It's that time of year again. Time for the annual Storefront Demme update. First up, today is Jonathan Demme's 63rd birthday. Happy birthday, Mr. Demme! There also happens to be some exciting news on the upcoming projects front. Demme is currently working on a Jimmy Carter documentary, entitled He Comes in Peace.
Believe it or not, this film has already been the source of controversy. As The Boston Globe reported last month, Jimmy Carter gave a speech at Brandeis University that Demme intended to use as the conclusion for his film, but Brandeis wouldn't let him photograph the event. "When I heard that we had been denied permission, I was kind of incredulous," Demme told The Globe. "They have in a way diminished everyone's ability to add to the debate, including the Brandeis students themselves. I thought, 'How can a film with the kind of aspirations we have be prevented from capturing a dialogue?"
The focus of the documentary is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is the subject of Carter's recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. The article explains that, as of January 20th, Demme had been shooting the documentary for three months.
There's actually a great deal of content that I've been meaning to add to the site and that will be coming in the weeks ahead. For now, go out and rent/buy the new The Silence of the Lambs DVD -- the fifth, by my count... though I stopped keeping track a while ago -- which features some fresh material, including an "All-New Jonathan Demme & Jodie Foster 3-part Documentary."
Next update (and no, you won't have to wait until 2008): some significant additions to the Music Videos section of the site.
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