All posts by David Fellerath
David Fellerath ·
5 Mar 2010, 4:59 PM ·
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If you haven’t heard of Roger D. Hodge, you’re likely familiar with the magazine he used to edit: Harpers Magazine.The 43 year old, who first began working at Harpers as a fact checker in 1996, was recently sacked from the editorship, which he assumed in 2006.
Why was he canned? Well, that’s the subject of tonight’s event, which bears the perhaps intentionally florid title of “My Rise and Fall: Roger Hodge on the State of Magazines.”
Tonight at the Center for Documentary Studies, Hodge will engage in a public conversation with Duncan Murrell, a Pittsboro writer and teacher who has published in Harpers, the Independent Weekly and points in between. The talk is free and begins at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of CDS.
The last Hodge piece we read was a corker called “The Mendacity of Hope.” In it, he called out Barack Obama’s failure to remotely live up to the hopes of his supporters—by perpetuating the travesty of Guantánamo Bay and escalating the war in Afghanistan, among other things—and he also criticized liberals for projecting such wishes on a man who, after all, ran as a centrist.
The piece is here, but subscription is required.
Center for Documentary Studies Barack Obama, Duncan Murrell, Harpers Magazine, Roger D. Hodge
David Fellerath ·
4 Mar 2010, 4:29 PM ·
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More programming news from Full Frame: Fourteen invited, out-of-competition films were named today.
The short version: It’s going to be a good festival.
- No Crossover, Steve James’ Allen Iverson film, made for ESPN, that explores a controversial incident in his high school years that did much to establish his outlaw image
- And Everything is Going Fine, Steven Soderbergh’s film about the late monologist Spalding Gray, who died by suicide six years ago
- PELADA, a soccer documentary partly produced by Duke graduates that is receiving its world premiere this month at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas
- A profile of the man who blew the whistle on Vietnam, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
- A new one, previously announced, from Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker called Kings of Pastry, which follows 16 chefs as they compete for the Meilleur Ouvrier de France
- And the world premiere of In My Mind, Gary Hawkins’ film of composer Jason Moran’s recreation of Thelonious Monk’s 1959 Town Hall concert.
Complete list below. Continue reading »
Full Frame Allen Iverson, And Everything is Going Fine, Chris Hegedus, DA Pennebaker, Daniel Ellsburg, Gary Hawkins, In My Mind, Jason Moran, Kings of Pastry, No Crossover, PELADA, Steve James, Steven Soderbergh, Thelonious Monk
David Fellerath ·
3 Mar 2010, 5:31 PM ·
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The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival announced its new docs competition lineup for next month’s festival, which runs April 8–11 in downtown Durham.
The full lineup is below, but our initial scan reveals a couple of names well known to festival fans, including Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) and Laura Poitras (Flag Wars; My Country, My Country). The former’s film is on the notorious lobbyist Jack Abramoff, called Casino Jack and the United States of Money. Poitras’ film looks to be equally timely and topical: It’s called The Oath, and it focuses on two men—brothers-in-law—who worked for Osama bin Laden as a driver and a bodyguard.
There’s a well-known name not usually associated with documentary making that is attached to another Afghanistan film: Sebastian Junger. The author of The Perfect Storm has a new book due out this summer called War, and his first foray into filmmaking, Restrepo, follows a group of American soldiers during a long, dangerous tour in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. Tim Heatherington is his co-director.
Closer to home, we spot at least one local filmmaker: Durham’s Rodrigo Dorfman, whose Generation Exile tells the stories of “five displaced characters, including the filmmaker” to evoke their “experience of alienation and moral dilemma.”
We’ll have much more in the coming weeks. The complete list of docs in competition follows. Continue reading »
Film, Full Frame Afghanistan, Alex Gibney, Jack Abramoff, Laura Poitras, Osama bin Laden, Rodrigo Dorfman, Sebastian Junger
David Fellerath ·
15 Jan 2010, 3:44 PM ·
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The Globe-News Center in Amarillo, Texas
Longtime Indy theater and dance critic Byron Woods has been invited to teach the National Critics Institute’s theater criticism intensive seminar and to serve as critic-in-residence for the 2010 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF). KCACTF serves more than 18,000 college and university theater students each year, in programming all across the country. Woods is one of eight theater critics nationwide chosen to serve this festival, and he will be the critic in residence in Region VI, which includes Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and New Mexico. The Region VI conference will take place at Amarillo College, located in Amarillo, Texas, from Feb. 22-28.
Reviews, Theater Amarillo College, Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, National Critics Institute
David Fellerath ·
14 Dec 2009, 6:01 PM ·
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Up in the Air likely will open in the Triangle Christmas week. (Photo by Dale Robinette/ Paramount)
Earlier today, the Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA) released its year-end awards. Up in the Air, the acclaimed comedy adapted from the Walter Kirn novel, received three nods, including best picture, best actor (George Clooney) and best adapted screenplay (Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner).
Other top awards: Meryl Streep took best actress honors for her turn as Julia Child in Julie & Julia, Christoph Waltz received best supporting actor for his sensational turn as a Nazi officer in Inglourious Basterds and Mo’Nique claimed best supporting actress for her role as an abusive mother in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.
Taking the Wyatt Award for best Southern film was That Evening Sun, with Hal Holbrook. Ramin Bahrani’s Goodbye Solo, which was shot in North Carolina and played in the Triangle last summer, was the runner-up.
The complete press release is below. Indy freelancer Neil Morris is a member of SEFCA and participated in the voting.
And, by the way, be sure to visit the Indy Web site and vote for your favorite films of the year and the decade. The Indy’s year in movies issue will be out Jan. 6.
Continue reading »
Film Christoph Waltz, George Clooney, Julie & Julia, Meryl Streep, Mo'Nique, Precious, SEFCA, Up in the Air
David Fellerath ·
3 Dec 2009, 9:28 AM ·
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UPDATE 12/4/09: Still no news of Main Street. Sundance announces out-of-competition premieres. Main Street not included. We’ll have to wait for a different occasion for this film’s emergence.
In the category of “the news is that there’s no news….”
We looked up the Sundance competition lineup, which was announced yesterday, with the eager hope of seeing MAIN STREET, the Horton Foote-scripted drama that was filmed last summer in Durham. There are some good looking films in the competition, but no Main Street. We don’t know if it was submitted to Sundance or not, but it would be unusual for a film of this profile—with a literary pedigree, a respected, well-known cast, a modest budget and no distributor—to not be entered into Sundance.
Main Street, which stars Colin Firth, Orlando Bloom, Patricia Clarkson and Ellen Burstyn, was put out for inspection at last month’s American Film Market—with a poster included—but we’re not aware of anyone who’s seen the film writing about it.
This year’s Sundance is under the leadership of John Cooper, after 19 years of stewardship by Geoff Gilmore. Cooper told The New York Times that he, naturally, wanted to put his own stamp on the festival.
“We really tried to hunker down and make some hard decisions,” Mr. Cooper said. “We tried not to be wishy-washy about what is independent, which I know has been a criticism in the past. We weren’t going to be swayed by the marketability of a film.”
This seems to mean that he wants the festival’s programming to be about the quality of the filmmaking, not the Q-rating of the casts (we’ll see what the sponsors say about that!).
On the documentary side (which is where the best films ALWAYS are), we see new work by filmmakers who’ve been fixtures at Full Frame and elsewhere in the doc world these last few years, including Laura Poitras (Flag Wars, My Country My Country and now THE OATH; Annie Sundberg & Ricki Stern (The Trials of Darryl Hunt, The Devil Came on Horseback and now JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK); Amir Bar-Lev (New Orleans Furlough, My Kid Could Paint That and now I’M PAT _______ TILLMAN); Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound and now LUCKY) and Davis Guggenheim (The First Year, It Might Get Loud, An Inconvenient Truth and now WAITING FOR SUPERMAN).
Let’s hope Full Frame can land most or all of these films next April.
And let’s hope to see MAIN STREET emerge somewhere. All is not lost for Sundance, by the way: The festival has yet to announce its out-of-competition special premieres. These films tend to star-driven titles that already have distributors.
Film, Full Frame Amir Bar-Lev, Annie Sundberg, Colin Firth, Davis Guggenheim, documentaries, Ellen Burstyn, Full Frame, Horton Foote, Jeffrey Blitz, Laura Poitras, Main Street, Orlando Bloom, Patricia Clarkson, Ricki Stern, Sundance
David Fellerath ·
23 Nov 2009, 10:08 PM ·
1 Comment
Remember all those Colin Firth and Orlando Bloom sightings last summer? Well, the movie they were shooting, Main Street, just made a stop at one of the stations of the indie-film cross by being screened at the American Film Market earlier this month. The AFM is an international film bazaar in which hopeful producers show off their finished (or unfinished) films; this year, more than 8,000 buyers from around the world viewed approximately 500 films. Most films at AFM will never see the light of day, but others could become the next Paranormal Activity or Clerks or — well, it’s hard to put a finger on what niche Main Street would occupy. Lil’ Abner meets The Trip to Bountiful?
It’s safe to assume that Main Street won’t be the next Reservoir Dogs or Sex, Lies and Videotape…, but as potentially the last new film made from a Horton Foote screenplay, it will definitely merit attention from film festival programmers. And if it’s good, well then it could end up in theaters.
The big announcement to wait for is from Park City, home of the Sundance Film Festival. If Sundance holds to its past form, we should know the first week of December if Main Street will play the festival (it’s entirely possible, if unlikely, that the film’s producers didn’t submit it for consideration). In fact, given the cast and the late screenwriter, who recently was the subject of a New Yorker appreciation as well as a biography by Wilborn Hampton, one would have to think that this film would have an edge on the thousands of films with minimal budgets and no-name actors that are submitted every year.
If Main Street turns up in Park City, that would give Durhamites a lot to be excited about in late January. If it doesn’t play Sundance, it could mean a number of things besides “the film wasn’t good and it was rejected,” although it could mean that, too. We’ll just have to see.
We found this poster on the Internets. It’s not, to be charitable, the most original design. In fact, some people might call it cheesy. However, it’s worth remembering the particular function of a poster used at AFM, as this evidently was. The important thing is to let potential buyers know who’s in your film and a rough idea of the genre (Driving Miss Daisy meets Pride and Prejudice meets The Lord of the Rings meets Baby the Rain Must Fall?). Click the link to see an alternate poster being used on the Web site of Myriad Pictures, the film’s producer.
Film American Film Market, Colin Firth, Horton Foote, Main Street, Orlando Bloom
David Fellerath ·
24 Oct 2009, 12:42 PM ·
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Wendell Pierce (right), best known as "Bunk" on The Wire, played Vladimir in the original cast of the Harlem Classical Theatre production of Waiting for Godot. J. Kyle Manzay (left) reprises his role as Estragon this weekend at Duke.
Indy freelancer Sam Wardle attended opening night of The Classical Theatre of Harlem’s production of Waiting for Godot. Here’s his report.
Waiting for Godot
Performed by The Classical Theatre of Harlem
Duke Campus: Reynolds Industries Theater
Friday, Oct 23
“Why people have to complicate a thing so simple, I can’t make out,” playwright Samuel Beckett quipped more than 50 years ago about his masterpiece, Waiting for Godot. Oddly enough, I was left wondering, after watching the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s retelling of the play as a Hurricane Katrina morality tale, if this new interpretation didn’t go too far in the other direction.
While critics and viewers have spent the six decades since Waiting for Godot premiered wondering who symbolized what, and why, this retelling leaves little-almost too little-to the imagination. What was once a surreal work about, well, God knows what, the Harlem reimagining places the play’s six characters within parameters we can all understand, or at least recognize: The two tramps are Hurricane Katrina refugees in a wasted section of the Ninth Ward. Pozzo is a white slave owner, a throwback to New Orleans’ pre-Civil War days as a center of the slave trade, and Lucky, his slave, is, well, a slave. Godot is the federal government, coming too late-or not at all-to the city that it so badly failed, and Godot’s nameless spokesboy is the media, or the White House public relations machine, or whatever polite arm of society it is that the master refrains from whipping. Or maybe Pozzo and Godot are one, two sides of the same frivolous, oppressive coin.
Indeed, if there’s any doubt as to the thrust of this particular Beckett renaissance, the Classical Theatre of Harlem premiered this production to massive crowds in Gentilly and the Ninth Ward. It’s a tremendous and inspiring example of sheer, almost inaccessible art finding voice in a current event, but it’s not necessarily true to the original. Continue reading »
Duke Performances, Reynolds Industries Theater, Theater Classical Theatre of Harlem, Hurricane Katrina, J. Kyle Manzay, Kanye West, Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, Wendell Pierce
David Fellerath ·
20 Oct 2009, 12:33 PM ·
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Reviewed by Nathan Gelgud
From the first scenes of protagonist Max starting a snowball fight, Spike Jonze’s spotty but exciting Where the Wild Things Are spends a lot of time crashing and bashing, and that’s when it is marvelous. Tellingly, the best scenes are mostly dialogue-free. But the script gets in the way much too often, throwing off what is exciting and engrossing about the film.
Continue reading »
Film
David Fellerath ·
17 Oct 2009, 8:19 AM ·
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From Indy contributor Rebekah L. Cowell:
Listen up high rollers, times are a-changin’ in Chatham County. The County’s no longer dry and word has it the casino’s coming to town. Tonight, Bynum Front Porch hosts its second annual casino night, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Now before the righteous citizens of Pittsboro decide it’s time for an ole timey revival, remember that gambling funds go to help the county’s kids. All money raised will fund scholarships and programming for two nonprofit community organizations, the Bynum Front Porch,and Chatham Arts Council.
Last year’s funds helped send two local young people to college, says John Winecker, event organizer and Chatham County schoolteacher.
Continue reading »
Fundraisers, Spectacle Bynum Front Porch, casino night, Chatham Arts Council
