We stopped doing news items, casting items and the like around Rowthree as just ‘extra content’ some time ago; instead favouring the more solid information and material regarding upcoming and in-release films – such as trailers, festival screenings and you know, actual reviews. All that being said, this is bit of news is too good to pass up, especially considering there are a number of us around here that consider The Master to be easily the best film to be made, acted, and discussed by film lovers last year. According to Cinemablend, P.T. Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice is set to start shooting, with Joaquin Phoenix in the lead and There Will Be Blood cinematographer Robert Elswit shooting on 35mm film with a Warner Brothers studio backing. God bless that someone out there is still enabling Anderson to be able to do thing things his way, that is to say: The Classic Cinema Way. Shooting is expected to start this month.

Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon- private eye Doc Sportello surfaces, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era. It’s been a while since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that “love” is another of those words going around at the moment, like “trip” or “groovy,” except that this one usually leads to trouble.

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This could be my shortest Blind Spot post ever…Though I enjoy short form experimental films, appreciate the different aspects of filmmaking that get teased out and respect the filmmakers a great deal, it is not an area in which I’m overly well-versed. I’ve seen a few other films from the two directors responsible for this post’s films (Chris Marker and Stan Brakhage) along with a few things from Maya Deren, James Benning, Cocteau, Bunuel, etc., but my knowledge of their techniques, goals and intentions is somewhat limited. Having said that, especially after viewing both Marker’s Sans Soleil and Brakhage’s Dog Star Man, you don’t necessarily have to have any background at all since these films are the perfect art form onto which you can map your own feelings and perspectives. Neither of these films has a clearly laid out narrative or real characters, so it enables you to soak in its variety of images (many of which almost seem random at times) and attempt to put your own personal spin on them.

Marker’s Sans Soleil, for example, feels like a freeform wander through the world’s different cultures (pausing longer with some, glancing off others) with a fascination in the activities and ways of life of its people. All the while, Marker (and his sometimes overly serious and pretentious female narrator) riffs on the meaning of memory and how it forgets, changes and shapes history (“We do not remember, we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten” and “History only tastes bitter to those who expected it to be sugar coated”). The film also plays extensively with Japanese culture by tying into the memory aspects of the film and replaying Japan’s war history (“Small fragments of war enshrined in everyday life”). It also covers cats, an extraordinary ceremony to lay the souls of dolls to rest, more cats, sexual fetishes and a couple of additional cats (not to mention cat dolls placed into sex positions). The horrors of war are explored in a variety of different fashions as well, but focusing more on the concept of horror itself (the graphic death of a giraffe is a tough watch – you can see the life drain right out of it). If this seems somewhat random, well, it did for me too.

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Mud (2012)

Directed by: Jeff Nichols
Country: USA

I was astonished two years ago with the disturbing “Take Shelter”, but this time Jeff Nichols was not capable of maintaining me a hundred percent clung to “Mud”, his third feature film. Ellis is a sensible 14 year-old kid, who is passing through difficult times with the imminent separation of his parents. One day, he and his friend Neckbone, went to a deserted island, across the Mississippi river, to search for an old abandoned boat that has been placed on top of a tree. For their surprise, they found a famished man called Mud living there. Wanted by the police and by some thugs who wanted him dead, Mud asks for the kids’ help after telling them his story of love and crime. The old question arises: is the story true or false? The adventure never lost interest, but some excessive situations made the story fall into a sort of triviality. Ellis’ appetite for punching faces was in some cases absolutely ridiculous. The pace didn’t help too, and visually the film didn’t cause much impact for the eyes. The exception to these issues was the final shooting, which was very well done, putting intensity on the screen and adrenaline in our veins. “Mud” showed some moments of sincerity, especially those depicting the relationships between parents/sons, and gave a respectable vision of coming of age and the complexities of love associated to it. Being perfectly watchable, I felt it needed more agitation in the story and the suppression of some unnecessary scenes, to become more appealing.

(3/5)

Any Day Now (2012)

Directed by: Travis Fine
Country: USA

Set in the 70’s, “Any Day Now” depicts the struggle of a gay couple to gain the custody of a Down syndrome boy whose junkie mother had been arrested. Despite of some noticeable issues, especially in the story’s development, the film succeeds in gaining our sympathy for the cause. This is achieved through very solid performances, especially from Alan Cumming, and from the anger we feel from observing the negligent attitude of the boy’s mother. The biases were evident in many occasions: in a scene with a police officer, at work, at school, and in courtrooms, the latter with very laughable interventions from lawyer and judges. The couple’s differences were highlighted, with the low profile and sobriety of the law expert Paul (Garret Dillahunt), balancing with the expansiveness of Rudy (Cumming) whose dubious artistic talent only served the purpose of putting more sentiment in the final moments. Inspired on a true story, “Any Day Now” revealed an inevitable tendency for melodrama, but compensates with some honesty and a sense of true feelings. I could not help feeling sorry for the sympathetic young boy Marco (Isaac Levya), in Travis Fine’s most interesting film so far, a real champion of audiences in Festivals such as Chicago, L.A., Seattle, and Tribeca.

(3/5)

42 (2013)

Directed by: Brian Helgeland
Country: USA

42 is a biopic about Jackie Robinson, the first African American baseball player hired to play in a major league team, breaking the color barrier that prevailed since 1880′s. Robinson became an official player of Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, fighting in silence against racist prejudices, both inside and outside the team. His exceptional skills, sporting behavior, and effort put in the field, ended up winning the respect of team mates, managers, reporters, and general public. The film also focuses the importance of his wife Rachel, but great part of its time is spend on provocations, threats, and discriminations related with the racial segregation, as well as assorted episodes from several games that remained forever in the history of baseball. This is the fourth feature film from helmer Brian Helgeland, who seems to have won the heart of American audiences, but unfortunately did not touch mine. The approach was banal and nothing new or unanticipated was added to make it interesting. I felt that Helgeland’s main concern was to impress us with the racial theme, forgetting to spend some time building the character itself. 42 depicts Robinson’s life in the most conventional Hollywood tradition, using the same old formulas and manipulations that most of us are fed up. Its noble intentions and a couple of rousing moments, could not make Jackie Robinson’s fantastic achievements seem so special on the screen.

(2.5/5)

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Director: Antti Jokinen
Screenplay: Antti Jokinen, Marko Leino
Based on a Novel by: Sofi Oksanen
Starring: Laura Birn, Liisi Tandefelt, Amanda Pilke, Krista Kosonen, Peter Franzén
Producers: Jukka Helle, Markus Selin
Country: Finland, Estonia
Running Time: 120 min
Year: 2012
BBFC Certificate: 18

(4/5)

Accepting an offer to review a screener of Finnish drama The Purge (a.k.a. Purge or Puhdistus) was a no brainer for me. My wife is a proud Finn and insists on watching any film/concert/event that makes its way over to the UK. Usually it’s her that tracks these down so I get extra brownie points for finding and obtaining them myself. Add the fact that she’s read the book this is based on and given that I can’t always talk her into watching my usual choices of film, I replied as soon as the email from distributors Metrodome hit my inbox and requested a copy to cast my critical eye over.

The Purge opens with a bruised and battered Zara (Amanda Pilke) seeking refuge in a remote farmhouse in Estonia. Living alone in the house is the elderly Aliide (Liisi Tandefelt) who reluctantly offers her shelter. The two get talking and we learn that Zara has escaped from enslavement and abuse at the hands of a group of sex-traffickers (shown through flashbacks). A possible connection between the two women as well as familiar aspects to her story flashes Aliide back to her youth (where she’s played by Laura Birn). Whilst the Communists cracked down on Fascists in Estonia during World War II, Aliide fell in love with her sister Ingel’s (Krista Kosonen) fiancé Hans (Peter Franzén). In a bid to win him for herself and to survive the ongoing atrocities, she makes some painful yet selfish decisions which put her sister and niece’s lives in jeopardy and haunt her several decades down the line. However, when Aliide discovers Zara’s full background, she finds a way to seek redemption for her past crimes.

As is to be expected from the source material (and most Finnish dramas for that matter), The Purge is an extremely bleak film. With both women enduring some horrific sexual abuse and mental anguish, it’s a tough film to get through. The grim tone is relentless and there are no moments of light to alleviate the oppression shared by the characters and audience. This of course fits the film’s content, but I actually felt it maybe went a little too far. The film is so consistently brutal through its two-hour running time that it actually loses its power to shock and move as it gets into the latter third. By the end I was quite numb to it all and what was theoretically quite a powerful and affecting finale didn’t really get to me as it should.

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At the San Francisco International Film Festival, semi-retired (His HBO Liberace film is still in the queue) Steven Soderbergh gave a 35 minute talk to participants on his feelings on cinema, art, the business and all those things in between. The organizers politely asked nobody to record or repost this (although several were live tweeting the event) but as Soderbergh laments right in his talk, nobody can keep a secret any more. Perhaps the ‘don’t record this’ request by the powers that be was simply reverse psychology. Nevertheless, that the cat is now out of the bag, so have a listen.

Bon Mots:

“Whenever people start to get weepy about celluloid,” Soderbergh thinks of a quote he attributes to Orson Welles: “I don’t want to wait on the tool. I want the tool to wait on me.”

“The problem is that cinema, as I define it and as something that inspired me, is under assault by the studios and, from what I can tell, with the full support of the audience.”

Quoting D. Rushkoff, “There’s no time between doing something and seeing the result and instead the results begin accumulating and influencing us before we’ve even completed an action. And there’s so much information coming at once – and from so many different sources- that there’s simply no way to trace the thought over time.”

“Psychologically, it’s more comforting to spend $60 million promoting a movie that costs 100, than it does to spend $60 million for a movie that costs 10.”

“If you’ve ever wondered why every poster and trailer and every TV spot looks exactly the same – it’s because of testing. It is because anything interesting scores poorly and gets kicked out.”

Director: David O. Russell (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter)
Screenplay: David O. Russell, Matthew Quick (book)
Producers: Bruce Cohen, Donna Gigliotti, Jonathan Gordon,
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Matias Varela, Dragomir Mrsic, Lisa Henni
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 122 min.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the moment I saw Three Kings. It didn’t sound like much, another war movie this one with a comedic angle, but David O. Russell delivered an interesting and uncompromising look at the “business” of war with all its ugliness and occasional hilarity. I haven’t cared much for Russell’s movie’s since then but I’ve kept watching, hoping for another little gem. I never imagined a romantic comedy would be the movie to deliver it.

Silver Linings Playbook emerged as a bit of a surprise. Sure, it had calibre (director, well loved book, fantastic cast) but it feels like the swell was slow building. World of mouth screenings followed by praise for nearly everyone involved and then an Oscar win. I saw it pre-awards and it was busy but the busy screening was nothing compared to the sold out Monday night outing after Jennifer Lawrence’s award win. Apparently the Oscars do count for something – in some instances at least.

The premise is pretty standard stuff. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall for each other. Boy and girl pretend they don’t like each other but end up working together towards something bigger than both of them before finally coming together in a happily ever after. In this case a medicated happily ever after since both Pat and Tiffany are suffering from their own personal demons. But as sweet as this romance is and regardless of what anyone tells you this is indeed very sweet, it’s the kind of quirky sweetness that works. Mostly it works because of the performances – both Lawrence and Bradley Cooper (who’s been having a fantastic couple of years) are fantastic – but also because it’s the story of two damaged people who find love in an unlikely place and both of whom take some pretty big risks to eventually end up together.

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Check out these links:
Everything’s alright. We have glow-in-the-dark sheep now
Great TP prank (in silent film style)
M’s real name
Straight talk with RICKY JAY
Creative food art

Star Wars VII posters (fan art) | (more)

Support Zach Braff’s new project!

Movie posters with original book titles | (more)

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I‘m a bit conflicted over my impressions of Freida Mock’s newest documentary Anita, so let’s see if I can work them out…

First of all, let me be clear about the subject of the film – Anita Hill is clearly an incredible person. Intelligent, funny, brave and interesting, 20 years ago she became a lightning rod around issues that few people enjoy discussing even today. And yet, there it was on the news back in 1991: an entire panel of old white men talking about sexual harassment, penis sizes and pubic hair during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. As women were finally breaking down some barriers by garnering greater positions within the U.S. government, Hill’s grace under fire during her single 9 hour questioning session made her a role model for many women and brought more public attention and debate to the issues. Hill understood that harassment of any kind is primarily about control (perhaps being the youngest of 13 children helped her recognize this…) and she strongly felt that her prior experiences with Thomas’ repeated sexual advances and inappropriate closed door insinuations was relevant to him being given a lifetime position on the Supreme Court bench. In other words, “Speak Truth To Power”. The film documents a great deal of Hill’s lengthy appearance at the hearings via old news footage and shows us the road she traveled afterwards up until her present day role as a speaker and professor of public and social policy. Though she never wanted to discuss her history specifically in the classroom, she’s never shied away from it. “If I’m not public, it will be a sense of victory for them”.

But the film let’s both Anita and the audience down in the telling of all these events. There are fascinating sections of her story (the condescending questions of senators at the hearing, the 25000 letters of hate/support Hill has received, the effect she had on the rise of female politicians at the federal level, etc.), but it’s told flatly, doesn’t always provide as much context as it could have, and mostly sticks to archival footage and current talking head interviews. It’s clear that Mock wanted to keep the focus on Hill, but as engaging as Hill is herself when speaking and discussing her family, career before/after the hearings and her hopes for the future, it sometimes feels similar to a 60 Minutes piece. That’s not in and of itself bad, but it’s disappointing. Particularly due to the excellent work Hill is currently doing with young women and the array of her peers that could have been pulled in for further positioning of her role in changing perceptions on harassment in the workplace. As I walked out, I mentioned to a friend that all the conversation I heard after the film was mostly about ideas Anita Hill had discussed in the extended Q&A (also attended by Mock) and not about the film.

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What exactly is William and The Windmill about? Is it the story of a resourceful and ingenious young Malawi boy who builds a windmill from available detritus using diagrams in a book so his parents have a way to power their water pump during a particularly nasty African drought? Or is it the story of affluent white philanthropists (Including Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos’ parents Jacklyn and Mike) who are caught up in their own benevolent idealism? If you go and watch the second of William Kamkwamba’s Technology Entertainment Design (TED) talks – the first one is featured in the film, but at age 17 he is more deer in headlights than anything else – he comments on that experience in retrospect something to the effect of, “I’d never seen surround by so many azungu – white people. ” There is another exchange in the Ben Nabor’s documentary where the filmmaker asks William point blank what he wants for his life, rather than what other people want for his best interest. There is confusion to such a naked question, as William seems to perpetually wear a cloak of semi-dignified acquiescence. This moment might be best one in the film, which tells, but barely shows the event when William was 14.

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Ryuichi Ichinokawa’s wife doesn’t know what he does for a living. And she doesn’t really seem to care…”Without meaningful conversation, any relationship withers. I guess I just gave up on him. As long as we can pay the bills, I don’t care what he’s doing anymore.” He is either out at work, uncommunicative on the computer at home (when she says the above quote to the filmmakers, he’s right there in the same room on the computer and has no reaction) or sleeping. He thinks she has a negative attitude, stopped supporting him long ago and cares more about what her friends think than what he does. Short of his obsession with one day getting to Hawaii, they no longer have any ambition, hopes or dreams and assume the worst about each other. They are two very lonely people and Ryuichi wonders how much longer they will stay together after the kids have both gone off to school. So it may seem odd that the name of his company is “I Want To Cheer You Up Ltd”.

Ryuichi’s business provides the service of having himself or one of his extended team come and pose as a family member or friend for the client. Weddings tend to generate a lot of business as brides and grooms want to fill out their side of the aisle with additional people to show their worth (Ryuichi has even sat at an honoured guests table and even made a speech), but it seems like just about any situation might suddenly need a fake family member present. He’s played the husband for a woman trying to get her Ex to provide for her kids and a father for a girl whose boyfriend wants to ensure he has the right blessings before they move in together (her real Dad would never approve) while also having a team of about 30 other people who can take on any role required. The need for all this fakery seems to stem from many people’s concept of family honour and the need to represent a strong family and set of friends to others – which makes everything quite ironic when they use Ryuichi’s service to create layers of new secrets and lies.

My initial interest in the film stemmed from it sounding like a real life version of the events in the Greek film ALPS (based around a team of people who take on the role of their clients’ family members to re-enact scenes from their life). As interesting as that facet of the film is, it’s actually a stronger match with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata – the story of a man who can’t bear to tell his family he lost his job. Ryuichi is still very much a follower of the patriarchal society and is searching for his validation and respect through his customers since he doesn’t appear to get it at home (he talks about how they used to celebrate Father’s Day, but don’t anymore…). He claims that he simply wants to make his clients happy and help steer their lives in the right direction – mostly due to the fact that he is deeply unhappy himself and doesn’t see a way out. A fascinating look at one man’s broken dreams and the broader implications of a culture that places importance on what other people think of you.

Upcoming Screenings:

Sun, May 5 1:00 PM
Scotiabank 3

Mamo returns! We look at the changing face of China in light of Iron Man 3, the sci-fi might of Tom Cruise and Oblivion, before diving into the whole Zach Braff Kickstarter fracas. There’s some larger point to be made here about how and where movies make money, we’re sure.

To download this episode, use this URL: http://rowthree.com/audio/mamo/mamo301.mp3

Director Morgan Matthews states right up front that he used to be keenly interested in Bigfoot in his younger days. Years later, that interest has now flipped and turned into a deep curiosity of the people that continue to search, track and believe in the hairy Sasquatch. He follows along with three separate teams – the deluded but honest believers, the opportunist business man and the liar – while they go through their paces to gain any evidence of the long-elusive beast. Early on it looks like the film might be just like any other let’s-go-talk-to-crazy-people doc (filled with energy, but not shedding any interesting light on anything), but shortly after all three expeditions are arranged and we’ve jumped between each team’s early preparations with Matthews, we cut to the director lying in a hospital bed. Suddenly we have a different movie on our hands…

Though Dallas and Wayne seem a bit unsteady, they appear to honestly think they have the largest amount of compelling evidence anyone could come across. Sure it’s mostly blurry photos, recordings of sounds and anecdotes, but they’ve devoted their lives to it. They truly seem kindhearted, but a little bit lost and possibly even desperate. Tom and his professional team, on the other hand, have trucks filled with equipment and have made numerous videos of their exploits. They feel they are “this close” to finally nabbing one of the pesky critters. He is easily angered by any kind of intimation that perhaps he may have previously exaggerated some of their findings (actually, many things easily anger him) and he’s wary of the camera always being on. The third team is a solo hunter named Rick and his part-time vegetarian intern named Briana. He happens to have some history with Tom: a widely reported hoax by Rick and a friend was initially supported by Tom until proof of the fraud was made public. Rick has now reinvented himself as a professional tracker of Bigfoot and Matthews joins him on a several days-long jaunt through the deep woods.

The film becomes more and more engaging as we learn more about these people, their techniques, self-delusions and possible deceptions. It’s all the more intriguing since you know that Matthews is going to face an ordeal of some variety, but with which team? None of them escape looking silly – Rick tripping in the woods while he wears cowboy boots, Tom’s admission after a particularly stressful moment that he’s had 7 stints in his heart, Dallas calling for Bigfoot using a “shamen language” – but there’s also a more serious tone that slides under the entire film as the teams come across numerous other people living in rather desperate and terribly sad ways. Guns seem to be easily acquired, the economy hasn’t rebounded for any of these folks and basic needs are a struggle to acquire. It’s a clever mix of myth debunking, suspense, silly fun and state-of-a-decaying-nation profile. So how does it end? Well, like Bigfoot itself, you’ll just have to see it to believe it.

Upcoming screenings:

Fri, May 3 9:30 PM
The Royal Cinema