Jordan Beswick, C.S.A.

by Michael Koresky (August 18, 2008)

Considering that Azazel Jacobs, the director of “Momma’s Man,” is the offspring of American avant-garde filmmaker extraordinaire Ken Jacobs, one would be forgiven for expecting his film to be more experimental and abstract than the seemingly conventional narrative that plays out. Yet buried beneath the poignant clutter of this occasionally familiar stunted-youth-in-life-transition tale is a surprisingly complex, elegantly detailed meditation on creativity and artistic growth. While Ken Jacobs may work with found footage, purposefully elongating time and reassembling it into tapestries of pointed Americana, his son has constructed a personal fiction film using the detritus of his own life: the downtown Manhattan loft where he grew up, the gadgets and tchotchkes strewn about it like cherished memories, and his parents themselves.

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by indieWIRE (August 5, 2008)

EDITORS NOTE: This interview was originally published during “Patti Smith: Dream of Life”’s premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival

Celebrity photographer Steven Sebring’s feature directorial debut “Patti Smith: Dream of Life” is described by the Sundance Film Festival as a “hypnotic plunge, a breathing collage of this legendary musician/poet/painter/activist’s philosophy and artistry that feels as if it sprang directly from her soul.” 12 years in the making, “Dream of Life” examines Smith’s “interior terrain,” the ideas, losses and memories she wrestles with in addition to tracing her outward adventures. The film utilizes music, narration, graveyard pilgrimages, performance, political rallies, archival footage and verite moments with her working-class parents, children and friends to examine this punk pioneer. The film opens at the Film Forum in New York this Wednesday, August 6.

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“Acting is not the memorizing of a text while wearing a disguise, nor the facility to simulate anything at a moments notice, but the reconstruction of motives that are the cause of action and words.  This is not easy, easy though it may be for the actor to forget his own suffering by shouldering that of another.  At his best he is not only an interpreter, not only a carrier of ideas originating in others, but can invest his impersonation with a depth of understanding beyond the playwright’s knowledge.  He can be a superb mechanic and take the written word plus the director’s instructions to combine the two with the components of his own person, and thus give fluency and cohesion to thoughts that would not float over the footlights without his skill.  He can impress us with the meaning of the simplest word though we may have heard it a thousand times before without recognizing its significance.  It is not when he spouts Shakespeare without slurring a syllable that he wins his spurs, not when he has absorbed Kabuki or Stanislavsky in order to read a television commercial, but when he has learned to muffle his flamboyance, and so to control what he does that he can combine both actor and commentator.  He then can make us feel compassion, not for himself but for the one whose history we witness.”

-Josef Von Sternberg

This Friday, August 1, Frozen River will have its theatrical premiere in New York and Los Angeles.  In the following weeks and months, it will begin its rollout to theatres in about 65 other cities across North America. 

Frozen River is a dramatic feature about two women, one white and one Mohawk, who form an uneasy partnership to transport illegal immigrants from Canada into the US via the frozen St. Lawrence River.  The film stars Melissa Leo and Misty Upham, and was written and directed by Courtney Hunt. 

Frozen River screens in New York at the Angelika and at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, and in Los Angeles at the Landmark (10850 W Pico Blvd) and at the Edwards Westpark Cinema 8 in Irvine.  It will be seen later in the month in, among other places, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Winner, Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival
Winner, Audience Award, Best Picture, Provincetown Film Festival
Winner, Lena Sharp Award, Seattle International Film Festival
Opening Night Film, New Directors/New Films

“It took my breath away, and then somewhere around the last hour, it put my heart in a vice, and proceeded to twist that vice until the last frame.  All of a sudden, this completely naturalistic movie was one of the most exciting thrillers I’m going to see this year.” - Quentin Tarantino

“Riveting… Melissa Leo gives the performance of a lifetime… independent moviemaking at its best; telling real life, off the grid stories with compassion, skill and honesty.” — Steve Ramos, indieWIRE

“Gripping… Frozen River, with a superb performance by Melissa Leo… opens up a world we rarely see on screen. “  David Ansen, Newsweek

View the trailer:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/frozenriver/

by indieWIRE (July 30, 2008)

Director Dorothy Fadiman’s doc “Stealing America: Vote By Vote” centers on the democratic integrity of the United States in the last two Presidential elections.  For more than thirty years, exit polls accurately predicted election results. Over the last ten years that reliability has disappeared. The last two Presidential elections both came down to a relatively small number of votes, and in both elections the integrity of the voting process has been called into question. With the upcoming election looking to be similarly close, the film asks the questions: What happened in 2000 and 2004? What, if anything, has changed since? And what can be done to ensure a fair and honest tabulation of votes in 2008? This film brings together behind-the-scenes perspectives from the U.S Presidential election of 2004 — plus startling stories from key races in 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2006. The film sheds light on a decade of vote counts that don’t match votes cast — uncounted ballots, vote switching, under-votes, an many other examples of election totals that warrant serious investigation. The doc opens in limited release beginning Friday, August 1.

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by Kristi Mitsuda (July 29, 2008)

From “Sunset Boulevard” to “Mulholland Drive” and beyond, most movies revolving around Hollywood hopefuls portray the greater Los Angeles area as a soulless cesspool into which the hordes can’t help but sink.  But in his Tinseltown-set feature “In Search of a Midnight Kiss,” Alex Holdridge reimagines L.A. as a place of renewal and unsung beauty:  Skyline shots inclusive of freeway traffic, graphic compositions incorporating the city’s variegated architecture, and even the Hollywood sign shrouded by smoggy haze are lovingly lensed in stark black-and-white in obvious homage to Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” (though this hipster kid on the block scores his images to the indie rock of Shearwater rather than Gershwin).

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When asked in an interview for his thoughts regarding the statement, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” the late, great, John Lennon, replied, “It’s better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I worship the people who survive. I’ll take the living and the healthy.”

I say, “Amen to that!”

by Eric Kohn (July 23, 2008)

From John Hughes to Judd Apatow, the plight of the American teen has never lacked appeal in popular culture. But even this steadfast truism doesn’t make the concept for “American Teen” immediately salable. A nonfiction portrait of several prototypical seventeen year olds in Warsaw, Indiana, the movie finds all the stereotypes — from the jocks to the outcasts — in real life. “I understood that there were certain teen stories that happen in real life. I was going after those,” says director Nanette Burstein, speaking from her home in Los Angeles where she recently gave birth.

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North American rights to Kelly Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy,” from this year’s Cannes Film Festival, have been acquired by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch’s upstart distribution company Oscilloscope Pictures. The film, starring Michele Williams, will have its theatrical debut in December at New York City’s Film Forum. The story of a woman and her dog who are sidetracked in Oregon while en route to Alaska, the film is based on Jonathan Raymond’s short story Train Choir. David Fenkel of Oscilloscope Pictures negotiated the acquisition of the film with Tanja Meissner of Memento Films International, with producers Neil Kopp and filmscience’s Anish…

< http://www.indiewire.com/buzz/080720.html#012838 >