Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/jim-brunzell-iii/page/7/)
The summer movie season is officially over. The “Great Minnesota Get-Together” just wrapped up, kids and students are back in school, and Hollywood and Independent studios are gearing up to release their most prestigious prize-contending films over the next few months. Continue Reading
PARK CITY, UTAH—On the morning of January 21, the Sundance Film Festival was moving into its first opening weekend and there was little if any buzz on writer/director Craig Zobel’s second feature, Compliance, until the film had its world premiere screening mid-morning at the Library Theater. After the end credits were finished, it became the film everyone could not stop talking about. Compliance opens this Friday, August 31, at the Lagoon Cinema. Continue Reading
Opening Friday, August 24 at the Lagoon Cinema is the hot ‘n’ heavy, NC-17-rated, Texas barnburner Killer Joe. It’s the first film in five years from Academy-Award-winning director William Freidkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection) and his second adaptation of a Tracy Letts play (the first being 2006’s underrated Bug). Killer Joe will definitely not be mistaken for any other film in 2012 and it could be one of the most talked-about films of the year. It’s an example of the offbeat and strange world of neo-noirs filled with plenty of unreliable characters, deception, violence, and sexual innuendos; and all of that is topped with one scene at a family dinner table, I presume the scene that earned the film its notorious NC-17 rating. Continue Reading
The Minneapolis Underground Film Festival (MUFF) has already been in motion for four years and will be unveiling its fifth edition this weekend at the St. Anthony Main Theatre. While the festival has not received much fanfare in past years, perhaps since the festival had been in the dead of winter and located at MCAD, this year feels and looks different; hopefully, film fans will take notice. The move is not much of a surprise, as December is a tough month for filmgoers—mainly due to the hideous weather in the Twin Cities, but also it is usually the month when Hollywood preps its Oscar campaign season and studios want to release their golden derby entries. With MSPIFF’s success moving to the friendly locale with plenty of sunshine down by the river, MUFF is poised to make its mark, even with its eclectic program. Continue Reading
For the past two years, I have been writing this column and it has been a great opportunity to write freely on different films, theaters, organizations, festivals, people, and, occasionally, television programs. The local Twin Cities film community, however, has been what I have tried to focus on every week. Looking at the Twin Cities’ upcoming film events is always exciting and often surprises, disturbs, stimulates, and leaves me wanting more. Since I first became a journalist, five years ago, I’ve been living my dream as I travel across North America bringing Twin Cities Daily Planet the latest interviews, news, and updates from some of the leading film festivals in the U.S. and the world (Toronto, Sundance, Chicago, Seattle, and Tribeca)—not to mention our own local film festivals, including the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival and the Twin Cities Film Festival. For next week’s column, I’ll be previewing the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival. Continue Reading
As the summer film calendar enters “the dog days of summer,” most of the big films of the summer have been released, with the exception being the new Jason Bourne film, The Bourne Legacy, starring Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) instead of Matt Damon, opening nationwide on Friday, August 10. Continue Reading
The 2012 film calendar has already passed the halfway point of the year and there have been quite a number of films that I have seen and would highly recommend you catch at some point. One problem, though, is that many of the year’s best films will not open until closer to the fall due to the annual quest for potential Oscar gold. The good news is that many are either out in theaters now or coming soon, or are already out on DVD/Blu-Ray. Continue Reading
One of the best branding slogans is, “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO.” It’s clever and direct and has worked wonders since it was first unveiled in 1996. HBO (Home Box Office) seemed to discover very early on that with a cable channel you did not have to necessarily show movies day and night. In the late 70s, HBO started shows like Inside the NFL and Race for the Pennant, and had also shown Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier’s “Thriller in Manila” boxing match in 1975, making it the first pay cable channel to air a program via satellite. It was also home to Wimbledon for close to 25 years, before the tournament went to TNT in 1999. Continue Reading
With June already gone, the summer movie season is in fast gear now—and so is the heat. The first week of July will be in the mid to high 90s all week, and nothing sounds more comfortable than an air-conditioned movie theater. Each week in July, new theaters will be rotating some of the most anticipated films of not only the summer, but of the year. There is one film in particular on everyone’s mind that does not need any help getting bodies into the seats and could contend for the biggest film of the year, even though The Avengers just crossed the $600 million mark last week. However, there is another comic book hero who might have something to say about that and will likely jumpstart filmgoers in July. Continue Reading
Next Monday and Tuesday, July 2 and 3, the Trylon Microcinema will be opening writer/director Panos Cosmatos’s debut feature, Beyond the Black Rainbow, and one thing is for certain: there will not be another film screening in town like it. (In fact, there might not be another like it for the rest of 2012.) The film screens as part of the “Trylon Premieres” series, every Monday and Tuesday, of new releases, restored classics, and all the other films in between that otherwise do not open at your local AMC, a Landmark Theater, St. Anthony Main, or the Riverview Theater. Continue Reading