Beautiful Losers film trailer from beautifullosersfilm on Vimeo.

The documentary Beautiful Losers has been building buzz ever since it premiered at this year's SXSW Film Festival. It nabbed the Documentary Jury Award at Cinevegas earlier this summer and we now have a trailer (above, as well as news on a unique distribution partnership with Nike Sportswear. Oh yes, you heard that right -- Nike has partnered with Sidetrack Films and will help release the film in five markets, while also providing prints and advertising support (according to this indieWIRE story).

Directed by Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard, Beautiful Losers features such celebrated artists as Harmony Korine, Mike Mills, Todd James, Ed Templeton, Tobin Yelland, Geoff McFetridge and more, and, through their own unique voices, we share with them memories of how each discovered their art and subsequently created an entire movement in the early '90s. From the synopsis on the film's official website: "Beautiful Losers focuses on the telling of personal stories. It speaks to themes of what happens when the outside becomes "in" as it explores the creative ethos connecting these artists and today's youth."

Beautiful Losers opens at New York's IFC Center this Friday before expanding to other cities. Check it out.

It wasn't that long ago that documentaries carried the stigma of being educational first and entertaining second. As with foreign-language fare, an audience for them lingered on the fringe, and an industry was willing to offer them their very own awards, but they really weren't terribly high-profile box-office prospects... that is, until the '04-'05 summer successes of Fahrenheit 9/11 and March of the Penguins made it seem perfectly okay for audiences to see, and for studios to market, a film without so much as one measly explosion in it.

But then along comes American Teen: a film openly marketed as - and arugably assembled to be - anything but a documentary that finds itself underperforming in its current limited runs (it goes wide this Friday). Last May, I witnessed a group of young women leaving whatever indie they caught at Washington D.C's Landmark E Street Cinema as they approached the film's poster and wondered aloud if someone was remaking The Breakfast Club, with a tone that suggested neither horror nor concern, nor any great interest in the big, fat what-if scenario placed before them.

What I wonder now is, at what point did we begin to craft documentary filmmaking specifically to the masses, and then what happens when the masses simply don't show?

While The Dark Knight battled The Mummy on the mainstream charts, indie fans enjoyed much cooler movies. In its third week of release, Brad Anderson's Transsiberian continued its strong run, raking in $15,100 per-screen at the two locations where it's playing, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The film has grossed $125,000 so far. Also set in a cold clime, Frozen River, Courtney Hunt's "single mother smuggles illegal immigrants" drama, took in $10,471 per screen at seven locations on its opening weekend.

Two other debuting indies had decent results: black and white romantic comedy In Search of a Midnight Kiss made $7,300 at the two theaters where it opened and British comedy Sixty-Six scored $5,700 per-screen at its two engagements. No figures were reported to Box Office Mojo for documentary America the Beautiful or for Japanese melodrama Love and Honor.

indieWIRE highlights the success of holdover Man on Wire, James Marsh's completely charming and suspenseful doc, which earned $12,500 per screen at four locations. They also point to the returns of two films in their second week of release: period drama Brideshead Revisited ($5,284 per screen at 94 theaters) and high school doc American Teen ("a rather disappointing" $4,487 per screen at 39 locations). I saw the former on Sunday afternoon (packed, people lined up for the next screening) and the latter on Saturday afternoon (maybe 15-20 people). Different crowds, definitely, but Brideshead Revisited is much more likely to gain as it opens further.

A non-fiction inquiry into the toxic ramifications of the U.S.'s obsession with female beauty, Darryl Roberts' America the Beautiful certainly doesn't lack for a worthy topic, nor for endless avenues of investigation. Choice subject matter, however, only gets a film so far, and the director's everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to tackling the myriad ways that women are beset by unreasonable and/or dangerous body-image ideals ultimately does as much harm as good.

Roberts is well-trained in the Michael Moore school of documentary filmmaking, using a personal story - his break-up with a potential wife over superficial qualms with her looks - as the impetus for a wide-ranging analysis of the modeling industry, the cosmetics trade, magazine advertising, the field of plastic surgery, and, for good measure, a tragic tale of bulimia to cap things off in suitably wrenching, cautionary-tale fashion. His strategy is to cram in as many facts and tidbits as 105 minutes will allow in order to present an overwhelmingly damning case against our cultural priorities. Frustratingly, though, his film is sometimes overwhelming less because of its convincing conclusions than simply because of its mountain of cursorily handled arguments.

Out of all the specialty releases that have appeared in theaters -- including American indies, docs, and world cinema -- why is one standing out this summer as a "word-of-mouth" hit? That's how Steven Zeitchik in The Hollywood Reporter descibes Guillaume Canet's terrific French thriller Tell No One, which has grossed nearly $1.7 million since opening in New York and Los Angeles at the beginning of July.

Zeitchik provides background on distributor Music Box Films and its founder William Schopf and then says that strong reviews in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker "certainly helped, particularly with the film's older demo." (Hmm, did someone take a poll?) He also speculates that press days for director Canet, its mystery/thriller genre, and timing -- an indie slipping between the cracks of the big summer movies -- may have been factors.

Tell No One opened the same July 4th holiday weekend as Hancock, and the mixed reviews for the Will Smith picture may indeed have pushed some folks to try the French flick. But The Wackness also opened that weekend, and despite some very good reviews and a smashing opening weekend, its per-screen average has declined as it has expanded across the country. More than one million dollars at the box office is a decent return for a rather desultory stoner period comedy-drama, in my opinion, though it's far less than others thought it could achieve. Still, why did Tell No One -- with, evidently, a substantially smaller marketing budget -- catch on and not The Wackness?

It's around this time every summer that the major blockbusters have done their thing and the multiplexes start to feel stale. Another Mummy movie? A Kevin Costner political comedy? Meh and meh. And that's where the Indie Spotlight comes in! We're here every Friday to tell you what's opening beyond the multiplexes, out in the art houses and fringe theaters, to remind you that there are alternatives to the flicks opening on 3,000 screens.

This week sees the release of five indie films: America the Beautiful, Frozen River, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, Love and Honor, and Sixty Six. The scoop on each of them is below. If they're not opening where you live, make a note to keep an eye out for 'em later.

Frozen River
What it is: A drama set at the border between Quebec and New York, where a woman helps people immigrate illegally.
What they're saying: The film premiered to wide acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and where Cinematical's James Rocchi declared it excellent. At Rotten Tomatoes, 81% of the critics agree with Rocchi.
Where it's playing: New York City (Angelika Film Center, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas) and Los Angeles (The Landmark, Laemmle Sunset 5, Town Center 5 in Encino, Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, Edwards Westpark 8 in Irvine).
Official site: Sony Classics.

It's been called one of the greatest documentaries ever made. It's a 170-minute-long juggernaut of a film. The fact it was snubbed by the Oscars created such a public outcry that the Academy was compelled to change the very voting process for the documentary field. And, like finding a piece of filet mignon at the local fast-food joint, Hoop Dreams is now nestled in alongside old Buffy re-runs, Simpsons clips and other offerings at Hulu.com.

Directed by Steve James, Hoop Dreams follows two young men from Chicago and their struggles and triumphs on and off the basketball court as they aspire to go from grade school promise to high school stardom and hope make it to the NBA. Shot over a period of years, Hoop Dreams has been called one of the finest documentaries of all time, and the indie-consultancy group Cinetic has made it available on-line at Hulu.com. And, of course, part of me is looking for the cloud around this silver-lined opportunity: What's Cinetic hoping to get out of this? What's Hulu hoping to prove? And if you're hoping to prove the viability of Hulu as a distribution model for documentaries, why would you pick a 14-year-old film that already has a great Criterion DVD? And finally, as much as I admire Hoop Dreams and the idea of it being available on-line, I have to wonder if anyone is going to sit in front of their computer screen for the full 171-minute running time of the film. ...

By: Christopher Campbell (original publish date: February 3, 2008)

(With the Cine-staff off on a late-July mini-vacation, we thought it'd be fun to bring you some of our favorite pieces from months past. Enjoy!)

Today, as millions of (mostly) men are watching the Super Bowl, possibly witnessing the Patriots make history (sorry Erik), millions of (mostly) girls are watching Miley Cyrus (aka "Hannah Montana") make history of her own. As you read this, across the country the 3D concert film Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour is selling out its show times for the day. Actually, it's more likely that at many theaters show times have long been sold out.

On Friday, when the Disney release opened, I took a look at the status of the weekend show times in the tri-state area on Moviefone, Movietickets.com and Fandango. Most times were already unavailable. But I had no way of knowing how recently those times had sold out, because tickets went on sale back on December 1, and many people (our own Kim Voynar and her daughter included) bought theirs way in advance. As Kim mentioned last week, Fandango announced that more than 1,000 show times had already been sold out and that theaters were trying to squeeze in more screenings. The online ticketing company also announced that since December 1, the film has been one of its top selling titles and that this past week the film accounted for 91% of all the company's online ticket sales (compared to 1% each for Rambo, 27 Dresses and Cloverfield).

By: James Rocchi

(With American Teen opening nationwide this week, we at Cinematical are re-running our Sundance 2008 interview with director Nanette Burstein.)

One of the biggest word-of-mouth buzz hits of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, Nanette Burstein's American Teen follows a handful of high school students in Indiana for 10 months; the resulting documentary somehow has the look and feel of a Hollywood-manufactured piece of teen fiction, with stylish and surreal animated sequences -- and still offers a touching, bold, you-are-there window into the state of adolescence in America. Paramount Vantage purchased the documentary's rights only a few days ago, but when the director met Cinematical, it looked as if her schedule hadn't gotten any less harried. Asked if she has a future project in mind, Burstein laughs ruefully: "The next thing I'd like to do is sleep for a really long time." Burstein spoke with Cinematical about how she came to be in Indiana, the media-savvy minds of today's kids, the sequences she had to lose from her original "8 hour cut," and much more.


This interview, like all of Cinematical's podcast offerings, is now available through iTunes; if you'd like, you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:

In May of 1970, Neil Young quickly wrote a song called "Ohio," hotly responding to the Kent State shootings, during which the National Guard killed four students and wounded nine others. He recorded it with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, who had just come off a hit record from the previous year, and the song peaked at #14 on the pop charts. Over the years, Young has recorded several such protest and/or political songs, including 1967's "For What It's Worth," 1970's "Southern Man" and 1989's "Rockin' in the Free World," which slyly took a stab at then President George H. W. Bush by mentioning his campaign speech staple "a thousand points of light." Young is now in his 60s and once again something pissed him off to the point that he has gone back to the recording studio. This time though, there's no beating around the bush (so to speak). No more messages hidden inside innocuous song titles. This time we get "Let's Impeach the President."