Sitting in a stack of pulpy old crime novels and lascivious short stories of hookers, gangsters and freaks may be a diamond in the rough. The book is about a heroin addict named “Frankie Machine”, it won the National Book Award in 1950, and Otto Preminger’s film adaptation starred Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak.
The book and the film, “The Man With the Golden Arm”, may ring a bell, but its author, Nelson Algren, is still buried in that stack of old books.
In the new documentary Algren, which got its premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival on October 14, Nelson Algren is in the company of Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson. But his name has been forgotten, least of all in Chicago where he called home.
Since Algren’s heyday in the late ‘40s and ‘50s, his work’s legacy has seen the same pitiful fate...
The book and the film, “The Man With the Golden Arm”, may ring a bell, but its author, Nelson Algren, is still buried in that stack of old books.
In the new documentary Algren, which got its premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival on October 14, Nelson Algren is in the company of Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson. But his name has been forgotten, least of all in Chicago where he called home.
Since Algren’s heyday in the late ‘40s and ‘50s, his work’s legacy has seen the same pitiful fate...
- 10/21/2014
- by Brian Welk
- SoundOnSight
Audience Q&As at a film festival can be a mixed bag. At the World Premiere screening for Tuesday night’s Algren, a man waved at Director Michael Caplan, who recognized the man from a coffee shop earlier in the day. During the Q&A for Red Army, Director Gabe Polsky charmingly asked his grandmother (correction: Babushka), in Russian, what she thought of his movie.
On the other side of the coin, they can result in tedious questions (and even more tedious answers) about getting licensing for archival material or audience members outright interrupting and berating the director, like a man who asked about the “sociology” behind Russian athletics. Sometimes people just like to hear themselves talk.
In fairness, it takes finesse to ask the right questions and tailor the right answers so you can tell a good story. This holds true for the two documentaries I watched Tuesday night at Ciff.
On the other side of the coin, they can result in tedious questions (and even more tedious answers) about getting licensing for archival material or audience members outright interrupting and berating the director, like a man who asked about the “sociology” behind Russian athletics. Sometimes people just like to hear themselves talk.
In fairness, it takes finesse to ask the right questions and tailor the right answers so you can tell a good story. This holds true for the two documentaries I watched Tuesday night at Ciff.
- 10/15/2014
- by Brian Welk
- SoundOnSight
The Chicago Film Festival is sadly not New York, Cannes, Toronto, Telluride or Sundance. It doesn’t take place in a quaint mountain town but in the heart of Streeterville where the film fest has taken over a local AMC multiplex. It doesn’t get world premieres of the biggest auteur debuts or Oscar bait like Inherent Vice, Gone Girl or The Theory of Everything. Special screenings like Birdman, Wild, St. Vincent, The Imitation Game, Clouds of Sils Maria and Two Days, One Night are all leftovers that the blogs and other festivals have already absorbed and spit back out.
What that leaves are the under-the-radar gems, the local Chicago color that never makes it past the Mississippi and the early looks at darlings that didn’t get the due attention the first time around the festival circuit. Last year, Chicagoans got a look at Le Week-end, Like Father, Like Son,...
What that leaves are the under-the-radar gems, the local Chicago color that never makes it past the Mississippi and the early looks at darlings that didn’t get the due attention the first time around the festival circuit. Last year, Chicagoans got a look at Le Week-end, Like Father, Like Son,...
- 10/9/2014
- by Brian Welk
- SoundOnSight
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