Awards Season Gets Underway

Quvenzhané Wallis gives her director Behn Zeitlin a big hug.

IFP Gotham Awards Ceremony Lights Up Dark Night

The red carpet was aglow with the incandescent twinkle of Hollywood’s stars on Monday night at the 22nd annual Independent Film Project Gotham Awards. With Oscar winners Matt Damon and Marion Cotillard amongst the evening’s honorees and the likes of Jack Black, Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and so many more blazing a trail through the double doors of Wall St.’s Cipriani’s, it was no wonder that the less glamorous side of the velvet rope was a veritable press feeding frenzy. Lucky for us, then, that we had sharpened our claws.

As the guests took their seats for the ceremony, The Observer was whisked upstairs to a private viewing room, lest we cavort too rambunctiously with the delicate A-List crowd. There we watched over the evening’s events like demi-gods looking down from the heavens upon the cherubs pecking away at their meals, with eight year old nominee Quvenzhané Williams and 13 year old Jared Gilman leading the underage coterie.

The awards soon got underway, much to the delight of the recipients. Honoring their intentions as champions of independent cinema, the jury not only rewarded the biggest Hollywood names but the industry’s up-and-comers for their contribution to film. Beasts of the Southern Wild writer and director Benh Zeitlin was undoubtedly the big winner of the night, scooping statuettes – well, glass cuboids – for Breakthrough Director alongside the Bingham Ray Award, dedicated to the late film executive. Read More

movies

Thirlby in Nobody Walks.

Ants in Your Pants: Nobody Walks is a Convoluted On-Screen Orgy That Doesn’t Arouse

The last film by novice indie director Ry Russo-Young was an empty bottle called You Won’t Miss Me, about an alienated 23-year-old misfit just released from a psychiatric hospital. Her new film, Nobody Walks, is an empty bottle about an alienated 23-year-old misfit from New York who is making a video about insects for her art thesis. She seems to have a thing for 23-year-old misfits. Too bad she can’t find a way to make a movie about them that will keep anyone awake. Co-written by Lena Dunham, whose TV sitcom Girls is another guaranteed cure for insomnia, Nobody Walks is 82 minutes long—and I was snoozing 30 minutes in. This is not good for anyone anxious to build a reputation or entertain an audience.  Read More

Who Should Replace Steve Carell on The Office?

The red carpet premiere of Despicable Me was probably not where NBC wanted Steve Carell to confirm that he was leaving The Office following this season—but alas, such is life for the perpetually lagging behind network. Still, even without the “face of the franchise,” NBC is planning on continuing ahead with The Office to Read More

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: The John Krasinski Show

Despite having the most appropriate title of the fall—indeed the interviews are brief, the men hideous—Brief Interviews with Hideous Men will not be remembered all that fondly. Even at 80 minutes, the film feels too long by twenty, and never actually reaches a conclusive point beyond that all men are created equally awful. Read More

Sam Mendes Takes Cues from Noah Baumbach

While this summer is shaping up to be one for the fanboys—X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek and Terminator Salvation all open within four weeks of each other in May, while Transformers 2 hits theaters soon after—there is hope for people with slightly more refined tastes. (Not that we won’t be seeing all of those movies Read More