THE DEAD DON'T DIE

THE DEAD DON'T DIE is an unashamedly indulgent movie who's success relies on the audience wanting to be in on the joke.  I went along for the ride and found it to be uproariously funny, silly, shaggy and joyful - and hands down one of my favourite films of 2019.  This isn't a film for those over-obsessed with tight-plotting, consistent pace or an aversion to jump the shark moments. But as I said, if you go with the silliness, there's a lot of fun to be had.

The film opens in small town USA, reminiscent of original Twin Peaks. There are some slow-witted nice cops, played by Bull Murray, Adam Driver and Chloe Sevigny. And there's policing a dispute between Hermit Bob (Tom Waits) and MAGA-supporter Farmer Frank (Steve Buscemi).  There's pace is lackadaisical and their hearts decent.  It soon becomes apparent that polar fracking has caused the earth to move off its axis resulting in whacky daylight hours and a zombie apocalypse. The rest of the film sees how our heroes cope with the impending doom ("kill the head") - not to mention the newly arrived Scottish mortician with hardcore Samurai skills (Tilda Swinton). 

We get lots of references to George Romero, including an update on his consumerist satire, as zombies wonder round in desperate search of wifi.  We also get a hopeful message about how "the children are our future". But mostly this is a film of supreme visual comedy - a shot of Adam Driver pulling into a diner parkway in a tiny red convertible Smart car - a shot of Tilda Swinton applying 1980s New Romantic makeup to a corpse - or a re-animated Iggy Pop hunting for coffee.  

Any film is worth watching that gives us even one of those things. So yes, I get all the critics and I see the film's weaknesses but I just dont' care, because when it delivers it's absolutely hilarious!

THE DEAD DON'T DIE is rated R and has a running time of 104 minutes. The film played Cannes 2019 and was released in the USA in June. It opens in the UK on Friday.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA is the delightful sequel to the charming 2012 kids animated movie.  It brings together most of the creative and voice team of the original for a story that feels organic in its progression.  In the first film, Dracula (Adam Sandler) struggled to accept that his beloved daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) had fallen in love with a human interloper (Andy Samberg) in his monster hotel.  In the sequel, the kids have gotten married and Drac is a grandpa to cute little Dennis. Problem is, Dennis doesn't appear to be a monster at all.  And so, a concerned Mavis wants to take him to live in the human world, much to Drac and his son-in-law's horror.

For much of the movie we see Drac take the kid on a road-trip to discover his inner monster, with laughably negligible impact. Turns out the monsters aren't really that monstrous anymore, partly through old age, and just plain old assimilation.  Pretty soon, Drac comes to believe that Mavis is right.  But at a last hurrah birthday party for Dennis, Drac's father Vlad (a brilliant cameo by Mel Brooks) comes to town. This infamously hard-ball monster is aghast that his son-in-law is human, just as the human grandparents are happy the kid is "normal".  

There's lots of social commentary in here about the difficulty of being accepted as a mixed-race or non-straight kid.  The difference between tolerating something and truly accepting it.  The difficulty of being understood by both sides and the pressure to please parents and grandparents.  And that's to be applauded. But aside from all that, the movie really works at the level of great animation, and superb imaginative comedy. The scenes of vampire bat flight are beautifully animated, and there are some lovely throw-away visual jokes (such as Drac giving the Invisible Man a purple nurple). Finally, what I love in this movie, as in the original, is its heart.  This is just a straightforwardly joyously warm-hearted movie that makes you want to hug your family and embrace glorious diversity.  Kudos to all involved.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 2 has a running time of 89 minutes and is rated PG.  The movie is on global release.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA is, like PARANORMAN, an absolutely lovely, beautifully drawn, heart-warming children's animation film that pays homage to horror film history.  Adam Sandler plays Count Dracula, so scarred my the peasant mob killing his beloved wife, that he turns his castle into a hotel for ghouls and monsters to protect them from the nasty humans in the outside world. His extreme protection irks his teenage daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez) and when she meets a stray backpacker called Jonathan (Andy Samberg) the Count is torn between protecting his daughter from the outside world, and protecting the backpacker from the monsters at the hotel.  So ensues some wonderful comedy, with the Count loosening up under Jonathan's influence, and Mavis tentatively entering her first romance.  Ultimately, the movie plays a request for tolerance but it moves us because of its loving rendering of a father-daughter relationship.  As an out and out daddy's girl myself, I fell in love with it.  Kudos to director Genndy Tartakovsky (DEXTER'S LABORATORY) for his gonzo animation style, raucous sense of humour and genuine heart.  This is simply an adorable film.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA played Toronto 2012 and is on release in Australia, Israel, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, the USA, Japan, Argentina, Hungary, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ireland and the UK. It opens on October 18th in the Czech Republic, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania and Sweden; on October 25th in Germany, Kuwait, Ukraine and Spain; on November 2nd in Iceland; on November 8th in Denmark, Italy and Poland; on November 19th in Vietnam; on November 23rd in Finland, Indonesia, Macedonia and Turkey; on December 5th in Thailand, Greece, Singapore and India; on December 19th in Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal; on  January 7th in Hong Kong and Taiwan and on February 13th in France. 

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA has a running time of 91 minutes and is rated PG in the USA.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 5 - RAMPART

When I walked in to RAMPART I was expecting the movie equivalent of The Wire or The Shield - an examination of corruption and institutional racism in the police force, based on the real Rampart scandal in 1990s Los Angeles. To be sure, director Oren Moverman (THE MESSENGER) and writer James Ellroy impressionistically hint at the wider malaise.  We have cameos from Steve Buscemi and Sigourney Weaver as the ass-covering establishment. But there's no clear picture of the wider context - no attempt to connect the dots and take the viewer to the heart of the corruption, in the  manner of LA CONFIDENTIAL. Rather, this movie is a character study of a fictional policeman at the centre of the scandal - Woody Harrelson's Dave Brown.  

To that end, the centre of the story isn't the police department or the patrol car, but the home Dave shares with the mothers of his two children, who also happen to be sisters (Anne Heche, Cynthia Nixon); the bars he frequents; the woman he picks up (Robin Wright).  Because, let us be clear - RAMPART is a scathing depiction of a delusional man, so corrupt he can't even see it, or own it - a self-destructive charmer, who thinks he should be rewarded for "doing the city's dirty work" but can't see that he's destroying his family in the process.  

If you accept the movie as a character study rather than a thriller or procedural, you have a far greater chance of enjoying it. Frustrations with the ambiguities of the graft and the uneven pacing - the lack of real "bite" - are compensated for by the powerful, charismatic and complex central performance by Woody Harrelson and the impressionistic use of intense colour and feeling of claustrophobia created by DP Bobby Bukowksi (ARLINGTON ROAD). Because, in the final analysis, RAMPART is not a great movie - it doesn't hold you in the way that it should - it is, rather, a highly successful mood piece that contains a superlative central performance. I just wish that that performance had been anchored to a stronger supporting text.

RAMPART played Toronto and London 2011.

Michael Stipe and Woody Harrelson at the UK premiere
of RAMPART at the BFI London Film Festival.

Random DVD Round-Up 2 - GROWN-UPS

GROWN-UPS is an alleged warm-hearted comedy that utterly fails to entertain on any level. 

The conceit is that four school-friends, now grown-up, come together at the funeral of their beloved school sports coach, and spend the weekend together in a vacation home. Their lives have taken them in different directions. Adam Sandler's character has turned into a big name Hollywood name, and is married to a glamorous fashion designer (Salma Hayek). Meanwhile Kevin James' character has ended up a small-time employee, much to his own shame. The movie is meant to be about how these friends rediscover their friendship and what really matters in life. It's meant to be about how our kids have become spoiled by Tivo and video games and need to just run around in the mud sometimes. All laudable aims. 

But in terms of execution, the fact that this flick was directed by Dennis Dugan (YOU DON'T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN, BIG DADDY, HAPPY GILMORE) and co-written with Fred Wolf (THE HOUSE BUNNY, LITTLE NICKY) tells you all you need to know about the crass humour and crude narrative arcs that the characters are sent on. I didn't invest in any of the characters, and so didn't care about their enlightenment. I didn't buy into the fashion designer ditching her Milan show - her heart melting with surprising ease. Even worse, I hated the so-called attempts at comedy. What happened to Maria Bello's career that she takes a part where her only job is to provide a "gag" about her toddler still drinking breast milk? Am I really meant to laugh at a grown man falling into mud? And what dirt do SNL has-beens David Spade and Rob Schneider have on Adam Sandler that he keep casting them in his films? 

 Still, it's far more watchable than COUPLE'S RETREAT. 

 GROWN UPS was released in summer 2010 and is available to rent and own.

YOUTH IN REVOLT - affected nonsense

YOUTH IN REVOLT is an 89 minute quirky hipster comedy that felt like it last three hours, irritated me with its affectations, and didn't make me laugh. It stars Michael Cera as the same character he always plays - an unthreatening, horny teenage boy, desperately courting a cooler girl who stoops to conquer on account of his taste in films and music or whatever. It's the same schtick that was cute in JUNO, became less so in NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST, positively irritated in PAPER HEART, and really, really pissed me off here. He needs to stretch himself and try something different. Or at least deign to inflect his voice on occasion.

Anyways, in this particular film, Cera plays a kid called Nick Twisp, a sensitive loner who has good manners, likes Sinatra, and wants to travel the world. He meets the girl of his dreams and, hipsters being self-involved, she's his female double - an unthreatening hipster loner who dreams of a tall French boyfriend. Both of these kids speak like no-one you've ever heard of, and hatch up plots that are contrived and distancing, including getting expelled, trashing several cars, and drugging people. Of course, Nick Twisp doesn't really need a double to end his loneliness - he already has the voices in his head - his bad alter-ego, European play-boy Francois, and his feminine alter-ego Carlotta. Stop me if I'm freaking you out.

I think we're meant to find the incidental characters amusing - Ray Liotta as the sleezy cop; Zach Galifianakis as the loser boyfriend; Steve Buscemi as the dad; Fred Willard as the liberal neighbour; Justin Long as the doped up brother - but I found them to be under-used and unfunny. I can't disguise how tired I am of Cera. But I guess my real problem is with Gustin Nash's script based on C.D.Payne's novels. This film is too absurd to get emotionally involved in, but not stylised enough to be as good as, say, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.

YOUTH IN REVOLT played Toronto 2009 and is currently on release in the USA, Canada and the UK.

IGOR - bizarrely pitched

IGOR is a kids animated film that subverts the Frankenstein legend. Igor is a humble hunchback who dreams of breaking through the class ceiling and becoming a bona fide Evil Scientist. To do this, he creates a monster that he'll enter in the annual Evil Science Fair (!) But Igor has three problems. First, his monster isn't an mass-murderer but an aspiring actress, who just wants to sing songs of joy and hope. Second, he's not actually that evil. In fact, he's a sweetie and he's falling for his monster. Third, evil Dr Schadenfreude wants to steal Igor's monster and win the science fair himself.

The movie is quite bizarre. I'm not sure how young kids are going to react to a movie populated with patchwork beasties rather than cute bunnies. Or a movie where the humour is aimed far more at adults than kids - knowing pop-culture references rather than prat-falls. And IGOR isn't even going for the sort of adult humour that drives a movie like SHREK. Rather, it's going for the sort of arrested development geeks (myself included) that love watching movies like BRAIN DEAD or YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN or Tim Burton's animation. To that end, while I had a nice time watching IGOR I'm not sure if it really works as a kids flick. But if you like John Cusack and Steve Buscemi and loved the combination of ghouls and Harry Belafonte in BEETLEJUICE, this movie could be for you.

IGOR is currently on release in the USA, Israel, Taiwan, the Philippines, Greece and the UK. It opens in Iceland on October 31st. It opens in December in Russia, France and Portugal and in Argentina on January 1st.

KING OF NEW YORK - random-expletive-generator

"You know I don't feel that strongly about it. I'm not saying it wasn't bad. It was bad."

"The script took five years to write? How? He just pulled expletives at random out of a hat."

Nikolai on KING OF NEW YORK.

KING OF NEW YORK is a poorly made, politically dubious gangster flick from writer-director Abel Ferrara. It features Weapon of Choice, Christopher Walken, as ex-con wannabe dealer, Frank White. As the movie opens, White leaves Sing-Sing in a moody looking town car and heads straight to the Plaza where he shags two hookers. He then proceeds to run around town, giving money to charity, while all the time off'ing dealers who refuse to do business with him. He also offers jobs to punks who try to mug him. "Come to the Plaza. Ask for Frank White." Doesn't he think the concierge at the Plaza is going to start noticing all the gangsters turning up?

The whole thing feels amateurish. It wants to look moody but looks shoddily put together. Everyone seems to be pastiching bad guys. Laurence Fishburne is particularly guilty of this - walking with all the attitude and conviction of Ali G. But even Christopher Walken seems to be hamming it up more than usual. Not once did I feel threatened by any of these characters. They were like silly kids playing a rather vicious kind of dress-up.

That, of course, is the criticism most often thrown at this film. That it is irresponsible because it glamourises pimping, dealing and shooting people at random. I, of course, have no objection to pimping, dealing and shooting people. I do, however, object, to boredom, bad acting and grand-standing.

KING OF NEW YORK was originally released in 1990 and is available on DVD.

I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE - in which Chris Rock neuters himself

Poor Chris Rock. He has a successful career as a stand-up comedian who specialises in aggressive, outlandish commentary on relations between the sexes and relations between the races. He's appeared in, and made a couple of, movies but each time he essentially plays the on-stage Chris Rock character. In DOGMA, for instance, he's Chris Rock as the thirteenth disciple - loud, funny and pissed off AND a disciple.

The problem with I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE is that Chris Rock has delusions of grandeur. Admirably he decides to break out of the Chris Rock persona and make a straight family drama about a bored married man tempted into infidelity. (it's a remake of Eric Rohmer romatic-comedy cum morality tale, L'AMOUR L'APRES-MIDI). We know Chris Rock is serious because he's wearing glasses, a moustache and a suit and because he only lets his loud, angry persona explode for a few moments in the movie. So, first up, fans of Chris Rock, of which I am one, shouldn't approach this film for classic Chris Rock humour.

That aside, how does I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE work as a semi-serious discourse on the pros and cons of married life? Not brilliantly, and that's fundamentally the fault of the scriptwriters - Rock and Louis CK. They cast Gina Torres as the boring suburban wife and Kerry Washington as the temptress Nikki Tru but give neither of them anything to do except be whiny and seductive respectively. With such two-dimensional options, the central character's moral dilemma seems two-dimensional too. There's no real sense of danger. There's no real sense of why someone as hot and vapid and Nikki would go for this suburban schlub. And frankly, there's no sense of why someone as mature and composed as his wife would stick with him either.

So you have this semi-straight, two-dimensional family drama for an hour and a half which is boring and bland but, hey, at least Chris is trying to break out. But then, the writers wimp out and give us the most bizarre, tone-breaking, vomit-inducing ending I've seen all year, with two of the characters declaring their love by means of song. Ye gods. Did no one on set have the balls to say, "Chris, seriously, NO!"

I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE was released in 2007 and is available on DVD.

London Film Fest Day 3 - INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW is another teeeeee-dious drama from actor-director Steve Buscemi. Once again, he features self-pitying, narcissistic people doing not particularly interesting stuff.

INTERVIEW is a two-hander between Sienna Miller's teen idol, Katya, and Buscemi's cynical journalist, Pierre. Sienna plays a character close to home, known more for who she fucks than who she plays. Buscemi is a failed Washington hack and failed husband nursing grim secrets and a superior attitude for all things Superficial. Pierre patronises Katya. She spends the next hour and a half running rings around him in her loft apartment. They both swing from fascination to hatred to contempt with alarming and incredible alacrity. And in the end we have seen some cutting one-liners, some apparent revelations, more proof that Miller can actually act, but nothing of any substance.

All of which left me wondering "Why?", as at the end of the LIFF screening of LONESOME JIM two years ago. Why was this film ever made? As a memorial to Theo Van Gogh, who directed the Dutch original, apparently. I don't see how translating his work into this insular little film does any good.

INTERVIEW played Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and London 2007. It has already been on release in the Netherlands, the US, Belgium, Frnace, Morocco, Tunisia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Israel, Slovenia, Turkey and Romania. It opens in Norway and the UK on November 2nd and in Ireland and Malta on November 9th. It opens in Spain on January 4th.

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY - an equal opportunities offender

The box-office success of Adam Sandler is proof of sinister forces at work. MR DEEDS, LITTLE NICKY, HAPPY GILMORE, CLICK.... These are all juvenile, piss-poor attempts at comedy in which a dick-head offends a bunch of people but is redeemed in the final reel, thus winning the heart of the hot chick. THE WEDDING SINGER is the exception to the rule: the genuine warmth of Drew Barrymore offset the Sandler curse. And, of course, PUNCH DRUNK LOVE brilliantly channelled Sandler's infantile aggression into a pathological rom-com. But, in general, to paraphrase the great George Costanza, I never feel the urge to get down on my knees and thank God that I know Adam Sandler and have access to his dementia.

No sir, Adam Sandler is not my bag. But I never thought he would produce a movie that would actually be offensive. Evidently, I was wrong.

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY is an alleged comedy in which two heterosexual men pretend to be gay partners so that if one dies the other can inherit his pension benefits. The movie affects politically correct intentions. It wants to show us how two straight guys become more sympathetic to the gay cause by experiencing bigotry first hand. But in reality, the only thing that's politically correct about I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY is the fact that it's an equal opportunities offender. Straight men are misogynistic, reactionary bigots. Gay men are flamboyant fairies who listen to musicals and sing Gloria Gaynor songs. There's nothing cuter on a woman that a play-boy bunny outfit. Naturally, we leave the most offensive scene to serial offender, Rob Schneider, who hasn't even got the balls to be credited on this flick. Schneider dons fake teeth, a wig, face-paint and a hokey accent to do the most offensive impression of a Japanese man since Mr Yunioshi in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S.

I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY is already on release in the US, Greece, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Australia, Egypt, Belgium, France, Portugal, Thailand, Hungary, Russia, Brazil, Italy, Turkey, Hong Kong, Slovakia, Lithuania, Spain, the Philippines, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Iceland, Poland and the UK. It opens in Germany, Slovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Mexico, Norway and Sweden next weekend. It opens in Israel on October 4th, in Bulgaria on October 12th and in Finland on November 16th.

CHARLOTTE'S WEB tells some home truths

CHARLOTTE'S WEB is a perfectly passable children's film based on the famous book by E.B.White. It stars Dakota Fanning as a little girl who rescues the runty pig from her father's axe. The little pig, named Wilbur, then moves into her uncle's stable and befriends an articulate spider called Charlotte. Charlotte sets about writing words in her web describing the pig as special, so as to persuade the humans of a miracle and save Wilbur from a pre-Christmas trip to the smokehouse.

The movie is filmed in live action, with a host of ridiculously famous actors lending their voices to the various animals - Julia Roberts, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Buscemi, Robert Redford, John Cleese, to name but a few. The voice-overs are well-done and the whole movie has a suitably fairy-tale feel, as evidenced by the fact that the orchestral score is by Tim Burton-favourite, Danny Elfman. However, apart from Julia Roberts who voices Charlotte and Dominic Scott Kay who voices Wilbur, the actors all have thankless tasks - doing their best with limited screen-time. This is particularly a problem for Fanning who finds herself upstaged by an alarmingly cute talking pig.

The movie has its fare share of cloyingly saccharine moments. But let's be clear. CHARLOTTE'S WEB is a movie about how all life ends in death and how some animals are higher than others on the food chain. The tone is set early on, when the little girl saves the piglet from her father's axe and the editor cuts to some sizzling bacon frying in a pan. So parents with little kids should be warned that the movie contains some heavy material - indeed teaching little kids some reality is exactly the point of the film. Still, you need'nt fear that this is a liberal, vegetarian rant. Both the novel and film are remarkably conservative. The message is not that bacon comes from cute pigs so don't eat it, but that this is how life is, so deal with it.

CHARLOTTE'S WEB is already on release in Australia, the US, the Netherlands, Greece, Singapore, Japan, Denmark, Mexico, Venezuala, Germany, Brazil, Poland, Kuwait, Argentina, Estonia, Iceland, Norway, Armenia, the Philippines, Switzerland, Belgiu, France, Sweden and the UK. It opens in Hungary, Finland and Hong Kong next week. It pens in Italy and Latvia in March and in Turkey and Spain in April.

ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES - crazy beautiful

I have a feeling that ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES is one of those films that you either find pretentious and indulgent or love to pieces. I am firmly in the latter camp. Written and directed by John Turturro (the actor featured in many a Coen Brothers movie) we are firmly in that kind of weird and wonderful world, populated by odd-ball characters and capers.

The movie focuses on a family headed up by a fat fireman called Nick (James Gandolfini.) He is married to a wedding dress-maker called Kitty (Susan Sarandon) and has three daughters. His wife pines for a former lover and his daughters are obsessed with a hilarious wannabe rock-star called Fryburg (the brilliant Bobby Canavale.) To add to the complication, Nick is attracted to a dirty-talking red-head (Kate Winslett) and is being egged on by his lewd best mate Angelo (Steve Buscemi). The subject matter of the movie is therefore all the messy stuff that happens in life - mid-life crises, weary marriages, obnoxious teenagers, first love. And the down-and-dirty texture is built up with brilliant suburban locales, costumes and a whole cast of eccentric supporting characters - notably Christopher Walken as the Elvis-loving vengeful friend of Kitty.

I've seen the movie described as a musical, not least by the producers. But I think that's a bit misleading. It's not a full on musical where the action periodically stops and the movie breaks into a staged musical number. Rather, at certain points in the story, the characters sing along to kitschy songs of the '60s - Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones and the like. It's rather like the camera follows the characters into their little day-dreams before spinning back into the reality of the flick. I guess it really is a matter of taste, but I thought the music was used brilliantly to add to the sense of whimsy and wonder. Plus, any chance to see the crazy genius that is Christopher Walken doing his dance schtick is a bonus.

I can perfectly see how some will find the project indulgent or eccentric for the sake of it, but to my mind, ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES is one of the most touching, funny and genuinely crazy movies I have ever seen and I would strongly urge you to give it a try.

ROMANCE AND CIGARETTES showed at Venice 2005 and is now playing in the UK. I don't know if it will get a US release.

LONESOME JIM – Why oh why oh why oh why?

What is it with successful Hollywood actors and directors that they feel the need to go back to small towns and make deathly dull earnest movies of charming small town folk who look terrible, say nothing witty, do nothing of consequence and then die? We know life sucks. That is why we go to the movies. We want guns, fast cars, and hot chicks in Santa outfits. Enough with the white man’s version of keeping it real. Let’s keep it fake. That’s why God invested plastic.
You think I’m kidding? Lonesome Jim (Casey Affleck – and yes, he is related to Ben) is a 27 year old guy from Indiana who moved to New York and ended up walking dogs for a living. He comes home to have a nervous breakdown, is mean to his mum, ignores his dad (Seymour Cassel), depresses his elder brother so much he attempts suicide, improbably shags Liv Tyler (the chick who marries Aragorn in Lord of the Rings) and nearly messes that up too. Don’t get me wrong. All these people give great acting performances, but they have little to work with.
The movie is shot with a digital camera (the Panasonic AG-DVX100 for all you camera geeks) and the resulting print looks grainy and washed out. This is not (I think, I hope) a deliberately cultivated aesthetic. Some other random facts and assertions…..Apparently it cost $500,000 to make. I assume this is Taiwanese dollars not US dollars. LONESOME JIM was also nominated for the Grand Jury prize at Sundance back in January, but didn’t win. 40% of people who rated this on IMDB gave it ten out of ten. I am willing to bet that 100% of these people attended film school.

LONESOME JIM premiered at Sundance back in January 2005 but only goes on limited US release from 10th March 2006. There is currently no European release date, thank God. For once, I think the distributors have this down. Apart from some film geek gawpers who would turn up to see Buscemi sneeze, who is really going to shell out ten squid to see this?