sundance

Joseph Gordon-Levitt opens up about hitRECord and DARK KNIGHT RISES’ Occupy Wall Street vibe

It’s more than an hour ‘til show time and the ticketholder tent outside the 1,270-seat Eccles Theatre, the Grand Théâtre Lumière of Sundance, is bursting at the seams for Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s hitRECord: A Night at the Movies. Thus, the less punctual attendees are forced to brave the heavy snow and form a long line wrapping around the theatre. Judging by the high volume of beanies, as well as girls dragging their boyfriends around like disgruntled parents, the crowd is skewing very young—save a handful of older men who look like Julian Schnabel.

Weekly movie trailer roundup: Joseph Gordon-Levitt as bike super hero and cancer survivor

What’s up with actors doing double duty in the movies this Fall? First it was George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Daniel Craig and now Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in two films that couldn’t be more different. In the scattered, disconnected mess that is the PREMIUM RUSH trailer, I gather he plays some kind of fixed gear fanatic, the kind of guy you meet at a party and all he can talk about is how his bike is fixed in one gear all the time and doesn’t have brakes! (The kind of guy, btw, one meets all too often living in Brooklyn.) But Gordon-Levitt doesn’t play your average bike messenger; He’s more like a bike messenger superhero, his super power being delivering packages by taking the most dangerous, complicated and taxi-clogged routes. According to the movie, bike messengers treat all their deliveries like ticking time bombs, barreling through streets, tire-hopping off moving vehicles and skidding to sudden stops. It looks like Gordon-Levitt gets hit by a car, like, four times in this trailer. All while trying to save a cute girl (aka Cho Chan from HARRY POTTER) from a crime she didn’t mean to commit! What a stud!

INCEPTION

With THE DARK KNIGHT, Christopher Nolan established himself as a director with the ability to translate the artfulness of a film like MEMENTO into a blockbuster that packs equal parts action and story. Even with an ensemble case, THE DARK KNIGHT manages to retain a singular character study that remains the heart of the story, no matter how many explosions go off in the background.

Almost the opposite is true of INCEPTION, Nolan’s ‘break’ while finishing up the Batman trilogy.

HESHER: a textbook of indie-film blunders and cliches.

I’m reluctant to add to what I suspect will be a critical pile-on against HESHER, at least based on the reactions after yesterday’s mobbed premiere at the Eccles Theater. But I’ll call it out only because its problems seem to be symptomatic. Despite its appealing cast, Spencer Susser’s HESHER is not just familiar in its failings but weirdly comprehensive, practically a textbook of indie-film blunders and cliches.

This is the kind of movie, all too common among rookie directors, that is so enamored of its cute concept — in this case, anarchist as grief therapist — that it never bothers to develop or explore that concept, or even test its basic plausibility.

Trend-spotting at Sundance Film Festival 2010

Image from HOWL

Journalists at film festivals invariably find themselves with the task of connecting the dots among dozens of disparate movies — looking for the big picture, whether in the form of a new fad or a larger cultural moment (e.g., last year’s elusive search, during a Sundance that coincided with a historic inauguration, for the quintessential Obama movie). Expect lots of trend-spotting once Sundance 2010 kicks off on Thursday night, and expect these three topics to get plenty of play:

SUNfiltered music video roundup

Here’s this week’s round up of music videos that we found during our peregrination through the streets of the Internet.

1. Benjamin Taylor’s “Wicked Way” music video is a winning formula of 15 models singing his song as they morph into one another. Incidentally, he comes from an impressive musical pedigree being that he is the son of James Taylor and Carly Simon.