Arts Express: Steve Coogan Talks The Dinner

*STEVE COOGAN TALKS THE DINNER
*PARIS CAN WAIT: A CONVERSATION WITH DIANE LANE AND ELEANOR COPPOLA

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Two new films mix cuisine and socio-cultural conflicted conversation:

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

** "No man is an island, and we have to engage with things around us and speak our minds - and even though that means sometimes I'm going to invite a little derision and some negativity from certain quarters - but I'm okay with that."

Steve Coogan phones in to Arts Express from London to talk about his role opposite Richard Gere in The Dinner. And a film as much a mirror reflecting back critically on the audience as it is a movie, in how the drama challenges viewers regarding impulses that can compromise enlightened idealistic values versus self-serving behavior - whether tribal, familial or both - that dehumanizes and destroys those labeled as the "Other." And by extension, that could be referring to director Oren Moverman's native Israel in its treatment of the Palestinians, or the US inflicting horror on the people of any number of countries - all in the context of a ridiculously ostentatious and pretentious designer dinner.
A feature of the Tribeca Film Festival

** "I personally find it delightful to partake in an offering of a movie that is without aliens, robots, explosions, train wrecks, dire disease and plagues, or invasions from other planets."

That's Diane Lane, talking about her starring role along with Alec Baldwin as her emotionally self-absorbed spouse, in Paris Can Wait. Lane and the writer/director Eleanor Coppola, wife of Francis Ford Coppola, met with Arts Express to discuss how they explore through this film together in front of and behind the camera as women. And the journey beyond what is much more than a road movie, the predominant male perspective, filter, lens and narratives dominating cinema.

** Tribeca Focus: The Foster File: A Kurt Vonnegut page to screen allegorical tale of Wall Street money versus musical obsession. Spotlighting humble grocery clerk Herbert Foster 'who never owned more than one pair of shoes at a time' - and his mysterious alternate persona  Mr. Firehouse Harris, three nights out of seven.
A Tribeca Film Festival feature.

More information about the Tribeca Film Festival is online at: Tribecafilm.com/festival

Arts Express: Airing on the WBAI/Pacifica National Radio Network and Affiliate Stations