In all likelihood, people are going to watch Gentlemen Broncos for one of two reasons: 1.) because it’s from the team that created and directed Napoleon Dynamite, a film that has garnered enough “indie” and word-of-mouth street cred for the husband-wife team to pull in an audience for another film or two (I could be wrong, but I get the impression that their second outing, Nacho Libre, may have dipped into that goodwill well or, at the very least, didn’t make the water-level rise), or 2.) because it stars Jermaine Clement, probably best-known as Jermaine from the HBO series, Flight of the Conchords.  Gentlemen Broncos seems to be the type of movie that relies on an existing fan base to gain any traction in the theater or on DVD.  The film isn’t inaccessible if you you’re in the dark on either of the two above reasons, but it is absolutely tailored to a pre-existing audience: fans of the above or people who enjoy quirky, “indie” movies that try to show a different slice of Americana’s pie.  The film’s story is as follows: Benjamin Purvis is a shy, non-descript teenage writer with a rabid appreciation for sci-fi author Ronald Chevalier.  Benjamin attends a writing camp where he submits his story, Yeast Lords, into a contest to be judged by Chevalier and it turns out that Wars is actually good enough for Chevalier, who is close to losing his publishing contract because of a string of not-so-hot book ideas, to plagiarize. Benjamin must fight to take his story back from Chevalier as well as the local filmmakers who have turned Yeast Lords into one of their films, albeit heavily rewritten.  And then Benjamin wins!  Or something.  Gentlemen Broncos‘ story actually seemed to be there more out of necessity than anything, which kind of made the film’s story (ironically about writing) feel sort of loose and unimportant.

But that’s not to say Gentlemen Broncos is a complete misfire.  It does a few things quite well.  The look of the fantasy pieces in the film (dramatic enactments of both authors’ versions of Yeast Wars) are, for the most part, spot on.  Influenced by the countless sci-fi paperback covers that lined grocery store checkouts and novelty science-toy stores  back in the 80s (you know, the painting of a hero in a silver suit shooting a laser gun at some sort of green, six-eyed alien creature peering from behind a moon rock, photon blaster in hand, all on some distant landscape watched over by three moons), Broncos’ fantasy sections look like those covers come to life: the blues are absurdly blue, the clouds are impeccably white, everything within each shot is completely lit.  Those scenes look like a print of Forbidden Planet that was punched up by a solid digital cleaning.  Another solid checkmark for the film goes to April Napier’s costume design.  Napier’s wardrobe design is a strong reminder at just how clothing can capably help set the tone for a story.  If the theater were to mute Gentlemen Broncos, looking at the costumes would give the audience a firm grasp of the characters, the general location of the film and the eccentricities that Hess was clearly trying to bring to the forefront.  And the main character, Benjamin Purvis, is sympathetic enough that you kind of want to root for him (or, at least, you certainly don’t hate him).  While the character couldn’t get more cookie-cutter insecure-protagonist-who-lost-his-father-at-a-young-age-and-finds-his-outlet-in-writing-while-surrounded-by-eccentrics-and-those-who-are-willing-to-take-advantage-of-his-insecurity-including-his-hero-turned-nemesis, actor Michael Angarano infuses enough reality in Purvis so that when scenes where half-assed love interest Tabatha (see comment about the story being “loose and unimportant”) has an obscene amount of hand lotion dumped onto the palm of her hand and she turns to Benjamin to request a hand massage, my initial reaction of “No fucking way” was tempered by Angarano’s character so that I eventually conceded, “Yeah, maybe the high school me would say ’sure’.”

But while Purvis is appropriately likeable, the rest of the film is overly crowded with eccentrics.  Literally every character on the screen is weird, and not just in personality.  Hess populates Purvis’s life and town with outwardly strange people who, while they have just enough heart, they’re just not believable.  His mother is a fashion designer who makes horrible clothes but believes they’re great (they’re very, very clearly not: see the I Dream of Jeannie fall-wear for an example), Lonnie, the amateur filmmaker, has such an exaggerated mouth and way of speaking that just screams “trying too hard to be an oddball!”, Chevalier speaks in a weird pitch, has an odd hand gesture to say goodbye or thank you, and Dusty has long, badly permed hair, a mustache tailor-made for cruising a high school parking lot for chicks in a beat-up van with a mystical panther painted on its side, and a snake for no other reason than it’d be crazy for him to have a snake.  The list goes on.  And what’s interesting is each character is so over-the-top with their oddities that it becomes abundantly clear we’re supposed to be laughing at these small town weirdos.  Hess seems to have designed Gentlemen Broncos’ comedy around pulling the audience up to this heightened sense of self so we can all have a really good laugh at these people who are clearly beneath us.  And it just feels mean.

Which raises the question: How does a comedy work?  To make an audience laugh involves more than just throwing every nutty idea writers can think of onto the screen in the hopes receiving the coveted laughter payoff.  There’s a science, an art, to putting something on film that will register with an audience, eliciting chortles, guffaws, and uproarious laughter.  One way a good comedy pulls this off is by using the characters and/or the situations to point out things about ourselves.  Broncos seems to want to lance the idea of the small town and its inhabitants, but it doesn’t infuse enough of the small town that we all know to make what we’re watching remotely relatable.  I didn’t grow up in or ever visit a town where everyone in the general population looks or behaves like a circus retiree.  So how can we expect to laugh at our small town culture when everyone presented on the screen is so out there it’s almost absurd?  It’s too much to ask the main character to represent the audience and as a result, the audience relates to no one and misses the joke.  As contrast, look at a film like Waiting for Guffman, a Christopher Guest movie that perfectly reflects and deflates the idea of a small town and its inhabitants.  Guffman shows townsfolk who are perfectly believable and relatable, allowing the audience to see itself in the characters so that ultimately the film’s comedy comes from holding up a mirror and laughing at what we know to be true about ourselves.  Comedies can make fun of the little people if they’re willing to show that they understand and embrace the little people.  Guffman does this, Gentlemen Broncos does not.

And it’s not that a comedy needs to show a true reflection of the audience in order for it to work.  I’m hard-pressed to believe that any character Will Ferrell has ever played could be found hanging out at your town diner.  But the comedy in a film like Blades of Glory or Talladega Nights resides in the exaggeration of these overly, and unjustifiably, cocky characters Ferrell portrays.  They are so broad that they exist as almost the embodiment of a personality trait, a caricature.  They have a cockiness that makes us cringe when we come across it in real life, and the films allows us to laugh at that, to diffuse it, and to collectively acknowledge that this isn’t something we want to be.  What also makes it work is that the characters in those Ferrell movies are, on some higher level, in on the joke; they’re not trying to be sympathetic.  The audience is not supposed to feel heart towards Chas Michael Michaels.  We know that and Ferrell knows that.  The comedy comes from the absurdity and the deflation of that personality trait.  Gentlemen Broncos never presents characters that are in on the joke, so Hess ends up asking the audience to essentially spend an hour and a half having a good time at the expense of these characters solely because they’re different than us and it just doesn’t work.

In Gentlemen Broncos, Hess presents a film whose comedy just felt like bullying.  There are some legitimate funny moments in the film, mostly lines from Chevalier that were just so Jermaine (Conchords fans will appreciate the random throw-away lines that reek of Clement’s style of humor), but it made me want to re-watch season 1 of Flight of the Conchords more than anything.  This is not to say Gentlemen Broncos is an overall bad film; it’s not.  It’s a decent indie-looking film that definitely shows technical control of a craft.  Hess successfully had a vision for the film and pulled off the look.  But a bully is still a bully no matter how well dressed he is, and the film just feels mean.  And personally, I think I’m beyond using humor as a way to attack the little weirdos in our lives.  Maybe the high school me would do that, but I now prefer my comedy to be more gentlemanly.

An autopsy will determine the cause of death, but there are no other details. The Canadian-born actor became a teen star in the 80s with such films as ‘The Lost Boys,’ ‘Lucas,’ and ‘License to Drive.’

Recently Haim appeared in the reality show ‘The Two Coreys,’ about himself and friend/colleague Corey Feldman.

The Opening Night film for the 2010 Festival will be Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s ‘The Extra Man’ starring Kevin Kline, Paul Dano, Katie Holmes, and John C. Reilly.

Kevin Kline will be in attendance to receive the IFFBoston Career Achievement Award to recognize his impressive overall body of work as an actor.

Opening night as in years past takes place at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, Somerville MA. The festival will have 150 film screenings, filmmaker Q&A sessions, panel discussions, visiting filmmakers, parties and events will showcase the works of filmmakers who seek to create films that are life changing, thought provoking and expose aspects of life in new and revealing manners. Other venues this year in-addition to the Somerville theater are the Coolidge, Brattle, and the Institute of Contemporary Art.

The complete film festival lineup will be announced in late March. All-Access passes to the festival go on sale March 9th and individual tickets will be on sale April 1st, both on the festival website at http://www.iffboston.org.

Film passes and Chrome All-Access passes are now on sale at http://www.iffboston.org/buypasses.

I talk about IFFBoston quite often on this site, it is the most fun I have living in Boston period. If you love movies, and you live in the Boston area. Get yourself a pass, you won’t regret it. The programming is excellent, and the atmosphere, crowd, and people who work it, top notch. I can’t give it any higher endorsement.

Ryan Bingham likes to keep things simple.  A constant traveler for work, he lives his life with his frequent flyer cards, his hotel reward programs, everywhere he goes, he is greeted with a chorus of, “it’s great to see you again, Mr. Bingham.”  Ryan Bingham is a professional down-sizer.When companies need to trim their staff down, they send in Bingham to be the hatchet man.  The work is not important to Bingham, it’s the lifestyle that the work allows him to live.  He spends as little time as he can in his apartment.  It’s too close to having a life.  He doesn’t seem to have friends, he has his job.  And his backpack of clothes.  As the movie opens, Ryan meets a fellow traveler, who lives by a similar ethos.  If they’re in the same city, or on the same layover, they’ll meet up.  Her name is Alex Goran and Ryan finds himself feeling something he usually doesn’t: he cares about her.

Meanwhile, things at work are getting complicated.  A young go-getter has come up with a way to virtually fire people on-line, thereby saving millions of dollars a year and thousands of miles in the air.  You sit down in front of your computer terminal, the firee sits in front of their terminal and they are told their services are no longer required.  Ryan thinks the concept is asinine.  You need to fire people face-to-face, you need to give them that respect.  To give the inventor a sense of what he does, he takes her with him on a trip, showing her that perhaps firing people isn’t as easy as she thinks it is.

This is Jason Reitman’s film and you can clearly see his imprint on the material.  Based on the book by Walter Kirn, it seems to have Reitman’s sensibilities throughout, much in the same way his first film, an adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s “Thank You For Smoking,” felt like a collaboration.

The cast is uniformly excellent.  George Clooney is outstanding, playing Bingham in a very subdued and carefully mannered performance.  Vera Farmiga, who usually disappears in her past films, (“The Departed,” “Running Scared,” amongst others,) is excellent here, playing Alex as the yang to Bingham’s ying.  Also impressive is Anna Kendrick, best known for her work in the “Twilight,” films, but turning an excellent performance as Natalie Keener, the inventor of the on-line executioner.  Reitman fills out his cast with some of his stock performers, veterans from his other movies, (Jason Bateman, J.K. Simmons, Sam Elliott,) who all work perfectly yet again.  The rest of the cast, mostly those facing firing are actual victims of downsizing, brought in by the filmmakers to re-count their initial reactions.  And it doesn’t feel like a gimmick.  It feels natural.

“Up in the Air,” is the kind of movie that sneaks up on you.  While you may not be expecting greatness, it sneaks up on you, introducing characters that may at first blush appear comic, but Reitman peels that away, quickly showing the vulnerabilities of each one in a way that draws you in.  By the end of the movie, there is a definite affinity and  caring for Bingham and his compatriots that I did not expect.  Much like “Juno,” “Up in the Air,” wins you over at first with charm, but quickly reveals a greater depth.  It is a movie that, upon walking into, you may not think you’re going to see a great movie, but by the end, you know you’ve seen something special.  It’s one of the year’s best.  -Sam

I was a bit surprised to see Sandra Bullock take home Best Actress, other then that though, there wasn’t anything else that truly shocked me, overall the ceremony was fairly predictable. I was a bit disappointed that ‘White Ribbon’ didn’t take home Foreign Film or Cinematography, but I was happy with who won. Overall, a great but fairly predictable telecast. Now, lets cross our fingers for Shutter Island and next years awards!

Oscar Results:

Best Picture: The Hurt Locker

Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Actress in a Leading Role: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

Actor in a Leading Role: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Actress in a Supporting Role: Mo’Nique, Precious

Actor in a Supporting Role: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Original Screenplay: The Hurt Locker, Mark Boal

Adapted Screenplay: Precious, Geoffrey Fletcher

Animated Feature Film: Up

Foreign Language Film: The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos)

Original Score: Up

Original Song: “The Weary Kind,” Ryan Bingham and T-Bone Burnett, Crazy Heart

Art Direction: Avatar

Cinematography: Avatar

Costume Design: The Young Victoria

Makeup: Star Trek

Film Editing: The Hurt Locker

Documentary Feature: The Cove

Animated Short Film: Logorama

Documentary Short Subject: Music By Prudence

Live Action Short Film: The New Tenants

Sound Editing: The Hurt Locker

Sound Mixing: The Hurt Locker

Visual Effects: Avatar

The predicted winners are highlighted in bold.

Best Picture

Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Precious
A Serious Man
Up in the Air
Up

Best Director

Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
James Cameron, “Avatar”
Lee Daniels, “Precious”
Jason Reitman, “Up in the Air”
Quentin Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds”

Best Actress

Sandra Bullock, “The Blind Side”
Helen Mirren, “The Last Station”
Carey Mulligan, “An Education”
Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious”
Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”

Best Actor

Jeff Bridges, “Crazy Heart”
George Clooney, “Up in the Air”
Colin Firth, “A Single Man”
Morgan Freeman, “Invictus”
Jeremy Renner, “The Hurt Locker”

Best Supporting Actress

Penelope Cruz, “Nine”
Vera Farmiga, “Up in the Air”
Maggie Gyllenhaal, “Crazy Heart”
Anna Kendrick, “Up in the Air”
Mo’Nique, “Precious”

Best Supporting Actor

Matt Damon, “Invictus”
Woody Harrelson, “The Messenger”
Christopher Plummer, “The Last Station”
Stanley Tucci, “The Lovely Bones”
Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”

Best Original Screenplay

Mark Boal, “The Hurt Locker”
Quentin Tarantino, “Inglourious Basterds”
Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman, “The Messenger”
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, “A Serious Man”
Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, “Up”

Best Adapted Screenplay

Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, “District 9″
Nick Hornby, “An Education”
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, and Tony Roche, “In the Loop”
Geoffrey Fletcher, “Precious”
Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, “Up in the Air”

Best Animated Feature

“Coraline”
“Fantastic Mr. Fox”
“The Princess and the Frog”
“The Secret of Kells”
“Up”

Best Foreign Language Film

“Ajami” (Israel)
“The Milk of Sorrow” (Peru)
“Un Prophete (A Prophet)” (France)
“El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret in their Eyes)” (Argentina)
“The White Ribbon (Germany)

Best Feature Documentary

“Burma VJ”
“The Cove”
“Food, Inc.”
“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers”
“Which Way Home”

Best Art Direction

“Avatar”
“The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus”
“Nine”
“Sherlock Holmes”
“The Young Victoria”

Best Cinematography

“Avatar”
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“The White Ribbon”

Best Costume Design

“Bright Star”
“Coco Avant Chanel”
“The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus”
“Nine”
“The Young Victoria”

Best Editing

“Avatar”
“District 9″
“The Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Precious”

Best Make-Up

“Il Divo”
“Star Trek”
“The Young Victoria”

Best Visual Effects

“Avatar”
“District 9″
“Star Trek”

Best Original Score

“Avatar”
“Fantastic Mr. Fox”
“The Hurt Locker”
“Sherlock Hollmes”
“Up”

Best Song

“Almost There” from “The Princess and the Frog”
“Down in New Orleans” from “The Princess and the Frog”
“Loin de Paname” from “Paris 36″
“Take It All” from “Nine”
“The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)” from “Crazy Heart”

Sound Mixing

“Avatar”
“Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Star Trek”
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

Sound Editing

“Avatar”
“Hurt Locker”
“Inglourious Basterds”
“Star Trek”
“Up”

Documentary Short

“China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province”
“The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner”
“The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant”
“Music by Prudence”
“Rabbit a la Berlin”

Animated Short

“French Roast”
“Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty”
“The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte)”
“Logorama”
“A Matter of Loaf and Death”

Live Action Short

“The Door”
“Instead of Abracadabra”
“Kavi”
“Miracle Fish”
“The New Tenants”

Blood Into Wine, a new documentary about the development of an Arizona vineyard, suggests starting in the soil. The film follows the growth and development of Merkin Vineyards as owner/proprietor Maynard James Keenan and his partner/mentor Eric Glomski break soil in the arid Arizona town of Jerome. Keenan, for those who don’t know, is the singer for the multi-platinum bands Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer and one of the film’s focuses is to bridge the gap for Keenan’s fans and followers (and, as the film shows, they’re plentiful and rabid) from Keenan the “rock star” to Keenan the viticulturalist. Keenan demonstrates that growing wine in an area that most enthusiasts and professionals don’t even know produces the libation is a labor of love and his commitment to it rivals his commitment to any of those listed musical projects. Starting as an admitted novice, the film shows Keenan, surrounding himself with those who he can glean from, as he digs in the soil, prunes vines and plays a hands-on role in each step of the process for what he hopes will one day turn his efforts into a viable entity as well as (and quite possibly more importantly) shaping his understanding of what is basically modern-day alchemy. And this is the film’s main point: patience, hard work, and commitment to an idea, whatever it is, is its own reward. “It took the world seven years to get Tool, seven years to get A Perfect Circle, and it’ll take it seven years to get this,” muses Keenan. Art takes time, regardless of what you’re creating. Fans of Tool’s music will appreciate this statement, given that the band has been around for 20 years and has 4 LPs and 1 EP to show for it.

And what about that music? No doubt the ticket-buyers to this film consisted mostly of Keenan-enthusiasts probably eager to get a glimpse of the notoriously hidden artist. To go from sparingly giving interviews, rarely having his face shown undisguised, and living in where-the-hell-is-Jerome, Arizona instead of LA (one of Keenan’s favorite punching bags) to a full-length documentary starring the man himself is probably too strong of a boon for fans of the singer to pass up, even if the film is basically about a specific kind of gardening. Blood Into Wine does touch upon Keenan’s music career (considering it was the elephant in the room, it seemed inevitable that it had to show up in the film), giving clips from Puscifer performances, interviews with Revolver’s Editor-in-Chief, and even has Milla Jovovich discussing making music with him (an ominous prediction for fans is hinted at when Keenan noted that performances would probably become a nice 2-week break from the toils of the vineyard). But unfortunately, the musical aspect of Keenan was probably the film’s weakest point. While undoubtedly interesting from a fan perspective, the film’s focus on the growth and cultivation of Merkin Vineyards is the crux of the film and the rest felt out of sync with the topic at hand. Perhaps parallels could be drawn to what Keenan has successfully cultivated and created in the past to his new endeavor, but the film doesn’t lead the viewer towards that conclusion with any sort of confidence, so the pieces about his musical career feel tacked on and slightly jarring. Interesting, but in this case unnecessary.

Indeed, this is a film about the wine and as a subject it is engrossing. Like Keenan before us, we meet Eric Glomski and are immediately impressed with his wealth of knowledge and his total sensory immersion into the craft of creating wines. To hear him discuss how 90% of what you’re tasting in a wine is actually the aroma, how he has trained his sense of smell to such a point where he can distinguish the various types of shampoos in the room, where he can smell a particular tree in a forest, is inspiring. To take something that most of us appreciate on a surface-level and approach it from a different angle is, there’s no other word that seems to fit better, neat. It’s all there already, right under our noses just waiting to be inhaled. Glomski and Keenan seem to make a perfect pair for taking on this craft; both approach the development of a wine holistically, understanding that what they are doing isn’t just a business, but an expression of themselves. “We aren’t chasing the market,” notes Glomski, and he’s right. Where the commercialization of the wine industry has been led by trends (one Napa Valley vineyard owner noted how some companies actually sell tried-and-true recipes for a successful insert-flavor-of-the-month-here to vineyards), the Arizona Stronghold (a joint venture between Keenan’s Merkin Vineyards and Glomski’s Page Spring Vineyards) revels in the creation of pleasing blends. To hear Glomski talk through tasting a wine, finding what he feels is its strengths and what it’s missing, and then thinking through what else he has tasted that could marry well and compensate is intoxicating. Glomski’s passion and incredible depth of knowledge combined with Keenan’s passion and willingness to work for it makes it hard for anyone with even a fleeting spark to create something not to their drive ignited to go work towards their goal. The film’s title suddenly becomes clear and obvious.

Will you learn a lot about the wine-making process? Blood Into Wine gives the audience a surface-level view, but don’t expect to walk away with any sort of Wine 101 knowledge. But that’s not the point. Blood Into Wine exists to show that whatever your passion or interest is, it’s going to take work to accomplish it. Anything worth doing is worth doing well and it’s going to take blood, sweat, and tears to try and get a competent command of your goal. But if you succeed, the first sip of that wine could be the most pleasing thing you’ve ever tasted, making all of your blood worth it.

Whiticare tells his bosses he received a call from a contact at one of their competitors, that ADM had a mole within their ranks that was sabotaging their lysine production. Lysine being the division that Whiticare is in charge of, which had been losing money for months. Whiticare’s boss decides the best course of action would be to install a wire-tap in Whiticare’s phone, just in case his contact called him again.

Under the insistence of his wife, Whiticare reveals to the FBI agent that ADM was routinely meeting with price competitors to fix the price of lysine. That is when things really start to fall apart, as Whiticare bumbles along, recording hundreds of hours of tape and video in an effort to implicate his bosses in the price-fixing scheme.

The film is being marketed a lot goofier then it actually is, though there is an overall comical tone, the subject is a bit serious. Whiticare is a complicated character, who isn’t exactly what he seems either. Damon embodies the role so well, and you spend half the film shaking your head at ever foolish decision Whiticare makes.

The music in the film is delightful, jazzy, and fits the dark yet light hearted tone of the film. The best part of the film is how well Soderbergh and his production designer make this feel like a period piece. The entire film takes place from the early 90s to just a few years ago. It is so convincing, from the computer systems, to the cars, and haircuts, top notch work. Think of the movie as the Insider meets Erin Brockovich, just way funnier.

‘Children of Invention,’ tells the story of Elaine, a single mother from a China, raising her two children alone just outside the city of Boston. Elaine is constantly looking for a way to make ends meet, and finds herself in-and-out of get-rich-quick schemes. We join the family as Elaine is trying to return bottles of vitamins she’d been trying to sell. The vunerable mother then enters a pyramid scheme, which happens to prey on low-income foreigners like herself. Her two children, Raymond, and Tina, are left to fend on their own when something goes wrong in the pyramid scheme.

The idea of two children waking up and having their only protector gone leaves an uneasy feeling, and plays to very relatable fears.Rather then panicking, Raymond, the elder child takes his sister, and decides the only way to support themselves is to sell the inventions that they have created together.

‘Children of Invention,’ is no doubt a personal story for Chun, this is felt through out the entire film. ‘Children of Invention,’ is a tale inspired by his own upbringing. His Mother who was in the audience shared her worries that the audience might have thought that there were a lot of similarities between the film and real life, fearful that we might think that she wasn’t a good mother. However, members of the audience said that there is a strong empathy felt for the Mother, as every action she takes is out of love for her two children. The atmosphere of the film as a whole is amazing, and highlighted by an excellent score.

Often the world the characters moved through seemed to be intentionally out of focus. This shallow depth of field highlighted the feeling that these characters are cut off and separated from the world they inhabit. The only thing that they had and could rely on was each other.

You can catch ‘Invention’ it at its premiere February 26th, at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge.

Scorsese told a Hollywood Reporter Blogger that “Frank will do the singing. But we’re waiting for a finished script.” I’m sure LR contributor Ben is quite excited about this news, he’s been waiting this one since it was just a rumor.

So if the film does move forward, Leonardo DiCaprio will play Frank Sinatra, but we won’t be doing the singing.