In the wake of the Oscar nomination for Josh Fox's terrific documentary "Gasland," which I reviewed favorably last year at Sundance, the director is facing more backlash from the gas industry. Fox is an noteworthy provocateur whose first feature "Memorial Day" got less attention but also succeeded at ticking people off. The difference here is that "Memorial Day" was intentionally abrasive, while "Gasland" was designed to make a real difference. Fox has responded to the latest allegations by sending around the following statement: With the recent Oscar nomination of my documentary film Gasland, Big Gas and their PR attack machine…...
- 2/9/2011
- Screen Rush
This year’s Buffalo International Film Festival offered a program of horror films that opened with Alfred Hitchcock’s Pyscho. Shooting April, the first narrative feature by Tod Lancaster ends the evening. The film follows in a tradition spawned by Blair Witch Project, and copied countless times by quasi point-of-view “documentary” horror films, one of which is probably made in every undergraduate introduction to filmmaking.
The interesting thing regarding Shooting April is how complicit we are: our presence empowers the filmmaker and more than once I had considered walking out. I wish I had, the film does not earn the brutality it closes on simply because we have made enemies of all that are present – we are in the company of unlikable date rapists all around.
Shooting April is a pseudo documentary that provides us a group of guys who perform stunts for a website. Whereas we like the homoerotic...
The interesting thing regarding Shooting April is how complicit we are: our presence empowers the filmmaker and more than once I had considered walking out. I wish I had, the film does not earn the brutality it closes on simply because we have made enemies of all that are present – we are in the company of unlikable date rapists all around.
Shooting April is a pseudo documentary that provides us a group of guys who perform stunts for a website. Whereas we like the homoerotic...
- 10/15/2010
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
Please join family, friends, and fans of Leah Ryan for a reading of her remarkable play The Wire, directed by Dev Bondarin (Raised by Lesbians), featuring Ronan Babbitt (The Wild Inside at Fordham University), Liz Canavan (The Little Flower of East Orange), Maria McConville (Memorial Day), and Dallas Roberts (Nocturne) at the Linda Gross Theater, 336 West 20th Street, NYC, June 15th at 7Pm.
- 6/12/2009
- BroadwayWorld.com
It was a really nice evening last night at the new Cooper Square Hotel where actress Katie Holmes hosted an Ifp 30th Anniversary Spring Event. The event was co-chaired by producer Hunter Gray (Memorial Day, Zero Bridge, Momma's Man, Half Nelson, pictured at right) and producer Anthony Bregman (Synecdoche, New York, Sleep Dealer, Friends with Money, and Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's upcoming The Extra Man, which stars Holmes, pictured at left). In his remarks, Bregman talked about Holmes's long history with independent and specialty films, including roles in The Ice Storm, Go, Thank You for Smoking and Pieces of April. I'd add to that her part in one challenging studio film, Wonder Boys, which is a movie that keeps getting...
- 4/27/2009
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The opening half-hour of Josh Fox's Memorial Day belongs on the list of astonishing cinematic party sequences. Fox's cast of neophytes and amateurs carouses at a popular spring-break resort, and unless they're the greatest unknown actors in America, they're actually hammered off their collective asses. Writer-director Fox weaves his camera among them, catching their woozy conversations in quick edits and smeary color, documenting the stages of being young and intoxicated: unfettered glee, incoherent cockiness, raw sexual impulse, hair-trigger rage, exhausted inertia, and cold, cold regret. As the movie's soundtrack alternates between ominous glitch-tronica and sentimental ...
- 2/5/2009
- avclub.com
What do you do with Josh Fox’s Memorial Day, a sporadically engaging (but far too simple-minded to be as troubling as it wants to be) hypothetical slice-of-life which exists to use spring break to explain away Abu Ghraib? When I saw the film at CineVegas last summer, Memorial Day certainly seemed to have fewer defenders than detractors, and I found it to be alternately mesmerizing, infuriating, boring and eye-rollingly facile. I think it fails as a narrative film, even as it occasionally stuns as a work of pure cinema. And yet, I don’t think it’s dismissable outright. Executive produced by Michael Stipe, Memorial is the brainchild of a New York theater rabblerouser named Josh Fox, and is loosel ...
- 2/4/2009
- by Karina Longworth
- Spout
What do you do with Josh Fox’s Memorial Day, a sporadically engaging (but far too simple-minded to be as troubling as it wants to be) hypothetical slice-of-life which exists to use spring break to explain away Abu Ghraib? When I saw the film at CineVegas last summer, Memorial Day certainly seemed to have fewer defenders than detractors, and I found it to be alternately mesmerizing, infuriating, boring and eye-rollingly facile. I think it fails as a narrative film, even as it occasionally stuns as a work of pure cinema. And yet, I don’t think it’s dismissable outright. Executive produced by Michael Stipe, Memorial is the brainchild of a New York theater rabblerouser named Josh Fox, and is loosely b ...
- 2/4/2009
- by Karina Longworth
- Spout
Josh Fox’s “Memorial Day,” which premiered last year at June’s CineVegas Film Festival, is a challenging film to summarize. It might seem like it’s about spring break, but its also an art film about war. As described by Fox himself, the film “is about ‘spring break’ girls gone wild culture which is the seedy underbelly of our American Puritanism, the inverse side of the coin. It’s also about how we forcefully …...
- 2/4/2009
- indieWIRE - People
Josh Fox’s “Memorial Day,” which premiered last year at June’s CineVegas Film Festival, is a challenging film to summarize. It might seem like it’s about spring break, but its also an art film about war. As described by Fox himself, the film “is about ‘spring break’ girls gone wild culture which is the seedy underbelly of our American Puritanism, the inverse side of the coin. It’s also about how we forcefully …...
- 2/4/2009
- indieWIRE - People
Josh Fox’s “Memorial Day,” which premiered last year at June’s CineVegas Film Festival, is a challenging film to summarize. It might seem like its about spring break, but its also an art film about war. As described by Fox himself, the film “is about ‘spring break’ girls gone wild culture which is the seedy underbelly of our American Puritanism, the inverse side of the coin. It’s also about how we forcefully …...
- 2/4/2009
- indieWIRE - People
By Neil Pedley
On offer this week are films both long in the making and short on running time. Dakota Fanning does a double bill, Steve Martin further damages his credibility and "Blair Witch" director Daniel Myrick returns to have people running for their sanity.
"2008 Academy Award Nominated Short Films"
For one week only, Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures have teamed up again to bring you the world's finest in the way of live action and animated shorts from a multitude of international filmmakers, as determined by the Academy's selection committee. This year's live action lineup includes the Swiss/German drama "Auf der Strecke (On the Line)," the French life reimagination drama "Manon on the Asphalt", the Roddy Doyle-adaptation "New Boy" [pictured right], the Danish comedy "The Pig" and the German Holocaust-themed drama "Spielzeugland (Toyland)." The animated slate consists of the Japanese hand-drawn "La Maison en Petits Cubes", the Russian slice...
On offer this week are films both long in the making and short on running time. Dakota Fanning does a double bill, Steve Martin further damages his credibility and "Blair Witch" director Daniel Myrick returns to have people running for their sanity.
"2008 Academy Award Nominated Short Films"
For one week only, Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures have teamed up again to bring you the world's finest in the way of live action and animated shorts from a multitude of international filmmakers, as determined by the Academy's selection committee. This year's live action lineup includes the Swiss/German drama "Auf der Strecke (On the Line)," the French life reimagination drama "Manon on the Asphalt", the Roddy Doyle-adaptation "New Boy" [pictured right], the Danish comedy "The Pig" and the German Holocaust-themed drama "Spielzeugland (Toyland)." The animated slate consists of the Japanese hand-drawn "La Maison en Petits Cubes", the Russian slice...
- 2/2/2009
- by Neil Pedley
- ifc.com
The 10th annual CineVegas Film Festival, set for June 12-21 at the Palms Casino Resort and the Brenden Theatres in Las Vegas, will kick off with the world premiere of Peter Cattaneo's The Rocker, starring Rainn Wilson as a failed drummer who joins his nephew's high school rock band.
Sean McGinly's The Great Buck Howard, starring John Malkovich, Colin Hanks, Emily Blunt and Tom Hanks, will close the fest.
CineVegas, under the leadership of artistic director Trevor Groth, will host several other world premieres, including Ben Rodkin's Big Heart City; the neo-noir musical Dark Streets from director Rachel Samuels; the comedy Happy Birthday, Harris Malden, from Sweaty Robot, a Philadelphia comedy troupe; Josh Fox's Memorial Day; Rolf Belgum's She Unfolds by Day; J.L. Vara's South of Heaven; and Matthew Wilder's Your Name Here.
The fest will also hold a new competitive section for documentaries that will include Aaron Rose's Beautiful Losers; Abel Ferrara's Chelsea on the Rocks; Nicola Collins' The End; Paul Eagleston and Stephen Rose's Hi My Name Is Ryan; Dan Lindsay's "Road to the World Series of Beer Pong "; and John Corey's Lost in the Fog .
The fest line-up will also include a group of films from first and second-time Mexican filmmakers under the sidebar title La Proxima Ola; Vegas Uncovered, a special section of documentaries about Las Vegas; Diamond Discoveries, a sampling of new indie features seeking distribution; and Sure Bets, advance screening of indie features that are set for release.
Sean McGinly's The Great Buck Howard, starring John Malkovich, Colin Hanks, Emily Blunt and Tom Hanks, will close the fest.
CineVegas, under the leadership of artistic director Trevor Groth, will host several other world premieres, including Ben Rodkin's Big Heart City; the neo-noir musical Dark Streets from director Rachel Samuels; the comedy Happy Birthday, Harris Malden, from Sweaty Robot, a Philadelphia comedy troupe; Josh Fox's Memorial Day; Rolf Belgum's She Unfolds by Day; J.L. Vara's South of Heaven; and Matthew Wilder's Your Name Here.
The fest will also hold a new competitive section for documentaries that will include Aaron Rose's Beautiful Losers; Abel Ferrara's Chelsea on the Rocks; Nicola Collins' The End; Paul Eagleston and Stephen Rose's Hi My Name Is Ryan; Dan Lindsay's "Road to the World Series of Beer Pong "; and John Corey's Lost in the Fog .
The fest line-up will also include a group of films from first and second-time Mexican filmmakers under the sidebar title La Proxima Ola; Vegas Uncovered, a special section of documentaries about Las Vegas; Diamond Discoveries, a sampling of new indie features seeking distribution; and Sure Bets, advance screening of indie features that are set for release.
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