By Erin Blakeslee, Editorial Assistant

If you've made it to SXSW or other independent film festivals these past few years - or have added the films of said ilk to your Netflix queue - you may have witnessed the emergence of a new cinema movement, dubbed "mumblecore" by reviewers and critics.

Just watched Badlands this evening, Terrence Malick's 1973 film with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. It's loosely based on the Charles Starkweather/Caril Ann Fugate murders. I highly recommend it, mainly because Sheen is so charismatic that he makes the killer likeable. It's truly a model for how to create sympathetic characters, by convincing the audience to like the character, even if he's despicable.

Along with this movie, I'd also recommend Liza Ward's 2004 novel, Outside Valentine, which is fictionalized account of the same murder spree, set in three time periods and told in three alternating voices--the voice of Caril Ann, which is definitely the most haunting, the voice of two of the victims' son, and the voice of his future wife. An eerie and utterly convincing read. More information about the novel is at Henry Holt, here. A good interview with Liza Ward is here.

After the Coen brothers' adaptation of No Country for Old Men this November, Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street looks like the most exciting movie of the fall/winter. Still a musical. Stars Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman.

By Jess Mehr, Non-Fiction Editor

I'm reading Charles Baxter's The Feast of Love on Fiction Editor Jon Sealy's recommendation, only to discover that there is a movie version of the book coming out on September 28th. It stars Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear (as Bradley). It's directed by Robert Benton, who won an Oscar for Kramer vrs. Kramer. I hope Charlie Baxter got a dump-truck full of money for it. Check out our upcoming anniversary issue for a review of Baxter's new collection of craft essays.

http://www.feastoflovefilm.com/

As if waiting until December to see the film version of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement wasn't bad enough (the Brits get to see it September!), now I find out that Keira Knightley will do the book justice and get naked during the pivotal fountain scene.

This doesn't just please me because Keira Knightley is hot. If you've read the novel, you know this scene is the instigating event of the entire narrative. In it, Knightley's character, Cecelia, disrobes and dives into a fountain to retrieve a piece of broken vase while Robbie, the son of a servant, watches. Cecelia's little sister, Briony, also sees the scene and misconstrues it, and it's this dramatic irony, as well as Briony's subsequent actions that propels the plot, with tragic consequences.

Cecelia's near nakedness is so essential to the scene that I can't imagine a movie version without it; but if you're Keira Knightley, you don't have get naked just because someone says so. Many stars refuse to do nude scenes under any circumstances. I'm glad the star agrees that the partial nudity is essential to the script, although apparently, that's not her only reason for doing it. Knightley goes on to add that she loves stripping naked in her movies and finds sex scenes "liberating."

No, seriously.  A documentary on nerdcore, featuring MC Frontalot.  Can it get any better?

Via Backwards City, via ComingSoon.net, via J.K. Rowling's official website.  Harry Potter #7 has a name. 

And in further news, I'll be travelling for the next week or so, so posting might be spotty. 

Aleksandra Moorast, tromping through the deserts of Tunisia, has stumbled on people living in the abandoned sets of the first Star Wars movie.  FTA:

Surprisingly, his French was perfect and he explained to me that since he had neither family nor money, he came to live in the movie set. He looks after the place, the real roof of the fake house protects him from the sandstorms, and if a tourist throws him a small coin every once in a while, he can buy some more tea and some food. And he is hardly the only one living in the Lucas-built wonderland in the middle of the Sahara. 

Michael Morrison has an article up at Entertainment Weekly (don't judge me) discussing how he watched all six Star Wars movies, in order, having never seen any of them before :

My knowledge of Star Wars was limited. I was familiar with the popular sayings that have become a part of today's language: ''May the Force be with you.'' ''Luke, I am your father.'' And without even knowing it, I had already developed a hatred toward Jar Jar Binks.

Wired is carrying the story of Darren Aronofsky's new science fiction film, The Fountain, which uses no digital effects, instead relying on a photographic contraption made by the marine biologist Peter Parks:

Bristling with digital and film cameras, lenses, and Victorian prisms, their contraption can magnify a microliter of water up to 500,000 times or fill an Imax screen with the period at the end of this sentence. Into water they sprinkle yeast, dyes, solvents, and baby oil, along with other ingredients they decline to divulge...The upshot is that Parks can make a dash of curry powder cascading toward the lens look like an onslaught of flaming meteorites. 

The New York Times is reporting the anticipated finalization of a production deal for one of Kubrick's lost manuscripts.  And I do mean lost:

“When Stanley died, he left behind lots of paperwork,” Mr. Hobbs said in a telephone interview. “We ended up going through trunks of it, and one day we came across ‘Lunatic at Large.’ I knew what it was right away, because I remember Stanley talking about ‘Lunatic.’ He was always saying he wished he knew where it was, because it was such a great idea.”

Lunatic at Large will be directed by first-timer Chris Palmer from a script finalized by Stephen R. Clarke. 

Someone has finally brought one of Charles Bukowski’s novels to the big screen.  I just watched the trailer for Brent Hamer’s Factotum, starring Matt Dillon as Bukowski’s alter ego, Henry Chinaski, and it promises to be the best film representation of the famed writer yet.  I’m a big fan of Barfly, but Dillon seems to be playing the cool, detached Chinaski far more believably than Mickey Rourke’s caricature (“To all my friends!”).  I expect Factotum – Man of Many Jobs – will ring with the Zen-like bleakness common of Bukowski’s work, but the trailer looks damn funny, too.

Sycamore Review published some great Bukowski poems back in our Winter 1990, Winter 1991, and Summer 1991 issues.

[Parick Nevins, Managing Editor] 

Also in the pages of Us Weekly: candid photos from the set of the film adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement, starring the lovely Keira Knightley as Cecelia, and directed by Joe Wright (who also directed Knightley in the most recent (and Oscar-nominated) version of Pride and Prejudice).   Not to insinuate that there's some sort of a twist at the end of this novel, but...how are they going to pull off the twist that's at the end of this novel?!?

According to Variety, Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, that American Express commercial that I love where he explains how to make movies, etc...) is directing an animated version of Roald Dahl's children book, Fantastic Mr. Fox.  Be still my heart.