honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Monday, December 15, 2003

Maui's 'FirstLight' festival generates pre-Oscar buzz

By Christie Wilson
Advertiser Neighbor Island Editor

So many movies, so little time.

Jude Law stars as Inman, a wounded Civil War soldier who gets up from his sickbed to walk back home to Cold Mountain, N.C., and reclaim Ada, the woman he loves.

Gannett News Service

That's the lament for fans of "FirstLight: Academy Screenings on Maui," which will present 46 of the year's best movies during two weeks starting Wednesday.

Oscar bait such as "Cold Mountain" with Nicole Kidman and Jude Law and "Mona Lisa Smile" with Julia Roberts will be seen on Maui before their official national releases.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" will be shown two days after its Dec. 17 opening, but FirstLight's Barry Rivers says you haven't seen Middle Earth until you've seen it on the 1,200-seat Castle Theater's mammoth screen with Dolby Digital Surround Sound at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.

The 2003 lineup — which includes about a dozen more films than last year — features favorites from earlier in the year such as "Seabiscuit," "Whale Rider" and "Finding Nemo," and more obscure pictures that have been released only in Los Angeles and New York.

Besides gorging Maui audiences starved for independent and art-house hits, FirstLight is where vacationing film industry execs and actors can catch buzzworthy contenders before casting their Academy Award ballots.

'FirstLight'

Presented by the Maui Film Festival

• Opens Wednesday, continues through Jan. 1 (no screenings Christmas Eve and Christmas Day)

• Castle Theater, Maui Arts & Cultural Center

• $10 per film, $5 kids younger than 12

• $40 FirstLight 4-Film VIP FastPass available (with flexible options — one admission to four screenings, or four admissions to one screening)

• (808) 572-3456, www.mauifilmfestival.com

• FirstLight schedule on Web site

Rivers said studios have always been eager to have their movies shown at FirstLight, but interest in this year's event hit a new peak after the Motion Picture Association of America banned "screener" tapes that are distributed during the winter awards season to critics and industry members who vote on prizes.

The ban, meant as a crackdown on pirated movies, outraged the smaller studios that rely on screeners to get a wider audience and a better chance of award nominations. The ban was nullified by a New York judge Dec. 5.

"More studios than ever wanted to be at FirstLight," Rivers said in a telephone conversation from Los Angeles, where he was making arrangements for his Maui Film Festival Inc.'s summer outdoor film festival in Wailea. "We always get a lot of calls long in advance to make sure their movies get the better slots, but (the screener controversy) opened the floodgates."

Free admission to FirstLight showings is offered to current members of film industry guilds and organizations, and Rivers said several hundred attended last year's festival, including Warren Beatty, Woody Harrelson, and an assortment of top studio executives, agents and producers.

Among the lesser-known films that deserve attention this year, according to Rivers, are the understated comedy "The Station Agent," which collected three awards at the Sundance Film Festival, and director Jim Sheridan's "In America," about an Irish couple who move to the Hell's Kitchen section of New York with their daughters to pursue their dreams.

American filmmakers John Sayles and Robert Altman have new movies showing at FirstLight. Sayles' "Casa de los Babys" features Daryl Hannah, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Marcia Gay Harden in "a heartfelt story of women who travel to Mexico where they share a home while waiting to adopt babies." Altman's "The Company" with Neve Campbell and Joffrey Ballet dancers is "an intense and revealing exploration of the dancer's life at the highest levels of the art."

Rivers also recommended two timely films with Muslim characters. "Monsieur Ibrahim" stars Omar Sharif as a Turkish shopkeeper in Paris who befriends a young Jewish boy. "It's a wonderful film for the season. It's about the ability of people of different ethnic backgrounds, different religions and different ages to get along," Rivers said.

"Osama" is the first post-Taliban feature film to come out of Afghanistan, and is being considered as an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film. The movie tells the story of a Muslim woman who is not allowed to go out in public without a male family member, all of whom have died in the conflict. "So, she dresses her young daughter as a son so that they can begin to piece a new life together," Rivers said.

FirstLight has several powerful documentaries that critics have labeled among the top films of the year.

These include "Capturing the Friedmans," a Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner about the child abuse conviction of a father and son from rural Long Island, and "The Fog of War," a portrait of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara by Errol Morris, who also made the acclaimed "The Thin Blue Line."

Tickets for FirstLight screenings are $10 per film ($5 for children under 12). A $40 FirstLight 4-Film VIP FastPass that allows for preferred seating can be purchased at the MACC box office and Borders Books & Music in Kahului. Information: www.mauifilmfestival.com.