From top left: Stew on stage in Spike Lee's
"Passing Strange"; Samantha Power, a producer of "Sergio", Richard Ray Whitman
in "Barking Water"; a scene from "Cliente"; a scene from "Peter & Vandy"; Kevin
Bacon in "Taking Chance", Anna Wintour in "The September Issue", Wesley Snipes
and Don Cheadle in "Brooklyn's Finest", and Ashton Kutcher in "Spread".
(All photos courtesy of Sundance Film Festival)
THE POPCORN REEL 2009 SUNDANCE
FILM FESTIVAL FOCUS
Halfway Home, And Still Plenty Of Sundance
To Go Around
By
Omar P.L. Moore/The
Popcorn Reel
January 20, 2009
As the Sundance Film Festival hits its halfway point, several films and
documentaries have caught the eye, and with screenings still to come before the
Festival comes to a close next Sunday there are some titles definitely worth
highlighting. In the category of engagement and the amazing, Spike Lee's
"Passing Strange", the filming of the stage musical by Stew, a rock-n-roll
musician, has had audiences tapping in the aisles with great energy and
enthusiasm by all accounts. "Strange" deals with the expression of black
male teenage angst, and does so quite vividly. "The Carter", a
documentary, features the stream-of-consciousness genius of Lil' Wayne, the
young rapper from Louisiana who literally works around the clock, not sleeping a
wink, for he is constantly creating new music and churning out work all day,
every day. Filmmaker Adam Lough follows Wayne around at numerous junctures
over the course of several months. Wayne is nominated for more Grammys
this year than any other artist (eight) and for a few hours next month he will
literally be stifled creatively as he sits at the Shrine Auditorium in Los
Angeles during the ceremony as he awaits word on whether he is a winner.
Angst is at issue in "La Mission", Peter Bratt's drama set in the Mission
District of San Francisco, starring his brother Benjamin as a tough-as-nails
Lowrider car leader whose world is rocked by a family crisis.
Sheer ingenuity is chronicled in "Nollywood Babylon", the documentary by
Canadian filmmaker Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal about the world's biggest and
busiest film industry centered in Nigeria, known as Nollywood. Film
distribution is cranked out at an extraordinary high rate, with dozens of
thousands of films distributed each year in the country. An ingénue is
documented in "The September Issue", a documentary on compiling that month's
issue of Vogue Magazine in 2007, its famously polarizing and profound
editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who gives filmmaker R.J. Cutler ("The War Room")
an exclusive, never-before-seen behind the scenes look at the inner workings of
Vogue.
For politics, look no further than films like Pete Travis's "Endgame", about the
negotiations between a British intelligence officer and the then-outlawed
African National Congress and its prominent star and later South African
president Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Ejiofor) in the country during the apartheid
era, brokered by a professor (William Hurt). Jonny Lee Miller, who plays a
real-life character that upon which the film is based, also stars.
"Sergio" is a documentary about the slain UN envoy-diplomat Sergio Vieira de
Mello who was killed in Iraq in 2003 when a bomb went off in his office there.
The film is produced by Samantha Power (based on her biography Chasing The
Flame) and Greg Barker, who also directs. "Brooklyn's Finest", another
police thriller directed by Antoine Fuqua, has an all-star ensemble cast to
boast: Don Cheadle, Wesley Snipes, Richard Gere and Ethan Hawke are among the
participants, as the film explores the dynamics and dilemmas of politics on the
streets and in the precincts.
For the trips with the dead or the soon to expire, "Taking Chance" is about the
long, solemn journey home for soldiers who fly home with the dead bodies of
their comrades in arms. Based on the true story of Lieutenant Colonel
Michael Strobl, who undertakes the difficult journey of taking slain 19-year-old
Lance Corporal Chance Phelps' body back to America on a flight. Kevin
Bacon stars as the Lieutenant Strobl. "Barking Water", a stunning
landscape of a Native American woman who forgives her abusive and now ailing
husband and accompanies him on a road trip home, is directed by Sterlin Harjo
with great conviction. The cinematography is sometimes oversaturated but
no less haunting or beautiful.
For love stories, there's "Peter & Vandy", which plays like the 2001 film
"Memento", with its story out of sequence. There's "Dare", a film which
may not be what it appears to be, about love, relationships and the blurring
lines of sexual identity. Steven Soderbergh's 1989 debut film "sex, lies
and videotape" makes the Festival's Collection cut on its 20th anniversary of
world premiering at Sundance, while Wendell B. Harris's incendiary and superb
"Chameleon Street" (not a love story) does too. There's more love, this
time of the same-sex kind, where Jim Carrey plays a cop turned con-man and gay
lover in "I Love You Phillip Morris", which is based on a true story and has
been waiting for a distributor for at least two years. Ewan McGregor also
stars.
If success in Hollywood is measured by how many people you sleep with, then
Ashton Kutcher's character has everyone else licked, if you pardon the pun.
In "Spread", he plays an up-and-coming (sorry!) actor who sleeps his way up the
Tinseltown ladder. What does he learn? You'll have to see.
Then there's "Cliente", which may be viewed as something of a reworking of
"American Gigolo". The film stars Nathalie Baye as a successful career
woman who develops a complex relationship with a gigolo. It may also sound
like an amplification of last year's "Deception", part of which dealt with
underground sex clubs in the American corporate world.
For topics close to the black community, "Good Hair", executive produced by
Nelson George and featuring Chris Rock, examines the history of black people's
hair and what it symbolizes in the culture. Robert Townsend's "Why We
Laugh" discusses black comedians and the history of their comedy in America,
with Mr. Rock and whole host of other noteworthy voices of comedy, Whoopi
Goldberg, Steve Harvey, Paul Mooney, D.L. Hughley, Dick Gregory, Bill Cosby,
Keenan Ivory Wayans and many more opining on the subject.
Boxing enthusiasts will take to "Thriller In Manila", John Dower's documentary
on Joe Frazier, who for the first time since the 1975 fight with Muhammad Ali in
the Philippines looks at the infamous encounter in which he suffered humiliating
defeat. The film is entirely from Mr. Frazier's perspective. "Tyson"
looks at the rising and falling star of Mike Tyson, and at the man behind the
boxing brilliance that he was in the 1980's and early 1990's before a series of
falls took him to new lows.
For one word first names there is "Adam", about an awkward man (Hugh Dancy) who
tries to find love with the beautiful woman of his dreams, and "Helen", Sandra
Nettelbeck's film about the severe depression which befalls a successful
professor (Ashley Judd). Two first names in the same title (aside from
"Peter & Vandy") there's "Rudo Y Corsi", which reunites Gael Garcia Bernal and
Diego Luna from "Y Tu Mama Tambien" and is directed by Carlos Cuaron, the
brother of "Y Tu Mama" director Alfonso Cuaron, whom along with Alejandro
Gonzalez Inarritu and Guillermo Del Toro produce this film about a pair of
Mexican brother day laborers who aim to build their mother a dream house.
The film has already been picked up for distribution in North America by Sony
Pictures Classics.
Finally, last but definitely not least, there's "Over The Hills And Far Away", a
film based on a true story of author-journalist Rupert Isaacson, whose South
African-born son suffers from autism and is taken to Mongolia to see if the
effects of the affliction can be cured.
There's a lot to see -- so many movies, so little time. And there are lots
of short films still available to be seen for free on iTunes, including "575
Castro Street", about the photo business of Harvey Milk, San Francisco's Board
of Supervisors member.
For all of the films mentioned here and for ticket information, visit
http://www.sundance.org/festival.
The Popcorn Reel Sundance 2009 Coverage
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