Tag Archive for 'Vera Farmiga'

Guest Post: The View on the Ground at Sundance by Kerri Yost

Winter's Bone

This year Sundance is telling us to “rebel”, re-start the revolution, to re-think what independent filmmaking is. Their animated bumpers before the films are persuasive propoganda and it’s embedded in all the panels and new director John Cooper’s conversations.  As female filmmakers, I say we take this advice.  Sundance is noted for highlighting filmmakers who are ignored in the mainstream media. For giving new directors a chance to break in with their smaller films that would be ignored in the larger Hollywood film industry.  For finding original voices.  Well, for the most part, that’s us.  I’m hear at Sundance mostly for programming for the Citizen Jane Film Festival, a film festival in Columbia, Missouri that celebrates films by female filmmakers.  And I am excited that some of the best work at Sundance this year comes from original female voices, with the biggest buzz circulating around Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone.

Granik is no stranger to Sundance.  She took the Dramatic Directing Award for her first feature-length film Down to the Bone back in 2004, and this year she is one of the few lucky filmmakers to have multiple distributors interested in her work.  Winter’s Bone is a unique coming of age story set in the Missouri Ozark mountains and told through the experiences of 17-year old Ree Dolly (in a breakout performance by Jennifer Lawrence).  While Ree’s meth-cooking father is running from the law, Ree is left to tend to her younger siblings and mentally ill mother.  We are soon swallowed into Ree’s world through her journey to find her missing father, who has put the family house up for bond after being arrested.  Based on the award-winning novel by Daniel Woodrell and shot completely on location in the Missouri Ozarks, this “country noir” has a sense of place rarely seen.   Granik immersed herself in the Ozarks, starting with writer Woodrell’s own neighborhood and befriending locals to develop locations, find many of her actors, get a sense of the local dialect, and find musicians that we see and hear throughout the film.  Her collaborative nature and attention to detail ultimately creates a reality that is both naturalistic and at times mythical.  Granik captures the close-knit sense of family kin and codes of law, as well as the devastation the meth epidemic has had on families in that region, much like the rest of rural America.  But what is most obvious from both Down to the Bone and Winter’s Bone is Granik’s ability to bring out the best in actors.  Much like Down to the Bone brought Vera Farmiga attention and awards, I suspect Winter’s Bone will garner much deserved attention for young Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes, who plays Ree’s uncle who goes from sinister to sympathetic with very few words.  Hopefully the buzz and attention for Winter’s Bone will last beyond the festival circuit.

Perhaps no film follows the Sundance slogan of “renewed rebellion” more than Katie Aselton’s directing debut The Freebie.  Festival regulars know Aselton as actress in many a mumblecore film and the wife of one of the pioneers of the mumblecore movement, Mark Duplass (The Puffy Chair).  Like many other actresses, Aselton wasn’t getting the roles she wanted, so she took the advice from her husband and decided to write and direct her own film to solve this problem.   And along with writing, directing, and co-producing, Aselton is also in nearly every frame of the film.   Continue reading ‘Guest Post: The View on the Ground at Sundance by Kerri Yost’

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Tags: Debra Granik, Jennifer Lawrence, Katie Aselton, Sundance, Vera Farmiga

Sundance 2010- The Competition Lineup

The Sundance Film Festival released a good amount of the lineup for the next festival and it looks at first glance to be dark and very boy oriented.  Women account for only 4 out of the 16 (25%) of dramatic films in competition.  Women are better represented in the documentary area making up 7 out of the 16 films (43%) in competition.

Here are the films by and about women that have been announced (descriptions from Sundance via LA Times).  Some of the films that most interest me are Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone.  Remember she introduced us to Vera Farmiga in the brutal Down to the Bone a couple of years ago.  The docs I want to see are Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s (The Devil Came on Horseback) doc on Joan Rivers and Jesus Camp’s Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing new doc on abortion 12th & Delaware.

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION (16 Films in Competition)

The Imperialists are still Alive! (Director and screenwriter: Zeina Durra)—Juggling the sudden abduction of her childhood sweetheart as well as a blooming love affair, a French Manhattanite makes her way as an artist in an indifferent, sometimes hostile world. Cast: Élodie Bouchez, José María de Tavira, Karim Saleh Karolina Muller, Marianna Kulukundis, Rita Ackerman. World Premiere

Night Catches Us (Director and screenwriter: Tanya Hamilton)—In 1978, complex political and emotional forces are set in motion when a young man returns to the race-torn Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age during the Black Power movement. Cast: Anthony Mackie, Kerry Washington, Jamie Hector, Wendell Pierce, Jamara Griffin. World Premiere

Obselidia (Director and screenwriter: Diane Bell)—A lonely librarian believes love is obsolete until a road trip to Death Valley with a beguiling cinema projectionist teaches him otherwise. Cast: Gaynor Howe, Michael Piccirilli, Frank Hoyt Taylor. World Premiere

Winter’s Bone (Director: Debra Granik; Screenwriters: Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini)—An unflinching Ozark Mountain girl hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact. Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Lauren Sweetser, Kevin Breznahan, Isaiah Stone. World Premiere

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION (16 films in competition)

Bhutto (Directors: Duane Baughman and Johnny O’Hara; Screenwriter: Johnny O’Hara)—A riveting journey through the life and work of  recently assassinated Benazir Bhutto, former Pakistani prime minister and a polarizing figure in the Muslim world. World Premiere

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child (Director: Tamra Davis)—The story of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose work defined, electrified and challenged an era, and whose untimely death at age 27 has made him a cultural icon. World Premiere

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Directors: Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg)—A rare, brutally honest glimpse into the comedic process and private dramas of legendary comedian and pop icon Joan Rivers as she fights tooth and nail to keep her American dream alive. World Premiere

My Perestroika (Director: Robin Hessman)—Intimately tracking the lives of five Muscovites who came of age just as the USSR collapsed and are adjusting to their post-Soviet reality, My Perestroika maps the contours of a nation in profound transition. World Premiere

The Oath (Director: Laura Poitras)—Filmed in Yemen, The Oath tells the story of two men whose fateful encounter in 1996 set them on a course of events that led them to Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Guantanamo, and the U.S. Supreme Court. World Premiere

A Small Act (Director: Jennifer Arnold)—A young Kenyan’s life changes dramatically when his education is sponsored by a Swedish stranger. Years later, he founds his own scholarship program to replicate the kindness he once received. World Premiere

12th & Delaware (Directors: Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing)—The abortion battle continues to rage in unexpected ways on an unassuming corner in America. World Premiere

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION (12 films in competition)

A Film Unfinished / Germany, Israel (Director: Yael Hersonski)—Film reels uncovered in Nazi archives reveal the mechanisms used to stage Warsaw Ghetto life–images which have shaped our view of history. World Premiere

His & Hers / Ireland (Director: Ken Wardrop)—Seventy Irish women offer moving insights into the relationships between women and men. North American Premiere

Kick in Iran / Gemany (Director: Fatima Geza Abdollahyan)—The first female professional Taekwondo fighter from Iran to qualify for the Olympic Games struggles for recognition in a society where women still play a subordinate role. World Premiere

Russian Lessons / Georgia, Germany, Norway (Directors: Olga Konskaya and Andrei Nekrasov)—An investigation into Russian actions during the 2008 war in Georgia, revealing the little known story of the ethnic cleansing in the region since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. World Premiere

Waste Land / United Kingdom (Director: Lucy Walker)—Lives are transformed when international art star Vik Muniz collaborates with garbage pickers in the world’s largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro. World Premiere

WORLD CINEMA NARRATIVE COMPETITION (14 films in competition)

Grown Up Movie Star / Canada (Director and screenwriter: Adriana Maggs)—After her mother runs away, a teenage girl, determined to grow up fast, is left to care for her hopelessly rural father.  U.S. Premiere

Vegetarian (Chaesikjueuija) / South Korea (Director and screenwriter: Lim Woo-seong)—A young housewife, finds herself having strange dreams that make her disgusted by meat, leading to trouble with her meat-loving husband and attention from her artist brother in law.  International Premiere

Sundance Film Festival Announces 2010 Competition Lineup (LA Times)


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Tags: Annie Sundberg, Debra Granik, Joan Rivers, Ricki Stern, Tamra Davis, Vera Farmiga

Sexism Watch: Double Dose

Jeers to the Hollywood Reporter for convening a year end discussion with high-profile producers round-table without a SINGLE WOMAN!  Please don’t tell me a single female producer was not available.

producers_490x200

Here are two points, from the conversation of note:

Laurence Mark: on How Julie & Julie got made:

Mark: “Julie & Julia” happened, without question, because of Meryl Streep. We all know it, Meryl knows it, Sony is certainly happy to say it.

And Ivan Reitman talking about casting Vera Farmiga and the discussion he had with his son writer/director Jason.

I’d say the biggest disagreement we had was over Vera Farmiga, who is a wonderful actress but she was eight months pregnant about two months before he started shooting. He said “Look, I wrote it for her, I think she’ll be perfect.” And she was as big as a house! As a producer, I have to say to him, “I know she’s a great actress, she’s going to be great in it, but she’s got to be someone George Clooney is going to fall in love with.” There were all kinds of actresses who wanted to play this part, bigger names than Vera was at that moment, so I kept saying, “Well, how about her?” But he just hung in there. I had to really defend his decision, and I know he agonized about it enormously. There were a couple rough opening scenes — first days — that he reshot at the end of the schedule to give her a little more time to get into shape. Apart from that, there was really no downside.

Thank goodness Jason stuck to his guts.

And our second jeer of the day goes to CNN and this story, When Actresses Turn Ugly which is basically about the fact that Mariah Carey wore no makeup for her part in Precious.  How does wearing no makeup make you ugly?  Unacceptable.

Awards Watch: Producers Roundtable (Hollywood Reporter)

When Actresses Turn Ugly (CNN)

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Tags: Julie & Julia, Mariah Carey, Meryl Streep, Precious, Vera Farmiga