“The exploding girl” gets picked up by Oscilloscope Labs

// October 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Film & Script Reviews

Bradley Rust Gray’s second feature “The Exploding Girl” has been acquired by Oscilloscope Laboratories, the company announced Wednesday afternoon. Oscilloscope, which picked up the film’s North American rights, will open the film theatrically in early 2010. “Girl” debuted at the 2009 Berlin Internationl Film Festival, and had its U.S. premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last spring where actress for Zoe Kazan (“Revolutionary Road”) won an award for best actress. This marks the second collaboration between Oscilloscope Laboratories and Bradley Rust Gray who previously produced So Yong Kim’s “Treeless Mountain,” which the company released in April.

In her first leading role, Kazan plays Ivy, a twenty-year-old college student home in New York for spring break. She’s excited about a developing romance back at school and life is seemingly perfect. When her longtime friend Al finds himself without a place to stay during the break, Ivy and her mother take him in and Al and Ivy’s friendship strengthens while her boyfriend grows more and more distant. Increasingly distressed about her conflicting feelings, Ivy struggles to keep control, not wanting her overwhelming emotions to trigger her epilepsy.

“‘The Exploding Girl’ is a NYC film to its core. This film captures the current feeling of NYC like few others are able to do, perhaps the way ‘Fingers’ did in its time,” said Oscilloscope head Adam Yauch in a statement. “Brad’s directing and Kazan’s acting are so natural it allows you to feel like you are there, watching a real story unfold. We had a great time working with So and Brad on ‘Treeless Mountain’ and are really looking forward to working with them again on this one. Working with talented good-hearted people like So and Brad are why we are doing this.”

Behind the scenes: THE MINISTERS with Franc Reyes, John Leguizamo & Luis Antonio Ramos

// September 26th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Trailers, What's Poppin

Are you going to make it a hit?

Sundance to add “NEXT” category for low-no budget films

// September 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // What's Poppin

I saw this in INDIEWIRE and had to share.

by Peter Knegt
With New Fest Section, Sundance Embracing Low & No Budget Movies
The scene at the Sundance Film Festival.

Photo by Peter Knegt.

In a move aimed at including more low and no budget films, the Sundance Film Festival has announced the creation of a new section for its upcoming 2010 event. Dubbed “Next,” the section which will feature six to eight feature films, “selected for their innovative and original work in low- and no-budget filmmaking.” Festival Director John Cooper made the announcement today, citing “the desire to discover and promote filmmakers forging new ways to tell their stories, limited by resources but uninhibited by creativity.”

As of yesterday, Sundance organizers had already received 4,964 applications and 3,689 films. Submissions for the January festival still being accepted this month.

“Programming an event as important to the cultural landscape as Sundance Film Festival, we feel a responsibility both to represent new creative developments in the field and to contextualize films for our Festival goers,” Cooper said in a statement. “Historically, we have done this quite successfully with documentary, and most recently with New Frontier, ‘saving space’ as it were, to support different trends in storytelling. We want filmmakers to feel encouraged and intrigued by this new section of the Festival. We hope to excite audiences as well as inform a budding industry already investing in new models of distribution.”

A new aesthetic enlisting low-and no-budget filmmaking techniques has been on the rise. With “Next,” Festival programmers hope to provide a platform for filmmakers using new aesthetics enlisting low-and no-budget filmmaking techniques to connect to audiences, industry and press while at the same time “inviting the artists to be a part of an ever-evolving community of filmmakers working outside the system.”

“The filmmakers who are working in this realm and who I have spoken to about this have a ‘creative impatience’ that I find invigorating,” Cooper added. “These are not just the films that have been labeled mumble core…or dogma or even guerilla. They are an emerging counter culture within our counter culture.”

The 2010 Sundance Film Festival will take place January 21 – 31 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.