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See films first at Sarasota festival
[Photo: TNT]
William H. Macy and Kyra Sedgwick star in Door to Door, a film about a salesman with cerebral palsy. |
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 17, 2002
Independent movies offer fresh cinematic viewing, and Hollywood actors mix nuance and nostalgia in special programs, as a film-packed week kicks off on Saturday.
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Academy Award nominee William H. Macy is selling Door to Door Saturday at the Sarasota Film Festival, where independently produced films make their pitch to distributors and audiences.
Macy will introduce his new movie during Saturday's opening-night festivities at Hollywood 20 in downtown Sarasota, the site of 117 screenings over eight days. Door to Door features Macy as a salesman with cerebral palsy. The film is slated for cable broadcast later this year on TNT.
Saturday's screening and a posh party afterward are part of an enticing lineup. Oscar-winning filmmaker Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, Out of Africa) accepts the Regal Filmmaker Salute at a formal gala on closing night, Jan. 26. In between, moviegoers have opportunities to lunch with Shirley Jones, rub elbows with celebrities such as Jill Clayburgh, share a drive-in experience with Elvira and dance with the cast of Showtime's series Queer as Folk.
And watch movies. Plenty of movies.
Details and a complete schedule of film screenings can be found online (www.sarasotafilmfest.com) or by calling (941) 364-9514. Ticket packages for films and celebrity events ($10-$675) are sold online and at Hollywood 20. Individual screening tickets ($7) can be purchased at the box office only when seats are available.
Clayburgh, like Macy, is drumming up attention for her new film, Eric Schaeffer's bluntly engaging romantic comedy Never Again. Clayburgh plays a middle-aged woman returning to the dating scene, where she meets an impotent bug exterminator (Jeffrey Tambor) in a gay nightclub. Never Again, slated to be released by USA Films later this year, will be shown Jan 25 at 6:45 p.m.
Jones will be a luncheon honoree on Jan. 24 at Selby Botanical Gardens. The Oscar winner (Elmer Gantry) will host a screening of the 1956 musical Carousel on Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $85 for the luncheon and $15 for the film and question-and-answer session with Jones.
Elvira, mistress of the dark and late-night TV schlock, will join Audrey and Judy Landers for An Evening at the Drive-In on Jan. 22 at 9 p.m. The scream queens will show two of their low-budget horror films, Elvira's Haunted Hills and Ghost Writer, respectively. The event also includes a screening of the documentary Drive-In Movie Memories. Tickets are $25.
Among previewed films, the best bets are Never Again and La Tropical, a vibrant, salsa-flavored documentary by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Turnley. The film is like Buena Vista Social Club without political diversions, a portrait of a Havana nightclub where the hottest bands and most sensual dancers play. Patrons are profiled, and their stories are memorable, but the musical passages are nothing less than caliente.
Other promising films include Saul Rubinek's adaptation of the baseball stage play Bleacher Bums, a controversial portrait of life in Kandahar, the Shakespearean spoof Scotland, PA and the Brooklyn Dodgers documentary Boys in Winter: The Toughest Season. Survivor host Jeff Probst will accompany his directorial debut to Sarasota. Finder's Fee is a lottery comedy starring James Earl Jones, Robert Forster and Matthew Lillard.
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