Goodbye Solo tells the story of friendship between William, a 70-year-old Southerner with thoughts of suicide, and Solo, the cheerful cab driver tasked with driving him to his destination for the act. Roger Ebert called 34-year-old Ramin Bahrani “the great new American director” and White Tiger author Aravind Adiga described Goodbye Solo as “the little film that could,” noting that Bahrani resorts to “simple, direct, and classical storytelling” to take risks and give viewers two disparate ideas about the American Dream to think about.
Amy Adams and Emily Blunt star in the off-beat dramatic comedy Sunshine Cleaning. This uplifting film about an average family that finds the path to its dreams in an unlikely setting screened in competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
500 Days of Summer: Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a romantic who has the misfortune of falling hard for his winsome co-worker Summer (Zooey Deschanel), a pragmatist where affairs of the heart are concerned. Their story unfolds through flashbacks as Tom tries to win Summer back while at the same time wrestling with the idea of Summer and the conflict between perfect love and reality. The highs, the lows, the depression—it will all ring true thanks to a spot-on script and strong performances. Plus, the soundtrack—which includes the Smiths, Regina Spektor, the Pixies and Belle & Sebastian—is almost worth the price of admission. (from VSL)
Slumdog Millionaire, directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) is about Jamal, a teenage orphan who is about to win the Hindi version of Millionaire. The authorities, refusing to accept that an uneducated “slumdog” could win without cheating, haul him off for questioning.
Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum and in doing so reveals where he learned the answers to the show’s seemingly impossible quizzes. But the true question is why this young man with no apparent desire for riches is really doing on the game show?
Inside Outside is a documentary about graffiti evolving. In an interview with PingMag, director Andreas Johnsen said that graffiti is no longer confined to hip-hop culture and tagging.
“A lot of young folks have started to express themselves by writing deeper messages instead of simply tagging.”
Johnsen adds that graffiti also represents how the world is changing.
“There are more kids who want to speak up and maybe they feel that they can’t really do it through regular media. They might be feeling that our leaders keep people down by not telling us the truth. The increase of ads we see on the streets could be another reason too…”
Featuring: ZEVS (Paris), SWOON, KR, EARSNOT (New York City), OS GEMEOS, PIGMEUS (Sao Paulo), RON ENGLISH (Jersey City), ADAM & ITSO (Stockholm, Copenhagen).
Following Helvetica, Gary Huswit is set to release Objectified, a documentary feature about “industrial design; … the manufactured objects we surround ourselves with, and the people who make them”.
Merchandise for the film (tee and limited edition screen printed poster) is now available at the Objectified Shop.
“James Marsh’s Man On Wire plays like the best heist movie, with Philippe Petit and his co-conspirators plotting for months to pull off the impossible (and the truly terrifying).”
Man On Wire is a documentary about a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit who stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the World Trade Center, then the world’s tallest buildings.
After six and a half years of dreaming about it and eight months in planning, Petit finally executed his plans in August 1974. With the assistance of a team of accomplices, Petit overcame the numerous challenges involved: bypassing security; smuggling heavy steel cable and rigging equipment into the towers; passing the wire between the two rooftops and anchoring it to withstand the winds and the swaying of the buildings.
All this was done under the cover of night. At 7:15am the following morning, Petit took his first step on the high wire 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan pulling off what some dubbed “the artistic crime of the century”.
Much lighter fare than No Country For Old Men, Burn After Reading is set for release this September. It stars stars John Malkovich, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Brad Pitt. The title of this comedy is an allusion to former CIA director Stansfield Turner’s book Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence. If you are a Coen Brothers fan, this may interest you too.
