Parker Posey

Parker Posey is hard to miss lately. Yes, that was Parker Posey you saw this week guest starring on "New Girl. " That was also her on that quirky Emmy Awards promo video . She was recently written about in the New Yorker . You'll also get more of her in theaters this month in "Price Check. " And, she just signed on for the Princess Grace biopic "Grace of Monaco. " The scene stealer and independent movie queen appears to be everywhere. But did you also know that she was born in Baltimore?

Parker Posey is hard to miss lately. Yes, that was Parker Posey you saw this week guest starring on "New Girl. " That was also her on that quirky Emmy Awards promo video . She was recently written about in the New Yorker . You'll also get more of her in theaters this month in "Price Check. " And, she just signed on for the Princess Grace biopic "Grace of Monaco. " The scene stealer and independent movie queen appears to be everywhere. But did you also know that she was born in Baltimore?

PARK CITY, Utah - Parker Posey could call the Sundance Film Festival her turf. A few years back, the Baltimore native became known as "Queen of the Indies" for appearing in three movies here. She has acted in more than 30 mostly low-budget productions in the last seven years. Sitting in a cafe the other day on Main Street, she wasn't feeling nostalgic. She is tired of the indie tag yet continues to align herself with small films such as this year's Personal Velocity, Rebecca Miller's smart take on three women at a crossroads.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS Sony DVD -- $26.96 When The New Yorker runs an essay on the allure of biography and headlines it "Lives of Others," you know this film has reached an ultimate of chic. But this year's Oscar-winner for best foreign film deserves more than its brilliant media and arthouse success; the film's sweeping, intricate narrative could make subtitle-readers out of pulp espionage fans. BROKEN ENGLISH Magnolia -- $26.98 "If there's any happiness to be found, it's in the arts," says Gena Rowlands in an interview on the DVD of Broken English.

"Father of the Bride: Part II""Father of the Bride: Part II" lets Steve Martin and Martin Short indulge in some large-scale comic shtick as it follows the arc by which Martin becomes both a father and a grandfather in the same nine months -- he's so happy his daughter is pregnant, he gets his wife pregnant! PG-13"Party Girl""Party Girl" is a New York item that follows as Parker Posey, playing a librarian, has an amusing career by night as a club hopper. R

Writer-director Zoe Cassavetes, the daughter of Gena Rowlands and the late actor-director John Cassavetes, has made a distinctive romantic comedy-drama called Broken English. If it lasts a month at the Charles, fans of the theater's film noir series should plan to make it a double-bill with In a Lonely Place (playing Aug. 18, 20 and 23), the 1950 romantic mystery that Cassavetes' heroine, Nora (Parker Posey), sees with a date at a Manhattan revival house. In that cult classic, Bogey plays a tormented, possibly homicidal screenwriter who tells the woman who's just fallen in love with him, "A good love scene should be about something else besides love.

Apart from its catchy title, "The House of Yes" is filled with hysteria, incest, murder and fetishizing. But you are likely to ask yourself sooner rather than later: Is this enough?The film was taken from a play and shows it in excessive talkiness and a far from helpful circularity, as it soon exhausts its meager supply of themes. First-time director Mark Waters is more adept at coaxing eruptions of black comedy from his strong cast than he is at carrying his script past its stage-bound limitations.

THE LIVES OF OTHERS Sony DVD -- $26.96 When The New Yorker runs an essay on the allure of biography and headlines it "Lives of Others," you know this film has reached an ultimate of chic. But this year's Oscar-winner for best foreign film deserves more than its brilliant media and arthouse success; the film's sweeping, intricate narrative could make subtitle-readers out of pulp espionage fans. BROKEN ENGLISH Magnolia -- $26.98 "If there's any happiness to be found, it's in the arts," says Gena Rowlands in an interview on the DVD of Broken English.

That Parker Posey gave a loopy, improvisational performance recently isn't unusual. It's just that, this time, she wasn't filming a movie. The indie urchin, obviously not cowed by the presence of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Eli Wallach, Clint Eastwood, Forest Whitaker, Pedro Almodovar, Oliver Stone, Jonathan Demme, Penelope Cruz, Djimon Hounsou and a barefoot Helen Mirren, had them belly-laughing as she admitted after...

Think of "In the Company of Men" from the other side of the reflecting glass, a haunting paeon to anti-careerism, a brilliant ensemble piece that shows how ensembles, especially of women, splinter and fall apart, and you get some idea of "Clockwatchers."Toni Collette plays Iris, a recent college grad who is being pressured into becoming a salesperson by her salesman father. But, instead, she signs on to be a temporary worker, and we meet her on her first day on the job at Global Credit, one of those faceless behemoths that seem to do nothing but produce paper and put it into different files and piles.

Writer-director Zoe Cassavetes, the daughter of Gena Rowlands and the late actor-director John Cassavetes, has made a distinctive romantic comedy-drama called Broken English. If it lasts a month at the Charles, fans of the theater's film noir series should plan to make it a double-bill with In a Lonely Place (playing Aug. 18, 20 and 23), the 1950 romantic mystery that Cassavetes' heroine, Nora (Parker Posey), sees with a date at a Manhattan revival house. In that cult classic, Bogey plays a tormented, possibly homicidal screenwriter who tells the woman who's just fallen in love with him, "A good love scene should be about something else besides love.

Parker Posey's prodigious work ethic finds her frequently pitching in extra help on lower-budgeted productions. She fetched coffee for Billy Kent, the director of one of her recent films, The OH in Ohio, and made the call to get Heather Graham on short notice for an unbilled part after another actress dropped out. Posey also suggested and snagged Justin Theroux for a part in her new film, Broken English. "I like getting involved," she said. "I'll take care of it. It comes from independent film; I got used to it - there's tape on the floor, pick it up. It's just an awareness you have, like peripheral vision when you're Rollerblading in traffic.

That Parker Posey gave a loopy, improvisational performance recently isn't unusual. It's just that, this time, she wasn't filming a movie. The indie urchin, obviously not cowed by the presence of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Eli Wallach, Clint Eastwood, Forest Whitaker, Pedro Almodovar, Oliver Stone, Jonathan Demme, Penelope Cruz, Djimon Hounsou and a barefoot Helen Mirren, had them belly-laughing as she admitted after...

HOLLYWOOD - Parker Posey hears two voices. One tells her she's an established film presence. The other tells her she's still swimming upstream. The voice of optimism reminds her that in her 10-year career she's played all manner of provocatively unhinged women in more than three dozen films, most notably a seductive Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis fanatic (The House of Yes), a sadistic cheerleader (Dazed and Confused), a manic show-dog owner (Best in Show), an aimless Dairy Queen attendant (Waiting for Guffman)

PARK CITY, Utah - Parker Posey could call the Sundance Film Festival her turf. A few years back, the Baltimore native became known as "Queen of the Indies" for appearing in three movies here. She has acted in more than 30 mostly low-budget productions in the last seven years. Sitting in a cafe the other day on Main Street, she wasn't feeling nostalgic. She is tired of the indie tag yet continues to align herself with small films such as this year's Personal Velocity, Rebecca Miller's smart take on three women at a crossroads.

Energetic, good-hearted and slyly self-referential, "Josie and the Pussycats" makes points about the ceaseless materialism and crass commercialism of modern-day America by chronicling the exploits of a rock band created to sell comic books. And if that central irony isn't enough to get young audiences into theaters (and it probably isn't), there's this, too: The film rocks. Josie and her feline band-mates started off as characters in Archie comics and even had their own Saturday morning cartoon show for a time (most latter-day baby boomers remember the theme song well)

You call a movie "Party Girl" and everyone expects: clubs, fashions, booze, sex, attractive superficiality. All of which "Party Girl," which opens today at the Charles, pretty much delivers.What you don't expect, however, is exactly what the story also delivers: an account of a young woman finding that the true party in life is offered by a big building full of books, called a library. This movie could, in fact, have been called "Library Girl," though I doubt it would have done as well.Starring an energetic young actress named Parker Posey, it watches as Posey's Mary begins life as the original party animal, a creature drawn totally to the bright lights of the big city and no other phenomenon on earth.

"The Daytrippers" is like one of those Thanksgiving meals where it is not the food that causes the indigestion but all the resentment flitting lethally around the table.Usually, those dinners are excruciating because it's your own family. But since "The Daytrippers" isn't about your relatives, you're more likely to appreciate the poignancy and humor in watching the disintegration of a Long Island family one blustery day.Written and directed by Greg Mottola, "The Daytrippers" is a heartening example of what can be done on nothing but pocket change -- for Hollywood anyway -- and sly observation.

Think of "In the Company of Men" from the other side of the reflecting glass, a haunting paeon to anti-careerism, a brilliant ensemble piece that shows how ensembles, especially of women, splinter and fall apart, and you get some idea of "Clockwatchers."Toni Collette plays Iris, a recent college grad who is being pressured into becoming a salesperson by her salesman father. But, instead, she signs on to be a temporary worker, and we meet her on her first day on the job at Global Credit, one of those faceless behemoths that seem to do nothing but produce paper and put it into different files and piles.

Apart from its catchy title, "The House of Yes" is filled with hysteria, incest, murder and fetishizing. But you are likely to ask yourself sooner rather than later: Is this enough?The film was taken from a play and shows it in excessive talkiness and a far from helpful circularity, as it soon exhausts its meager supply of themes. First-time director Mark Waters is more adept at coaxing eruptions of black comedy from his strong cast than he is at carrying his script past its stage-bound limitations.