The 2014 Milwaukee Film Festival starts Thursday, and while the weather this week might be unseasonably warm for all-day moviegoing, the festival’s tantalizing lineup of Oscar-contender premieres, foreign films, kid-friendly flicks, special guests and other goodies make it hard to resist. Plus, the festival lasts two weeks, until Thursday, Oct. 9, so there’s got to be a couple of cold, rainy days coming between now and then, right?
I favorably reviewed “Walking the Camino” here on the blog, and over at 77 Square I did an interview with its director, Lydia B. Smith. The film is a lovely documentary following six people walking the 500-mile Camino el Santiago in the north of Spain.
Smith was an interesting interview — while the film is very internal and spiritual minded, the road to make it was a labored and physical one. She spent three frustrating years with 300 hours of good footage she had shot in Spain, and no funds to turn it into a film, let alone distribute it. Eventually, she reached out to enough people who could donate, including high school friends she hadn’t seen in years, to finish the film. It’s become one of the top grossing documentaries of 2014, despite the fact that it doesn’t have a distributor like Sony Pictures Classics or Sundance Selects backing it up.
Smith is in Madison all weekend, and will host post-show Q&As after the 6:55 p.m. screening Saturday night and 1:50 p.m., 4:20 p.m., and 6:55 p.m. screenings on Sunday. With its gorgeous scenery, it’s a film well worth seeing on the big screen.
I mentioned a little while back that Sundance Cinemas was restarting its Screening Room calendar this fall, and with it I’d be hosting post-show chats for a couple of the films. Well, I’ve figured out when those chats are going to be — and one of them I’m particularly excited about.
It’s a cycle familiar to Madison movie fans. We pick up the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly or some other national publication and read a review of some cool independent movie on the way. A Jim Jarmusch vampire movie starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston? A comedy about three Swedish middle-school punk rockers? A new Roman Polanski movie based on an acclaimed off-Broadway play? Can’t wait to see it when it comes to Madison.
And then it doesn’t. For reasons only booking agents can understand, the films don’t open in Madison.
Movie-wise, we’re languishing in the doldrums right now between the summer blockbuster season and the fall awards season, which is why the hottest movies at the multiplex right now seem to be old movies like “Ghostbusters” and “Forrest Gump.”
But one of the many virtues of living in a college town is that the on-campus series are firing up right now. While the Union South Marquee has second-run showings are more mainstream fare, it’s the UW-Cinematheque that really has movie lovers ready for fall. The series, which screens films for free Thursdays through Sundays at its home base at Vilas Hall as well as at the Marquee and Chazen Museum of Art, has a terrific lineup of Madison premieres, classic series featuring great directors and actors, series built around genre (horror) and theme (World War I), and other movies that are just plain fun to see on the big screen.
It’s been a long hot wait for fans of the Sundance Screening Room Series, which brings foreign, documentary and independent films to Sundance Cinemas on a regular weekly schedule. The last Screening Room calendar ended in late April, and while you can’t begrudge a theater for wanting to sell those “Guardians of the Galaxy” tickets, at some point between “The Giver” and “Sin City: A Dame To Kill For” getting booked there, it seemed like it was high time to get back to the Screening Room.
Thankfully, the series will fire up again next week, presenting nine films between Sept. 12 and the end of October, including some films that indie fans have been waiting for for months. The Screening Room films are all exempt from the Sundance amenities fees, and I’m happy to say that Sundance has invited me back to do some post-show talks after a couple of the films. I’ll let you know soon which ones and when.
Is independent cinema dead? Have the major studios killed the do-it-yourself iconoclastic spirit, or at least driven it to the margins of popular culture? One might think so. And yet there is a new breed of independent cinema that is capturing the popular imagination, a guerrilla art form made by amateurs, enjoyed by amateurs, passed around on an alternate distribution system than the traditional studio model.
Over at 77 Square, I wrote the cover story this week, an interview with Jeff Daniels. Daniels is coming to the Stoughton Opera House Saturday night with his son Ben’s rock band. Actors who try their hand at singer-songwriting are nothing new (coincidentally, Jeff Bridges is in Milwaukee performing with his band on the same night.)
So most of the interview concentrates on Daniels’ side gig as a musician — he’s actually pretty good at writing wry and poignant folk songs in the Steve Goodman mode. But we did talk a little about making movies in his home state of Michigan, and about “Dumb and Dumber To” this November. He seems pretty excited about it. “We certainly didn’t leave it in the locker room, I know that. We threw everything we had at it, for better or worse.”
Read the interview here.
Ten years ago last week, “The Notebook” opened in theaters, making stars out of Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, spawning adaptations of every other gooey romance novel Nicholas Sparks ever wrote, and taking some of the heat off “Love Actually” as the sappiest romance of the ’00s.
At the time, I actually sort of liked it, and thought McAdams and Gosling brought loads of charm to what was a very silly story. But one thing has bugged me ever since about “The Notebook” — the ending. As I was of the theater, I wrote in my head a much better ending to “The Notebook.” one that is even more sappy and sentimental than the original, but more interesting and surprising as well.
It’s June 30, the halfway point in 2014. So, although there’s many more movies to come in 2014 (including two I’ve already seen that will almost certainly make my Top 10 at the end of the year), it’s a good chance to take stock of my 10 favorite films thus far.
I’m not including films I saw at festivals, such as “Boyhood” and “Life Itself,” since they haven’t been commercially released yet. I’ve marked the ones out on DVD in case you missed them. Let me know in comments if I’ve overlooked any good ones.
Madison Movie 