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Philly Welcomes BlackStarFilmFestival – A Conversation with Ava DuVernay
The BlackStar Film Festival took place August 2-5, 2012 in Philadelphia...
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Just a Taste: People Like Us
Writer/Director Alex Kurtzman is known for writing high-tech, extraterrestrial, action flicks like Transformers, Star Trek, Cowboys and Aliens and TV shows like Fringe and Alias, so a family drama like his latest movie People Like Us, is quite a departure. But it’s the fact that this story was inspired by Kurtzman and writing partner Roberto Orci’s own life experiences with long lost siblings, that keeps them from being out of their depth. Sam (Chris Pine) is a fast talking, ambitious young man who in the initial scenes seems to be cocksure and on top of everything. All this comes crashing down around him when he makes a big oversight at…
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Support AFFRM – Kinyarwanda at select theaters this weekend
AFFRM is the African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement – empowering black independent filmmakers with collaborative, simultaneous theatrical distribution in multiple markets. Last March AFFRM got behind Ava DuVernay’s I Will Follow (click for T & T commentary). Giving it a chance to reach a wider audience. This weekend AFFRM is launching Alrick Brown’s KINYARWANDA. Which I will screen on Sunday. The below video from Reelblack features Brown talking about the film, AFFRM and the state of African American Cinema in general. For all its greatness, “Hotel Rwanda” nevertheless used the conventional Hollywood technique of a movie star as a protagonist to serve as the audience’s entry point. None of the…
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MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE – Sean Durkin & Elizabeth Olsen Q & A
Have you heard about Martha Marcy May Marlene? It’s been a darling of this year’s festival circuit – The title gives the impression four women share top billing, but in actuality newcomer Elizabeth Olsen (cast only two weeks before shooting), is not only the subject of the multiple monikers, she hauntingly carries the full weight of this dark drama; along with some good, creepy assistance by John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone). The film explores the mind altering experience of cult life. A group of mostly 20-something men and women share an old farm house in upper state New York. The initial impression is one of communal, live off the land, find…
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Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival (PAAFF 2009)
Prior commitments prevented me from seeing the other venue – Asian Arts Initiative and from screenings of the shorts and documentaries. I liked the idea that PAAFF presented shorts Light and Dark. I also wanted to see Operation Babylift about President Ford’s initiative in 1975 to airlift over 2500 orphans out of Vietnam and the effects 30 years later. To my discredit, my coverage is very incomplete in the fact that I also didn’t see the Centerpiece Presentation – Formosa Betrayed featuring James Van Der Beek as an FBI agent who gets in over his head with the Chinese Mafia and the Nationalist Chinese Government. As always, I encourage attendees…
