L.A. Film Fest adds Duplass movie, Korean animated ‘King of Pigs’
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The latest movie from filmmaking brothers Jay and Mark Duplass, an edgy South Korean animated film, and ‘Safe House’ director Daniel Espinosa’s ‘Easy Money’ will screen at the L.A. Film Festival next month, organizers said Tuesday.
The Duplasses’ ‘The Do-Deca-Pentathlon,’ will be presented in a special screening open only to members of Film Independent, which puts on the festival. The movie, which will open in theaters in July, focuses on two adult brothers who during a weekend family reunion rekindle a homemade competitive sporting event from their childhood while trying to keep it a secret from their relatives.
Yuen Sang-ho’s animated ‘The King of Pigs’ will have its North American premiere at the festival. The cold-blooded adult tale explores the underside of human nature at an all-boys middle school in Seoul. The school is a microcosm of society, a harsh environment where there is no escape from constant bullying and violence.
“Life is unfair, and that’s the reality,” Yeun, a chain-smoker with oversize glasses whose previous short films focused on life’s gloomier moments, told the L.A. Times in an interview last year. “I just wanted to show what the current society is like.”
The director funded the $150,000 project himself, with assistance from various art foundations. The film, with computer and hand-drawn animation, is purposely crude and rough, with plenty of graphic head-turning moments.
‘Easy Money’ is the previous film from “Safe House” director Daniel Espinosa, which was acquired by the Weinstein Co. two years ago.
“Easy Money” is based on a novel from Swedish author Jens Lapidus and stars Joel Kinnaman (‘The Killing’) as a Stockholm taxi driver who becomes enmeshed in a drug-running operation.
The festival will also host a free community screening of ‘Question Bridge: Black Males’ and a panel discussion looking at women in animation. Panelists will include Kristine Belson, executive producer of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’; Karen Rupert Toliver, 20th Century Fox Animation’s vice president of production; Katharine Sarafian, producer of Pixar’s ‘Brave’; and Michelle Murdocca, producer of Sony Pictures Animation’s ‘Hotel Transylvania.’
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-- Julie Makinen
