Tribeca Film Festival - Midnight

The Tribeca Film Festival Midnight section (formerly known as Cinemania) has been rebranded for this year's festival and offers seven films. features horror movies and thrillers where strong women dominate. Midnight programmer Cara Cusumano sums it up, "Featuring telekinetic children, mad scientists and middle-class suburban cannibals, this year's Midnight section is more diverse and entertaining than ever before, and a true celebration of the innovative, risky and groundbreaking stories and styles that can only be found in genre cinema." Films from the Midnight section include Dark Touch, Frankenstein's Army, Fresh Meat and Raze.

They look like creepy, bloody fun.

The Rock at G.I. JOE: Retaliation London Premiere

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson
G.I. JOE: Retaliation UK Premiere
March 18, 2013
Empire Leicester Square, London, UK
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images 

For those in the WWE Universe wondering why Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson wasn't on Raw this past Monday, it's because he was at the London premiere of his latest film, G.I. JOE Retaliation, along with co-stars Channing Tatum, Elodie Yung and Adrianne Palicki.

Tribeca Film Festival Spotlight

For the past week and a half, the Tribeca Film Festival has been announcing its selections for this year's Spotlight and Midnight sections and the new Storyscapes section to take place from April 17 - April 28.

The Spotlight section will feature 33 films -- 23 of them making their world premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF). They are a mix of narrative films and documentaries that blur the lines of indie and mainstream filmmaking. According to Genna Terranova, Director of Programming, the features in the Spotlight section explore fresh takes on unconventional relationships. I'm sold. Given my penchant for writing about and studying relationships, I'm looking forward to quite a few of this years films at the Tribeca Film Festival's Spotlight section co-sponsored by Cadillac and JetBlue.

The Date That Wasn't

One of my recent forays into online dating...


We exchanged a few messages before deciding to go to the movies. Previous plans to go on a gallery crawl didn't pan out because of location (he's in NJ) and other plans (I had other plans).


He'd be in "the city" (Manhattan, NY) on this particular day. He played an active role in selecting which movie we'd watch where, took into account my travel, all that jazz. We had the movie and time all picked out (4:15pm on a weekday). We were going to meet at the theater. I had his photo queued up on my phone so I could match it up with the man I would meet.

Planet Of The Apes Meets Jurassic Park

"Caesar, we found an island for you. It's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 
off the coast of Costa Rica. I think you'll really like it." 
"Caesar will go. No more stupid humans."

I spent a rainy Sunday afternoon watching a Jurassic Park marathon. I'm a sucker for a good creature feature. In the third installment of the Jurassic Park (2001) franchise, part of the storyline is the Velociraptors (raptor) are intelligent and can communicate with one another with specialized calls. That aids them in hunting and they can also call one another for help. Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) gives a lecture in which he theorizes that had it not been for the cataclysmic event that wiped out all dinosaurs, raptors could have become the dominate species on earth.

Hmm...

In come the apes. 

One intelligent species against another.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

I've been waiting months to see this movie...

I enjoyed Rise of the Planet of the Apes. For those who don't believe in evolution or who don't think chimpanzees and humans share roughly 97% DNA, you'll still enjoy this movie, even if you decide for some reason to root for the humans.


Understand the motives of Will (James Franco)--develop a cure for Alzheimer's--a disease that eventually takes his father's life. But with science, we never know the outcome until an experiment is conducted. Turns out our immune systems develop antibodies against the ALZ-112 retrovirus and Alzheimer's comes roaring back. This same virus in chimps improves intelligence and can be passed on from mother to child. The same virus kills humans--our immune systems aren't as strong as chimps. Do we (humans) stop there? No. We develop a stronger virus, ALZ-113, with deadlier effects.

Midnight In Paris

Yesterday, a rainy evening in New York, I walked through SoHo and thought, "Something happens to people in the rain." Everyone's pace was hurried but slowed at the same time. Although I'd planned on going to the movies anyway, the rain made for a good "excuse" to go. I promised myself I wouldn't romanticize the evening, but I will never forget where I was and who I was with when I saw Midnight in Paris.

Midnight in Paris is a 94 minute movie. It would take me twice as long to write everything that struck me about it and you twice as long to read it, so I'll keep it short. 

Cidade de Deus (City Of God)

Men will be boys and the power of photography

Flixster - Share Movies

Zé is ugly. He's drug dealer and gangster in 1970's Rio. Never learned to read. Socially awkward, not sure how to handle his feelings so he resorted to violence.


Those are some of the conclusions I drew while watching Cidade de Deus (2002).

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (or More Random Musings on Chimps)

We all gathered around the laptop to watch the trailer. I had viewed it a few days prior and was equally creeped out and impressed. Actually, the fact that I was creeped out is what impressed me. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a movie I'd go to the theaters to watch "for the cinematic value" as a fellow trailer-watcher put it. Sucks I have to wait until August 5.

At the end of the trailer, we all started clamoring to get our two cents in.

One guest at the dinner party said at the end of the trailer, he was expecting the chimp to talk. Yes! Andy Serkis is at it again!


The scene that stuck with me most is of a chimp standing at the foot of a bed while a couple sleeps. What the hell is he going to do? Chimps are so strong. And they have a dark side just like humans. I witnessed this when I watched The Dark Side of Chimps on National Geographic a few years ago. They wage wars and murder just like humans. Could increased brain capacity make them evil masterminds?

"Back" To Paris By Way Of FIAF

My first memory of wanting to go to Paris was between the ages of 6 and 11. I know it was that time of my life because of where my family was living at the time. I was watching Babar on HBO. In the episode he was driving down the Champs Elysées at night, during Christmastime. I remember feeling that I have to do that one day. I guess that's when this all started.


I attended the FIAF Travel Day Fair, yesterday, March 22, 2011. The first booth I visited was Call in Europe. A phone and my food are the most important things to me when traveling. Discussing the phone options in France reminded me of a conversation I had a few weeks ago at Les Enfant Terribles. A couple, who are regulars there as well, were going to Paris to get married. They were picking the brains of the staff about where to go, what to do etc. My friend, and bartender, told them about The Phone House where they could get cheap cell phones to use. I laugh thinking about the man's quip, "It's not Le phone house?" I added my notes to the inside of their travel guide by referring them to Real Time Travlr (the Founder, TastyKeish, is one of French connections).

Dating For Always

Last Friday night, a friend invited me out to go flamenco dancing at Boom. I love the food there and I know they have really great live music occasionally (I was serenaded right out front on Spring Street by an older gentleman who sang there on Thursday nights. He wanted to court me. Serenading is a good way to start!) 

Ok, back to last Friday night. I was invited out by my friend, the woman who recently started this blog to celebrate the birthday of her friend, the photographer who shot the In The Flesh Erotic Reading Series that I was a part of in August (Kevin Bacon, I’m almost there). We ended up having dinner because the band got stranded upstate. There was only one band member who made it and he was, um, entertaining my friend when I arrived. Like I really felt like I was interrupting something. Sorry, buddy, didn’t mean to cock-block!

After my wine and Agnolotti Burro e Salvia, the conversations started to “take off”. You know the deal. After the whole, what do you do/where do you work, how do you know the birthday boy, we got down to the good stuff. I admit, I missed part of it because I was scouring the bar for a sexy European but another woman at the table asked my opinion on dating – how I felt about it, did I enjoy it et al.