News

Launching what seems likely to become an auspicious awards season for him, Kieran Culkin won the Golden Globe for best supporting actor in a feature film, for his performance in “A Real Pain” as Benji, a wayward, charismatic Jewish man on a Holocaust tour in Poland with his strait-laced cousin.

Culkin started by shouting out a fellow actor who started young: Mario Lopez. “My wife and I did a shot of tequila with Mario Lopez,” he said with a smile. “Definitely feeling that! Whole speech is gone!”

This is the second consecutive Globe win for Culkin, who took home the statue last year for best actor in a TV drama for the final season of “Succession,” winning over his cast-mate Jeremy Strong — who was also nominated for supporting actor in a feature film this year for his performance in “The Apprentice.” Culkin was previously nominated three times in the TV...

The 2019 SXSW Film Festival launched plenty of buzz for many anticipated studio releases, from Jordan Peele’s “Us” to Olivia Wilde’s “Booksmart,” but these movies don’t tell the whole story. The Austin gathering showcased 102 features and episodic across nine days, and it remains unclear where many of those titles will surface next. But even if they didn’t garner the same level of hype, many of the smaller-scale narratives and documentaries at SXSW 2019 deserve audiences beyond the insular film festival circuit.

These highlights may not generate massive deals, but in today’s malleable distribution landscape, there are many of ways that strong, original storytelling can find audience. Here’s our usual plea that buyers take a chance on these worthy films that still need homes.

“Alice”

The opening minutes of “Alice” make the case for Emilie Piponnier to be a movie star, and the rest of the movie keeps it up.

“Will & Grace” actress Megan Mullally has been selected as the host the 25th edition of the SAG Awards on Jan. 27 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Kristen Bell performed the emcee duties this year as the first-ever host of the ceremonies.

Mullally won two Primetime Emmy Awards for supporting actress in a comedy series in 2000 and 2006, along with four SAG Awards for her role as Karen Walker in “Will & Grace.”

“We are delighted to have the talented, warm and funny Megan Mullally to host the SAG Awards Silver Anniversary,” said executive producer Kathy Connell. “This is a very special year, and we are all looking forward to a memorable show.”

Mullally said, “As a frustrated casting director and full-on fangirl of great actors everywhere, I’m over the moon to be a part of the SAG Awards 25th Anniversary.”

“Will & Grace” returned after an 11-year hiatus...

The Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival will once again present Artisans in Focus, a track launched last year to target the crafts of filmmaking and give due credit to the below-the-line community.

Hosted by Variety, Artisans in Focus will host a panel discussion at 4 p.m. July 3, moderated by Peter Caranicas, managing editor, features. At the session, several renowned department heads whose work has had a major impact on the art of filmmaking will discuss their collaborations with producers, directors, actors — and with each other.

So far, two participants have been confirmed: editor Jana Vlckova and cinematographer Matthias Grunsky. Additional panelists will be announced before the event.

“Legendary film stars and great auteurs of global cinema are regularly celebrated, but the geniuses behind the camera also deserve the spotlight,” says Variety VP and executive editor Steven Gaydos. “Artisans in Focus was created to give a greater voice to the individuals who create the images,...

Largely set in a hotel room on election night 2016, Onur Tukel’s The Misogynists is a nasty piece of business. Perhaps the director’s most no holds barred picture yet, it expresses the anxieties and political division of the Trump era. While narrative and documentary filmmakers are still grappling with the post-truth era in which the country is ruled by a kleptocracy, Tukel, like Tyler Perry, had the major advantage of prolificness. The eccentric and eclectic filmmaker releases at least a film a year, in addition to writing and starring in his friend’s films, including Infinity Baby and Booger Red.

The set-up here is simple: two colleagues get together for a coke- and tequila-fueled bender in a luxury hotel room that Cameron (Dylan Baker at his creepiest since Happiness) has been living in since his divorce. He’s joined by a frequent Tukel collaborator, here credited as Lou Jay Taylor...

An Interview with the makers of Infinity Baby

2017: The Weinstein’s, Toback’s, Spacey’s, C.K’s, Affleck’s, and Hoffman’s of the film world have, for the first time, been ousted from their Hollywood havens and floated down an assembly line into the best short-term rehab facilities movie money can buy.

The effect is all encompassing, not just for filmmakers & entertainers, but for politicians (George H.W Bush, Al Franken), and the civilians who consume them, too. The influence is so sweeping that, come the 40th Denver Film Festival, a Toback story derailed an interview organized between the cast and crew of the feature film Infinity Baby, that was held in a small corner of the city’s Civic Center.

In attendance: Infinity Baby’s director Bob Byington (7 Chinese Brothers, Harmony & Me), its writer Onur Tukel (Catfight, The Misogynists), and its star Trieste Kelly Dunn (Banshee,...

The 2017 Woodstock Film Festival concluded Oct. 15 with awards for actor Bill Pullman and Bob Byington’s dark comedy feature “Infinity Baby.” Stylized by its founders as “fiercely independent,” the fest celebrated its 18th annual iteration in Woodstock, Rhinebeck, Kingston, Rosendale, and Saugerties, New York. Running Oct. 11–15, the event screened dozens of new titles, including Richard Linklater’s “Last Flag Flying” (Amazon Studios), Ruben Östlund’s Cannes champion “The Square,” and “Infinity Baby,” the Best Narrative Feature award winner starring Kieran Culkin, Megan Mullally, and Nick Offerman that premiered earlier this year at SXSW. The Woodstock Film Festival has in years past screened such Oscar-nominated projects as “Far From Heaven,” “The Imitation Game,” “Up in the Air,” and last year’s “Loving.” The Maverick Awards Ceremony Oct. 14, which included a tribute to the late director Jonathan Demme, honored legendary producer and manager Shep Gordon with the Trailblazer Award in recognition of his groundbreaking career.

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: What better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? This week […]

The post This Week In Trailers: Kissing Candice, Heroin(e), Infinity Baby, Miami, The Departure appeared first on /Film.

For his first-ever film score, hip-hop artist Aesop Rock provides an exhilarating beat-heavy backdrop to Bushwick, the thriller directed by the Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott, and starring Brittany Snow and Dave Bautista. “The score is gritty, emotional, unnerving and triumphant, taking us on a journey as we weave through the streets of Brooklyn,” the directors note. We had the opportunity to speak with Aesop Rock about scoring the film and bringing an added level of intensity to the thriller.

This movie was intense, following the amazing music in the opening credits, the film was void of music for more almost 20 minutes. Talk to us about some of the discussions that limited the music.

There were many phases. There were times when there were stripped-down drums playing in some of that stuff, and various other pieces were tried. I think ultimately their decision to leave the top of the movie...

So this is some surprising news. Hot off the heels of producing and starring in the comedy Infinity Baby (which premiered at SXSW), married comedy couple Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson on Parks And Recreation) and Megan Mullally (Tammy #2 on the same show) are producing another film together. This one, however, doesn't seem to be a comedy. They recently gained the rights to the best-selling novel... Read More...

"My brother said his life meant nothing until he had his baby," says the young woman onscreen. So despite having little interest in kids herself, the woman signed up to care for an Infinity Baby — a biological byproduct of stem-cell testing that will never grow up, will never cry and only needs one feeding/diaper change a week. So goes the conceit of Bob Byington's odd skewering of commitment-phobia, which turns Onur Tukel's screenplay into a film very much in line with his own writer/director output. Funny but as undercooked as its namesake infants, the sketchy picture will play well to...

“Most Beautiful Island”

A short, stressful, and utterly spellbinding debut that transforms the immigrant experience into the stuff of an early Polanski psychodrama, “Most Beautiful Island” was a worthy winner of the SXSW Grand Jury Prize for best narrative feature, and might prove to be a breakthrough moment for a major new talent: Spanish actress Ana Asensio not only wrote, directed, and produced this fraught metropolitan thriller, she also appears in just about every frame.

It would be criminal to reveal too much about what happens to her character, a Manhattan immigrant who’s struggling to make a life for herself in the big city and in for the longest night of her life, but it’s thrilling to watch the anxiety of neo-realism as it slowly bleeds into something that resembles the suspense of the orgy sequence from “Eyes Wide Shut.” Creating a lucid sense of reality only so...

Over the past decade, South By Southwest has become 10 days of hand-to-hand combat between media and technology. Nestled within that war zone is a film festival — this year, 125 features screen at the SXSW Film Festival, including 51 from first-timers. Most come to town without distribution, and they may never see a bigger audience than this one.

The film festival is a solid platform for discovering new filmmakers; if you want to explore the connective tissue of contemporary American cinema, few other places offer such a fertile arena. Unlike industry heavyhitter Sundance, it’s not a fast-paced marketplace — but the SXSW conference is still one of the biggest windows into the future of the movies because so much of it has nothing to do with the movies at all.

This year, SXSW Film’s marquee titles duke it out with the TV shows in the Episodics section. (Among its premieres are two...

This year’s SXSW Film Festival is currently raging in Austin, Texas, complete with a packed slate that should keep festival attendees pretty happy in between bouts of chowing down breakfast tacos and basking in the good ol’ Texas sunshine. As ever, the festival features a strong lineup of both fresh premieres and festival favorites, new and returning stars, and plenty of opportunities for talent to break out on the festival stage.

From filmmakers to actors (and, sometimes, both at the same time), familiar faces looking to try a new craft to total newbies, this year’s festival has plenty of stars on the rise to look out for (ouch, so bright).

Read More: SXSW 2017: 13 Must-See Films At This Year’s Festival

Who’s going to break out in a big way at this year’s festival? We’ve got some ideas.

Ansel Elgort, actor, “Baby Driver”

If you...

Brace yourself. The annual multi-pronged South By Southwest Conferences and Festivals — SXSW, of course — is hitting Austin, Texas later this week for days and days of fresh film offerings (and music and interactive stuff, too, but we can only do so much here). With it comes the promise of a brand new season of festival-going, along with a slew of films to get excited about finally checking out (and, because it’s Austin, lots of tasty barbecue to enjoy).

From SXSW regulars like Bob Byington and Joe Swanberg to rising stars like Nanfu Wang and Laura Terruso to marquee names like Terrence Malick and Edgar Wright — and just about everything in between — this year’s SXSW Film Festival is offering up its most robust slate yet. We’ve picked out a baker’s dozen of worthy new features to add to your SXSW schedule.

Check out 13 new films from this...

Sundance came and went with little a flutter, Berlin with even less, and now, with the Oscar ceremony winding down the 2016 awards buzz with a rather awkward bang, one might think we’d been given a reprieve from festival-season madness. Fortunately for cinephiles, that’s a train that rarely stops churning, with the Austin, Texas-based South by Southwest right around the corner. While Terrence Malick’s upcoming “Song To Song” might be (unsurprisingly) snagging most of the headline chatter, there are always some interesting below-the-buzz films worthy of attention.

Continue reading SXSW Exclusive: First Look At ‘Infinity Baby’ Starring Kieran Culkin, Nick Offerman & Megan Mullally at The Playlist.

With Sundance behind us, the next major American festival is waiting in the wings. The SXSW Film Festival lineup has landed, and there’s a lot to dig through.

Read More: SXSW 2017 Episodic Lineup to Include ‘Dear White People,’ ‘American Gods’

Unlike Sundance, which attracts a lot of industry attention around a handful of high-profile titles, SXSW is more about discovery. As usual, there are a lot of compelling possibilities in the program, from the newcomers in its competition sections through the more peculiar and surprising offerings in the Visions section. IndieWire got a few tips from SXSW Film director Janet Pierson and extracted these promising possibilities.

Small Stories, Big Steps

The festival’s narrative feature competition is often the place where filmmakers on their first or second feature get a sudden boost. It was there that Lena Dunham’s “Tiny Furniture” and Destin Cretton’s “Short Term 12” both took off.

With Spider-Man: Homecoming still in the early days of production, it's never too late to add a few more cast members as shooting continues in Atlanta. Today we have word that there will be two somewhat surprising new additions to the cast, with actress and stand up comedian Martha Kelly and Ufc fighter Tyron Woodley signing on for unspecified roles. We don't know for sure when they'll start filming, but Tyron Woodley's involvement may have been hinted at this weekend.

The Ufc aired its latest pay-per-view event Ufc 201 on Saturday night, and for those who watched the event, young star Tom Holland was spotted in the crowd, which wasn't terribly surprising since the fight took place in Atlanta, where the movie is shooting, and where Tyron Woodley knocked out Robbie Lawler to win the welterweight title. Deadline reported on Martha Kelly's casting, although Tyron Woodley revealed the news...