MCN Columnists
Kim Voynar

Voynaristic By Kim VoynarVoynar@moviecitynews.com

Of Indie Film and Insularity

This Thanksgiving weekend, as I ponder my abundant blessings, one of the things I’m most thankful for is having a job that allows me not only to watch a lot of movies, but to see many of them at film festivals far and wide. As I write this, over the past couple years we’ve seen…

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Home is Where My Heart Is

Published under 1,000 Monkeys. Why 1,000 Monkeys? David and I spent a lot of time talking back and forth about a new name for this more philosophical, life-stuff column. One day in frustration, I said to David, “If you put 1,000 monkeys at 1,000 typewriters, they could never write the craziness that is my life…

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Memory Lane

Published under 1,000 Monkeys. Why 1,000 Monkeys? David and I spent a lot of time talking back and forth about a new name for this more philosophical, life-stuff column. One day in frustration, I said to David, “If you put 1,000 monkeys at 1,000 typewriters, they could never write the craziness that is my life…

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Precious Things

Back at Sundance last year, when Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire was first unveiled for critics with little fanfare but high hopes, quite a few folks thought it would never see the light of day off the fest circuit. Too dark, too depressing, too tragic … with little redemption or justice to buoy…

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The Vampire as Moral Compass

These days, it seems vampires are the new black — but they aren’t quite as black as they used to be. Today’s vampires have more than just gloomy good looks and great fashion sense; they come complete with a moral compass. If art and literature reflect the world in which they are created, what does…

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For Better, For Worse

Published under Voices. It’s a very curious and lonely thing, facing a pancreatic tumor and a divorce at the same time. You know intellectually that your marriage is over, that the person you’d always imagined would be by your side holding your hand if you ever had to face something scary like this isn’t there…

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Paging Polanski

Finally, a film about hot, tattooed roller derby chicks. Whip It!, Drew Barrymore‘s directorial debut, is not just a good time at the movies, but a smart film about female empowerment and what it means to be a tough chick, even if you’re not the biggest, meanest bitch on the wheels. It’s exactly the kind of…

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Film Festival

On September 9, along with many of my fellow film journalists, I packed my bags and boarded a plane to Toronto for one of the most challenging (and occasionally rewarding) film festivals we film fest junkies work all year: the Toronto International Film Festival. I’d just come off a long, hard month of helping my…

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Defending Jennifer’s Body

Spoiler Warning: This column contains spoilers about the film Jennifer’s Body. Consider yourself forewarned and forearmed. Is Jennifer’s Body really as bad as some critics say, or are some folks just lime-green Jell-O over anything that has Diablo Cody‘s name attached? I thoroughly enjoyed this film from start to finish, in part because I thought I was…

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Cloudy with a Chance of Mediocrity

I realize I’m in the critical minority on this, but I wasn’t all that crazy about Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Yes, yes, the animation was bright! And colorful! And the cheeseburgers and scoops of ice cream and giant pancakes and meatballs practically popped off the screen. It was all very exciting, I suppose. I…

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To Absent Friends

Today I’m thinking a lot about 1984 — the year, not the Orwell novel. September 8, 1984 was a life-altering day that altered the course of my life; on September 8, 1984, my best friend, Monica, committed suicide at the age of 16. I can still recall, with achingly perfect clarity, where I was when…

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Of Love, Life and Loss

What’s the meaning of a life, and a loss? Earlier today, MCN Headlines Editor Ray Pride posted a particularly tragic headline to the front page of MCN about the murders of Filipino-Canadian film critic Alexis Tioseco and his partner, Slovenian critic and programmer Nika Bohinc, in what seems to be a random house robbery. The murders have hit…

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Life, the Movies and Everything

Movies are entertainment, not life. But sometimes when life delivers a solid sucker punch, you need a little something to see you through, and for me, the movies are great medicine for, well, the melancholy. I’ve been in Oklahoma City for almost two weeks now, since I got a call from my uncle letting me…

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Feminism and Horror: Beyond the Final Girl

I’m not what most horror buffs would consider a “horror buff,” but lately I’ve been warming up to the genre. While I don’t think I’ll ever enamored of ultra-gory fare like the Saw films, I’ve grown more open to experiencing the pleasures of watching horror films over the past few years. I realized recently that…

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Coming of Age at the Movies: Where’s the Brat Pack for Today’s Teens?

My own coming-of-age years were defined by Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (seasoned with a generous sprinkle of Purple Rain and a dash of Desperately Seeking Susan). If you were a couple years behind me in high school, it was probably Say Anything and Some Kind of Wonderful.  The 1980s teen flicks were great…

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Until the Credits Do Us Part: Marriage and the Movies

If you judged marriage based on the recent history of Hollywood’s depiction of adult relationships, you might think most people spend the majority of their lives either starting new relationships or ending old ones, and very little time in the period in between. Perhaps it’s partly the influence of Hollywood, where celebrity marriages might last…

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The Slippery Slope of Truth in Non-Fiction Films

Rich, successful Latino-American lawyer takes on a big corporation on behalf of downtrodden, third-world workers and wins. It makes for a great “David versus Goliath” story of melodramatic Erin Brockovich proportions — but what if the David of the story ends up being accused of fraud, causing not only that case but others to be thrown…

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The Fame and Misfortune of Michael Jackson

People who live and make their living in Hollywood are quick to tell you that Hollywood is an awful, soul-sucking, backstabbing hell of a town, and they’re largely right. Fame is, in its way, as evil a societal monster as alcoholism and drug addiction, and it’s not particularly surprising that many people who achieve fame…

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Real Dads of Hollywood

Over Father’s Day weekend as my kids and I were plotting and planning how to make their dad’s day a special one, I thought about writing a column this week on great movies about dads and fatherhood. Unfortunately, I realized in trying to come up with a list of films I would include in such…

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The Relativity of Relationships

There’s a certain irony in a film festival held in Las Vegas — a town where the size, not the quality, of your chip stash matters and fliers offering beautiful girls sent to your hotel room are handed out on the streets — programming some interesting films that focused on emotional connections. Based on an…

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“I’m in Locarno, my movie is premiering for 1,000 people, which is nuts. A huge-ass screening, second day of the festival, 7:30pm in the sidebar competition. It’s comparable to Un Certain Regard or Director’s Fortnight. Every movie I saw in that section was fun, brilliant movies from around the world. The main competition was like Aza Jacobs and Mia Hansen-Løve, people who have been around. And I was like, “This is crazy. What am I doing inside the bloodstream of this establishment? I’m 27. I don’t belong here.” Every person I talked to there couldn’t believe what the movie cost, and then couldn’t believe when I told them what other American movies cost. We were the cheapest movie there by 65%. The next cheapest movie cost I think three times as much as we did. And they were just like, “You can’t make movies for what you’re telling us your movie cost.” And I told them, “Well, I can, I’m here, I’m in the same section as you are, so you are wrong. People think I’m lying when I tell them my budget. And also everyone likes it. I’m having a great time and people are being very responsive. Maurice Pialat’s widow was like, “I heard your movie’s good, I want a copy of it.” I’m like, “Well this is f**kin’ crazy.” Pedro Costa saw it there and really liked it and I’m like, What am I doing? I had gone in two months from screening at BAM for a lot of friends to Pedro Costa? This is the exact sentence: “Pedro Costa saw your movie. He’s a huge Jerry Lewis fan. He wants to talk to you about your movie and also Jerry Lewis.” And I thought, “I’m out of my element. I cannot have that conversation because that’s ridiculous.” Because his retrospective was happening at Anthology when I worked at Kim’s, and his Criterion box set came out when I was working at Kim’s. He can’t want to talk to me. That’s not possible. That’s not allowed. There is no world where that makes any sense!”  Or like when you wrote me to say that David Gordon Green wrote you to say, “I’m watching The Color Wheel and then I’m going to see Tree of Life.” There is no world where this is allowed! Again, somebody whose DVDs I was putting on the shelf, as, like, a hero. And it’s just like, “Oh, I’ll watch this movie.” There’s just a very fuzzy area in the middle there and it happened very quickly and I don’t understand why.  I still have a voice-mail from Sean [Price Williams, cinematographer]. I wish he was here to talk about it, but the voice-mail is a long pause and he’s just like, “I don’t want to tell you this, because it’s gonna make you so insufferable. I hate having to tell you this, but Leos Carax watched your movie and he really loves it, and he wants to meet you when he comes to New York.” I can’t live in a world where Leos Carax knows who I am, watches my movie, likes it, and thinks, “I wanna meet that guy.”
~ It’s Alex Ross Perry’s World

“I don’t know. It’s been a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to make the films I really dream of making. I was in Italy a few years ago scouting for this very beautiful film I wanted to make with Richard Linklater. We worked really hard on the script for a couple of years and couldn’t get the money together. It was an expensive idea. It’s heartbreaking when that happens over and over again and then the movies that do get made are ones that have lots of women being beaten up or zombies being killed. It’s all fine, it’s all okay, but it’s hard. I remember when River Phoenix died, he was ahead of me on this curve. He kind of realized how hard it was to make serious movies. People like Sidney Lumet figured out how to walk that line, but it’s hard. And it requires patience. It’s a life’s work and I wonder if I’m up to the task.”
~ Weary, Wary Ethan Hawke

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