Talk to Me Screening and the Carmel Film Society 1
I just came back from an inaugural screening of the newly-formed Carmel Film Society. The CFS is a non-profit organization focusing on bringing film-related events and people to the beautiful central coast (monterey peninsula) of California. They will benefit the EMMA Project, which will bring young female filmmakers to a filmmaking camp every year and be taught by various actors, directors and industry biggies.
Seriously, check out their creative board, it’s loaded with big names like Cheadle, Robin Williams, Annette Bening, and Jamie Foxx.
The CFS will definitely be a great asset to this area, holding VIP movie screenings/events once a month, bringing in actors, directors, and execs related to the film they’re screening. Like next month, they’ll be screening “Canvas” with Joe Pantoliano and Marcia Gay Harden. Pantoliano (Cipher from the Matrix, or the other guy in Memento) should be in attendance with perhaps the director or producer. That’s coolness.
The film was “Talk to Me“, starring Don Cheadle. It was pretty good. I don’t think it was “one of the best films I’ve seen in the last 5 years” as Roger Ebert put it, but it’s a wonderful portrait of an ex-con-turned-shock-jock-and-social-activist, Petey Greene. And the close friendship between the two main characters reminded me a little of “The Shawshank Redemption”.
I’m not a Don Cheadle bandwagon kinda guy, but I think he’s a pretty decent actor and I agree with the buzz of other critics and the press that this might be his Oscar role.
So anyway, the event included plenty of free and fancy snacks as well as all the wine/champagne/ale/root beer(but no water!) you could drink. I was like dying of thirstitude and I had to ask one of the penguins for a glass of water.
Oh, and it was held at the beautiful La Playa Hotel in Carmel. Dang. It was nice.
The reception was held in a banquet room of some sort, and it was crowded with mostly older rich white folk from around the central coast. All gala’d up too. There were a few 20-somethings that were obviously sons/daughters of rich people.
Basically I was out of place, being a sensible, KIA-driving guy. haha. No but seriously, everything was done well, all beautiful.
We heard from the executive director, Scott Brown, and our local executive producer, Joey Rappa (pleasantly nice guy) of the Rappa’s restaurant on Monterey’s Fisherman’s Wharf, and we were treated to a Q & A with the film’s director, her husband who plays Sunny Jim in the film, the co-executive producer and the real-life Dewey Hughes, who’s played by Chiwetel Ejiofor in the movie.
Oh, and I even ran into an old college chum, Marc Simone. We shall up-to-speed each other via MySpace soon.
So now I have to write a brief blurb about the event for INK’s website, and turn in a review of the film in a few days for the 7/26 print issue.
But I’m going to rest a little bit first because my head is throbbing in pain for some reason. Procrastination is the best medicine.
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