By Sean Axmaker

"When Juno exploded into the pop culture in 2007, it catapulted a young actress named Olivia Thirlby from the indie world's best kept secret into an overnight success," notes Sean Axmaker, introducing his interview. "Her performances in the ensemble drama Snow Angels and the coming-of-age dramedy The Wackness are enlivened by the same spunk and warm glow that made Juno crackle, but the dimensions are shaded in ways that dramatically differentiate these characters from the happy-go-lucky Leah. What's interesting is that both of these films were shot before Juno had been released. Which means that this young actress landed each role without any name recognition or public track record, but merely by the force of her auditions."

Continue Reading Olivia Thirlby: "Women Are Moviegoers, Too"

By Brian Darr

"Finally, a [Guy] Maddin film that fully incorporates the homely comic-pathos of his essays and movie reviews," writes Max Goldberg in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "In My Winnipeg, the Canuck filmmaker's punch-drunk dissolves and superimpositions aren't just cinematographic cake-frosting; they're visual portents and analogues of his seasick crawl through the past."

With Brand Upon the Brain! out on DVD on August 12 (from Criterion, no less) and My Winnipeg still winding its way through US theaters, Brian Darr talks with Maddin about his hometown, aural landscapes, his library of 16mm prints, George Kuchar and that marvelous "dupey look."

Continue Reading Guy Maddin: "I Had This Haunted Childhood"

"Stuck in the summertime hell of superhero crapola and CGI migraines, it's not hard from where I stand (which is, frankly, still a state of bedevilment about how the typically abbreviated and overwrought non-storyness of The Dark Knight has so many educated viewers bamboozled) to find relief in the forgotten matinee fodder of a less bombastic time," writes Michael Atkinson at IFC. "This week, it's René Clément's rather delightful 1964 suspenser Les Félins (The Felines), titled here (after the American pulp paperback it was based on, by prolific noiriste Day Keene) Joy House. There's not much that's earth-shaking about Joy House (except perhaps Lalo Schifrin's pre-Jerry Goldsmith score). But it's a movie in a way movies haven't been in a long time: graceful, relaxed, fun-loving, unpretentious." Also reviewed is the "overlooked Hungarian film The Witman Boys."

Continue Reading DVD Spotlight: 8/5.

By Michael Guillen

The Counterfeiters, winner of the Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category, is based on true events: the Nazis planned to destabilize the American and British economies by flooding the markets with fake dollars and pounds. And they enlisted prisoners in concentration camps to counterfeit the bills. This presents a dark dilemma to the prisoners: cooperate and survive - or sabotage the project and possibly pay with their lives.

"I don't think there is the right way to behave in a situation like that," director Stefan Ruzowitzky tells Michael Guillen. "This is something I learned from doing research and reading a lot of autobiographies. They all agree that it was so difficult in the camps to do the right thing and, if you wanted to do the right thing, often it led to catastrophe and disaster because the whole system was so perverted."

The Counterfeiters is now out on DVD.

Continue Reading Stefan Ruzowitzky: "Sometimes Right, Sometimes Wrong"

By James Van Maanen

"No less a light than Steven Soderbergh (once upon a time the flag-bearer for independent American cinema) is on record as calling Choking Man 'everything an independent film should be," notes James Van Maanen. "If that kind of all-encompassing praise sounds difficult to live up to, not to worry. Steve Barron's film is plenty good and certainly worth its 83 minutes of your time. Though he was on vacation at the time, he was kind enough to answer a few quick questions via email."

Besides the interview, James has a review of the film as well, at Guru.

Continue Reading Steve Barron: "It Was All Low-Budget, On-the-Fly and Adrenalin Flowing"

By James Van Maanen

In Mardi Gras: Made in China, David Redmon asks revelers in pre-Katrina New Orleans if they have any idea where the beads they're throwing in exchange for a glimpse of mammaries were made. In short, nope.

Laura Kern in the New York Times: "A startling look at both the effects of globalization and at a dramatic cultural divide, the film contrasts the lives of the Chinese, hard workers who are forced to make serious sacrifices at very young ages, with indulgent Americans intent on having a good time and seemingly at ease with their lack of awareness. With any luck, this film will manage to open a few closed eyes (or minds)."

James Van Maanen talks with Redmon about the many projects he's working on with producer Ashley Sabin and the many more they'll be distributing shortly.

Continue Reading David Redmon: "Girls and Boys Gone Wild in the Context of the Global Economy"

By James Van Maanen

"I think the collage aesthetic, with the rough edges still showing, encourages us as viewers to engage critically with the material we're watching, rather than simply letting the visual or narrative pleasures wash us away."

With Delineating Borders: The Films of Jesse Lerner running through tomorrow evening at Anthology Film Archives in New York, James Van Maanen talks with the filmmaker (and co-author of F Is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth's Undoing) about Mexico, cultural hybrids, politics and future plans.

Continue Reading Jesse Lerner's Aesthetic and Cultural Hybrids

By Sean Axmaker

"A refreshingly high-concept low-budget outing, the Duplass Brothers' Baghead is an immensely likeable and surprisingly well-executed genre hybrid," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE. "The difficulty one finds in trying to categorize it is part of its charm... [I]t smartly proves that it only takes the slightest, smartest tweaks to temporarily revitalize an entire genre."

Sean Axmaker talks with Jay and Mark Duplass about how they've pulled this off.

Continue Reading Jay and Mark Duplass: "The Hardest Part About Mixing Genres Is Mixing Genres"

By David D'Arcy

"This is part of the endless war machine. The war machine grinds on. They used to run Cold War simulations there. Now they run Iraq simulations there. They're beginning to evolve more into Afghan War simulations. For all I know, it'll be Iran in two years. They only have to re-jigger the actors and the sets, and the war continues."

That's Jesse Moss, talking about the National Training Center, which has built Medina Wazl, a fictional town out in the Mojave Desert, where soldiers train to fight the real war in Iraq. David D'Arcy talks with him and his filmmaking partner, Tony Gerber, about their documentary Full Battle Rattle, currently at Film Forum in New York through Tuesday.

Keep an eye on their blog for further screenings.

Continue Reading Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber: "The War Continues"

By James Van Maanen

"A perceptively written, finely-played exploration of a fundamentally good marriage during an unanticipated bad patch, Silvio Soldini's Days and Clouds is an absorbing, deliberate drama about choices and commitment," wrote Eddie Cockrell in Variety from last September's Toronto International Film Festival.

Days and Clouds opens in New York on Friday, and James Van Maanen nabbed a quick talk with Soldini during this year's Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series.

Continue Reading Silvio Soldini: "The Reality Around Me Has Changed"