To all our Film Society members and supporters,
To all those great supporters. We're heading into that time of the year
where films are small and have no advertising muscle behind them! So, we
need your active help to make this work and to keep independent film in
your community. We need you to go to the movies! If you see a film you
like, please tell all your friends. Your recommendation is very
important as the Film Society prides ourselves on a personal touch!
Thanks for all your support.
Opening this week!
MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS starring Jude Law, Norah Jones, Natalie Portman,
Rachel Weisz, and David Strathairn.
Wong Kar Wai, acclaimed Chinese director of CHUNKING EXPRESS, IN THE
MOOD FOR LOVE, and 2046 makes his English-language debut!
Held over!
CARAMEL
FLAWLESS- w/ Michael Caine
Ends Thurs...
SNOW ANGELS
REDBELT
YOUNG @ HEART is confirmed for Memorial Day weekend! See you then.
We have an exciting May lined up of our Utah Screenwriters Project. Next
week Salt Lake Film Society in association with the Utah Film Commission
will host our Pitch-Smart Scriptmart. A full mini-meeting pitch session
event where local Utah writers who have graduated from the Utah
Screenwriters Project will have the opportunity to meet with Utah based
producers. This exciting event will allow producers to connect with
writing talent in our state. In addition, we're honored to host JOAN
TEWKESBURY, a legend in the screenwriting world. She will host a
workshop session on character obsticals for this season's Utah
Screenwriter participants.
Thanks to your support, and frequent choice of our venues for your film
entertainment, these community programs thrive. Your membership dollars
and ticket admission pays for all our continued film fostering and film
exhibiting programs. Thank you!
Our community supporters The Space Between Theatre Company proudly
presents Carol Lynn Pearson's Facing East! June 5-24 (Thursdays through
Saturdays) with Sunday matinée June 25th.
Also from The Space Between comes CABARET, coming Thursday, June 12 to
the all-new outdoor venue, The Space at Coyote Gulch, located in
Kayenta/Ivins. Performances take place Thursday through Saturday for the
weekends of June 12 – 14, June 19 – 21 and June 26 – 28. Cabaret-style
seating starts at 6:30pm, $30/per person for the pre-show. Traditional
seating is at 7:30pm, $15/per person for an 8pm start each evening.
For more information visit
www.tsbtc.org
Two?
If you're continuing to receive two e-mails, please reply to this e-mail
with the word "two" in the subject line and we'll take you off the
duplicate list. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.
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Our Coffee guarantee!
We're training our staff to become amazing barista's...if you order a
coffee with us and are not 100% satisfied, please tell our staff and
they will happilly try another shot for you or refund your purchase.
Word of Mouth marketing...
Many of the films Salt Lake Film Society brings will not have the
marketing budget for you to be able to see them on television ads or in
the papers, so please feel free to read our "tell me more" section below
that describes each film and lists details of cast with critical review
re-caps. This should hopefully get you enough information to want to
venture out for a night at the cinema!
Memberships are a great way to support our non-profit as well. Ask any
staff member and/or reply to this e-mail for details. Our first member
screening will likely take place in March. All memberships are
tax-deductible - what a way to see movies!
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QUICK LOOK at SHOWTIMES - RED CLIFFS CINEMAS
Behind the RED CLIFFS MALL 1750 E. RED CLIFFS DR.
THIS WEEK:
Thru Thursday 5/22...
CARAMEL 01:15, 4:05, 7:05, 09:05
SNOW ANGELS 09:40
SMART PEOPLE 01:05, 4:10, 7:10
FLAWLESS 01:00, 4:15, 7:15, 09:30
THE COUNTERFEITERS 01:10, 4:00, 7:00
RED BELT 09:30
NEXT WEEK
FRI 5/23 - THU 5/29
CARAMEL 01:15, 7:05
THE COUNTERFEITERS 04:00, 9:05
SMART PEOPLE 01:05, 4:10, 7:10, 09:10
FLAWLESS 01:00, 4:15, 7:00, 09:15
MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS 01:10, 4:05, 7:00, 09:30
===============================================================
TELL ME MORE...PLEASE!
(all star ratings are based on 4 star rating systems)
MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS
Written and directed by: Wong Kar Wai . Starring: Jude Law, Norah Jones,
Natalie Portman, Rachel Weisz, and David Strathairn
In Wong Kar Wai's debut English-language feature, the internationally
acclaimed director takes his audience on a dramatic journey across the
distance between heartbreak and a new beginning. After a rough breakup,
Elizabeth sets out on a trip across America, leaving behind a life of
memories, a dream, and a soulful new friend, a cafe owner, all to search
for something to mend her broken heart. Waitressing her way through the
country, Elizabeth befriends others whose yearnings are greater than
hers, including a troubled cop, his estranged wife, and a down-on-her
luck gambler with a score to settle. Through these individuals,
Elizabeth witnesses the true depths of loneliness and emptiness, and
begins to understand that her own journey is part of a greater
exploration within herself.
*** TV Guide
...has the same dreamy, romantic melancholy that distinguishes Wong's
best films.
*** San Francisco Chronicle
Wildly romantic.
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.
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.
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.
SNOW ANGELS
Written and Directed by: David Gordon Green . Starring: Sam Rockwell,
Kate Beckinsale, Michael Angarano, Griffin Dunne, Amy Sedaris, and
Olivia Thirlby
A story of love lost and found in a small town, Snow Angels is a
heartrending portrayal of three couples in various stages of life
orbiting around each other in search of connection and meaning. An
unexpected act of violence disrupts the lives of these intertwined
couples and reveals the profound moments in which they each realize how
precarious and remarkable life can be. High-school student Arthur plays
trombone in the marching band, busses tables at the local Chinese
restaurant, and avoids his squabbling parents. At work, he flirts with
Annie, who used to be his babysitter. Annie is trying to build a new
life for herself and her daughter after splitting with high-school
sweetheart Glenn. A man with a troubled past, Glenn hopes to make a new
start by getting a job and reconnecting with his family. At school,
Arthur meets a pretty girl, Lila, who is just as nerdy as he is, and
they quickly develop a crush on one another. Though Lila makes her
feelings for Arthur painfully obvious, Arthur is reluctant to accept her
advances as he watches his father move out of the family home while his
mother struggles to keep things together. Determined to find happiness,
Arthur begins to fall for the irresistible Lila, even as he witnesses
Annie and Glenn tear one another apart in a series of distressing
encounters that occur at the same time as his parents begin separate
lives. Then, on a cold winter morning, Glenn and Annie's past catches up
with their future. In one shocking moment, all of the pain and struggle
comes to a screeching halt. For them, and for everyone who knows them,
nothing will ever be the same.
**** Chicago Tribune
Green is a rare bird in American filmmaking: a humanist who knows how to
tell a story.
***1/2 Philadelphia Inquirer
Disturbingly good. The writing and the performances are such that as
things go from bad (sad motel-room affairs) to worse (a 4-year-old gone
missing), the film's characters get inside your skin, your soul. It's
enough to make you want to cry.
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...
**** Chicago Reader
The Counterfeiters poses some tricky moral questions, and its troubling
ambiguities rank a cut above the dubious uplift of "Schindler's List."
**** 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.
SMART PEOPLE
Directed by: Noam Murro . Starring: Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker,
Ellen Page, and Thomas Haden Church
Professor Lawrence Wetherhold might be imperiously brilliant, but when
it comes to solving the conundrums of love and family, he's as downright
flummoxed as the next guy. His teenage daughter is an acid-tongued
overachiever who follows all too closely in dad's misery-loving
footsteps, and his adopted, preposterously ne'er-do-well brother has
perfected the art of freeloading. A widower who can't seem to find
passion in anything anymore, not even the Victorian literature in which
he's an expert, Lawrence seems to be sleepwalking through a very stunted
middle age. When his brother shows up unexpectedly for an extended stay
just as he accidentally encounters a former student, Janet, the
circumstances stir him from his deep freeze, with often comical,
sometimes heartbreaking consequences for himself and everyone around him.
***1/2 TV Guide
A sharp, superbly acted character-driven comedic drama.
*** New York Times
The great virtue of Smart People, attributable to Noam Murro's easygoing
direction as well as to Mr. Poirier's wandering screenplay, lies in its
general preference for small insights over grand revelations.
=============================================================
FILMS TO COME
In no particular release order
YOUNG AT HEART
SON OF RAMBOW
THEN SHE FOUND ME
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. 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
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Salt Lake Film Society thanks Xmission for their donation of services.
--
Tori Baker
Executive Director
Salt Lake Film Society
tori_baker@???
(801) 364-1088
