#braden king

[mypearchive]

Strand Releasing has loaded up publicity photos in preparation of their release of “The Evening Hour,” which will consist of screenings of the film, a dvd release, and through VOD via Google Play, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, and Vudu.  

Ettinger is pictured in some of these photos with British actor, Cosmo Jarvis     (”Lady Macbeth”).

[thefilmstage]

Has there been a great feature made about the opioid crisis in America? Director Braden King is determined to answer the question “yes” with The Evening Hour, written by Elizabeth Palmore and based on the novel by Carter Sickels. And while he bites off a bit more than he can chew here, there’s a good deal that resonates.

First Reformed‘s Philip Ettinger stars as Cole, a nursing home aide who moonlights as a drug dealer. Only, he seems to have something of a moral code about the meds he’s slinging. Sure, he’s keeping a lot of townspeople addicted but he’s doing it responsibly, legitimately supporting some who can’t afford pills they need and keeping others safe from the much-worse Everett (Marc Menchaca). He carries on a half-assed relationship with Charlotte (Stacy Martin) and a general sense of calm. This all crumbles once Terry Rose (Cosmo Jarvis), a friend from the past, returns to town. Cole’s old pal has a cock-eyed plan to take over the drug trade in town, much to the chagrin of Everett.

Continue reading my Sundance review of The Evening Hour.

[dustedmagazine]

Boxhead Ensemble — Here: Chicago Sessions (Hired Hand)

Photo by Thomas Bernhard

Movies may play on your emotions, but film production is no place for the sentimental. No matter how good an individual shot or sound may be, if it doesn’t serve the film’s purpose it should not be there. A skilled gleaner can sweep lots of glorious stuff off the cutting room floor, sometimes bonus scenes for the DVD, and in the case under consideration here a complete double LP by Boxhead Ensemble. 

Boxhead Ensemble founder/leader Michael Krassner and filmmaker Braden King have sustained a partnership since the 1990s that has included live accompaniment for selected shorts and multiple soundtracks for the movie Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks It’s Back. Krassner’s approach to scoring capitalizes on the improvisational skills of musicians selected for their identifiable sounds and the potential chemistry of personnel combinations that may occur for the first time when the players plug in, sit down and start playing along with what’s on the screen. For Dutch Harbor, he assembled a line-up of mid-1990s Chicago rock and post-rock all-stars. When the movie hit the road, he took some of those musicians and a shifting array of new ones to make a new score every night. Not long after a Boxhead tour of Europe in the wake of the September 11th attacks, Krassner moved to Arizona, but he’s sustained ties to both Chicago and King. In the early 2000s, the Ensemble made a series of stand-alone records that blurred the lines between ambient and Americana.  

Most recently Krassner worked with King on Here, a road movie about a cartographer’s misadventures in Armenia. Between 2008 and 2011 they staged multi-media experiences that combined three screens showing footage shot for Here, holograms, and a live band. He also scored the finished movie, which circulated festivals in 2011. Not long before the movie was complete, Krassner came back to Chicago to try to channel a bit of that Dutch Harbor energy. He booked a couple days at Electrical Audio and convened a small group of players who have been associated with different phases of the Boxhead Ensemble. Jim White, who drums with the Dirty Three, was a mainstay of the late 1990s-early 2000s touring ensembles. Cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm returned from the non-filmic records made later in the 2000s. Guitarist Tim Rutili and fiddle/guitar player James Becker have not only come in and out of Boxhead since the late ‘90s, but have also retained Krassner as a producer for Califone’s Heron King Blues. More recent recruit Shahzad Ismaily is a multi-instrumentalist whose credits run the gamut from Laurie Anderson to the Renderers. Nothing from the session made it into the movie, but a double album sourced from the Electrical Audio sessions has been released just in time for the 20th anniversary of Dutch Harbor’s first screenings.

The MO for these sessions involved different combinations of musicians playing in response to scenes from the movie. As befits a film set mainly in mountain passes, near-desert expanses and crumbling buildings far older than the people who currently inhabit them, the music evinces grit and a potentially endless vibe that sustains even after the music fades to silence. Resonant cello, liquid bass and slowly feeding-back electric guitar negotiate a contrapuntal reverie on “Wednesday Trio No. 4;” a similarly named but differently configured trio recorded the next day uses heavily strummed guitar and pizzicato fiddle to evoke slow, trudging progress. Becker’s acoustic bowing bring to mind pre-electrification antiquity, while liberally pedal-processed electric guitars played by most parties acknowledge the plot point that Here’s protagonist is doing advance work for an eventual Google Maps-type documentation of Armenia. Rutili’s distinctive, chugging contributions recall his playing in Califone. They confer a temporally unmoored, Neil Young on the moon quality to certain tracks. As is his wont, Krassner plays frequently but understatedly, adding solidifying loops and linchpin flourishes that pull everything together.  

One wonders why this music didn’t make it to the finished film. Not the hints of Americana; the finished film still has a bit of that. It has a strong identity — if you’ve heard the Dutch Harbor soundtrack and the mid-2000s records, you’ll likely recognize the links between this music and that in short order. Most likely King already had enough good sound material and just put this stuff in the bank as insurance. It’s certainly strong enough to exist on its own.

Bill Meyer 

[yoymialterego]

2022 / Cine al menguar la pandemia: The Evening Hour

No pasa mucho tiempo después del inicio de "The Evening Hour" para que nos demos cuenta que en la nueva cinta de Braden King parece haber cierto aire de desesperanza aún en los momentos más esperanzadores. La película arrastra un aura de desamparo, de tragedia ineludible entre este coro de perdedores.

La historia trata, hablando a grandes rasgos, sobre la gente común de un pueblo chico del interior norteamericano, con sus rasposas relaciones familiares, sus amistades brumosas, y el veneno que circula por las arterias más profundas del poblado, bajo una superficie de normalidad bucólica y falaz. Se centra sin embargo en la vida de Cole Freeman (Philip Ettinger), un dealer de poca monta, buena onda y tierno, que empieza a ver cómo su pequeño, fiable, tranquilo y casi altruista negocio empieza a hacer agua por la acción de nuevos camellos que se disputan la plaza.

Es en ese muestreo y exposición de la red de relaciones de familia y amigos de siempre donde "The Evening Hour" toma densidad, cuando el director se enfoca y trata de explicarnos cómo va esparciéndose el dolor, físico y moral, dentro de esas gentes que se conocen de toda la vida. O cuando el protagonista se da cuenta que su mundo se viene abajo, y King nos hace notar que en todo caso ese mundo armado con amabilidad, diplomacia y compasión aparentes, más bien estaba prendido sólo con alfileres.

Y si el desarrollo de la historia es dubitativo por momentos, porque acelera y se demora casi en las mismas proporciones en las que los personajes -y por lo tanto el relato- parecen verdaderos en mayor o menor cantidad, eso no es un factor que demerite en demasía al filme, que por otra parte goza de una muy buena fotografía y unas estupendas actuaciones, que incluyen la participación de Cosmo Jarvis, Lili Taylor y Tess Harper, y que con un final anticlimático (o digamos mejor "bien aterrizado") hace de "The Evening Hour" una sobresaliente antítesis del american way of life.

[mypearchive]

Strand Releasing Acquires North American Rights for Director Braden King’s Feature Film ‘The Evening Hour’ | LBBOnline

Little Black Book, “We are thrilled for Braden. It’s a beautiful film and really speaks to his storytelling skills and his talent working with actors”

[mypearchive]

Philip Ettinger in the cinematic adaptation of Carter Sickels’ novel, “The Evening Hour,” directed by Braden King.  A Spring release was the most recent news I have heard.

[mypearchive]

Fest Track On Sirk TV Interview: THE EVENING HOUR [Mill Valley Film Festival 2020 - Virtual] - Part I - video Dailymotion

Director Braden King and actors Philip Ettinger, Michael Trotter & Kerry Bishe talk to Fest Track about home, physicality informing emotionality and the notion of perspective in regards to their dramatic film "The Evening Hour" which played the California Premieres section of the virtual edition of the 2020 Mill Valley Film Festival.

[mypearchive]

Fest Track On Sirk TV Interview: THE EVENING HOUR [Mill Valley Film Festival 2020 - Virtual] - Part II - video Dailymotion

Director Braden King and actors Philip Ettinger, Michael Trotter & Kerry Bishe talk to Fest Track about home, experience and environment in regards to their dramatic film "The Evening Hour" which played the California Premieres section of the virtual edition of the 2020 Mill Valley Film Festival.