3 Time Film Excess Nominee:
Best Supporting Actor: Michael Parks (lost to Michael Shannon for Boardwalk Empire S2)
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo (lost to Agnieszka Grochowska for In Darkness)
Best Practical Effects (lost to Haywire)
+ Wildest Movie of the Year
+ Best Independent Movie of the Year
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| The gritty-cool poster for Kevin Smith's Red State |
Three high school friends find a middle-aged woman online, who wants to screw them. But as they search her out, they walk right into a trap set up by a hateful, Christian doomsday sect.
Red State is a hard-boiled, crazy, cool little indie film, replete with biting societal criticism of both government and religious fanaticism and bolstered by vivid action and pitch black (sometimes nearly bizarre) humor by writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks (1994)). It is well-written and dazzlingly carried out with very limited funds, (the budget for special effects were reportedly just 5,000 $.)
Red State has some fantastic performances; by John Goodman (Flight (2012)) and particularly by Melissa Leo (Flight) and Michael Parks (Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)), who plays the deluded father in the film with an intensity and gusto that simply knocks you over: In his long speech scene, his charisma and rationale almost gets us to understand his congregation.
The film is intermittently very dark, funny and scary. A wild ride and probably the most kick-ass piece of independent American film-making of 2011.
Smith has several projects in the making; he is involved with the filming of Holidays right now, a horror movie that he both stars in and co-directs, with several others. He is also debuting his new movie Yoga Hosers, the sequel to Tusk (2014), later this year.
Related posts:
Kevin Smith: Tusk (2014) - Smith goes all-out wack
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
Cop Out (2010) or, A Couple of Dicks
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| Michael Parks' lunacy is quite convincing in Kevin Smith's Red State |
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| John Goodman is a no-bullshit type government agent in Kevin Smith's Red State |
Watch Kevin Smith introduce the teaser for the movie here
Cost: 4 mil. $
Box office: 1.8 mil. $ + 3 mil. $ from VoD
= Even Steven
[Red State's distribution was as controversial if not more controversial than the film itself: After its Sundance screening, Smith had said publicly that he would sell the distribution right auction-style, so he gave the crowd long faces when he told them after the screening that that wouldn't be the case anyway; because he would sell the rights to himself for 20 $, and that he thinks that it is the way forward for independent filmmakers of today, - distributing their own films and avoiding the distributor's often sizable box office cut. Smith then showed Red State for a week in his pal Quentin Tarantino's cinema in Los Angeles and went on a roadshow in North America, starting in Radio City Music Hall, with the film and himself, whereupon it was released to VoD and video. The reception to the film has been wildly mixed, and Smith has burned many bridges for himself with his 'auction', but Red State has been praised by peers such as Richard Kelly, Tarantino and Ben Affleck. Note that the VoD-figure listed above comes from Smith and could be misleading.]
What do you think of Red State?
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