Just Before Dark

a collection of stuff for your perusal

permalink Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin are touring around with their latest documentary “Undefeated”.  It just had a run at the DOC NYC festival at the IFC Center where they won a special jury prize.  Earlier this year, they debuted at SXSW and picked up distribution through the Weinstein Company.  Since then, they’ve been going from festival to festival picking up awards. The film follows a North Memphis high school football team through a season.  The filmmakers follow the students and coaches - each a great character and story in their own right.  It may be unfair to describe it this way, but it’s sort of “Friday Night Lights” (the documentary) meets “The Blind Side” in the best possible ways.  T.J. and Dan moved down to Memphis for 9 months to make the film and managed to blend in and captured some incredibly candid behavior from the students on film (which would seem to be a fairly impossible feat around high school kids).  The film manages to be incredibly emotional without becoming saccharine.  Coach Bill Courtney delivers a series of speeches to his team throughout the film that were so good that they could have been scripted, but weren’t.   The wide release of the film nn February 10th is going to start in 15 major markets, which is an incredible release for a documentary, but it is well deserved.  Even if you don’t like football, this film is well worth a watch.  The filmmakers are now in Denver at the Starz film festival. I don’t know if Undefeated is eligible for awards season this year, or if it will have to wait until next year, but I can’t imagine that they won’t pick up some nomiations (if not the awards themselves).

Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin are touring around with their latest documentary “Undefeated”.  It just had a run at the DOC NYC festival at the IFC Center where they won a special jury prize.  Earlier this year, they debuted at SXSW and picked up distribution through the Weinstein Company.  Since then, they’ve been going from festival to festival picking up awards.

The film follows a North Memphis high school football team through a season.  The filmmakers follow the students and coaches - each a great character and story in their own right.  It may be unfair to describe it this way, but it’s sort of “Friday Night Lights” (the documentary) meets “The Blind Side” in the best possible ways.  T.J. and Dan moved down to Memphis for 9 months to make the film and managed to blend in and captured some incredibly candid behavior from the students on film (which would seem to be a fairly impossible feat around high school kids).  The film manages to be incredibly emotional without becoming saccharine.  Coach Bill Courtney delivers a series of speeches to his team throughout the film that were so good that they could have been scripted, but weren’t.  

The wide release of the film nn February 10th is going to start in 15 major markets, which is an incredible release for a documentary, but it is well deserved.  Even if you don’t like football, this film is well worth a watch.  The filmmakers are now in Denver at the Starz film festival.

I don’t know if Undefeated is eligible for awards season this year, or if it will have to wait until next year, but I can’t imagine that they won’t pick up some nomiations (if not the awards themselves).

Posted in film documentary undefeated football tj martin dan lindsay movie
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Filmmaker Murray Siple spent years making documentaries about extreme sports until a car accident left him a quadriplegic.  After taking ten years off, he got back behind the camera to capture a story of a group of homeless men who spend their mornings collecting bottles and cans and their afternoons racing shopping carts down the steep hills of Northern Vancouver.  It aired on the Sundance Channel, which doesn’t show any more upcoming screenings currently, but the National Film Board of Canada has posted the entire film online for free.

I’m going to be spending a little over a month in Vancouver for the Olympics this Winter.  I just wish this was a year-round sport.  I would have loved to see these guys in action in person.

Posted in film movie video trailer murraysiple cartsofdarkness vancouver canada nationalfilmboard
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I went to see Neill Blokamp’s film “District 9” last night and really enoyed it.  It’s based on a short he directed back in 2005 called “Alive in Joburg” which is a story about aliens whose ships come down and hover over Johannesburg.  Blokamp took advantage of the larger budget and feature-length to dive into a storyline that I really didn’t anticipate from looking at the original short or the trailer.  While some of the disturbing imagery in the film makes this a little unfriendly for kids, it’s well worth a watch.

While you’re at it, why not check out another one of Blokamp’s shorts, “Tempbot” from 2006.  It follows the life of a robot brought into an office from a temp agency and the drudgery and heartbreak that ensues.  Neill’s really nailed integrating special effects imagery into a documentary style.

Posted in film movie neillblokamp district9 aliveinjoburg tempbot aliens robot specialeffects
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The trailer has been posted for Terry Gilliam’s latest film “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus”.  I’ve been wondering how this would turn out, and from the trailer it looks great.  You might remember this as the last film Heath Ledger shot before dying, and since principal photography hadn’t yet wrapped when he passed away, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law stepped into his role.

The film follows the leader (Christopher Plummer) of a travelling theatre troupe who, having made a deal with the Devil, takes audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations.  Ledger, Law, Depp, and Farrell all play Tony, an outsider who joins the troupe.  This is Gilliam’s first film with collaborator Charles McKeown since “The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen”, which was a great film but serious box office disappointment.  By the way, if you’re looking for some great reading about life behind the scenes on a Terry Gilliam production, check out the book, “Losing the Light: Terry Gilliam and the Munchausen Saga” by Andrew Yule.

Posted in movie film trailer terrygilliam imaginariumofdrparnassus heathledger johnnydepp colinfarrell judelaw christopherplummer andrewyule