Film : Buzz

Baltimore filmmaker Matthew Porterfield is debuting his latest film, "I Used to Be Darker," at Sundance next month. The movie tells the story of a runaway who goes to live with her aunt and uncle in Baltimore and confronts a family struggle afterwards. "Darker" is one of ten films in the film festival's NEXT program, which highlights innovative storytelling in film. 

You can read more about the NEXT films here on film site Indiewire or in this writeup in the New York Times. 

Porterfield garnered rave reviews for "Putty Hill" in 2010. The Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University selected the Hamilton native for its 2012-2013 Artist Residency Awards. Porterfield has also won the Sondheim Prize and was included in the Whitney Biennial. 

Greater Baltimore breathed a sigh of relief when they missed the worst of Category 1 Hurricane Sandy. 

Schools and many offices closed, leaving residents confined to their homes. So how did folks in Baltimore cope with cabin fever?

Some turned to video streaming provided by Netflix, CNNMoney says. "Viewership doubled on the East Coast, with major spikes in cities including New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.," writes CNNMoney. 

So what movies are popular among Netflix subscribers in Baltimore? Charm City has diverse movie tastes, with "Tyler Perry's Laugh to Keep From Crying," "2001 a Space Odyssey," and the 2001 French horror flick "The Brotherhood of the Wolf" all ranking among the top 10 movies that are favored more in Baltimore compared with other cities. That's according to the Netflix site. 

Centerstage has asked some of the nation's most prominent playwrights to create short films to answer the question "What is My America."

Neil LaBute, Baltimore-born Anna Deavere Smith and Lynn Nottage are some of the writers involved in the 50 films directed by 90s indie director Hal Hartley, Broadway World writes.

"From foreclosure to gay marriage, from the judiciary to the little-known circumstances surrounding the death of James A. Garfield, these monologues, with a wry mix of humor and heart, shine a light on our particular American moment—and tug at the seams of political rhetoric as only theater can," Broadway World writes. 

Centerstage, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, is releasing the videos weekly up until the Nov. 6 presidential election. You can read the entire story here. 

Pennsylvania brewer D.G. Yuengling & Son is putting the spotlight on Baltimore.

It's filming a number of TV ads in Baltimore that promote Yuengling Lager and Yuengling Light Lager in Baltimore, Shanken News Daily writes. Shanken in a daily email news service that covers the wine, beer and spirits industry. 

"Yuengling’s upcoming set of ads includes five new spots currently in production in Baltimore, focusing on the brewery’s Yuengling Lager and Yuengling Light Lager brands," Shanken writes. "They will target the 21-34-year-old age group that represents the company’s core consumer. The new ads follow a recent push in Yuengling’s home market of Philadelphia, aimed toward reinforcing its status as a household name amid an 'influx of new, competitive beer brands.'" 

You can read the rest of the article here. 

And you can read about the commercials' filming in Canton here. 

John Waters had enough of hitchhiking and headed back to the stage. To commemorate the 25^th anniversary of his film set in his hometown city, he will launch Hairspray: In Concert! next year, according to Broadway World.

Hairspray: In Concert! will premiere with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Jan. 11-13, 2013, and with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Jan. 24-27, 2013, writes Broadway World.

The cast includes Broadway stars Nick Adams, Marissa Perry and NaTash Yvette along with Waters himself. Read more about it in Broadway World. 

While the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation filmed scenes in Washington D.C. last week, the Netflix movie House of Cards recreated the nation’s capital right here in Baltimore, reports the Washington Post.
 
House of Cards shot overnight Wednesday and into Thursday morning at the Johns Hopkins’ Peabody Institute, which was “transformed into the fictitious ‘Hotel Cotesworth,’ a supposedly historic D.C. institution where the presidents have slept,” writes the Post.
 
The political thriller has also used the offices of the Baltimore Sun as the set for the show’s fictional newspaper, the Washington Herald.
 
House of Cards stars Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright and Kate Mara and is directed by David Fincher, director of Fight Club, The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 

Ten years after HBO first aired The Wire, Funnyordie.com brings us The Wire: The Musical. This musical parody turns the gritty show about inner-city Baltimore into a laugh-inducing musical.  

The voice over boasts, “Experience The Wire’s realistic portrayal of America’s decaying inner cities through the magic of song.”
 
The Wire: The Musical brings back many actors from the series including Michael Kenneth Williams, Sonja Sohn, Andre Royo, Larry Gillard Jr. and Felicia “Snoop” Pearson. The video has gone viral with more than 400,000 views.

The director of Hairspray and Pink Flamingos apparently enjoys hitchhiking and is now making his way across the country, according to Baltimore Fishbowl. 

John Waters "has hitched halfway across the country over the past week — yes, he started out in Baltimore — and, last we heard, is currently somewhere in Colorado," Fishbowl writes.

The movie director camped out in an indie rock band's van in Ohio, according to DCist. The blog cites live Tweets from band members of Here We Go Magic. 

Then a middle-aged couple drove him through Kansas. 

"We suspect that Waters’s Kansas hosts may have been less hip to his work than the indie band was, but they still knew they had a national treasure in the car," Fishbowl writes.

You can read the rest of the story here. 

Baltimore independent filmmaker Matt Porterfield has had another honor bestowed upon him. 

The Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University has selected the Putty Hill director for its 2012-2013 Artist Residency Awards.

"The Artist Residency Award program offers significant resources for innovators across all creative disciplines, selected each year by the center’s curators and director," Broadway World writes. "These unique residencies include considerable financial resources, along with the technical, intellectual, and staff support, along with (mental and physical) space in which to develop new work and engage with Ohio State classes and the Columbus community."

Porterfield and the three other selected artists/organizations will receive $200,000.

He plans to use the resources to work on another film, Broadway World writes. 

Porterfield has also won the Sonheim Prize and was included in the Whitney Biennial. 

Charm City residents know that Baltimore gets a bad rap on the small and silver screens. 

But someone who writes for a national newspaper and doesn't ?live in Baltimore has come to the city's defense. 

Joe Queenan cites numerous examples of Baltimore's harsh treatment, starting with the most recent, The Raven. Starring John Cusack Edgar Allen Poe, the movie depicts innocent Baltimoreans getting murdered in the most gruesome manner. 

"Can the entertainment industry please stop picking on Baltimore?" Joe Queenan writes. 

Shows like the Wire and Homicide didn't do the city any favors either. In fact, the only time the city ever gets a break is when John Waters shows off the city's quirky characters, Queenan writes. 

The writer takes a yearly day trip Baltimore to visit the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the National Museum of Dentistry (hey, wait, we've never even been there) and other sites. You can read Queenan's entire ode to Baltimore here. 

The Boys of Baraka, a movie about inner-city kids in Baltimore sent to a boarding school in Kenya, played at the Maryland Film Festival seven years ago.

It once again is in the spotlight, however, as the filmmakers are featured in a New York Times story on the creative tension between documentary film partners.

""Disagreements are an inherent, and productive, part of their working relationship," Grady tells the Times. “You’ve got creativity, money and ego involved.”

The two will feature their work again at the Maryland Film Festival this year with their movie Detropia. 

Is John Cusack really the best person to play Edgar Allen Poe in The Raven? 

We have no idea. Go read Entertainment Weekly. 

But we do know that the macabre Hollywood flick is set in 19th century Baltimore and it says so in all the movie reviews you read about the movie. 

Nice PR for Baltimore from a dead author!

The movie opened nationwide last weekend and is now No. 7 at the box office, according to the Internet Movie Database. It pulled in $7.25 million. 

"Veep," the HBO comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus that was filmed in Baltimore, had a red-carpet premiere earlier this month, writes the Huffington Post.

The show, which airs April 22, is about a female vice president. Maryland film officials credit the state's expanded tax credits for convincing producers to let Baltimore be a stand in for the nation's capital.

But I guess, when it comes to the red carpet premiere, they had to choose the real deal, eh? You can read the story and some pics from the event here. 

Sure, you might own every episode on DVD. But if you ever meet David Simon, don't go waxing poetic about "the Wire."

That's according the New York Times ArtsBeat blog. Writer Jeremy Egner explains:

"Before Mr. Simon went Hollywood, creating the endlessly exalted “Wire” and the current HBO series “Treme,” he was a longtime crime reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and he often evinces that breed’s hard-bitten outlook and allergy to cheap sentimentality."

Simon also tells the Times that he wrote the series for the city of Baltimore. You can read the Q&A with David Simon here.

Baltimore's favorite famous and quirky film director John Waters is featured in the April 1 issue of the Wall Street Journal Magazine.

No it's not an April Fool's Joke.

The director, 65, talks about a lot of things -- why he doesn't lie about his age, his childhood in suburban Baltimore where stood out from the other kids (you don't say?) and that he's mellow now because it's not cool to be his age and be angry. 

He also says he likes rap music. 

"I like rap music. But bragging about being rich to poor people is really offensive," Waters says. "I want to hear a gangsta rap song about buying a Cy Twombly painting or dating a museum curator. I want to hear about that kind of rich." 

Read the entire article here.