The News: Landlord Moves In

(L-R) Hal Ashby and Beau Bridges on the Brooklyn set of The Landlord (Photo: United Artists/Photofest)

By S.T. VanAirsdale

Some of today's movie news of note from around New York:

--Film Forum this week is showcasing a new print of Hal Ashby's long-buried 1970 Brooklyn gentrification dramedy The Landlord, featuring Beau Bridges as the brash young title character who faces an uphill battle when taking on a slum in -- wait for it -- Park Slope. Hey, it was a different time. Anyway, Mike Hale revisits the backstory today in The Times: "For a memorable scene in which Elgar, wearing a white suit and holding a large potted plant, is chased down the sidewalk by the men he finds sitting on his stoop, Mr. Bridges had to run three or four blocks between raucous crowds of onlookers. 'I looked up on the rooftops,' he recalled, 'and the locals were cheering and yelling "get that white..." 'I was sure I was going to take a bullet." Thank God he didn't; The Fabulous Baker Boys would have sucked.

--Filmmaker Magazine has a bureau of bloggers covering the ongoing IFP Market, including Pamela Cohn (a Reeler Pinch Hitter who has an eye-opening lowdown for filmmakers thinking about pushing their work at bigger festivals) and director and panelist M Dot Strange, who offers the winning observation, "After the panel a woman came up to me and congratulated me on being a satanist even though I don't remember pledging my soul to our all mighty overlord of darkness during the panel." Huh. Maybe I should be down there this week.

--This fall is evidently the season Iraq goes to the movies: David Carr at the Times and S. James Snyder at The Sun offer round-ups of what's what, what it means and what to expect.

Posted at September 19, 2007 8:13 AM