Cast members of NOTHING FOR CHRISTMAS, director Sean Guess’s indie feature film that returns to Clearview Cinemas on White Street for two showings Thursday.
Stroll past Red Bank’s Clearview Cinemas, and you’d take the slickly designed, professional-looking poster for any of the many Oscar hopefuls, festival favorites and international delights that regularly play the art house.
Take a closer look, though, and you might notice that Nothing for Christmas is an offering that’s unique to the local multiplex landscape an uber-indie, locally shot feature film that’s written, produced, directed and edited by Shore area auteur Sean Guess.
A native of Ocean Township and, like many of the folks who’ve brought you redbankgreen, a veteran of what was once called the newspaper industry the prolific filmmaker has made the White Street screening space his venue of choice for “world premiere” events dating back to his first completed endeavor, 2004’s Cut.
Guess sold out the house with a combination of “good press and great promotion” for that one, and subsequent efforts like At the Movies (2007) and Fans Anonymous (2008) became highly anticipated draws, far beyond what might be expected of a low-budget artist who refused to work the usual “zombies and more zombies” side of the street.
Shot in locations around coastal Monmouth County with a cast of regional actors, 2010’s Christmas presents a “delightful and heartwarming” seriocomic story of “community, friendship and the magic of the holidays” in the age of downsizing, foreclosure and crises of faith.
It’s all centered around the unlikely bond between a holiday-hating Catholic teenager (Mackenzie English) and an understanding rabbi (Stewart Schneck), and it’s on the big screen for one night only, with showtimes at 7 and 9pm. Purchase tickets ($10) by email at [email protected] or at the door and check Gary Wien’s website New Jersey Stage for an interview with Guess on his current work in progress, Asbury Park USA (a trailer for which is due to roll prior to Thursday’s screenings).
Clearview Cinemas, 35 White St., Red Bank 7pm, 9pm/ $10
