For reasons or the other, 35tos Annual New Directors / New Films Festival was my first time at the Museum of the film section of Modern Art. Huge vintage posters of classics like La Dolce Vita are hung up right where the escalators leading to the two theaters Titus to be used to protect the 25 feature films and 7 short films are presented in the guides immaculately constructed from the festival. With reports that the Sundance festival this year was overpopulated by pre-sold movies, driven by the star like Alpha Dog thriller medicine fantastic Nick Cassavetes and Nicole Holofcener's Friends with Money, ND / NF has quickly one of the most well-attended showcases for first-timers to show their talent contest for attention besides each other.
First was 13 Tzameti (), a nerve sart Melville-does-Hostel incredibly given by Gela Babluani, who shot the French thriller (though he himself is Georgian) in rough, gritty black and white. The film follows a young man who steals a mysterious invitation to a game when his boss is killed, only to find that he has walked into a gambling ring based on random men shoot themselves to each other. What makes it so interesting in the film is its fascination with the process of play, more time is spent on such bets are handled as men who bet the act with one another sweaty palms do play inducing same. Although it lost its steam in the end, the film summons the dark side of humanity with more vigor than the cold of Eli Roth, horror gimmick in internet movies database 2009.
In a more surreal note, there were John & Jane Toll-Free (), a documentary about telemarketers in Bombay who make many calls we got vilified lawyer here in the states. Disorienting in its use of Steadicam work and sometimes organized, this look persistent American dream seen by an Indian filter leaves your signal where you least expect it. The use of American companies call this as the small valley to give phone calls, see the range of views of the Glen, who hates his job and despises its leaders, Osmond and Nikki, who are strong beliefs about their jobs (to Nikki, is Christianity, for Osmond, is financial success). Sometimes dizzying and surreal, the film's director Ashim Ahluwalia could be called almost conventional in its radical, haunting images and their seductive subjects.
In the realm of personal drama, Sundance was helpless Ryan Fleck's Half Nelson (). The film is well-trodden territory: a young professor, favored (Ryan Gosling) spends her snorting coke and training time on the basketball team for girls. He makes friends with one of the players (Shareeka Epps) and a friendship that eventually blossoms help him with his habits of medicine and she with Frank (Anthony Mackie), a drug dealer and friend of his imprisoned brother. The script has enough clichés and predictable results to form a logo LIfe in bottom right corner of the screen, but the material is saved by the direction of La Mancha and interpretation. The gosling fills the screen that awakens a sense of wit and urgency, while Epps, a newcomer to break again the role she created in the original short Gowanus Mancha, Brooklyn, says her scenes with the goslings with the intensity amazing. The spot puts a tremendous atmosphere of woozy camera movements and it works excellent with the players to give something stale dialogue around refreshing.
Cavite () recently won the co-directors Ian Gamazon and Neill Dela Llana the Independent Spirit Awards "Someone to Watch" Award. There is good reason: the film of Dela Llana and Gamazon is a powerful burst of discordant Portable Camera dizziness and tense emotions in real time. Wise by management, the movie was one of the standouts of the festival, especially in a budget that most of us consume on a Q-tip in a year. The film concerns Adam (Gamazon), a man who returns to his birthplace in the Philippines for the funeral of his father when he is suddenly making a pledge for a terrorist group when they give a cell phone, orders bark on it, and begin to cut up his mother and sister. A no-budget, DV nightmare in the vein of the cab and Telefonica Celular, Cavite really does work hours without boring the audience, but Adam's dialogue never seems real or true, and Gamazon, abandoned carry an entire movie, not is up to the challenge.
The director Ramin Bahrani Shopping introduced its excellent Man Push () saying the film was inspired both by the bombing of George W. Bush in Afghanistan and by the work of Albert Camus. In structure, it is not quite as existential as Camus but there is an enormous amount of thought that goes through the mind of the hero of Bahrani and Man owner Ahmad (Ahmad Ravzi), when he strives to remain anonymous as a truck owner Hand of New York City. He accidentally offers friendship to a rich man from his native area of Pakistan where Ahmad was a famous musician, and falls for a Spanish beauty (Leticia Dolera) who manages to push another car. It seems conventional, but Bahrani, who also wrote the script, does not play anything like you think he will, and together with the cinematographer Michael Simmonds, he finds a different flavor to the city family still humming along to your movie. The kiss that part of Dolera and Ravzi is a moment of pure sweltering movie this year has been very absent.
Saving the best for last, Michael Cuesta's Twelve and Believing (), continued to LIE 2001., Parents should make Disney led to the Atlantic. Where L.I.E. was based, tight and tense, Twelve & Possession is a loose, but no less powerful, multinarrativa about four friends of 12 years must pass through the awkward plight of children does not help when their parents do not listen and one of the friends meets a tragic end. Does not bother the audience hard with love and sleep easy with first romances (remember Little Manhattan?). Instead, he discovers all the terrible neglect and embarrassment, all thoughts misguided and skewed logic holds that childhood. The performances are stellar, with a special nod to the three principal children and Jeremy Renner horribly good. Slope is a director who has shown their ability to grow in his first film, feeling more welcome with actors and their history and finding the humor in dark places he used to play for such seriousness.
Regardless of what came as a heavy favorite, had undeniable talent, ardent by spoonfuls distributed by the filmmakers on the screen. Sadly, I let the two largest festival talks, the Old Joy Kelly Reichardt and Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's Quinceanera, but it is clear that the ND / NF 'S that protects the process should be more rigorous than Julliard. No wonder that Center Stage was not accepted.
