Bill's Movie News and Reviews

"A Wrinkle in Time": a kids' view of other planets

2009-11-21T20:35:00.000-08:00

On a weekend where “everybody” is flocking to Twilight II, I looked at an overlooked TV film from 2004, Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time”, directed by John Kent Harrison, based on the children’s novel by Madeleine L’Engle.

A physicist Jack Murry (Chris Potter) dematerializes while experimenting with extra dimensions, along with an assistant Hank. The son and daughter, along with a neighborly teen Calvin O’Keefe (played by a wholesome Gregory Smith, then 20) go through some time warps, visiting two planets: the first green with sharp-top mountains like those in China and huge birds (probably a thick atmosphere), and then a polluted world Camazotz. Maybe the planets were inspired by the solar system in Frank Herbert’s Dune (a film in 1984). The kids are accompanied by three female “angels” (Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which).

The second planet is really pretty interesting conceptually. The sky is cloudy with soot and orange, hazy pollution. There are townhouses on a concrete street without yards, leading to a central headquarters surrounded by a circle of offices in a pinwheel. Inside the headquarters there are endless concrete passageways, and the aliens can put the kids (especially Calvin) out with their own kind of anesthesia. It’s a kind of hell, or perhaps southern California in the future, after a century of global warming. Kids can shoot hoops or ride skateboards when a cop tells them that the scheduled "hour" for them to do so has come (sounds like school).

There are other interesting concepts. The daughter gets detention for correcting her male science teacher in an early scene. Later, there is a script line “being equal doesn’t mean being the same.” A lot of the writing sounds metaphorical.

Gregory Smith's character has a basketball hoops flashback where he acts a bit like a superman (maybe an expansion of "Everwood").

The DVD is full screen (unfortunately), and comes from Dimension Films, which at the time was part of Disney (and the Weinstein Company).

Here is Walt Disney Studio UK’s official trailer for the upcoming (2010) “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” with a very muscular Jake Gyllenhaal.

Check also a blog on this film trailer here.

"William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe": POV biography of a daring civil rights lawyer by his daughters

2009-11-20T22:42:00.000-08:00

William Kunstler was a famour, perhaps notorious civil rights lawyer. Two of his daughters Emily and Sarah (born when he was 57) have made a documentary film about him, “William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe”, from ArtHouse Films. It is also sponsored by PBS point-of-view so it should air eventually on PBS. I saw it at Landmark E Street in Washington, website here. Kunstler (1919-1995) was an “accidental war hero” in the Pacific, and came home to Westchester County NY to start a conventional law practice. He gradually developed a passion for civil rights. He defended the “Chicago 7” (or Chicago 10) in 1969 and was actually sentenced to four years for contempt of court, which he never served. He would say that he was "paying his dues" and earning "the privilege of being listened to" (as I call the concept elsewhere), by taking the same risks and punishment as his defendants. Later he defended native Americans at Wounded Knee, SD (as covered in a book by Russell Means, well known in libertarian circles, as he spoked at a Libertarian Party of Minnesota convention in 2001). He would also defend prisoners at Attica during the 1971 uprising, which is covered quite graphically in the film with a lot of real footage. Later he would defend perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, preceding 9/11.

Kunstler believed that tyrants maintain power by making despotic practices “legal”.

Note: In 2007, HBO aired its popular (and long) docudrama "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" 2007, HBO / Picturehouse, dir. Yves Simoneau, 123 min, PG-13, book by Dee Alexander Brown.

"The Men Who Stare at Goats" and the New Earth Army: Remote viewing (not just from Area 51)

2009-11-19T16:24:00.000-08:00

If you stare at certain animals (including people) you can freak them out. Hence the title of “The Men Who Stare at Goats”, directed by Grant Heslov for BBC and Overture Films. A journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), seeking for adventure to run from a sinking marriage, meets Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a special forces agent who aims to end war as we know it with psychic operations. The film is supposed to take place in Kuwait and Iraq, but most of it was filmed in White Sands, New Mexico (although it is UK-funded). There really are some goats, and they are not George W.’s “my pet goat” (“W.” makes a cameo in the film).

Wilton and Cassady are kind of like a tag-team of “brothers”, almost Supernatural-style, for a lot of the movie, getting each other out of jams. But there are a lot of flashbacks that track the Army’s supposed psychic operations back to Vietnam , with Jeff Bridges as the lead exponent, and Kevin Spacey as the balding, aging Cheney-like defense contractor. As with many indie films today, this one has a lot of A-list stars. In the end, the reporter will learn how to go through walls himself.

Attribution link for Wikipedia picture of White Sands. I visited the area of 1979, and it figures in to Dan Fry's "To Men od Earth".
The film talks about “remote viewing”, which is supposedly a way that the CIA learns about alien civilizations that could have outposts on Mars, Europa, or Titan. There was a book on the topic by Courtney Brown in the 1990s called “Cosmic Voyage” which claims that there is a remote viewing training center in the Charlottesville, VA area. Here it’s another technique of the New Earth Army. In the movie, there’s one scene that takes place at “Area 51.”

You do wonder what dabbling in telepathy and the paranormal would do to “don’t ask don’t tell”. A lot more that what Facebook does.

The film is based on a book by Jon Ronson and claims to be based on true events. The names have been changed to protect the innocent (and to protect "online reputation").

Revisiting "A Separate Peace" (1972), based on the coming of age novel by John Knowles

2009-11-18T19:00:00.001-08:00

I see very few films (in theaters) twice, but Paramount’s version (directed by Larry Peerce, adapted by Fred Seagl) of John Knowles “bildungsroman” or “coming of age” novel “A Separate Peace” is one of the very few. I saw it the first time in 1972 while living in northern VA and working for the government and being near my home of origin, and a second time six months later after moving to New Jersey on a new job, when I was on the verge of “coming out.”

The protagonist is Gene, played by Parker Stevenson, a likeable young man, good student and just a fair athlete. It’s 1943 in prep school in New Hampshire, and boys know they will be drafted at their 18th birthdays, so they have to live fully now. Gene feels drawn to Finny (John Heyl) who is more athletic and, importantly, more extroverted and socially charismatic.

Perhaps Gene resents his attachment, which can become a little clingy. One day they are in the woods and Finny climbs a tree and Gene follows. Perhaps out of a subconscious compulsion, Gene jousts the limb (as he says in the novel). Finny falls and breaks a leg.

Eventually, although Finny maintains the friendship and seems oblivious to suspicion, Finny suddenly dies of a secondary embolism. That would not be very likely today, although anytime someone is in bed nursing care includes watching for clots and using blood thinners if necessary. Gene finds out when he makes a visit to the hospital.

I had a friendship that was a bit like this while working at that government job, and the movie did relate to what was going on in my life before I “came out.”

The book would be recommended fiction in high school English classes.

"Life Is a Banquet": Biography of actress Rosalind Russell

2009-11-16T20:23:00.001-08:00

On Monday, WETA Channel 26 presented the one hour film by Jonathan Gruber, “Life Is a Banquet: The Rosalind Russell Story”, produced by the Total Media Group. The film is narrated by Kathleen Turner. Tom Brokaw and Hayle Mills appear.

Rosalind Russell became a stage and movie star in both New York and Hollywood when movie starts were aloof and remote from the public. She performed in Leonard Bernstein’s “Wonderful Town”, lesser known than some of his other works, and with a more limited range.

One of her most important films would be “Auntie Mame” (1958) which has Mame (Rosalind) having to raise a nephew after a family tragedy, a theme discussed here before.

Russell would develop breast cancer and have double radical mastectomy, and then severe rheumatoid arthritis. She would die at the age of 63 in 1976, and a hospital in San Francisco would be named after her.
There is an apparently unrelated song “Life Is a Banquet” by Scribbie Tunes on YouTube, here.

Can a movie be ("Untitlted")? Maybe so, if it pokes fun at artistic "arrogance"?

2009-11-15T05:47:00.000-08:00

Once, when lined up to go through a maze in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, a guy behind me, from Brazil, said, the whole point of this modern art is to make you feel like s___.

So we have a satire of modern art and modern music, or at least the apparent attitude of the artists, without a title, that is “(Untitled)”, from Jonathan Parker and Samuel Goldwyn Films. Adam Goldberg plays Adrian Jacobs, the avant-garde composer who works with ordinary objects (like pails) as percussion instruments. His brother Josh (Eion Bailey) sells correspondingly avant garde paintings, but his stuff works only for people who collect for the sake of collecting. Madeleine Gray (any inspiration from the Madeleine of “Vertigo”?) befriends Josh while running her gallery, and then tests him, shall we say. Monroe (Ptolemy Slocum) carries all this even further, with one piece consisting of a red dot, which he calls “Untitled”, and with other pieces like “light going on and off”.

Adrian catches plenty of flak for his attitude, especially after a “concert” performance of a piece early in the film. He says he will work three more years and then do away with himself. He earns a living as a piano player in hotel lobbies, sometimes playing Chopin or Grieg, but then bangs on the piano the way we used to as kids (we called it imitating the Army once) before I started taking my piano lessons more seriously. At one point Adrian says "noise is simply unwanted sound", as if he could afford the irony; he can't.

On of brother Josh's art exhibits is based on dead mammals (including a cat) and is a bit offensive, even in the satirical context of this film!

Both brothers, however fortyish, are lithe, lean, virile, hairy, and mammalian. (The canera likes to focus on Adrian's gams.) One wonders why they find so much satisfaction in nihilism!

The movie has an excerpt of a performance from Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire”, to show what “legitimate” atonal music should sound like.

So is this movie a satire of artistic arrogance? Does it make fun of self-expression for its own sake, or of just plain attention-getting?

The film played late Saturday night to a fair crowd at Landmark E Street in downtown Washington DC. The audience did find it funny. The film is shot in Panavision Digital, in full 2.35:1, to focus more on the setting and "art" than just the characters, who "look" likeable enough. There are not that many closeups.

The website for the film is here.

John Cusack's lighter role was "Must Love Dogs"

2009-11-14T14:11:00.000-08:00

While John Cusack gets a lot of visibility this weekend as an Everyman author who taps in to the end of the world ("2012, previous entry"), I checked out an earlier romantic comedy from Warner Brothers and director Gary David Goldberg, “Must Love Dogs”, based on a novel by Claire Cook.

Cusack is the good guy here, but the interest in this film partly comes from the fact that it came out just as social networking sites were becoming popular, and perhaps before people realized that their reputations could suffer from too much digital dirt. Here, a pre-school teacher Sarah Nolan (Diane Lane) goes along with her family’s intention that she find a boyfriend before she becomes an outright cougar (pun). Both Bob (Dermot Mulroney) and Jake (Cusack) are just barely not too young for her, but she plays a gimmick, you have to be a dog lover. Now I suppose you could try the same plot idea with “equal time for cats” (or cougars, particularly). We see some athletic talents here, like crew team, and maybe dogs can row as well as swim.

The DVD has a couple of "testimonials" from characters, left out of the film, and a gag reel called "Pass the Beef" (not pass the barf") where Cusack gets to be funny.

"The Fourth Kind" is more fact-or-faction docudrama than a gee-whiz UFO abduction movie

2009-11-12T19:49:00.000-08:00

The film “The Fourth Kind”, from Olatunde Osunsamni, could be a typical sci-fi abduction thriller, showing the grays doing medical examinations of hapless humans. But it never shows anything. Ratherm it explores a series of disappearances, centering around psychologist Abbey Tyler, from Nome Alaska (almost as far west as one can go, and near the Arctic circle, much more in the boonies than Sarah Palin) as a docudrama, much of it conducted in interviews by Osunsamni himself, many with embedded video clips of Tyler herself, looking quite haggard. The actress who plays her, Milla Jovovich, looks much more vital, even as her own encounter approaches. But in format, this film is rather like Frost-Nixon, perhaps with a little of the fact-or-fiction style of the 1998 cult thriller “The Last Broadcast” about the supposed Jersey Devil.

The story is a bit complicated, as Tyler is investigating why a Nome man killed his family, as she gets drawn in herself. Eventually her daughter disappears, through the roof of her palatial home, and then she may have an encounter herself. (In the vernacular: Third Kind is sighting of aliens; Fourth Kind is actual abduction by aliens. ) The abductions are simulated by broken and vacillating (to the point of abstraction) embedded tape sequences that almost call to mind “Blair Witch Project” as well as “The Exorcist”. The bit about the presumed shadowy aliens speaking in Sumerian (as deciphered from the casette tapes) is quite interesting.

The film provides a lot of documentation (white on black, colors reversed) in the closing credits, as to what happened to Tyler and the other characters, and the idea that there could have been a G-man coverup.

Personally, I think a real abduction scene, with the medical examinations, could make for some interesting stuff. I did see Philippe Mora's film of Wesley Strieber's book "Communion" back in 1989 (New Line)and as I recall the film built up to recreating the dreamed or remembered encounter with the aliens.

The film was shot in Bulgaria and north of Vancouver. It looks a little more lush than Nome would really look in October (2000). The film is distributed by Universal and the production company is Gold Crest.

(For review of "This Is It" see the "drama blog"; for "2012" see the "disaster movies blog".)

"Taking Chance": HBO film on Veterans Day about a Marine funeral escort

2009-11-11T19:47:00.000-08:00

On Veterans Day, HBO aired an original film “Taking Chance”, directed by Ross Katz, about Marine Lt. Col. Michael Strobl (Kevin Bacon, very much cleaned up) who volunteers for a detail to escort the remains of PFC Chance Phelps back to Wyoming. The screenplay is supposed to be based on actual true events in 2004. HBO’s webpage for the film is this.

Strobl has a desk job in the Pentagon, analyzing force levels overseas in Iraq and elsewhere, and finds he is not taken seriously by his peers who have served on actual combat deployments. In the course of his escort, he meets and talks to many people in all kinds of situations. At one point, a Northwest Airlines pilot asks the passengers to endure some inconvenience as his detail is removed from the plane. Then he must learn the story of Phelps’s death in combat, and, moreover, his unique personality, which survived basic training intact to an unusual degree. If more young men in the world we like Phelps, we wouldn’t need a Marine Corps; we would be at peace.

National Aquarium presents some of "Planet Earth" in 4-D "Immersion Theater"

2009-11-10T17:36:00.000-08:00

The National Aquarium in Baltimore offers a 4-D Immersion Theater with a short film “Shallow Seas” from the BBC “Planet Earth”, reviewed on the TV blog July 11, 2008.

The 4-D experience is similar to what is offered at the Newseum in Washington, but is even more startling, sometimes poking the visitor in the back or spraying the visitor. Most of this short was filmed near Argentina and some near Northern Australia.

The film was preceded by a “preview” of the Northern Australia exhibit, itself in 4-D with a crocodile, with a 4-D chair pegs simulating a bite. The film depicted the two extreme seasons (wet and dry) with extreme brush fires started by lightning just before the wet season.

Remember “Sensurround” for the 1974 movie “Earthquake”?

Related: today, see also “Drama review blog” today (see Profile) for dolphin show.

PBS stations air "The Soviet Story" by Edvins Snore

2009-11-09T20:34:00.000-08:00

On Monday November 9, Maryland Public Television aired for free viewing the 2008 documentary film “The Soviet Story" (website link url) by Latvian director Edvins Snore (distributor Perry Street Films).

The film starts out by comparing the ideologies of Communism (Marxism, Leninism, etc) with early Nazism or early National Socialism, and shows that they were both “Utopian” in one sense but willing to murder and purge enemies to set up “cleansed”, “perfect” societies. Communism readily accepted that it had to eliminate “backward” or “pre-capitalist” populations. Even after WWII, even today perhaps, Communism does not view the elimination of “backward” peoples to make way for a perfect society to be a “crime.” And in Europe today, especially Britain, there are political battles over extraditing former Soviet war criminals.

History documents the early agreements between Hitler and Stalin, which would help Hitler start his invasions in 1939. The film does skip over what made the Soviet Union “join” the Allies, leading to the huge battles in 1942, with the eventual partition of Germany and Berlin in 1945 (it’s interesting that this film is aired during the week of the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall).

But Soviet atrocities would continue throughout and after the war, as Stalin would murder more than 20 million people, three times as many as Hitler. Stalin would pursue his enemies relentlessly, having Trotsky brutally murdered in Mexico City by a hit man.

The music score contains excerpts from the Requiem by Gabriel Faure.

Viewers might want to review the Washington Times column from Nov. 8 by Jeffrey T. Kuhner, Rebirth of an old scourge: Call it Cold War 2.0, in fascist black instead of red”, link here.

Wikipedia attribution link for picture of Auschwitz ruins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Auschwitzruins.jpg I made a personal visit on May 25, 1999.

Lionsgate has DVD of John Huston's "The Dead" (famous James Joyce story)

2009-11-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

Hats off to Lionsgate for releasing a DVD of John Huston’s last film, the little 1987 mini-classic “The Dead”, an Irish film originally distributed by Vetron, running all of 73 minutes. The first 45 minutes or so dramatize a Christmas dinner party in a “1900 House” in Dublin, supposedly in 1904, on a snowy early winter night. That part of the film plays like an episode of PBS’s “Masterpiece Theater”, with the little performances (a piano march, not identified, but I believe it is by John Field), then a “recitation” of a poem called “Broken Vows” (rather like “Transfigured Night”), and then a wonderful Christmas dinner, complete with flaming pudding, family style, in the days before high tech and media when people really appreciated social occasions. It’s relevant that the house belongs to two unmarried sisters, both musicians.

The film was adapted by screenwriter Tony Huston from the short story of the same name by James Joyce, from a collection called “The Dubliners”. Husband and wife guests Gabriel and Greta Conroy are played by Donal McCann and Anjelica Huston. The other guests leave, and the Conroys ride home in a coach, and face an issue vexing their marriage. Greta reveals an affection that she once had for a 17 year old boy who died, perhaps of consumption, but she feels because of her. Gabriel then soliloquizes that he is living in a state of shutdown; perhaps he is already dead (as if he had Cotard's Syndrome). During the dinner, there had been clues, such as the idea that theology was getting redesigned to “get us off the hook.”

English teachers will like this DVD and should show it in high school.

The story has gotten mentioned in connection with a couple of more recent films, which seem far afield in style from this one. For example, in 2007 the Yari Film Group distributed a film by Mark Fergus, “First Snow,” about a jute box salesman (Guy Pearce) who learns that his life will stop with the first autumn Rocky Mountain snow, and his experience suggests his life is already running out of him. Or try Goran Dukic’s “Wristcutters: A Love Story” (2007), from Halycon, in which a young man (Patrick Fugit) has apparently tried suicide upon losing a girl friend, and finds himself in a colorless purgatory where the laws of physics don’t quite work right.

(Related: on main blog, post n April 18, 2007).

What's in "The Box"? Maybe nothing, but a bizarre chain letter and moral challenge

2009-11-06T19:36:00.000-08:00

Back in the early 1980s there was a black comedy called “Basket Case” that had the great script line “What’s in the basket?” (A millstone.) And I recall an HR meeting back in the middle 1990s when I carried some papers in a cardboard box, closed, and the HR woman asked, “what’s in the box?”

For a young couple, with a nice middle school son, in Richmond VA (played by James Marsden and Cameron Diaz) that was a good question. It starts off innocently enough on a cold rainy morning after Thanksgiving when they find a package on the doorstep in their suburban Richmond home. Okay, Mom is a prep school English literature teacher , and Dad is an engineer at Langley which, in Hampton VA (beyond Williamsburg and Ft. Eustis) is a 60 mile commute. And no matter that Richmond usually wouldn’t have much snow by early December.

This sets up, as moviegoers say, a good story, for Richard Kelly’s latest excursion into existential thrillers, “The Box.” He opens his movie with some CIA teletypes about a guy that has gotten out of a burn unit and is delivering bizarre presents to private home, apparently with the intention of creating bizarre chain letter. The man is Arlington Steward, played by a creepy but assertive Frank Langella, with part of his face burned away. “I am not a monster” he reassures Norma. No, a freak accident with lightning may have made him an extraterrestrial deity.

This is all back in late 1976, when Arthur is an engineer on the Viking Mars landing, which you think will fit into the bizarre plot. Probably most readers now have heard about the moral puzzle: press the button, you get one million dollars, and someone you don’t know will die. You can see how that can set up the illegal chain letter – but only when frivolous wives take the challenge. Husband and wife here will be confronted with their own moral challenges, with a new kind of Catholic complementarity.

In form, the movie becomes a bizarre treasure hunt (rather like "Vertigo"), with lots of foreshadowing and clues, with an imagination for how technology would go viewed from 1976. It’s interesting to see all this without the Internet or social media figuring into the story.

The Richmond location looks good (we see Broad Street in snow), and imdb shows that Kelly himself is a young man (about 34) from the Old Dominion -- previously known for “Donnie Darko” (naming his production company -- the longer director's cut is what you should see now) and “Southland Tales” (which epilated Justin Timberlake). Kelly wrote the screenplay based on a short story “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson (there is a red button on the Box). This time, the movie has big studio distribution (Warner Brothers). The moral tone of the movie is indeed conservative, and fits the results of the latest GOP sweep in the 2009 election in Virginia.

Pictures: mine (from 2004)

"Cold Showers": French film looks at teens in the world of judo

2009-11-04T20:13:00.000-08:00

“Cold Showers” (“Douches froides”) is a curious little French film, directed by Antony Cordier, about a teen (hopefully 18+ but this is Europe) triangle, with two young men on the judo team. Vanessa (Salome Stevenin) is probably more of a catalyst then a heroine.

Mickael (Johan Libereau) struggles in school and his parents have problems that remind one of the 2008 crisis (the film was made in 2005 but socialistic France is not always a bed of roses for the underprivileged by any means). He befriends Clement (Pierre Perrier), from a well-to-do family with a disabled father. But, unlike the case of so many films, Clement is a charismatic, totally likeable character who helps other people and is not spoiled in any sense. The home scene that introduces him has the Mozart Requiem playing.

The technical scenes involving judo or karate are interesting, and eventually there is a ménage of sorts mixed in with the sport. Mickael and Clement never really become interested in one another, although the film seems to set up that expectation for LGBT audiences. There is a subplot about Mickael having to make weight, and in one scene is made to puke so that he just gets under; the whole episode shows how far men have to go for competitive sports.

The director views his film as a set of metaphors: sports is a sublimation for sexuaity, and the threesome is a metaphor for class struggle. In the end, the rich win. His remarks do suggest sexual tension between the young men as just below the surface, coming out in the physical contact of sport. He also views adolescence as a metaphor for political renaissance. Perhaps some will see the film as a "left wing" political statement. Michael Moore belongs in this crowd.

The DVD is distributed by Picture This! which often distributes LGBT movies. The theatrical distributor was Bac films. (Do not confuse the film with "Cold Souls".)

Wikimedia attribution link for Paris picture here.

I was in Paris in 1999 and 2001.

"By the People: The Election of Barack Obama" on HBO Election Day 2009

2009-11-03T20:27:00.000-08:00

On Election Day in 2009 (Tuesday, November 3), HBO premiered its original documentary by Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, “By the People: The Election of Barack Obama”. One year ago this same Tuesday, around 11 PM EDT, Obama gave his acceptance speech “Yes We Can” at Grant Park in Chicago. The HBO website for the film is here.

The film traces the history of the primaries, and his surprising domination, staying in the lead from the beginning. Some moments in the campaign where Hillary Clinton speaks are recapitulated (“you can’t choose your parents, but you can choose your pastor!”) But people, even kids, are shown being recruited to work for the Obama candidacy.

Obama gives a speech praising “quiet heroes” who don’t seek personal limelight or getting into the newspapers (what about blogs?) but instead look after their families: their children and grandchildren.

Michelle has to consider how much of her work (how much time) to support what seemed like an improbable run for the presidency at first.

The president gets to be a movie star in this one.

HBO provides the deleted scenes at YouTube.

If the film has a theatrical release in the US, it will probably be handled by Sony Pictures Classics (too bad we don’t have New Line’s Picturehouse, HBO’s theatrical partner until last year, any more; Time Warner should bring it back and use it).

This film reminds me of the 1993 release "The War Room" directed by Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker, from October Films, about the Clinton 1992 presidental win, with George Stephanopolous a major player (looking much younger).

"An Education": music, reading English at Oxford, and teenage temptations

2009-11-01T05:18:00.000-08:00

The memoir of Lynn Barner and adapted screenplay by Nick Hornby provides a British 60s “period” comedy, touching many areas, in a film by Lone Scherfig, “An Education”, a big looking, full widescreen film from Sony Pictures Classics.

Jenny (Carey Mulligan), 16, attends a stuffy prep school for girls as her parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) push her toward an Oxford education. She is talented with the cello, playing Elgar (the Third Symphony is excerpted – popular in the 50s but rarely heard today), along with Ravel’s Fantasy. She has a very nice teen boyfriend her own age (Matthew Beard) from the school orchestra whose company her parents encourage. They imagine that she could marry a famous author like CS Lewis (I chuckled at this one) as the book “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (a Disney movie a few years ago) figures into the script.

But she meets the Jewish, fortyish real estate man David (Peter Sarsgaard) who sweeps her away, meeting her on the street by offering a ride for her cello! We learn he is a bit seedy: he makes a living by busting neighborhoods and going in and buying up abandoned flats for low prices. He sweeps her away, offering her a whirlwind life in Paris and other continental places, aiming to “have fun”. He picks up a banana as a metaphor for ending her innocence.

Will she be able to “read English” at Oxford after throwing it away? We’ll see. The movie stays within PG-13 territory, but just barely.

"Roman Holiday": Trumbo was blacklisted when this classic was made

2009-10-29T21:03:00.000-07:00

Back in September, PBS stirred up some interest in the onetime blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, and one of his most famous stories that made it to film is “Roman Holiday”, from Paramount, in 1953, directed by William Wyler. Trumbo was not credited at the time because he was on the “Commie” blacklist. In those days, Hollywood made romantic comedies in black and white but made them look stylish and artsy, somewhat like today’s indie films. Imagine the Coliseum in black and white (compared to how it looks in all those 50s Fox Cinemascope spectacles).

The film was the first (for Americans) with Audrey Hepburn, as the spoiled princess (on tour in Rome) who first (with some nihilism) tells her servant she thinks she is dying and then “escapes” to be a real person (“Ayna Smith”). (Imagine if Prince William or Harry wanted to become “ordinary people.”) Having gotten it “in the muscle” from the nurse before escaping, she falls asleep outside, and is found by a wayward journalist Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck). He takes her to his apartment , where she wakes up in a potentially embarrassing situation (by 50s standards). But then he needs his “people skills” to get a real tabloid scoop for his editor (Hartley Power), who has been on the verge of firing him.

There is a class-conscious bit of dialogue when Hepburn rides on the motorcycle with Peck through streets in Rome, "I can do just what I want all day long; you have to work." Yes, a princess runs away and finds out she could have to work too. Just a tad of Marxism maybe.

The movie speaks to a lot of the cultural standards of the day, as to how “public relations” is hard work. In one funny scene, Ayna takes her first cigarette. Later, screenwriters would feel “guilty” for making cigarette smoking glamorous!

The DVD has a stort "Remembering Roman Holiday" which explains how Trumbo wrote many screenplays under pseudonyms during the blacklist. The short also explains the concept of a princess running away to the real world, and who at the same time Princess Margaret had an affair with a commoner, Mr. Townsend, but at the end, just as in the movie, had to go back to her "official duties." This more or less is the ending of the film, upbeat as it is, especially with the music score by Georges Auric.

There is also a short "Restoring Roman Holiday" which explains the difference between preserving films (less than 25 years old) and restoring them. The name "Dalton Trumbo" was added back to the credits during the resoration.

The DVD also has a short about Edit Head.

Eventually Ayna has to deal with her "loyalty" to her "family" and unnamed "country". Some choices you don't get to make.

The film was remade for television in 1987.

"Paranormal Activity" - a real "Dogme" horror film

2009-10-27T20:19:00.000-07:00

After seeing the Lars Van Trier film Monday, Tuesday I saw a true “Dogme” horror film, done with all the handhelds and close-ups in the limited space of a suburban San Diego home (in 2006, before the real estate collapse). I’m talking about “Paranormal Activity”, which doesn’t leave much room for Heterosexual Activity between Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston. Yup, like “AntiChrist” this is a “He and She” movie (“Bugcrush” at least was “He and He”). All too soon, the geeky Micah (an about-30 very likeable guy) sets up webcams over the house to photograph the Happenings, hoping to see the ghost. The Ouija board scene is clever, and reminds me of a Ouija session I had in Brooklyn New York in 1978 (it moved), or even of being hypnotized by a roommate at the University of Kansas in 1967 (my arm levitated).

A lot is made of the fact that the movie was produced (by Blumhouse Productions, written and directed by Oren Peli) for between $11K and $15K and yet has made tremendous profits. It’s odd that Paramount and Dreamworks both used their full-corporate trademarks on billboards to distribute the movie (rather than using Paramount Vantage). But the film itself had no rolling credits and no distributor marks. It merely had the opening and closing typewritten narratives about the fact that this was a real event as discovered by San Diego police. “Napoleon Dynamite” (with Jon Heder) was distributed under the full Paramount label, as I remember.

In fact, Film Bloggery has a story that Peli is looking for a distributor for “Area 51”, link here. Other sources say that Steven Spielberg picked up this HD film (sounds like it could have gone to Magnolia’s HDNet).

The very ending, the last ten minutes or so, yes, they are scary, and brutal. Micah had such a nice – bod – until. I love the stepladder scene – to the attic, it reminded me of the attic in my Pulte Townhome in Dallas.

I’ll add here a link to an appeal from IFP Minnesota, link here. I networked with them when I lived in Minneapolis from 1997-2003.
Here is a video review on YouTube from MBish84.

Lars van Trier's "AntiChrist"

2009-10-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot written so far about Lars von Trier’s new film “AntiChrist”, and, despite its explicit character (is is not rated but would surely get an NC-17), it is not far from Von Trier’s more obviously cerebral “dogme” work. Like many of his other films, it is structured in parts (here, grief, pain and despair, with a prologue and epilogue), and uses woodcut-like illustrations to introduce the movements.

Furthermore, most of the film has an otherworldly, extraterrestrial quality. The prologue, where Willem Dafoe and wife Charlotte Gainsbourg are celebrating the Song of Solomon, is in black and white, and the fall of the little boy to the snowy pavement has a slow-motion, abstract quality to it, as if it were part of a drawing. Then in the movie proper, the couple is in the woods, presumably in Germany, but Van Trier gives the fern-laden forest a misty, bluish tent, almost like vegetation imagined to grow on a small planet around an M-star. This road trip and apotheosis in the cabin take on an other worldly quality.

Some of the things that the couple do to each other are among the most explicit ever seen in the legitimate art market, and they may satisfy voyeuristic curiousity. The music is interesting: Handel in the prologue and epilogue, and horror fare in the three main sections, especially in the scenes involving the deer, fox and crow.

Has the couple slipped into evil? Has "He" out of lack of forgiveness? At least he is "opposed to Christ."

The earlier film of Van Trier that comes closest to this is probably “Breaking the Waves”; remember that Dogville and Mandalay are laid out on mapped stages. Many of Van Trier’s films, including this one, are filmed in 2.35:1 even though that supposedly violates the concepts of Dogme.

The film bears comparison to the gay horror road-movie short "Bugcrush" by Carter Smith, where there is some conceptual similarity.

I have a screenplay script called "Prescience" where the "aliens" have laid out a set of civilizations along a circular railroad track, radially identical but representing different time periods in history, where the characters abucted from earth go on a "treasure hunt" bringing artifacts back into the earlier "civilization" segments, as the entire planet prepare to evacuate because of an approaching brown dwarf. Since this would be laid out on a stage, it sounds like a Van Trier concept.

The website for "AnitChrist" is here. The distributor is IFC Films.

YouTube trailer from CinemaClocksHD.

"Crude": about an environmental catastrophe, not about peak oil

2009-10-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

The film “Crude: The Real Price of Oil” (2009), by Joe Berlinger and from First Run Features (and Red Envelope) is not, as the title could hint, another film about peak oil (like “A Crude Awakening” in 2003). Rather, it focuses on the specific “Amazon Chernobyl” case in the Amazon region of Ecuador (at the eastern foot of the Andes), regarding pollution of native lands by Texaco going back to the 1970s, leading to litigation against Texaco (in Ecuador) and then against Chevron after it took over Texaco. Chevron would argue that a local petroleum company was responsible for the pollution, but the film documents that this cannot be the case. Chevron would also argue that it was a target for litigation because it had the deepest pockets. The website for the film is this.

The film shows many interviews with native people in their Amazon homeland, with horrifying shots of children deformed by the pollution, and many on-location shots of Quito.

The inauguration of a new Ecuadorean president was expected to reduce the corruption that allowed oil companies to intimidate or pay off judges and officials. An environmental scientist speaks for Chevron and swears she would not work for the company if she could not vouch for its integrity.

The environmental damage is said to be larger than that of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989.

The film played to an almost full house at Landmark E Street in Washington on a Sunday night.

Wikipedia link for NASA map of Amazon river.

"Boot Camp": an indictment of "Tough Love" programs for teens? Gregory Smith dominates the film, as usual

2009-10-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

Even liberal state politicians have run on the idea of boot camps for drug-abusing or otherwise delinquent teens, so it makes some sense to make a movie about it, especially the possibility that these places could abuse kids. Such is the case with Canadian director Christian Duguay’s “Boot Camp” (2007), recently available from MGM and 20th Century Fox DVD (I’m not sure why it took two studios).

The setup is frightening enough. A kid is in bed at a suburban home at night, and suddenly a tactical squad bursts in and hauls the kid away, with the consent of the parents who now say they had no choice. Actually, that happens to a teen who makes a phony “fictitious” sham threat on the Internet (a lesson about the danger of joking around online about certain matters), introducing the concept. Then a teenage girl Sophie (Mila Kunis), with a bad relationship with a stepfather, gets whisked away out of the arms of her boyfriend Ben (Gregory Smith), drugged, and wakes up on a Fiji Island boot camp called the Advanced Serenity Achievement Program. The program sort of reminds me of “Special Training” in Army Basic, maybe (“Tent City” at Fort Jackson SC in 1968). The kids go through stages of rank: from “black shirts” to “yellow” to “white.” When one person misbehaves, everyone is considered responsible for a group and is punished.

The plot, at this point, seems a bit contrived. Ben is a very good kid, and checks the “online reputation” of ASAP and finds its shady history, explaining why the owner set up his “Tough Love” program out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. So he fakes being a bad kid so he can get sent there and rescue Sophie, after a couple false starts. I’m not sure how believable that is, but it leads to a great climax where Ben gets to give a Holden Caulfield-type speech.

Gregory Edward Smith (who has dual US-Canadian citizenship) played the precocious Ephram in TheWB series “Everwood” and Holden in “Kids in America”. He is the same character here, the noble rebel right out of Salinger, the ideal role model for the (physically) “average” nerd kid. In most of his other films (going back to “Small Soldiers” and “Just Ask My Children”) he plays a similarly spirited character. I’ve always wondered how “kids” who start acting in movies in grade school deal with all of it. I know they have studio teachers, but how is there ever enough time? Gregory Smith has always been able to “carry” a feature film as a lead and very dominating character, even as an early teen.

The film producers maintain that “Tough Love” programs often abuse kids and have resulted in about 40 deaths in the past decade. In this film, there is one character who abuses underage girls at the camp.

In my own novel draft (and one screenplay), I imagine a “right wing” “re-education” program in West Texas called “The Academy”, which is used as a lynchpin or pivot in the plot to explain (in my novel) the arrival of aliens.

Picture: Gregory Smith and Chris Pratt appear at King of Prussia PA, August 2005 (where I met them in line and talked about DADT and EFF).

"An Englishman in New York": memoir of the later years of Quentin Crisp

2009-10-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

“An Englishman in New York”, a tribute to Quentin Crisp (aka Denis Charles Pratt) opened the Reel Affirmations Film Festival in Washington DC Oct. 15. The film is directed by Richard Laxton and written by Brian Fillis. The production and distribution company, Leopardrama, uses the MGM roar as part of its trademark. Crisp is known for his memoir, “A Naked Civil Servant”.

John Hurt plays the controversial gentleman and raconteur. He would be denied entry into the British Armed Forces during WWII because of his homosexuality, and would emigrate to the United States in 1981 at the age of 73. Hurt’s appearance changes little in the film, up to his death at 90.

Crisp was famous for his little proverbs and aphorisms, some of which created offense, as when he said that “AIDS is a fad”, which his publicist wanted him to retract, not explain. But most of his sayings ring true with appropriate feminine brutality. “Beauty is in the eye of the possessor.” He saw sex and art, for gay men, as separate from “real life” but saw gay men as a people “looking in from without” as if to keep score on heterosexuals. (Again, the “gays are spies” theme from Mulligans.) He had little “ideological” respect for fundamental rights, and said that if most people got what they deserved they would live and die in rags. But his cynicism could be funny. In an opening interview he says he wore drag in order to disguise himself from attackers as who he was.

John Hurt had played Crisp in the Thames Television production of “The Naked Civil Servant” in 1975.

"The Brood": David Cronenberg's concept of conception by imagination (the kids look like Greys)

2009-10-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

Some of David Cronenberg’s earlier films have some neat visual concepts to go with his concept of horror, and his 1979 film for MGM, “The Brood” (“obviously” set in Toronto) has one of his neatest concepts, an “alien autopsy.” The “Grey” is a minimalist dwarf-like creature without many features, especially without reproductive organs, and it can get mean (whereas UFO grays don’t), banging its victims to death. It’s usually well clothed as a kind of Little Red Ridinghood.

The “brood” is created by imagination, a neat concept, as “m.p.” Nola (Samantha Eggar) goes after her enemies with her “children”. (There is a scene that shows her “parthenogenetic” pregnancy.) There is a certain savagery to a few of the scenes, reminding one of “Psycho”, and this is not in black and white. In one of the early killings, the create comes through a pantry, throwing trash on the kitchen floor first. Real Greys never do these things.

My own concept, in my novel draft, is that “angels” could be accumulated from people, with the akashic information carried by viruses with unusual radioactive isotopes.

The film opens with a scene in a play with a father and son talking, with the father telling the son he wished the son had been a girl, so that the son’s weakness would be morally acceptable.

Attribution link for Wikipdia picture of a Grey in p.d.

"Mr. Right": British comedy of male relationships, with a Malthusian touch (Reel Affirmations)

2009-10-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

I got to the Harman Theater today to the Reel Affirmations LGBT film festival to see the 2007 UK film by David and Jacqui Morris, “Mr. Right”.

I seem to remember a book around 1990 called “A self-policing code” for gay men, saying “I’ll give up the search for Mr. Right and settle for what’s reasonable”.

But in this British comedy, there is a ménage of young men most unwilling to do that. There are several “couples” (in the style of a “Bob Ted Carol Alice” movie) but the film seems dominated by Harry (James Lance), a TV producer who doesn’t like his job, and particularly Alex (Luke de Woolfson, who looks younger than the age given in imdb), who longs for the limelight of showbiz. Yes, he wants to be an actor, put perhaps he wants to be more like a self-promoting artist.

There is, about 2/3 through the movie, a dinner scene where Alex and others entertain the question as to whether “being gay is wanting to be famous” (like in the previous film “Mulligans”, whether “being gay is being a spy”). Then Alex, whose tall, thin but extremely muscular form (particularly cute in a Union Jack tank top)and articulate manner dominate the film, enlists in a one-man play, “Malthus”, where he will justify an ideology of “Mr. Right”, that is the survival of the fittest (perhaps more related to Herbert Spencer than Charles Darwin) – put in Malthusian terms (related to overpopulation, which many people see today as a canard, given the concerns about “demographic winter”), to the point that Nazi Germany gets mentioned at least once. Alex also tells his boyfriend that his home is finally the first thing he has created by himself in his life.

The Reel Affirmations link for the film is here.

"Mountain Top Removal" from Haw River Films, little known documentary about Appalachian strip mining

2009-10-16T18:34:00.000-07:00

I had to hunt down the site of the documentary film titled prosaically “Mountain Top Removal”, from Haw River Films, produced and directed by Michael Cusack O’Connell. The site is here.

The 74 minute film mixes full screen and standard wide screen, depending apparently on how it was originally shot; but the views of the “badlands” south of Charleston, W Va (for example, the Kayford Mine) are breathtaking. If they weren’t polluted and occurred naturally, they might make for a national park like what we have in Utah.

The process of mountaintop removal starts with clear cutting of forests, followed by blasting, removal of overburden with draglines (like “Big Muskie”) and valley filling. Typically several hundred feet of elevation are removed, in a few cases up to 1000 feet, as with open pit mines in the West. Waivers are usually granted to coal companies excusing them from old rules requiring restoration to original contour. Mountaintop removal lends itself to a clever metaphor: permanent epilation or alopecia.

Another enormous issue is contamination of water supplies. Coal seams have a lot of heavy metals, but until they are disturbed, the do not dissolve out, and mountain water remains clean. But after mining, the water (often in slurry) becomes toxic. People living in mined areas are reported to have higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease as well as the usual coal-mining related ails.

Cofferdams can break, as with the Buffalo Creek flood in 1972, and one sequence involves an elementary school (Marsh Fork) that may be at risk from a dam above it. Yet, spouses of some mine workers say that their children play outside near the school without evidence of dirt or contamination. Visit “Pennies of Promise” (here) for more.

About 800 square miles, or about 450 peaks, have been affected by mountaintop removal, mostly in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.

Most Americans are unaware of how dependent their electricity supplies are on stripmining for coal. This is particularly true of people in the “Appalachian megapolis” from Atlanta to Columbus. Author Jeff Gordell (“Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future”, 2001, Mariner Books) says that this was his experience.

The film shows protestors being arrested for trespassing, with "I Love Mountains" T-shirts. I was almost arrested in July 1971 for tramping and taking pictures in a strip mine near Mt. Storm, W VA -- I got a tour in a coal company truck.

Picture above: Virginia, Kentucky border (mine, July 2005).