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Found Footage film festival, a collection of bizarro videos, at Plaza Theatre Oct. 12
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Check out the Found Footage Festival, the national touring showcase of odd and hilarious found videos. It h as a one-night-only engagement at the Plaza Theatre (1049 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE) on Sunday, Oct. 12th at 7:30 pm. Tix are $10.
Nick Prueher and fellow curator Joe Pickett, whose credits include The Onion, “The Late Show with David Letterman” and “The Colbert Report,” have spent the last four years traveling the country, scouring thrift stores and garage sales for bizarre videos.
[Here’s a link to the trailer]*http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=3648214.)
And here’s the press release:
The Found Footage Festival is a one-of-a-kind event compiles more than an hour’s worth of footage from videos that were found at garage sales and thrift stores and in warehouses and dumpsters throughout the country. Curators Pickett and Prueher host each screening in-person and provide their unique observations and commentary on these found video obscurities. From the curiously-produced industrial training video to the forsaken home movie donated to Goodwill, the Found Footage Festival resurrects these forgotten treasures and serves them up in a lively celebration of all things found.
Among the new video clips to be featured in the show:
— Highlights from a cable access talent show called “Stairway to Stardom”
— An all-new collection of exercise videos featuring Marky Mark Wahlberg, O.J. Simpson and a group of rapping pregnant ladies.
— An instructional video for a cosmetic device so frightening that it will forever haunt you
The Found Footage Festival was founded in New York in 2004 and has gone on to sell out hundreds of shows across the U.S. and Canada, including the HBO Comedy Festival at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. .
For more information, call the venue’s box office at 404-873-1939 or visit [www.plazaatlanta.com.][(http://www.plazaatlanta.com)
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24 hours of Paul Newman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Turner Classic Movies will pay tribute to legendary actor Paul Newman, who died this weekend at age 83. On Sunday, Oct. 12, TCM will dedicate its entire 24-hour schedule to movies by the Oscar-winning actor. The lineup (which only includes films Newman made from 1956 to 1968) will include the iconic “Cool Hand Luke,” the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “Torn Curtain,” and my personal favorite “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with actress Elizabeth Taylor. Are any of the films in the lineup below one of your favorite Newman films?
TCM’s Oct. 12 schedule
6 a.m.: The Rack (1956)
8 a.m.: “Until They Sail (1957)
10 a.m.: “Torn Curtain (1966)
12:15 p.m.: “Exodus (1960)
3:45 p.m.: “Sweet Bird of Youth” (1962)
6 p.m.: “Hud” (1963)
8 p.m.: “Somebody up There Likes Me” (1956)
10 p.m.: “Cool Hand Luke” (1967)
12:15 a.m.: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958)
2:15 a.m.: “Rachel, Rachel” (1968)
4 a.m.: “The Outrage” (1964)
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‘High School Musical 3’ tickets on sale now
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s just a matter of weeks before “High School Musical 3,” the first feature film and Part Three of the Disney tween phenom, arrives in theaters.
But for those eager to get in line for Troy and Gabriella’s “Senior Year” episode, opening nationwide Oct. 24, tickets are on sale today, via the Internet.
Atlanta’s own Justin Martin (who portrayed Travis Younger in ABC’s “A Raisin in the Sun”) will play a sophomore Wildcat in the East High serial, starring Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale.
To get advance movie tickets, go to Disney.com/HSM3. Buy tickets before Oct. 23 on Fandango.com or Movietickets.com, and get a free iTunes download of the movie song “Can I Have This Dance.”
You can also find videos, downloads, buddy icons, games and other cool stuff on the movie site.
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New David Duchovny, Demi Moore film to be shot in Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The story, a social commentary, centers on a picture-perfect family that moves into a suburban neighborhood and immediately becomes the toast of the town, loved and envied by all. But the reality is they are a commissioned fake family put together by a marketing company as a way to introduce new luxury-level products to neighborhoods around the world.
Georgia earlier this year improved its tax breaks to entice production companies to film movies and TV shows here. So far, a few other productions have come here as well. A Lifetime pilot TV show called “Drop Dead Diva” has been shooting around town. “Van Wilder 3” has also been reportedly working its magic in the area. (We know, we know. Not exactly Oscar worthy but you take what you can get.) A possible ABC Family film starring Melissa Joan Hart (“Sabrina the Teenage Witch”) is also likely to be hitting town soon.
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Tyler Perry donates food to help 1,000 families
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This morning, filmmaker and actor Tyler Perry is making his way over to the Hosea Feed The Hungry Care Center in Southwest Atlanta to give away a truckload of food. Rising food and gas prices are making it more difficult for families to pay their bills and put food on the table, says Perry. “The Family That Preys,” director is challenging others to not only help feed the hungry, but provide other financial assistance to help those less fortunate. Are you up for Perry’s challenge? If so, what do you do or plan to do to help the less fortunate?
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Atlantan wins $100,000 for short film
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
John Gray of Atlanta has been awarded $100,000 by the Doorpost Film Project for his short film “Before I Wake,” in which a man confronts past sexual abuse. Another short film by Gray, “Freedom to Live, ” which looks at the physically abusive relationship between a white husband and an African-American wife, got him into the finals earlier this summer. It was the prize for that film that earned him $10,000 to make his latest short film about hope and redemption.
Doorpost is an international online short filmmaking community that discovers filmmakers who inspire and influence rather than just entertain. In addition to the $100,000 prize, Gray will get the chance to meet with executives at movie studios in Los Angeles. He picked up his award at a ceremony last week in Nashville.
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Dennis Quaid on His New Football Movie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I met Dennis Quaid this morning at one of those generic Buckhead high rise hotels. With football on his mind, he’s in town to promote his latest movie, “The Express,” about the first African-American Heisman Trophy winner, Ernie Davis, and hard-driven Syracuse University coach Ben Schwartzwalder.
It’s set in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Quaid plays the coach, Rob Brown is Davis.
Later today Quaid will workout with the Falcons. He joked that growing up in Houston he was “too small for high school football, and that pushed me into the drama department.” Golf is his sport of choice these days.
Asked about the film, he said: “My character, Ben, was part of the status quo, and he followed those unwritten rules of a racist and segregationist society. But he also was one of the first coaches to actively recruit African-Americans in football, and ultimately Schwartzwalder and Davis developed almost a father-son relationship. It’s not a story you can wrap up neatly with a bowtie on top.”
Quaid first came onto my radar in “Breaking Away,” the bicycle racing movie where he was one of the “cutters” — the blue-collar townies who feel like second-class citizens in a college town. It’s a movie about class status and self-esteem and the triumph of the heroic individual. I also recall it as a pretty exciting sports flic.
What’s your favorite Dennis Quaid movie? What’s your all-time favorite football movie?
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Don’t try to grab students with serious snoozefest
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dear Mr. Smithee,
I teach at a small community/technical college. I wanted to start a film series, so I polled my fellow faculty members and asked them this question: What films do you believe your students should see before they leave college?
The 10 films receiving the most votes, and thus becoming the first film series, were: “The Mission,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “Schindler’s List,” “Duck Soup,” “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life,” “Rear Window,” “Twelve Angry Men,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Wizard of Oz” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
I launched the film series. The students stayed away in droves. I had to cancel mid-way through.
I’d like to try again. And so I turn to you.
Why do you think these films were snakebitten? What would you suggest for a film series at a small, two-year college?
PATRICK SPRADLIN, Brainerd, Minn.
Dear Ya, Sure, Ya Betcha,
Why do you think Hollywood turns out mountains of pure cinematic drivel?
It is because, quite simply, it is the kind of material that will lure in young minds.
What you have here is a failure to communicate.
Perhaps you trusted that college students were interested in learning something new.
Think of it this way. You, a fine young college student, finally ask the school’s most beautiful coed for a date. You say, “Hey, let’s go see a long movie about 18th-century Jesuits hacking their way through the jungles of South America.”
And you are then shocked when she says she simply must stay in her dorm room that night to wash her hair?
If you are going to book something as dense as “The Mission,” at least be prepared to put up signs that read “FILM SERIES. FREE BEER.”
I might suggest that you try not only to educate your otherwise occupied students but to imagine what might be their personal interests and work from that to attain a crowd.
Here are 10 films to consider …and why:
“Hard Candy” (2005). Before she made “Juno,” Ellen Page performed admirably in a hard-hitting revenge drama involving a pedophile (Patrick Wilson). It’s tough as nails and can spark a lively post-screening discussion.
“Monster’s Ball” (2001). Not because it’s an important and interesting movie (which it is) but because you will market it by playing up the facts that the late Heath Ledger co-stars and that it’s directed by Marc Forster, whose latest film is the upcoming James Bond thriller “Quantum of Solace.”
“Eraserhead” (1977). College is the time of life to watch David Lynch. And this is the definitive Lynchian mind-blower.
“Napoleon Dynamite” (2004). Don’t forget to hold a “Tina, come get some ham!” eating contest.
“The Descent” (2006). Who cares that it’s only two years old. It’s a fine horror film. Take a hint from William Castle’s playbook. Require moviegoers to chain one leg to a chair and make promotional signs that read, “So much scarier than ‘Saw’ you will cut your foot off to get out alive!”
“Go” (1999). The marketing plan: “See Katie Holmes before she was abducted!”
“The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001), “Two Towers” (2002) and The Return of the King” (2003). Be smart. Show the extended versions. Do it in a marathon. Anybody who makes it all the way through all three films gets an “A” in the college course of their choice.
“Suicide Club” (2002). Every festival needs a foreign film. This cult favorite from Japan begins with 54 giggling teenage schoolgirls jumping in unison toward a speeding subway train. Blood, gore and smart filmmaking ensue.
You can thank me later.
ALAN
Dear Mr. Smithee,
When I was 7 or 8 years old — a wee one, as it were — I went to a movie with friends and a parent that caused me to go rushing out of the theater in tears. It would have been 1958 or ‘59 and the bit that drove me bonkers was a riot in a Chinese prison. Lots of hacking with swords and the like.
I know it’s not much to go on, but I trust in your all-knowingness.
BARRY McCORMICK, Powder Springs
Dear Once Wee,
I have six words for you: “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.”
ALAN
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Do you watch movies online?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Most people I know often talk about what’s in their Netflix queue. Which means they’re mailed a movie on a disc and after watching it they mail it back.
Jaman.com appears to be a lot easier. Join and you can watch a lot of movies online for free or rent them for $1.99 and watch them online. (The free films — like the vampire classic “Nosferatu” — usually come with ads).
Netflix’s library is huge. Jaman’s is still kind of itty bitty. Most popular movies on Jaman.com right now are “The Bank Job,” “The Eye,” “Tyler Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman,” “Killing Zoe” and “Witless Protection.”
Among other films available: “Requiem for a Dream,” “Grease” and “Reservoir Dogs.” And there are Bollywood movies, too.
Do you watch movies online?
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Jonas Brother graduates high school … in Atlanta!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Joe Jonas of the ubiquitous Jonas Brothers got a special treat during the group’s Atlanta concert this week. He graduated from high school! With a cap, a gown and a tribute from his tutor.
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
Watch and enjoy.
Permalink | Comments (45) | Post your comment | Categories: Mr. Smithee's Megaplex
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