(some recent independent films
NOT from this festival are included here)
(Note: Some film reviews are being moved to more
subject-matter specific files; direct links are given)
Title: Poles Apart and other films from
the Minneapolis St Paul Film Festival of 2001 |
Release Date: 2001 |
Nationality and Language: |
Running time: |
|
Distributor and Production Company: |
Director; Writer: |
Producer: |
Cast: |
Technical: |
Relevance to Doaskdotell site: independent films |
Reviews:
From the 2001 Minneapolis/St. Paul International
Film Festival (and Sundance) Memento
(Sundance
festival) Startup.com (not in festival) Chopper
(not in festival) Six Days in
Roswell (2000 festival) First Baptist
Church, Washington DC history Seven Songs from the Tundra (2000) (Seitsman laulua tunralta), This is the first film in my recollection to be make entirely on location in Lappland—in this case, Finnish and apparently Russian,
in an Arctic coast area west of Archelangelsk or
I don’t know where you can find the Lapp songs on the
Internet, but here is a site, PSR Tech, for native-American music: http://www.virtualnetspace.com/culture D.L. Maybery award for best short subject in 2000 The Quiet Storm,
produced and directed by Scott Sterling, Zenith Films, 52 minutes. First, this film title reminds me both of “The Quite
Man” and of “The Perfect Storm,” and it can go head to heads with anything
from the major studios. The
script concerns a teenage relationship that goes awry, the male
captivating his girl friend with almost psychopathic lies, clearly
designed to “blame” her for non-events. Unable to resist his charm and
false charisma, she falls into inviting his abuse. Eventually, well, the boy doesn’t
stay out of jail—and the inside of a Hennepin County jail cell, with its
steel commode and nothing else, makes for a chilling encounter of a young
man going nowhere—although maybe he is caught in time to be redeemed. The script has the intensity of
some of the great ones, like Traffic, Virginia Wolf and Year of Living
Dangerously. As with many
independent films, everything is shot on location (no sound stage), on
streets upon which I have walked myself. This film has an intimate reality
rarely found in larger studio films.
The only question on the script was the interweaving of
before-looks and after-looks, which might work better if the script were
expanded to feature length.
(I love that line, “I bombed my English test”—Oh, do I remember
those tests on Shakespeare!)
This film was originally produced for educational purposes, but if
expanded to feature length it could look pretty attractive to more
progressive distributors (like Artisan, Lions Gate, D.L. Maybery award for
best feature in 2000 Poles Apart,
produced and directed by Greg Stiever. This
documentary chronicles the first all-female trek across The on-location scenery is stunning, especially the
Thiel mountains and then the South Pole itself, where surprisingly the
women find civilization. For another voyage film visit Rock the
Boat. Bill’s Gun
Shop, from Dangerous Films, directed by Dean
Lincoln Hyers, produced by J. Michael Tabor,
written by Rob Nilsson, starring Scott Cooper, John Ashton, Victor Rivers,
Tom Bower, James Keene, Carolyn Hauck, Sage, Jacy Dummermuth. Again. The independent,
locally produced film (this was shot on location in the Twin Cities and in
southern Minnesota) imparts an urgency and tension lacking in the glitz
and polish from bigger operations (and, again, why does Hollywood have to
cover up real companies and real locations when small filmmakers
don’t?). In fact, the film
has stunning photography (seems wide screen) and a pinpoint digital sound
track. And we identify with
the 23-year old Dillon McCarty (Scott Cooper), starting out his adult life
with a bit of personal schism, between being a mild-mannered (almost
impotent) “good guy” and wanting to emulate his movie-star police heroes
and marshals. He goes to work
for a gun shop and gradually sinks into a rather scary world. (I didn’t know that gun shop
employees are expected to wear guns going to and coming from work.) Eventually he goes on a bounty run
and has to get himself out of an impossible situation, generating a lot of
rooting interest from the audience.
This film played to a full house at the Heights Theater, and comes
across as a level-headed treatment of guns and self-defense for mainstream
Americans (the film also covers racial tensions pointedly), and not just
an activity on the rightwing fringe.
Compare to Tim Gordon’s short film “Trigger Effect” (2007 – don’t
confuse with 96 Universal film) reviewed on my movies blog Stroke, directed by Rob Nilsson, starring Edwin Johnson, Teddy Weiler, Omewene, Robert Vihoro, Gabriela Maltz Larkin. Nilsson produced this dark look—filmed wide-screen in a dusky black-and-white—of San Francisco’s underbelly with his Tenderloin Y group, using real residents of the area. The story centers around a faltering 55-year-old poet struggling on the streets and slums after a series of strokes. He looks haggard, feral, and fetal with his pot belly and disintegrating skin. The artist has failed adaptively, possibly even before his health failed. Falling through the cracks of a social safety net and extended family, he struggles with other street and poor people who help him. In one harrowing scene, a friend is evicted from a tenement for having him up in the apartment. Another, a female friend risks herself sexually with him, to the tune of the second movement of the Sibelius Violin Concerto. At the end he starts to recover his speech, and then, well… People disappear, people fall through the cracks and it is a moral issue. The film contains a few other Robert Altman-style subplots that seem the meander too much. SOME SHORT FILMS from Minnesota in
2001. Scott Bowman
offers an interesting short, Spaceboy, in which an
introspective young man performs is own self-counseling by working on a
spaceship. There is a
staccato of mathematical philosophy—references to the importance of the
tetrahedron as a container for consciousness, and to the ideas of
Buckminster Fuller—which build up until the day the boy has a serious
accident. Whether the
subsequence experience is “real” is up to the viewer. Let’s say there are the
appropriate references to STAND-BY, from director Roch Stephanik (2000) was
the closing night film for the 2001 Minneapolis-St, Paul International
Film Festival. It tells the claustrophobic story of a woman who, abandoned
almost penniless by her husband at Orly Airport
in Paris before they are due to take off for Buenos Aires, survives and
prospers by becoming a hooker. The wide screen format does not comport
with the excessive yellows and browns in the filtering. But the
consumerism of the European airport looks all the more glitzy The Young
Unknowns, (2000),directed by Catherine Jelski, starring Devon Gummersall (as Charlie) and Arly Jover (as Paloma), Eion Bailey and
Cassandra, 87 minutes. This
film comes across as an etude in audience manipulation over heterosexual
stereotypes of gender roles and the associated bad behaviors. Charlie, as 23-year-old showbizzer living well in the fast lane but behaving
very casually and contemptuosly, gets a dose of
“humanity” when his mother dies.
That half-way brings him out of the trap of drugs and drifting with
his buddies. But the movie is supposed to make the audience mad at the
characters, either at men for the way they treat women as “sex objects” or
at the women for manipulating their false femininity. Now, I know people in show-biz and
the behavior in this movie is not typical. Real life is really better than
this, much better. Why make a
film to “manipulate” the viewer and then not really say anything? This
sounds like a film school master’s thesis that gives one the expected
filmmaking credentials; a manifesto it is not. Anyway, I had to do “unknowns” in
qualitative analysis lab in chemistry. I remember getting “one too
many.”
Those Who Looked
Away (or They Looked Away), 55 min.,
directed and written by Stuard Erdheim, is a documentary producing evidence that
Allied bombers knew the locations of the crematoriums at Auschwitz-Berkenau and other concentration camps during the 1944
bombings after D-Day, in which they often hit oil refineries and similar
targets very close by. I visited the Auschwitz site (40 miles from Krakow,
Poland) myself in May 1999.
The film is shown with a 45-documentary, The Last Nazi, about a war criminal
thought to be living in Syria today.
Memento (2001 (and Insomina (2002)) http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/mmemento.htm In 2003, New Market gave us a second big release
Whale Rider, written and directed
by Niki Caro, from New Zealand, based on a novel
by Witi Ihimaera. This
is a modern day period piece about native New Zealand Maori culture, which
sound like it could resemble a native American
film. A tribal leader Porougani (Cliff Curtis)
aspires to keep his seafearing tribe together
with a male heir, but when fraternal twins are born only the girl Pai (Keisha
Castle-Hughes) survives. She will grow up to be more courageous in rituals
than most of the boys, including a harrowing and poetic climax where she
saves a herd of beached whales by riding one of them, holding on to
barnacles. The communal and ritual nature of the culture, even in the
modern world, comes through as the teenage boys must demonstrate their
manly worthiness in collective “Big G” chestwork
exercises. The film gains realism by using real Maori people to play the
roles, and the medical problems associated with westernization (obesity
and probably diabetes) come through. Some of the people look like products
of intermarriage with Europeans. The film also gains power with
on-location photography with the most effective use of film stock and hues
and saturation on an immense wide-screen canvas, giving the effect of epic
filmmaking. Amores Perros moved to this link. 21 Grams
moved to the same
link as above. Startup.com, (not in festival) from Artisan Entertainment, a docudrama
by Chris Hegedus and Jehane Noujlam, about the
rise and then crashing and burning of Internet startup GovWorks.com
(ezgov.com in the movie), as started by thirtyish entrepreneurs Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman. The “idea” was to attract local
governments to a site that would have people pay traffic fines, taxes,
file tax returns, and interact with local governments in various
ways. Again, this is the
paradigm that you come up with a relatively simple transaction that people
want, replicate it in the desired variations on the Internet and become a
millionaire. There’s not much
real creativity or intellectual substance (you know, the difference
between authoring and publishing), except the adrenalin rush of building a
business and maybe getting rich.
The friendship of Tuzman and Herman is
chronicled as the share hotel rooms to save money when traveling for
venture capital, then breaks when things go sour and Tuzman wants Herman to go. And, well, he has to rationalize
completely firing him. The
conversation is always muted in simple phrases. The company has rah-rahs and retreats for its employees, singing, esprit
de corps … something that would be a complete turnoff. Maybe it’s OK for a 25 year old to
put in 80 hour weeks there on somebody else’s agenda if he learns
something but, according to Star Tribune reviewers, people were
fired without severance when the film went down. Herman and Tuzman get their friendship back in the end and well
turn to vulture capitalism, a new industry in 2001. Herman, gentle in manner, was
interesting, apparently a single parent with an adopted opposite race
three year old girl. Girl
friends are not very apparent.
This is no business for family men. The film is dusky, it appears to be a August
(2008, FirstLook Features, dir. Austin Chick) Blogger.
Josh Hartnett and Adam Scott struggle as brothers with an Internet startup
a month before 9/11. Ambush (Tie Rukajarven) (1999),
available as far as I know only by direct import from Finland (MRP) by
non-profits (such as the University of Minnestoa
Film Society). In Finnish, with subtitles. Directed by Olli Saarela, written by Antti
Tuuri, starring Peter Franzen (as Lt. Perkola)
Irina Bjorklund, Karl Keiskanen, 123 minutes, suggest NC-17 because of
graphic violence and full nudity.
This is one of the most stunning war epics ever filmed, somewhat in
the style of “Enemy at the Gate.”
It is set in the Finnish-Russian conflict in 1942, when Lt. Perkola takes his men on a strategic march through the
Karelia lake country, to get a baptism of fire in infantry combat, as
graphic as any I have ever seen in film. The wide-screen photography of the
Finnish countryside is stunning, as are the sets and images of troops on
bicycles (no tights, please).
This is a big picture, on a scale of Pearl Harbor yet very little
known here. The Perkola character is played with great charisma by
Franzen, another young actor waiting to become
an overnight sensation. Conscientious, intellectual, well-educated and
philosophical-- and preoccupied with a volunteer nurse he met on the
front, he must learn how to discipline his men and deal with their all too
human errors (like the man who drops his bicycle in the river crossing an
improvised plank bridge). The
unit cohesion issues (and even bonds of affection) are well developed from
the very first scene, when an older soldier almost drowns when his buddies
“baptize” him. The film is modern, taking difficult ideas into a
counterpoint of thinking rather than mapping them out to a simple plot, as
in Pearl
Harbor. I hope that Sony
Pictures Classics or Lions Gate will pick this one up pronto.
Chopper
(2001), from Image Entertainment and
Mushroom Films, an Australian company. The Mushroom corporate trademark is
literally an H-bomb going off over Sydney harbor (homage to Nevil Shute’s novel On the Beach, and not In
the Wet). And violent, super-violent this film is. It’s NC-17, --that
is, persons under 17 will not be admitted. It is a “fictional biography” of
author Eric Read, played by comic Aussie actor Eric Bana. Well, Read is a mega-criminal, a sociopath who
knocks off drug dealers and other undesirables in the most brutal ways
imaginable, Dahmer-like. He is charged with only one such
shotgun murder and acquitted, but while in jail commits other violent
crimes on camera. We watch
people bleed to death, vomit, etc. on camera. There is little sex, except for
explicit talk of castration. Well, Read is all tattooed in a presumably
anti-social way, his body hairless to make room for the body art. So are
the other characters. The
tone of this film is relentless, there is nobody to like. He equates college education to
homosexuality (and there are rampant homophobic slurs in the script), and
brags that he becomes a best-seller without being able to spell. Well, he winds up living in
Tasmania, the most homophobic state, so he deserves it. The Aussies make
great crime and detective films (like The Interview in 1999). But
not this one. Sorry, a big “thumbs down.” It’s not funny. A reader emailed me angrily that Read is a best-selling
author in Australia, whether I like it or not. (I don’t.) Six Days in A TIME FOR DRUNKEN
HORSES (2000) from Badham Ghobadi of Iran, won
the Camera d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. It traces the odyssey
of several Kurdish children trying desperately to get Madi, a 15 year old dwarf born with graphic birth
defects, an operation to live a few more months. The kids traverse the
border between Iran and Iraq during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. Barters of
livestock, dowries and arranged marriages ensue in an attempt to pay for
the surgery. The Kurds, a bit
of a mystery people, were the victims of Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical
weapons. Their standard of
living is abysmal because they are not free. In Farsi and Kurdish with
subtitles.. THE DIVIDED WE
FALL (Sony Pictures Classics, 2000, Czech
and German), winner of the Sundance Best Foreign Language Film, presents a
somewhat funny story that could be compared to The Diary of Anne
Frank (recently remade by Directed by Jan Hrebejik, with Bolek Polivka, Csongor Kassai, Jaroslav Dusek, Anna Siskova. Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN (2002), from
The winners of the Maybery award for 2001 were The Atlas Moth, by Rolf Belgum, and Bill’s Gun Shop (above). Belgum’s film was a kind of rhapsody about rural entomology, hunting, rock music, auto mechanics (the infamous U-joint) and brain chemistry. The shorts were Mike Hazard’s “Eugene McCarty: I’m Sorry I was Right” and “An Idiot’s Guide to Running for President,” by Jim Taylor. Okay, these next two films aren’t from this festival, but here goes: Gregg
Holtgrewe directs his fantasy, Waiting All
Day for the Green Face of the Hummingbird (If I Were a
Lily) (Crew Works, 2002, about 55 min.) in which a young man
(played by A. C. Spencer) gets lost in David Lynch-like fantasies over the
apparent loss of his mother (remember the original 1960 Psycho) and disconnection with
real spouses (or girl friends, maybe) as mannequins and real women become
interchangeable. It’s more like Lost Highway
than And then there is Melody Gilbert’s documentary Married at the Mall (2002, Frozen Feet, 60 min.)a film that she uses when teaching documentary filmmaking techniques. Here the subject matter and “problem” deal with couples who marry in the chapel at the Mall of America near Minneapolis. Often they are older people who have already led several past lives. The film does illustrate the basic techniques of filmmaking well, with the variety of shots and layers and evolution of the subject matter through showing rather than just telling. The look tends to be metallic and pink and consumerist, like the Mall itself, until it gets outside on honeymoons. There is a particularly interesting shot at the Spring Creek campground of a tunnel on a motorcycle trail (it reminds me of the Sparta tunnels in Wisconsin). Map of the Human Heart (1993, Miramax/Polygram, dir. Vincent Ward, is a grand looking pre World War II adventure when a pilot takes an Inuit with tuberculosis to a Catholic foster home, after which she falls in love with a Frenchman, who will hire the pilot again for reunification while fighting the Nazis, and run in to all kinds of family loyalty problems. In the summer of 2002 Lot47 released the daring epic film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, directed by Zacharias Kunuk (172 minutes, filmed in Beta digital). This provides an intimate look at adaptive Inuit (Eskimo) life in the Baffin region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. The story builds slowly in terms of typical jealousies, and builds to a climax as one of the characters escapes by running barefoot across the ice pack. At the end, the matriarch of one of the tribes evicts some of the men. The rituals and occasional primitive violence, as well as the scenes inside igloos, are stunning. It is stunning how much can be done with a screenplay about a primitive-looking society in which much more goes on than we would imagine. Shortly after I moved to Minneapolis in 1997, a
graduating Hamline University college student helped me get on television
with a lecture on my book, and in the course of things I heard a lot about
college-student group-house (not exactly frat house) life (the notorious
“1521 Club”). Well, here is a movie about such a property at the
University of Minnesota. The film is Camcorder, from One Camera Productions,
produced, written and directed by Dave Gillette. It is a bit more than a
home-movie account of campus life, framed at different screen aspect sizes
for different levels of narration. The students interact in gentle ways,
talking about part-time jobs (like flood control), hangovers, student
loans, homecomings. There’s no real mystery. The living conditions look a
bit crowded. Toward the end the film progresses towards graduation. Jesse
Ventura punctuates the narrative, with inevitable epigrams like, “you
don’t have the automatic right to feel good about yourself until you
accomplish something.” True,
that’s the libertarian idea—and part of the culture wars. The lineup for
Cinema Lounge at Bryant Lake Bowl in August 2000 also included WOEFUL
BALLAD by Charles Mruz, AUS Regarding
roommate setups, in 2003, Fox Searchlihgt
released L’Auberge
Espagnole
(The
Spanish Inn), directed by Cedric Klapisch,
in which a French graduate student Xavier (Romain Duris) travels to
Barcelona in an exchange program and has to interview a group of exchange
students from Germany, Italy, Denmark, and England to get a room in an
overpriced “group apartment.” The film plays games with the idea of
European identity (there is one professor insisting in teaching in
Catalonian), and covers a lot of plot setup with time-lapse shots and
fantasy sequences. Barcelona
is absolutely spectacular. For once, we have a director who rejoices in
the natural, hairy-chested male, and the idea of giving up the
corporate-government world to become a writer. . Returning
to the subject of digital video, Final Cut, iMovie and the like (and, for
that matter, filmmakers who swear by 16 mm), there is an example of the
disaster that can result when a big budget Hollywood director (Steven
Soderbergh) tries to have the fun of a filmmaker
or writer who has an income from something else (a “day job”) and writes
or films what he wants. When amateurs do it in Cinema Lounge, it works,
but not when “established” Hollywood pros try to imitate the freedom of us
kiddie filmmakers. The mess is Full Frontal
(101
minutes, Miramax, rated “R”, 2002), reviewed at the link shown
here. The Central
Standard Film Festival (run in Minneapolis at the same time as the SoundUnSeen film festival in September 2002), featured
a number of little gems. Two 50-minute documentaries add more substance to
GLBT arguments. Shades of Grey (Tim DePaepe) presented the debate of the proposed “Simply
Equal” non-discrimination ordinance in Lawrence, Kansas (aka Smallville, the home of Kansas University, where I
attended graduate school). Fred Phelps makes his “God hates f__s” presentation in a way that is especially
chilling, reminding one of other videotapes from, shall we say, the other
end of the earth (although Phelps maintains that he does not believe in
discriminating against race). (The reader can do his own searching on
Google about this person, I will decline to give
links.) More revolutionary
was Daddy
and Papa (Johnny Symons), which traces several gay fathers in
San Francisco. At least one is single, and prefers raising a child to
cocktail parties and trips to Greece. One gay male couple is taken through
the adoption process, including a home inspection visit from the social
worker who asks about drugs and weapons and inspects the home closely for
safety issues such as medicine cabinets that do not lock. “F__k and you’re a parent. If
you’re gay, you have to go through the Inquisition to become a father.”
There is even a scene with the family bed, and a boudoir is converted to a
play pen, complete with lego trains. One odd
scene has a father talking about being a dad while being kneaded by his
cat.
Alvin Ecarma produces Lethal
Force (Diversity Films, 2001), not to be confused with Lethal
Weapon I, II, etc. This wonderful little satire is just plain gore. Cash
Flagg. Jr. plays the indestructible hit man, who finally gets it at the
end. You get to see impalements, eye gouging, and faces blow off. Okay, you cab “check it out.” It
reminds you of the Dollars movies, Hannibal (there is an allusion to
the dinner party), Reservoir
Dogs, The Wild Bunch, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, even
(below) Pieces.
An interesting
exercise in “abstract film” comes from Shane Nelson with his prosaic 16mm
A Film in
Three Parts (2002), shown at Cinema Lounge by IFPMSP in
Minneapolis in October 2002. The title rather reminds me of Igor
Stravinsky’s “A Symphony in Three Movements.” No, Mr. Nelson didn’t use
Stravinsky, choosing current rock as a very detailed digital soundtrack to
accompany the clips on “extreme sports” followed by a mock adult
encounter. But the effect – of technique and manipulation away from
feeling—is rather like Stravinsky. In any case, we get to see stunts that
you would expect from an James Bond or Van Diesel
movie—skateboarding and ski jumping.
The three “movements” are “Technique” (OK, Allegro), “Style” (OK,
Andante), and “Who Give….” (OK, a concluding romp of a Rondo).
Shane offers
other short films, like the NOFX video “Seeing Double at the Triple
Rock,” (2006, dir. Justin Staggs)in which
Jesus appears during the performance of a rock band. For details, visit Omni-Fusion. Another of
Shane’s films is Jon Robinson Audition for
Temptation Island, shown May 2003 at a
presentation by Cine-Magic. Here
there was some comic allusion to reality TV and Elimi-date, particular the propensity of producers of
those shows to choose the least aggressive, “masculine” and
“attractive” male to go home with the girl. (The producers
choose the winners, not the girls.) Blue Car (2002) is one of the highlights of the
2003 Festival (Miramax, directed by Karen Moncrieff, produced by Peter
Oppenheimer, Amy Sommer and David Waters,
starring Agnre Bruckner, David Strathalm, Margaret Colin, Frances Fisher); it was the
centerpiece of a benefit (at the Minneapolis Riverview Theater) for Corner
House (Corner
House Interagency Child Abuse Evaluation and Training Center), a legal
and assistance facility for sexually abused children, with Twin Cities
native actor Josh Harnett as one of the hosts. (After the benefit, the
audience surged forward for autographs, although the Minneapolis Police
did not allow him to autograph for more than a few minutes.) The story with the breaking of a
family, as the father drives away in a blue car, leaving the artistically
gifted Meg to grow up in a low income Ohio single parent family with a
little sister who may grow anorexic later. Her middle-aged male English
teacher discovers her talent for writing poetry, and soon she clamors to
go to Florida for a competition. She can’t afford to, and of course that
is what generates the “must do” in the plot. Well, her behavior does not
reflect well on her character, and neither does that of the teacher—and at
this point I will say that the denouement is too predictable for me. The
show included a trailer for Josh’s new film “Hollywood Homicide” in which
his character “wants to be an actor rather than a cop”
The Retreat (2002), a 30-minute horror war drama by
Darin Heinis (and Aaronstokes), won a special jury award at the
Confidence (2003, Lions Gate), directed by James
Foley and written by Doug Jung, provided the closing night gala for the
Twin Cities International Film Festival. It is a complex crime caper with
a hint of black comedy, where grafter Jake (played by Ed Burns) goes after
a mafia bill collector and runs into a gay crime boss Winston King played
magnificently by Dustin Hoffman, who obviously seems tempted by Jake’s
masculinity. The story builds from one situation to another, much of it
referring to the kind of creative derivative accounting that brought down
Enron. James Foley did a spirited Q and A afterwards, in which he
expressed his passion for making movies a bigger amalgamation of arts and
life experiences rather than a formulaic storytelling exercise to bring in
shopping mall audiences and make quick profits. Foley also mentioned his
preference for anamorphic (widescreen) lenses. Even son, this film, at
least, displays tight narrative and storytelling. Four Feet (2002), a short film by Lisa
Schiller, produced by Ann Luster, with Shelby Robin and Brittany Shoberg. A 14-year-old girl has just lost a leg in a
car accident and is being introduced to life with a
prosthesis. In her
hospital room, a roommate afflicted by cystic fibrosis arrives (“four
feet” away) and soon demands all of the attention, invoking all kinds of
artsy fantasies of the playground late autumn world outside the window.
The CF patient quickly becomes medically desperate, coughing phlegm into
basins on camera but still trying to keep her hopes. Happy endings are
relative in a micro-universe like this. This was shown at IFP Cinema
Lounge in May, 2003. Death and the Maiden (1994, Fine Line, dir. Roman Polanski,
play by Ariel Dorman, 103 min, R, UK) is a famous political thriller where
Sigourney Weaver plays a housewife Paulina Escobar and grassroots
political activist in a somewhat Fascist South American country (it seems
to be Chile) is convinced that her lawyer husband (Stuart Wilson) has
fallen victim to a neighbor Dr. Miranda (Ben Kingsley) who may have raped
and tortured her during an old regime. She arranged to kidnap him to get
at the truth. Quite a clever plot. The title of the movie comes from the
name of the famous d-minor string quartet by Franz Schubert, which is
often played. At one point, she says, “did you know that Schubert was a
homosexual?” It’s not clear
if he was. Trainspotting (1996, Miramax / Polygram / Channel 4,
dir. Danny Boyle, R, 94 min) is a graphic picture of the drug scene in
Edinburgh, Scotlandwith Ewan McGregor as Renton,
living a life that winds up in toilet stalls. Pretty unpleasant. Milk and
Honey
(2002 In June 2003,
Bryant Lake continued its iconoclastic offerings. There was a
thirty-minute documentary by Texas filmmaker Dorothy Ibes Baby’s Memory Book, in which a young man
recounts his troubled growth into a redneck
adulthood, tempered by marriage and becoming a dad, yet somehow unable to
stay away from drugs and jail. Much of the narration focuses on fishing
for catfish (remember “Okie Noodling”) and the way such
past-times contribute to father-son bonding, yet this seems lost.
Minnesota documentary filmmaker Melody Gilbert contributed to the concept.
There are some odd camera angles in the young man’s soliloquys, as he lies
in bed on his back and the camera tries to climb over his chest hair. Then Jeff
Gilson once again turns on his own kind of subtle comedy in John Sarraccoi’s Decision, a kind of miniature Jerome’s
Razor, where a young men escapes career decisions in the office to
take to the open roads – from Minnesota I-35 to the hiking trails in its
state parks where Gilson’s character gets drawn into his own delusions,
where his world seems walled off by animated billboards and where trails
and hikes can come to dead ends, like Clive Barker’s “Erasure” in Imajica. Winged Migration moved to http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/mendur.htm
Shine moved
to http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/mmusic.htm
Paper Clips
moved
to http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/mhitler.htm Well, after
participating as an extra in a Twin
Cities Actors’ Forum short film Scalpers, in which a Twinbies ticket scalper (Justin Overlander) gets scalped himself by a broad with kids
and medical bills in collections to pay, I waltzed over to the Boom where
Saloon stage dancers (even those from The Churchill) congregate on Tuesday
nights, and watched the Bravo video Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,
which is a well-structured documentary about a makeover, if you have maybe
$500000 from a TV network to blow. A pot-bellied guy with scruffy beard
and unconvincing body hair gets the full treatment, starting with waxing,
although they confine most of the on-camera epilation to an eyebrow trim.
(His chest, somehow, partially survives but he never should have been
allowed to wear shorts in public to begin with.) Next they take him to a
men’s shop (sorry, Target and Wal-Mart won’t do) where you would have gone
in the past to satisfy Then
Minneapolis and Community Technical College student Ryder Seeler produces a short film Angry Pursuit
(about 10 min, 2003) in which a young writer who mimics Barton Fink
has to evade hit men who don’t like what he writes. Seeler told the Minneapolis Byrant Lake Bowl audience that the film was somewhat
inspired by the story of Salman Rushdie with his 1988 novel Satanic
Verses, that led him to live in London in hiding from Shiite Islamic
fundamentalists from Iran for blasphemy. Of course, we live in a world now
where Google can make any blogger famous for a well-articulated social
message, and that brings up the question: what happens when the famous
blogger, by drawing angry attention to himself (perhaps even from
terrorists), inadvertently involves others such as his family or
workplace. I take on that a bit in my own screenplay treatment of Do
Ask, Do Tell with a scenario involving lawyerly ambulance
chasing. The deeper question,
though, is the dichotomy faced by the modern writer: to write what he
wants to say, or to write what others will pay him to say, as in the
recent film The
Trip. The same July
evening, we watched an art film of previews from City Council Productions
The Making of Smoke Fire, which makes fun not just of Hollywood
summer movies, but of all the big production companies (Village Roadshow,
Intermedia, Beacon, Regency, Castle Rock) that
make them—and of the stars that populate them. Put Josh Hartnett and
Austin Powers together and you get Josh Powers. And then there is The Tox That Rocks that brings up memories of Danny
Boyle and Trainspotting,
even when showing the Stillwater drawbridge as a relief from a detox
center that doesn’t measure up to Betty Ford’s standards.
In August 2003,
just before moving back to the DC area, I saw most of Blogumentary, by Chuck Olsen,
at Bryant Lake Bowl on Also on that
program was Neil Orman’s Dotcommies Revisited, which traced the Idea to
a dotcom, followed by the bust with the entrepreneur living with folk and
working in a video store. Critics have
been holding up The Station Agent (2003, Miramax, 88 Minutes) as an
argument for small films, and a lesson for filmmakers in to how to make
them. That is perhaps the problem. The visuals (railroad yards and depots
in New Jersey, model trains) are detailed, interesting and well filmed
technically, and the characters touching (most of all Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage), the dwarf who inherits the depot. But the
movie comes across, to me, at least, as a series of effective scenes and
low-key characters without a lot of tension or story direction. Maybe the
grittiest moment is at the end, when Finbar,
lecturing a grade school class about railroads, is interrupted by a kid
blurting out, compulsively, “how tall are you? … I am taller than that…”
and the teacher says “Come with me.” Another small
film that is winning fans is In America (2003, Fox
Searchlight/Hells Kitchen), directed by Jim
Sheridan (My Left Foot). The story is a kind of reverse of
Angela’s Ashes. Here a poor Irish family arrives in New York in the
1980s and moves into a tenement in Hells
Kitchen. Johnny (Paddy Considine) and Sarah
(Samantha Morton) are the couple, and Johnny is a struggling stage actor
trying to learn his lines, break in to off-off-broadway, support his family with grunt work (in
his case, driving a cab, and showing how he could negotiate NYC’s
medallion system for cabs could have been interesting had it been
included), and dealing with problems like no health insurance when Sarah
has a premature baby. The family’s life will be transformed by a feisty
African artist Mateo (Djimon Hounsou) after his two small daughters make contact
trick-or-treating. Early on, the daughters say “In America, we demand, we
don’t ask.” Later Mateo
forces the issue when he says something like this to Johnny: "I love your wife. And I love you. And
I love your children." And Mateo lives up to the idea of agape love as he
meets his own destiny. What I liked was the way the movie showed the
problems of artists who really have to make a living by what they do at
some point. That’s the way people compete. Lost in Translation: Moved to http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/mlost.htm The Auteur (2008, Tigard, dir. James Westby, 78
min) Blogger. The Auteur Theory (1999, Pathfinder, dir. Evan
Oppenheimer, UK) A conceited documentary filmmaker makes a doc about a
student film contest, and people turn up dead. Blogger. Fear and
Trembling (“Stupeur et tremblements”)
(2004, Chocolat (2000,Miramax,dir. Lasse Hallstrom, UK/France,
121 min, PG-13) has Vianne Rochet (Juliette Binoche)
and her friends open a shop as chocolatiers in 1961 in a small French town
in Provence, and shake up the morals of the community during Lent. It
makes a good correspondence to some of today’s moral debates. It even
snows in France in this movie.
Boys Don’t
Cry moved to
http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/mtrans.htm Monster;
and Aileen: The Life and
Death of a Serial Killer moved to http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/maileen.htm
Boxing Helena, Pieces, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
(both), The Collector at http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/mboxing.htm
Secret
Ballot (2001, Sony
Pictures Classics, G, 105 minutes, Iran, dir. Babak Payami, with Nassim Abdi and Cyrus Ab, is an exercise in abstraction about a serious
issue: an election. A female election agent is sent to an unidentified
island to collect ballots in an unspecified election, and plays out the
issues of how she is taken as a woman in a patriarchal society in an
essentially alien setting. The film is considered timely in light of the
Bush v. Gore fiasco after the 2000 election (or perhaps recent
controversies over automated voting systems). The simple but expansive
imagery and subtle colors (even the burkas of the women against the
landscape) are compelling visually, as is the final scene when the cargo
airplane lands in the distance to take her away with her ballot box from
this low tech world. And this film is actually rated
G. The
Clearing (2004, Fox
Searchlight, 91 min, R, dir. Pieter Jan Brugge)
pits Robert Redford against Willem Dafoe in a somewhat straightlaced kidnapping story thriller, reminding one
of Ransom, but much quieter. As usual with independent film, the
on-location settings are real: here, it’s the Pittsburgh area, with its
metro and many auto tunnels.
Dafoe is the disgruntled fired employee, harboring a grievance for
years, and in one speech in their walkabout Redford tells him to act like
a man, take tough love, and pay his dues to the working class after his
management job was downsized and he was permanently marginalized. It’s the
employee’s fault, not society. Meanwhile, the FBI sets up shop in his
home, for a long time, with the passage time indicated by snow coming and
melting. Then, there is a twist worthy of Days of Our Lives.
The Life and Times of
Hank Greenberg
Thirteen
(2003, Fox Searchlight
Pictures and Working Title, dir. Catherine Hardwicke) presents a teenage
girl Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) going from honor student (albeit
7th Grade) going down before her alcoholic mother (Holly
Hunter), with the “help” of temptation from friends. Some good old teenage
rebellion that seems to me not to get out of girltalk. There are disturbing scenes, and some
tempting ones with boyfriends, and some pseudo-lesbianism. The critics
liked this; I found it rather going for sensationalism that renders
silliness. In the 70s, they would say, landlords fear young girls as
tenants more than anything else, throwing lavender paint down the toilet
and stuff—this film could have used queer eye. There is an earlier independent
film from the Y 2000 called “Thirteen,” no relation to
this one (see suntimes.com/Ebert and search). There is also “13
Days” from Newline, again no relation, obviously. According to an NBC
Today report on Eros (2005, Warner Independent Pictures,
104 min, rec NC-17) is an experimental trilogy of three short films. (1)
“The Hand,” dir. Wong Kar-Wai, in Mandarin
Chinese; (2) “Equilibrium,” dir. Steven Soderbergh, (3) “The Dangerous Thread of Things,” dir.
Michaelangelo Antonini
(in Italian). Critics seem to like the first film, a tale about a
prostitute who challenges a humble tailor to perform (early on, she makes
him take his pants off, a challenge to masculinity that struck me as
rather clinical). It is set in Hong Kong as a typhoon approaches and seems
contained and claustrophobic. The second film was my favorite. The
centerpiece is some good old-fashioned black-and-white movie making,
making you feel that you’re really at the movies. In the mid 50s, a
psychiatrist (Alan Arkin – remember he was the
boss Mr. English in “Thirteen Conversations about one Thing”) manipulates
his over-the-hill heterosexually married client (Robert Downey, Jr.) who
has recurring dreams (shown in blue) of a voluptuous woman. The
psychiatrist does stuff while the patient lies on the couch, kid stuff
like sending messages across the street by paper airplanes to whom he
believes to be the femme fatale, in another New York office building.
Soderbergh shows some real germinal Haberstrom-like interest in 50s social values and
mores in this miniature, suggesting possible future interesting projects.
The third film is a bit of a rondo, as a man named Christopher bounces
between his wife and another woman, particularly at a villa that could be
out of “Vertigo”—leading a confrontation and climax that could easily be
solved if both women gave in to lesbianism. Oldboy (2003, Tartan/Egg Films, dir.
Chan-wook Park, 120 min, R) is a dark thriller
in which a man Oh Dal-su (Park Choel-woong) is kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen
years in a dingy hotel for a mysterious, forgotten (perhaps by amnesia)
crime, and forced to keep up with the world (including 9/11) through
videos, then must find his captor in five days. The video rendition of the
external world for the imprisonment period provides an interesting device
for layered storytelling, although I think the idea could have been
carried even further. The film becomes gruesome towards the end (there is
a wonderful metaphor in the script of aging one year with every step
taken, but it is not shown—it could have been), but has spectacular
wide-screen vistas of Soeul, rural Korea and New
Zealnad. In April 2007
some news commentators claimed that this film (Oldboy) may have been
imitated by the shooter in the Virginia Tech tragedy. That seems to be
related to the revenge motive of the movie, as well as a specific photo of
Cho Sueng Hui with a
hammer. Stephen Hunter has a
story in The Washington Post, C01, April 20, “Did Asian Thrillers Like
‘Oldboy’ Influence Va. Tech Shooter,” at this link.
He also discusses the movies of John Woo, like “The Killer”.
Sympathy for Mr.
Vengeance (“Bolsuneun naui geot”, 2002, Tartan/CJ, dir. Cahn-wook Park) was the
first in the “Vengeance” trilogy. The plot deals with family loyalty,
trying to get a kidney transplant for a sibling, and then “revolutionary
revenge” when the donate kidney doesn’t lead to the desired result; that
includes kidnapping a corporate executive’s family member. Blogger. The Waterdance (1992, Samuel Goldwyn, dir. Neal
Jimenez, Michael Steinberg, 106 min, R) is a classic indie film about
overcoming disabilities resulting from tragic accidents. Writer Joel
Garcia (Eric Stolz) has broken his neck while
hiking and is slowly regaining some abilities in a rebab center, even eventually love. Toward the end,
Stolz takes over the performance with a great
deal of charisma. In one scene he writes on an Apple computer with the
best technology of the day. Gradually he has an affect on the other patients, causing confluct and drawing them out into actual battles.
Helen Hunt is Anna, and other patients are played by William Allan Young
and James Roach. The Secret
Club (Den Hemmelige Klubben), Gay
Pioneers, Rainbow Pride, One Wedding and a Revolution.
Men;s Mix 1: Gay Shorts Collection
(2004) A Trip to Bountiful (1985, Island/Bountiful, dir. Peter
Masterson, play by Horton Foote, 108 min, PG) is a sweet film about an
elderly, impoverished woman Carrie Watts (Geraldine Page) saving up and
“escaping” (from her daughter-in-law Jessie Mae (Carlin Glynn), on a bus
trip from Houston (in the 1940s) to see her childhood home Bountiful. John
Heard is the submissive son Ludie. The hymn
“Coming Home” prevails in the sound track. I saw this at the Inwood in Dallas on a Sunday afternoon.
Into Great Silence (“Die Grosse Stille”, 2007, Zeitgeist, 162 min, NR) is a reality
documentary examining the Carthusian Order of
monks at the Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps. There is a detailed
discussion on blogger.
Commune (2004, dir. Jonathan Berman) about the
Black Bear Ranch in northern CA, founded in 1968, 78 min. Blogger. On The DC Shorts Film Festival,
I saw a
selection of the “best” (8 films). The details are on my blogspot movie entry. The DC Shorts
Festival also held a one day Lunafest event on
PSA: Texting While
Driving (UK, 4 min,
Short) Blogger.
WACO films
( Russian Ark (2002, Wellspring, dir. Alexsandr Sokurov, Russia,
96 min) takes us through 300 years of Russian history with a continuous
tour through the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, all 33 rooms
and with three orchestras. This film advertises itself as the first
feature movies made in one continuous shot, although I think that is not
true. (How about Rope?) The
history of the Romonovs and other families shows
in the pictures; I’m not sure of how many of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an
Exhibition show up. There is tremendous style and wintry color, and the
place would do Donald Trump proud. Lost in Paris, Texas (1984, Argos / Fox Searchlight, dir.
Wim Wenders, wr. Sam Shepard, 147 min, R) Curious indie film about
a man with amnesia, found in the desert by a brother, and recovering his
life, before going back out. Actually, the real town is in the East Texas
pine forest. Sarah Silverman: Jesus is
Magic (2005, Roadside
Attractions, dir. Liam Lynch, 72 min, R). Can you really a movie of a
standup comedy routine by turning it into a rondo with various little
episodes involving the speaker’s fans? Most of this little film is Sarah
Silverman’s standup performance, with some songs “Porn Queen”) and lots of
gags attacking social proprieties. She is the Jewish girl made big with
dirty comedy. Christianity is defined by making Jesus “magic.” But all of the sexual and scatological jokes ring hollow
compared to her potential. Maybe the “best” line, “the best time to get
pregnant is when you are a black teenager!” Or “American was the first Airline
to go through the Towers.” She stages an episode where gays and blacks,
when challenged in a movie studio lot, call themselves “faggots” and
“niggers” respectively. She has a lot of jokes about 9/11 and they are not
too funny. There are some gags about female private part hair and waxing,
but this is hardly threatening to the men. Oh, yes, movies are a visual
medium, and we can see that she shaves her underarms. Brian Posehn and Laura Silverman make an ungainly couple for
some of the rondo interludes. Fatal Lessons: The Good
Teacher
Dying to be Perfect: The Ellen Hart Pena Story. Hurrican Katrina Coverage: (Oprah Winfrey; Storm
that Drowned a City) CNN: We Were
Warned: Tomorrow’s Oil Crisis; Undercover in the Secret
State Liberty: The American
Revolution: The Reluctant Revolutionaries Gospel of Liberty (2005, Gateway, dir. Andrew Gardner,
G, 37 min) is a documentary of the history that led to the Statute for
Religious Freedom in Virginia in 1786, signed by Thomas Jefferson, five
years before the federal Bill of Rights in 1791. In the 1730s the Anglican
Church was still exacting heavy taxes on Virginia residents. The efforts
of preachers George Whitfield and Samuel Davies, with independent
preaching, sometimes starting in homes and in town squares, would lead to
pressure for formal religious freedom. Some of the narration is from a TJ
actor standing in the Capitol in Williamsburg. See also Williamsburg: The
Story of a Patriot Slavery and the Making of America Thomas Jefferson (1997, PBS “American Stories”, dir.
Ken Burns, 180 min) moved to
http://www.doaskdotell.com/movies/mjeff.htm “Mega-Disasters: The San Francisco
Earthquake “American Experience: The Great San
Francisco Earthquake” Mega Disasters:
Earthquake in the Heartland East Coast
Tsunami National
Geographic’s Ultimate
Tsunami Ultimate
Tornado Ultimate
Earthquake Da Vinci and the Code
He Lived By and
Understanding the Da Vinci Code Elvis: The Last 24
Hours (2005, GMVS,
dir. Mike Parkinson, 60 min) is a memoir of rock singer Elvis Presley with
emphasis on the last day of his life in 1977, his bad health and probably
death from a drug overdose. I can remember that it was a big deal with
Elvin was drafted into the Army. The Gates of Jerusalem (2003, Questar, dir. Rick Ray, Phil Cooke, narr. Richard Kiley, 122
min) is a documentary about the eight gates into the Old City of Jerusalem
and the history of the City up to the present day, including the taking
back of the Western Wall in 1967. There was a B.C. time when the Greeks
took over, and when Jews were actually prohibited from practicing
circumcision, and forced to watch nude Greek dramas. The modern conflict
between major faiths comes down to a conflict about the meaning and
importance of faith in a world where many people do not believe that they
can control their own personal fates with rationalism alone. The three
major faiths conflict on the final days, as to the coming of the Messiah,
the Second Coming, and the Final Judgmenet. Paris je
t’aime (“Paris,
I Love You”, 2007, First Look Releasing, 18 short films, transitions dir.
Emmanuel Benbihy; “Montmarte” (Bruno Podalydes), “Quais de Seine”
(Gurinder Chada), “Le Marais” (Gus Van Sant), “Tuileries” (Joel and
Ethan Coen), “Place des Victoires” (Nobuhiro Suwa), “Quartier des Enfants
Rouges” (Olivier Assayas), “Quartier Latin”
(Frederic Auburtin and Gerard Depardieu), “Tour
Eiffel” (Sylvain Chomet), “Bastille” (Isabelle
Coixet), “Quatier de
la Madelaine” (Vincenzo Natali), “Pere-Lachaise”, “Parc Monceau” (Alfonso Cuaron), “Loin de 16eme” (Walter Salles), “Porte de Choisy”
(Chritsopher Doyle), “Pigalle” (Richard LaGravenese), “Place des Fetes” (Oliver Schmitz), “Faubourg Saint-Denis” (Tom Twyker), “14th arrondissemente” (Alexander Payne). The Van Sant episode has a “Rosenfels” style talk between two apparently gay men
that turns into prattle over language. One of the episodes has some
interesting movie marques, including Werckmestier
Harmonies. Blogger review is here: http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/05/paris-i-love-you.html Mongolian Ping Pong (“Lu cao
di”, 2005, dir. Hao Ning, First Run Features, 102 min, PG, China) is a
good example of abstract story telling – especially the way film schools
and Hollywood view it, and this film was promoted well by Landmark
Theaters. Two boys on the steppe in Mongolia find a ping pong ball when
fetching water, and embark on a journey that will eventually take them to
a ping pong tournament in China. The film captures the high altitude clear
air of the steppes with breathtaking shots (it could have used
Cinemascope), among people who live simply. Gradually, bits of technology
get introduced, as they journey to China, but the dialogue and
consciousness always seems very collective. The Story of the Weeping
Camel (“Die Geschichte
vom weinendem Kamel”, ThinkFilm, dir.
Byambasuren Davaa and
Liugi Falorni, 87 min,
PG, Germany / Mongolia, in Mongolian with subtitles) A tender animal story that is like
a Disney documentary from the 50s. A camel rejects her unusual offspring,
a white camel, because he is “different”, so kids go on a journey to find
a musician who can charm the mother into caring for all her children.
There is a breathtaking scene inside a large, well-decorated Mongolian
tent home with a child crying. The Cave of the Yellow
Dog (“Die Hohle des gelben Hundes,” Tartan, dir. Byambasuren Davaa, 93 min,
G, Germany/Mongolia) is a gentle docudrama about nomadic life in Mongolia,
and a child who lets a stray dog “adopt” the family, with some
disapproval. There is a scene where a child is being fed and told she will
have to learn to look after her brother. Later the same child talks to her
mother about dreams, and the mother says that only children have dreams
about other lives (reincarnation). Mother Theresa of
Calcutta (“Madre
Theresa”, 2003, Alfred Haber / Fox Faith / Lux, dir. Fabrizio Costa, Italy, 110 min, G) A biography of
Mother Theresa (Olivia Hussey), who fought bureaucracy within the Catholic
Church to help the poor in India, and then was accused of participation in
a financial scandal, due to her naivite about
business matters. The media has made much recently of her personal crisis
in faith, her reported “doubts” as reported in her lifelong writings made
available at her passing. There is a scene near the end of the film where
she expresses her own personal darkness, which is seen as part of a
journey to know Christ. In a speech, she denounces our “culture of
indifference” and emphasis on personal merit. She also was criticized for
not converting people of other faiths to Catholicism, saying they should
be good in their own faith. Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall … and
Spring (“Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom”, 2004, Sony
Pictures Classics, dir. Ki-duk Kim, S. Korea,
2003, R). An elderly Bhuddist monk raises a boy in a floating monastery in
a mountain lake. He tries some cruel tricks with snakes and fish. Later,
the boy grows to manhood, finds a girl and marries. He returns after
killing her, and faces atonement and repentance, and renewal, but not
before his father immolates himself.
Part of his renewal is accepting the “be here now” experience of
monastic life. There is a great image in “Fall” where the old man uses a
cat’s tail to write a penance message in Korean script, holding the
meowing feline the whole time. This is a curiously auteurish film. The Class (“Entre les murs” or “Between the Walls”, 2009, Sony Pictures Classics, dir. Laurent Cantet, book by Francois Begaudeau) reality docudrama of a tough mixed-race Paris school and a young, possibly gay teacher. Blogger. Intimacy (2009, Empire / Koch Lorber/ Studio Canal, Patrice Chereau, based on stories by Hanish Kureishi, R or NC-17, 115 min, UK/France/Spain/Germany) Blogger. Forgiving Dr. Mendele (2006, First Run Features, dir. Bob
Hercules and Cheri Pugh, 82 min) has Eva Moser Kor, a survivor of Auschwitz, going through a public
exercise of forgiving the Nazi scientist who performed eugenics
experiments on her and her twin sister. The debates get into what
forgiveness is for: is it to get on with your own life, is it to accept a
more collective view of morality, is it essentially religious in nature,
and what is the relationship to atonement and justice? She opens a
Holocaust museum in Indiana, which gets burned down once and
reopened. When Will I Be Loved? (2004, A Short Film About Love (“Krotki
film o milosci”, 1988, Kino/Zespol Filmoy, dir.
Krzysztof Kieslowski, 83 min). A young man Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko)
plays “rear window” on neigjbor Magda (Grazyna Szapolowaska).
Eventually she challenges and invites him. In a confrontation, he has a
premature ejaculation when she says “it’s just love.” He tries to slit his
wrists. Then there is a final twist to the plot. The feature expands from
film 6 of “The Decalogue”.
The A Short Film About
Killing (“Krotki film o zabijaniu”,
1988, Kino/Zespol Filmoy, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski, 82 min).
While a defense lawyer (Krzysztof Globisz)
proudly finishes school and enters the bar, a psychopathic drifter (Miroslaw Baka) throws rocks
from overpasses and then garrots a taxi driver,
in a graphic scene. The lawyer cannot stop the relentless execution by
hanging, which the psychopath resists to the end. The film is taken as an
argument against capital punishment. It’s surprising how “capitalist”
Communist Warsaw looks here. This feature expands from film 5 of “The
Decalogue”. The
On the Lot: (Fox) http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/05/on-lot-18-one-minute-comedy-films.html
On “Under the Gun”, by Hilary Graham. “How to Have a Girl”, by David May. “Die Hardly Working”, by Zach Lipovsky. July 3: “The Malibu Myth:, by Kenneth Luby; “Anklebiters”, by Sam Friedlander; “Midnight Snack”, by Andrew Hunt; “Eternal Waters”, by Jason Epperson; “Open House”, by Shira Lee Shalit; “Profile”, by Mateen Kemet. July 10 “Time Upon a Once” by Zach Lipovsky; “The Legend of Donkey-Tail Willie”; “Spaghetti”, by Will Bigham; “First Sight”, by Shalini Kantayya; “Worldy Possessions” by Adam Stein. July 17: “Key Witness” by Sam Friedlanber; “Sweet” by Jason Epperson “Zero2Sixty” by Andrew Hunt; “The Losers” by Kenny Luby; “Catch” by Mateen Kemet. July 24: “Bonus Feature” by Zach Lipovsky; “Girl Trouble” by Adam Stein; “Unplugged” by Will Bigham; “Keep off Grass” by Andrew Hunt; “American Hoe” by Sam Friedlander; “Old Home Boyz” by Jason Epperson; July 31: “Driving Under the Influence” (Adam Stein); “Backseat Driving Test” (Sam Friedlander); “Bonus Feature 2” (Zach Lipovsky); “The Move” (Jason Epperson); “Road Rage 101” (Will Bigham); August 7: “The Yes Men” (Will Bigham); “Dress for Success” (Sam Friedlander); “Army Guy” (Adam Stein); “Oh Boy” (Jason Epperson) http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/06/on-lot-15-semi-finalists-5-films.html;
http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/06/lot-5-more-short-films-generally.html http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/06/on-lot-6-comedy-shorts-12-contestants.html http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-lot-6-contestant-horror-films.html http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-worlds-collide-on-lot.html
http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-lot-camera-action-its-buy.html http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/07/comedy-club-on-lot.html http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-lot-5-finalists-film-in-school.html
http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/08/lot-is-left-with-its-fantastic-four.html
L’Chaim AFI Silvedocs
2007 Shorts 5: “Long
Distance”: “6 Conceptions of Freedom (2007, dir, Thomas A. Ostbye, Norway, 19 min); “Calcutta Calling” (2007;
dir. Andre Hormann, Germany/India, 16 min); “My
9/11”; dir. Tjebbo Penning, Netherlands, 12 min;
“Talk to Me”, dir. Mark Craig, 23 min, UK). Blogger reviews: http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/06/afi-silverdocs-shorts-5-long-distance.html Magnolia Pictures and Landmark: Five
Best Live Action Shorts, 2007 Oscar nominees:
At Night (“Om natten”, 2007, Zentropa, dir. Christian E. Christiansen, 39 min, Denmark; The Tonto Woman (2007, Knucklehead, dir. Daniel Barber, story by Elmore Leonard, 35 min, UK/Spain); The Substitute (“Il Supplente”, 2007, Frame by Frame, dir. Andrea Jublin, Italy, about 20 min,; The Mozart of Pickpockets (“Le Mozart des Pickpocket”, 2006, Kare, dir. Phillipe Polet-Villard, about 25 min, France, 1.85:1); Argentine Tango, (“Tanghi
argentine” ,2006, Dreams in Motion, dir. Guy Thys, Demographic
Winter: The Decline of the American Family (2008, Family First
Foundation, dir. Rick Stout and Barry McClerran), blogger.
Documentary about the political and social changes that accompany lower
birthrates and increased lifespans among affluent populations. The website
has a long preview trailer with interviews (movie link). Digital Media Conference (AFI)
shorts: “Fox Attacks
Black America” (2007, David Greenwald); “Mission Accomplished” (2007,
David Greenwald); “Second Life”; “Promise of the Internet” (1994). Blogger
reviews. Boyds Negro School: Historic Lives
(2006, Heritage
Montgomery MD, 26 min) documents a one room schoolhouse in rural Maryland
a century ago under segregation. Blogger. Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black
Mormons (2009,
Proud American (2008, Lightsource, dir. Fred Ashman, 96 min) is a corporate
patriotic film about successful immigrants and minorities, blogger
discussion here. 10 Questions for the Dalai
Lama (2007, Monterrey,
dir. Rick Ray, 85 min) is a documentary about the 14th Dalai
Lama Tenzin Gyatso, now in exile in India.
Blogger review: Compare to “Into Great Silecne”
above. Details at http://billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com/2007/06/10-questions-for-dalai-lama.html
The Unmistaken Child (2009, Oscilloscope, dir. Nati Baratz,
Israel/UK/Germany, 102 min) About a monk who finds and parents a
reincarnated Bhuddist lama. Blogger. Nanking (2007, ThinkFilm/HBO, dir. Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, a docudrama with actors and survivors of the Japanese plunder of Nanking at the end of 1937. Blogger. The Children of
Huang Shi (2008, Sony Pictures Classics, dir. Roger Spottiswoode, Fredericksburg: A Documentary
Film (narrated by
James Earl Jones, National Park Service, 22 min)
is shown at the Fredericksburg VA Visitor Center at the Fredericksburg and
Spotsylvania Battlefields Memorial. (There is a longer version of the film
on a very expensive Manassas: The End of
Innocence (Conagree, dir. Ben Brutt, 45
min) is shown at Mansassas Battlefield Park in
VA, blogger.
Historic Jamestowne (NPS) Blogger. The American President: Woodrow
Wilson (New York Life
Fund, 16 min) is shown in the Woodrow Wilson house in Washington DC. It
emphasizes that Wilson got elected president in 1912 intended domestic
reform and did not intend to get involved in overseas squabbles, but when
he entered World War I in 1917, he implored to “make the world safe for
democracy.” The film does not discuss the sedition laws, but it does
mention that White House groundskeepers were drafted, with sheep (actually
shown on black and white film) left to graze the White House lawn. His
stroke prevented his ability to push the League of Nations, which would
fail. Colonial Clothing: The Dress of
Eighteenth Century America (2002, Colonial Williamsburg, 17 min)
Men engage in “staymaking” to mold the dress
(petticoats and corsets) of colonial women, and go through elaborate dress
rituals themselves, including garters and wigs (usually requiring heads to
be shave). All kids, including boys, wear dresses. Patrick Henry: Quest for
Liberty (2007,
American Animation, dir. John Derrick, 34 min). History of the famous
speech in 1775. Blogger. Liberty or Death (2007, St John’s Church Foundation /
PBS, dir. Paul Tait Roberts, 57 min) is a
live-action reenactment of the famous speech. Blogger.
George Mason: The Bill of
Rights (1991/2007,
dir. Robert Cole, 28 min) available from Gunston
Hall, narrated by Roger Mudd. Blogger.
A New Birth of Freedom (2008), narrated by Morgan Freeman,
for the Gettysburg National Military Park visitor’s center, 22 min, in
Cinerama. Blogger. The AMW Story: America’s Most
Wanted, with John
Walsh, shown at the National Museum of Crime & Punishment in
Washington DC. Blogger. National Firearms
Museum (NRA, 10 min)
traces the US history of firearms in modern war, starting win canons, and
briefly touches on the Second Amendment. Loudoun Heritage Farm
Museum (2000). Blogger. Hillary: The Movie (2008, Citizens United, dir. Alan
Peterson) “exposes” the Clintons. Blogger.
St. Olaf’s College, 96 Years of
Christmas Festivals
(30 min, St Olaf’s, 2007), blogger. That link also discusses the 2007
Insomnia Film Festival entry “Change Inside” (River’s Edge
Films, Nathan Haustein). The film reminds me of some of
Epperson’s films from “On the Lot” above. Miscellaneous
digital shorts (“Mail by Rail”
by the USPS) including National Archives ‘s “Democracy Starts Here” and SNL Digital
Shorts (“Laser Cats”)
here; “Podium: The Obama Files” and
“Candyman’s Boudoir” here.
“The Best Look in the World”
has Shia La Beouf, Andy Samberg and others in
suits without pants, putting their legs together, hair included; some straight men engaging in some
homoerotic play. Blogger
here. Maybe SNL could use Carter Smith (“Bugcrush”) to do a digital short. Also check out MacGruber
on that blog. The Muslin-American
Experience, (2008,
LinkTV) online film festival. Includes “A Land
Called Paradise,” “The Sleeper Cell”, “Bassem in
Trying” (all directed by Lena Khan), “Arranged,” “Muslim While Flying,”
“Healing our Community,” “Glimpse”, “The Countdown,” “The Children of
Adam,” “21”, “Ordinary People”, “The USA Patriot Act Story,” “A Question
of Race and Islam”. Blogger
link. North Korea: A Day in the Life (“(“Noord-Korea: Een dag uit het leven”, 2004, Total Film / Key Monjey, dir. Pieter Fleury, 48 min) is an unobtrusive documentary of daily life in the hermit “kingdom” of Kin Jong Il. Blogger link. Right America, Feeling Wronged: Some Voices from the Campaign Trail (2009, HBO, dir. Alexandra Pelosi, 44 min). Blogger. Journalists Killed in the Line of Duty (2005, Starz / Overture / CameraPlanet, dir. Steven Rosenbaum, narr. Anderson Cooper) traces the story of Daniel Pearl and several other journalists killed by terrorists or by disease or by friendly fire. Blogger. A Powerful Noise (2009, Unity Films, dir. Tom Cappello, 85 min), Women in Vietnam, Mali and Bosnia struggle to lift their families and communities out of poverty. A one night event by iFathom “A Powerful Noise Live”. Blogger. The Dogwalker (2002, Reel Indie / Breakthrough /
Bigfoot, dir. Jacques Thelemaque, 97 min,
PG-13). A woman flees to LA from an abusive man and meets up with a
down-and-out dogwalker; they build a friendship
by helping each other. Blogger.
Short films from this director on the Revolution #9 (2001, Wellspring/Exile, dir. Tim McCann, 90 min, PG-13) A likable young male freelance writer and movie reviewer sinks into schizophrenia, but is it a plot? There is a lot about subliminal advertising; the title of the movie refers to a fictitious perfume product. Film schools and screenwriting teachers are likely to like this film. Blogger. Partly Private (2009, dir. Danae Eton) A Jewish couple contemplates circumcision for its sons. Blogger. Cold Showers (2006, “Douches froides”, Picture This!/BAC, dir. Antony Cortier, France, 99 min, NC-17): two judo teens in France form a threesome with a girl friend in an allegory to left-wing class struggle in French society. Blogger. The Other Side of Immigration (2009, dir. Roy Germano, 1 hr) showed at the Politics on Film festival in Washington DC. Blogger. Also shown with that film, the short on HIV-prevention, “Strapped” (2009, Stone Soup Films). Breaking News,
Breaking Down (2008, dir. Mike Walter, 36 min) about journalists who
cover trauma. Blogger.
Un-Natural State: Taxation Without Representation in Washington, D.C (2008, DCVote, dir. Kirk Mandeis, 65 min) Blogger. Around Venus By Balloon (2004, France, dir, Marteen Rove) the Venus greenhouse effect. Blogger. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (2008, ThinkFilm/HBO, dir. Marina Zenovicu). Blogger. Brand upon the Brain (2008, Seattle Film Company, dir. Guy Maddin, 100 min, Canada, R) Silent film style homage to director’s parents and their orphanage of horrors. Blogger. Also with the shorts : “It’s My Mother’s Birthday Today”, “Footsteps” and “97 Percent True” (50 min) a documentary about making this unusual film, almost afeature film itself. The Watermelon (2009, Celebrity Media/Lightsong, dir. Brad Mays, wr. Michael Hemminsgon, 90 min, R). A kind of localized “Odyssey” in LA. A hit at the San Diego film festival. Blogger. Uncross the Stars (2010, Echo Bridge, dir. Kenny Golde) A young widower builds a porch for a relative and comes to terms with his life. Involved in piracy litigation brought by the US Copyright Group. Blogger. The Steam Experiment (“The Chaos Experiment”, 2009, Genius/Cinepro, dir. Phillippe Martinez, 90 min). Blogger. Lucky Ducks (2010, TJP, dir, Tracey Jackson, 94 min) docudrama about a stormy relationshop with a spoiled daughter, trip to India. Blogger. The Kids Grow Up (2010, Shadow/HBO, dir. Doug Block). A documentary filmmaker sends his only daughter to college. Blogger. Silverdoc shorts 2010: “Arsy-Versy”, “A Moth in Spring”, “Big Birding Day”, “The Poodle Trainer” “The Herd” Blogger. Jerichow (2008, Cinema Guild, dir. Christian Petzhold, Germany, R) Love triangle involving a dishonorably discharged veteran. Blogger. The Secret of Kells (2010, Miramax International, dir. Thom Moore), animated feature about the origin of the Book of Kells. Blogger. The Room (2003, dir. Tommy Wiseau, 99 min). Tommy Wiseasu’s spoof of a movie industry that takes itself seriously, down to the musical trademar. Blogger. Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors without Borders (2008, Truly Indie, dir. Mark Hopkins, UK) Blogger. The Shpongletron Experience (2011, Shpongle), 90 minutes of animated video about alien
life forms and holding places in other worlds, as part of show. Blogger. Newseum Films: Running Toward Danger (2008, 11 min). Journalists and
emergency responders discuss their experience in New York City on
9/11. The collapse of each
tower is shown graphically. 45 Words: The Story of the First
Amendment (2007, 15
min) starts with the rancorous criticism of the King in the colonies, with
pictures of print linotypes, to Madison’s evolution of the Bill of Rights
in 1971, to President John Adams and the passing of the Sedition Act, and
the trial of Matthew Lyon (Congressman from Vermont) for criticizing the
possibility of an obscure war with France. The Power of the Image (2008, 8 min) is a narration that
summarizes many important moments in history, with a lot of combat images
(Vietnam) from the past fifty years. I-Witness News: 4-D Time Travel
Adventure (18
min) The Big Picture: Stories of our Lives
(20 min, Cinerama) The Rise of TV News (30 min) Bias; Sources; Getting It
Right News Wanted (7 min) The Pulitzer Pictures: Glimpses of the
Past (25 min) All of the
above are at this blogger link.
The First
200 Years: A Video Overview of the History of the First Baptist Church of the City of
Washington, DC 1802-2002, (100 minutes, digital video, written
by Deborah Cochran) was shown to the church audience on March 7, 2004.
Much of the film consists of stills, Ken Burns style, of scenes of the
church’s several locations and buildings since 1802. There are some
interviews, and in one early interview Dr. James Somerville (the current
pastor) explains that the Establishment clause in the First Amendment, and
hence so much of the litigation before the Supreme Court over the years,
owes its existence to Baptists, which at one time had started as a
denomination open to original thinking. The split into Northern and
Southern conventions (this church is in both) occurred over slavery before
the Civil War and for Southern Baptists the First Baptist Church in Dallas
is actually the largest in the country, I believe (I visited it when
living in Dallas in the 1980s, complete with Dr. Criswell). But the
Washington church went through quite a history itself over race, before
settling into the two largest properties, the next to last in existence
during World War II when I was born. I remember that sanctuary, and the
meetings at the Jewish Community Center while the new building was
erected, and I remember the first service on Christmas Day, 1955, with the
blue light coming through the windows waiting for their stained windows.
Dr. Pruden, in fact, talked about material
progress compared to spiritual progress that day. I would be baptized with
my mother in early 1956. Then, like so many baby boomers, I would go out
on my own. The church would start to lose membership in the 1970s as the
demographics of the Dupont Circle area changed
rapidly after Stonewall. But
the church would host presidents, including Jimmy Carter who often taught
Sunday School there during his term (I attended a few times and met him,
when he taught the “divorce chapter” in Matthew), and sometimes during his
first few months, Bill Clinton, when Everett Goodwin was pastor. (In the
1990s the Church would participate in one of Mr. Carter’s favorite
legacies, Habitat for Humanity, and regularly makes lunches for the
homeless, sponsors youth chess tournaments and participates in other
community activities.) Now this gets into the story that I tell in my own
1997 book, Do Ask Do Tell: A Gay Conservative Lashes Back, and the
main references are in Chapter 1 and Chapter 4. This
film has more different selections from classical music than any other
film in history, all performed at the church. It is easy for me to imagine
this being shown on PBS, at least the local WETA station—but that’s my
theory. On On On On “World Vision 30 Hour Famine” (8
min) is a youth movement for hunger. Blogger.
The “30 Hour Famine” site is here. The Mount
Vernon estate of George Washington is We Fight To Be Free (2006, Greystone, dir. Kees von
Oostrum, USA, 18 min) with Sebastian Roche as
George Washington and Caroline Goodall as Martha
Custis. The story of George Washington is shown
in retrospect from the Christmas 1776 crossing of the Deleware River, with a scene in the French and Indian
Wars where Washington takes command when Braddock is killed. In 2.35 : 1 Panavision and stunning photography and sound
with a romantic soundtrack by Trevor Jones. One of the best museum films
around. “Building Blocks” and “Vote! Earth” from Digital Media
Conference 2009, Blogger.
Cannes shorts from NFC, Film Board of Canada: “The Forbidden Tree” (Iran); “The Story of My Life” (“Toute ma vie”) (France); “The Technician” (Quebec); “The Report Card” (“La pagella”) (Italy). Blogger.
----- Some remarks here about a few “older” small foreign (and, I guess, domestic) films. The Red Balloon (“Le Ballon rouge”, Red Envelope / Films Montsouris, dir. Albert Lamorisse, 38 min, 1956, G) A young boy in working class Paris streets climbs a wall and retrieves a red balloon that has a life of its own, and follows him around. At the end, he is lifted off the ground and flies over Paris like Mary Poppins by a cohort of rainbow balloons. The director’s son plays the boy. White Mane (“Crin blanc: Le cheval sauvage”, Red Envelope / Films Montsouris, dir. Albert Lamorisse, 40 min, 1953, G, black and white) A boy comes across a white horse in the Carmargue, where the Rhone meets the Mediterranean, and sets out to rescue it when ranchers try to lasso and keep it. The film has many abstract scenes of the horse in marsh and seems like an exercise in impressionism. The boy, Alain Emery, plays the part with a lot of charisma. There is little dialogue in either of these films, usually shown together. Shoah (1985, New Yorker, dir. Claude Lanzmann, France, 9 hrs) is a series of four films based on interviewing survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. The first film concentrates on some communities in Poland (such as Chelmno and Koto). As survivors speak, the landscapes of the countryside and towns (often with snow and cloud cover), and especially trains and railroad tracks are shown. There are many shots of Auschwitz-Birkenau, including the indoor works next to the Crematoria, where Jews themselves were forced to dispose of the bodies of their brethren. Woman in the Dunes (“Suna no onna,” 1964, Pathe, dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, novel by Kobo Abe, Japan, 123 min) was a sensational little black-and-white film about an entomologist who falls into a hole and is trapped with a rather hungry woman. Lies (“Gojitmal”, Fox Lorber / Wellspring, dir. Sun-Woo Jang, Korea, 115 min, NC-17), a meta-film about sado-masochism. The Venus Wars (1989, Manga, dir. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, Japan) animated civil war on terraformed Venus. Blogger. The Bicycle Thief (“Ladri di Biciclette”, 1948, Arthur Mayer & Joseph Bustryn, dir, Vittorio di Sica) is a favorite of screenwriting affaciandos because if makes a compelling, well-structured story out of a situation so basic and simple. A man has pawned the family linen to buy a bicycle so that he can get a job putting up posters. The bike is stolen while he is working, in plain sight. He and his son go off on a quest to find the thief. Will morality be relative? Black and white, very intimate, very elementary. This is a WWII world where people have few choices. The Flower Girl (about 1971, North Korea, 180 min) may be the worst film I ever saw, in my case, in the fall of 1974 in the Washington Square Methodist Church in Greenwich Village in New York City shortly after I had moved there while working for NBC as a computer programmer. This is a story about a little girl who goes out into the fields and rice paddies working “with the people” in order to buy medicine for her mother. It goes on and on and rants and raves about communal existence. Don’t confuse this with any other western film that might have the same name. Jet Lag (“Decalage horaire”, 2002, Miramax, dir. Daniele Thompson) was shown as a closing night film at an international film festival in Minneapolis, and I believe the director was there. A beautician (Juliette Binoche) and cook (Jean Reno) are stranded together at Charles De Gaulle airport just north of Paris (that’s where I landed in 1999), and, in a situation comedy that keeps them together, go from animosity to amour. The film is slick (2.35:1) but uses a curious sepia filter that keeps the airport environment stagey. The American film “The Terminal” a couple years later makes a good comparison. Say Amen, Somebody (1983, United Artists Classics, dir. George T. Nierenberg, 100 min, PG) A spirited docudrama about African American gospel music, focusing on Thomas A. Dorsey and Willie May Ford Smith. Harry’s War
(1981, Taft, dir. Kieth Merrill) is a “comedy”
about a man who goes to war (literally) with the Z (1969, Cinema V, dir. Costa-Gravas, novel by Vasilis Vasilikos,127 min, France) A right wing group covers up an assassination leading to the overthrow of a democratic government in Greece. The film amounts to an effective warning about what can happen even in stable countries. Music by Mikis Theodorakis, quite memorable. Brighty of the Grand Canyon (1967,
Feature Film, dir. Norman Foster, novel by Marguerite Henry, 89 min, G) is
based on the popular children’s novel. A wild burro befriends a
prospector, who is waylaid and murdered in the Grand Canyon. The killer
takes the burro, who escapes and connects up with
a little boy and the good guys. The movies has
two graphic scenes involving an attack with a mountain lion. The
Grey Gardens (1975, Janus / Portrait, dir. Ellen Hovde and Albert Maysles, 94 min). The aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Edith Bouvier Beale and “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, live in squalor and fight in the Hamptons. Blogger. Brother’s
Keeper (1992, Jacob: The Man Who Fought With God ((“Giacobbe, l'uomo che lottò con Dio”), 1963, Eurocine / San Paolo, dir. by Marcello Baldi, Italy, 115 min) – besides touching on Sodom and Gormorrah, it documents, however superficially, the source of a major fetish. Blogger. Saul and David (1964, Eurocine / San Paolo, dir. Marcello Baldi, 113 min). Blogger. Peeping Tom (1960, Janus, dir. Michael Powell, UK, 101 min), the British “Psycho” and quite a commentary on 1960 film and video technology. Blogger. Open Secret (1944, Eagle Lion, dir. John Reinhardt). Antisemtism Post WWII Blogger.
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