BEHIND THE LENS #297: Featuring Stephen Janis, Deanne Foley and Latonia Hartery

It's a full house this week on #BTLRadioShow thanks to our special guests, filmmakers STEPHEN JANIS, DEANNE FOLEY, and LATONIA HARTERY. Plus, some quick review bytes on two new films streaming everywhere right now – ME YOU MADNESS and PARADISE COVE.

One of my fave films of the year already is ME YOU MADNESS, written and directed by LOUISE LINTON and starring Linton and Ed Westwick. Irreverant, politically incorrect, high octane, glamorous, breaking the fourth, rapier wit-filled darkly comedic action movie love story, ME YOU MADNESS is delicious dark decadent fun from start to finish. Linton shows good command as not only a wordsmith, but as a storyteller (much of which I believe we can credit to her trial advocacy skills as a lawyer) is well constructed and structured. Visually, Linton knocks it out of the park with polish and color thanks to cinematographers Reinhart Reschke and Boa Simon, whose lighting and lensing only serve to elevate the already sumptuous production design of Allura Johnson and Travis Zariwny, while editor Samuel Means maintains high octane energy, most notably in some over-the-top musical montages set to touchstone needle drops of the past few decades. (I want the soundtrack.)

And then there's PARADISE COVE. Written by Sherry Klein and directed by Martin Guigi, PARADISE COVE stars veteran actors Todd Grinnell, Mena Suvari, and Kristin Bauer van Straten in this psychological thriller genre blend based on a true story. Van Straten stars as Bree, a once-wealthy Malibu matriarch and actress who has lost her home but refuses to leave the Paradise Cove colony, now living on the beach underneath her once home. Grinnell and Suvari are Knox and Tracey, a young married couple looking to get rich quick by flipping the Malibu beach home of Knox's recently deceased mother. Of course, that home was once Bree's and under which Knox and Tracey find her. Performances are solid with van Straten soaring as Bree. And while the script itself is unremarkable and easily fills the bill as a Lifetime TV movie versus a "theatrical" release film, elevating the film as a whole is Guigi's direction and his collaboration with DP Massimo Zeri, production designer Alessandro Marvelli (who uses color and texture to define and distinguish the character traits of our principals) and editor Eric Potter, the latter who delivers some truly shocking moments thanks to abrupt emotional cuts.

Co-directors DEANNE FOLEY and LATONIA HARTERY join us live in the first half of the show talking about their charming and sweet anthology narrative about love and romance, HOPELESS ROMANTIC. Six women, six stories about love, all told within the setting of a wedding complete with the good, the bad, and the ugly cry. You laugh, you cry, you nod your head in sympathy, and by film's end you may even find yourself more of a "hopeful" romantic than not. Deanne directs one of the "segments" as well as the umbilical throughline while Latonia is not only one of the directors but a producer of the film which meant she was on hand for virtually all of the filming. Listen as Deanne and Latonia talk about the genesis of this anthology, collaboration amongst all six female directors, crafting characters and casting, diversity of characters, finding cohesive yet individually distinctive tone, using one cinematographer and one editor for the entire film and each segment, scoring, and let's not forget, the wealth of talent in the Nova Scotia area who we see on screen and behind the lens.

Joining us at the midpoint of the show for a fascinating conversation about his documentary, THE FRIENDLIEST TOWN, is STEPHEN JANIS. An award-winning investigative journalist, author, musician, and now writer/co-director/editor of the documentary, Steph.

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