What’s Up at the 2007 Philadelphia Film Festival? (Week Two)
The 2007 Philadelphia Film Festival is half over, but there’s still plenty to see in the upcoming week, including a rare screening of Jayne Mansfield’s best dramatic role, Julie Christie in a role that could cop her an Oscar next year, Parker Posey as a love-starved Manhattanite, a highly praised biopic about Edith Piaf, and stag films from the first half of last century!
As its website proclaims, "Our 16th edition features an expanded selection of American Discoveries and the Documentary Tradition, the return of the Language of Comedy and International Masters, and a complete showcase of Centerpiece Screenings, Animation, Festival of Independents, World Focus, Suitable for Families, Cinema of the Muslim World, Spanish and Latin American Cinema Now, and Danger After Dark, with a new focus on the Asian Gangster realm.
"Special programs, world premieres, parties, events, award honorees, added features, and more - the Philadelphia Film Festival is back, bigger and better than ever before."
Here’s EDGE’s survey of some titles not-to-be-missed over the next week. The list is in alphabetical order. For a complete list of screenings and events, visit the Festival’s website.
Away From Her
Julie Christie stars in actress Sarah Polley’s directorial debut - a touching drama about the strain of Alzheimer’s disease on an elderly couple’s marriage. Written by novelist Alice Munroe and featuring Canadian vet Gordon Pinsent. "The film," when reviewed last year in the Hollywood Reporter, "will strike a chord with older viewers and should benefit from strong word-of-mouth. And (according to the festival program) is "already destined for the 2008 Oscar race, Away From Her is a tiny epic of love, devotion and last wishes. But be prepared -- by the end of the night there won’t be a dry eye in the house."
Fri, Apr 13, 9:30 PM, Ritz 5; Sun, Apr 15, 4:45 PM, Ritz 5
Broken English
Indie queen Parker Posey stars in writer/director Zoe Cassavetes’ comedy about a love-starved New Yorker who can’t find the man of her dreams. Featuring Gena Rowlands (Cassavetes mom; her dad is the late director/writer/actor John Cassavetes) and Drea de Matteo (The Sopranos). "A pitch-perfect lead performance by Parker Posey and debuting feature writer-helmer Zoe Cassavetes’ deft, low-key approach raise "Broken English" a couple notches above the usual run of lonely-single-woman-seeking-romance-in-the-big-city yarns," wrote the critic in Variety. "Cassavetes (daughter of Rowlands and the late John) has crafted a screenplay that nicely balances seriousness and wit, negotiating familiar territory with enough alert intelligence to avoid excess deja vu. As a director, she seems mostly focused on the very good performances, which are often funny but more subtle than the norm for this terrain."
Saturday, April 14, 9:30 PM, Ritz Five; Sunday, April 15, 12:15 PM, Ritz East Theatre.
The Burglar
Shortly before she became an international sex siren, Jayne Mansfield starred in this low-budget film noir about the robbery of a coveted emerald necklace from a Main Line mansion. In the thriller - directed by Paul Wendkos - Mansfield (a Bryn Mawr native) is joined by Dan Duryea as the leader of group of jewel thieves who set their sights on the necklace owned by a Philadelphia spiritualist. Tensions build amongst the thieves after the heist, as well as the involvement of a pair of less-than-honorable cops lead to a chase in an amusement park highly reminiscent of Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai. "Adapted from his own story by David Goodis (writer of Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player and Jacques Tourneur’s Nightfall), this offbeat crime yarn was produced by Louis W. Kellman ("Diver Dan") and stylishly directed by Paul Wendkos (The Mephisto Waltz) in a flamboyant cinematic style reminiscent of Orson Welles at his most extravagant. Other highlights include appearances by local news legend John Facenda and the diving horse at the Steel Pier. We are proud to reintroduce this film in a pristine new 35mm print. Local author "Movie" Irv Slifkin will talk about the film and sign copies of his latest book "Filmadelphia: A Celebration of a City’s Movies" (Middle Atlantic Press), which features The Burglar and over 100 other films made in and around our area," writes George Stewart in the festival’s program.
Friday, April 13, 7:00 PM, Ritz Five
In the Shadow of the Moon
When John F. Kennedy challenged the American people that a trip to the moon was possible by the end of the 1960s, he sparked one of the greatest adventures in the history of science. The story of how astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin were sent to walk on the moon to in July, 1969 is the subject of director David Sington’s documentary. He was given access to a treasure trove of unseen NASA film clips and other curiosities of the era in the making of the film. "The excitement, majesty and extraordinary human accomplishment of the American lunar program of the ’60s and early ’70s is rousingly captured in "In the Shadow of the Moon." Deftly mixing a treasure trove of archival footage with engaging commentaries of surviving astronauts from all nine Apollo moonshots, this British production will bring it all back for those with first-hand memories of the time, while providing a stimulating primer for younger generations," wrote Variety in reviewing the film at the Berlin Film Festival. Sunday, April 15, 7:15 PM, Prince Music Theater; Monday, April 16, 5:00 PM, Prince Music Theater
Judy Toll: The Funniest Woman You’ve Never Heard Of
Comedian Judy Toll was on the cusp of major success - the Philadelphia native had gone from local comedy clubs to success in Los Angeles in the early 1980s, where she became a member of the legendary improv troupe The Groundlings. With her partner Judy Gold, she created the stage play Casual Sex, and found work on such HBO series as Sex and the City and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Then she was diagnosed with cancer. "Regardless," reads the Festival program, "Judy Toll was not going to let showbiz pass her by, and she continued to headline for years to come, mining her own frustrations and trials for material and influencing many of today’s top talents. Filmmaker and brother Gary Toll avoids the potential sentimentality of this tragic story, focusing instead on Judy’s many accomplishments as a comedian and a woman, not the least of which was her legacy of lasting friendships which this film lovingly illustrates."
Friday, April 13, 7:00 PM, International House; Sunday, April 15, 2:15 PM, National Constitution Center
The Living and the Dead
Director Simon Rumley’s gothic horror story is set in a crumbling estate in the British countryside where James, a schizophrenic young man, tends his terminally ill mother with the help of a nurse at the instructions of his absent father. "Unfortunately," writes Travis Crawford in the Festival program, "James begins experimenting with his psychoactive medication and sinks into a hellish world of hallucination and paranoia, barring the nurse from the mansion and submitting his helpless mother to his madness. Rumley deftly utilizes the decaying rural manor as an effectively labyrinthine visual metaphor for James’ crumbling psychological state, and Living and the Dead becomes a poignant and powerful portrait of insanity and humanity." And the critic for the website DreadCentral.com wrote: "Tension continues to mount throughout the film, culminating in an almost unbearably tragic climax. The film is filled with the types of mundane, believable horrors that affect an audience in ways no regular horror movie could hope to achieve. The Living and the Dead plays almost like a straight version of Cronenberg, given the film’s preoccupation with body revolt and the rebellion of one’s own mind. Unfortunately, Cronenberg himself already tried something similar with Spider, a film abandoned by both genre fans and snobbish critics alike. Here’s hoping Rumley’s film isn’t left to wither on the festival circuit vine; this powerful movie deserves to be seen."
Thursday, April 12, 9:45 PM, Ritz East Theater 1; Sunday, April 15, 5:00 PM, The Bridge
The Memory Thief
Mark Webber, this year’s Festival honoree, gives an intense performance in this remarkable first feature from director Gl Kofman. In the film Webber plays Lukas, an aimless young man living in Los Angeles where he works as a toll booth operator who spends his free time voyeuristically spying on traffic at the toll plaza. When one day a passenger tosses him a copy of Mein Kampf, he begins to read it; that is until he’s berated by a Holocaust survivor who sees him reading it. From then on he begins to recreate himself in the image of a survivor. "Along the way," Eric Moore writes in the Festival program,"he befriends a young Jewish woman, Mira (Rachel Miner), whose father (Jerry Adler) is himself a survivor. Adler offers up a fantastic performance as Mr. Zweig, a man who has buried his past and is vociferously opposed to reopening it. Kofman unwinds this unsettling narrative with an adept hand, dotting the film with refreshing wisps of humor in the midst of his lead character’s gradual descent into psychosis."
Saturday, April 14, 9:30 PM, Prince Music Theater; Sunday, April 15 PM, 12:15, Prince Music Theater
The Secret Cinema Presents Stag Movie Night: Vintage Porno From The 1920s, 30s and 40s
Those who think that porn was born in the 1960s will likely be pleasantly surprised (or shocked) by this collection of classic stag
Snowcake
In this offbeat, intriguing drama, Alan Rickman plays a Britisher driving across Canada who becomes stranded and alone in a remote town after a shocking accident. There he confronts his past while dealing with his new present, which includes relationships with two women - Linda, played by Sigourney Weaver, an eccentric and extremely detached woman who Alex learns is high-functioning autistic; and his neighbor (Carrie-Anne Moss,) a divorcee whom he gets romatically involved. "Evans shifts intriguingly from his usual thriller genre, directing with a sensitive touch and few flourishes," reads the film’s description in the Festival program. "He focuses on the characters and their environments, letting us see right into them as they reveal their secrets. Angela Pell’s script is a marvellously complex examination of people who are either unable or unwilling to explain or justify who they are. As it focuses in on its central message about accepting people totally, it carries real weight, both emotionally and thematically. Rickman is astounding, giving Alex a sharp wit and an amazingly textured inner life, which we see within his eyes and his tiny reactions to the people around him. ... The supporting cast are also delicate and expressive; Moss has a brittle strength that comes through strongly, while Rennie barely says a word but conveys his truck driver’s troubled soul brilliantly. Weaver is more troublesome in the trickiest role. There are moments when she takes our breath away with a flash of raw transparency. There are moments of sheer genius and the film has a final kick that’s both important and deeply stirring."
Thursday, April 12, 9:30 PM, Ritz East Theater 2; Saturday, April 14, 12:15 PM, Ritz Five
Them
Clementine, a teacher at a French school in Bucharest, and Lucas, a novelist, live a quiet life in a large house tucked away in the woods. Their complacent life, though, is interrupted when they are menaced by an unknown force in directors David Moreau and Xavier Palud’s claustrophobic thriller. The directors "trap the viewer in the home with the two vulnerable protagonists as the assault begins and doesn’t let up until the film’s shocking coda," writes Joseph A. Gervasi in the Festival program. "Eschewing the protracted scenes of torture and gore that have become commonplace in contemporary genre cinema, Them instead firmly places the viewer in an endless game of cat-and-mouse where every shadow hides a spectral form and each window reveals a grasping hand. In this relentlessly paced film, there are no locked doors to hide behind and no easy answers to be found when the predators are revealed. You won’t believe what they’ll do to amuse themselves." (French, Romanian with English subtitles)
Saturday, April 14, 10:00 PM, The Bridge; Sunday, April 15, 9:30 PM, Ritz Five; Thursday, April 19, 8:30 PM, County Theater
2 Minutes Later
When an abrasive Philadelphia photographer turns up missing, it is up to his twin brother and a lesbian detective to track him down. That’s the premise to Robert Gaston’s locally made noirish comedy/thriller. "It begins literally with a bang," writes Lawrence Ferber in the Festival program, "as handsome photographer Michael (Michael Molina) is being chased through dark rural woods by a determined, gun-toting stranger. One of the bullets hits its mark and...flash forward two weeks later as Kyle, Michael’s twin brother, arrives in town to get to the bottom of his brother’s recent disappearance. And he quickly finds, when mistaken for his brother, that his brother was a far from liked figure. Enter Abigail (Jessica Graham), a private investigator who already knows a thing or two about Michael: he’s a jerk. And may have been murdered. As the pair investigate Michael’s recent goings-on and rather lurid, Mapplethorpe-ian work -- "I need a shower," Abigail quips after sifting through his portfolio -- it’s clear that motive is in no short supply. Many local men have been humiliated, disgraced and angered during Michael’s abusive photo sessions and many personal relations. But when that determined stranger with the gun believes "Michael" is alive and well, he sets his sights on Abigail and Kyle. Director Gaston adds decidedly modern twists to the hard-boiled film noir template -- openly queer protagonists, tartly contemporary dialogue, full-frontal nudity and intense eroticism -- while delivering taut action and memorable performances. Think a queer The Thin Man as the witty repartee flies between the sassy and sultry Graham and the hunky Molina. All that’s missing are a few stiff drinks -- that’s on you."
Friday, April 13, 7:15 PM, Prince Music Theater; Sunday, April 15, 2:30 PM, Prince Music Theater
La Vie En Rose
The opening night attraction at this year’s Berlin Film Festival was this epic portrait of the legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf that has gone on to become a sensation in Europe. "...there has never been a woman quite like Edith Piaf," writes Michael Lerman in the Festival program. "Decisive, demanding and determined until the day she died, "The Sparrow" made fiercely personal songs about her harrowing life that have gone down in history as some of the most powerful of their kind. Her legacy is one to be championed, which is exactly what director Olivier Dahan does in this extremely bold picture. Rising up from a poverty-stricken life of slums and whore-houses, Piaf got her break when she was discovered on the street by nightclub owner Louis Leplée, here played by an incredibly endearing Gérard Depardieu. She quickly made her way to stardom, accruing a long list of celebrity friends and a notoriously extravagant lifestyle until her body gave way to cancer. It was the final of a painful battery of illnesses that included blinding conjunctivitis and deafening androgenetic alopecia (both of which she recovered from). Along the way she recorded several hits ... but also lost loved ones and suffered from severe drug and alcohol addiction. Marion Cotillard shines in her portrayal of Piaf in one of the greatest performances of the year. Dahan, wanting to break from the traditional bio-pic arc of depicting a subject’s successful period followed by their downfall, tells the story non-chronologically so that each down note is softened by bits of triumph. The result is a powerful climax that will soar into your heart." (French with English subtitles)
Thursday, April 12, 7:00 PM, Prince Music Theater; Friday, April 13, 2:15 PM, Ritz East Theater 1
Waitress
There’s a bittersweet back story to writer/director Adrienne Shelly’s comedy/drama. After completing the film late last year, she was murdered in her New York apartment, cutting short her promising career. The film went on to become the must see film at this past year’s Sundance Film Festival. It stars TV’s Felicity - Keri Russell, as a pie maker and waitress who must come to terms with her unexpected pregnancy in a Southern town. "All Jenna wanted was a simple life," writes Michael Lerman in the Festival program. "In order to free her mind from the trauma of her abusive husband, Earl (the talented Jeremy Sisto), she spends her days inventing new pies, dreaming of escaping to a better life. Every day she saves a little money from her tips, planning to take a bus far away from the small Southern town in which she resides. That is until Earl gets her drunk one night, and she falls off the celibacy wagon and finds herself pregnant. Unsure of what to do, she turns to Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion), a handsome gynecologist, for advice about what to do while trying to keep the baby a secret from the controlling Earl. But when a romance blossoms between her and the married Dr. Pomatter, Jenna’s life begins to spiral out of control. The recently deceased Shelly, who was tragically murdered in her apartment just after the film’s shooting finished, is best known for having graced the independent cinema scene with her acting talent for nearly twenty years. With Waitress, she has created a perfect finale to her career. The film is as visually stunning as it is well-written, and it imbues the characters with a luminous glow, magical to the eye, while cutting through the cookie-cutter charm of the small town with sharp wit and sophistication. Full of knockout performances that include Shelly herself, Cheryl Hines as Jenna’s endearingly gabby coworkers and Andy Griffith, who has just become more talented with age, the film is sweet, heartfelt, intelligent and above all, fun."
Closing Night Combo: Wednesday, April 18, 7:30 PM, Prince Music Theater
You Are Here
The after-hours night life of club kids is explored in Henry Pincus’s kinetic new drama. "A cast of attractive young faces (and physiques) that features Bijou Phillips, Adam Campbell, Katie Cassidy and Patrick Flueger anchors this riff on Go about a bickering group of friends that collides with a lecherous crime kingpin scouting the dance floor for college-age sexual conquests during one night of partying," writes Jared Earley in the Festival program. "Navigating a complicated nightlife labyrinth of casual misunderstandings and club culture conflicts that include a love triangle, a drug overdose, a dirty debt and a possible murder, You Are Here takes a breezy and engaging romp through the hottest of nights with the coolest of characters, all the while maintaining a quick, observant and humorous multi-layered point-of-view. Combining an irresistible blend of clever camera moves, loaded dialogue and a driving soundtrack of edgy club cuts, it’s an involving whirlwind of an evening that one character understatedly sums up: "Young, cool, careless, care-free... This is life, and here we go again!"
Thursday, April 12, 7:00 PM, The Bridge; Saturday, April 14, 2:30 PM, Prince Music Theater
Rising Star Award: Mark Webber
"Move over Rocky: Mark Webber’s unlikely rise to become one of film’s hottest acting talents is Philadelphia’s newest rags-to-riches tale." Writes Raymond Murray in the Festival program.. "In a story which could not have been scripted, young Mark Webber has overcome amazing odds in his drive to become a successful actor.
Born in 1980 in Minneapolis, he and his single mother, Cheri Honkala, moved to Philadelphia when Mark was 10 years old. Poverty-stricken, the two were homeless, living in abandoned buildings and even a car in North Philadelphia and Kensington. But things changed: Cheri became the founder and director of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and a well-known homeless advocate, while young Mark (when not with his mother at protest rallies) attended Philadelphia’s High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. Mark has credited his mother’s inspiration and drive to the achievement of his own dreams.
He received his big break when he was cast in Eugene Martin’s Philadelphia-set Edge City, and in the nine years since his debut Mark has appeared in 23 films. His breakout starring role was in the popular comedy Snow Day, in which Mark starred as a love-struck teen skier. This sort of success may have led him into more pop movies, but instead, he has gone a more determinedly independent route, one that has seen him work with such indie directors as Steve Buscemi, Todd Solondz, Ethan Hawke, Woody Allen, Thomas Vinterberg and Jim Jarmusch. His boyish good looks, coupled with a simmering intensity, have allowed him to act in light comedies as well as in dramas. His most recent role - and possibly his best performance so far - is as a hard-working and hard-pressed young man stuck in a small, football-crazed Nebraska town in The Good Life, which should hit cinemas later this year. Mark also has been active on the stage, most recently in the role of Bobby in David Mamet’s American Buffalo, staged in London and New York. He has even co-produced his first film - Weapons- which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this January.
An atypical young Hollywood actor with an atypical background, Mark’s acting career is moving at a breakneck pace, yet this has not stopped him from continuing to be an outspoken advocate for homeless people, still attending marches with his mother on behalf of the disadvantaged.
Mark Webber’s true life story is inspirational and, coupled with his roles so far, one expects to hear and see at lot of the young man for years to come."
Saturday, April 14 • 9:30 PM• Prince Music Theater
