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April 26, 2006
"Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story" - April 30th
Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 30th at 5:30pm for Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story at the Brattle Theatre. Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion. This is an exclusive engagement at the Brattle, so you may wish to pre-order tickets or show up early.
"The best mock documentaries - This is SPINAL TAP, BOB ROBERTS, WAITING FOR GUFFMAN - work because they fall just short of mockery. They have real affection for their subjects, and can recreate those subjects' hilariously skewed version of the world insofar as they fully inhabit that world. Mock-docs that don't do this are either mean, obvious, or both.
Thankfully, BLACKBALLED writer-director Brant Sersen loves paintballers, and his movie has the winking empathy that marks all great mock-docs. A hilarious cast, complete with (Boston's own) Rob Corddry of "The Daily Show" and much of the cast from the famed "Upright Citizens Brigade," put together a group of memorable characters and one-liners that are sure to become tomorrow's dorm-room jokes.
Corddry is Bobby Dukes, the uncontested Michael Jordan of paintball for many years...until the day he committed the unthinkable during a paintball match: he "wiped."We get this back-story in a clever opening sequence, then meet Bobby ten years after his betrayal of the sport. Now, he's decided that it is time to return to the paintball field, face the demons of his past, and assemble a motley crew of paintballers to compete in the Hudson Valley Paintball Classic. Game on! - notes from the Independent Film Festival of Boston 2005.
Alongside Corddry, the cast is rounded out by many familiar comedic faces including: Ed Helms (The Daily Show), Paul Scheer (VH1's Best Week Ever), Rob Riggle (Saturday Night Live), Rob Huebel (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and local comic legend DJ Hazzard."
Posted by grahams at 9:10 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2006
"The Beauty Academy of Kabul" - April 23rd
Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 23rd at 7:00pm for "The Beauty Academy of Kabul" at the Kendall Square Cinema. Look for Sean wearing a nametag and sitting in the little seating area in the lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion.
"Who would ever dream that what war-torn Afghanistan needed was a school for hairdressers? Yet this surprising and humorous film reveals that there is healing power—as well as economic opportunity—in the pursuit of beauty. Six American volunteers, three of them Afghan-Americans returning home for the first time in 20 years, come to Kabul to open the country's first post-Taliban beauty school. The response is so overwhelming that a lottery must be held to select the lucky students. Features the music of Ahmad Zahir. Directed by Liz Mermin. (Partially subtitled)"
Posted by grahams at 3:01 PM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2006
"Following Sean" - April 16th
Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 16th at 5:00pm for "Following Sean" at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion. Note: This film is showing in the Coolidge's "Screening Room", which is quite small, so you might want to show up early or preorder tickets.
"This riveting family saga looks back to San Francisco in the late ‘60s when budding filmmaker Ralph Arlyck made a candid short film about Sean, a precocious 4-year-old hippie child who lived in his apartment building. A natural on camera, Sean is frank about how he smokes pot and hangs out with speedfreaks. The film gained great acclaim (and naturally sounded alarms), but the story doesn't end there. Three decades later, Arlyck finds Sean again, now a struggling husband and father. New interviews with Sean as well as his freewheeling father, sarcastic communist grandma, and boisterous family are combined with original '60s footage to paint vivid time-traveling portraits. FOLLOWING SEAN is an epic chronicle of growing up and moving on filled with moments of surprising tenderness and humor."
Posted by grahams at 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
April 6, 2006
"Baby Face (1933)" - April 9th
Join the Boston Sunday Night Film Club this Sunday, April 9th at 5:30pm for Baby Face at the Brattle Theatre. Look for Sean wearing a nametag in the theatre lobby about 15 minutes before the film. As always, after the film we will descend on a local establishment for dinner/drinks/discussion
"Baby Face was one of the most notorious of all the films of the Pre-Code era - the time during the early Depression when the Hollywood studios virtually ignored the censors and offered up one sex-filled film after another. Public morals were so offended that the industry was forced to adopt an even stricter Production Code in 1934. Advertised with the titillating warning, "Parents: do not bring your children," Baby Face stars Barbara Stanwyck as an abused daughter who turns tricks out of a speakeasy in Erie, Pennsylvania, then heads to Manhattan, where she sleeps her way up the corporate ladder (with a young John Wayne, among many others). A longer (by five minutes), even racier version was recently discovered by the Library of Congress and is making its debut at the Brattle. After the film, we'll be showing scenes from the censored version for comparison. - adapted from notes from the Film Forum, NYC"
Posted by grahams at 9:59 PM | Comments (0)