RED BANK: ROMCOM FILMING IN PARK
Film-production trucks lined West Front Street along Riverside Gardens Park in Red Bank Monday morning.
RED BANK: BASIE TO HOST RUMSONITE’S FILM
Rumson resident and former ‘Saturday Night Live’ cast member Siobhan Fallon Hogan takes on a heavy dramatic role in a feature film scheduled to debut at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank later this month.
RED BANK: DALPRA TO HEAD PARKS & REC
Louis ‘Del’ DalPra at Red Bank Regional in 2009. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Former Red Bank Regional High athletic director and coach Louis ‘Del’ DalPra was named director of the borough’s parks and recreation department Wednesday night.
RED BANK: HOFFMANN LEAVING REC JOB
Charlie Hoffmann with parks attendant Celestine Woods at Riverside Gardens Park in 2018. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Charlie Hoffmann, who has directed Red Bank’s parks and recreation department for the past five years, is leaving town.
The announcement of his departure at the council’s semimonthly meeting Wednesday sparked a “pile-on” of praise for Hoffmann’s work, which included organizing everything from sports and cultural offerings to this weekend’s Spring Egg Hunt.
RED BANK: SECRET STASH TO RELOCATE
The business has operated at 35 Broad Street since 1997. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash, filmmaker Kevin Smith‘s comic books and collectibles store in downtown Red Bank, plans to move to another not-so-secret Broad Street location, he announced Wednesday.
RED BANK: BASIE FILM FEST GOES VIRTUAL
Wondering how to fill the hours while housebound by the COVID-19 pandemic? You might binge on the 27 bitesized movies in the Count Base Center for the Arts Teen & College Film Fest, which this year is a virtual affair.
Here are three entries, one from each category: middle school (above), high school and college (below).
After you’ve watched these, hop over to the festival page, watch the 24 others, and cast your vote for the your favorites.
RED BANK: HELP FUND ‘MOOSEDUCK’ FILM
Character sketches of Maurice the Mooseduck by Shutianyi Li.
Hot off the heels of his award-winning short “Three Sonnets,” Red Bank filmmaker Jeffrey Delano Davis launched a Kickstarter campaign for a short piece of animation for children called “The Mooseduck.”
RED BANK: INDIE FILMS TO LIGHT UP SCREENS
The trailer for ‘I Am Another You,’ a documentary about a young man who chooses to live on the streets, screens as a free, community-welcome entry at this week’s Indie Street Film Festival. Below, artist Ron Haywood Jones‘s mural for the festival at 97 Broad Street remained unfinished Tuesday morning because of rain interruptions. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
Its community mural may still need some finishing touches, thanks to uncooperative weather. Still, the third annual Indie Street Film Festival kicks off in Red Bank Wednesday evening, ushering in a five-day rush of innovative cinema, movie talk and parties.
A project of the filmmaker cooperative Indie Street (working in partnership with Red Bank RiverCenter), the festival spreads decidedly non-Hollywood magic across the borough’s theaters, restaurants, night spots, and even the middle school auditorium. And there’s a free, community-welcome screening mixed in among the orange-pass-only fare.
Check out the festival schedule below; information about passes and tickets can be found here.
RED BANK: RAIN DELAYS MOVIE FEST MURAL
Sunday’s rain forced a postponement to completion of a new Indie Street Film Festival mural begun in Red Bank by area students Friday night. The volunteers will try again next Sunday, according to a post on the festival Facebook page. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
Meantime, the National Weather Service forecasts mostly sunny skies and a peak temperature around 89 degrees on the Greater Red Bank Green Monday. But there’s an 80-percent chance of thunderstorms Tuesday evening, which would impact the planned screening of “Cars 3” in Riverside Gardens Park, so stayed tuned for an update. The extended forecast is below.
RED BANK: WATCH THIS SPACE
For its third annual edition in Red Bank later this month, the Indie Street Film Festival plans to enlist area kids in the creation of a mural beginning Friday evening. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
RED BANK: BASIE NOW ‘CENTER FOR THE ARTS’
The rollout of the new name will begin immediately, theater officials said. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Marking the start of a new chapter — and the end of that whole ‘theater or theatre?’ conundrum — Red Bank’s Count Basie Theatre has been rebranded the Count Basie Center for the Arts, officials said Monday.
The name reflects the 92-year-old venue’s present and future as a “campus,” where performance art is learned, developed and staged, said Basie chief executive officer Adam Philipson. More →
RED BANK: ‘MARK FELT’ SCREENING AT BOW TIE
Follow the Movie: Liam Neeson stars in “Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House,” which gets a sneak preview screening in Red Bank Thursday.
“Follow the money,” said the shadowy figure known as Deep Throat to reporter Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), in the fact-based thriller All the President’s Men.
Many years later, the informant who helped break open the Watergate investigation was revealed to be former FBI associate director W. Mark Felt,subject of a new bio-drama that stars Liam Neeson and screens in a special sneak-preview showing this Thursday at Red Bank’s Bow Tie Cinemas.
ON THE GREEN: CATCH THESE OUTSIDE
The reverb-drenched surf rock sounds of the Sharkskins close out the concert season on the Fair Haven Municipal Dock Thursday night.
From star-kissed surf and free-range country to plein-air pickin’ and fresh-air film, the season of outdoor diversions remains very much in effect on the Greater Red Bank Green. We’ve got the roundup of public-welcome events under the summer sky — and over the next seven days and nights — all of them free as a breeze.
It all starts tonight, weather permitting, with the latest installment of the Summer 2017 Movies in Riverside Gardens Park series, sponsored by Red Bank Parks and Recreation and brought to you by Shore Flicks.
RED BANK: IT’S COOL, AND FREE, AT THE BASIE
The Count Basie’s free summer film series continues on Tuesday with screenings of ‘In the Heat of the Night’ and Guardians of the Galaxy.’
While the venerable venue once known as the Carlton can trace its cinematic lineage way back to the silent-screen age, the grand auditorium of Red Bank’s Count Basie Theatre put in many decades of service giving the local moviegoing audience what it couldn’t always get at home — from glorious technicolor and stereophonic sound to that all-important enticer known as air conditioning.
RED BANK: ICE CREAM & A MOVIE
The Gracie and the Dudes ice cream stand in Riverside Gardens Park is the place to be a sultry summer evening. (Photo by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
Riverside Gardens Park, sandwiched between West Front Street and the Navesink River in Red Bank, is a hive of activity on warm summer nights. Swarms of kids stop by to view the boats on the river, catch a glimpse of the sunset and maybe enjoy the weekly entertainment put on by the folks at the borough Parks and Rec department.
Enticed by the aroma of fresh baked waffles being shaped into cones, PieHole finds a place in line to see what everyone is ordering at the Gracie and the Dudes ice cream stand there.
RED BANK: SMITH BIOPIC ANCHORS FILM FEST
Mark Frost plays Kevin Smith in the biopic ‘Shooting Clerks,’ which screens at the second Monmouth Film Festival at the Two River Theater this weekend.
It seems that no sooner had the last of the popcorn been swept after the recent Indie Street Film Festival than another weekend-long celebration of independent cinema prepared to unspool in Red Bank, the town that Nicholas Marchese calls “the arts mecca of Monmouth County.”
RED BANK: INDIE FILM FEST GETS UNDERWAY
Lead festival organizer Jay Webb, right, with guests at Wednesday night’s opening reception on the patio of the Count Basie Theatre. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
With a display of carved-surfboard art, a New Jersey premiere screening of Dave Made a Maze and a DJ’d after-party at three separate venues, the second annual Indie Street Film Festival officially got underway in Red Bank Wednesday evening, ushering in a four-days-and-nights slate of screenings, panels, workshops and get-togethers with an admirable “Cannes-do” spirit.
A project of the fillmajer cooperative Indie Street (working in partnership with Red Bank RiverCenter), the sequel to last year’s inaugural event looks to make a long-running “tentpole franchise” of the venture. It’s a multi-venue happening that offers plenty of reasons to visit the borough’s theaters, restaurants and nightspots — or even its best-kept-secret middle school auditorium — during that time of year when the beaches make their biggest bid for buzz.
Take it here for info on individual event tickets and festival passes — and read on, for a rundown of goings-on between through Sunday. More →
RED BANK: FESTIVAL SERVES FILMS & EVENTS
A portion of the colorful mural painted earlier this month on the Catherine Street wall of Kitch Organic heralds the second annual coming of the Indie Street Film Festival, co-founded by Jay Webb, below.
To Wanamassa resident Jay Webb, losing oneself in the flickering lights of a hushed, darkened room is only part of the joy of a film festival for cinephiles. Another is getting together and gabbing about what they’ve seen, and who’s doing what in an art form wholly dependent on collaboration.
Which is one reason the schedule for the second edition of the Indie Street Film Festival, which returns to Red Bank next week, is studded with community events in between screenings of some 60 films.
IN THE AIR: FREE MUSIC, MOVIES AND MORE
Week two of this summer’s Movies in the Park series in Red Bank features an entry from the ‘Star Wars’ catalog. Below, Layonne Holmes fronts the Motor City Revue in a return to Sandy Hook Wednesday.
There’s a chance to imagine yourself as part of the biggest franchise in film fantasy history. Some power pop on the dock. A heat-blast of Latin-flavored jazz in the park. A little beach-music soul on the sands. And one of the world’s most beloved plays on yonder grassy knoll.
It’s all going on beneath the setting sun and stars of the Greater Red Bank Green — and all fabulously free of charge in the evenings to come.
LITTLE SILVER: STUDENT FILM A PRIZEWINNER
‘Parallax Dreams,’ directed by and starring Red Bank Regional’s John Tuohy, seen below at the awards ceremony.
An enigmatic short film by a Red Bank Regional sophomore, shot in and around Red Bank, was a double prize winner at a student film festival last month.
John Tuohy, a 16-year-old rising junior from Little Silver took the top prize in the Big Dreams and Silver Screens Festival held in Rahway on June 3.
RED BANK: OH THOSE SUMMER NIGHTS
Stake out your place on the grassy slope; bring a lawn chair, a food drive donation…and come in costume as your favorite GREASE character…when free summer movies return to Riverside Gardens Park on July 11.
Don’t look now, but tomorrow night, July 11, marks the start of the tenth season since the folks at Red Bank Parks and Recreation got into the movie business, with the free summertime schedule of Movies in Riverside Gardens Park. And, unlike a lot of casual family-fun activities under the sun and stars, this might be an occasion worth dressing up for.
In other words, get those classic poodle skirts and leather jackets down from the attic — because when John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John light up the big inflatable Shore Flicks screen at approximately 8:30 p.m. in the smash 1978 musical Grease, the Parks and Rec people will be looking for a few good Dannys, Sandys, Rizzos and Kenickies, with a costume competition that promises prizes (and a whole lot of post-prom bragging rights).
RED BANK: NEW MURAL POPS INTO VIEW
A colorful new mural bloomed to life on the Catherine Street wall of Kitch Organic restaurant in Red Bank over the weekend.
Executed by local children — and some adults who pulled a couple of all-nighters — the mural promotes two cultural events: the Indie Street Film Festival, which returns to town for a four-day run starting July 26; and the Crossing Borders Festival, featuring five days of free-admission Latino-flavored plays and food at the Two River Theater beginning August 2.
Artist Misha Tyutyunik, also known as MDot, created the design, reprising his role from the 2016 Indie Street mural on Monmouth Street. Click read more for additional pix. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
RED BANK: ‘MAUDIE’ THURSDAY AT BOW TIE
Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke star inhe bio-pic feature ‘Maudie,’ screening in a Thursday sneak-preview fundraiser at Red Bank’s Bow Tie Cinemas. (Photo by Trish Russoniello. Click to enlarge.)
She was the very definition of an “outsider artist:” a young woman crippled by arthritis and living a below-radar existence as a housekeeper in a Nova Scotia fishing village, whose colorful way of seeing the world elevated her to the status of Canada’s most cherished folk-art painter. Just as unlikely, and equally compelling, is the bond between Maud Lewis and her employer, the relationship at the heart of the biographical feature film “Maudie.”
A 2016 festival favorite that’s slated for general release in the United States on Friday, the film from director Aisling Walsh gets a sneak-peek screening Thursday as part of a special series at Red Bank’s Bow Tie Cinemas.
RED BANK: ‘PARIS’ IN THE SPRING
Alec Baldwin, Diane Lane and Arnaud Viard star in ‘Paris Can Wait,’ screening in a Thursday sneak-preview fundraiser at Red Bank’s Bow Tie Cinemas.
It maybe has some catching up to do with the likes of Cannes, but when it comes to being a mecca for first-run independent/”arthouse” feature films, Red Bank has long led the local pack — a fact that’s attributable primarily to White Street’s Bow Tie Cinemas (and its predecessor, Clearview Cinemas).
For most of the new millennium, the downtown movie house has done duty as official host venue for a series of sneak-preview screening events, spotlighting festival-favorite indies before they go into general release. Part of a long-running partnership between borough-based nonprofit Monmouth Arts and Sony Pictures Classics (the major distributor whose president, Tom Bernard, makes his home in Middletown), the series unspools once more this Thursday, May 11, with a 7:30 p.m. showing of “Paris Can Wait.”
RED BANK: LAST CALL FOR FEST ENTRIES
Press release from Indie Street Film Festival
Attention independent filmmakers – Sunday, May 7 is the final submissions deadline for the second annual Indie Street Film Festival (ISFF), set for July 26-30, 2017.
Taking place at multiple theatrical venues in Red Bank — including the historic Count Basie Theatre, the Two River Theater, Bow Tie Cinema and Red Bank Middle School — the festival will host attendees from around the world, but will maintain the grit and hard-working attitude that both New Jerseyans and Independent filmmakers have shared for decades.