Remember kids: Zombie fighting Teddy Bears pick Jack Daniels as their whiskey of choice. (And while I do dig the punny title, judging by the camera work and eye-colour, this should have been called The Evil Ted (Or Evil Ted II: Ted By Dawn)) Yes, I’m a horror aesthetics dork.
Happy Halloween. Enjoy Misery Bear courtesy of the BBC.
When there is a big-name screenwriter such as William Monahan – the man who inked the likes of The Departed, Kingdom of Heaven, and Body of Lies – making the transition from penman to director, one would think that people would be buzzing with curiosity. That really hasn’t been the case for Monahan’s directorial debut London Boulevard, the gangster love story starring a killer cast that includes Colin Farrell, Ray Winstone, Keira Knightley, Ben Chaplin, and David Thewlis.
Knightley and especially Winstone are always worth watching, and since his turn to awesomeness in In Bruges, Farrell has been making some good, if not interesting, film choices. Despite being in post-production for over half a year, nobody seems to have watched this thing yet. Whether that means anything for the quality of this film or not still remains to be seen.
The film will be released in the UK on November 26, 2010.
The last thing of Tony Kaye’s that I’ve seen is the spectacular documentary Lake of Fire – until today. The director has been making films (or trying to) with the release of two films since Lake of Fire including the 2009 crime drama Black Water Transit (how did I miss that?).
While we wait for his next project, the Adrien Brody and Christina Hendricks (Saffron!) starring drama Detachment, we can also take in this new short. A music video for UK band The Hours, “See the Light” stars Sienna Miller (one of the few times she doesn’t rub me the wrong way – probably because she doesn’t talk) and features the striking visuals we’ve come to love and expect from Kaye’s projects.
Video is tucked under the seats.
» Read the rest of the entry..
(4/5)
[Now Playing (at least in Toronto). Go see it!]
A more apt title for Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job would be: Everything You Wanted to Know about the Financial Crisis but Were Afraid to Ask. More so than the heist movie the title suggests, this definitive documentary on the origin, impact and repercussions of the global financial meltdown of 2008 attempts to provide an oral history of the event for future generations to heed. The messages of films like Collapse, The Corporation and here, Inside Job, challenge more than a particular group or issue, they make us confront our very survival and way of life. We ignore at our own peril.
A talking heads documentary? Sure, but with one hell of a story to tell. Inside Job showcases a who’s who of economic and political personalities (those culpable and/or unwilling to be interviewed are called out by name). A considered and comprehensive inquiry into the crisis, the documentary never shies away from explaining the minutiae of the ‘heist’, whether by making intelligible the predatory tactics of derivatives, the bubble of bank leveraging, or the incestuous relationship between credit rating and insurance agencies with mortgage-backed securities. Not exactly a sexy subject, and no amount of Matt Damon’s narration and tongue-in-cheek musical cues can alleviate the weight of what this film is burdened to tell, but by design Inside Job appeals to the mind more than the heart. » Read the rest of the entry..
[Because the film opens theatrically in NY and LA today, and has been available online for a month on VOD, here is a re-post of my review for Gareth Edwards' Monsters. Also check out Jandy's take on the film and if you want further Monsters reading, check out my interview with the director posted up over at Twitch.]
There are monsters amoung us – figuratively and literally – in the simple yet aptly titled not-quite-creature-feature, Monsters. Sometime in the near future a wee spot of primordial alien matter got all tangled up with a returning man-made space probe. After about 6 years the effects of the tag-along DNA have resulted in some rather large and terrifying beasties that call about half of Mexico, from Mazatlan to Tampico and all the way north to the American border, home. The Americans respond by building a towering and intimidating 30 meter high concrete wall that makes the $1.2 billion 2006 mandated (by Bush and company) fence looks like no more useful than to pen in goats. The term “Fortress America” is starting to sound rather closer to reality. It being the US-Mexico border, stuff is bound to penetrate and be met with an overabundance of force. Not quite Don Johnson in Machete, but you have to wonder if the response creates half the problem. While Monsters is no Starship Troopers, it is about as far from the crazy violence or anti-fascist bombast as possible, there is a satirical streak hidden under it all that probably would make Paul Verhoeven concede a knowing nod to its sub-textual, humanist slant.
Apparently, it was director Gareth Edwards’ goal to make the most ‘realistic’ movie about gigantic monsters invading earth as possible. If that means a quieter, more mundane tone, more a movie of our collective environment altered by the presence of alien beings rather than the typical crash-and-smash mayhem caused by invaders from Mars then so be it. He has succeeded in an act of alternate-future that feels real, it feels lived in, and there is a sense of the mundane and normalcy that is almost always lacking in pictures of these type. Shooting in the central American wilderness and small towns therein make for a gorgeous movie on top of its unconventional execution. To say it defies expectations, the constant comparisons to District 9 are, on one hand, appropriate yet still quite misleading. Monsters is not an action picture, it is a contemplative road picture. That it defies easy comparison is simply because there are not enough of these movies made to draw accurate comparisons. I was rather reminded by the opening hours of the 1980s TV miniseries “V” or perhaps Alien Nation; where the presence of extra-terrestrials make a large-scale change on society merely by existing in it. But it also evokes the social journey-films of Alfonso Cuarón, pick either Y tu mama tambien or Children of Men, there are similarities to both. We exist in our environments even as a collective societal shift from panic to uncertainty to ‘the new normal’ follows any major global ‘sea change.’ Of course, all of this inferred shock and awe happens offscreen, only implied by a few title cards. The Monsters could just have easily been another country’s military occupation of modern Mexico, or how the world at this point is rather used to the quagmire in Iraq after 6 years of US entrenchment. As it stands, the gigantic walking squids are here, and they have left their mark, but are now simply a part of the fabric of North American life. This is the greatest achievement of the film, and one that allows for a bit of consideration and politics, although, really the joy is simply existing in this plausible new world order. Part of me wishes that if someone is going to make Max Brook’s overcooked novel World War Z, Gareth Edwards would be the man to leaven out the breathless hyperbole of the ‘letters from the front’ and make it a mature allegory for adults.
This made my evening for no other reason that that someone took the trouble to do this.
Vancouver’s winter festival run continues with the Vancouver Short Film Festival which kicks off this afternoon and wraps up its programming tomorrow night. The festival, in its fifth year and featuring many up-and-coming local filmmakers, keeps growing as this year’s program includes 45 short films, a panel, an international screening and a retrospective of the best short films from the festival’s history.
The festival kicks off at 2:45PM with a free screening being co-presented by the NFB and their “Get Animated” program (check out our previous announcement) and is followed up tonight at 7PM by the “Emerging Filmmakers” screening which showcases some of the best short films from BC’s post-secondary students.
Of the festival’s festivities, I’m most excited to check out the “Professional Filmmakers” event tomorrow night which includes 2009 Hot Shot Shorts Contest winner Everything’s Coming Up Rosie and Mark Sawers’ photographic comedy Exposed which stars two of my favourite local actors Gabrielle Rose and Michael Ecklund.
Lots more details on the festival including screening schedule, venue and ticket information, is available at the official website.
Director of shorts for the Flyway Film Festival is veteran programmer, Xan Aranda, founder and director of the Chicago Short Film Brigade and writer/producer of other feature films. Xan spoke with us last year with her in competition film, Milking the Rhino. This year she’s here to help promote Prisoner of Her Past and give us an exquisite breadth of great short films in the many genres that they encompass.
Once again at the closing night P&I party, Xan talked with Matt and Andrew about the nature of short films, some of the favorites at this year’s fest and other festival goings on with her Short Film Brigade and the sheer number of them she sees each year. We also talk about the Jay Cheel retrospective she plans to screen after learning about Poutine from Gerry.
LINKS:
Chicago Short Film Brigade
Xan Aranda.com
Mormons Make Movies
Final night at the Flyway Film Festival and during the drink-a-thon that is the closing night gala party, we managed to finally catch our very busy friend and now film maker, Jed Schliegelmilch, for a quick sit down to discuss his new film, Absence/Presence. This extremely personal documentary follows Jed on a quest of sorts to explore a little bit more about what happened Halloween night ten years ago when his brother very unexpectedly committed suicide. Details at the time were sketchy and even a little bit of mystery to the evening. Jed road trips to Wisconsin to visit friends and officials involved with the case in order to finally come to grips with his own feelings surrounding the entire situation. Needless to say the audience took the film as the punch in the gut that it is and was visibly moved as the closing credits rolled.
As we sat down in the very noisy Breakwater Gallery and Wine Bar, Jed and his director of photography, Damon Holland, talk about their feelings on putting the film together, how Cloud Cult got involved and agreed to do the soundtrack and what it’s like to be a rookie film maker at their very first festival and what plans they have for the film in the future.
LINKS:
Official site
Twitter
SAVE.org
October brings forth the unlikely successes of both Jackass and Paranormal Activity. 3D is back, and so is a terrifying movie made with a camcorder and an air gun. And so is the rapacious love of short term profit in Hollywood. How will all this affect us, the buying public? Find out in the brand new mamo.
To download this podcast use the following URL: http://rowthree.com/audio/mamo/mamo183.mp3
Colleen (Mary Ostler Wood Butchery & Other Stuff), Khaled (@khaled_ca) and I look back at the 2010 edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival, reminisce about a couple of movies and count down our top 5.
Also big shout outs to Rich (@seattlefilmblog) of A Random Walk Through Film and Bill, our Victoria buddy, for pitching in with lists of their favourite festival selections.
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