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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 Cinema ...
About Face: The Mystique of an Actor’s VisageCould anything be more devastating to an actor than losing his face? Maybe not. Yet Montgomery Clift and Mark “Star Wars” Hamill ( a lesser talent, to be sure) both soldiered on after disfiguring car accidents and painful skin grafts. Granted, Clift doused himself with booze and pills to kill ... read morePosted on 08/21/2008 by DGSmith Revisiting "Trouble the Water"Back in January, at the Sundance Film Festival, I wrote a little notice about Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's documentary, "Trouble the Water," which went on to win the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary. The film, which accompanies aspiring hip-hop artist Kimberly Roberts and her husband, Scott, through the ... read morePosted on 08/18/2008 by DGSmith Twilight of the Idols: Chabrol’s “A Girl Cut in Two” and Rohmer’s “The Romance of Astrea and CeladonIt is a real treat to be a filmgoer in New York City this week, when new films by two elder statesmen of the French New Wave (not the usual suspects, either) will have their theatrical debut. Godard may hog the limelight with near-annual retrospectives of his ’60s oeuvre (someone ... read morePosted on 08/14/2008 by DGSmith Quick TakesPatti Smith: Dream of Life. Dir. Steven Sebring. 2008. 109min. Palm Pictures. If you don’t know who Patti Smith is (New York poet, punk-rock legend, friend to Robert Mapplethorpe, William Burroughs, Bob Dylan, and countless other cool cats), and you’ve never heard her raucous, iconic 1975 album “Horses,” then don’t ... read morePosted on 08/07/2008 by DGSmith Lives on the Line: "Frozen River," "Man on Wire," and "American Teen" in ReviewWe don’t need Norma Desmond to tell us that Hollywood isn’t kind to aging actresses. When an industry that prizes beauty above brains plants a virtual expiration tag on the rear end of its female stars, and cigar-chomping movie producers proclaim a talent “over the hill” at age 30, who ... read more Posted on 08/01/2008 by DGSmith 
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 |
