A documentary backed by Warren Buffett and Pete Peterson warns of the impending collapse of the federal finance system, weighed down by a staggering $53 trillion of debt, exacerbated by enormous and growing trade deficits and shrinking industrial capacity, and undercut by ballooning taxpayer credit failure.

I.O.U.S.A. débuts tonight in 358 cinemas nationwide, including Showcase Cinemas in Warwick. (8 p.m.; $12.50) It’s been selling out, so you may be wise to pay the extra online purchase cost.

Tonight’s showing also features a special one-time live (via satellite) interview, and you may submit questions at the official website.

This is from the Projo, about Michael Corrente’s attempt to find 10 scripts for 10 movies to be filmed in Rhode Island:

“I’ll make the movie, I promise you. If you send me a script and it’s good and it’s done, I will make that movie for a million dollars. Rhode Island’s a great place to be making movies right now.”

Corrente’s ScareRI is a competition offering unknown screenwriters the chance to pitch him a horror-movie script. Corrente, director of films such as Outside Providence and American Buffalo, created an open call for writers to pitch him their scripts and from those he said he would make 10 feature-length movies, filmed entirely in Rhode Island, with A-list actors as stars. The scripts had to be set in one location, with no more than 10 characters, and could not exceed 90 pages, the equivalent of 90 minutes of screen time.

Are any Dosers participating in this? I’m a bit confused as to exactly what sorts of commitments have been made, and to whom. But it seems like a pretty cool thing, and a nice investment by Corrente in his home town.

Update: Dan Barbarisi sends along some details, via link to his first story on this project.

If you’ve been looking for a movie that doesn’t have Morgan Freeman, I think I found one. Persepolis is still at the Avon Cinema. It is up for an Oscar in the ‘Animated Feature’ category, but that should read ‘Best Picture’. It’s the wrenching, but frequently funny, tale of life in Iran since the Shah was toppled. However, I must make it clear — I did not read the graphic novel. My experience regarding this type of film has always been that the group known as ‘people who have read the graphic novel’ is never satisfied with a movie that is ‘based on the graphic novel’. But just regular people should like this movie.

Cool. Don’t think I’ve seen any local press on this:

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—A local animation studio is teaming with students from the Rhode Island School of Design to create a first-of-its-kind computer-animated horror movie.

The Providence-based studio, The Story Hat, is planning to begin preproduction this week on the movie called Bloodline, according to the Providence Journal.

The movie tells the story of tattoos that grow and change, wreaking havoc on the people who bear them.

Director Michael Corrente says he hopes the movie puts Rhode Island on the map as an animation headquarters.

The studio estimates that the film could give jobs to as many as 200 people at peak production.

The 11th Annual Providence French Film Festival is just around the corner: February 21 through March 2 at the Cable Car. The list of films is already up (including trailers!), although the schedule is not yet set.

Over at RIFuture, Kim gives us a heads-up on the film screening:

Tomorrow night (Sunday, 1/27), is the Premier of Venus, Priests, and Superwomen, a documentary about censorship and the banning of the Vagina Monologues at Providence College.

The film examines the varied and conflictive perspectives concerning the play’s censorship at Providence College and also examines wide-ranging views on what some consider offensive and demeaning about the performance, from both Fr. Shanley’s perspective to some of the young women that organized the event.

Details:

Tomorrow night, 7:00 - 8:00PM, at the Columbus Theatre (270 Broadway) in Providence.

On his own opinion of the President:

“I can’t give you that, because the filmmaker has to hide in the work,” Stone said. “Here, I’m the referee, and I want a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world? It’s like Frank Capra territory on one hand, but I’ll also cover the demons in his private life, his bouts with his dad and his conversion to Christianity, which explains a lot of where he is coming from. It includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors.”

Also, Josh Brolin (pictured) is attached to play Bush.( Variety)

To be welcomed for the inexplicable RI filming of the movie Hachiko: A Dog’s Story. It’ll star and be produced by Gere, and is based on the story of Hachiko, a renowned canine owned by a Japanese professor. Hachiko used to meet his owner at the train station every evening. When the owner died, the dog kept going to the station at the time his train used to arrive, every day, for more than ten years.

I assume Gere will not be done-up into a Japanese man for the filming.

So there you have it. Dogs are great, and a preemptive congrats if they can make it neither a bore nor a sap-fest. (No gerbil jokes, please.)

Here’s some non-muppets Jim Henson’s for you to enjoy:

Screened for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in May of 1965, Time Piece enjoyed an eighteen-month run at one Manhattan movie theater and was nominated for an Academy Award for outstanding short subject. It’s kind of like Dziga Vertov on acid.