Just Before Dark

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.

Marco Mucig designed this trailer for the Bicycle Film Festival.  It makes me want to jump on my bike and ride around the city wearing a giant letter costume.  Or perhaps I’ll just watch this trailer again. (via FormFiftyFive)

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.