The Nowhere Inn: "From real-life friends Annie Clark (a.k.a. Grammy award-winning recording and touring artist St. Vincent) and Carrie Brownstein comes the metafictional account of two creative forces banding together to make a documentary about St. Vincent’s music, touring life, and on-stage persona. But they quickly discover unpredictable forces lurking within the subject and filmmaker that threaten to derail the friendship, the project, and the duo’s creative lives. From first-time filmmaker Bill Benz comes a densely woven, laugh-out-loud funny and increasingly fractured commentary on reality, identity, and authenticity. A story of two close friends who attempt to wrestle the truth out of a complex subject before the hall of mirrors that is their artistic lives devours them completely."
Directed by: Bill Benz Co-Written By: Annie Clark & Carrie Brownstein Starring: Annie Clark, Carrie Brownstein, & Dakota Johnson Music by: St. Vincent Produced by: Carrie Brownstein, Lana Kim,...
Directed by: Bill Benz Co-Written By: Annie Clark & Carrie Brownstein Starring: Annie Clark, Carrie Brownstein, & Dakota Johnson Music by: St. Vincent Produced by: Carrie Brownstein, Lana Kim,...
- 8/13/2021
- by Jonathan James
- DailyDead
Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” may have been the biggest sensation to come out of 2020’s fall festival season, but it’s wasn’t the only film about a largely ignored community. In “Concrete Cowboy,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and comes to Netflix on April 2, the community is a stable in North Philadelphia where Black men and women have been keeping and riding horses for more than 100 years.
Here, too, professional actors are surrounded by non-pros from the actual community being depicted, and here, too, the filmmaker — in this case Ricky Staub — finds uncommon empathy in the depiction of the world in which its characters live.
The film is partly a father-and-son story and partly a coming-of-age saga, but it expands to be more than that, using the real-life Fletcher Street Stables to explore a subculture that has been largely ignored outside of Philadelphia for generations.
Here, too, professional actors are surrounded by non-pros from the actual community being depicted, and here, too, the filmmaker — in this case Ricky Staub — finds uncommon empathy in the depiction of the world in which its characters live.
The film is partly a father-and-son story and partly a coming-of-age saga, but it expands to be more than that, using the real-life Fletcher Street Stables to explore a subculture that has been largely ignored outside of Philadelphia for generations.
- 4/2/2021
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
The very existence of Fletcher Street Stables, where Black cowboys have kept horses in cramped rooms and roamed the city streets for a century, begs for cultural investigation. While the image of the Black cowboy has been marginalized by American storytelling, the real-life characters of Fletcher Street provide an excuse to make up for past exclusions. The setting served as a backdrop for Greg Neri’s novel “Ghetto Cowboy,” which has now inspired “Concrete Cowboy,”
Idris Elba stars as stern and world-weary North Philly cowboy Harp, who has given up on family life to roam the streets with his trusty steed Chuck and a close-knit community of fellow riders. That routine gets shaken up with the arrival of his troubled teen son Cole (“Stranger Things” discovery Caleb McLaughlin), who has been expelled from Detroit schools so many times that his exasperated mother (a frantic Elizabeth Priestley in a handful of...
Idris Elba stars as stern and world-weary North Philly cowboy Harp, who has given up on family life to roam the streets with his trusty steed Chuck and a close-knit community of fellow riders. That routine gets shaken up with the arrival of his troubled teen son Cole (“Stranger Things” discovery Caleb McLaughlin), who has been expelled from Detroit schools so many times that his exasperated mother (a frantic Elizabeth Priestley in a handful of...
- 9/14/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Bill Benz’s high-concept rock mockumentary opens with a white limo speeding through the desert. The driver (Ezra Buzzington) has never heard of his passenger, the cult sensation Annie Clark, better known by her stage name St. Vincent. “I’m not for everybody,” she shrugs. The driver is unsatisfied. “Don’t worry,” he glowers. “We’ll find out who you are.”
That threat hangs over Clark’s black-bobbed head for the rest of the film’s running time. Clark hires friend Carrie Brownstein, the Sleater-Kinney guitarist and “Portlandia” comedian (with whom Clark also wrote this script), to shoot a documentary of her Masseduction tour for “people to know who I really am.” The problem is Clark is a Scrabble-playing, radish-eating, people-pleasing dork. Fans love St. Vincent, a guitar-shredding Amazon in thigh-high neon boots with a voice that sounds piped in from a spaceship. St. Vincent commands attention. As for Clark,...
That threat hangs over Clark’s black-bobbed head for the rest of the film’s running time. Clark hires friend Carrie Brownstein, the Sleater-Kinney guitarist and “Portlandia” comedian (with whom Clark also wrote this script), to shoot a documentary of her Masseduction tour for “people to know who I really am.” The problem is Clark is a Scrabble-playing, radish-eating, people-pleasing dork. Fans love St. Vincent, a guitar-shredding Amazon in thigh-high neon boots with a voice that sounds piped in from a spaceship. St. Vincent commands attention. As for Clark,...
- 1/27/2020
- by Amy Nicholson
- Variety Film + TV
For their 5th annual edition, the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival is heating up by returning to the summer after being a winter event for the past three years. The fest will run on Aug. 17-19 with a killer lineup of films from all over the world — most of which probably will not be able to be seen in Minnesota except at this 3-day event.
Plus, there are two programming blocks of short films all made by local filmmakers, including Pam Colby’s Fertile Ashes, Ryan Becken’s Buffalo Shampoo, Janelle Sorenson & Melany Joy Beck’s Bring It 2 Peter, Jl Sosa’s Some of Angela and more.
The feature films screening this year cover an extremely diverse swath of subject matter, from every day people’s murder fantasies fulfilled — cinematically, at least — in Michal Koskowski’s German documentary Zero Killed; a tattoo comes to live to torment its wearer in...
Plus, there are two programming blocks of short films all made by local filmmakers, including Pam Colby’s Fertile Ashes, Ryan Becken’s Buffalo Shampoo, Janelle Sorenson & Melany Joy Beck’s Bring It 2 Peter, Jl Sosa’s Some of Angela and more.
The feature films screening this year cover an extremely diverse swath of subject matter, from every day people’s murder fantasies fulfilled — cinematically, at least — in Michal Koskowski’s German documentary Zero Killed; a tattoo comes to live to torment its wearer in...
- 8/13/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Robert G. Putka‘s Mouthful and Jared Varava‘s Tumbleweed! are two short films that have been selected to screen at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival, which will run in Austin, TX on March 9-17.
Mouthful is Putka’s second short film, a verbally raunchy comedy starring Eilis Cahill and Conor Casey as a young couple whose relationship becomes strained thanks to an overly frank discussion about their sexual histories. The film was recently reviewed on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film saying “one shouldn’t assume too much how the premise of a young man and woman discussing [male] anatomy will play out.”
Putka has also mounted an IndieGoGo campaign to help fund his filmmaking team’s trip to SXSW and for marketing material, such as posters, T-shirts, press kits and such. If you want to help out, please visit the Mouthful IndieGoGo page.
Tumbleweed! is the latest collaboration between...
Mouthful is Putka’s second short film, a verbally raunchy comedy starring Eilis Cahill and Conor Casey as a young couple whose relationship becomes strained thanks to an overly frank discussion about their sexual histories. The film was recently reviewed on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film saying “one shouldn’t assume too much how the premise of a young man and woman discussing [male] anatomy will play out.”
Putka has also mounted an IndieGoGo campaign to help fund his filmmaking team’s trip to SXSW and for marketing material, such as posters, T-shirts, press kits and such. If you want to help out, please visit the Mouthful IndieGoGo page.
Tumbleweed! is the latest collaboration between...
- 2/10/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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