This week I’ve once again picked a wonderfully eclectic collection of highlights. The first is the New Zealand television premiere of Candyman: The David Klein Story (Thursday 19th April, 8.30pm), directed by Wellington-based documentary filmmaker Costa Botes (Forgotten Silver, Daytime Tiger).
This week I’ve once again picked a wonderfully eclectic collection of highlights. The first is the New Zealand television premiere of Candyman: The David Klein Story (Thursday 19th April, 8.30pm), directed by Wellington-based documentary filmmaker Costa Botes (Forgotten Silver, Daytime Tiger).
This 2010 documentary tells the true story of David Klein, an American candy enthusiast who in 1976 changed forever the confectionary industry when he re-invented the ordinary jellybean. Klein took the jellybean and turned it into the Jelly Belly - brightly coloured and realistically flavoured - and created a pop culture phenomenon, President Regan’s favourite lolly (he used them to help give up smoking), and a billion dollar industry.
Klein had an altruistic nature and rather relaxed approach to business so ended up pretty much giving it all away - a decision that has haunted him, and his family, since. There’s a clear message for genius inventers dealing with the corporate world - get a good lawyer. Otherwise, this film documents David’s career and how one decision has affected his and his immediate family’s life, and ultimately offers a reconciliation between father and son.
Candyman was produced by Botes, Klein’s son Bert and his wife Jennifer Cardon-Klein and premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City (the highly respected Sundance Film Festival alternative that has been going since 1995). If you touch base later this week you can read my interview with Costa Botes about how this project came about.
From one corporate story to another, The Company Men screens on Saturday 21st April, 8.30pm. Starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper, The Company Men is written and directed by television producer, director and writer John Wells in his debut feature film.
The film follows three men made redundant when their company downsizes in response to the global financial crisis. It is a drama of our times, but it’s also takes a while to grow on you. Well’s main problem is that when we first meet the core characters they simply aren’t that likeable, especially Ben Affleck’s Porsche driving, golf playing, high flying corporate cliché. It’s a credit to the performances that the cast gradually reveal themselves and get you interested in how this turn of events in their lives affects them. They might not be the most relatable characters, but the idea that there is more to life than your job is, and it’s this idea that drives Wells’ film.
Finally, I hope you’ve been enjoying the celebration of director Ken Loach’s work, screening each Sunday night at 8.30pm. It’s easy to label Loach as just a “social realist”, but not all of his work is bleak and miserable! This Sunday Rialto Channel is screening one of my favourite Loach films, the charming romantic drama Ae Fond Kiss.
It’s a cross cultural romance between an Irish divorcee and a second generation Pakistani immigrant both living in Glasgow - which could hardly avoid a measure of cultural and social angst! But there’s also a warmth and sweetness you don’t often see in Loach’s harder hitting work, and while it was made in 2004 this, what is in effect a modern day Romeo and Juliet story, has hardly dated.
Enjoy.