We’ve talked about Thom Fitzgerald’s 3 Needles a few times over the past year—when it screened at TIFF in 2005, when it screened at the Atlantic Film Festival in 2005, when co-star Lucy Liu had that art show here, when it had an expensive charity screening a couple months back—and yet the film still has not gotten a theatrical release in Halifax. (Unbelievably, it drops in the US first, on December 1.)
And this week will not change that. But there will be a one-night opportunity to check out Fitzgerald’s “international edition” of the film—its three stories are told one after the other instead of intercut, the way we saw it in Toronto lo those many months ago—at Park Lane on November 28. The screening, in recognition of World AIDS Awareness Day on December 1, starts at 7pm, tickets are $8 at the door.
TV
All of you with your Alicia Silverstone stories can sit in front of your TVs this week and re-tell them again and again when CBS shows the Halifax-shot Candles on Bay Street. Silverstone stars as a woman returning to small-town “Maine” with her son to find that her long-lost love (Eion Bailey) has married Annabeth Gish (whose dope Showtime drama Brotherhood was just released on DVD, go rent it).
This Hallmark Hall of Fame extravaganza—TV movies for the sap in all of us—was directed by John Erman, who says, “I think the really important theme of this story is that we all have an ability to change. Every one of our characters goes through a metamorphosis and comes out the other end a richer, fuller human being. I think change is one of the most important and difficult aspects of living. When things are good, we all want things to stay as they are. But when we face big challenges, sometimes we have no choice but to change.”
“It’s a simple, sweet story that everyone can relate to,” says Silverstone. “It’s a story of love lost, and love rekindled, of lives affected in a wonderful, unexpected way.”
Stock up on tissues and tune in to CBS (channel 32 in Metro) at 10pm on Sunday, November 26.
Video
On Friday, November 24 at 7pm the Centre for Art Tapes will screen two films by French video artist Sandy Amerio.
Hear Me, Children-yet-to-be-born is a 45-minute “experimental fiction” about the prinicple of business storytelling, “which works on the principle of metaphors and analogies” and “has multiple applications: management of conflicts, factory relocations, downsizings, layoffs or increases in production.” Surfing on (our) History is a half-hour production partially written and performed by Amerio’s parents in a film about “the degree to which we our actors in our own lives.”
The screening will be held at the Windsor Theatre in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, George at Bedford.
And more film
The holiday season brings with it a lot of traditions in the form of office parties, eggnog poisoning, the Parade of Lights, Christmas carols blasting from City Hall and angering downtown workers, the Urban Surf Kings’ annual show and Woody the Talking Christmas Tree at Mic Mac Mall.
But our favourite is perhaps the Atlantic Filmmakers’ Co-operative’s Super Duper Super 8 Christmas Party, a screening of holiday-themed super-8 films. This year’s event drops December 19, but the reason we’re telling you about it now is because you could be one of the filmmakers.
If you head to AFCOOP right now—in the CBC Radio building at Sackville and South Park—and bring $45 ($40 if you’re a member) you’ll get one roll of Super-8 film (you get to choose between colour and black and white), one day’s rental of a camera, shipping and processing. The rub is that you have to edit in-camera, so think about something you can shoot in sequence.
As far as the holiday theme—“It doesn’t even have to be a Christmas film, just film a guy in a Santa hat and put the word Christmas in the title and you can shoot whatever you want,” notes AFCOOP, which also notes “no porn.”
Finished films must be in AFCOOP’s hands by December 4, so get hopping. It’s first-come, first-served.
Been there? Screened that? email: [email protected]
