Big Screen Little Screen

[The following is an orphaned mini-review that I dug up from my draft archives. I thought it was relevant considering the recent changes in the film’s distribution plan.]

At first glance director Lance Hammer’s debut film Ballast can easily be dismissed as a poverty level dirge of depression and bad luck for a lonely group of people who live on the Mississippi Delta. That would be a mistake. It’s more like a slow burn meditation on what it takes to survive when all life has given you is nothing in return for a life of suffering. It is the story of a fragmented family of three who try to figure out what will happen next after another member commits suicide. Immediate and pulsing with a Southern Gothic bloodline, the film deliberately ramps up into the desperate but dignified circumstances of this small collection of characters. The flat tone resembles the flat landscape but is never dull. Post-screening Hammer described his editing technique for this film as “using the moments in between” but he could have easily been speaking about his characters lives who seem to all too easily slip through the cracks.

Recent film news reveals that Hammer will look to go it alone when it comes to distribution and film rights.

Hammer says conventional distribution advances for a small film like “Ballast” range between $25,000-$50,000. “If you made a $50,000 project, that makes sense,” Hammer said. “If you happen to spend more money than that, it becomes difficult to justify giving up creative control.

After reading the news of the coming apocalypse for independent films it’s good to see an example of a filmmaker controlling his own destiny.

Related: For more inspiration read the interview with Lance Hammer at The Filmlot.

[…]

Ballast screened Sunday, March 30th at the 2008 New Directors/New Films series for the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

For those who’ve slept through Sundance and it’s 125 entries this year, or would rather the wheat be separated from the chaff, so to speak - check the winners list and then proceed at your leisure, from the executive summary material, to the day by day minutiae.

– Karina Longworth offers three overlooked gems, and five films most likely to hit your local theater. Bonus: a video exit poll of moviegoers that had just watched Dakota Fanning in Hounddog, on whether the rape scene controversy was much ado about nothing. Keep in mind though, those Sundance cats are largely NPR listening flag-burners anyway

– A mixed bag it was, but the Sundance Channel on YouTube provided the most comprehensive video coverage within the festival, with over 80 selections to choose from. And Zoom In’s video dispatches were nothing to sneeze at either.

– Not enough? IndieWire set up camp for the duration of Sundance, and compiled over 90 interviews, reviews, and features.

– Finally, David Hudson’s tireless coverage of the coverage, over at GreenCine Daily. If you can’t find your Sundance news there, it never happened.

With well over 100 films of all shapes, sizes, and genres (and more than a few defying description) screening in Park City at the moment, only a small percentage are fated to successfully navigate from the festival circuit to your local art-house or cineplex.  Not the best indicator of a film’s worth or substance, but someone with deep pockets has to want to pick up and distribute the films that screen for Sundance audiences, and for better or worse, it often comes down to the buzz, baby. After a flurry of screenings and aquisitions this weekend, the pundits are naming names.

The Hollywood Reporter’s Anne Thompson (Risky Biz) participates in a video roundtable with Cinematical editor James Rocchi and Kim Voynar - editor of new offshoot Cinematical Indie, to talk up the noteworthy screenings over the kick-off weekend, and more to watch out for - Sarah Polley’s directorial debut - Away from Her, Russian drama The Island, docs Chicago 10, The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, and Nanking.  A lengthy discussion, also including: Catherine Keener in An American Crime, Adrienne Shelly’s posthumously released film Waitress, Snow Angels, Black Snake Moan, Red Road, and horror-comedy Teeth. Speaking of the latter, it appears that “vagina dentata” may reach overused insider catchprase status at some early point this year.

See also: Blurby buzz from middle-brow tastemakers Entertainment Weekly, and hearsay - both good and bad, from Variety. Lastly, Deadline Hollywood’s roundup of early Sundance deals - i.e., films you might actually catch in your neck of the woods, someday.

• The Sundance Channel currently has over 30 short videos - directors profiles, interviews, and street scene dispatches from the Four Eyed Monsters duo on their YouTube page. Selections include a sit down with Gina Gershon and Steve Buscemi for paparazzi dramedy Delirious, and Jeffrey Blitz, director of high-schooling coming of age (in the vein of Thumbsucker) story, Rocket Science.
• IFC News on director David Wain’s (Wet Hot American Summer, alum of Stella and The State) new comedy The Ten - comprised of ten stories based on The Ten Commandments. Cast includes Jessica Alba, Paul Rudd, Rob Corddry, plus (featured in video) Winona Ryder and Gretchen Mol. Also, from last year’s Sundance, Kirby Dick’s doc This Film Is Not Yet Rated belatedly spurns small concessions from the MPAA on their ratings considerations.
• indieWire’s continuing iW Video segments:  Alternative programming at the Slamdance festival, a review of Weapons.
• Zoom In interviews Tommy O’Haver about An American Crime, starring Catherine Keener.  Based on true events, Keener (in a role she was “scared to death” to play) as Gertrude Baniszewski - a mother who, with the aid of her own children and neighborhood kids - abused, tortured, and eventually murdered a teenage girl (played by Hard Candy’s Ellen Page).

Continued accumulation of daily dispatches from Park City, updated throughout the day:

“In advance of the Monday night Sundance debut screening of Hounddog (aka “The Dakota Fanning Project”), which contains a graphic scene of Fanning (who was 12 at the time) being raped, the Catholic League is calling for a federal investigation of possible child pornography, the biggest controversy to explode to date at the festival.” - Gregg Goldstein, Risky Biz

“Oh. This is that rape movie. Who is gonna pay 10 bucks to watch a kid get raped? So what if you’ve got Dakota Fanning. None of her fans are going to come to see it anyway.” - L.A. Times on filmmaker Deborah Kampmeier and the eleven years, four failed financing attempts, and 21 producers credits between finished script and controversial release.

• David Poland: “Just saw what might well be this Sundance’s You, Me & Everyone We Know. It’s called Expired and it is a romance of broken people [Samantha Morton and Jason Patric] who, in this case, happen to be ‘meter maids’”.  Also features Terri Garr and Illeana Douglas.
• Reid Rosefelt of Zoom In describes the rigamarole of day one, and posts a video interview with indieWire’s Eugene Hernandez as he describes his manic schedule, and vows to trim out the number of parties visited while holding himself to a curfew.
• “(I’m) actually invigorated by the prospect of attending a film festival in which an over-hyped (and over-priced) Vacation retread steals headlines (and potential aquisition dollars) from ten or twelve films more deserving of market share”. - Karina Longworth, in response to early reports that the festival is effectively dead on arrival, and devoid of commercial prospects.
• indieWire rolls out their first audio/visual segment for iW Video, with opening night featured director Brett Morgen, on his partially animated documentary, Chicago 10, focusing on the seven anti-war protesters put on trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The film features voice-overs by Hank Azaria, Nick Notle, Mark Ruffalo, Roy Scheider, and Jeffrey Wright, though Morgen lost me at Rage Against the Machine. Also, in an opening night conference, Robert Redford talks about the overreliance on buzz.
• “A vibrantly crafted evocation…’Chicago 10‘ is far less interested in offering a fresh, probing look at what took place on the streets during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the circus trial that followed than it is in celebrating the stars of the anti-war movement and rallying the current generation to follow their examples.” - Variety review.  Screengrab collects more, mixed reviews of the film.
• “While it still produces its share of successes, a Sundance victory is not the passport to the mainstream of popular imagination. Nor is it the melting pot of new talent that many imagine.” - The Guardian (via Hollywood Elsewhere)

I’ll be compiling the best reviews, features, interviews, and video coming out of the Sundance Festival, from today until the 28th. One post per day, updated a few times thoughout the day and night:

• “The problem with Black Snake Moan isn’t the incendiary nature of the material…The problem is simply one of time structure: The amount of time Lazarus ministers to Rae is just too short for her victory over her self…a film where the lead actress is literally wrapped in forty pounds of metaphor, and where lifetimes of abuse, addiction and regret can be cleared up over the course of less than a week with some moonshine and home cooking and 12-bar riffs” - James Rocci review
• “She so much wanted this film to get in here, to be seen, and that’s why all of us knew that there was no way that she committed suicide. This movie is a huge turning point in her career.” The New York Times gets reaction from Adrienne Shelly’s circle, as Waitress, a film that she wrote, directed, and starred in, premieres two and a half months after her tragic death. Forever to be mentioned in the same breath as Hal Hartley, who remembers the actress, while talking his new film - Fay Grim, via The Reeler.
• GreenCine points to Filmmaker mag’s festival features, including Risk Factors: 20 emerging directors provide blubs about the roadblocks presented between script to screen.
• Variety kicks off their coverage with a full-blown features page: Distributors try to sort though a festival lineup that’s “more arthouse and less ‘Little Miss Sunshine,’” - the commercial diamond in the rough that will be referenced countless times in the next two weeks.
• Twitch features an interview with Mark Duplass, director of The Puffy Chair, a standout of last year’s festival - unfortunately overshadowed by the dollar signs attached to another comic road trip, LMS. Duplass notes that along with the DVD release on January 23rd, he and brother Jay have a new film in post-production, two more slated for studio release, and the possibility of a series in the works for NBC.
• Free, streaming video shorts premiering at Sundance - updated daily
• Mos Def and Sarah Polley, directors Darren Aronofsky and Jared Hess among the list of competition judges.
• Via Cinematical, something akin to a text-messaging chat room - The Park City Fest Mob - Sundance bloggers on the ground documenting gossip and goings-on.
• “Digital Media Evangelists” and video-short darlings Susan Buice and Arin Crumley (Four Eyed Monsters) will be video blogging daily from the Sundance Channel’s platform on YouTube. Also, first-time director Zoe Cassavetes on Parkey Posey and Broken English: