Fire Under the Snow tells the remarkable story of Palden Gyatso, a Buddhist monk whose life tracks the modern history of Tibet: Born in 1933, Palden entered a monastery at the age of four. In 1959, after the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, he was arrested and spent the next 33 years in prison, undergoing brutal torture and re-education. Throughout, he maintained his Buddhist discipline. Released in 1992, he made his way to Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile. His autobiography is the basis for the film, which makes its Buffalo premiere next Thursday (Nov. 5), sponsored by the UB Asian Studies Program and the UB Law School’s Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy. All proceeds benefit the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala.
7:30pm. Market Arcade Film & Arts Centre, 629 Main St. $10.
The Buffalo International Film Festival 2009 kicks off this Friday, October 9th. Artvoice and BIFF will be giving out tickets throughout the month-long festival. We’ve got a pair of tickets for each event, and in addition we’ll have some extras for opening night featuring Charlie Chaplin’s Lost Outtakes and for the Saturday October 17th Ray Bradbury It Came From Outer Space matinee.
For more information and to register for your chance to win, visit our BIFF page. Winners will be selected at random – we’ll notify you via e-mail and have your tickets waiting at will-call. Registering once makes you eligible to win a pair of tickets to any of the BIFF’s events. Good luck!
Visit the BIFF2009 website to see the entire schedule of events.
Yuichiro Yamada
Everyone in this community has some opinion on our local businesses. Some of us do everything in our power to support them. To these people, local businesses might as well be a part of the family. So for these people, Yuichiro Yamada, a documentary filmmaker and graduate student at UB, made two documentaries to follow the life and times of these businesses that color our streets, speak up in our communities and act as the familiar placeholders in our routines about the city.
Just Browsing takes a look at our local bookstores such as Talking Leaves, Rust Belt Books and Second Reader, and how they do business as a small, endangered enclave of independent booksellers. Yamada’s other feature, Irreplaceable, was shot during the last days of New World Records and focuses on the loss to the Buffalo community caused by its closing. A loss that some may argue was like…well, losing one of the family.
They will be screened to the public as a part of collaboration between Hallwalls and Talking Leaves at Hallwalls Cinema, after which Yamada will be on hand to answer questions. Wednesday, September 30, 7-9pm. Hallwalls Cinema @ Babeville, 341 Delaware Avenue.
Yamada’s work focuses on local and independent businesses as members of the city landscape and how they are impacted by events in the city, the economy and the country. His films focus on these businesses both here in the US and in his native Japan.
Yamada couldn’t have picked a better place to film these documentaries seeing as how the landscape of Buffalo’s independent businesses is a sore spot for some, a pride and joy for others, but certainly a point of discussion for everyone.
—ann marie awad
AV street correspondent John Duke sent in this photo of fans Kate Feroleto and her cousin Leah Feroleto with Keanu Reeves. Reeves was in town yesterday to get a feel for Buffalo’s City Court building, where filming for Henry’s Crime will take place.
Congratulations to Buffalo Niagara Film Commissioner Tim Clark for bringing the production to Buffalo. “It goes back to Keanu himself, who has very fond memories of Buffalo,” Clark said. “He grew up nearby Toronto and is pretty much insisting that this project be written for Buffalo.”
Reeves plans to winter in Buffalo. Anyone else got any Keanu sightings to share?
Artvoice is giving away free tickets to see Adam, before it officially opens to the public. Tickets will be available tomorrow, Tuesday August 18th starting at 10AM at the Artvoice office. Tickets are first come first serve, and will be available through 5PM or while supplies last. The screening is Tuesday evening at 7:30PM.
Romance can be risky, perplexing and filled with the perils of miscommunication – and that’s if you aren’t ADAM, for whom life itself is this way. In this heartfelt romantic comedy, Hugh Dancy (THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC) stars as Adam, a handsome but intriguing young man who has all his life led a sheltered existence – until he meets his new neighbor, Beth (Rose Byrne, “Damages,” 28 WEEKS LATER, KNOWING), a beautiful, cosmopolitan young woman who pulls him into the outside world, with funny, touching and entirely unexpected results. Their implausible and enigmatic relationship reveals just how far two people from different realities can stretch in search of an extraordinary connection.
Visit our Contests, Promotions and Giveaways page to see the movie trailer and for full details!
Come spend your Saturday night (July 25th) with a riveting mix of animated shorts from around the world. Squeaky Wheel, Buffalo’s very own artist-run non-profit that supports the local media arts, will host its 6th annual Animation Festival featuring both low and high-tech presentations from local and international artists. Highlights at this family-friendly outdoor screening will feature globally recognized works by filmmakers hailing from such far corners of earth as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom all for your entertainment. The event will showcase methods utilizing everything from the vintage to the cutting edge tricks you thought only existed in your dreams. Viewers can expect creative pixilation, animated cats, a dancing Godzilla (see below), and the award winning short “I Met the Walrus,” featuring and inspired by original audio from an infamous John Lennon interview. Bringing your own picnic equipment is strongly encouraged to maximize viewing pleasure and stargazing opportunities.
—lindsey berman
8:30pm (dusk). Days Park at Wadsworth & Allen. Contact www.squeaky.org or 884-7172. FREE
Artvoice is giving away movie passes to a special preview screening of (500) Days of Summer.
To get your free admit-two pass to see the film before it opens in theaters, stop by the Artvoice office at 810 Main St. in Buffalo today, Tuesday July 21st. The film screening takes place on the evening of Wednesday, July 22nd.
Passes are available while supplies last. One pass (admit-two) per person, per household. No purchase necessary. Pass does not guarantee you a seat. Please arrive early as seating is available on a first come first serve basis. No phone calls please. This film is rated PG-13: No one under the age of 13 is eligible for a pass, or may be admitted to the screening without a parent or guardian.
For more information about the movie, to see the trailer, and for full terms and conditions, please visit our (500) Days of Summer promotion page.
Michael Caine faces death in IS ANYBODY THERE?
John Crowley’s Is Anybody There? really packs it in. Crowley and scripter Peter Harness have tried to amalgamate a lot of scenes that are serially, and sometimes almost simultaneously, intended to register vulgarly mordant humor, dreary Brit-kitsch kitchen sink drama, piercingly poignant human dilemmas and delicate philosophical insights. As might be expected, the filmmakers’ attempts to bundle all this together are sometimes awkward and arbitrary.
What’s surprising is how well they get away with it. The most important reasons are the performances of Michael Caine and young Bill Milner and their unexpectedly appealing and affecting teamwork. Caine’s performance might seem to be the vital force in this essentially slight and uneven film, and it is, but it is designed to work in tandem with Milner’s Edward. To the extent a point of view prevails in the picture, it’s the boy’s.
Caine’s Clarence is a used-up music-hall magician sent by social workers in 1987 to lodge at the seniors boarding house run by Edward’s parents (Anne Marie Duff and David Morrisey) near the English shore. Waspishly embittered and dismayed to find himself in this less than genteel, sometimes disturbing group setting, Clarence is ill-disposed to deal graciously with a ten-year-old boy who resents being displaced from his room, first by the lately deceased previous occupant and now by the old magician.
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