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Outtakes

Weekend Countdown: Let’s Go Jackets!

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Is it hyperbole to say this is the most exciting weekend in the history of the Columbus Blue Jackets? Is it?!

They’ve been playing out of their minds, and if they keep that going Saturday night in NWA, they could land a #8 seed in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And let’s be honest, unlike last time, this year it really feels like they could do some damage (especially after a #8 seed just won the cup!)

And so, in honor of this weekend’s hockey fever, let’s lace ‘em up and count down the top 5 hockey films!

 5. Rocket: The Legend of Rocket Richard (2005)

No, we did not throw this in just to avoid including Mighty Ducks or Youngblood, but man, were we happy to find just one more decent hockey movie. The film echoes the life of Montreal Canadiens great Maurice Richard in an elegantly filmed biopic on overcoming adversity to become an iconic sports figure and national hero. Sure, that sounds familiar, but this time it happens in Canada.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkcFx1p4-Cg

 

4. Mystery, Alaska (1999)

Here’s a perfectly enjoyable, needlessly cluttered underdog tale where decent writing and generous performances outweigh trite themes. The alum of a tiny Alaskan town brings an NHL match home when the NY Rangers agree to play Mystery, Alaska’s hard-nosed local boys. Good-natured fun follows.

 

3. Goon (2011)

We can’t get enough of this Canadian minor league hockey gem, written by Jay Baruchel and starring Sean William Scott, who plays against type as a sweet natured, dunderheaded hockey goon who can’t skate but sure can beat the crap out of people.

 

2. Miracle (2004)

This great looking, family-friendly biopic boasts an excellent Kurt Russell, some fantastic hockey footage, and swelling emotions. Authentic, understated and weirdly compelling given the fact that we all know how it turns out. (Dude, we totally beat the Russians! Those douches.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZBb_8WQKUA

 

1. Slap Shot (1977)

What Caddyshack is to caddying, what The Bad News Bears is to little league – Slap Shot is best hockey movie ever. Paul Newman is hilariously salty in a story about a failing town soon to lose its minor league hockey team, and the player whose career is over if he can’t figure out how to save it. Does salvation wear thick glasses, travel in threes, and pack toy trains?

Outtakes, Slider

Weekend Countdown: Good Ol’ Beantown

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If there’s one thing movies have taught us, it’s to stay out of the woods. If there’s a second thing, it’s that only a knucklehead would screw with the fine folks of Boston. It didn’t work out that well for the British, or for most anyone else, as these films clarify. These citizens are a hardy sort, and our hats are off to them.

The Departed (2006): Scorsese and DiCaprio closed themselves up in a mental institution in Boston Harbor for 2010’s Shutter Island, but the insanity they unleashed back in 2006 resulted in their real Beantown masterpiece. Hometown boys Mark Wahlberg (never better) and Matt Damon mix with accent-appropriate DiCaprio and an unhinged Jack Nicholson to let Scorsese work out his Catholicism-and-bullets fixation in a new town with a new ethnicity. Dropkick Murphys tag along.

The Verdict (1982): Writer David Mamet and director Sidney Lumet echo Boston’s hard boiled, thick skinned belief in redemption. Stubborn but wearied Beantown lawyer – a brilliant Paul Newman – decedes not to take the easy money and instead takes a Catholic-run hospital to trial. A tremendous supporting cast helps, with bonus points to James Mason, whose creepy-charming malevolence is chilling.

Gone Baby Gone (2007): For his own career redemption, once-laughingstock Ben Affleck returned to his hometown (and the town that inspired his first Oscar) for his first directorial effort. Shot on location and filled to brimming with local actors (OK, maybe we didn’t need 3 actors with a hairlip), Affleck’s flick makes Dorchester as much a morally ambiguous character as Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck), the hometown investigator looking for a missing girl. Amy Ryan astonishes – truly – as the girl’s mother.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb2-Ac2K3BQ

The Town (2010): Affleck returns home for his second effort behind the camera, this time to make Charlestown less of a tourist destination than it had already been. The best low-brow heist movie ever, The Town boasts excellent performances all around – even from Blake Lively. It serves up generations of bone-deep, hardened Towny criminals including Chris Cooper, still fighting the fight as a lifer, and Pete Postelthwaite creeping everybody out as kingpin/florist.

Mystic River (2003): Eastwood’s spin on a Dennis Lehane novel reignited Hollywood’s romance with Boston flicks. Three neighborhood buddies grow up and grow apart, each with his own connection to the criminal element that tainted their childhood and threatens to unravel their lives. Moody and dramatic, with a winding, melancholy mystery to puzzle out, the film nabbed two Oscars (Sean Penn, Tim Robbins) and racked up four more nominations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjHLulVPB7w

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973): Most of these films involve a code, one of silence and violence that’s accepted and practiced because without it the business couldn’t go on. Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) breaks that code because he’s facing a stretch in the joint he’d just as soon avoid. A never-better Mitchum upends snitch stereotypes, drawing our sympathy as he works through his dilemma. Slower paced and filmed with less panache than its Boston Mob counterparts, this film develops slowly and leaves you feeling more like you’ve been punched in the gut.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WtR-mi6VtU

Good Will Hunting (1997): Hello, Southie. Hometown boys Ben Affleck and Matt Damon started their Hollywood takeover by writing a story about two low rent kids upending MIT’s elitism, finding love, and breaking out of a history of poverty and violence. Well, Damon broke out, but Affleck got to deliver the best Boston character in any film ever.

The Boondock Saints (1999): Jesus, these brogues are terrible. Just awful. But writer/director Troy Duffy’s sordid story of the righteously violent McManus twins did find an audience. They’re out to clean up the Boston they love – or at least ensure that it’s the Irish, not the Russians, allowed to shoot up the neighborhood. Steeped in Catholicism, blood, pathos and, again, the worst imaginable accents, Boondock Saints is weirdly watchable. It helps that Willem Dafoe tags along as one bat shit insane FBI agent.

The Fighter (2010): Another Boston tale of redemption, fucked-up Irish families and low-rent hustling, David O. Russell’s brilliant The Fighter mines authenticity from this true life tale. Brilliant performances across the board owe their merit to actors who never judge or condescend. Oscar winner Melissa Leo shines as mother/manager for her boxer sons, and every scene she shares with her seven daughters – who hate son Mickey’s (Mark Wahlberg) girlfriend – is genius. But it’s Christian Bale’s epic performance as Mickey’s crackhead former boxer/older brother Dickey that seals this picture as among the best of 2010.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkQkOAlyt0c

Outtakes

Rare Baseball Reels at the Wex

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By Hope Madden

The sun is shining, the air is warm – it must be spring. If that puts you in the mood to play ball, you sound just like Dave Filipi, Director if Film/Video at the Wexner Center for the Arts.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of Rare Baseball Films, the Wex’s tribute to Filipi’s favorite sport. For the second year running, the footage comes courtesy of the UCLA Film& Television Archive, pulled specifically from their cache of newsreels. The lifelong Minnesota Twins fan took a minute to talk baseball, geekdom, and how well angel dust mixes with bourbon.

 

Columbus Underground: Rare Baseball Films is in its tenth year. It must be very popular.

Dave Filipi: It’s been pretty popular since the first year, but it’s definitely become more so – seems like more people find us every year. It’s something that I’m personally very interested in, but if it wasn’t popular, we wouldn’t do it this regularly. I like doing it, though. As long as people like it, and as long as I can get footage, we can keep doing it.

 

CU: So, years back, the season approached and you just got an itch to watch a bunch of baseball movies?

DF: One year, it was getting close to when we’d do our schedule for March and April. I thought it would be fun to do something to mark the beginning of the baseball season. I thought I’d try to do something with the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Because it’s all archival stuff, they don’t let it off the premises. But the person there at the time said, “If you’re willing to show really nice digital transfers, we can send that instead.”

It’s worked out really well because they can send all this footage and we can look at it here and we can edit it here. It actually makes it go a lot smoother.

 

CU: How do you choose the pieces for the program?

DF: Most of the stuff we show is actually a lot of snippets – maybe the only two interesting minutes out of a 30 minute documentary. A classic example of that from a few years ago is a clip from a film called Baseball Versus Drugs. It’s from the early Seventies, it’s very dry, very clinical. It has doctors sitting behind desks and telling the dangers of drugs.

At almost the very end, there’s a minute or two of this major league baseball player at the time, Pete Richert, who’s visiting a Baltimore classroom with kids who were maybe 9 or 10 years old. He’s telling them not to do drugs, but giving them this inappropriately graphic information. “If you’re taking angel dust and you drink a quart of Jack Daniels…” He’s going into really explicit detail, and these kids are sitting in the class with their mouths open.

Most of that film you would never show to anybody, but that two minutes is what I’m looking for.

 

CU: What similar highlights we expect this year?

DF: Every year people ask if we’ve found any footage from the Negro Leagues. And it exists, I know it exists, but in working with the Hall of Fame and then with UCLA, no Negro League footage ever came up. But there was a clip this year. It’s really, really interesting.

And there are a couple of clips of Japanese baseball from the Thirties, which is obviously before World War II. One is an American newsreel of the Japanese leagues, and the commentator is pretty racist. He’s trying to be funny, but he’s making all these derogatory comments, any kind of negative verbal stereotype that you can think of. We’ve never had anything like that before.

 

CU: What are you most excited about?

DF: There’s a really interesting – this is for baseball geeks only – there’s a 30 second clip of Christy Mathewson warming up in 1908. Stuff like that is pretty rare.

 

CU: You worked with Cooperstown for years but moved to UCLA last year. What prompted the switch?

DF: Because of staff shortages, and just a shortage of resources overall, they (Baseball Hall of Fame) have not been able to provide me with new footage for the last couple of years. It almost got to the point where we would have to stop doing the program.

They’re really hurt. Their budget is very tight and they don’t have the resources. I think people assume – such a popular tourist destination – but they’re not part of Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball doesn’t send them a check for a million dollars every year. They’re a nonprofit like everyone else, and they’re hurting for funds.

UCLA has this incredibly nimble and exhaustive database of newsreels.  I can say, Hey, can you do a search of baseball and send me the list? And they sent me this huge list. It’s been great working with them – it’s kind of just like shopping, in a way.

 

CU: Did this all start because of your own passion for baseball?

DF: I have always really, really loved this game. I really can’t remember not being into baseball. I just was a total fanatic, from a very early age, and not just contemporary baseball. I like history in general, and so I really would get obsessed with Babe Ruth and Roberto Clemente.

Before the Internet, everyone would have a baseball encyclopedia and pick a name and look up how many strike outs they had, things like that. Unlike any other sport, it’s all there in the numbers. You can check out a game in 1910, you see it all there.

 

You can see it all, too. The program unspools this Friday and Saturday (April 12 and 13) at 7pm. Visit wexarts.org for tickets and details.

Originally published on Columbus Underground.

Outtakes

Weekend Countdown: Best Underseen Sports Flicks

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Jackie Robinson’s history-making story hits big screens this weekend with the lovely if superficial 42. It’s a crowd pleaser sure to be seen by millions. But in case you’re in the mood for a great flick you and most everyone else missed, we present the five best underseen sports films.

5. The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters (2007): “I wanted the glory, I wanted the fame. I wanted the pretty girls to come up and say, ‘Hi, I see that you’re good at Centipede.’” With dreams this big at stake, you cannot look away.

4. Goon (2011): Rude, crude, bawdy and flat-out fun, this Canadian film about minor league hockey surprises on every level, delivering a hilarious and fascinating underdog tale.

3. Sugar (2008): Filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson) offer an insightful tale about Dominicans chasing their dreams of playing Major League baseball and, in the process, deliver a quietly powerful take on immigration.

2. Undefeated (2011): No, not Sarah Palin’s unintentional comedy. This Oscar-winning doc treads familiar ground, but the intimacy and honesty that emerges from the story of an inner-city football squad make it irresistible.

1. Murderball (2005): Best sports doc ever. Paraplegic rugby teams competing in the Paralympic Games are not interested in your pity. “We’re not going for a hug. We’re going for a fucking gold medal. “

 

 

Outtakes, Slider

Weekend Countdown: Top 5 “cabin in the woods” flicks

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In honor of Evil Dead, we’re counting down our favorite “cabin in the woods” horror films that are not associated with that particular franchise.

5. Tucker & Dale Versus Evil (2010): This hilarious Shaun of the Dead-style send up of hillbilly horror entertains with every frame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFFh25DmPNU

4. Resolution (2012): Self-aware, atmospheric and creepy, Resolution doesn’t rely on traditional slasher implements to get under your skin.

3. The Blair Witch Project (1999): There is, too, a cabin. At the very end, remember? After we lose Josh and Josh loses his tongue. Oh, you remember – Mike’s standing in the corner like a naughty child, and Heather…. poor, poor Heather…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D51QgOHrCj0

2.  Antichrist (2009): “Nature is Satan’s church.” “Chaos reigns!” “Keep her away from the hand tools.” (No one said that last one, but man, somebody should have.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBdDcQONmkM

1. The Cabin in the Woods (2011): Kind of a cross between Tucker & Dale and Resolution, this funny, wickedly clever, joyous deconstruction of horror tropes leaves you just giddy.

Outtakes

Outtakes: New Fangs for Old Vampire

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By Hope Madden

The coolest vampire – and among the first – ever to grace the big screen gets a makeover this weekend, courtesy of composer Andrew Alden, and you can check it out at the Gateway Film Center (1551 N. High St.). At 2pm and 8pm Friday, March 29, Alden and his band The Andrew Alden Ensemble will perform a live accompaniment to F. W. Murnau’s magnificent silent film Nosferatu (1922).

An adaptation of Dracula, Nosferatu follows a vampire count as he sets his sights on a fair maid, relocating from his far off castle to a bustling European city and leaving blood drained corpses in his wake.

The film remains a horror mainstay for two reasons. Murnau’s immaculate direction was so far ahead of its time, wasting no shots and creating an atmosphere unseen at the time, that his film still feels relevant and fresh today. More importantly, he cast the bald, ratlike Max Schreck as the count, and in his bony hands, the creepiest vampire of all time came to be.

Andrew Alden agrees, and the 23-year-old composer felt inspired to use the story and Murnau’s undiluted vision to create a new musical accompaniment.

“I’m a huge fan of Nosferatu,” he says. “I watched it as a teenager, in the middle of the night watching terror classic movies. I was frightened and I thought it was wonderful. It’s just a great vampire movie, not like any vampire movie of today. “

Years later, studying music at Boston’s Berklee School of Music, an idea began to take root.

“I always loved movies, and I remember a light bulb going off,” he says. “I thought, why don’t I make my musical language take the form of the stories of these movies? I’ll take my music and, instead of using a story I come up with, I’ll use the story of the movie itself.”

Looking for a film in the public domain, Alden began his experiment with George Romero’s 1968 zombie classic Night of the Living Dead. Composing a new score to match the film took him about two months.

“I find I’m getting faster,” Alden says. “Nosferatu was particularly easy because it seems as though F. W. Murnau really thought everything out. Not too many shots seem like filler. Everything is driving the plot forward. The music was really easy to write.”

His contemporary chamber music ensemble, consisting of violin, viola, electric guitar, drums, piano, synthesizer and assorted other percussion, tours the country with five films Alden has scored. Along with Nosferatu and Night of the Living Dead, his band accompanies Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Lost World (1925), and Battleship Potemkin (1925).

“Even though we do five movies, I think the favorite is Nosferatu,” he says. “because the movie’s so great.”

Tickets for the Friday matinee run $10 in advance or $15 at the door, while the 8pm screening are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

Originally published by Columbus Underground

Outtakes

Outtakes: Homegrown Actor Gone Wrong

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By Hope Madden

Wildly original filmmaker Quentin Dupieux’s newest “no reason” film Wrong opens in Columbus this weekend. The director’s feature debut, Rubber, depicted a car tire on a murderous rampage.

I’ll pause and let that settle in for a second.

Dupieux’s laid back, loony style finds a slightly more accessible form in his latest effort. Wrong is a languidly paced, surreal comedy that follows mustachioed Dolph Springer (Columbus native Jack Plotnick) as he searches for his missing dog, Paul.

It seems straightforward enough, but rest assured, you have no idea where this is going. Importantly, Dupieux seems to.

“Quentin strikes a really interesting tone in this movie,” says Plotnick, who took a few minutes this week to speak with Columbus Underground about his new film.

The two had worked together previously on Rubber, which led to the second collaboration.

“He wrote the role in Wrong for me,” he says. “It was such a gift, and I was so touched and moved and excited.”

“He didn’t want me to feel that I needed to do the schtick I often do in some sitcom or Disney kids’ show. He wanted me to keep it very real,” he says. “And the funny thing is that the absurdity is so much clearer when people are treating it as though it’s really happening.”

While Wrong is certainly bizarre, Plotnick sees a lot of differences in the two films. “There are no exploding heads,” he laughs. “But there is a machine that can read the memory of a dog turd. It’s definitely off the wall, but in very thoughtful, absurdist way.”

Plotnick credits Dupieux’s craftsmanship as the reason his films are so strangely powerful. The filmmaker writes, directs, edits, often scores and photographs his own films.

“He’s his own DP (director of photography), and he’s a fantastic artist with a camera,” says Plotnick. “What I love about Quentin is that he loves breaking the rules of cinema, and this movie really does that. It’s liberating and refreshing, and I’m glad that audiences are catching onto it.”

The actor has been busy since Wrong wrapped, filming another indie, shooting another spot of his recurring role on The Mentalist, and even writing and directing his own movie.

“The big thing in my life is that I’ve directed my first feature film,” he says of Space Station ‘76. “It’s a SciFi dramedy that takes place in the future as we had imagined it in the 1970s, and it stars – this is the amazing thing –  Patrick Wilson, Liv Tyler, Matt Bomer and Jerry O’Connell. And I could not be happier with how it came out.”

Space Station ’76 will premier next year at the Sundance Film Festival. In the meantime, you can catch Plotnick in his quest to find his dog this weekend at the Gateway Film Center. And while Plotnick won’t be able to get back to Columbus himself this weekend to see the movie, he’ll be represented.

“My sister’s actually bringing like 20 people there for opening night.”

 

Originally published on Columbus Underground

 

 

Outtakes

Outtakes: Field & Screen

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February brings the Wexner Center’s Field & Screen series, returning for its fourth year to explore the issues and pleasures to be found in food and the environment. From wild mushrooms to sushi, the farmer/farm animal bond to the zookeeper/baby wolf bond, the history of environmentalism to the tall and not-so-tall tales of wilderness exploration, the series brings wildly varying views of the fruits of the earth and the way we relate to them.

According to Wex’s Director of Video/Film Dave Filipi, the center’s goal with the series is, “To show great films and to get people thinking about how we interact with our environment, as well as what goes into our mouths and where it came from.”

He says the series came about in 2010 on the heels of the film Food, Inc. and the success of books like Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

“All of the sudden, it seemed like people were talking about ‘free range’ and ‘local foods’ and ‘grass-fed beef’ and things like that. Across the center, we’re always looking for ways in which the arts might intersect with pressing issues of the day, and it seemed like an ideal time to do a series,” Filipi recalls.

“We didn’t plan on doing the series again,” he says. “But it struck a chord with our audience, and we’ve done it every February since.”

Filipi expects Wexner moviegoers to continue to be pleased with the lineup.

“As people become more and more aware and concerned about these issues, it seems interest grows accordingly. Also, Columbus has exploded as a food city, and interest in that regard also continues to grow,” he says.

Filipi has some recommendations for those as interested in what’s on the plate as the environment that generates it. “Foodies should love Now, Forager, Sushi: The Global Catch, and Step Up to the Plate.”

According to Filipi, it’s important to balance issue-oriented features with films of a more artistic nature.

He says, “One danger of showing only straight-forward, information-based documentaries is that one finds themselves preaching to the converted. These films certainly have their place, but I think other approaches can be even more engaging.”

Informational pieces have their place as well, often sparking movement in the community.

“The series has served as a nice mechanism for groups and organizations to come together to share a film and discuss issues relevant to their group,” says Filipi. “We’re always looking for that nexus between the arts and pressing issues, and we hope this series addresses that goal in a creative and engaging way.”

Field & Screen kicks off Friday, 2/1 at 7pm. Local filmmaker Matt Meindl will introduce his short Don’t Break Down, a Super-8 with stop-motion product that imagines the afterlife of garbage. Meindl’s film, which will go on to reside at The Box video space for the balance of the month, is being paired Friday night with Denis Cote’s documentary, Bestiare.
The series extends for the rest of the month, promising documentaries, shorts, tall tales and tasty treats.

The complete Field & Screen schedule:

  • Bestiaire, Friday, February 1, 7 pm
    Preceded by Don’t Break Down, introduced by Matt Meindl
  • Now, Forager, Saturday, February 2, 4:30 pm & 8:30 pm
  • Sushi: The Global Catch, Saturday, February 2, 7 pm & Sunday, February 3, 2 pm
  • Nuclear Nation, Tuesday, February 5, 7 pm
  • Covenant with Panel Discussion, Thursday, February 7, 7 pm
  • Step Up to the Plate, Thursday, February 14, 7:30 pm & Saturday, February 16, 4:30 pm
  • A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet, Saturday, February 16, 7 pm & Sunday, February 17, 2 pm
  • It’s the Earth Not the Moon, Thursday, February 21, 7 pm
  • True Wolf, Saturday, February 23, 4 pm
  • Wild Bill’s Run, (Introduced by director Mike Scholtz) Thursday, February 28, 7 pm
    Preceded by short Inside the Whale

Tickets for all screenings are $8 for the general public and $6 for members, senior citizens, students, and children under 12, unless otherwise indicated. The films will be screened in the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Theater, 1871 N. High St. Tickets are available at the door or in advance at tickets.wexarts.org.

Originally published on Columbus Underground

Outtakes

Outtakes: What’s up, Docs? Yes, and Plenty of Them

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Doc Week returns to the Gateway Film Center, with fascinating, often harrowing true life tales to tell. It’s like Shark Week, with less midair seal chomping.

According to Gateway president Chris Hamel, Columbus Documentary Week allows him to pursue a personal goal.

“Documentary films are my favorite kind of films,” he says. “For years, with the exception of the great work of the Wexner Center, most of the documentaries I wanted to see never played on a big screen in Columbus. I really wanted to make an effort to bring more of these films to Columbus, and with reoccurring series like this, I think we are accomplishing that goal.”

 

The program kicks off Thursday, March 14 and runs through the 21st with a rotating set of 19 films. Among them are Oscar nominees, buzzed-about award winners, big budget docs and small, intimate films. From the surreal, challenging beauty of Samsara – a vision meant to be screened in a big room – to personal tales like Don’t Stop Believin’, the festival’s programming touches on all types of documentary. Given that variety, Hamel feels certain that every moviegoer will be able to find something to appreciate.

Still, a few films really stand out.

“Certainly two of the ‘can’t miss’ high profile documentaries in the series are A Place at the Table and West of Memphis,” he says.

The Sundance darling Table dives into the issue of American poverty in a way that animates facts and statistics with intimate portraits of several struggling families. Questioning US government compliance in the national hunger epidemic, the film draw attention to industrial farm subsidies, food stamp restrictions, and policies that limit school nutrition funding in favor of multi-billion dollar corporations.

“West of Memphis,” says Hamel, “appeared in many of the ten best films of 2012 lists. It is an astoundingly researched look at social injustice, and is the essence of powerful, inspiring documentary filmmaking.”

The film details the case of the famous “West Memphis Three” – teens Damian Echols (who co-produces), Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, Jr. – who were wrongly convicted of brutal child murders.

“Director Amy Berg and producer Peter Jackson’s soaring film details every aspect of the killings, the sloppy investigation, the subsequent trials, and the eventual evidence of wrongful imprisonments,” says Hamel. “West of Memphis is shocking, maddening, and revelatory.”

Aside from the program’s big ticket events, Hamel hopes some smaller films make an impression. He says, “Trying to choose a favorite is very difficult. However, two films I am rooting for are Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey, and My Amityville Horror.”

Believin’ tells the incredible story of rock band Journey’s replacement singer Arnel Pineda, while Amityville brings Daniel Lutz back to his infamous childhood home.

Says Hamel, “The two films couldn’t be more different, but both are great films based on subject matter people are very familiar with.”

Hamel hopes the familiarity and enjoyment encourage those who normally avoid documentaries to give the series a chance.

“Also, Daniel Lutz is crazy and Arnel Pineda can really sing his ass off.”

Reason enough!

More information can be found online at www.gatewayfilmcenter.com.

To help you pick and choose, here’s Columbus Documentary Week’s schedule:

Thursday, March 14
• How To Survive A Plague 7:00 PM
• Citizen Hearst 9:30 PM

Friday, March 15
• Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder 12:00 PM
• West of Memphis 1:00 PM
• Uprising 1:00 PM
• Oma and Bella 2:00 PM
• Trashed 3:00 PM
• Nicky’s Family 4:00 PM
• West of Memphis 4:10 PM
• 5 Broken Cameras 5:00 PM
• Happy People: A Year in the Taiga 6:00 PM
• A Place At The Table 7:00 PM
• West of Memphis 7:20 PM
• Orchestra of Exiles 8:00 PM
• Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey 9:00 PM
• My Amityville Horror 10:00 PM
• West of Memphis 10:30 PM

Saturday, March 16
• Trashed 12:00 PM
• West of Memphis 1:00 PM
• Let Fury Have The Hour 1:00 PM
• High Tech, Low Life 2:00 PM
• Orchestra of Exiles 3:00 PM
• Happy People: A Year in the Taiga 4:00 PM
• West of Memphis 4:10 PM
• Oma and Bella 5:00 PM
• A Place At The Table 6:00 PM
• Samsara 7:00 PM
• West of Memphis 7:20 PM
• Nicky’s Family 8:00 PM
• The Bitter Buddha 9:30 PM
• Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey 10:30PM
• West of Memphis 10:30 PM
• My Amityville Horror 11:30 PM

Sunday, March 17
• Happy People: A Year in the Taiga 12:00 PM
• West of Memphis 1:00 PM
• A Place At The Table 1:00 PM
• How To Survive A Plague 2:00 PM
• Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder 3:00 PM
• West of Memphis 4:10 PM
• Citizen Hearst 4:30 PM
• Let Fury Have The Hour 5:00 PM
• Indie Game: The Movie 6:30 PM
• My Amityville Horror 7:00 PM
• West of Memphis 7:20 PM
• Uprising 8:30 PM
• High Tech, Low Life 9:00 PM
• Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey 10:30 PM
• West of Memphis 10:30 PM

Monday, March 18
• The Bitter Buddha 12:00 PM
• West of Memphis 1:00 PM
• Nicky’s Family 1:00 PM
• Oma and Bella 2:00 PM
• 5 Broken Cameras 3:00 PM
• Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder 4:00 PM
• West of Memphis 4:10 PM
• Orchestra of Exiles 5:00 PM
• Trashed 6:00 PM
• A Place At The Table 7:00 PM
• West of Memphis 7:20 PM
• Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey 8:00 PM
• My Amityville Horror 9:30 PM
• Let Fury Have The Hour 10:00 PM
• West of Memphis 10:30 PM

Tuesday, March 19
• Orchestra of Exiles 12:00 PM
• West of Memphis 1:00 PM
• Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey 1:00 PM
• High Tech, Low Life 2:00 PM
• Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder 3:15 PM
• Trashed 4:00 PM
• West of Memphis 4:10 PM
• Oma and Bella 5:00 PM
• A Place At The Table 6:00 PM
• Reveal the Path 7:00 PM
• West of Memphis 7:20 PM
• 5 Broken Cameras 8:00 PM
• Happy People: A Year in the Taiga 9:30 PM
• Uprising 10:00 PM
• West of Memphis 10:30 PM

Wednesday, March 20
• Oma and Bella 12:00 PM
• A Place At The Table 1:00 PM
• West of Memphis 1:00 PM
• The Bitter Buddha 2:00 PM
• 5 Broken Cameras 3:00 PM
• Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder 4:00 PM
• West of Memphis 4:10 PM
• Trashed 5:00 PM
• Let Fury Have The Hour 6:00 PM
• Orchestra of Exiles 7:00 PM
• West of Memphis 7:20 PM
• Happy People: A Year in the Taiga 8:00 PM
• A Place At The Table 9:30 PM
• Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey 10:00 PM
• West of Memphis 10:30 PM

Thursday, March 21
• Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder 12:00 PM
• West of Memphis 1:00 PM
• Trashed 1:00 PM
• Let Fury Have The Hour 2:00 PM
• Reveal the Path 3:00 PM
• Happy People: A Year in the Taiga 4:00 PM
• West of Memphis 4:10 PM
• 5 Broken Cameras 5:00 PM
• Orchestra of Exiles 6:00 PM
• A Place At The Table 7:00 PM
• West of Memphis 7:20 PM
• Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey 8:00 PM
• The Bitter Buddha 9:45 PM
• My Amityville Horror 10:30 PM
• West of Memphis 10:30 PM

 

originally published on Columbus Underground

Outtakes

Outtakes: Oscar Nominated Shorts

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For the fourth year in a row, all 15 Oscar nominated shorts – animated, live action, and documentary – will find screen time at the Gateway Film Center (1550 N. High St). The run is a Gateway exclusive and an excellent opportunity for Oscar completists to get a chance to peek at some nominees that could otherwise go unseen.

According to Gateway president Chris Hamel, his theater gets the exclusive run because the series has done well for the theater.

“We’ve done a little better each year,” he says. “Last year we sold out several screenings of all three programs. I think that is the primary reason the distributor sticks with us.”

And what drive’s Hamel’s interest in booking the series? “As an Oscar buff, I really just want to see everything before they announce the winners,” he admits.

The animated program includes lighter fare than recent years. Disney’s slight, romantic “Paperman”, Pes’s brief but fun “Fresh Guacamole”, and the quickly recognizable “Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare’” – following the wee Simpson through a day at the Ayn Rand School for Tots – are here for grins.

For something a little heavier, Minkyu Lee’s “Adam and Dog” unspools an origin story for domesticated animals, while the real charmer, Timothy Reckart’s “Head Over Heels”, offers a bittersweet love story likely to take the prize.

Oscar does like its devastating live action shorts, and the 2012 list does not disappoint. Tales of war torn childhood woes and the punishment of Alzheimer’s populate the series and promise to wring tears. From the daily lives of little boys growing up in the rubble of war comes both Afghanistan’s “Buzkashi Boys”, and Somalia’s particularly fascinating portrayal, “Asad”.

Yan England’s “Henry” boasts a poignant turn from Gerard Poirier as the titular concert pianist plagued by old age and the mystery of his lost love, while “Curfew” offers some very sketchy adventures in babysitting.

For something darkly surreal, “Death of a Shadow” spins a ghostly love story set against the violence of WWI.

This year’s nominated documentaries explore human connections among the elderly, the terminally ill, and the homeless. Intimate, moving , and surprisingly hopeful “Inocente”, “Kings Point”, “Open Heart”, “Redemption”, and “Mondays at Racine” feel more like a theme-driven series than a set of disparate but excellent shorts.

It’s the quality and the rarity that draws Hamel year after year. “Personally, I consider it a necessity to bring films to Columbus that may not have otherwise played here. These short films, obviously all of high quality, allow us to present something to Columbus film fans they can’t see anywhere else.”

For more information, visit www.gatewayfilmcenter.com and theoscarshorts.shorts.tv.

Originally published on Columbus Underground