Mar 19
The Guild
Niche comedy is thriving online; web series are finally reaching critical mass. It makes sense: certain topics are geared toward such narrow audiences that they wouldn’t immediately appeal to even the smaller cable networks, but they can find a ready viewership online. Plus, comedy can be done well even on a minuscule budget: comedic timing doesn’t require costly special effects or a running time beyond three to ten minutes. Now that web series aren’t just seen as ideas that established networks have rejected, filmmakers are making use of quality scripts, acting and production. Here are a few lesser-known gems we’ve discovered.
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Mar 12
Adam Scott, Jennifer Westfeldt
RECOMMENDED
One of the grown-up aspects of Jennifer Westfeldt’s debut as a film director—aside from not being “‘Friends,’ With Kids”—is how she works both blue and red. Her roundelay of couples at the cusp, then hoist upon the cusp of childbearing, make vulgar remarks, drop biting insults and many garish swears, and also casually drink through bottle after bottle of red wine and a couple of copiously displayed brands of bottle beer, one indicating “crass,” the other, “class.” (Talking with her recently, she smiled sweetly and said, “That’s just how my friends talk.”) The how-do-we-make-a-romantic-comedy-in-this-decade gimmick is that two friends since college (Westfeldt, Adam Scott) know each other’s lives inside out but have never become romantic. While they continue to play, their friends—couples Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm; Chris O’Dowd and Maya Rudolph—have kids. But! What if they shared a kid? But not their lives? Cruel behavior and often crackling banter follow. Read the rest of this entry »
Feb 29
"Beats Being Dead" from "Dreileben"
By Ray Pride
Here’s an impressive statistic: in its fifteenth edition, the Siskel Film Center’s European Union Film Festival, the largest North American showcase for films from the EU, boasts sixty-five films from all twenty-seven EU countries.
As impressive, but slightly confusing are the four different formats the movies are being shown in: It’s a buffet of selections from among the choices theaters still have, at least until next year. There are thirty-three being shown on projected celluloid in thirty-five millimeter; nineteen in HDCAM video (a format often mandated by film festivals), seven in DigiBeta and seven in the DCP format, which is the heavily protected format that the U.S. film industry has chosen to replace 35mm as an exhibition medium. Read the rest of this entry »
Jan 12
RECOMMENDED
Synopsis is the devil, but sometimes the devil is in the details. Here’s Tribeca Film’s synopsis of writer-director-actor-producer Edward Burns’ microbudget romantic comedy and fan letter to New York’s upscale Tribeca neighborhood, “Newlyweds”: “Buzzy (Edward Burns) and Katie (Caitlin FitzGerald) are a newly married couple living a seemingly conflict-free life. But when Buzzy’s damaged and impulsive half-sister Linda (Kerry Bishé) arrives at their doorstep expecting to stay for an indefinite period in their Tribeca loft, her antics threaten to disrupt the couple’s commitment to an ‘easy’ marriage.” Sounds like any romantic comedy, but it’s more like Woody Allen on a designer shoestring. Read the rest of this entry »
