The 9th Annual Independent Film Festival of Boston (IFFBoston) is scheduled to run from April 27- May 4 at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, and the Stuart Street Playhouse in downtown Boston. A total of 110 film screenings and other events are pleased.
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Results tagged “iffboston”
With the Independent Film Festival in full swing, Bostonist is taking full advantage of the 90-plus movies on tap this week, and all just to let you know what to give a "yay," "nay," or "I never want to hear of this movie again." Thankfully, this year's festival has proven to be a solid collection of flicks, though unfortunately they're not all winners. Here's a sampling of what Bostonist saw last night.
Ondi Timoner's We Live In Public is bound to be this century's The Power Broker. While Robert Caro's extensive look at how bureaucrat Robert Moses single handedly restructured the population of Manhattan as a city planner, Timoner's 90-minute documentary about dot-com kid Josh Harris paints Harris as a venerable Nostradamus of the Internet age, a man who predicted the popularity of social networking and lived out its highs and lows years before Facebook was dreamed up at Harvard. The Power Broker became a bestseller, won Caro the Pulitzer Prize, and made a household name out of Moses; We Live In Public won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance this year, will no doubt win over legions of filmgoers, and may just place Harris in the limelight.
With the Independent Film Festival in full swing, Bostonist is taking full advantage of the 90-plus movies on tap this week, and all just to let you know what to give a "yay," "nay," or "I never want to hear of this movie again." Thankfully, this year's festival has proven to be a solid collection of flicks, though unfortunately they're not all winners. Here's a sampling of what Bostonist saw last night.
The best documentaries aren't necessarily the ones that provide you with book-smarts on any given subject, but the kind that make you actually care about a subject that you normally couldn't be bothered about. It just so it happens that Best Worst Movie fits that description to a "t," and it's a film that will appeal to more than the hardcore fans of the cult movie that the documentary is based on. For most casual movie-goers, cult movies like Troll 2 are a dime a dozen, finding the right audiences, fame, and adoration decades after their initial, pitiful releases.
Think techno is just mindless noise for rich European teenagers strung out on E with nothing to do at 3 am? Think techno cuts deep to the amygdala and triggers the emotions that make everyone human? Think techno is a brand new trend - like "the internets" and "the Facebook" - that all the kids dig, but you just don't get? Think techno is something Bostonist made up just a few short seconds ago? Well, does IFFBoston have the documentary for you.
Step aside, Twilight: vampires aren't the only monsters with pangs of high school longing written all over them. Once Make-Out With Violence screens at IFFBoston on Friday, zombies will no longer be left in the corner. Traversing the tough territory of juxtaposing human emotion and unfulfilled romance with the, um, "realities" of an archetype straight out of a George A. Romero flick seems like an overwhelming task. But the Deagol Brothers, an informal group of friends working under a pseudonym inspired by the first hobbit slain by infamous Lord of the Rings' character Smeagol, were up to the challenge. After four years of start-and-stop work on the film and at a large personal monetary cost, Make-Out With Violence has finally been hitting the festival circuit with quite a response.
2005 was a great year for Meta Film Noir (if such a genre exists). Shane Black's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang injected new vitality into the detective story with its use of humor and not-so-subtle breakdowns of the sexual roles found in the classic films of the thirties and forties. Noir always had rich parts for women, be they femme fatales or expanded damsels in distress, but the sexual potency of the protagonist was rarely questioned.
Relationship films are a dime a dozen in Hollywood these days. After all, what's the best way to reach people then to make a movie about what most people in the world have experienced? So, it's the usually those movies with the right hint of innovation and sincerity that end up capturing the public's... er... heart.
For all that's been said about the music industry since Napster became part of the modern lexicon, very few words have been dedicated to the individuals at the bottom of the proverbial industry food chain: the mom and pop stores. Although they may be small fish to the big wigs of the major record companies, they certainly mean a lot to those "consumers" who the record industry CEOs are constantly trying to court. Brendan Toller is one of these individuals.
Sooo, imagine you have an invisible girlfriend. And imagine she's Joan of Arc. And she's also a bartender in the French Quarter. Kind of. Oh, and imagine you're biking 400 miles to New Orleans to see her. We imagine that sounds like the makings of an amazing story, right?
If you're ever feeling really sorry for yourself, like this Bostonist was last week (massive taxes! bureaucratic bullshit! getting rejected!), a movie about puppies may help put your life into perspective. And not just any puppies—Katrina puppies. Mine, which screens this weekend at the Independent Film Festival Boston, is a documentary about the process of attempting to reunite Katrina survivors with their pets, months and years after the storm. It covers the good—actual reunions!—the bad—pups that didn't make it through the storm—and the very ugly process of pulling pets from new adoptive homes to be returned to their old owners in New Orleans. It's a heartwrenching topic, beautifully covered by director Geralyn Pezanoski in this SXSW 2009 Audience Award Winner for Best Documentary.
Ever heard Eddie Vedder sing Neil Diamond? That alone is reason to check out Song Sung Blue, an alternately hilarious and heartwrenching documentary that screened at IFF Boston. The movie follows the ups and downs of a husband-and-wife Neil Diamond cover band called Lightning and Thunder. Vedder joined the "America's Singing Sweethearts" on stage at Milwaukee's Summerfest in 1995 for a rousing rendition of "Forever In Blue Jeans," a Diamond classic that Vedder needed a cheat sheet to sing. The performance was certainly a highlight of Lightning and Thunder's career, but there's much more to the duo than their on-stage personas. Song Sung Blue traces the pair's dramatic tale from the duo's beginning to the present, infusing the experience with plenty of Diamond tunes and some flashes back to the past.
It officially kicked off yesterday, but the majority of Independent Film Festival Boston starts unreeling tonight. If the festival's coverage in the Globe is any gauge of the way moviegoers choose their movies, it is clear that most people want their movies to match their lifestyle preferences. IFFBoston, with its long list of films and many venues, leaves these kinds of category distinctions to the hapless fan. Bostonist attempts to do the work for you.
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