Armand Assante (American Gangster, The Mambo Kings, The Lords of Flatbush) will make an appearance at this year’s Gasparilla International Film Festival.
UPDATE: Assante will be on hand for the screening of the Romanian-made California Dreamin‘, Sunday, March 1 at 2:50 p.m. at Channelside Cinemas.
The film, directed by the late Cristian Nemescu, stars Assante as a U.S. Marine captain assigned to escort a train carrying NATO equipment bound for Yugoslavia during the war in Kosovo.
Wrote J. Hoberman, in the Village Voice: “An unfinished film set in an unsettled corner of the world, Romanian director Cristian Nemescu’s California Dreamin’ ponders history’s cruelties even as, in a wholly unexpected way, it embodies them. Six weeks into editing this darkly farcical meditation on geopolitical haplessness, the talented 27-year-old filmmaker died in an automobile accident; nine months later, his first feature would win the Prix Un Certain Regard at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.”
Assante will be honored with the festival’s Career Achievement Award for Excellence in Film, to be presented at in his honor at the Dolce Vita Lounge. That reception will be held March 1 at 5 p.m., following the California Dreamin’ screening.
The actor also appears in another GIFF film, The Steam Experiment, starring Val Kilmer.
Screen veteran Terry Moore, to be honored on opening night, at Tampa Theatre, is also among the movie-world notables slated to attend the ihird annual fest, which runs Feb. 26 through March 7 at various Tampa venues.
Confessions of a Shopaholic – A chick-flick antidote to the recession blues? Stars Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers). Writes Betsy Sharkey, in the L.A. Times: “If you’re looking for a serious examination of the staggering credit-card debt so many in this nation carry and the families and lives destroyed by it, watch the nightly news . . . don’t look here. But if a knockabout farce of a thousand ways to outwit that persistent, pesky and downright unpleasant debt collector, played by a decidedly annoying Robert Stanton, while falling in love might amuse you, then feel free to indulge.”
Hell Walks the Earth – The off-brand zombie movie was directed by Terrence Muncy III, who recently relocated to Pinellas Park from Indiana, according to 
