The Awards Circuit will be undergoing maintenance today to improve site functionality. The skinny is that we have become massively popular (thank you I might add) but our servers can’t accommodate all the incoming traffic. The site will be moving to a larger server today (beginning at 11pm eastern time) with more bandwidth so you can visit at your leisure. I would like to thank all of you for being patient through this time. Tomorrow, we should be 100% up and running and be able to accommodate all our readers for the rest of the season.
If you feel inclined to help out, you can always make a donation (right on the gold bar above), big or small, it will definitely be appreciated. Read more on Saturday Site Maintenance…
 Much like Elizabeth Olsen was able to elevate but not ultimately save ‘Silent House’, Jennifer Lawrence lends her talent to a similar project in ‘House at the End of the Street’. She’s good as a horror movie heroine, but the movie itself is way over directed by Mark Tonderai and far too reliant on silly/clichéd horror tropes. That’s of course as much attributed to the script by David Loucka (who in turn got a start on the story from filmmaker Jonathan Mostow) as anything Tonderai does, but he doesn’t help the cause and ultimately has crafted a movie that’s as likely to inspire giggles as screams. The screening I was at had both in almost equal measure. When the flick is trying to scare or unsettle you, it’s mostly successful, except of course for those unintentionally silly moments. Attempts at fleshing out the story are rather unsuccessful though, so while this does most of the things a fright flick should do, it still manages to leaves you slightly dissatisfied. Genre fans will probably find some things to like about the movie, but fans of Lawrence may be slightly let down.
Read more on House at the End of the Street (**½)…
Last year I wrote an article on the issues that baseball films have with Oscar, though the success of ‘Moneyball’ certainly has opened doors a bit. ‘Trouble with the Curve’ of course is a misfire, but next year we may just have a contender in ’42′, a biopic of Jackie Robinson. Starring Chadwick Boseman as the legendary Brooklyn Dodger, Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, the man who signed him, and written/directed by Brian Helgeland, the film has recently dropped a pretty solid trailer. You can see it after the jump, and stay tuned for more on this flick when it opens April 12th of next year and seeks to hit a homer not just with audiences, but with critics as well. Take a gander below…
Read more on The Jackie Robinson biopic ’42′ gets a Trailer!…
 There is definitely something to be said about the way Bertha Bay-Sa Pan’s Almost Perfect normalizes the Asian-American contemporary family, whose relatable dysfunction is as acceptable to the masses as your typical big budget-driven family dramedy centered on – you guessed it – the familiar white pedigree. Let’s face it: movies like Almost Perfect would cease to exist if not for progressive filmmakers like Bay-Sa Pan, and so I thank her for her dedication to mainstreaming minority and bi-racial families in cinema by having them spearhead white-dominated narrative spaces. I have never seen Bay-Sa Pan’s Face, her debut feature, but based on its tremendous critical response and slew of accolades, I’d say that Bay-Sa Pan had sprung herself into the forefront of prominent female directors following its release. With Almost Perfect, released approximately ten years after Face, it’s almost easy to claim this film as Bay-Sa Pan’s sophomore slump, but the highly irregular/problematic directorial and editing choices point to a chilling truth: Bertha Bay-Sa Pan stayed away from her home behind the camera for far too long, and it shows. Read more on Almost Perfect (**)…
Categories: Film Reviews Tags: Almost Perfect, Almost Perfect Review, asian-american cinema, Bertha Bay-Sa Pan, Eleven Arts, Entertainment/Culture, indie romantic comedies, Ivan Shaw, Kelly Hu, Kristy Wu, Roger Rees
 Hello again to all of you film festival fans out there! Clayton was with me the past few days at the New York Film Festival taking in the sites and cinema, so you got to see his thoughts on some of the big flicks, but I’m back today to talk about some of the other screenings thus far. Friday saw 4 films being screened, though only one was from the Main Slate. That was the much anticipated “Beyond the Hills,” though we were also treated to sidebar documentaries “Punk in Africa,” “John Cassavetes,” and “Lang/Godard: The Dinosaur” (the latter two were only about an hour apiece and thus won’t get review).
Read more on NYFF: “Beyond the Hills” excites, “Punk” disappoints, “Araf” shows graphic…
Categories: Article Tags: Araf, Beyond the Hills, Cinema of the United States, Entertainment/Culture, Frances Ha, John Cassavetes, Lang/Godard: The Dinosaur, Laura Linney, New York Film Festival diaries, Punk in Africa, the 50th New York Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
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