The press release came in Friday afternoon, but I had already abandoned the computer for Tribeca screenings, so I’m just looking at it in depth now: BAMcinematek has announced the lineup for BAMcinemaFEST, the summer event that replaces what was formerly known as Sundance and BAM –– and, it would seem, builds on it substantially. A sampling of the program’s highlights:
On July 1, “An Evening with Arnaud Desplechin,” in which the director of A Christmas Tale “presents two personal favorites: Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) followed by a conversation with film critic Kent Jones; and then Desplechin will introduce the next screening, François Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid.” I had planned to be out of the country that night, but this sounds almost good enough to change my plans.
A screening of Metropolis with “live performance of original score by Irish ambient rock collective 3epkano.”
A retrospective sidebar featuring films by Visconti, Jarmusch and a special 20th anniversary screening of Do the Right Thing.
Parties! Including the after party for opening night film Don’t Let me Drown, and an all-night movie marathon.
Don’t you just hate when the movies make you care about a bigot? Sure, racists are technically humans, but that doesn’t mean we need to sympathize with them, right? No matter how great the film, it should be very difficult to accept the softening of intolerant people.
Yet the lovable racist is not uncommon in cinema. In fact, out in theaters right now are two films dealing with this type of character. The Reader presents a cold Concentration Camp guard (Kate Winslet) for whom we’re meant to shed a tear, and Gran Torino focuses on a War Veteran stereotype (Clint Eastwood) who may evoke from the audience as much amusement as disgust.
Maybe it’s like picking a scab, watching these kinds of movies. Some great films, such as Downfall, may only welcome an understanding of someone so heinous as Adolph Hitler, but other films have allowed us to totally enjoy racist protagonists of lesser offense. Check out the following examples to see some of the many intolerant heroes we’ve easily tolerated. …Read more
“Antoine’s the best. I couldn’t think of anybody better to direct this movie than Antoine Fuqua. He’s got a great sense of the characters. He’s not from New York, but he got out here and just wanted to be around everything Brooklyn, soak it up.”
That’s first-time screenwriter Michael Martin, in the midst of telling me his amazing Cinderella story, which begins with a tollbooth clerk from East New York writing an original screenplay called Brooklyn’s Finest and ends with the script being produced by Paramount with Mr. Fuqua (Training Day) directing.
I knew nothing of that story when I discovered the film shooting in my Brooklyn neighborhood last month. My first reaction to the sight of a huge Hollywood crew and thugged-out extras in gold chains was, another bigass Ho’wood King-Kong-ain’t-got-nuthin perp pageant. But, hanging out with the crew–the friendliest and most accessible I’ve ever observed– I wanted to believe that these nice people weren’t just here for pulp plunder.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
filmcouch-114
The press release came in Friday afternoon, but I had already abandoned the computer for Tribeca screenings, so I’m just looking at it in depth now: 
