“If you love movies that are trying to tell real, unadulterated stories, pure, heartfelt stories, you need to be a part of supporting those films and helping them come into the world, because that’s the only way that they will.” – Alison Bagnall When we contribute to a crowdfunding campaign, we tend to think of the specific project at hand. The quote above reminds us that for movies that pledge can also be an investment in more than a single film. It’s about supporting and encouraging independent filmmaking overall and certain genres or kinds of movies. Bagnall acknowledges that she makes a particular sort of film, which maybe is not everyone, yet which is really, really loved by enough people that they need to be made. Studios and larger production companies might not see reason to make films that a small audience is really into when they get more money out of films that a large audience is just sorta into. The quote above comes from Bagnall’s Kickstarter campaign video for her next feature, Funny Bunny. And we can assume that if we like her previous works, 2003′s Piggie and 2011′s The Dish and the Spoon (one of our must-see picks for SXSW that year) and even Buffalo ’66, which she co-wrote, that we’ll want to see this too. As she describes it, the film is about “a friendless anti-obesity crusader, a trust fund manchild and a reclusive factory farming activist.  These three marginal people bump up against one another and

What is Casting Couch? Proof that not everyone’s tracking Hurricane Sandy’s path on Twitter. Some are still out there casting movies. The big casting news over the weekend was all of the big names that were announced for George Clooney’s next project as a director, The Monuments Men. Deadline had the scoop that this period drama about a group of art historians and museum curators trying to recover important and historical works from the clutches of the Nazis is going to star names like Bill Murray, Daniel Craig, Cate Blanchett, Jean Dujardin, John Goodman, Hugh Bonneville, and Bob Balaban. As far as I know none of these people can even speak German, but you’ve still got to look at that list and be impressed. You could cast this crew as an office full of telemarketers and everyone would still watch the movie, making them heroes during the dying days of the Nazi regime is just icing on the cake.

We open with a gasp. Amy Seimetz’s feature directorial debut, Sun Don’t Shine, kicks off with its lead actress (Kate Lyn Sheil) fighting for breath under the blazing Florida sun, thanks to a knock-down-drag-out fight with her boyfriend (Kentucker Audley) in an empty slice of wetland far from any prying eyes. The two struggle in the mud and sand, until the scuffle is finally over and they resume driving far away from something very bad, very bad indeed. An understated take on the classic Bonnie and Clyde trope with a mumblecore vibe, Seimetz’s film centers on two runaway losers who need to get somewhere far from home – and fast.