantly until after finishing the film, I took the recommendation seriously. I looked up the film, saw it was classified as a hybrid of neo-noir and sci-fi with some positive reviews, and started getting my hopes up. You see, a decade ago, an indie neo-noir entitled Memento (2000) forced me on a path towards filmmaking and criticism, so I have a bit of a weak spot for them. Hoping that lightning would strike twice, I roped in a noir-loving friend (and fellow colleague in the Cinema and Media Studies Ph.D. program) to watch the film with me. After about twenty minutes, my potentially...

By Christopher Stipp

The Archives, Right Here

Check out my new column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on Twitter under the name: Stipp

The Messenger - DVD Review

Woody Harrelson is a human litmus test for what the ravages of war can do to an individual.

The Messenger is a movie that defies a conventional critique as the movie unspools in a manner that feels more real than it does made up, more visceral than it does imagined. While Kevin Bacon’s turn in Taking Chance was a heartfelt swan song to one human’s life who died for his country, The Messenger is grittier in its portrayal of a man tasked with delivering the news no family member wants to get about their fallen soldier.

It’s grittier and more immediate thanks to the liberating decisions made by first time director Oren Moverman. The...

DVD Playhouse—May 2010

By

Allen Gardner

Avatar (20th Century Fox) James Cameron beat his own title as box office champ, set with Titanic over a decade ago, with this eye-popping sci-fi epic about a paraplegic Marine name Sully (Sam Worthington), who takes the form of an “avatar,” or virtual being, to go undercover on the planet Pandora, attempting to infiltrate the native Na’vi to gather intelligence that will aid a joint corporate and military operation to rape the planet of its natural resources, destroying its indigenous population in the process. When Sully suddenly “goes native,” he locks horns with the company CEO (Giovanni Ribisi) and his gung-ho commanding officer (Stephen Lang, in a wonderful, scenery-chewing turn from a long-underrated actor). Thought of by many scholars and film buffs as a “game-changer” as much as the first Star Wars film was—and they may be right. While Cameron’s politically-correct...

It was the Closing Night of The Beverly Hills Hi-Def Film Festival and producer/star Chase Masterson ( http://www.chasemasterson.com/Chase.html ) along with her fiance writer/director James Kerwin had invited me and played host to a number of my celeb friends. I met my buddy Valerie Perez there and we waited until the rest of the guests arrived from a pre-cocktail party just down the street. Joining me for the screening was Camden Toy, Lisa Cash, DeeDee Bigelow, Katie Lohmann, Jeff Rector and Joannie Laurer as well as cast and crew from the film, producer Sarah Nean Bruce, stars John Newton, Mik Scriba and Warren Davis. The film was followed by a Q&A and was well received by the audience. The film actually won the top prize of the festival, a well done film noir with a dash of Sci-Fi. The film is currently making the...