EVER WONDER WHAT happened to all those Italian-American doo-wop groups of the late 1950s and early 1960s after the British Invasion bands rendered their vocal harmonies unfashionable?
Veteran character actor Robert Davi did. So he made a movie that documents the plight of one such fictional group, The Dukes, a vocal quartet who find themselves so hopelessly out of style decades later that they can't even get plugged into the oldies circuit. Instead of collaborating on musical endeavors, they work together to pull off a heist in hopes of getting some bucks to fund a doo-wop club.
That's the plot of "The Dukes," an independent comedy that marks Davi's first outings as both director and screenwriter. His debut has been, as the saying goes, auspicious. When "The Dukes" made the rounds at film festivals earlier this year, it was met with rave after rave. The "Spinal Tap"-with-Brylcreem plot scored laughs, but the film's deeper message earned Davi deeper respect than he ever got playing villains such as Franz Sanchez in the 1989 James Bond film "License to Kill."
Variety magazine praised the comic chemistry between Davi and co-star Chazz Palminteri, who play the hapless band member who try to pull off the hopeless heist. The Monte Carlo Film Festival handed the film a Platinum Award for Best Screenplay, while the Queens International Film Festival hailed hometown boy Davi as Best Director. "The Dukes" also nabbed a Best Screenplay award at the Monte Carlo Film Festival de la Comedie.
The film will get a D.C. premiere at the American Film Renaissance Institute's fifth annual film festival, taking place Oct. 1-4 ("The Dukes" will then open in New York Nov. 14, and get a wide release the following Friday). Davi was named the festival's "featured star" and will do a question and answer session after the Oct. 1 screening.
Express caught up with him by telephone.
Continue Reading "Harmony as Allegory: Robert Davi on 'The Dukes'" »
FOR THE PAST 19 years, the films of Latin America (and now, Spain and Portugal, too) have been bundled together and screened — that's right folks, we're in the midst of the Latin American Film Festival!
Running through Oct. 7, the festival features over 30 films, all showing at AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring. Tonight's elections are "60 Miles East" and "Cochochi." The former is a heart-wrenching tale of Dominicans that set out in search of a better life on small, fragile boats. The latter is a Mexican coming-of-age tale about two brothers and, it would seem, a horse? Whatever the plot details, it won awards at both the Toronto and Miami International Film Festivals.
For a complete list of films, click here.
» AFI Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring; through Oct. 7, various times, various prices; 301-495-6720. (Silver Spring)
Photo courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
WE DON'T OFTEN get to watch as Faust sells his soul to the devil, but when the George Herbert Walker Bush presidential campaign went over to the dark side, America got to see it on TV, twice a night — five times if you were watching the news.
The infamous "Willie Horton" ad accomplished a number of feats: It wiped then-president Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal, in which the president traded arms to Iranian terrorists in exchange for American hostages, out of voters' minds; it destroyed Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis' presidential bid; and it changed forever the way the Republican party did campaign business.
Behind what documentarian Stefan Forbes calls the "single most racist campaign in American history" was Lee Atwater.
The Mississippi-born political strategist and fiery blues guitarist went from riling up college-age Republicans to changing the terms of the American political campaign to schooling future generations of advisors and back-room boys — the most prominent of which is Karl Rove — on the niceties of his merciless playbook.
Forbes, fascinated by Atwater's short, sharp arc — he was felled by a brain tumor at barely 40 — explores his life in the film "Boogie Man."
This 89-minute look at the country's most powerful setter of political terms is incisive and even-handed — let's just say Forbes is a lot fairer to Atwater than Atwater would have been to him — giving weight to the respect and admiration Atwater engendered among bluesmen for his commitment to blues guitar and his James Brown-like onstage ferocity and letting laugh-out-loud lines such as Mary Matalin's claim that Atwater was "a great intellectual" pass without comment. (He was a genius but no intellectual.)
When he set out to film "Boogie Man," Forbes, an Emmy-nominated director, knew this was the film he had to make — little could he have known how much the country needed to see it.
Continue Reading "Go Big or Go Home: Lee Atwater Was the 'Boogie Man'" »
THINK YOU'RE TOO STRESSED OUT? You might be right. Also, it might kill you.
"Killer Stress," a documentary about measurable effects of stress in the animal kingdom, will air Thursday on PBS. But you can see it tonight at the National Geographic Society if you're willing to pay $18 to be two days ahead of the average public television viewer. You'll also get to see Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist from Stanford University, talk about his thoughts on the film.
But first, you can read what Sapolsky said on the topic to Express' Vicky Hallett for the low, low price of free.
» Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic Society, 1600 M Street, NW; Tue., Sept. 23, 7:30 p.m., $15-$18; 202-857-7700. (Dupont Circle)
IT'S NOT A documentary — "Battle in Seattle" is a simulation of the five days in November 1999 when activists descended upon Seattle to protest the World Trade Organization's meeting there.
Andre Benjamin, Michelle Rodriguez, Charlize Theron and others play people caught up in the agitation that pits beleaguered law enforcement officers against angry agents of change.
» E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; opens Fri.; 202-452-7672. (Metro Center)
YOU'VE SEEN ANDY WARHOL'S "Sleep" and Ingmar Bergman's extended version of "Scenes From a Marriage," but as a cinema marathoner you're still a piker until you've settled in for all 15-plus hours of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "Berlin Alexanderplatz."
Based on Alfred Döblin's classic modernist novel, the 1980 film parallels an ex-con's backsliding re-entry to society with Weimar Germany's descent into fascism. You're asking if, in the age of Netflix, full immersion is worth the back pain. But think of what else you'll be getting: currywurst, commentary by Desson Thomson and the company of a roomful of people who enjoy watching Germans have sex with their clothes on.
» Goethe-Institut, 812 7th St. NW; Sat., noon-11 p.m.; Sun, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., $9-$20; 202-289-1200. (Gallery Place-Chinatown)
Written by Express contributor Glenn Dixon
Photo courtesy Goethe-Institut
IT'S OFTEN TAKEN for granted here that the faucet will work, that the bathtub will fill, and that the fridge at 7-Eleven will always contain bottles of Dasani. But filmmaker Irena Salina wants us to take a closer look at water.
Her documentary "Flow: For Love of Water," opening at E Street cinema on Friday, examines the multifaceted water crisis, from scarcity to pollution to dams to private water companies that have restricted water access to only those who can afford it.
The movie is at times disorganized, but that hardly detracts from its chilling message — that the days of "water, water everywhere" will soon be over.
» EXPRESS: I always turn off the tap while I'm brushing my teeth. Will that help? Is it enough?
» SALINA: It's awareness. We take water for granted. We have a whole generation of people who turn the shower on to get it warm, go do dishes, and then the phone rings. ... [Water]'s not just something coming from a tap. It's a source of life.
Continue Reading "Turning Off the Taps: 'Flow,' A Cautionary Tale" »
"VISUALLY, AS A FILMMAKER, it's a no-brainer: It's riots," said rookie director Stuart Townsend about the subject matter of his film, "Battle in Seattle."
Townsend's an actor who played Dorian Gray in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," and his star-studded directorial debut is about 1999's stunningly successful World Trade Organization protests does deliver arresting sights and sounds of city streets flooded with dissenters, angry police in storm-troop attire, shattering glass and realistic violence.
ANOTHER SHORT FILM lunch hour offering from the D.C. Shorts Film Festival, but this one is family friendly. This hour-long program of animated films includes a one-minute claymation masterpiece entitled "The Inquisitive Snail" and a treatise on global warming (cartoon Al Gore not included.)
» Landmark's E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW; Wed., Sept. 17, 12 p.m., free; 202-452-7672. (Metro Center)
Photo by Lucian Perkins/The Washington Post
SINCE YOU'VE NO DOUBT noticed the days are getting shorter and the nights longer, it might be wise to beat the rush and embrace the darkness now. You could start by skimming through the just-released "D.C. Noir 2," a new collection of stories about crimes and mayhem that for once don't take place on Capitol Hill. (Like its predecessor, it's edited by the ubiquitous George Pelecanos.)
To further prep you for the upcoming shadows of next month's Noir City DC filmfest at AFI Silver, we asked a few of the "D.C. Noir 2" contributors about their favorite films and characters, as well as what the heck noir is, anyway.
» EXPRESS: Favorite films?
» GEORGE PELECANOS: I have many, so I'll just list some of them: "The Big Heat," "Lady From Shanghai," "Touch of Evil," "Double Indemnity," "Pickup on South Street." All of these films use the language of cinema to convey a feeling of fatalism, claustrophobia and psychological distress.
» ELIZABETH HAND: "The Third Man" is one of the greatest films ever. "Odd Man Out," with James Mason as an IRA operative trying to escape after a botched robbery. Then probably "Kiss Me Deadly" and "Blade Runner," which is a science-fiction noir.
» JAMES GRADY: Without one wasted frame, "The Maltese Falcon" proves [writer Dashiell] Hammett, [director John] Huston and [star Humphrey] Bogart are geniuses, and has asides about American corruption that most people miss.
» MARITA GOLDEN: "The Grifters" is essentially a morality tale, a commentary on the fact that chickens do come home to roost, and no matter how we try to engineer it, we get snared in webs of our own construction.
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