Gossip Central

Two Films from Israel at the New York Film Festival: Fill the Void and The Gatekeepers

Is it too soon to talk about Foreign Film Oscars? Fill the Void, Rama Burshtein’s glimpse into Tel Aviv’s Hasidic world, Israel’s entry for Academy Award consideration, should make the top five. Among the many pleasures of the New York Film Festival in its 50^th year, this stunning drama takes the viewer into the marriage practices of a hermetic community, offering an intimate, if fictional view, of how matches are made. Ultimately a love story, Fill the Void is most surprising in revealing unexpected emotional connection and subdued passion in places where love is most often a last consideration.

Ann Roth: Reluctant Honoree at the Hamptons International Film Festival

How do you pay tribute to a star in the film industry, playfully dubbed “The Meryl Streep of Costume Design?” That was the dilemma Nathan Lane faced in front of a crowd at the Hamptons International Film Festival that included Scott Rudin, Bruce Weber, and eh, Meryl Streep. “You have to say something nice,” said Lane by way of lauding Ann Roth’s genius. But Roth would have none of it. Horrified when director Mike Nichols announced that they’d worked together for 47 years, she seemed horrified that she was honored at all.

Searching for Sugar Man at Guild Hall: Alec Baldwin, Honorary Chairman of the Board

Just days after he married Hilaria Thomas, when he could have been in some exotic place on honeymoon, Alec Baldwin, taking his Hamptons International Film Festival duties very seriously, took the stage at East Hampton’s Guild Hall, to introduce a documentary that’s been garnering buzz at film festivals. A hit at Sundance and Berlin, Searching for Sugar Man is an American Dream story about a ‘70’s singer/songwriter, heavy on social commitment in the manner of Bob Dylan or Phil Ochs who was rumored to have dramatically killed himself at the end of a performance, by gunshot or in a ball of fire. It is not a spoiler to say that Sixto Rodriguez was found alive and well and living in Detroit.

Flashing Back with Sara Driver on the Bowery

My favorite Sara Driver story involves her 1981 film of Paul Bowles’s short story, “You Are Not I.” Long thought lost, a print of the 48-minute film was discovered in 2008 among Bowles’ possessions in Tangier, Morocco in his driver’s insecticide-laden basement. Now restored, the film was featured at several conferences and festivals celebrating the author’s centennial last year. In its own right, Sara Driver’s work has been feted in Buenos Aires, Reykjavik, and Thessalonika, among other places.

This weekend You Are Not I screens in a retrospective at Anthology Film Archives, “Sleepwalking: The Films of Sara Driver,” along with her films Sleepwalk (1986), When Pigs Fly (1994), and Bowery—Spring, an 11-minute documentary from 1994. Also marking the occasion of a newly minted boxed DVD set of Driver’s work, the series will feature films Driver found inspiring, among them Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People and Charlotte Zwerin and Bruce Ricker’s Thelonius Monk: Straight No Chaser.

Audrey Tautou, Etcetera at the French Rendez-vous

Petite and utterly adorable, the French movie star Audrey Tautou will always be known as the “Amelie” girl for her delightful performance in the 2001 film. On closing night of this year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema, she was the guest of honor at a soiree at the upper East side Cultural Services of the French Embassy, attending with a posse that included her hairdresser. Her new movie Delicacy, opening in New York this week, has an office romance at its core. In a far corner of the elegant Fifth Avenue townhouse, Tautou, dark curls bobbing, spoke about why her character would enter into an inexplicable love affair with a dull witted co-worker. “You don’t know where love comes from. He touched her in a deep place,” said Tautou her hands gesticulating wildly. Next up for her is a movie with Cedric Klapisch, Casse Tete Chinoise, an expression that translates loosely to “head crushing anxiety,” to be shot soon in Chinatown. When asked if there is an American director with whom she’d like to work, she did not hesitate: “Alexander Payne. I adored his About Schmidt.” The French do love what they love.

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.