Newman & Woodward highlight film fest

By Linda CarmanPrint Story | Email Story
Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman will be among the actors and filmakers to participate in this year's Williamstown Film Festival
WILLIAMSTOWN — In its fifth season, the Williamstown Film Festival has assembled a cadre of Williamstown Theatre Festival actors – including Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward – for a love fest, and mixed them with independent film newcomers for an inside look at the latest in films. The festival will kick off Friday, Oct. 24, with “The Station Agent,” the first of nine features to be showcased over two weekends through Nov. 2. The festival is long on shorts — all 30 of them — including a Halloween midnight special roundup of the Seven Deadly Sins, and an all-shorts program Saturday, Oct. 25, at noon. But the 40 films will be interspersed by actors, directors, producers and guest writers talking about their craft. Highlighting the first weekend will be the screening of “Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,” whose co-stars Newman and Woodward will introduce the film and answer questions afterward at the Hunter Center for Performing Arts at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams. Other venues will be Images Cinema and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. This past summer, the Williamstown Theatre Festival collaborated with a reading for the film festival. “We – the film festival – don’t have a home,” Steve Lawson, festival executive director said over the weekend. “We wouldn’t exist were it not for our artistic partners over the years. There’s a different artistic experience with each venue.” Lawson speaking about the festival, its evolution and the excitement it engenders, quoted his friend and mentor, the late Nikos Psacharopoulos, longtime WTF director, as aiming to create a season of “good plays well done.” “That’s a pretty good motto for any arts season,” Lawson said. “When you get overly schematic, that’s when you get into trouble.” In his introduction to this year’s festival program, Lawson wrote, “The spectrum of work is the most ambitious yet, ranging geographically from Manhattan to the desert Southwest and tonally from cutting-edge raunchiness to aching humanity.” In surveying the festival that he has headed since its beginning, Lawson noted, “All the numbers are up. Last year, we had 85 submittals; this year there were 212, not counting those we went after,.” Sixteen to 18 artists are expected for the first weekend; 12 to 14 for the second. At least half the shorts are represented by at least one artist, and, Lawson noted, “A festival is a shorts maker’s main venue.” These artists, coming from Virginia, Texas., Nova Scotia, and New York, will stay at hotels, motels and board members’ homes. “Variety,” the show business publication, plans to cover the event, Lawson said, visibly pleased. “We have a 50 percent bigger printed program this year, with more ads,” he said. “Last year, we got corporate sponsors Coca-Cola and HBO. This year, we’ve added Arts & Entertainment, and Writers Guild of America East. It raises the profile. Of course we’re always grateful to our local banks.” “We have fantastic artists coming,” he added. Newman and Woodward, whom Larson has known for many years through his long association with WTF, will discuss :Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,” which Larson describes as “a period piece, concerning a husband and wife.” “I had asked them a couple of years ago to be honorees, but Joanne said ‘Paul doesn’t care for that sort of thing. He says, Beware the disease of honorrea.’” Lawson said he was pleased Newman made an exception. “It’s a vintage film that’s a counterpoint to all new stuff,” he said. “And there are a whole bunch of WTF actors in it – Robert Sean Leonard, Austin Pendleton, Blythe Danner – so it’s nicely appropriate.” Olympia Dukakis, also a longtime WTF actress, is featured in “The Event,” portraying “the mother of a young man dying of AIDS who asks his family to help him end his life. It’s a suspense film, with Parker Posey as a district attorney who wonders why so many gay men are dying,” Lawson said. Both Dukakis and director Thom Fitzgerald will answer questions after the screening in this Berkshire premiere, also at the Hunter Center at Mass MoCA. “Olympia gives a powerful performance. There’s Oscar talk with this one,” said Lawson, adding, “It’s a Who’s Who of indie film.” “Off the Map,” directed by Campbell Scott, features Joan Allen and Sam Elliott as parents who live with their daughter in the New Mexico desert. It explores the transformation they work on the life of an IRS agent sent to investigate them. The screenplay is by Joan Ackermann of New Marlboro. The film, a Berkshire premiere, will be screened at Images Oct. 31 at 8 p.m. Scott, who starred in a film shown here last year, “Roger Dodger,” and currently in “Secret Lives of Dentists’, will speak at a lunch seminar on “The Hyphenate Life” Nov. 1 at 12:30 p.m. at the Water Street Grill. Scott will describe a career mixing acting, directing and producing. Lawson, an ebullient man and film aficionado, positively exudes elation describing the season opener, “The Station Agent,” winner of numerous awards at the Sundance Film Festival, including awards for screenwriting, the audience award and best actress for Patricia Clarkson. Lawson saw director Tom McCarthy’s first feature at Sundance in Park City, Utah, in January, and went into high gear, lobbying Miramax for permission to allow the screening here, despite the film’s having opened Oct 3 in New York and Los Angeles. “It’s a great opener, and it’s the last feature we got,” said Lawson, noting that McCarthy had acted in Lawson’s adaptation of “La Ronde,” directed by Joanne Woodward, in 1997. The final feature, “No Sleep ’til Madison,” “Came over the transom,” Lawson said. The film, whose three co-directors live, respectively, in Madison, San Francisco and Los Angleles, recounts the saga of five guys, friends since high school, bound for a Wisconsin high school tournament. The New England premiere will be screened Nov. 1 at 10 a.m. at Images. Plans for a gala at the Clark Nov. 1 at 8:30 p.m. have yet to be announced. “You want to showcase talent and good work,” Lawson said. The festival atmosphere is one of intimacy, and those who attend will gain at least a glimpse of an insider’s view, he said. Lawson, who divides his time between Williamstown and New York City, spends from May and June focusing on the festival, and from festival’s end in November through May directing the Writers in Performance series for the Manhattan Theatre Club. “They’re equally interesting, equally provocative. A wonderful balance,” he said. And, since the Manhattan Theatre Club has converted the old Biltmore Theatre on Broadway for performance space, the theatrical veteran Lawson can look forward to his Broadway debut. The Williamstown Film Festival ticket line is 458-9700; fax 458-2702; its Web site is williamstownfilmfest.com .
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Lanesborough Fifth-Graders Win Snowplow Name Contest

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — One of the snowplows for Highway District 1 has a new name: "The Blizzard Boss."
 
The name comes from teacher Gina Wagner's fifth-grade class at Lanesborough Elementary School. 
 
The state Department of Transportation announced the winners of the fourth annual "Name A Snowplow" contest on Monday. 
 
The department received entries from public elementary and middle school classrooms across the commonwealth to name the 12 MassDOT snowplows that will be in service during the 2025/2026 winter season. 
 
The purpose of the contest is to celebrate the snow and ice season and to recognize the hard work and dedication shown by public works employees and contractors during winter operations. 
 
"Thank you to all of the students who participated. Your creativity allows us to highlight to all, the importance of the work performed by our workforce," said  interim MassDOT Secretary Phil Eng.  
 
"Our workforce takes pride as they clear snow and ice, keeping our roads safe during adverse weather events for all that need to travel. ?To our contest winners and participants, know that you have added some fun to the serious take of operating plows. ?I'm proud of the skill and dedication from our crews and thank the public of the shared responsibility to slow down, give plows space and put safety first every time there is a winter weather event."
 
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