Category: movies

No more walking, watch three movies at once, and “You don’t have to carry a passport, because a friendly computer already knows more about you than you do.”

1975 commercial – Braniff Airways – The Supersonic Future

So you can play Dark Side Of The Moon while watching The Wizard Of Oz, or you can play an mp3 commentary by Mystery Science Theater 3000 star/writer Mike Nelson while watching–Roadhouse, starring Patrick Swayze’s well-oiled rack.
Check out RiffTrax, Nelson’s new funny commentary site. Then check it out again when he’s got more than one movie on there. [via robotwisdom]

To watch McQueen and the other cars motor along the film’s highways and byways without running into or over a single creature is to realize that, in his cheerful way, Mr. Lasseter has done Mr. Cameron [director of The Terminator] one better: instead of blowing the living world into smithereens, these machines have just gassed it with carbon monoxide.

– from Manohla Dargis’ NYT review of Matrix 4: Cars

I already added X3 to the pile of sequel-sequels that I won’t see [lessee, there’s Matrix 3, Star Wars 3, Godfather 3, Police Academy 3…], but that doesn’t mean I don’t love reading the reviews.
Take Walter Chaw’s review, for example, at Film Freak Central: “…an example of what can happen when a homophobic, misogynistic, misanthropic moron wildly overcompensates…
…It’s Michael Bay’s Schindler’s List…”
X-Men: The Last Stand review by Walter Chaw [filmfreakcentral.net via goldenfiddle]

Considering that the Decalogue is at least partly to blame for me deciding to become a filmmaker, and that it’s partly an inspiration for my Souvenir Series, I can’t let a Kieslowski festival go without genuflecting.
The National Film Theatre is running an in-depth program of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films and his influences/inspirations. It started on Thursday, but you haven’t missed anything so far, “just” The 400 Blows and La Strada. [of course, what I meant was, they’ll both be screened again.] Decalogue screenings start next weekend, and Three Colours screenings the weekend after that.
The NFT site is comprehensive, but hard to peruse, while the Kultureflash overview is deliciously easy, as always. How DO they do it?
Krzysztof Kieslowski Revisited [bfi.org.uk]
previous kieslowski adulation and influencing on greg.org

“When I originally posted the video on the site I likened watching it to a life-changing experience ‘on par with losing your virginity or seeing Garden State for the first time‘…” [emphasis added]

That’s part of Derek’s description of #1, “Glosoli,” a Sigur Ros video, which is pretty gorgeous. Obviously, it might be that I’m just waaay too old and outside the demo anymore, but if Beck’s boring-ass breakdancing robot video is #47, I guess there really aren’t 65 good music videos made each year.
M3 Online: Top 65 Music Videos Of 2005 [gwfa via robotwisdom]

Jia Zhangke’s Unknown Pleasures was eye-opening, the tale of two disaffected slackers told in a Chinese-inflected, naturalist style.
Now Jia has turned his eye on a symbol-soaked Chinese theme park full of miniature world landmarks, which provides the impossibly contrived backdrop for an unassuming, bleak narrative. Roger Ebert loves it.
The World, dir. by Jia Zhangke [ebert via archinect]

When watched together, in sequence, Film professor Aidan Wasley says, the Star Wars 6-ilogy is actually revealed to be the world’s greatest art film, ever:

Star Wars, at its secret, spiky intellectual heart, has more in common with films like Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books or even Matthew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle than with the countless cartoon blockbusters it spawned. Greenaway and Barney take the construction of their own work as a principal artistic subject, and Lucas does, too.

Wasley goes on to talk about Lucas’s interest in both the “never in a bajillion years long, long time” narrative coincidences which make up the films; and the deterministic, aesthetic order that is required for the thousands of CGI scenes.
So you mean the stilted storytelling and embarassing acting is good because Lucas intended it that way? I think that by defining “art films” as the uncompromised vision of a single individual–who we’ll call an artist–then yes, Cremaster and Star Wars are both art films. But don’t expect critical or audience opinion to be swayed by someone re-ascribing a whole host of a film’s shortcomings as the artist’s intention.
There’s as much risk of turning out a dud from this kind of mythic, singular, lone artist process as there is from the much more maligned studio-meddling/compromising hack process. Think Gangs of New York, Baseketball and Team America World Police.
Star Wars: Episodes I-VI, The greatest postmodern art film ever. [slate via kottke]
Previously: On watching Cremaster 1-5 in order

There was a Church film in the 70’s that showed what happens when you don’t do your home teaching. Mike Farrell (the BJ-Hunniccutt-on-M*A*S*H guy) played an auto mechanic/Mormon bishop, who asks a young, career-focused lawyer in his congregation to be a home teacher to a troubled family where the father was becoming less active in the Church. Time goes by, the lawyer’s busy and can’t ever find the time to visit the family each month and check in on their spiritual well-being. One evening, he gets a distraught phone call from Sister Brown: her husband’s gone, fed up, the last straw, and now they’re getting a divorce. “Is there anything I can do to help?” the lawyer asks, which sets the wife up to drive the film’s message home: “There was probably a time when you could have done something, but now it’s too late.”
Greg Whiteley’s first film, N.Y. Doll, on the other hand, is a testament to the blessings that can come from doing your home teaching. Not only does your home teachee get his band back together after 30 years, your first film gets a raucous reception at Sundance.
When Whiteley was assigned to be fellow Los Angeles ward member Arthur Kane’s home teacher, all he really knew was that the middle-aged Kane was a quiet, seemingly rootless reformed alcoholic who’d been in a band as a kid, long before he joined the Church.
Typically, home teaching takes the form of short, friendly, monthly visits, where you read a verse or two, share a prepared inspirational message from church leaders, and ask, slightly awkwardly, “Is there anything we can do for you?” And every once in a while, you help someone move.
Arthur Kane’s home teachers, including Whiteley and the guy before him, who’s interviewed in the movie, clearly magnified their callings. They gave Arthur money to get his prized bass guitar out of hock. Whiteley started videotaping Kane, making him the star of a film which, at the time, had no story and no prospects; all the big, archetypal plotpoints that occur in NY Doll–the Dolls reunion, the intervention of Morrissey, Kane’s illness–only happened after filming had begun.
[At least that’s how it appears. Most of the footage in the film appears to have been shot in small, intense bursts, even single sittings: Kane on the bus, at the Family History Center, the NYC reunion/rehearsal, picking up all the rock legend interviews backstage at the Meltdown 2004 performance in London. It’s entirely possible that N.Y. Doll started out as a favor from a filmmaker, to help a friend tape his conversion story and his colorful personal history.]
In any case, NY Doll deftly and sensitively navigates two, even three paths as it tells Kane’s tale: there’s the VH1-style “where are they now?”/reunion rockumentary; the tearjerking, feel-good “grant a wish” by-the-book PBS special; and–and I don’t imagine many people, Mormon or not, will spot this–a matter-of-fact lesson in the exercise of religious faith.
While the NY preview audience [heathen journalists all] I saw the film with tittered at the mention of answered prayers, miracles, and Kane’s explanation of how the Holy Spirit revealed The Book of Mormon’s truthfulness to him [“it’s like an acid trip from the Lord”], that kind of experience and language will seem utterly commonplace to LDS audiences. So much so, that it may go unnoticed; but Whiteley’s ability to document LDS religious doctrine and sentiment without resorting to either media-outsidery cynicism or church-insidery didacticism is such a rare achievement, I’m tempted to call it a miracle. He that hath ears, let him hear, I guess.

The film’s arcs aren’t perfect, however, just the best they got on tape; I would have liked some more from Kane on the breakup and supposed bad blood that kept him and Doll lead singer David Johansen apart for 30 years. This reconciliation/making amends thread is pegged by his bishop–and by Kane himself–as the real dream-come-true; it’s the “right” answer, Jesus-wise, but in retrospect, it didn’t feel supported by the reunion buildup. And Kane’s Family History Center co-workers could have been a little less cute-ified [“Q: you could be groupies! A: hee hee”]. But these are quibbles, really.
The moments of real emotion that Kane fans like Bob Geldof, Morrissey, and that one critic chick…sorry, Love…evince, and the patience/tolerance/goodwill/what-have-you when Kane leads the band in a pre-performance prayer are incredibly touching. Especially considering how obviously out of touch Kane could be [his Joseph Smith-inspired stage costume was called a pirate outfit by one person backstage]. If anyone spoke ill of his subject, Whiteley’s heart was too full of charity to include it.
In the production notes, the filmmakers asked reviewers not to talk about the ending, so instead, I’ll talk about the end of the ending credits. That is where I and one other guy who stayed were rewarded with one of the most inspired musical mashups ever: an unplugged rendition of the archetypal Mormon hymn, the dirge-like “A Poor Wayfaring Man Of Grief,”–a favorite of both Kane and Joseph Smith–sung by NY Doll David Johansen in his hard-lifeworn, gravelly, and heartfelt voice. It’s no cover of the Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt,” but don’t we all fall short of the glory of Johnny Cash?
It’s a generous gift from Johansen to his once-estranged bandmate, all the more so because it’s so utterly unexpected. This is one pearl of great price that I hope someone will rip and get into wider circulation immediately.
N.Y. Doll opens today in New York (at the Angelika) and Los Angeles. See the New York Doll website for more info and release schedules. [newyorkdollmovie.com]
Is There Life After Rock ‘n’ Roll? [stephen holden’s nyt review]
previously: Oh My Heck! Brother Greg Whiteley’s NY Doll

Absolutely brilliant.
“Meet Jack Torrance. He’s a writer looking for inspiration.
Meet Danny. He’s a kid, looking for a dad.”
Shining: the remixed trailer [via waxy, who’s mirroring it.]

Absolutely brilliant.
“Meet Jack Torrance. He’s a writer looking for inspiration.
Meet Danny. He’s a kid, looking for a dad.”
Shining: the remixed trailer [via waxy, who’s mirroring it.]

One of my favorite documentaries–and one that suckered me into making films myself–is Agnes Varda’s 2000 masterpiece, The Gleaners And I. [it’s $27 at amazon.]
It turns out that there’s an obscure gleaning law on the books in Los Angeles, and harvesting fruit that hangs over public property–like streets and sidewalks–is perfectly legal. There’s a website called Fallen Fruit that puts together neighborhood maps for anyone who wants to get to picking. [via boingboing]