News

A pair of titles in our Most Anticipated Films for 2012 in #39. Andrew Dosunmu (Ma George) and #30. Mark Jackson (Untitled Sicily Project) are two of the lucky fifteen filmmakers to have received coin in the shape of 2012 Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute grants. Recipients include a trio of titles that we caught in Park City back in January in Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, Ira Sach’s Keep the Lights On, and Destin Daniel Cretton’s I Am Not a Hipster. Here’s the press release.

Post-Production Feature Film Grants

Keep the Lights On

Writer/director: Ira Sachs

The story of a tumultuous, decade-long relationship between two men in New York City. Keep the Lights On premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Ira Sachs is a writer and director based in New York City. His films include Married Life (2007), The Delta (1997) and the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize-winning Forty Shades of Blue.

Documentary filmmaker Jason Spingarn-Koff ("Life 2.0") has a pretty sweet deal.  He gets to work with documentary filmmakers to help them make short videos for one the world's most respected media outlets, The New York Times.   Spingarn-Koff, whose own film debuted at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and went on to debut on Own last year, is now working as the first video journalist for the Times's Opinion section and as the producer and curator of the Times's new Op-Docs initiative. With Op-Docs, Spingarn-Koff told Indiewire, "We're trying to create a forum for filmmakers to express themselves using their medium, just like our print Op-Ed contributors use their talents as writers." He continued, "I've been working to create an outlet that's diverse in subject matter but also style.  It has a distinct feel from most news.  Here we're working with indie filmmakers, animators, artists, to create films...

Own isn't just four-for-four with its Documentary Club offerings — they're getting better as time goes on. With Life 2.0 (premiering Thursday at 9/8c), director Jason Spingarn-Koff explores Linden Lab's virtual world Second Life, in which people explore and interact in an online universe via avatars of their choice.

It's not quite a game, but how the documentary subjects negotiate the computer world and the real one makes for gripping dramatic tension...

Read More >...

Check out this new red-band trailer for Conan the Barbarian. It stars Jason Momoa, Ron Perlman, Stephen Lang, Rachel Nichols, and Rose McGowan. It hits theaters August 19. [IGN]

Filmmaker Jason Spingarn-Koff made Life 2.0 about people who embraced the online game “Second Life” to the fullest. They created online personas that were nothing like themselves, met and fell in love with other gamers, and a whole lot more. Online gaming certainly has an immersive subculture, but I wonder how they will treat the subjects in this documentary. It’s easy for them to fall into cliches about gaming addiction and gaming’s inherent worth.

We can hope it’s a unique look, at least. The trailer lends itself to a lot of gamer perspective. Check it out and let us know how you feel about it. [NPR]

The Last Circus (Balada triste de trompeta) is the latest film from Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia.

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers? Point Blank Trailer It's this time of year when escapism reigns supreme. While I haven't really found anything that satisfies my need for Crank level...

The 2010 edition of the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival has just announced their complete Noves Visions program. The program where the festival places the young, edgy material, this is the big discovery program of the festival. Here's the announcement!

Noves Visions, The Most Indie

And Daring Section At Sitges 2010

The 43rd Sitges - International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, that will take place 7 to 17 October, presents its lineup for the Noves Visions section:

Noves Visions - FICCIÓ Section

Exploration of new territories in narration, placing emphasis on both thematic and formal aspects of films that are a vision of the present as well as a disturbing premonition of times to come.

A Horrible Way To Die (Adam Wingard, USA)

Chatroom (Hideo Nakata, UK)

Dispongo De Barcos (Juan Cavestany, Spain)

Earthling (Clay Liford, USA)

Everything Will Be Fine (Christoffer Boe, Denmark)

Finisterrae (Out of competition. Sergio Caballero, Spain)

Isolation (Stephen T. Kay,...

It's been called the Cannes of genre cinema an the first wave of programming has been announced for Sitges 2010, a lineup featuring the best in genre film of all types from all around the globe. Here's the full announcement!

The Shining celebrates its 30th anniversary and the 43rd Sitges - International Fantasy Film Festival of Catalonia, that will take place from 7 to 17 October, would like pay homage to it through the image for this year's official poster. The Shining (1980), by Stanley Kubrick, is one of the few undoubtedly classic horror films that still holds up with the passage of time, going beyond the genre and the director himself.

The Festival will also be remembering the 25th anniversary of Back to the Future by Robert Zemeckis, offer a special tribute to the deceased Paul Naschy with the screening of the documentary El hombre que vio llorar a Frankenstein, and will be...

For enthusiasts of Second Life, a 3-D virtual world that enables users to interact with each other through avatars, all the hype surrounding Avatar must have seemed kind of overblown. After all, they’d been living their own science fiction fantasies for years, and their virtual world reflects the fantasies of millions of people, not just Mr. Cameron’s. Last night, Stranger Than Fiction featured a screening of Life 2.0, a dreamy documentary that explores what happens when people start living a Second Life. Director Jason Spingarn-Koff explores the phenomena from the inside – his filmmaker avatar straps on a digital camera and turns its lens on avatars at home in their second world. Among his characters are a couple...

For enthusiasts of Second Life, a 3-D virtual world that enables users to interact with each other through avatars, all the hype surrounding Avatar must have seemed kind of overblown. After all, they’d been living their own science fiction fantasies for years, and their virtual world reflects the fantasies of millions of people, not just Mr. Cameron’s. Last night, Stranger Than Fiction featured a screening of Life 2.0, a dreamy documentary that explores what happens when people start living a Second Life. Director Jason Spingarn-Koff explores the phenomena from the inside – his filmmaker avatar straps on a digital camera and turns its lens on avatars at home in their second world. Among his characters are a couple...

Much press has been given to Second Life, the virtual world/social network "game" in which participants can live out their fantasies in a polygonal wonderland, free of the restrictions that come with real life. Imagine a perfectly visualized chat room, only with its own user-created socio-economic structure. Companies have found clever ways to monetize the free experience, while over 15 million users work virtual jobs, buy virtual items, have virtual sex, and dance the night away in virtual nightclubs.

Life 2.0, a new documentary by Jason Spingarn-Koff, finds a human story within the world of Second Life, by focusing his attention on the experiences of four of its users. One is a young woman working from her basement, making a six-figure salary designing clothing and houses for sale in Second Life. A male Second Life addict tries to make sense out of his relationship with his created avatar, an eleven-year...

Less than a week worth of recovering from the Sundance Film Festival, and we are already looking forward to our next, big film fest coverage. That would be the South by Southwest Film Festival held annually in Austin, Texas. Last year, Scott and I brought you all kinds of coverage from the Lone Star State, and this year doesn’t look to be much different.

With that, the announcement came last night of the feature films that will be playing at the SXSW Film Festival. Previous announcement were already made about films like Cold Weather, Electra Luxx, Hubble 3D, Lemmy, Saturday Night, and The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights making their debut. Kick-ass was recently announced as the opening night film, as well.

Among the other films being presented this year are some Sundance darlings, a few, highly anticipated premieres, and MacGruber.

Check out the full list...

Late yesterday the SXSW Fim Festival, which runs from March 12-20 in Austin, TX, announced the full lineup of films that will be screening at this year’s event. And baby, it’s quite a list. Mixing big name films with intimate indie gems, the sheer number of films and the vast array of talented filmmakers is sure to be a hit with attendees and critics alike.

This lineup includes premieres of studio films such as Universal’s MacGruber, Lionsgate’s teen superhero actioneer Kick-Ass and smaller films like Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, Michel Gondry’s The Thorn in the Heart and Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything Is Going Fine. With so many films to watch, it will be very difficult to find time to seem them all during the events nine days. But hell, we’re going to try.

For more on...

Director Jason Spingarn-Koff's Avatar

Catfish, GasLand, and Restrepo are the buzziest documentaries this year, but I will assert that Life 2.0, which has lower-level awareness at this point (and no distribution deal) is one of the most potent docs I’m seen at the festival — or anywhere else in quite a while. Jason Spingarn-Koff makes the jump from television documentaries to his first feature doc; better said, he creates his own avatar and enters the 3D virtual world Second Life to chronicle the experiences of four people fully immersed in this environment.

In ascending order of disquieting alternate lives, there’s “Asri,” a 30-year-old woman who awakens around 6pm each day and proceeds to spend the next 15-20 hours online as the owner of a successful clothing store; in first life, “Ayya” is a young married male, but in second life she’s an 11-year-old girl; “Blunty” and “Amie...

Yet another video review courtesy of SlashFilm featuring our own Brandon Lee Tenney. This time he talks about Life 2.0, a documentary playing at Sundance about the virtual online world of Second Life. Directed by first-time feature filmmaker Jason Spingarn-Koff, the doc follows a group of four people whose lives are dramatically transformed by the virtual world - reshaping relationships, identities, and ultimately the very notion of reality. Brandon is also joined in the video by Peter of SlashFilm and Laremy Legel of Film.com. It seems like they all had mixed reactions to the film. Watch the full Life 2.0 Sundance video review below. A little blurb on Life 2.0 the Sundance Guide: "Director Jason Spingarn-Koff digs deeply into the core of basic human interaction by assuming his own avatar and immersing himself in the worlds of Second Life residents, whose real lives have been drastically transformed by the...

Second Life launched in June of 2003. Since that time, tens of millions of people across the planet have created alternate realities of themselves, sometimes more realistic than others. Documentary film maker and journalist Jason Spingarn-Koff delves deep into this subculture of the world’s population, creating a documentary where all the characters are chunks of 1s and 0s interacting with one another. Sounds fascinating to say the very least.

Official synopsis:

Every day, across all corners of the globe, hundreds of thousands of users log onto Second Life, a virtual online world not entirely unlike our own. They enter a new reality, whose inhabitants assume alternate personas in the form of avatars—digital alter egos that can be sculpted and manipulated to the heart’s desire, representing reality, fantasy, or a healthy mix of both. Within this alternate landscape, escapism abounds, relationships are formed, and a real-world economy thrives, effectively...

Yesterday we got the list for the films playing in competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and today we get the rest of the films that will be featured and there are quite a few that make 2010 look much stronger based on pedigree alone than I have seen in quite some time. Variety has a big write-up detailing the categories and more on the festival right here, but I am just going to offer up the titles and let you sort it all out.

The titles already in the RopeofSilicon database are linked.

Premieres

All films are from the United States unless otherwise noted Abel (Mexico-u.S.), the directorial debut of actor Diego Luna, written by Luna and Agusto Mendoza, about a peculiar young boy who, as he blurs reality and fantasy, takes over the responsibilities of a family man in his father's absence. With Jose Maria Yazpik, Karina Gidi,...