Review: Blinded By The Light

by Chris Feil

Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha brings us another earnest and heartwarming delight with Blinded By The Light, a true story of a Pakistani teenager transported out of his British suburb by the music of Bruce Springsteen. Javed (played by charming newcomer Viveik Kalra) is an outsider inside and outside his home: he can’t abide his father’s rigid cultural expectations and struggles to be taken seriously as writer in a white-dominated community. But the film also speaks to the political and economic concerns of its time period, depicting a lower-middle class world oppressed by Thatcher and the ensuing racist resurgence and capitalistic dominance.

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🎬 😣 🤳 🙏

by Jason Adams

I fear that in delivering this news I will be able to actually see the liver spots pop up on the tips of my typing fingers and travel with sudden immediacy up my arms -- something like a smaller version of that scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the dude turns to a skeleton and dust in ten flat seconds. But throw all the "Old Man Yells At Clouds" memes at me you must, the news that Crawl director Alexandre Aja and producer Steven Spielberg -- who has recently made headlines about the sanctity of the movie-going experience, cough cough -- are teaming up to bring interactive-by-cell-phone "Choose Your Own Adventure" type storytelling to movie theaters makes my thin skin shudder and die...

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Over & Overs: Moonrise Kingdom

TFE is kicking off a new series. We began, unofficially with Julie & Julia and now each week a Team Member will share a movie they can't help but watch frequently, whenever it comes up. Here's Ginny O'Keefe...

-What kind of bird are you?”

-I’m a Raven”

And that kids, is how I met your mother. One of my sweetest “Over and Over” movies is the criminally underrated Wes Anderson film Moonrise Kingdom. This 2012 gem follows two young kids in 1960’s New England who fall in love with each other and decide to run away into the wilderness so they can be together. One is a resourceful, kind orphan who’s been sent away to join the Khaki Scouts. The other is a troubled, solitary, creative bookworm feeling smothered by her overbearing family. The entire town goes on a manhunt for the two lovebirds before a massive storm hits and the Wes Anderson preciousness and hilarity ensues... 

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"No, that's mine. Mine!"

...green doesn't look good on you. You know it doesn't look good on you"

Doc Corner: 'What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?'

By Glenn Dunks

The streets of New Orleans are the setting for US-based Italian-born Roberto Minervini’s latest examination of the American south. If nothing else, his newest documentary sports the year’s best title. It’s a title that asks a question that many of us have probably asked ourselves, from seats of privilege. 

The title actually comes from a slave-era spiritual, which only further highlights the tragic ways that African Americans have been inflicted by the force of racism across all of its forms for centuries. The contemporary age of Trump is sadly not unique and so there is a particular irony to be found in the answer to the titular question. For many the answer is whatever they need to do to get by. Whether that be protest, go to work, trawl the streets for teenage kicks, or rehearse for Mardi Gras. For most without the agency of privilege, when the world is on fire it’s just a struggle to not get burnt...

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We met Marsha Mason!

Last week we had the privilege of attending a live podcast recording of "Live at the Lortel" in the West Village where the guest was four-time Oscar nominee Marsha Mason. While a good portion of the interview focused on her new play "Little Gem" and her deep devotion to the stage, all of her Oscar nominated performances got at least some airtime. (She never intended to be a film actress but then Cinderella Liberty kind of fell into her lap). 

The piece of the interview we found most fascinating was hearing her talk about her work on Chapter Two...

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