In what appears to be a second-wind promotional push for last month’s release of Damsels in Distress, director Whit Stillman has done what he said he would never do and joined Twitter. More surprising than that? He’s over-the-top nice, in his interactions with both colleagues (some that that he may owe money to!) and strangers with less than 30 followers. Read More
It would be easy to compare Whit Stillman’s latest feature, Damsels in Distress, to other flicks about the dangers of female friendship: It’s Heathers without high school, or Mean Girls at college. After all, the movie begins with young, brunette ingénue Lily (Analeigh Tipton) during her first day at Seven Oaks College, being swooped in on by a pack of three severely affected juniors who immediately offer her friendship. Greta Gerwig is the blonde queen bee, Violet, and her two cohorts include the British Rose (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and the ditzy Heather (Carrie MacLemore). These three are seemingly on a mission of good: they run the school’s suicide-prevention center and spend most of their time “helping” the brothers of D.U., one of the school’s Roman (not Greek) fraternity houses. Read More
The Hunger Games (Gary Ross) March 23
Your children have been refreshing Fandango daily to see if tickets are available yet for the movie based on Suzanne Collins’ kiddie novels—think of them as Twilight, except with actual murder instead of benign vampirism. Games promises a chaste love triangle and lots of angst for the tween Read More
Good news for New York’s Urban Haute Bourgeoisie. Damsels in Distress, the first film from hometown hero Whit Stillman in over a decade, will make its debut at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Among the heavy-hitter directors potentially screening their new works for the first time — Steven Soderbergh, Roman Polanski and, for some reason, Read More
