“Break a paparazzo’s camera; smash up a hotel room” Before he moved to Los Angeles to live the dream, I had the pleasure of seeing Jack Hunter perform the Richard Burton role in a local Buffalo production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? His turn contained a perfect amount of gravitas while the intimate setting [...]

“Ne’ wick?” It’s the kind of story you hear about often—spouses separated by continents in order to work towards making a better life for their family. A breadwinner wins the opportunity for immigration to the United States while his/her second half must remain home for years before the chance for reunion presents itself. But whether [...]

“We’re driving the bed, right?” With a goofy acronym for a name—YERT: Your Environmental Road Trip—and a tagline promising to be ‘An Environmental Documentary That’s NOT Depressing!’, you can imagine a lot of eye-rolling and trepidation when sitting down to see just how true a statement that marketing line could be. But then you meet [...]

“The phrase that each of us is unique and irreplaceable is so powerful” A man caught between the spiritual world of his faith and the material one of his craft, Dan Zimmerman has lofty ideals to support his work and life. In Thomas Florek‘s short documentary Dan Zimmerman: Musician, Painter, Cosmic Patriot, we experience the [...]

“You officially have a stalker—ME!” It’s the kind of gentlemen’s agreement you can see yourself making in the heat of a drunken bout with self-pity: swear off the opposite sex for a year in order to cleanse your soul of the one who left. For brothers Grant (Neil Brookshire) and Ancel Fox (Aaron Toronto) it’s [...]

“You Left Me” After reading the letter that came with my screener for Jon Alex‘s 2 Kings, I was excited to see what magic was wrought by this young creative who wrote, directed, starred, and did everything but write the song. The praise was high and the name-dropping intriguing—both Norman Mailer and James Cromwell made [...]

“What was he doing up anyway?” The last line of a Steve McQueen quote used as an epilogue to Garrett Bennett‘s Shuffle sums the theme of the film up nicely: “I was always kind of a coward until I had to prove it to myself.” These are words I believe everyone could relate to—whether you [...]

“Why don’t you give me something to be joyful about?” Love can seem so easy from the outside. Two people: completely enamored with each other, their smiles easy, serene, and unmistakably genuine. You look at them and think 40-years of marriage would be pure bliss, a harmonious dance that could never last as long as [...]

Another year—another Buffalo Niagara Film Festival complete. 2011 was definitely an evolution for Bill Cowell’s brainchild, bringing in the most filmmakers to promote their work I’ve seen, the inclusion of a new venue with Niagara Falls’ Rapids Theatre, and the first ever ‘Star’ on the BNFF Walk of Fame. The ten-day event smartly coincided with [...]