Movie Intelligence
Following are the films currently showing in our region, listed in order of their Metacritic score.* For a synopsis of the film and excerpts from the reviews that led to the score, click on the Metascore next to the film title. For show times, click on the theater name in the Movie Theaters directory at right.
Metascore/film title/(theaters)
94 The Hurt Locker (Bantam, Spectrum, Upstate)
85 An Education (Spectrum)
84 Avatar (Beacon)
83 Crazy Heart (Fairview, Images, Lyceum, Spectrum)
82 Ajami (TSL)
82 The White Ribbon (Spectrum, Upstate)
77 A Single Man (Spectrum)
77 The Ghost Writer (Beacon, Moviehouse, Spectrum, Triplex)
76 Every Little Step (Norfolk Library)
76 The Last Station (Spectrum)
75 Repo Man (Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Regal Berkshire)
70 Sweetgrass (TSL)
69 The Bad Lieutenant (Bantam, Spectrum)
64 The Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Cinerom, Fairview, Lyceum, Regal Berkshire, Triplex)
63 Shutter Island (Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Regal Berkshire, Spectrum)
61 The Green Zone (Beacon, Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Lyceum, Moviehouse, Regal Berkshire, Spectrum, Triplex)
57 Sherlock Holmes (Gilson)
55 The Crazies (Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex)
53 Alice in Wonderland (Beacon, Canaan Colonial, Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Lyceum, Moviehouse, Regal Berkshire, Triplex)
53 The Blind Side (Gilson, Lyceum)
49 New York, I Love You (Spectrum)
47 She’s Out of My League (Beacon, Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Lyceum, Regal Berkshire)
47 Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Regal Berkshire)
43 Remember Me (Cinerom, Hudson Movieplex, Regal Berkshire)
40 Brooklyn’s Finest (Hudson Movieplex, Regal Berkshire)
31 The Bounty Hunter (Cinerom, Fairview, Lyceum, Regal Berkshire, Spectrum)
31 Cop Out (Canaan Colonial)
*Metacritic is a site that weighs film reviews from dozens of sources, averaging the results to achieve a score—the closer to 100, the more positive the reviews.
Unscored
Cool Hand Luke (Mahaiwe)
The Eleanor Roosevelt Story (TSL)
Fraude (Mass MoCA)
Gigi (Clark)
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 03/18/10 at 10:06 AM • Permalink
A Farm Film Feast: Film, Food and Discussion
From the film "Sweetgrass"
The crusade to eat locally hits the big screen with such enticingly titled films as, Dirt! The Movie, Mad City Chickens, and What’s On Your Plate? This week and through the weekend, more than a dozen films about food will be screening at Images Theater in Williamstown, MA, followed by panel discussions. Among the topics: King Corn Rules!, Berkshire Stories, Fresh! An Overview, Eating Locally and Globally, and Farming in the Future. On Saturday evening, there will be a dinner break—an opportunity to sample some of locally-sourced restaurants, such as Mezze and Hobson’s Choice, that are within walking distance of the theater.
Farm Film Feast
Images Cinema, Williamstown
Film admission: all film pass/$35; individual films/$5
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 03/01/10 at 03:52 PM • Permalink
RI Selects: Beautiful Film, Ugly Predicament
Friday, February 26 @ 7 p.m
“We have a 10-15 year window to make some noise,” says Columbia County resident Sven Huseby. “I would love to see the term ‘ocean acidification’ become part of the political discourse.”
According to the documentary Huseby appears in and co-produced and that his wife Barbara Ettinger directed, A Sea Change: Imagine a World Without Fish, the familiar global warming horror story is actually even more horrific than we’ve been led to believe. For all we hear about melting icecaps and rising sea levels, until now, few of us have known of the disastrous consequences that carbon emissions have on ocean water’s chemistry and the impact that will ultimately have on marine life.
When this film debuted to an unprecedented SRO audience at the Smithsonian Institution, The Washington Post said that it, “looks terrific, with lots of breathtaking footage of the natural world, from the tiniest pteropod (the fluttery, planktonic sea snail that is most threatened by acidification) to the most majestic Norwegian scenery.” It also returns again and again to Huseby’s relationship with his grandson—a leitmotif that lends both a sense of scale and urgency to the filmmakers’ message.
A Sea Change follows the quest of Huseby, a retired history teacher, to discover what is happening to the world’s oceans. After reading Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Darkening Sea,” he travels to Alaska, California, Washington, and Norway to find out about the rising acidity of the oceans and what this “sea change” bodes for the world. He speaks with oceanographers, marine biologists, climatologists, and artists and discovers that excess carbon dioxide is dissolving in our oceans, changing sea water chemistry and making it difficult for tiny creatures at the bottom of the food web to form their shells. The effects could work their way up to the fish a billion people depend upon for their source of protein.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with Huseby and Ettinger.
A Sea Change: Imagine a World Without Fish Screening
Chatham Real Food Market Co-op
15 Church Street, Chatham, NY; 518.392.3353
Admission free; reservations essential.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 02/10/10 at 06:04 PM • Permalink
RI Selects: Nothing Silent About It
February 12 @ 7 p.m.
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Experience silent film as it was intended to be. A free screening of the 1922 comedy, Grandma’s Boy, starring Harold Lloyd, will be accompanied by live piano, vocal and percussion by Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton.
Harold Lloyd was the most successful silent comedian of the 20’s, eclipsing Chaplin’s and Keaton’s box office receipts. The film, a coming-of-age story with hapless Harold outwitting bullies and winning the girl of his dreams, is filled with gags courtesy of writer Hal Roach (Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy).
Donald Sosin was the resident pianist at MoMA for five years and currently plays for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and BAM, the Whitney Museum and at film seminars at Harvard, Yale and other campuses here and abroad. Joanna Seaton has sung with jazz great Dick Hyman at the 92nd St. YM-YWHA, and appeared in many Off-Broadway and regional theater productions. Learn more about their work at oldmoviemusic.com.
Geer Village
Hollenbeck Room
99 South Canaan Road (Route 7)
Canaan, CT
Admission: Free, no reservations required.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 02/01/10 at 02:42 PM • Permalink
“Keep Farming” Film Fest Deadline for Submisssions 2/15
The Chatham Agricultural Partnership, the Chatham Film Club, and the Columbia Land Conservancy once again present Farm Film Fest III, an afternoon of farming films to be presented on Sunday, March 7, from 1 - 4 p.m. at the Crandell Theatre in Chatham, NY. The organizers are now seeking short films about local farms or farm-related issues to screen. Films should be 5-20 minutes long and submitted in DVD format by February 15. For more information, go to the Keep Farming website.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 01/21/10 at 01:11 PM • Permalink
RI Selects: Meet “Secretariat”
Saturday, December 5 @ 1 p.m.
Of course, the real Secretariat died in 1989, but Harbor Mist, one of the horses that will portray the record-holding Triple Crown winner in a forthcoming Disney bio-pic, will be visiting the region this weekend on his way back to California. Harbor Mist will perform tricks, and Rex Peterson, one of Hollywood’s foremost horse trainers,will fill us in on some of the behind-the-scenes drama of making a film with horses.
In 1973, Secretariat, owned by Penny Chenery Tweedy (played by Diane Lane in the film, which is set for release next fall), was the first U.S. Triple Crown winner in twenty-five years. He set records in two of the events—the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes, that still stand today.
Windrock Farm
Amenia, NY
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/09/09 at 11:55 AM • Permalink
Williamstown Film Festival Tickets on Sale
Suitably enough, the highlight of the first weekend of the 11th Annual Williamstown Film Festival (October 23 - 25; second weekend, October 29 - November 1), will be dinner and a movie on Saturday night. The annual benefit dinner is being held this year at Mezze’s new catering facility in Williamstown. The film that follows, Against the Current,was written and directed by Peter Callahan who, in 2004, read an earlier version of the screenplay at the Williamtown Festival. His feature film screens at 8 p.m. at MASS MoCA’s Hunter Center in nearby North Adams.
Callahan, who grew up in the Hudson Valley and currently lives in Westchester County, has made a film that is likely to resonate with local audiences. The principal action takes place in a familiar setting seen from a curious point of view. During much of the film, the protagonist swims in the Hudson River, covering 150 miles between Troy and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. His reasons are only gradually revealed to both the audience and his companions in the escort boat. The swimmer, Paul Thompson (Joseph Fiennes), a financial writer, is struggling with a tragic loss. He decides to distinguish himself by doing something unique. What ensues is a physical journey and an emotional one that explores the psychological devastation that grief can wreak.
Among the other highlights in this year’s roster:
Beyond Greenaway: The Legacy, a sequel to Sarah Gilbert’s 1982 documentary, Greenaway, which examined her parents values and unusual lifestyle. One of six children, Gilbert grew up amidst great wealth on a private island in Long Island Sound near Greenwich, CT. Today she is approaching the age of her parents when the first film was made. In the sequal Gilbert and her siblings look back with sympathy and affection at their foibles, eccentricities, and paranoia (they firmly believed that a Communist takeover of the U.S. was imminent, and that they were in grave personal danger; back then, at the dawn of the Reagan Revolution!). Gilbert will be at the breakfast seminar preceding the film, as will Callahan and David Brind, who wrote the screenplay for Dare, another film being screened. Their topic: “Life into Art.”
Mart Crowley’s play The Boys in the Band opened the year before Stonewall and is believed to be the first theater piece to focus exclusively on the everyday lives of gay men. In his film Making the Boys, through interviews with Edward Albee, Robert Wagner, Larry Kramer, Dominick Dunne, Dan Savage, Michael Musto, Tony Kushner, Terrence McNally, Paul Rudnick, Carson Kressley, Michael Cunningham, and Marc Shainman, documentarian Crayton Robey explores the hostility gay people endured and their euphoria in the 60s and 70s as they emerged from the closet en masse. This screening will be preceded by a lunch seminar with the film director and part-time Columbia County resident James Ivory.
In an era when political news is entertainment 24/7, when “Joe the Plumber” can, in a matter of weeks, become a political commentator with a global reach, when a little-known Alaskan governor can be transformed overnight into a “world leader,” the media that enable all of this deserve closer scrutiny. In his documentary Poliwood, the esteemed feature film director Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog) explores the fusion of politics, celebrity, entertainment, and the people who decide what’s news.
When director Richard Shepard was a boy, his dad took him to see The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II. He was particularly taken by the character Fredo. “There was something about the sadness and loneliness and oddness of the guy.” Years later, Shepard decided to learn everything he could about John Cazale, the actor who played Fredo, but there was little information, except that he had appeared in just five movies—The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather: Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter—before dying of cancer at 42. “...five great movies that were nominated for Best Picture,” Shepard says. “If he were a baseball player, he’d be in the Hall of Fame. He was five for five.” So he set out to make a documentary. In the end, I Knew It Was You may be less about Cazale than about the colleagues he influenced—Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet, and Meryl Streep, to whom he was engaged at the time of his death.
One of the most popular components of the Williamstown Festival is the emphasis placed on short films, which are scattered throughout the schedule. A feature film in this year’s line-up, Dare, started as a well-received short.
Williamstown Film Festival Tickets
Weekend passes: $85 (weekend 1) & $120 (weekend 2)
All festival pass: $205
Benefit dinner and film: $100 (not covered by passes)
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 10/06/09 at 01:10 PM • Permalink
FilmColumbia Celebrates its 10th Year
"The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus", starring the late Heath Ledger
The four-day movie marathon known as FilmColumbia, which was founded in 1999, comes to the village of Chatham from October 22 - 25. A star-studded lineup of more than 30 international screenings, plus panel discussions, script readings, parties, and more, the festival “has something for everyone,” according to Peter Biskind, executive director and co-programmer with Larry Kardish, of FilmColumbia. This year, he adds, “We have more comedies than before—our sneak preview for Saturday night has created a lot of buzz in the industry.” With their career connections to the film industry, Columbia County residents Biskind, a Vanity Fair writer and author of many books on film, and Kardish, a filmmaker, curate the selection of new works each year from filmmakers around the world, making FilmColumbia one of the most diverse, intimate, and respected cinematic events on the east coast.
Highlights of the 2009 schedule include such noteworthy releases as director Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, the last movie to star actor Heath Ledger, who died in the midst of production. The film would’ve died too, Biskind explains, were it not for the unique script. “The characters plunge through a mirror confronting their true selves and changing their physical selves. That premise allowed three other actors—Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law, all friends of Ledger—to be incorporated into the story without revisions.”
Other movies showing this year at FilmColumbia spotlight historical characters (Mussolini in Vincere; Queen Victoria in The Young Victoria; Barack Obama in By the People); political drama (The White Ribbon, Axis of Good, The Men Who Stare At Goats); documentary work (Living In Emergency, I.O.U.S.A); comedy (The Maid, the Coen Brothers, A Serious Man, and the Saturday night sneak); and melodrama (That Evening Sun, Against the Current, Fish Tank), plus numerous special interest films and cutting-edge adult animation. Many of the screenings are followed by Q&A sessions in which the director, producer, and/or actors discuss the making of the movie and field questions from the audience.
Produced and organized by Chatham Film Club members, under the direction of Calliope Nicholas, FilmColumbia uses three Chatham village venues—the Crandell Theatre, The Morris Memorial, and the Tracy Memorial—for screenings and special events.
FilmColumbia Festival
October 22 - 25
Individual tickets $5 - $8/members; $2 - $8/students; $7 - $10/non-members
All-Film Pass, $80/members, $110/non-members
Gold Pass to all events, $125/members, $175/non-members.
Chatham Film Club members may use this order form now.
The general public may buy tickets on-line or at the Chatham Bookstore, starting Friday, October 9
Advance purchase highly recommended as most films sell out.
During the festival, some tickets may be available at the Tracy Memorial.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 09/30/09 at 08:08 AM • Permalink
Still Some Tickets Left for Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock” Chatham Premiere
There was a time when lots of small towns across America had an old movie palace like the Crandell, a theater in Chatham that was built in 1926 as a venue for vaudeville and the silent picture show. Since 1960, the year Psycho was the big hit, the Crandell has been owned by the Quirino family. These days, it is undeniably frayed around the edges, but to understand what a loss it would be to a town like Chatham were the Crandell to close, one has only to observe the people arriving at the theater on any given Friday night. Teens on what used to be called “dates,” a mother and her pre-adolescent son, three generations of one family, they all come to see whatever is being offered on the one big screen, despite outmoded projection and (until recently) sound equipment. They come because the Crandell is still the heartbeat of Main Street on the weekend evening, one small town movie theater whose role has not been usurped by some Vegas-style multi-plex in a strip mall outside of town. For that alone, it deserves to be treasured.
And it is. Even though its owner Tony Quirino is ready to pack it in, the Crandell is not going to close. At least not if the members of the Chatham Film Club have any say in the matter, which, apparently, they do. Their Save the Crandell campaign is a big deal and about to become much bigger. One film-club member, the Academy-award nominated screenwriter and producer James Shamus, a Ghent resident, pulled strings to have his most recent film, Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, which was shot in Columbia County (New Lebanon, Hillsdale), premiere at a benefit screening at the Crandell on July 30. The first show, at 6 p.m., is already sold out. Tickets are still available for the 8:30 show and for the gala that will be held in a tent near the theater from 7 - midnight.
It promises to be quite a night. James Shamus will be there, of course, and so will the Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee, as well as the film’s young star, Demetri Martin (Yale, NYU Law School, stand-up comedy—his poor parents— and now this). True to the smalltown spirit of the event, there will be a buffet of picnic fare—pulled pork sliders, hot dogs, potato salad, good tomatoes, pesto pasta salad—as well as wine, beer (Chatham Breweries, naturally), and soft drinks. And, of course, there will be brownies. As Sandi Knakal of the Film Club board points out, “What’s a Woodstock party without brownies?”
Chatham Film Club
Taking Woodstock premiere, 8:30 p.m.
The Crandell Theatre
Main Street, Chatham
Tickets: $25/8:30 show
Premiere Party 7 p.m. - midnight
Tickets: $50/general admission, $150/reserved seating
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/09/09 at 07:55 AM • Permalink
Outdoor Movies: Smiles of a Summer Night
They say the best things in life are free, which around here includes many of the movies shown en pleine air at night in the summertime. The wonderful sponsors of these programs seem to consider it their civic duty to provide families with every opportunity to be outdoors on our all-too-infrequent (especially this year) hot summer nights.
The first of the two Handy Boys Enterprises Free Outdoor Movies, Kung Fu Panda, will screen Saturday, July 18, and the second Madagascar 2 on August 15.
Eddie Collins Ball Field
Route 22, across from Agway
Millerton, NY
Saturday , July 18 at about 8:30 p.m.
Admission: Free
The Images Cinema in Williamstown dubs its outdoor movie series Family Flicks Under the Stars, and screens them on Sundays (in case of rain, the party moves indoors to the theater). The 4-week series begins this Sunday with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the Gene Wilder version, not to be confused with the more recent one with Johnny Depp in the title role).
Images Cinema
50 Spring Street
Williamstown, MA; 413.458.5612
Sunday July 12, at about 8:30 p.m.
Admission: Free
Performance Space for the 21st Century in Chatham screens its films in an airy tent—perhaps not quite as glamorous as under-the-stars, but at least it’s waterproof. Another difference: their programming (all about singing and dancing, this year) is for grown-ups. Back again this year, Adjunct Professor of Communications at FIT Frank Farnham introduces the first film, The Turning Point, with Shirley MacLaine, Anne Bancroft, and Mikhail Baryshnikov on Tuesday, July 14. Old Chatham resident Farnham will also be on hand with illuminating commentary for subsequent screening of such films as Tales of Hoffmann, Guys & Dolls, and A Hard Day’s Night.
PS 21
2980 Route 66 (north of the village); Chatham; 518.392.6121
Tuesday, July 14, at about 8:30 p.m.
Admission: Free
Throughout the summer The City of Pittsfield periodically offers free Outdoor Movies on the Common. The first of the season, on Friday, July 17, is Dreamworks’ Animation’s Over the Hedge (PG).
The City of Pittsfield
The Common, on First Street
Pittsfield, MA
Friday, July 17, after dusk; canceled in the event of rain.
Admission: Free
Time & Space Limited, the PARC Foundation, and the City of Hudson are co-sponsoring free outdoor movies on Friday nights from now till the end of summer. Their programming is, as usual for TSL, unpredictable and amusing. This Friday, they’ll kick off the series with the cartoon, Sita Sings the Blues, an animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana, billed as “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.” Subsequent weeks will feature Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, the documentary Man on Wire, and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. For a complete schedule, visit the TSL website.
Pocket Park
330 Warren Street
Hudson, NY
Friday, July 10, after dusk; rain date, Saturday
Admission: Free
The Clark in Williamstown is presenting a summer film series, An Artist in Her Own Right: Barbara Stanwyck and the Modern American Woman, starting next Saturday afternoon. While it is not outdoors, it is free, so we’re including it. How could we not with a line-up like this: Baby Face, Stella Dallas, Ball of Fire, The Lady Eve, and, of course, Double Indemnity.
The Clark
225 South Street
Williamstown, MA
Saturday, July 18, 2 p.m.
Admission: Free
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/06/09 at 12:49 AM • Permalink
