One of the early announcements out of Cannes was that of a new picture on its way from director John Woo. Known for over the top action scenes, fine cheese and crates of doves, Woo will be looking to remake one of the classic films from Japanese movie studio Nikkatsu as part of its centenary celebration. Entitled Day Of The Beast, the film will be an English language take on Seijun Suzuki’s superb 1963 film Youth Of The Beast. Of its many great scenes, one of my favourites is when Jo Shishido’s main character survives being blown up in a house while he’s hanging upside down, manages to swing himself to a gun, fight off two remaining yakuza and then shoot himself free before finishing them both off. How can Woo top that?

Of course, I’m kidding when I tell Woo to tread carefully. I’m not one to believe that the original film can be wrecked by any attempt to remake it. In fact, any attention a remake can bring to an earlier film is definitely welcomed – especially when it’s something by one of my favourite directors. Though he was a studio director – in other words, he had to film whatever script they gave him with whatever cast they gave him – Seijun Suzuki figured out early on how to keep things interesting even when the scripts were standard B-movie fare. Akin somewhat to Hitchcock in viewing the role of the director to be more technical in nature (where does the camera sit, when does it move, how do I frame things, etc.), Suzuki was able to play with storytelling conventions a great deal by adding subtext and context via his images and visual style while avoiding exposition like the plague. The classic story is that Nikkatsu fired him upon seeing his 1967 film Branded To Kill after having warned him to play by the rules (his previous film Tokyo Drifter wasn’t exactly a straight line narrative either). His methods of telling his story made generic plots into interesting ones and I’ve never seen a film of his that didn’t make me broadly smile at something totally unexpected, make me think “Whoa, that was cool…” and yet still convey relevant information about the story or character.

So in anticipation of John Woo’s re-imagining of one of the classic yakuza films, here’s just a few examples of Suzuki’s work:

Youth Of The Beast (1963)

Gate Of Flesh (1964)

Tattooed Life (1965)

Tokyo Drifter (1966)

Branded To Kill (1967)

Kagero-za (1981)

Yumeji (1991)

Pistol Opera (2001)

Princess Raccoon (2005)

Bait-y school drama, Won’t Back Down has several actors I enjoy watching on the big screen, Viola Davis, Holly Hunter and Maggie Gyllenhaal. But I’ll be promptly skipping this one. Focusing less on fixing the schools and more on starting your own damn school (note this topic was delved into quite a bit in Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting For Superman), it amps up every cliche in this sort of ‘genre’ that makes me kick myself for skipping Tony Kaye’s Detachment, which seemed to earn its earnestness rather than flailing it about like a dead cat in an elevator.

“We have to find a teacher that has the same ideas you do.” – Isn’t this the problem with America in a nutshell, from Fox News to MSNBC? But I digress, it’s not by far the only howler that Maggie has receive or deliver. The last line in this trailer, dares you to vomit on your computer. My Gosh, with dialogue like that who needs plot or story.

I know, I know, you don’t want to spoil any of the mood or surprises of Ridley Scott’s new Alien prequel and you are not watch these. Yea, right.

You have got to hand it to the web-viral marketing department for Prometheus who have been world-building with this series of videos in a pretty amazing way. First Weyland’s TED Talk, then a commercial for the “David” line of sythentic humans, now we have the girl with the dragon tattoo herself, Noomi Rapace, essaying her Dr. Elizabeth Shaw character’s philosophy for adventure to the Weyland corporation (Ellie Arroway style) as their computer analyzes every square nano-meter of her face for identity, archival, and one assumes, empathy testing.

Yep, it’s Contact meets Blade Runner in an Alien movie. Yum.

Directed By: Tod Browning
Starring: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova

Tag line: “The Strangest… The Most Startling Human Story Ever Screened… Are You Afraid To Believe What Your Eyes See?”
Trivia: Myrna Loy, originally slated for the Olga Baclanova role, turned down the part because she felt the script was offensive

For more Cinematic oddities and reviews, head over to dvdinfatuation.com

Director Tod Browning, who had run away at age 16 to join the circus, came to love the “Big Top”, and all the excitement it had to offer. With his 1932 film, Freaks, Browning wanted to show the world a slice of circus life few on the outside had ever seen, namely the camaraderie and close-knit relationships that formed among the sideshow attractions, sometimes referred to as the circus freaks. But the world in 1932 wasn’t quite ready for Browning’s film, and as a result, Freaks was reviled by both audiences and critics alike.

Hans (Harry Earles), a circus performer who stands less than three feet tall, has fallen in love with trapeze artist Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), despite the fact she’s twice his size. Cleopatra initially laughs off Hans’ advances, but changes her tune when she learns he’s about to inherit a large fortune. It doesn’t take long for Cleopatra to seduce Hans, and soon the two are married. With the help of her secret lover, Hercules the Strong Man (Henry Victor), Cleopatra plans to knock off her new husband and collect his inheritance. But when she humiliates Hans in public, Cleopatra incites the anger of the other circus ‘freaks’, who are only too happy to intercede on Hans’ behalf.

It’s easy to see why Freaks might have been a bit much for it’s 1932 audience. Along with the appearance of such sideshow performers as the bearded lady (Olga Roderick), the half-man/half-woman (Josephine Joseph) and the human skeleton (Peter Robinson), we also meet the Half-Boy (Johnny Eck) who was born without legs, and the ‘living torso’ (Prince Randian), born with no limbs whatsoever. There are other “oddities” as well, like pinheads, Siamese twins (Daisy and Violet Hilton) and a girl with no arms (Martha Morris) who has to eat every meal with her feet. Yet, while these characters are certainly unusual, I don’t believe it was Browning’s intention to simply exploit their various deformities. On the contrary, I get the distinct impression when I watch this film that a mutual respect had developed between the director and his sideshow subjects, and am convinced his ultimate goal was to paint them all in a sympathetic light. That’s not to say there’s no exploitation whatsoever, just that Browning counterbalances it by making the ‘freaks’ genuine characters. In short, he wanted us to see them as the true heroes of his story, and the so-called ‘normal’ characters, who lie, cheat and steal their way through the film, as the tale’s true monsters.

Upon its release in 1932, critics attacked Freaks unmercifully. The Atlanta Journal wrote that it “Transcends the fascinatingly horrible, leaving the spectator appalled”, and its “shocking nature” resulted in the film being banned in many states. Ultimately, audiences could not accept Browning’s vision, and I truly believe ‘acceptance’ is what the director was after. He set out to show us the inner decency, even the humanity of this special group of performers, men and women who were dealt a blow by life, yet were coping with it as best they could.

Browning was able to see past their deformities. Unfortunately, at the time, he was the only one who could.

Last week I was complaining because there were hardly any releases worth glancing at; this week I opted to put in a second row of highlighted covers because there are a LOT of releases, including a bunch of last year’s festival circuit films that I didn’t want to get lost in the shuffle. Still a slow week on the Instant Watch front, for both new additions and expirations, but there are a few gems in there you won’t want to miss.

New Release Pick of the Week

Chronicle
A nice surprise in the midst of February doldrums to find this small but satisfying take on what would happen if a group of high-schoolers got the power of telekinesis. Both the “ordinary people get superpowers” and found footage genres are getting stale, but Chronicle uses both to good advantage, chiefly by being spot on in how teenagers would react to their new-found powers.
2012 USA. Director: Josh Trank. Starring: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan.

Other New Releases

Afghan Luke (2011 USA, dir Mike Clattenburg, stars Nick Stahl)
Agent Vinod (2012 India, dir Sriram Raghavan, stars Kareena Kapoor)
Chained: Code 207 (2012 USA, dir Tino Struckmann, stars John Greer)
The Devil Inside (2012 USA, dir William Brent Bell, stars Fernanda Andrade)
Dragonslayer (2011 USA, dir Tristan Patterson, stars Josh ‘Skreech’ Sandoval)
eCupid (2011 USA, dir J.C. Calciano, stars Andy Anderson)
Flashpoint: Season 4 (2011 USA, stars Amy Jo Johnson, Hugh Dillon)
Golf in the Kingdom (2010 USA, dir Susan Streitfeld, stars David O’Hara)
Hell on Wheels: Season 1 (2011 USA, stars Anson Mount, Colm Meaney)
Mortuary (2005 USA, dir Tobe Hooper, stars Dan Byrd)
My Perestroika (1010 USA/UK/Russia, dir Robin Hessman)
My Piece of the Pie (2011 France, dir Cédric Klapisch, stars Karin Viard)
The Tenants (2009 Brazil, dir Sergio Bianchi, stars Fernando Alves Pinto)
The Universe: Season 6 (2007 USA)
Victorious: Season 2 (2011 USA, stars Victoria Justice)
We Were Here (2011 USA, dir David Weissman, Bill Weber)
Windfall (2011 USA, dir Laura Israel)
The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake (2011 Hong Kong, dir Herman Yau, stars Rose Chan)

Catalog Pick of the Week

Being John Malkovich Criterion
There are no films that define “mindfuck” quite like Being John Malkovich, and yes, I pretty much mean that literally. When John Cusack discovers a door that leads inside the brain of John Malkovich, it’s only the beginning of one of the most bizarre and brilliant films I’ve ever seen. I’m glad to see Criterion honoring newer, deserving films like this.
1999 USA. Director: Spike Jonze. Starring: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, John Malkovich, Catherine Keener.

Other Catalog Releases

Before and After Blu-ray (1996 USA, dir Barbet Schroeder, stars Meryl Streep)
Born Yesterday Blu-ray (1993 USA, dir Luis Mandoki, stars Melanie Griffith)
Bringing Down the House Blu-ray (2003 USA, dir Adam Shankman, stars Steve Martin)
Caravan (1946 USA, dir Arthur Crabtree, stars Stewart Granger)
D.O.A. Blu-ray (1988 USA, dir Annabel Jankel, Rocky Morton, stars Dennis Quaid)
Duets Blu-ray (2000 USA, dir Bruce Paltrow, stars Gwyneth Paltrow)
Eagle’s Wing (1979 USA, dir Anthony Harvey, stars Martin Sheen)
Fanny by Gaslight, aka Man of Evil (1945 UK, dir Anthony Asquith, stars James Mason)
Forbidden Zone Blu-ray (1982 USA, dir Richard Elfman, stars Hervé Villechaize)
Gone Fishin’ Blu-ray (1997 USA, dir Christopher Cain, stars Joe Pesci)
Hazel: Season 3 (1963 USA, stars Shirley Booth)
Holy Man Blu-ray (1998 USA, dir Stephen Herek, stars Eddie Murphy)
Love Story, aka A Lady Surrenders (1944 UK, dir Leslie Arliss, stars Margaret Lockwood)
Mr. Wrong Blu-ray (1996 USA, dir Nick Castle, stars Ellen DeGeneres)
The Odessa File Blu-ray (1974 UK, dir Ronald Neame, stars Jon Voight)
The Order Blu-ray (2001 USA, dir Sheldon Lettich, stars Jean-Claude Van Damme)
Riverboat: Complete Series (1959-61 USA, stars Darren McGavin, Dick Wessel)
Spaghetti Western Double Feature: Grand Duel / Keoma (1972/1976 Italy, dir Giancarlo Santi/Enzo G. Castellari, stars Lee Van Cleef/Franco Nero)
Terminal Velocity Blu-ray (1994 USA, dir Deran Sarafian, stars Charlie Sheen)
Walking Tall Trilogy (1973-1977 USA, stars Joe Don Baker / Bo Svenson)
White Squall Blu-ray (1996 USA, dir Ridley Scott, stars Jeff Bridges)

Instant Watch Pick of the Week

Sleep Dealer
In the near-future, borders are blocked and immigration halted, but richer countries using poorer ones for labor hasn’t changed; thanks to the wonders of virtual reality laborours can hook into a machine and control robots to do the menial tasks that the wealthier nations don’t want to do. A great setup that the film may not quite exploit (no pun intended) to its full extent, but is still a worthwhile low-budget, idea-ridden sci-fi film.
2008 Mexico/USA. Director: Alex Rivera. Starring: Luis Fernando Peña, Leonor Varela, Jacob Vargas.

Other Instant Watch Releases

Expiring Pick of the Week

Metropolis Restored [5/16]
This is the Complete Metropolis edition with the additional 25 minutes of footage, which is the best way to see it. I hope I don’t have to really sell this film too hard – it’s a simply breathtaking experience, and if you can’t get a chance to see it on a big screen, definitely don’t miss this chance to see it before it expires.
1927 Germany. Director: Fritz Lang. Starring: Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Gustav Frohlich.

Other Instant Watch Expirations

Barking Water (2009 USA, dir Sterlin Harjo, stars Casey Camp-Horinek) [5/16]
The Producers (2005 USA, dir Susan Stroman, stars Nathan Lane) [5/16]
Battleground (1949 USA, dir William A. Wellman, stars Van Johnson) [5/19]
In the City of Sylvia (2007 Spain, dir José Luis Guerín, stars Pilar López de Ayala) [5/24]
Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies (2008 USA, dir Arne Glimcher) [5/24]
Singh is Kinng (2008 India, dir Anees Bazmee, stars Akshay Kumar) [5/25]
I Capture the Castle (2003 UK, dir Tim Fywell, stars Ramola Garai) [5/26]
Pretty Persuasion (2005 USA, dir Marcos Siega, stars Evan Rachel Wood) [5/26]

See all expiring titles.

Formerly the “Untitled Terrence Malick Project” starring Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz, Javier Bardem, Olga Kurylenko, Barry Pepper, Michael Sheen and Amanda Peet, the film got both its title, To The Wonder, and its MPAA rating, “R” today. Strange title, it feels like directions to Malick’s awesome yet often obtuse filmmaking style (“This way to the wonder folks! Wonder? Wonder!”) It’s certainly not at Cannes, and who knows if it will come out in 2012, 2013 or whenever. Just passing this along, because, well … Terrence Malick.

Oh, in cause you were curious, the R was doled out for nudity.

“To The Wonder is a romantic drama centered on a man who reconnects with a woman from his hometown after his marriage to a European woman falls apart.”

In 2006 Joss Whedon (certainly the mainstream man of the hour in light of Avengers‘ rip-roaring success) expressed his exasperation with the question “Why do you write all these strong female characters?” His pithy, Whedonesque answer of course was “Because you’re still asking me that question.”

Five years later in 2011, his words and frustration still rang true. The list of top ten box office hits includes only one film with a female lead – The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1, and Bella’s status as a “strong female character” is questionable (more on Twilight in a minute…) and the audience for the film adaptations of Stephanie Meyer’s novels is female-dominant. Last year’s box office champ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows does have a strong female character in Hermione Granger, but the lead of that film is obviously the Potter himself, everyone else more or less orbits his journey. Meanwhile, Transformers 3, The Hangover Part II, Fast Five, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and on down the list are male-centric to say the least.

But 2012 may be the year of the empowered girl.

The ongoing box office (and to a degree, critical) success of The Hunger Games seems to support that idea. But it is not just Katniss leading the charge: smart and strong women are leading many films this year. Films that seem utterly poised to be blockbuster hits and critical darlings feature women in the lead.

In the past 30 years of western pop culture (we’ll get to Studio Ghibli in a moment too…) we have Wonder Woman, Lt. Ellen Ripley, Buffy Summers and Foxy Brown.

Perhaps in 2012 we will have new names to add to that list. Mallory Kane. Katniss Everdeen. Lisbeth Salander (admittedly Fincher’s polished update of The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo was at 2011′s in extremis, but we’re counting her in the vanguard). Snow White. Princess Merida. The fact is, this shouldn’t be notable. But it is, because we are still asking writers, the majority of which are men, why they write strong women characters. But there are now many more writers to ask (admittedly still predominantly male!). Allow the Row Three staff to offer a survey of this years fem-powered offerings, starting with the resurrection of the Alien franchise.

There’s ample reason to believe that Ripley was an accident – at least in terms of the pop-cultural feminism we have subsequently subscribed to her. Both she and Lambert were written gender-neutral, with only a script note attached to the Alien screenplay suggesting that one or two of the crew members of the Nostromo might, if suitable, be cast female instead of male. This decision may therefore have been completely arbitrary. One suspects that Jesus-jawed crew leader Dallas, or science fiction’s signature dyspepsia victim Kane, would probably have been male no matter what. Parker, Brett, Ash, Lambert and Ripley were all up in the air.

Ridley Scott was working fervently to make a pitch-perfect monster movie. Any horror worth its salt needs a good Final Girl, and one can look at the gender choice for Ripley and think quite reasonably that yes, six-foot-two supermodel Sigourney Weaver looks much more appealing in her end-of-movie strip-down to tank top and panties (and subsequent, unexpected final smack-down with the Big Green Meanie) than, say, Christopher Walken.

But I don’t buy it. This, after all, is the Ridley Scott who brought us, in descending order, the fortysomething Marian of Robin Hood, the autonomous and prideful Sibylla of Kingdom of Heaven, the con-girl of Matchstick Men, the – ahem – whatever-the-hell-she-was of G.I. Jane, and the two feminine killing machines – Pris and Zhora – of Blade Runner. This Ridley Scott is not someone who would have created our female Ripley lightly – and I say that without even invoking the decade-defining pair of feminist icons that were Thelma & Louise.

I have no idea what’s in Prometheus, although we can safely assume that Ripley isn’t. I have judiciously avoided Prometheus spoilers like the plague. Charlize Theron seems like a feint, but I see Noomi Rapace in stills from the film, and my mind immediately begins conjuring powerful possibilities. One can ascribe a plentiful variety of meanings onto the Alien franchise, but one thing can never be denied: this is a cycle of movies whose women – females, of whatever species – have been not just important, nor even merely central, but defining.

So whether Rapace goes down like Kane in the first act or ends up as this neo-franchise’s newly minted Final Girl, it’s her that I’m going to the theatres to see. I’ll tell you this: the Ridley Scott described above didn’t cast the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in his new film by accident.
-BROWN

I came at The Hunger Games not as a rabid fan of the books (in fact, I haven’t even read them), but as someone intrigued by the hype coming not only from the studio marketing machine, but from people I know and trust. It seemed likely that The Hunger Games would take the movie world by storm as it had the world of young adult fiction, and so it seems to have done, becoming 2012′s first certified blockbuster, and tracking perhaps surprisingly well across age and gender borders. The movie isn’t without its problems, but it has one element that’s essentially unassailable: the character Katniss Everdeen.

There’s no one reading this who doesn’t know the story by now. Katniss volunteers to fight for her district in the titular games to keep her younger sister out of them and ends up giving the gamemasters a bunch of headaches when she pushes the rules of the games to their limit. But Katniss is not a trained fighter like the contestants from District 1 or District 2, nor does she have an action hero exterior or drive. She depends on the skills she’s picked up struggling for survival in her backwoods district – archery, tracking, hiding – and her innate intelligence and intuition.

However, though she’s clearly set up as someone who can handle herself, she isn’t really a hero in the beginning any more than she appears to be a strong contestant. Success in the games is not wholly dependent on either combat or woodland survival skills, but on likability, a quality that Katniss does not initially appear to possess. Instead, she can be blunt, abrasive, tactless, and single-minded to the point of alienating others, including the sponsors who can make or break a contestant in the games. At the same time, she is initially so fiercely protective of her home and family that she seems willing to be utterly ruthless in her pursuit of victory. But that’s not who she truly is, and she comes to redefine what makes a good Hunger Games contestant, by acting with humanity – and thus she becomes a heroine defined by her very humanity, both in the sense of being humane and caring to those who need it and in terms of her own fallibility. She doesn’t always make the right decisions, nor for the right reasons, but that’s part of being human, and heroes with no journey of their own are of little interest.

But perhaps the most notable thing about Katniss as a female hero is that in a way, gender does not matter to these games. Each district gives a girl and a boy, but age, skill, training, and persona matter much more than gender, and no one assumes Katniss or any of the other girls in the games is innately disadvantaged because of their gender. On the other hand, gender distinctions aren’t completely ignored in this society, nor is Katniss forced to take on masculine traits to win the games. Her strength is primarily centered in her humanity, her sense of loyalty to her district and her fellow players (those who deserve it, anyway), and her willingness to make tough yet smart decisions when necessary – all traits that cross genders. In fact, the most important factor of Katniss’s being female may be how unimportant it is – and that’s what gender equity is all about. Perhaps that’s why The Hunger Games does not have as overwhelmingly female an audience as other female-led young adult series. Her appeal is universal, because she is a hero that we can all admire.
-HARDESTY

Haywire has a plot that is so traditionally male driven, the Special-Ops soldier sold out by his bosses petty politicking, that one could initially look at the gender swap of its lead, in the form Mixed Martial Arts champ Gina Carano, as a simple gimmick to refresh an oft-used formula. But the moment you see Ms. Carano simply move, the thought quickly vanishes. Instead of 95-pound ladies with super-human strength, you have a woman who looks the part physically, and is instantly believable in her role as a 21st-century soldier of fortune. Soderbergh famously took all the the artificial foley work out of the fight sequences in Haywire, and why not, you accept that Mallory Kane is beating the tar out of Hollywood’s male elite (MacGregor, Fassbender, Banderas, Tatum) equally as you buy her a sexual being and one who is more confident that she has made her daddy proud. One might argue that the antecedent is Elmore Leonard’s tough cop Karen Cisco (brought forth by the prolific director in Out of Sight) but there she is clearly second fiddle even as she is perhaps more interesting than Jack Foley, even as her sex-fantasies rub up against her professionalism. Kane’s femininity is most certainly present, but it is a non-issue. She bristles to wear the black cocktail dress and be arm-candy when sent on a job with an Irish 007-esque agent and things end badly on that front. No time outs, here. Soderbergh plays the iconic tussle at the heart of Haywire as a cheeky stand-in for rough sex, where the lady-mantis eats the male at the end of copulation, but here the goal is clearly self-preservation, not mating or passing down DNA.

If there is a case to be made for a fresh new action franchise in the vein of the now dusty Stallone/Schwarzenegger films of the eighties, or their more meterosexual counterparts of late (vide Jason Bourne or Thomas “Neo” Anderson), then Carano is your lady. I’m completely surprised that she is not going pop up in The Expendables 2 in some way, maybe she will. Perhaps they can dust off one of those many Wonder Woman scripts and stuff her into the latest in Amazon-wear. Or better yet she should blaze her own trail; indeed she seems well on her way.
-HALFYARD

In A Lonely Place To Die it does not take long to sense that Alison is in control and means business: a minimal smile for a photo while rock climbing, a calming influence in someone else’s moment of panic, a few short and to the point comments to a fellow climber (“if you want to climb with me you need to up your game”) and a quick rebuke of an admirer. Not to mention the fact that she invents the “ginskey” – a mixture of gin and whiskey. She’s tough and confident – just her body posture alone tells enough of the story. She’s in the mountains to climb and challenge herself so let her be. When her group stumbles across a child in danger, she’s quick to act and assume responsibilities. As the bad guys give chase across cliff, hillside and village, she dodges bullets, withstands bone crunching falls, navigates rapids, powers through the forest and protects the young girl now under her charge. Not without breaking a sweat though – this kind of effort doesn’t come easy. She’s not a superwoman, but she will push herself to the limits, give every ounce of herself and dammit if she won’t make you do the same. Melissa George plays Alison and she needs more roles in action films – she works harder than Daniel Craig does as Bond with twice the commitment.
-TURNBULL

That 2012 brings not one, but two adaptations of the most delicate of princesses, Snow White, but re-invented as a figure of girl-power. If you go by the iconic 1937 Disney version Snow White exists to be abused, confused and to fall into a deep sleep before being woken by true love’s kiss with marriage as the end game. Even if you look at the emphasis on costume design and opulent pageantry in Tarsem Singh’s Mirror, Mirror, you will see that all of this is directed as the vice of the vainglorious Queen. Snow (Lily Collins) herself goes from being imprisoned in elaborate bows and ribbons to an investigator of what is wrong with the kingdom. The huntsman sent to do away with her has been transformed into a courtier (Nathan Lane) who wears the trappings of a sycophantic fop, indeed he has fallen from grace in the former regime (a paralysis or sleep of its own) and now plays nursemaid, toady and beautician consultant to the Queen. The rest of the sleep and paralysis is bestowed upon the incoming prince (Armie Hammer) who is often tied up, suspended and eventually is the recipient of the ‘sleep’ spell (in the form of puppy love, that is to say goofy obedience and sulky pouts) before being rescued by Snow. Many people have seen fit to write off the side-plot of the prince and his submission by Julia Roberts the cougar-Queen as a bit of slapstick fun for the kids, bit it is precisely the inversion of who is in danger and who is the rescuer that re-defines this post-feminist faerie-tale.

Snow earns the respect of the dwarfs not by housework and demure prettiness (albeit she dabbles in both) but by exercising leadership and a willingness to understand and empathize. In short, it is dignity, not beauty, that slays the beast of the kingdom and breaks all the evil spells upon the land. Granted, Snow does get married off and recedes her leadership role back to her elders, but not before restoring order, and perhaps insuring a proper succession plan.

Less is known about the darker and potentially more violent Snow White and The Huntsman that takes a more adult tone in terms of the story, looking to be more like a spiritual sequel to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. In the latter, Alice dons armour and leads a CGI army into battle before taking on the dragon, Jabberwock and looks to be directly echoed here with Kristen Stewart eshcewing twinkling vampires and swooning indecision (see below) and looking much like Joan of Arc decked out in plate mail and mounted on horseback. Ready for action, she is. Although little is known beyond the trailers at this point, will The Huntsman be the prince, or mentor & trainer in the art of war, or both? The poison apple and glass coffin seem to be in store for Snow White, but will she also be leading a CGI army into battle at some point? I think so.
-HALFYARD

Let me tell you about my Wonder Woman. The Lynda Carter TV show was my absolutely favourite thing in the world when I was five or six; I remember explaining quite sternly to my mother at one point why there was nothing weird about a boy preferring to be someone of the opposite sex while playing dress-up superhero with his friends. I was a mouthy kid anyway, and twirling around to become an Amazon Princess is fun, no matter what you have between your legs – and so to support my Wonder Woman fascination, my parents bought me everything Wonder Woman for a glorious couple of years. I remember very specifically a Wonder Woman book-on-tape which told the origin story of Wonder Woman in part text, part illustration. It was, for all intents and purposes, my first comic, and I identified with the heroine so completely – while still appreciating the first queasy stirrings of nascent fanboy lust at the sight of her in that Paradise Island short toga – that I can say quite definitively that there were many long years of my life before it ever even occurred to me that a story about a female superhero was in any way unusual.

It is unusual, though; even in the history of the Wonder Woman mythology, I came into the game at an unusually forward-thinking point, when Wonder Woman got to be powerful, friendly, optimistic, and beautiful. Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines, a fantastic one-hour documentary that I saw at ActionFest in April, gives the complete canvas sweep of the evolution of the character, from female role model, to mean-spirited sexist caricature, to feminist icon, and back again. As an essay, Wonder Women is fairly median in its survey of the evolution of the character, which it expands to include female heroines in pop culture in general – but the film makes some strong connections in its essay, and is just so gosh-darn heartfelt besides (a little girl proclaiming that for super powers, she’d want “Eye lasers that could make trash go into little shreds. Recycle Girl.”) that it was hard not to arrive at the end of Wonder Women with a big stupid grin on my face.

I had not connected the fact that both Buffy and Xena died (onscreen) within moments of each other in 2001, nor what those events might have meant for a generation of girls growing up with self-annihilation as a disturbingly omnipresent motif in their culture of stories. I had not connected the recent hyper-sexualization of female superheroes with young girls learning that the only route to empowerment is through sexual actualization. I had not heard of the Reel Grrls organization, which puts cameras in the hands of teenaged girls in an effort to fight the fact that only 3% of the decision-making positions in media are held by women. Like I said, Wonder Women makes good connections, and tells the tale once again for why female superheroes shouldn’t be so unusual.
- BROWN

The Secret World of Arrietty, adapted from The Borrowers by Studio Ghibli, continues a long-standing tradition by this particular Japanese animation-house for stories centered around competent and heroic girls (of all ages.) In North America the film hardly lit the box office on fire – it certainly wasn’t marketed very hard by Disney – but that may be due to an interesting complexity of what exactly is going on with the storytelling. Here we have a young lady of a race of tiny people who live under the stairs who forms a Capulet-like relationship with a human boy’s Montague. The film does not play the tragedy to the melodramatic heights of Shakespeare, but instead goes for a more ‘endless summer’ feel one gets at a certain age on the cusp of adulthood.

Arrietty certainly makes mistakes in her coming-of-age explorations both in geography and love. She ends an era for her family as she forges her unusual relationship with human owners of the house. But she is never used as bait to be rescued (that role falls upon her mother) and she finds her own way on her own terms whilst still trying to honour her parents. That her father accepts her as a ‘hunter-gatherer’ (that is what the Borrower’s do) without question is a post-gender giveaway right there. That she uses a sewing pin as her weapon of choice, sword-size for her, is a nice visual nod. Arrietty may not be the epic girl-driven adventure of Nausicaä or Princess Mononoke, but there is a maturity and quiet confidence in the film; one that belies the need to show-off that I believe was completely overlooked upon its release.
-HALFYARD

Perhaps Disney never pushed The Secret World of Arrietty very hard because they have their own inhouse film coming up very soon. It is notable in the lengthy and very successful life of Pixar (America’s Ghibli if you will, and John Lasseter would be the first to agree) that Brave is the first feature to be anchored around a girl. Staggering to think this, but after 20 years, the studio has come along way from Lil’ Bo Peep and Ms. Potato Head, the barely regarded females in Toy Story. The former, it should be noted pretty much vanished from the franchise by its third entry – albeit Jesse the Cowgirl is a far better replacement coming in at part 2.

Brave has anchored a lot of its marketing muscle around the relationship between Princess Merida and her mother the Queen which has a quiver of friction on the grounds that she wants to be a warrior and her mother wants her to go the traditional route. Dad seems ambivalent, leaving him more or less out of the equation. Now I believe that Brave goes the more traditional route of a curious girl causing a lot of the problems (one has to look no further than Disney’s The Little Mermaid for curses and witches and Kingdoms in jeopardy) only to find a way to bail herself out, but Brave hopefully stands to push the character – the moral fabric – of its lead beyond the song and dance and romantic longings of wistful mermaids. Ariel never had to take on a man-eating bear to prove her mettle.
-HALFYARD

Whether you love, hate or simply like Adam Wingard’s You’re Next (I’m in that last camp), there will be little question that you’ll remember the character of Erin (a tier-jumping performance by Sharni Vinson). She plays an innocent girlfriend who gets caught in one of the worst “meet the family” dinners ever. Not only do things spiral into vicious squabbling between siblings, but when the killings start it really ruins the mood. Particularly the crossbow arrows hurtling through the windows from the unseen attackers outside. The problem with remaining unseen, though, is that you can’t always see your target clearly and what these assailants don’t realize is that Erin has some kickass hidden talents. Not just her fighting and weaponry skills (which are, to say the least, impressive), but also her intelligence and cunning. As the family dwindles, she survives by using whatever resource is at her disposal. She turns the “game” around and doesn’t simply stay as prey – she becomes a hunter herself by setting traps and outwitting everybody each step of the way. She deserves every “Whoop!” and spontaneous bit of applause her character gets as she leaves her own trail of carnage in the house and never gives an inch. Not all the humour or horror elements work throughout the film, but Erin’s new version of the Final Girl does – one who doesn’t just make it out via her gumption, but actively engages in the challenge of surviving what’s thrown her way. She throws it right back – and harder.
-TURNBULL

Twilight seemed innocuous when it was first released but as it entrenched itself into pop culture, discussions around Bella and her inadequacy as a role model for young women have been many and often, in my humble opinion, short sighted.

There’s this feeling, and looking at the list of other women who have made our list, that the women we should be looking up to need to be outwardly strong, fiercely independent and willing to stand up for what they believe in, against all odds. Does that mean that women who chose to be wives and mothers and who favour traditional ideals aren’t fitting role models or, in their own way, strong and worthy of attention?

On the surface, Bella doesn’t appear to fit into what has become the ideal “empowered woman.” She comes across as a helpless romantic, a young woman so blinded by love and her want of a man that she leaves behind her life. At its core, feminism fights for a woman’s rights to be the same as those of men and allowing women to make the choice. That choice could land you in a fight to the death in an arena or in the case of Bella, the choice to enter into a relationship and stick with it even when the odds are stacked against her. It doesn’t make her a coward it just exemplifies that “traditional” values of family and love are just as important to fight for as anything else. Her fight is personal but it doesn’t make it any less important or any less worthy.

Bella’s growth has been slower than we may be used to but she hasn’t exactly been standing around for three movies waiting for Edward to come to her. To protect and save her. She has gone after what she wants at every turn. She wanted Edward and even when he fought her, she came out victorious. She fought, and continues to fight, for what she wants and cares for, fights that often land her in the line of death. We tend to focus on her moments of weakness but that’s like kicking a dog when he’s down. We all have those moments, it is part of what makes us human. Bella is stronger because she fights those troubling moments and emerges stronger. Her death dive in New Moon was stupid and done for the wrong reasons but she owned her mistake and went on to save Edward’s life. Not bad for a girl who many argue is weak.

I think some of the hate on Bella stems from the fact that her story is so clearly romantic and entrenched in a romantic trope where we often find women who let themselves be pushed around by men and over three films, try as the studio, writer and directors might to infuse the tale with action sequences, this is still, at it’s core, a story of romance and of a woman who fights for love. Perhaps when Breaking Dawn: Part 2 opens in November thoughts on Bella will change. The conclusion to the tale puts Bella at the centre of a brewing war where she becomes responsible and the only person capable of protecting her family and friends. Maybe a physical fight will finally dispel the idea that Bella is an inadequate role model because from where I sit, she’s just as capable and deserving of the “role model” moniker as any of the other women in this discussion.
-ANTUNES

“May I kill him?” Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) asks an incapacitated Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), just before chasing serial rapist and murderer Martin Vanger out of his torture-basement with a handgun. Some members of the audience were incensed – why was feminist icon hacker hero Lisbeth Salander asking a man’s permission to exercise her proxy? But this reaction misses the point of the two arrow-straight throughlines that screenwriter Steve Zaillian and director David Fincher have guided through their adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

A minor character in Dragon Tattoo describes two elder white men in the film as “the old Sweden and the new,” but for me this line refers more to Blomkvist and Salander. Yes, Blomkvist – 40ish, urbanized, and a marvelous wuss – is now the “old Sweden,” while Salander – 20-something cyberpunk bisexual superhero – is the next generation, roaring to get out of its garret. This is what makes the Blomkvist/Salander pairing in Dragon Tattoo so compelling: these are two people who should not even be in the same room with one another, socially speaking, and yet in combination they find a genuinely adult kinship that makes each of them more than the sum of their parts.

Perplexing some and galling others, Lisbeth is not only the victim of sexual violence, but is also, independently, a fully sexual person, with needs and drives which she is more than capable of meeting. In American cinema, it’s easy to cast women as one of these or the other, but giving Lisbeth the ability to survive sadistic guardian Bjurman’s actions, and take equally sadistic revenge on Bjurman, and yet also insistently take Blomkvist as a pleasurable lover, makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Not me. There’s an obvious gag, late in the film, when Lisbeth insists that Blomkvist shut up about the case they’re investigating while she’s busy arriving at orgasm, but it underscores the onscreen couple’s most important genre coup de grace. In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth is James Bond, and Blomkvist – played by James Bond – is the bimbo.

But when Lisbeth asks Mikael “may I kill him?”, I don’t see a girl asking permission of a man; I see a character asking someone whose opinion of her has come to matter, whether doing what she considers to be the natural course of action will make him dislike her. It’s Lisbeth – who, until this point, was socially withdrawn enough not to think about such things – asking her only friend, “Is this right?” She does this because whether or not Mikael dislikes Lisbeth has come to matter to Lisbeth, and by asking, Lisbeth exposes vulnerability for the first time. This single line marks the moment when Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, the old Sweden and the new, meet in the middle and understand that they are on exactly the same page: someone’s gotta go kill the fuck outta that Martin Vanger.
-BROWN

So what was it about Black Widow? As I stated in my review, I don’t feel like Joss Whedon and Scarlett Johannson – writer/director and star of The Avengers, respectively – really “solved” the character; her “red ledger” speech sounds like warmed-over Faith from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and her relationship with Clint “Hawkeye” Barton never coheres into a strong enough story point. Widow’s role in The Avengers, on paper, doesn’t seem to hold up to the more instantly crowd-pleasing superheroics of Iron Man, Thor, or The Hulk. So why, then, does the Black Widow occupy such a large part of my fond recollections of all that was good and great about The Avengers?

In a word, agency. Black Widow is of course herself literally an agent, but she also demonstrates – throughout The Avengers, without a single moment of exception – remarkable freedom from the sort of agency-hampering clichés that routinely surround the female leads of just about every single action movie ever. Black Widow is not a love interest. She is not an instigator of messes that other people then have to get her out of. She is not abused or raped for the thinly-veiled purposes of inciting her (male) counterparts’ ascendance into true heroism. Her skills and abilities as part of the Avengers team are never questioned, verbally or otherwise, by anyone. And she is not a member of the titular collective of superheroes for any reasons beyond her own chosen ones. In other words, for Black Widow, in her Avengers version, is there because she should be, and her femaleness simply never comes into it. Black Widow is a feminist statement by virtue of not being one: she is the first citizen of Joss Whedon’s long-imagined world where articles like this one don’t need to be written.

Black Widow is, of course, the subject of one of The Avengers’ most talked-about incursions, a two-word slap of profanity so unabashedly satanic that one presumes the only reason the MPAA allowed the phrase “mewling quim” to land in a PG-13 movie is that the voting body, historical dullards that they are, simply have not heard of the word. (My old high school English teacher, who was in every sense of the word a great mentor and friend, once held forth to his entire assembled class on the disproportionately excellent vulgarity of the word quim, which has passed so far into obscurity that one can nearly employ it in regular conversation again with impunity.) That the expletive should come at the very apogee of one of The Avengers’ best sequences – in which Loki squares off against the Black Widow in his prison cell – is delightful; that Widow should then immediately reveal that she has, in fact, outsmarted Loki – the God of Lies! – cements the character’s preeminence in Whedon’s otherwise even-handed ensemble. I have no proof of it, of course – and I do not discount his genre-defining work with Bruce Banner, or Tony Stark – but I suspect that Joss Whedon took The Avengers assignment, at least in part, so he could see that smile on Black Widow’s face, as she strode away from Loki and out of that room.
-BROWN

Black Widow is the not only highly empowered role for Ms. Johannson in 2012, with Johnathan Glazer’s Under The Skin on the way before the end of the year. Based on the first novel from Scotsman Michael Faber, it sees a unique female predator named Isserly using sex (and large mammaries) to gather male victims who fit a certain robust body type as … well, I’m not going to spoil it for those who’ve not read the novel (which I might add is quite excellent, if initially very opaque.) Suffice it to say that Isserly is both a victim and an empowered figure whose journey into empathy grounds the grisly subject matter at hand. In a mash-up of horror, science fiction and morality play, Under The Skin is a unique beast of a story that turns the entire notion of the ‘femme fatale’ and the ‘sex-alien’ (think Species‘ “Sil” or Splice‘s “Dren”) on its ear. It remains to be seen just how faithful Glazer is going to be to the novel and even perhaps the character. It is notable that females are practically trophies in Sexy Beast and poor Anna in Birth is emotionally manipulated and pretty much has her psyche crushed when she comes vis-a-vis with the ghostly embodiment of her man resurrected as a 9 year old boy. Nevertheless, I am willing to throw it as a potential cherry on the top of the large pile of films that makes our collective case for 2012.
-HALFYARD

(with contributions from Marina Antunes, Matt Brown, Kurt Halfyard, Jandy Hardesty, and Bob Turnbull.)

One final thing. Because there was no obvious place for it elsewhere. In the spirit of this piece, below is the patron saint of this new era of Women on Film from 1996, the hero of the instant classic American-noir Fargo, Marge Gunderson.

Postscript: Yes, Joss, we will all stop asking that damned question now.

Can you name them all (click the image)?:

Mother of Dragons | via

Yeah. He was a miniature:

The Raid reenacted with Claymation Cats!

State Home for Manic Pixie Dream Girls:

The Sound of The Avengers:

Other Fun Links:
Naked Lunch essay
Korean Film Institute uploaded 70 classic films to YouTube

An excellent week coming up on TCM, with a few scattered cool things on other channels, but for the most part, this week is all TCM all the time, and I’m hardly exaggerating. Especially look out for the Frank Capra marathon on Friday, including some of his early works, which are a whole lot of fun, even if Capracorn isn’t quite your thing.

Monday, May 14

6:00am – Sundance – Police, Adjective
Part of the Romanian New Wave of slow-burn dramas and crime films, this one looks like an interesting take on the police procedural, though it garnered some mixed reviews during its run on the festival circuit.
2009 Romania. Director: Corneliu Proumboiu. Starring: Dragos Bucur, Vlad Ivanov, Irina Saulescu.
(repeats at 12:15pm)

12:00N – TCM – Giant
The saga of a Texas cattle rancher and two generations of his family’s rivalry with a nearby rancher and oil tycoon. A bit sprawling and overlong for my tastes, but certainly has its moments, and is one of only three films James Dean made before his death.
1956 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Carroll Baker, Mercedes McCambridge.

6:00pm – TCM – Stage Door
I cannot describe to you how much I love this film. I’m not sure it’s wholly rational. Katharine Hepburn plays an heiress who wants to make it on her own as an actress, so she moves (incognito) into a New York boarding house for aspiring actresses. Her roommate ends up being Ginger Rogers (who’s never been better or more acerbic), and the boarding house is rounded out with a young Lucille Ball, a young Eve Arden, a very young Ann Miller, and various others. The dialogue is crisp and everyone’s delivery matter-of-fact and perfectly timed, and the way the girls use humor to mask desperation makes most every moment simultaneously funny and tragic – so that when it does turn tragic, it doesn’t feel like a shift in mood, but a culmination of the inevitable.
1937 USA. Director: Gregory La Cava. Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, Andrea Leeds, Gail Patrick, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, Constance Collier.
Must See

10:00pm – Sundance – The Girl on the Train
In this French film, a young girl claims to be the victim of an anti-Semite attack on a train; a media sensation follows, but is she telling the truth? I’ve been curious about this one for a while, but haven’t made time to see it. Has anyone caught it yet?
2009 France. Director: André Téchiné. Starring: Émilie Dequenne, Michel Blanc, Catherine Deneuve.
(repeats at 3:00am on the 15th)

11:30pm – TCM – 100 Men and a Girl
Deanna Durbin was Universal’s answer to Judy Garland back in the 1930s and early ’40s, a fresh-faced ingenue with a grown-up sounding set of pipes. Deanna’s voice tends more toward the operatic than the pop, though, which could conceivably be a turn-off to modern audiences. She’s still delightful on screen, though, and this is one of her most charming films, playing a young girl determined to save her father’s struggling orchestra by getting renowned violinist Jascha Heifetz (playing himself) to play with them.
1938 USA. Director: Henry Koster. Starring: Deanna Durbin, Adolphe Menjou, Alice Brady, Jascha Heifetz, Eugene Pallette, Mischa Auer, Billy Gilbert.
Newly Featured!

Tuesday, May 15

9:00am – Sundance – Encounters at the End of the World
Werner Herzog has made the savage beauty of nature one of his themes throughout most of his fiction films, so perhaps it’s only natural that he has moved onto explicitly non-fiction explorations of some of nature’s most remote locales, in this case, Antarctica.2007 USA. Director: Werner Herzog.
(repeats at 1:45pm)

10:00am – TCM – Lolita
“How could they make a movie of Lolita?” runs the tagline, and indeed, it’s hard to imagine anyone even trying in 1962 – both because of the pedophiliac content and the interior nature of the narrative, very difficult to reproduce in cinematic form. But Stanley Kubrick decided he was up to the task, and though it isn’t considered one of his best films, it still rates pretty highly.
1962 UK/USA. Director: Stanley Kubrick. Starring: James Mason, Sue Lyon, Shelley Winters.

12:45pm – TCM – Under Capricorn
A curiosity among Hitchcock’s films, more of a lush colonial melodrama than a thriller, which is at least one of the reasons it’s not very highly considered among his works. Personally, it’s my least favorite Hitchcock film, but apparently it was a favorite of the Cahiers critics (who championed Hitchcock in general, but this is an odd one to pick out), and I’m kind of curious to check it out again to see if it was merely my preconceptions that let me down.
1949 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Joseph Cotten, Ingrid Bergman, Michael Wilding, Margaret Leighton.
Newly Featured!

5:45pm – TCM – Niagara
Marilyn Monroe got a chance to play against type a bit as a calculating newlywed planning to off her husband during their honeymoon. Also unusual for what is basically a noirish crime film, it’s shot in color.
1953 USA. Director: Henry Hathaway. Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Joseph Cotten, Jean Peters.

8:00pm – TCM – Gun Crazy
A sort of proto-Bonnie & Clyde, with a pair of young lovers knocking over liquor stores and banks as they travel cross-country, indulging their love of guns and violence. This is one of the great unsung B-level noir films, though among noir lovers you’ll find it’s plenty sung, with Joseph H. Lewis bringing out the tragedy within the story’s pulp. Definitely don’t miss it if you’re into 1940s crime films.
1950 USA. Director: Joseph H. Lewis. Starring: Peggy Cummins, John Dall.

9:45pm – TCM – Remember the Night
Barbara Stanwyck is caught shoplifting just before Christmas. The prosecuting attorney, Fred MacMurray, puts off the trial till after Christmas and ends up feeling sorry for her, bailing her out, and taking her home with him so she won’t have to spend Christmas alone in jail. It’s fairly predictable what’s going to happen next, but as usual, Stanwyck makes relatively routine material worth watching. And of course, a Preston Sturges script doesn’t hurt either.
1940 USA. Director: Mitchell Leisen. Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Beulah Bondi, Elizabeth Patterson, Sterling Holloway.

1:15am (16th) – TCM – The Ox-Bow Incident
A pair of drifters become the leaders of a lynch mob when they hear about a local cattle rustler and murderer. Ahead of its time in terms of psychological depth and shades-of-grey morality at a time when most westerns were pretty simplistic with clear good guys and bad guys.
1943 USA. Director: William A. Wellman. Starring: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn.

Wednesday, May 16

11:00am – TCM – Fort Apache
The first entry of John Ford’s informal Cavalry trilogy has John Wayne and Henry Fonda posted to the eponymous Fort following the Civil War, dealing with Indian uprisings, and delving in Fonda’s character of a man driven to reclaim his lost honor in the military by any means possible.
1948 USA. Director: John Ford. Starring: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple.

1:15pm – TCM – Mister Roberts
Henry Fonda is the title character, an XO on a cargo ship who often butts heads with the captain (James Cagney), who runs the ship with an iron fist. The tone is a satisfying combination of comedy and drama, and with a cast that also includes William Powell in his last role and Jack Lemmon in one of his first, you can hardly go wrong. Though John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy share credit for the film, it’s mostly Ford – LeRoy was brought in to finish it when Ford had to undergo emergency surgery, but he tried to emulate Ford’s style as much as possible.
1955 USA. Director: John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy. Starring: Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, Jack Lemmon, Betsy Palmer, Ward Bond.

8:00pm – TCM – Dead End
A highly-regarded crime drama from the classic gangster era, with a street gang of kids, an unemployed man, and a small-time crime boss gangster facing off over a chunk of turf in Manhattan’s East Side. Showcasing an early role for Humphrey Bogart.
1937 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Joel McCrea, Sylvia Sidney, Humphrey Bogart, Wendy Barrie, Claire Trevor, Allan Jenkins.
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2:30am (17th) – TCM – These Three
Based on the play “The Children’s Hour,” this film abides by the Production Code by turning the play’s lesbian love affair between two teachers into a heterosexual love triangle between three, but retains the drama that erupts when a lying student implicates them in a scandal based on the intertwined relationships. Interestingly, Wyler would adapt the play again in 1961, retaining the original title and and implicit love affair, thanks to the relaxing hold of the Code. Despite the constrained morality, however, this one might be the stronger film.
1936 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Merle Oberon, Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Bonita Granville.
Newly Featured!

Thursday, May 17

8:00pm – IFC – Pitch Black
A better-than-expected B movie, with some great atmosphere and twists as a crashed spaceship strands a disparate group of people on a planet that’s not quite as lifeless and deserted as it seems. A nice genre calling card for Vin Diesel, and a great chance to see Claudia Black outside of her Farscape role.
2000 USA. Director: David N. Twohy. Starring: Vin Diesel, Claudia Black, Radha Mitchell.
Newly Featured!
(repeats at 10:15pm)

10:00pm – TCM – Call Northside 777
One of Jimmy Stewart’s first films after spending the war as a fighter pilot; he plays a reporter compelled to reopen an eleven-year-old murder case, coming to believe the wrong man was sentenced to life in prison. A good combo of film noir and mystery.
1948 USA. Director: Henry Hathaway. Starring: James Stewart, Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb.

12:00M – TCM – The Wrong Man
Alfred Hitchcock made many films based on the idea of the wrong man being accused for some crime, but this is the most on-the-nose one. Innocent Henry Fonda is mistaken for a suspect in a crime, and undergoes a vast extended ordeal at the hands of the police and witnesses who constantly identify him as the criminal even though he is not. The effects on him and his family are devastating. Not one of Hitchcock’s very best, but worth watching for Fonda’s performance and the distillation of one of Hitchcock’s most prominent themes.
1956 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle, Harold J. Stone.

12:30am (18th) – IFC – Blindness
Director Fernando Meirelles has never quite recaptured the magic of City of God (made in his native Brazil), but his American films The Constant Gardner and Blindness have their staunch supporters as well. In this one, Julianne Moore bolsters a group of survivors after a mysterious illness takes away everyone’s sight but hers, leading to an apocalyptic breakdown of civilization.
2008 USA. Director: Fernando Meirelles. Starring: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal.
(repeats at 3:00am on the 18th)

2:00am – TCM – Anatomy of a Murder
One of the best courtroom dramas ever made – James Stewart vs. George C. Scott as lawyers on a murder/rape trial that may not be quite what it seems. And that’s aside from the top-notch jazz score by Duke Ellington, which is in itself reason enough to see the film.
1959 USA. Director: Otto Preminger. Starring: James Stewart, George C. Scott, Lee Remick.
Must See

Friday, May 18

6:30am – TCM – The Miracle Woman
This early Frank Capra film follows a female religious leader (based on Aimee Semple MacPherson) whose fervor attracts the attention of a charlatan who exploits her explosive preaching style and message for his own profit. I liked this a lot more than I expected to, thanks in no small part to Barbara Stanwyck’s sensitive performance and more nuanced-than-expected treatment of the subject, though there is a fair bit of sentimentality thrown into the mix.
1931 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Sam Hardy, David Manners, Beryl Mercer.

8:15am – TCM – The Bitter Tea of General Yen
In what is certainly not one of Hollywood’s more racially sensitive films (though it has more nuance than you might expect for its time period), Barbara Stanwyck plays a bright-faced missionary to China who ends up captured by Chinese General Yen and finds herself falling in love with him. A strange, strange movie in many ways (not least of all the surrealistic photography); not wholly successful perhaps, but a very unusual entry in Frank Capra’s filmography.
1933 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asther, Toshia Mori, Walter Connolly.

9:45am – TCM – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Frank Capra puts on his idealist hat to tell the story of Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), an inexperienced young man appointed as a junior senator because the corrupt senior senator thinks he’ll be easy to control. But Smith doesn’t toe the party line, instead launching a filibuster for what he believes in. Wonderful comedienne Jean Arthur is the journalist who initially encourages Smith so she can get a great story from his seemingly inevitable downfall, but soon joins his cause.
1939 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Eugene Pallette, Thomas Mitchell.
Must See

12:00N – TCM – It Happened One Night
In 1934, It Happened One Night pulled off an Academy Award sweep that wouldn’t be repeated until 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, snagging awards for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress. Colbert is a rebellious heiress, determined to run away and marry against her father’s wishes. Along the way, she picks up Gable, a journalist who senses a juicy feature. This remains one of the most enjoyable comedies of all time, with great scenes like Colbert using her shapely legs rather than her thumb to catch a ride, Gable destroying undershirt sales by not wearing one, and a busload of people singing “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.”
1934 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert.
Must See

2:00pm – TCM – You Can’t Take It With You
Capra won his third directing Oscar for this film (the others were for It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town), but to me it’s not one of his more interesting pieces. Young couple James Stewart and Jean Arthur invite chaos when his staid, wealthy family meets her wacky, irreverent one.
1938 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Spring Byington.

4:15pm – TCM – Lady for a Day
Said to be one of Frank Capra’s favorites among his own films; follows an aging apple-seller in Depression-era New York who has been leading her daughter in Europe to believe she’s a rich society matron. When the daughter plans to visit, she must figure out a way to keep up the ruse. A film basically built out of great 1930s character actors, and a wonderful one at that.
1933 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: May Robson, Warren William, Glenda Farrell, Ned Sparks, Guy Kibbee, Jean Parker.
Must See

6:00pm – TCM – Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
One of Frank Capra’s most whimsical films stars Gary Cooper as an unassuming country boy who suddenly inherits a great amount of money. When he decides to give it all away to whoever comes and asks for some, he garners a media frenzy, everyone thinking he’s crazy. Idealistic, warmly funny, and, yes, Capracorny. But as corn goes, it’s among the best. Also, any chance to see Jean Arthur is worth taking.
1936 USA. Director: Frank Capra. Starring: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft, Lionel Stander, Douglass Dumbrille.

8:00pm – TCM – American Graffiti
Seems a little hard to believe now, but before George Lucas started in on Star Wars, he actually made other totally unrelated movies. Like this one, an excellent coming of age story set in the early 1960s, with a 1970s New Hollywood spin on it. Richard Dreyfuss before Jaws, Ron Howard back in the Happy Days days, Cindy Williams before Laverne & Shirley, Harrison Ford in a bit part, it’s a lot of good fun.
1973 USA. Director: George Lucas. Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Cindy Williams, Wolfman Jack.
Must See
Newly Featured!

12:00M – Sundance – Nights and Weekends
Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig are two of the most visible faces in the Mumblecore movement, such as it is, and this is one of their more highly-regarded collaborations (both credited as directors, writers, and actors), with a typically lo-fi relationship-driven story of two people struggling through a long-distance relationship.
2008 USA. Director: Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig. Starring: oe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, Alison Bagnall.

Saturday, May 19

1:15pm – TCM – The Diary of Anne Frank
One of the most famous memoirs of Jews living in Nazi Germany becomes a fairly well-regarded film, with Millie Perkins taking on the role of young Anne, whose family goes into hiding as Nazi persecution increases, sharing their space with another family and struggling for survival and secrecy. Shelley Winters won her second Oscar for her role.
1959 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Millie Perkins, Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters, Richard Beymer.
Newly Featured!

4:30pm – TCM – Blackboard Jungle
Glenn Ford is the teacher who takes on rowdy inner-city kids in one of the earlier “heroic teacher” films. A young Sidney Poitier is one of the students, and a scene in which a record of “Rock Around the Clock” is played is reputed to be the first time rock n’ roll appeared in a film.
1955 USA. Director: Richard Brooks. Starring: Glenn Ford, Anne Francis, Louis Calhern, Sidney Poitier.

8:00pm – TCM – Wuthering Heights
William Wyler’s moody 1939 version of Emily Bronte’s moody gothic novel, with Laurence Olivier as the moody Heathcliff. Probably the best film version of the story up till now.
1939 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Geraldine Fitzgerald, David Niven, Flora Robson.

12:00M – TCM – The Outlaw
After being a successful aviator and before becoming a hopeless hypochondriac, Howard Hughes tried his hand at moviemaking, most notably with 1930′s Hell’s Angels and this 1943 film, notable for being Jane Russell’s first major role as well as for being suppressed/banned for a few years thanks to Russell’s frank and earthy sexuality. I actually haven’t seen it myself yet, so I can’t comment on its quality, but the story surrounding it is interesting enough for me to want to take a look.
1943 USA. Director: Howard Hughes. Starring: Jane Russell, Jack Buetel, Thomas Mitchell.

1:00am (20th) – IFC – Layer Cake
Sounds like an unusual title for a crime film, but it’s also an unusually solid crime film, with Daniel Craig in one of his breakthrough roles as a drug dealer given a couple of tough jobs just before planning to retire. Last jobs never go well, so you can kind of predict all won’t go as planned.
2004 UK. Director: Matthew Vaughn. Starring: Daniel Craig, Tom Hardy, Sally Hawkins, Burn Gorman.
(repeats at 3:15am on the 20th)

2:00am (20th) – TCM – The Grapes of Wrath
John Ford’s homage to the dust bowl farmers of the 1930s, taken from the Steinbeck classic, won several awards (including one for Ford) the year it came out. Despite sounding like a downer of a time, it really isn’t – the moody cinematography by Gregg Toland and the undertones of crime and corruption give it a noirish feel that both complements and offsets the social drama of the main story.
1940 USA. Director: John Ford. Starring: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine, Charley Grapewin.
Must See

4:15am (20th) – TCM – Citizen Kane
Widely considered the greatest American film ever made, I’d be very surprised if anyone reading this hasn’t seen it. The quest for what makes publisher/politician Charles Foster Kane tick takes a journalist through a fractured narrative that never seems to give any definitive answers. Personally, I respect and recommend Kane for its innovations in narrative, cinematography, and cinema language, but I find it a difficult film to love (yet even that is fitting, as the difficulty of loving or being loved by Kane himself is a central theme).
1941 USA. Director: Orson Welles. Starring: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead.
Must See

Sunday, May 20

8:15am – IFC – The Limey
A favorite around the Third Row, with Steven Soderbergh directing Terence Stamp as the title character, a British ex-con who heads to Los Angeles to try to solve (and presumably avenge) his daughter’s murder. I have yet to catch up with this one myself, but as a Soderbergh fan, it’s definitely on the horizon.
1999 USA. Director: Steven Soderbergh. Starring: Terence Stamp, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzmán, Barry Newman, Peter Fonda, Melissa George.

10:00am – TCM – The Great McGinty
The story goes that Preston Sturges, a well-regarded and successful screenwriter, took this script to Paramount and said he’d sell it to them for $10 if they let him direct it. They said yes, and thankfully the film was successful, opening the door not only for Sturges to become one of the best writer/directors of the 1940s, but also writers like Billy Wilder and others to make the jump into directing. The story involves a crooked politician and the fake marriage he concocts to gain voters.
1940 USA. Director: Preston Sturges. Starring: Brian Donlevy, Muriel Angeles, Akim Tamiroff, Allyn Joslyn, William Demarest.
Newly Featured!

11:30am – TCM – The Seven Year Itch
Far from my favorite Billy Wilder movie – or Marilyn Monroe movie, for that matter, but it does contain one of Marilyn’s most iconic roles, the next-door-neighbor who infatuates middle-aged main character Tom Ewell as he becomes afflicted with the titular condition when his wife and family go on vacation for the summer. It’s a slight film that stretches the limits of incredulity to their breaking point, but watching Marilyn basically play herself is a fun time.
1955 USA. Director: Billy Wilder. Starring: Tom Ewell, Marilyn Monroe, Evelyn Keyes, Sonny Tufts.

5:30pm – TCM – The Spirit of St. Louis
A lesser Billy Wilder film perhaps, but a fairly solid biopic of Charles Lindbergh and his first solo flight across the Atlantic. A lot of it depends on Jimmy Stewart alone in a cockpit, but he’s up to the task, and it’s kind of a fascinating part of aviation history (okay, more fascinating if you’re from St. Louis, as Lindbergh and I both are).
1957 USA. Director: Billy Wilder. Starring: Jmaes Stewart, Murray Hamilton, Patricia Smith.

2:00am (21st) – TCM – The Rules of the Game
Considered one of the finest films of all time by many critics (routinely making Sight & Sound’s Best Films list, a top ten list polling notable critics once per decade), Jean Renoir’s film set on a bourgeois French estate just prior to the onset of WWII went a bit over my head when I saw it as a teenager, and I haven’t yet taken time to revisit it. From what I’ve heard, the nuances of class and social structure as well as the subtle comedy will probably work far better for me now.
1939 France. Director: Jean Renoir. Starring: Nora Gregor, Marcel Dalio, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Jean Renoir.
Newly Featured!

4:45am (21st) – TCM – A Room with a View
One of Merchant-Ivory’s best films out of their many classy adaptations of period literary classics – and less, uh, stuffy than they often tend to be. For me, it vies only with Howards End (another E.M. Forster adaptation) in their repertoire. A young Helena Bonham Carter, a veteran Maggie Smith, and Daniel Day-Lewis in one of his earliest film roles, don’t hurt at all.
1985 UK. Director: James Ivory. Starring: Helen Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Julian Sands, Simon Callow, Judi Dench, Daniel Day-Lewis.

You’ll have to forgive me if I get a little UPA happy in the future; I picked up TCM’s new box set of UPA Jolly Frolics and have been really enjoying going through it. Most of these cartoons are new to me, because UPA cartoons rarely get the kind of play that Looney Tunes or Disney cartoons get, even though UPA was the site of some of the most exiting and unique animation styles in the 1950s, really pushing past the established styles of Warner and Disney and incorporating more modernist and avant-garde design aesthetics into their cartoons. Though UPA would become best known for its series of Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing Boing cartoons, they also did a lot of one-offs, not really establishing any major long-lasting characters outside of those two. Rooty Toot Toot is a one-off, based on the popular jazz song “Frankie and Johnnie” about a woman who shoots her lover after catching him with another woman. It was deservedly nominated for a Best Short Oscar in 1951 (losing to Tom & Jerry outing The Two Musketeers), and is probably one of my favorite examples of a song-based short. One thing I love about it is a fairly common trait in UPA cartoons, and that’s how minimalist it is and how willing the animators are to let color and basic design define the space – none of the clothes have solid edges, for example. Other UPA cartoons would go even further in this direction. It gives them a startlingly modern look, as though a Matisse painting were being created right before our eyes.

Take a moment and consider this image. Note the usual ‘based on a true story’ tag associated with these low-budget demon-possession horror movies (this one literally called, The Possession) and now take a look at that image again. It’s OK to laugh, I think the poster designers were, even if they craft a pretty iconic image, that delightfully sways very far from ‘true story.’ MovieLine, recently started up an irregular column (One-Sheet-Wonder) by Dante A. Ciampaglia and he has a lot more to say about this design, here.

(It appears I will have to step up my game with this weekly column!)

Absolutely stellar work on the trailer for this year’s Shinsedai Cinema Festival:

Yeah, I want to see each one of those right now too…The full lineup has now been announced and tickets go on sale June 21st, so go browse the titles and see if you can match up trailer clips to their movies. A preview post of the festival should be upcoming soon, but that trailer does a fabulous job of selling the festival on its own. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but moving pictures put together in a montage set to music speak about a thousand times more.

It’s hard to say if Aida Makoto will ever truly let himself be happy. As an artist, he’ll always be restless (as most really creative people are) and never completely satisfied with all his work, but he can’t seem to be content with life. “Life is miserable if you can’t be an artist”, he says, not quite convincing us that it’s much different if you are one. Aida says he has ADHD and you tend to believe him when he takes one of his countless smoke breaks and continues to have a hard time focusing on the details of his paintings. Strange when you consider just how very detailed they are, but then you remember how long he’s been working on them and that he may simply never finish them. His large painting of about 30 schoolgirls dressed in blue by a waterfall looks complete down to the last little leaf, but it’s been in the works for 3-4 years. It’s been shown at numerous art shows, but it’s never quite finished. In fact, as he is setting it up at a new gallery, he sees it under a different set of lights and starts to completely reconsider some old choices. He even tells the gallery owner that if the painting sells, he wants to make sure that he can still finish it afterwards.

Another work in progress is the depiction of a mountain of businessmen’s bodies piled high and rising out of the mist. We see him just beginning the details of each individual body at the beginning of the film while he works in a large warehouse gallery in China. The paintings are too big to really work on full time in Japan, so he’s set up shop here over the summer and imported his wife and son as well. The film tracks his progress and as the summer comes and goes, his works are in various stages of not being completed. His family returns home and he stays behind. He returns for New Years festivities and then once again returns to buckle down since the businessman mountain painting is due for a showing. It shows, but it’s still not quite finished…

Both paintings are quite remarkable. Not just for their size, but for the bits of detail as well as the entirety of the picture when you step back. His other artwork is quite conceptual and usually focuses on the somewhat perverse. No matter what, though, he continually questions himself and tends towards excessive alcohol consumption – even after what others might consider a successful showing (he tends to downplay things that go well). His wife works as an artist as well and seems to have a much more practical approach towards her work as well as her life. Raising their son has not been easy – he has his own behavioural issues – and it feels like she is still helping raise Aida as well sometimes.

The film loses its way occasionally by focusing on the young boy, even though there looks to be a very interesting story of its own there. The boy has similar issues as Aida does – he feels “different” than other kids, doesn’t much care for playing with them and keeps to himself mostly (his parents believe he developed this complex partially from hearing a previous teacher continually putting down his two artist parents in front of him) – but we don’t get much development of the storyline. I suppose you could view Aida’s son as yet another “work in progress” or perhaps compare the film’s tendency to wander away from the paintings to Aida’s own inability to stay focused on them, but it doesn’t help the viewing experience.

However, if this portrait of artist Aida Makoto isn’t overly artful in its own approach to its subject, that’s OK. Aida has more than enough of his own art to bring to bear.

Ryan Gosling. Josh Brolin. Sean Penn. Convinced yet? Okay… Emma Stone, Giovanni Ribisi, Nick Nolte. How about now? Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) directs Gangster Squad, which is a “chronicle of the LAPD’s fight to keep East Coast Mafia types out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s.” The film also co-stars Michael Peña, Robert Patrick, Anthony Mackie, & Mireille Enos.

Tommy guns! Fedoras! Cool one-liners! A stylish LA-set noir that could be straight out of a Chandler book. I bought my ticket before I even finished writing about it. This is my kind of movie.

Gangster Squad is scheduled to be released in the U.S. on October 19, 2012.

Directed By: Michael Paul Girard
Starring: Dick Monda, Jean Stewart, Billybob Rhoads

Tagline: “You’ll never trust your vacuum cleaner again!”

For more Cinematic oddities and reviews, head over to dvdinfatuation.com

After millions of years away, a race of miniature martians returns to earth to check on the progress of their “human” experiment, and from what they can see, it’s been a total disaster. Having left humanity in charge of the planet, the aliens are disappointed to find it in such an untidy state, and decide to change things up a bit by mating humans with vacuum cleaners, so that future generations will be able to clean up the mess their forefathers left behind. Unfortunately, the vacuum they choose as their prototype malfunctions, and is transformed into a sex-starved maniac. With this horny Hoover on the loose, no earthling, male or female, is safe from bodily penetration.

Imagine a bunch of flat-broke college buddies getting together to make a sci-fi movie, and you have Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars. There’s nothing particularly “special” about any of the effects; the aliens are made of clay, and brought to life through stop-motion, yet never look like anything more than messy globs sloshing about. As for the humor, it aims low, and even then often misses the mark. When the alien “ship” first arrives on earth, it lands next to a vagrant named Vernon (Dick Monda), who’s asleep on the pavement. One of the aliens, an anatomically correct male, climbs out of the ship and urinates into Vernon’s empty gin bottle. Shortly after the martians fly off, Vernon wakes up, and not to be outdone, rolls over and lets loose a fart. From there, things get downright childish, with highlights including a peeping tom, whose name actually is Tom (Billybob Rhoads), masturbating as he watches his naked neighbor, Rana (Jean Stewart), through her bathroom window, and another scene where Tom gets his comeuppance when he’s anally raped…by the vacuum cleaner! Crass dialogue and tasteless humor run rampant throughout Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars, none of which is particularly funny. I myself never laughed once, though I must admit I did smile a few times, like when the vacuum first comes to “life”, and is framed against the rising sun, a la the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey (they even play Also Sprach Zarathustra).

The concept behind Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars far outshines its execution, yet it was all done in fun, and I was left with the distinct impression everyone making this film had a great time doing so. Oversexed Rugsuckers from Mars is not a good movie. In fact, it isn’t much of a movie at all; it feels more like a class project, and though it probably deserves a failing grade, I’ll give it an “E” for effort.

With maybe a little extra credit thrown in for its title.

Cinéastes assemble! The entire crew is back for this full throttle episode of the Cinecast in which we lather love all over Joss Whedon… or do we? Kurt Halfyard made a last minute decision to check out Avengers just before recording – remember this is the guy that gave Cabin in the Woods a rather scathing review. So thinks might get interesting **(SPOILERS!!)**. After Marvel talk, we get into the homework submissions for the week and I can tell you that thanks to Matt Gamble, the grades are all over the map; no F’s yet, but everything from D’s to A+ are handed out. From there, Kurt wraps up HotDocs, Matt brings up a sore spot in another take on Lockout while Andrew listened to rap and watched Hackers. Lots of “stuff” here – who knew Kurt had a vasectomy?

As always, please join the conversation by leaving your own thoughts in the comment section below and again, thanks for listening!

 
 
Full show notes are under the seats…

  show

  show

Cinecast (Andrew and Halfyard show)
After the Credits (Marina and Co.)
Mamo! (Matt and Matt)
ALL the RowThree Podcasts on one feed
All posts and discussions from RowThree

  show

IN-HOUSE BUSINESS:
– Donation shout out (Thanks Hans!)

MAIN REVIEWS:
– Avengers **(SPOILERS!)**

GRADING HOMEWORK:
Rick Vance: Style Wars
Sean Kelly (LetterBoxd): Paradise Lost (trilogy)
Robert Reineke: Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages
Nat Almirall (LetterBoxd:) Legong: Dance of the Virgins and Fishing with John
Lennart Andersson: The Arbor
Steven Beckley: Capturing the Friedmans
Courtney Small: When We Were Kings
Darryl Bowen: The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human and Paradise Lost
Dick Japowski: Dig and Overnight
Ryan McNeil: And Everything is Going Fine
Len Fearnside: The War Game

full list on LetterBoxd
full GPA spreadsheet for this semester [UP TO DATE]

THE WATCH LIST:

Kurt
– The Ambassador
– Detropia
– Klovn

Matt
– Lockout
– Hysteria
– Safe
– Game of Thrones

Andrew
– Hustle and Flow
– Almost Famous
– Headshot
– Hackers
– Classic Albums series: Stevie Wonder, “Songs in the Key of Life”

DVDs/NETFLIX INSTANT NOW AVAILABLE:
Jandy’s DVD Triage

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT:
1) send us movies for Matt to watch while he’s on drugs in August.
NOTE: listen to show for caveats (no Pink Floyd!)
2) Also, yes or no: should Matt appear on that episode?

OTHER STUFF MENTIONED:
High and Low Brow
Rashomon review
All of Kurt’s HotDocs video reviews
Post credits scene in Avengers
The War Game podcast at WTLTE with Jay Cheel
KLOVN red band trailer

NEXT WEEK:
Dark Shadows

PRIVATE COMMENTS or QUESTIONS?
Leave your thoughts in the comment section below, or email us:
feedback@rowthree.com (general)
andrew.james@rowthree.com
kurt@rowthree.com

FOLLOW US:
Andrew: Twitter, G+, Letterboxd
Kurt: Twitter, G+, Letterboxd
Matt: Twitter, LetterBoxd
RowThree: Twitter, G+, Letterboxd

One of the hidden delights of TIFF last year was this little southern fried noir featuring cowboy hats, zippo lighters, trailer parks and biker gangs all in orbit of the eponymous dirty cop, Killer Joe (Kurt’s Review). Matthew McConaughey and his very (VERY) game ensemble cast, including Gina Gershon, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church and Emile Hirsch knock this one out of the park, and the powers that be realize there is only one way to watch this thing: NC-17. William Friedkin used to get away with a lot of subversive behaviour in his 1970s output (The Exorcist, The French Connection and Cruisin’) but sort of petered out after the quite solid To Live and Die in LA. But his collaboration with writer Tracy Letts and very tight budget turned over a new page that really let him indulge in weirdness. Killer Joe is the new Friedkin all the way, and it is really, really good. Don’t bring your mom to the screening though.

After months of waiting, they’ve finally cut a trailer and damn if it isn’t one of the best ones I’ve seen this year so far. Just watching this one again, reminds me to kick myself for not putting this in my top 10 films of last year. When Pauline Kael said, “Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.” She was talking about Killer Joe.

If I’m the one doing the counting, Ben Affleck is two for two as a feature film director. After Gone Baby Gone and The Town, I have been eagerly awaiting what he would do next. He has come a long way from the easily joked about actor who I once loathed.

His latest effort in the director’s seat is Argo, a film in which he will also star. It follows the true story set when “the Iranian revolution reaches a boiling point [and] a CIA ‘exfiltration’ specialist concocts a risky plan to free six Americans who have found shelter at the home of the Canadian ambassador.” It has a pretty rockin’ supporting cast that includes Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, Kyle Chandler, Alan Arkin, Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, and Richard Kind.

Argo hits theaters in the U.S. on October 12, 2012.

This is a pretty dismal week for new releases, I gotta say. So much so that I eschewed picking one to feature. I might be convinced to watch Underworld: Awakening because I like vampires and tight leather, but I can’t in good faith recommend it, especially sight unseen. Better news on the Instant Watch front – the highly acclaimed Tyrannosaur hit streaming this week, and I’m certainly hoping to find time to see it before too long.

New Releases

Amador (2010 Spain, dir Fernando Leon De Aranoa, stars Magaly Solier)
Beautiful Wave (2011 USA, dir David Mueller, stars Aimee Teegarden)
The Big C: Season 2 (2011 USA, stars Laura Linney)
Bobcat Goldthwait: You Don’t Look the Same Either (2011 USA, stars Bobcat Goldthwait)
Dark Blue: Season 2 (2010 USA, creator Jerry Bruckheimer, stars Dylan McDermott)
The Front Line (2011 South Korea, dir Hun Jang, stars Shin Ha-Kyun)
The Genesis Code (2010 USA, dir Patrick Read Johnson, stars Kelsey Sanders)
Kawa (2012 New Zealand, dir Katie Wolfe, stars Calvin Tuteao)
Love’s Everlasting Courage (2011 USA, dir Bradford May, stars Wes Brown)
The Looney Tunes Show (2011 USA, stars Jeff Bergman)
Madison County (2011 USA, dir Eric England, stars Katie Stegeman)
Mother’s Day (2010 USA, dir Darren Lynn Bousman, stars Rebecca De Mornay)
Playback (2012 USA, dir Michael A. Nickles, stars Christian Slater)
Reykjavik to Rotterdam (2008 Iceland, dir Oskar Jonasson, stars Baltasar Kormakur)
Shock Labyrinth 3D (2009 Japan, dir Takashi Shimizu, stars Ai Maeda)
The Shrine (2010 USA, dir Jon Knautz, stars Aaron Ashmore)
This is What Love in Action Looks Like (2012 USA, dir Morgan Jon Fox, stars Zach Stark)

Catalog Pick of the Week

The Maisie Collection: Vol. 1
Long-running movie series are nothing new; in fact, movie series (distinct from ongoing serials) were quite popular in the studio era, though more often associated with B-level production than our current ultra-high budget sequelitis. Maisie was one of the most popular ones in the early 1940s – none of which I’ve seen, but I’m definitely curious.
Includes: Maisie (1939), Congo Maisie (1940), Gold Rush Maisie (1940), Maisie Was a Lady (1941), Ringside Maisie (1941).
1939-1941 USA, dir various, stars Ann Sothern, et al.

Other Catalog Releases

42nd Street Forever Blu-ray (2005 USA; collection of various movie trailers)
Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden (1979 UK, dir Graham Williams, stars Tom Baker)
Doctor Who: Dragonfire (1987 UK, dir Chris Clough, stars Sylvester McCoy)
Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol (1988 UK, dir Chris Clough, stars Sylvester McCoy)
Fantasy Island: Season 2 (1978 USA, stars Ricardo Montalban)
Ganja & Hess Blu-ray (1973 USA, dir Bill Gunn, stars Duane Jones)
Murder Obsession Blu-ray (1981 Italy, dir Riccardo Freda, stars John Richardson)
Vegas: Season 3, Vol. 1 (1980 USA, stars Robert Urich, Bart Braverman)

Instant Watch Pick of the Week

Tyrannosaur
I’ve been hoping this would come to Instant Watch, since it was one of Row Three’s most highly acclaimed movies of last year, with no end of praise for the cast and director (Considine in his directorial debut) for the gritty, sometimes tough-to-watch, but apparently excellently done drama.
2011 UK. Director: Paddy Considine. Starring: Peter Mullan, Olivia Colman, Eddie Marsan.

Other Instant Watch Releases

Angels Crest (2011 USA, dir Gaby Dellal, stars Thomas Dekker)
The Gates (2005 USA, dir Albert Maysles, stars Christo)
Kevin Smith: Burn in Hell (2011 USA, stars Kevin Smith)
Theater of War (2008 USA, stars Meryl Streep)
Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) (2006 USA, dir John Scheinfeld, stars Harry Nilsson)

Expiring Picks of the Week

Metropolis Restored [5/16]
This is the Complete Metropolis edition with the additional 25 minutes of footage, which is the best way to see it. I hope I don’t have to really sell this film too hard – it’s a simply breathtaking experience, and if you can’t get a chance to see it on a big screen, definitely don’t miss this chance to see it before it expires.
1927 Germany. Director: Fritz Lang. Starring: Alfred Abel, Brigitte Helm, Gustav Frohlich.

The Third Man [5/12]
Combining a noirish story and style with a very European sensibility, British director Carol Reed managed to create one of the most quintessential noir films of all time, and yet one of the most unique. Cotten heads to Vienna to find out what happened to his old friend (Welles), but discovers far more than he bargained for.
1949 UK/USA. Director: Carol Reed. Starring: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Alida Valli.

Other Instant Watch Expirations

Just a reminder that a whole raft of MST3K episodes are set to expire on the 15th. Check out the whole expiration list on InstantWatcher (link below) to see which ones if you’re interested.

Little Shop of Horrors (1960 USA, dir Roger Corman, stars Jack Nicholson) [5/12]
The Trial (1962 USA, dir Orson Welles, stars Anthony Perkins) [5/12]
Johnny Got His Gun (1971 USA, dir Dalton Trumbo, stars Timothy Bottoms) [5/15]
Un chien andalou (1929 France, dir Luis Buneul) [5/15]
Barking Water (2009 USA, dir Sterlin Harjo, stars Casey Camp-Horinek) [5/16]
The Producers (2005 USA, dir Susan Stroman, stars Nathan Lane) [5/16]
Battleground (1949 USA, dir William A. Wellman, stars Van Johnson) [5/19]

See all expiring titles.

I left the Hot Docs screening of The Revisionaries angry. Not stomping mad yelling obscenities, but stewing over what I had just seen, frustrated over an inability to do anything about it IMMEDIATELY and trying in vain not to be cranky with the friends who exited the theatre with me. This wasn’t overly surprising since I went into the film – which covers the Texas State Board of Education’s systematic attempt to dismantle their education standards through politics, religion and ignorance – with the expectation of acquiring a certain sense of outrage. It’s not that I was looking forward to that, but I felt that I should see if the film covered any angles or viewpoints I hadn’t heard before. The attempts to dilute the teaching of evolution in certain regions of the U.S. are a huge bone of contention with me, so I wondered how the film would approach the situation in Texas. The first part of the film covers the period of 2009-2010 when the school board tried to leave a loophole in its curriculum standards to allow a “strengths and weaknesses” arguments clause and therefore let non-scientific “theories” into science classrooms.

The film played it mostly as expected – an inherent bias that matched my own and a slight mocking tone of those who completely misunderstand the scientific method, but with an overall style and approach that was reasonably fair. Apparently most of the revisionists who saw the film were quite happy with it and thought their side came through well. Indeed their true colours and viewpoints do come through – mostly through board member and one-time chairman Don McLevoy who desperately tries to open the door for “intelligent design” to find its way into science classrooms in Texas by forcing debate and votes on how evolution should be taught. Considering McLevoy is a Young Earth Creationist (ie. someone who believes the Earth is less than 10000 years old, Noah’s ark really existed, dinosaurs walked with humans, etc.), it’s clear that he shouldn’t be anywhere near decision-making authority when it comes to science education standards. But that’s far from the most surprising thing in the film…First of all, McLevoy comes across as a mostly decent person even though his ideas have no foothold in reality. He’s completely deluded himself into thinking he understands how science works (he even claims to be a skeptic by nature), but genuinely believes in the things he’s trying to do. In what seems to be honest frustration, he admits that he just doesn’t understand his detractors. He’s a dangerous person to be in a position of major influence over one of the country’s major text book markets (to enter the Texas market, the manufacturers have to meet the Board of Education’s guidelines) since he simply doesn’t realize his limitations, but I expected a different kind of fanatic.

That’s where the second surprise came in – Cynthia Dunbar. Initially she appears to be a well-meaning but incompetent board member who just doesn’t understand the concept of a scientific theory. However, the more we hear her speak and the more we learn about her (she teaches at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University School of Law after having graduated from Pat Robertson’s Regent University School of Law), the more she becomes the centre of the issue and one of the main driving forces towards the wreckage of the future of Texas as an educated state. In short, she’s a horrible person. My bias is showing, but when someone’s political and religious agendas clearly supercede any thought of serving the people in their region, when she deliberately misinterprets questions and historical fact (she states in her book “One Nation Under God: How The Left is Trying To Erase What Made us Great” that the founding fathers of the United States created “an emphatically Christian government”), when she states that religion founded education, that government should be guided by a “biblical litmus test” and that public education is a “subtly deceptive tool of perversion”, I’m not sure how you reach any other conclusion about this person’s true morality. It’s completely and utterly compromised.

Even worse than the evolution debates in the school board were the ones that followed. After McLeroy loses his bid to retain his chairman’s seat, he focuses on what to change in the guidelines for social studies. With Dunbar’s stewardship, they pass what seem to be hundreds of amendments to the standards that take great pains to pick apart bits of history they don’t like – squashing names and events they would prefer were not a part of history and inserting their own views. It’s infuriating. Other board members are disgusted by these amendments, but the discussions are much more generalized this time around and therefore politics rules the day. The result is that most members of the board are convinced to allow all the changes through. Though the film edits many of the requested changes to specific soundbites that will enrage audiences (or at least should enrage them) and uses background music that brings to mind a circus, it is clear that minorities, women and non-Christians don’t really come out on the winning side of the revisionists’ version of history. The chalkboard titles of the movie become more than just a reference to the classroom – they indicate that apparently history is just as easily erasable.

As dire as all this is, the film isn’t without humour. Several great moments are provided by my new hero Eugenie Scott (Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education). She’s a marvelous speaker, clear-headed and not prone to get sidetracked by the ridiculous. In short, she is a shining ray of hope for logic and reason. Unfortunately, anthropologist Ron Wetherington is less successful in helping out the evolution side – he’s obviously brilliant, but allows himself to get caught in the debates. While he explains different technical aspects of the mechanics of evolution, the board members grow bleary-eyed and confused. I applaud his willingness to fight for the cause, but it’s frustrating to see his arguments complicate matters and even work against him. McLeroy also adds some humour, though most of it is at his expense (his Sunday school trip to a field with his pupils to show them that there would be plenty of room to house all the species on an ark is wonderfully surreal). And then there’s Cynthia Dunbar. There’s nothing funny about Cynthia Dunbar. Director Scott Thurman praised the Toronto crowd and thanked them for laughing during the movie. He commented that he hasn’t heard as much laughter in his U.S. screenings and postulated that it may be due to the fact that we didn’t have to worry about it up here in Canada. That’s where Thurman and I disagree – everyone should be worried and a bit angry about the kind of aggressive attacks on science and historical fact shown in his film. Hopefully that anger can then be turned into something constructive.

Modern architecture, like modern art, has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Though I can appreciate the clean lines and minimalist, uncluttered spaces, they’ve also never been spaces I’ve wanted to live in but on a tour through West Vancouver a few years ago, I had a realization that “modern” architecture, as applied to Vancouver, means something much different than what I had envisioned in my mind. In many aspects it is still about minimalism and open spaces but it’s also about communing with the nature around you and living in a space where the outdoors feels like an extension of your living quarters. Turns out this approach to modern architecture, though not exclusive to the west coast, has really taken a hold here and Coast Modern explores the architecture and ideas that have developed from LA to Vancouver.

Peppered with interviews of prominent modern architects, writers and the individuals that call some of these spaces home, directors Mike Bernard and Gavin Froome have pieced together a fascinating and beautiful account of the movement, its importance and why it never quite took hold. With the sentiment that “Modernism is a beautiful failure,” Bernard and Froome introduce the pioneers of the movement, the Case Study Houses that caused such a stir of attention but never quite took off and explore the modern ideal with a focus on the human connection. It’s not just about the beautiful homes but what they instil in the people that live in them. There’s a feeling of wanting to be part of nature, of living a healthier life when you surround yourself with so much nature and tranquility.

Like a walking tour of a neighbourhood, Bernard and Froome take us from Los Angeles to Vancouver, into homes that feel more like museums than living spaces but once inside, they’re cozy and warm and there’s a feeling of peace when you look out 12 foot high glass walls to overlook the water or when one comes through what appears to be an old farmhouse only to reveal a tranquil garden. It’s almost as if these are spaces of meditation where the loudest noise one would expect to hear is a beeping microwave. Though in some instances the spaces are clearly lived in – on two occasions we see children running around, jumping on furniture – others, even when crammed with papers and books, feel more like museums than homes; it’s their scarcity that makes them unique and foreign, objects of attention in many cases even decades after construction.

I was thoroughly engrossed by Coast Modern, it’s gorgeous vistas, beautiful homes and the history and ideas encapsulated within it, particularly the notion that these aren’t just places to live in for a few years, sell and then move on. They’re homes, extensions of the people that designed them and those that live in them, the kinds of places that stay in the family for generations. Considering the current love for reality TV, I’m surprised no one has thought to create a “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” type show dedicated entirely to modern architecture. I’d watch it and considering the buzz around this documentary, I’m not alone in my enthusiasm.

Coast Modern screens tonight. Online tickets are sold out and Rush line in effect. Second screening has been added. Details and tickets at DOXA.

Maybe it will be just want we need in August, right as the political absurdity that is the upcoming U.S. Presidential election is kicking into overdrive.

The Campaign, directed by Jay Roach (Austin Powers, Meet the Parents), written by two of the guys involved on Eastbound & Down and FunnyorDie.com, and starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis is a political satire following two Southern politicians caught in vicious campaigning for a seat in Congress. No official trailer has been released yet, but below you can watch the “political ads” – one for each candidate.

Will this be a refreshing farce of what is sure to be an overwhelmingly in-your-face and negative election year? Are Ferrell and Galifianakis a match made in heaven? Are you indifferent? Chime in below.

Change is constant and many of the technological advances of the last century have significantly changed our way of life but there’s a feeling, especially as our parents and grandparents get older, that we are the last remaining connection to a world and a way of life that will soon be relegated to pages of books and scenes from photos and videos. Soon no one will remember what it was like to live without TV, never mind not being able to access it on the go and it seems that with every step forward in technology, the memories of the past fade even faster.

Justin Simms’ Hard Light is a deeply personal film about a time long ago; a time that many have forgotten but in remembering the past, it’s also a look at what we’re missing in today’s world. Newfoundland author Michael Crummey seems determined to remember that old way of life and Hard Light is a combination of re-enactments and interviews with Crummey, a story as much about the filmmaker, who at the end of the film admits to Crummey that his novel “Hard Light” changed his life, as it is about the author whose writing is the result of his inner struggles with finding himself in a world that seemed to be passing him by.

In the interviews, Crummey shares details about his life growing up in Newfoundland, of his relationship with his parents and grandfather and how his memories and experiences shaped the adult he wanted to be. It’s fascinating hearing Crummey discuss his life as a wonderer after leaving home to pursue writing. He was willing to do anything, including own nothing, in order to do what he loved and it took him decades to realize that in his choice of nomadic living, he’d failed to really live, to stop and enjoy the moments and people in his life. Listening to Crummey speak was both soothing and inspiring, and I found his observations on life and how communities and families are changing interesting and insightful.

As fascinating as I found Crummey’s insights, I found Hard Light lost a bit of steam with the incorporation of re-enactments. I found them unnecessary and the narrator for these moments leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a particularly poor way to start the film because as interesting as the story being read is, it’s doesn’t do much to draw the audience in and the deliberately soothing, all too quiet tone is grating. At some point, Crummey reads some excerpts from his book and I found these much more effective as his voice lends added weight to the words he has put to paper.

I didn’t care for nor did I find most of Simms’ artistic choices effective for this documentary, they come across as poor attempts to spruce up what is essentially an interview with Michael Crummey but Crummey and his writing far surpass any fumbles by the filmmaker. I would listen to Crummey wax poetic on just about anything and am thrilled to have discovered another powerful voice in Canadian literature.

Hard Light screens Monday, May 7th. Details and tickets at DOXA.

There’s a great scene early on in Brishkay Ahmed’s feature documentary debut Story of Burqa: Case of a Confused Afghan where Ahmed speaks with a couple of guys on a Vancouver street. She asks them what they think of the Burqa and their responses are surprising, both saying that the practice of the burqa is unnecessary. Things get stranger when Brishkay travels to Afghan and the surrounding areas and is told, on more than one occasion by a number of highly respected men, that the burqa isn’t even a traditional Afghan garment. So how does such a constricting piece of clothing come to be so important to a culture to which it was imported? The answers aren’t easy or simple but Ahmed sets off to find out and what she discovers along the way is shocking.

Walking the markets of Kabul, watching men coming in and out of a small burqa shop, we learn the details of how the garments are made and we see men, many of them traveling from afar, buying burqa’s for their daughters and wives. Seeing educated men speak of the burqa and its purpose and importance to the culture, it quickly becomes apparent that the controversial garment is a long engrained symbol of control and not some cultural norm long practiced by the people. Ahmed travels the world digging up the history of the burqa, it’s origins and how it eventually came to Afghanistan and her discoveries are eye opening not to mention unnerving.

Though it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that a garment forced on women under the guise of religious necessity is so popular among men, there’s a sense from Ahmed’s interviews that many men aren’t even aware that the burqa isn’t a necessity but rather something that has been forced on the culture from external sources. It’s fascinating, and scary, to see how long this process has taken and how totally it has entered public consciousness.

Story of Burqa: Case of a Confused Afghan uncovers some hard truths and fascinating facts and though a necessary, must see film, it lacks the polish of a project from a more experienced filmmaker. Most of the interviews veer off course from their starting point and though interesting, some of Ahmed’s points are muddled by additional unnecessary information; it’s all very interesting but much of it feels like a stretch from the story Ahmed sets off to uncover.

Though Story of Burqa: Case of a Confused Afghan is a bit rough around the edges, it’s a fascinating film and one that deserves to be seen and discussed. As they say: knowledge is power and this is knowledge that needs to be distributed.

Story of Burqa: Case of a Confused Afghan plays Thursday, May 10th. Screening details at tickets at DOXA.