local weather Click for Sun Valley, Idaho Forecast
 front page
 classifieds
 calendar
 public meetings

 previous edition

 recreation
 subscriptions
 express jobs
 about us
 advertising info
 classifieds info
 internet info
 sun valley central
 sun valley guide
 real estate guide
 homefinder
 sv catalogs
 hemingway
Produced & Maintained by Idaho Mountain Express, Box 1013, Ketchum, ID 83340-1013 
208.726.8060 Voice
208.726.2329 Fax

Copyright © 2003 Express Publishing Inc.
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 


Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Features

Loving a ‘Nosey Parker’

Director to attend screening


By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

At the 2003 Nantucket Film Festival a teeny little film made in Vermont, by a sheep farmer no less, won a special jury prize, and at four other film festivals won best film. The movie, "Nosey Parker," is being screened 7 p.m. Thursday, April 15, at the Magic Lantern in Ketchum.

Photo by Jack Rowell

It’s the third homemade Vermont tale in a trilogy of films by Writer, Director, Editor, Producer John O’Brien. The other two are "Vermont is for Lovers" and "A Man With a Plan."

O’Brien will be in attendance for the screening and there will be a question and answer period with him following.

The best way to describe his latest movie is to say it’s gorgeously shot on location in the director’s hometown of Tunbridge. It uses some actual actors and many real people who actually inhabit the town. It uses a lot of improvisation, and it’s delightful in a wry and surprising way. It’s also irresistible.

Here’s the gist: A smug older husband, who’s a shrink, and his second wife, an ex-patient, move up to Vermont from the faster paced Tri-state area—New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. They build a trophy house on a gorgeous piece of land and settle down.

He’s smug and insensitive. She’s vulnerable (after all she married her shrink) and lonely. When a trio of elderly Tax Listers arrive to do some assessing and a bit of snooping, she invites one of them, George Lyford who portrays a craggy old fellow, to return. Then she hires him to be their handyman, an idea that seems incredible until you see George wield a saw.

Retired dairy farmer Lyford was in his 80s when the movie was made and sadly died soon after. We can only hope he had a smile on his face, because this non-actor simply melts your heart along with the heart of the lonely wife. He becomes the companion and friend her husband can’t be, and introduces her to his life and the Vermont that lies beyond her manicured lawn.

Wall Street Journal Drama Critic Donald Lyons wrote in his review of "Nosey Parker" that it is not some "sugared take on pastoral virtues; we get living people—cranky, odd, sad, generous—co-creating a cinema in which real American lives breathe through the pores of the narrative. This quietly revolutionary moviemaking is never sentimental; there's a sharp, life-weathered Vermont tang to the life we see."

In an interview with the New York Times, O’Brien said, "I wanted to capture everything about these old people before they die, their sense of humor, their accents, their stories, their sense of community."


Homefinder

City of Ketchum

Formula Sports

Windermere

Edmark GM Superstore : Nampa, Idaho

Premier Resorts Sun Valley

High Country Property Rentals


The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.





|