Film Festivals

The folks at South by Southwest (SXSW), the American film festival second only to Sundance in my mind, have announced that John Hamburg’s I Love You, Man starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel will open next year’s festival.

A tribute to the abundance of compelling new voices and the creative spirit in independent filmmaking, the Spectrum program presents out-of-competition dramatic and documentary films from some of the most promising filmmakers in the world today.

Park City at Midnight offers eight films that are likely to amuse, surprise, or shock the bleary-eyed viewer and offer a lively last stop in the nightly film-going circuit.

To showcase the diversity of contemporary independent cinema, the Sundance Film Festival Premieres section offers the latest work from American and international directors and world premieres of highly anticipated films.

We continue our Sundance 2009 coverage with a preview of John Krasinski’s directorial debut, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

In addition to the announcement of the competition film slate for 2009, the Sundance Film Festival also provided us with a bunch of images from some of the films that will be featured. We begin our preview with some higher profile pics.

The 2009 competition lineup for the Sundance Film Festival has been announced, and among the entries are some big names and some small ones, all of which are intriguing nonetheless.

You know John Krasinski — he’s Jim from The Office. But did you know that Krasinski also fancies himself a writer and a director in addition to being a solid actor?

The folks at YouTube and the Sundance Film Festival have teamed up once again this year for Project: Direct, a program that supports truly indie filmmakers by allowing them the opportunity to win their way into the Sundance line-up.

We don’t know what’s going to be playing at Sundance. No one does. No one except the half-dozen dolphin-werewolf hybrid creatures that choose the line up every year and keep it secret until some time next week. Luckily, several of the were-dolphins are susceptible to bribery, and we’ve got buzz on our side.

If there is one thing that I love about the coming of the cold and the snow in the late fall here in Ohio, it is that it reminds me that the Sundance Film Festival is just around the corner.

Calling all Los Angeles Zombies, Werewolves, and Creeps - Screamfest LA is back and sporting a good slate of horror films starting this Friday!

It goes without saying that I was excited about seeing the highly anticipated, as well as highly controversial, North American premiere of Zack and Miri Make A Porno at Fantastic Fest 2008 in Austin’s amazing Alamo Drafthouse.

Catch round 2 of our epic non-coverage of the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), in which we live vicariously through our friends and neighbors around the web.

Even though we weren’t allowed to make the trip across the border into Canada, we would still like to bring you some of the Toronto Film Fest updates from our friends and neighbors around the web.

Robert Fure watches 6 shorts at the HollyShorts Festival so you don’t have to, but after reading what he has to say, you just might want to find them for yourself.

Kevin Smith will be traveling to Austin on September 18 to show his upcoming movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno to open Fantastic Fest.

Kabluey is the best film that you’ve never heard of, and it’s finally coming to theaters that are hopefully near you. If you’re geographically challenged in regards to the release schedule, then never fear, it’ll be on DVD in September. Definitely a must-see.

The 2008 Cannes Film Festival is over and the awards have been announced. Cue the crickets. Sorry, that was wrong, cue le crickets.

After seeing her film I Am Becasue We Are at the Cannes Film Festival, Moore announced that Madonna will appear at his Traverse City Film Festival on August 2 to showcase her work.

This weekend, the mecca of geekdom was the Drexel Theater in Columbus, Ohio. More than 300 people gathered for 24 hours of science fiction movies. Several of the Rejects were in attendance to enjoy the good, the bad and the ugly that science fiction cinema had to offer.

The complete schedule of the 25th Annual Ohio 24-Hour Science Fiction Marathon has finally been announced. Several of the rejects will be in attendance, enjoying the full grindhouse experience of an all-night movie marathon.

The man’s formative years were spent flinging his extensive film knowledge in the general direction of willing and unwilling ears and his movies are laced with comments on films, past and present. So who better to stand in front of a room full of attentive film lovers and natter to his heart’s content?

The Ohio 24-Hour Sci-Fi Marathon is more then just movies. Each year, you get to see hours of additional material like rare and vintage trailers, short subjects, classic cartoons and so much more.

Today we got some cool news from the Tribeca Press office that the festival, which was founded in 2001 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, will close with The Wachowski’s tripped out, CGI-infused cartoon adaptation Speed Racer.

Henry Bean’s latest film, Noise, about a man who tries to silence New York City by breaking into cars and disconnecting the alarms is based on a true story. It’s partly his own. I don’t just mean he wrote the script. I mean it’s based on his own life.

It’s an hour and a half from McKinney to Dallas. It consists of a half hour straight shot towards the heart of the Big D followed by an hour of twisting concrete that go back and forth, over and under, on top and underneath each other in order to squeeze every square inch of land into driving space for the daily commuters.

Al Gore has global warming. Rev. Jim Phelps has homosexuality. Uwe Boll has film critics. Everyone needs something to fight whether it matters to the rest of the world or not and director Henry Bean takes noise pollution to task in his sarcastic, clever, witty David and Goliath comedy Noise.

Director/Screenwriter Jason Wulfsohn and screenwriter/actor Sacha Grunpeter experiment with a unique way of delivering their message in Tracing Cowboys, but its delivery makes to hard to want to discover it.

Every journalist who actually carries about journalism knows the legend of Hunter S. Thompson. They know about his love affair with guns, explosives and other things that go “Boom” and can wake up enter counties.