I signed 15 different non-disclosures to screen Star Wars: The Last Jedi. But I knew that this movie needed to be reviewed. How else would people know to go see it? The lights went down. The excitement was overwhelming. The trumpets trumpeted. The scroll scrolled. But as the story began to unfold, it felt … familiar. Not […]
There’s a case to be made that ‘90s punk legends Jawbreaker have a big influence on underground music these days. So many bands now similarly walk the line between heart-on-the-sleeve emo and rambunctious punk, the way guitarist and vocalist Blake Schwarzenbach, bass guitarist Chris Bauermeister and drummer Adam Pfahler did in their heyday. The band’s […]
The biggest and best things happen in the the biggest little state, and this Thanksgiving weekend is no different. AS220 will hosting the 11th Annual Short Short Story Film Festival on Friday, November 25. The festival, presented by MergingArts Productions, focuses on short films with runtimes of six minutes or less and will screen two full programs of […]
Richard Griffin has directed 24 feature films in the last 14 years through Rhode Island-based Scorpio Film Releasing, which he runs with his husband and producer, Ted Marr. This article combines excerpts from a single interview. Current projects On November 5 we’re premiering a film called Strapped for Danger, which is a comedy, kind of […]
October 26 may, on the surface, appear to be just a regular Thursday in Rhode Island. But under the surface there is something more going on — something BIG. On this day, the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, which President George H.W. Bush signed into law back in 1992, will trigger a clause that will require the […]
It’s been a while since these pages delved into the heated waters of local film activity, but everything from features to web series, documentaries to bountiful shorts is getting released constantly by the RI film community. Here’s some of what’s coming up this fall. The most talked-about larger production will be in pre-production through the […]
[See later Dec 2017 interview: motifri.com/hr-bad-brains-pop] Documentary subject Paul “H.R.” Hudson, the frontman for Washington, DC, punk legends Bad Brains, and director James Lathos were both in attendance for a screening of Finding Joseph I at the Greenwich Odeum in East Greenwich, RI, on Aug 18. Following the screening, recent Rhode Island transplant Ted Leo […]
Karen Allen was barely into her 20s when she first read the short story, A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud., by Carson McCullers, but the words continued to resonate throughout her life. They eventually inspired a film that was to become her directorial debut. This delicately wrought tale of the chance encounter between a young […]
The recently released trailer for Higher Methods is generating lots of excitement for the film, which director Nathan Suher describes as a “trippy psychological drama.” Higher Methods is about an actor named Matthew (Michael Christoforo) whose search for his missing sister leads him to a theater group led by an unconventional instructor. “It goes […]
I made my debut as an extra in motion pictures on July 23. It was the last day of filming on Higher Methods. I reported to Country Gardens in Rehoboth, which is a wedding and banquet facility with sprawling grounds. A production assistant escorted me to the filming location. The scene I was needed […]