Archive for May, 2010

  • 02 May

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    After the Credits Episode 84 – May Preview

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    After the Credits Episode 84 - May Preview [ 44:21 | 40.61 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup


    To download show directly, paste this link into your downloader:
    http://www.rowthree.com/audio/AfterTheCredits-Episode84.mp3

    Dale (Digital Doodles), Colleen (Mary Ostler Wood Butchery & Other Stuff) and I talk about the plethora of crap opening in May (with a few notable exceptions).

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    Show Notes:

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  • 02 May

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    Hot Docs: The Parking Lot Movie Review

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    What happens when you throw a bunch of over-educated graduate students, slacker musicians and other creative and testosterone-loaded souls into a job where absolutely nothing is required of them except sitting there and taking money from customers? Well, Kevin Smith more-or-less answered this question with his indie-hit Clerks in 1994, but here is a documentary seemingly populated entirely with Randals.

    The Corner Parking Lot is a sodium-lamp lit stretch of broken asphalt and dumpsters for the restaurants along the downtown area of Charlottesville Virginia. Being a sleepy town and a college town (the University of Virginia) there a mix of class that grind against one another in the evening and weekend nightlife. A number of the philosophy and anthropology graduate students work under their very employee-friendly boss and owner of the lot. They are (more or less) given free reign to release their creative energy in passive-aggressive prankery against the ‘parkers.’ The gate board is adorned daily by existentialist aspects of the job and pop culture trivia applied ritually with stencils and spray paint. Guitars, flip coning (soon to be an Olympic sport) and graffiti scrawls on what it means to park become performance art. In short, hanging out is what these guys do best. They serve you but they do not have to like you, and if you are in the rich lawyer, drunken frat boy or air-head sorority set then they are very much judging you by what you drive, how you park. They see the delightful irony of someone driving a $70,000 Cadillac Escalade desperately trying the squeeze it into the crevices of the smaller parking spaces, and then trying to not pay the $4.00 lot-fee. They could explain why you have to pay, they could explain the fundamentals of capitalism if they chose, but mainly they will mock you. Perhaps they will engage your parking break, just to see if you notice before you make it back to your home (you know you don’t use the damn thing!) Have no fear, they equally rail against the other end of the automotive economic scale, those smug and oh so superior Prius owners. Apparently, you should drive a Honda Civic to not be in the CPL doghouse – it is good on gas, easy to park and otherwise non-offensive aesthetically.

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  • 02 May

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    Trailer: Winter’s Bone

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    Here is the trailer for Winter’s Bone, the Grand Jury Prize Best Picture winner from Sundance Film Festival. The sophomore directorial effort of Debra Granik (Down to the Bone), the film follows a young girl who begins a desperate and dangerous search through the rural area of the Ozarks for her drug-dealing father who disappears after putting their homestead up for his bail. Early word has it that this could be a major contender come Oscar time next year, specifically for the always awesome John Hawkes (Me and You and Everyone We Know, Deadwood).

  • 02 May

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    Hot Docs Capsule Reviews – The “I Love You Man” Edition

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    ILoveYouMan3

     

    As Hot Docs 2010 kicks into full gear, here’s a sampling of a few of the films I managed to see in the lead up to the fest:

     
     

    RushBeyondTheLightedStage2

    Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage (2010 – Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen) – The two images above are apropos for a discussion of the latest musical documentary by the team that brought us Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey and Iron Maiden: Flight 666. Rush is a band that has always had a sense of humour about themselves and it shines through in this almost 2 hour journey through their 35 year recording career. Whether it’s appearing in the film “I Love You Man” (top photo), making a rare TV appearance on “The Colbert Report” or looking back at their old publicity shots and admitting they didn’t know much about fashion, the trio enjoy not taking themselves too seriously. I had a great big smile on my face the entire length of this film – from the early live footage with drummer John Rutsey to the closing credits dinner between the three bandmates. Granted, my bias is showing – I love this band. It’s actually a good thing that there is currently an embargo on full reviews (until the theatrical premiere on June 10th) because I’m not sure I can quite express my genuine feelings about the film yet…So if you are a fan of the band, you will adore this film – there is a veritable plethora of old film and photos that I would expect even the most hardcore fan has not seen (including a scene from an old Allan King documentary entitled Come On Children with a very young Alex Lifeson telling his parents he doesn’t want to finish school). For those who aren’t big fans, there is still a great deal to like since the band’s story arc is always engaging, the incorporation of the many photos and graphics is extremely well done and the various testimonials of other musicians are very entertaining. And the music is, if I may be allowed a small fanboy moment, awesome.

     

    TheSocalledMovie

    The “Socalled” Movie (2010 – Garry Beitel) – Funk, Rap and Klezmer. An obvious combination of musical styles right? No? Well, Josh Dolgin thought they were and so he began to experiment and create songs using these styles as touch points. In his younger days, he called himself “Heavy J” in order to fit in with the scene. It never really took hold, though, and people started to call him “The So-called Heavy J”. After awhile, that last part dropped off and he became “Socalled”. Through 18 or so short sections (some a few minutes, some closer to 10-15), we watch Josh create, perform and talk about his art. My favourite portion has to be his meeting and NY concert with Fred Wesley – former trombonist and leader of James Brown’s band – where they bust out some serious funk. I get the feeling Dolgin is a spiritual kin to Glen Hansard (from the film “Once”) who proclaimed “Make art! Make art!” at the Oscars a few years ago. That’s just what Dolgin does on a daily basis.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 02 May

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    Hot Docs: And Everything Is Going Fine

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    (4.5/5)

     

    With only a desk, a glass of water, a few props and some cursory notes, Spalding Gray would sit before a live audience and tell them his story. Whether about his knowledge of death and sex before age fourteen or his mind-altering experiences in Thailand, his physical ailments or the suicide of his mother, what transpired in each monologue was half theatrics, half confession. Late in his career, when he grew tired of telling his own story, he would invite audience members on stage and interview them, hoping to uncover the germ of theatre in their unassuming candor. His role as ‘poetic journalist’ remained the same, his title as master of the monologue preceding him wherever he went.

    This cottage industry of telling his story kept him busy throughout the eighties and nineties, onstage and onscreen, affording him the chance to work with some of the finest filmmakers working at the time, including Jonathan Demme and Steven Soderbergh who both saw something cinematic in his monologues worth pursuing in that medium. Under very different circumstances, Soderbergh returns again to tell Spalding’s story, this time as a documentary in tribute to his friend that six years ago took his own life. The film, And Everything Is Going To Be Fine, never addresses the tragic event, nor does it try to consolidate a life with anything other than Spalding’s own voice. Piecing together archival footage of interviews and performances, Soderbergh has forged a new monologue, a summation of the life of Spalding in his own words (albeit rearranged). » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 02 May

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    Review: City of War: The Story of John Rabe

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    Director: Florian Gallenberger
    Screenplay: Florian Gallenberger
    Producers: Benjamin Herrmann, Mischa Hofmann & Jan Mojto
    Starring: Ulrich Tukur, Daniel Brühl, Steve Buscemi, Anne Consigny, Dagmar Manzel
    Year: 2009
    Country: France, China, Germany
    BBFC Certification: 15
    Duration: 129 min

    (3/5)

    City of War: The Story of John Rabe is a French, Chinese and German co-production that tells the story of the ‘Rape of Nanking’ between 1937-38 and how German businessman John Rabe helped save hundreds of thousands of Nanking residents from the fate that befell hundreds of thousands of others. It’s a shameful period in Japanese history that some still deny ever happened, despite all the evidence and eventual acknowledgement by the government several decades later. City of War is essentially a Chinese version of Schindler’s List, but nonetheless presents a story well worth telling and does a fairly decent job even if it lacks some of the cinematic poetry of Spielberg’s much loved film. Out this month in the UK is City of Life and Death too that tackles the same subject matter though. From the reviews I’ve seen of that it sounds like a more harrowing experience focusing on the atrocities themselves and not on John Rabe and those trying to put a stop to them. Without seeing it I can’t recommend one over the other, but my instincts tell me that City of Life and Death will be the more powerful film. I’ll certainly try and track it down to compare the two.

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  • 01 May

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    Filmwatching LA: May

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    newbev.jpg

    I decided to arrange things a little differently this time around; giving more of a paragraph overview of the available repertory screenings in LA this month instead of the full schedules. Links to the full schedules for each cinema can be found at the bottom of each section. I’ve also included some trailers this time; went a little crazy for the crime/noirish side of things, but I can’t help it if that’s what the theatres play, now can I? But also, yes, I plead guilty to loving noirish crime films.

    Cinefamily @ The Silent Movie Theatre

    This month Cinefamily is running a set of series loosely themed around kids movies. Some of them actually are kid-friendly films, but knowing Cinefamily, most of them are…not. But they’re all pretty off-beat and wacky. Thursday nights are Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups, with dark fantasy films from Neil Jordan (The Company of Wolves), Louis Malle (Black Moon), John Waters (Desperate Living), David Lynch (Wild at Heart), Roman Polanski (What?), and others. One of the films, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, is a holdover from the Czech film series they did a couple of months ago; I saw it then, and if you like whacked out, nonsense-making, but somehow very beautiful and mesmerizing vampire films, it’s definitely worth a look. I might actually go see it again. And Wild at Heart is, I think, the only David Lynch film (aside from Fire Walk With Me) that I haven’t seen, so I’ll try to make it to that.

    Friday nights, Lance Robertson and Kevin Lee of Yo Gabba Gabba are hosting a series of Fun and Funky Kid’s Films, some full films like The Wiz and Pufnstuf, and some compilations of clips and short films, including one of European Stop-Motion Animation that you know I’m dying to see. And for those who really like their kids movies messed up, this month’s late Saturday Holyfuckingshit! series is focused on Fucked-Up Kids Movies.

    The silent film series is centered on mothers rather than kids, what with May having Mothers Day and all. The silent versions of Humoresque and Stella Dallas are on tap, plus Clara Bow vehicle Dancing Mothers. Also in honor of Mothers Day, though not at all silent, is a Psycho triple feature on Mothers Day itself. You gotta love a cinema that thinks about Psycho as a great Mothers Day movie – and then offers free tickets to any male cinemagoers who come dressed up as their mothers. That’s Cinefamily for you, right there.

    Speaking of special events, there are two Comedy Death Ray screenings upcoming: Jon Hamm presenting Tootsie and Doug Benson presenting (and providing live commentary for) Friday the 13th Part 3. And of course, Jerry Beck’s Animation Tuesdays continue the first Tuesday of the month – this month’s theme is Toons in Drag, copresented by Outfest.

    Full schedule at Cinefamily.org

    » Read the rest of the entry..

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