Movie News & Gossip

A pair of present and former American University professors are getting ready to collaborate on a feature film about the November-December 1989 period in Czechoslovakia's history known as the "Velvet Revolution". Filmmaker-in-residence Gary Griffin is a veteran documentary cinematographer whose credits include the 2006 Dixie Chicks tour chronicle SHUT UP AND SING and the Oscar-winning 1992 short EDUCATING PETER, while 82-year-old Czech born writer Arnost Lustig was formerly a Professor of Literature at the institution's D.C. campus.

Lustig tells the Prague Monitor that the film, to be directed by Griffin, is based on a script - NOVEMBER - that the cinematographer wrote some 20 years ago. The story centers around three young male protagonists who are drawn into the peaceful overthrow of the country's then Communist regime; Griffin was also a student at the time at Prague's Film Academy (FAMU).

One of the toughest challenges for independent filmmakers is coming up with a narrative that stretches the boundaries of stortytelling but not those of the line producer's Excel spreadsheet. In the shadow of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, a box office-busting example of this approach, stands another entry still an orbit or too away from the film festival circuit - the mock-documentary LUNOPOLIS, written and directed by Lafayette, LA aspirant Matthew Avant.

Avant and co-producer Hal Maynor play a couple of documentary filmmakers who uncover the Church of Lunology, a mysterious fraternity bent on keeping secret the fact that an underground colony of from-the-future humans is living on the moon and controlling the flow of events on earth. Think of it as THE DA VINCI CODE meets MAN BITES DOG. Or perhaps, in light of Paul Haggis' stunning letter of resignation from the Church of Scientology, LUNOPOLIS can also be positioned as an indirect spoof of the Thetan clan.

As a highly successful stage and screen actor, Alfred Molina is used to a posh, globetrotting lifestyle of top-notch restaurants, grand hotels, red carpets and limo rides, For example, when FilmStew caught up with the 56-year-old London native at Toronto's Signatures Restaurant, a fresh brewed cappuccino appeared before he had a chance to place an order.

Nevertheless, as someone who is only too aware of how seductive such a pampered life can be, Molina has developed a unique strategy for keeping himself grounded. When he is on the road, he hand washes his underclothes and socks. "I've got no problem with spending two hundred dollars for a bottle of wine, but I'm buggered if I'm going to spend three dollars and fifty cents just to get a pair of socks laundered. It's ridiculous," he laughs.