Jordan Beswick, C.S.A.

Premieres: “Mary and Max” Director Adam Elliot, by indieWIRE (January 6, 2009)

“Mary and Max” will kick off the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. A claymation animation by Academy award-winning filmmaker Adam Elliot (”Harvie Krumpet“), it tells the simple story of a 20-year pen-pal friendship between two very different people: Mary Dinkle, a chubby, lonely 8-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horowitz, a 44-year-old Jewish man, who is severely obese, suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, and lives an isolated life in New York City.

Mary and Max
Director/Screenwriter: Adam Elliot
Producer: Melanie Coombs
Cinematographer: Gerald Thompson
Editor: Bill Murphy
Cast: Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Humphries, Eric Bana
Australia, 2008, 92 min., color & b/w

Please introduce yourself…

My name is Adam Elliot and I have just finished making a stopmotion “clayography” (clay biography), that has taken my team and I five years to create; from “script to screen.” It has been all-consuming, but what feature film isn’t? It is my sixth animated film and my first feature. The experience has definitely been bitter sweet and I tell people making a stopmotion feature is like making love and being stabbed to death at the same time! I suppose that’s why there aren’t many around. Despite the blood, sweat and tears, we are very proud of “Mary and Max” and hope audiences engage, be entertained, be moved and hopefully learn and leave the cinema nourished in some way. People keep telling us the film is unique. I found this curious and odd for a while, but I now understand. We are plasticine, we deal with adult themes, we are Australian, we are independent and our characters are strange.

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Sometimes the hallmark of a winning film is integrity - in the original sense of the Greek word meaning “integrated” and “whole” - when the film’s original vision seems perfectly to match its execution. That’s the perfume that rises off Laurent Cantet’s “The Class” (”Entre les Murs”), which screened at the tail end of Cannes 2008 and captured the Palme d’Or after a lineup of films that frequently landed wide of the mark. “Class” rolls out all of a piece - Cannes jury prez Sean Penn called it “seamless.” And while keeping its boundaries tightly delimited, “Class” opens a window on contemporary France and rainbow cultures beyond.

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Though literary works are catnip to filmmakers, it’s always dicey to reinvent one for the screen. Witness “Revolutionary Road,” which will send the unwary viewer reaching for the Welbutrin, despite the best efforts of Kate and Leo, reunited for first time since the boat went down. Trouble is, what often gets lost in the translation to screen is the element which can raise a dark book above merely depressing: language, a writer’s capital. Of course, very occasionally a film adaptation can be better than the novel - the case with “The English Patient,” which retained the original’s powerfully haunting tone, while spelling out the novel’s buried plot points. 

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by Kristi Mitsuda (December 7, 2008)

The Pacific Northwest on display in Kelly Reichardt’s latest film isn’t restorative, as in her lovely last, “Old Joy,” the lust forests of which temporarily heal an ailing friendship; nor is the setting here milked for moody, romantic potential as in the recently released “Twilight.” In “Wendy and Lucy,” the filmmaker instead harnesses the region’s notoriously forbidding grey skies to conjure an atmospheric bleakness suited to the impoverished underbelly of Portland.

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In Select Theaters December 17
A Darren Aronofsky Film

"Witness the Resurrection of Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky's Gritty, Deeply
Affecting Film." - David Ansen, Newsweek

Director Darren Aronofsky presents a powerful portrait of a battered dreamer,
who despite himself and the odds stacked against him, lives to be a hero once
again in the only place he considers home - inside the ring.
Visit the OFFICIAL SITE for more.

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thewrestler

It all sounds very familiar. Fresh from hugely favorable screenings at theToronto International Film Festival, a Fox Searchlight release rides a wave of word-of-mouth that leads to scores of accolades and even more box office. This is the story of 2004’s “Sideways,” 2007’s “Juno,” and potentially, this year’s “Slumdog Millionaire.” As Searchlight continues to slowly expandDanny Boyle’s Oscar hopeful, it becomes more and more clear that it might have 2008’s specialty powerhouse on its hands.

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A short time ago in Los Angeles, actress Tilda Swinton had a very busy few days. She was there promoting her work in Erick Zonca’s “Julia,” screening at AFI Fest 2008. But in the two nights preceding its screening, she continued her newfound role as a staple honoree with back-to-back fetes: a tribute at AFI, and an award of excellence at the 2008 BAFTA/LA Britannia Awards. “It’s very strange this getting awards,” Swinton said upon accepting her award from BAFTA/LA. “I have to confess until so recently that the only thing I’d ever won was a raffle when I was twelve. I got a bottle of aftershave I gave my brother for Christmas and he still has it.”

In the midst of all of this, Swinton found the time to sit down with indieWIRE poolside at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills.

“I’m very jetlegged and I’ve got a kind of throat infection but apart from that, I’m doing good,” Swinton said about her hectic Los Angeles itinerary. “I mean, I enjoy it fine because if you think about what I’m doing here, I’m doing things that I have some real connection to. I’m only too happy to come and present ‘Julia.’ I’m really proud of that film. I’d go anywhere to talk about it or screen it. Having to stand up and accept an award is a challenge. I have to say, it’s not my favorite thing in the world but otherwise going around for the work is good. I had a possibility to present ‘Julia’ so they kind of got me on that.”

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by Eugene Hernandez and Peter Knegt (November 14, 2008)

Continuing this year’s awards season coverage in indieWIRE, editor-in-chief Eugene Hernandez and assistant editor Peter Knegt chatted yesterday via instant message about the ever-evolving race. Topics for this installment include a look at emerging best picture contenders, from “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to “Milk,” and potential dark horses that might play a larger role in this race than people are expecting.

Eugene Hernandez: Where do we start, so much to catch up with. How about a snapshot of best picture before we dig a bit deeper…

Peter Knegt: Well it seems like the whispers are getting more and more informed. It’s still murky territory overall, but I’d say we can narrow down the list to 10 or so possibilities: “Australia,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Gran Torino,” “Milk,” “The Reader,” “Revolutionary Road,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Wrestler.”

EH: I saw “Milk” a second time this morning and feel strongly that it is even more resonant in a post-election/Prop 8 context. It’s a leading contender for best picture as far as I am concerned. And the reactions from the other folks in the screening room seemed quite positive.

PK: I agree. It has all of the elements of a real contender, and its release within a storm of activism that remarkably parallels its story is going to make it all the more potent. I’d also suggest it’s a lock for Sean Penn, the screenplay and maybe one of the supporting actors.

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by Eric Kohn (November 12, 2008)

In Irish director Declan Recks‘ remarkably tense romantic drama “Eden,” actions speak louder than words — or, at least, more coherently, as far as American audiences are concerned. For those inexperienced in the careful discernment of regional accents, “Eden” offers no subtitles, but the central themes are thankfully not lost in translation. Recks relied on visual lyricism as much as dialogue when translating Eugene O’Brien’s devastating 2002 play about an estranged young married couple from the stage to the screen. As a result, he doesn’t mind if a few lines remain unintelligible to certain viewers. “It makes them pay attention more,” Recks told indieWIRE. “People might not get every single word, but they know what’s going on from the performances. It’s not a very heavily plotted film; it’s a character study.”

Making his directorial debut after working on Irish television productions for several years, Recks put a clear effort into creating a narrative with distinctly cinematic qualities. Filmed in a gorgeous spectrum of colors to evoke the rustic seaside community where the story takes place, “Eden” shifts between conflicting perspectives of a relationship on the rocks. It begins by examining the fractured marriage of Billy (Aidan Kelly), a reckless alcoholic, and Breda (Eileen Walsh), in the days leading up to their tenth wedding anniversary. “A lot of films tend to start at the beginning of a relationship, where you see the most exciting parts,” Recks said. “They tend not to deal with the people who have been together for years and are trying to deal with everyday life. I think the fact that we start our story there makes it slightly unconventional.”

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