Film
by Jack Brown | May 27, 2010 | Film
Living in New England means living surrounded by history. It’s the sort of thing that becomes rather easy to overlook when, in the course of a day, you can breakfast at the home of the man who invented the Graham cracker (Sylvester’s in Northampton), take...
by Jack Brown | May 7, 2014 | Film
Cinema as we know it today would be nothing without its heroes. For all the high-minded talk about its artistry—of dramatic chiaroscuro and delicate details, of symbolism and self-reference—our films still often boil down to that oldest sort of...
by Jack Brown | May 28, 2010 | Film
There are people in this world who are born to be parents: those forward-thinking types who as teenagers sock away lawn-mowing wages for the down payment on a house, or that neighborhood babysitter whom kids seem to take to more than their own parents—the one...
by Jack Brown | May 21, 2014 | Film
Spend some time in the Valley—12 to 15 minutes ought to do it—and you’ll come to realize that there are a few things of which we’re awfully proud. One of those is our area’s long, rich tradition of farming, and the modern-day ideas that...
by Jack Brown | Jun 3, 2010 | Film
We modern types like to flatter ourselves by thinking that we can remain constantly in touch with the rest of the world. We know the instant an earthquake hits on the other side of the globe, and the exact height of a devastating tidal wave. An oil spill is tracked by...
by Jack Brown | May 14, 2014 | Film
You might have thought that the current craze for all things vampiric had run its course. Over the last few years—further, if you track it back to the Buffy The Vampire Slayer era—we have seen all manner of pop culture infiltrated by those creatures of the...
by Jack Brown | Jun 4, 2010 | Film
Ah, blockbuster season, how I’ve missed you. I’d almost forgotten how barren a world can seem without an endless barrage of candy-colored ogres, wisecracking dogs, and hormonal vampires. (Shrek Forever After, Marmaduke, and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.) Or,...
by Jack Brown | May 28, 2014 | Film
Sequels are funny things. Most of the time, they’re the butt of our cinematic jokes—the increasingly ludicrous installments of the Rocky franchise, or the ever-more gadget-obsessed James Bond pictures of the 1980s and ’90s. (Example: a boom box that...
by Jack Brown | Jun 10, 2010 | Film
In the early days of motion pictures, the scene’s biggest stars often came from the stage. It’s tempting—now that we know what Hollywood has become—to say that they were poached, but that wouldn’t be exactly true. Rather, it was a natural...
by Jack Brown | Sep 3, 2014 | Film
One of the great perks of being a good entertainer is that someone else is often footing the bill for your food and drink. And while that itself may not be a good enough reason to take a gig, I (as a musician who has played his fair share of restaurant dates) can...
by Jack Brown | Jun 17, 2010 | Film
There was a time not so long ago when writing a film column meant writing a column about movies. You might have your comedies and dramas, your documentaries and science fiction, but at the end of the day they were all movies. Nearly all drew from the same essential...
by Jack Brown | Oct 29, 2014 | Film
One of the great side benefits of living in an area where presenters really care about film is that those same people also really care about the people behind the cameras. It’s not at all unusual to find writers, actors, producers, and directors visiting the...
by Jack Brown | Jun 17, 2010 | Film
Travel south to Newport, Rhode Island some weekend and you might find yourself walking the Cliff Walk, a popular coastal path hewn into the rock where the Atlantic comes ashore. As it winds along the water’s edge, the Walk on its other side butts up against the...
by Jack Brown | Oct 22, 2014 | Film
Since the advent of YouTube, there has been no shortage of bizarre, hilarious, and disturbing video footage available at the touch of a button. Sometimes, it’s all in the same clip. But as the years have gone by, the flow has become a deluge; friends and family...
by Jack Brown | Jun 18, 2010 | Film
Over the last few decades, the death knell of traditional moviegoing has been rung many times. Twenty-five years ago there was the VCR debate, when, at a heated Congressional hearing, film honcho Jack Valenti famously said that “the VCR is to the American film...
by Jack Brown | Sep 17, 2014 | Film
If one had to name the product least likely to ever be considered “fair trade,” oil would have to be near the top of the list. While the fair trade movement—a progressive take on the global marketplace that seeks to ensure sustainability and growth...
by Jack Brown | Jun 24, 2010 | Film
For American film audiences of a certain age, Woody Allen’s work pretty much sums up the idea of what an art house film should be. I can already hear the howls of indignation—and Allen’s own would surely be among them—but the fact of the matter...
by Jack Brown | Oct 8, 2014 | Film
It’s hard for me to explain how much of an impact M*A*S*H has had on my life. When I was a kid coming of age in the 1970s and ’80s, the televised series—in which Alan Alda starred as Hawkeye Pierce, a surgeon in a mobile army hospital during the...
by Jack Brown | Jul 1, 2010 | Film
Adapting books for the silver screen is nothing new. Indeed, many cinematic landmarks began their lives on the printed page—from The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind right up through the Harry Potter and Jason Bourne franchises. Some, to be fair, retain a...
by Jack Brown | Oct 8, 2014 | Film
Now in its 18th year, the Northampton International Film Festival (NoHoIFF) has become a staple event for filmgoers—and perhaps more importantly, filmmakers—of autumn in Western Mass. As reliable as the turning of the trees, it returns this week to take...
by Jack Brown | Jul 8, 2010 | Film
It’s been about a quarter of a century, give or take, since I first discovered the peaks and valleys of late night television. In those pre-cable days—cruelly, we got wired just as I left for college—that meant a lot of Monty Python, Larry David and...
by Jack Brown | Aug 27, 2014 | Film
For my money, there are far too few artists like Michel Gondry in the world. The French filmmaker, writer, actor and musician is best known stateside as one of the driving forces behind the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a darkly comic, sometimes...
by Jack Brown | Jul 15, 2010 | Film
The Two EscobarsWritten and directed by Jeff Zimbalist and Michael Zimbalist. With Pablo Escobar, Andres Escobar, Rene Higuita, Francisco Maturana, John Jairo Velasquez Vasquez, Fernando Rodriguez Mondragen, Jaime Gaviria and Cesar Gaviria. Right now, soccer fans all...
by Jack Brown | Oct 1, 2014 | Film
If there’s one thing common to big cities all over the world, it’s surely the value of a well-located apartment. An old building filled with the character (and, sometimes, characters) of its years, access to good coffee, and a neighborhood worth walking...
by Jack Brown | Jul 15, 2010 | Film
If your town is anything like mine, the Fourth of July weekend might have seemed surprisingly quiet—with municipalities across the country struggling to balance budgets, the stunning-but-expensive fireworks show has proven to be one of those short-lived luxuries...
by Jack Brown | Sep 24, 2014 | Film
Much has been written about the value of the traditional filmgoing experience. Especially in this modern age, when a healthy percentage of the population carries a de facto movie screen in their pocket, it’s important to remember those intangible effects brought...
by Jack Brown | Jul 22, 2010 | Film
The older I get, the more I enjoy cooking. A good dinner, well made and enjoyed with friends, has long since replaced the night of shouting over the band at the bar. But when you start getting finicky about food, you quickly realize the limitations of our modern kind...
by Jack Brown | Sep 10, 2014 | Film
If you were around the Valley in the summer of 2012, you might recall running into a superstar or two while strolling around Shelburne Falls. It was in June of that year that filmmaker Jason Reitman (Juno; Thank You for Smoking) brought his troupe of players—a...
by Jack Brown | Jul 29, 2010 | Film
If you haven’t heard the story of Stieg Larsson, allow me to fill you in—it’s a doozy. Larsson was a Swedish journalist and human rights advocate who edited Expo, a quarterly dedicated to rooting out far-right and racist organizations operating in...
by Jack Brown | Aug 21, 2014 | Film
If you grew up Catholic, the local priest probably played a pretty big role in your childhood. Even if you weren’t particularly religious—as my own Catholic-by-default family wasn’t—the parish father was someone you probably saw once a week, if...
by Jack Brown | Aug 5, 2010 | Film
After spending most of the spring holed up with work in Western Mass. or on the road as part of a musical sideline, I finally took the time a few weeks back to put everything on hold for a bit, step away from the computer, and head south to Rhode Island to visit...
by James Heflin | Oct 15, 2014 | Film
In the last 18 years, the Northampton Independent Film Festival has evolved, and even gone away for a while. In 2012, after that hiatus, it became the Northampton International Film Festival and gained a new abbreviation: it’s not the “NIFF” longtime...
by Jack Brown | Aug 12, 2010 | Film
There was a time not so long ago when Hollywood held something of a monopoly on special effects. They didn’t necessarily have to be particularly good, even, to inspire wonder in audiences; the sheer novelty of an ant towering over a factory was enough. But with...
by Jack Brown | Dec 10, 2014 | Film
It’s December again, somehow, which means that soon a great many of us will be flying, driving, or jumping on a train to visit our families and hunker down in the warm embrace of tradition. Yours and mine might look very different — mine tends to include...
by Jack Brown | Aug 19, 2010 | Film
The recent release of Predators, the latest installment in a long-running sci-fi franchise, may have been what did it. Or it may have been The A-Team. Whatever it was, I’ve noticed this summer that I’ve become susceptible to slipping into a hazy reverie...
by Jack Brown | Dec 3, 2014 | Film
I’m rather ashamed to admit this, but the first time I stumbled across a copy of A Brief History of Time — not the book, but a VHS copy of the Errol Morris documentary it inspired — I dismissed it without much thought. To my teenaged self, there was...
by Jack Brown | Aug 26, 2010 | Film
Eat, Pray, Love opened at area theaters this week, and it promises to be a monster of a hit. Based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir about a post-divorce year of world travel—Italy, India, and Bali are on her itinerary—the film features the eminently...
by Jack Brown | Dec 18, 2014 | Film
There are so many wonderful mysteries left in the world. In an era when so much can be laid bare with just a few keystrokes, it’s comforting, somehow, to know that there is much we don’t fully understand. Not just the odd bits here and there, but some...
by Jack Brown | Sep 2, 2010 | Film
When it comes to seeing movies, trying to plan ahead isn’t always easy. You might have a killer date set up—those new shoes you’ve been saving for a good occasion, a reservation at the local candlelight and wine joint, some flowers hidden in the...
by Jack Brown | Nov 5, 2014 | Film
Here in the Valley, movie lovers are lucky to have a relative wealth of options when looking for a night out. That’s especially true for those who live in the Northampton/Amherst area; with the multiplex at the mall, art-house fare at Amherst Cinema, and free...
by Jack Brown | Sep 9, 2010 | Film
One of the pleasant quirks about the film scene in the Pioneer Valley is that a great many movies are screening in unusual, unexpected, or out of the way places. Sometimes, as with Pleasant Street’s 40-odd seat Little Theater, that place is even in a proper...
by Jack Brown | Nov 29, 2014 | Film
Ten years ago was a very different time in my life. Today, I’m a married father of two suddenly ambulatory kids who love nothing more than pulling things off shelves. My nights are mostly spent reconstructing our shattered home, in preparation for the coming...
by Jack Brown | Sep 16, 2010 | Film
Whether you consider him a groundbreaker or a hack—rarely, it seems, is there a middle ground—director Quentin Tarantino has an obvious knack for picking up on our pop-culture fixations. This is a filmmaker who has crafted long stretches of dialogue around...
by Jack Brown | Nov 19, 2014 | Film
A friend of mine got married recently, and one day afterward we got to talking about her new surname, and all the bureaucratic rigamarole a name change drags in its wake. It was remarkable to realize just how much of our lives are tied to our government issued IDs in...
by Jack Brown | Sep 23, 2010 | Film
Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis is a touchstone of cinema. This early sci-fi morality play, whose story of a divided mankind recalls the Morlocks and Eloi of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, has left its mark on a still-growing string of...
by Jack Brown | Nov 12, 2014 | Film
If you’re the type of person who watches a lot of PBS—and let’s face it, here in Western Mass., that’s a lot of us—you’ll likely be familiar with the recently released documentary Big Ideas for Little Kids. With an early November...
by Jack Brown | Sep 30, 2010 | Film
In the world of silent film, comedy was gold. The very nature of the medium, with its necessary physicality—the demonstrative, almost charade-like theatricality used to express what sound could not—seems designed for pratfalls and pulling faces. In other...
by Jack Brown | Dec 18, 2014 | Film
As we close out another year on this great blue marble, I’m reminded of an annual event in the film world: the December doldrums. This is that week, which creeps in every year just before Christmas, when theaters seem to be holding their collective breath....
by Jack Brown | Oct 7, 2010 | Film
Filmgoers in the Valley are living in charmed times. I can’t think of a single must-see title that hasn’t found a home in the area recently, usually without the delay that ordinarily follows a New York/L.A. opening. There are art houses on both sides of...
by Jack Brown | Oct 14, 2010 | Film
The film Let Me In, out now at local theaters, points up some interesting facets of the larger world of filmmaking in Hollywood and beyond. A remake of the 2008 Swedish film Let The Right One In, it is a vampire story with a twist: the creature here isn’t a...
by Jack Brown | Oct 21, 2010 | Film
At the age of 32, actor James Franco has already had quite a career. After starting out on the television series Freaks and Geeks—canceled despite overwhelming acclaim from critics—he went on to win a Golden Globe for his surprisingly rich portrayal of...
by Jack Brown | Oct 28, 2010 | Film
For the bean-counters of Hollywood, there could hardly be a sweeter word in the English language than “sequel.” These rehashes, reruns, and re-imaginings come preloaded with backstory and developed characters—or at least they should—and as any...
by Jack Brown | Nov 4, 2010 | Film
Sometime last year I stumbled across the work of Kate Micucci, a young actress and comedian who also performs original songs as half of the satiric musical duo Garfunkel and Oates. Onscreen, she has a odd but striking presence, her otherwise diminutive features marked...
by Jack Brown | Nov 11, 2010 | Film
There’s a great adjective that writerly types love to hear used in character descriptions: Runyonesque. The very word sounds like a mix of street carnival and high society—a place where poetry and burlesque find a shadowy corner to canoodle. Coined to...
by Jack Brown | Nov 18, 2010 | Film
The elections last week proved a contentious affair, even in a Valley long used to left vs. right histrionics and vitriol. This time, somehow, it all felt just a bit more personal—where, in past years, tooting an angry horn at roadside picketers felt like...
by Jack Brown | Nov 25, 2010 | Film
In director Danny Boyle’s 1996 breakout hit Trainspotting, “choose life” was something of a sardonic call to arms—some of the other things viewers are exhorted to choose during the famous opening narration include leisure wear and dental...
by Jack Brown | Dec 2, 2010 | Film
Movies and the holiday season have a rather grand history. The holidays offer up ready-made stories of family ties both light and dark: tales of hatchets buried and exhumed, of the return of the black sheep, of dreams fulfilled and wishes granted. Movies do their part...
by Jack Brown | Dec 9, 2010 | Film
Over the years, art-house films have provided some of our best cinema. Generally more focused on character and story than most blockbusters can afford to be, they have the opportunity to move us with something more subtle than spectacle, and they take advantage of it,...
by Jack Brown | Dec 16, 2010 | Film
It’s not all that often that the worlds of sport and cinema collide in really deep ways. Make no mistake: when it happens well, it can be a magical thing—a Raging Bull or Hoop Dreams makes up for an awful lot of dreck—but more often the choice...
by Jack Brown | Dec 23, 2010 | Film
First things first: by the time the next issue of the Advocate hits the streets, Christmas will be just a few days away. If you celebrate the holiday, maybe you’re heading to a family homestead, or to the in-laws’ house for a long weekend. Maybe...
