Getafilm

REVIEW: Milking the Rhino

2009-11-25T10:42:00.004-06:00

Picture the last nature documentary you saw about the African bush: bilbao trees, tall grasses, lush jungle, parched desert, and wildlife ranging from impalas to elephants, zebras to giraffes. If it's anything like the last one I saw, the animals appeared to be living in an untouched paradise.

"The reality is that if you just turn the camera around, you have people that live just next to this wildlife," explains a national park director in Milking the Rhino, a fascinating documentary filmed over three years about the tumultuous relationship between humans and animals in post-colonial Africa. Produced by Kartemquin Films (Hoop Dreams, The New Americans) and directed by David E. Simpson, it is a content rich film that should forever change the way you watch a nature documentary or, if you can afford it, participate in an African safari. As one of the year's best and most thought-provoking documentaries, it's hard to even know where to begin talking about all of the issues raised in Milking the Rhino. So while I'll attempt to lay out some of its key points, I really recommend that you take the time to sit down and watch it.

At the turn of the century, the Maasai tribe in rural Kenya has found itself in a perplexing dilemma: national laws (borne of spurious colonial motives) have turned nearly 80% of their pasture land into a preserved wildlife sanctuary. The beasts of the field are thriving while the Maasai, one of the oldest cattle cultures on earth, are on the verge of losing the last of the very land that maintains their livestock and their livelihood. One pioneering tribal member, James Ole Kinyaga, saw ahead of these developments and founded the Il Ngwesi Eco-Lodge in 1995, in an attempt to ensure a steady stream of income as the Maasai continued to be pushed out by the conservationists.

As Kinyaga explains it, the loss of their land coupled with the restrictions on hunting protected wildlife either spell the end of the Maasai culture or an opportunity to make sure it has a secured space to thrive. He's gambling on the latter, steadily drawing in tourists and always speaking with optimism about his tribe's future; in essence he wants to "milk the wildlife" (and the rare black rhino) for financial gain on behalf of the community. Many of his fellow Maasai are still skeptical of any dealings with the "white man", however, and when a terrible drought drains the little grassy space they have left, his plans and the very nature of wildlife conservation is called into question.

Meanwhile in Namibia, an NGO officer named John Kasaona is trying to spread the gospel of conservation to the Himba and Herrero tribes that live near protected nature conservancies in the country's Kunene region. These tribes have also found themselves struggling with laws that have developed over the past decades, particularly those that allowed white landowners to hunt wildlife while prohibiting tribal members on communal lands from doing the same (it would be considered poaching and land them in prison). Not surprisingly, the Himba and Herrero are suspicious of any kind of talk of conservation, even if it is coming from Kasaona, one of their own native countrymen. Despite their misgivings, however, he continues to work with the government to bring ecotourism groups to their land with the hope that the increased traffic will benefit the local cultures more than it will disrupt them.

As with so many stories about contemporary Africa, the grim, debilitating legacy of colonialism on the continent is on tragic display. Unlike most films, however, Milking the Rhino actually explores these effects, explaining how conservancies developed in the years following independence from colonial powers. It's a real splash of cold water in the face to realize that the institutionalizing of so many national parks figuratively bulldozed over the local people and cultures, creating an even wider socioeconomic gap and leading the tribes to despise the animals that were allowed to stay and roam free on their land.

Milking the Rhino also deftly addresses the cultural competencies that so many Westerners and colonial descendants have been lacking in their interactions with the tribes. (And it goes both ways - the tribes, some never having seen white people, amusingly think they are skinless aliens.) One of the ongoing cultural challenges with these eco-lodges, for example, is that men in the Maasai tribe traditionally do not cook, especially not for white females expecting European and American cuisine during their stays at the Il Ngwesi.

Worse still, when "consultants" are brought in to work with these lodges, their instructions are patronizing (e.g., teaching the Maasai to set a table "correctly" by Western standards, as if that should be defined or even maintained in the bush), and contradictions abound as the groups desire to see the mythical African landscape while turning a blind eye to the effects of their own presence on the land. It's all cringe-worthy and uncomfortable, and it underscores the unfortunate tendency for Westerners to simply impose the comforts of home whereever we go to ostensibly "experience other cultures".

There are no simple solutions to the issues raised in Milking the Rhino; it captures the nuances and historical factors that could be easily left out to make for a prettier picture. We see the suffering of the tribes as the drought arrives, and we see the problems that arise when money begins flowing into the community and changing traditional lifestyles, and we see the unpredictable challenges that threaten to discourage the noble efforts of people like Kasaona and Kinyaga.

But we also see successes in the development of "Communal Conservancies" (which allow the tribes the same rights as private landowners, including hunting as their ancestors did), and in the self-reflection and patience of everyone involved, and in the softening of the tribes' attitudes toward the wildlife. As one Maasai leader admits, "Now when you lose cattle, you're not mad because you are getting something back from wildlife."

It's a small consolation for the troubles his tribe has experienced, but it's an important and mostly uplifting coda to this sad story. Milking the Rhino is not an activist film with an agenda, but simply an educational project that can provide a framework for discussion and eventually lead people to action. If you do get a chance to see it, you will want to visit the film's excellent website for updates and background information on everyone involved. And next time to you see a nature documentary on the African plain, consider the people who have been asked, often forcibly, to move out of the camera's frame.

Milking the Rhino recently screened at the 2009 Flyway Film Festival (listen to Matt Gamble's interview with co-producer Xan Aranda here). It also aired on television this year as part of PBS' Independent Lens series. Visit the official website to see dates of additional screenings, and to purchase the film on DVD. It is listed but not yet available on Netflix.

300 Words About: Living Arrangements

2009-11-22T23:32:00.012-06:00

For movie buffs, there is probably not a more surreal experience than seeing yourself on screen in a film. But seeing your own streets and neighborhood landmarks is a bit of a trip, too. For residents of the Uptown neighborhood where I live in South Minneapolis, Living Arrangements is a charming indie horror comedy with a satirical local flavor that only we can appreciate; for everyone else it's still a charming indie horror comedy.

The debut feature from Minneapolis-based director Sam Thompson, Living Arrangements is a high-concept story about a pair of newly engaged vegans, Sasha (Joe Noreen) and Billie (Alexandra Glad), who move into an Uptown apartment only to find a werewolf living in their attic. It sounds like the kind of bizarre idea you'd come up with joking around with friends at 2:00 AM, but the production is treated with just enough seriousness that by the grisly finale you're actually invested in the characters and you've long forgotten how ridiculous the premise is.

Thompson deserves credit for making the production look more expensive than it probably was, at least most of the time. The werewolf suit looks like a bad Halloween costume (and that's being generous) but on balance there are some impressive effects and the cinematography and color balance have a nice polish. The sound mix also shows that somebody had a lot of fun finding growling, meat-eating noises that a werewolf would presumably make. From an acting standpoint Living Arrangements delivers well across the board, including some familiar local faces and a surprising cameo from American Movie's Mark Borchardt (if he's a local, I wasn't aware).

Living Arrangements might not have the budget and brilliance of something like Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell, but for a low-budget, genre-mixing independent film, it delivers laughs with the same wry wink - and should give Uptowners a new appreciation for the weirdos in the apartment next door.

Living Arrangements screened at the 2009 Flyway Film Festival after premiering at the Uptown Theater earlier this year. It's still playing on local screens (next at the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival) but is not yet available on DVD. Visit the official website for updates and additional trailers.

REVIEW: Etienne!

2009-11-21T15:43:00.002-06:00

There are two kinds of pet owners in the world: cat and dog owners, and bird/fish/reptile/rodent owners. I've recently joined the ranks of the former, but for a good part of my childhood I was one of the latter. Due to my dad's reluctance to own a dog (he was once bitten by a rabid German shepherd), and due to the time and money required to care for cats and dogs, we had a series of hamsters - adorably soft little dwarf hamsters, more specifically. They live about two years and were a great source of enjoyment and entertainment for our family (I once accidentally sucked one up with the vacuum hose - she survived).

It takes a special kind of person to appreciate dwarf hamsters, and by extension, a special kind of person to appreciate a movie about one. I couldn't believe it when I saw the description for Etienne! in the Flyway Film Festival lineup: "After Richard's best and only friend, a dwarf hamster named Etienne, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he decides to take him on a bicycle road trip up the California coast to show him the world before he must put him to sleep." I had to see this movie.

For better and for worse, Etienne! wasn't exactly what I expected. The story of Richard and Etienne's bonding trip gradually fades and takes a backseat to what amounts to a coming-of-age tale, even a romantic comedy. Maybe this shouldn't come as a surprise, because it would take some impressive writing (or a lot of cheap gags) to sustain a story about a hamster's road trip for 88 minutes.

Writer/director Jeff Mizushima adapted Etienne! from a short film he made at Cal State Long Beach, and it has all the characteristics of a debut feature: refreshing originality, unpolished set pieces, great music (a phenomenal folk-rock soundtrack), not-so-great acting, and a cinematic style that almost screams, "Look at me, I'm different!". Mizushima fortunately backs that claim up - Etienne! really is a different kind of film, both a relationship story and romantic dramedy that avoids the trappings of formulaic clichés. Its tender characters and sweet story reminded me of both Napoleon Dynamite and The Station Agent, though it's more sincere than the first and quirkier than the second.

So as it turns out Etienne! really isn't about a hamster, per se, as much as it's about the kind of person who would take a hamster on a road trip. Richard (Richard Vallejos) is an odd guy, and I couldn't for the life of me nail down his age (25, give or take 10 years?), but both he his soulmate Elodie (Megan Harvey) are positively magnetic on screen. Etienne is pretty cute, too - a fine representative of dwarf hamsters everywhere relishing their 15 minutes of fame in this charming movie.

Etienne! screened at the 2009 Flyway Film Festival and has been traveling the festival circuit this fall. Keep an eye out for a screening near you, or save it to your Netflix queue prior to its DVD distribution sometime in 2010.

Winter 2009-10 Lineup @ The Trylon microcinema

2009-11-18T00:04:00.017-06:00

One of the things I've loved about the upstart Trylon microcinema is that a great variety of films has been featured in just the few months since it's opened: Buster Keaton, New York crime thrillers, David Cronenberg, Frank Capra, and music films as part of Sound Unseen 10. The little theater tucked away on Minnehaha Avenue is slowly but surely becoming a must-visit destination for film buffs in the Twin Cities; it's impossible to walk out of this place without feeling good about cinema. The picture looks great (The Warriors looked especially sharp on 35mm), the sound is clear, and the concession prices are unequaled in the city.

Take a weekend date night to come out and support Take-Up Productions and this independent theater space. Here's a look at the variety of classic films on tap for this winter at The Trylon:

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DECEMBER - The Archers

Dec 4 and 5

Stairway To Heaven (1946)

A visionary and witty fantasy that finds downed World War II pilot David Niven attempting to cheat death (in the form of Marius Goring's Heavenly Conductor 71) in order to pursue his relationship with an American radio operator (Kim Hunter). While he pursues his romantic destiny on earth, his fate is subject to a celestial tribunal in heaven.

Dec 11 and 12

Black Narcissus (1947)

A highly charged drama set in a convent high in the Himalayas where a group of nuns attempt to establish a school and a hospital. Despite young Deborah Kerr's best efforts to keep things under control, repression turns to obsession as the nuns become affected by the exotic atmosphere and the action becomes increasingly delirious.

Dec 18 and 19

49th Parallel (1941)

A Nazi U-boat is sunk by the Canadian Air Force and all the crew are lost except six men who had been sent ashore before the attack. Starring Lawrence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, Leslie Howard. Winner of the 1943 Academy Award for best writing.

Dec 25 and 26

The Red Shoes (1948)

*Dazzling new 35mm restoration!* A Technicolor classic based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale of magic ballet slippers whose wearer (Moira Shearer) cannot stop dancing, The Red Shoes tracks a ballerina's rise to the lead role in a ballet version of the well-known story. Powell noted of the film's role in a post–World War II free world, "For 10 years we had all been told to go out and die for freedom and democracy; but now the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art."

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JANUARY - In Deppth

Jan 1 and 2

Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas (1998)

Leave it to Terry Gilliam to film one of the world's most unfilmable novels. The late, great Hunter S. Thompson's legendary gonzo account of sex, drugs, and, well, more drugs in the desert is, in its own, a bizarre, psychedelic road trip into insanity. But, married with Gilliam's truly inspired vision, it becomes a warped evocation of America on acid. Welcome to Bat Country!

Jan 8 and 9

Ed Wood (1994)

Tim Burton has been remaking good movies into bad ones lately, but his finest work is about cinema's worst filmmaker. Ed Wood is the biopic of the legendary director of Plan 9 from Outer Space; it features a giant rubber octopus, a drug-addicted Dracula, and Johnny Depp in a dress in a story that's funny and touching. (Shown in HD)

Jan 15 and 16

Dead Man (1995)

Jim Jarmusch's enigmatic western stars Depp as William Blake, an accountant who travels west from Cleveland in hopes of landing a job. Hauntingly photographed in black and white and featuring a plaintive score by Neil Young, Dead Man inverts a familiar genre, reconfiguring the desolate Western landscape as a backdrop for existential exploration.

Jan 22 and 23

The Ninth Gate (1999)

More weirdness for Depp and a return to the genre for Roman Polanski, The Ninth Gate is a supernatural thriller about a rare book finder in Europe searching for a pair of ancient satanic texts which carry a curse of misfortune. (Shown in HD)

Jan 29 and 30

Cry-Baby (1990)

Full of over-the-top parody of teen culture of the 1950s and a great performance by Johnny Depp’s cheekbones, Cry-Baby has reached cult status like most John Waters films. Some other notable faces in the movie include Ricki Lake, Iggy Pop and Traci Lords. It’s cheese and camp, which is a trademark of any good Waters movie and should be embraced by anyone who sees them.

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FEBRUARY - Godard's 60s

Feb 5 and 6

Made In U.S.A. (1966)

*Minneapolis Premiere!* Trench-coated Anna Karina arrives in Atlantic City (apparently a provincial French town) to track down boyfriend Richard Widmark (a character, not the actor), only to find...and then the bodies start dropping. A (very) metaphorical treatment of the murders of JFK and Ben Barka...and Karina’s swan song for Godard.

Feb 12 and 13

Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967)

Is she Marina Vlady or Juliette Janson? asks the narrating Godard in a conspiratorial whisper. She’s both: an actress in a film and a housewife from the Paris suburbs who turns tricks in the city to make ends meet. With characters casually addressing the camera, a conversation between complete strangers in a bistro–all underscored by relentless thuddings of a pinball machine–and an unblinking gaze at the cosmic whirls of foam in a coffee cup.

Feb 19 and 20

Contempt (1963)

That’s what Brigitte Bardot has for husband Michel Piccoli–but why? Does she think he used her to get that lucrative assignment from overbearing American producer Jack Palance? Or does she just “not love him anymore?” Given international stars, an Alberto Moravia best-seller, and the biggest budget of his career, Godard still managed to overturn movie conventions while producing a meditation on post-Hollywood filmmaking.

Feb 26 and 27

Band Of Outsiders (1964)

“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” – Godard.

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Additional/Ongoing:

Sound Unseen

1st Wednesday each month: Dec 2, Jan 6 and Feb 3

Last October, the Trylon was pleased to host five days of Sound Unseen, the annual music in film festival. Now we’ve decided to make it a year-round thing. So this December Sound Unseen returns to the Trylon with monthly screenings. Details.

Dreamland Faces

3rd Wednesday each month: Dec 16, Jan 20 and Feb 17

After supplying the bewitching accompaniment to last July’s Buster Keaton series at the Trylon, the band Dreamland Faces is back to perform accompaniment and otherwise to a selection of 16mm features and shorts. Details.

Trash Film Debauchery - Traumatized Children Series

4th Wednesday each month: Dec 23, Jan 27 and Feb 24

Your friends at TFD will be presenting a series of bizarre and unbelievable children's movies from across the globe. Prepare yourselves for psychological scarring. Night light and blankie necessary. Details.

All films show at The Trylon twice on each date, the first show beginning at 7:00 PM, immediately followed by the second. Tickets for all shows can be purchased online at Brown Paper Tickets as they become available.

The Trylon microcinema is located at:

3258 Minnehaha Avenue S

Minneapolis, MN 55406

Google Map

Info Line: 612.424.5468

REVIEW: Colin

2009-11-17T13:40:00.043-06:00

Exactly how do you make a film with a budget of $70 (Yes, that's seventy dollars.)

"We bought a crowbar and a couple of tapes, and I think we got some tea and coffee as well -- not the expensive stuff either, the very basic kind," explained British filmmaker Mark Price in an interview I read on CNN.com last May, when Colin premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. His claim was unbelievable and cheeky - in fact unbelievably cheeky, considering budgets on numerous Hollywood films each year extend into the hundreds of millions of dollars (the recent disaster movie 2012 had a price tag of $260 million). So alhough I'm not a big zombie guy, when Colin popped up on the schedule at the recent Flyway Film Festival, well I just had to see how this played out.

The film opens with Colin, a young Londoner, looking out of a kitchen window in what appears to be the late afternoon. The sounds of sirens, screams, and gunshots filter through the windows and walls, informing us that something is very wrong outside. Eventually we realize Colin is taking shelter here, nursing a seriously nasty wound (cue first impressive low-budget effect, seen in the trailer below) suffered in what must have been a horrifying zombie attack. He soon becomes a zombie himself, thirsty for blood as he wanders the streets while still harboring what appears to be some semblance of human consciousness.

Much of the praise lauded on Colin, aside from its production value, is that it is apparently one of the only zombie movies to tell a story from the zombie's point of view. Zombie movie fans are a passionate group, you should know (Colin played at the festival as part of the International Zombie Summit), leading to taglines like this one from FHM, which I don't think is meant to be as tongue-in-cheek as it sounds: "The most touching film you will see about a decomposing corpse all year."

Do not be confused - Colin is much more of a serious drama than a horror comedy in the style of Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland (which I haven't seen). Mark Price attempts to inject real emotion into this story as Colin's sister tries to rehabilitate him from his lonely bloodlust, but engaging me emotionally about zombies is about as difficult as engaging me emotionally about aliens or talking animals. On the other hand, maybe some zombie fans really do care about the pathos of the undead, and maybe that FHM quote really speaks to them.

And what of that $70 budget? Having recently "starred" in a horror short for a friend of mine, I have to admit that the effects and makeup in Colin really are on the level of a professional production. Beyond that I was also impressed by the realism in the exterior and street shots. I don't know if this was shot guerrilla-style without notifying anybody or if it was all shot at odd hours, but you really do get the sense of London as a ghost town. Unfortunately for Mark Price's achievements with this, however, the cinematography can only be described as obnoxiously bad, with the camera being vigorously shaken in a constant effort to convey chaos. It's distracting and annoying and doesn't really fit at all with the snail's pace of the film.

But take my thoughts for what they're worth from somebody who knows and cares little about zombie movies. Despite Price's best efforts to stretch his budget, it was still quite evident to me in every scene of Colin that it was made for $70. But this was an accidental hit, we should remember, and no matter how you look at it Colin is still an interesting experiment that, along with Paranormal Activity, is a likely portent of things to come in the film world.

Colin screened at the 2009 Flyway Film Festival and recently played in theaters across the UK. It is available there on DVD and may be making its way into American markets and Netflix soon.

Getafilm Gallimaufry: This Is It, Wild Things, Flute-Playing Goat & Tyler Perry

2009-11-12T14:43:00.083-06:00

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]
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This Is It (A)

There's a reason why more music critics than film critics were called on to review This Is It: a good 90% of the footage in this documentary is singing and dancing, not storytelling. You should know that if you're not already a Michael Jackson fan, because if you aren't then I imagine This Is It would be about as enjoyable as a John Tesh concert film (and if you don't like MJ then one can reasonably assume your musical tastes are that...tragic).

The truth is that there is almost no insight whatsoever to be drawn about the King of Pop from This Is It; it's simply two hours of evidence that Michael Jackson was one of the greatest performers to step onto a stage. Ever. But we already knew that, and as the closest most of us will come to ever seeing him in concert, This Is It couldn't be any more thrilling. The music is just as intoxicating as always, the dancing is just as breathtaking as always, and the passion on display from Jackson (particularly on "Earth Song" and "They Don't Really Care About Us", two of my favorites from the underrated HIStory album), is just as emotionally explosive as always.

Furthermore, This Is It proves beyond any doubt that Jackson was not an aloof, air-headed, strung out mannequin - at least not on stage. His concentration is incredibly and consistently intense; he not only coordinates every one of his breaths, emotions, muscle movements, notes, and transition cues, but everyone else's breaths, emotions, muscle movements, notes, and transition cues. It's shocking to consider how many processes this man's mind could coordinate simultaneously.

The two regrets I'll carry with me from This Is It are that 1.) I didn't see it with a packed theater audience that may have made for a more interactive experience, and 2.) I'll never see Michael Jackson in concert, which may be for the best because for the first time in my life I think I understand how those hysterical people in the front row could entirely lose themselves in the moment.

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Where the Wild Things Are (B)

How can you fairly and accurately illustrate the collective memory of a generation? You can't, obviously, but Spike Jonze must have considered that question while he produced Where the Wild Things Are. Most people (or maybe only most Americans) between the ages of 20-40 read the book at some point during their childhood, yet I think it would be surprisingly challenging to find a consensus on why everyone enjoyed it.

Some people loved the beasts. Some people felt like Max, lonely and misunderstood. Some people loved the jungle setting. Some people loved the idea of an imagination run wild. Some people loved the happy ending between Max and his family. Me? I guess I liked the mystery of it all, and the fun of thinking about some magical place under the moon. The picture here sums up that sentiment pretty well, and that's what I was hoping for from the movie. But that's not what I got, at least not entirely.

The spectacular cinematography, production design and visual effects in Where the Wild Things Are are among the best I've seen all year, primarily because they are so understated. As Jason Bellamy brilliantly observed in his review, "I didn’t realized how much I’d come to miss environmental tangibility in movies until I watched Jonze’s film...There’s an intimacy to these images that CGI-dominated films never match."

But while this movie had the visual magic down for me, I never felt any emotional connection to Max or any of the monsters, at least not outside of their childlike joy while running through the woods. The brooding and fuming and bickering that made up the rest of the film left me cold, and wondering if I had completely misinterpreted the book so many years ago. But how do you misinterpret a picture book?

I don't think you can - you can only interpret one differently from another person. Right?

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300 and the Flute-Playing Goat?

I managed to successfully avoid seeing 300 a couple of years ago when everybody was raving about it. I don't find violence all that enjoyable to watch, no matter how "aesthetically beautiful" Zack Snyder made it, so it was an easy skip.

I came across it on TNT a few weeks ago, however, and found myself in the middle of a really bizarre scene. I had to look it up to see who the characters were, but this was evidently an exchange between Leonidas and some creature named Ephialtes, who the historical record shows to be a hunchback but who Snyder portrays as a literal beast alien pregnant with twins in his left shoulder.

Anyway, in the midst of this nearly unwatchable scene my eyes caught a quick glimpse of what appeared to be a goat playing the flute. It didn't really compute because I didn't think this was a science-fiction story, but at the same time I felt ignorant enough about the movie to assume that it may have been explained at another point. I wasn't going to stick around and find out, so I did a quick search to see if my eyes had deceived me. Here's what I found:

The description of the video from the YouTube user: "weird scene from 300. A goat llama man thing plays some instrument. I don't know about you, but there was a collective WTF from the entire theater when we saw it."

Tell me about it. Anybody have an explanation?

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A New Perspective on Tyler Perry

Some time ago I learned that my fiance likes Tyler Perry movies. I don't know how many she's seen (and I don't think she does, either), but she finds the character of Madea actually funny. We went back and forth for a few weeks about this, me wondering what I was missing and her unsuccessfully trying to explain to me. The only Tyler Perry movie I've seen is his first, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which I saw in the theater seven years ago, before I even knew who Perry was. But I've never warmed to his comedy stylings either on film or television, not because I find it offensive or undignified, but because I've never gone for the easy laughs produced when somebody dresses up as an overweight elderly African-American woman, whether that be Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, or Tyler Perry. I can see why it's funny, but I don't find it funny.

Anyway, my impression of Tyler Perry was significantly changed a couple of weeks ago when I accidentally stumbled onto a "60 Minutes" interview with him after a Sunday football broadcast ended. The episode was highlighting Perry's achievements and the broader public ignorance about not only his commercial success (four of his films have opened #1 at the box office in the last three years alone), but about the man himself (a victim of child abuse and a high school dropout).

What struck me the most was Perry's dogged determination to bring his visions to reality after his pitches and projects were completely rejected by Hollywood producers and studios. He funded Diary with his own money (he had a long and successful career as a playwright prior to film) and has now become the first-ever black producer to own a film and television studio. Talk about laughing your way to the bank - being forced into independent production has meant that Perry keeps a huge chunk of every dollar his films gross (last year he was among the top 15 highest-paid celebrities).

So what does this all mean? That I like his movies and think he deserves to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars? Of course not. But for all the obstacles and rejection he has overcome, and for the positive messages that he is trying to send through his stories, well, I have to admit I have new respect for Tyler Perry. Even if I still don't find Madea funny.

The clips below don't tell the full story, but you can check out the full video here to see the segments where he visits his childhood home (including the cubbyhole where he hid from his abusive father) and shows off his incredible studio and production lot.

Taking It Home: Good Hair

2009-11-11T16:52:00.015-06:00

("Taking It Home" is an alternative review style in which I share my thoughts on a movie's themes and how they may relate to my life, while focusing less on the acting, writing, technical aspects, or even plot of the film. It's a collection of the ideas I took home, "because the movie experience shouldn't end in the theater".)

Maintaining "good hair" really couldn't be any worse for you...

Chris Rock's Good Hair is kind of like one big weave: it's fun, it looks great, and it moves naturally, but you really don't know what actually exists at the roots, underneath the gloss and sheen. Framing the documentary with a Morgan Spurlock-like "I'm a new dad and now I have to figure out how to make the world better for my daughter" setup, Rock casually bounces between interviews with hairstylists, people on the street, and Hollywood celebrities. He travels from Beverly Hills to Harlem to India to Atlanta, and makes a lot of people laugh along the way, including the audience.

But to what end, exactly, nobody really knows. The average person will leave Good Hair knowing a little bit more about black people's hair but next to nothing new about racial identity in American culture, which is what the film so easily could have explored with just a little more investigation. Maybe it's unfair to blame Chris Rock for not probing further, though, since the only thing more audacious than a black man making a film about black women's hair in the first place would be a white man making a film about black women's hair (which isn't quite as curious as the reality of Jason Griggers in this film, a white man venerated as an expert sylist of black women's hair).

In any case it would be unfair for me not to recommend Good Hair, because even the few insights that can be gleaned from it are enough to get you thinking about, for example, why the global market on "ethnic" hair care is dominated by whites and Asians. The Rev. Al Sharpton, in a surprisingly understated and altogether charming interview, astutely observes that something must be wrong when African-Americans have almost no involvement or investment in a market that caters exclusively to African-Americans. It certainly is odd to think about. Or what about the millions of dollars black women collectively spend on their hair care without ever considering the economic, emotional, or even physical damages some procedures may have? Yes, something is wrong here.

Rock intersperses his travels with Indiana Jones-like animated maps, a red arrow being drawn from one city to another, and as he moved from India (where the vast majority of women's hair is...um...harvested) to the U.S., I was struck by the realization that the trade routes for the hair that many black women wear parallels the slave routes that carried many of their ancestors to the West. Indeed, if there is one thing black women have not been liberated from in this country it's the right to wear their hair in its natural state.

The truth is that we've been successfully brainwashed to think that most black women have naturally straight hair, and as Rock's interviewees describe, having it that way is truly the only way they can feel "accepted" in our society. You'll remember the New Yorker magazine cover earlier this year that sparked controversy for showing Barack Obama in Islamic dress. What you might have forgotten is that the artist also made a deliberate decision to depict Michelle Obama with her hair in an afro - a socially acceptable way to symbolize a wild, rebellious, or militant attitude. In this day and age the First Lady of the United States of America has to have her straightened and relaxed - she just has to. And with our taxes paying her husband's salary, which we can assume possibly pays some part of her presumably high hair care costs, we are, by proxy, paying to make sure Michelle Obama straightens her hair. A a bit of a stretch, perhaps, but is it not still worth considering?

Maybe I had unreasonably high expectations for Good Hair to educate as well as it entertained, but no disappointment was as sore as the the fact that India.Arie was neither interviewed or featured in this film. Maybe it was an oversight (which would be almost impossible to believe), or maybe she declined, but for having written what I would literally consider one of the best songs of the decade - about black women's hair, incidentally - one would think somebody would mention "I Am Not My Hair" (well, Eve does mention it, but she just takes the line and doesn't mention the song).

Below is the video for "I Am Not My Hair" (feat. Akon), along with the lyrics, which definitely deserved some consideration as part of the discussion in Good Hair.

What did you take home?

[Akon]
See I can kinda recall
Little ways back, small tryin' to ball
Always been black and my hair I tried it all
I even went flat, had a gumdee curly top and all the crap, now
Tryin' to be appreciated
Nappy headed brothers never had no ladies
Then I hit by the barber shop real quick
Had em give me little twist and it drove them crazy
And then I couldn't get no job
No corporate wouldn't hire no dreadlocks
Then I thought about my dogs on the block
Kinda understand why they chose a stealin' rock
Was it the hair that got me this far? (uh-huh)
All these girls these cribs these cars (uh-huh)
Hate to say it but it seem so flawed
Cause success didn't come 'till i cut it all off (uh-huh)

[India.Arie]
Little girl with the press and curl
Age eight I got a Jheri curl
Thirteen then I got a relaxer
I was a source of so much laughter
Fifteen when it all broke off
Eighteen and then I went all natural
February two thousand and two I
Went and did what I had to do
Cause it was time to change my life
To become the women that I am inside
Ninety-seven dreadlocks all gone
Looked in the mirror for the first time and saw that
Hey...

[Chorus]
I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am not your expectations no no
I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am a soul that lives within

[India.Arie]
Good hair means curls and waves
Bad hair means you look like a slave
At the turn of the century
It's time for us to redefine who we be
You can shave it off like a South African beauty
Or get in on lock like Bob Marley
You can rock it straight like Oprah Winfrey
If it's not what's on your head
It's what's underneath and say
Hey....

[Chorus]

[Akon]
Who cares if you don't like that
With nothin' to lose post it with a wave cap
When the cops wanna to harass
Cause I got waves
But he's sayin' nothin' like that
Not in my days (noo...)
Now you gotta change all feeling's
Based on one another by their appearance
Yes, India I feel ya girl
Now go on and talk the rest of the world

[India.Arie]
(oh, oh, oh)
Does the way I wear my hair make me a better person?
(Whoa, whoa, whoa)
Does the way I wear my hair make me a better friend? nooo...
(Whoa, whoa, whoa)
Does the way I wear my hair determine my integrity?
(Whoa, whoa, whoa)
I am expressing my creativity...

[India.Arie]
Breast cancer and chemotherapy
Took away her crown and glory
She promised God if she was to survive
She would enjoy everyday of her life ooh...
On national television
Her diamond eyes are sparkling
Bald headed like a full moon shining
Singing out to the whole wide world like
Hey...

[Chorus 2x]
I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am not your expectations no no
I am not my hair
I am not this skin
I am a soul that lives within

300 Words About: The Box

2009-11-08T23:05:00.123-06:00

So lemme get this straight, that's two disasters in a row from Richard Kelly, right?

Literally the first words I heard after a promotional screening of Richard Kelly's The Box were, "I'm so glad I didn't have to pay for that," from a relieved audience member as he left the theater. Yes you did, I thought to myself. We all did, and in more than one way.

There are a lot of options presented to the characters in The Box, only some of which (I've heard) are taken from the original short story by Richard Matheson, which apparently made for a great "Twilight Zone" episode in the 80's. The options include choosing between this or that, which will lead to one of these things happening first and second and so on. Tragically for me, never was a character presented with an option to outright end the movie and save thousands of lives in theaters around the world. "The button has been pushed," proclaimed a creepy, still-Nixonian Frank Langella, and along with everyone else I had to live with (and eventually die by) the decision I had already made to see this movie.

My disappointment may differ from yours since I'd actually been looking forward to The Box for well over a year, previewing it in my forecast for 2009 and even mentioning it back in my review of Southland Tales. I think what I failed to recognize after Kelly's defense of that disaster is how closely his words resembled M. Night Shyamalan's (who, it should be known by now, is no friend to this blog). Whether you end up seeing The Box or not, know this fact: If Shyamalan and his rising heir-apparent Kelly ever make a film together, it will be a cinematic spectacle of metaphysical frivolity and pompous bloviating like the world has never seen (at least not since Knowing).

It didn't have to be this way. On paper, The Box is just oozing with cinematic potential, and for the first third of the movie Kelly fires on every single cylinder. Yes, there is engaging, assured, brilliant filmmaking for 45 minutes until, tragically, Kelly gives in to what has become the go-to crutch for any movies with a nonsensical plot: aliens. Oops, did I spoil the "twist"?

Don't worry, it's a predictable enough development from the first minute of the movie, and the actual climax has little to do with the supernatural and a lot to do with actual human emotions and the consequences that follow questionably selfish actions. In short, the ending provides everything the rest of the movie lacks. But oh, what a missed opportunity to that point - we get much more silliness than suspense for the last hour, and the most thought-provoking questions are about Kelly himself (e.g., how has such a promising and visionary director gotten away with eight years of mediocrity?).

So if you haven't already seen The Box, you have a decision to make right now. If you press the button on your mouse and choose to see what time it's playing nearby, three things will happen: 1.) You will be on your way to suffering through one of the worst movies I've seen so far this year; 2.) you will understand how truly bad Southland Tales actually was; and 3.) you will be obligated to come back here and try to set me straight, because this movie is sure to inspire debate.

People's Republic of Cinema @ the Walker, Nov. 4-23

2009-11-03T22:18:00.002-06:00

Beginning tomorrow night and continuing through Nov. 23 is yet another fascinating film series at the Walker Art Center: The People's Republic of Cinema: 60 Years of China on Film. I know as much about Chinese cinema as I do about aerospace engineering, which is to say I'm a total ignoramus about both subjects.

Hopefully this series will broaden my horizons even a little, and I'm particularly intrigued by the concept of observing a country's history through the eyes of its most famous filmmakers. I'd love to see that for any country, let alone a country poised to be one of the great superpowers of this century (and a country so richly studied in last year's best documentary, Up the Yangtze).

Here's part of the official blurb from the Walker, as well as a listing of the films, synopses, and, when I could track them down, even trailers.

"The series celebrates 60 years of China on film, featuring 14 films, many of them rarely seen, which trace the evolution of China through the eyes of its filmmakers...Marking the 60th anniversary of 'New China', this timely series tracks the decades of political tumult and massive cultural and economic change that followed 1949’s Communist revolution. The People’s Republic of Cinema charts the unprecedented propulsive energies at work through years of radical transformation and looks to the future of a country still in flux—one responding both to its past and its relatively new prominence in the larger world. The series is organized chronologically by content, from films created or set during the establishment of the People’s Republic of China to those of the present day."

All films are in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles.

Wednesday, November 4 @ 6:00 pm (Bell Auditorium - FREE)
New Year’s Sacrifice (Zhufu)
Directed by Sang Hu

A fine example of revolutionary realism, this film is creatively adapted from the 1924 short story by Lu Xun, the father of modern Chinese literature. In this tragic tale of a woman (portrayed by veteran film star Bai Yang), Lu attempted to show that “the oppressive weight of tradition . . . only increases the burden on widows while offering little comfort” (Film Society of Lincoln Center). Winner of a special jury prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. 1956, video, 100 minutes.

Friday, November 6 @ 7:30 pm (Walker Cinema - $6/$8)
Crows and Sparrows (Wuya yu maque)
Directed by Zheng Junli

This neorealist gem of Chinese cinema, completed just before the revolution, shows the country’s transformation through the prism of a Shanghai boarding house. The tenants must work together to save their living space as the owner, a Chiang Kai-shek sympathizer, is fleeing the country and the Red Army is set to take over. During production, Zheng provided the studio with a fake script and made daily updates to the real screenplay hidden in the ceiling as the situation in the country changed. 1949, 35mm, 108 minutes.

Saturday, November 7 @ 7:30 pm & Wed., Nov. 11 @ 10 am (Walker Cinema - $6/$8)
Little Red Flowers (Kan shang qu hen mei)
Directed by Zhang Yuan
Area Premiere

Four-year-old Qiang is sent to a kindergarten boarding school not long after the 1949 liberation. After failed attempts to win the coveted red flowers doled out for good behavior, he turns to rebellion. With Qiang’s trials and tribulations serving as a microcosm of the confusion and conformity in post-revolution Chinese life, this heart-rending, beautiful film features a first-rate performance by its diminutive star, who achingly displays a loss of childhood innocence. 2006, 35mm, 92 minutes.

Sunday, November 8 @ 3:00 pm (Walker Cinema - $6/$8)
The Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzi jun)
Collectively directed

One of eight “model works” permitted during the Cultural Revolution, the story of The Red Detachment of Women has been adapted to several artistic disciplines: film (screening at the Bell Auditorium on November 9), literature, opera, and ballet. This stunning film adaptation of the ballet that premiered in 1964—and was performed for President Richard Nixon upon his visit to China—captured international attention at the 1971 Venice and San Francisco film festivals. Featuring Ching Ching-hua, Lo Sing Siang, and members of the China Ballet Troupe. 1970, 35mm, 105 minutes.

Monday, November 9 @ 6:00 pm (Bell Auditorium - FREE)
Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzi jun)
Directed by Xie Jin

An all-time classic of Chinese revolutionary cinema by legendary director Xie, this film follows the exploits of fighting women’s detachment within the Communist revolution. Loosely based on a true story, the action focuses in particular on Wu Qionghua, a slave girl who escapes and seeks revenge against her oppressors. 1961, video, 120 minutes.

Wednesday, November 11 @ 6 pm (Bell Auditorium - FREE)
Red Lantern (Hong deng ji)
Directed by Cheng Yin

Another of the eight “model performances” of the Cultural Revolution, this modern Peking opera film showcases the highly stylized revolutionary aesthetics typical of the era. 1970, video, 112 minutes.

Friday, November 13 @ 7:30 pm (Walker Cinema - $6/$8)
Yellow Earth (Huang tudi)
Directed by Chen Kaige

Beginning in 1939, this poignant story focuses on impoverished farmers in the Shaanxi province. A communist soldier promotes the People’s Liberation Army to a rural girl on the brink of an arranged marriage, and characters burst into inspired song throughout. Chen’s first feature, which showcased the exquisite cinematography of a young Zhang Yimou, announced the arrival of China’s Fifth Generation filmmakers, who challenged the style and stories of Mao-era films. “Unquestionably a milestone in Chinese film history” - (Film Society of Lincoln Center). 1984, 35mm, 89 minutes.

Saturday, November 14 @ 7:30 pm (Walker Cinema - $6/$8)
Platform (Zhantai)
Directed by Jia Zhangke

This epic road movie from acclaimed filmmaker Jia spans the years 1979 through 1990—a time when Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policy elicited sweeping economic and cultural change. As foreign pop culture gradually permeates every aspect of life, a nomadic theater troupe changes its name to the “All-Star Rock and Breakdance Electronic Band” and trades propaganda theater for improvised pop songs and Western dance. In revealing the erosion of Maoist orthodoxy and the arrival of Western influence, Platform charts the mood of a country in permanent transition. 2000, 35mm, 154 minutes.

Monday, November 16 @ 6:00 pm (Bell Auditorium - FREE)
One and Eight (Yi ge he ba ge)
Directed by Zhang Junzhao

Based on an epic poem, this film follows nine captives led by a group of Communist Eighth Route Army soldiers in World War II. When nearly all of the regular soldiers are killed, the prisoners—including army deserters and an officer falsely accused of treason—must wage battle against the Japanese in order to survive. Due in part to Zhang Yimou’s cinematography, this is one of the early examples of Chinese cinema’s move toward artistic experimentation in the 1980s. 1984, video, 90 minutes.

Wednesday, November 18 @ 6:00 pm (Bell Auditorium - FREE)
Ermo
Directed by Zhou Xiaowen
Area Premiere

A captivating and sensual tale about a strong-willed rural woman’s obsessive pursuit of the biggest television in her county, Ermo is a cinematic meditation on post-socialist consumerism in China. 1994, video, 98 minutes.

Thursday, November 19 @ 7:30 pm (Walker Cinema - FREE)
Beijing Bastards (Beijing zazhong)
Directed by Zhang Yuan

While searching for his pregnant girlfriend, rock singer Cui Jian drinks, smokes, does drugs, and carouses aimlessly. A bleak treatise on youth, cast with actual rock musicians and artists, Beijing Bastards is considered one of the first “independent” films in China, and was partly financed by Zhang’s income from directing music videos. Called “the Sixth Generation’s first major film” (Time), it sparked controversy in China, but won special jury awards at the Locarno and Singapore film festivals. 1993, 35mm, 95 minutes.

Saturday, November 21 @ 7:30 pm (Walker Cinema - $6/$8)
Good Cats (Hao mao)
Directed by Ying Liang
Area Premiere

In the fast-growing city of Zigong, 29-year-old Luo Liang becomes a driver for Boss Peng, a shady real estate developer. Interspersed with rock music interludes and upbeat commercials for the impending Olympics, Ying’s inventive third film is a razor-sharp satire of the moral consequences of China’s rise to economic power. “[Ying’s] apocalyptic visions derive from a scrupulous, brave realism” (New Yorker). 2009, video, 103 minutes.
*Plays with
Cry Me a River (Heshang aiquing)
Directed by Jia Zhang-ke
Ten years after graduation, four far-flung college students are reunited and take up the same arguments from their youth. “An elegy to the generation born in the 1970s” (International Short Film Festival Oberhausen). 2009, video, 19 minutes.

Monday, November 23 @ 6:00 pm (Bell Auditorium - FREE)
Pirated Copy (Man yan)
Directed by He Jianjun

Set against the backdrop of the contemporary black market for pirated DVDs in Beijing, Pirated Copy is a character-driven drama about the passion two couples have for each other and for film. It “demonstrates that [He is] one of the most interesting and versatile directors among China’s ‘Sixth Generation’” (Variety). With music by famous Chinese female punk rocker Bao Luo. 2004, video, 90 minutes.

* Full schedule & Tickets for the Walker screenings
* Map and Directions to the Walker Art Center
* Map and Directions to the Bell Auditorium

REVIEW: Ink

2009-11-03T11:59:00.021-06:00

Is it fair to judge a film based on its bang-for-the-buck value (low budget, high production), and ignore otherwise standard criteria like writing and acting? Is the bar set a little lower for independent films, making the mediocre ones appear good and the good ones appear great?

Your perspective around these two questions will undoubtedly influence your opinion of Ink, the low budget ($250,000) sci-fi fairytale from Jamin Winans that recently played on Opening Night of the Flyway Film Festival. It's been receiving a healthy supply of positive buzz from Ain't It Cool News and Film School Rejects, and the filmmaker's comparisons of the film to Donnie Darko, The Matrix, and especially Pan's Labyrinth are justified.

But the problem with comparisons to those critically acclaimed hits is that if the film in question doesn't measure up to them (and Ink does not, in my opinion), it's maybe better not to mention the similarities at all - like hearing somebody can dance like Michael Jackson and then finding out they can't even moonwalk.

It's not for lack of trying that Ink didn't bowl me over; considering its budget this is a monumental achievement of visual filmmaking. The special effects, cinematography, and stunt work are a feast for the eyes. Winans obviously had a clear (and very ambitious) vision for Ink, and it would be unfair for me to say that what he had in his mind wasn't realized on the screen.

But I feel like too often these early-career feature films bite off more than they can chew, and a filmmaker will try to impress people on too many levels. Now, if you know me you know I love bare-bones filmmaking to begin with (Ballast, Take Out), so I found the plot of Ink barely engrossing at its best, and plodding and tedious at its worst.

The film shows us an alternate dimension of reality, where our dreams are controlled by spiritual beings known as the Incubi (bad) and Storytellers (good), who come into our bedrooms by shadow of night and battle for our souls. Humans are unaware of these forces and their influences on daily life. A decent little concept from which to build a story, right? If only it was kept that simple.

Our protagonists are the stereotypical little blonde girl, Emma (Quinn Hunchar), her widowed and self-absorbed father, John (Chris Kelly), and a mysterious dreamworld creature named Ink (for reasons that are unexplained, Ink has a nose the size of an extra limb protruding from his face). Ink has kidnapped Emma's soul in an effort to join the ranks of the Incubi. This all takes place in the first 15 minutes or so of the film, and I was hooked by a particularly well choreographed fight scene in Emma's house.

Like I said at the outset, it's all amazing to watch, but I soon found the plot so muddled and melodramatic that the spectactle eventually lost its spark. Removing a few characters and about 20 minutes would have done the trick for me, but again, I'm biased toward a style of filmmaking that usually bores people by its simplicity (Gerry, anybody?).

So bringing it back to the questions I opened with: I think there is definitely something to be said for champagne filmmaking on a beer budget, and Winans deserves credit for Ink's astounding production value, cinematography, stunt work, and terrific musical score (done by Winans himself). But that's as far as my personal recommendation can go, because I just wasn't compelled by the story or characters. Then again, I'm in the minority in feeling the same way about Pan's Labyrinth, so take that into consideration.

Ink played at the 2009 Flyway Film Festival and is now available for purchase on Blu-Ray and DVD. It will be released on Netflix, Blockbuster, and iTunes on November 10. Give it a shot - a movie with this much effort behind it deserves to be seen.

Class of '84 Blogathon: The Gods Must Be Crazy

2009-10-26T12:43:00.004-05:00

[This remembrance is brought to you as part of Joe Valdez's Class of '84 Blogathon at This Distracted Globe, a celebration of films from on the 25th anniversary of what many people consider the best film year of a generation.]

There are few movies that define the period in which they were made as much as the bizarre docucomedy The Gods Must Be Crazy. The story was officially set in the present day of the early 80's, but the footage of the generic city where "civilized man" lived, and even more so the music that backed this footage, inadvertently trapped the movie in a very, very specific time period (check out the first 10 minutes I've included here to jog your memory).

The Gods Must Be Crazy was actually produced in South Africa in 1980 but not shown in the U.S. until 1982, and even then in very limited release. Positive international word-of-mouth ended up bringing the movie back to the U.S. in 1984, when it opened in wide release and pulled in $30 million at the box office. So despite its birthdate I'm including it here because 1984 was the year it really made its impact in the United States.

Since I would have been three years old at the time I'm positive I didn't see it in the theater, but it remained culturally relevant throughout the decade, eventually even being shown as part of geography lessons in American classrooms (where I'm pretty sure I saw it at least once). After the sequel arrived in 1989, however, and after another sequel (1991) and another sequel (1993) and another sequel (1994) arrived, almost all of the thought-provoking cultural insight from the original was lost forever. Indeed, what started as a brilliant social commentary in 1980 ended as a silly slapstick comedy franchise more than a decade later.

I think it's safe to say that the social boundaries of political correctness would prevent The Gods Must Be Crazy from being made today. In fact I'd wager that that's exactly why it's also never shown or even talked about at all 25 years later. It takes a somewhat sophisticated sense of both humor and cultural awareness to fully appreciate this movie; it's either the funniest or most offensive movie you've ever seen, depending on who you are and how you look at the world.

I'm not going to claim to have these sophisticated senses (I liked Tropic Thunder, after all), which leaves me still fairly confused about how to process this movie. I had a similar reaction to Borat - many of the depictions deeply disturbed me, yet when I stepped outside of myself I found the mocking of American culture in many ways brilliant. The same can be said for The Gods Must Be Crazy, though it's an even more fascinating case because it presents a global situation, not specifically an American one (and not even an African one, really).

I haven't actually even seen The Gods Must Be Crazy for well over a decade, but I chose it from the list of '84 because even at a young age I knew that it made an impression on me. Not only was it funny by generic comedy standards (likable characters, perfectly timed physical gags, etc.), but it was so richly based in reality that you weren't sure sometimes what was staged and what wasn't. It was filmed in South Africa, made by a South African, and starred a Namibian bushman from the Kalahari Desert, N!xau, who like his character had never encountered the Western world before (and was thus completely fleeced by the producers, being paid a mere $300 for his work).

In an ironic cultural crossover, N!xau actually starred in all five "sequels" and traveled around the world before moving back to his rural village in the 90's. An obituary suggests that he died of tuberculosis, and observes that, "nothing that was important to us was important to him," a statement may be a perfect distillation of the film's message.

The Gods Must Be Crazy taught me that a lot more about "civilization" than I probably realized at the time, and I couldn't help but laugh while watching the beginning here again. In fact I am so impressed with the first 10 minutes that I'd really like to sit down and watch the whole thing over again to find out if, as an adult, my reaction to and understanding of The Gods Must Be Crazy may have changed.

Check out the other Class of '84 Blogathon entries at This Distracted Globe!

Flyway Film Festival: Colore Non Vedenti

2009-10-22T15:30:00.007-05:00

Colore Non Vedenti
Jay Cheel, 2009 (Official Website)
Run time: 29 min. | Canada
Categories: International Zombie Summit

When you spend as much time as I do reading and writing about movies, names of critics and bloggers and freelance writers often blend together in an incomprehensible mish-mash (by some definition I could be considered all three, for example). So when I saw the name Jay Cheel listed as the director of Colore Non Vedenti, the wheels in my head started turning - where had I seen that name? About ten seconds of searching provided me with the answer, as I've read a lot of Jay's writing at both Film Junk and, much more so, The Documentary Blog.

This all means nothing in the context of the charming Colore Non Vedenti, aside from perhaps proof that Jay can make films just as well as he can write about them. This sci-fi "zombie" thriller comedy (it kind of defies labeling) is well-written, assuredly directed, and impressively acted. It's evidence that low-budget does not mean low-quality, making it a perfect companion to the Cannes zombie hit Colin (reportedly made for $70), with which it will screen at Flyway.

On paper the story doesn't really sound as entertaining as it is on the screen, which is perhaps why the Flyway website doesn't provide a synopsis, and why I'll all but skip one here. You only need know that Colore Non Vedenti it follows a traditional blueprint - one guy fighting to save the world before the zombies/aliens/beings take over. David Tompa is an altogether perfect actor to play our reluctant hero Jack, and the rest of cast capably and humorously fill out their roles, particularly Haley Shannon as the exasperated Amy. Deanna Jones is great as the Waitress as well.

The pressure to choose the right music for a short film must be intense, and Cheel has risen to the occasion here with an awesomely memorable theme, a kind of Latin choral rock song (you have to hear it to understand it). The music is just the icing on the cake with this one, and I expect the Colin crowd to eat it up like hungry zombies on Saturday night. If you can't make it there, check it out right here in the comfort of your own...wherever you are:

Colore Non Vedenti plays with Colin on Saturday, Oct. 24, at 5:00 PM at the Stockholm Opera Hall.

Flyway Film Festival: Reviews of Selected Shorts

2009-10-21T22:59:00.044-05:00

I've really only come to appreciate short films in the last few years, almost entirely because of the theatrical screenings of the Oscar nominees every February. In fact I think I'd rather watch La Maison en Petits Cubes, last year's Oscar winner for Best Animated Short, again than the much-lauded Up (which I nonetheless did like). Anyway, my point is that shorts aren't the amateur and/or unimportant productions I may have once thought they were; many filmmakers even make a career out of short films.

There is an almost overwhelmingly high number of shorts playing at the Flyway Film Festival this weekend, and I've been fortunate to get a peek at several of them. Unfortunately one of them that I was really excited for, Surprise!, didn't play in my region-limited DVD player, so I can't say anything about it other than that it sounds like a promisingly boffo French comedy: "As an attentive husband, Pierre has prepared a surprise for his wife Brigitte's birthday, but a series of harmless incidents (like a draft, a sun beam reflected off a window) brings the next door neighbor into his bed just as Brigitte walks through the door." Maybe not high-minded comedy, but if handled the right way these set-ups can be hilarious.

So while I haven't seen Surprise!, here are some words about four shorts that I have seen, in alphabetical order and including video when I've found it available.

Gilles' Lilly (La Lili à Gilles)
David Uloth, 2007
Run Time: 16 min. | Canada
Categories: Narrative Short

You know you're not in for a G-rated story when a little girl drops the F-bomb in the opening monologue of a film. David Uloth's Gilles' Lilly (La Lili à Gilles), which has won several canadian festival awards (including the best short film at the Montreal World Film Festival), is a perfect companion piece to the dark mood of Spike Jonze's recent re-imagining of Where the Wild Things Are. Lilly (Marie-Félixe Allard) and her father, Francois (Jean-Phillipe Pearson), visit her senile and widowed grandfather, Gilles (Pierre Collin), who lives alone on the family estate. He is regularly looked after by Johanne (Sophie Caron) and is generally in good physical health, but Francois wants to take over the land and thinks it best for Gilles to live in an assisted care facility. Lilly is too young to understand her grandfather's dementia; his strange habits and sayings leading her to think of him as a magical wizard.

Lilly serves as our narrator, describing the "magical" things she sees in the house and drawing the viewer into a childlike state of wonderment along the way. The child actor Allard is absolutely adorable, which makes her salty language and unfiltered monologues shocking and, in a backwards way, even charming. The three adult actors are terrific as well, and I'm surprised to see only a few film credits to each of their names on IMDb. Collin and Pearson are especially affecting as father and son, and their terse discussion and eventual outbursts drive home how much dementia can devastate a family structure.

Aside from the handling of its characters and themese, what really set Gilles' Lilly apart from most short films was, for me, the jaw-droppingly impressive production values. This is a polished and very professional-looking film, with warm, rich, absorbing cinematography, and a perfectly balanced score. Directors these days are increasingly going the cheap route and using handheld cameras and naturalistic, bare-bones set pieces. Uloth (like Jonze) goes the other direction and shows that attention (money in a production budget) focused in the right places can produce an amazingly alive, visually engrossing world.

Yes, this is the kind of short film that looks better than most features - and one that could easily be flushed out into one. Uloth should have submitted this for Oscar consideration (maybe he did), and if he ever makes a feature film I am on board completely. I've been able to track down an Italian-subtitled version of Gilles' Lilly to show here, but this really deserves to be seen on the big screen this weekend.

Gilles' Lilly plays with For My Father (Sof Shavua Be-Tel Aviv) on Sunday, Oct. 25, at 5:00 PM at the Stockholm Opera Hall.

I Own You

Jeannie Roshar and Gary Anthony Williams, 2008 (Official Website)
Run Time: 18 min. | USA
Categories: WI/MN Showcase

When it comes to race in America, there is a fine line between on-the-mark social satire and offensive political correctness. Just ask any stand-up comedian, say like Michael Richards. Just the description alone of I Own You probably raises some people's hackles: "Ronnie, an African-American man, and Betsy, his Caucasian wife, are shocked to learn that in the 1800s, her family owned his in slavery. At first Ronnie brushes it off, but then an axe, a dashiki, Oprah Winfrey, and a cotton ball cause him to look at his wife in a whole new way." The story was inspired by the actual situation in which African-American co-writer Gary Anthony Williams (who also stars as Ronnie) found himself in when he married his Caucasian wife.

So what's the verdict? Well, from where I sit as a product of such a marriage (albeit not an American one), I can say I Own You is really pretty funny, and not surprisingly well-informed. Balance - not to be confused with equality - is essential in applying comedy to hot topics like this, and Williams and Roshar (who stars as Betsy) impressively cover nearly all aspects of interracial relations (white guilt, reparations, African-American co-opting of African culture, marginilization of other races, biracial children, etc.).

I think it's worth mentioning that I Own You is showing at the festival just a few weeks after an interracial couple in Louisiana was denied a marriage license (and a year after a biracial person was elected president). A screening of I Own You in that state, and elsewhere, could do a great job in both enlightening and entertaining an American public still unsure of how to talk about this subject.

I Own You plays in the Shorts 1 Program on Saturday, Oct. 24, 1:00 PM at the Lake Pepin Art & Design Center.

Snowbird
Courtney Hoskins, 2007
Run time: 6 min. | USA
Categories: Narrative Short

A patient and contemplative mindbender, Snowbird observes a young woman on a Colorado mountain pass, desperately trying to catch a ride from a sympathetic driver. Her methods of flagging cars begin as amusing (funny signs, cartwheels), then turn more desperately hopeless, then fade altogether. Will she be left stranded?

What sounds like an uninteresting story about a random hitchhiker is anything but. On her Vimeo page, Courtney Hoskins explains that Snowbird is about "finding your voice and gaining the courage to move forward in your life." It's not really until the very end that you understand what that means, and then you're left with all kinds of questions. Making a thought-provoking film in under 6 minutes is pretty impressive - check it out.

Snowbird plays with MIA: A Soldier's Homecoming on Sunday, Oct. 25, 5:00 PM at the Lake Pepin Art & Design Center.

Wind Up Dress (World Premiere)
Brett Harding, 2009
Categories: WI/MN Showcase
Run time: 7 min. | USA

I get a kick out of "what if?" scenarios in movies, like from A Simple Plan - what if you found $4 million that nobody was looking for? As unlikely as that is, Wind Up Dress offers an even more unbelievable premise: what if a disabled woman was given the ability to walk by wearing a special dress (identical to a scenario in last year's Quid Pro Quo)?

The reason I like these kinds of films is because there's never a "right" answer, and there's always a cost that needs to be considered by the characters. Whether they will realize it or not is often what separates a comedy from a drama. Wind Up Dress, which is a silent film and is shot in black and white on what appears to be 16mm, is definitely a drama. It's well-paced and the vintage sheen provides a sense of realism that ironically would be missing if color were added. My only knock would be that the climactic finale runs just a bit too long, which is never what you want in a short film. But nonetheless I recommend checking out Wind Up Dress and asking yourself, "What if?".

Wind Up Dress plays with New York Lately on Sunday, Oct. 25, at 3:00 PM at the Stockholm Opera Hall.

Don't Miss "Minnesota In & On Film": A Simple Plan, 10/22/09

2009-10-20T10:34:00.009-05:00

You won't find it in any theater listing or community event calendar, but continuing this Thursday at Macalester College is an outstanding biweekly film series, "Minnesota In & On Film". Among the many notable Macalester alumni is Colin Covert '74, film critic for the Star Tribune and a great all-around guy. Colin is introducing each of the films and leading post-screening discussions with special guests and Macalester faculty.

The series is sponsored by the Alumni Office and is meant for "alumni, staff, faculty and parents", but since I fit none of those descriptions and I've still rolled up at two of the three films, I think we can assume the public are also welcome. So far I've enjoyed The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (starring Robert Duvall as Jesse James) and the Oscar-winning documentary American Dream, both of which I was seeing for the first time and both of which have helped in some way inform my understanding of this quirky state.

But since I first saw the series schedule I've had Thursday, 10/22, circled in red ink for Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan, one of my all-time favorite movies and, according to Colin, the "greatest movie ever filmed in Minnesota". Nearly two years ago I highlighted A Simple Plan as an Underrated Movie of the Month, and now, a decade after its release, I can see it again on the big screen.

I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. It's in every good way a Coen brothers movie, though technically it was adapted from the novel and directed by their pal Sam Raimi (the trio co-wrote The Hudsucker Proxy). I had fun at Drag Me to Hell earlier this year, but for my money Raimi is wasting his time with the Spider-Man franchise and not seeking enough opportunities for thrillers like A Simple Plan. I guess you can decide for yourself on Thursday.

Screenings for the series take place at 7:00 PM in the John B. Davis Lecture Hall inside the Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center, but if you're like me you'll get confused by all of those names and end up in the middle of campus asking some disaffected student for directions. Just head to the big building near the corner of Snelling and Grand; the lecture hall/theater is downstairs to the right. Admission for the whole series was $25, but you can also do as I've done (I think) and pay $5 at the door for each screening.

And if you for whatever reason can't make it this Thursday (a family emergency being your only legitimate excuse), you can mark your calendar for the last film in the series on Nov. 12 - none other than Purple Rain.

(watch in High Quality)

Fly Away to the Flyway Film Festival, Oct. 22-25

2009-10-19T10:15:00.018-05:00

This weekend across the river over der in Pepin, WI, the second annual Flyway Film Festival will showcase an impressive lineup of narrative features, shorts, and documentaries. Amusingly, about half of the films are family-friendly while the other half are zombie flicks (in fact Saturday is being called the International Zombie Summit). But there are plenty of other options if you don't have kids or don't like dead people.

Here's a blurb from the website from festival director Rick Vaicus:

"Selections range from regional Wisconsin/Minnesota offerings to international fare, among them, the Cannes-favorite U.K. zombie film Colin; German drama Storm, which garnered huge praise at the Berlin International Film Festival; Trust Us This Is All Made Up, from U.S. director Alex Karpovsky (whose mockumentary Woodpecker was a 2008 FFF audience favorite); and the family-friendly feature Etienne!, which has steadily been gathering warm critical praise.

Added into the mix is the Opening Night (and Midwest premiere) screening of the extraordinary sci-fi film Ink and Closing Night’s feature, the Wisconsin typesetting documentary Typeface for a variety of subject matter that can truly appeal to almost every film lover.

“We are so excited about this year’s programming,” says Vaicius. “It’s been a lot of hard work, but we’ve been rewarded with some regional and national sponsorships, as well as a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board which has allowed us to expand on last year’s successes, including the ability to bring more filmmakers to the community and the festival.”"

Matt Gamble at Where the Long Tail Ends did a yeoman's job covering last year's festival, and this year he has recruited yours truly and Andrew James from Row Three to join him and expand the festival coverage. We've all got a handful of screeners and plan on being there at different times or throughout the whole weekend. I'll review what I can before the festival but will review whatever I see at some point, even if days or weeks afterward, as the timing was just too short to see everything beforehand. Many of these are small independent films that deserve whatever attention they can get on their way around the festival circuit.

The good news is that you don't need my direction because the festival website is terrific. It's well organized, easy to navigate and requires minimal clicking. Check out the full schedule here and the complete list of films here. Here are what I personally consider some highlights from the descriptions I've read and buzz I've heard:

Friday, October 23rd

7:00 PM Storm; Hans-Christian Schmid 2009 | Narrative Feature | 105 min.

9:00 PM Ink; Jamin Winans 2009 | Narrative Feature | 102 min.

Saturday, October 24th

11:00 AM   and on the 7th day, God Rocked; Jason Page 2008 | WI/MN Showcase | 98 min.

1:00 PM     Redneck Zombies; Pericles Lewnes 1989 | 90 min.

3:00 PM     Zombie Girl: The Movie; Aaron Marshall, Justin Johnson and Erick Mauck 2008 | 91 min.

3:00 PM     Trust Us This is All Made Up; Alex Karpovsky 2009 | Documentary Feature | 83 min.

5:00 PM     Colin; Marc Price 2008 | 90 min.

5:00 PM     Milking The Rhino; David E Simpson 2008 | Documentary Feature | 83 min.

7:00 PM     Pontypool; Bruce McDonald 2008 | 96 min.

7:00 PM     The Drummer; Kennith Bi 2007 | Narrative Feature | 115 min.

7:00 PM     Etienne; Jeff Mizushima 2008 | Family Flyway | 88 min.

9:00 PM     Dead Snow; Tommy Wirkola 2009 | 91 min.

Sunday, October 25th

1:00 PM     Living Arrangements; Sam Thompson 2009 | WI/MN Showcase | 95 min.

1:00 PM     The Gold Retrievers; James D R Hickox 2009 | Family Flyway | 90 min.

3:00 PM     New York Lately; Gary King 2008 | WI/MN Showcase | 92 min.

5:00 PM     MIA: A Soldier's Homecoming; Randall Wilson 2007 | Documentary Feature | 57 min.

7:00 PM     Typeface; Justine Nagan 2009 | WI/MN Showcase | 64 min.

I haven't been to the Pepin area before but have only heard that the town and waterfront area are spectacularly beautiful. If the weather holds up I'm sure there will be some great fall foliage to admire as you rub your eyes from the sunlight in between screenings. You might also run into the three of us buzzing around the three festival venues.

Get your tickets now!

Joel & Ethan Coen: The Third Decade (2006-)

2009-10-18T16:10:00.003-05:00

Though I didn't finish this project until the Walker Art Center's Coen Brothers retrospective, Joel & Ethan Coen: Raising Cain, reached its end, I'm still glad I took the opportunity to rewatch all 14 Coen brothers films (including A Serious Man, for the first time). Considering the lack of time I've been able to spend writing here, it was an ambitious goal, though it's given me (along with the Regis Dialogue I attended with them) a much more comprehensive understanding of their films.

Read: A Conversation with the Coens & a Look at Their First Decade (1984-1994)
Read: Joel & Ethan Coen: The Second Decade (1995-2005)

(Title screens via the Walker blog.)

No Country for Old Men (2007)

As I mentioned in Part 1, I saw Blood Simple for the first time only recently, but it made an immediate impression on my understanding of the rest of the Coen's films, particularly No Country for Old Men. This was my favorite movie of 2007, a Best Picture winner, an instant classic, and one of the best movies of the decade. Repeated viewings have done nothing to diminish its stature in my mind, and I continue to gain appreciation for the acting from the supporting cast, notably Kelly MacDonald, who does wonders covering up her thick Scottish accent.

I haven't read the celebrated Cormac McCarthy novel that inspired the Coens to make this adaptation, but there are a lot of ways you can look at No Country for Old Men - as a parable about the inevitability of death and the meaninglessness of fate, as a cultural study of early 1980's West Texas, as a conventional cat-and-mouse chase story, or as a hitman suspense thriller. Any way you look at it, the most obvious thing about it is the incredible polish with which the Coens fashion the story. There is not an overlong scene or an unnecessary line or even a bad character; it's nearly a perfect movie. Here is an instantly classic scene that introduces us to the creepy quirkiness of Anton Chigurh (Bardem). No one can play the mocking copycat game like Chigurh:

Burn After Reading (2008)

Considering the star power that was on display in this movie (nearly the entire cast has either won or been nominated for multiple Oscars), it still surprises me that Burn After Reading received such a lukewarm critical and commercial reception. Maybe people were disappointed to see the Coens return to screwball comedy after their top-form drama in No Country for Old Men. Or maybe the satire on Beltway culture was too subtle and we just didn't appreciate the wryness of the comedy.

In any event I think Burn After Reading is one of those Coen movies that shouldn't be overthought; it's best enjoyed when you just sit back and allow yourself to be entertained by the kooky characters. And they are kooky, as evidenced in the trailer (the only embeddable video I could find, unfortunately):

A Serious Man (2009)

Not much more to say about this that I haven't said here or here, other than two weeks after seeing I still remember it fondly. Is it the best Coen film yet? That's hard to say, and it doesn't really matter. It is, at the very least, their most personal film, as well as (not coincidentally) one of their most thought-provoking. It is a meditation on life, suffering, and Judaism, not necessarily in that order.

With A Serious Man the Coens have now told a story set in almost every decade of the last century (really interesting to consider). And of course they can still write great comedy. Here's a hilarious scene with Larry Gopnik's arch-nemesis, Sy Ableman:

Joel & Ethan Coen: The Second Decade (1995-2005)

2009-10-17T18:45:00.013-05:00

As the Walker Art Center's Coen Brothers retrospective, Joel & Ethan Coen: Raising Cain, finishes this weekend, I'm rushing to record some brief thoughts on the six films from their second decade of filmmaking.

Read: A Conversation with the Coens & a Look at Their First Decade (1984-1994)

(Title screens via the Walker blog.)

Fargo (1996)

I wasn't allowed to like Fargo the first time - as I recounted last year, nobody in Minnesota was. It was funny, sure, but at the expense of the local culture. Not a culture that I really identify with, but nonetheless one that I obviously recognized and one that was extremely offended by the film. Yes, people do talk like that and yes, the winters are that bad. Sometimes even worse. But in addition to an innately lower body temperature and a twisted sense of humor, most Minnesotans also have a keen awareness of when they're being mocked, and they weren't happy about Fargo until...well, until it started winning awards, and until the Coens became recognized as perhaps the best filmmaking duo of their generation. Then everybody looooved Fargo (read more about the local reaction here).

Watching it again recently I not only appreciated the comedy and cultural needling, but I rediscovered how great the acting is from all of the major players. Frances McDormand obviously won Best Actress for her performance, but William H. Macy and Kristin Rudrüd are great as Jerry and Jean Lundegaard, and Steve Buscemi and even John Carroll Lynch are in top form.

Most of my favorite scenes feature Marge Gunderson (McDormand) talking to the locals, probably the highlight being her rendezvous with Mike Yanagita. But here's another classic, both because it features the exterior of the Lakeshore Club, a random bar/social club that I always saw by my friend's house growing up, and because it references my alma mater, WBLAHS ("Go Bears!"):

The Big Lebowski (1998)

I don't think there is a trippier Coen movie than The Big Lebowski, and I don't think there is a funnier Coen character than John Goodman's Walter Sobchak. For these reasons it's easy to see why the last Coen film of the 90's became a cult classic only a few years after it was released (to middling reviews, it should be noted). There is the annual Lebowski Fest (now in eight cities, and growing), and the constant pop culture references, and the frequent midnight showings. In fact there probably isn't another Coen film celebrated as often as this one.

What makes it so special? I really believe it's Walter Sobchak. Sure, Jeff Bridges makes Judd Apatow's schlubs seem like downright gentlemen, and the seedy L.A. bowling culture is hilariously depicted. But in my opinion this would be a completely different movie without John Goodman's effortlessly obnoxious performance. One of my favorite scenes is (SPOILER) his eulogy for Donny, but of course the only clips available are dumb reenactments from countless Lebowski devotees. So instead here's a different clip of Walter, in which (true story) he makes a snide comment to Joel Coen after he thinks he hears him call "cut" in the middle of the scene.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

According to the brothers, they didn't realize they were remaking "The Odyssey" until they were well into writing the screenplay for O Brother, Where Art Thou? There's no need for them to be worried about accusations of plagiarism, because I still think it's one of the most unique projects of this decade, even if it's not one of my favorite Coen films. The strengths of O Brother are most obviously heard (the bluegrass soundtrack relaunched many careers) and seen (Roger Deakins' sepia-toned cinematography is perfectly understated), but the underlying political and social commentary also adds depth you don't find in many of the Coen movies.

The idiocy of Clooney, Turturro, and Blake Nelson still tests my patience, and while I don't find the comedy as rip-roaring as most people, I can still appreciate the tongue-in-cheek satire behind many of the scenes. In the recent Regis Dialogue with the Coens, for example, they described how the "O Death" scene with the Ku Klux Klan was actually filmed using an African-American marching band or color guard or something like that. It was also shot right next to a freeway outside of L.A. and could be easily seen from the road. They're not sure how they got away with it. Anyway, here's what might be the most well-known scene, and one that I think features the best song from the movie. Introducing the Soggy Bottom Boys:

The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

Not having seen all of their films in 2001, I still didn't really understand the Coens' style of filmmaking when I saw the noirish dark comedy The Man Who Wasn't There in the theater. Thinking back I'm surprised I even went to see it, but I suppose I must have still been excited about Billy Bob Thornton after A Simple Plan, since Scarlett Johannson and James Gandolfini certainly weren't names I would have known eight years ago. To take nothing away from Carter Burwell's great scores in all of the Coen movies, I love the piano renditions of Beethoven symphonies throughout this film. The music, along with the black-and-white coloring (it was actually shot in color and then drained in post-production), creates a melancholic atmosphere that draws you in and almost forces you to marinate on its themes of loneliness, love, and redemption.

I don't think of it as a really hard-boiled noir (though it has been described as such), and the pace could only be described as unhurried. But that's nice in a way, because a lot of Coen stories scurry along and jump around (as Elvis Mitchell astutely observed in the Regis Dialogue, nearly all of their films are chase films), while The Man Who Wasn't There, along with Blood Simple, Barton Fink, and No Country for Old Men, move along deliberately and really operate as meditations on one or two key characters. Anyway, here's a surprisingly brisk scene featuring Tony Shaloub, who has unfortunately only been cast in two Coen movies (can you name the other one?):

Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

You can see what's wrong with Intolerable Cruelty without even watching the movie. Those three names in the writing credits alongside Joel and Ethan - Robert Ramsey, Matthew Stone, and John Romano? Collectively they've written Big Trouble, Man of the House, Nights of Rodanthe, and TV shows including "Class of '96" and "Cop Rock", to name just a few.

The Coens share screenplay credits here but something just does not click for me with this movie. The one Coen-esque thing about the characters is that they're depraved and depressed, but I see no chemistry between George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones (which I guess is the point?), and the story is so contrived, particularly the ending. I don't know, I saw this for the first time recently and found it pretty disappointing, yet also validating. After all, there's a reason I had skipped it in the first place. It's not entirely without merit, but the "good" scenes are few and far between. Here's one that actually appears to bear the Coen mark:

The Ladykillers (2004)

Though Intolerable Cruelty is lesser Coen in my opinion, and though The Hudsucker Proxy is always and unfairly omitted from their filmography, The Ladykillers is the Coen film that should really be forgotten. Its soulful soundtrack and inspired set pieces simply cannot make up for a tediously unfunny 104 minutes of obscenities, slapstick gags, and Tom Hanks sniveling and snorting and sounding quite a lot like Forrest Gump.

Maybe it takes a few viewings and maybe I'm just missing the meaning behind the comedy, but J.K. Simmons and Marlon Wayans bickering for a couple hours doesn't really do much to entertain me. In fact I was more interested in Ryan Hurst's performance as Lump, because I think Hurst misinterpreted direction to act "dumb as a rock" as direction to act as a rock; Lump ends up hardly even human, and not at all funny.

Granted, The Ladykillers also not an original Coen story, as they were commissioned to rewrite the script from the 1955 film of the same name (which I haven't seen). After Barry Sonnenfeld left the project the brothers were also tapped to produce and direct it. Incidentally, after two decades of filmmaking this was the first movie in which they were both credited as writers, producers, and directors (perhaps to share the blame for what they knew would be a miss?). Here's a forgivingly brief scene:

Coming soon - The Coen Brothers: The Third Decade (2006-)...

Only in the Movies: Talking at Bars and Nightclubs

2009-10-13T11:16:00.005-05:00

When you can't talk, about all you can do is look around...

My patience had been tested beyond a level of comfort by the end of the unfunny Couples Retreat, but it became a downright aggravating experience in the last 20 minutes. I'm not one for spoilers but I'm guessing no one is going to be shocked by the sappy ending of this disaster. Yes, the couples predictably live happily after, but not before a completely inane and anticlimactic set piece in a stereotypically hedonistic outdoor resort wetbar nightclub patio lounge whatever-you-want-to-call it.

The four couples journey (a forehead-slappingly stupid "Guitar Hero" competition interrupting them briefly along the way) from Eden West to Eden East, the "singles" side of the island where hot, young, multicultural models get together under the colored lights and dance in perfectly arranged choreography. It looks like a Budweiser commercial, even more so because people are actually drinking Budweiser - Bud Heavy, to be more specific. Why even one person would be drinking a blue collar American beer at a five star resort in Bora Bora is unexplained (it's more likely they would be drinking PBR in this hipster era anyway), but let's just assume Bud paid a king's ransom for the product placement and get on with our lives.

In any case that's not the detail that finally broke me, and incidentally neither is the horribly stereotyped African-American couple or the insipid, immature, idle screenplay. What got me was what was happening during that nightclub scene: the characters were talking. Not shouting, not leaning in, not yelling in each other's ears - quietly talking, and at that having the most honest and deeply emotional conversations any of them had had during many years of marriage. It was ridiculous.

In what kind of bar or nightclub are you able to carry on a conversation at a normal volume?

This has bothered me for years and the only reason it's coming up in the context of Couples Retreat is because it was one of the last sins that movie committed. But it's nothing new. We see a group of characters go out to a nightclub or a young couple meet a bar or restaurant. It's always a weekend night, yet they never have to elbow for space or search for an open table or stool, and they're generally served by a waitress or bartender within 30 seconds of arriving (watch for this in beer commercials as well). Then they start talking - using voices that would be appropriate for a library.

I'm past the point in my life when a nightclub or packed bar environment is what I look forward to on a Saturday night (actually I don't know if it was ever that appealing, but long story short I'm fine with that not being an option discussed on weekends anymore). These days I tend to judge a place by how well I can hear the music from a block away, and by that I mean if I can hear it at all I'm going to steer clear. My time with friends is short these days, so why suffer through brain-rattling noise and restlessly stand around, unable to actually talk to them? The fact of the matter is that if you're going to try, a decision must be made early on to sacrifice your voice for the next day. Okay vocal chords, let's do this...(deep breath)..."YEAH, SO, THE OTHER DAY I WAS -", yada yada yada.

But this doesn't happen in the movies, and instead major dialogue is placed in these nightclub scenes. Judd Apatow is a fan of this trick, for example, as both Knocked Up and The 40 Year-Old Virgin feature his socially awkward characters heading out to cruise for women at local hotspots. The scenes are pretty funny ("Yeah, well, you know, it's $9 beer night."), but totally unbelievable. Michael Mann prefers these settings as well, recently having Jamie Foxx talking in loud nightclubs in both Collateral and Miami Vice.

One scene in Collateral is particularly suspect. Witness Foxx and Tom Cruise enter a packed-to-capacity nightclub blasting Paul Oakenfold's "Ready Steady Go". I am absolutely certain the volume would be greater than 100 decibels in this room, yet Cruise speaks to Foxx in a virtual whisper as they navigate through the crowd. Watch the first minute and then listen to Cruise at 1:23:

And of course there's also The Matrix. If my memory serves me correctly, Trinity approaches Neo and coos into his ear words that he has no problem hearing as an industrial techno mix blasts in the background. Maybe this doesn't count because it's The Matrix and nothing is actually real, but that would be the only explanation because the two of them carrying a conversation like this defies the natural laws of our world.

Wouldn't it have been amusingly realistic to have Jamie Foxx yell, "What was that?!?", and lean in closer as a frustrated Tom Cruise had to repeat himself? And wouldn't it have been amusingly realistic if Neo just gave the old smile and nod? Or if Trinity had to engage him in intense eye contact while mouthing out each word? Just once I'd like to see a director show it like it really is.

Do you disagree? Are there other examples and/or gaping holes in my theory? Let's go to the bar down the street and discuss...

Also seen "Only in the Movies":

- Answering machines

- Free cab rides

- Browsing through vinyl

REVIEW: A Serious Man (A)

2009-10-09T00:05:00.322-05:00

Consider some of the classic songs featured at pivotal moments of Coen Bros. movies: the operatic "Oh Danny Boy" in Miller's Crossing, the psychedelic "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" in The Big Lebowski, and the bluegrassy "Man of Constant Sorrow" in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, just to name a few. The tone and lyrics of each of these songs are essential to evoking a particular atmosphere in key scenes. But that's about where the meaning ends - within those scenes.

Then consider the use of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" in A Serious Man. The lyrics are not only key to the setting of the movie, but they are for the first time in a Coen film the backbone of the entire story. Recite the first two lines ("When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies") and you have explained the philosophical underpinnings of Larry Gopnik's mid-life crisis. Which is to say you haven't explained anything at all. Let me try to explain.

Set in their home state at the time of their childhood, and featuring characters that have clearly influenced their storytelling style, A Serious Man exists not only as the most personally realized film of the Coens' 25 year-long career, but quite certainly one of their best. In fact, on close examination this is the film that explains the thirteen that preceded it. You see by this really-but-not-really autobiography how they must have viewed the world as children, surrounded by a culture (Jewish Midwestern) and cast of characters (quirky, disturbed, confused) that would leave an impression on anyone. Fortunately for all of us, the brothers have been sharing their peculiar outlook on life through their films for years, culminating in a melancholic masterpiece that will delight their fans as much as it disinterests their critics (all of them fools, anyway, right?).

"Receive everything that happens to you with simplicity," reads a rabbinical quote at the beginning of the film. This is followed by an absorbing and mysterious scene set generations ago in Poland. We're not sure who these characters are or what they're supposed to represent, but things start making sense as we're suddenly thrust into 1967 by those Jefferson Airplane lyrics. The song is playing in the earphones of Danny Gopnik (Aaron Wolff), but his father, Prof. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), is the one who's figuratively hearing the words. He's a modern-day Job, navigating his way through a host of dilemmas related to his physical health, his marriage, his job, his children, his brother, his neighbor, his students, his - you get the picture.

Larry pleads to anyone who will listen, "I haven't done anything!," which is meant to both excuse and assuage himself but accomplishes neither objective. Like any rational person - particularly any rational person of faith, Larry eventually makes the mistake of looking for easy answers to the questions that burden his life, knowing no such answers exist but thinking he'll make a breakthrough nonetheless.

Not since John Turturro embodied Barton Fink has a character in a Coen brothers movie dredged through such ponderous philosophical terrain, and never have matters of faith been so deeply entrenched in one of their stories. A Serious Man provides no easy answers, and it's one of the few films they've made that actually poses heavy questions. Coen characters have had their shares of problems, that's a given, but none of them been so unjustly treated as Larry Gopnik - and even then actually been cognizant of it.

Some of their "victims" (Ed Tom Bell, Ed Crane, Barton Fink) have been caught up in the wrong situation at the wrong time, whereas others have been weasels (Jerry Lundegaard, The Dude, Everett, most recently Osbourne Cox) who deserved the bad karma that was chasing them. And then there are the heroes - Norville Barnes, Tom Reagan, H.I. McDunnough, Marge Gunderson - who overcame some disadvantage to ultimately save the day.

But not Larry Gopnik - he's not a martyr or a hero or a crook. He's really trying to be "a serious man", trying as hard as he can to remain on the straight and narrow with his work, his family, and his faith. But it doesn't work. Something's askew in Larry's universe and disaster continues to strike, harshly and repeatedly. Everyone tells him to "see the rabbi", to which he scoffs like a teenager told to "turn down that music!". When he finally does see the rabbi(s), of course, his confusion increasingly ferments into frustration and despair. It's terrifying and, at times, hilarious.

It requires a capable actor to handle Larry's emotional nuances and deadpan reactions to the inevitability of life, and Michael Stuhlbarg is certainly up to the task. You would expect no less from the Coens in casting the rest of the characters, some of whom you'll recognize but 32 of whom are played by local actors here in the Twin Cities. Speaking of which, aside from a couple of obscure references (I'm sure the discussion about Ronald Meshbesher only produced riotous laughter in theaters here), you might never know that this story is set in Minnesota.

I dare say that all of the hullabaloo about the local filming didn't even amount to much in terms of local sights, but nevertheless the culture is key and the Coens nailed it once again, from deer hunting to tornado drills to the Red Owl grocery chain. Roger Deakins doesn't do much to make our fair state look interesting, but he employs some of his favorite pitched-angle closeups that work in some scenes but fail in others. Carter Burwell also has fun with a moody score that ebbs and flows at just the right moments.

And, of course, the Coens once again hit their comedic notes with perfect pitch and timing. There are a few instantly classic lines ("Be out in a minute!", and "Look at the parking lot, Larry!"), not to mention the token one or two characters whose sole purpose appears to be comic relief (here, Sy Ableman and Rabbi Nachtner). Yes, there is a lot of comedy in A Serious Man, which seems in opposition to the depression I've described yet perfectly in line with the Coen brand of storytelling, which at the moment is of the highest quality.

Whether this will end up as successful either critically or commercially as their other films (a Best Picture nomination in an expanded field this year deserves to be considered an absolute lock) remains to be seen, but in any event I think A Serious Man will end up being many people's favorite Coen brothers movie. It's tenderly made, warm and strangely comforting, both because you can relate to Larry's suffering and be removed from it at the same time.

In a way it's also like that Jefferson Airplane song, full of meaning yet difficult to explain. As you can see from my light treatment here, I've been thinking about this movie for the last week and I still don't know how to process it (and on what level - artistic, critical, philosophic?). I thought taking the time to actually sit down and write some thoughts would move me along, but I don't think I'm there yet and I may not be until I see it again. Better just let it continue marinating in the meantime and chalk this one up to that crafty Coen magic.

Grade:
Writing - 10
Acting - 9
Production - 9
Emotional Impact - 9
Music - 5
Social Significance - 5

Total: 47/50= 94% = A

A Closer Look at the Worst Movies of the Decade (2000-2009)

2009-10-06T14:30:00.005-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I caught a story about Rotten Tomatoes listing the worst films of the first decade of this century/millennium (2000-2009). Obviously curious to see what was included, I headed over to RT to see the full list of shame. Here it is, from the "best" (an RT rating of 7%) to the worst (RT rating of 0%); titles are followed by the film's release year...

100. Whiteout (2009)
99. Glitter (2001)
98. Cheaper By the Dozen 2 (2005)
97. Boat Trip (2003)
96. All About Steve (2009)
95. Lost Souls (2000)
94. The New Guy (2002)
93. A Sound of Thunder (2005)
92. Babylon A.D. (2008)
91. Surviving Christmas (2004)
90. Dragonfly (2002)
89. Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
88. Kaena: The Prophecy (2004)
87. Testosterone (2003)
86. Pavilion of Women (2001)
85. Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (2006)
84. Thr3e (2007)
83. Doogal (2006)
82. Supercross: The Movie (2005)
81. Extreme Ops (2002)
80. Big Momma's House 2 (2006)
79. The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002)
78. Deck the Halls (2006)
77. Date Movie (2006)
76. Johnson Family Vacation (2004)
75. Son of the Mask (2005)
74. Envy (2004)
73. Gigli (2003)
72. Broken Bridges (2006)
71. College (2008)
70. New Best Friend (2002)
69. The Cookout (2004)
68. Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie (2004)
67. The Hottie & the Nottie (2008)
66. The Fog (2005)
65. Swept Away (2002)
64. Corky Romano (2001)
63. Yours, Mine, & Ours (2005)
62. Serving Sara (2002)
61. Good Luck Chuck (2007)
60. The Perfect Man (2005)
59. 88 Minutes (2008)
58. Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
57. Godsend (2004)
56. Because I Said So (2007)
55. The Celestine Prophecy (2006)
54. Harry And Max (2005)
53. Modigliani (2005)
52. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2005)
51. Fascination (2005)
50. Dirty Love (2005)
49. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2008)
48. BloodRayne (2006)
47. Soul Survivors (2001)
46. Material Girls (2006)
45. My Baby's Daddy (2004)
44. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)
43. Darkness (2003)
42. House of the Dead (2003)
41. Zoom (2006)
40. Down to You (2000)
39. Miss March (2009)
38. Happily N'Ever After (2007)
37. Code Name: The Cleaner (2007)
36. The Whole Ten Yards (2004)
35. Deal (2008)
34. The Haunting of Molly Hartley (2008)
33. Delta Farce (2007)
32. Deuces Wild (2002)
31. The Covenant (2006)
30. Fear Dot Com (2002)
29. Bless the Child (2000)
28. Rollerball (2002)
27. Battlefield Earth (2000)
26. Kickin' It Old Skool (2007)

(view clips of the "Top 25" at CNN.com)

25. Meet the Spartans (2008)

24. Texas Rangers (2001)
23. The In Crowd (2000)
22. Disaster Movie (2008)
21. Epic Movie (2007)
20. Crossover (2006)
19. Half Past Dead (2002)
18. The Master of Disguise (2002)
17. Twisted (2004)
16. Daddy Day Camp (2007)

(With a rating of 0%, the following top 15 movies did not receive one positive review among them. Not one.)

15. Alone in the Dark (2005)
14. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009)
13. Constellation (2007)
12. Killing Me Softly (2002)
11. Merci Docteur Rey! (2002)
10. Witless Protection (2008)
9. Redline (2007)
8. 3 Strikes (2000)
7. Strange Wilderness (2008)
6. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)
5. National Lampoon's Gold Diggers (2004)
4. King's Ransom (2005)
3. Pinocchio (2002) - 53 reviews
2. One Missed Call (2008) - 73 reviews
1. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002) - 107 reviews

Now, if you've read any of my other unnecessary analyses of movie stuff, you'll know that the story doesn't just end with a release of this list. Let's break it down with some observations.

Worst Years

Here is a breakdown of the years from this decade and corresponding number of "worst" movies from said year:

2000 - 6 movies
2001 - 5 movies
2002 - 16 movies
2003 - 5 movies
2004 - 13 movies
2005 - 14 movies
2006 - 13 movies
2007 - 11 movies
2008 - 12 movies
2009 - 5 movies

A few things jump out at me:

First, I'm surprised 2007 had that many bad movies. I don't know if RT has a Best of the Decade list and I'm not about to do as much research and copying and pasting as I just did here to find out, but my point is that I still consider 2007 the best year of the decade, so it's a little surprising that's not reflected here.

Second, I am not at all surprised 2002 ranks as the worst year of the decade. Although this is a year that produced excellent films like Gangs of New York, Amelie, The Bourne Identity, Whale Rider, Catch Me If You Can, Unfaithful, Blue Crush (that's right), In America, Spirited Away, Frida, and City of God, in looking through an alphabetical list of films from that year you begin to chuckle, then wince, then cringe, and then run away screaming.

Make no mistake, this was an absolutely dreadful year at the movies. In addition to the 16 movies on this list, you can add garbage like Crossroads, Austin Powers in Goldmember, Death to Smoochy, Juwanna Man, Phone Booth, Windtalkers, When We Were Soldiers, and my own personal nightmare, The Time Machine, which ranks among the five worst movies I've ever seen.

Third, the awful quality of movies in 2002 begins to explain a lot of Hollywood trends that would influence the rest of the decade. Studioes went all-in with sequels, producing record numbers of them and making trilogies out of totally meaningless comedies by mid-decade. Understanding that their original ideas (Eight Legged Freaks, anybody?) were getting panned by critics and ignored by audiences, they figured heck, let's just keep making the same movies from here on out and people won't be disappointed. Natch, Spider-Man, Ice Age, and xXx were all released in 2002 before spawning endless sequels. In addition to the rise of sequels, the success of both Chicago (Best Picture winner) and The Ring spawned countless movie musicals and J-horror remakes, respectively.

In conclusion, many of the movies we've seen over the last 5-7 years were directly a result of Hollywood's desperation to recreate anything that even resembled a success in 2002, since everything else they gave us that year was rightfully scorned.

Worst Actors

Thankfully I have not seen the majority of these movies, but in scanning this list I'm making a loose connection here that the following people may be guilty of multiple crimes against cinema (at least two movies from this list), a felony charge that should result in a career change but usually results in bigger paychecks: Tim Allen, Sandra Bullock, Jamie Kennedy, Chris Klein, Matthew Perry, Eddie Griffin, Jennifer Lopez, Vin Diesel, Larry the Cable Guy, Eddie Murphy, Ben Affleck, Mandy Moore, Piper Perabo, Leelee Sobieski, Robert De Niro, Ben Kingsley, Lucy Liu, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Hillary Duff, Anthony Anderson, Selma Blair, Stephen Dorff, Ja Rule, and Andy Garcia.

Now taking suggestions for their just punishment.

Worst Directors

There is no need for consideration and deliberation here. The worst directors of this decade are Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, who together have blessed us with Date Movie, Disaster Movie, Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans in the last three years alone. Three of these are in the top 25, with Date Movie being the lone "hit" at a solid 6% RT rating, good enough for 77th place on the decade's list of shame.

You shouldn't be surprised that during the course of this unabated abusive streak against masochistic audiences, the duo has made millions of dollars more than you and I ever will, and they continue to work with no shame and no apparent moral compass. Next up: Scary Movie 5. And that's Hollywood.

Additional Observations

- I believe I've only seen three of these movies in their entirety: Yours, Mine, & Ours, Code Name: The Cleaner, and Envy. The first two I saw as in-flight entertainment (along with the aforementioned The Time Machine - twice), so those don't count because everybody knows that in-flight entertainment almost exclusively features the worst movies available at any given time. However the last movie, Envy, I will admit to seeing with a good friend on opening weekend. That Jack Black and Ben Stiller could have costarred in something so earth-shatteringly stupid still surprises me. If you've never heard of it, don't go looking for reasons why not. You may be severely disturbed by what you find.

- Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, the Worst Movie of the Decade, was directed by someone named "Kaos". That is all.

- How are Monkeybone (2001) and Lady in the Water (2005) missing from this list? Both are in the aforementioned top five worst movies I've ever seen, and I'm shocked that any critic could have had a positive opinion of either movie. Also, I find it interesting that this list does share some titles with the current IMDb Bottom 100, but does not share any title with the Bottom Rated 2000's Titles.

- I wonder how many Oscar-winning actors and directors are represented in this list? I'm not going to do any more research into it (as you can see I've already done way too much), but I'm curious as to who is most embarrassed by the list's release and attention. Same goes for studios, actually. Who can we thank for the most worst movies?

- Is Matthew McConaughey truly absent from this list? Is that possible?

- I've never heard of some of the listed movies, but a few of them appear to deserve this dishonorable distinction based on name alone. Thr3e features a naming device that should forever belong exclusively to Se7en, while Modigliani sounds like an Italian fashion designer, not a movie. Pavilion of Women? What? Also, notice the prevalence of movies with subtitled titles: Kaena: The Prophecy, Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, Supercross: The Movie, Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, and last but...actually, yes, last and least, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.

Now I turn it over to you:
How many of these movies will you admit to seeing?
What movies do you remember from this decade that are missing from this list?
Will anyone dare defend one of the listed choices as a good movie?

Let's hear it...

300 Words About: We Live in Public

2009-10-03T21:07:00.023-05:00

"Our business is in programming people's lives", says Josh Harris in Ondi Timoner's We Live in Public, winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize last January. He's talking both literally and figuratively, as a social "artist" (his word, not mine) and a cultural prophet - one of the most influential of the last generation. As his brother says in confused wonder, "Everything that he does is a precursor to something that is going to happen to all of us."

You've probably never heard of Harris, but if you're reading this you're living in his world, as he's left an indelible mark on the internet, including web browsers and social media and yes, even blogs. When he completed his biggest social experiment ten years ago, "Quiet: We Live in Public", he was already way ahead of the cultural curve. As he knew then, and as we can see now from the influence of the internet, "People want 15 minutes of fame - every day."

So we blog, and we use Facebook, and we iReport, and we all too often sacrifice way too much privacy in order to "connect" with people that we don't know and may never meet. Chances are I've never met you, for example, but I value the relationship that I have with you through this blog, through our shared thoughts and interests in film. It's an exclusively virtual relationship, but yet I feel like I know many of my regular readers well, even more intimately than some of the people I interact with in "real life". A bizarre new reality, isn't it?

But should we embrace it, adapt to it, fear it or reject it - and do we even have a choice? It's hard to make a blanket generalization for everyone, but as Harris' many experiments have shown, the virtual world can only supplement the real world, it cannot replace it. Observe his failed business, romantic, and familial relationships as evidence of this. And observe the social chaos that occured during "Quiet: We Live in Public", as one participant found, "the more you get to know each other, the more alone you become." Incidentally, Harris now lives off the grid in Ethiopia to avoid his creditors, the irony being that thanks to him there are fewer and fewer places that can be considered off the grid.

Official Website

"I tend not to have particularly intimate relationships," Harris admits. Although people consider him a genius and an visionary pioneer of the internet, others consider him delusional and self-absorbed. In fact, in a documentary that included many disturbing images, one of the ones that bothered me the most was Harris' alterna-identity, "Luvvy", a strangely creepy clown avatar that he used to transform into for interviews and business deals. It was a weird regression to a child-like state, and it drove home just how socially alienated Harris was...and just how socially alienated we all may become? I desperately hope not.

[We Live in Public closes Sound Unseen 10 this Sunday, October 4th at 7:30 PM at the Cedar Cultural Center. Director Ondi Timoner will be present for a Q & A. Tickets.]

Taking It Home: Capitalism: A Love Story

2009-10-01T23:41:00.005-05:00

A method even less effective at inspiring change than Michael Moore's films...

Next time I get the opportunity to ask Michael Moore a question, I hope it will be part of an actual conversation instead of a Q & A where he has the microphone and I'm buried in the audience. That way he won't be able to sneak out of answering my challenge so easily. Yes, in a fit of frustration following a recent screening of Capitalism: A Love Story, I worked up the nerve to ask American's most notorious documentarian how he made a 126-minute film about money and capitalism without so much as mentioning personal financial responsibility. More on that later - including a video of Moore "answering" my question.

I have a tortured history with Moore, alternately considering him a genius, even a role model, before inevitably changing my mind and viewing his work as purely propagandic, sensational, and even counterproductive. Incidentally, I'm surprised that I have yet to discuss his films in any detail on Getafilm, I suppose a result of Sicko arriving a month or so before I started writing here (though you can see I came down pretty hard on it come Oscar time anyway).

In any event, somewhere between Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 I realized Moore was abandoning true documentary filmmaking - what I conservatively prefer to view as non-fiction storytelling - for something resembling schizophrenic scrapbooking. His arguments (never mind that documentarians shouldn't really make any) are an amalgamation of liberal talking points and moral sermonizing, but the resulting films are so disjointed they inhibit any in-depth thought or discussion about the issues at hand. He doesn't quite dilute the messages in his films so much as he drowns them out with his own voice, sometimes figuratively but always literally. Thanks to Michael Moore, a Michael Moore film is never allowed to speak for itself.

So what to think of Capitalism: A Love Story, which Moore claims is a culmination of all of his films since Roger & Me? Three things: 1.) this is not only one of Moore's longest films, but also his most deliberately emotional one; 2.) possibly by design but probably by accident, Capitalism: A Love Story ends up making a much stronger case for universal health care than Sicko did; and 3.) Moore is ultimately still more interested in inciting audiences than inspiring them, which is a tragedy considering the global reach and box-office success of his films.

I don't think any Michael Moore movie has ever made me emotional to the point of crying, but Capitalism: A Love Story came pretty close. The worst part is that I knew I was being manipulated and I couldn't do anything about it - some of his examples of capitalism's "evil" effect on individuals are really are moving. But they're obscure, even removed, from the average person's experience. For example, my nonprofit organization doesn't have a "dead peasant" insurance policy out on me (the practice was essentially banned for the purposes Moore claims, which he fails to point out until the closing credits of the film). This doesn't make it any less tragic to hear about the families who have been exploited by corporations, but knowing that this isn't really happening anymore kind of defeats the purpose of getting people fired up about it.

On the other hand, Moore's frequent attacks on the recent federal bailouts are very convincing. One of the best stories he's documented in any of his movies is about the sit-in of workers who refused to leave their Chicago window and door factory when it was closed down in the midst of the financial crisis last year. By sheer will power and a sympathetic media spotlight, the workers forced Bank of America to pay them (with bailout money) the wages they were owed by their company before it closed its doors. It's a thrilling example of people standing up for their rights - and getting what they justly deserve. Most importantly, the workers aren't burdened with a problem that wasn't their fault. After all, complains one of the workers, "We don't make the financial decisions. We make windows and doors."

Were Moore to apply reasonable, real-world examples like this in Sicko, he might have been able to truly drive a universal health care agenda. But alas, have you heard that film mentioned even once in this national debate on the issue? No, because Moore was busy bouncing around Europe and Guantanamo, giving viewers little to relate to in terms of their own lives. Capitalism turns the lens on the U.S., and in attacking American greed and the corporate roots of our government he actually makes a very moving argument for universal health care, nailing it home with some reverent archival footage of FDR claiming health care as a "right".

I am under no illusion that we Americans will learn anything from this recession; from my observations everybody is just waiting for the groupthink green light to start spending like crazy again. But the health care issue has a lot of traction at the moment, and if any of Moore's films have the potential to nail a social issue at the right time, this may be the one.

But that's a big "if", as I'm not sure people will mobilize after seeing this in the same way they did after An Inconvenient Truth. The problem is that Moore is sending mixed messages. He wants people to get out the "pitchforks and torches" (see the end of the video below), and even threatens to stop making films unless we start "doing something". What exactly, he can't say - just something, something about democracy and our ideals. It's all too broad and too big and frankly too overwhelming, particularly when so many questions are left unanswered.

He sure can make people laugh and shake their heads and fists, though, can't he? There are some terrific scenes in Capitalism: A Love Story that almost make you wish Moore would make a flat-out comedy one of these days (word has it his next project is a play set in the SuperMax penitentiary). His profile on Ronald Reagan and his search for an explanation of stock derivatives had me laughing out loud, while his big reveal about Goldman Sachs and the U.S. Treasury (and about CEO treatment in general) made me want to march down to Wall Street or the White House myself.

But I'm not going to do that because I have responsibilities, and like most people (hopefully), I don't ignore those responsibilities. I pay my bills on time. I use my credit card sparingly. I consolidated my school loans and I've never missed a payment. I don't buy things I can't afford and I don't borrow what I know I can't pay back. And believe it or not I get along just fine.

So when I asked Michael Moore about what role he thought personal responsibility played into this mess, I wasn't talking about people cheating bankers and bankers cheating people. I was talking about people who run up thousands of dollars of credit card debt in order to buy toys and clothes and things they "just have to have". I was talking about people who buy the house with the three extra bedrooms "just in case", and those who open up lines of credit at every department store that offers them a 10% discount on a one-time purchase. I was talking about people who live not on next month's paycheck, but next year's paycheck. I was talking about people whose irresponsible use of their credit caused Bank of America to cut my credit limit in half, even though I've never even carried a balance.

Moore gets a kick out of putting crime scene tape around financial buildings on Wall Street, but he just as soon could have put it around John Q. Public's wallet, because there is blame to share here. As you can see by Moore's petulant response to me (especially after the first minute) he obviously doesn't agree. You tried, Michael, and as always I appreciate the boldness and deceiving humility with which you address really urgent issues. But "we the people" are in love with capitalism as much as our government and banks are, and in blaming only them for this fiasco you missed an opportunity to make people really sit back and reflect on their own financial decisions. Capitalism may be a love story, but the romance of consumerism makes people swoon even more.

What did you take home?

(P.S. I didn't shoot this video - it was taken by Moore's staff at a screening a few weeks ago and posted on his YouTube channel. You don't hear me asking the question because the video starts about 1/3 into his answer. The Q & A session was about a half hour long and ultimately revealed Moore to be at a pivotal point in his career. The man truly seems tired of fighting these fights.)

REVIEW: P-Star Rising (A-)

2009-10-01T16:25:00.005-05:00

If you were at a club at 2:00 AM and a nine year-old little girl got up on the stage and started rapping, your natural instinct would likely cause you to smile and say, "Aw, that's so funny/cute/random/disturbing." You'd have an amusing story to tell your friends the next day. Gabriel Noble probably had the same initial reaction when he saw Priscilla Star Diaz (a.k.a. "P-Star") perform five years ago in lower Manhattan, but something about P-Star captured his curiousity and wouldn't let go. He spent the next day filming Priscilla and her family, and then the next day after that, and then the next four years after that. P-Star Rising, which premiered at Tribeca in April and is currently on the festival circuit, richly documents Priscilla's tumultuous emergence as a child star, and the youngest ever female rapper.

Watching Priscilla, her sister, Solsky, and her father, Jesse, move from a one-room Harlem shelter to a four-bedroom apartment and leased SUV is often uplifting but frequently discomfiting. Jesse was an aspiring rapper in his own right in the late 80's, but poor career management and a two-year prison stint (for selling cocaine) derailed his future, leaving you to question his ability to manage Priscilla's career. His wife fell in too deep with drugs and could not care for their daughters, so it was up to him, a failed rapper and convicted felon, to try and support two young girls on his own. He worked odd jobs when he could find them, but most of his energy was spent trying to revive his rapping career - until he discovered Priscilla's talent. (He also apparently home schools Priscilla, a somewhat disturbing detail that isn't given much attention here.)

On the surface this might look like another story of a parent trying to ride the coattails of their child's success, and while that element no doubt exists here, P-Star Rising is as much about the current state of the music business as it is about parenting. Priscilla is treated as a commodity ("A brand, not an artist, not a rapper - a brand", her producer insists) and essentially given cash on demand to stay happy and hard working. Sometimes she is performing with and for adults (she has to wait patiently during one recording session while her collaborator smokes a blunt), and sometimes she is performing with and for kids. Fortunately and despite her incredible maturity, her career settles into the latter track, where she achieves great success in the Latin America teen markets before earning a starring role on PBS' "The Electric Company".

Official Website

Her stardom comes at a cost, however, as Solsky is all but neglected by her father. She is failing all of her classes and remains desperate to reunite with her strung-out mother, if only to feel some semblance of a family. Jesse, for his part, appears solely focused on P-Star's earnings, boasting about the money they have before wasting it on clothing and then pitifully whining about where he's going to get money to pay the rent. Eventually he acknowledges that his responsibility as a parent is to provide, not to be provided for, and he takes a part-time job with a catering company. But most of the time it seems that Jesse is helpless in his role as a parent, and that P-Star is successful despite his management, not as a result of it.

The silver lining in this occasionally depressing tale is that Priscilla really does live up to her middle name. She is immensely talented and impossibly precocious. Her career appears to be on a solid track for now, and if she ends up being the next big thing, P-Star Rising will be an invaluable record of her truly humble beginning.

[P-Star Rising screens as part of Sound Unseen 10 this Saturday, October 3rd at 5:00 PM at the Trylon microcinema. Tickets.]

Listen to Erik McClanahan's interview with Gabriel Noble

300 Words About: Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench

2009-09-30T23:08:00.045-05:00

Jazz just sounds cooler when it's backing a black and white scene, doesn't it? Gives it an organic, refreshing sound, almost a palpable texture. Jazz under neon blue lights and nightclub smoke makes for a great atmosphere, too, but that's sultry and mysterious and can be too confined by its own setting.

The reason I point this out is because Damien Chazelle's Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (which made waves at Tribeca in April but is still seeking financing for a theatrical release) gives jazz a shot in the arm that not only gets your toe tapping, but your spirit soaring. You're not seduced by the riffs so much as you're invigorated by them.

It's a verite-style romantic musical dramedy that defies categorization precisely because it fits so many descriptions: indie, docudrama, mumblecore, to name a few. At different times it reminded of new cinema (In Search of a Midnight Kiss and Medicine for Melancholy) and classic cinema (the dancing scene from Jean-Luc Godard's Band of Outsiders), and it won't work for everyone if only because it's so peculiarly surreal. But I think that's why I loved it, aside from the fact that it was shot on the Boston and Cambridge streets that hold a special nostalgia for me.

Guy (actual trumpeting phenom Jason Palmer) plays in various jazz collectives, his girlfriend Madeline (Desiree Garcia) waits tables and waits for her break as a jazz singer. We see the two finish a decidedly awkward conversation on a park bench; the details of why they break up don't matter (and Chazelle's lack of explaining and narrative handholding is appreciated throughout the film) so long as we accept that it wasn't really what either person wanted. Soon enough both are on the rebound - Guy meeting Elena (Sandha Khin) in an almost startlingly sensual encounter on the T, and Madeline heading to New York City and a new relationship with a much less talented and much less charming musician.

Official Website

This set-up fortunately just takes a few minutes, with the rest of the film serving up a steady diet of jazz performances, romantic exchanges, spontaneous tapdancing duels (include one taken in one extremely long, extremely impressive take), awkward arguments, musical numbers, dialogues about love, and lots of 16mm city shots of Boston that show the city in a way that I haven't seen on film before.

If any or all of that appeals to your cinematic senses, keep your fingers crossed that Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench makes its way to you this fall (click here for a screening schedule). It's a delight that sneaks up on you like a spontaneous jazz solo; you almost don't have time to process the fact that what you're watching is truly special.

[Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench screens as part of Sound Unseen 10 this Saturday, October 3rd at 6:45 PM at the Trylon microcinema. Tickets.]

A Conversation with the Coens & a Look at Their First Decade (1984-1994)

2009-09-26T18:24:00.004-05:00

Last night I had the once-in-a-lifetime luck to score a ticket to the 50th Regis Dialogue at the Walker Art Center, a 2 and 1/2 hour discussion between Elvis Mitchell and Joel and Ethan Coen. The conversation kicked off the second week of the Walker's current Coen Brothers retrospective, Joel & Ethan Coen: Raising Cain, and the the good news for those who couldn't get in last night is that the films of the Coens will still be shown in 35mm in the comfy Walker Cinema through October 17th. Click here for the remaining schedule, and note that the Burn After Reading screening is free.

The brothers also attended the reception following the dialogue, but even as I was literally brushing shoulders with them I couldn't work up the nerve to ask them: in No Country for Old Men, where is Anton Chigurh at the Desert Sands? I did ask Elvis Mitchell but I think we were talking past each other. My question was about the night scene at the hotel where Chigurh is looking through the keyhole, not the day scene when Tommy Lee Jones first arrives and finds Josh Brolin. Elvis was convinced that Chigurh wasn't there, that it was an out of sequence scene. Well obviously, but that's not the scene I'm talking about. By the time I realized the misunderstanding, both Joel and Ethan had wandered away from us left the reception, leaving it a mystery forevermore. Wasting an easy 10 minutes standing right next to the Coens and not asking them a question, let alone that question, is something I'm going to be regretting for a long time.

What would you have asked the Coens, given the opportunity? Everybody knows that they are among the most private personalities in Hollywood, and Elvis Mitchell deserves props for his attempt at getting them to open up about their childhood and influences. But the Coens are the Coens, and their inherent reluctance to talk makes interviewing them akin to pulling teeth; indeed, it looked like they'd rather have been at the dentist than on the stage. Pregnant pauses were filled by countless "yeah"s and "uh-huh"s, to the point that I was waiting for Mitchell to throw up his hands in defeat (he almost appeared ready to a couple times).

Despite all of this he was still able to squeeze out some interesting insights about their influences and childhood. Although it would have been nice to have a Minnesotan ask them about Minnesota, the truth is that a.) by now the Coens have been New Yorkers longer than they've been Minnesotans, so despite A Serious Man they're probably not as nostalgic for this place as most people think, and b.) Mitchell proved to be a brilliant analyst of their films, surprising even Joel and Ethan with his insights into their literary style and story patterns. Overall I still think it was a really interesting discussion, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't one of my most memorable film experiences. (Here's a longer recap by Tad Simons.)

Now while I still can't claim to be anything close to an expert on their films (I still need to see Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, and several others I've only seen once or twice), I'd like to remain true to my goal of writing something on each of their films before this retrospective ends. So here I'm offering some thoughts on the five films the brothers made in the first decade of their career. I hope to follow this with a second decade (1995-2005) and present day overview as well. Obviously I owe some thoughts to A Serious Man once I see that next weekend, since I've been howling about how good it will be for so long.

(Title screens via the Walker blog.)

Blood Simple (1984)

As I mentioned last week, I saw Blood Simple for the first time only recently, but it made an immediate impression on my understanding of the rest of the Coen films, particularly No Country for Old Men. The desperate characters, the mind games, the desolate Texas landscape - in just one film they had already established a wholly unique style of storytelling (Ethan claimed the story was inspired by crimes of passion that were prevalent in Texas in the mid-80's). Everything is weaved together so seamlessly that you can't believe they were only in that this was their first feature (interesting trivia: Blood Simple premiered before its theatrical release at the Walker in 1984).

It's not nearly as polished as their other films, but of course they were working with a tiny budget and mostly amateur cast. It actually took me a while to recognize Frances McDormand as Frances McDormand, and I thought Dan Hedaya was enjoyably smug as well. All in all Blood Simple is just a flat-out solid debut, and the stylish scene transitions (the finger pointing, the bed falling) are worth rewinding and rewatching a few times.

Raising Arizona (1987)

I'm fairly sure Raising Arizona was the first Coen Brothers movie I saw, thanks to my older brother. It was harmless comedy and I probably missed most of it considering how young I was, but it always remained a kind of campy, nostalgic movie memory for me as I grew older (and even as I became allergic to Nicolas Cage).

Although it appears to be a total departure in tone from Blood Simple, you can still pick up the Coenesque cinematography and sardonic character treatments (including John Goodman in his first of five Coen films), and their flashy editing style is amped up a little for comedic effect. I think I've come to appreciate Raising Arizona in recent years more for its fast-paced entertainment than its actual comedy, but either way it's still as rewatchable as any of the Coen movies.

Miller's Crossing (1990)

The third film in the Coen filmography is also one that I saw recently for the first time, and I can say with some certainty that one time just isn't enough (a sentiment echoed by Mitchell last night), so I'll need to revisit this one to be able to fully appreciate it. It's a hard-boiled noir that doesn't apologize for its complexity, though the fact that the Coens got stuck while writing it may speak to unnecessary plotting. Apparently Miller's Crossing is based on two Dashiel Hammett novels, neither of which I've read, but if the alternative is a bare-bones, vanilla story, well I guess I wouldn't want that either.

What stands out to me the most in Miller's Crossing is the maturity of Barry Sonnenfeld's cinematography, this being the third (and last) film he shot for the Coens. Some of my favorite shots are of the hat floating away after the title sequence, and the "Danny Boy" shootout shown here:

Barton Fink (1991)

Probably the most disturbing film the Coens made in their first decade is Barton Fink, the noir/horror/comedy that they wrote, ironically, while suffering from writer's block as they tried to finish Miller's Crossing. This movie exhibits the unpredictability of the Coens maybe better than any other; the characters are so bizarre and the atmosphere so surreal - Charlie Kaufman must have been influenced by it - that you can't really grasp the meaning of all of it until afterwards, and even then you might need some help (I did).

Barton Fink also appears to exist as more of a social commentary than any of the other Coen films, at least in this first decade. The brothers made a point last night to identify themselves simply as storytellers, but this story says a lot more about culture and Hollywood business than they're probably willing to admit.

Another key aspect of Barton Fink is the cinematography by Roger Deakins, who has since lensed every one of the Coens' movies. His style is evident here in many of the hotel scenes, and there is one shot in particular that I love, when John Goodman bends the bedposts apart and the rounded steel cap falls and rolls toward the camera in perfect focus. This isn't that shot, but it showcases another great part of Barton Fink - John Turturro's performance:

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

Otherwise known as The Movie That Wasn't There, this much-maligned Coen film was not mentioned by name - not once - in the entire 150 minute discussion last night. I don't know if it's because the Coens themselves don't like this film or they think that audiences and critics still don't, but for as much style and risk it seems like they put into it, you'd think they'd be a little more proud of this effort. I think it loses its way a little bit after a promising beginning, but it's humorous enough (even family friendly!) and features capable acting from Paul Newman, Tim Robbins and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

As with the bed post scene in Barton Fink, there is a shot in The Hudsucker Proxy that seems like it would have required a million takes. It's hard to see with the quality of this video, but how do you throw a bunch of hula hoops into an alley and have just one of them, all alone, perfectly roll out to the sidewalk and turn?

Coming soon - The Coen Brothers: The Second Decade (1995-2005)...