“THE DISH & THE SPOON” — A HAMMER TO NAIL REVIEW

By Vinay Singh

(The Dish & The Spoon world premiered at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival. It opens theatrically at the reRun Gastropub in NYC on Friday, February 10, 2012. Visit the film’s official Facebook page to learn more.)

Alison Bagnall’s The Dish & The Spoon opens with a distraught young woman named Rose (played by Greta Gerwig) hastily driving an old, large Mercedes station wagon into the rainy sprawl of an off-season Delaware beach town. When her cell phone rings, she only hesitates for a moment before throwing it out the window onto the highway. This act — equal parts defiant, hostile, foolish and liberating — embodies Rose perfectly. Her internal roiling torment is what impels her and the film forward.

Rose drives until she hits the Delaware coast, where, exhausted and flustered, she retreats to a cement watchtower — more on the amazing locations later — in order to finish her five-pack of beer (i.e., all the change in her ashtray would buy her). In the watchtower, she stumbles upon a young man (played by Olly Alexander and credited simply as “Boy”) lying comatose at the top lookout. The young man’s looks and boyish charm evoke Bob Dylan, albeit with a British accent and a cravat to boot. In her red beanie, overcoat and baggie pajama pants, Rose more closely resembles a crazy cat lady. Despite their differences, not to mention Rose’s best efforts to get rid of the young man, the two find themselves having coffee at a diner… and so begins their road trip of sorts.

Gerwig and Alexander take turns stealing scenes, and it is this magic that really stays with you long after the final frame. In the end, however, The Dish & The Spoon is Gerwig’s show. She lays bare Rose’s emotions and juggles the character’s confusion effortlessly. In one of the film’s most memorable moments, she confronts her cheating husband over the phone and berates him until he confesses, at which point she becomes awkwardly congenial as they discuss, presumably, the sordid details of his affair.

I say that this film depicts a road … Read the rest

25 NEW FACES – PART 4

By Filmmaker Staff

Brent Stewart

When you live next to Harmony Korine some unconventional ideas can creep into your head. So when Brent Stewart was thinking about making a chamber-piece drama on 35mm and shooting the whole thing with little to no camera movement he went to his famous filmmaking neighbor for some advice.

“I knew it would be a challenge to pull off because even Harmony said to me, ‘Man, that’s risky.’”

But, The Colonel’s Bride, Stewart’s debut feature, is an intimate look at loneliness, old age and death with striking photography, a haunting score and a stirring lead performance that shouldn’t be missed. In the film, we follow Bill (character actor James DeForest Parker), a Vietnam vet who awaits the arrival of his mail-order bride (Alicia Truong). With a regular diet of booze and cigarettes, Bill is a grizzled guy from a different era. Though Stewart doesn’t delve into the pain in Bill’s eyes, it’s obvious he’s seen a lot in his life and is still digesting it all; and by the time he’s content the end is suddenly upon him.

For Stewart, 35, the creation of Colonel’s Bride is a culmination of years struggling in the avenues of fine art and photography. Searching to find “comfort in narrative stories,” he attended Rotterdam’s CineMart when he was selected in 2007 in hopes to get his footing in the film world. “I was meeting with production companies from all over the world, but they were like, ‘Let’s make a film in Belgium.’” Frustrated, he went back to Nashville and began making shorts, including the ’09 Sundance entry The Dirty Ones. Then last year he scrounged enough money through a mixture of sporadic jobs, selling his still photography and working as a second-unit director for one of Korine’s Liberty Mutual commercials (where he met Parker) to make Colonel’s Bride. He also obtained his 35mm film through short ends his AC got from shows like Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and the movie Gran Torino. “Economy of means,” is how Stewart describes the making of the film. But soon after filming … Read the rest

25 NEW FACES

By Filmmaker Staff

The 25 new faces of independent film.