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4 articles from 2008

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Movie Review: The Visitor (2008)

24 October 2008 7:26 AM, PDT | From Rope of Silicon | See recent Rope Of Silicon news

Richard Jenkins and Haaz Sleiman in The Visitor

Photo: Overture Films Writer/director Tom McCarthy has found success in banality, by working magic into his stories and treating them as living organisms rather than just movies. Five years ago he gave us The Station Agent a fantastic little film that didn't receive its due when released despite a large amount of critical acclaim. With The Visitor McCarthy has seemingly plucked a character that would have easily fit into The Station Agent and given him his own film. While the storyline is as commonplace as the one used in The Station Agent, it is McCarthy's ability to tweak it just enough that keeps you watching. The Visitor centers on Walter (Richard Jenkins), a college professor you immediately recognize as someone who is bored with his job and his life. When told he will have to head to New York to present

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Brad Brevet

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Full Nominees List of 2008 Gotham Independent Film Awards Announced

20 October 2008 8:18 PM, PDT | From Aceshowbiz | See recent Aceshowbiz news

On Monday, October 20, Ifp has announced the contenders for the 18th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards and Lance Hammer-directed drama "Ballast" has dominated the nomination list, taking in 4 separate nods. The movie, which has won the 2008 Sundance Film Festival's Dramatic Directing Award for Hammer, is nominated for Best Feature, Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor and Best Ensemble Performance.

In the category of Best Feature, "Ballast" will be up against Courtney Hunt's "Frozen River", Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York", Thomas McCarthy's "The Visitor" and Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler". Meanwhile, for the Best Ensemble Performance category, the film's cast that include Micheal J. Smith Sr. will be competing with "Rachel Getting Married" ensemble led by Anne Hathaway, "Synecdoche" cast led by Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" ensemble, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, and "Visitor" cast led by Richard Jenkins.

Though garnering the most gongs for the 2008 Gotham Awards,

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AceShowbiz.com

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2008 MVFF31—Michael Hawley’s Line-up Preview

24 September 2008 11:10 AM, PDT | From TwitchFilm.net | See recent Twitch news

Race.  Religion.  Politics.  According to Mill Valley Film Festival‘s Director of Programming Zöe Elton, those are subjects to avoid when choosing “something breezy” to open and close a film festival.  At a recent press conference to announce this year’s line-up, however, she was obviously making ironic note of that supposition.  As it turns out, this year’s fest is bookended by films steeped in those three volatile topics.

Opening the festival’s 31st edition on October 2nd will be Religulous and The Secret Life of Bees.  The Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center will host the latest from Borat director Larry Charles, a documentary in which Bill Maher ridicules the world’s three major monotheistic religions.  Over in Mill Valley, the Sequoia Theater will screen the west coast premiere of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s tale of race relations in 1964 South Carolina, starring Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo.

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Michael Guillen

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Thomas McCarthy on "The Visitor"

11 April 2008 6:19 AM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news

By Aaron Hillis

Though he's the writer-director of the acclaimed 2003 dramedy "The Station Agent," Tom McCarthy is probably not the first face you associate with the film (Peter Dinklage was the bigger breakout, no pun intended). But that doesn't bother the New Jersey-born McCarthy, who has had his own share of on screen recognition (more on that later) since he began acting in film and television in the early '90s. (If his name still doesn't ring a bell, then you certainly didn't watch the brilliant final season of Hbo's "The Wire," in which he co-starred as the morally skewed Baltimore Sun reporter Scott Templeton.) McCarthy's second feature behind the camera is "The Visitor," a poignant and lightly funny drama about a widowed and utterly disillusioned economics professor named Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins, "Six Feet Under") who discovers, on a business trip from Connecticut, that a Syrian percussionist and

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Aaron Hillis

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4 articles from 2008

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