Doc NYC gave a boost to 15 Oscar-contending documentaries Tuesday, naming them to its prestigious shortlist of the year’s best nonfiction films.
Early favorites Flee, Summer of Soul, The Rescue, Ascension, and Becoming Cousteau made the Doc NYC shortlist, as did Introducing, Selma Blair, the intimate documentary about actress Selma Blair’s battle with Ms, and The Velvet Underground, Todd Haynes’ film on the influential avant-garde rock band fronted by Lou Reed.
Doc NYC has earned a reputation as an accurate predictor of Oscar success. Last year, the festival gave shortlist recognition to three of the docs that went on to claim Oscar nominations: Time, Collective, and Crip Camp.
“For eight of the last nine years, Doc NYC has screened the documentary feature that went on to win the Academy Award,” the festival noted. “The festival has also screened 39 of the last 45 Oscar-nominated documentary features.
Early favorites Flee, Summer of Soul, The Rescue, Ascension, and Becoming Cousteau made the Doc NYC shortlist, as did Introducing, Selma Blair, the intimate documentary about actress Selma Blair’s battle with Ms, and The Velvet Underground, Todd Haynes’ film on the influential avant-garde rock band fronted by Lou Reed.
Doc NYC has earned a reputation as an accurate predictor of Oscar success. Last year, the festival gave shortlist recognition to three of the docs that went on to claim Oscar nominations: Time, Collective, and Crip Camp.
“For eight of the last nine years, Doc NYC has screened the documentary feature that went on to win the Academy Award,” the festival noted. “The festival has also screened 39 of the last 45 Oscar-nominated documentary features.
- 10/27/2021
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Joshua Deighton and Holly Becker are joining Sidney Kimmel Entertainment as senior vps production. They will report both to president of production Bill Horberg, who announced their appointments Thursday, and to SKE president Jim Tauber. The staffing ramp-up comes as SKE is finalizing a deal with MGM to distribute a slate of projects still to be determined. Deighton has served as vp production at Fox Searchlight, where he was involved in the acquisition of such films as "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Super Troopers". He also was a production exec on such films as "Sideways", "Sexy Beast", "One Hour Photo" and Danny Boyle's upcoming "Sunshine".
Cablevision Systems unit Rainbow Media Holdings, which is set to be spun off from the cable operator, has named former Showtime Networks exec Glenn Oakley senior vp new business development ... The U.K. online advertising market reached £266.8 million ($479.6 million) in the first half of 2004, up 76% year-over-year, putting the industry on track to potentially surpass ad spending on commercial radio next year, an industry trade group said in its latest report... The Securities and Exchange Commission will not bring insider trading charges against former Lehman Bros., Internet star analyst Holly Becker and her husband, a hedge fund trader, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
- 10/11/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
NEW YORK -- Nikki Reed, who co-penned and starred in Fox Searchlight's teen drama thirteen, is negotiating to land a role in another edgy indie feature, IFC Films' American Gun, sources said. Gun is being executive produced by Forest Whitaker along with IFC's Jonathan Sehring, Caroline Kaplan and Holly Becker. Whitaker also stars in the project, which follows a series of interweaving story lines focusing on the proliferation of guns in America. Helmer Aric Avelino is making his feature debut on Gun. He co-wrote the script with Steven Bagatourian. Ted Kroeber is producing, with Arlene Gibbs as a co-producer. Reed recently reteamed with her thirteen director and co-writer, Catherine Hardwicke, on Columbia Pictures' Lords of Dogtown (HR 3/3). American Gun, the film's working title, starts filming next month in Los Angeles. Reed is repped by CAA, manager Booh Schut and attorney Steve Warren.
- 6/29/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Forest Whitaker has pacted to topline -- and executive produce through his Spirit Dance production banner -- IFC Films' ensemble drama American Gun. Sources said Donald Sutherland, Linda Cardellini and Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon are in negotiations to join Whitaker. Newcomer Aric Avelino will make his feature directing debut on the project, which explores "a series of interwoven story lines focusing on how the proliferation of guns in America affects and shapes lives, often inciting dramatic shifts in both behavior and outlook," the filmmakers said. Avelino also penned Gun, which IFC executives Jonathan Sehring, Caroline Kaplan and Holly Becker will executive produce with Whitaker. Ted Kroeber is producing, with Arlene Gibbs as co-producer.
- 6/15/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Forest Whitaker has pacted to topline -- and executive produce through his Spirit Dance production banner -- IFC Films' ensemble drama American Gun. Sources said Donald Sutherland, Linda Cardellini and Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon are in negotiations to join Whitaker. Newcomer Aric Avelino will make his feature directing debut on the project, which explores "a series of interwoven story lines focusing on how the proliferation of guns in America affects and shapes lives, often inciting dramatic shifts in both behavior and outlook," the filmmakers said. Avelino also penned Gun, which IFC executives Jonathan Sehring, Caroline Kaplan and Holly Becker will executive produce with Whitaker. Ted Kroeber is producing, with Arlene Gibbs as co-producer.
- 6/15/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Screened
IFP Los Angeles Film Festival
Inspired by his stint as a camper and then a counselor at the upstate New York theater camp Stagedoor Manor (not to mention a certain 1980 movie set at New York's High School for Performing Arts), screenwriter Todd Graff makes his directorial debut with "Camp", a film that, intentionally or not, succinctly reflects the title's various connotations.
Although certainly not the smoothest run of operations, the clunky transitions and less than fluidly staged musical numbers aren't the deal breakers they might have been thanks to the picture's genuine affection for its milieu and its committed ensemble of fresh-faced teen talent.
But even with the on-camera endorsement of musical theater deity Stephen Sondheim, backing from Jersey Films and specialty pros Killer Films ("Boys Don't Cry", "Far From Heaven") and the marketing savvy of IFC ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding", "Y Tu Mama Tambien"), the closing-night selection of this year's IFP Los Angeles Film Festival isn't exactly sleeper material.
With its arsenal of in-jokes, the picture will likely have to settle for an audience demographic limited to musical theater buffs overlapping with those who felt they never fit into a more traditional summer camp setting.
Shot on the actual site of Stagedoor Manor, whose campers have included Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and an 8-year-old Robert Downey Jr., "Camp" introduces the current fictional crop after a dispensable opening musical number.
Among those arriving for an artistically expressive summer at Camp Ovation: newbie Vlad (Daniel Letterle), a certified player with boy-band looks who wastes no time in seducing several female campers -- including sweet but insecure Ellen (Joanna Chilcoat), her bunkmate Dee (Sasha Allen) and the conniving seductress Jill (Alana Allen) -- while managing to find a little time to flirt with sensitive Michael (Robin De Jesus), who still bears the physical and emotional bruises of being beaten up when he attended his high school prom in drag.
Unlike regular summer camps, which might mount one major production at the end of each month, Camp Ovation puts the kids through the rigorous task of putting on a new show every two weeks, complete with costumes, sets and a resident house band.
Adding to that challenge is the arrival of this year's guest director, the cynical, hard-drinking Bert Hanley (musician Don Dixon), who had a hit show on Broadway a decade ago but hasn't been able to finish anything since.
Will Bert ever put down the bottle and get those creative juices flowing anew?
Will Vlad ever learn to stop playing people like they were strings on his guitar?
Will the evil Jill get her well-deserved comeuppance?
Will everybody get their encore?
Actually, in Graff's hands, nothing feels quite like a sure thing. The awkwardness experienced by the group of adolescents also extends to the construction of sequences and the uneasy juggling of characters, which keeps throwing the film out of balance.
And while the script has no shortage of tart, knowing wit, too often scenes seem set up solely to pay off some sight gag, undercutting key emotional credibility in the process.
But Graff, whose writing credits include "Coyote Ugly" and "Dangerous Minds", at least has his heart in the right place, and those expressive, talented kids are the real deal.
Mr. Sondheim aside, Graff also manages to round up some heavyweight support in the persons of composer Stephen Trask ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch"), musical director Tim Weil ("Rent"), songwriter Michael Gore ("Fame") and lyricist Lynn Ahrens ("Ragtime"), but somehow, rather than summoning "Fame", many of the group performance pieces end up having all the infectious energy of a musical interlude on "The Partridge Family".
Camp
IFC Films
An IFC production A Jersey Films/Killer Films/Laughlin Park Pictures production
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Todd Graff
Producers: Todd Graff, Katie Roumel, Christine Vachon
Pamela Koffler, Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher, Jonathan Weisgal
Executive producers: John Wells, Richard Klubeck, Holly Becker, Caroline Kaplan, Jonathan Sehring
Director of photography: Kip Bogdahn
Production designer: Dina Goldman
Editor: Myron Kerstein
Costume designer: Dawn Weisberg
Music: Stephen Trask
Music supervisor: Linda Cohen
Cast:
Vlad: Daniel Letterle
Ellen: Joanna Chilcoat
Michael: Robin De Jesus
Shaun: Steven Cutts
Spitzer: Vince Rimoldi
Petie: Kahiry Bess
Jenna: Tiffany Taylor
Dee: Sasha Allen
Jill: Alana Allen
Fritzi: Anna Kendrick
Bert: Don Dixon
Running time -- 110 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
IFP Los Angeles Film Festival
Inspired by his stint as a camper and then a counselor at the upstate New York theater camp Stagedoor Manor (not to mention a certain 1980 movie set at New York's High School for Performing Arts), screenwriter Todd Graff makes his directorial debut with "Camp", a film that, intentionally or not, succinctly reflects the title's various connotations.
Although certainly not the smoothest run of operations, the clunky transitions and less than fluidly staged musical numbers aren't the deal breakers they might have been thanks to the picture's genuine affection for its milieu and its committed ensemble of fresh-faced teen talent.
But even with the on-camera endorsement of musical theater deity Stephen Sondheim, backing from Jersey Films and specialty pros Killer Films ("Boys Don't Cry", "Far From Heaven") and the marketing savvy of IFC ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding", "Y Tu Mama Tambien"), the closing-night selection of this year's IFP Los Angeles Film Festival isn't exactly sleeper material.
With its arsenal of in-jokes, the picture will likely have to settle for an audience demographic limited to musical theater buffs overlapping with those who felt they never fit into a more traditional summer camp setting.
Shot on the actual site of Stagedoor Manor, whose campers have included Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and an 8-year-old Robert Downey Jr., "Camp" introduces the current fictional crop after a dispensable opening musical number.
Among those arriving for an artistically expressive summer at Camp Ovation: newbie Vlad (Daniel Letterle), a certified player with boy-band looks who wastes no time in seducing several female campers -- including sweet but insecure Ellen (Joanna Chilcoat), her bunkmate Dee (Sasha Allen) and the conniving seductress Jill (Alana Allen) -- while managing to find a little time to flirt with sensitive Michael (Robin De Jesus), who still bears the physical and emotional bruises of being beaten up when he attended his high school prom in drag.
Unlike regular summer camps, which might mount one major production at the end of each month, Camp Ovation puts the kids through the rigorous task of putting on a new show every two weeks, complete with costumes, sets and a resident house band.
Adding to that challenge is the arrival of this year's guest director, the cynical, hard-drinking Bert Hanley (musician Don Dixon), who had a hit show on Broadway a decade ago but hasn't been able to finish anything since.
Will Bert ever put down the bottle and get those creative juices flowing anew?
Will Vlad ever learn to stop playing people like they were strings on his guitar?
Will the evil Jill get her well-deserved comeuppance?
Will everybody get their encore?
Actually, in Graff's hands, nothing feels quite like a sure thing. The awkwardness experienced by the group of adolescents also extends to the construction of sequences and the uneasy juggling of characters, which keeps throwing the film out of balance.
And while the script has no shortage of tart, knowing wit, too often scenes seem set up solely to pay off some sight gag, undercutting key emotional credibility in the process.
But Graff, whose writing credits include "Coyote Ugly" and "Dangerous Minds", at least has his heart in the right place, and those expressive, talented kids are the real deal.
Mr. Sondheim aside, Graff also manages to round up some heavyweight support in the persons of composer Stephen Trask ("Hedwig and the Angry Inch"), musical director Tim Weil ("Rent"), songwriter Michael Gore ("Fame") and lyricist Lynn Ahrens ("Ragtime"), but somehow, rather than summoning "Fame", many of the group performance pieces end up having all the infectious energy of a musical interlude on "The Partridge Family".
Camp
IFC Films
An IFC production A Jersey Films/Killer Films/Laughlin Park Pictures production
Credits:
Director-screenwriter: Todd Graff
Producers: Todd Graff, Katie Roumel, Christine Vachon
Pamela Koffler, Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher, Jonathan Weisgal
Executive producers: John Wells, Richard Klubeck, Holly Becker, Caroline Kaplan, Jonathan Sehring
Director of photography: Kip Bogdahn
Production designer: Dina Goldman
Editor: Myron Kerstein
Costume designer: Dawn Weisberg
Music: Stephen Trask
Music supervisor: Linda Cohen
Cast:
Vlad: Daniel Letterle
Ellen: Joanna Chilcoat
Michael: Robin De Jesus
Shaun: Steven Cutts
Spitzer: Vince Rimoldi
Petie: Kahiry Bess
Jenna: Tiffany Taylor
Dee: Sasha Allen
Jill: Alana Allen
Fritzi: Anna Kendrick
Bert: Don Dixon
Running time -- 110 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
CineVegas International Film Festival
The future is quieter, emotionally subdued and grayly mysterious, at least in the small hop forward imagined by filmmaker Michael Almereyda. In the challenging, well-realized "Happy Here and Now", Almereyda has another potential critical hit to rival his last film, "Hamlet", and its commercial destiny looks promising.
Immediately engaging one with a succintly intimate tone while tracking parallel stories of wavering young souls living in a New Orleans shorn of its touristy surface, "Happy" succeeds in introducing a sci-fi concept that works best as a metaphor rather than as a prediction of the future. Through the Internet and sensory devices that capture one's facial nuances, it is possible to create a mask, or generated face, to engage surreptitiously in one-on-one conversations with strangers.
We see such a cyber-encounter right off, with Muriel (Shalom Harlow) conversing with a cowboy-hat-wearing philosopher who calls himself Eddie Mars. In another startling sequence a young fireman named Tom is introduced.
The film gets away with a risky gambit with lead Karl Geary playing both Eddie Mars and Tom -- although they are not one and the same person.
Enter Amelia (Liane Balaban), who comes to town looking for Muriel, her sister who has disappeared. Spiritually adrift herself but strongly motivated to find Muriel, Amelia stays with her aunt (Ally Sheedy) and teams up with an ex-government-agent-turned-private-investigator (Clarence Williams III).
Their first task in finding Muriel is to peer into her computer's memory, which leads them to Eddie Mars.
Eventually, it's revealed that the person behind the Eddie Mars "avatar" is termite-obsessed, wannabe filmmaker Eddie (David Arquette), who is also Tom's brother. Along with a sequence where Amelia dreams while still connected to the computer, Eddie's bumbling attempt to make a raunchy Internet short about one of his favorite historical minds, Nicola Tesla, deftly illustrates Almereyda's concerns about identity and communication.
"Happy" is beautifully acted and filmed, with the Internet imagery rendered in Pixelvision. The story is broadened nicely by including recently widowed Hannah (Gloria Reuben), a music teacher married to a fireman killed in the line of duty. Her sad quest leads her to Tom and their potential romance nicely brings us around to the hope of rebirth. The musical selections and score are big factors in modulating the film's subtle moods, while the late R&B legend Ernie K-Doe plays an important supporting role and sings "Children of the World" in one inspired sequence.
HAPPY HERE AND NOW
IFC Productions
A Keep Your Head production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Michael Almereyda
Producers: Anthony
Katagas, Callum Greene
Executive producers: Jonathan Sehring, Caroline
Kaplan, Holly Becker, John Sloss
Director of photography: Jonathan Herron
Production designer: Leonard Spears
Editor: Kristina Boden
Costume designers: Luca Mosca, Marco Cantoretti
Music: David Julyan
Casting: Lina Todd
Cast:
Amelia: Liane Balaban
Eddie Mars/Tom: Karl Geary
Lois: Ally Sheedy
Bill: Clarence Williams III
Eddie: David Arquette
Hannah: Gloria Reuben
Muriel: Shalom Harlow
Running time -- 89 minutes
No MPAA rating...
The future is quieter, emotionally subdued and grayly mysterious, at least in the small hop forward imagined by filmmaker Michael Almereyda. In the challenging, well-realized "Happy Here and Now", Almereyda has another potential critical hit to rival his last film, "Hamlet", and its commercial destiny looks promising.
Immediately engaging one with a succintly intimate tone while tracking parallel stories of wavering young souls living in a New Orleans shorn of its touristy surface, "Happy" succeeds in introducing a sci-fi concept that works best as a metaphor rather than as a prediction of the future. Through the Internet and sensory devices that capture one's facial nuances, it is possible to create a mask, or generated face, to engage surreptitiously in one-on-one conversations with strangers.
We see such a cyber-encounter right off, with Muriel (Shalom Harlow) conversing with a cowboy-hat-wearing philosopher who calls himself Eddie Mars. In another startling sequence a young fireman named Tom is introduced.
The film gets away with a risky gambit with lead Karl Geary playing both Eddie Mars and Tom -- although they are not one and the same person.
Enter Amelia (Liane Balaban), who comes to town looking for Muriel, her sister who has disappeared. Spiritually adrift herself but strongly motivated to find Muriel, Amelia stays with her aunt (Ally Sheedy) and teams up with an ex-government-agent-turned-private-investigator (Clarence Williams III).
Their first task in finding Muriel is to peer into her computer's memory, which leads them to Eddie Mars.
Eventually, it's revealed that the person behind the Eddie Mars "avatar" is termite-obsessed, wannabe filmmaker Eddie (David Arquette), who is also Tom's brother. Along with a sequence where Amelia dreams while still connected to the computer, Eddie's bumbling attempt to make a raunchy Internet short about one of his favorite historical minds, Nicola Tesla, deftly illustrates Almereyda's concerns about identity and communication.
"Happy" is beautifully acted and filmed, with the Internet imagery rendered in Pixelvision. The story is broadened nicely by including recently widowed Hannah (Gloria Reuben), a music teacher married to a fireman killed in the line of duty. Her sad quest leads her to Tom and their potential romance nicely brings us around to the hope of rebirth. The musical selections and score are big factors in modulating the film's subtle moods, while the late R&B legend Ernie K-Doe plays an important supporting role and sings "Children of the World" in one inspired sequence.
HAPPY HERE AND NOW
IFC Productions
A Keep Your Head production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Michael Almereyda
Producers: Anthony
Katagas, Callum Greene
Executive producers: Jonathan Sehring, Caroline
Kaplan, Holly Becker, John Sloss
Director of photography: Jonathan Herron
Production designer: Leonard Spears
Editor: Kristina Boden
Costume designers: Luca Mosca, Marco Cantoretti
Music: David Julyan
Casting: Lina Todd
Cast:
Amelia: Liane Balaban
Eddie Mars/Tom: Karl Geary
Lois: Ally Sheedy
Bill: Clarence Williams III
Eddie: David Arquette
Hannah: Gloria Reuben
Muriel: Shalom Harlow
Running time -- 89 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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