My Cart
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 ...
Kazakh Film: Chouga and TulpanEvery major film festival presents a gallery of cinema offerings and possible discoveries for those curious enough to seek out unfamiliar work by international narrative-film artists and imagemakers. The New York Film Festival may play it safe by screening films that already have theatrical distribution, like Steven Soderbergh’s twin-halved 262-minute ... read more Posted on 10/08/2008 by DGSmith LOOKING BACK AT TORONTOOne of the biggest regrets I have coming back from the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival is that I didn’t have a chance to write more on-the-ground dispatches, especially since each day brought new encounters, exciting experiences, and often tragicomic turns of events. But our schedule was jam-packed this year, ... read more Posted on 09/17/2008 by DGSmith SOME TIFF FILMS AT A GLANCETrying to get into the swing of things here in Toronto hasn’t been easy. But I won’t bore you with the details of our cross-border journey or our commune-like accommodations (we’ve nicknamed our two-room suite “the asylum”), though I should mention we’ve had some technical issues with our site that ... read more Posted on 09/08/2008 by DGSmith On the Road Again: Toronto 2008So here we go, folks--another round of festival madness is finally upon us. This year, for the Toronto International Film Festival, we're sporting a brand new face (if you've tooled around our home page, you know what I'm talking about), loads of new members (greetings, Tweet fleet!), and a promising ... read morePosted on 09/03/2008 by DGSmith 
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 |
