Posted By Margot Harrison on Sat, May 16, 2020 at 2:05 PM

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Courtesy of Menemsha Films

Still from 'Crescendo'

Now in its fifth year, the upcoming Stowe Jewish Film Festival is embracing social distancing with an all-virtual experience. And — more importantly, perhaps, for anyone who's running out of thought-provoking streaming options — it's free. For that, founder and cochair Edee Simon-Israel thanks "generous sponsors" and "our marketing and technology partner," Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, which served as the fest's venue in 2019.

The fest will last three weeks, starting May 24, with each of three films available to stream for three days.

Tags: Stowe Jewish Film Festival , Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center , Edee Simon-Israel , Jewish film , Crescendo , My Polish Honeymoon , The Samuel Project , Web Only , Image

Posted By Margot Harrison on Mon, May 11, 2020 at 5:00 PM

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Courtesy of Amazon Studios

Nathan (Robbie Amell) discovering his new world in "Upload"

Where do we find entertainment these days? On our laptops and in our living rooms. The streaming options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. So, in this weekly feature, I review a movie or series that might otherwise be easy to overlook.

The series:
“Upload” (season one, 10 episodes, 2020)

Where to see it:
Amazon Prime Video

The deal:
In 2033, no one has to die — no one who can afford to have their consciousness digitized and uploaded to a virtual afterlife, anyway. Twentysomething tech bro Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell) hasn’t yet made provisions for his own untimely demise, which occurs in the pilot episode when his self-driving car rams itself into a truck.

Luckily (or unluckily) for him, his image-obsessed girlfriend, Ingrid (Allegra Edwards), comes from a 1 percent family with “unlimited data.” As medical personnel fight for Nathan’s life, she persuades him to let himself be preemptively uploaded to the swanky Horizen Lakeview, a rustic grand hotel inside a computer server. (Exteriors were filmed in a real place: Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, N.Y.)

Tags: Upload , Greg Daniels , Amazon Studios , Black Mirror , streaming TV , The Good Place , Terasem Movement Foundation , Web Only , Image , Video

Posted By Margot Harrison on Mon, May 4, 2020 at 5:56 PM

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Photo Courtesy of Deborah Feingold

Where do we find entertainment these days? On our laptops and in our living rooms. The streaming options are overwhelming — and not always easy to sort through. So, in this weekly feature, I review a movie or series that might otherwise be easy to overlook.

The movie:
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2019)

Where to see it:
Until May 15, stream the movie for $10 per household as part of the Vermont International Film Foundation’s Virtual Cinema program. On VTIFF’s page, you’ll find instructions for viewing the movie on your TV, plus an interview with the director from Seven Days contributing writer Luke Baynes.

The deal:
If you were a movie lover in the 1970s or ’80s, you already know the work of Pauline Kael (1919-2001), who reviewed for the New Yorker from 1968 to 1991. Her opinions were strongly worded, contrarian and frequently very funny. They carried so much power that Bob Fosse and George Lucas, both directors she’d skewered, inserted parodic references to her into their work (remember evil “General Kael” from Willow?).

Tags: Vermont International Film Foundation , What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael , Pauline Kael , documentary , streaming , Virtual Cinema , biographical , film criticism , Web Only , Image

Posted By Rick Kisonak on Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 4:34 PM

Courtesy of John Fusco

John Fusco with Woody Harrelson

Dropping out of high school at age 16 doesn’t guarantee international fame and fortune. At the same time, it hasn’t exactly held John Fusco back. Nope, he’s squeaking by.

The Vermont-based screenwriter, producer and series creator is leading a ridiculously rich existence, in fact. If there were a prize for most movie-like life, it would be sitting on his mantel beside the ones he received the year before and the year before that.

Here's an example: After he dropped out of school, Fusco traveled the American South in search of Delta blues musicians who’d never had a top-10 record but were pioneers and innovators of the form. He played music himself here and there and took factory jobs to finance his research. He got his GED. He went to New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. His bachelor’s thesis was the 1986 Columbia Pictures hit Crossroads, starring Ralph Macchio as a young guitarist traveling through the South to learn about the blues.

Tags: The Highwaymen , Netflix , John Fusco , Bonnie Parker , Clyde Barrow , Kevin Costner , Woody Harrelson , Merrill's Roxy Cinemas , Vermont , screenwriter , Web Only , Image

Posted By Margot Harrison on Mon, Feb 18, 2019 at 10:39 PM

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Courtesy of Save the Children Action Network

Jennifer Garner and two friends

Jennifer Garner is known for her ass kicking on "Alias," her winsomeness in 13 Going on 30, her red-carpet outfits, her celebrity marriage to (and recent divorce from) Ben Affleck and, perhaps slightly less prominently, her work as an ambassador for the international charity Save the Children. This Thursday, that charity work brings the movie star to Burlington, where the public can see her — space permitting — at a "special conversation on the importance of high-quality child care" at Merrill's Roxy Cinemas in Burlington.

Garner's conversation partners will be Save the Children Action Network CEO Mark Shriver and Aly Richards, CEO of Let's Grow Kids, a Burlington-based organization that aims "to ensure affordable access to high-quality child care for all Vermont families by 2025," according to its website.

Tags: Jennifer Garner , Merrill's Roxy Cinemas , Save the Children Action Network , Burlington , movie theater , Vermont , Image , Web Only

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 4:36 PM

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Courtesy of Jay Craven

'Wetware' film still

On Saturday, September 22, in Burlington, Vermont filmmaker Jay Craven offers two preview screenings of Wetware, his 10th feature. Craven is well known for his period adaptations of  Vermont-centric novels by the late Howard Frank Mosher, including Where the Rivers Flow North (1993) and A Stranger in the Kingdom (1999). His latest is a distinctly different venture.

Rife with moody neon and existential angst, Wetware takes place in the near future, in which human genetic enhancement technology is being woven, with snags, into the fabric of everyday life.

The Vermont International Film Festival and Kingdom County Productions present two benefit screenings tomorrow at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. at the Film House of the Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center. Proceeds support KCP youth education programming. On Saturday, September 29, Town Hall Theater in Middlebury hosts one preview screening.

In advance of this weekend's screenings, Craven fielded questions from Seven Days.

Tags: Jay Craven , Wetware , Kingdom County Productions , Craig Nova , Vermont International Film Festival , Image , Web Only

Posted By Rick Kisonak on Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 12:15 PM

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Courtesy of Eugene Jarecki

Eugene Jarecki

Talking Trump-era politics with Eugene Jarecki is probably the equivalent of playing chess with Boris Spassky or standing across a tennis court from Roger Federer. The field is not level. You are not remotely in the same league. And that’s what makes it so much fun.

The Peabody and Emmy award-winning director of such acclaimed documentaries as The Trials of Henry Kissinger (2002), Why We Fight (2005), Reagan (2011) and The House I Live In (2012), the Mad River Valley resident has been named a Soros Justice Fellow at the Open Society Foundations and a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

Tags: Eugene Jarecki , The King , Merrill's Roxy Cinemas , Elvis Presley , documentary , filmmaker , Vermont , Kat Wright , Maggie Clifford , Loveful Heights , Video , Image , Web Only

Posted By Luke Baynes on Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 1:43 PM

Tags: Harry Goldhagen , Nightingale Chronicles , Merrill's Roxy Cinemas , Image , Web Only , Video

Posted By Rachel Elizabeth Jones on Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 1:17 PM

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Vermont will be taking no part in mumblecore™ — at least not according to ClickHole. Yesterday, the Onion's delightfully irreverent content platform posted the piece, "Supporting the Arts: Vermont Is Offering a Tax Credit to Incentivize Indie Filmmakers to Stay the Fuck Out of Its State With That Bootleg Duplass-Brothers-Rip-Off Bullshit."

The title pretty much lays it all out, but it's a great full read anyway, especially if you get thrills every time you see the word "Vermont" in a major outlet, real or otherwise.

Tags: humor , indie filmmaking , Vermont , the Onion , ClickHole , Image , Web Only

Posted By Luke Baynes on Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 11:56 AM

Jake Mosher

Howard Frank Mosher

Film history is littered with failed adaptations of novels. Oftentimes a film adaptation falls prey to the commercial time constraints of movies, and the necessity of wholesale excising of text. Sometimes it’s just a matter of poor casting decisions. Then there are authors like James Joyce and William Faulkner, whose stream-of-consciousness styles are for the most part unfilmable.

But occasionally, a writer and director’s artistic sensibilities coalesce with such kinship that their paths seemed destined to cross. Such was the case with director Jay Craven and celebrated Northeast Kingdom novelist Howard Frank Mosher, who died from cancer on January 29 at the age of 74.

Tags: Howard Frank Mosher , Jay Craven , novels , Vermont , Image , Web Only