Jordan Beswick, C.S.A.

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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< http://www.indiewire.com/movies/2008/07/review_soft_sho.html >

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 >

by Howard Feinstein (July 21, 2008)

[Editor's Note: Magnolia Pictures opens the film in limited release beginning Friday, July 25 in New York with a larger roll out in select cities August 8.] “Man on Wire” is the perfect example of matching doc director to doc subject. French tightrope walker and juggler Philippe Petit became world-famous when he walked between the two World Trade Center towers, then under construction, on August 7, 1974 — a completely illegal if fantastic act that involved complex preparation and shook up New York City’s police department. (He had to cross back and forth several times to avoid the cops.) Petit had already achieved artistic notoriety for his feats at famous sites like Notre Dame in Paris, but to traverse the air space between what were then the world’s two tallest buildings? It’s not only his unbeatable skill, though, that makes Petit an ideal subject for a doc: He is a ball of fire, a fascinating egomaniac who engages you completely with his energy and confidence. Petit has written several books, including To Reach the Clouds, which recounts the feat in downtown Manhattan.

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by Howard Feinstein (July 18, 2008)

John Crowley is, above all, an Exception, with a capital ‘E.’ One, he became a highly regarded established theater director in his native Ireland, but was able to cross over into the medium of film with equal success. And two, he has shown himself masterful in two completely different film genres and styles.  To elaborate: Crowley’s first feature, “Intermission” (2003), was an ensemble piece in which multiple (mostly raunchy) Irish characters crisscrossed through 11 different storylines, which ultimately converged into a powerful climax. Now he has made “Boy A,” set in the UK (where Crowley now resides), the atmosphere of which is totally English, it’s one storyline beautifully developed and, much more linear than “Intermission,” moving toward an equally strong denouement.

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by Vadim Rizov (July 16, 2008)

In 2007, “Rooster’s Breakfast” became the most successful Slovenian film of all time, third in seats only to “Troy” and “Titanic.” (176,807 admissions and counting.) Yet it has virtually no presence outside the ex-Yugoslavia area: appearances at FilmFest Munich and a small Madrid festival aside, its success is a perversely insular affair, built around engagements  in Sarajevo, Croatia and the like. If dank, depressing Romanian films can conquer the film festival world, why not a leisurely, ingratiating portrait of small-town life built around drinking hijinx and a low-key romance? (Variety didn’t even review it.) Showing tomorrow and Saturday as part of a Slovenian retrospective organized by Lincoln Center and the Slovenian Film Fund, the most commercially successful film in Slovenian film history is barely a blip on the international radar. Director Marko Nabersnik has a few explanations for both why it’s domestically successful and internationally a little inert, and why the Slovenian film industry generally remains below the radar.

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Bergman Island: “Faro Document,” “Persona,” “Summer Interlude,” and More from Faro by Michael Koresky (July 3, 2008)

A film festival unlike any other, Bergmanvecken (or Bergman Week), now in its fifth year in operation and its first incarnation since the death of the man at its center last July, is a celebration of location as much as film. For Swedish cinema, Ingmar Bergman was always a one-man-show, its industry glue, its irreproachable standard-bearer, its looming demon genius — and he has been resented throughout the industry for the past half-century nearly as often as he’s been embraced. Not so on Faro, the island located on the northern tip of Gotland, where he made his permanent residence for decades even as he lived and worked in Stockholm during the off seasons.

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