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Now and Then: After the Storm, Portraits of Tenacity in Recovery

Reviews

As a resident of a city whose history of storms — and their concomitant unnatural disasters — is troubled at best, I watched Sandy warily but distantly. Thing always look different outside the "cone of uncertainty." The images coming in from the Northeast this morning put me in a more solemn frame of mind.

By Matt Brennan
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October 30, 2012 12:02 PM
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Video

Spike Lee has the coolest-professor-ever vibe down, which makes sense after his 15-year stint teaching at NYU. In this video interview from journalism site Mediabistro, Lee talks like he's addressing a classroom of young filmmakers and creatives. He dispenses expert advice about how to fall in love with work and make the best of boredom. "My first big break came because I coudn't get a job," he says. He borrowed a friend's Super 8 camera and filmed New York in the summer of 1977 -- when New York was a broke city with record high temperatures and fabulous music at block parties. As Lee says: "Film found me. I didn't say I found film."

By Maggie Lange
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September 28, 2012 11:58 AM
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News

In the wake of a successful launch for "Safety Not Guaranteed" and strong response to opening nighter "Looper," FilmDistrict has moved decisively to acquire U.S. distribution rights for Spike Lee's remake of Chan-wook Park's 2003 South Korean thriller classic "Oldboy." They plan a 2013 release.

By Anne Thompson
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September 7, 2012 11:02 AM
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Reviews

Venice is buzzing this year with superb documentaries from high-profile film figures. Jonathan Demme’s “Enzo Avitabile Music Life” was a spirited portrait of the Neopolitan singer-songwriter who may not be widely known but whose zeal, talent and exhilarating performances with other figures in his field had me reappraising my assumptions about that woollily defined genre called world music; and more on Sarah Polley’s revelatory “Stories We Tell” later. But it was Spike Lee who rocked the Lido today with his rousing, passionate, breathlessly paced and frequently moving paean to Michael Jackson, which focuses intently on the creative process that went into generating the songs and videos for his third album, BAD – an album which spawned some of the greatest pop hits of all time, including its title track, ‘Man In The Mirror’ and ‘Smooth Criminal’.

By Matt Mueller
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August 31, 2012 1:44 PM
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Reviews

Beware screening your movie too early at a big festival. Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales" was one example of an unfinished movie getting creamed at Cannes. Spike Lee, who defines the current indie model --lucrative commercial director by day, scrappy indie doc and featuremaker by night--unveiled his self-financed "Red Hook Summer" at Sundance to less-than-stellar reviews. So he took the movie back to the editing room. Lo and behold, it scored better pre-release reviews, and opened solidly in four theaters last weekend.

By Anne Thompson
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August 17, 2012 4:23 PM
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Festivals

Along with premiering his out-of-competition Michael Jackson documentary "Bad 25" at the Venice Film Festival (August 29 - September 8), Spike Lee will also be honored by the fest with the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award.