yelling to the sky
zoe kravitz plays a teen at a crossroads in ‘yelling to the sky. ’
victoria mahoney bei der premiere des films' yelling to the sky' (photo by ...
join imagenation cinema foundation and the film society of lincoln center for a special screening of yelling to the sky .
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join gabourey sidibe from “precious, ” imagenation cinema foundation and the film society of lincoln center for a special screening of yelling to the sky .
in the world of
yelling to the sky ,
good intentions run up against tough reality. and neither turns out to be exactly what we thought .
yelling to the sky is all id. a visceral trip that hits you in the mouth from its opening frames, and grips onto you, unrelentingly until the cathartic close .
the film sincerely strives for emotional maturity, but without a discernible narrative, comprehensible character motivations, or a thematic thread to latch onto, “yelling to the sky” merely whimpers with unfocused gloom .
and, as another aside, speaking of precious, one noteworthy factoid; correcting what we all believed when it was made public that she had a role in the film, gabourey sidibe actually got the part in yelling to the sky before most of us even knew about lee daniels’ adaptation of sapphire’s novel. we long believed that gabourey’s participation in yelling to the sky was due in some part to her performance in precious. not quite the case .
subscribe to trailers: urltoken subscribe to coming soon: urltoken yelling to the sky official trailer # 1 (2012) - gabourey sidibe, zoe kravitz movie hd as her family falls apart, seventeen year old sweetness o' hara is left to fend for herself in a neighborhood where her survival is uncertain .
this is what i related to and why – despite its flaws – i’m so thankful for yelling to the sky. i may be a white woman and i may not have made the same choices sweetness made, but it showed me i wasn’t alone. it felt cathartic watching .
yelling
is a prosaic look at a hard life. like sweetness, the movie finds its way by instinct .
what i came to realize, hours after i first screened the film, was that, the initial unexplainable reaction i felt in watching it, was more akin to numbness – a numbness that was brought on by the assault on the senses and emotions that yelling to the sky is; but that’s actually a good thing, so stay with me here for a little bit .
writer - director victoria mahoney’s film aims for rawness, shining a harsh spotlight on an underprivileged teen’s desperate search for parental acceptance and personal dignity. but “yelling to the sky” is a mess. it’s a structural shambles, as if the bleakest footage from the o’hara family home videos were cut - up, shuffled, and blindly spliced back together without rhyme or reason. it’ll have you yelling in exasperation .
movie reviews -' yelling to the sky' - a queens chronicle that' s a little too lifelike writer - director victoria mahoney marries her experiences as a biracial woman to the drama of an unstable family in y elling to the sk y. critic mark jenkins says the film, which stars zoe kravtiz as a troubled teen, struggles to build convincing relationships among its disadvantaged characters .
austin — an elliptical portrait of at - risk youth where little if anything is unambiguous, victoria mahoney ’s yelling to the sky drips with a strange but sometimes moving nostalgia for environs its characters clearly want to escape. its artful indirectness leaves enough gaps to present commercial difficulties, but the right kind of attention on the fest circuit could support an art - house run .
new yorkers! you should feel privileged to have all of the cool events and showcases right at your fingertips. victoria mahoney’s yelling to the sky is screening tomorrow, august 25th at lincoln center’s walter reade theatre. the director and gabourey sidibe will be in the house and you’ll be treated to some yummy bites from whole foods to keep you going. you may remember seeing the trailer that we posted here back in april, and now is your chance to see the story unfold in person .
sure, some people may find yelling to the sky bleak or hopeless. it’s heartbreaking to watch sweetness spiral out of control. sweetness clamors to escape, to break free. yet there’s nowhere to go. echoing real - life, the film ends with ambiguity and uncertainty. you don’t know how her life will turn out. sweetness’ story – her struggle to survive amidst the chaos swirling around her, desperate to cling to any semblance of community – is one worth telling. and it’s one we don’t see often enough .
yelling to the sky struck a visceral chord with me. i related to it in a way i often don’t with films. i’m not a biracial woman growing up impoverished, who turns to selling drugs as a means of survival. but i grew up with an absent father and a single mother struggling with mental illness, feeling trapped by my surroundings, desperate to break free .
all this leaves little for the actors to play—they are only directed to scowl, glare intensely at the ground, and occasionally cry. meanwhile, the camera lingers on a pot of gravy, or hands at the dinner table, or just the sky, in a misguided attempt to impart importance to the mundane. as sweetness casually dishes drugs to neighborhood kids, the schizo music shifts from indie guitar strumming to hardcore hip - hop. are we in “dawson’s creek” or “girlz n the hood” ?
the ambitions of indie coming - of - age drama “yelling to the sky” must be admired. set within a violent, lower - class suburb, it explores how a fractured home life nearly destroys teenager sweetness o’hara (zoë kravitz). with a verbally and physically abusive dad (jason clarke), a mom (yolonda ross) made comatose by depression, and peers (including gabourey sidibe) who routinely beat her to a pulp, sweetness decides the only way to survive is to deal drugs .
the movie includes several fistfights, a shooting and a drug bust, plus a shoplifting montage that crackles with teenage recklessness. like the hip - hop tunes that punctuate the alt - pop and faux - classical soundtrack, these moments provide lively counterpoint. they also foreshadow showdowns and comeuppances that never quite arrive. perhaps the clearest evidence that yelling to the sky is based on mahoney' s own life is that the movie lets its most troubled characters off pretty easy .
yelling to the sky is a searing portrayal of one girl’s pain. of her frustration at being confined and trapped in a world not her choosing. sweetness doesn’t focus on her education or her future. she deals with the immediacy of her pain. she starts selling drugs as a way to make money. she numbs herself with drugs, alcohol and surrounding herself with a cadre of bullies and drug dealers. sweetness desperately yearns to escape. but where to? where can she go ?
with zoe kravitz playing a character named sweetness and gabourey sidibe in a supporting role, street - chastened, queens - set coming - of - ager “yelling to the sky” will be hard - pressed to avoid comparisons to “precious. ” truth be told, writer - director - producer victoria mahoney’s semi - autobiographical debut feels like a cup - half - full response to that bleak inner - city fable, with a stunningly beautiful fair - skinned black teen [ … ]
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and given the roller - coaster of emotions the 90 - minute yelling to the sky is, from one extreme to another, the numbness i felt immediately after seeing the film made total sense! but that’s obviously a personal response than a universal one. i tend to “shut down” after experiencing something so intense – or as i already deemed it, an assault on the senses. call it a defense mechanism. it’s like you’ve been emotionally “exposed” by a piece of art, as it’s able to force itself inside of you, and reach places that you’d normally keep shielded. and thus, the immediate reaction there is to create this wall that’s meant to keep the “intruder” (the film) out. hence, the numbness / shutting down .
while light - skinned biracial and black women possess privilege, they may also face a backlash and be deemed not “ black enough. ” while the jarring opening scene of yelling to the sky certainly alludes to this, it is never explored further. instead, the film resorts to racial stereotypes: “ dark (er) - skinned black people are mean and like to victimize light (er) - skinned black people, ” “girls / teenagers / women who are “authentically” black are bad” and “interracial relationships are dysfunctional. ”
in time, despite the violence and its threat, sweetness flounders into a sense of self in a movie that can feel as if it’s undergoing a similar painful metamorphosis. “yelling to the sky” can be frustrating, especially when sweetness takes up with some mean girls from school. as an outsider wanting in, her motivations feel true, but ms. mahoney’s ideas about her and this movie are fuzzier .
the vision of a pregnant woman beating a man until he’s bloody is hard to shake, and it’s the kind of startling, punctuating image that speaks to ms. mahoney’s strengths in this film. “yelling to the sky” is at once a coming - of - age story and a kitchen - sink drama, mostly though, it’s a mood piece and suggests the influence of filmmakers like terence davies and charles burnett. not much happens in story terms, but the film swirls with emotions that make it by turns grim and amusing, heavy and light, obvious and vague .
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but the moment snaps into focus when another woman, ola, raging and yelling, begins beating the man attacking sweetness, climbing on his body to punch him again and again as the crowd surges excitedly around them. when this fury is finally pulled off the attacker, her pregnant belly juts out, defiant as a fist .
he said it didn' t appear to be a tomahawk missile and said it would be safest to wait for definitive answers to come from the military .
sweetness o’hara, the quiet teenager at the center of the american independent movie “yelling to the sky, ” lives in a small house that seems even smaller when her father is raging through it. as played by the young actress zoë kravitz, sweetness moves through life like a leaf in the wind. she drifts and scatters and at times gets caught underfoot, including by a gang of local bullies. every so often, though, she faces down a more frightening, confusing antagonist, her father, gordon (jason clarke), a violent drunk whose menace overruns his erratic charm .
the actress and director both love the genre, but as they told indiewire, they also knew it needed to be retrofitted to tell the true story of catherine weldon and sitting bull .
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news 8 showed the video to robert ellsworth, former u. s. ambassador to nato and a former deputy secretary of defense .
firefighters spent the day working to get full containment of the west fire which was at 92 percent containment with 505 acres burned, according to the last update from cal fire san diego. but the number of structures destroyed has tripled to 56 including 34 homes. news 8' s monique griego reports from alpine outside what use to be the home of a couple who lived in the area for decades .
this overall trajectory is familiar enough, delivering close brushes with prison and death — the two fates that surely await should sweetness continue on this path. but “yelling” unfolds rather listlessly, feeling like a much longer film than it is, due to curious editing choices that, among other things, make it virtually impossible to track how much time passes between the disconnected moments, and the fact that mahoney favors impressionistic fragments over scenes that power the story forward .
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i’m on the opposite side of the country right now so i can’t make the screening, but if you’re in the area, make sure you get a ticket! then head straight back here to let us know what you thought of the characters, the plot, and the director’s overall vision. i can’t wait !
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on my subway ride home, almost immediately, i thought about miles davis, and the organic, experimental approach he used in creating some of his music – notably an album like bitches brew, which was recorded in just three days. the story goes… wiithout any notice, nor giving them any idea of what they were going to be working on, davis summoned the musicians who contributed to the compilation, and, while in the recording studio, they were typically given very few instructions – mostly suggestions as to mood and tone, with his intent being to essentially force the musicians to pay very close attention to one another, to their own performances, and to miles davis’ cues, all of which could change at any moment, without notice .
an lapd officer will stop at nothing to force out the interracial couple who just moved in next door .
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when her mother abruptly leaves the scowling gordon, new burdens face sweetness. to survive, she turns to drug dealing before gradually coming' round to college as an option. while a well - meaning school counselor (tim blake nelson) tries to help her make up for a missed sat opportunity, sweetness has to rely on steeliness, and her own sense of savvy and spunk, to fight her way out of her life .
characters transform; those perceived to be weak, find strength; and the strong prove to be just as vulnerable. lessons are learned often after extremes, and everyone isn’t exactly who they present themselves to be (or who we, the audience might instinctively classify them as) .
for the new york city - based recent graduate of nyu’s tisch school of the arts, little accidents has traveled to numerous festivals, including sundance and the seattle international film festival where it won the grand jury prize for narrative short .
based on the 1980 film xanadu, the musical xanadu opened on broadway in 2007 .
kravitz approaches the change matter - of - factly, offering little outward hint of the character' s motivations; some viewers will be frustrated by an inability to identify with the character, while others will embrace the opaqueness as unsentimental realism .
to be heard is the story of three teens from the south bronx whose struggle to change their lives begins when they start to write poetry. as writing and reciting become vehicles for their expressions of love, friendship, frustration, and hope, we watch these three youngsters emerge as accomplished self - aware artists, who use their creativity to alter their circumstances .
elsewhere, the film isn' t averse to sentiment, portraying even deeply flawed characters in a nearly noble light, particularly the drug dealer (tariq trotter) who spreads his money around the neighborhood charitably .
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ms. mahoney opens the story with a spasm of abrupt, unsettling violence that sets an uneasy mood that endures for the run of the movie. sweetness and another teenager are bicycling on an otherwise peaceful street when a gang descends and grabs the girls, knocking them to the ground. it’s a confusing scene, with bodies thrashing inside the frame, partly because the who, what and where of the frenzy are as yet unknown .
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as sweetness, kravitz has to undergo a major transformation with practically no help from the script: when her pregnant big sister runs off, she undergoes an identity crisis and deliberately chooses to become a harder person — convincing a local drug dealer to help her start dealing and recruiting two identically dressed bad girls to form a tiny but tough gang .
three days after the west and building fires broke out, san diego county is preparing to help residents rebuild their lives .
a teenage boy needing assistance while in the water at ocean beach was rescued by two other teenagers on sunday, according to authorities. investigators say the teen was trying to rescue his girlfriend from drowning, but he ended up needing saving himself .
the pentagon said tuesday it was trying to determine if a missile was launched monday off the coast of southern california and, if so, who might have fired it .
and it’s that same “unboxed” thinking that makes the film a challenge. like the mercurial nature of its characters, it’s just not - so easily classified. tonal shifts are sometimes jarring, and it may at first feel chaotic, but you’ll soon come to realize, as i did some time after the screening, it’s a controlled, contained chaos, if that makes sense. although another way to think about it, is taking into consideration that the unpredictability and uncertainty you feel in watching the film is exactly how you should feel, because victoria does a wonderful job creating the universe zoe kravitz’s sweetness o’hara lives in, both the physical and the psychological. hers is indeed a volatile, chaotic world, so, the fact that i was able to genuinely empathize is a credit to the film and all the talents involved in its making .
hardened by years in foster care, a teenage girl from brooklyn' s brownsville neighborhood decides that joining the boys wrestling team is the only way back to her estranged father .
“the documentaries we do are secondary to the experience we get having time with the individual people, ” machoian explains. “we’ve learned that americans are amazingly compassionate people who are looking for such a small amount of joy in life, who aren’t interested in imperialism, greed or whatever else the media wants to label them as. what they are interested in is putting food on the table, a roof over their head and having something in their life that they love to do. ” — mike plante
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when sweetness’s parents aren’t cuddling each other, her father drinks to excess and her mother fades into muteness, like a woman being erased. she later disappears, perhaps to an institution. as for sweetness, she unpersuasively tries to play a bad girl .
is the film perfect? no it definitely falters at times. i wish we had learned more about each of the characters. it feels very much like a snapshot, a voyeuristic peek through the window into their messy and complicated lives. just when you’re lured in, the window abruptly closes. but the biggest flaw? i wish it had more deeply explored the issue of race without resorting to stereotypes .
“stemming from my teenage obsession with chekov’s three sisters and a connection to the theme of “manufacturing illusions in order to sustain day to day life. ” i related on a gut level to the notion of joy and opportunity, existing elsewhere while in the same breadth knowing it was a lie. the illusion of “one day it’ll be different” is what kept me alive and smashing that illusion might’ve been my death. putting this film out is important because (yet another generation of) young people are facing the exact same isolation, confusion, neglect, inquiry, desire, and heartache. all these years later, there’s little to no progress or solution. adults have become freakishly focused on ‘self’, so much so, that we’re failing our responsibilities to participate and aid in the development and advancement of young people’s spiritual and intellectual growth. ”
zoë kravitz was no stranger to the glamorous world of hollywood as a child. she was born in los angeles to a famous couple: her father is musician lenny kravitz, and her mother is actress lisa bonet... .
a painful history of colorism and skin shade hierarchy — dark vs. light skin — exists amongst black women. when the media portrays black women, we often see women with lighter skin, straighter hair and more caucasian features. both l’oreal and elle photoshopped black to make their skin appear much lighter. the media often whitewashes black women, continually perpetuating the unachievable attainment of the white ideal of beauty. “ the myth of black beauty ” and the preference for lighter black skin can be traced back to slavery .
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sparrow songs is scheduled to conclude october 2010. as for what’s next, jablonski will only say, “we’re going to make a feature documentary together as sparrow songs. we’re looking for a producer, and we hope to be shooting this fall. ” — s. m .
lane and schoenbrun discuss how her interest in morgellons disease patients (“the pain of others”) and his exploration of the slenderman myth (“a self - induced hallucination”) led them to make archival films from youtubes .
my childhood existed of treacherous terrain to navigate. my mother was preoccupied by her own problems. i never knew what i was walking into when i went home. so i focused on the future. i clung to the hope that one day things would be different. that was the sole reason i survived. it’s the one thing that kept me going. while my mind was fixated on the future, my actions were grounded in the present. like sweetness, i skipped classes and almost didn’t graduate high school for i wanted to numb my pain. it’s this delicate dance of present angst and future hopes that mahoney captures so well .
their goal was to make as many films as they could over the course of a semester, resulting in 14 shorts. ella and the astronaut played festivals all over the world, and charlie and the rabbit premiered at sundance 2010. the collaboration is just that: after conversations about an idea, they talk each scene out on location, switching up who is filming and who is directing based on a feeling of the moment. both share editing duties .
it’s a rare occurrence that a film is able to create a world that’s so vivid and raw that i’m sucked in and totally immersed in it, experiencing every moment as if i really am right there with the characters – so immersed that when the film ended, it was only then that i realized how involved i was, which lead to the disorientation i felt .
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when her husband is sentenced to eight years in prison, ruby drops out of medical school in order to focus on her husband' s well - being while he' s incarcerated - leading her on a journey of self - discovery in the process .
while i was disappointed the film didn’t explore mother - daughter relationships, it does show the bonds of sisterhood. the relationship between sweetness and ola is my favorite part of the film. we see the girls joke, play, challenge and comfort one another. both rely on one other for support. ola leaves home to live with her boyfriend, leaving sweetness to fend for herself alone. but she’s not the only one trapped. months later, ola must return home with her baby, now a single mother. her dreams of escape nothing but nebulous memories .
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and it’s this kind of “unboxed” approach to cinema that i find appealing. fuck safety. take some risks. i’d more readily applaud a film that challenges the expected order of things and fails (not that this one does, by the way, but just to make a point), than one that simply repeats formula mechanically. the phrasing i’ve heard used is “assembly line cinema. ”
a charismatic drug lord tries to start a new life after he falls for a young woman from philadelphia .
sara colangelo’s little accidents is one of the more arresting shorts on the festival circuit at the moment, both immediate and restrained in its tale of a woman working in a massachusetts soda drink factory who fears that she’s become pregnant. she recruits her mentally disabled ex - boyfriend to shoplift a pregnancy test for her and bonds again with him as she struggles with what to do. “i was interested in the juxtaposition of two people, one of whom is recently disabled and trying to reintegrate himself into society and who is the stable one, and the other a woman who may be pregnant and who is spinning out of control, ” colangelo says. “and i was interested in the factory setting, which is almost a metaphor for motherhood. through the course of the short, you slowly realize that these people have a past, and that they dated once. i’m always interested in withholding information from the audience. it becomes more interesting for them that way; it gets their wheels turning. ”
the result is inevitably didactic, but also poetic in its choice of seemingly nonessential details, as in a scene that finds sweetness helping her father stitch up a bleeding head wound. these moments, like the colorful, cluttered house sweetness inhabits, feel lived - in enough to be lifted directly from mahoney’s own experience and promise to linger in our memories long after the occasional awkwardness involved in conveying them onscreen is forgotten .
it could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from an underwater submarine, to demonstrate mainly to asia, that we can do that ,
he said, stressing that it was just a theory .
smith, who appeared as “rent’s” outgoing mimi on broadway, embodies what dignity looks like in this dead - end environment, but sweetness has bigger aspirations, turning to drug dealing and petty crime to modestly improve her quality of life. at school, counselor coleman (tim blake nelson) spots the signs of trouble and tries to steer sweetness straight, but such lessons only can be learned firsthand — and so kravitz takes her character through a remarkable transformation from delicate introvert to self - possessed street thug .
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needless to say, “monetization” is indirect. says jablonski, “at least two times a week i get an e - mail from a random stranger saying, ‘thank you for making these films. they give me a lot. ’ but the big - picture benefit is that michael and i have developed a great friendship, and that friendship is what’s allowed the project to continue. ”
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after working off - off broadway, mahoney went to l. a. , did a number of pilots, a few european films, and a season of seinfeld (she played gladys mayo, owner of the clothing store putumayo). but then there were all those “ridiculous films i did to sustain myself. and that’s when i began to feel [ artistically ] ungratified. so, i slipped into writing. i went to cubby — that’s what we called hubert selby, jr. , who taught the masters program at usc. he gave me a skill set for writing instead of my [ previous ] fantasy of being a writer. ”
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continuing, colangelo says, “we have so much material. one of the film’s arcs deals with john, the older brother. he’s had musical failures, going from band to band and not having them work out. suddenly he puts his younger brother in a band and it starts getting all of this attention. but the film is also about mortality. bill has had two heart surgeries, and john, who wasn’t that close to him early on, worries he doesn’t have much time left with him. ”
but the point here is that central characters definitely aren’t 2 - dimensional “coming of age” movie cut - outs. they are alive, fully realized human beings, all on personal journeys, trying to make sense of the world around them, and really just find some stability amidst the chaos – the non - fleeting kind; a need that i think is universal. the saying goes that we’re all alike, and when life throws daggers our way, we become interested in one thing and one thing only – our own survival, by any means necessary .
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with the headline: a mixed - race girl in a mixed - up world .
in a scene that takes place inside the office of a teacher at the high school zoe’s sweetness o’hara attends, a poster hanging on what may have been a wall (although that’s irrelevant) read something like, “ character is who you are… ” and in smaller letters, “ when nobody is watching. ” those may not have been the exact words, but close enough. the sentiment is the same and understood .
the nyu film grad counts spike lee, the walking film - directing brand and dean of black cinema himself, as a mentor, influence and friend, but he also name checks paul greengrass, clint eastwood and 2003 25 new face seith mann as influences. “i respect those who have a voice, who speak up, who have something to say, ” he said. his upcoming film, produced by night catches us producer ron simons, is about “a puerto rican family in the bronx whose father returns home from prison after three years to discover that his teenage son is gay / transgender, and the drama that ensues. ” look for it on the festival circuit next year. — brandon harris
character motivations lack scene - to - scene sense. why does sweetness’ sister (antonique smith) strangle sweetness for wrecking her car in one scene, then warmly laughs with her while washing dishes the next? when sweetness chats with her guidance counselor about college, did they forget last week’s coke binge? what’s the point of sweetness’ father’s constant entrances and exits? and what about the murdered dude? the film is less about a dysfunctional family and more a study of dysfunctional storytelling .
sweetness’ unpredictable father gordon (jason clarke) vacillates between affectionate charisma and volatile violence and rage. he verbally and physically abuses every woman in the household. he tries to make amends for his deplorable parenting later in the film. but since he’s caused so much trauma, it might be too late for forgiveness .
because of the film’s insistent funereal pace, forgive me for chuckling when sassy bully gabourey sidibe gets dragged by her hair across the school hallway by tiny, vengeful zoë kravitz .
seeped in realism, the naturalistic performances from the cast, including star zoe kravitz, are dynamic – vigorous and purposeful; active and changing. nary a sequence is wasted .
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the knowledge that these are not just disparate short films but rather installments in a time - based project gives sparrow songs a quiet gravity. the project began when jablonski, who graduated from ucla film school in 2009, heard about a friend, musician john wood, who was releasing an album a month. “i thought that was such a cool discipline, ” he says. jablonski’s narrative short blue boy had been playing festivals, including tribeca, and he was doing the rounds of meetings. “i realized that [ industry projects ] take a long time, ” he says. “i wanted to do something where i wouldn’t have to ask permission to either make it or show it. ”
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as her family falls apart, seventeen year old sweetness o' hara is left to fend for herself in a neighborhood where her survival is uncertain .
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17 - year - old sweetness o’hara (zoe kravitz) has arrived at the first of several life changing forks in the road. being the daughter of mixed race parents in a less than tolerant community, she lives with an alcoholic and intermittently abusive father, and a mother suffering from a mental illness, the exact nature of which sweetness is unsure. her protective older sister, ola, is pregnant, with no support from the child’s father. yet, with all this chaos enveloping her, sweetness takes her life into her own hands in a neighborhood where to become an adult, you first must survive as a teenager .
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veronica love seems to have it all... she' s smart, sassy and sexy and has a career as one of the most successful real estate entrepreneurs in california. affectionately known as love by her... see full summary »
since graduating, they have made two seasons of their web series american nobodies, short films profiling people in small towns. this may result from growing up in small towns — machoian in king city, calif. (“6, 000 when i was there”), and ojeda - beck in davis, calif. , where his parents relocated to from peru. for ojeda - beck, “growing up in a small town requires you to look, to see. ”
summary: sweetness (zoë kravitz) is a good girl–gone–bad who is suffering with teen angst that ranges from racial identity issues t0 bullying to drugs and more .
set in queens but with no specific geographical references (and few rooting it to any definite time period), the movie focuses on a mixed - race home in which two girls, sweetness (zoe kravitz) and ola (antonique smith), are raised by a white father — alcoholic and prone to abuse, but caring when sober — and a black mother afflicted with mental - health issues we never understand .
“this project has been like what musicians call ‘woodshedding, ’” says alex jablonski about his collaborative venture with michael totten, sparrow songs. “we are finding our voice, trying out different styles, and learning so much. ” adds totten, “in the past i’ve let this idea of ‘i don’t have the right money or equipment or subject matter’ prevent me from moving forward. sparrow songs has taught me to get rid of the idea of perfection because it doesn’t exist. ”
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in closing, as i already said, i think this is a film that demands a second viewing for a number of reasons. it ends in almost a similar fashion as it begins, still with an uncertainty of what will come of these characters, despite the cathartic moment that was the very last scene. in essence, i felt like i “interrupted” the lives of these people, spent about 90 minutes with them, although the film takes place over several months, immersed in this chaotic world they exist in, and then almost abruptly left in the same manner in which i entered it. they lived before i met them, and they will continue to live after i left them, however unstable that living might be .
a native of australia, jason clarke has come a long way from his sheep sheering days as a child, graduating from the university of melbourne, victorian college of the arts in 1994. after graduation, ...
all the actors give stellar performances in this emotionally raw and gritty film. zoe kravitz in particular captivates with a nuanced, powerful performance as the smart, struggling sweetness o’hara, trying to survive in a whirlwind of turmoil. sweetness and her older sister live in a troubled home with unstable, unreliable parents: their white father, an alcoholic and their african - american mother who suffers from mental illness .
sweetness overhauls her look, trading girly clothes for makeup and gaudy gold jewelry. (at 22, kravitz already looks a bit too mature for the role, but is right in so many other ways, it’s best not to quibble .) her new identity is more independent and assertive, as sweetness breaks away from her dysfunctional family to form a clique of her own, including drug dealer roland (tariq trotter, who confidently embodies the unlikeliest of role models) and two of latonya’s former groupies (shareeka epps and sonequa martin, playing friends so tight they clone one another’s wardrobes) .
imagenation cinema foundation is a harlem - based nonprofit media arts organization, founded as an outlet for progressive media by and about people of color, with the goal of establishing a chain of art - house cinemas dedicated to these works. through a variety of public exhibitions and programs, imagenation fosters media equity, media literacy, solidarity, cross - cultural exchange and highlights the humanity of pan - african people worldwide .
we don’t see enough female protagonists, women of color in film or female filmmakers of color. we don’t see enough films exploring issues of gender and race. and we should. in an interview, mahoney (a promising new filmmaker who is certainly one to watch) shared her inspiration for the film :
on friday, november 5, vandenberg air force base launched a delta ii rocket, carrying the thales alenia space - italia cosmo skymed satellite, but a sergeant at the base tells news 8, there have been no launches since then .
imagenation provides customized, low priced, high quality marketing services (target audience research, ad placement, community screenings, social media marketing, postcard distribution and production services) for independent filmmakers and distribution companies that wish to target urban markets. we also rent out our 2 - story outdoor cinema screen. to inquire about our marketing and rental services contact gregory gates at gregory @ urltoken
clarke, whose hirsute, semi - hulking appearance hides an appealingly snide villainy, lets just enough charm and vulnerability show within gordon' s jerkiness. gadibe seems to be coasting, now that we' ve seen how funny and sly she can be in
tower heist
and
seven psychopaths .
yet she and the rest of the cast find an honest, just - gritty - enough groove that never panders or preaches .
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in a sense, this degree of personal investment compensates for something lacking in kravitz’s otherwise star - making performance. there’s no denying the actress’ beauty, but apart from that, she never really demonstrates what sets sweetness apart from other girls trapped in similar straits, something narration might have solved. mahoney, on the other hand, was clearly driven by a genuine creative gift, and escaped such restraints to unleash this affecting cri du coeur .
mahoney said she wanted to evoke feelings of claustrophobia when sweetness spent time at home. and she succeeds beautifully. you feel just as trapped as sweetness, chained by loneliness, fear and desperation. when she’s out in the streets, it feels frenetic with drunken stupors, drive - by shootings and drug deals gone wrong .
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a woman was killed monday while walking in traffic along the martin luther king jr. freeway in san diego, authorities said .
colangelo is midway through another project, a documentary. “i heard a story on npr one morning about this band, bill, ” colangelo says. “the older brother is the manager, and he put his younger brother, bill, who has down syndrome, in as lead singer. my younger brother has down syndrome, so their process was fascinating to me. i gave them a call and they let me spend a lot of the summer of ’08 with them, sitting in on recording sessions, following them around when they perform. i think disability is talked about a lot when people are younger and going through special needs schools, but when they’re older it feels like they’re forgotten about. they fall off the grid. ”
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i’ve intentionally not revealed any of the film’s plot because i actually think it’s somewhat irrelevant in this case; if you haven’t figured it out by now, based on all i’ve already said, it’s not a film that’s interested in telling the expected linear narrative. there is a story there, don’t get me wrong – one that i could probably summarize in one sentence; but the film lives on another level .
the spectacular contrail could easily be seen up in los angeles, but who launched this missile and why, remain a mystery for now .
girl in the bunker: based on a true story (2018) henry thomas (e. t .) moira kelly (cutting edge )
eric kohn and anne thompson discuss their favorite films of the year so far. they also debate several new releases and share some streaming recommendations .
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pacific ocean (cbs 8) - a mysterious missile launch off the southern california coast was caught on video monday evening by a kcbs news helicopter.
yelling to the sky is a 2011 american drama film written and directed by victoria mahoney . the film premiered in competition at the 61st berlin international film festival , were it competed for the golden bear . 
yelling to the sky is a 2011 american drama film written and directed by victoria mahoney. the film premiered in competition at the 61st berlin international film festival, were it competed for the golden bear.
yelling to the sky is a 2011 american drama film written and directed by victoria mahoney. the film premiered in competition at the 61st berlin international film festival, were it competed for the golden bear.