Author Archive

  • 10 Feb

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    Talk Amongst Yourselves

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    “He’s a Pimp. And pimps don’t commit suicide.”

  • 10 Feb

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    Friday One Sheet: Kill List

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    The film may have already had a successful festival run, and has opened commercially in United States last Friday, but I just missed seeing this handsome Quad for the column a week ago by about an hour. So here you go.

    This drama/horror blend of Hit Men and The Wicker Man and Ben Wheatley’s first film Down Terrace (an understated gangester black-comedy of errors and manners) takes its time to ease its audience into complacency before dropping a substantial bomb of dread and pain. The poster above reflects the literal title and what awaits at in the finale. I love the ‘domino’ motif, and the slanted credit block. It’s a keeper.

    (Via Mubi)

  • 07 Feb

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    It’s Halftime in America: Don’t Change Horses Mid-Stream

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    I do not watch The Super Bowl. Generally, I am more interested in the movie trailers and whatnot that more or less tell me what films to avoid this summer, which are aired to great expense during the big game. Curiously, this year most of them made it to the internet a few days early; thus, I am a little bit late on this bit of tempestuousness hiding as a lengthy advertisement. My assumption that I had seen all of the biggies before Super Bowl Sunday was flat out false! Colour me surprised (and playing catch-up) when I came across this Chrysler Ad that plays like a bit of good old fashion propaganda. I’ll take this ‘entertainment’ any day over those gawd-awful Act of Valour ads that demonstrate Micheal Bay has been setting down the film-grammar for military recruiting for the past few decades, only to give birth to the perfect synergy of popcorn-entertainment and propaganda.

    But I digress.

    I am a fairly big fan of David Mamet penned Wag The Dog, and this commercial fits nicely into the “Don’t Change Horses Mid-Stream” Ads (themselves an echo of the Ronald Reagan Campaign “Morning in America spots in 1984.) that gets Dustin Hoffman hired, rewarded and then killed, in that film. Even more amusing is that it was directed by David Gordon Green, striding the line between original Americana, George Washington, and bad 1980s remake, The Sitter.

    Apparently this has ruffled a lot of feathers. Clint’s made a statement, as has Karl Rove, and a lot of that is covered here.

  • 07 Feb

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    Machete Kills

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    I know that Robert Rodriguez works fast as a filmmaker and all, but doing some quick arithmetic says this: Danny Trejo’s current age of almost 68 years old – the tall tattooed Mexican is almost 70 and you have two films to go through pre-production! So, yea, you better get on the promised sequels to the Grindhouse trailer-turned-feature, Machete, fast, Mr. Rodriguez. Of course, Trejo still manages to crack out about 10 films appearances per year, despite his age, so there is that – and even in the first film, it seemed Machete was almost supporting character in a huge ensemble.

    Machete Kills! is currently in pre-production. No word if Machete Kills Again! will be happening.

    Oh, and given that these films came from Planet Terror (in a way), is it too much to ask for a Zombie Seagal (post Hara-Kiri guts hanging out and all to appear in one of the sequels

  • 05 Feb

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    Extended Thoughts: Chronicle

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    *Some Spoilers, Fair Warning*

    Perhaps a goofy co-incidence that Facebook filed with the SEC to launch its $5 Billion (with a B) initial public offering in the same week as this virally advertised film hit cinema screens. The dollar value for the filing is itself equal parts news-catcher, market-hubris and ultimately an underscore on where society, in the here and now, lays its value: Social Networking. Even more curious that the script for Chronicle makes room for Carl Jung and Arthur Schopenhauer, but relegates Facebook and Twitter curiously to subtext. Chronicle is an interesting name for the movie; perhaps more literal in meaning (a chronological ordering of events – here by an unseen editor) but also less on-the-nose than say, “Status Update.”

    I’m getting ahead of myself, perhaps.

    The latest found footage movie is one of the more interesting uses of this increasingly strained sub-genre and this is why: The main character, an angry young man with nascent telekinetic powers who is well on his way to becoming a super-villain, not only self-incriminates himself by filming the process of his road to villainy but (and here is the kicker) he uses his powers control the camera’s framing of his own story. In the case of the films big climactic show-down, the full self-realization/actualization of himself as the Apex-predator, he uses dozens of cameras to capture things from multiple angles. The thing that always struck me as strange with the outbreak of social networking, is how so many young people capture themselves drinking underage, skipping school, or other such activities that are both unacceptable in society (but also loaded, perhaps, with a cachet of cool) and upload it THEMSELVES to later be prosecuted, ostracized, or whatnot by their own self-publication. To make the the unspoken, but underlying ‘thesis’ of the film is interesting to me. I wish the filmmakers (Josh Trank and Max “son of John” Landis) did not have to be so overt with every character justifying or explaining why they are filming all the time (see also George Romero’s Diary of the Dead) because, dammit, it is 2012 and rather obvious that we are race of beings whose souls are been stolen by the camera on pretty much an hourly basis – from mall and street security, to our own goshdarned phones!

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 05 Feb

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    Sunday Bookmarks

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    • Errol Morris’s continuing series of Microdocs for the NYT: Eating Champion ‘El Wingador’
      “El Wingador is a man truly committed to a certain kind of excellence — or at least, a certain kind of excess. Sure, I could have picked a different eating champion, but I guess I have an affinity for chicken. It is evident that chicken is his favorite competition food — particularly chicken wings. I asked him, “Why not hot dogs?” The simple and compelling answer: “Hey, my name is ‘El Wingador,’ not ‘El Hotdogador.’ ” A New Jersey native, he is the five-time champion of the Wing Bowl and has come out of retirement to compete once again this year.”

    • Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi: Why Digital is Far Superior to Film

      Gamble on Celluloid vs. Digital in the projection booth: “Cinephiles cry out about the loss of film citing the lower picture quality and the dangerous precedent set on the levels of their oh so precious film grain, but frankly, after being in the film exhibition business (i.e. movie theatres, for those unencumbered by the burden of industry jargon) for over a decade, I see digital as a welcome upgrade. And in some instances, a god damn savior. Here’s why.”

    • Wolves in Sheep Clothing (Genre as Sartorial Satire): Robin Hardy talks the Legacy of The Wicker Man the Timing of The Wicker Tree, and 40 years of History
      While The Wicker Tree got only the tiniest of Theatrical releases from Anchor Bay last week, here is Kurt Halfyard and Michael Guillen in a lengthy (over an hour) conversation with director Robin Hardy, who is not shy with his opinions on the world and politics.

    • John Anderson sits down for a chat with the legendary Douglas Trumbull
      “When the special-effects whiz and director Douglas Trumbull receives a special Oscar on Saturday — the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for filmmakers “whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry” — it could be taken as a valedictory tribute, the cap on a career that began with Stanley Kubrick and “2001: A Space Odyssey” and includes a best-picture nominee this year, “The Tree of Life.” But Mr. Trumbull, 69, is hardly finished with his contributions.”

    • Josh Fox Arrested on Capitol Hill While Filming ‘Gasland’ Sequel
      “According to Politico, Fox was led out in handcuffs before the hearing began while shouting, “I’m within my First Amendment rights, and I’m being taken out.” Fox’s “Gasland” took on oil and gas companies for their policy of using hydraulic fracturing to obtain fuel from underneath layers of otherwise unpenetrable rock. The process has been accused of contaminating drinking water in rural mid-Atlantic towns, and Fox’s film is famous for showing residents set fire to the water coming out of their kitchen sinks. He was in the Capitol shooting a follow-up.”

    • Cafe de Flore comes out on DVD in a couple weeks, here is Joseph Belanger talking to Jean-Marc Vallée
      “While I flat out refuse to divulge what exactly the connection is between these vastly different plots, I will say that a simple song connects them on screen and that song also served as the filmmaker’s inspiration for the entire film. The name of that song? Why, “Café de flore”, of course. When he first heard the Doctor Rockit song, Vallée thought, “It’s so epic. I’m going to make a film with this track.” And so the movie is built around this song as well as a general appreciation for music itself. This aspect of the film is the director’s most autobiographical. “Music makes me feel so good, makes me feel alive, makes me dream, makes me want to make movies,” Vallée asserts right before he starts humming the catchy accordion hook from the film’s title track to me.”

    • The Hulk Persona writes (shouts) an open letter to NBC on the necessity for saving COMMUNITY
      “WE SOMETIMES FORGET THAT PART. BRANDS, NETWORKS, AND INDIVIDUAL SHOWS HAVE AN ETHEREAL, YET INESCAPABLY-PRESENT CACHET. AS MUCH AS SOME NETWORKS SEEM TO BE AT ODDS WITH THIS CONCEPT AT TIMES, THE TRUTH IS THAT THEY SPEND MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TRYING TO CREATE AN IDENTITY. SO OF COURSE IT MATTERS. BUT WHY IS NETWORK IDENTITY SO NECESSARY? FOR LONG-TERM BUSINESS EFFECTS, OF COURSE. HECK, BRAND IDENTITY IS THE ONE THING THAT A NETWORK CAN RELY ON IN THE EVER-CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF TELEVISION.”

  • 03 Feb

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    Talk Amongst Yourselves

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    Rest in Peace, Jackie Treehorn. Ben Gazzara died today of pancreatic cancer.

  • 03 Feb

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    Friday One Sheet: Clean Design (Elena)

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    I could not tell you what this film is about from this minimalist design, but could tell you the film has played a lot of festivals! Actually, the third film from Russian visual-stylist Andrei Zvyagintsev (Think the Russian version of Anton Corbijn) is a cause for celebration. While The Banishment didn’t light the festival circuit on fire (it was really solid – I liked it), the director’s debut, a meditation on manhood and fathers and sons, The Return, was one of the best films of 2003, period.

  • 03 Feb

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    Review: The Innkeepers

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    [Because The Innkeepers is graduating from Video On Demand to Theatrical Exhibition today, we revisit Kurt's Toronto After Dark Review. If you want to go further back in the archives, Jandy's review is here.]
     

    There is a scene, perhaps midway through Ti West’s most recent film of spooky interiors and patient tracking-shots, where an underpaid employee struggles to get a bag of garbage in to the rear alley bin. It is as good of a touchstone for what he has been managed thus far with his career, going against the grain of mainstream horror trends (torture, found footage, etc.) by making more patient, measured films which rely exclusively on atmosphere and tension. Making a horror film in this day and age that eschews gimmickry and/or mounds of bad CGI (and worse dialogue) while actually getting it out into the marketplace is a herculean task in and of itself. Alas, for all the chatter (and wonderful key art) posted on the internet about The House of the Devil, the film is only a success within the select niche of genre aficionados. Notwithstanding some very minor issues with its digitally-flat (and rather abrupt) ending, it is one of the great horror pictures of the past 10 years. I have little reservation in calling it a master-work in terms of generating both tension and anticipation, which when you boil things down is damn near everything in the horror genre. Yet, suspense seems seems to be dying off with each new re-invention of horror-formula with only a few notable exceptions.

    Back to the bag of garbage.

    The employee is Claire and she is one of only two remaining staff serving a meagre three guests living at the The Yankee Pedlar Inn until the business shutters at the end of the week. The bag is leaking some sort of fluid as she drags it haltingly across the uneven cracked asphalt. She makes several Sisyphean attempts to heave the hulking sack into the bin whose lid seems close just a millisecond too soon. The whole scene plays out as a charming bit of physical comedy, a levity that rests purely on the comic timing and chummy vibe of Ms. Sara Paxton which, more than a bit, reminds me of Anna Faris’ endearing goofiness in Smiley Face. And so goes The Innkeepers, a haunted hotel story that trafficks in the gentle, snarky comedy of its pair of underpaid and unambitious wage-slaves before breaking out the Shining and the ghosties and turn-of-the-screw tension to become one of most effective horror films of 2011. One of the smartest, too. An early gag in the movie, which threatens to echo/resonate in the films final shot, is one hell of a deconstruction of the jump-scare and its often gross misuse in the genre. This is a good sign that West has his brain and his talent laser focused on the nature and the possibility of this type of filmmaking. The syntax similar to The House of the Devil, but the tone could not be more different. Gone is the late 70s early 80s setting, although it retains a feel of classic, vintage filmmaking that outside of a few laptop computers, and a latte bar across the street, could place the film anywhere in the 20th century. Horror and comedy are rarely mixed well, but resulting cocktail here is shaken and stirred. Hell, it is downright effervescent. The icing on the cake is that the ending here feels far more organic to the themes brought out in the storytelling than House of the Devil. In its own fashion The Innkeepers turns the rules of this sort of film inside out while still managing to follow them. It’s a neat trick, and a welcome one.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 31 Jan

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    Guy Pearce is Simply One of a Few Citizens Seeking Justice.

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    I‘d immediately write this off as a piece of Direct-to-DVD trash (ala last years Tresspass), if it were not for Roger Donaldson at the helm. Like John Frankenheimer and Sidney Lumet before him, Donaldson (Thirteen Days, The Bank Job), tends to consistently make solid more-or-less-grounded genre efforts that stand above the usual array of hack-work polluting the action-thriller section. No he’s not quite as good as his similarly named (I often confuse the two!) contemporary Roger Mitchell (Changing Lanes, Enduring Love) but if you want yeoman’s work, Donaldson is your man.

    Here a shaved headed Guy Pearce drops a Star-Chamber-esque service into the lap of every-man Nic Cage (as if!) following the maiming of his wife (January Jones) leaves her hospitalized (probably some irate X-men fan.) The faustian bargain: We’ll give you vigilante justice if you owe us an undisclosed favour down the road. Of course the favour down the road has Cage dodging the sliding rear wheels of a 6 tonne flatbed truck. Lots of intensely silly mayhem ensues. Seeking Justice looks to sit somewhere in the middle ground between modern vigilante fantasies; not as outright stupid as the similar Gerard Butler-vehicle, Law Abiding Citizen nor as talky or restrained as the Jodie Foster-vehicle The Brave One.

    Of course, it will be worth watching this movie, when it drops into theatres March 16, just to get to this image:

  • 30 Jan

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    Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame.

    28

    An oddly compelling reason to never buy a Honda, but also an interesting commentary on how our ‘hero’ has gone from a stolen 1961 Ferrari to a leased 2012 CRV. Superbowl, I hate you even more than usual. I’m off to palette cleanse on the real Ferris Too, Alexander Payne’s Election (The last time Matthew Broderick didn’t phone it in.)

  • 30 Jan

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    My Love for Film in a Snapshot #10

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    A little obvious, maybe. But after a recent viewing of Joe Carnahan’s blunt, but highly entertaining, ‘Man vs. Nature’ (but really Man vs. himself with nature lighting the fire under his feet) horror picture, The Grey, my immediate thought was back to Spielberg’s early super-blockbuster, Jaws. This was not so much for the obvious comparison of being stuck somewhere fighting something that wants to eat you, but more in how the film processes manhood through a bunch of hands-on characters. Martin Brody (Roy Schieder), Quint (Robert Shaw) and Martin Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss, not pictured above) work as three representation of manhood – their analogues in The Grey would be Peter Henrik (Dermont Mulroney), Ottway (Liam Neeson) and John Diaz (Frank Grillo). Spielberg has a smoother sense of framing and setting up his characters, as the stakes are not as balls-out immediate in Jaws until the final act – and The Grey, outside of the oil-rig prologue, is pretty much only ‘the final act’ of Jaws. There are hundreds of great shots and moments in Jaws, that is what makes it one of the all time classic populist blockbusters, but at its heart, the film is simply guys standing around thinking about consequences and actions within the twentieth century masculine purview, and I kinda sort of like that.

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