Austin360 blogs > Austin Movie Blog > Archives > 2006 > September > 15
Friday, September 15, 2006
Local does good!
A big point of pride for locals this year has been “Away From Her,”(*) the feature film writing/directing debut for actress Sarah Polley. Polley, you see, is “a national treasure” in the words of a local publication, and though that may be slight hyperbole you can see their point: Born in Toronto, she has gone on to be a high point in films by regional geniuses Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg, alliterative auteurs Wim Wenders and Hal Hartley, and, well, the guy who made the “Dawn of the Dead” remake.
Anyway: Her film, the adaptation of an Alice Munro story about a man losing his wife to Alzheimer’s, is a solidly made tearjerker that gets to you without being at all manipulative. And appropriately for a national treasure, she showcases a Canadian actor many folks (me, anyway) won’t know: Gordon Pinsent, a bear of a man who has to find a way to be faithful to a wife (a brilliant Julie Christie) who has essentially forgotten who he is.
Which brings to mind something I noticed on Canada’s beautiful currency. While our money features national monuments and the not-entirely-universal motto “In God We Trust,” the Canadian $20 is adorned with the work of a Canadian artist and the Gabrielle Roy quote, “Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?”
I’m beat and ready to come home to the good ol’ motherland, but Canada does have its good points.
- Here’s a list of everything I’ve reviewed (or will soon) at hollywoodreporter.com: Bonneville, Chacun Sa Nuit, Lake of Fire, Manufactured Landscapes, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Tour, This Filthy World, Stranger Than Fiction, Palimpsest, Love and Other Disasters, Little Children, Last Winter, Kabul Express, Journals of Knud Rasmussen, Jade Warrior, Half Life, The Fall, Catch A Fire, Time, Syndromes and a Century, Away From Her, Brand Upon the Brain
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‘Wheels’ nearly ready to roll
Austin moviemaking machine Bob Ray — known for the scrappy, smoke-choked “Rock Opera” — tells us his long-gestating roller derby doc “Hell on Wheels is this close to being locked and loaded and ready to rumble.
“We’ve completed the editing!” Ray says, noting it took 18 months to chop into shape 500 hours of video footage.
“There’s still a small mound of work to be done: recording a score, color correction, EQ, graphics, etc.,” he says. Ray hopes for an early to mid-2007 release.
Watch the movie’s trailer, eyeball pix and more at Hell on Wheels.
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See ‘Sleep’ early
Michel Gondry’s new film, “The Science of Sleep,” opens in Austin theaters Sept. 22, but Matt Dentler of SXSW has graciously tipped us off to a way to see the film before that. There’s a preview screening at the Arbor at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. Click here to RSVP for you and a guest. The RSVP is required.
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