Friday, August 12, 2011

Next Out of the Gate: Dark Horse

So Todd Solondz's latest film is on its way, set to debut at the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals next month. Hopefully, that means it won't be too much longer, then, for it to disseminate to us little people with a more general release. Dark Horse features some intriguing and noteworthy names among its cast: Mia Farrow, Christopher Walken and Storytelling alumni Selma Blair, and is produced by regular Solondz collaborators Ted Hope and Derrick Tseng (for the full cast and crew line-up, check out Dark Horse's page on the imdb). The plot is briefly described as: "Thirty-something guy with arrested development falls for thirty-something girl with arrested development, but moving out of his junior high school bedroom proves too much. Tragedy ensues."

I'm not sure if the film is 100% complete yet, but with locked festival commitments, they've gotta be close! And while there isn't an official trailer or anything yet, there is a brief clip that fans will definitely want to check out: here. And you can follow the film's official faecbook page, facebook.com/darkhorsemovie.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

toddsolondz.com Getting a Make-Over!

Toddsolondz.com is in the midst of a much, much, much needed facelift. The main aspect of which is that I've created and am incorporating solondz.blogspot.com as the main page.

You see, when I first created toddsolondz.com years ago, it a lay-out I was pretty happy with, at least for the time. It gradually got out-dated. And then, when I met Mr. Solondz in person, he asked me to change it (because it was originally called Fear, Anxiety & Depression: The Films of Todd Solondz, and he didn't care for the film he's more or less disowned as the title and theme of the website). So, I made a bunch of quick changes and graphics which were just meant to be temporary, and were, to be honest, kinda garish and awful. But, predictably, that "temporary" layout remained for years.

So, now it's getting over-hauled! These changes will make updates easier for me to make, and hopefully a little more inviting for you guys. It'll let you RSS subscribe, so you get news updates sent to you whenever I update, so you don't have to keep checking back to see if I've made any changes. And it's got all the little facebook, twitter and whatever buttons you kids like to play with. ;)

The 2011 version of the site hasn't just been reduced to the blog, however. All the cool pages from the original site: the film pages (click the boxes on the left!) and the galleries are still here. And when Dark Horse comes out, you can bet there'll be a film page and gallery added for that, too.

I'll be tinkering with it over the coming weeks, and like every site, it's forever "under maintenance." So don't freak out if something's screwed up. But at least we're getting this site out of the stone age, and let's all agree to forget about the yellow and orange.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Life During Wartime - Criterion DVD!

The wait for a Life During Wartime DVD (and Blu-Ray) in the US is finally over! Well, not really; but at least it's finally been announced. And it's coming from The Criterion Collection, no less.

It's slated for a July 26th release date, and for you diehard Criterion collectors, it will be Spine #574. The features will be:

  • New digital transfer, supervised and approved by director of photography Ed Lachman, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Ask Todd, an audio Q&A with director Todd Solondz in which he responds to viewers’ questions
  • Making “Life During Wartime,” a new documentary featuring interviews with actors Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy, and Michael Kenneth Williams, and on-set footage of the actors and crew
  • New video piece in which Lachman discusses his work on the film
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Sterritt
This makes it the first of Todd Solondz's films to appear on DVD with extras!