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• bill says:

  January 22, 2010 at 10:35 am

  That’s an interesting/amusing story about Nolan, and, as it hap­pens, I just recently saw FOLLOWING for the first time. I liked it okay, but wish I liked it more. It really feels like a film made by someone who just wanted to see if they could make a film. And they did, and that’s great, and I really love Nolan’s work since he exploded (par­tic­u­larly THE PRESTIGE, which I think is hor­ribly under­rated, and which is one of my per­son­al favor­ite films; what a dark, strange, twis­ted sum­mer tent­pole movie that thing is), but FOLLWING’s form­al dar­ing is trans­par­ently cal­cu­lated, not organ­ic or neces­sary, but inten­ded solely to be noticed as a thing itself. Which, again, is fine, but it dis­tanced me from what I cared about. I’d watch BLAIR WITCH over FOLLOWING any day of the week.

• Michael Adams says:

  January 22, 2010 at 10:54 am

  Note that the hero of FOLLOWING has a Batman stick­er on his door.

• Zach says:

  January 22, 2010 at 11:28 am

  Killer anec­dote and piece, Glenn. Not to drag Biskind into this, but one thing I did take away from D&DP was that Sundance has always favored the “arty” over the artist­ic to one degree or anoth­er, for a vari­ety of reas­ons, not least of which (was) Redford’s dubi­ous taste. Don’t get me wrong – a few fant­ast­ic films and film­makers have been “launched” at/by Sundance, but by and large it’s an unam­bigu­ous mar­ket for “spe­ci­al­ity films” (ie, middlebrow awards bait).
  Meanwhile, genu­ine cine­mat­ic artists with legit­im­ately chal­len­ging, non-obviously-commercial films (the kind that require a thriv­ing, integ­rated, multi-subsidized cul­ture) are work­ing their asses off and pro­du­cing tre­mend­ous work…if I can steer a little atten­tion to Apichatpong’s latest – for FREE at the Auteurs! – A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, I will have done my good deed for the day.
  I’d like to see Sundance roll out the red car­pet for some­thing like Syndromes and a Century.

• Jason M. says:

  January 22, 2010 at 1:49 pm

  Zach – thanks a bunch for the link to Apichatpong’s latest! Saw it at this past years NYFF, and ran around recom­mend­ing it to a bunch of oth­er people, without a way for them to see it, of course (so many of my view­ing recom­mend­a­tions these days seem to either begin or end with “If it plays any­where near you” or “If you ever have a chance to see it…”).
  So: ‘Daily Good Deed’ Achievement Unlocked.
  And of course Sundance should roll out the red car­pet for film­makers like Apitchatpong, Lisandro Alonso, Pedro Costa and any num­ber of oth­ers. But let’s face it, it’s not going to hap­pen. Theres’ far too many eas­ily con­sum­able indies out there for people to waste their time on genu­inely great, chal­len­ging filmmaking.

• Paul Johnson says:

  January 22, 2010 at 2:04 pm

  Great “And that little boy grew up to be…” story.

• Jaime says:

  January 22, 2010 at 2:32 pm

  Glenn – puzzled by the Peranson dig. Was it a dig? What’s the context?

• Stephen Whitty says:

  January 22, 2010 at 3:03 pm

  Understand your ire, Glenn, and prin­cipled defense of the right word, although I think for most scrib­blers these days “arty” only sig­ni­fies some­thing they see as ambi­tious and styl­ish – as opposed to “artsy,” which means over­wrought and pre­ten­tious. But I may be being too kind.
  Both words are cer­tainly impre­cise, though, and they’re prob­ably best avoided. Along with all those “writers” who can­’t write (and don’t think words, or clar­ity, or gram­mar or even simple logic mat­ter any­more just so long as they have “a voice,” or as someone said straight­facedly about a recent West Coast hire, “a brand”).
  As for Sundance, I’m curi­ous – miss it much? Been a few years since I’ve gone and can­’t say I do. For every dis­cov­ery you might make, it always seemed like there were six use­less “premi­eres” of middle-brow cable doc­u­ment­ar­ies – and those end­less rides on “Eccles Loop” buses (or godaw­ful Yarrow press screen­ings) got old awfully fast.
  It’d be nice to see it wean itself of the Ashton Kutcher flicks and Paris Hilton sight­ings and end­less, use­less swag and get back to basics a bit…

• James Keepnews says:

  January 22, 2010 at 4:20 pm

  Personally, I’m amazed to dis­cov­er this Atrocity Exhibition adapt­a­tion, which I’d nev­er heard about before. Boy, that and Mr. Cronenberg’s Crash would make quite the drive-in double-feature date night, provided you’ve got airbags every­where (and LSD and gold-tipped cigar­ettes and…). It’s evid­ently only avail­able on non-NTSC DVD, fur­ther proof I des­per­ately need a multi-region Blu-Ray play­er, already, and not just to keep up with Glenn’s column. What more can you tell us that was cham­pi­on­able (sp?) about this film?
  Blair Witch is fas­cin­at­ing as “cine­mat­ic” socio-history, meh-worthy as “cinema”. That said, I’m sin­cerely a huge Heather Donahue fan, and always found some­thing to cham­pi­on about her per­form­ances, e.g. the Taken min­iser­ies. Sorry to hear she retired, hope it won’t last.

• THE FUTURIST! says:

  January 22, 2010 at 4:38 pm

  Not on top­ic, Commander Kenny, but you might be inter­ested, if you don’t know of this news already. http://www.homemediamagazine.com/universal/universal-bows-vault-series-demand-dvds-18149

• bill says:

  January 22, 2010 at 4:43 pm

  @THE FUTURIST! – Good gravy, that’s an eclect­ic mix. PURE LUCK and RUGGLES OF RED GAP? THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN and BLUE COLLAR? I’m very excited about some of these, but what did they do, write a bunch of titles on ping pong balls and dump them all into a lot­tery wheel?

• THE FUTURIST! says:

  January 22, 2010 at 7:21 pm

  @bill – it appears that way. But, RUGGLES and THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER were luck­ily in all that pinging and ponging. At least there was some kick in those balls.

• Chuck Stephens says:

  January 23, 2010 at 11:47 am

  Seconding the puz­zle­ment over the wholly inapt Peranson dig (which I also com­men­ted on over at The Auteurs): what gives, big daddy?

• Glenn Kenny says:

  January 23, 2010 at 11:53 am

  Whoa, hold on there; I did­n’t intend a slam at Peranson, (which may be one reas­on why it seemed so inapt). As I said in the com­ments at the Auteurs’: “I did not intend a slam at Peranson or Cinema Scope, as I hold both in high esteem. I was expect­ing my jibe would be recog­nized as a rhet­or­ic­al flour­ish mock­ing [Brooks] Barnes’ phil­istin­ism, and not as a cri­ti­cism of Peranson. That’s why I began the sen­tence with ‘Well, depend­ing on how you look at it…’ I’m sorry to not have been clear­er, or to have been mis­in­ter­preted, depend­ing on how you look at it.”