Sunshine Cleaning … Entrepreneurship as catharsis

Written as a guest post for my friend Leah MacVie’s blog, the original post is located here. The 2008 Sundance favorite Sunshine Cleaning, written by Megan Holley and directed by Christine Jeffs, is a phenomenal look into the emotional fragility of two young women trying to find their way in life. Rose and Norah Lorkowski are at the age where adulthood should be in full force, dependent lifestyles at home with school grades a top priority long gone. But these two haven’t had the most idyllic childhood; in fact, some…

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360|365 GEH Film Festival Recap … Where eggs come to perform

Only Sid Rosenzweig, 360|365 Programming Committee member, could introduce himself before more than one screening as an “all-around good guy” and not have it get old. Complete with a smile spanning ear to ear, Sid’s jovial demeanor never let you see the statement as anything other than a good-natured ice-breaker, leading him into the description of whatever film he was presenting next. This attitude was prevalent amongst all involved, making it a joy to attend the 360|365 George Eastman House Film Festival‘s inaugural season, knowing that the organizers, presenters, and…

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BNFF10: The 4th Annual Buffalo Niagara Film Festival Recap

The Buffalo Niagara Film Festival closed out its fourth annual entry, ending a pretty great eight days of cinema. Attendance might have been stunted due to a plethora of activities in Buffalo, including a Salman Rushdie talk that prevented me from going to opening night and the brief return of Sabres hockey to the playoffs, but that did little to dampen the spirits of organizers, volunteers, or filmmakers. What makes this event uniquely great in comparison to an event like the Toronto International Film Festival is that you don’t have…

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Salman Rushdie risks his life once more for Just Buffalo’s Babel

And that is why you leave to get in line for an autograph when Mike Kelleher says “final question” with a guy like Salman Rushdie doing the signing. The guy is a rockstar that not only brought the biggest crowd yet for a Just Buffalo Literary Center Babel event, but also attracted the most ever taking advantage of the signature session. It all began with Rushdie relaying how we can all thank Charles Dickens for making authors feel like they were allowed to do ‘the strange thing’ and speak in…

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The 82nd Oscars recap through tweets …

@jaredmobarak • NPH in sequins … i guess that’s something … The 82nd Annual Oscars ceremony begins, yet the hosts are nowhere to be found. Have we gotten to the point now where we need a lead-in for the most assuredly lame/very PC stand-up routine? We need to get the ball rolling for the ball that gets the show rolling? And they wonder why it always goes over its allotted timeslot. So, not only do we have to be introduced to all the lead acting nominees—because anyone watching doesn’t know…

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Finally, I’m in Buffalo! … Babel’s Azar Nafisi

Those four words were definitely not what I expected to escape Azar Nafisi’s lips upon reaching the podium at Kleinhans for 2010’s first installment of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel Series. After Mike Kelleher finished his three pages of introductory notes—including naming three of the four authors to be stopping by this great city next season, listed below—the Iranian-born novelist took that stage and spoke enthusiastically about the children she visited earlier at City Honors. They gave her great insight and enthralled her enough to stay thirty minutes past her…

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Picking Winners at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards

Some Oscar nomination thoughts, the morning after: William Altreuter: Best Picture: The Hurt Locker. James Cameron backlash, plus Hollywood self-seriousness = victory! Best Actor: Jeff Bridges. Everybody loved Clooney, but he’s in something good every year. Supporting Actor: Stanley Tucci. Just a hunch. Best Actress: Sandra Bullock. Did you realize she’s forty-five years old? Not exactly the best argument against the proposition that there are no roles for women over twenty-four, since she plays at least ten years younger, but still. Plus the Streep movie wasn’t that good (even though she…

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Jammers skating through the pivots and blockers … Queen City Roller Girls

After watching Drew Barrymore’s surprisingly good film Whip It, I had roller derby on my mind. A couple weeks earlier I had been in Toronto for the city’s International Film Festival and watched as they constructed an outdoor rink to be played on as promotion for that film and a couple months later Buffalo Spree did a cover story on Buffalo’s own league, The Queen City Roller Girls. Leave it to our fair city to have a roller derby league able to capitalize on all the new hype—we have it…

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The Most Anticipated Films of 2010

2010 looks to be a very intriguing year for the film world. A lot of big name directors are coming in with new work, hopefully continuing on their winning ways, while others are returning to perhaps erase some recent blunders and get back on track. There are two true sequels on the list, four depending on your definition, (and Harry Potter isn’t one since I’m not quite sure what to think, being only a Part I of a final chapter), a couple television shows getting big screen love, and a…

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Using the space between two languages … Ha Jin ventures to Buffalo

The second installment to Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel series for the 2009-2010 season saw American-Chinese author Ha Jin taking the stage. He is an interesting writer in the fact that he crafts his work with his second language, English. Not even learning it until college, where it was his fifth out of five choices to study at university, he has both adopted it and America as his home. Saying that he is in semi-exile from China, he still holds a linguistic bond to the nation even though they have…

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“The Curious Novelist” … A.S. Byatt journeys to Buffalo

The 2009-2010 season of Just Buffalo Literary Center’s Babel has commenced. Attendance didn’t unfortunately sell-out the new venue at Kleinhans, but the crowd was full and above the capacity of Babeville, so the change definitely was necessary. Michael Kelleher announced that this would be the final series under the original commission from the John R. Oshei Foundation, warranting the inclusion of donation envelopes and the dire news that ticket sales wouldn’t be able to sustain the event for its planned fourth season. After all the business, however, and asking for…

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