Sundance: Mark Ruffalo is a Bipolar Bear

Sundance coverage continues with Nathaniel on Maya Forbes' "Infinitely Polar Bear"

Remember when people used to dump on Silver Linings Playbook for reducing mental illness to cutesy romcom obstacles? That! Only this time the drubbing is fully earned. A disclaimer before we begin: I am preternaturally disposed to enjoy Mark Ruffalo's Ruffalosity in any of its varieties or sizes so I queued up for Infinitely Polar Bear, despite my gut instincts warning me away. (One must always be weary of star vehicles at indie festivals because a famous face alone can win a movie a prized festival slot. If a movie made by unknowns and starring unknowns gets into a festival there's generally more reason to hope that it got there on pure merit.)  [more...]

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Linking

The Stir Laura Linney had a baby despite none of us knowing she was pregnant
The Wire Joe Reid plans to see all 58 Oscar nominated movies from 2013 
LA Times George Clooney pretends to be pissed about Tina Fey's Golden Globes joke 
Gawker loves the idea of Detroit getting a bronze Robocop statue. It needs a hero! 

Film School Rejects as I predicted Margot Robbie is wracking up the roles in the wake of Wolf of Wall St
Interview Magazine Kanye West interviewed by Steve McQueen. Expect quotables 

tv
/Film what's going on with Nicolas Winding Refn's Barbarella TV series? 
previouslytv "your crotch is not that interesting" on HBO's Looking 
Vulture on the new and improved Lady Edith on Downton Abbey 
Coming Soon Jason Isaacs is joining the Rosemary's Baby tv miniseries as Roman Castavet (good part!) ... and word is that Zoe Saldana may get the famous pixie cut for it

Looking premiered and I missed it. But more when i catch up with it

a chain reaction
NY Times has a piece about why it might be better for the cinema if there were less movies each year. It's an interesting article that I mostly agree with though I wholeheartedly wish that Manohla hadn't felt the need to diss Iron Man 3 which is hardly the best example of junk blockbusters out there -- at least it was trying something vaguely new, making a Tony Stark movie rather than an Iron Man movie essentially. But let's not get distracted. Her piece was provocative asking for curation over consumption for programmers and money people. 
The New Yorker disagrees, arguing that we only get the great discoveries because so many indie films are made. You can't predict which new artists will actually deliver. 
The Front Row takes this as an opportunity to talk about what the purpose of film criticism is in the internet era and then
Mark Harris comments, too
...all of which gives us plenty to think about. 

Sundance: With "Boyhood", We Can Officially Crown Richard Linklater King of Longform Cinema

Our Sundance Film Festival continues with Nathaniel on Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" 

Life can sneak up on you. Individual moments may linger and shape us but most of life's power is cumulative. It's all in the daily living. When narrative art wants to approach the impossibly grand subjects of Life Itself or at least whole huge swaths of it like Falling in Love or Coming of Age or Starting Over, it's usually in the form of a snapshot: one season, one day, one year, one life-changing event. Richard Linklater's incredible Boyhood, 12 years in the making and longer still gestating before that, starts small. When we first meet Mason Jr (Eller Coltrane) he's a boy of 6 or 7, and not that much different than any little boy... staring at clouds, playing outside, fighting with his sister. But Boyhood has much larger scope and Linklater wanders right out of the singular snapshot and bicycles straight for the mosaic. And what a mosaic! [more...]

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Sundance: Only Lovers Left Alive

Our Sundance Film Festival coverage continues with Michael Cusumano on Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive.

Tom & Tilda - who needs neck pillows travelling when you have each other

Before Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive I would have gladly placed a moratorium on all vampire films. Beyond the exhausting cultural ubiquity of the undead, Tom Alfredson’s masterpiece, Let the Right One In appeared to be the final word on the sub-genre for the foreseeable future. What was left to say after that?

I should’ve known better.  All it takes is the synopsis “Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton in a vampire movie by Jim Jarmusch” to remind one that there is new life to be found in any song, provided that the singer is right. [more...] 

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I Lose It For Lanyards

If it were socially acceptable I would fashion entire outfits only out of press badges for festivals. All the festivals.

In homage to that gold amex dress from the 1994 Oscars. Or for other totally valid reasons. 

Glenn, Michael and I have arrived in Sundance and as you read this, we're all watching movies, different ones. I'm starting with a Norwegian film called Blind and then maybe an African film called White Shadow. We'll see what happens and bring you coverage from the snowy slopes. Utah is as beautiful as ever, with mountains and blue skies and bright moons and the rest of it though this year looks to be 100 times less snow-covered than my last Sundance trip in 2010. I may even be able to see the movie theaters as I approach them this year, instead of wandering into snowbanks, hoping a dark screening room is on the other side.