It’s been a couple months since the last edition of What’s Up Doc? placed Michael Moore’s surprise world premiere of Where To Invade Next at the top of this list and in the meantime much shuffling has taken place and much time has been spent on various new endeavors (namely my Buffalo-based film series, Cultivate Cinema Circle). Finally taking its rightful place at the top, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hagedus’ Unlocking the Cage is in the midst of being scored by composer James Lavino, according to Lavino’s own personal site. Though the project has been taking shape at its own leisurely pace, I’d expect to see the film making its festival debut in early 2016.
Right behind, the American direct cinema masters is a Texan soon to make his non-fiction debut with Voyage of Time. Just two weeks ago indieWIRE reported that Ennio Morricone, who scored...
Right behind, the American direct cinema masters is a Texan soon to make his non-fiction debut with Voyage of Time. Just two weeks ago indieWIRE reported that Ennio Morricone, who scored...
- 11/5/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
The fall festival rush is upon us. Locarno is currently ramping up. Venice has released their line-up and Thom Powers and the Toronto International Film Festival team have dropped a bomb with a previously unannounced new feature from powerhouse docu-provocateur Michael Moore. It is truly a miracle that the production of a film such as Moore’s upcoming Where To Invade Next (see still above) managed to go completely undetected by the filmmaking community until it was literally announced to world premiere at one of the largest film festivals in the world. Programmed as a one of the key films in the Special Presentations section at Tiff, the film sees Moore telling “the Pentagon to ‘stand down’ — he will do the invading for America from now on.” Also announced to premiere at Tiff was Avi Lewis’ This Changes Everything, which has slowly been rising up this list, as well as...
- 8/7/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Kino Lorber is proud to announce the acquisition of all North American rights to Les Blank & Gina Leibrecht‘s How To Smell A Rose: A Visit With Ricky Leacock In Normandy, a moving tribute by one cinema verité master to another.
Opening at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday, August 12, 2015, How To Smell Of Rose: A Visit With Ricky Leacock In Normandy was co-directed by Les Blank and his longtime creative partner, Gina Leibrecht. How To Smell A Rose: A Visit With Ricky Leacock is the penultimate film directed by Les Blank, before he passed away on April 7, 2013.
During its theatrical run at Film Forum, How To Smell A Rose will be screened with the Leacock-Joyce Chopra classic, Happy Mother’S Day, on the 1963 birth of the Fischer quintuplets in Aberdeen, South Dakota. In further national theatrical engagements “Rose” will be presented with Les Blank’s now classic...
Opening at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday, August 12, 2015, How To Smell Of Rose: A Visit With Ricky Leacock In Normandy was co-directed by Les Blank and his longtime creative partner, Gina Leibrecht. How To Smell A Rose: A Visit With Ricky Leacock is the penultimate film directed by Les Blank, before he passed away on April 7, 2013.
During its theatrical run at Film Forum, How To Smell A Rose will be screened with the Leacock-Joyce Chopra classic, Happy Mother’S Day, on the 1963 birth of the Fischer quintuplets in Aberdeen, South Dakota. In further national theatrical engagements “Rose” will be presented with Les Blank’s now classic...
- 7/22/2015
- by Michelle McCue
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Read More: SXSW: Les Blank's Leon Russell Doc Gets a Proper Premiere and a Trippy New Poster Les Blank and longtime collaborator Gina Leibrecht's documentary "How to Smell a Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock in Normandy" has been acquired by Kino Lorber. The film paints a portrait of the British documentarian and his partner Valerie Lalonde while in France. It features clips of Leacock's films. One such film, "Primary," follows the 1960 Wisconsin Primary election between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. "Canary Bananas," also featured in the documentary, was made by Leacock at 14 years old on his father's Canary Island plantation. "How to Smell a Rose" will be screened at art house theaters and film festivals during the fall, followed by a VOD and home media release. Read More: Leon Russell Gets Reflective at 'A Poem is a Naked Person' NYC Opening...
- 7/22/2015
- by Kaeli Van Cott
- Indiewire
The distributor has picked up all Us rights to rom-com to star Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson and Jason Sudeikis.
Garry Marshall will direct Mother’s Day and Wayne Rice and Gulfstream Pictures’ Mike Karz will produce Mother’s Day, which Open Road plans to release wide on April 29, 2016.
Daniel Diamond, who also serves as a producer, handles international sales through his Diamond Pictures. Jared Underwood and Danny Mandel of Aperture Media Partners provide the debt financing.
Anya Kochoff-Romano and Lily Hollander, Matt Walker and Tom Hines wrote the screenplay and principal photography will take place in Atlanta in August.
Open Road brokered the deal with CAA, which packaged the film and represented Us rights.
In other news, Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht’s How To Smell A Rose: A Visit With Ricky Leacock In Normandy.
Garry Marshall will direct Mother’s Day and Wayne Rice and Gulfstream Pictures’ Mike Karz will produce Mother’s Day, which Open Road plans to release wide on April 29, 2016.
Daniel Diamond, who also serves as a producer, handles international sales through his Diamond Pictures. Jared Underwood and Danny Mandel of Aperture Media Partners provide the debt financing.
Anya Kochoff-Romano and Lily Hollander, Matt Walker and Tom Hines wrote the screenplay and principal photography will take place in Atlanta in August.
Open Road brokered the deal with CAA, which packaged the film and represented Us rights.
In other news, Kino Lorber has acquired all North American rights to Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht’s How To Smell A Rose: A Visit With Ricky Leacock In Normandy.
- 7/22/2015
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
It’s been a surprisingly interesting month of moving and shaking in terms of doc development. Just a month after making his first public funding pitch at Toronto’s Hot Docs Forum, legendary doc filmmaker Frederick Wiseman took to Kickstarter to help cover the remaining expenses for his 40th feature film In Jackson Heights (see the film’s first trailer below). Unrelentingly rigorous in his determination to capture the American institutional landscape on film, his latest continues down this thematic rabbit hole, taking on the immensely diverse New York City neighborhood of Jackson Heights as his latest subject. According to the Kickstarter page, Wiseman is currently editing the 120 hours of rushes he shot with hopes of having the film ready for a fall festival premiere (my guess would be Tiff, where both National Gallery and At Berkeley made their North American debut), though he’s currently quite a ways away from his $75,000 goal.
- 7/6/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Well folks, after a rather long and brutal winter (at least for me here in Buffalo), we are finally heading into the wonderful warmth of summer, but with that blast of sunshine and steamy humidity comes the mid-year drought of major film fests. After the Sheffield Doc/Fest concludes on June 10th and AFI Docs wraps on June 21st, we likely won’t see any major influx in our charts until Locarno, Venice, Telluride and Tiff announce their line-ups in rapid succession. In the meantime, we can look forward to the intriguing onslaught of films making their debut in Sheffield, including Brian Hill’s intriguing examination of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, and Sean McAllister’s film for which he himself was jailed in the process of making, A Syrian Love Story, the only two films world premiering in the festival’s main competition.
- 6/1/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
It should come as no surprise that Cannes Film Festival will play host to Kent Jones’s doc on the touchstone of filmmaking interview tomes, Hitchcock/Truffaut (see photo above). The film has been floating near the top of this list since it was announced last year as in development, while Jones himself has a history with the festival, having co-written both Arnaud Desplechin’s Jimmy P. and Martin Scorsese’s My Voyage To Italy, both of which premiered in Cannes. The film is scheduled to screen as part of the Cannes Classics sidebar alongside the likes of Stig Björkman’s Ingrid Bergman, in Her Own Words, which will play as part of the festival’s tribute to the late starlet, and Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna’s Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (see trailer below). As someone who grew up watching road races with my dad in Watkins Glen,...
- 5/1/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Now that the busy winter fest schedule of Sundance, Rotterdam and the Berlinale has concluded, we’ve now got our eyes on the likes of True/False and SXSW. While, True/False does not specialize in attention grabbing world premieres, it does provide a late winter haven for cream of the crop non-fiction fare from all the previously mentioned fests and a selection of overlooked genre blending films presented in a down home setting. This year will mark my first trip to the Columbia, Missouri based fest, where I hope to catch a little of everything, from their hush-hush secret screenings, to selections from their Neither/Nor series, this year featuring chimeric Polish cinema of decades past, to a spotlight of Adam Curtis’s incisive oeuvre. But truth be told, it is SXSW, with its slew of high profile world premieres being announced, such as Alex Gibney’s Steve Jobs...
- 2/27/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Many people may know Les Blank most for his association with Werner Herzog, who he filmed while on the brink of creative madness in Burden of Dreams and earlier in Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, in which the notoriously true-to-his-word filmmaker indeed ate his shoe after having promised he’d do so if Errol Morris managed to finish his pet cemetery film, Gates of Heaven. But those ignoring the larger majority of Blank’s overflowing oeuvre would be sorely missing out on the jubilance of life that the quietly curious documentarian managed to strike on film with just his trusty 16mm Eclair, his appreciation for cultures of all kinds, and a fervent hunger for life. Sadly, Blank passed away in the spring of last year, just weeks before receiving the Outstanding Achievement Award and a restored retrospective of his body of work in Toronto at the Hot Docs Film Festival,...
- 12/2/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Turkey or no turkey, these next couple of days lucky filmmakers who’ve been selected to screen as part of the Sundance Film Festival will get the invitation notice straight from John Cooper and the Park City programming team, and thus, those that we’re betting have made the cut have also inched up the list a bit. One of those that seem an obvious choice to premiere at the fest is director Steve Hoover and producer Danny Yourd’s Crocodile Gennadiy. Following up their Grand Jury Prize winning Blood Brother with incredible turnaround time, our new most anticipated film tracks the delicate operations of Gennadiy Mokhnenko, a Ukrainian activist, orphanage manager and savior of countless children whose addict parents favor injected cold medicine and alcohol over them. Part heartwrenching domestic drama, part sleuth thriller, the film looks to use the Ukrainian uprising as a backdrop to highlight its protagonist...
- 11/27/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Main programme includes Birdman, Foxcatcher, The Imitation Game and Rosewater.
The Telluride Film Festival (Aug 29 - Sept 1) has revealed the line-up for its 41st edition, packed with films tipped for awards season.
The festival will include 85 features, short films and revivals representing 28 countries, along with special artist tributes, conversations, panels and education programmes.
The main programme includes Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, which opened the Venice Film Festival to rave reviews yesterday.
The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, The Homesman, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, and Jon Stewart’s directorial debut Rosewater are all generating awards buzz.
There are also several titles that picked up prizes in Cannes earlier this year including Foxcatcher, which won Bennett Miller best director; Russian drama Leviathan, winner of best screenplay; Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, which saw Timothy Spall win best actor; and jury prize winner Mommy from Xavier Dolan.
The 50 Year Argument (d. Martin Scorsese, [link...
The Telluride Film Festival (Aug 29 - Sept 1) has revealed the line-up for its 41st edition, packed with films tipped for awards season.
The festival will include 85 features, short films and revivals representing 28 countries, along with special artist tributes, conversations, panels and education programmes.
The main programme includes Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, which opened the Venice Film Festival to rave reviews yesterday.
The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, The Homesman, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, and Jon Stewart’s directorial debut Rosewater are all generating awards buzz.
There are also several titles that picked up prizes in Cannes earlier this year including Foxcatcher, which won Bennett Miller best director; Russian drama Leviathan, winner of best screenplay; Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, which saw Timothy Spall win best actor; and jury prize winner Mommy from Xavier Dolan.
The 50 Year Argument (d. Martin Scorsese, [link...
- 8/28/2014
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
This year’s edition of the Telluride Film Festival announced its lineup today, revealing that Colorado will play host this weekend to a variety of awards hopefuls. Jean-Marc Vallées’ Wild starring Reese Witherspoon, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game, and Jon Stewart’s directorial debut Rosewater are among the films that will have their world premiere at the festival. (Those movies will also all screen at the Toronto International Film Festival, which instituted new rules about premieres in an attempt to prevent films from making a Colorado pit stop before heading to Canada.) Films like Birdman and...
- 8/28/2014
- by Esther Zuckerman
- EW - Inside Movies
There are a lot of familiar faces in the just announced 2014 Telluride Film Festival line-up, but as much as this fest is about what's officially announced, it's also about what's not mentioned as secret screenings are pretty much what makes Telluride such a buzzy fest, though this year a little bit of snow may also be part of the conversation. As for the titles announced so far you have Venice early standout Birdman, Jon Stewart's Rosewater, The Imitation Game and Jean-Marc Vallee's Wild along with a Ton of Cannes crossover pics including Foxcatcher, The Homesman, Leviathan, Mommy, Mr. Turner, Red Army, Wild Tales and Two Days, One Night. There is plenty of Toronto crossover with many of this pics as well, which also includes Ramin Bahrani's 99 Homes, the new Martin Scorsese documentary The 50 Year Argument, Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence and Ethan Hawke's Seymour among others.
- 8/28/2014
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Telluride — With all the reindeer games going on in the fall festival world, a lot of the drama and mystery surrounding Telluride's perennially on-the-lowdown program began to seep out like a steadily deflating balloon this year. Toronto, Venice and New York notations of "World Premiere," "Canada Premiere," "New York Premiere" or "International Premiere" and the like made it all rather obvious which films were heading to the San Juans for the 41st edition of the tiny mining village's cinephile gathering, and which were not. But the fact is, if you're in it just for the surprises — or certainly, for the awards-baiting heavies — you're never going to be fully satisfied by the Telluride experience. That having been said, this year's program might just be the most exciting one in my six years of attending. Starting with all of the stuff we were expecting, indeed, Cannes players "Foxcatcher," "Mr. Turner" and "Leviathan...
- 8/28/2014
- by Kristopher Tapley
- Hitfix
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Nov. 25, 2014
Price: DVD $124.95, Blu-ray $124.95
Studio: Criterion
An uncompromisingly independent filmmaker, Les Blank (Burden of Dreams) made documentaries for nearly fifty years, elegantly disappearing with his camera into cultural spots rarely seen on-screen—mostly on the peripheries of the United States, but also occasionally abroad.
The collector’s set Les Blank: Always for Pleasure provides a diverse survey of Blank’s vast output.
Gap Toothed Women, a 1987 film by Les Blank
The collection provides a diverse survey of the late filmmaker’s vast output, including the warmly funny The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins, about the legendary Texas musician; Always for Pleasure, which captures the vivacious spirit of New Orleans; Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, a hilarious celebration of the pungent, flavorful “stinking rose” of the title; and eleven other unexpected features, plus eight of Blank’s short films.
Seemingly off-the-cuff yet poetically constructed,...
Price: DVD $124.95, Blu-ray $124.95
Studio: Criterion
An uncompromisingly independent filmmaker, Les Blank (Burden of Dreams) made documentaries for nearly fifty years, elegantly disappearing with his camera into cultural spots rarely seen on-screen—mostly on the peripheries of the United States, but also occasionally abroad.
The collector’s set Les Blank: Always for Pleasure provides a diverse survey of Blank’s vast output.
Gap Toothed Women, a 1987 film by Les Blank
The collection provides a diverse survey of the late filmmaker’s vast output, including the warmly funny The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins, about the legendary Texas musician; Always for Pleasure, which captures the vivacious spirit of New Orleans; Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, a hilarious celebration of the pungent, flavorful “stinking rose” of the title; and eleven other unexpected features, plus eight of Blank’s short films.
Seemingly off-the-cuff yet poetically constructed,...
- 8/25/2014
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Opening Night – World Premiere
Gone Girl
David Fincher, USA, 2014, Dcp, 150m
David Fincher’s film version of Gillian Flynn’s phenomenally successful best seller (adapted by the author) is one wild cinematic ride, a perfectly cast and intensely compressed portrait of a recession-era marriage contained within a devastating depiction of celebrity/media culture, shifting gears as smoothly as a Maserati 250F. Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Neil Patrick Harris is Amy’s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon (who played Honey in Tracy Letts’s acclaimed production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is Nick’s sister Margo, Kim Dickens (Treme, Friday Night Lights) is Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry is Nick’s superstar lawyer Tanner Bolt. At once a grand panoramic vision of middle America, a uniquely disturbing exploration of the fault lines in a marriage,...
Gone Girl
David Fincher, USA, 2014, Dcp, 150m
David Fincher’s film version of Gillian Flynn’s phenomenally successful best seller (adapted by the author) is one wild cinematic ride, a perfectly cast and intensely compressed portrait of a recession-era marriage contained within a devastating depiction of celebrity/media culture, shifting gears as smoothly as a Maserati 250F. Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Neil Patrick Harris is Amy’s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon (who played Honey in Tracy Letts’s acclaimed production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is Nick’s sister Margo, Kim Dickens (Treme, Friday Night Lights) is Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry is Nick’s superstar lawyer Tanner Bolt. At once a grand panoramic vision of middle America, a uniquely disturbing exploration of the fault lines in a marriage,...
- 8/20/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
The New York Film Festival has announced 15 titles lined up for its Spotlight on Documentary. Nyff 52, running from September 26 through October 12, will feature new films by Frederick Wiseman, Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi, Albert Maysles, Joshua Oppenheimer, Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht, Ed Pincus and Lucia Small, J.P. Sniadecki, Debra Granik, Robert Kenner, Jung Yoon-suk, Ethan Hawke, Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan, Gabe Polsky, Arthur Jafa and Marah Strauch. » - David Hudson...
- 8/19/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
The New York Film Festival has announced 15 titles lined up for its Spotlight on Documentary. Nyff 52, running from September 26 through October 12, will feature new films by Frederick Wiseman, Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi, Albert Maysles, Joshua Oppenheimer, Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht, Ed Pincus and Lucia Small, J.P. Sniadecki, Debra Granik, Robert Kenner, Jung Yoon-suk, Ethan Hawke, Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan, Gabe Polsky, Arthur Jafa and Marah Strauch. » - David Hudson...
- 8/19/2014
- Keyframe
On the heels of the 39th edition of the Toronto Int. Film Festival (Sept 4-14), Ifp’s Independent Film Week is where a plethora of fiction, non-fiction and new this year, web-based series from the likes of Desiree Akhavan and Calvin Reeder find future coin. Sectioned off as projects at the very beginning of financing to those that are nearing completion, there happens to be tons of Sundance alumni in the names below. Among those that caught our attention we have Medicine for Melancholy‘s Barry Jenkins’ sophomore feature, produced by Bad Milo!‘s Adele Romanski, Moonlight is about “two Miami boys navigate the temptations of the drug trade and their burgeoning sexuality in this triptych drama about black queer youth”. Concussion‘s Stacie Passon digs into the thriller genre with Strange Things Started Happening. Produced by vet Mary Jane Skalski (Mysterious Skin), this is about “a woman who has...
- 7/24/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Film-maker behind intimate, rounded portraits of musicians including Dizzy Gillespie and Lightnin' Hopkins
Les Blank and Werner Herzog: strange dreams and sole food
The film-maker Les Blank, who has died aged 77, explored the margins of America's music, capturing and framing idioms such as Louisiana Cajun and zydeco, the norteño music of the Texas-Mexico border, blues, polka, and Appalachian old-time music. He was also fascinated by traditions of eating and cookery, and when screening his film Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (1980) he sometimes created what he called "smellovision" by cooking garlicky dishes in the auditorium.
Blank made more than 40 films, including Burden of Dreams (1982), about the shooting of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. While few of his documentaries were known to a wide public, many were admired by other directors. In 2007, he received the Edward MacDowell medal, an annual award for achievement in the arts, only twice before given to film directors,...
Les Blank and Werner Herzog: strange dreams and sole food
The film-maker Les Blank, who has died aged 77, explored the margins of America's music, capturing and framing idioms such as Louisiana Cajun and zydeco, the norteño music of the Texas-Mexico border, blues, polka, and Appalachian old-time music. He was also fascinated by traditions of eating and cookery, and when screening his film Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (1980) he sometimes created what he called "smellovision" by cooking garlicky dishes in the auditorium.
Blank made more than 40 films, including Burden of Dreams (1982), about the shooting of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. While few of his documentaries were known to a wide public, many were admired by other directors. In 2007, he received the Edward MacDowell medal, an annual award for achievement in the arts, only twice before given to film directors,...
- 4/12/2013
- by Tony Russell
- The Guardian - Film News
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