Sure, Sunday tends to be overcrowded with high-end TV, including "True Blood," "The Newsroom," "Copper," "Dexter," "Ray Donovan" and more, but what to watch the rest of the time? Every Monday, we bring you five noteworthy highlights from the other six days of the week. "First Comes Love": Broadcast Premiere Monday, July 29 at 9pm on HBO Nina Davenport, the filmmaker whose chronicling of Iraqi film student Muthana Mohmed's internship on "Everything is Illuminated" found her inexorably being dragged into the story herself in 2007's "Operation Filmmaker," turns her camera fully on herself in her new documentary "First Comes Love." The 41-year-old New Yorker documents her journey toward single motherhood when she finds herself entering her 40s with no steady partner in sight and a growing concern that the window during which she can have a child is coming to an end. "Pov": "Neurotypical" Monday, July 29 at 10pm...
- 7/29/2013
- by Alison Willmore
- Indiewire
When Nina Davenport, the "Operation Filmmaker" director whose new personal doc, "First Comes Love," premieres on HBO tonight at 9pm, gives birth to her son Jasper at age 41, she does so surrounded by an amusingly large group of friends, including the father of the baby. "I didn't expect the hospital to let so many people into the delivery room," she observes dryly in voiceover. What she isn't accompanied by is a husband. Davenport, finding herself single going into her 40s, decided that if she wanted to have a biological child, she wasn't going to be able to do it in the traditional fashion referenced in the title -- by meeting Mr. Right, marrying him and then getting pregnant. Instead, Davenport enlists a somewhat reluctant gay pal to donate his sperm and the support of various others in her life, including her best friend Amy, to accompany her on her journey toward being a single mother,...
- 7/29/2013
- by Alison Willmore
- Indiewire
In terms of documentary film servings in the fall (pre Idfa in November), in the hands of Thom Powers, Tiff’s former Real to Reel section now simply known as Tiff Docs is the equivalent to riding the gravy train. To be housed at the new spanking brand new Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, this year’s docu items included such names/titles as Ken Burns and what looks to be the Telluride preemed The Central Park Five, Julien Temple’s London – The Modern Babylon, Marina Zenovich’s sequel Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out, another hot topic subject for Alex Gibney with Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God and an exec produced item from Errol Morris with Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing side by side with with the latest from Crossing the Line helmer Daniel Gordon (9.79*) and Operation Filmmaker helmer Nina Davenport (First Comes Love). Here...
- 7/31/2012
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Operation Filmmaker Directed by: Nina Davenport Cast: Muthana Mohmed, Nina Davenport, Liev Schreiber Running Time: 1 hr 30 min Rating: Unrated Plot: Muthana Mohmed attends film school in Iraq until it is bombed during the invasion of Baghdad in 2003. In an act of charity, Director Liev Schreiber invites him to work as a Pa on the set of Everything is Illuminated. There, instead of stepping up to the challenge, he flounders. After they're done filmming, Mohmed decides he doesn't want to return to Iraq, where conditions have deteriorated. He then struggles to maintain travel visas and support himself financially in Europe. Who’s It For? Viewers who enjoy documentaries where the filmmaker plays a large part. People interested in another perspective on the Iraq war. Those who don't mind cursing. Expectations: The DVD box had a line...
- 1/6/2009
- The Scorecard Review
I almost called this a 'Watch This' post, and then a 'Fan Rant', but either way, the general idea is that I'd recommend all of you to tune in or at least record PBS tonight for the broadcast premiere of Nina Davenport's terrific documentary, Operation Filmmaker, in which a young Iraqi film student is invited to work on the set of Liev Schreiber's Everything is Illuminated and how that experience begins to unravel for all involved -- Davenport included (and that's not to mention appearances from Elijah Wood and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as themselves!).
It's fascinating in the purest trainwreck sense, and deserves to be paired up with Overnight and shown to all fledgling filmmakers as a guide for what Not to do when all manner of opportunities are offered to you in the field. Davenport's correlations to the Iraqi conflict as her subject becomes less and...
It's fascinating in the purest trainwreck sense, and deserves to be paired up with Overnight and shown to all fledgling filmmakers as a guide for what Not to do when all manner of opportunities are offered to you in the field. Davenport's correlations to the Iraqi conflict as her subject becomes less and...
- 12/31/2008
- by William Goss
- Cinematical
By Michael Atkinson
As the Korean New Wave fades and dissipates, from a throng of cultural force fields to a mere battery of individual filmographies, ambitious or withering or otherwise, one director stands as the most passionately embraced and steadily distributed in the tradition of imported art films. Strangely, it's Hong Sang-soo, not Park Chan-wook or Bong Joon-ho, both of whose pulpy trajectories have stalled and didn't, in any event, summon the English-speaking world's eyeballs expected for their psychodramatic hyperbole. Hong's films are not crowd-pleasers, but measured, often uncomfortable meditations on Korean urbanites and their lives of power-boozing, disconnection and romantic failure. Up to now, Hong's great modernist trope was (tellingly, for a Korean) the bifurcation of perspectives. His elusive masterpiece "The Power of Kangwon Province" (1998) is so sneaky about its doubled-up narrative and its delivery of emotional haymakers that you might not realize that it's all about the residue...
As the Korean New Wave fades and dissipates, from a throng of cultural force fields to a mere battery of individual filmographies, ambitious or withering or otherwise, one director stands as the most passionately embraced and steadily distributed in the tradition of imported art films. Strangely, it's Hong Sang-soo, not Park Chan-wook or Bong Joon-ho, both of whose pulpy trajectories have stalled and didn't, in any event, summon the English-speaking world's eyeballs expected for their psychodramatic hyperbole. Hong's films are not crowd-pleasers, but measured, often uncomfortable meditations on Korean urbanites and their lives of power-boozing, disconnection and romantic failure. Up to now, Hong's great modernist trope was (tellingly, for a Korean) the bifurcation of perspectives. His elusive masterpiece "The Power of Kangwon Province" (1998) is so sneaky about its doubled-up narrative and its delivery of emotional haymakers that you might not realize that it's all about the residue...
- 12/30/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
By Aaron Hillis
A documentary cannot withstand the corrosion of time based on compelling subject matter alone. I learned this a few years ago while writing copy for an indie distribution label, whose acquisitions team had a rash tendency to pick up decades-old docs simply because they were Academy Award nominees. Sometimes they were still engaging under all that dust, but more often than not there were traits that dated them worse than the fashions worn within: static talking-head interviews shot practically but uninspiringly against bland or ugly backdrops, a schoolmarm's discipline for the purist limitations of vérité and an exhausting dryness that underscores how little use films are as strict conveyers of data -- of course, Wikipedia wasn't yet invented, so maybe information was enough back then?
Plenty of documentarians today still rely on the same old creative crutches, but in the year 2008, the docs that rubbed up against...
A documentary cannot withstand the corrosion of time based on compelling subject matter alone. I learned this a few years ago while writing copy for an indie distribution label, whose acquisitions team had a rash tendency to pick up decades-old docs simply because they were Academy Award nominees. Sometimes they were still engaging under all that dust, but more often than not there were traits that dated them worse than the fashions worn within: static talking-head interviews shot practically but uninspiringly against bland or ugly backdrops, a schoolmarm's discipline for the purist limitations of vérité and an exhausting dryness that underscores how little use films are as strict conveyers of data -- of course, Wikipedia wasn't yet invented, so maybe information was enough back then?
Plenty of documentarians today still rely on the same old creative crutches, but in the year 2008, the docs that rubbed up against...
- 12/23/2008
- by Aaron Hillis
- ifc.com
As the expression goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And good intentions are what led actor Liev Schreiber to Muthana Mohmed, a 25-year-old student filmmaker from Baghdad who was featured on an MTV special in 2003. Schreiber was ramping up production on his directorial debut, an adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel Everything Is Illuminated, and he saw in Mohmed the living embodiment of the project's intent to bridge the cultural divide. So he and his producers made arrangements for Mohmed to fly to the Czech Republic to work as a production assistant on the film, under the expectation that it would be a gratifying learning experience for Mohmed and his sponsors. With filmmaker Nina Davenport on board to document the occasion, the stage was presumably set for the year's most heartwarming DVD extra. Then, reality came crashing in. As it turns out, Mohmed...
- 6/5/2008
- by Scott Tobias
- avclub.com
- [Note: This interview was originally published during our coverage of the 2007 AFI Festival.] This intriguing documentary about good intentions gone wrong is about Muthana Mohamed, a young Iraqi film student, who has been given a golden opportunity to escape the war and be part of actor/director Liev Schreiber's film (Everything Is Illuminated) in Prague. Operation Filmmaker raises questions about the film maker's responsibility to "real" people in general in an age where reality shows get people to sign away their rights to be part of the Hollywood dream.After his stint as a Pa, Muthana is expected to return to Iraq but as the situation in Iraq worsens, he decides to stay without any money to everybody's obvious disappointment - a Hollywood ending this is not. The cast and crew return to Hollywood without any consideration or responsibility for the young man except for Nina Davenport who was there to document his journey. A filmmaker with a dilemma, Davenport tries
- 6/3/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
By Neil Pedley
Among this week's offerings: The pregnancy comedy goes pre-natal, the fate of all the jungle rests in the hands of the world's most lethargic endangered species, and Dario Argento has a new film, rendering the rest of this list mostly unnecessary.
"Dreams With Sharp Teeth"
Author Harlan Ellison is widely regarded as one of the finest writers of the 20th century. He is also, as this documentary readily highlights, abrasive, petulant, egotistical and prone to fits of belligerent rage. Collecting together more than two decades worth of footage and interviews, "Grizzly Man" producer Erik Nelson lifts the dust jacket off one of literature's genuinely larger than life characters and a man who has filed more lawsuits than the Aclu, proving that sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, even Ellison's sci-fi tales.
Opens in New York.
"The Go-Getter"
On paper, it sounds like the dictionary definition of...
Among this week's offerings: The pregnancy comedy goes pre-natal, the fate of all the jungle rests in the hands of the world's most lethargic endangered species, and Dario Argento has a new film, rendering the rest of this list mostly unnecessary.
"Dreams With Sharp Teeth"
Author Harlan Ellison is widely regarded as one of the finest writers of the 20th century. He is also, as this documentary readily highlights, abrasive, petulant, egotistical and prone to fits of belligerent rage. Collecting together more than two decades worth of footage and interviews, "Grizzly Man" producer Erik Nelson lifts the dust jacket off one of literature's genuinely larger than life characters and a man who has filed more lawsuits than the Aclu, proving that sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, even Ellison's sci-fi tales.
Opens in New York.
"The Go-Getter"
On paper, it sounds like the dictionary definition of...
- 6/2/2008
- by Neil Pedley
- ifc.com
- First Run/Icarus Films have announced the acquisition of an unconventional, docu tale about a good-deed-gone-wrong that was spawned when actor-turned-director Liev Schreiber was filming Everything Is Illuminated. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for “Best Documentary” at the 2007 AFI Fest in Los Angeles (see Ioncinema.com's coverage and interview by Yama Rahimi here), a Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Chicago International Film Festival, and a prize from the Rotterdam Film Festival, Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker will receive it theatrical debut this summer (June 4th) at NYC's IFC Center with more openings in other cities to follow. The docu takes place in the wake of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," American actor had an idealistic notion: to rescue an Iraqi film student from the rubble of his country and bring him to the West to intern on a Hollywood movie (Everything Is Illuminated). It promised to be a heartwarming tale,
- 1/30/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
- The 2007 AFI Fest ended with the screening of Love in the Time of Cholera and the announcement of this year's winners with the politically correct choice of Munyurangabo, an uneven drama set in Rwanda by a Korean-American director was a surprise given the strong line up this year. The tie between Operation Filmmaker and Afghan Muscles was justified, both were evocative and timely, dealing with an Iraqi film student and the other about Afghan body builders. Winners pictured above are: From left to Right: Jenny Lund (Munyurangabo), Nash Edgerton (Spider), Lauren Greenfield (Kids + Money), Jeffrey Schwarz (Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story), Andreas Mol Dalsgaard (Afghan Muscles), Micheal Addis (Heckler). The line up was one of the strongest in years including many films from Cannes (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Persepolis, Silent Light, Jellyfish, Caramel, Secret Sunshine and others) and Berlin (Irina Palm, The
- 11/13/2007
- IONCINEMA.com
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