Edward Burns’ latest film ‘Nice Guy Johnny,’ which premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, will be released on October 26 via cable VOD, DVD, and iTunes. The film is a rom com with a bit more com than rom, and is definitely enjoyable.  It’s a light movie about a mid 20′s guy who considers giving up the pursuit of his dream job due to pressures from his over bearing fiance.  Of course he meets a beautiful girl that begins to change his life.  The film stars Matt Bush and Kerry Bishe and of course Burns himself.  Check out my complete Tribeca review of the film here.

I think Burns has done a great job trying to promote his small indy film via various means especially Twitter. I am a follower of Burns’ Twitter account and really think that his down-to-earth personality really comes through in spreading the film’s buzz (although he is a Mets fan – come on Edward).  If you follow his account, you know all the different places and steps he took to obtain distribution, something that most film insiders don’t do a good job at. Instead you usually get all the glitzy and glamourous things your favorite stars are doing.  Stuff that I could care less about.  Burns keeps his followers intrigued and up-to-date on the many steps it takes to get a film shown as well as giving everyone a real (un-glitzy tainted) taste of life as a film maker.

The trailer to Nice Guy Johnny is also up on the Apple website. Click here for the trailer.

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In honor of the premiere of The Two Escobar’s tonight on ESPN, we are reposting the link to our review of the film and our interview with Jeff Zimbalist a co-writer/co-director of the film.  Jeff, and his brother Michael, both wrote and directed the film together.  Hanging out with these guys during the Tribeca Film Festival was an absolute pleasure.

The film is a documentary about the sequence of events that linked Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug lord, and Andres Escobar, the great Colombian soccer player during the mid 1990′s. The film explores the impact that both of these men had on their country during that time and what led up to the 1994 World Cup.   This is story telling at its finest. A MUST SEE documentary.

As part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series, tonight (June 21) at 9pm on ESPN Deportes and tomorrow (June 22) at 10pm, catch The Two Escobar’s. ESPN premiered this film to coincide with the World Cup as well.

DUE TO VIDEO IT DIFFICULTIES – WE ARE REPOSTING THIS. CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW

Last Friday, April 30th, 2010, the Tribeca Film Festival ended its 12 day event with the premiere of Freakonomics, a film adapted from the incredibly popular correlation/causality book written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Yes people, this book is now a movie, and I think we can expect to see it hit theaters sometime in the Fall – so get excited.   Freakonomics is one film broken up into its component parts each directed by a separate team made up of the dream team of documentary filmmakers.  Overall there are 6 directors on board the film including Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side), Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp), Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Eugene Jarecki (The Trials of Henry Kissinger), and Seth Gordon (King of Kong).

I had the pleasure of being on the red carpet at the event and was fortunate enough to talk to several people involved in the film. I spoke to Alex Gibney about his his individual piece, what he thinks his most challenging project has been, and when we can expect to see the Elliot Spitzer documentary to hit theaters. He also directed My Trip To Al-Qaeda, a documentary about Lawrence Wright’s one-man-show, which premiered at the festival as well.  Seth Gordon talked to us about his role of  mashing up of all the films component parts and linking them together.   We talked to Chris Romano, one of the producers, about how he put the project together.  Morgan Spurlock talked to us about the role the city of New York plays in the world in Independent filmmaking, and we were lucky enough to catch a quick glimpse of Robert De Niro himself as he entered the gala to end his 9 year-old film festival.

Check out the footage below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side), perhaps the greatest documentarian of our time, directs this near perfect documentary, My Trip To Al-Qaeda, an exploration behind terrorism.  Gibney collaborates here with Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize winner, to bring Wright’s play to the big screen.  Even better, My Trip To Al-Qaeda was purchased by HBO so we can expect to see this amazing piece of work to soon hit a TV near you. However, I was lucky enough to be at the world premiere of the film, being able to bring you some feedback of what to expect.

My Trip To Al-Qaeda took to the New York show circuit in 2007, and it proved to be quite a hit.  Wright is a bit of a terrorism expert, which is not to be construed in the wrong way, as he has studied Al-Qaeda for many years.  Here’s a fun fact, he even wrote the controversial 1998 film “The Siege,” starring Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis, about terrorism striking New York City and the US response.  Oddly enough, this connected Wright to the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. After 9/11, The Siege became an instant rental sensation, making Wright a profiteer of arguably the most horrific day in our nations day history.  Gibney takes us on a unique ride and storytelling adventure about Wright’s one-man-show.

What does a hypnotized chicken have to do with Al-Qaeda?  These unique metaphors are used throughout the film, and play, by Wright to give insight into radicalism.  He interviews many former radicalists, some of which he didn’t even know had been reformed.  He often addresses the audience admitting that he wasn’t even sure who he was really talking to, but expressing only slight concern for his own safety, something I was really shocked by.   Most the film is spent on educating its viewers on the origins of terrorism, the impacts of certain historical events (i.e. Eqypt’s brief peace with Israel, Russia v Afghanistan, Iraq, and more), and the US response.

Wright has the stage presence of a professor as he analyzes his video research in front of the live audience.  He goes back and forth analyzing the footage then addressing the crowd.  He poses insightful and thought provoking questions along the way.  This documentary takes us a behind the scenes ride of examing terrorism in a way I, and I’m guessing most of you, have not experienced.

What startled me most was that Wright really takes a knock on the US, but not in an unpatriotic way so please don’t get me wrong.  This is the same knock he so clearly elaborated on in his “The Seige.”  What if Bin Laden all along wanted us to freak out in fear and begin attacking our own citizens? What if he wanted us to round up all Muslims who fit a certain terrorist profile, torture them without mercy, and send them to prison without due process? Ummm, Guantanomo anyone? If you’ve seen “The Siege,” then you know what Wright is talking about.

More startling than even that Wright asks, what has America become? We are supposed to be a beacon of good, right? Check out “My Trip To Al-Qaeda,” and make up your own decision.  You are in for one heck of treat if you choose to do so.

This Gibney and Wright collaboration is a MUST SEE.

Our good friend Ron Ashley is back at it again as he had the chance to catch the Deborah Scranton directed documentary “Earth Made of Glass” at this years Tribeca Film Festival.   This will be documentary time on TheMovieBanter as we will soon put up a review of Alex Gibney’s (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room & Taxi to the Dark Side) latest documentary My Trip to Al-Qaeda.  With that aside, here is Ron Ashley’s latest guest review of Earth Made of Glass.

TFF Review by Ron Ashley:   EARTH MADE OF GLASS directed by Deborah Scranton

“Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.”  Documentarian Deborah Scranton borrows this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the title certainly conveys the hopes of her film’s primary characters – that the world works in such a way as to reveal the truth about injustices, that wrongdoers will ultimately be seen for what they really are.  In this powerful, thought-provoking documentary, Scranton follows Jean Pierre Sagahutu, a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide attempted against the Tutsis, as he continues his 15 year quest to find out the truth behind who murdered his father, mother, and 9 siblings.  Juxtaposed with Sagahutu’s quest is commentary from Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who has spent the past 15 years trying to bring to global public attention France’s involvement in training militias in Rwanda and Congo, preparing them to attempt one of the most horrific genocides in history.

The film does an excellent job of educating viewers on the historical context of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, explaining that Belgian and French colonialists have spent the past 90+ years dividing the Rwandan people by tribe (Hutu v. Tutsi), spreading propaganda to create mutual hatred, and providing one side with the tools to destroy the other.  As fascinating a subject as that may be, by far the most striking part of the film was the discussion of how a nation recovers from such a tragedy.  The theme of retribution vs. reconciliation is brought up repeatedly throughout the film – should the Tutsis seek justice for what happened to their people, or should they try their best to forgive the sins of the past and reconcile with the Hutus to create a united Rwanda, moving forward toward a brighter future?  The film shows Rwandans to be a strong, wise people, who will likely set the world’s best example of how to move on after catastrophe strikes.  The rest of the world, particularly the nations of the Middle East, could learn a lot from the Rwandans.

On a technical level, P.H. O’Brien’s cinematography is spectacular.  The physical beauty of each shot combined with the harsh nature of most of the story creates a very complex emotional undertone for the whole film.  The vast spectrum of sensations incited in viewers echoes the film’s most poignant message – that although people can commit truly awful acts against one another, it is possible for humanity to reign supreme.  Underneath the nasty shell of many stories is the hope for a sweeter end.

We will surely see more of Scranton’s important work in the future.  Be sure to check out EARTH MADE OF GLASS if you want a visceral, educational, and moving experience.

Click here for scheduling and times.

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The 2010 Edward Burns project is entitled Nice Guy Johnny.  It has been such a hit at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival that additional screenings have been added to the schedule.  Burns wrote and directed the movie, and he also is one of the film’s stars. Burns’ co-star is Matt Bush (Adventureland), who actually plays the part of Johnny Rizzo, a 25 year old soon-to-be husband who is contemplating giving up his dream of being a sports caster to make his fiance happy by taking an insanely boring, but higher paying, job in the cardboard box industry.  Could Burns have picked a more obviously boring job? Lets just say he made his point.

Burns plays Johnny Rizzo’s smooth talking, bachelor of an uncle named Terry who decides to take Johnny to the Hamptons in order to give him a proper farewell to single life. However, Terry  is a warm, loving uncle who is simply trying to convince his nephew to not give up his dreams.  Just about everyone wants Johnny to take the job, but it’s the least likely of people who actually has Johnny’s best interests at heart.   Terry and Johnny are actually more similar than not (even though one is a going to married while one is a womanizer) since they both have low paying (so called “bummie”) jobs that they absolutely love. Terry basically asks Johnny the question – why does the woman who supposedly loves you, want you to leave a job that makes you happy in order to take a job you will absolutely hate?  Terry is really what every tormented man needs.  He’s the little critter sitting on your shoulder telling you the truth that you try to avoid, but you already know. Enter Kerry Bishe (Scrubs), who plays Brooke in the movie, and you already know what’s about to happen.

Nice Guy Johnny is a cute romantic comedy that has more Uncle-to-Nephew dry humor than Johnny-Brooke romance. It revolves around an important and serious theme, Johnny’s crisis, yet delivers a message in a soft and humorous manner. Burns has this niche of a movie perfectly nailed.  You know exactly what you’re getting with his stuff and it’s usually pretty good.  He’s the guy who will bat .295, hit 25 homers, and drive in 100 rbi’s every year.

For someone who is also 25, I really was engaged by Johnny’s character.  He is making such important decisions during the entire movie, and at such a young age, each time I kind of found myself thinking how I would have responded.   It was that kind of movie. Thus, I liked it. Any movie that engages the viewer is a successful movie. It’s that plain and simple really. The film has a clever script, is set in NY (my home), explores a 25 year old guy’s quarter life crisis and tells a couple jokes along the way.

Nice Guy Johnny gets a GO SEE IT rating. Check it out at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Click here for scheduling and ticket info.

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Here is my Interview with Guy Pearce from the red carpet of the screening

Click here to view the embedded video.

For the 10th anniversary of the cult classic film, and Christopher Nolan’s first huge hit, Memento, the Tribeca Film Festival screened a special viewing of the film with the cast and crew. For those who don’t know, Memento is about a man with short term memory loss who tries to hunt down his wife’s killer. Due to his condition he uses very unique methods to help himself piece the case together including tatooing his entire body with clues. Oh, did I mention that this movie is told backwards.

This post is not meant to review the film, but nearly mention the amazing experience it was to watch the movie with Guy Pearce, the film’s star, Joe Pantoliano, and Jonathan Nolan, Chris Nolan’s brother and co-writer of the film. In fact the movie is based off Jonathan Nolan’s short stories. After the the screening we were treated to a panel of the above 3 mentioned people as well as 2 scientists who were there to help explain how true to reality the short-term memory loss was represented on screen.

For me, it wasn’t so much the realistic portrayal of short-term memory loss that was confirmed by the scientists, but the plot explanations and discussions by Jonathan Nolan that really grabbed my attention.  Especially since this film is so completely confusing.  For example, the cast confirmed that Leonard, Pearce’s character, was talking to Teddy, Pantoliano’s character on the phone during the black and white phone scenes, and not some random cop or person.   Nolan even brought up that how could Leonard know,  that in the final scene, he was up to fact number 6 (aka the license plate number). When watching the movie, go think about that.  There’s so many interpretations of the film, it’s not worth noting all the possibilities.

I am reaching out to all of you, what did you think of Memento, is Leonard – Sammy Jenkis?, did Leonard kill his wife?, how could he know it was fact 6, right? he has short term memory loss so it’s impossible, right? What do you think.

Check out our facebook page and my twitter account for more pics and info on the experience.

Interview with Jeff Zimbalist, writer and director of The Two Escobars. See below the video for the full review.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jeff and Michael Zimbalist tell the engaging story of Pablo and Andres Escobar and their impact on Colombia in the mid 1990′s.  I had the pleasure of attending the premiere of the film and was also able to speak directly to the Zimbalist brothers, the writers and directors of this excellent documentary.  Pablo Escobar needs no introduction, but not everyone may know Andres. Andres Escobar was one of Colombia’s top soccer players at the time of Pablo’s reign and was the tragic victim of a nightclub shooting after the Colombian national soccer team returned home from a disappointing performance in the 1994 World Cup.

This documentary explores the connection between drugs and soccer.  Though Pablo killed many people running his drug cartel, he did finance a large part of Colombian soccer and was a big reason behind the glory days of Colombian soccer in the 1990′s.  Andres was the gentleman of the sport and an ambassador for Colombia as he represented a positive symbol for a struggling country.

The Zimbalists intelligently go behind the scenes here interviewing many former members of Medellin cartel.   They are able to piece the testimony together in a way that engages each and every viewer. You don’t need to be a sports fan to like this film.  After the film ended, they even mentioned that due to the sensitivity of the subject, some testimony was so extreme and taboo that they couldn’t use it in the film. The purpose of this film is not to explore every truth behind certain untold facts about the Cartel, but rather explain the connection of drugs and soccer and demonstrate the heroic figures that the  national team represented. The Zimbalist brothers told us this as we went through a Q and A after the film.

By getting information directly from those that experienced it, the Zimbalist brothers risked their own safety.  The heart that went into making this film is a beautiful thing and should remind us how special the movies truly are.  This film also just got into the Cannes Film Festival as well.  Good Luck in France.

This is a MUST SEE documentary. If you don’t get a chance to get to this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, The Two Escobars will be on ESPN’s 30 for 30 film series, premiering in June.  Check this one out.

Keep Bantering.

Red Carpet Footage from the premiere of Beware the Gonzo

Interviews with – Jesse McCartney, Brian Goluboff (Writer/Director), Steve Kaplan, James Urbaniak

Click here to view the embedded video.

Interview with – Judah Friedlander

Click here to view the embedded video.

Guest Review by Ron Ashley

I was fortunate enough to attend last night’s world premiere of BEWARE THE GONZO, written and directed by Bryan Goluboff, at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival.  This light-hearted high school dramedy (emphasis on the –medy part, in the vein of JUNO) is a far cry from Goluboff’s last produced film credit, THE BASKETBALL DIARIES, for which he wrote the screenplay.  His range is impressive, as both the comedic and dramatic elements of GONZO were quite well-executed.  It felt real enough to be relatable, but outlandish enough to make me laugh out loud many times throughout.

Ezra Miller was a perfect choice for the leading role of ‘Gonzo Gilman’, an aspiring investigative journalist, who decides to create his own underground high school newspaper after being booted from the established school paper by Editor-in-Chief and Grade A Popular Douchebag, ‘Gavin Reilly’ (played by Jesse McCartney).  Miller has the whole teenage angst thing down to a science at this point, especially having played the role of ‘Damien’ in the hit Showtime series CALIFORNICATION.  With his hip alternative look and solid dry comedic timing juxtaposed with a markedly honest dramatic performance, Ezra definitely shines in this film.  His co-star, Zoë Kravitz, was perfectly fine.  The role was not particularly challenging or interesting, but she played it just right – maintaining the fun-but-angsty tone of the film without upstaging the more interesting characters.  It certainly doesn’t hurt that she’s gorgeous.  I have a sneaky suspicion that the mainstream media will describe her as “exotic” because her skin is darker than, say, Hayden Panettiere’s, but she strikes me more as gorgeous in a hip New Yorker kind of way.  It works, regardless of what you want to call it.

To be perfectly honest, Jesse McCartney surprised me.  I’ve never seen the TV shows SUMMERLAND or GREEK, so the Jesse McCartney I knew was a teen pop star who appealed mostly to young girls (and any member of NAMBLA).  I had the pleasure of meeting Jesse prior to the screening, and for someone as friendly as he actually is, he played a convincing antagonist.  His All-American appeal has not changed, and we should expect to see more of him on the big screen in years to come.

Goluboff also selected his ensemble cast very well.  Amy Sedaris and Campbell Scott played Gonzo’s parents, and both nailed it.  The teen ensemble was my favorite part of the film, particularly standout newcomers Griffin Newman (‘Horny Rob’) and Stefanie Y. Hong (‘Ming Na’).  Newman has superb comedic timing, and Hong is just funny to see on screen, a la Jon Heder.

Beware The Gonzo is one of the better high school films I’ve seen in the past few years.  It could very well be this year’s Juno, which scored major points at the box office after getting a full national release.  It’s got comedy, romance, sex, awkwardness, passion, angst, nerds, hot chicks, and a little tenderness thrown in for good measure.

You’ve heard it here first on themoviebanter.com, Beware The Gonzo is a must see at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

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Click here for more showings and info on Beware The Gonzo.

Andy Serkis (Gollum from Lord of the Rings) plays the British punk rocker Ian Dury in the Matt Whitecross directed film, “Sex and Drugs and Rock & Roll” (“SDRR”).  SDRR is a very stylistic film that shows the wild ride of ups and downs that Dury faced on the road to taking his band, The Blockheads, to stardom.  Additionally, Dury suffered from Polio as a child, causing him permanent crippling damage, a physical hurdle that Serkis perfected on screen.

Whitecross shows Dury as a poetic entertainer, not one for a loss of words, who loved his music perhaps a bit more than his family.  Serkis plays him as a motivated loco-motive willing to give all his heart to having success making music. However, the road to success is at the expense of his wife, his children, his girlfriend, and his friends.

I really like the tragic angle to this movie. When Dury is up, he is up, and when he is down, man is he down.  When we see Dury in times of strife, Whitecross uses a unique style of filmmaking to take us back to Dury’s childhood to show how difficult it was for Dury growing up in a disability center, constantly being bullied and struggling to fit in. Whitecross then returns to the film to present day and shows Dury harnessing that so-called ‘chip on his shoulder’ to motivate him to keep going.  I also thought it was very interesting that Dury’s children (though his son had a much bigger part in the movie than his daughter) did not really have a lot of speaking parts. Perhaps, Whitecross did this purposely to show how dominating a presence Dury had amongst those closest to him. The man was so often talking, he never really gave anyone else a chance to speak their mind.

He might have been selfish in his pursuit of music, he might have neglected his family, but Dury remains a person who brought almost as much joy to the lives of his family as much as he did grief.  He also had a fan base that deeply loved him.

Serkis gives an incredible, and I really mean INCREDIBLE, performance playing Ian Dury.  I for one didn’t know much about Dury, but watching the film took me inside the life of this conflicted man. Serkis is one of the great underrated talents in the industry, who has all the skills for major leading man success. I hope he gets that chance soon.

Overall, SDRR is a good movie and definitely worth checking out at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival.

Click here for movie blurbs and scheduling.