Catzilla Productions
Really Independent Filmmaking

Writing from Venice, Anne Thompson battled a torrential storm to post her thoughts on Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere," and later caught up on the early word out of Telluride on new films from Mark Romanek, Errol Morris, and Peter Weir premiering last night, the festival's opening day. Writing about Romanek's 1970s alternate reality set "Never Let Me Go," Thompson notes that the director and writer "have created a believably off-kilter 'what-if' world ...
Read more...

An accomplished TV and documentary writer, director and editor in her native South Africa, Jann Turner is making her feature directorial debut with "White Wedding," which opens today, September 3 in New York and Los Angeles. A road comedy about a groom-to-be's attempt to reach his nuptials in time, "White Wedding" humorously engages with the heritage of apartheid, acknowledging that deep-seated racism remains while suggesting that it can be overcome. Turner ...
Read more...

In Venice Anne Thompson weighed in on Sofia Coppola's anticipated fourth feature, "Somewhere," starring Stephen Dorff as a bored movie star trying to reconnect with his daughter. Thompson found Venice to be the ideal venue for the film's world premiere. "The very European 'Somewhere' is a good fit here," wrote Thompson. "The Italian journos at the morning press screening got a kick out of an amusing sequence when bored movie star ...
Read more...

Back in April indieWIRE launched the 'Futures' weekly column, to profile new up and coming faces in indie film. The column dates back ten years ago, when it appeared in iW and IFC TV's print magazine IFC Rant. This summer saw a slew of new names welcomed into the 'Futures' mix. Over the past hot months subjects included "Get Low"'s first time feature director Aaron Schneider, New Left Media's Chase Whiteside ...
Read more...

Filmmaker Lixin Fan may very well be one of modern-day China's great non-fiction storytellers. His Sundance World Cinema Documentary competition film, "Last Train Home" is a documentary masterpiece that depicts China's meteoric rise to economic powerhouse through the story of a couple who move away from their rural village to earn money in a big city factory that produces goods for export, leaving behind their two children who are being reared ...
Read more...

Flashback to Telluride 2006: Sony Pictures Classics co-president with actress Penelope Cruz in Telluride for her starring role in Pedro Almodovar's "Volver." The 2010 Telluride Film Festival gets underway starting Friday. indieWIRE will have reports from the event over the Labor Day weekend. [Photo by Eugene Hernandez]
Read more...

North American rights to Baltasar Kormákur?s latest thriller "Inhale," starring Dermot Mulroney, Diane Kruger, Sam Shepard, Vincent Perez, and Rosanna Arquette, have been bought up by IFC Films. Written by Walter Doty and John Claflin, the film will have its U.S. premiere at the Woodstock Film Festival on October 1st, before being available nationwide via IFC's VOD network. The film will hit theaters in NYC October 22nd. In the film, Mulroney ...
Read more...

Documentary films are the buzz of this year's Telluride Film Festival. In keeping with tradition, the lineup for the event is announced just 24 hours before the event begins in Colorado tomorrow and the roster includes a number of notable documentaries. Errol Morris will unveil his latest, "Tabloid," ahead of its Toronto debut next week, while Ken Burns will present "The Tenth Inning" and Werner Herzog will be at the event ...
Read more...

Rounding up the latest from the fall festival circuit on a daily basis? Both Shane Danielsen and Anne Thompson are planted in Venice to report on the festival for indieWIRE. Each offered their take on Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan," which opened the Venice Film Festival on September 1. Danielsen for one loved the film, hailing it as superior to Aronofsky's debut "Pi." Of Natalie Portman's much talked about lead performance, Danielsen ...
Read more...

Every film festival, like every orchestra, has a characteristic uniquely its own, a particular tone, running faintly but unmistakably beneath its noise and clamor. Berlin's watchword is efficiency. Cannes runs on glamour. Rotterdam promotes (I think falsely) the sense of moral improvement that is the raison d'etre of the ascetic. For Venice, the constant is inconvenience. Part of it, admittedly, is its location: one of the world's most beautiful (and improbable) ...
Read more...