FlixView

TREME: America the Beautiful

2011-07-04T02:27:00.004-06:00

I Love My Country

Anyone who believes we here in the U.S. of A. don’t actually make anything anymore needs to watch HBO. Let me be more specific: you need to watch Treme. Now. All of it.

Fourth of July fireworks have been cancelled here in Lubbock, as in much of the parched southwest, but my heart swelled with nationalistic pride and my eyes teared up repeatedly as I watched the second season finale of the series about New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Created by television auteurs David Simon, responsible for HBO’s The Wire and NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street, and Eric Overmyer, who worked on both productions with Simon as well as St. Elsewhere and Law & Order, Treme is proof positive that the most interesting narrative work today is being done for broadcast and cable tv, not the movies.

My girlfriend has a low tolerance for menace (having been held up at gunpoint, she’s earned it), so halfway through the first season of Treme she gave up. Amidst the joy of creative people living vibrant lives in a globally and historically unique city, she correctly perceived the constant possibility of unannounced horror. Amidst plenty of examples, the ninth episode of this season suddenly ended with one of the most horrifying murders ever represented on American television. No small part of its horror was its banality, coming out of the blue as such things often do.

But to reach the fifth paragraph of an essay about Treme without mentioning the music is as criminal as some of the worst behavior the series has brought to life. Truly, it is hard to imagine any cultural text paying such consistent, knowing, loving tribute to the vitality of America and its unique cultural gifts as Treme does, episode after episode. The theme song alone (by John Boutté) makes me want to salute the nearest flag, and most episodes are so full of great American music that even a partial list is a cop-out.

New Orleans may be reasonably called the birthplace of American music, and our music, along with democracy and free-market capitalism, may be America’s most enduring contributions to global culture in the broadest sense. Nowhere else has this peculiar set of circumstances and energies produced such irrepressible joy, sorrow, beauty, ugliness, hope, despair, solidarity, and loneliness. Treme captures it all, even more vividly than did The Wire, which was inevitably drawn to the dark side of the American soul.

When Davis (Steve Zahn) leads his band for the last time in a nerd-funk cover of James Brown, or Antoine (Wendell Pierce) gives up his band to lead a bunch of aspiring high-schoolers, or Janette (Kim Dickens, the sexiest actress alive) gives up her high-profile chef in New York to return to NOLA and start over, or LaDonna (Khandi Alexander) recovers her inner fire after being raped by opportunistic thugs, or Delmond (Rob Brown) returns because Dr. John convinces him his father was right, or Toni (Melissa Leo) realizes her daughter Sofia and she will survive the suicide of the love of their lives, we know we will survive too, This is great art.

Which is to say, Treme is the best American television series. Ever.

Happy 4^th of July, all.

Super 8: B+

2011-06-10T01:56:00.004-06:00

Did you miss me? Hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since my last post, but full-time grad school plus teaching has taken over my life. Happily, I have reached the end of my obligation to full-time coursework, now I can take my time and finish strong. Another year, at least, but not another year away from FlixView.

In my absence the embedded trailer links in my last post have vanished, and incessant spam has forced me to disable the comment function. My profile still has an active gmail address which you are welcome to use if you have comments or questions.

I couldn’t avoid the omnipresent 30-second spots for Super 8, saturation campaigns are tough to live up to, but those 30 seconds at least didn’t give too much away. I was ready for a popcorn movie, I can’t even remember the last time I saw anything in a theater, and I suspect Super 8 will prove to be a crowd-pleasing money maker.

I was a teenager in the 1970s when Super 8 is set, and I made some movies with my dad’s super-8 camera, so J.J. Abrams’ script and taught direction had me at hello. The romance held up for the first 90 minutes or so, as Abrams and Executive Producer Steven Spielberg paid loving homage to the suburban teenage fantasies of that period. As Matt Patches points out on Film School Rejects, Super 8 often feels more like one of Spielberg’s own movies from the period than anything else, including Abram’s best work.

I don’t want to necessitate a spoiler alert, so all I’ll say about the gradual loss of momentum in the final act is that I wanted to turn Michael Giacchino’s score off, especially during the last sequence before the closing credits. I remember having a similar reaction to Abram’s otherwise astonishingly good Star Trek reboot, so it’s not fair to blame the tone on Spielberg. The production design is outstanding, although the camera work is occasionally distracting. But I ate my popcorn and it was good.

Lost in School

2009-06-21T22:29:00.002-06:00

Apologies for being an absentee blogger, nearing the halfway point in my coursework and it's been a brutal spring. I've mentioned my ongoing interest in movie trailers, and as I prepare a research proposal comparing the content of green-band trailers [approved by the MPAA for all audiences] to the content of red-band [restricted] trailers for the same features, I'm going to take advantage of the generous embedding feature at ifilm [now www.spike.com] to post some samples. Age verification performed by the host site.

Rambo [released 25 January 2008] green band:

Rambo - Trailer 1 | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

Rambo [released 25 January 2008] red band:

Wicked Videos, Latest Virals | | SPIKE.com

Pineapple Express [released 6 August 2008] green band:

Pineapple Express - Theatrical Trailer | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

Pineapple Express [released 6 August 2008] red band:

Pineapple Express - Red Band Trailer | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

I Love You, Man [released 20 March 2009] green band:

I Love You, Man - Theatrical Trailer | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

I Love You, Man [released 20 March 2009] red-band:

I Love You Man - Red Band Trailer | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

If these embed correctly, I'll post some more.

An Seh / Those Three: A

2009-04-22T01:32:00.004-06:00

First-time writer/director Naghi Nemati reportedly spent two years in the mountains of northern Iraq filming Those Three, and the stunning result was screened as part of the Global Lens film series sponsored by The Department of Electronic Media and Communication and The Institute for Hispanic and International Communication at Texas Tech's College of Mass Communications last evening.

Dr. Rob Peaslee, who is bringing film studies to the College with class and gusto, moderated a panel discussion following the screening. This has been the pattern for all three Global Lens screenings, and the commentary by scholars with extensive knowledge of Middle Eastern cultures gave the evening depth and breadth.

Those Three is a modernist fable of soldiers who desert, choosing the vast snowy unknown over their small company and overbearing officer. In contrast to Persepolis [2007], Those Three is not anchored to specific historical events, or even an easily definable narrator. As panelist Dr. Lahib Jaddo pointed out, Persepolis was not made in Iran, and therefore less subject to censorship. What Those Three reminded me of most powerfully was Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, although Dr. Kanika Batra argued for the powerful influence of Akira Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala [1975]. The white landscape is striking, and as in the Cohen brothers' Fargo [1996], rises to the level of an additional, omnipotent character. Stark, beautiful imagery, thoughtful bursts of vitality and humor, a puzzling narrative structure, and a fine cast contribute to a deeply moving art film.

Watchmen: C+

2009-04-03T12:36:00.002-06:00

It is true that director Zach Snyder [300] struck a skillful balance between honoring his source, the classic graphic novel Watchmen [1986], and creating a movie which could be enjoyed by audiences not familiar with the original. The larger potential audience is most clearly addressed in the credit sequence, a simultaneously subtle and over-the-top bit of filmmaking. In most particulars, Snyder chose fidelity, and fans of the original seem grateful. At the risk of revealing how uncool I am, I'm part of the larger audience, and I just didn't get it. Cool visuals, especially Rorschach's constantly morphing mask, and Dr. Manhattan in all of his blue glory, but also dreadful superhero sex and, ultimately, more cognitive involvement than this non-fan could muster.

Slumdog Millionaire: A-

2009-03-10T04:40:00.004-06:00

Watchmen can wait, I have finally seen Slumdog, this year's little movie that could. Having won nearly every major award stateside, and many international prizes as well, it's as hard not to root for this movie as it is not to root for its plucky young protagonist, Jamal [Dev Patel]. I have a friend from India who has worked in the film industry there, and found Slumdog too feel-good for his taste. But on Oscar night, he was cheering the movie's multiple awards as enthusiastically as anyone. Sorry, Lakshmi, you're busted.

What is undeniable, even for those who aren't crazy about it, is that this film manages to embody globalization in its very being. Based on the Indian novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup, co-directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, and scored by A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire is a heady mix of Bollywood, Charles Dickens, Trainspotting, Frank Capra, and the British export which conquered so many of the world's media markets in localized versions, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Some aspects of the narrative structure have been criticized for straining credibility [the answers coincide with Jamal's autobiographical chronology?], but I think this speaks to the film's hybrid genre, one-part Mumbai ghetto realism and one-part familiar fairy tale. As Scott Foundas wrote in the Village Voice, "Like so many of the Bollywood melodramas it stylistically apes, Boyle's film is unapologetically pop, even as Boyle himself seems to be at once inside and outside the idiom, embracing it while winking slyly at our collective need for escapist fantasy. Then, just when you figure he has pulled out all the stops, Boyle proves to have one more trick left up his sleeve: a joyous musical number that sends everybody out of the theater feeling like a winner." Jai Ho!

Doubt: B

2009-03-04T06:25:00.006-07:00

Sorry to be scarce these days, intense couple of weeks in school. Hoping to catch Watchmen opening weekend, will post once I've seen it.

Doubt, adapted and directed by John Patrick Stanley from his own stage play, is better than it looked. Yes, Meryl Streep's Sister Aloysius Beauvier is a bit over the top at times, but it occurs to me that not long ago, actresses approaching 60 only had minor grandmother parts to choose from, so that's progress. Philip Seymour Hoffman likewise teeters on the edge of characature, particularly in the characters' climactic showdown. But Viola Davis's brief supporting role as a mother caught in an impossible situation makes the whole film worth watching, as does Stanley's eye for the details of time and place. I liked the epilogue, a sure sign of a strong script, and did not see it coming.

A big bowl of wrong

2009-02-23T04:31:00.003-07:00

I've always taken a perverse pride in admitting when I'm wrong, and last night's Academy Awards show was the best I remember, well, in forever.

Generally recognized as a relatively weak year for movies, this year's Oscars were shorter and faster-paced; as Rob Peaslee pointed out, they even cut way down on commercial breaks. And Hugh Jackman was a fine host, like Christopher Walken and others with song and dance in their backgrounds, Jackman is a natural for musical theater.

No surprises among the winners, but having previous winners announce the acting awards was touching and classy. My personal favorite was the screenplay nominations, illustrated with clips while presenters Steve Martin and Tina Fey read from the scripts. Bravo, all around.

Now I just have to find time to see Slumdog Millionaire...

Does anyone outside the industry care about the Oscars?

2009-02-22T13:58:00.004-07:00

Not a new question, but one that has become increasingly urgent in financial terms. Courtesy of Wes Wise, a terrific piece in yesterday's New York Times about the current challenge: "A best-picture nomination for Wall-E, from Walt Disney and its Pixar Animation unit, if not The Dark Knight, from Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures, might have done it. Even an acting nomination for Clint Eastwood, whose crusty appearance in Gran Torino, from Warner, turned out his biggest box office to date, would have helped. But the academy gave no points for popularity. And the company folks noticed." The Academy has long favored middle-brow artsy projects for Best Picture, and moved toward smaller, artsier fare in recent years. By ignoring popular favorites [or relegating them to minor award categories], the Oscars insist on their own irrelevance to the industry they serve. Now, if the Best Picture nominees included The Dark Knight and Iron Man, lots more people would care who wins tonight. Among the nominees, I'm rooting for Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon, but The Departed it ain't.

Oh, and if Mickey Rourke gives yet another acceptance speech, maybe this time he could thank screenwriter Robert D. Siegel for creating the character that made Rourke's comeback possible. That's about as likely as anything other than Slumdog Millionaire winning Best Picture.

Gran Torino: B

2009-02-21T02:29:00.003-07:00

OK, there is some predictability about the narrative, but not so much that Gran Torino wasn't worth making, or watching. The script should have received an Original Screenplay nomination, in its better moments it breathes if not amazes. Eastwood plays his own Dirty Harry persona in retirement, but what is best here are the Michigan locations [the production brought much-needed capital to the rust belt] and the bigger picture of neighborhoods and culture in transition. Revenge is among our species' oldest narratives, and it plays out with more intelligence than usual here -- the conclusion is certainly more satisfying than the final act of Million Dollar Baby [2004].

Film Fund-amentals: The Horror, The Horror

2009-02-20T01:08:00.006-07:00

Note: The following guest post by Dennis Toth is reprinted with the generous permission of R&R Consulting.

As the weekend success of the new Friday the 13th has demonstrated, you seemingly can't go wrong with a horror film. Well, sort of.

Despite its $45.2 million dollar take at the box office, the film will redoubtably drop like a rock from here on out. That is the destiny of any modern horror movie. The audience for these films is actually pretty marginal and the potential is normally depleted after the first few days. Yet there is a method to the madness -- as long as it follows some basic rules:[Excerpt Only]

Keep the budget as tight as possible to $15 million dollars (even closer to $10 million would be best). Nobody goes to these movies for plush production values, so forget about it. The new Friday the 13th strictly adhered to this rule. With a budget of $20 million dollars, My Bloody Valentine in 3-D broke this fundamental law and went belly up faster than a horny teenager at Camp Crystal Lake. Granted, the budget difference is marginal. But everything in this genre is about narrow margins.

Stick to the known brands. There are nearly two dozen more horror films coming down the pipeline, most of which are remakes of movies from the 1980s. Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street are the genre's version of Pepsi and Coca-Cola. The original My Bloody Valentine wasn't even close to being an RC Cola. Name brand recognition is supreme.

Forget 3-D. Nobody goes to these flicks for the technical gimmicks. They go to these movies to see young people (and the occasional oldster bit player) get massacred in an R-rated but gory manner. It's all about sexual anxiety and taboo violations. Everything else is immaterial.

Don't worry about the opening weekend. The first-run life span of a horror film is roughly three weeks. The real money is then made with the DVD release, which will normally double (at a minimum) whatever was made at the box office. That is why My Bloody Valentine in 3-D will still make a profit despite its lackluster performance (barely $48 million first-run). Much like the porno trade, more people prefer to watch extreme violence in the privacy of their homes.

Last but not least, don't get too hung up on cinematic value. Most of these movies are incredibly stupid and artistically dead, but most attempts to expand beyond this (e.g. Wolfen and Mimic) have commercially failed. Most successes have struck to the basic formula that was neatly broken down and spoofed by Wes Craven in the Scream series (a must-see study guide to the genre).

Of the many horror films coming out this year, only one might succeed in breaking the artistic dead end of the form. I doubt if Zone of the Dead will travel far in first-run. But a Serbian horror film that promises to be a mix of Night of the Living Dead and Assault on Precinct 13 (the original, not the crappy remake) located within the aftermath of the recent Balkan Wars promises to be the first major cult movie of the twenty-first century. Too bad the midnight movie circuit is basically a zone of the dead.

-- Dennis Toth

got us surrounded

2009-02-18T12:29:00.003-07:00

Even a low-end surround sound system greatly increases presence, an elusive quality perhaps best expressed by the current ad for Turner Classic Movies: the images on screen occupy the space beyond the frame. We watch and are immersed. For a quick guide to various surround decoders, see 5.1.com.

Examples of superior 5.1 mixes abound, discs where the possibilities of three-dimensional sound have been used imaginatively by the sound mixers. One is the opening sequence of Falling Down [1993], in which Michael Douglas's frustration while stuck in traffic on a hot day is expressed by sound effects and music swirling around the sound mix in a gradual crescendo. The soundtrack captures the moment his character snaps, which motivates the story that follows.

Music dvds normally spread the instruments out to all five directional channels, but with live performances, this creates the sonic impression of being on stage. OK for air guitar I s'pose, but I prefer the sound mix on U2: Rattle and Hum [1989], which uses the rear channels only for crowd and echo effects, keeping the music in the front of the soundfield, where it would be if you had seats front and center. Over the opening Paramount logo, Bono says "This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We're stealing it back." Helter Skelter shows what a difference a great 5.1 mix can make.

Coraline [2009]: A

2009-02-15T04:32:00.004-07:00

Friend and colleague Rachel Kennedy introduced me to the critical concept of the female gothic last fall, a phrase coined by scholar Ellen Moers thirty years ago. While subsequent debate has concerned whether this subgenre is defined by the author’s gender, Rachel sided with those who define it in terms of the protagonist’s gender, and applied it to Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth [2006]: a young female heroine embarks on a fantastic voyage of self-discovery in a gothic house. A similar narrative and visual/thematic sophistication informs the latest 3-D release, Coraline.

Director Henry Selick, best known as the director of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas [1993], has adapted Neil Gaiman’s 1992 novella into a rich, entertaining film with lush visual and aural textures. While Selick has used computer-generated imagery in the past, Coraline is, astonishingly, made with stop-action animation, and demonstrates a deep affection for hand crafts onscreen and off. The score by Bruno Coulas and They Might Be Giants is subtle and perfectly suited – if you can see Coraline at a day and time when the theater is not full of kids, you’ll be glad.

And, if possible, do see it in Real D. As 3-D movies go, Coraline is only a distant cousin of those which use 3-D effects for cheap thrills [stay through the end of the closing credits, though]. It is more like Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder [1954], using the special effect to reinforce visual and thematic elements already woven into the text’s fabric. There’s an overhead shot near the end with a chandelier in the foreground which looks like a direct homage to Dial M, and hints of The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and other fantasy classics abound. The unity of visual and thematic elements involving the circus, eyes, and fabric crafts raise Coraline to the realm of popular entertainment which also functions as fine art.

Jon Stewart on Bill O'Reilly's Right to Privacy

2009-02-10T04:32:00.005-07:00

If someone made this argument in print, it would be dull but true. The Daily Show's video memory vault and Stewart's wit make it entertaining but true:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=217706&title=bill-oreillys-right-to-privacy

updates and stuff

2009-02-07T07:49:00.002-07:00

It is now less than a month until Zach Snyder's big-screen adaptation of Watchmen arrives, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox sorted out their legal dispute and all is happiness in geekland. The British Financial Times' film critic, Nigel Andrews, has written a terrific essay about the relationship between cinema and the comics, in which he discusses Watchmen at some length:
"In the best comic books and graphic novels, movement is the deferred magic that gives the pages their dormant power and dynamism. In the greatest cinema, stillness is the magic to which motion nostalgically, primally aspires to return. That is why the relationship between the two forms, though it may never be a marriage, will always be alive, mysterious and passionate as a romance."
That is not to say there aren't too many comic-based movies, but traditional storyboards drawn to plan cinematic shots are themselves virtual comics, so the love affair runs deep.

* * *

Christian Bale apologized, so at least he knows when he has behaved badly, something we all do occasionally. Ain't It Cool News' Harry had it right, the audio recording never was news, and its sudden appearance many months after the incident suspicious.

* * *

Michael Phelps has apologized too, but is losing sponsors right and left. Too bad, except for the camera it seems like it ain't nobody's business. The Huffington Post's Lee Stranahan pointed out the real hypocrisy:
"Kellogg's has profited for decades on the food tastes of marijuana-using Americans with the munchies. In fact, we believe that most people over the age of twelve would not eat Kellogg's products were they not wicked high... [W]e the undersigned plan to BOYCOTT your products. And we're serious. Even though the Pop Tarts thing will be HARD."
Ditto Subway, although I can understand corporate concerns over image, the role-model thing is tricky business. Here's a solution: legalize it, regulate it just like alcohol, and tax the nation's largest cash crop. Pay off a large chunk of the federal budget deficit. Free up some jail cells and courtrooms for criminals who hurt others or steal stuff.

To follow or not to follow

2009-02-05T04:40:00.002-07:00

My friend and colleague, Sam Bradley, has introduced me to the sometimes mundane, sometimes astonishing world of Twitter. Sam's recent post on the etiquette of following others on Twitter expresses a view of Twitterquette with which I essentially agree.

I'm not writing this post to convince anyone to explore this relatively new social medium, my own experience with it has been rewarding, but I realize it's not for everyone. Whether you do or don't Twitter is your business, dear readers.

But I just blocked someone on Twitter for the first time, and the circumstances seem to me to capture something about our present cultural moment. Someone added me to their follow list, and I added this person back, usually open to the possibilities. That I disagreed with some tweets did not bother me in the least, I follow lots of people I disagree with, it's a good way to learn a thing or two.

The next morning, I received a Direct Message from this person, not in any way personalized, just a link with a politically provocative description involving imminent civil war in the U.S. Having been on the losing end of the last couple of Presidential elections, and having gradually become convinced the 43rd President will be remembered among our nation's worst ever, I still felt like I managed not to be a sore loser. Lots of sore losers this year, fine, everyone's entitled to their opinion.

The following morning, I received a similar Direct Message with another link, still not in any way addressed to me. Then I discovered that both links had been tweeted by this person, so that any followers could see them. What then was the purpose of duplicating the link directly, except to insist I stop what I was doing and read what someone wanted me to read. BLOCK!

It's like a neighbor knocking on the door or ringing the bell unannounced. First try is neighborly. Second and third try are simply refusals to accept no for an answer. It's like people who talk through movies in theaters as though no one else is there, something regular readers know makes me crazy. So I don't go to the movies much, and that makes me sad. When did we all forget simple good manners?

I include myself in that rhetorical question, it's a broad cultural problem. I suggest we heed the words of the late George Carlin and try to "Be excellent to each other." If excellent is asking too much, how about just considerate?

Mano a Mano

2009-02-03T08:14:00.005-07:00

I'm on the fence regarding comic book movies, wasn't a comic nerd as a kid, and my memories of Speed Racer and Spiderman in their 1960s animated tv incarnations dwarf the Hollywood franchises that have arrived in recent years. Still, eye candy for its own sake is ok with me.

But it's hard to enjoy even the most dazzling movie images if they aren't held together with some storytelling. Yes, Heath Ledger was a talented young actor with much promise, and he managed to make us forget Jack Nicholson's Joker, no small feat. But, as The New York Times' David Carr wrote on the last day of 2008, "in an industry that seems unable to find a way to end a story, the Batman’s third act stands out as an amazing mess... Iron Man, on the other hand, may land somewhat prosaically — and the fight with Jeff Bridges is a bit cheesy — but there is a satisfying crunch to the end."

Today, for good measure, I was reminded how much I don't like Christian Bale. He was well-suited to the first role I saw him in, Patrick Bateman in Mary Harron's clever reworking of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho [2000]. But after hearing Bale's on-set tirade at the cinematographer on the upcoming Terminator Salvation, I think the Bateman performance was a fluke, the actor was just a lot like the character. Robert Downey Jr. made his Batman look like a mannequin.

Bruce on video

2009-02-01T18:13:00.004-07:00

The Superbowl half-time show was a bit more Vegas than most Springsteen shows, less intimate than usual. But he is the quintessential American singer/songwriter of recent decades, so it was just a matter of time. For those wanting some more Bruce on video, here's a sample:

Born to Run: 30th Anniversary Edition [1975], which includes a dvd concert recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in 1975. High-energy show, main drawback is the goofy hat the Boss is wearing.
MTV Unplugged [1992]
Blood Brothers [1996]
The Complete Video Anthology [2001] includes two songs from No Nukes [1980], an acoustic “Born in the U.S.A.” recorded on The Charlie Rose Show in 1998, and popular videos by John Sayles, Brain DePalma, and Jonathan Demme, as well as lots more concert footage.
Live in New York City [2001] and Live in Barcelona [2003], both concerts with the incomparable E Street Band; the earlier set wins my heart because it was filmed at Madison Square Garden.
VH-1 Storytellers [2005] More talk than song, but it's insightful and intimate.
Bruce Springsteen with the Sessions Band: Live in Dublin [2007]
Working on a Dream [2009], like the Born to Run Anniversary Edition, includes a bonus dvd.

My favorite video of Bruce and the E Street Band is not commercially available, it was included in the original Concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. "Bo Diddley" > "She's the One" > "Bo Diddley," and the band drives that groove into the ground. Great to see the late Danny Federici on keyboards.

But the end of the Inaugural We Are One concert was pretty wonderful, too, Bruce and Pete Seeger side by side singing Woody Guthrie. Chills.

Deckard as Bogart

2009-01-31T06:35:00.005-07:00

I confess, I have not seen all five versions of Blade Runner [1982] contained in the five-dvd "Ultimate Collector's Edition" issued in December 2007 for the noir-fi's 25th anniversary. Let's see, there's the original theatrical release, the original international release, the director's cut released in 1992, the new "final cut," and, exclusive to this set, a "workprint" cut. Me, I want the replica of Deckard's briefcase which houses the set.

This came to mind because of a discussion with my friend and colleague, Curtis Matthews, on twitter yesterday. He asked whether I consider the director's cut of Blade Runner a sequel, which I don't, but it's a good question. The versions of Blade Runner are dramatically different, especially with respect to the voiceover by Deckard [Harrison Ford] and the happy ending with Deckard and Rachel [Sean Young]. Both were included in the original theatrical release, and while the final romantic escape felt a bit disingenuous, I prefer the versions of the film which include at least some of Deckard's voiceover. Our film fiend/friend Wes Wise chimed in that he found the director's cut felt empty without the voiceover, and I think he has a point. The voiceover is one of the strongest links between Blade Runner and the classic films noir of the 1940s and 1950s, Deckard as world-weary, anti-hero detective. Deckard as Bogart.

best sequel ever

2009-01-30T04:24:00.003-07:00

I’m not sure exactly how I ended up with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II [1974] in my dvd player, probably when the “Coppola Restoration” discs were released last September, I placed it on my Netflix queue and here it was. This digital restoration is eye-popping in its clarity, the areas of the image in shadow have come to life once more, and the full palate of Gordon Willis’ extraordinary cinematography and Technicolor’s three-strip dye transfer processing is truly mind-blowing.

As for the unavoidable comparisons with The Godfather [1972], Part II only exists and makes sense in relation to the first film, but evaluated side by side is clearly the greater achievement. Film scholar David Bordwell perhaps explained it best in 1979 when he wrote, “we might consider The Godfather as a classical narrative film and The Godfather Part II as more of an art film.” The first couple of times the narrative moves back and forth between Vito Corleone’s life as a young immigrant and his son Michael’s rise to power half a century later, titles orient us to the time and place, but soon the slow dissolves separating these stories connected by the first film make sense and feel right. Vito’s story was adapted from Mario Puzo’s novel by Coppola and the novelist, while Coppola wrote the 1950s story arc, before Apocalypse Now [1979] robbed him of the ability to tell a coherent story.

The performances in Part II are as awesome and sobering as the images and story, and the film’s elements come together in an epilogue as devastating as any ever filmed. The third film, released in 1990, was understandably irresistable to make, but we should do ourselves the favor of pretending it doesn’t exist except as an unrelated, better-than-average mob flick. However, to think that between the first and second Godfather films, Coppola made The Conversation [1974] with Gene Hackman, well it just doesn’t hardly matter what he made before or since. Where’s my Netflix queue?

Jon Stewart's trickle up economics

2009-01-28T13:14:00.002-07:00

This is a good interview anyway, with two of my favorite anchors, Jon Stewart and Gwen Ifill. But in passing, Stewart proposed an economic recovery plan that would save the banks and erase consumer debt, the proverbial two birds with one stone:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=216987&title=gwen-ifill

trailer trash talk

2009-01-27T05:43:00.003-07:00

I'm preparing to run a focus group or two this spring on movie trailers, basic research designed to collect some evidence for subsequent work. One seemingly widely shared feeling about trailers is that, with all the economic pressure placed on opening weekend grosses, trailers often tell us too much about the movies they advertise, giving away plot developments and gags best experienced while watching the movie itself. Basically, the folks marketing the movie don't care whether they impoverish the experience of actually watching it, as long as people buy tickets. I'm also interested in the meteoric rise of trailers online, how that might be different than seeing them on television or in theaters. Have the new "red band" trailers for R-rated movies made any difference in what movies people see or why? Open to suggestions here, let me know what you think, thanks.

awards season in full swing

2009-01-26T04:36:00.002-07:00

The ensemble cast award at last night's Screen Actors Guild ceremony went to Slumdog Millionaire, which also won the Producers Guild of America top feature award the night before, and a Best Picture nomination for the upcoming Academy Awards. Does anyone outside of the industry care?

Charlie Rose hosted an interesting conversation Friday with A. O. Scott and David Denby about the Oscar noms and movies generally, and in another day or so it should be online at www.charlierose.com. In the meantime, David Carr wrote an amusing column about the year-end glut of good movies in a generally mediocre year, and the frustrations of trying to watch movies with, you know, movie audiences.

Finally, for those of us with neither the time nor the money to spend the past week and a half in Park City, Utah, here are this year's Sundance winners:

Grand Jury Prize: U.S. Documentary We Live in Public
Grand Jury Prize: U.S. Dramatic Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire
World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary Rough Aunties
World Cinema Jury Prize: Dramatic The Maid (La Nana)
Audience Award: U.S. Documentary The Cove
Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic Push
World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary Afghan Star
World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic An Education
Directing Award: U.S. Documentary El General, director Natalia Almada
Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic Sin Nombre, written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga
World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary Afghan Star, directed by Havana Marking
World Cinema Directing Award: Dramatic Five Minutes of Heaven, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award Nicholas Jasenovec and Charlyne Yi, Paper Heart
World Cinema Screenwriting Award Guy Hibbert, Five Minutes of Heaven
U.S. Documentary Editing Award Sergio
World Cinema Documentary Editing Award Burma VJ
Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary The September Issue, cinematographer Bob Richman
Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S. Dramatic Sin Nombre, cinematographer Adriano Goldman
World Cinema Cinematography Award: Documentary Big River Man, director/cinematographer John Maringouin
World Cinema Cinematography Award: Dramatic An Education, cinematographer John De Borman
World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Originality Louise-Michel
World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary Tibet in Song
World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Acting Catalina Saavedra, The Maid (La Nana)
Special Jury Prize: U.S. Documentary Good Hair
Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Independence Humpday
Special Jury Prize for Acting Mo'Nique, Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire

The week that was

2009-01-24T15:24:00.002-07:00

The inauguration was moving, in spite of a few minor glitches: there should have been some indication that most of the crowd was hearing a recording of YoYo Ma and Itzhak Perlman as they played; and, more importantly, the re-do of the swearing in should have been on television, if only to keep the right-wing nuts from having one more hook upon which to hang their suspicions. Speaking of right-wing nuts, Rush Limbaugh had to express the hope that President Obama's economic recovery plan fails on ideological grounds. As the "loyal opposition" expresses concern over the amount of deficit spending the President is requesting, I can't help but wonder why they didn't raise similar concerns as George W. Bush turned a budget surplus into the largest deficit in history. Why was it ok to spend money we didn't have to fight the war in Iraq, but not to prevent even more foreclosures and unemployment here at home? One of the great strengths of our nation and culture is that we are pragmatic enough to put common sense ahead of ideology. I know Rush has to be angry and outrageous to keep his listeners, but at what point are his words unpatriotic?

President Obama on screen

2009-01-18T04:45:00.006-07:00

An unusual collaboration between The New York Times' two first-string film critics, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, produced an insightful and timely essay on Friday about the development of male African-American personae on the big and small screens over the past fifty years: "Barack Obama's victory in November demonstrated, to the surprise of many Americans and much of the world, that we were ready to see a black man as president. Of course, we had seen several black presidents already, not in the real White House but in the virtual America of movies and television." Dargis and Scott connect the dots which link Sidney Poitier, blaxploitation, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby, Morgan Freeman, and Denzel Washington, among others, and point out that Dennis Haybert's president on 24 may have not just suggested Barack Obama was in our near future, but helped make it so.

Which side are you on?

2009-01-15T05:52:00.003-07:00

An interesting, provocative question, asked most pointedly by musician Billy Bragg in the 1980s referring to class struggle in the context of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

But I heard it again in a graduate seminar this week, in a very different context. My background is in humanities-based film studies, but I'm in an empirical, social scientific Mass Communications program at Texas Tech, so this has involved a lot of getting with the program. The most difficult transition for me is to A.P.A. style (M.L.A. is better, Chicago is my favorite); A.P.A. does not use first names of authors or capitalize most words in book titles.

The big dichotomy in the social sciences generally, and in Mass Comm especially, is between quantitative and qualititative research methods. The clearest way to think about the difference is that quantitative research translates data into numbers so it can be analyzed statistically. The question posed in class this week was whether content analysis is a qualitative or quantitative method.

The consensus is quantitative, and certainly, most content analyses I've read include statistical data analysis. But here's my point: the coding of content in order to make it quantitative is a qualitative process.

A series of studies examining sexual and violent content in movie trailers by Mary Beth Oliver, et al. illustrates my point. In 2002, the authors conducted extensive content analyses of movie trailers and found that "approximately 76% of the previews in their sample featured at least one act of aggression (with an average of 2.5 aggressive acts per minute), and that 56% of the previews featured at least one sexual scene (with an average of 1.5 sexual scenes per minute)" (p. 597).

This is interesting, useful information, the kind of empirical evidence of commonly believed generalizations in which social science can excel. But these numbers were based on carefully articulated definitions of aggressive and sexual content -- is a character holding a weapon an aggressive act, for instance?

Not only do these numbers require qualitative judgments in order to be collected in the first place, they require qualitative contextualization in order to create any meaningful conclusions. In a subsequent study, Oliver et al. wrote, "Given that movie trailers have only an abbreviated amount of time in which to overview the plot of a film and to pique viewers' interest, violent content may effectively function as a quick and unambiguous indicator that the film will contain dramatic conflict..." (p. 599).

I am new to the social sciences, but when asked whether I'm interested in doing quantitative or qualitative research, my defiant answer is that purely quantitative questions only exist in the world of mathematics and statistics.

* * *

Reference: Mary Beth Oliver, et al., "Sexual and Violent Imagery in Movie Previews: Effects on Viewers' Perceptions and Anticipated Enjoyment," Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 51.4 (2007), 596-614.

24 more

2009-01-13T09:17:00.004-07:00

I confess, I only got part of the way through the four-hour season premiere of FOX's 24. It would have been hard to believe when this show premiered in 2001 that it would have the legs to begin a seventh season, but then again, 2001 was an appropriate year to premiere a series about counterterrorism [life imitates art, again?].

I started watching it because of the real-time structure, and the producers have had the good sense to keep that, even when it has created credibility issues. Before 24, it was difficult to explain the concept of "real time" to students, now it's relatively easy. That's something.

What is hardest to take is Jack Bauer's constant sense of urgency, Kiefer Sutherland's earnest-o.d. is exhausting to watch, to the point of self-parody. Sure enough, season 7 begins with a congressional hearing at which Bauer admits to using torture against terrorist suspects, but has to be excused on national security grounds because there are more bad guys to catch and torture. It's as though Bauer is one part James Bond and one part Dick Cheney.

On the other hand, 24 gave us an African-American president before our current president-elect was on the national scene, and any show that gets Janeane Garofalo on weekly network tv can't be all bad.

Globes

2009-01-12T09:50:00.002-07:00

There are many reasons to prefer the Golden Globe Awards over the Oscars, my personal favorite is the division of major categories into comedies/musicals on the one hand and dramas on the other, and the inclusion of movies and tv side by side. That the talent is seated at tables with drinks rather than the formal theater seating of most awards presentations often makes the Globes more fun to attend and to watch.

The evening's big winners were, most surprisingly, Slumdog Millionaire (best picture-drama, best director, best screenplay, and best score) and Kate Winslet (best actress for Revolutionary Road and best supporting actress for The Reader). Less surprising were multiple awards for 30 Rock and HBO's John Adams. The evening's comeback kid was Mickey Rourke, although the west coast feed didn't include The Wrestler director Darren Aronofsky flipping Rourke the finger in jest. Least surprising award of the evening was Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight, and director Christopher Nolan rose to the occasion with a brief but eloquent acknowledgement.

I also got a kick out of seeing Marty Scorsese present the Cecil B. DeMille award to Steven Spielberg, but the clear favorites in front of the microphone were Ricky Gervais and Tina Fey, who told her internet haters to "suck it." As I wrote in a post last fall, "If nothing is sexier than wit, Tina Fey is a goddess."

Why isn't Warner Bros. on Twitter?

2009-01-10T14:35:00.014-07:00

Online buzz has reached a deafening pitch in the studio dispute over Watchmen, as a scheduled hearing before Federal District Judge Gary A. Feess was postponed Friday at the request of lawyers for Warner Bros. Pictures and 20th Century Fox [see today's update in The New York Times].

Links to an open letter about the dispute from Watchmen producer Lloyd Levin on Drew McWeeny's Motion Captured blog on Thursday were posted hundreds of times in individual tweets. Given WB's presence on Facebook and MySpace, it is curious that they have not chosen to put their Twitter account to better use.

Meanwhile, fans of the extraordinary 1980s graphic novel seem relieved that the $130 million movie adaptation's scheduled release on March 6 may materialize on time.

Pause Button Pressed

2008-07-17T21:18:00.002-06:00

The Pause button has been pressed on Flixview for the time being. Please check back from time to time, and in the meantime, go check out Wall E, the new Pixar film from Disney. Fine and fun stuff!

Thanks for reading!

jb

July 15 DVD Releases

2008-07-14T17:03:00.007-06:00

Looks like a pretty quiet week in DVD release world....The Bank Job, , a fairly interesting heist film will be out. This English piece is based on a the actual 1971 robbery of Lloyds' of London. Good action, but the pacing was annoying, saved, however, by good performances and direction.

Penelope, an interesting little rom-com starring Christina Ricci, makes its small screen debut. A sort of princess and the frog story, it is a fun and lighthearted way to pass 90 minutes or so....

The Year My Parents Went of Vacation is probably the highlight of the week. This story covers the story of 12-year-old Mauro who is left to fend for himself when his parents go "on vacation" during the military regime in 1970s Brazil...a classic coming-of-age story unfolds. Filled with warmth, love, heroism, nostalgia and humor', says Video ETA, and rightfully so.

On the small tube tomorrow is a very interesting sounding documentary which will screen on POV, a PBS show, The Last Conquistador. This is the story of the enormous and ugly statue of Juan de Onate that greets visitors at the El Paso International Airport. Without the input of American Indians, the city of El Paso and artist John Houser worked on the sculpture of Onate, whose history includes the slaughter of 800 American Indians at the Acoma Pueblo in northern New Mexico, in retribution for the killings of a about 15 Spaniards who were killed in a revolt by the Acoma, who were trying to rid themselves of the invaders. Additionally, by Onate's decree, 80 Acoma men had their left foot amputated.

When a much smaller statue of Onate was raised and praised in Espanola, NM about 10 years ago, person or persons unknown 'amputated' the left foot of this cowardly murderer as a reminder to what history really shows.

Should be an interesting watch to see how they justify the placement of this obtrusive monument to a mass murderer.

Looking for rare movies on DVD?

2008-07-13T15:49:00.003-06:00

If you've given up on trying to find that film you saw 30 years ago, one time, and can only remember that one great scene,here are some resources that I use to find obscure titles that are either hard to find or are copies made from another source, whether it is an old obsolete VHS copy, laser disc, or from television...there are few things that are not available someplace, somewhere. Do note that often times the DVD is a DVD-R, which will not play on some DVD players.

Obviously, Amazon.com can be a good source,as can Ebay, although I don't do Ebay.

There is a guy in NY state that I have ordered stuff from in the past, with great success. Check out www.classic-movies-dvd.com. He has a fairly strong selection of older films, lots of film noir and older westerns, too.

www.stores.films-classic.com/ is a newer site that I have not used yet, but they have competitive prices.

www.movielead.com is also an interesting source. They are more expensive, but they claim they can get any film (although I proved them wrong), and their sources are from original prints of the film.

And since I am probably a bit behind the times when it comes to Internet searches, a friend just told me about www.ioffer.com Everything I looked up, except for one title was available here, so I have just placed my first order with a gent in Florida. It is an interesting site, and you don't need to use a credit card.

Happy hunting!

This Week at the Movies

2008-07-12T18:00:00.001-06:00

So, in between achieving real life activities, I was able to sneak in a few flicks, all on DVD, since I just can't muster the courage required to go see another big budget summer movie, although Wall-E has potential, I guess.

Encounters at the End of the World, was the best of the lot. I will be reviewing this film at length in the future, but rest assured, iconic director, Werner Herzog's view of Antarctica does not include a lot of 'awww-ing' at penguins. It is a superb piece, which opens in Santa Fe in a couple of weeks, and will probably play at the Fountain early this fall.

Two Lives...Plus One, a soon to be released French film was probably next best. It covers an old story, a woman who is put upon by everyone around her taking the necessary measures to revive her life. Short and tightly directed, it is still on the festival circuit.

The Tracey Fragments, although decidedly not for all tastes, was much more interesting than I thought it would be. It stars Ellen Page of 'Juno' fame, as a young woman whose little brother disappears under her watch. However, the way the film is shot...every scene is in fragments...multiple images that convey more than one would think, makes this a challenging and unique film to watch.

Lastly, I'd like to recommend one of my favorite war movies, Pork Chop Hill. From about 1959, this realistic action film is based on a true story, and stars Gregory Peck as the commander of a small unit of infantrymen who are ordered to hold the hill in question while peace talks drag on far behind the front lines. Realistic and gritty, I it is one of the few movies that have been made about the Korean conflict, and one of the first to show African American's in combat roles. Brisk and in black and white, it is not an Audie Murphy or John Wayne look at combat.

Recommended!

This Week at the Fountain Theatre

2008-07-11T08:35:00.004-06:00

Nothing to do With Stallone!

Son of Rambow

Oh, please, please, please, let people see beyond the title of this movie (especially if they know how to spell).

I can only imagine the huddled masses reading Son of RamboW and dismissing this energetic and sweet parable of kidhood as a follow-up to some kind of Sylvester Stallone idiocy.

It’s not. At its basest, Son of Rambow is a great look at ‘how I spent my summer’, combined with a gentle lesson in morality and mortality for all involved.

Will is a lonely lad, not allowed to partake in certain things in school, including the viewing of films (and I thought MY parents were bad) because of misguided religious beliefs. But imagine his delight after accidentally viewing a ‘pirate’ copy of THE Rambo film, the one with Stallone.

Completely taken in by the film and the idea of making his own film, he is enlisted by the class spalpeen, Carter, who has shown him the picture as he tries to befriend his fellow outcast, and soon they are off making their own version of the 80’s jungle hero saga. Will of course becomes the stuntman and Carter the director and cinematographer, and before long, these two likable miscreants are the talk of their school.

Nothing is to bold for Will to try as the two boys formulate the ‘plot’ of their movie, enlisting an odd set of local characters, neighbors and strangers alike.
But needless to say, trouble is afoot, in the form of adults and another schoolmate.
Enter Didier Rivol, a French exchange student (certainly a pointed jab at certain French filmmakers) and all hell breaks loose. Didier, perhaps the first grade-schooler with a ‘posse’ and groupies, is soon cajoling his way into the film, using his buttery personality and high-grade sunglasses as part of the ruse. The girls flock to him, and soon he is forcing and sweet talking his way into the boy’s picture.

On the adult side, Will’s mother, quite devoted in her faith, and sensing skullduggery, enlists the aid of a church heavy to find out just what kind of ungodly mischief Will is up to.

As long as the picture stays focused on the activities of the ‘filmmaking’, it does well, but when it dares to step out of bounds, into the more serious aspects of life, it finds itself in a bit of trouble. The two main stories don’t blend very well, and a few sidebar type pieces are thrown in which detract from the clever and charming way that Will and Carter learn a few good lessons in growing up.
All in all, Son of RamboW works in a lot of ways, but don’t allow yourself to be seduced by the rather ungainly side stories. Blend in a bit of your own nostalgia instead, and you’ll have a nice formula for a friendly and sweet summertime movie.

B+

Son of Rambow opens tonight July 11 at the Fountain Theatre in Mesilla, thanks to the Mesilla Valley Film Society. It runs for a brisk 95 minutes, and is rated PG-13 for some quaint language not meant for young’uns ears and some ‘don’t try this at home behavior.’ It is from the UK.

CINEMATINEE....Saturday at 1.30- Songcatcher, with live music by Al Dawson before the movie, beginning at 1 PM

ALMOST MIDNIGHT MOVIE

Can’t afford a real vacation this year because of the greediness of those involved in the oil industry and the lunacy of airlines? Then this is the movie for you, tonight (Friday, July 11) only at 9.45 at the Fountain Theatre…admission is an entire dollar.
National Lampoon's Vacation chronicles the trials and tribulations of the Griswolds (Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Dana Barron, and Anthony Michael Hall) as they trek cross-country in search of fun and recreation at the mythical Wally World theme park. Along the way, they get lost in St. Louis where Clark Griswold [Chase] unwittingly asks a belligerent pimp for directions), stop to visit some hillbilly relatives (Randy Quaid is hilarious as the down-on-his-luck patriarch), pick up their cantankerous aunt Edna (Imogene Coca), dispose of her corpse after she passes away in the back seat, narrowly skirt death after crashing through a roadside billboard in the desert, and stay at a hotel where Clark is tempted by a seductive swimmer (Christie Brinkley). Having endured a journey more trying than Homer's Odyssey, they finally arrive at Wally World -- only to find it is closed for two weeks for renovations. Much of the humor in National Lampoon's Vacation is indicative of the general lack of taste in '80s comedies (particularly their exploitation of racial stereotypes and incest humor), but a good portion of the film is still laugh-out-loud funny thanks to a game cast. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide

Flickers about floods

2008-07-10T10:29:00.003-06:00

Floods don't seem to be a popular subject for movies either--again referring to the www.imdb.com Website, one can pick up a few 'seasonal' titles to look for...The River, made back when Mel Gibson was still a semi-interesting actor, is a pretty good flick...in case you don't remember or never saw it, old Mel is a farmer, Sissy Spacek his wife, and as if things weren't bad enough for him- foreclosure is looming-the rains come and don't stop. Nor do the bad guys. Somewhat melodramatic and with a somewhat predictable ending, it is a passable way to spend a couple of hours.

Hard Rain, a rather cheesy action flick with Christian Slater and Morgan Freeman mixes crime with a horrific rainstorm, but most of the rest of the titles listed are shorts or ancient made for TV movies that have not survived.

However, on the serious side, there is Spike Lee's interesting but flawed documentary series, When the Levees Broke, which first appeared on HBO a couple of years ago. It chronicles the experiences of those involved in the flooding that took place in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

The road to my house is washed out, so I will spend the rest of the day composing stories and watching movies, and looking for movie titles about Killer Humidity.

Stay tuned.

Rainy Day movies

2008-07-09T11:12:00.003-06:00

According to IMDB, there are 20 films with the same title--'Rain'. Starting in 1929 with a short and silent documentary (Regen) made in the Netherlands, described by one viewer as a lyrical rain shower over Amsterdam, and continuing up through the impending release of Rain, a made in the Bahamas drama about a young woman (named Rain) who heads for Nassau to find the mother she never knew (now THAT sounds original), and makes any number of life discoveries, the subject of rain itself is not really covered.

Seems that the word is most often used for a title in films, mostly shorts, that touch on the subject of people in search of something or are victims of emotional scarring. Although there is one about a dog (named Rain) that served in the Vietnam 'War'. It sounds interesting, but is not readily available on DVD or even VHS. One viewer sadly notes that 4500 German Shepherds were used in that conflict, and that only 1/10 returned home.

Nevertheless, it is rather fun to note that 'rain' is not used for a title of a film about the real thing.

If this keeps up, I'll type in 'floating down an arroyo' and let you know what I come up with for film titles....just saw a lizard with snorkel gear swim by.

Madonna and A-Rod

2008-07-08T07:41:00.003-06:00

Oops, wrong blog.

This week I've been touching on the sudden loss of a number of film distributors who work exclusively with smaller US films, documentaries, and foreign films. A number of distributors still exist of course, such as Sony Pictures Classics, Rialto (although they only do great overlooked foreign films), Fox Searchlight, which will apparently be the only 'big' studio to have a 'small' wing (they released Juno), Maya, which specializes in films made for the Latino/a audience.

So how does one see these films? Well, besides the obvious, such as getting them from Hastings or Netflix when they come out, or joining the interesting new DVD club, Film Movement, you can sometimes get lucky when you are on the road.

El Paso offers a couple of very small venues, such as the fun Fellini Cafe on Cincinnati Street, just down from UTEP. Fellini shows a different film each night in its tiny cafe, and all you need do is show up, spend $5 on grub (Betty makes great torta's) and watch a good film in the tiny space.

UTEP has the Union Cinema during the school year, although these films are never first run (Fellini usually is, and in fact, she gets some titles that are currently playing only in the big cities...don't ask...)

In Tucson, The Loft Cinema is a two screen indie theatre, and in Albuquerque, there is The Guild. Both cities also have corporate screens that usually devote one screen to 'art' films...check www.fandango.com for titles and such.

Santa Fe of course is mecca...there is the Santa Fe Film Center, The Screen, CCA, and DeVargas...all of which offer a number of 'art' films. All have nice Websites....do beware of The Screen, since their schedule often changes at the last minute.

Further afield, Denver is also a land of plenty....but skip Phoenix. For one of the largest cities in the US, they sure are not interested in good movies.

And of course, there is the Fountain Theatre here in muggy Las Cruces. I am a board member of the Mesilla Valley Film Society, so you'll be kept up to date on what is going on at the grand old theatre....best news lately is that the new owners are going to pop for air conditioning which will be installed in time for summer 09! Not a moment too soon, either.

Lastly....movies watched lately Up the Yangtze...a great documentary about the building of the Three Gorges Dam in China, and its effect on two traditional families, Iron Man-- yes, I finally broke down and went to a 'big' summer title....and really liked this one. It was not at all what I expected. Robert Downey was great, and it was funny to see G. Paltrow run in ultra high-heel shoes..
Drillbit Taylor....I skipped this when it was on the big screen, listening to the numerous bad write-ups that it received. Boy, was I dumb....this is a sweet and fun little film, and is now out on DVD. I think it got drubbed because many are used to the gross-out antics of J. Apatow, the producer of the momen, and Drillbit had little of that.

Gotta go wring out my shirt....

RIP, Part 2

2008-07-07T08:22:00.001-06:00

Here is an interesting piece by Andrew O' Hehir, a film writer for Salon.com

All winter and spring, people in the independent-film business have been murmuring politely behind their hands and pretending not to see the 800-pound walrus in the corner of the room: The indie industry is undergoing a sudden and largely unexpected meltdown, or in the business-speak recently employed by Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard, "a periodic market adjustment."

Nobody's ignoring it anymore, not after Saturday's address to a Los Angeles Film Festival conference by Mark Gill, CEO of the independent production and financing outfit the Film Department and former president of Miramax and Warner Independent. Gill's speech, entitled "Yes, the Sky Really Is Falling," was followed by a thoughtful Sunday column from the Philadelphia Inquirer's Carrie Rickey, cataloging everything that has gone wrong for small films, and the companies that make them, in the last six months.

It's a short but bloody history: Warner Bros. shut down its Picturehouse and Warner Independent subsidiaries and slashed the staff of New Line Cinema by 90 percent. Paramount Vantage, another "studio specialty division" that was born just two years ago, is being reabsorbed by Paramount Pictures. ThinkFilm, a true independent distributor, is being sued by vendors who say they haven't been paid and is under fire from documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney, who claims the company botched the release of his Oscar-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side." Think's future is in doubt, as is that of Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, which has reportedly downsized itself by half. According to Gill, who ought to know, at least five other indie distributors "are in serious financial peril." (I could probably guess who three or four of those are, but it's indecent to speculate about other people's livelihoods.)

At the big winter-spring marketplaces of Sundance, Berlin and Cannes, the apparent indie boom of the last few years turned awfully tepid, awfully fast. There were lots of terrific smaller-scale films at those festivals, but hardly anything that looked or felt like an international art-house hit on the scale of "Pan's Labyrinth" or "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" -- the movies that enable indie distributors like IFC or Miramax or Sony Classics to take chances on riskier fare. And as Rickey details, it's been a relatively weak year at the box office, with expected hits like "The Counterfeiters," "The Visitor," "In Bruges" and "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" failing to cross over to mainstream moviegoers (or at least not in sufficient numbers).

Perhaps your heart does not bleed overmuch, amid the general economic and spiritual turmoil of our country, for a few middle-sized motion pictures that failed to meet expectations -- or for a few dozen movie-industry executives forcibly ejected from the corporate suites of Manhattan and Burbank. First of all this isn't really about them, although most of them are decent and knowledgeable people who care more about movies than about money (or they wouldn't be working on the weedy intellectual fringe of the entertainment industry). It's also insufficient to retreat to some 2002-style panegyric about how a digital democracy is dawning and these old-school gatekeepers must perish in the tar pits of economic history for a new model to emerge.

That argument has a pseudo-Marxist ring of historical inevitability about it, but it's mostly wrong. Nobody in the film business questions that the current mode of distribution for independent film -- in Rickey's article, Emerging Pictures CEO Ira Deutchman calls it the "post-studio, pre-Internet era" -- is somewhere between transitional and dysfunctional, and that some version of electronic home delivery is likely to dominate the marketplace within five to 15 years. But as God is my witness, we need gatekeepers! If anything, we need them in the digital era more than ever. At least in the short term, the current marketplace implosion is likely to have a highly undemocratic effect on both filmmakers and film lovers, delivering still more practical control over what we watch and when to a shrinking group of ever-larger entertainment conglomerates.

Even as the potential moviegoing public has become distracted by an explosion of electronic options and devices unimagined a generation ago, the marketplace has been swamped by a poisonous glut of new movies. As Gill explains, in 1993, the Sundance Film Festival received roughly 500 submissions. For 2008, that number had swollen to more than 5,000. The reasons for that are various: The cost of producing a small-budget motion picture has fallen sharply in the digital age, and the success of a handful of indies in the late '90s and early 2000s drew investors large and small to pour countless billions of dollars into filmmaking.

It hasn't turned out to be a sensible investment. Gill calculates the odds of losing all your money on an independent film at 99.95 percent. Most of those 5,000 movies, in his words, are "pre-ordained flops," made by people "who forgot that their odds would have been better if they'd converted their money into quarters and taken the all-night party bus to Vegas." First of all, there's the simple fact that the market can't support more than 10 percent of those movies in a given year, and probably a much lower ratio than that. In 2007 a reported 603 films were released theatrically in the United States, the vast majority of them coming and going almost unnoticed. Everyone in the business agrees that number is unsustainably high; a more reasonable level might be 250 to 300.

Then there's the fact that while enthusiasm, access to technology and an eagerness to become famous may be widespread, talent and craftsmanship are not. As anybody who's ever served on a film-festival selection committee learns the hard way, most of those movies should never have been made in the first place and definitely should not be inflicted upon the public. There has indeed been an explosion of ultra-low-budget filmmaking -- just try to wade through the self-produced movies available on YouTube -- but so far it has not revealed a nation full of unheralded Orson Welleses in embryo. If anything, it has produced a deluge of abysmal crap that makes the genuine discoveries harder to see. As Gill acidly observed: "The digital revolution is here, and boy does it suck."

Is he just an old-economy pterosaur cynically trying to fend off the evolutionary trend that will make him obsolete? Sure, maybe. But that doesn't make him wrong. However independent films will be distributed in the future, I suspect a two-tier economy will be involved. There will still be a professional film industry that produces and distributes a relatively small number of movies that cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, whether they reach you in theaters, through a cable box, on your computer or iPod or through some other pipeline not yet devised. There will also be a purely digital universe of films that cost almost nothing to make and almost nothing to watch -- sort of a purified, film-school version of YouTube, minus any dreams of media stardom or celebrity coke parties.

There are two contradictory ways of looking at the current crisis, and as is customary with these things, they're both partly accurate without quite grasping the big picture. On one hand, this rapidly snowballing market crash seemed to come out of nowhere. Indiewood movies, meaning those distributed by the studios' specialty divisions, have dominated the Oscar nominations for the last three or four years. Just last fall, Miramax and the now-defunct Paramount Vantage shared the production and distribution of "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood," the year's two most acclaimed American films. You might have heard about a little Fox Searchlight release called "Juno," which approximately everyone in the country saw twice. It looked as if the mid-level quasi-independent film was conquering the adult moviegoing market, turning the big studios into teen-oriented sequel factories and driving smaller, more adventurous art-house cinema to the margins of the margins.

On the other hand, even if nobody saw this coming, we should have seen something coming. The national economy has slipped into what looks like a protracted recession, the supply pipeline is clogged with crap, the future of film distribution is literally up in the air and the audience is distracted, distraught and fragmented. Newspapers, broadcast TV, the music industry and other media have suffered precipitous downturns. What a great moment for dark and quirky motion pictures! Seen in that light, a market crash was an enormous duh, and perhaps a necessary correction, as they say in business school. Maybe all that stock-market money had to go down the toilet to get the industry focused on making fewer and better films, a solution that would make many of these problems go away.

Of course my judgment, like that of Mark Gill and Carrie Rickey, may be clouded by my desire to make a living: If independent film disappears as an economically viable industry, I'll have to find something else to write about. Be that as it may, I'll sign on with their guarded optimism; as the president always tells Congress during the State of the Union address, the "economic fundamentals" beneath the whole enterprise remain strong, and down cycles give way to up cycles just as surely as rain produces flowers. Gill cites marketing data suggesting that 10 percent of the public tell pollsters they prefer independent films to mainstream fare, which if anything is a historic increase. (Indies traditionally account for 5 or 6 percent of ticket sales.)

Does that polling data actually mean that one in 10 Americans would rather see Werner Herzog's new Antarctica documentary (doing very well in limited release, thank you), or revisit Kieslowski's "Three Colors" than stand in line for Christopher Nolan's latest Batman flick? Or does it just reflect a momentary semiotic uptick in the number of people who want to appear hip and sophisticated? I think we know the answer to that question, but there's a trickier one out there: How does the economic, social and cultural climate surrounding filmmaking affect the work? And in the age of the iPhone and the Wii and the whatever else, are there still budding Fellinis and Tarantinos interested in creating spellbinding visual narratives that demand your full attention for 90-plus minutes?

Sure there are. Sony's Tom Bernard told Rickey that the obituary for art-house movies "appears every 17 years, like the locust." The indie booms of the '80s and '90s crested and collapsed in their turn, but the best filmmakers always survived -- and without fail every year moviegoers turn some totally unlikely release into a big hit. As far as the old-fashioned movie experience is concerned, Gill is probably right that in a few years we'll have half as many films released in half as many theaters. This will be a sad transition for many of us, sure. But the movies weren't killed by television, they weren't killed by VHS and DVD, and they can't be killed by whatever's happening now.

RIP

2008-07-06T22:34:00.003-06:00

In recent weeks, a number of film distributors, some sponsored by large studios, others working as small independent entities, have shuttered their doors, or may do so soon.

Although it is sort of a contradiction in terms, Warner Independent is no longer an 'indie' wing of the monster studio Warner, nor is New Line 'on its own'. This is the studio that did Lord of the Rings, and it now appears that the next film of the series, The Hobbit may not be made. There is also a multi-million dollar lawsuit pending against New Line/Warner because they have not paid royalties to the Tolkien family estate for the previous films....seems the amount in question is 150 MILLION! Picturehouse, which I think was yet another subsidiary of Warner is also closing. Their most recent (and probably last) release is Mongol...an interesting bio-pic about Genghis Khan.

Paramount Vantage, the 'indie' portion of Paramount Studios is also going, going, gone. This is odd, since they (as did Warner Indie), have done some pretty interesting and money making flicks, including last year's There Will Be Blood.

Next to go was Tartan, which mostly dealt with flicks with an edge, such as Oldboy, the movie I hate more than any other.

The English group has been purchased by another group, but it appears that they will only deal with DVD distribution of Tartan's current catalog.

Last year, another strong indie distributor, Wellspring, went under, and it also appears that another of the major players, THINKFilm, which has a wonderful PR crew, is in deep financial trouble, and recently closed its Toronto office.

This may not seem important to most film lovers, but it is an amazing and scary trend. Foreign film releases have been getting low attendance in the US for several years, and the number of major players pulling the plug on their art film wings does not make me a happy boy. With the end in sight for all of these folks, that leaves IFC and Sony Pictures Classics as the major players, supported by a number of tiny distributors, such as Magnolia and Shadow.

If you've had enough of summer blockbusters, go see something small and thought provoking. I tried to do that today in Albuquerque, but there was not a single thing playing here that was not showing in LC, except for the cool Film Noir fest at the Guild, Albuquerque's only non-corporate screen.

Who Am I, Pt. 2

2008-07-05T20:21:00.003-06:00

As promised/threatened, here is a bit more about me and my history with movies. My interest in movies began long ago, in a land far away. I spent a lot of time by myself, and still do so whenever I can, but I found that going to a picture house was a great way to get away and be left alone.

In high school, I really got into the pictures when the Clint Eastwood/Sergio Leone 'spaghetti' westerns came out in the mid-60's. I immediately decided that my occupation would be that of anti-hero, and once told a gendarme who was trying to arrest me that 'I had no name'. Honest... (even though Eastwood's character DID have a name in each of the three westerns he made with Leone)

While living in Wyoming, my interest in film faded somewhat, since the selection was, shall we say, minimal. But one cold wintery Saturday afternoon Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast came on PBS, and that was the end of my life as I knew it.

I later returned to live in Illinois for a short time, and with a few lapses due to lack of available movies to watch, I have been hooked ever since.

My first film 'reviews' were for the Missoula MT Missoulian, which used to put out a monthly video guide. I did not do any other film work until coming to Las Cruces, and that, mi amigos, is a whole different story.

Think I'll go watch a movie..

CineMatinee- shameless self promotion

2008-07-04T14:35:00.001-06:00

If you are a patron of the Fountain Theatre in Mesilla, and like unique and different films (read Mr. Curiel's quote from a posting of a few days ago), then you should enjoy tomorrow's CineMatinee film, Ten Canoes.

It is the first and the only film to be made in a Native Australian language, features no Anglo actors, with very few of the Native Australian actors having any acting experience. Click on the link above for more details.

Dutch director, Rolf de Heer also directed The Tracker, another terrific Australian film that will play as a CineMatinee in the future.

Australia is generally not seen as a place where a lot of movies come from, but that should change. Films such as The Proposition, Where the Green Ants Dream, Gallipoli, Rabbit-Proof Fence, My Brilliant Career, 15 Amore, Japanese Story, good ol' Mad Max, and the superb Walkabout all hail from Down Under.

Screen time is at 1.30... jb

Recent DVD Viewings

2008-07-03T21:00:00.001-06:00

I can't say that I enjoy the big studio summer film releases, and I'm sorry to say, that I have yet to see any of them. I rely, of course, on DVD releases and a lot of them.... so here are some of the better films that I have seen in recent weeks---

--Fires on the Plain--a Japanese film from the 50's. It is the story of a Japanese soldier stationed in the Philippines at the end of World War II, as he attempts to find food, help, and salvation, but instead finds madness and death. A dark gripping well told story shot on location.

---Definitely, Maybe--Yup. Watched this last night, and it is much better than I thought it would be. It has a few of the rom-com pratfalls that one would expect in such a story (a young Dad tells his daughter the story of how he met her Mom, but in a rather unique way) but it is blessed with good acting, a fresh story, and good direction.

---Shotgun Stories----one of the best films I have seen this year....the first half hour is slow and a bit confusing, but once it gets going, this well-made, shot in Arkansas flick tells the story of two sets of half-brothers and how they handle the recent death of their father. One group hated him, the other loved him. Tight acting and again, a fresh story helps to keep one very engaged.

---Bigger, Stronger,Faster....a very interesting documentary by a young man whose brothers rely on steroids to help them be more competitive....but he also tells the history of steroids, and allows the viewer to make her/his own judgement...steroids, good, bad, or ugly? This probably won't play here, but if it does, make sure you see it for a well balanced look at the substance(s) in question.

See you at the movies...but not the big summer releases!

Whoooo, who are you?

2008-07-02T21:00:00.003-06:00

So, Kent should be on the road by now, and out of computer range, at least for the next couple of days, so I'll share a little bit about myself with you...

I have been in LC since spring of 2001, having lived in Montana, Wyoming, Santa Fe, Alaska, Colorado, and Santa Cruz CA since leaving Illinois where I was born and raised..northwest of Chicaga.

Currently, I try to make a living by doing freelance writing, and work with a variety of publications. I do film reviews for a very cool Albuquerque bi-weekly paper called Local IQ (www.local-iq.com) and have been a movie maven on and off for most of my life....

More next time about that and my 6 ex-wives.

Today's Movie Quote

2008-07-01T22:34:00.006-06:00

Jon Curiel, a reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle once said 'film exposes us to unfamiliar and incredible people, places and things'.

I reckon that will be one of the points of doing this...to share information and insights about some of people, places, and things that involve the film world with all of the good Flixview readers.

Indeed, as Kent heads for points east--to Texas (ewww)- because as HE said, 'Las Cruces wasn't flat enough and didn't have enough bad movies'- I'll be trying my hand at this for a while. Not sure if I will have time to do it everyday, but we'll hope for that and for continued readership in the future.

It will be hard to top Kent's knowledge of film, but we'll give it a try.

Please be patient as we transition and as I learn how to use this blog.

What does that word mean, anyway? jB

Extra! Extra!

2008-06-29T21:29:00.003-06:00

Yes, it's true, Jeff Berg is taking over as FlixView blogmeister. Jeff is an accomplished freelance journalist and bona fide filmhead whose guest posts have consistently boosted our visitor count. He and I are trading places, I'll occasionally send in posts from Buddy Holly land. More to come.

point of view: Desert Island Discs, part two

2008-06-26T11:54:00.005-06:00

Here is this week's DVD column, reprinted and revised from the Las Cruces Sun-News. While this is my 34th and final column in print, I hope and plan to continue posting to FlixView, so stay tuned.

***

For my final column, some of the rest of my list of DVDs I would want with me if I was stranded on a desert island.

First, honorable mentions: Stranger Than Fiction [2006], Shakespeare in Love [1998], Chris Marker’s La Jetée [1962], Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers [1956], Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride [1987], David Lynch’s Blue Velvet [1986], Lizzie Borden's Born in Flames [1983], Christopher Nolan's Memento [2000], David Fincher’s Fight Club [1999], Paul Anderson’s Magnolia [1999], the Coen brothers’ Fargo [1996], and Quentin Tarentino’s Pulp Fiction [1994] and Jackie Brown [1997].

Now, the top ten. American independent cinema has been the source of many of the most interesting films of the last few decades, and my own favorites include Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing [1989], in which a city block in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy and the summer’s hottest day become a universe combusting.

Paris, Texas [1984], written by Sam Shephard, directed by Wim Wenders, and scored by Ry Cooder, is the most melancholy exploration of contemporary masculinity ever filmed. Australian director Gilliam Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career [1979], a feminist love story, is also the sexiest G-rated movie I've ever seen.

I have written about Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise [1984] in a previous column, and along with Mystery Train [1989] and Down By Law [1986], it forms a trilogy of great American beat comedies. Down By Law is my favorite, with musicians John Lurie and Tom Waits forming their own trilogy with newcomer Roberto Benigni. Sweet, funny, weird, and utterly unique.

Next, a trilogy of great rock and roll performance films from different periods in the music’s development, each with different points of view.

Stop Making Sense [1984] is all about what’s happening on stage, the Talking Heads burning down the house with their middle- and early-period material. Jonathan Demme [Silence of the Lambs] directed with beautiful long shots unlike the constant fast-cutting of most videos on MTV in its first five years.

Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll! [1987] was produced and filmed to honor Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday, with a band led by Keith Richards and Johnnie Johnson, the pianist on all of Berry’s early hits, who hadn’t played with him on stage for twenty years. The film also tells Chuck Berry’s biography, and allows him to be at his best and at his worst onscreen.

The Grateful Dead Movie [1977], according to the late Jerry Garcia, is like licorice: "Not everyone likes licorice, but the people who like it, really like it." Besides capturing the band at a creative peak, this rock doc spends a lot of time in the crowd with Deadheads, sounding sometimes very smart, sometimes dumb, and often very stoned.

Finally, Alfred Hitchcock’s trilogy of mature masterpieces examines the male gaze and its consequences relentlessly.

Rear Window [1954] is one of the director’s most entertaining movies, witty and romantic as well as suspenseful. It also feature two of Hitchcock’s favorite actors at the top of their game, James Stewart and Grace Kelly, surrounded by strong supporting performances from Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr, and Wendell Cory.

Vertigo [1958] has consistently turned up in many serious critics’ ten best films ever lists. There is much more to Vertigo than first meets the eye, but it is not popular entertainment in the same sense as Rear Window is. It’s a dark, personal film, James Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson may be the single character Hitchcock identified with most intensely in all his films.

As leading Hitchcock scholar Robin Wood has written, "Psycho is one of the key works of our age." Shot on a shoestring by the crew from Hitchcock’s television productions, Psycho [1960] has a visual and thematic coherence which elevates it to the height of popular art. The revolutionary narrative structure, and producer Hitchcock’s insistence that viewers had to see it from the beginning, represented a pivotal moment in film history.

One of many great works of criticism that Psycho inspired was Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake, released in 1998. That the original so clearly expresses Hitchcock’s misogny and has influenced every slasher film since proves this is not a perfect movie, it’s a flawed but great film.

I hope this column has been half as much fun to read as it has been to write. I’m leaving Las Cruces to resume graduate school and teaching. Thanks for reading.

point of view: Desert Island Discs, part one

2008-06-25T15:20:00.004-06:00

"Desert Island Discs" was a game we played back when discs meant vinyl LPs. The idea was to pick ten albums you would want if you were stranded on a desert island, nevermind needing electricity and a phonograph to listen to them.

I am going to cheat and not limit my DVDs to ten. Instead, I will list some which I have discussed in previous columns, and some others I’d have trouble living happily without. Sadly, tomorrow's column will be my last, so here are the movies I most wish to leave readers enjoying.

In the music corner, Milos Forman’s Amadeus [1986] makes the cut, as does Bert Stern’s Jazz on a Summer’s Day [1960], filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, and Guys and Dolls [1955], the great Frank Loesser musical adapted for the screen by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Two of my rock and roll choices have been included in recent columns, The Commitments [1991], about a bunch of young Dubliners who form a vintage soul band in the years before Ireland’s economic miracle, and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz [1978], documenting the last performance by The Band, with guests including Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan.

Eric Clapton Unplugged [1992] and Nirvana Unplugged [1993] represent the innovative MTV series at its best, and the Independent Film Channel’s extraordinary series of cultural documentaries includes Punk: Attitude [2005].

A little bit rock and roll, a little bit cartoon describes two more entries, The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine [1968] and The Point [1971], a made-for-television fable narrated by Ringo Starr and built around half a dozen songs by the late Harry Nilsson.

Other animated features I would hate not to have include Disney’s The Jungle Book [1967], Pixar’s Ratatouille [2007], and The Simpsons Movie [2007], which managed to maintain the manic, irreverent wit of the soon-to-be longest-running series in television history.

I would also want some landmarks of film history, Edwin Porter’s The Great Train Robbery [1903], Georges Melies’ A Trip to the Moon [1902], D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance [1916], German classics The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1919] and Metropolis [1926], and an example of Soviet montage such as Battleship Potemkin [1925].

Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton? That’s like Beatles or Stones, regardless of who we prefer, we gotta give both side of the debate their due. For me, the answer is Keaton, try Sherlock Jr. [1924], in which projectionist Keaton falls asleep on the job and dreams himself into the movie he’s projecting, or the classic The General [1927].

Leni Riefenstahl’s notorious Nazi propaganda masterpiece Triumph of the Will [1934] is in, the conclusion of George Lucas’ first Star Wars [1977] was lifted shot-for-shot from it. For sheer persuasive power and unique rhetorical strategies, Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line [1988] and Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 [2004] are on the cutting edge of the debate about documentary technique and responsibility.

Hollywood’s classical period produced too many essential films to list, but I’d have to have Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday [1940], John Ford's Stagecoach [1939], John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre [1948], Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity [1944] and Some Like It Hot [1959], Gone with the Wind [1939], Casablanca [1942], The Wizard of Oz [1939], and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane [1940] and Touch of Evil [1957].

Tomorrow, the Desert Island library grows, and I list my top ten.

point of view: John Adams

2008-06-24T19:43:00.003-06:00

Point of View DVD column #32 of 34, reprinted and revised from the Las Cruces Sun-News and the El Paso Times. Sorry I've been so scarce online, the previous post was the obituary for my beloved landlord, mentor, and patron. It's been a busy month.

***

Several thousand members of Internet Movie DataBase [http://www.imdb.com/] have given one of the highest ratings ever [9.2 out of 10] to the HBO Films miniseries John Adams [2008, 3 discs, HBO, $59.99], available on DVD this week.

The seven-part, eight-hour production is based on historian David McCullough’s book of the same title [Simon & Schuster, $20]. The screenplay was adapted and co-produced by Kirk Ellis, best known for the Turner/BBC production Into the West. Executive Producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman previously collaborated on Band of Brothers and Big Love, also for HBO.

The production is at once lush and grimy, including previously neglected historical accuracies such as Adams’ increasingly decaying teeth. Some details are less accurate, concessions to storytelling over history, a list of some of these is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams_(miniseries).

For those of us who have not read McCullough’s biography, or other books about our nation’s beleaguered second President, the first episode of the miniseries begins with a surprising incident: Adams defending the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. Our flawed hero wins their acquittal, although in fact two of the soldiers were convicted.

Ellis’ screenplay occasionally makes such modifications, but it is in the interest of telling the story well, and that he does. This is fascinating stuff for anyone curious about the early days of the United States, and the miniseries does not shy away from Adams’ sometimes difficult personality or misguided policies such as the Alien and Sedition Acts [unmistakably a relevant predecessor to the Patriot Act].

Filmed in Colonial Williamsburg and other locations in Virginia, as well as in Hungary, John Adams features production, set, and costume design with an extraordinary eye for detail. There are sequences in which the late 18th century is portrayed so vividly you can almost smell it.

What makes John Adams come alive most effervescently is Paul Giamatti’s towering performance as Adams, full of intellect and passion, sometimes too much so. Laura Linney matches Giamatti step-for-step as Abigail Adams; their relationship was one of history’s greatest love stories. Abigail was an early advocate of women’s right and the abolition of slavery, and her letters to John remain extraordinary on many levels.

The cast is full of strong supporting performances, especially David Morse’s stoic, weary George Washington, Tom Wilkinson’s witty, wise Benjamin Franklin, and Stephen Dillane’s dour, brilliant Thomas Jefferson. Ebon Moss-Bacharach is John Quincy Adams, John and Abigail’s son, later to be come the sixth President of the United States.

The only other son of a President to follow his father into the office is George W. Bush, and HBO Films’ most recent production, Recount [HBO, $19.98, available on DVD August 19], follows the Bush and Gore teams in the weeks after the election debacle in Florida in 2000. Laura Dern's portrayal of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris is especially priceless.

HBO has been producing made-for-cable movies and miniseries since 1983, including Elizabeth I with Helen Mirren, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Truman, Stalin, and If These Walls Could Talk, among many others. Their next mini-series, Generation Kill, about a Batallion of Marines in the first 40 days of the War in Iraq, was produced by David Simon [The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Streets] and premieres on the premium channel July 13.

Jack Moffitt, 1940-2008

2008-06-15T12:23:00.002-06:00

Dr. Jack Moffitt, left, with his cousin, Robin Petrie, in his backyard, summer 1995.

***

Dr. John Francis Moffitt, Jack to his friends and family, died in his sleep June 1, 2008 at his home in Las Cruces. Dr. Moffitt was a Professor Emeritus of Art History at New Mexico State University, published twenty books during his lifetime as well as hundreds of scholarly articles, and presented lectures about his research across the U.S. and abroad.

John Moffitt was born in San Francisco, California on February 25, 1940, and grew up there and in Hawaii. His father, Colonel John F. Moffitt, died in combat during World War II. His mother, Jean P. Moffitt, passed away in Las Cruces in the late 1990s. He was married twice, first to Jessie Lawson of Columbia, Missouri, and then to Lea Henry, who died in 1984.

After serving active duty in the Army and the California Army National Guard, Moffitt earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Drawing from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1962, and a year later earned his Master of Arts degree in Art History from California State University, San Francisco.

He then moved to Spain, where he earned a Diploma de Doctor [Ph.D.] in Art History from the Universidad de Madrid in 1966. Spain remained a second home to Moffitt, who traveled there frequently, most recently last year to present a lecture on the Dama de Elche, a Spanish national icon which was the subject of his fourth book, Art Forgery: The Case of the Lady of Elche [1995].

In 1966, Moffitt returned from Spain to assume his first tenure-track faculty position as Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at East Carolina University in North Carolina. In 1968, he became Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Sonoma State College in California.

Dr. Moffitt’s four-decade professional relationship with New Mexico State University began in 1969, when he was hired as Assistant Professor of Art. He earned promotions to Associate Professor and then full Professor at N.M.S.U., and became Professor Emeritus upon his retirement from active teaching in 1996.

At various times, Moffitt also served as Visiting Professor at Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Universidad Literaria de Valencia, Universidad de Málaga, Stockhoms Universitet, and Florida State University.

Moffitt’s first article, "Art History as a ‘Pedagogical Science’: Pot-Shots at the Old Garde," was published in Art Education in 1969. Subsequent articles appeared in dozens of scholarly journals, among them Art Bulletin, Art History, Goya: Revista de Arte, and The Journal of Irreproducible Results. In 2007, he published an article in The Mid-Atlantic Almanack about the history of the lions outside Las Cruces City Hall.

His many books include Spanish Painting [1973], O Brave New People: The European Invention of the American Indian [1996], Picturing Extraterrestrials: Alien Images in Modern Mass Culture [2003], Alchemist of the Avant-Garde: The Case of Marcel Duchamp [2003], Caravaggio in Context: Learned Naturalism and Renaissance Humanism [2004], Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Painting, the Legend and Reality [2006], and The Arts in Spain: Ancient to Postmodern [1999, reprinted by Thames and Hudson, London, 2005]. Moffitt also translated numerous works such as Juan Antonio Ramírez’s Architecture for the Screen: A Critical Study of Set Design in Hollywood’s Golden Age [2004].

At the time of his death, Moffitt had at least half a dozen additional book-length manuscripts in various stages of preparation for publication, including Painterly Perspective and Piety: Religious Uses of the Vanishing Point, The Hidden Worlds of Joseph Beuys, and Creative Dementia in the Arts: Madness, Mindlessness, Automatism and Serendipity from the Paleolithic to the Present Day, coauthored with Peter Shotwell. Several of these manuscripts will be published posthumously.

Moffitt was an active member of many professional academic organizations, including the College Art Association, the American Society for Hispanic Art Historical Studies, and the Renaissance Society of America.

Dr. Moffitt was an accomplished visual artist as well, whose work has been included in more than two dozen exhibitions coast-to-coast. His media included oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, and in recent years, manipulated digital photographs, some of which can be viewed online at www.starving-artists.net/~JackMoffitt. In collaboration with Henry Mancha, Moffitt also created a unique, postmodern sculpture gallery in the backyard of his Las Cruces home.

Another aspect of Moffitt’s legacy was his teaching. Stuart Pimm, now Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University and the University of Pretoria, South Africa, recently recalled, "Jack looked after me in all kinds of ways when I was a very poor graduate student. My wife Julia and I loved his humour, and his extraordinary creative genius." Another former student, Paul Tegmeyer, teaches in Italy and always visited Jack when in the U.S. Yet another, Tony Pennock, painted the distinctive Las Cruces water tank murals after a conversation about the idea in Moffitt’s office in 1972.

John F. Moffitt is survived by his cousin, Robin Petrie of Berkeley, California, his uncle and aunt, Pete and Gwen Petrie, of Sausalito, California, and his cousin, Patricia-Moffitt Mehlinger of San Francisco. He is survived as well by countless friends and colleagues whose lives were touched and enriched by Jack’s life and work.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Jack Moffitt’s name to KRWG-FM are requested. A memorial service and wake [casual attire] will be held at Chez Moffitt, 1104 Luna Street, at 7pm on Saturday, June 21, 2008.

point of view: Two minor films feature major talent

2008-06-12T11:08:00.003-06:00

Last week's DVD column is reprinted below.

***

Casey Affleck has appeared in nearly two dozen movies, mostly in supporting roles. Last year, the thirty-something actor played wildly different leading parts in two of the year’s best and most easily overlooked films.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [Warner, $27.98] was adapted from the Ron Hansen novel and directed by New Zealander Andrew Dominik, previously known only for writing and directing the Australian feature Chopper in 2000.

With Jesse James, Dominik achieves the visual texture, narrative complexity, and contemplative tone and tempo of classic anti-westerns of the 1970s such as Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven [1978, Criterion, $39.95] and Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller [1971, Warner, $19.98]. The cinematography by Roger Deakins, best known for his work with the Coen brothers, is often breathtakingly, starkly beautiful.

Brad Pitt is Jesse James, and the actor’s own experience with the pitfalls of fame may have helped him create this vivid, weary, dangerous performance. But it is Affleck as James wannabe Robert Ford whose portrayal of the outlaw’s assassin simmers onscreen with equal parts admiration, envy, and loathing.

On first viewing, Affleck dominates this film, his deeply confused and creepy relationship with Jesse is enough to make your skin crawl. He reminds me of nothing so much as Mark Chapman’s relationship with John Lennon, a fan whose enthusiasm also crossed over into violence.

The unavoidable, unanswerable question with Jesse James and Robert Ford is why Jesse kept the young groupie around, even inviting Ford into his home. On second viewing, it is Pitt’s complex portrayal of the notorious outlaw hounded by his own fame in the early days of mass media that lingers long after the movie is over.

Jesse’s older brother Frank is played by playwrite Sam Shepard, whose occasional onscreen performances always lend gravitas to whatever films he acts in. Like many of the great 1970s westerns, The Assassination of Jesse James moves slowly and methodically, its 160-minute length edited down from the original four-hour version shown only once at the Venice Film Festival.

An even more impressive ensemble cast is led by Casey Affleck in Gone Baby Gone [Miramax, $29.99], adapted from the Dennis Lehane novel by Aaron Stockard and Ben Affleck, Casey’s older brother, who also directed the film. Supporting performers include Ed Harris, Morgan Freeman, Michelle Monaghan, Amy Ryan, and Amy Madigan.

Ben Affleck, like Brad Pitt, has seen the effects of celebrity first-hand, and wisely returned to the big screen behind the camera. Wisely, because the older Affleck brother turns out to have an affinity for directing as well as screenwriting [that much we knew when he and Matt Damon won the Original Screenplay Oscar for Good Will Hunting in 1997].

Gone Baby Gone captures the heartbeat of Boston, and was shot on location in Dorcester by filmmakers who know the city. That its story involves a child’s abduction will rightfully give some viewers pause, and anyone who has ever worked in urban services will recognize the moral dilemmas it poses.

Another characteristic Gone Baby Gone shares with The Assassination of Jesse James is a deeply poignant epilogue. While neither was very successful at the box office, both are substantial films which deserve second lives on home video.

local flix: Basketball in the Barrio [Weds 6/11]

2008-06-09T17:11:00.002-06:00

The world premiere of the documentary film Basketball in the Barrio: El Paso's History & Culture will be screened in the Philanthropy Theatre [entrance at the front of the Plaza Theatre] on Weds June 11. The one-hour documentary was produced over the course of five years by award winning filmmaker Doug Harris, a former college basketball All American and European professional player.

Admission is $25.00; plus applicable service fees. Tickets are available at the Plaza Theatre Box Office, charge by phone at 915-544-8444, all TicketMaster outlets or online at www.ticketmaster.com.

Some of the documentary's familiar cast members include: UTEP coach Don Haskins, NCAA championship coach Nolan Richardson [Arkansas], El Paso championship boxing prizefighter Juan Lazcano, along with Jon Teicher, the radio/ television voice of Miner's Basketball. The film's producer/director Doug Harris received the 2008 Beacon Award from the Association of Cable Communicators [ACC] for his popular film BOUNCE: The Don Barksdale Story that was televised on FOX Sport Net.

Come join the filmmaker and many of the people featured in the documentary for a pre-film reception in the Oasis Lounge at 6:00PM. The screening begins at 7:00PM.

point of view: What is it about Paul Thomas Anderson?

2008-05-29T06:44:00.003-06:00

Below is this week's DVD column, revised and reprinted from the Las Cruces Sun-News and the El Paso Times.

***

Films sometimes come in pairs, and last year’s two darkest mainstream movies were Ethan and Joel Coen’s No Country for Old Men [see column 3/13/08] and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood [Paramount, $29.99].

Anderson’s is the more austere of the two, a dense historical epic about the early days of oil in the west of the early 20th century. Daniel Day-Lewis won the Best Actor Oscar for his complex portrayal of oilman Daniel Plainview.

The first chapter of There Will Be Blood has no dialogue, but speaks volumes about this man and his work underground. Gradually we see Daniel achieve some success, and adopt a baby boy orphaned by an accident at an early Plainview rig. The boy, H.W. [Dillon Freasier], becomes part of Plainview’s sales pitch to convince landowners to sell him drilling rights.

Eli Sunday [Paul Dano] is a local preacher who gets an agreement and some cash out of Plainview. Daniel and Eli take turns gaining the upper hand in a conflict that seems Anderson’s way of drawing parallels between the rise of capital and of established religion.

Both There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men were partially shot in New Mexico and West Texas, and both have much-discussed conclusions which I don’t want to give away. The end of Blood is darker, more surreal, a kind of Grand Guignol final act in an opera of misanthropy. As with most of Anderson’s work, the film makes more sense with multiple viewings.

Movies are composed of images and sound, and Anderson cinematographer Robert Elswit also won an Oscar for photographing Blood in a spare style full of dark spaces and blinding western sunlight. A haunting 20th-century classical score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood adds depth and tone to the film by suggesting themes the script only hints at.

P.T. Anderson writes his own screenplays, and he adapted There Will Be Blood from the first 150 pages of Upton Sinclair’s Oil! [1927]. "There’s not enough of the book to feel like a proper adaptation," he told a press conference last December, explaining why he changed the title.

Anderson’s first film, Hard Eight [1996, Sony, $14.94], had its title changed against his wishes. Sydney was his original title, the name of the past-his-prime gambler played enigmatically by Philip Baker Hall, one of Anderson’s informal repertory actors. Hard Eight is a David Mamet-style noir with a heart, and John C. Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Samuel L. Jackson all demonstrate what an actors’ director Anderson is.

Boogie Nights [1997, New Line, $26.98] was the film that announced Anderson’s arrival for most of us, an audacious depiction of America’s transition from the 1970s to the 1980s through the lense of a pornography production company. Alternately exhilarating, sad, and scary, Boogie Nights is not for everyone.

The ensemble cast includes Anderson regulars William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzmán, Melora Walters, John C. Reilly, and Philip Baker Hall, as well as Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Don Cheadle, Heather Graham, and Alfred Molina.

Magnolia [1999, New Line, $26.98] was Anderson’s first masterpiece, reminiscent of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts [1993] and Nashville [1975]. Tom Cruise demonstrates what a fine actor he can be in a supporting role, mocking his own celebrity and revealing vulnerability behind the bravado. Jason Robards anchors the cast as a dying patriarch, with Julianne Moore as his young wife and Philip Seymour Hoffman as his nurse. Aimee Mann’s songs star as well.

Punch-Drunk Love [2002, Sony, $14.94], with Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, came as a surprise, a sweet little movie about true love against all odds. Anderson uses artwork by Jeremy Blake to create a lush, vibrant visual texture, and in spite of some menace and violence, a lighter tone than any of his other films.

Jeff Berg on L.Q. Jones

2008-05-27T12:02:00.003-06:00

El Paso film historian and collector Jay Duncan, Saturday's guest of honor L.Q. Jones, and some local movie slut whose initials are JB. Photo courtesy of Robert Yee.

***

L.Q. Jones has been a supporting actor in over 100 films and 400 TV episodes, with a career that stretches back to the 1950's. He has worked with hundreds of directors and actors: Robert Altman, Meryl Streep, Martin Scorsese [who has a tribute to Jones in the DVD extras on the Casino DVD], Antonio Banderas, Sam Peckinpah [The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country], Barbara Stanwyck, Clint Eastwood [right here in Las Cruces]. He has even made a film in downtown Hillsboro and another in downtown El Paso with good old Chuck Norris.

On May 24, Jones was the guest of the Mesilla Valley Film Society at a special presentation of his 1975 'cult' film A Boy and His Dog and a special presentation of A Prairie Home Companion, his most recent work, and the last film directed by Altman. KRWG-FM radio gave away a pair of tickets to this coming weekend's live PHC show worth $500, and the entire event was a success, in spite of the numerous other activities going on in the area, and the fact that Jones, although well-known among fans and a handful of others, has never become a 'big' name, something that he does not miss.

The evening before, I had the honor of having dinner with him and his lovely partner, JoAnne Stiles, at La Posta, a place he has been to before, either while filming here or just passing through. We had a long and animated conversation... I learned that he has three children 'one that has a lot more money than me', had or still has a ranch in Guatemala, remains great friends with N.M. author and resident, Max Evans [who couldn't make the event], is not a fan of today's movies, and in fact eschews them, and has a grand and raucous sense of humor.

Our conversation drifted from one thing to another, not all involving films or filmmaking. He was warm, open, and funny, and more than obliging, as he shared stories till well past La Posta's closing time, to the gentle dismay of the staff.

On Saturday, he introduced his terrific dark futuristic comedy, A Boy and His Dog to about 30 patrons, and fielded questions until we had to break to set up for the PHC event. He then introduced that film, took another hour of questions, and then adjourned to Vintage Wines, across the street from the Fountain, where Nicki Wolf and her partner Brian [a dead ringer for a younger Jones] hosted a reception until 7pm, when Jones and Ms. Stiles bid us farewell.

Several questions involved character actors such as Jones himself, and other unheralded late greats such as Warren Oates, J.T. Walsh, R.G. Armstrong, Slim Pickens, his close friend Strother Martin, Ben Johnson, and John Davis Chandler. Another question about Tim McIntire, a close friend and associate of Jones', brought tears to his eyes as he told the sad story of McIntire's passing.

It was an event that I wish more people had attended, but one that anyone who did attend will remember for a long, long time. Especially me. Jones has always been a 'hero' of the unknown for me, ever since I saw him fall into the river, killed by an Apache, in Peckinpah's could-have-been-a-masterpiece, Major Dundee [1965].

Thank you, Mr. Jones!

weekend flix 5/23/08

2008-05-23T06:09:00.002-06:00

This week's cinematic highlight is clearly the visit to Las Cruces by actor/director L.Q. Jones. Saturday's schedule at the Fountain Theatre, once again:
11:00am: Screening of A Boy and His Dog with LQJ, who directed it and adapted the screenplay from Harlan Ellison's novel.
1:30pm: Screening of A Prairie Home Companion, Robert Altman's last film, with LQJ.
3:45pm [approx]: Question and Answer session with LQJ.
4:45pm [approx]: Reception across the street at Vintage Wines.
Tickets are $10 for the afternoon, $8 for MVFS members, be there or be square.

***

This week's evening feature at the Fountain:
May 23 through May 29 Nightly at 7:30pm, Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30
Vanaja

Director: Rajnesh DomalpalliIndia/USA ~ 2006 ~ 1 hour 51 minutes
Vanaja is our heroine, a pretty, spunky 15-year-old being raised by an alcoholic widower in India in an indeterminate era in the late 20th century. Her father, desperate for money, gets her a job at a big house. Vanaja talks the lady of the manor into teaching her, despite her lowly caste, how to dance Kuchipudi. As Vanaja's skill grows, so does her confidence. The great lady increasingly approves of Vanaja's dancing skill and increasingly disapproves of Vanaja's sassy, fearless mouth and her lusty flirting with the postman. Then the lady's son arrives from America, changing the atmosphere in the house. Early in the film, the great lady admonishes Vanaja for dancing with vigor but no emotion. By the end of the film, it's clear what she meant. Vanaja's travails make her sad and angry at life and give her performances fire. Just looking at the movie is a joy, too: Cinematographer Milton Kam and production designer Nagulu Busigampala use an extraordinarily vivid color palette, dominated by Vanaja's favorite color, pink. [Almost as charming is the film's official website, www.vanajathefilm.com, whose cast and crew bios are sincere and unpretentious. The best is that of Busigampala, an uneducated handyman who graduated to production designer with prodigious success.] -- Susan Dunne, courant.com

***

Current major studio releases screening in Las Cruces:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Speed Racer
What Happens in Vegas
Iron Man [see post]
Made of Honor
Baby Mama

As always, comments on any of these are welcome.

point of view: based on a true story?

2008-05-22T06:30:00.000-06:00

This week's DVD column is reprinted from the Las Cruces Sun-News and the El Paso Times below.

***

Three recent DVD releases raise questions about taking fictional liberties with non-fictional stories. When a film claims to be "based on" historical fact, the filmmakers assume an extra burden in telling their stories.

The Great Debaters [Genius, $29.95], directed by and starring Denzel Washington, tells a neglected, extraordinary chapter of American History. In the midst of the Great Depression, African-Americans at small Wiley College in East Texas assembled a debate team which broke many color barriers and helped sow the seeds of civil rights oratory.

Written by Robert Eisele and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey, The Great Debaters has much to be said for it. The characters and their complex relationships are based on real people, including Washington’s Professor Melvin B. Tolson. This is a film which values literacy and intellectual analysis, rare qualities even in some similar classroom/sports underdog movies.

The DVD bonus documentary, "The Great Debaters: An Historical Perspective," makes it clear that most of the movie is historically accurate. What is missing is any acknowledgement that the team’s final debate was against U.S.C., not Harvard, a revisionist detail which tarnishes the film’s claim to accuracy.

It’s not hard to understand why this revision of history was decided upon, Harvard provides a convenient short-hand for the dominant white establishment of the day. But the accomplishments of the Wiley debate team did not need to be magnified, it’s the sort of Hollywood compromise which insults the audience by assuming we wouldn’t understand the significance of the story as it actually happened.

One of last year’s best films, Sean Penn’s Into the Wild [Paramount, $29.98], has similar difficulty with fictional distortion. Penn adapted Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book, assembled an exceptional cast led by Emile Hirsch [Speed Racer], and recruited Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder to compose and perform a haunting musical score.

When I first saw Into the Wild last fall, it was the best cinematic experience I had in a theater all year. It’s a beautifully written and photographed film, about an idealistic young man with transcendental concerns which many people share. Unlike most of us, Christopher McCandless acted on his beliefs, walking away from an affluent life to follow his muse into the Alaskan wilderness.

Unfortunately, Into the Wild has some of the same problems which haunt The Great Debators. A debate lingers about the circumstances of McCandless’ death, and neither the film itself nor the DVD bonus features address these issues of factual dispute.

A documentary by Ron Lamothe entitled The Call of the Wild [Terra Incognita, $30.00] questions some of the basic elements of McCandless’ story as portrayed by Krakauer and Penn. The documentary’s website lays out these points of dispute.

One solution to the many difficulties of bringing "true stories" to the big screen is suggested by writer-director Todd Haynes’ experimental biopic about Bob Dylan, I’m Not There [Weinstein, $29.99], "Inspired by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan." Now there’s a claim which leaves some room to distort reality.

Haynes does, with six different actors [including the late Heath Ledger] representing six of Dylan’s many personae over the years. Haynes has said he wanted to recreate the European art film of the 1960s, and I’m Not There has some of the strengths and weaknesses that characterized that movement in film history. It’s not easy viewing, but it doesn’t force historical fact to fit Hollywood formula, either.

A Prairie Home Companion special event, May 24 @ the Fountain Theatre

2008-05-20T06:36:00.000-06:00

You may not know the name, but you probably know the face. Actor/director L.Q. Jones admits that himself.
A veteran of over 150 films and television shows, including the film version of A Prairie Home Companion, Jones will be the guest of the Mesilla Valley Film Society for a special screening of A Prairie Home Companion on Saturday, May 24, at 1.30 at the Fountain Theatre in Mesilla. During his long career, Jones has worked with directors such as Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Sam Peckinpah, and actors such as Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anthony Hopkins.
In 1975, he wrote [from a short story by Harlan Ellison] and directed A Boy and His Dog, a futuristic dark comedy, which stars Don Johnson and Jason Robards. The film has become a late night staple on college campuses and at theatres such as the Fountain over the years. As a part of this event, we will be showing A Boy and His Dog on Saturday morning at 11:00 am.
This event will also include a drawing for a pair of tickets to the live version of Prairie Home Companion which will take place in Las Cruces on May 31. These tickets, compliments of KRWG-FM, are valued at $500 and include premium seating and entrance to an after-show party with the cast of the show.
Tickets are $8 for Mesilla Valley Film Society members and $10 for non-members, and are available at the Fountain Theatre, The Bean, and Spirit Winds Gift Source. Ticket holders will also receive a discount at a reception to be held at Vintage Wines, across the street from the Fountain, after the movie. [If there is room, single tickets for A Boy and His Dog, showing at 11:00 AM, will be available for $5 after pass-holders are seated.]
For more information, please call 524-8287.
SCHEDULE FOR SATURDAY, MAY 24
11.00. AM- Screening of L.Q. Jones’ movie, A Boy and His Dog, in 35 MM. Jones will be present for Q & A.
1.30 PM- Introduction of special guest, L.Q. Jones before the screening of Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion.
3.45 PM- [approx]-A conversation with Jones, conducted by MVFS Board Member, Patricia Gonzalez
4.45 PM [approx] Reception for Jones at Vintage Wines, across the street from the Fountain. Save your ticket, it will be worth a discount on a glass of wine compliments of Nicki Wolf.

CineMatinee update

2008-05-19T07:38:00.002-06:00

CINEMATINEE- JULY 2008
July 5- 10 Canoes [2006, 92 minutes, not rated, in the Ganalbingu Australian Native language]
July 12- Songcatcher [2000, PG-13, 109 minutes]
July 19- Red Sky at Morning [1971, 112 minutes, rated PG, made in New Mexico]
July 26- The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez [1982, 104 minutes, rated PG, made in New Mexico]

Titles booked for the July/August regular calendar include Young at Heart, Flight of the Red Balloon, Children of Huang Shi, and Redbelt. Also probably have Priceless, a French comedy.
All titles subject to change, especially July 5. I think Lucas' folks were extras in Red Sky. I ran it a few years ago at the museum.
You might want to check the NM Film Office Website in a few days for the winners of this weekends NM Filmmakers Showcase which will screen here in August as a CineM. Might even be one from Las Cruces.

weekend flix 05/16/08

2008-05-17T07:11:00.002-06:00

This week's CineMatinee, showing at the Fountain Theatre Saturday at 1:30pm only:

***

May 17- Payday [1972, Rated R, 102 minutes]
A musician finds his life and his career jumping off the rails in this moody, intelligent drama. Maury Dann [Rip Torn] is a singer and songwriter struggling to hold onto his footing as one of the top names in country & western music. This being 1972, long before the Nashville sound had gone "mainstream," Dann has a new Cadillac and a small entourage to show for his efforts, but most of his shows are one-nighters at beer-soaked honky tonks in the Deep South. Onstage Dann comes off as a soft-hearted good ol' boy, but off the stand, Dann is a mean-spirited hell raiser with a nearly unquenchable appetite for booze, pills, and women. Over the course of a seemingly typical day and a half, Dann steals a fan's girlfriend; ditches his longtime mistress, Mayleen; picks up a naïve groupie, and gives her a crash course in life on the road; fires his guitar player [and best friend] and hires a starry-eyed teenager as his replacement; tries to bribe a disc jockey with booze and free records; has a harrowing run-in with his speed-addicted mother; discovers he's missed his son's birthday by four months; and, in cahoots with his manager, Clarence, fast-talks his loyal driver, cook, and gofer, Chicago, into taking a possible murder rap.

While Payday earned excellent reviews [particularly for Rip Torn's superb performance as Maury Dann] and a handful of awards [Daryl Duke's direction won him a citation from the National Association of Film Critics, while Don Carpenter's screenplay received a prize from the Writer's Guild of America], the film's downbeat themes made it a tough sell. However, Payday has gained a cult following, and more than one "outlaw" country star of the 1970s has tried to claim that the film was based on him.

***

This week's evening feature at the Fountain, nightly at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm:

Caramel / Director: Nadine Labaki Fr./Lebanon ~ 2007 ~ 1 hour 35 minutes
Caramel is a sweet affair, hiding any bitter undertones under a sprightly, glistening exterior. Fresh from commercials and musicvids, novice helmer [and star] Nadine Labaki gathers five women around a Beirut beauty salon to address a range of issues facing Lebanese women -- from extramarital affairs to religious dictates. Layale is at the tail end of an affair, her breaking heart supported by salon colleagues Nisrine and Rima. Latter is awakening to lesbian desires, while Nisrine opts for minor surgery before her wedding so it appears she's still a virgin. Client Jamale can't face aging and seamstress Rose wants to accept love but her elderly, half-crazy sister Lili needs constant attention. Helmer lightly addresses problems of hypocrisy in both Christian and Muslim communities, emphasizing a common female bond beyond beauty treatments. Labaki extracts surprisingly fine, natural perfs from non-pros, often bathed in a golden light in keeping with the title. -- JayWeissberg, Variety.com

***

Current major studio releases screening in Las Cruces:

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Speed Racer
What Happens in Vegas
Iron Man [see post]
Made of Honor
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guatanamo
Baby Mama
Forgetting Sarah Marshall [see post]
The Forbidden Kingdom
Leatherheads [see post]
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who [see post]

Also currently screening in El Paso: Redbelt. Let us know what you think of any of these.

arrested adolescence

2008-05-16T07:15:00.004-06:00

With another Adam Sandler comedy arriving in theaters early next month, critic A.O. Scott has written an insightful essay about the prevalence of men who are clinging to boyhood: "It would be hypocritical of me to dismiss the appeal of this fantasy and silly to deny that a lot of these movies manage to be both very funny and disarmingly insightful about the male psyche. But I suspect I’m not alone in growing weary of the relentless contemplation of that psyche in its infantile state, and of the endless celebration of arrested development as a social entitlement."

point of view: "It's Alive!"

2008-05-15T06:47:00.002-06:00

Monsters are mashing again in this week's DVD column, reprinted below from the Las Cruces Sun-News.

***

The Host [2006, Magnolia, $19.98], produced in South Korea, proved that the lingering fascination of Godzilla is no freak of nature. Something about large monsters attacking our cities speaks to us.

Director Joon-ho Bong created an international sensation with his vivid, sometimes scary creature who emerges from the Han River to wreak havoc on the people of Seoul. Overtones of political commentary are hard to miss, the creature is created by a U.S. scientist insisting on dumping toxic waste down the drain in a lab.

The movie is uneven, and probably would have worked better at 90 minutes than it does at two hours. Some comic relief is intentional, some seems less so, especially in the dubbed version of The Host.

Homegrown monsters are on the rise as well, and not all them are urban. Director Frank Darabont had adapted two Stephen King movies, The Green Mile [1999] and The Shawshank Redemption [1994], so he was the author’s choice to bring King’s 1980 novella The Mist to the big screen [Genius, $29.95].

The Mist is set in a rural town in Maine, although the film was shot in Louisiana. The mysterious title fog rolls into town one morning, and as a group of towsfolk in the local grocery store gradually discover, the mist contains all sorts of malevolent creatures.

Unlike The Host, The Mist forces us to wait to see what the monsters actually look like, usually fundamental to an effective monster movie. The unseen is scarier, no matter how well designed the monsters are. As is often the case with King stories, human conflict brewing inside the supermarket suggests the source of supernatural troubles outside.

The Mist DVD bonus features include a brief documentary about legendary movie poster artist Drew Struzan, upon whom narrator David Drayton [Thomas Jane] is based. Struzan’s images are part of our collective subconscious even if we don’t realize it. Darabont collaborated with special effects studio CaféFX, on the recommendation of Guillermo del Toro, who worked with them on Pan’s Labyrinth [2006].

What distinguishes "The Mist" from most studio productions, whether monster movies or not, is the conclusion. The Hollywood temptation to create a happy ending is resolutely avoided, in favor of an epilogue worthy of the darkest films of the golden age of American horror movies in the 1970s.

Still, the pleasures of The Mist are familiar. More influenced by The Blair Witch Project [1999] and the rise of YouTube is Cloverfield [Paramount, $29.99], a first-person video account of New York City attacked by a huge monster of unknown origin.

More than most recent movies, Cloverfield probably breaks down along generational lines. Post-boomers, accustomed to hand-held camerawork and the relatively chaotic media world in which anyone with a camcorder might get their footage on the evening news, don’t seem to feel queasy or disoriented by this visual style or narrative structure.

Between them, screenwriter Drew Goddard, director Matt Reeves, and producer J.J. Abrams have worked on the television series Lost, Alias, Felicity, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Viewers who have never found anything to like about any of these shows will probably not think much of Cloverfield.

The movie has intelligence about it, and its unique pre-release campaign helped it gross nearly $200 million by the time of the home video release last month. Discussions of sequels are reportedly proceeding, including the clever possibility of the same evening filmed by other NYC residents.

Trouble is, for all its visual style, Cloverfield is most reminiscent of home videos shot in New York on 9/11/01. With that infamous day as an undeniable reference point, the filmmakers should have set their sights higher thematically, rather than simply creating a thrill-ride with real-world menace looming off-screen.

Grand Theft Auto 4

2008-05-14T07:36:00.002-06:00

Games have become increasingly cinematic, and the long-awaited update of one of the most visually and narratively addictive has arrived. For a knowledgeable review, see The Onion's A.V. Club, which gave the new version an A. For some social science theory about the function of narrative in first-person shooter games, see the scholarly article coauthored by my friend and colleague Sam Bradley.

point of view: Christopher Nolan revives Batman

2008-05-10T16:46:00.002-06:00

This week's DVD column from the Las Cruces Sun-News is reprinted below.

***

The summer of 2008 is off to a promising start with director Jon Favreau’s subtle and entertaining Iron Man, and the Wachowski brothers’ Speed Racer opens this weekend.

The biggest buzz has been generated by The Dark Knight, due in theaters July 18th, largely because it will feature one of the late Heath Ledger’s final roles as Batman’s nemesis The Joker. It’s already clear from photos of Ledger’s makeup that this will not be Jack Nicholson’s Joker.

Director Christopher Nolan reinvigorated the Batman franchise with 2005’s Batman Begins [Warner, $19.98], wisely abandoning the four big-budget movies released between 1989 and 1997. While Tim Burton’s first adaptation brought a moody, gothic visual style to the familiar tale, the franchise rapidly lost steam and went through almost one lead actor per movie [Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, then George Clooney].

Nolan co-wrote the screenplay for Batman Begins with David S. Goyer [Blade], based on the DC Comics character created by Bob Kane in 1939. Nolan’s sensibility also shows the clear influence of Frank Miller [300, Sin City], especially Miller’s dark Batman graphic novels.

As with many first entries in superhero franchises, Batman Begins spends much of its time explicating the backstory, and these sequences are somewhat predictable, if necessary. As Bruce Wayne’s would-be mentor, Henri Ducard [Liam Neeson] tells him early on, "Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you."

One thing distinguishing Batman Begins from the earlier movies a sronger cast, led by Christian Bale, appropriately earnest and buff as our hero. Gary Oldman as not-yet-Commisioner Gordon, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, and Morgan Freeman all do their part, and Cillian Murphy is a thoroughly creepy dealer of bad trips.

Michael Caine as ever-faithful butler, Alfred, is too perfect for words. Twice in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne marvels at Alfred still not having lost faith in him. "Nevah," Caine replies with a knowing, loving smile. Alfred also provides some welcome comic relief to the movie’s tone.

Less effective is Wayne love interest Rachel Dawes, played by Katie Holmes in Batman Begins, but by Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Dark Knight. The first film’s resolution of the obligatory love story leaves a lot to be desired, even by comic-book-movie standards. Iron Man is both sexier and more romantic.

The gadgets have improved without resorting to the Bat shark-repellant camp of the 1960s tv series, and, unlike Batman and Robin [1997], the new Batsuit thankfully does not include Batnipples. One of Nolan’s characteristics is an aversion to CGI effects, he prefers stunts and real explosions.

Christopher Nolan began making movies as a kid, and released his first feature in 1998 [Following, Sony, $9.95] before he was 30. Memento [2000, Sony, $14.94], Nolan’s second film, remains one of the most unique and important movies of the past decade. Then came Insomnia [2002, Warner, $14.96] and, more recently, The Prestige [2006, Buena Vista/Touchstone, $29.99], artsy studio productions which were better than average, but did not live up to his sophomore effort.

There is no doubt that someone of Nolan’s ability and intelligence can bring sparks of originality to superhero blockbusters, and it’s a good sign that The Dark Knight was co-written by his brother Jonathan [as was Memento]. What remains to be seen is whether this young talent will return to lower-budget, edgier films which play to his strengths between chapters of his Batman franchise.

weekend flix 05/09/08

2008-05-09T13:32:00.003-06:00

Almost Midnight series, Friday at 9:45pm only:
Pee Wee's Big Adventure [Tim Burton, 1985].

***

This week's CineMatinee at the Fountain Theatre, Saturday at 1:30 pm only:

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid [1973, 122 minutes-director’s cut, rated R & featuring live music by James Michael before the screening, beginning at approximately 1 PM]

Mr. Garrett was killed 100 years ago this year, and to denote that very historic local event, we offer a special screening of this film, directed by Sam Peckinpah [The Wild Bunch].

A former friend betrays a legendary outlaw in Peckinpah’s final Western. Holed up in Fort Sumner with his gang between cattle rustlings, Billy the Kid [Kris Kristofferson] ignores the advice of comrade-turned-lawman Pat Garrett [James Coburn] to escape to Mexico, and he winds up in jail in Lincoln, New Mexico. After Billy theatrically escapes, inspiring enigmatic Lincoln resident Alias [Bob Dylan] to join him, the governor and cattle baron John Chisum requisition Garrett to form a posse and hunt him down. Rather than flee to Mexico when he can, Billy heads back to Fort Sumner, meeting his final destiny at the hands of his friend Pat, who, two decades later, is forced to face the consequences of his own Faustian pact with progress.

With a script by Rudolph Wurlitzer, Peckinpah uses the historical basis of Billy's death to eulogize the West dreamily yet violently, as it is desecrated by corrupt capitalists. Both Pat and Billy know that their time is passing, as surely as Garrett's posse knows that they are participating in a legend. Using familiar Western players like Jack Elam, L.Q. Jones, Slim Pickens, and Katy Jurado, Peckinpah underscores the West's existence as a media myth, and he even appears himself as a coffin maker. Just as Peckinpah's earlier The Wild Bunch [1969] invoked the Vietnam War, the casting of Kristofferson and Dylan alluded to the chaotic late '60s/early '70s present. Also like The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett was truncated by its studio; the cuts did nothing to help its box office. Key scenes, particularly the framing story of Garrett's fate, have since been restored to this pristine DVD version. In this director's cut, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid stands as one of Peckinpah’s most beautiful and complex films, killing the Western myth even as he salutes it.

***

This week's evening feature at the Fountain, nightly at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm:

The Counterfeiters [Fälscher, Die]
Director: Stefan RuzowitskyAus./Ger. ~ 2007 ~ 1 hour 39 minutes
Writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky explores the moral corrosion of Nazi complicity with this tightly wound adaptation of Adolf Burger's factbased book The Devil's Workshop. Salomon Sorowitsch [Karl Markovics] may be a talented artist at heart, but his desire for wealth has driven him to use his creativity for more nefarious means. Arrested by the police inspector Herzog [Devid Striesow] at the onset of World War II, Sorowitsch is sent to the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp. It's not long before Salomon's thinly veiled opportunism earns him a relatively comfortable position as the camp's resident sketch artist, and five years later he is mysteriously swept away to Sachsenhausen. Upon arriving at the camp, Sorowitsch discovers that Herzog, now a commandant, is attempting to destabilize the economies of the Allies while simultaneously funding the Nazi war machine by assembling a special team of counterfeit artists to create millions in fraudulent pounds and dollars. As the operation gets under way, Sorowitsch finds the efforts of the team continually undermined by unyieldingly idealistic collotype specialist Adolf Burger [August Diehl]. In the months that follow, the team wrestles with their consciences as Axis forces are gradually overwhelmed by Allied might.
--All Movie Guide 2007 Oscar winner.
In German w/English subtitles

***

Current major studio releases screening in Las Cruces:

Speed Racer
What Happens in Vegas
Iron Man [see post]
Made of Honor
Under the Same Moon
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guatanamo
Baby Mama
Forgetting Sarah Marshall [see post]
The Forbidden Kingdom
Street Kings
Nim's Island
Leatherheads [see post]
21 [see post]
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who [see post]

***

As always, dear readers, feel free to let us know what you think of any of these.

current: Leatherheads [65/100]

2008-05-08T16:14:00.002-06:00

Really nice try, but not quite. Director George Clooney [Good Night and Good Luck, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind], directing a first screenplay by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly, almost pulls off a recreation of classical Hollywood screwball romantic comedies. Certainly, the story of professional football’s early days is a neglected one worth telling, and Leatherheads is well served by a strong cast including Clooney [unabashedly channeling Cary Grant], Renée Zellweger [channeling Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday], and John Krasinski [The Office], who is bound to wind up a movie star once the dust settles. Clooney and Zellweger have some serious old-fashioned chemistry, and the football action is funny and generally effective. What exactly is missing I’m not sure, a weak epilogue doesn’t help much, but more than anything what seems to haunt Leatherheads is that it is so not of our time. This is intentional, I realize, but somehow this charming, well-told tale just feels too antique to be on a big screen. I hope home video will be kinder to it, it’s a thoroughly likeable movie.

guest columnist Lucas Peerman at the movies

2008-05-07T19:59:00.004-06:00

Been to a movie lately? I haven’t. The last movie I saw on the big screen was Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show [which certainly wasn’t worth the $7.50 entrance fee] way back at the beginning of February. It’s not that the movies coming out haven’t piqued my interest, but it seems that I just don’t have the patience to spend two hours in a dark, crowded theater with hundreds of my non-closest friends.

I suppose the high cost of concessions, sticky floors, teenagers making out in front of me and dimwits laughing at the most unfunny of jokes all curb the wonderful experience of being informed, inspired and enlightened by a great movie in a large theater and the sensory overload that comes with it.

Jurassic Park [1993], Matrix [1999] and Beowulf [2007] in 3D in Tinseltown are probably my three most memorable theater-going experiences. All of them pushed the envelope with special effects and transported me into a another realm — away from the annoyances of the theater that interrupt most viewings.

With today's advances in big-screen televisions and state of the art audio systems, why not just take off your shoes, lay down in the sofa, set the thermostat, turn off the cell phone, put a 25-cent bag of popcorn in the microwave, pop open a cold one and watch a good flick at home? Sure, you might be Johnny-come-lately to the office movie discussions, but isn’t that a small price to pay for hours of stress-free movie viewing?

I’ve heard Iron Man is worth putting up with the frustrations of theater. There’s also quite a few summer titles — Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Wall-E and Pineapple Express — that might suck me into a moderately uncomfortable chair for two hours. But, for the most part, I think the only Blockbuster I’ll be checking out is the one with the blue and yellow sign.

I’d be interested to know if how my fellow Pulse readers feel about this subject. Chime in at the Pulse movie blog at http://blogspot.flixview.com.

survey says...

2008-05-06T05:54:00.000-06:00

Working on this week's column about director Christopher Nolan, and I'm curious what FlixView readers think:

Christopher Nolan began his directing career with Following [1998] and Memento [2000], both intense, low-budget indie gems. Since then, he has directed Insomnia [2002], Batman Begins [2005], and The Prestige [2006], plus this summer's The Dark Knight, due in theaters in July.

Has Nolan sold out to big-budget Hollywood? I have friends on both sides of this debate, and am trying to decide as you read this. Open to comments, emails, opinions -- what do you think?

intended to disturb

2008-05-05T06:24:00.000-06:00

The hipster film geeks at The A.V. Club have done it again. Their latest feature, 17 Notorious Living, Working Cinematic Provocateurs, includes old-timers like Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, and John Waters, plus some younger troublemakers you may not have heard of before.

Jeff Berg: how Fountain films are chosen

2008-05-04T15:51:00.006-06:00

So, how come some films make it to Las Cruces, while others do not? Here is a brief primer on how the films that are selected by the Mesilla Valley Film Society (MVFS) for screening at the Fountain Theatre works.

For those who don't already know, the MVFS is run entirely by volunteers, other than the head projectionist and the cleaning person. Both are gods and deserve much more than they are paid, but since the MVFS is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit, pennies are pinched, expenses being monitored by the board member who has also been the treasurer for many years.

The current board of directors number 7, five of whom take an interest in programming films. Prior to the once a month meeting, and with various degrees of interest or dedication, these folks comb through various publications and Websites, cherry-picking films that are put on a list for consideration for booking. Most of the films selected are those that play in similar programming venues such as New York's Film Forum, and of course are booked weeks, if not months later.

That is in part because many distributors are not too interested in a 100 seat venue in Las Cruces, NM. Some distributors, such as Sony Pictures Classics, IFC, Shadow, Rialto, and Monterey Media are all too happy to work with the MVFS head programmer, and offer films as early as possible, along with promotional items, which are often hard to get. That being because many times the films are near the end of their theatrical runs, and are about to go on DVD, hence posters and such may be gone or hard to get. Other distributors such as Weinstein and Paramount Vantage act like big babies about the whole thing.

Some titles are rejected because of cost, but not many. Other titles, if made available, are pretty much 'automatically' scheduled, such as English comedies that are not picked up by Allen Theatres. Increased competition is expected when Allen opens 6 new screens later this year, and in the El Paso market, which is a huge draw for the MVFS & has also changed recently, since Century Cinemas has dedicated a screen to full time showings of Fountain type films, with its CineArts 'arm'. The new Premiere theatres have brought real competition to town, thus the change in strategy.

Who would have thought that Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park would have ever played in El Paso [still there, limited screenings, go see it before it disappears... best film I have seen this year]. Although a film being booked in EP does not disqualify it from a Las Cruces booking by the MVFS, it does play a part, especially if the film plays for several weeks. DVD release dates also play a huge role, especially for 'mainstream' indies, which will have a lot of DVD copies sitting on local video store shelves.

The MVFS does not have the luxury of selecting films week to week, since the theatre is called a 'calendar house', hence MVFS has to book two months at a time. As an example, the newly released and very fun documentary, Young at Heart is just now making it into corpulent corporate theatres across the country, and the MVFS is strongly considering it for its July/August calendar, which is now being scheduled.

Hence, only 7 current films can be booked for each calendar. There has been some strong debate among programming committee members about dropping the 'classic' film that is booked for each calendar, since most times they are a poor draw, and could easily be replaced by a newer film that has more appeal to the local audience.

Another tool is film festivals. Several committee members attend one or more festivals a year [at their own expense for the most part] to see what is coming up and where it is coming from. A common resource is the Telluride Film Festival, which takes place each Labor Day weekend. The Denver and Santa Fe festivals have also become valuable resources.

The Saturday CineMatinee series is a 'one man show' for the most part, except for occasional suggestions [suggestions are always welcomed by the MVFS, but please note that horror, MOST Japanese anime, and of course big budget films are usually not even considered]. There is a suggestion box at the theatre or you can leave a message at 524-8287. Also a good idea to check whether a particular film has a USA distributor, which you can look up at http://www.imdb.com/ -company credits before going to any trouble. CineMatinee concentrates on films with a New Mexico connection or those that fit 'the movies that missed us' category. Rarely are recent films shown as part of CineMatinee. It is an educational program designed to show films that are worth digging around for or titles that are terrific pictures that never got a fair shake.

There of course if much more to this, but this is a general overview. Time and space generosity of Kent may allow for Part II later on.

Trivia question: without looking it up... name two feature films that were shot in Hillsboro, NM, 40 miles or so from Lost Causes.... err Las Cruces.

current: Iron Man [90/100]

2008-05-03T06:15:00.002-06:00

Movies start with ideas, which are shaped into screenplays. That the latest comic-book-turned-into-summer-blockbuster has eight credited screenwriters is usually a kiss of death. But four of these [Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby] were the creators of Marvel Comics' Iron Man in the early 1960s, and two of the others collaborated on adapting P.D. James' Children of Men to the screen two years ago, so it seems for once there weren't too many cooks in this kitchen.

Credit largely goes to director Jon Favreau [Swingers, Elf], who has brought his light, witty, hipster touch to the superhero summer blockbuster genre without seemingly missing a beat.

Helping Favreau keep Iron Man from being another dull special effects overdose is a really good cast, none of whom phoned in their performances. Robert Downey Jr. especially demonstrates how well an unpredictable choice for playing a superhero can pay off. Downey's own painfully public struggles may have helped him channel the role of Tony Stark, genius millionaire playboy arms-dealer turned genius millionaire do-gooder. Downey's abilities have never been in doubt [watch 1992's Chaplin again if you're not sure], and now that the actor has cleaned up his act and gotten down to business, it's a win-win scenario for everyone.

Gwyneth Paltrow's heels and curls work, but her wit and depth bring much more to Stark's girl Friday, Pepper Potts, than summer moviegoers might reasonably expect. Early in the film, when Tony's latest one-night stand disses Pepper's role in his life, Paltrow offers the woman a chauffered ride and the observation, "Sometimes, I even take out the trash." Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges also bring a lot to this party, Bridges in particular plays against his stereotypical roles to unsettling effect.

The summer of 2008 is off to a good start. As a friend and colleague said to me, comic books are our mythology. When they are done right, as in Iron Man, it's deeply exhilarating. Down to the last line of dialogue and opening chords of Black Sabbath's classic song, this blockbuster delivers all it promises and more, at a brisk but not headache-inducing pace. The effects serve the story and characters here, for a change, and the prospect of a future franchise is for once, as Nathan Rubin wrote in The Onion's A.V. Club, "a promise instead of a threat."

Post Script: Exceptionally good interview with Robert Downey Jr. about this role and his own life by David Carr for The New York Times: www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/movies/20carr.html.

weekend flix 5/2/08

2008-05-02T17:31:00.002-06:00

Just saw Iron Man, believe the hype, full post tomorrow. Meantime, here's what's playing:

***

Fountain Theatre evening feature, Fri-Thurs at 7:30pm and Sun at 2:30pm:

In Bruges Director: Martin McDonagh, UK/Bel. ~ 2008 ~ 1 hour 47 minutes

Ray [Colin Farrell] and Ken [Brendon Gleeson] have arrived at a charming little bed and breakfast in Bruges. Ray is all twitches and elbows, supremely uncomfortable in this village that's the definition of ''quaint,'' continually nonplussed by the jaw-dropping architectural beauty on display everywhere he looks. Ken is the more seasoned of the two, a hulking and squash-faced type who is endlessly enthralled by everything he sees, dragging Ray along on tourist outings like they were an old married couple.

There is quite a bit more to In Bruges than these hitmen nattering on about the town and their comic interactions with locals, ranging from charming drug dealers to a dwarf American actor, and it's in Ray's occasional bursts of frightful sadness that it starts to come out. McDonagh starts teasing away the layers to the characters' pasts, the real reasons why they've come to Bruges, and the judgment that awaits when they receive a phone call from their boss, Harry. The whole thing is a masterfully handled act of suspense, and one that the film manages with even more surprise since most viewers are going to be busy enough enjoying the banter between Ray and Ken that they won't even notice the story's pitch-black underpinnings until they've already been enveloped by the entire film. - Chris Barsanti, Reel.com

***

This week's CineMatinee at the Fountain, Saturday at 1:30pm only:

Santitos [2000, rated R, 100 minutes, in Spanish w/subtitles] A holy innocent walks through the halls of sin driven by foggy logic and the faith of a saint in Santitos, a hilarious Mexican comedy of Catholicism, religious visions and wrestling stars.

"Thank goodness I forgot the Easy-Off," she declares when St. Jude appears in her oven to inform her that her deceased daughter is actually alive.

Following vague clues about "La Casa Rosa" [the pink house], she embarks on a journey that takes her through a series of brothels [graduating from housekeeper to star attraction], through Tijuana to America, and into a coin-operated sex club in the very jaws of sin in Los Angeles.

Alejandro Springall's cheerfully absurd odyssey, produced by filmmaker John Sayles, stays just this side of lampooning the veneration of saints and heeding the call of questionable visions. Esperanza keeps up a one-sided conversation up with the Lord and phones home juicy confessions to her soap-opera addicted priest, who is skeptical but riveted as her stories become more outrageous than his favorite show.

It's remarkably bright, funny and sweet for a film that wades through so much sleaze, as Esperanza follows her visions.

The innocent energy of Heredia's spirited performance keeps the film from sinking into a morass of sleaze especially after Esperanza soon gets her own guardian angel -- a sweet, seductive masked Mexican wrestler named the Angel of Justice.

Springall's greatest achievement in Santitos is carving out a colorful world where every dark corner is brightened by Esperanza's spiritual cleansings. Like a naive, madcap modern saint blowing a fresh breeze through halls stale with sin, her faith and charity keeps her innocent through her trials.

Screening before Santitos will be the 10 minute short film, The Tehuacan Project, a narrative documentary about Lucia and Jesus, both deaf from childhood disease, who find their way to Tehuacan, Mexico, in hopes of finding a cure at Mexico’s first school for the deaf. Narrated by Adrien Brody. Executive producer is Brad Pitt.

***

Current major studio releases screening in Las Cruces:

Iron Man
Made of Honor
Deception
Under the Same Moon
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guatanamo
Baby Mama
Forgetting Sarah Marshall [see post]
The Forbidden Kingdom
Prom Night
88 Minutes
Street Kings
Nim's Island
Leatherheads
21 [see post]
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who [see post]

Also currently showing in El Paso: Diary of the Dead, Snow Angels, and Paranoid Park.

Comments on these or any other movies always welcome, let us know what you think.

Prairie Home Companion Event at the Fountain Theatre

2008-05-02T13:31:00.002-06:00

To help celebrate the arrival of Garrison Keillor and the cast and crew of A Prairie Home Companion, the long running NPR radio show, to Las Cruces on May 31, the Mesilla Valley Film Society will present a special screening of the Robert Altman movie about the show at the Fountain Theatre in Mesilla, on Saturday, May 24, beginning at 1.30 PM.

Our special guest will be actor/director L.Q. Jones, one of the co-stars of the film, who has also appeared in over 100 other film and television productions, and has worked with everyone from Antonia Banderas to Martin Scorcese.

In addition to Mr. Jones appearance, KRWG radio will be giving away a pair of tickets to the May 31 show, which includes backstage passes and a reception with the cast of the show. Value of these tickets is $500.

A reception will take place at Vintage Wines, who will offer a discount on glasses of wine. The new shop is located directly across the street from the Fountain Theatre, and an additional activity with Mr. Jones will also be announced soon.

Tickets for this event will be $8 for Mesilla Valley Film Society members and $10 for non-members, and will be available at the theatre box office, Spirit Winds Coffee Bar and Gift Source, and at The Bean Coffee House in Mesilla.

Please note that the limited seating capacity of the theatre means that ticket sales will be limited to approximately 100. No reserved seats or tickets, sorry! For more information, please leave a message at 575 524 8287.

point of view: two Hollywood veterans who won't quit

2008-05-01T07:18:00.004-06:00

This week's DVD column, revised and reprinted from the Las Cruces Sun-News and the El Paso Times:

***

According to current Social Security guidelines, "full retirement age" is now 67. But don’t tell Mike Nichols, now in his mid-70s, or Sidney Lumet, now 83, because these highly respected directors have both just released new movies on DVD.

Nichols won acclaim early in his career for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? [1966] and The Graduate [1967], later directed Silkwood [1983] and Primary Colors [1998], and, more recently, adapted the exceptional HBO productions of Wit [2001] and Angels in America [2003].

Working with producer/actor Tom Hanks and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin [The West Wing], Nichols adapted Goerge Crile’s nonfiction book, Charlie Wilson’s War [Universal, $29.98].

Charlie Wilson [Hanks] was a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from the second Texas Congressional District near Houston from the early 1970s until 1996. As the DVD bonus documentaries make clear, Wilson is still quick to acknowledge his reputation for womanizing and ethically dubious behavior.

But Wilson became a Congressional champion of the mujahideen resistance to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, partly due to his involvement with conservative Houston socialite Joanne Herring [Julia Roberts] and C.I.A. renegade Gust Avrakotos [Philip Seymour Hoffman].

As scriptwriter Sorkin explains, "They were successful, the Afghans beat the Soviets, the only time the Red Army had ever been defeated. And, in so doing, that was the first domino that fell in the end of the Soviet Union, and the end of Communism, and the end of the Cold War."

Hoffman describes the film’s ironic view of its three main characters: "Their liabilities as people actually become their assets." That is where Nichols’ direction and Sorkin’s script are most effective.

Avrakotos was an outsider in the C.I.A. of the 1980’s, not from the familiar Ivy League network, and Hoffman is an absolute force of nature in this role. In the Congressman’s Capitol Hill office, Wilson tells Avrakotos, "You ain’t James Bond."

"Well, you ain’t Thomas Jefferson, so let’s call it even," Gust replies. This is Nichols and Sorkin and their cast at the top of their game.

What is lacking in Charlie Wilson’s War is an accounting of the power vacuum created in Afghanistan in the 1990s as a direct result of all we see on screen. Author Crile has written, "By the end of 1993, in Afghanistan itself there were no roads, no schools, just a destroyed country – and the United States was washing its hands of any responsibility." Crile and others have argued this was the vacuum filled by the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, and this critical epilogue is sadly missing from Nichols’ film.

Sidney Lumet’s career as a film director is even more distinguished than Mike Nichols’: 12 Angry Men [1957], Fail-Safe [1964], Serpico [1973], Dog Day Afternoon [1975], Network [1976], Prince of the City [1991], and The Verdict [1992] are among his dozens of films, and he is reportedly in production on his next, Getting Out.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that, like Nichols, Lumet cast Philip Seymour Hoffman in a leading role in Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead [ThinkFilm, $27.98]. Hoffman plays Andy Hanson, the older, bullying brother of Hank [Ethan Hawke], who convinces his sibling to participate in a scheme to rob their parents’ suburban jewelry store.

If this sounds ethically ugly, it is, a sure sign that Lumet has not lost his edge. If you have ever seen a Sidney Lumet film, you know before watching it that nothing goes according to plan.

What is a surprise is Marisa Tomei’s gutsy, explicit performance as Andy’s wife, Gina. Albert Finney, as Andy and Hank’s father, demonstrates that he’s no closer to done working than director Lumet.

Fair warning, even though the title comes from a beloved Irish blessing ["May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead"], this is a nasty film. Utterly brilliant, a painfully honest portrait of all the loyalties that can be lost in an amoral society, but not easy viewing.

One might think a younger director brought such a cynical view of declining morality to the screen, courtesy of first-time original screenplay author Kelly Masterson. Shooting in high-definition video, Sidney Lumet proves you’re only as old as your latest work.

David Ansen's Endless Summer

2008-04-28T07:06:00.002-06:00

Fine essay by Newsweek's Ansen about the decline of movie endings in recent years: "The hard thing about endings is that there's one way to do it absolutely right, and so many ways to go wrong." Besides some movies that have ended badly [I'm so glad Ansen included Neil Jordan's The Brave One with Jodie Foster on this list], Ansen also mentions some of cinema's best conclusions, such as Some Like It Hot, The Usual Suspects, and Gone With The Wind.

point of view: Love is in the Air

2008-04-26T07:23:00.003-06:00

This week's DVD column is reprinted from the Las Cruces Sun-News Pulse below:

***

Many movie lovers will want to own Juno on DVD, the question is whether to spring for the extra $5-$10 for the two-disc Special Edition [20th Century Fox, $34.98]. Some double-disc editions, like Knocked Up [Universal, $30.98] simply don’t offer enough substantial content to be worth the extra bucks. Casual fans of Juno may be content with the single-disc edition [$29.98].

But Juno has some hard-core fans. It was produced for approximately $7.5 million, and by the time of the DVD release, the film had grossed over $140 million domestically. For serious fans, the second DVD offers a wealth of bonus features, including deleted scenes, screen tests, and a "Cast and Crew Jam" sure to delight those who loved this movie and its heroine.

First-time screenwriter Diablo Cody won this year’s Oscar for Original Screenplay, and rightfully so. Juno is smart and funny, although it takes a few scenes to get up to speed with these wise-cracking characters who seem at first too precious. Once the needle finds the groove, Juno is pretty irresistable.

Cody and director Jason Reitman [Thank You For Smoking] are well-served by an exceptionally good cast, most especially Canadian Ellen Page as Juno. Juno’s would-be boyfriend Paulie Bleeker is played with appropriate sweetness and awkwardness by Michael Cera [Superbad], and her parents by two of the best character actors working today, Alison Janney [The West Wing] and J.K. Simmons [Law and Order].

Rounding out the cast are Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner as the adoptive parents, and Rainn Wilson in an early cameo which solidifies his cult status. The serious issues of parenthood, abortion, and adoption raised by Juno seem somehow not the point of the movie. Juno’s gradual acceptance of Bleeker as her actual boyfriend is the point, these two smart but geeky kids really love each other and belong together.

While the characters in "Juno" live in a world full of popular culture, and their dialogue frequently refers to it, the characters in Enchanted [Disney, $29.99] are themselves pop culture archetypes. They don’t know that, but we do, and the pleasures of "Enchanted" are based on what we know.

No doubt the beginning of a new trend, the Blu-Ray DVD of Enchanted [$34.99] includes exclusive bonuses such as "D-Files," tracing some of the film’s many references to classic Disney fairy tales. For those of us who don’t have Blu-Ray players, Entertainment Weekly online describes many of these Disney allusions and adds some of their own at: www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20184033,00.html.

Amy Adams is appropriately perky as Giselle, the animated heroine banished to the widescreen world of real people, and Patrick Dempsey handsome yet vulnerable enough to be her unknowing Prince Charming. James Marsden and Susan Sarandon play their archetypal parts well. Three of the original songs written for Enchanted by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz were nominated for Oscars.

For love of a very different kind, director Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl [MGM, $27.98] offers a painfully quiet hero who falls in love with a life-sized, mail-order doll. The love story is really between Lars [Ryan Gosling, in an extraordinary performance reminiscent of Peter Sellers in Being There] and the other residents of his sleepy, Capra-esque northern town, who play along with his delusion that Bianca is, in fact, a real girl.

The delicate genius of Lars and the Real Girl is that we are never sure what Lars really believes, the degree to which his romantic delusion is conscious. The supporting cast includes Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, and Patricia Clarkson, and their willingness to play along with Lars’ delusion is often very funny, and ultimately deeply moving.

weekend flix 04/25/08

2008-04-25T07:42:00.000-06:00

The week's CineMatinee at the Fountain Theatre, Saturday at 1:30pm only:

The Harvey Girls
[1946, 101 minutes, not rated, partially shot in New Mexico]

CineMatinee explores a new genre, the musical!! The story line is fictional, to be sure, but it's based on real-life circumstances. Fred Harvey established a chain of restaurants along the Santa Fe Railroad line in the 1870s. The Harvey Girls who ran the places were more than waitresses; they were civilizing influences on the Old West. The movie relates the experiences of a group of these young women, and one in particular, as they open a new rail-stop eatery in Sandrock, Arizona.

Judy Garland plays Susan Bradley, a small-town girl from Ohio, who is not heading to Sandrock to work in a Harvey House at all but to get married as a mail-order bride. When they arrive and Susan sees whom she's to marry, a grizzled old-timer played by grizzled old actor, Chill Wills, she backs off in a hurry. Now, faced with no means to make her way, she joins the Harvey crew.

The plot is so slight it's in danger every moment of wafting away on the desert breeze. But its enthusiastic cast carries it forward, and many of its musical numbers remain entertaining. Susan no sooner becomes a waitress than she finds out the crooked local judge played by Preston Foster, and the honest local saloonkeeper played by John Hodiak, don't want the Harvey House in town. Being partners in the saloon business, these two fear the restaurant will bring respectability with it and diminish their clientele. The film's conflict comes mainly between the judge and the Harvey establishment, because it is only the judge who will stop at nothing to maintain his own interests.

The words and music to the film's tunes were written by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren. The show stopper is "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," but other numbers include "In the Valley," "Wait and See," "The Train Must Be Fed," "Oh, You Kid," "It's a Great Big World," "The Wild, Wild West," and "Swing Your Partner Round and Round."

This film is being shown in conjunction with the Las Cruces Railroad Museum’s weekend-long Railroad Days celebration, which commemorates the arrival of the first train in Las Cruces. Special guests that will appear before the movie include Harvey Girls re-enactors, courtesy of the Railroad and Transportation Museum of El Paso.

***

This week's evening feature at the Fountain, one of last year's best and most unsettling films, nightly at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm:

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Director: Cristian Mungui / Romania ~ 2007 ~ 1 hour 53 minutes / In Romanian with English subtitles.

This slice of celluloid dynamite comes from Romania, and what you see will floor you. Set in 1987 in the final days of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship, the film begins in a college dorm where Otilia [Anamaria Marinca] is trying to help her clueless roommate Gabita [the excellent Laura Vasiliu] arrange an abortion, strictly outlawed since 1966 under the communist regime. A prison sentence awaited not just the woman but anyone involved in aiding or abetting her. In short, the risks are enormous for both Otilia and Gabita, who can't face the poverty of single-motherhood. The title refers to the exact time that Gabita has been pregnant, a fact she stupidly hides from the insidious abortionist Bebe [Vlad Ivanov] out of fear that he'll think her too far along. Bebe visits her in a hotel room arranged for the so-called ''probe.''

Ivanov won the prize for best supporting actor from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and with good reason. He'll freeze your blood. Bebe is a tyrant, clinical in attitude, even when demanding sex from both women for his services. It's the tension between those two poles, movingly readable on Marinca's face, that deepens the film's meaning and raises it very close to the level of art. --Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

***

Major studio releases currently screening in Las Cruces:

Deception
Under the Same Moon
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guatanamo
Baby Mama
Forgetting Sarah Marshall [see post]
Forbidden Kingdom
Prom Night
88 Minutes
The Ruins
Street Kings
Expelled
Nim's Island
Leatherheads
21 [see post]
Drillbit Taylor
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who [see post]

Also currently screening in El Paso: Snow Angels, Diary of the Dead, and Paranoid Park.

Please feel free to leave comments and let us all know what's worth our hard-earned bucks and what isn't.

current: Forgetting Sarah Marshall [90/100]

2008-04-24T07:29:00.002-06:00

The Apatow gang has done it again. This time Jason Segel has written and starred, and his script is funny and, as with much of producer Judd Apatow's work, has the ring of truth about much of it. Peter Bretter [Segel] has been dumped by his tv-star girlfriend Sarah Marshall [Kristen Bell], and decides to get away from constant reminders of her. Needless to say, it doesn't work, and they end up in adjoining rooms at a resort in Hawaii. Some of the usual gross-out gags, and more envelope-pushing regarding male nudity, but the real surprise here is the fine work by Russell Brand as Sarah's new squeeze and Mila Kunis [That 70s Show, Family Guy] as Peter's new love interest. Just when you think you have these characters pegged, they show some humanity and capacity for growth. That's a good thing.

summer movies

2008-04-22T16:43:00.002-06:00

I've got some thoughts of my own about the coming summer monsoon of movies, stay tuned, but in the mean time, Entertainment Weekly's Mark Harris is hard to beat: www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20192973,00.html.

second thoughts

2008-04-21T06:39:00.002-06:00

At first glance, writing a review of a film or interviewing the filmmaker should seem like essentially the same article, but they are not. Proof in this case comes from a review of the new Morgan Spurlock movie [see post below] by A.O. Scott in The New York Times: "The facetiousness of this project is charming at first — as is the conceit of depicting the hunt for Mr. bin Laden using video-game animation — but the charm wears off pretty quickly."

the Mary Poppins school of filmmaking

2008-04-19T10:34:00.003-06:00

Morgan Spurlock [Super-Size Me, 30 Days] talks with The Onion's A.V. Club about his new film, Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? Spurlock says, "I think that my movies are entertaining. This is a fun movie. It is the Mary Poppins school of filmmaking: a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." That's why Fahrenheit 9/11 did so well, it was entertaining as well as serious. Discuss among yourselves.

Roger Ebert returns, and retires

2008-04-18T09:54:00.000-06:00

Really good profile of Roger Ebert by A.O. Scott in The New York Times this week. Ebert is easily the nation's best-known film critic, thanks to his years on television pointing his thumb up or down. He's returning to writing reviews after a bout with cancer, but has retired from the syndicated weekly tv show he helped create with the late Gene Siskel in 1975.

Some have complained that Ebert's critiques have been too generous in recent years -- the man is happy to still be alive and still be watching movies, after all -- but his place in the history of American film criticism is secure. As Scott writes, "His writing may lack the polemical dazzle and theoretical muscle of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, whose names must dutifully be invoked in any consideration of American film criticism. In their heyday those two were warriors, system-builders and intellectual adventurers on a grand scale. But the plain-spoken Midwestern clarity of Mr. Ebert’s prose and his genial, conversational presence on the page may, in the end, make him a more useful and reliable companion for the dedicated moviegoer."

weekend flix 04/18/08

2008-04-18T09:32:00.003-06:00

This week's CineMatinee at the Fountain Theatre, Saturday at 1:30pm only:

Angel-A [2005, 90 minutes, rated R in French w/ subtitles]
Andre is a petty criminal in debt to everyone he knows. With only 24 hours to come up with a serious haul of cash before his troubles worsen, Andre decides he's better off dead and heads to a bridge to commit suicide. Unexpectedly, a statuesque woman named Angela is already there and jumps first. When Andre follows to save her life, she pledges total companionship to the diminutive crook and sets out to clear his debts. As she makes good on all of her promises he starts to believe that he's found an angel sent from above to help him, and it turns out that might not be too far from the truth.

The picture is a clever little drama/comedy that coasts by on a massive reserve tank of charm. Really a battle of fears between Angela and Andre, Angel-A is an episodic tale of a man's self-actualization and unstoppable devotion.

The performances from the two stars are the ties that bind Angel-A together. Sprinting to keep up with director Luc Besson's cart wheeling screenplay, the actors are two striking physical specimens and the camera loves their differences. Andre is a dumpy, physically disabled troublemaker; a loser in life who's starting to believe his own press. Angela is a towering blonde firecracker with a sexuality that melts glass. The duo makes for one hilariously uneven couple, but their acting couldn't be more finely matched and ready to engage.

Besson also has the mesmerizing cinematography of Thierry Arbogast, a long-time collaborator, to rely on. Arbogast and Besson elected to shoot Angel-A in black and white, both to soften the alarm of any magic spilled onscreen and to let the fine Parisian locations breathe. Stripped of color, Angel-A couldn't look better if it tried; the creamy vistas lend the tale a certain distance to better absorb and create a new glimpse of Paris.

This week's evening feature at the Fountain, nightly at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:30pm:

Youth Without Youth Director: Francis Ford Coppola; USA/Germany/Italy/France/Romania ~ 2007 ~ 2 hrs., 4 min.

Youth Without Youth is a narratively ambitious, visually sumptuous surrealist enterprise in which Francis Ford Coppola has tried to bend time and space together as neatly as the folds in an origami swan. It is a complex assemblage, and by turns bewitching, inspiring, enervating, and confounding.

For Dominic Matei [Tim Roth], the Romanian question mark at the center of the film, time doesn’t begin here and end there, it swirls like wind-scattered leaves. In brief outline, it opens with Dominic, his body stooped and head crowned by a snowy tonsure, being struck by lightning while hurrying across a rainy Bucharest street in 1938. Subsequently hospitalized [Bruno Ganz helps care for him], Dominic loses his teeth, sprouts new ones and miraculously reverts to his physical prime, complete with a thick head of hair.

Mr. Coppola has created some strikingly beautiful images in Youth Without Youth ― his framing remains impeccable, as does his sense of color, proportion and pictorial harmony. In this film Mr. Coppola blurs dreams and everyday life and suggests that through visual and narrative experimentation he has begun the search for new ways of making meaning; new holy places for him and for us.

--Manola Dargis, The New York Times

Current mainstream studio releases showing in Las Cruces:

Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Forbidden Kingdom
Prom Night
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
88 Minutes
The Ruins
Smart People
Street Kings
Expelled
Nim's Island
Leatherheads
21
The Other Boleyn Girl
Superhero Movie
Drillbit Taylor
Dr. Suess' Horton Hears a Who
10,000 B.C.
Never Back Down

Also currently screening in El Paso: Under the Same Moon and Diary of the Dead.
As always, feel free to post comments on any of these.

point of view: Iraq movies and more

2008-04-17T07:14:00.002-06:00

Note: Here is today's DVD column reprinted from Pulse. This was not my original draft, I have several distinct views about the war and the movies that have been made about it, and decided to focus on 1] the poor box office performance of most of these movies, 2] the absolute outrage of Bush Administration policy regarding the Geneva Conventions, and 3] the need to maintain a civil, pluralistic tone when discussing even our most deeply held beliefs. With that in mind, I've added a post-script below, sentiments I thought probably didn't belong in an entertainment section regardless of the subject at hand.

***

When previews for Paul Greengrass’s United 93 [Universal, $14.98], about the fourth hijacked plane on Sept. 11, 2001, first began showing in theaters two years ago, members of the audience famously shouted at the screen, "It’s too soon!"

Most of the subsequent theatrical releases about 9/11 and its aftermath in Iraq have performed dismally at the box office, suggesting that initial response was correct. With the notable exception of John Wayne’s The Green Berets [1968, Warner, $12.98], most Hollywood movies about the Vietnam War were produced and released well after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Wayne was a supporter of that war, and explicitly made the movie to influence public opinion.

Contemporary Hollywood releases have also tried to persuade audiences, and have probably had similarly little impact – people enter movie theaters with their minds made up, and rarely change their opinions because of what they see on the screen. That is not to say such movies aren’t worth making, but while the war continues, few members of the audience are open to new points of view, and the evening news is depressing enough.

That’s unfortunate, if only because the best theatrical films about the conflict in Iraq do offer the opportunity to consider what we believe and why. Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah [2007, Warner, $27.98] poses many questions about this conflict and its effect on soldiers and their families without being in any way unpatriotic. Tommy Lee Jones’ performance is one of his finest.

Lions for Lambs [2007, United Artists, $29.99] includes different views of this war, its disappointing performance at the box office probably has more to do with how much of the movie is conversation, even if the conversations ring true. Home of the Brave [2006, MGM, $27.98] offers a predictable but significant story about veterans returning home with wounds both visible and not.

I could not bring myself to watch Brian DePalma’s Redacted [2007, Magnolia, $26.98] -- any readers who have seen it and care to weigh in are most welcome. Rendition [2007, New Line, $28.98] is pedantic and heavy-handed to the point of being unwatchable, in spite of the importance of its subject, prisoners secretly removed from the U.S. so they can be questioned without Constitutional rights.

It is in the realm of documentary that films about 9/11 and the war in Iraq have been appropriate and necessary. The most exhaustive and thoroughly documented film about this period is PBS’s 4-hour "Frontline" documentary, Bush’s War [2008, PBS, $29.99), also available to view online at pbs.org. Bush’s War is most effective in tracing the shift in hostilities from Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden to Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

This year’s Academy Award winner for Best Documentary, Taxi to the Darkside, will be shown at the Fountain Theater June 13-19. The film traces our nation’s abandonment of the Geneva Conventions regarding treatment of prisoners, a policy even Senator John McCain rejects as unacceptable. Unlike most members of the current administration, McCain has served in active combat duty, and two of his sons are currently enlisted.

It is possible to have great respect for Sen. McCain and still believe he is mistaken about Iraq. What this debate needs most is civility, agreeing to disagree. That’s the power of democracy, citizens can hold opposing views without being enemies. In spite of its unecessarily provocative title, Michael Wilson’s Michael Moore Hates America [2004, Allumination, $9.98] is reasonable and pluralist, a much-needed tone in these divisive times.

***

Postscript: After the fact, I'm feeling comfortable with limiting my comments in print, people read Pulse for entertainment options, not political opinions. As my colleague and sometimes partner-in-crime Jeff Berg observed, this really should have been a two-part column, too many movies about the current situation and too much to say about them.

One implicit film left out was Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 [2004, Weinstein Co, $14.95], the most financially successful documentary ever made. There has been a positive growth industry of films attacking Moore and his methods, I ended the column with what I considered the most thoughtful of them, other than the idiotic/ironic title. Moore's methods deserve scrutiny, as even when I agree with his point I'm often uncomfortable with the manner in which he presents the argument.

Case in point, the footage of President Bush in the minutes after the second plane hit the World Trade Center. To Moore's credit, his film is the only reason most of us ever saw this footage, and the same pundits who have defended the President's immediate reaction would have called for the impeachment of a Commander in Chief so far out of the loop when minutes mattered most if he wasn't someone they supported in the election. Decisions were being made about whether to shoot down domestic commercial airplanes while President Bush sat in front of an elementary school class for a photo opportunity.

But, characteristically, Moore edited the footage for time, and added a sarcastic voice-over rather than let the footage speak for itself. Even old-school documentarian Albert Maysles agrees, Moore is more committed to persuasion than to documentary, and he shouldn't be outraged when people question his unorthodox cinematic methods. Moore's work is important and valuable, but shouldn't be considered "documentary" any more than Fox should be considered "News." Nothing wrong with having a point of view, just call it what it is.

Two other films I neglected to mention are Stop-Loss, currently showing theatrically, and No End in Sight [2007, Magnolia, $26.98], a scathing exploration of the diversion of U.S. resources away from Afghanistan in order to remove the government of Iraq in spite of overwhelming evidence that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

I've mentioned before that my father was a Goldwater Republican, he believed that government is best which governs least. The moralism which has dominated his party for the past three decades would not sit well, but more to the point, he would consider waging a war without any plan to pay for it a betrayal. National defense first, always, but one of the bedrocks of my father's Republican Party was to pay your tab as you go. President Bush and his administration have been like adolescents with their first credit card, except instead of their parents picking up the tab, our children and grandchildren will. That is shameful, not even a "policy."

But what is most shameful about this unnecessary war is more than 4000 American lives lost, many more injured, and countless Iraqi casualties. If the War in Iraq is so essential to our national security, why aren't the Bush daughters enlisted, or the Vice President's children?

An open letter to Allen Theatres

2008-04-16T07:31:00.001-06:00

I read with great interest the article in the March 31 Sun-News business section about your new ten-screen theater scheduled to open outside the Mesilla Valley Mall later this year. As planning and construction proceed, I wanted to offer some suggestions to make the experience of your paying customers as pleasant as possible. Between FlixView and my occasional reviews for Pulse, I am probably your single best customer, often seeing several new releases a week in your theaters.

One frustration which I'm certain many customers share is how noisy other patrons can be, talking and texting on cell phones and carrying on conversations out loud as though they were in their living rooms rather than in public. Restless teenagers are the worst offenders, but as theater manners have declined, fewer patrons of any age seem to know how to behave considerately anymore. The Cinemark Theaters in El Paso have security guards on duty who will inform noisy patrons that they have to leave if they don't respect other people in the same theater. I'm perfectly willing to pay more to see movies in peace, the experience of trying to enjoy a film while people nearby are talking out loud makes me want to stay home and wait until everything comes out on DVD. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. Maybe your employees could step inside each screening room more than once per two-hour movie, and enforce quiet more aggressively. Sometimes the loudest distractions are your employees talking and laughing in the hallway. State-of-the-art soundproofing is a necessary expense in your business, I understand that, but the actual viewing experience is often ruined by a few thoughtless people.

Approximately half of the screens at your Telshor 12, including the recently renovated #1 and #12, have scars and blemishes which can make movies unwatchable. Throughout the dark, beautifully photographed Sweeney Todd, there was a bright green blemish on the lower right of the screen which we complained about, and which is still there. That's insulting to your customers. In Charlie Wilson's War, Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks had large, dark scars moving around their foreheads as the camera angles changed. And P.S. I Love You was projected in the wrong aspect ratio, so that fully one third of the image was above and below the screen and not visible [the characters all had flat-top, Frankenstein heads]. Complaints usually result in a free pass [why only good for 48 hours??], but if the problem doesn't get fixed, that's not necessarily helpful.

I was glad to read that your new theater will likely include a restaurant, I hope this means customers will have more eating and drinking choices while watching movies. My preference is for a cup of good, strong coffee, but since you don't serve it and won't allow it to be brought in from outside, I would almost always rather watch a movie at home. On a chilly winter night, none of your cold beverages are appealing, and you could make a healthy profit on high quality iced coffee even in the summer. Finally, your popcorn supplier in Albuquerque provides the worst popcorn I've ever been served at a theater. Try the popcorn at the Fountain if you believe it's not possible to do better. Understanding that corn prices are rising, an increase in your popcorn prices might be the perfect opportunity to provide a tastier product.

The movie theater business is a tough one, I know that first-hand, and I'm offering these suggestions in hopes that customers who agree with me will continue to patronize your establishments. Everyone I talk to about this agrees, if the new theater doesn't offer a higher level of service, more and more of us will stay home or drive to El Paso to see movies. Las Cruces is growing rapidly, we all realize that, and NMSU now has a first-rate film school. If you don't take advantage of this window of opportunity, once competition eventually arrives in our city your bottom line will suffer.

I do wish you success in your new endeavor.

Sincerely, Kent Lowry

Bruce in Dallas

2008-04-15T06:59:00.000-06:00

Yes, he's still the Boss. Springsteen and the E Street Band brought their world tour to the American Airlines Arena in Dallas Sunday night, the closest the 2007/2008 tour has come to Las Cruces. Worth the 700 miles each way, hands down.

Good night for fans of Born to Run, the band's classic 1975 album, as we heard the entire B side including "Meeting Across the River" and "Jungleland" to start the encore, and "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" to open the evening's set. "She's the One," a personal favorite, has been on the set list throughout this tour. Sadly, the next night in Houston we would have heard "Thunder Road" and "Rosalita" as well, but hey...

The material from last year's Magic plays very well, fits right into the set, and ending each night's encore with "American Land" from the Seeger Sessions Band Live in Dublin works perfectly. In case its irony is lost on some [as happened when President Reagan tried to co-opt "Born in the U.S.A." in 1984], the lyrics to "American Land" were scrolled on the jumbo screens while the band played. Bruce did not hold back his comments about "the past eight years" in spite of being in President Bush's home state, though their reception seemed chillier than elsewhere around the country.

Bruce still has the goods, still puts on a great show every night, and the band is as strong as ever in spite of missing Patti and keyboardist Danny Federici on this leg of the tour. Nice surprise to have fellow Jersey boy Jon Bon Jovi come on stage for a "Glory Days" duet, plus we all got to wish drummer Max Weinberg a happy birthday.

The one real disappointment of the evening was the sound quality in the third tier. My guess is that the sound board is equalized for balance on the floor and lower levels, I can't imagine that anyone connected with this tour would have considered the PA sound up top acceptable, it was loud past the point of distortion for most of the night. I'm guessing that's standard practice at this arena, but it seriously interfered with enjoying a terrific rock and roll show down below.

Tomorrow, back to the movies, pardon this indulgence.

Misc Film Notes via guest blogboy Jeff Berg

2008-04-14T09:54:00.003-06:00

So, yesterday, Sunday, I took a chance and went to the corporate cinema for an evening showing of Smart People. Normally, I will not go to an evening screening because of the rudeness and ignorance of many of the people who attend evening shows in this town. I've never seen a place like this with so many people who just don't get it. Idiot that I am, I completely forgot that there was no skool again today, consequently, every bored eighth grader in town was standing in a group in front of the theatre calling the kid in front of them.

Smart People was a fairly fun film, with good performances and a sharp story. The one main drawback on the screen was the casting of Sarah Jessica Parker as an ER doctor. She was not convincing and was kind of an extra weight on the dry/sardonic humor of the piece. I think it is the first film to receive commercial release from this year's Sundance Film Festival, so we can always hope for better more original things in upcoming releases.

My new method of rating films will be a chair-- like a dining room chair with four legs. A great film will show the chair standing steady, strong and on its own on all four legs. A pretty good film will get three legs....good, but a bit off balance, like a three-legged dog trying to pee....two legs....buyer beware...probably worth seeing, but teetering on the edge of bad filmmaking....one leg is something that might be worth seeing on DVD in two or three years, but only if you check your brain at the door... and no legs will mean that the film doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Smart People gets 3 legs.

The audience? Well, of the 16 in attendance, three were brain surgeons who were conducting operations via text message. I only had to ask one person to put their oh-so-precious and omnipresent cell phone away, after the woman in front of me checked her phone 4 times in the first 20 minutes. She escaped wrath by finally 'taking it outside' before I took her outside.
There are also four holes in the screen of theatre #1.

But who am I to complain?

Having not heard from Kent since his departure for points east, one will assume he will be back tomorrow to offer a complete synopsis of his travels. In the meantime, here is the final calendar schedule from the Mesilla Valley Film Society (Fountain Theatre) for the months of May and June-

Week of May 2- In Bruges (UK)
Week of May 9- The Counterfeiters (Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, 2007)
Week of May 16-Caramel (great little film from Lebanon)
Week of May 23- Vanaja (India)
Week of May 30- Flawless (starring NM native, Demi Moore)

Week of June 6- CJ-7 (China, and no, it is not about a talking Jeep)
Week of June 13- Taxi to the Dark Side (2007 Oscar for Best Documentary)
Week of June 20- Then She Found Me
Week of June 27- Overlord

CineMatinee's...1.30 each Saturday...May 3- Santitos/ with short film, Tehuacan Project, May 10- Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, May 17- Payday (1972...with Rip Torn), May 24- A Prairie Home Companion (and....there will be a ticket giveaway for the upcoming taping of the show in which will occur in Las Cruces on May 31)....May 31- Coyote Waits (Hillerman)

June 7- Big Bad Love, June 14- Ballad of Little Jo, June 21- Bagdad Cafe (this may change) June 28- Make Haste to Live (rare made in NM film noir from the 50's)

Adios!

Fond Memories of the Visits to the Cinema (guest blogboy, Jeff Berg)

2008-04-13T10:30:00.007-06:00

Well, Kent is off doing fun stuff in Dallas such as going to a Bruce Springsteen concert, eating real food that doesn't require tortillas or ketchup, and maybe attending the Angelika Film Center. So, he has entrusted me to fill this space for a couple of days with a few cinematic thoughts for your amusement.

So.....here are a few of my favorite memories from visits to movie palaces large and small.

---my first movie theatre memory is... my first movie. I don't recall the title, but it was a Jerry Lewis flick (hey, I was a kid!), and it was so crowded, that I sat on the floor in the aisle of the Catlow Theater in Barrington, Il. Pre fire code days, of course.

---a few years ago in Albuquerque, I sat behind two women at a screening. They were gabbing in low voices before the movie, during the trailers, and into the credits. The gabbing continued as the movie started, and being tired of this type of behavior, I gave the back of one of their seats an open palm slap. Startled, of course, one woman turned around, as I politely asked her to be quiet. It was then that she informed me that her companion was visually impaired and that she was explaining what was going on to her. Shrinking to the size of the smallest kernal of popcorn on the floor, I tried to watch the movie after a stumbling apology. And there was no doubt about her telling the truth, because when they got up to leave after the movie, the second woman had an assistance dog with her. He (the dog) should have ripped my throat out, but instead, they accepted my apology and left. It took my newly shrunken legs about 20 minutes to get up the aisle and into the lobby.

---Terrence Malick is a genius. If you are not familiar, check out his films, Badlands, Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven (the best) or The New World. When New World opened in El Paso, I rushed down for a screening, settled into my seat, and immediately found that instead of being at a movie, I was at a cell phone convention. I hate cell phones, do not own one, and think they should be outlawed. In fact, this week, I am going to try and order a cell phone jammer. After about 30 minutes of rough endurance as the fools around me answered and made calls (one of them had even brought her lunch, rustling the plastic bag, and squeezing open the styrofoam container every few minutes to grab another bite of cigar butts marinated in gallstone sauce.) Finally, I chose her to be the one that would be made an example of. I stood up, kicked the back of her chair as hard as I could, and politely reminded her, in a voice just loud enough for the other offensive offenders to hear, that she was not the only one in the theatre. I moved to a different seat, but had completely lost my concentration, and had to go see the film again-- elsewhere.

---More recently, while at the Mill Valley Film Festival last fall, I was at a showing of Rails and Ties, the first film to be directed by Alison Eastwood, daughter of Clint. It was an okay film, but died a quick death at the box office. One of the stars is Marcia Gay Harden, who, with Ms. Eastwood, was in attendance. All through the film (I was most surprised at this), there they were, cell phones being flipped open, and a couple of calls were received to enhance the experience. Perhaps 300 people were in the theatre. After the film ended, Eastwood and Harden did a question and answer session. As that ended, I stuck my cell phoneless hand in the air and was called upon by Ms. Harden.

Me: Ms Eastwood, Ms. Harden....really enjoyed your film, but I was, for the first time during a film festival, distracted by people and their cell phones. Do you not think that it is an insult to you, your craft, and the other patrons to even consider answering a call during a movie?

Eastwood: (meekly) Well, I don't like it, but I find that it has become part of our culture, and I try to ignore it.

Harden:(sternly)....Not only is it rude and thoughtless, but I even get annoyed by people who eat in theatres and even by those who go to the bathroom, unless it is a long film. In fact, they need to oil the doors of this theatre because while I was watching the film, the people that HAD to get up were twice as distracting because of the squeaking doors!

I love Ms. Harden and will see all of her movies from now on.

So, if you are ever on the phone during a movie that is not showing at your house, and some idiot assaults the back of your seat, you will know who it is.

point of view: Keep on Tracking, part 3

2008-04-11T07:12:00.005-06:00

Note: The following column is reprinted from the Las Cruces Sun-News and the El Paso Times, with embedded video clips added courtesy of YouTube.

***

The sophistication and number of great tracking shots accelerated in the 1990s, beginning with Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas [1990, Warner, $14.98].

When gangster Henry Hill [Ray Liotta] brings his future wife Karen [Lorraine Bracco] to the Copacabana, Scorsese’s camera follows them past the line at the front door, through the kitchen, and to a table placed front row center for them. The slightly dizzying effect of the moving camera here expresses Karen’s amazement at Henry’s power. "What do you do?" she asks.

This is an increasingly common visual technique, in which handheld cameras mounted on Steadicams follow one or more characters through interior spaces. Paul Thomas Anderson used this device effectively in Boogie Nights [1997, New Line, $26.98] and Magnolia [1999, New Line, $26.98], as did Joss Whedon in Serenity [2005, Universal, $26.98].

Like much of the camerawork in Cloverfield, [due on DVD April 22], the first-person virtual reality robbery at the beginning of Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days [1995, 20th Century Fox, $9.98] is dizzying to the point of nausea. Strange Days is a violent and disturbing film, flawed but neglected.

Long, elaborate tracking shots can take enormous preparation, and sometimes they are simply about directors showing off. Brian DePalma’s Snake Eyes [1998, Paramount, $9.98] is not a great movie, but it starts with a mind-boggling tracking shot in and around a boxing match in Atlantic City which runs over ten minutes.

Ten minutes used to be the limit for a single continous shot on film, but Russian Ark [2002, Fox Lorber, $19.95] used high-definition video to capture four centuries of Russian history in the Hermitage in a single 90-minute tracking shot involving thousands of people on-screen and off, supervised by director Aleksandr Sokurov. The entire film is one shot.

While Russian Ark is a high-brow art film, foreign action movies have also featured classic tracking shots. Johnny To’s Breaking News [2004, Palm Pictures, $19.99] begins with a long, elaborate shot ending in gunfire, and The Protector [2006, Weinstein Co., $14.95] includes a martial arts fight scene which follows Tony Jaa through a large, circular hallway as he dispatches bad guys coming from every direction.

Quentin Tarentino acknowledges the influence of Asian action movies on his work, and Kill Bill Vol. 1 [2003, Miramax, $14.99] has its own terrific tracking shot following Uma Thurman through a Japanese bar while the 5.6.7.8’s perfom their hit "Woo Hoo."

Last year’s Atonement [Universal, $29.98] included a beautifully crafted tracking shot of Robbie Turner [James McElvoy] and his fellow soldiers wandering the beach at Dunkirk. As often happens, the process of condensing Ian McEwan’s novel into a feature film left some of the story out, so director Joe Wright used a few shots to stand in for Turner’s years as a soldier, and this tracking shot carries a lot of narrative information.

The most impressive use of tracking shots in the fifty years since Touch of Evil is in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men [2006, Universal, $14.98]. While the film’s two longest takes actually each include more than one shot, the visual style is seamless, and organically related to the subject and themes. The DVD includes commentaries by half a dozen noted cultural historians on the issues raised by the film, and Children of Men integrates these concerns with stunning photography and intelligent story-telling.

Next week, films about the War in Iraq.

two missing clips

2008-04-09T06:35:00.000-06:00

Embedded below are YouTube clips of tracking shots from two films I mentioned last week, Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend [1967] and Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger [1975].

In his definitive book on The New Wave [NY: Oxford UP, 1976, 201], James Monaco describes this shot as: "the centerpiece of the film, and one of the most exhilarating in all of Godard: a slow, deliberate tracking shot down a country road jammed with stalled cars, which lasts more than seven minutes. ... [Godard] has found a way to make the shot edit itself; each car is a new 'frame,' a new focus of interest. The tension between the action (or lack of it) and the movement of the camera is the source of the humor, which is as cinematic as it is cosmic."

L.A. Weekly critic John Powers wrote of The Passenger: "...everything comes together in one of the few miraculous shots in the history of movies, a seven-minute tracking shot which begins with Locke [Jack Nicholson] lying in a hotel bed and winds up answering the question of what lies on 'the other side of the window.' An eerie, Eastern serenity pervades the entire scene -- all the hero's subjective pangs have been refined away and we're left with the mysterious calm of a world that lies beyond the feeble history of its passengers." [Foreign Affairs, SF: Mercury House, 1991, 47.]

Amy Heckerling

2008-04-08T16:09:00.002-06:00

One of my favorite filmmakers [Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Johnny Dangerously, Clueless] has a new film which, sadly, is being released direct-to-video. Read all about it in The Onion's A.V. Club interview.

Jeff Berg on documentaries

2008-04-07T06:32:00.003-06:00

After my umpteenth viewing of The Silence of Cricket Coogler this past Saturday, I had to wonder, again, do documentaries actually change anyone's life or point of view?

Coogler is not a good example. It is a tale of Las Cruces at its most tawdry, about a murder and sexual assault that took place in 1949, probably by a state official and the fact that it was never solved, but it did change the course of New Mexico history. If you get the chance, check the video out at Branigan Library, or go to one of the upcoming book events [NMSU Book Store or Barnes and Noble] that will take place with the release of local author Paula Moore's new book on the subject, Cricket in the Web. It is an outlandish and disgusting story, and I was told at this screening that there was some talk among the state police that all of the new publicity will force them to reopen the case. Good! It should be.

But then I got to thinking about more in depth docs....I watch a lot, since I review some for an Albuquerque paper. Some are jaw-dropping, some are lame, most are well intentioned and educational. But those that have tried to inspire audiences to action always fall flat. Perhaps a few people will do something or change a habit that is helping to melt the planet, but for the most part, I bet that such films just end up as coffee shop chatter while lingering on the DVD shelves a few months later.

A good example of this is the endless stream of docs about the disgusting situation in Iraq. Have you watched any? Have they changed your thoughts in any way, and if so, enough for you to take action by contacting one of our useless elected officials or becoming involved in a peace rally or other such activity? The docs of course haven't changed the administrations mind in any way, especially Taxi to the Dark Side or No End in Sight, which should be required viewing, Clockwork Orange-style [you know... the scene where Alex's eyes are forced open]. But as good as these chronicles are, as are some of the live action films about this illegal invasion of another country, no one goes to see them. One of the best is Grace is Gone, starring John Cusack, which died so quickly at the box office, that its total take was $30 grand for its tiny release. I happened to see it at the Denver Film Festival last fall, and was hopeful that its message and theme would reflect back on those who could actually do something to end this lunacy.

Kent has mentioned that he is doing a future column on the many Iraq films that are out...I look forward to that. And after you read that column, call Bingaman and Domenici and even the moronic Steve Pearce and tell them what you feel. It won't do any good, but at least you'll have done something.

Sunday

2008-04-06T12:59:00.003-06:00

I'm busier than usual today, assembling a doctoral application [thanks, Sam!] and trying to get ahead with day job chores and newspaper columns so I can take my girl to Dallas a week from tonight to see the E Street Band for her birthday. We were hoping to see Shine A Light in El Paso this weekend, but time and cash are short, so here's Stephen Holden's New York Times review. Filmed at one of New York's last great rock and roll palaces, the Beacon Theater, a week after the Stones played the Sun Bowl in El Paso a year and a half ago. Marty rules!

point of view: great tracking shots, part two

2008-04-05T06:18:00.002-06:00

Note: This week's DVD column is reprinted from the Las Cruces Sun-News below, with embedded video clips added. In case the You Tube clips vanish, the first one appears after the fourth paragraph: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoHm6UywRTw; and the second after the fifth paragraph: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t60oYOTbTU.

***

Tracking shots have a history nearly as long as the cinema itself, going back at least as far as the 1914 Italian epic Cabiria [Kino, $29.95]. Some directors such as F.W. Murnau and Max Ophuls used a moving camera in creative ways, but the bulk and weight of movie cameras inhibited movement until the development of lighter, more portable equipment in the 1950s and 1960s.

Last week I discussed the famous first shot of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, and that same year, 1957, Stanley Kubrick directed Paths of Glory [MGM, $14.98] with Kirk Douglas. The trenches of World War I are revealed by Kubrick’s camera as he follows men walking through them.

No director before or since has been as closely associated with tracking shots, and no Kubrick film uses a moving camera to explore cinematic space as insistently as The Shining [1980, Warner, $20.98]. The invention in the 1970s of the Steadicam, which combined the fluid movement of a dolly on tracks with the freedom of a hand-held camera, made the extraordinary tracking shots in The Shining possible.

The film begins with aerial tracking shots following a distant Volkswagon beetle on a mountain highway, headed for the Overlook Hotel. As soon as Jack Torrence [Jack Nicholson, in one of his defining roles] enters the hotel, the camera follows his movement through a series of interior spaces.

Jack’s son Danny [Danny Lloyd] rides his Big Wheel tricycle through the empty hotel once he and his parents are alone for the winter, and Kubrick’s camera rides smoothly low behind him. The sound of plastic wheels ‘ka-thunking’ over rugs and hardwood floors in these shots is hard to forget.

The Shining is one of the most visually systematic films ever made, and the tracking shots which move through the outdoor hedge maze parallel Danny’s exploration of the hotel’s interior. In his book on Stanley Kubrick [Inside a Film Artist’s Maze, Indiana, $14.95], film scholar Thomas Allen Nelson observes that the maze also resembles a brain, which makes sense given how much of the story is motivated by what is happening in Jack’s mind.

Two more examples of the visual intelligence of The Shining deserve mention. One is the placement of knives mounted on the kitchen wall when Danny first arrives – they are over his head pointing right at him in several shots. Kubrick’s extensive, detailed storyboard drawings make it clear this was not accidental.

Also, when Jack looks down at the model of the maze in the hotel lobby, the point of view shot in which he ‘sees’ his wife [Shelley Duvall] and son is not from Jack’s position on the narrow end of the model. It is as though one of the hotel’s ghosts is standing beside him looking at the maze, and we are seeing through the ghost’s eyes.

The made-for-television Stephen King’s The Shining [1997, Warner, $14.98] demonstrated that Kubrick’s film may have strayed far from King’s novel, but a more literal adaptation did not make a better movie.

Other directors of Kubrick’s generation whose films have used remarkable tracking shots include Jean-Luc Godard [Weekend, 1967, New Yorker, $29.95] and Michelangelo Antonioni [The Passenger, 1975, Sony, $19.94]. Other early uses of the Steadicam can be found in Rocky [1976, MGM, $14.98], Bound for Glory [1976, MGM, $14.98], and Wolfen [1981, Warner, $9.98], in which we see through the predators’ eyes as they move.

Next week, great tracking shots since 1990.

weekend flix 04/04/08

2008-04-04T05:46:00.006-06:00

The cinematic highlight this weekend in Las Cruces will be the CineMatinee at the Fountain Theatre Saturday at 1:30pm only:

The Silence of Cricket Coogler [2000, 90 minutes, not rated]. Back by popular demand, with special guest Paula Moore, whose new book, Cricket in the Web has just been released. The brutal rape and murder in 1949 of Ovida “Cricket” Coogler, a young waitress in Las Cruces who was last seen alive in an official state car, evolved into one of the wildest, strangest and most precedent-setting cases in American history. Referenced in the public media over the past half century as one of the most compelling, mysterious and perplexing murder cases in the nation’s history, including non-fiction references by noted mystery author Tony Hillerman, this documentary is a gripping revelation of all that occurred.

Events following Coogler’s murder included the arrest of Jerry Nuzum, a falsely accused star running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers; a Grand Jury that would not have been authorized in the case if it weren’t for the tenacity and courage of common citizens created through a remote statute by petitions from NMSU students; a cover-up by public officials; the torturing of a black WWII veteran to gain a confession to the murder; a blatant bungling and cover-up of forensic evidence; a link between the state capital and illegal gambling. The revelation that the Mafia was in the process of buying New Mexico; the mysterious deaths of three police officers who knew too much about the case; a governor who was elected on a platform that he would solve the murder case; and finally, pardons by former President Harry Truman, for two police officers convicted of civil rights violations in the case. Ms. Moore will share her new findings on the case, and be available for questions and a book signing.

***

This week's evening feature at the Fountain is War/Dance [2007, USA, 105 minutes], directed by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix. Winner of the documentary directing award at Sundance and nominated for an Academy Award, "War/Dance is as irresistible as the rhythms of African music on its soundtrack. It's a fantasy set in real life, and, like all great fantasies, its moments of light are set against a backdrop of darkness and even horror. Uganda is a country where music and dance are so important that capital city Kampala hosts an annual National Music Competition, for which all of the country's 20,000 schools compete to enter. In 2005, the primary school in the remote Patongo refugee camp, with students who are largely war orphans or rescued child soldiers, won its regional competition and, for the first time, headed to Kampala to compete in the nationals. As the Patongo students head off to the nationals, the film's natural climax, they are excited to see ''what peace looks like'' and intent on proving themselves. ''We are going to show them,'' says Dominic, ''that we are giants.'' Win, lose or draw, War/Dance shows us that they already are. -- Kenneth Turan, LA Times.

***

Current studio releases in Las Cruces:

Leatherheads; The Ruins; Nim's Island; Stop-Loss; 21 [see post]; The Other Boleyn Girl; Run Fat Boy Run; Superhero Movie; Drillbit Taylor; Shutter; Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns; Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who [see post]; 10,000 B.C.; Never Back Down; Jumper [see post]; College Road Trip

Currently also screening in El Paso: Under the Same Moon, Funny Games, Penelope, The Orphanage [see post], and Shine A Light. As always, comments on any of these releases are most welcome.

current: 21 [50/100]

2008-04-03T06:45:00.003-06:00

Very loosely based on the nonfiction book by Ben Mezrich about M.I.T. students counting cards in Vegas, this is one of those movies "inspired by" actual events. As Monday's post and lots of online message boards [www.imdb.com/title/tt0478087, for example] make clear, the filmmakers took extensive liberties in dressing this story up to fit generic Hollywood expectations. Almost stylish in places, and Jim Sturgess [Across the Universe] is imminently watchable, but the script is predictable and can't quite sustain its momentum. Mostly too bad because it seems as though a really cool movie could have been made from this material.

favorite film 'zines

2008-04-02T11:35:00.004-06:00

I've written before about Film Comment, published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York. The March/April issue includes pieces by longtime heroes of mine Robin Wood and Molly Haskell, as well as features on Horror Remakes [Psycho, Funny Games] and the longstanding creative relationship between Martin Scorsese and The Rolling Stones. Scorsese's new concert doc about the Stones, Shine A Light, opens Friday at Tinseltown in El Paso.

The Film Comment site only provides the table of contents of each issue, but the site for Cineaste also includes the full text of selected articles plus some online-only extras. Cineaste has been my favorite film publication since I first discovered it 25 years ago, and the current issue includes interviews with John Sayles, Woody Allen, and Christian Mungui [4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days]. Current online exclusives include interviews with Stefan Ruzowitzky [The Counterfeiters] and Oliver Stone.

Film criticism simply doesn't get much better than these two 'zines.

Jeff Berg on the Film Salon

2008-04-01T14:32:00.003-06:00

Below is info. on a friend's film series, the once a month Film Salon. It is run by Chuck Horak, who also does the On Film program each week on KTEP, and he generally shows Classics in a true series form as you can see below. Weblink is http://www.filmsalon.org/. Each screening is at 7:30pm, on a good size screen in a small auditorium at Trinity First Church in El Paso. Admission is free, and he can even arrange for child care with advance notice (2 days). The Wilder film noted is on April 5.

The Film Salon at Trinity First will screen Billy Wilder’s The Apartment on Saturday, April 5th at 7:30PM.

After the success of Some Like It Hot in 1959, Wilder re-teamed with Jack Lemmon in this acerbic and very modern dark comedy about a meek and lonely salary-man [Lemmon] and the string of corporate managers who “borrow” his conveniently located apartment for their extra-marital affairs. True to form, Wilder and writing partner I.A.L. Diamond find humor and heartache in a string of situations that leaves a buffeted Lemmon trying to get along in a banal and amoral corporate environment while searching for the courage to stand up to his boss and declare his love for the company elevator operator. Fred McMurray [the heavy from Wilder’s superb Double Indemnity and deep into a Disney contract at the time] is Lemmon’s philandering heel of a boss and Shirley MacLaine is the elevator operator. MacLaine is also McMurray’s last affair and Lemmon’s true love. Throughout, Wilder brilliantly balances his critical eye for the drama of modern life with a dry sense of humor about the plight and ultimate triumph of an every-man. The Apartment deservedly won Wilder the Oscar Trifecta in 1960 – Best Picture, Director and Original Screenplay.

The Film Salon concludes its appreciation of Billy Wilder's long and successful career with this screening of The Apartment. Please join us on May 3rd when we celebrate our 6th Anniversary with a special film program, beginning at a special time – 7PM. Our 6th Anniversary in May will begin our summer screening series of an eclectic assortment of films from the fantasy genre.

21 according to Marc in SF

2008-03-31T07:35:00.003-06:00

SAW '21' ;LAST NIGHT. KEVIN SPACEY PLAYING HIS USUAL BITCHY ROLE AS AN M.I.T. PROF. WHO TEACHES SOME BRIGHT KIDS TO COUNT CARDS AND BEAT VEGAS AT BLACKJACK. NOT A BELIEVABLE MOMENT IN IT....... COMPLETE GENRE AUTO PILOT. THERE SHOULD BE A NEW RATING SYSTEM..... PEOPLE OVER 50 MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A MINOR IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND MOTIVATION.

ANYWAYS, AFTER THE SHOW THE CHINESE KID THE MOVIE WAS 'BASED ON' CAME OUT AND TALKED TO US. DID HE GET THE GIRL AT HE END IN REAL LIFE.? NO! DID THE PROF. REALLY HAVE A BAD HISTORY IN VEGAS? NO. DID THE LAURENCE FISHBURN CHARACTER [A PIT BOSS] REALLY BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF YOU? NO.
SO YOU END UP WITH THIS TRULY POST MODERN PROBLEM: WHAT/WHO WAS THE ORIGIONAL STORY BASED ON? HERE WAS THE 'ORIGINAL' GUY WHO COULDN'T TELL HIS OWN LIFE FROM THE COPIES....... OR THE GENERIC COPY WAS MORE ALIVE THAN THE ORIGIONAL GUY. THIS GUY ACCEPTED THE COPY AS AN AUTHENTIC REPLICA OF HIMSELF..... EVEN THOUGH THE SMELL OF VELVETA PERVADED THE THEATRE MORE THAN IT DID FOR "A BEAUTIFUL MIND."

a great book vs. film column

2008-03-30T10:05:00.005-06:00

Frequent readers know how much I like The Onion's A.V. Club, some of the sharpest and funniest analysis of pop culture anywhere. Associate Editor Tasha Robinson has been writing a column for the past few months comparing books and the movies adapted from them, and each column carries a spoiler alert explaining that plot details and endings will be discussed in detail, as they should be after the appropriate heads-ups. These are lengthy, knowledgable columns, full of wit and insight, always followed by comments from the A.V. Club's smarter-than-your-average-bear readers:

The Other Boleyn Girl [03/28/08]
Oil! / There Will Be Blood [02/29/08]
Jumper [02/22/08]
Into the Wild [02/14/08]
I Am Legend [02/08/08]
Atonement [01/25/08]

And, for good measure, Robinson collaborated with other A.V. Club writers on a two-part feature in November, "Lost in Translation: 20 Good Books Made Into Not-So-Good Movies" followed by "21 good books that need to be great films, like now."

newspaper film critics

2008-03-29T10:57:00.002-06:00

Earlier in the week, I provided a link to the following article by Eric D. Snider under the heading "no comment."

"Will Newspaper Film Critics Become Extinct?" was published on film.com in December, and describes a nationwide trend toward relying on a few national critics for understandable bottom-line reasons:

The reasoning is that since the same movies are released in every city, there's no reason to pay a local guy to review them. It's much cheaper to just buy them from the wire services, which syndicate reviews by Roger Ebert, the Associated Press, the New York Times, and others.

In 2007 alone film critics at papers in Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Atlanta, Akron, Ft. Lauderdale, and Tampa have been either reassigned or fired altogether. Those papers are tightening their belts. If you gotta fire somebody, it makes more sense to get rid of the movie critic than, say, someone covering local sports or local politics.

The problem with this line of thinking is that if everyone follows it, eventually we'll be left with only a few different critics whose reviews will be reprinted in the nation's 1,400-plus daily papers. Do you want to pick up the paper and see Roger Ebert's cavalcade of four-star reviews no matter which city you're in? Fewer voices means the conversation becomes less interesting.

This situation reflects a nationwide trend toward homogeneity, the gradual loss of region and place as every town has the same few retailers and restaurant chains. Trouble is, I see both sides of this predicament, and understand why publishers have a hard time rationalizing extra expense for content which is available through subscriptions already paid for. I'm lucky to get paid to write about dvds, but I'm keeping my day job.

With that in mind, as well as an ongoing desire to bring more voices to FlixView, I'm considering some small ads on a trial basis. It's been a point of pride that FlixView has had no advertising of any kind for its first year and a half, but it may be time to reconsider if some small income could generate more content. Not a fait accompli just yet, any readers who feel one way or another about this are welcome to comment or email.

FlixView

TREME: America the Beautiful

Super 8: B+

Lost in School

An Seh / Those Three: A

Watchmen: C+

Slumdog Millionaire: A-

Doubt: B

A big bowl of wrong

Does anyone outside the industry care about the Oscars?

Gran Torino: B

Film Fund-amentals: The Horror, The Horror

got us surrounded

Coraline [2009]: A

Jon Stewart on Bill O'Reilly's Right to Privacy

updates and stuff

To follow or not to follow

Mano a Mano

Bruce on video

Deckard as Bogart

best sequel ever

Jon Stewart's trickle up economics

trailer trash talk

awards season in full swing

The week that was

President Obama on screen

Which side are you on?

24 more

Globes

Why isn't Warner Bros. on Twitter?

Pause Button Pressed

July 15 DVD Releases

Looking for rare movies on DVD?

This Week at the Movies

This Week at the Fountain Theatre

Flickers about floods

Rainy Day movies

Madonna and A-Rod

RIP, Part 2

RIP

Who Am I, Pt. 2

CineMatinee- shameless self promotion

Recent DVD Viewings

Whoooo, who are you?

Today's Movie Quote

Extra! Extra!

point of view: Desert Island Discs, part two

point of view: Desert Island Discs, part one

point of view: John Adams

Jack Moffitt, 1940-2008

point of view: Two minor films feature major talent

local flix: Basketball in the Barrio [Weds 6/11]

point of view: What is it about Paul Thomas Anderson?

Jeff Berg on L.Q. Jones

weekend flix 5/23/08

point of view: based on a true story?

A Prairie Home Companion special event, May 24 @ the Fountain Theatre

CineMatinee update

weekend flix 05/16/08

arrested adolescence

point of view: "It's Alive!"

Grand Theft Auto 4

point of view: Christopher Nolan revives Batman

weekend flix 05/09/08

current: Leatherheads [65/100]

guest columnist Lucas Peerman at the movies

survey says...

intended to disturb

Jeff Berg: how Fountain films are chosen

current: Iron Man [90/100]

weekend flix 5/2/08

Prairie Home Companion Event at the Fountain Theatre

point of view: two Hollywood veterans who won't quit

more summer reading

David Ansen's Endless Summer

point of view: Love is in the Air

weekend flix 04/25/08

current: Forgetting Sarah Marshall [90/100]

summer movies

second thoughts