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Cinematic compass rose*

Spring's a-poppin' all over, cinematically speaking.

Catch Gilda's coy hair flip under and above the stars at Cinespia in Los Angeles.

directed by charles vidor
saturday june 2nd
gates at 7:30 pm, film at 9:00 pm
hollywood forever cemetery
6000 santa monica boulevard at gower
no reservation necessary.
$10 donation tickets available at gate.
as a courtesy to other movie-goers: no tall chairs

Cook up some Indie Grits in Columbia, South Carolina.

From Wednesday, May 30 to Sunday, June 3 it is our hope to provide a movie-going experience unlike any you’ve had before. With Indie Grits, we set out to achieve three things: bring quality, independent film to our town, provide a nurturing, rewarding atmosphere for filmmakers who create media that’s outside of the norm, and offer a glimpse into what the South has to offer without falling back on clichés and caricatures. As a result, we’ve culled together a wide array of interesting films and, at times, turned away quality work that just didn’t fit in.

Get wide-eyed, gaijin, at the Brattle Anime Festival in Cambridge.

17 Titles, 24 Hours, 1 Survivor, No Rules! Plus special guests, give-aways and a Cosplay Contest! 

Or celebrate 75 years of Doc Films in Chicago.

Despite the lamentable conditions, many legendary filmmakers paid visits to Doc in that era, including Otto Preminger, Fritz Lang, John Ford, Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray, and Alfred Hitchcock, who paid his own travel expenses....

Film critic and former Doc Chair Dave Kehr, AB'75, remembers, "We were against Pauline Kael and everything she stood for. We thought movies were art and we wanted to take them seriously and were not interested in enjoying them as trash." --"Doc of Ages" by Charlotte Robinson, The Core [University of Chicago May/June 2007], 18.

As for New Yorkers, fend for yourselves. The rest of us should have such problems.

[OK, fine. How about The Conversation, then a Samuel Fuller double bill? Ingrates.]

*Could one of you nice people make me a compass rose image that incorporates a film reel? That'd be nice.

Final fantasies: 300 vs. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

The sinewy Spartans of 300 finally barricaded themselves into our local dollar theater this week, so the 'Fesser and the cinetrix ambled over to see what all the homosocial hot fuss was about. Boy howdy, was the abs airbrusher overtaxed on that set!

Strictly by coincidence, the cinetrix also sat down with another CGI wonder earlier in the weekend, the unwieldily monikered The Chroni--what?--cles of Naria: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and she's gotta say that Tilda Swinton's White Witch beats nine-and-a-half-foot-tall, self-proclaimed deity Xerxes manicured hands down for overall scariness. In a classic case of never sending a pierced, painted brow drag queen to do a real frosty, dreadlocked queen's job, the sublime Ms. Swinton was a hands-on ruler--a regular street fighter, really--and still has the cinetrix quaking in fear. Not to mention she wins the battle of the biers handily. Eunuchs, feh. Whatever.

Of course, there is the matter of superior source material to consider. C.S. Lewis's Christo-leonine children's series is a classic, while Frank Miller's graphic novel aims straight for the fan boys. The stakes just seem higher when you pit four nice pasty British schoolchildren against grotesque giants, dwarves, and wolves than when you set a bunch of Chelsea boys into slo-mo battle with baddies like the Immortals, who, with their gleaming identical steel rictuses, resemble nothing scarier than an army of storm troopers modeled after a scowling Fiddy Cent.

OK, 300 has it all over the lions when it comes to nudity, I'll grant you that. The director's fondness for tiny, pert, natural breasts was refreshing, especially given the flick's graphic comic book orgins and its desired demographic.

Both films share the bottom-line-pleasing cast of [near nude to clothed] mostly unknowns, which is a plus. [The cinetrix couldn't stop marveling at how much Susan Pevensie reminded her of pal Little Ayun.] For real. Just think of how much more CGI those lower salaries bought. Without them, there'd be no hunchbacks or fauns, no charging rhino with pierced nipples or soaring griffons. And who couldn't use more soaring griffons?

I also will concede that 300's green screen horizons were far superior to Lion's occasionally flat depth of field. At times, those stormy Spartan skies seemed culled from Rembrandt's stolen canvas.

But the sad fact remains that 300 pretty much put the cinetrix to sleep. Literally, Granted, it had been a long weekend, capped by an epic 10-hour party, but still. Its near silent-film take on racial purity and tedious voiceover narration lacked the sense of urgency of Lion's similarly preoccupied with pure-bloodedness story.

Screw Leonidas's Sparta. I'll take the Lion's Narnia any day.

[Also, they really should consider a fence around that bottomless well in Sparta. That shit's dangerous.]

May the Force be with you. Always.

Thirty years of Star Wars. The return of Captain Jack Sparrow. And a year of getting used to this.
Memorial Day, indeed.

Best. Review. Evar.

OK, Sac just supplanted my all-time favorite review [which was Gene Shalit blithely saying, "Goodfellas? Good movie!" if you must know].

Read it and weep.

Froggy went a-courtin'

As usual, the cinetrix is a little late to the party, but she was delighted to read in The Reeler earlier this week that Jason Kohn's kickass documentary Manda Bala has landed distribution* and is slated for a summer release.

If you're stuck at work on this Friday before a holiday weekend, you really should do yourself a favor and squander some time reading this off-the-chain pre-Sundance interview with Kohn.

A taste:

So what inspired you to cut loose from something relatively secure with such a legend and take this on?

I worked for Errol because he was my favorite filmmaker; I worked my ass off interning through college to get into his office. A lot of the kids you usually takes are Harvard people, and I worked hard just to get in his office. And once I was there, it was awesome just being around and listening to him. Literally -- when I say "listening to him," I mean sitting at my desk and listening to every single thing the guy ever said. Because he's unbelievably brilliant. And I learned a lot, but it's not making your own movies. And if you want to make your own movies -- even if you work for your favorite filmmaker -- it's not the same. No matter how high you get on the ladder or how many years you work there, you're still only helping someone make his movies. That was never a goal of mine.

But Errol was so fundamental in making Manda Bala, because I was looking for a movie to make -- for years. I went down to Brazil, and my dad, who lives down there, had told me about this frog farm. I went there with a camcorder and it was beautiful -- it was crazy. The guy there was very, very nice, but obviously a little bit involved in something that he wasn't quite clear about. I came back and cut together a little thing and showed it to Errol; he thought it was awesome. It was with Errol's blessing that I left the office, and if he hadn't been supportive at that moment it probably wouldn't have happened. Since that moment -- I decided to shoot it on film. For Errol, that was also a big deal because a lot of people go out to make "Errol-style" documentaries, just to catch "kooky" characters. But that's not an "Errol-style" movie; an "Errol-style" movie is based in the production level -- he literally, physically makes movies differently than other people. Part of the decision to shoot it on film in CinemaScope was kind of embracing the way that Errol makes movies physically, which are demanding and expensive. It's one of the things he really appreciated in the project early on and one of the reasons he's been so supportive since the beginning.

You --

Did that answer your question at all? That was a shitty answer, wasn't it?

Yeah, Jesus Christ. Let's start over.

You've seen The Fog of War, right?

Yes.

You know where MacNamara says, "Never answer the questions that you're asked; only answer the ones you wish you had been asked"? The fact is that I don't know what I want to be asked. I'm new to this.

And it keeps going. Just don't get caught laughing at your desk.

*"Fuck Sheila Nevins!"

Dargis speaks

A little audio lagniappe for those kind folks who keep Pullquote on Google's front page when searching for Manohla Dargis.

Turns out the New York Times co-chief film critic has branched out from her usual audio-slideshow approach to NYT multimedia offerings in her coverage of the Croisette. It's true. No, they haven't brought back the late, lamented Cannes blog, but you can thrill to the sound of a cafe cash register cheeping in the background as Dargis throws down with Sight & Sound editor Nick James--and giggles kittenishly about Joy Division--here.

Chapter and verse

The cinetrix would be the first to admit she's only an occasional reader of David Bordwell's blog [something about the lingering resentment she harbored as an impoverished grad student that she was financing summer homes for him and Kristen with each subsequent edition of Film Art she was compelled to buy]. But damn if the brother doesn't take a good long look at something I've been pondering of late: the consequences of dividing a DVD into chapters.

The DVD made a movie more like a book.

This sounds odd, because we think of digital media as replacing print. Yet consider the similarities. You can read a book any way you please, skimming or skipping, forward or backward. You can read the chapters, or even the sentences, in any order you choose. You can dwell on a particular page, paragraph, or phrase for as long as you like. You can go back and reread passages you’ve read before, and you can jump ahead to the ending. You can put the book down at a particular point and return to it an hour or a year later; the bookmark is the ultimate pause command.

We tacitly acknowledge the resemblance between the DVD and the book when we call the segments on a DVD its chapters, the list of chapters an index, and the process of composing the DVD its authoring.

In the classroom I encounter this phenomenon most often grading student papers. Bordwell doesn't have a whole lot to say on specific chapter titles, but especially in the assignment where they may chose the sequence they analyze, the kiddies often locate it in the narrative not by plot summary but by title. [And this after we've gone through auteur theory.] I just don't think they realize that filmmakers generally don't conceive of their films in chapter form and those catchy descriptive titles are usually the 11th-hour work of some underpaid grunt in marketing.

The cinetrix has no unified field observations to offer on the topic. She was mostly wondering whether other educators had encountered this. And for the rest of you lucky folks, any favorite, slapped-on-after-the-fact titles gracing some of your favorite [pre-DVD technology] classic films? Share away in the comments, s'il vous plait.

The Puffy Chair

A while back a younger cinephile friend pressed The Puffy Chair on the cinetrix. When she finally got around to watching it, conditions were less than ideal, but only somewhat. The 'Fesser was puttering around in the kitchen, but even that almost ambient noise had me cranking the volume just to hear what the Duplass Brothers' characters had to say for themselves.

I wish more of it was worth hearing. [There may be something to that mumblecore tag after all.] In this entry in the indie canon of white boys and their problems caught on prosumer DV, self-involved Josh attempts to save his on-the-skids romance with marriage-minded Emily by inviting her along on an eBay errand to fetch the titular chaise as a present for his dad. Along the way they pick up Josh's hapless brother Rhett, who resembles Buster Bluth made over as a madrassa student. Hilarity, as the kids say, ensues.

Don't get me wrong. There are some well-observed set pieces, chief among them Josh's encounter with the Southern seller of the puffy chair, which--surprise!--doesn't resemble the posted picture. The cinetrix experienced a full-on "don't go into the basement!" feeling of horrified familiarity watching his confrontational New York attitude clash with the "Well, bless your heart, Yankee asshole. I'm a fixin' to move slower now" slyness of the duplicitous furniture shiller. [Hell, even the cinetrix knows enough to cop an aw-shucks flittery politesse when the occasion calls for it.]

The whirlwind romance between Rhett and local gal Amber is also a keeper, boozy and yearning and lit with fairy lights. But, unlike Emily, I had a hard time believing that grown-up love was ever possible for either of these overgrown boys.

When the film ends--and I do mean ends--the cinetrix suspects that viewers are supposed to wrestle with the abruptness and the ambiguity, but she just felt relieved to leap out of the Chair and bid the whole lot good riddance.

I should note that the DVD comes packaged with three shorts. The ones about recording an outgoing message and staging an intervention are mildly amusing, in the Duplass's chosen "dude" idiom. Only "Scrapple" goes one step beyond, giving us a couple's Scrabble game that gets physically and emotionally violent until, big surprise, the guy admits he thinks he's smarter than his girlfriend.  This confession spells out the Duplass Brothers' world view pretty concisely, which may be why the cinetrix wasn't so taken by their games.

Blades of Glory

Walking out of the local second-run palace after taking in Blades of Glory, the 'Fesser observed that dissertations are probably being written about Will Ferrell's body. He's probably right.

In fact, grad school dropout A.O. Scott took an exploratory poke at the subject in his review of Talledega Nights:

Really, though, the brand that powers this ragged, intermittently uproarious fusion of sketch-comedy goofing and driving around in circles is Will Ferrell, who wrote the screenplay (with Adam McKay, the director) and served as an executive producer, in addition to running around on a race track in his underpants. He does a lot more than that, needless to say, but Mr. Ferrell’s willingness to strip down to his skivvies is one of his trademarks.

It is also a rare movie-star display of solidarity with those American men who, whether out of laziness or principle, disdain sunlight, proper nutrition, body-hair maintenance and abdominal exercise. Part of Mr. Ferrell’s appeal is surely that he is one of them. O.K., one of us.

And in his review of Blades of Glory, Stephen Holden concurs:

For the sake of his career, Mr. Ferrell should never join a gym; buffed up, he would cease being one of us.

But is he, in Blades of Glory? Ferrell plays bad boy figureskater Chazz Michael Michaels, a roll 'n' roll rebel and admitted sex addict who is banned from the sport after fighting with his pretty-boy rival Jimmy MacElroy on the awards stand. Part of the comedy, of course, is seeing his famously flabby physique squeezed into the revealing and flamboyant unitards favored by the skating set. But this nod in the direction of homosocial solidarity with the "one of us" set is undermined by the homosexual panic Ferrell sets off in the teen-aged segment of his fanbase when he starts pair skating with his former rival, played by Jon Heder. Seriously, there were audible "ewww"s eminating from the rows behind us at every crotch-cupping lift.

So, Ferrell: patron saint of shlubs or sly satirist of second-tier sports and their definitions of masculinity? Discuss.

*Fun code editorializing going on at the Times. If you try to click over from the capsule to Stephen Holden's full-length Blades of Glory review, you end up here.

Bloc[k] Party

When the cinetrix was but a wee sprog she spent many a happy afternoon throwing down at the block parties in her Nana and Pop-Pop's Queens Village hood. So she's pretty sure that the MOMI/Local 187 IBT/Kaufman Astoria Studios/Mayor's Office shindig this Sunday should be a keepin'-it-real borough affair.

NEW YORK ON LOCATION
All-Day Street Fair and Celebration        

Sunday, May 20 - 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
36 Street between 34 and 35 Avenues in Astoria

Presented by Museum of the Moving Image, Theatrical Teamsters Local 817 I.B.T., Kaufman Astoria Studios, and the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting.

Straight from productions shooting in New York—Step inside 20 film trailers and trucks.

• Featured trucks: star dressing rooms, hair and makeup, wardrobe, camera, electrical, grip, props
• Special effects and stunt demos every hour
• Family workshops all day in the Museum
• Food available from TomKats Movie Catering
• Movie professionals on hand to answer questions

“Careers in Entertainment Production: Paths to Opportunity"        
        Sunday, May 20, 2:00-3:30 p.m.
        In the Riklis Theater

       

Katherine Oliver, Commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting, will moderate a panel discussion with top New York-based production professionals. They include Lamont  Crawford, dolly grip (Inside Man, 30 Rock, Munich, Syriana); Tod Maitland, sound mixer (I Am Legend, The Producers, Something's Gotta Give, Meet the Parents); Toy R. Van Lierop, makeup artist (Hitch, The Best Man, Bowfinger, Doctor Doolittle);     and Louis Bertini, film editor (Sex and the   City, Transamerica, The Naked Brothers Band).

FREE MUSEUM ADMISSION ALL DAY        

Moving Image Shop Sale: Due to remodeling of the gift shop and reduced square footage the Museum will be selling a large variety of books, posters and gifts all drastically reduced prices (many below cost!). One Day only.