Arts Spotlight | 2013 Mayor's Arts Awards
May 24th 2013 | Posted in: Mayor's Arts Awards | Posted by: Lincoln Arts Council
Marjorie Mikasen
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Before Midnight
May 24th 2013 | Posted in: Film | Posted by: The Ross
Nine years after Before Sunset, their highly-regarded sequel to Before Sunrise, director Richard Linklater reteams with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for Before Midnight, which finds their characters together raising twin daughters. Jesse (Hawke) attempts to maintain a relationship with Hank, his teenage son from his first marriage, but their bond is strained even though Hank has just spent the summer with his dad and step-family. Meanwhile, Celine (Delpy) must make a difficult decision about her career.
Director Richard Linklater continues his enchanting tale of a chance meeting between two strangers, bringing to it a nuanced perspective only gained by years lived. As it does in each film in the series, life carries with it new responsibilities and attitudes, forcing the two dreamers to reassess what they want next. Bolstered by an increasingly refined onscreen chemistry between lead actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, Before Midnight is a fitting third chapter in one of the great love stories of American independent cinema. - C. R, Sundance Film Festival catalogue
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist
May 24th 2013 | Posted in: Film | Posted by: The Ross
Mohsin Hamid's international best-seller concerning a Pakistani Princeton graduate whose life is forever altered by the 9/11 terrorist attacks arrives on the screen courtesy of celebrated filmmaker Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding, Salaam Bombay!). Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed) was a bright Wall Street business analyst working under the influential Jim Cross (Kiefer Sutherland) when two passenger jets brought down the World Trade Center as he watched in horror. His American Dream shattered alongside his future with the radiant Erica (Kate Hudson), Khan is suddenly branded an enemy in the land he called home. The humiliation of being wrongfully arrested, profiled, and interrogated soon drives Khan back to his family in Pakistan. There, Khan's eloquence and charisma make him a natural leader among the anti-American student population, but a potential threat in the eyes of the U.S. government. Years later, American journalist Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber) tracks down Khan in Lahore to interview him about a foreign professor who has been abducted by extremists, and threatened with execution. Recognizing the danger to his family, and well aware that Lincoln has a hidden agenda, the man who slowly became the victim of his own cruel fate recounts the story of his profound and unexpected transformation, and the devastating repercussions it threatens to have on everything he holds sacred. Martin Donovan and Om Puri also star
“[THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST is] smart, provocative.... rich in complexities.... it does not offer answers but rather, of equal if not greater value, it presents different ways to frame the question...”—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
“[THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST is] deliberately ambiguous... provides just enough answers while leaving us with more than enough questions. It's a film that demands discussion afterward.”—Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
“[THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST is] remarkable... Riz Ahmed gives a smoldering performance that announces the arrival of a major actor.... The film meanders at times, but mostly it's bracing.”—Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
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Frances Ha
May 24th 2013 | Posted in: Film | Posted by: The Ross
Frances (Greta Gerwig) lives in New York, but she doesn't really have an apartment. Frances is an apprentice for a dance company, but she's not really a dancer. Frances has a best friend named Sophie, but they aren’t really speaking anymore. Frances throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as their possible reality dwindles. Frances wants so much more than she has, but lives her life with unaccountable joy and lightness. FRANCES HA is a modern comic fable in which Noah Baumbach explores New York, friendship, class, ambition, failure, and redemption.
“With its swift, jaunty rhythms and sharp, off-kilter jokes, [FRANCES HA] is frequently delightful.... less a satire or a cautionary tale than a bedtime story for young adults.”—A.O. Scott, New York Times
“[FRANCES HA is] delirious and delightful.... a black-and-white, seriocomic lark... co-writer Greta Gerwig is a flailing, free-spirited Annie Hall for the 'Girls' generation.”—Aaron Hills, Village Voice
“[FRANCES HA is] a small miracle of a movie, honest and funny with an aim that's true.... more than makes you feel hopeful about movies, it allows you to feel that way about life as well.”—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
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Something In The Air
May 24th 2013 | Posted in: Film | Posted by: The Ross
Following his critical triumphs, Summer Hours and Carlos, Assayas' semi-autobiographical new feature is a vibrant, incisively crafted story of a young man's artistic awakening in the politically turbulent French student movement of the early '70s. In a nod to his earlier film Cold Water, Assayas' surrogate Gilles (newcomer Clement Métayer) is a graduating high school student in Paris deeply involved in the counterculture of the time. While Gilles begins to realize that his interests lie more in the revolutions in music and art, he finds himself pulled into ever more dangerous political protests by the people around him, especially his radicalized girlfriend (Lola Créton of Goodbye First Love). Illuminating and elegiac, Assayas' SOMETHING IN THE AIR celebrates that thrilling, evanescent moment in history when young people could feel revolution just within their grasp.
“[SOMETHING IN THE AIR is] gorgeous, freewheeling, semi-autobiographical... an ode to both youth's universal qualities and the specifics of Assayas's youth in particular.”—Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice/LA Weekly
“[SOMETHING IN THE AIR is] wise and wistful.... The tone of the piece is wryly affectionate but never indulgent; the experiences depicted feel emotionally true and lived-in...”—Justin Chang, Variety
“[SOMETHING IN THE AIR is] exquisite.... a beautifully crafted work and an acute evocation of its period both in look and attitude, and it's no less deeply absorbing for being somewhat muted in tone.”—David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter
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