Category: Newsletters

(Note from Sean: This could my favorite film of 2011. Definitely my favorite from IFFBoston 2011.)

Beloved by children of all ages around the world, Elmo is an international icon. Few people, however, know the man behind the Muppet. In this entertaining and inspiring documentary, filmmaker Constance Marks introduces us to that man.

Kevin Clash grew up dreaming of one day working with his idol, master puppeteer Jim Henson. He began building puppets at the age of 10 and performed on Baltimore television as a teenager. Displaying incredible creativity and talent at a young age, Clash eventually attracted the attention of Muppet designer Kermit Love who introduced him to Henson and helped him find a home on Sesame Street.

This moving documentary, rich in rare archival footage and interviews, follows Clash from his early days in Baltimore to his current role voicing and performing one of the most famous puppets in the world, and along the way offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the world of the Muppets.

“Six years after their Guantanamo Bay adventure, stoner buds Harold Lee and Kumar Patel cause a holiday fracas by inadvertently burning down Harold’s father-in-law’s prize Christmas tree.”

In 2006, thousands of new electric cars were purposely destroyed by the same car companies that built them. Today, less than 5 years later, the electric car is back… with a vengeance. In Revenge of the Electric Car, director Chris Paine (Who Killed the Electric Car?) takes his film crew behind the closed doors of Nissan, GM, and the Silicon Valley start-up Tesla Motors to chronicle the story of the global resurgence of electric cars. Without using a single drop of foreign oil, this new generation of car is America’s future: fast, furious, and cleaner than ever. With almost every major car maker now jumping to produce new electric models, Revenge follows the race to be the first, the best, and to win the hearts and minds of the public around the world. It’s not just the next generation of green cars that’s on the line. It’s the future of the automobile itself. Featuring CEO and President of Renault and Nissan Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Tesla Motors Elon Musk, Former Vice Chairman of GM Bob Lutz and EV do-it-yourselfer Greg “Gadget” Abbott. Narrated by Tim Robbins.

Note: This film is a $15 ticket with a live soundtrack, if you are interested in attending you should certainly buy tickets early!

An amazingly macabre film even by Brownings standards, THE UNKNOWN features the great Lon Chaney as Alanzo, an apparently armless circus knife-thrower, and Joan Crawford as his beautiful assistant, and the object of his obsession. Featuring a live score performed by Bostons own CIRKESTRA, a globe-trotting circus music band.

“Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself.”

Sergeant Gerry Boyle is a small-town Irish cop with a confrontational personality, a subversive sense of humor, a dying mother, a fondness for prostitutes, and absolutely no interest whatsoever in the international cocaine-smuggling ring that has brought straight-laced FBI agent Wendell Everett to his door.

As Ohios Democratic primary nears, charming Gov. Mike Morris (George Clooney) seems a shoo-in to win the nomination over his opponent, Sen. Pullman (Michael Mantell) . Morris idealistic press secretary, Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) believes in his candidates integrity and the democratic process. But, Meyers meeting with Pullmans campaign manager (Paul Giamatti) and a dalliance with a young intern (Evan Rachel Wood) set in motion a chain of events that threaten Morris election chances.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in this heartfelt comedy drama about a young man’s struggle with discovering that he has cancer in this Mandate Pictures production. Will Reiser provides the script, based on his own experience, with The Daily Show’s Evan Goldberg and Ben Karlin handling producing duties. Seth Rogen co-stars, along with Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston, and Philip Baker Hall.

Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), general manager of the Oakland A’s, one day has an epiphany: Baseball’s conventional wisdom is all wrong. Faced with a tight budget, Beane must reinvent his team by outsmarting the richer ball clubs. Joining forces with Ivy League graduate Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), Beane prepares to challenge old-school traditions. He recruits bargain-bin players whom the scouts have labeled as flawed, but have game-winning potential. Based on the book by Michael Lewis.

The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. From acclaimed director Steve James and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, this film is an unusually intimate journey into the stubborn, persistence of violence in our cities. Shot over the course of a year out of Kartemquin Films, The Interrupters captures a period in Chicago when it became a national symbol for the violence in our cities. During that period, the city was besieged by high-profile incidents, most notably the brutal beating of Derrion Albert, a Chicago High School student, whose death was caught on videotape. The film’s main subjects work for an innovative organization, CeaseFire, which believes that the spread of violence mimics the spread of infectious diseases, and so the treatment should be similar: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source. The singular mission of the “Violence Interrupters” – who have credibility on the streets because of their own personal histories — is to intervene in conflicts before they explode into violence. In The Interrupters, Ameena Matthews, whose father is Jeff Fort, one of the city’s most notorious gang leaders, was herself a drug ring enforcer. But having children and finding solace in her Muslim faith pulled her off the streets and grounded her. In the wake of Derrion Albert’s death, Ameena becomes a close confidante to his mother, and helps her through her grieving. Ameena, who is known among her colleagues for her fearlessness, befriends a feisty teenaged girl who reminds her of herself at that age. The film follows that friendship over the course of many months, as Ameena tries to nudge the troubled girl in the right direction. Cobe Williams, scarred by his father’s murder, was in and out of prison, until he had had enough. His family – particularly a young son – helped him find his footing. Cobe disarms others with his humor and his general good nature. His most challenging moment comes when he has to confront a man so bent on revenge that Cobe has to pat him down to make sure he’s put away his gun. Like Ameena, he gets deeply involved in the lives of those he encounters, including a teenaged boy just out of prison and a young man from his old neighborhood who’s squatting in a foreclosed home. Eddie Bocanegra is haunted by a murder he committed when he was seventeen. His CeaseFire work is a part of his repentance for what he did. Eddie is most deeply disturbed by the aftereffects of the violence on children, and so he spends much of his time working with younger kids in an effort to both keep them off the streets and to get support to those who need it – including a 16-year-old girl whose brother died in her arms. Soulful and empathic, Eddie, who learned to paint in prison, teaches art to children, trying to warn them of the debilitating trauma experienced by those touched by the violence. The Interrupters follows Ameena, Cobe and Eddie as they go about their work, and while doing so reveals their own inspired journeys of hope and redemption. The film attempts to make sense of what CeaseFire’s Tio Hardiman calls, simply, “the madness”.