Back in the misty days of the mid ’80s when I first started toying around with making movies, the common refrain you’d hear from people in the business was, “If you’re not shooting on 35mm film, you’re not actually making a movie.” In many ways, these comments were meant to discourage people who weren’t blessed […]
The Oscar-qualifying Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF) is once again hitting big screens throughout the state, and this year’s event promises to be bigger and better than ever. Shawn Quirk, festival organizer, says of the 316 films ready to be screened, “It’s the strongest year we’ve had.” The festival received 6,000 film entries that […]
There is no doubt that Americans love movies. But how much do Americans love movie theaters? Last year, domestic box office revenue was just under $12 billion. While this might seem like a record amount, the bigger picture reveals just how our movie-watching habits have changed, thanks, in part, to the availability of streaming services […]
Filmmaker Skip Shea still lives in the same town where he grew up, where he went to school and where he was sexually abused by Catholic priests. For years he was passed from one predator to the next, all of them allegedly in recovery from their unholy desires. The town is Uxbridge, Massachusetts, right over […]
Steven Feinberg is a legend of the silver screen. Currently serving as the executive director of the Rhode Island Film & Television Office, Feinberg previously spent 22 years in Hollywood where he worked with every major studio you can think of, developing a Saturn-nominated Best Science Fiction Movie, Fortress, in the process. Since returning to […]
Strapped for Danger: Undercover Vice, the latest offering from veteran RI director Richard Griffin, wraps in Pawtucket on August 4. A rollicking LGBTQ+ comedy, the production centers around two undercover police officers being sent into a “gay porn factory” to bust a racketeering ring. The second in the Strapped for Danger series, Undercover Vice is […]
On June 29, some of the best women-created animation from around the world will be featured at AS220 for the annual Womanimation! screening. MergingArts Productions, helmed by creative director Toni Pennacchia, puts the festival together every year. This 90-minute festival brings to the screen 12 animated shorts from 11 countries, and more than half of […]
There are a lot of things to like in Vault, the new crime film about the legendary 1975 Hudson Bonded Vault robbery from director Tommy DeNucci and producer Chad Verdi. The heist netted an estimated $31 million of loot from organized criminals who stored it in private safety deposit boxes. The acting is superb, the […]
The long-awaited drama Vault, based on the audacious 1975 robbery of the Hudson Bonded Vault company in PVD, a private safe-deposit company used by big-time criminals to store their loot under the protection of organized crime, opens to the public June 7 for a RI sneak preview at Showcase cinemas in Providence and Warwick (the […]
The explosion of superhero movies has been an absolute dream come true for those of us who used to get punched for thinking Spider-Man was cool. Marvel Studios seems unstoppable, and with the culmination of their epic cinematic universe shared story hitting the box office, I thought it was time to look at the best and worst […]