Jul 01 2008
Dear Zachary Headed to the Small Screen
I just can’t get enough of free film lately, i.e. Internet musicals and ESPN sports documentaries. It used to be that small art house films premiered at indie festivals and then played their limited engagement out in New York or LA, never to be heard from again. Well it doesn’t get any smaller that Slamdance, a low budget Sundance taking place in Utah at the same time, where “Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father” first played. I first heard about it from this glowing review from Cinematical who said
“Play this film. And here’s a note to anyone looking to purchase a doc to distribute and whatnot: Buy this film. I don’t work for a studio, thus I’m not keen on all the politics involved, but I guarantee if this doc was picked up by, say, HBO, it would change lives immediately.”
While the review was more than convincing, I never thought that I or any other non festival attendee would ever get the chance to see this doc about director Kurt Kuenne paying a video homage to his murdered friend Andrew Bagby. Without a film crew, Kuenne interviews friends and family of the deceased in order to immortalize him for his infant son, all while details of his mysterious death are revealed. That all I can give away, as further details reveal shocking truths that apparently, and Im going off of reviews here, make this film the emotional roller coaster that it is. If you want to know more, you will have to watch MSNBC this fall, as the cable news channel has just purchased the film. In the meantime, check out the film’s website here, which features a trailer and more information on the story.
I have always thought of the Olympic opening ceremonies as a little overdramatic and dare I say cheesy. Well thanks to a 300 million dollar budget and the artistic vision of renowned Chinese film director Zhang Yimou, 2008’s Bejing ceremonies were legendary - despite the frequent flood warnings and technical difficulties interrupting the broadcast thanks [...]
Bret Easton Ellis strikes again; Wayfarers, New Order, drugs, sex, and rich LA brats. Welcome to the first look at “The Informers”, the film adaptation of Ellis’s 1994 novel of the same name in which he also wrote the screenplay.
“The drama is set over the course of a week in 1983, in the chillingly [...]
In the 1950’s Hollywood was producing around forty westerns per year, that number fell to twenty during the 60’s, around ten per year in the 1970’s through 90’s, and in the new millennium, we are lucky to get five westerns each year. But when those westerns are of the caliber of 2007’s “3:10 [...]