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DGSmith
Damon Smith is a New York-based film journalist. He has written features, profiles, and reviews for The Boston Globe, Time Out New York, Filmmaker magazine, Senses of ...
Ball and Trains: "The Order of Myths" Unmasks America's Oldest Mardi GrasBy Damon Smith Alabama native Margaret Brown made a strong impression four years ago with “Be Here to Love Me,” her tender docu-portrait of late Texas troubadour Townes Van Zandt, the renowned songwriter (and drinker) who died in 1997 of a heart embolism. For her second feature, Brown travels to ... read morePosted on 07/23/2008 by DGSmith Herzog and the ApocalypseA Meditation Inspired by "Encounters at the End of the World" By Damon Smith Movies have been dreaming about the end of the world at least since the 1950s, when nuclear-age anxieties about world destruction combusted on-screen, mostly in genre pictures featuring mad scientists, doomsday scenarios, and irradiated monsters. The ... read morePosted on 07/18/2008 by DGSmith About a "Boy"A Review of John Crowley's Post-Prison Coming-of-Age Tale, "Boy A" By Damon Smith “The past is not the future,” opines Peter Mullan’s Terry in the buzzed-about British film “Boy A.” But the past is exactly what’s got hold of Jack Burridge (Andrew Garfield), the sensitive young man that Terry, a ... read morePosted on 07/18/2008 by DGSmith Mumblecore's First Horror Flick: And No, That's Not the Unknown ComicA Review of "Baghead" By Damon Smith Depending on whether your taste runs to (or far away from) talky, low-budget twentysomething relationship comedies by the likes of Andrew Bujalski and Joe Swanberg, you either loved or hated Mark and Jay Duplass’s 2006 debut, “The Puffy Chair,” a keystone of the ... read morePosted on 07/18/2008 by DGSmith A Promise to the DeadOpening Night Selection of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival By Damon Smith Torture, “disappearances,” exile, and the brutal impact of war on women and families are big themes of this year’s Human Rights Watch showcase of 32 films (mostly documentaries) from 20 countries, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln ... read more Posted on 06/20/2008 by DGSmith Spirit of ’68: Riots, Revolution, and Wilhelm Reich on FilmBy Damon Smith Forty years later, how far removed are we from the upheavals that occurred during the eventful, often tumultuous months of 1968? That was the question I kept asking myself Monday after a marathon session at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, which wrapped up ... read more Posted on 05/15/2008 by DGSmith The Problem with Reality, Part One: Nick Broomfield and Battle for HadithaBy Damon Smith Smart people have long debated the relation between cinema and reality, but for documentary filmmakers, the question has always been a particularly vexing one. Posted on 04/30/2008 by DGSmith French Kisses: Christophe Honoré Updates the New Wave Musical with "Love Songs"by Damon Smith Critics who were irritated by the manic-depressive ethos of Christophe Honoré’s last film, Dans Paris, are not likely to be won over to his latest, a modern-day musical in the mold of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Godard’s Une femme est une femme. For ... read more Posted on 04/04/2008 by DGSmith 
Review of City of Men
Favela RisingCapitalizing on the international popularity of his Brazilian TV series City of Men, which aired on BBC4 in Britain and on the Sundance Channel here in the States, Fernando Mereilles (The Constant Gardener) last year produced a feature-film version of the show, directed by Paulo Morelli and starring Darlan Cunha ... read more Posted on 03/24/2008 by DGSmith Wrapping Up, Part 2My last day in Park City was both fun and frustrating. I tried to get into a screening of James Marsh’s Man on Wire, a doc about rebel tightrope walker Philippe Petit, who danced on a wire between the Twin Towers in 1974, but apparently every last journalist, festivalgoer, and ... read morePosted on 01/27/2008 by DGSmith |
