Christianity Today Movies Blog

Heartland Gives Big 'Welcome' Gift

Indianapolis film fest honors French flick with $100,000 grand prize

by Mark Moring

The Heartland Film Festival, now in full swing in Indianapolis, held its annual awards banquet on Saturday, Oct. 17, giving the French film Welcome, directed by Philippe Lioret, its $100,000 Grand Prize Award for Best Dramatic Feature.

P-Star Rising by Director Gabriel Noble was the winner of the $25,000 Award for Best Documentary Feature, and Bicycle (Jitensha) by Director Dean Yamada was the winner of the $10,000 Vision Award for Best Short Film.

Heartland also honored Dr. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, with the Pioneering Spirit Award for his creative spirit in filmmaking and his contribution to Heartland’s mission.

Posted by Mark Moring at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)

Saved! + Helter Skelter + South Park=Leslie

Observations from Day 7 of the Toronto International Film Festival

by Kenneth Morefield

My getaway day film at TIFF was Leslie, My Name is Evil, a camp-kitsch satire I described on Twitter as a cross between Helter Skelter, Saved!, South Park, Carrie, and Forrest Gump. With maybe a dash of Rocky Horror Picture Show thrown in for good measure. "Just because I want to make out with her," one of the jurors says of the titular Manson girl, "doesn't mean I wouldn't vote to put her to death." You get the idea.

Continue reading "Saved! + Helter Skelter + South Park=Leslie" »

Posted by Kenneth Morefield at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

World Films and the Buzz About Town

Observations from Day 6 of the Toronto International Film Festival

by Kenneth Morefield

Despite my emphasis thus far on sneak previews of commercial studio releases, I am conscious of the fact that TIFF stand for the Toronto International Film Festival. My Tuesday, through a fluke of scheduling more than a conscious choice, had a heavy international flavor. Clare Denis returned to Africa with White Material, Amos Gitai frets about war in Israel in Carmel, and Jessica Hausner follows believers on a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

The day began, however, with Alain Renais's Les Herbes folles (Wild Grass).

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Posted by Kenneth Morefield at 1:25 PM | Comments (0)

Ends of the World (as We Know It)

Observations from Day 5 of the Toronto International Film Festival

by Kenneth Morefield

Since it would take me more time and space than I have at the moment to fully explain why I disliked The Road as much as I did, I will save that for another place and another time and instead elucidate here who I think will like it, and why.

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Posted by Kenneth Morefield at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)

Brilliant Star; Drab Gray

Observations from Day 4 of the Toronto International Film Festival

by Kenneth Morefield

Jane Campion's Bright Star is a heartfelt, carefully drawn, masterpiece of a love story, It contains all the fire and penetration one would expect from a Campion film, but there is also a surprising--and welcome--tenderness as well. "They were so young," Campion said of John Keats and Fannie Brawne when introducing the film. There is a protectiveness that she clearly felt about the love story at the heart of the biography, one that shields the film from the dull hagiography that permeates so many biopics and the more strident polemicizing that gets conflated with passion in some of Campion's earlier works.

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Posted by Kenneth Morefield at 11:14 PM | Comments (3)

Places--and Horrors--in the Heart

Observations from Day 3 of the Toronto International Film Festival

by Kenneth Morefield

Films by and about Iranians have provided some of the highlights of the Toronto International Film Festival in recent years. Offside, Persepolis, When Buddha Collapsed From Shame, and Two Legged Horse (set in Afghanistan but directed by Iranian Hana Makhmalbaf) have each offered glimpses into cultures that few Americans know much about but which, in light of recent post-election protests, continue to garner the world's attention.

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Posted by Kenneth Morefield at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)

A Puzzling 'Face' and a Non-Story Nun Story

Observations from Day 2 of the Toronto International Film Festival

by Kenneth Morefield

Tsai Ming-liang has thrice directed films that were nominated for the Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival. Face lost out on this year's prize to Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon (more on that film this weekend), but its subject matter (a loose retelling of the Salomé story) and setting (much of it was shot at the Louvre) could attract some viewers not normally game for a 140 minute art film in French and Malaysian.

Continue reading "A Puzzling 'Face' and a Non-Story Nun Story" »

Posted by Kenneth Morefield at 9:26 PM | Comments (0)

Toronto International Film Festival: Day 1

by Kenneth Morefield

The first day of the Toronto International Film Festival is usually very lightly programmed, presumably so that other films are neither competing with nor overshadowed by the opening night gala. The prestigious first Thursday slot at the Roy Thompson Hall was given to the Charles Darwin biopic, Creation, starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly. If you're anxious enough to get to Toronto on the first day but not quite ready to spring for tickets to walk the red carpet, your best bet is usually the Ryerson theater which will generally have a premiere of an anticipated, studio-backed film--something capable of selling out one of the larger venues without overshadowing a marquee event. (If the adrenaline has really got you going, the first midnight madness show is usually a film with a tad more name recognition. This year, Karyn Kusama's Jennifer's Body got the nod.)

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Posted by Kenneth Morefield at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

'Bella' Actor in New Role . . . for 20 Minutes

Eduardo Verastegui in short film about hope as part of Doorpost Film Fest

by Mark Moring

Eduardo Verastegui, the Hispanic actor who turned his life around and starred in the 2007 gem Bella, now has another starring role -- albeit in a short film that will likely never make its way into theaters.

Verastegui plays a ringmaster in The Butterfly Circus, one of ten finalists in The Doorpost Film Project, an annual competition of short films whose purpose is "to encourage truth-seeking visionaries by honoring their creativity as filmmakers, serving them in the context of building community and sharing their discoveries with the world so that others may have hope."

Also starring in the film are Doug Jones, who has played fantastical characters in Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy, and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and will also be playing a yet unannounced role in the upcoming Hobbit movies. And making his film debut is Nick Vujicic, a real-life evangelist who has no arms or legs.

It's a pretty cool thing, this Doorpost deal. I served as a judge for the final films a couple years ago, and was very impressed with what I saw. I have only seen a couple of this year's finalists so far, and haven't yet been wowed, but hope to be as I watch more in the coming days.

I'm not serving as an official judge this time around, but I am "judging" the films as a viewer -- and so can you. All you have to do is log in to the site, watch all 10 films, and you too can play a role in deciding which film will win the $100,000 grand prize. But hurry -- online viewing and voting ends on Sept. 16, and the awards banquet will be held Sept. 19 in Nashville.

Posted by Mark Moring at 3:57 PM | Comments (2)

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2009 Preview

by Kenneth Morefield

The week before the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival is one of the longest of the year for the North American cinephile. Imagine getting an e-mail nine days before Christmas with a list of all the gifts you got--but not being able to open any of them yet. Add to the mix a trickle of early reviews for many of these films now playing at festivals in Venice and Telluride--The Road appears to be getting hammered, Life During Wartime is getting a lot of advance praise--and you can turn normally taciturn, middle-aged adults into giddy school boys marking days off their calendars.

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Posted by Kenneth Morefield at 6:16 PM | Comments (4)

Darwin biopic to open Toronto film festival

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It has been 200 years since Charles Darwin was born, and 150 years since he published his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species. So, naturally, filmmakers are marking the occasion by making rival biopics.

The higher-profile of these, by far, seems to be Creation, starring real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as Charles Darwin and his wife Emma; the Toronto International Film Festival announced last week that its opening gala presentation this year will be the world premiere of this film, which was directed by Jon Amiel and based on a book by Randal Keynes.

(Trivia note: Keynes himself is the great-great-grandson of the Darwins, and he is also the father of Skandar, who plays Edmund in the Narnia movies. So one of the "sons of Adam" who sits on one of the thrones at Cair Paravel is also a "son of Darwin"!)

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Posted by at 1:27 PM | Comments (4)

Music and Moviemaking

by Lisa Cockrel

Calvin College recently hosted its biennial Festival of Faith and Music in Grand Rapids. It was a weekend full of rich conversation and wonderful music with participants including Cornel West, Lupe Fiasco, David Bazan, Over the Rhine, David Dark, Charlie Peacock, Andy Crouch, and so many more.

Nathan Johnson, who used wine glasses and household junk to compose the score for the neo-noir film Brick and also scored the upcoming The Brothers Bloom (both directed by his cousin Rian Johnson), gave an excellent behind-the-scenes look at composing music for independent film. He explored specific creative challenges regarding structure, technology and the constraints of small-scale music production.You can listen to his workshop here.

Posted by Lisa Cockrel at 9:05 AM | Comments (0)

'We're Going to Have Our Own Spielbergs'

Christian film fest founder draws battle lines, wants to 'build an industry around faith'

by Mark Moring

"We're here to send a message to the world that we no longer want our children immersed in toxic media which is in opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ. Christian filmmaking is coming of age. Christian filmmaking is coming of age!"

So said Doug Phillips, organizer of the recent San Antonio (Texas) Independent Christian Film Festival, as reported by NPR.

The NPR piece quotes Phillips further: "I think we're going to see significant production houses that will be funding $200 million films done by Christians. We're going to have our own Steven Spielbergs. We're going to have our own filmmakers that can tell great stories, produce tremendous films, but they're going to be doing it with a Christian world view, and they're not going to be embarrassed about that."

The story also notes that Phillips told festival-goers "they were drawing the Maginot line in the culture wars."

I appreciate Phillips' passion for good content, but the feisty rhetoric about creating "our own" industry just doesn't sit well with me -- especially with such militaristic imagery as a "Maginot line" (built to keep the enemy -- in this case, Hollywood -- at bay) and "culture wars." (NPR may have paraphrased Phillips by using those exact terms, but his meaning apparently came across that way.)

But why create "our own" industry? Why not get really good at the craft of filmmaking within an already well-oiled machine -- aka, Hollywood -- and make the movies there?

Continue reading "'We're Going to Have Our Own Spielbergs'" »

Posted by Mark Moring at 6:50 PM | Comments (25)

Heartland Gives Big 'Welcome' Gift

Saved! + Helter Skelter + South Park=Leslie

World Films and the Buzz About Town

Ends of the World (as We Know It)

Brilliant Star; Drab Gray

Places--and Horrors--in the Heart

A Puzzling 'Face' and a Non-Story Nun Story

Toronto International Film Festival: Day 1

'Bella' Actor in New Role . . . for 20 Minutes

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) 2009 Preview