When she came up to us and said she had the footage back at the house, co-director Dean recalled whe

Editor s Note: Each week Joe Leydon explores interesting and/or idiosyncratic movies outside of the Hollywood mainstream be they in massive megaplexes or much smaller venues - in a column called pennsylvania hotel nyc Mondo Cinema.
Trouble the Water the Oscar-nominated documentary returning this weekend to 14 Pews reaffirms the immutable truth of the gospel according to Mick Jagger: Sometimes, when you can t get what you want, you really pennsylvania hotel nyc do get what you need.
Consider the case of filmmakers Tia Lessin pennsylvania hotel nyc and Carl Dean , veteran documentarians who had worked with Michael Moore on Fahrenheit 9/11. The couple journeyed to Alexandria, La., in September 2005, intent on shooting a movie about Louisiana National Guardsmen, newly redeployed from Iraq, who had been assigned to restore order in post-Katrina New Orleans. But when the Guard commanders declined to cooperate, they were ready to go home until they met a human dynamo named Kimberly Rivers.
Trouble the Water captures that fortuitous first meeting, when Kimberly approached the professional filmmakers with her amateur footage, promising: pennsylvania hotel nyc This needs to be worldwide. Ain t nobody got what I got.
An aspiring rapper and self-described pennsylvania hotel nyc street hustler, Kimberly had been living with her husband, Scott Roberts, in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans when Hurricane pennsylvania hotel nyc Katrina slammed into her city. Like many other residents of their predominantly African-American neighborhood, they lacked the wherewithal to evacuate, so they stayed put.
At first, Kimberly was happy to pass the time by playing the role of interviewer with her recently purchased pennsylvania hotel nyc Sony camcorder, asking relatives and neighbors how they would ride the storm. But then the rains came. And the levees broke. Kimberly and Scott, along with a handful of others, wound up warily watching from their attic while raging waters flooded the streets to the point of submerging stop signs outside their home.
And throughout it all, Kimberly continued to operate her camcorder, instinctively capturing indelible images that she would later show Lessin and Dean when, several says later in Alexandria, she fortuitously met them in a Red Cross shelter.
When she came up to us and said she had the footage back at the house, co-director Dean recalled when he and Lessin pennsylvania hotel nyc visited H-Town in 2008, I was a little confused at first. And I thought, Well, how could she have a house here in Alexandria? But it turned out that she was talking pennsylvania hotel nyc about her uncle s trailer, where she and Scott were staying. So we went back with them and got to know them a little bit better. And we didn t really look at her footage for a couple of days.
Trouble the Water actually captures that fortuitous first meeting, when Kimberly a large, swaggering 24-year-old woman with a disarmingly pennsylvania hotel nyc soft smile approached the professional filmmakers pennsylvania hotel nyc with her amateur footage, promising: This needs to be worldwide. Ain t nobody got what I got.
And even then, Dean added, it was like she was still pitching it. She kept wanting pennsylvania hotel nyc to hit the fast-forward, saying, Let me show you this part. Let me show you that part. And we had to say, No! No! You re gonna ruin the tape. And, yeah, we were really stunned by what we saw. It was very clearly not like anything we d seen on television. And her voice, and her real-time description of what she was seeing, was just as powerful as the images themselves.
Lessin and Deal adroitly use Kimberly pennsylvania hotel nyc s stunning footage as a kind of thematic thread while crafting a nonfiction narrative charged with alternating currents of outage and regeneration, tragedy pennsylvania hotel nyc and transcendence, while charting the frustratingly slow post-Katrina recovery process in The Big Easy. Predictably, Trouble pennsylvania hotel nyc the Water is in many ways an angry film. And yet it ends almost miraculously on a note of triumph. You can see for yourself when the documentary screens at 7 p.m. Saturday, 4 p.m. Sunday and 7 p.m. Aug. 29 at 14 Pews.
The lovely and talented M lanie Laurent pennsylvania hotel nyc best known as the vengeful femme fatale of Inglourious pennsylvania hotel nyc Basterds pennsylvania hotel nyc plays an X-ray technician who tries to analyze her unsatisfying love life while dealing with her overbearing dad s health issues in Jennifer Devold re s The Day I Saw Your Heart , a seriocomic French import having its H-Town premiere at 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Aug. 30, and 5 p.m. Sunday, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
pennsylvania hotel nyc Two soccer-playing siblings on the verge of going pro must cope with the violent death of their father in Marcel Rasquin s Hermano , a Venezuelan drama opening pennsylvania hotel nyc Friday at the AMC Studio 30 . At the same location: Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi , a bubbly Bollywood romantic comedy about romantically attracted fortysomethings that, judging from its raucous coming-attractions trailer, appears at least partially inspired by the US sitcom Mike Molly .
With 2 Days in New York , French multi-hyphenate Julie Delpy attempts to make lightning strike twice by fashioning a sequel to 2 Days in Paris , her 2007 debut feature that was acclaimed by many people a witty Woody Allenesque romantic comedy. (Not by me, you understand, but by many other people.)
The new flick reintroduces Marion pennsylvania hotel nyc (director and co-writer Delpy) a few years after her breakup pennsylvania hotel nyc with the neurotic boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) who loomed large in the previous film. She s living in New York, raising the child she and her ex had at some point between the two movies, and sharing an apartment with another single parent, pennsylvania hotel nyc Mingus, a journalist and radio host played by Chris Rock. Yes, that Chris Rock.
2 Days in New York opens Friday at the Sundance Cinema, which also will be hosting pennsylvania hotel nyc a one-week engagement of Dark Horse , a black comedy about the unlikely romance of two thirysomethings (Jordan Gelber, Selma Blair) mired in arrested adolescence. It s written and directed by Todd Solondz, who also gave us Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse , so I wouldn t count on too much happily-ever-aftering here.
I Can Do Anything! an ambitious amalgam of animated shorts and live performance will be presented at 7 p.m. Friday at Aurora Picture Show. The free-admission program, according pennsylvania hotel nyc to an Aurora spokesperson, pennsylvania hotel nyc celebrates children who truly can do anything because they still know how to dream.
Specifically, the program will include a concert pennsylvania hotel nyc by the Girls Rock Camp of Houston All-Star Band, and a collection of animated shorts about youth empowerment produced by Texas filmmakers and curated by Sarah Gish.
Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi, a bubbly pennsylvania hotel nyc Bollywood romantic comedy about romantically attracted fortysomethings appears at least partially inspired by the U.S. sitcom Mike Molly. It is playing at the AMC 30.
Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi, a bubbly Bollywood romantic comedy about romantically attracted fortysomethings appears at least partially inspired by the U.S. sitcom Mike Molly. It is playing at the AMC 30.