Gen Art, the yearly New York film festival that attracts a good-looking get in-the-know crowd to its packaged week of nightly premieres followed by a party at different NYC hot-spots has unveiled details on its 17th edition taking place August 8 - 14. Missed Connections starring Jon Abrahams and Mickey Sumner will open the festival, while the world premiere of The Kitchen starring Laura Prepon and Dreama Walker will close out the fest. Details follow on Gen Art's seven feature premieres:
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The old-fashioned cancer weeper — a genre that includes pictures like Love Story, Brian’s Song, and the gold standard of chemocathartic melodrama, Terms of Endearment — has been in short supply these days, maybe because nakedly manipulative tearjerking is a hard sell with modern audiences. Jonathan Levine tried to freshen the genre with last year’s 50/50 and pulled it off with reasonably effective results, thanks largely to the unassuming charisma of his star, Joseph Gordon-Levitt: You don’t want to see anyone get cancer, but you particularly don’t want to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt get cancer. You may not want to see Kate Hudson get cancer, either, as her character does in A Little Bit of Heaven. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to like her. The tiniest bit of Hudson’s wrinkly-crinkly cuteness goes a long way, and in A Little Bit of Heaven, watching her waste away becomes slow torture. She’s like an adorbs Camille.
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Chances are at least a few of your casual conversations about Bridesmaids have revolved around the scene in which Melissa McCarthy is forced to use a bridal shop sink as a toilet. The true beauty of that scene was Kristen Wiig’s Annie, sweat-drenched, trying to stay composed while she was berated over choosing a restaurant that caused some serious gastrointestinal horrors for the ladies. Not to suggest that McCarthy doesn’t deserve the praise; she’s a terrific actress (Sookie forever!).
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