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Tribeca Interview: War, Inc. Director Joshua Seftel

By Joel Keller (Subscribe to Joel Keller's posts), Posted Apr 29th 2008 5:02PM
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Tribeca, Festival Reports, Interviews, War, Celebrity Interviews, Tribeca Film Festival, Cinematical
Joshua Seftel

Give Joshua Seftel some credit; he didn't pull any punches on War, Inc. In his first feature film, written by star/producer John Cusack, Jeremy Pisker, and Mark Leyner, Seftel attempts to make a scathing commentary on the War on Terror, the privatization of the military, the commercialization of societies all over the world, and other shenanigans. In a former life, Seftel was a former network news producer, and became known around Hollywood circles for directing documentaries like Breaking the Mold: The Kee Malesky Story.

He was nice enough to speak to me about the experience from a very blue room at the Tribeca Film Festival press office. Text and video are after the jump.

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Tribeca Review: War, Inc.

By Joel Keller (Subscribe to Joel Keller's posts), Posted Apr 28th 2008 10:02PM
Filed under: Comedy, Tribeca, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, War, Reviews, Tribeca Film Festival, Cinematical
War, Inc.

What do you say when a film is so bad that you actually feel physical pain for everyone involved? You literally sit there for an hour-and-a-half and feel sorry for everyone who put such a hard effort into the making of the film, only to see it lay there like a lox when it's finally projected on the big screen. As a reviewer, there's not much more you can do than just endure it and hope to see a fleeting moment or two of quality, just so you don't think you've completely wasted your time.

That's all the thoughts that were going through my head as I watched War, Inc., an ambitious film that fails miserably at everything it attempts to be. As a comedy, it's not funny. As a satire, it's as subtle as a sledgehammer. And as a treatise on war, the corporatization of the military, and the horrors of pop stardom, it doesn't tell you anything that you don't already know if you just watch the 24-hour news channels or read the news online even a little bit.
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Tribeca Review: Chevolution

By Joel Keller (Subscribe to Joel Keller's posts), Posted Apr 27th 2008 4:32PM
Filed under: Documentary, Tribeca, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Cinematical Indie, Reviews, Tribeca Film Festival, Cinematical

Chevolution

Even if you don't have any idea who Che Guevara is, you probably know what he looks like. His face has graced everything from t-shirts to bikinis to cigarette packs to beer. You know he's a symbol of ... something. But you're just not quite sure what.

So, who is Che Guevara? And how did that picture of him become so damned famous? Those questions, and other issues, are addressed in the excellent documentary Chevolution, which debuted at Tribeca on Friday.

In the documentary, producer/director Trisha Ziff and director Luis Lopez explore the Che phenomenon from all angles, including the revolutionary's early life, his fateful encounter with Castro, the Cuban revolution he helped make happen, to his life trying to foment revolutions in other countries. But it also examines how he crossed paths with photographer Alberto Korda, the fashion photographer/photojournalist who took the famous picture of Guevara that was the basis for the icon we know today.

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Tribeca Review: Killer Movie

By Joel Keller (Subscribe to Joel Keller's posts), Posted Apr 27th 2008 2:32PM
Filed under: Horror, Tribeca, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Reviews, Tribeca Film Festival, Cinematical
Killer Movie

Believe it or not, the slasher flick is one of the trickier movie genres to get right. You have to have just the right amount of blood, for instance; too much grosses people out, and not enough turns off the fans who want to see some gore on the big screen. But you also need to make sure the story that fits around the murdering hooks people in. If the people getting chopped up are just cardboard stereotypes, audiences lose interest quickly. Throw in a good old-fashioned whodunnit, and you've got the makings of a classic blood and guts movie.

Killer Movie, which debuted at Tribeca on Thursday, gets many of these elements right. But it also has glaring flaws that keep it from being a cut above (pun intended) its slice-and-dice brethren.

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Tribeca Junket Report: Baby Mama

By Joel Keller (Subscribe to Joel Keller's posts), Posted Apr 23rd 2008 8:02PM
Filed under: Comedy, Tribeca, Universal, Festival Reports, Interviews, Celebrity Interviews, Tribeca Film Festival, Cinematical
Toina Fey and Amy Poehler in Baby Mama

Last week, at the ever-so-swanky Ritz-Carlton near Central Park, Universal held a press conference for its upcoming feature, Baby Mama, which opens the Tribeca Film Festival tonight. Who participated? None other than stars Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Sigourney Weaver, along with writer-director Mike McCullers.

Fey and Poehler were first, and they spoke to reporters together. They met on the Chicago improv circuit fifteen years ago, performing together in a group called Inside Vladimir (named after a gay porn movie, apparently).

"I had heard about Tina -- on the streets! -- before I met her," said Poehler. "We both had moved from where we were going to college to study improv. We were the two women on that improv team and that's where we were when we met. We met when we were big eyebrowed, poor, badly dressed ducklings."

The chemistry between the longtime friends was evident not only in the movie itself, but also during the press conference; they were able to very easily joke around and go back and forth without stepping on each other's toes. And, of course, since both are improvisational experts, they came up with very funny lines instantly, like when a reporter asked Poehler if she has any desire to be a mother. The answer is in the following audio clip:

Amy Poehler wants to be an Oscar winner's mother (0:14)

More quotes and audio after the jump.
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Tribeca Review: Baby Mama

By Joel Keller (Subscribe to Joel Keller's posts), Posted Apr 23rd 2008 7:02PM
Filed under: Comedy, New Releases, Tribeca, Universal, Theatrical Reviews, Movie News, Reviews, Tribeca Film Festival, New Releases, Cinematical
Baby Mama

The first time I heard the term "Baby Mama" was probably on either Maury or Jerry Springer (don't laugh... you hear a lot of things as you're flipping over to PBS). It and its male equivalent, "Baby Daddy," essentially describes a person with whom you've had a child, but no other relationship currently exists. It used to be street slang, but in a movie world where pregnancy of all types seems to be the hot, go-to topic (Juno, Knocked Up), the whole "baby mama" thing was sure to come up at some point. I just never thought it would come from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

In Baby Mama, which opens the Tribeca Film Festival tonight and arrives nationwide on April 25, Fey plays Kate Holbrook, a successful vice president of a Whole Foods-esque organic supermarket chain. She's got the great job and the stunning Philadelphia apartment, but at 37, she longs for something more. You guessed it: Kate wants kids, and doesn't want to wait until she gets married to have them. One little problem: her chances of actually having a child are one in a million ("I just don't like your uterus," is what Kate's fertility doctor, played by The Daily Show's John Hodgman, tells her).
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