FILM:
Secrets of Jonathan Sperry
DIRECTOR: Rich Christiano
PRODUCERS: Rich Christiano, Chad Gundersen, Philip Hurn
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Jasper Randall
WRITERS: Dave Christiano, Rich Christiano
COUNTRY: USA
YEAR: 2008
Synopsis:
Gavin MacLeod (The Love Boat) plays the title character in this faith-based family film for all ages. It is 1970 and best buddies Dustin (Jasen Panettiere), Albert (Frankie Ryan Manriquez) and Mark (Allen Isaacson) are three 12-year-olds looking forward to a summer of fun. Dustin has a crush on Tanya (Bailey Garno) and wants to ask her out on a first date, but his friends aren’t much help, offering some terrible (and hilarious) advice. Complicating matters is Nick (Taylor Boggan), the town bully, who also likes Tanya. Dustin’s single working mother (Mary Jean Bentley) allows Dustin to mow lawns to earn spending money, where he meets 74-year-old Jonathan Sperry, and his reclusive neighbor Mr. Barnes (Robert Guillaume, Benson). What happens that summer will change each of them forever in writer/director Rich Christiano’s touching multigenerational tale of first love and life lessons. 96mins. Gavin MacLeod, Rich Christiano, Mary Jean Bentley and producer Chad Gundersen in attendance.
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FILM: Choke
DIRECTOR: Clark Gregg
PRODUCERS:
Johnathan Dorfman, Temple Fennell, Beau Flynn, Tripp Vinson
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Tim Orr
WRITERS: Clark Gregg (screenplay), Chuck Palahniuk (novel)
COUNTRY: USA
YEAR: 2008
Synopsis:
Based on the book by popular cult author Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), actor-turned-director Clark Gregg (The New Adventures of Old Christine, the upcoming Iron Man) brings to the screen a wickedly colorful dark comedy about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, and the sordid underbelly of Colonial theme parks. Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) is a sex-addicted med-school dropout who keeps his increasingly deranged mother Ida (Angelica Huston) in an expensive private hospital by working days as a historical re-enactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night, Victor runs a scam deliberately fake-choking in upscale restaurants to form profitable parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who “save” him. In flashback, we meet the younger Ida, who raised Victor alone and in absurdly unconventional circumstances. When, in a rare lucid moment, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father’s identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend (Brian William Henke) and his mother’s beautiful physician, Dr. Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald, No Country for Old Men), to solve the mystery in this laugh-out-loud farcical turn. 95mins. Clark Gregg in attendance.
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