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Classic DVD: Blow-Up (1966)

January 4, 2011 in Film | Permalink

David Hemmings photographs Veruschka, who is now 71 and still models occasionally.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s drama about a fashion photographer who may or may not have accidentally recorded a murder being committed uses the alluring backdrop of Swinging ’60s London to meditate on the frustrating elusiveness of truth. Blow-Up became an art-house smash in the U.S. in 1966, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, perfectly attuned as it was to the Kennedy assassination paranoia that the Warren Commission was never able to quell.

David Hemmings plays an obnoxious, nameless photographer, who berates his female models and fancies himself something of an unappreciated artist. While in the park one day, he stealthily snaps a man and woman in the distance, but she eventually spies him and pursues him vigorously. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) desperately wants him to turn over the film.

The photographer realizes why she’s so panicked when he later blows up the image and notices what might be a man in a bush pointing a pistol. Did the gunman commit a murder after the photo was taken? Or is he seeing something in the photo that isn’t really there? A friend peers at the enlarged picture and remarks to the photographer that it looks like one of “those paintings,” meaning an Op Art piece, whose meaning shifts depending on the perspective from which it’s viewed.

Early in the film, another of the photographer’s friends, an artist, opines about his Abstract paintings: “They don’t do anything at first…just a mess…afterwards I find something to hang onto…it adds up.” But what if life, more fleeting than art and too restless to truly study, does not? (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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Classic Film: Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers (1978)

December 28, 2010 in Film, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Of the three versions of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, a story about enemies secretly living among us, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version was the one that had the weakest sociological context to play off of. The 1956 original was made in the age when McCarthy and HUAC were conducting a witch hunt for alleged communists in our midst. The 2007 version was filmed in a time when terrorist sleeper cells were a reality. So why is Kaufman’s version, which largely is a satire about the rather mundane evil of the self-help industry, so much more effective than the others? Sometimes talent trumps context.

The Kaufman version stars Donald Sutherland as Matthew Bennell, a San Francisco Health Department inspector who spends his days making surprise visits to restaurants, trying to differentiate between capers and rat turds. His staid life in interrupted when his secret office crush, Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams), begins having problems with her boyfriend. The thing is, Elizabeth doesn’t only feel that her beau has changed suddenly and drastically, but that people all over San Francisco are becoming emotionless and creepy overnight. Matthew doesn’t agree initially but is forced to see her point after a number of shocking occurrences. Meanwhile, a personal-growth guru (Leonard Nimoy) uses feel-good palaver to try to calm every one down as the city falls into chaos. “You will be born again into an untroubled world,” Matthew is ominously told at one point, and he and Elizabeth and their friends realize they have to run for their lives before they too are transformed into drones.

Kaufman and cinematographer Michael Chapman, who would soon work his magic on Raging Bull, use San Fran’s quirky beauty to amazing advantage: every sloping sidewalk seems sinister, steam in an old dry cleaner becomes a fog of suspicion, each exotic flower doubles as a weapon. What results is one of the best genre pictures ever made, and one that wisely knows that paranoia knows no particular season and the fear that things aren’t what they appear to be never goes out of style.•

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Classic Film: The Stepford Wives (1975)

December 24, 2010 in Film | Permalink

With a pair of novels, 1967’s Rosemary’s Baby and 1972’s The Stepford Wives, the late Bronx-born writer Ira Levin tapped into the pulse of the women’s movement, just as Sleeping Beauty was awakening from her slumber without the aid of a prince’s kiss. Playing on the dreams of some insecure men who wished she would return to unconsciousness and the nightmares of some wary women who feared that such a relapse just might be possible, Levin crafted a pointed pair of paranoid satires, each of which received an excellent screen adaptation.

In the Stepford Wives, directed by Bryan Forbes, lawyer Walter Eberhart (Peter Masterson) talks his reluctant wife, aspiring Manhattan photographer Joanna (Katherine Ross), into moving their family to an idyllic town in the Connecticut ‘burbs. Leafy Stepford seems excellent: good schools, safe streets, low taxes. Walter loves it, quickly joining a local all-men’s club. (“They seem like a nice bunch of guys…they have a nice thing going here.”) But Joanna notices something peculiar about the women–they’re mostly obedient automatons who live to serve their husbands and boost their egos. And when less-docile local ladies go away for weekends with their spouses, they return as similarly happy, hollow homebodies.

Joanna realizes there’s likely some sort of attitude adjustment coming her way that she’d rather not stick around for, but the town seems almost designed to prevent her departure. “Isn’t it funny the things you do when you’re in love?” she says wistfully early in the film, thinking about an old flame. But funnier still are the things people will do when they’re threatened.•

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Classic Film: Rollerball (1975)

December 21, 2010 in Film, Videos | Permalink

A satire about an unspeakable future in which the world is ruled by a global corporatocracy, athletics have devolved into blood sport and people pop happy pills, Norman Jewison’s thoughtful 1975 drama is a paranoid vision that today seems a little too familiar for comfort.

In the not-too-distant future, a few corporate executives make decisions for everyone in the world. Borders and war and disease and poverty have been eradicated, so why is everyone downing pills and looking for brutal diversions to stave off the pain? One such despicable entertainment is rollerball, a human demolition derby with a body count that’s a welter of roller derby, football, martial arts and motocross. Jonathan E. (James Caan) is the swaggering star player of rollerball. Trouble is, the game isn’t supposed to have any stars. It’s been contrived to demonstrate to the masses that individual spirit equals futility, and that it’s best to stand at attention when the corporate anthem plays. One high-ranking executive (John Houseman, in all his scary gravitas) tells Jonathan that he needs to retire gracefully, but Jonathan, having felt slighted by the corporate overlords in the past, says no. That leads to the game’s violence being ratcheted up even further, as the suits try to eliminate the rebellious rollerballer.

When Jonathan’s teammate and best buddy, Moonpie (John Beck), is left comatose after a brutal battering by the Tokyo team, a doctor matter-of-factly describes his condition: “There is no consciousness, just a deep coma…no dreams…nothing.” Jonathan refuses to sign papers authorizing the doctors to pull the plug on Moonpie, deciding that he will hold out hope that some dreams are still possible. Then he returns to the arena for further battle.•

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New DVD: Exit Through The Gift Shop

December 15, 2010 in Film | Permalink

L.A. clothier Thierry Guetta, a.k.a. Mr. Brainwash.

Labeling what is ostensibly an art documentary as the best English-language comedy of 2010 might sound odd, but then so little of the debut film by acclaimed British street artist Banksy is truly ostensible and so much of it strange and wonderful. What supposedly started as a portrait about graffiti guerrillas by French-born Los Angeles clothier Thierry Guetta morphs instead into a profile about Guetta himself, who decides impetuously to become a celebrated artist just like his heroes, despite a lack of training and experience. Or is it all just an elaborate Banksy prank excoriating the trendiness of the art world?

Guetta sells second-hand clothes in L.A. at ridiculous mark-ups and is never without his trusty video camera, filming everyone and everything for no apparent reason. As he explains how this unusual habit led him to being the go-to assistant/cameraman for street artists after a meeting with Shepherd Fairey, he frequently fractures the English language. This happens not only because English is his second language but also because he is apparently something of an imbecile. Through Fairey, Guetta meets all the other major players in the global graffiti world, including the reclusive Banksy. The two become very close. Late in the game, Banksy begins to realize that Guetta, who is visiting him in Britain, may be less a filmmaker than a mentally ill man with a camera. In order to be rid of him, Bansky encourages Guetta to return to Los Angeles and create some art for a small show that Banksy will arrange.

But Guetta thinks bigger, immediately transforms himself into artist “Mr. Brainwash,” mortgaging everything he owns to hire a large staff for a Kostabi-ish assembly line and rent a humongous space for the exhibition. He ultimately creates a gigantic assemblage of knock-off Pop Art that turns the sprawling gallery into a Warholian vomitorium. As the show’s opening approaches and one disaster after another occurs, the suspense grows: Will Mr. Brainwash be able to sell his art for many times its worth as Guetta did with ratty T-shirts and torn jeans? If he is successful, does it reveal that much of what goes on in the art world is a con? Or is it all just a Banksy con? That the latter appears to be true doesn’t in any way diminish the great amusement of this film. Actually, it just enhances it.•

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Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Stay Hungry (1976)

December 13, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Bob Rafelson says that during the shoot, Arnold Schwarzenegger told him that some day he would become California Governor.

A movie about shady land deals and stormy bodybuilding competitions in 1970s Birmingham, Alabama, Bob Rafelson’s Stay Hungry has such an eclectic cast, such strange tonal shifts and such general oddness of all sorts that it never found the audience it deserved. It’s by no means a perfect movie but still one that should be seen, if only for its audacity to team Jeff Bridges, Sally Field, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Englund and Fannie Flagg.

Craig Blake (Bridges) is a well-born, sad-faced Southern gent who’s been in mourning for two years, since the accidental death of his parents. Searching for something to occupy his time, he gets roped into a dubious land-acquisition scheme in which some good ol’ boys are buying up local businesses and fleecing the mom-and-pop owners. Blake is charged with purchasing for peanuts a dingy gym, but his mission becomes complicated when he falls for one of the establishment’s fetching employees (Field) and befriends a hulking bodybuilder (Schwarzenegger) who’s training there. These two and others at the gym become an unlikely surrogate family for Blake, and he introduces them into his genteel and snobbish society at some risk.

Stay Hungry is teeming with talent, even if it doesn’t always know what to do with it, sometimes clumsily mixing comic scenes with disturbing ones. But at its essence, it’s a gentle if eccentric story of a wounded man slowly realizing that he needs to move beyond his comfortable milieu if he’s to find the things he needs to live. In addition to that, there’s Robert Englund as an exercise instructor and Arnold Schwarzenegger dressed in cowboy garb playing a fiddle. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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Classic DVD: Westworld (1973)

December 9, 2010 in Film, Science/Tech, Videos | Permalink

Michael Crichton’s 1973 sci-fi and Western mash-up is the best kind of genre film, one that uses familiar conventions to ruminate on the unconventional. In the case of Westworld, a futuristic theme park is the setting for discussion about how unprepared we are for that moment when artificial intelligence surpasses the human kind.

Delos is a $1,000-a-day wonderland, filled with lifelike robots, that makes real the violent and sexual fantasies of (mostly male) American tourists. “The vacation of the future today,” the company promises, offering consumers the opportunity to engage in orgies in the Roman Empire, sword fights in Medieval times or shootouts in the 1880s Wild West. Two Chicago guys (James Brolin and Richard Benjamin) head to Westworld, where they encounter a plethora of mechanical varmints and strumpets who are programmed to lay down–in gunfights or sexually–for their human “betters.”

But the technology inside the robots has continually improved, and they’ve begun showing signs that they’re just about done taking orders. In fact, the Singularity is nearer than anyone knows, and the bots begin to bite back. Pretty soon, humans are on the wrong end of jousts and duels as the tin machines become killing machines.

One particularly ornery automated gunslinger (Yul Brynner) seeks out Benjamin’s mild-mannered tourist, a lawyer who thought some harmless adventure would help him through a rough patch after a bitter divorce. At this point, the film puts aside its big ideas in favor of a mano a roboto faceoff. But no matter how this particular battle plays out, the war seems to have an unavoidable conclusion, one infused with a knowledge that we will no longer be able to control or understand. As one dejected scientist says resignedly about the robots run amok: “They’ve been designed by other computers…we don’t know exactly how they work.”•

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And Then The Godfather Faded Into Obscurity

December 7, 2010 in Excerpts, Film | Permalink

"I don't believe I have the stomach for it." (Image by Ed Fitzgerald.)

From the Letters to the Editor section of the April 21, 1972 Life magazine:

“Sirs: Richard Schickel gives The Godfather a pretty darn good review (‘The Resurrection of Don Brando,’ March 31), one that would likely send me to see this movie. But then I read another opinion in the local paper (‘Somehow I don’t find rape entertaining, murder funny or violence acceptable’). I feel sure I would see The Godfather as this critic did and I don’t believe I have the stomach for it.–Claude Ash, Havertown, PA.“

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Classic DVD: Slacker (1991)

December 6, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Teresa Taylor peddling an alleged Madonna pap smear, in the film's most famous scene.

Richard Linklater’s fresh and fascinating 1991 debut, Slacker, is an action film if you consider walking slow and talking fast to be action. Using a $25K budget, a screenplay with no narrative thread and a cast of seemingly loco locals in Austin, Texas, Linklater made a movie that challenged the prevailing notion of what an independent film had to be if it aspired to commercial success.

The movie is structured as a chain reaction in which the camera eavesdrops on a conversation and then departs with people who had some contact (often glancing) with those having the conversation. Then it listens in on the new conversation, which has nothing to do with the one that preceded it, and leaves with the next subjects. And so on. The people indulging in the bull sessions are underemployed, anarchic Gen-X townies who’ve given up on society without giving in. Some of these self-styled pariahs passionately suggest violent insurrection may be the answer to the country’s woes, but they don’t seem eager to leave their apartments to partake in such a struggle. And they’re just as fixated on the ridiculous as the profound. Some questions that arise: Have astronauts been on the moon since the ’50s? Is a stolen Madonna pap smear a salable commodity? Is Elvis Presley alive and supporting himself as an Elvis impersonator?

Any of these scenes might seem slight on their own, but the movie has an overarching philosophy that belies its casual tone. As one character imparts about another matter altogether: “The underlying order is chaos.” (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Decasia–The State Of Decay (2002)

November 29, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Ruined antique stock footage of a boxer in training.

Bill Morrison’s brilliant 2002 experimental film, Decasia: The State of Decay, uses ruined antique film stock and a brilliant score by Michael Gordon to meditate on aging, imperfection and loss–and the surprising solace these things can bring.

The director presents a seemingly unrelated stream of silent images that has been degraded by exposure and poor maintenance: a man in a fez does a whirling dance, butterflies flit about, firefighters make a rescue, a baby is born, a camel walks across the desert, a boxer hits a punching bag, an artist paints a portrait, workers run looms and machinery, nuns watch over children, etc. The scenes represent all the important aspects of life–birth, nature, play, labor, culture and love–but the images are often partially or wholly distorted and obscured by damage to the film, alternately creating effects akin to a house of mirrors, sunspots, sand storms and eclipses. Gordon’s furious score is the perfect counterbalance to the unimposing scenes, sounding at different times like an ambulance siren, a war march and a rocket hurtling toward Earth.

What makes Decasia so profoundly moving is its verisimilitude to life itself, as all of us age from the moment we’re born, collecting imperfections from the start. But Morrison shows that there’s beauty in the wear, treasure in the detritus, gold in the rust. What a beautiful consolation. (Available from Netflix and other venues.)

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Classic DVD: 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993)

November 26, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Feore approaches the camera during the spare opening of Franςois Giraud's wry biopic.

The stark opening sequence of Franςois Giraud’s brilliantly impressionistic 1993 biopic, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, is an extremely long take of the eponymous classical pianist walking across snowy terrain, beginning as a mere dot in the distance until he’s ultimately in close range of the camera. The scene might be too unsubtle if it wasn’t so offbeat: It’s the filmmaker boldly saying that he will idiosyncratically reveal the titanically talented and remote musician, who abandoned the concert hall for a brief and doomed life of seclusion and eccentricity.

As the title suggests, the film is divided into vignettes, alternates narrative and documentary, allows its lead (Colm Feore) an understated yet suitably unusual performance, and makes plenty of time for odd yet literally titled sequences like “45 Seconds and a Chair.” There’s just as much attention paid to the tics, neuroses and small obsessions that made Gould who he was as there is to his grand moments.

That’s not to say that Giraud glosses over the Canadian musician’s dramatic times; he just doesn’t accentuate them with a heavy hand, needlessly punctuating and underlining. In the key scene that recalls Gould’s last concert, there’s an air of deadpan and matter-of-factness. The whole thing just sort of sneaks up on you, as life often does. (Available by streaming on Netflix.)

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“The Face Of Fred Astaire Is So Enormously Stupid”

November 26, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Werner Herzog, from On the Ecstasy of Ski-Flying: Werner Herzog in Conversation with Karen Beckman:

“How he moves and how he dances is phenomenal…Fred Astaire..it is somehow something else because it’s so absolutely and crazily stylized, it’s so remote from the real world as you can get. For only ten dollars you can remove yourself from reality as far as you can even imagine. And him singing, ‘Don’t Monkey with Broadway,’ and the way they are dancing, it’s just phenomenal. And the face of Fred Astaire is so enormously stupid. I have never seen a face that projects stupidity in such a bold way as he does. And lines of dialogue and the songs they are singing are so phenomenally stupid, and still I love it and I don’t know why. There’s something very dear to my heart. When I even think about Fred Astaire, I become mellow.”

 

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Featured Video: Taxi Driver As A Rom-Com

November 22, 2010 in Film, Videos | Permalink

“At the corner of hope and destiny, everyone can find a taxi driver.”

(Thanks Newmark’s Door.)

Classic DVD: Pickpocket (1959)

November 22, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Michel often studies "Prince of the Pickpockets," Richard Stanton Lambert's 1930 book about 18th-century thief (and, later, cop!) George Barrington.

Franςois Truffaut famously said that Robert Bresson’s 1959 drama, Pickpocket, was the greatest date movie ever made, though he might have added that it helps if you’re dating an existential thief. The film’s anti-hero, Michel, is a Parisian intellectual who could easily earn his own way, but he believes, as if he were sprung from the pages of Camus or Nietzsche, that he needs to defy the laws of God and man and make other people’s watches and wallets his own.

Morose Michel (Martin LaSalle) lives a sluggish, threadbare existence, spending all his time perfecting his illicit technique and furthers his education when he falls in with a pack of more experienced thieves. As his obsession with the “craft” grows, Michel halfheartedly plays a cat-and-mouse game with an acquaintance who happens to be a police chief (Jean Pélégri). Equally lackadaisical is his (perhaps) budding romance with Jeanne (Marika Green), his sickly mother’s beautiful neighbor.

When the criminal tries to explain to the police inspector that some men should be allowed to transgress society’s rules for the good of society, the lawman will have none of it. “That’s the world upside down,” he points out.  “It’s already upside down,” retorts Michel. And from that moment on it’s a briskly paced race to see if Michel’s hands will end up holding Jeanne’s or in handcuffs. (Available from Netflix and other venues.)

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Classic DVD: Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

November 19, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Burstyn, who won an Oscar for her role, years later said she thought the violent scenes went too far.

One of the films that Martin Scorsese made as a hired hand, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is the testosterone-fueled director’s surprisingly successful attempt at something resembling a feminist film, albeit one with the filmmaker’s trademark endless profanity and macho violence.

Housewife Alice Hyatt (Ellen Burstyn) lives in fear in small-town New Mexico, married to an irrational husband with a hair-trigger temper that could explode at any moment in the direction of her or her 11-year-old smartass son, Tommy (Alfred Lutter). Tragedy affords her a respite when her abusive spouse dies in an auto accident, but with little money and few skills, it’s not going to be easy to move her and her boy to Monterey, California, her childhood home which she still idealizes. She sings at piano bars and is game to wait tables, but those jobs won’t allow her to get rich quick.

Alice’s taste in men doesn’t help much, either. She hooks up almost immediately with a married psycho (Harvey Keitel), and is soon forced to flee from him to Tucson with tart-mouthed Tommy in tow. There she gets a job slinging hash at a diner and meets a nice guy (Kris Kristofferson)–or is he?–and hopes her luck may be changing. But because she was raised to be someone’s wife, Alice is always short on confidence. “I don’t know how to live without a man, that’s what it is,” she says, realizing the crux of her problem.

Because Alice dreams such small dreams, this movie feels a little dated even though it was true to its time for certain women. But there is so much richness here. Diane Ladd is just great as Alice’s foul-mouthed fellow waitress Flo, who has known as much unhappiness as Alice but treats bitter disappointment as yet another target for her big-hearted sass. Alice instinctively dislikes Flo at first, fearing that she can never carry herself with such gusto. But she comes to understand that boldness is less often something you’re born with than something you learn. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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Small, Strange & Forgotten Films: Gates Of Heaven (1978)

November 15, 2010 in Film, Urban Studies | Permalink

"Trooper is the kind of dog who didn't have other dogs to relate to. He lived with adult human beings."

Errol Morris’ first great character study was his very first feature, the seriously peculiar and penetrating 1978 documentary, Gates of Heaven. The movie examines a California pet cemetery with 450 deceased residents and the many off-center human characters who have buried their beloved there.

Floyd McClure is the proprietor of the Foothill Memorial Gardens pet cemetery in San Francisco. He loved his late collie and hated the local rendering plant, so he followed his heart and built a final reward for dogs, cats, horses, hamsters, frogs, etc. While McClure has a great affection for animals, he hasn’t a great mind for numbers and is forced to sell his business to the Lamberts family, who transfer the deceased to a property in Napa. The movie is at its best once the Lamberts take over, as the father and two sons aren’t driven by love but by ambition, lessons learned from motivational speakers and familial rivalry. Interestingly, they do just as good a job for their clients as McClure did.

Against the backdrop of this transition, Morris interviews the eccentrics who have buried their loved ones with the honor that most people reserve for parents, siblings and spouses. At first these folks may seem nutty, but you gradually come to realize the important role the pets played for them, how they often filled a void that human love failed to occupy. The whole enterprise could have been a set-up to gawk and laugh at crazies and there are funny moments, but Morris ultimately has as much respect for his two-legged subjects as they have for their late, four-legged friends. (Currently on sale for $3.98 on Amazon and available for rent at Netflix and other outlets.)

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Classic DVD: Playtime (1967)

November 8, 2010 in Film, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

A film of protest but also one of reconciliation, Playtime is not only Jacques Tati’s masterpiece but also one of the biggest-hearted comedies ever made. Tati’s bumbling alter ego, Monsieur Hulot, is a man out of time, having grown at odds with Paris in the 1960s, with the arrival of modernity and technology. He staggers through a maze of confounding architecture, design and attitudes in a city he can no longer call his own.

Hulot attempts to visit a government official but grows discombobulated by the building’s odd furniture and space-age gadgets and winds up in a series of misadventures. He careers from an exposition of whirring products to a soulless, luxe apartment building to an excursion with a tourist group from America. Each sequence is beautifully calibrated so that Hulot is at the mercy of modern technology, as if he were Chaplin stuck in the gears of really well-designed machinery.

But all is not lost. One American tourist who hopes to experience the “real Paris” sees in Hulot a throwback to a grander time, and he begins to view the city with her enthusiasm. Together they find some magic in the margins, and Hulot learns how someone can more than make do even when it seems like he might be done.•

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Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Last Night (1998)

November 4, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Sandra Oh and Don McKellar kiss it all goodbye.

A romantic drama with a sci-fi twist, Don McKellar’s 1998 gem looks at life in Toronto on the last day on Earth. It’s not precisely clear why the planet is doomed–the sun may be heading this way–but everyone knows ahead of time exactly when the end is arriving. Against a backdrop of a city full of rioters and revelers, a collection of interrelated residents treats the final 24 hours as a holiday: for some it’s Christmas, for some it’s New Year’s Eve and for some Valentine’s Day.

Architect Patrick Wheeler (McKellar) is depressed, but not because the world is ending. He has a sad backstory that gradually emerges, but before that can happen he visits his family at a faux Yuletide celebration before returning to his apartment to die alone. His plans change, however, when he grudgingly takes in stranded Sandra (Sandra Oh), a gorgeous woman who’s had a mob hang her car like a tree ornament from a telephone pole. Sandra is desperate to get home to her husband (David Cronenberg), so that they can carry out a mutual suicide pact. Meanwhile, Patrick’s longtime friend Alex (Trent McMullen) faces the end of days like its the last days of disco, hooking up with as many people as possible, including his old schoolteacher (Genevieve Bujold). He engages in a meticulously planned checklist of sexual delights.

For Patrick and Sandra, there is no planning, just circumstance. Neither can shed the other and soon they stop trying to. In the urgency of the predicament, a rapid romance develops and they realize they want to share the final moments together. Perhaps that will mean exchanging bullets from guns or perhaps a kiss before dying.

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    Classic DVD: The Gleaners & I (2000)

    October 31, 2010 in Film | Permalink

    A judge explains the laws that allow for gleaning in France. In New York City, items taken from the trash are called “mongo,” and the practice is strictly prohibited, though the ban is rarely enforced.

    From night-soil men in Victorian England to rag pickers in fin de siècle New York to centuries of gleaners on French farms and vineyards, people have long improved their lot in life by collecting the waste of others. French New Wave legend Agnes Varda, in a contemplative mood about her own mortality, seeking a sense of regeneration, trained her cameras for this artsy documentary on a variety of people who glean and reuse discarded items.

    Varda visits rustic farms and urban markets in France, where she meets gypsies who collect unwanted produce to feed themselves, artists who find thrown-away items to utilize in their work and well-employed people who glean on principle, disgusted by the waste of modern society. “They’re like presents left on the street,” says one artist, turning other people’s trash into his treasure. “It’s like Christmas.” And it truly is remarkable the high level of food, furniture and finery that these determined foragers find for free.

    But Varda isn’t merely interested in the hunt and the quarry recovered–she’s just as fascinated by the inspiration fueling each search. In a Parisian market, she meets an incredibly intelligent if awkward soul who gleans almost all his food from vendors’ scraps, which gives him the strength to teach free language courses to immigrants in a shelter basement. He’s gained sustenance from the so-called garbage, and the director, grown weary with age, gains the same from his nobility.• 

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    Classic DVD: Sherman’s March (1986)

    October 28, 2010 in Film | Permalink

    Actress Patricia Rendleman does her cellulite exercises.

    A good raconteur like Ross McElwee never sticks to the “script” when a better story comes along. Case in point: his idiosyncratic 1986 documentary, Sherman’s March, in which the filmmaker planned to retrace the fateful  footsteps of General William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union commander who had lived in and loved the South yet cut a wide swath of devastation through Dixie during the Civil War. But then McElwee’s girlfriend dumped him just as he was about to begin filming and his quest became more of a personal one–an attempt to shake up his romantic life in the region where he was born and raised.

    It might sound narcissistic for someone to sweep aside the carnage of war to focus on his own aching heart, but the result captures so much about the wry and unexpected nature of the South that it’s hard to argue with the decision. McElwee films himself spending time with a wide array of unpredictable belles: singers, actresses, Mormon schoolteachers, survivalists, linguists and lawyers. Some are old girlfriends that the North Carolina native is revisiting and some are women he meets along the way. Yes, there’s also Burt Reynolds and a Burt Reynolds impersonator, but mostly it’s about the women. While McElwee and his dates don’t do as much damage as Sherman, by the time his sojourn is complete the director’s heart could use a body bag and a 21-gun salute..

    At one point, McElwee’s cantankerous old teacher and longtime friend Charleen Swansea insists he put down his camera. “You’re using it as a hedge, as something to hide behind,” she says, ordering him to find a nice Southern woman to marry. But it’s really more complicated than that. McElwee had relocated to the Northeast years before and feels like a stranger in a strange land when he goes home. Like Sherman himself, the director is familiar with the terrain but gradually realizes he can never belong to it again. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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    New DVD: Mother

    October 25, 2010 in Film | Permalink

    Hye-ja Kim also played a character named "Mother" in a 1999 South Korean film called "Mayonnaise."

    Maternal love knows no bounds in Joon-ho Bong’s haunting new murder mystery, Mother. Not quite on par with the South Korean director’s 2003 masterwork, Memories of a Murder, it’s still a powerful drama about the distance one woman will go to clear her son of a crime she knows he didn’t commit.

    Yoon Do-joon (Bin Won) is a grown man but mentally challenged in some unspecified way. His eagle-eyed acupuncturist Mother (Hye-ja Kim) seems to watch over him far too carefully, but her worry is justified when a schoolgirl is murdered and Do-joon is the leading suspect. He is subsequently arrested and charged with the slaying. Unable to get the help she needs from police and lawyers, Mother decides to conduct her own investigation, at first fitfully and then obsessively. She is eventually aided by Do-joon’s friend, Jin-tae (Ku Jin), who enjoys playing the strong-armed detective a little too much. Together they try to piece together dark elements from the slain girl’s past which may point to the real killer.

    You may see the main plot twist coming, but Bong’s films are so affecting not so much for reveals but for his deft ability to shift tone and mash up genres. In one scene, Mother is summoned to a bar to meet a high-powered lawyer she believes can clear her son. He is half-drunk and flanked by call girls as he explains a plea deal to her. When she hesitates to accept, he begins to scream wildly into a karaoke microphone at the frightened woman. It’s a bizarre bit of grotesque comic horror that speaks so clearly to everything Mother is feeling inside. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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    Classic DVD: Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975)

    October 22, 2010 in Film | Permalink

    Anne-Louise Lambert, who played Miranda, still acts in film and television and is also a psychotherapist.

    A beautiful enigma, Peter Weir’s drama, Picnic at Hanging Rock tells the story of a fin de siècle school outing in Australia that turns into a baffling, lingering nightmare.

    On Valentine’s Day 1900, girls from a remote boarding school enjoy an afternoon excursion to Hanging Rock, a volcanic formation that’s one million years old. The stern headmistress describes the rock’s creation in almost sexual terms, stressing the viscous nature of the eruption. When a small group of girls and a teacher hike closer to the natural landmark, all is well. When they vanish without a trace, panic ensues. Rescue parties have limited success and return with further mystery.

    “I’d give my head to know what happened up there,” says a doctor, who’s been brought in to make sure that a rescued girl hasn’t been molested and is still “intact.” But what chance does his head full of logic have against the intractability of nature, whether it’s ants encroaching on a picnic blanket, volcanoes erupting unexpectedly or the raging hormones of adolescence. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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    Classic DVD: Thieves Like Us (1974)

    October 18, 2010 in Film | Permalink

    It's hard to imagine 1970's American cinema without Shelley Duvall and Louise Fletcher.

    Often unfairly consigned to the middle or back of the Robert Altman catalog, Thieves Like Us is a stellar Depression Era drama that’s low-key, atmospheric and sometimes funny, even if it lacks many of the director’s trademark touches. There’s no ceaseless patter or cross-cutting plots, but the relatively straightforward film is undeniably rich.

    T-Dub (Bert Remsen), Chickamaw (John Shuck) and Bowie (Keith Carradine) are a trio of cons who form a Deep South crime spree during the 1930s. The guys might not have any money in the bank, but they don’t mind helping themselves–at the point of a gun–to whatever happens to be lying around in the vault. But these aren’t men with merely crime on their mind–they’re also lovers. The youngest con, Bowie, for instance, finds romance with a strange girl (Shelley Duvall) who chain-smokes cigarettes and inhales Coca-Cola. Just as Bowie considers getting out of a life of crime, he may not have that option. As their infamy grows and the fellows become sloppy, it’s just a matter of time until they’ve made their final withdrawal.

    Thieves Like Us manages to be very much a film of it’s time, with great supporting turns by ’70s stalwarts like Duvall and Louise Fletcher, as well as a film with an authentic feel for the era in which it’s set. But like the best of Altman, ultimately, the movie feels timeless, like a wave of ideas and emotions that exists in a realm all its own. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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    “When I Speak Of Assaults On Our Understanding Of Reality, I Am Referring To New Technologies.”

    October 15, 2010 in Excerpts, Film, Science/Tech | Permalink

    "It’s not that I want to demonize these technologies; they have allowed the human imagination to accomplish great things."

    Werner Herzog, one of the most quotable people on the planet, delivered a mostly improvised speech in Milan, Italy, which is called “On the Absolute, the Sublime, and the Ecstatic Truth.” During the lecture he addressed how new technologies diminish our understanding of reality–but how there’s no going back. (Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily.) An excerpt:

    “When I speak of assaults on our understanding of reality, I am referring to new technologies that, in the past twenty years, have become general articles of everyday use: the digital special effects that create new and imaginary realities in the cinema. It’s not that I want to demonize these technologies; they have allowed the human imagination to accomplish great things—for instance, reanimating dinosaurs convincingly on screen. But, when we consider all the possible forms of virtual reality that have become part of everyday life—in the Internet, in video games, and on reality TV; sometimes also in strange mixed forms—the question of what “real” reality is poses itself constantly afresh.

    What is really going on in the reality TV show Survivor? Can we ever really trust a photograph, now that we know how easily everything can be faked with Photoshop? Will we ever be able to completely trust an email, when our twelve-year-old children can show us that what we’re seeing is probably an attempt to steal our identity, or perhaps a virus, a worm, or a “Trojan” that has wandered into our midst and adopted every one of our characteristics? Do I already exist somewhere, cloned, as many Doppelgänger, without knowing anything about it?

    History offers one analogy to the extent of [change brought about by] the virtual, other world that we are now being confronted with. For centuries and centuries, warfare was essentially the same thing, clashing armies of knights, who fought with swords and shields. Then, one day, these warriors found themselves staring at each other across canons and weapons. Warfare was never the same. We also know that innovations in the development of military technology are irreversible. Here’s some evidence that may be of interest: in parts of Japan in the early seventeenth century, there was an attempt to do away with firearms, so that samurai could fight one another hand to hand, with swords again. This attempt was only very short-lived; it was impossible to sustain.

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    New DVD: Forbidden Lies

    October 10, 2010 in Film | Permalink

    Norma Khouri's book, "Forbidden Love," has been reclassified as a novel.

    Scandals about non-fiction bestsellers of dubious veracity are neither new nor even so rare, but few are as jaw-dropping as the one that Norma Khouri perpetrated with her 2003 memoir, Forbidden Love. That book purported to tell the story about the author’s best friend, Dalia, who supposedly was brutally murdered by her Jordanian family because she fell in love with a man outside her religion. In the wake of 9/11, with suspicion of all things Middle Eastern at fever pitch, the book became a sensation and Khouri a literary star. But people eventually began to ask whether it was true.

    It was not. Subsequently caught in a web of lies by an Australian journalist, Khouri held tight to her bogus claims and even fully participated in Anna Broinowski’s documentary about her to clear her name. Bad idea. As filmmaker and subject bound from Jordan to Chicago to Sydney, the story unravels further and further and Khouri begins to shift her lies to fit whatever situation presents itself. Pretty soon it’s obvious that she’s actually a Windy City con artist who did not spend most of her life in Jordan. As excruciating details of Khouri’s life emerge, what forms is a fascinating extreme psychological portrait of a person who will travel halfway around the world to tell ridiculous lies. Broinowski doggedly hangs on for what’s a wild ride but certainly no joyride.

    The film ultimately becomes as much an exploration into Khouri’s odd mindset as a literary investigation, and the inveterate liar ultimately tries to defend her behavior by painting herself as a victim of her shifty family and friends. She has evidence to back up some of these claims, but the truth has been trampled underfoot so thoroughly by film’s end, it’s all but unrecognizable. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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