“On the Road” director Walter Salles talks about filming an “unfilmable” novel

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Since its release in 1957, Jack Kerouac’s “Beat Generation” semi-autobiographical novel On the Road has become an American literary classic. It is also one of those rare novels that seemed untouchable for years to turn into a feature film, documentary, mini-series, television series, or any medium where it could be viewed on either a big theater screen or a big-screen television.The legend of people wanting to turn the novel into film is one that started shortly after the novel was published: Kerouac sent a letter to convince Marlon Brando to play Dean Moriarty; Kerouac could play Sal Paradise. Brando never answered the letter. Skip to 1979 where writer/director, Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights to the novel. Over the years, he wanted various screenwriters, directors and actors to bring the novel to life on screen. Continue Reading

Walker Art Center pays homage to darkly funny auteur Noah Baumbach with a Regis Retrospective and Dialogue

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“Come on…be romantically self-destructive with me.”This quote comes from Kicking and Screaming, Academy-Award-nominated writer/director Noah Baumbach’s 1995 debut feature about a group of college students facing life after graduation, dealing with ongoing and hazardous relationships, finding a purpose in the real world, and facing personal crises. This quote could also represent four other Baumbach films screening at the Walker Art Center, as part of the Regis Dialogue and Retrospective Noah Baumbach: Visibly Human. The retrospective kicks off with Kicking and Screaming, on Friday, March 15 and runs through Friday, April 5 with Baumbach and Village Voice chief film critic Scott Foundas, discussing Baumbach’s 18-year career as a screenwriter and director.Baumbach’s films featured in the Walker retrospective, four of them screening on 35mm (a rarity these days), seemingly have been about “self-destructive” relationships, whether they are among college students (Kicking and Screaming), parents divorcing (The Squid and the Whale), a pending marriage (Margot at the Wedding), and starting a new romance after a mid-life crisis (Greenberg). Baumbach’s characters and dialogue dance around relationships, while at other times, the subjects and plot seem to suggest making relationships pivotal.Take the mid-90’s Gen-X slacker film, Kicking and Screaming. While the four main male characters chose different paths after graduation, they all crave attention, are looking to fit in and are slowly being swept away by their own decisions, even if none of them really want to move forward.  Grover (Josh Hamilton) has broken up with Jane (Olivia d’Abo) as she has gone to study abroad, Otis (Carlos Jacott) can’t seem to do anything right, and Skippy (Jason Wiles) is thinking about sticking around school longer to be with his girlfriend Miami (Parker Posey), until he finds out that Max (Chris Eigerman) has been with Miami, as Max seems to have adopted a new sleazy lifestyle. Baumbach gives each character his or her proper arc, especially in a comic supporting turn from Eric Stoltz as the lifetime “student” bartending at the townie bar and giving advice and anecdotes on life with everyone, leaving each character wandering and contemplating their impending doom. Continue Reading

2013 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival announces a winning lineup

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This week The Film Society of Minneapolis/St. Paul made its first big announcement about the upcoming Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF), which opens Thursday, April 11 and runs through Sunday, April 28, 2013, at St. Anthony Main. One of the biggest cultural events in the Midwest, MSPIFF will screen over 200 international, American independent feature length and short films, narratives and documentaries representing over 60 countries.

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“A Place at the Table,” “The Gatekeepers,” “West of Memphis,” and other great indie films to watch for in Twin Cities theaters

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Finally closing the books on February will be a relief. It is the shortest month in the entire calendar year, and it has been hard to see everything that’s opened in local theaters. Out of the eleven studio releases to open this past February, I only managed to see one of them, Steven Soderbergh’s reportedly final film, Side Effects, and found it effective, even if the story does bite off more than it can chew in the final reel. (Soderbergh does have one more film to be released this year, and it should be a good one: the Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, which will be released on HBO and stars Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his younger lover, Scott Thorson.) I bring up Side Effects, as I’m surprised the studio released it in February, a few weeks before the Oscars, as they could have waited until summer or even late spring, where I think the placement could have benefited the film more.As for the other films released in February, I’ll probably never see half of them, including Identity Thief, Beautiful Creatures, and Safe Haven, and within a month, I’ll even forget that they were released. Some of the bigger releases over the next couple weeks I cannot seem to get excited for either, including Jack the Giant Slayer and Dead Man Down, though I have some interest in Oz The Great and Powerful. Continue Reading

2013 Oscars: Who will win? Who should win?

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The 85th Academy Awards ceremony will take place this Sunday, February 24, and the heat is on for many of the nominees. Over the past few weeks, alliances have shifted—especially since the nominations were announced and it was widely believed that Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln would be piling in all the trophies for its 12 nominations and taking home most of the awards.  While Lincoln will surely win some Oscars, there are other nominees that have been getting more attention as Lincoln’s momentum has suddenly slowed down only a few days before the Oscar winners are revealed.Here are a couple of categories and some picks regarding what I think should win versus what will win.In all of Lincoln’s 12 nominations, the one remarkable omission left out is in the Makeup and Hairstyling category; according to IMDB, some 30 were involved with makeup for the film. Frankly, I would rather see all of them nominated then any of the other three films (Hitchcock, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and Les Miserables) win; not to take anything away from the other films, but for Lincoln to receive as many nominations as it did and not receive another for the outstanding job the team did in transforming Daniel Day-Lewis into Abraham Lincoln…I thought for sure Lincoln would be a slam-dunk nominee and winner in that category.As for some of the other Lincoln nominations, the biggest no-brainer on the entire Oscar ballot is Day-Lewis winning his third Oscar for his towering performance as the 16th president of the United States. At times, you can get lost in the performance and may forget that you’re watching Day-Lewis and not “Honest Abe” himself up on the screen. Day-Lewis showcases his serious acting chops again and proves to be one of the best living actors worldwide. Continue Reading

Michael Starrbury, Minnesota screenwriter of “The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete,” talks about making movie magic

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A few days after the Sundance Film Festival premier of the film made from his screenplay, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete, local screenwriter Michael Starrbury sat down at a coffee house table in downtown Minneapolis where I was meeting him to discuss his film. I’d never met Starrbury before, but you’d think that we’d been friends for years; he has an engaging smile and charismatic personality, and knows his movies. We chatted and laughed for a good 20 minutes before we even started the interview.Starrbury, 38, looks younger than that, and the Osseo graduate, a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has been on quite a winning streak lately. He has won numerous awards, winning the IFP/McKnight Artist Fellowships for Screenwriters three times now; Starrbury’s Mister and Pete script is the first of many new projects he has completed or is working on.During Sundance it was announced that he would be working on an untitled Tupac Shakur feature film, mostly working on rewrites and bringing a bit more weight to the film, and that’s not all. He also is working on an adaptation of the science fiction comic The Great Unknown for Warner Brothers and his script Watch Roger Do His Thing made the Black List of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays. Continue Reading

Sundance Film Festival report, part 2: “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” “C.O.G.,” “The Spectacular Now,” and more

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PARK CITY, UTAH—My opening weekend at Sundance was an enjoyable ride of discovering new faces, ideas, proclamations, and stories. I was geared up more than ever and there was plenty on my plate. Yes, the four-to-five-hour sleep schedule and the constant stomach growling were pushing the limits of my body and mind, but some of the most anticipated films of the festival were coming up and there was nothing holding me back. Well, I could have been shut out of a screening…but thankfully, I got tickets to everything I needed and wanted to see.The 8:30 a.m. screenings are definitely not my favorites; they’re not ideal for most audiences or filmmakers, but the new Richard Linklater romantic drama Before Midnight proved to be the eye-opener I needed to make the wait to get into the MARC theater worthwhile. The third film directed by Linklater in the “Before” series, once again starring Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke as Celine and Jesse, with all three again getting screenplay credit, might be the best in the trilogy.This time around it’s nine years after Before Sunset, Celine and Jesse are living in Greece as a couple and are spending the final days of summer at a friend’s house for a mini-vacation. Much like the two previous entries, many of the scenes are set up around long concentrated and marvelous dialogue with friends, telling their life stories to the group—mostly about past loves—and looking forward to the future. At first Jesse and Celine’s story is no different than anyone else’s, sitting around for a beautiful and lavish lunch. Continue Reading

Sundance Film Festival report: “Don Jon’s Addiction,” “May in the Summer,” “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer,” and more

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PARK CITY, UTAH—It did not take long to get back into the complete insanity of the opening day at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Running into old friends, finding out where I’d be staying, checking in with publicists, requesting tickets, and loading up on catalogs, magazines, press kits, and water, I was in full force after a mere few hours on the ground.It never gets easy to deal with all the issues one does when walking into press headquarters and getting your bearings. Where do I go next? Was I supposed to meet someone here or there? These questions are constantly on my mind, but the conclusion that I have now come to is that nobody else is on your schedule and it will stay that way until the end of time—or at least until the end of Sundance.A few hours later, it was time to buckle up, get comfortable, and prepare for the long haul of seven full days of movie-watching, party-going, sleeping, walking, bus-riding, and more movie-watching until my eyes, head, brain, and body could take no more. The festival opened with four films (two documentaries and two narratives) and a shorts program for opening night; it was somewhat of a no-brainer that I first chose to see writer/director/star Cherien Dabis’s follow-up to her wonderfully enchanting Amreeka: May in the Summer. Continue Reading

Sundance Film Festival 2013 preview: Minnesota filmmakers join the star-studded throng

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Starting on Thursday, January 17 and running through Sunday, January 27, the 2013 Sundance Film Festival will take place in Park City, Utah (and in a few surrounding cities, including Salt Lake City). Streets are closed, theater doors are unlocked, grocery stores and restaurants are packed—this is all the craziness that occurs when somewhere between 40,000-50,000 people attend the opening weekend of the biggest film festival in the United States.Once again, I’ll be out in Park City for a week (barely eating and sleeping), covering the festival for Twin Cities Daily Planet. It is hard to believe this will be my fifth year writing on the festival; each year, I learn something new while out there, whether it be standing in line all bundled up or sitting in my chair either next to a local person, another journalist, or even, in one case, a star of one of the films I’m about to sit down and watch. You never know what surprises will be discovered but when they are, it is a thrilling feeling. This time last year, Beasts of the Southern Wild was barely on my radar; before its premiere, nobody was talking about it. Continue Reading

Best movies of 2012

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After seeing close to 45 films this December for consideration for my Top Ten films of 2012, it all comes to down to this: a list which represents an obscene number of hours logged sitting, standing, lying down, getting up before sunrise, staying up well into the night with restless mornings and nights, driving and walking though blizzards, downpours, heat waves, and your typical 72-and-sunny days to get to the theater, plop down in front of the computer, and/or kick back in the recliner chair to watch hundreds of movies.Shuffling through 230+ films and boiling it down to ten is never easy, and tough decisions are always made. There are three films I saw at Sundance that made the list, two have not been released in the Twin Cities but will open next month, and one may never open in the Twin Cities. As for the other four, it was a mixture of going to the theater to see the film or catching it once it was released on DVD.It is also difficult to present this as my “official” Top Ten list as there still around a dozen films I either completely missed in theaters or that haven’t opened in the Twin Cities that would be considered for the list. The biggest title in the bunch is Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, opening Friday January 11, 2013. It is not a slam-dunk that ZD30 would make my list, but I feel it would have a great shot at making it. Continue Reading