spoutblog's film blog - Archive

R. Kelly, Astronaut — Clip of the Day

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Pillow Talk (1959)

With Chapter 22 of Trapped in the Closet now live at ifctv.com, each episode of the hip-hopera commissioned by the Independent Film Channel has been released into the ether, and our long national ironic nightmare/guilty obsession is, for the time being, over. Watch it here — it’s a lot like Pillow Talk, except instead of Rock Hudson and Doris Day, there’s a philandering bisexual pastor and a midget. And, if you just can’t get enough of Sylvester, Twan, the lesbian waitresses, Rosey the nosey neighbor and the rest of the crew, you can watch this preview of IFC’s “exclusive interview” with R. Kelly, in which the maestro explains his creative process (”I always tell people, Trapped in the Closet is an alien,” he says, “Because it’s something I’ve never seen, since I’ve been on the Earth”) and hints that you haven’t seen the last of the Closet gang.

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Posted Thursday, August 23, 2007 7:01 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments

Unrated Eyes Wide Shut FINALLY Coming to DVD

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Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Good news for fans of Eyes Wide Shut: a new DVD edition of Stanley Kubrick’s final film is on the way, complete with rated and unrated versions of the film, plus two documentaries, commentary from Sydney Pollack and historian Peter Loewenberg, and more. It will be available for purchase on its own, or as part of a nine-disc Kubrick collection, coming out in late October.

And if you read the above and immediately thought to yourself, “WHAT fans of Eyes Wide Shut?”, you should go read this appreciation of the film by Jeffrey M. Anderson. For several years I’ve thought (mostly in a lazy, cocktail chatter sort of way) of writing a book about Eyes Wide Shut — not so much the movie itself as the press surrounding its production, Kubrick’s death, the controversy surrounding preparing the film for MPAA approval, and its reception amongst both critics and audiences. Every time I gear myself up to actually do the writing, I inevitably lose confidence–something happens and I think, “Oh, nobody cares about that movie.”

Jeffrey’s post–and, especially, the comments it has engendered–has possibly convinced me otherwise. It’s one thing for a couple of critics to remain fascinated by a widely-reviled film ten years after its release, but those comments suggest a common relief among Eyes Wide Shut lovers: they’re all basically saying, “Finally, it’s okay for me to come out of the closet about this.”

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Posted Thursday, August 23, 2007 6:00 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments

Xanadu Director vs. FOX News: Trade Roughage 08/23/07

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Xanadu (1980)

Mister Lonely (2007)

Robert Greenwald, who has made a living making unabashedly partisan documentaries about Wal-Mart and Iraq since scratching Xanadu off his resume, has teamed with Senator Bernie Sanders to launch a viral video campaign against Fox News. The first video, which you can see at FoxAttacks.com, calls for viewers to put pressure on the mainstream media to put pressure on the Bush administration. My favorite line from the Hollywood Reporter story: “One media observer said the video lacked balance and journalistic credibility.”
IFC has picked up three films expected to screen at the Toronto Film Festival, including Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely. In keeping with their previously announced plan to focus their attention on the First Take initiative, IFC will release all of these new acquisitions simultaneously in theaters and on VOD.
“Jeff Goldblum and his hometown of Pittsburgh, whether it likes it or not, have combined to create a surprising summer delight,” effuses an un-bylined AP story floating over at The Hollywood Reporter. That’s an, uh, interesting way to introduce the pay-cable debut of a film that made its festival debut 15 months ago and hasn’t been heard from since.

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Posted Thursday, August 23, 2007 4:02 PM by SpoutBlog | with 0 comments

Hannah Takes the Box Office

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Kissing on the Mouth (2005)

LOL (2006)

Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007)

More news from the front lines of The New Talkies coming soon, but here’s a tidbit for the capitalists: Chris Wells, who starred in and co-wrote LOL and who now works at the IFC Center, told me before the 6:05 PM screening of Hannah Takes the Stairs that in the film’s first three shows, it had already made enough money to cover the budget of Joe Swanberg’s first film, Kissing on the Mouth. I caught up with Chris again later in the evening, at which point he told me that not only had the 8:00 PM Hannah show sold out, but Swanberg’s third film had, in its first day of release, grossed more the budgets of his first two features combined. If you know anything about Joe, you know that we’re not talking about millions of dollars here, but I still think it’s impressive evidence that the DIY model doesn’t have to be an economic disaster.