Gossip Central

Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory on HBO, and Awarded by the National Board of Review and Cinema Eye Honors for Non-Fiction Filmmaking

Last October when the documentary Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory premiered at the New York Film Festival, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky celebrated an unanticipated event: the release from prison of the West Memphis 3. For documentary filmmakers, it doesn’t get better than this: having your work bring about change.

In 1993, a newspaper item about the murder of three 8-year olds in West Memphis and the three teenaged boys arrested for the crime piqued the interest of HBO’s Sheila Nevins. She called the filmmaking team of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, sending them south to document the case. The filmmakers thought they were going to tell a tale about guilty teens and Satanic rituals in the heartland. Finding the evidence overwhelming that the men were innocent, instead they made a movie that pointed toward a miscarriage of justice. Two earlier versions of the documentary, shown at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directions/ New Films festival and HBO galvanized support for the convicted young men. After 18 years in prison, the men were released this past August.

The Awards Will Not Be Televised: Brad Pitt at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards

The crowds outside Crimson, the club where the New York Film Critics Circle held their awards, were six deep, calm in the cold behind velvet ropes, hoping to get a glimpse. Brad Pitt would receive a Best Actor award for his work in Moneyball and The Tree of Life, and, Angelina was by his side. He had been at hers a few weeks ago, a quiet presence at the In the Land of Blood and Honey premiere. Inside Crimson, critics and colleagues heard his story about first coming to New York at age 25, staying with a friend on Christopher Street, noting there were an awful lot of men, and they were all so nice. As to the New York critics, he was happy to meet this group led this year by John Anderson, surprised they weren’t taller, and even happier that the event would not be televised.

Albert Brooks Tribute at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

As the guy who doesn’t get the pretty girl, Albert Brooks does get the laughs. Which, as he indicated at a special tribute focused on his acting on Sunday night at the Walter Reade Theater, has made some directors hesitate to cast him in dramatic roles. In such American classics as Taxi Driver and Broadcast News, romance with Cybill Shepherd and Holly Hunter eludes him, while in Private Benjamin, sex with Goldie Hawn on their wedding night does him in. Filmmakers may be wary of his “funny,” but not Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish director of Drive, a Ryan Gosling vehicle (ha!) in which Albert Brooks plays an articulate thug, a performance touted for major awards, such as Best Supporting Actor from the New York Film Critics Circle.

Before the Film Society’s tribute and a special screening of Drive, I had the opportunity to ask Albert Brooks about this role.

Out to Lunch with Charlize Theron

It is hard to feel sorry for Charlize Theron. The Academy Award winning actress, for the role of Aileen Wuomos in Monster when she famously puffed up and made up to emphasize the serial killer’s tough look, is in fact very pretty, like the most popular girl in your high school. The gorgeous blond of your fantasy who has everything, is exactly the role she plays as Mavis Gary, a writer of young adult fiction loosely based on her memories of teen glory in Mercury, Minnesota in Jason Reitman’s Young Adult, script by Diablo Cody. And yet, her behavior trying to snatch back her happily married boyfriend is so unspeakable, you find her a pitiable, abject, lonely, delusional masochist and alcoholic who self-mutilates pulling out her hair. Ech!

Gotham Awards: Let the Season Begin

You could say that the Gotham Awards has edge, and heart, marking the official start of the awards season. Cavernous Cipriani’s on Wall Street was the scene of great film industry camaraderie on Monday night. An “Oscars” night for indie films, with categories like “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You,” the evening shines a light on many films that will make the trip to Los Angeles for the Golden Globes and Academy Awards, as say, The King’s Speech, did last year.

This year, George Clooney may not be an indie leading man; that fact was not missed in this crowd. Much loved, he was the butt of at least one joke. In The Descendants, Alexander Payne’s latest film, he leads a stunning cast. The film is high on critics’ Best Picture lists. In the Gotham’s category of Best Ensemble Performance, Mike Mills’ excellent Beginners beat them out. Did you see it? Exactly. Christopher Plummer, picking up the prize, noted co-star Ewan MacGregor was off working in Africa. “I hate him,” he laughed.

The Sound of Mumbai on HBO2

Sheila Nevins knows how to pick them. At HBO2 where documentaries are her domain, so to speak, she reigns supreme. But “don’t call me lucky,” she cautioned members of New York Women in Film and Television at a special breakfast, lest anyone might envy her this dream job. To get to this place is a lot of work. Part of that work is selecting films for HBO2 to produce as she did with the Paradise Lost trilogy, sending a film team to West Memphis to see what they can find out about a sensational murder story. And sometimes it is just seeing a film she wished she had made as in the case of The Sound of Mumbai to air on HBO on November 23.

Mother's Worst Nightmare: Ezra Miller in Another Happy Day and We Need to Talk About Kevin

It was an unexpected Ezra Miller film festival: two movies premiering back to back this week, co-starring this gifted 19 year-old in roles that might give new parents pause. He's got this character nailed, the disaffected, edgy son with degrees of menace. Naturally the films in question, Sam Levinson's Another Happy Day and Lynne Ramsey's We Need to Talk About Kevin are all about the formidable moms, played by Ellen Barkin and Tilda Swinton. 

Breaking the Ice with Guy Maddin

Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin has perhaps one of the most rarefied visions of anyone working in film: operatic, on a tilt, jawdropping. This weekend, his talent for bringing together elements, yes, Icelandic music from the Middle Ages to a unique historic moment in Canadian history, comes to the Walter Reade Theater for a program commissioned for this year's PERFORMA 11, the new visual art performance biennial. I had the opportunity to speak to Maddin about his TALES OF THE GIMLI HOSPITAL: REFRAMED, a dreamlike re-imagining of his first film from 1988, with a new score by Icelandic musicians including Aono Jikken Ensemble and former members of mum.

How German Is It? Werner Herzog at DOC NYC

Werner Herzog is all over DOC NYC. In this, its second year, his film Into the Abyss was screened opening night on Wednesday. The famed German director quipped that all of his films could have this title. Indeed, last year his Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a 3D undersea archeological expedition kicked off the inaugural DOC NYC. The high grossing documentary might qualify-caves, massive bodies of water, get it?-- but for entirely different reasons.

Oranges and Sunshine at the Hamptons International Film Festival

British children may have been promised oranges and sunshine as they were deported to Australia in the '60's and '70's in a scandalous child trafficking operation affecting some 130,000 kids, but that is hardly what they found there. The children, aged 3 to 13, often left in child care by unwed mothers, were lied to, told their families were dead. In Australia, most were enlisted in a labor pool, forced into hard construction and menial jobs, beaten into servility, and many raped. This piece of twentieth century horror might have been swept aside but a social worker in Nottingham, Margaret Humphreys, dedicated herself to helping the children, now grown, find their families. She is also asking for accountability from agencies in both governments. Her story is told in the film, Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach and starring Emily Watson, featured in this year's Hamptons International Film Festival. While it is not a documentary, Oranges and Sunshine faithfully portrays the shocking truth.