CINEMA SUNDAY #1 - JANUARY 13th

MY KID COULD PAINT THAT

FEST will be screening this wonderful documentary on January the 13th, 2008, marking the first official CINEMA SUNDAY screening!! Here is a synopsis of the film:

In the span of only a few months, 4-year-old Marla Olmstead rocketed from total obscurity into international renown – and sold over $300,000 dollars worth of paintings. She was compared to Kandinsky and Pollock, and called “a budding Picasso.” Inside Edition, The Jane Pauley Show, and NPR did pieces, and The Today Show and Good Morning America got in a bidding war over an appearance by the bashful toddler. There was talk of corporate sponsorship, with the family

fielding calls from The Gap and Crayola. But not all of the attention was positive. From the beginning, many faulted her parents for exposing Marla to the glare of the media and accused the couple of exploiting their daughter for financial

gain. Others felt her work was, in fact, comparable to the great Abstract Expressionists – but saw this as emblematic of the meaninglessness of Modern Art. “She is painting exactly as all the adult paintings have been in the past 50 years, but painting like a child, too. That is what everybody things but they don’t dare to say it,” said Oggi, the leading Italian weekly. Through no intention of her own, Marla revived the age-old question, ‘what is art?’ And then, five months into Marla’s new life as a celebrity and just short of her fifth birthday, a bombshell dropped. CBS’ 60 Minutes aired an exposé suggesting strongly that the paintings were painted by her father, himself an amateur painter. As quickly as the public built Marla up, they tore her down. The New York Post asked whether “the juvenile Jackson Pollock may actually be a fullfledged Willem de Frauding,” the Olmsteads were barraged with hate mail, ostracized around town, sales of the paintings dried up, and Marla’s art dealer considered moving out of Binghamton. Embattled, the Olmsteads turned to the filmmaker to clear their name. Torn between his own responsibility as a journalist and the family’s desire to see their integrity restored, the director finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into a situation that can’t possibly end well for him and them, and could easily end badly for both.

official website and trailer: http://www.sonyclassics.com/mykidcouldpaintthat/

Thanks to all!

Well we had as good of a turn-out as we could have hoped for, considering the two days of heavy snowfalls which preceded the screening, not to mention the haste with which we threw all of this together.

So to those who came out, thank you dearly. The Jane Austen Book Club proved to be a fantastic movie (and not just for the ladies... there was a great sub-plot of the philosophically human depth of science-fiction literature). The way that each individual characters' romantic plots were a mirror reflection of the plots within the Jane Austen books they were reading was not as linear and obvious as they could have, and this kept the movie fresh. It was wonderfully paced, not allowing for much downtime or wallowing, but instead (because of the reading they were doing of books which study human relationships) they were able to recognise where they were in life from a third person perspective and thus move on, improving their situations. In a world where the majority of reading goes to tabloid cinicism and self-help drivel which just gives one the suggestions of other people, it's refreshing to see a film which recommends reading quality literature which may be an escape, but within this escape you develop such a rich sense of humanity you almost subconsciously better yourself, on your own terms, and this in turn improves all that is around you, by example as well as perspective. Being influenced to become a little more sensitive to your potentials within humanity through intelligent and engaging literature, as opposed to being influenced to complain about yourself and humanity by a media which does nothing but complain about humanity. How refreshing indeed!

So, again, , thank you to all who came and helped put all this together. . . including:

The Empire Theatre-Dave Dymond

Chat Noir-Paul and Jenn

Kelly Ouimet

The Toronto International Film Festival Group

The Temiskaming Speaker-Sue Nielsen

Jeff Addison-graphics

FIRST FILM!!!

Hello ladies and gentlemen!
We are excited to announce our official launch!

We will be holding our series premiere with The Jane Austen Book Club at the Empire Theatre in Temiskaming Shores on Thursday, November 29th.

A pre-show get together at Chat Noir Books will offer many door prizes, as well as season's passes at X-mas sale prices!

Season pass - $42 for 6 films (regular price $48)
Admit 1 ticket - $9

Tickets are available at Robertson's and, of course, at Chat Noir.

Event starts at 6:30
Film starts at 7:30


The film trailer and additional info can be found here:

http://www.sonyclassics.com/thejaneaustenbookclub/

The Weekender 20 Questions interview can be found in the arts and entertainment section here:

http://weekender.northernontario.ca/

We are looking forward to this wonderful film.
Hope to see you all there!