To all our Film Society members and supporters,
Announcing our premiere films for June, July and August! Exclusive
premieres for our members to say thank you for the support:
WITNESSES
WOMAN ON THE BEACH
CHOP SHOP
Dates and times to be announced soon. These titles are exclusive and
will not open theatrically for the public. So, like our slogan "film
festival all year long" you will be able to see these rare and wonderful
projects.
Opening this week!
YOUNG AT HEART - Prepare to be entertained by the inspiring individuals
of a New England senior citizens' chorus with their covers of songs by
everyone from The Clash to Coldplay in this documentary that has
delighted audiences worldwide.
The prolific director/playwright David Mamet returns with his new film
REDBELT, the story of a mixed-martial arts instructor forced into the
ring and out of his comfort zone.
"Mamet is on his game, and that is a sight to see." -- Rolling Stone
Also opening - THE VISITOR, an excellently written and performed
character-driven drama from the writer/director of The Station Agent.
Heldover!
FLAWLESS
CARAMEL
THE YEAR MY PARENTS WENT ON VACATION
Ends Thursday...
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY- last chance to see the feel-good movie
of the year
MARRIED LIFE- starring Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdams
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADIN?- from Morgan Spurlock of Super
Size Me
Local Producers/Writers Pitch-smart session!
Our Utah Screenwriters Project participants are well on their way to
completing their first draft of their screenplays. We will be hosting a
Producers Pitch-smart session for local producers.
Invitation only.
If you are a local producer and are interested in attending and hearing
more than twenty finished screenplay pitches, please reply to this
e-mail. We're sorry but our writers positions are already full. Writers
may stay tuned to this e-mail for information about the 2009-2010 Utah
Screenwriters Project.
WATER WEEK
May 7th 7:30 pm – Broadway Centre Cinemas
RUNNING DRY
FREE SCREENING
From May 4 to May 10, Water Week will be sponsoring free educational
films and documentaries surrounding the global water crisis at various
locations throughout the state. One of the selected films, “Running Dry”
is a comprehensive public information/education project, established to
raise awareness regarding the worsening global humanitarian water
crisis. Actress Jane Seymour, the documentary narrator, and many other
notable and knowledgeable individuals have come together to participate
in the public information/education process.
48 HOUR Film Fest
See this year’s finished products:
May 7th and 8th - 7:00pm and 9:30pm – Broadway Centre Cinemas
(Different films each screening)
Best of Screening May 12th 7:00pm at the Tower Theatre
The 48 Hour Film Project comes to Salt Lake City on the weekend of May
2. Filmmakers from all over the state of Utah will compete to see who
can make the best short film in only 48 hours. The winning film will go
up against films from around the world for the title "Best 48 Hour Film
of 2008".
Summer Members-only screenings!
Open Mic Nite
May 14 - mark your calendars!
Show your short film at the Tower Theatre. All filmmakers welcome.
Submissions will be taken starting at 6pm on May 14th. Arrive early with
your film as spots for exhibiting the films fill quickly. Submission fee
is $5, admission is a suggested $1 donation. This is your chance to have
your work seen by an audience.
Ballet West Short Film Call for entries!
Ballet West's Short Film Contest is free to enter. Films need to be at
least 30 seconds and no longer than three minutes. The winner will be
shown at SLFS Open Mic 8/27/2008. Winners will also receive prizes. For
more information on Ballet West's Short Film Contest call (801) 323-6966
for details.
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QUICK LOOK at SHOWTIMES -
THIS WEEK:
Broadway
Through Thursday 5/8...
Miss Pettigrew 01:15, 4:15, 7:15, 9:30
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation 01:00, 4:15, 7:00, 9:15
Married Life 01:10, 7:00* * WED 5/7 and THU 5/8 no 7:00 screenings
Under The Same Moon 04:05, 9:10** ** WED 5/7 and THU 5/8 no 9:10 screenings
Counterfeiters, The 01:05, 4:10, 7:10, 9:20
Where in The World is Osama Bin Laden 01:25, 4:20, 7:20***, 9:25
***WED 5/7 no 7:20 screening
Caramel 01:20, 4:25, 7:05, 9:25
Tower Theatre
Flawless 4:30, 7:00, 9:30
NEXT WEEK
FRI 5/2 - THU 5/8
Broadway
Caramel 01:20, 4:25, 7:05, 9:25
Year My Parents Went on Vacation 01:00, 4:15, 7:00, 9:15
Redbelt 01:05, 3:15, 5:25, 7:35, 9:45
The Counterfeiters 01:05, 4:10, 7:10, 9:20
The Visitor 12:55, 3:10, 5:25, 7:40, 9:55
Young at Heart 01:10, 4:00, 7:15, 9:30
Tower Theatre
Flawless (2:00* Fri thru Sun only) 9:00**
** no 9:00 screening on Wed. 5/14 due to Open Mic Nite
Under the Same Moon 4:30, 7:00***
*** no 7:00 screening on Mon 5/12 due to 48 hr. film fest
MIDNIGHT FRI 5/9 and SAT 5/10 Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
=============================================================
TELL ME MORE...PLEASE!
(all star ratings are based on 4 star rating systems)
YOUNG AT HEART
Directed by: Stephen Walker
Prepare to be entertained by the inspiring individuals of Young atHeart,
a New England senior citizens' chorus that has delighted audiences
worldwide with their covers of songs by everyone from The Clash to
Coldplay. As Stephen Walker's documentary begins, the retirees, led by
their strict musical director, are rehearsing their new show, struggling
with a discordant Sonic Youth number and giving new meaning to James
Brown's "I Feel Good." What ultimately emerges is a funny and
unexpectedly moving testament to friendship, creative inspiration, and
reaching beyond expectations.
**** Entertainment Weekly
They make joyful music, communicated, both by the singers and their
playful, sensitive documentarian, with an authority that quite knocks
off socks.
**** Chicago Tribune
An exuberant, affectionate documentary.
**** USA Today
A heartening and poignant affirmation of the transformative power of music.
REDBELT
Written and directed by: David Mamet . Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Alice
Braga, Tim Allen, Emily Mortimer, Rodrigo Santoro, Rebecca Pidgeon, and
Randy Couture
Set on the west side of the Los Angeles fight world, a world inhabited
by bouncers, cage fighters, cops, and special forces types, Redbelt is
the story of Mike Terry, a jujitsu teacher who has avoided the
prize-fighting circuit, choosing instead to pursue an honorable life by
operating a self-defense studio with a samurai's code. Terry and his
wife, Sondra, struggle to keep the business running to make ends meet.
On a dark, rainy night, an accident at the academy between an off-duty
officer and a distraught lawyer puts in motion a series of events that
will change Terry's life dramatically and introduce him to a world of
promoters and to movie star Chet Frank. Faced with this, in order to pay
off his debts and regain his honor, Terry must step into the ring for
the first time in his life.
***1/2 New York Times
A satisfying, unexpectedly involving B-movie that owes as much to old
Hollywood as to Greek tragedy.
***1/2 Los Angeles Times
Ejiofor brings a calm magnetism and a beautific serenity to his roles
that have the effect of knocking you flat -- there's something about
this guy that's messianic.
THE VISITOR
Written and directed by: Thomas McCarthy . Starring: Richard Jenkins,
Oliver Bokelberg, Hiam Abbass, and Maggie Moore
In a world of 6 billion people, it takes only one to change your life.
In actor and filmmaker Tom McCarthy's follow-up to his award-winning
directorial debut "The Station Agent," we get to know Walter Vale, a
disillusioned Connecticut economics professor whose life is transformed
by a chance encounter in New York City. Through newfound connections
with virtual strangers, Walter is awakened to a new world and a new life.
**** Rolling Stone
A heartfelt human drama that sneaks up and floors you.
**** USA Today
It is one of the year's most intriguing dramas, with a quartet of
powerful performances.
**** New York Post
Best movie I've seen so far this year? Hands down, it's Tom McCarthy's
superb The Visitor, which turns Richard Jenkins, one of the best
character actors in the business, into a full-fledged star.
CARAMEL
Written and directed by: Nadine Labaki . Starring: Nadine Labaki,
Yasmine Elmasri, and Joanna Mkarzel
In Beirut, five women meet regularly in a beauty salon, a colorful and
sensual microcosm of the city where several generations come into
contact, talk and confide in each other. In the salon, their intimate
and liberated conversations revolve around men, sex and motherhood,
between haircuts and sugar waxing with caramel.
**** Film Threat
Caramel will likely be the Lebanese selection for Academy Award for Best
Foreign Film it's inconceivable to me that it won't win...and whoever
wins for Best Actress will be the second most deserving actress of 2007.
***1/2 Time
It may be a first film, but Labaki, employing a cast that is full of
non-professional actresses, is a slick and knowing filmmaker. Her
multiple plot lines are neatly braided and though her characters are
conventionalized they are also charming and capable of surprising us.
THE YEAR MY PARENTS WENT ON VACATION
Written and directed by: Cao Hamburger . Michel Joelsas, Daniela
Piepszyk, and Liliana Castro
Set in the turbulent year of 1970, The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
is a poignant and humorous coming-of-age story. Mauro is a 12-year-old
boy thrust into a maelstrom of political and personal upheaval. When his
left-wing militant parents are forced to go underground, Mauro is left
in the care of his Jewish grandfather's neighbor in Sao Paulo. Suddenly
finding himself an exile in his own country, Mauro is forced to create
an ersatz family from the religiously diverse and colorful population of
his new neighborhood. Mauro befriends Hanna, a street-smart tomboy, and
develops a crush on Irene, a pretty waitress in a local bar. It is at
this local bar that everyone, including Mauro (an ardent soccer fan),
gathers to watch iconic star Pele in the 1970 World Cup championship,
which Mauro hopes to watch with his parents if they return to Brazil in
time.
**** Chicago Tribune
Pulls you into a well-observed world and its characters.
*** San Francisco
The filmmakers succeed with an unexpected ending. It's as fresh as
everything in the movie, which turns out to be about so much more than
one youngster's resilience.
FLAWLESS
Directed by: Michael Radford . Written by: Edward Anderson . Starring:
Michael Caine, and Demi Moore
Flawless is a clever diamond-heist thriller set in swinging 1960s
London. Demi Moore plays Laura Quinn, a bright, driven, and beautiful
executive at the London Diamond Corporation who finds herself frustrated
by a glass ceiling after years of faithful employment, as man after man
is promoted ahead of her despite her greater experience. Michael Caine
is Hobbs, the nighttime janitor at London Diamond who is virtually
invisible to the executives who work there, but over the years has
amassed a startling amount of knowledge about how the company runs.
Hobbs has his own bone to pick with London Diamond and, observing
Laura's frustration, convinces her to help him execute an ingenious plan
to steal a hefty sum in diamonds. But unbeknownst to Laura, Hobbs plans
go even further than he's let on, and together they set in motion a
thrilling heist of dizzying proportions, the likes of which London has
never seen.
*** Boston Globe
It's assured and neatly crafted - the time zips by while you're watching it.
*** Washington Post
The joy of this movie, which features Joss Ackland as a memorably
intimidating, Afrikaner-accented boss, is in the gradual revelation of
intrigue.
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADIN
Written and Directed by: Morgan Spurlock
If Morgan Spurlock has learned anything from over 30 years of watching
movies, it's that if the world needs saving, it's best done by one
lonely guy willing to face danger head-on and take it down action-hero
style. In Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?, the Oscar-nominated
filmmaker takes on a franchise even more lethal than McDonald's--Al
Qaeda. After this real-life action thriller is over, the world may never
be the same. Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? goes beyond shedding
light on the one man who has shaped the world's perception of a region
and its people. Spurlock risks life and limb to uncover the truth about
Bin Laden, and in doing so explores the lines that divide, those that
unite, and the countless shades of gray between.
*** Variety
Combines low comedy, high production values and the Middle East for what
will surely be a hit.
THE COUNTERFEITERS
Written and Directed by: Stefan Ruzowitzky . Starring: Karl Markovics,
August Diehl, and Devid Striesow
The true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, counterfeiter extraordinaire and
bohemian who was in captured by the Nazis in 1944. He agrees to help the
Nazis in an organized counterfeiting operation set up to finance the war
effort. It was the biggest counterfeit-money scam of all time. Over 130
million pounds sterling were printed under conditions that couldn't have
been more tragic or spectacular. During the last years of the war, as
the German Reich saw that the end was near, the authorities decided to
produce their own banknotes in the currencies of their major war
enemies. They hoped to use the duds to flood the enemy economy and fill
the empty war coffers. At the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, two
barracks were separated from the rest of the camp and the outside world,
and transformed into a fully equipped counterfeiters workshop.
"Operation Bernhard" was born. Prisoners were brought to Sachsenhausen
from other camps to implement the plan, and professional printers,
fastidious bank officials, and simple craftsmen all became members of
the top-secret counterfeiter crew. They had a choice: If they cooperated
with the enemy, they had a chance to survive as first-class prisoners in
a "golden cage" with enough to eat and a bed to sleep in. If they
sabotaged the operation, a sure death awaited them. For the
counterfeiters, it was not only a question of saving their own lives,
but also about saving their conscience as well...
**** Baltimore Sun
The Counterfeiters is in its own smart, trim fashion "The Bridge on the
River Kwai" of concentration-camp sagas. Also based (like Kwai) on a
real-life story, this movie starts small but becomes a miniature epic of
overreach and moral drift.
**** Entertainment Weekly
Without doing anything so divisive as taking sides, The Counterfeiters
pays sympathetic attention to those who play their cards to win even
when the rules are terrible, not least because the remarkable Markovics,
an Austrian TV actor with a pugnacious anvil of a head, is so riveting
as an unsaintly survivor.
UNDER THE SAME MOON (LA MISMA LUNA)
Directed by: Patricia Riggen . Written by: Ligiah Villalobos . Starring:
Kate Del Castillo, Adrian Alonso, Jesse Garcia, Kate del Castillo
When the death of his grandmother leaves young Carlitos alone, he takes
his fate into his own hands and heads north across the border to find
his mother. As he journeys from his rural Mexican village to the L.A.
barrio, Carlitos faces seemingly insurmountable obstacles with a steely
determination and unfettered optimism that earn him the grudging respect
and affection of a reluctant protector, a middle-aged migrant worker
named Enrique. The unlikely pair finds their way from Tucson to East
L.A., but the only clue Carlitos has to his mother's whereabouts is her
description of the street corner from which she has called him each
Sunday for the last four years. Unaware that Rosario is just hours away
from returning to Mexico to be with her son, Carlitos and Enrique
desperately comb the vast, unfamiliar city for a place he has seen only
in his imagination. (Fox Searchlight)
**** Entertainment Weekly
The film says that the U.S. immigrant situation is untenable, but then
it forces US to ask: What should be done?
***1/2 TV Guide
It's an unexpectedly powerful little film that manages to say a lot of
what, despite all the talk on the subject, isn't being said in the
national debate on immigration.
MARRIED LIFE
Directed by: Ira Sachs . Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper,
Patricia Clarkson, and Rachel McAdams
A wry blend of dark humor, romantic deception, and stylish
melodrama--with an invigorating dash of suspense--Married Life is an
unconventional fable for grown-ups about the irresistible power and
utter madness of love. After decades of marital contentment, Harry
concludes that he must kill his wife Pat because he loves her too much
to let her suffer when he leaves her. Harry has fallen hard for the
young and lovely Kay, but his best friend Richard wants to win Kay for
himself. As Harry implements his maladroit plans for murdering his wife,
the other characters are entangled with their own deceptions. Like
Harry, they race toward their passions but trip over their scruples,
seemingly well-intended toward all, but truthful to none. Married Life
is an uncommonly adult film that surprises and confounds expectations.
Although it plays with mystery, comedy, and intrigue, its ultimate
concern is: "What is married life?" In its sly way, Married Life poses
perceptive questions about the seasonal discontents and unforeseen joys
of all long-term relationships. (Sony Pictures Classics)
***1/2 New York Magazine
In Married Life, Ira Sachs aims a bit lower than Green but obliterates
his target: The funny, the scary, the campy, the sad--they're all
splendidly of a piece.
*** Entertainment Weekly
Married Life congratulates its audience on a sophisticated, humorous
complicity in the obvious immorality of Harry's murder plans, as well as
in Richard's own ungentlemanly designs on his pal's gorgeous girl. Every
adult, the movie suggests, has got a secret.
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY
Directed by: Bharat Nalluri . Written by: David Magee Simon Beaufoy .
Starring: Frances McDormand Amy Adams Ciaran Hinds Shirley Henderson Lee
Pace .
In 1939 London, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew is a middle-aged governess who
finds herself once again unfairly dismissed from her job. Without so
much as severance pay, Miss Pettigrew realizes that she must--for the
first time in two decades--seize the day. This she does, by intercepting
an employment assignment outside of her comfort level--as "social
secretary." Arriving at a penthouse apartment for the interview, Miss
Pettigrew is catapulted into the glamorous world and dizzying social
whirl of an American actress and singer, Delysia Lafosse. Within
minutes, Miss Pettigrew finds herself swept into a heady high-society
milieu--and, within hours, living it up. Taking the "social secretary"
designation to heart, she tries to help her new friend Delysia navigate
a love life and career, both of which are complicated by the three men
in Delysia's orbit: devoted pianist Michael, intimidating nightclub
owner Nick, and impressionable junior impresario Phil. Miss Pettigrew
herself is blushingly drawn to the gallant Joe, a successful designer
who is tenuously engaged to haughty fashion maven Edythe, the one person
who senses that the new "social secretary" may be out of her element and
schemes to undermine her. During the next 24 hours, Guinevere and
Delysia will empower one another to discover their romantic destinies.
(Focus Features)
****Hollywood Reporter
Sustains itself through terrific forward momentum and two glorious star
turns by gifted actresses Frances McDormand and Amy Adams.
***Variety
McDormand's performance slowly builds a solid integrity, and contrasts
well with Adams' more flamboyant turn.
=============================================================
FILMS TO COME
In no particular release order
ALEXANDRA
THE FALL
FOREVER
LOVE SONGS
FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON
SON OF RAMBOW
THEN SHE FOUND ME
MY BROTHER IS AN ONLY CHILD
MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE
GIRLS ROCK
And many more....
Our staff here at the Salt Lake Film Society thanks all our supporters.
SLFS takes great care in hiring a staff that has a film history or
knowledge, so feel free to talk with any staff member about up coming
releases and our video collection at the Tower Theatre. They are a
wealth of knowledge and I'm happy to take all e-mail correspondence.
If you would like to volunteer for the Film Society events and earn
passes, please contact Amy Beth Leber at 801-746-0037
We thank you for your continuing support.
Tori Baker
Executive Director
Salt Lake Film Society...film festival all year long!
We do not sell any personal lists or information to any third
party...ever! If you would like to be removed from this list, please
reply to this e-mail. If you could also let us know why we lost you, we
can better serve our community.
Salt Lake Film Society thanks Xmission for their donation of services.
--
Tori Baker
Executive Director
Salt Lake Film Society
tori_baker@???
(801) 364-1088
