Posts by Brian «
Ebertfest, Day 3: Linklater Charms, a Q&A Disappoints
The nattily scarved titular host. (photo courtesy of Ebertfest)
A surprisingly blustery Champaign, IL, morning started Ebertfest 2011 Day 3 fittingly with the lighter than air 45365, a free-form 2010 doc that takes its name from the zip code of sibling co-directors Bill and Turner Ross’ small Ohio hometown. Eschewing interviews and defined character studies, the first-time directors instead float their cameras voyeuristically from subject to subject, letting the audience glean what they can about the subjects—and in turn, the town—via candid, overheard snippets of conversation. Keep your eyes peeled for the as yet unannounced DVD/BluRay release date—this compelling slice of small-town America is definitely worth a visit…though you wouldn’t want to live there.
Next up was Richard Linklater’s delightfully lighthearted 2009 coming-of-age romp Me & Orson Welles, a mostly fictionalized account of the pre-Citizen Kane titular director’s legendary 1937 modern-dress off Broadway re-staging of “Julius Caesar” as seen through the eyes of a young bit player (played likably here by Zac Efron) who, with no theatrical experience, bluffs his way into a part and under the flamboyant director’s wing. Shining brightest is actor Christian McKay, whose authentic turn as the young Welles feels completely without caricature or artifice–from the voice to the baby-face, McKay is THE definitive Welles. Somebody should use this guy to capture more of Welles’ famously rocky life and career, stat. McKay’s tour-de-force performance alone makes this joyfully crafted comedy worthy of a spot in your Netflix queue, pronto. The laid-back Q&A following the screening touched on how Linklater discovered McKay (the latter was performing in a one man show as a much older and heavier Welles) and how/why the film was shot on location on the Isle of Man (the tiny country’s film bureau’s fiscal incentives, a sweet old theater there fit the bill perfectly). As a fun bonus, Linklater conducted a Welles trivia quiz throughout his Q&A, with special handmade prizes–a few personally redesigned M&OW posters and a few self-burned CDs of a Linklater-approved version of the M&OW soundtrack. Whatta guy. Read more »
A Trip to Ebertfest, Days 1 & 2
After a few short welcoming remarks from a white-scarf-adorned Ebert, via his laptop’s robotic voice, Ebertfest 2011 was officially underway in downtown Champaign, IL’s gorgeous Virginia Theater with one hell of an opening night feature: the beautifully restored and artfully reconstructed original cut of noted German a-hole/genius director Fritz Lang’s magnificent 1927 silent masterpiece Metropolis, accompanied by the always amazing Alloy Orchestra. Featuring 30 minutes of previously lost footage found in a Buenos Aires private collection in 2008, this version of Metropolis clocks in at a staggering 150 minutes that manages to delight, unnerve, and downright creep out more than ever. (Check your cable listings for Metropolis Refound, a short doc making the rounds on basic cable detailing this amazing reconstruction.) And while you’re online—stream the reconstructed version of Metropolis in HD on Netflix.) While this version was released in 2010 on DVD/BluRay (and streaming in HD via Netflix), the one thing you won’t get at home is the transcendent experience of the Alloy Orchestra’s genius (and often very loud) original score, a stunning bombast of various synthetic yet naturalistic orchestral strings and organs, weird metal springs that make weirder noises, chimes, low-tuned cello, and, heh, a rain stick. One of the most exciting and entertaining moments these viewers have ever experienced in a theater. Thanks, Eb! Read more »
SLIFF: 127 Hours (& About a Thousand Crappy Decibels)
127 HOURS (2010/SLIFF: PREVIEW) Oh, Danny Boy(le)! What has that horrible destroyer of quality cinema “Oscar” done to you? It certainly hasn’t dampened your relatively newfound affection for manipulative cheezeball OTT synth-rock score, or for your new fave composer and Slumdog Millionaire alum A.R. Rahman, who seems to have been under the impression that this was indeed a sequel to that misguided, overrated, Oscar-sweeping crapsterpiece with this samey collection of bombastic beats. Exhibit A: Your soon-to-be released and much buzzed about Oscar bait grossout adventure 127 Hours. It’s source material is a true story, however slight: Our oddball (read: dumbass) fitness adventure nut hero goes run-hiking ALONE through treacherous canyons in Utah when he suddenly finds himself trapped under a boulder in a remote crevasse. He struggles in vain for 127 hours or theareabouts, eventually freeing himself (SPOILER, SORTA) via chopping off his arm just under the elbow with a dull pocketknife. But while you succeeded in stretching this 20 minute, tops, story into an engaging full-length feature—much to the credit of a game and funny James Franco in the challenging role of the self-amputee—what ultimately knocked your film down a couple of letter grades for me was your Slumdog-esqe ham-fisted, overcooked visuals (Oh, split screens of office drones scored by Coldplay-in-overdrive-type tunes, etc, go fuck yourselves) and the aforementioned crap score. MIND YOU: This film will be a huge audience-pleasing hit, let there be no doubt about that. And it will likely be a Best Picture contender. *Sigh* I do hope that this is just the inevitable keep-making-what-the-people-want phase of your post-Oscar career that will eventually run its course, allowing you to tone down your current 30 Seconds to Mars music video treatment M.O. and move your focus from the flash-pots and blood bags into creating something a little subtler and hopefully a bit more resonant. Something more like your creepy sci-fi masterpiece Sunshine.
Don’t get me wrong here—127 Hours isn’t a terrible movie. And the scene with Franco taking his arm off will indeed stick with you. As for the rest, it’s certainly just as rousing as any other energy-drink-infused popcorn thriller. Aw, Danny. You break my heart.
My grade: C+
SLIFF 2010: An Evening with Harry Shearer
Eeeeeexcellent!
The 19th Annual Stella Artois St Louis International Film Festival (but still SLIFF, because SASLIFF just looks silly) kicked off on a more somber note than had originally been intended, with the sudden death last week of St. Louis-born filmmaker George Hickenlooper turning the opening gala screening/reception featuring his new buzzy film Casino Jack into a makeshift memorial ceremony. (Of course, I missed this reportedly moving tribute, due to a sneak preview of Burlesque playing across town in Chesterfield. There are priorities, people!) The film’s star, Kevin Spacey, was respectfully in attendance and, according to a SLIFF rep, later closed several bars and, eventually, sidewalks, in and around the Loop. Friendly!) After such gravitas, I think a laugh or two was definitely in order. Funny songs about priests molesting deaf boys, anyone?
An evening with this guy.
Well, if that sounds fun to you (and it surprisingly was!), you likely (wish you had) caught the following night’s packed but surprisingly not sold out SLIFF coup, An Evening With Harry Shearer, a fun and revealing two hour live interview/career retrospective of the comic actor/writer/director, already in town to promote his Hurricane Katrina exposé doc, The Big Uneasy, which was screening the following afternoon in the same venue, the gloriously unfashionable time machine known as the Hi-Pointe theater. Read more »
Gofobo.com: The Full Scoop on Your New Best Friend, or Making Crappy Lives Sweeter One Free Movie at a Time
Bad movies suck way less when they're free.
Movie fans on a budget will appreciate the service provided by the good people of Gofobo.com, a movie info site known mostly for providing free sneak previews of upcoming Hollywood fare. While some similar sites offer screenings in only a few select cities, or in one particular region, Gofobo is pretty much nationwide, so be sure to check regularly for screenings in your area. After a few months using the site fairly regularly, I have amassed some choice intel for you lucky, freewheelin’ hippies, so sit tight and take notes.
Once you create a free Gofobo account, check the SCREENINGS page for upcoming events in your town. Occasionally you will click on an upcoming screening and they will automatically allow you to reserve passes, EASY PEASY, but more often it will ask for an RSVP code to be entered for that particular screening. If you have that RSVP code (obtainable through radio/TV stations and pretty much any business giving them away as a promotion of some sort; TIP: a well-chosen Google Alert will help you discover some of these as they pop up), just enter it on that screening’s page, or on the home page. BOOM. Then you’re on that particular screening’s processing page, where you request either one or two passes. Next, you’ll download a PDF file which contains two separate printable passes, one saying your name and one saying GUEST OF your name (although they give you an option to only reserve one pass, good news for the sad, lonely bastards out there). You’ll need to print them out—HELLO, printer at work—and that’s pretty much it. Just be sure to show up at least an hour before show time (usually scheduled for 7pm, but with the occasional 10am or 9pm screening), because free movies draw people like crazy, and as with all sneak previews these shows are overbooked to ensure the fullest possible house. Also good to know: most screenings start seating a full 40-45 minutes before show time. Read more »
Blowing Your Mind One D at a Time
MEGAMIND (2010/PREVIEW: IN THEATERS 11.5.10) Thanks to my new best friend, the free and awesome Gofobo.com, I have attended several free sneak previews recently, all films of which I knew nothing whatsoever before viewing. This has paid off for me big time, especially for a recent Saturday morning screening of Dreamworks Animation’s upcoming 3D spectacular, Megamind. Holy cow, did I love this movie. And boy was I happy to have missed the film’s ad campaign, whose trailer idiotically gives away most of the film’s many fun plot twists. I heartily recommend you plug yer eyes ‘n’ ears when those suckers come on, and schedule a night at your local cineplex for a 3D DIGITAL PRESENTATION (don’t forget the integral 3D and DIGITAL PRESENTATION parts!) of this delightfully entertaining film.
Let’s just say that the story follows two alien babies, sent by their parents into space via escape pods a la Superman, who both crash land on Earth—one pod gliding directly into the living room of a wealthy family’s Xmas morning mansion, the other crashing disastrously into a prison yard, to be raised collectively by the criminals. The pair eventually grow up to be superhero Metro Man and supervillian Megamind (guess which landed where), whose rivalry plays out amongst the skyscrapers of Metrocity, whose citizens are decidedly gaga over their superhero to the point of erecting a worshipful skyscraper statue/museum in his honor. But let’s stop there—you’ll appreciate this fun thrill ride so much more with an open mind unsullied by preconceived notions. (Unsullied!)
Cross and Farrell go blue.
Megamind is an exhilarating visual experience, and an amazing leap forward in 3D (whether that leap is in technology or application, I’ll let the nerds battle that point out) that left me gape-mouthed and giddy. Remember the first time you looked into a ViewMaster as a kid, and each image looked surreal as hell but every bit as real as the world around you? This film is ALL that, but somehow without overwhelming the story or characters. No small feat! Read more »
Picture Books: Making Movies
MAKING MOVIES (1995/KNOPF) by SIDNEY LUMET Acclaimed director Sidney Lumet prefaces his 1995 insider how-to book on, well, making movies, with a telling anecdote about how he once asked one of his favorite directors, the great Akira Kurosawa, why he’d chosen to frame a shot in a particular way. Kurosawa explained it in the plainest terms possible: If he’d have panned the camera an inch to the left, you’d see the Sony factory; an inch to the right, the airport. Neither belonging in a period movie.
This story sets up Lumet’s book perfectly. Making Movies is a Hollywood tell-all of a variety not often enough seen, devoid of the usual kiss-and-tell, sensationalist twaddle, instead concerning itself with the fascinating(ly tedious) day-to-day process of how a film is created frame by frame. There’s some wonderfully exclusive stuff in here—a step by step detailed lesson explaining coded info on actual daily call sheets from previous Lumet productions, for example—you wouldn’t otherwise get wise to unless you’d find yourself somehow working on an actual set, or perhaps knee-deep (read: $100K+) in film school.
Yes, Lumet wants to make clear, there IS a great amount of chance-taking, inspired artistry in the filmmaking process, but there are also the thousands of tiny decisions that have to be answered NOW, and obstacles popping up left and right (say, a factory and an airport) that a director has to be able to consistently overcome—sometimes via the dreaded compromise—while still somehow maintaining the integrity of this thing to which you’ve dedicated the next year or more of your life.
While Lumet does mine his greatest successes—including Network, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, The Verdict, and Running on Empty—for much of the book’s anecdotal material, he also interestingly focuses on many of his lesser known (or sometimes, just lesser) films, for example, his 1992 Melanie Griffith-led A Stranger Among Us, a film that you totally forgot ever existed, until I just now mentioned it. (Also something you forgot ever existed? Melanie Griffith.) Read more »
Let’s Talk About…Let Me In
LET ME IN (2010/IN THEATERS)
From: Brian
To: Kimberly, Sarah
So, ladies, was this as a big a surprise for you as it was for me? Let Me In totally DIDN’T stink! We should really discuss it. VIA FAKE EMAILS!
First thing, though, let’s acknowledge the amazing film of which this is a remake, the haunting and devastatingly sad 2008 Swedish flick Låt den rätte komma in, released in the US as Let the Right One In. (Hey, who knew that Swedish movie titles aren’t all capitalized like ours? Now YOU do.) Basically it’s a tragic romance between a weird, isolated 12-year-old boy (Owen in Let Me In) and a new girl (Abby in LMI) that moves in next door. Well, she’s a vampire, OF COURSE, and is as isolated and lonely as her new friend. The older man livingwith her, who most assume is her father, is actually her caretaker, in charge of hunting victims, draining their blood into a jug, and bringing it home to the little girl monster. Besides one unfortunate (meant to be?) absurdly comical scene in which a whole mess of CG cats attack a recently made vampire lady, Let the Right One In was a masterpiece of its genre, and one of best films released in 2008, period.
When fans of that film (myself definitely included) heard it was getting a US remake, well grumble grumble grumble. The things that really made it stand out, amazing artfully stark cinematography and knockout performances from the two young Swedish leads, would be completely lost on a US director, right? Well, mostly NOT right at all! (You curmudgeons you!) While the remake doesn’t try to recreate the strangely lit, often gorgeously unreal visuals of the original, director Matt Reeves (of the so-so Cloverfield) has created in Let Me In a world rooted deeper in realism, which benefits the story in a whole new way. And as for the remake’s young lead actors, I adored the original Swedish duo, and was expecting to not accept slick American kid actors (who usually BLOW) in these subtle, dark roles, but I felt Let Me In‘s Kodi Smit-McPhee (last seen in another bleakathon, The Road) and Chloë Grace Moretz (whose turn as Hit-Girl was the only redeeming quality in the otherwise pretty awful Kick-Ass) really handled these challenges like old pros. Read more »
Not As Easy As You’d Think
I would agree!
EASY A (2010/IN THEATERS) I am what you would call an optimist. I choose to believe that things are never as bad as they might seem, and if they are pretty bad, that the worst of it is likely over, and it’s only going to get better from here. While this mindset has served me well for the most part, it has also resulted in my viewing many terrible movies. I always try keep an open mind and not let bad prerelease buzz or internerd word of mouth (uhhhhh, Kimberly) sully my nugget with any preconceived notions that might affect the way I would otherwise naturally respond to a film. While this has worked out for me occasionally (HELLO, The Last Exorcism), it has more often led me to watching my fave Hollyweirdos wallowing in their lesser (read: crap) works. Which brings me to the always charming young actress Emma Stone and her first lead role in Easy A, which, surprise!, kinda sucks. What shocked me even more than how much this film did not work for me was discovering how well reviewed it has been by just about everybody else, which leads me to a sad, inevitable truth: Everybody else is so very dumb. But you can better believe they think just the opposite, smugly sitting back in their luxury cineplex “love seats,” basking in the buttery glow that is recognizing a few arcane references stuffed into an otherwise tired and joyless exercise in “smart” teen comedy. I pity them.
The story follows virgin nobody high school student Olive (Stone, as charming as possible amidst some unfortunate ham-ery) who for no good reason lies to her best friend (who is more unpleasant and mean than the heavy in this story, yet who our heroine STILL wants to be pals with at the end) about sleeping with a college boy, a conversation overheard in the ladies room and passed through the grapevine until Olive is officially considered That Kind of Girl by her gawking classmates. Olive surprises herself by welcoming the attention, and is more than happy to put her new rep to use when a gay classmate (Dan Byrd, showing more heart and depth in his couple of scenes than this thing deserves) asks her to pretend to have sex with him at a crowded party so the bullies will stop picking on him for being a sissy. When that works, and she unintentionally starts a service of sorts where she pretends to have sex with dorks for payment (of gift cards anywhere from Auto Zone to Target), the attention from her classmates turns uglier, spurring a protest from a stock group of Amanda Bynes-led Christian students right outta Central Casting (a la Saved, but without the funny, with the firm exception of Kevin Volchok [!], as awesome here as ever), who make it their mission to rid the school of this tramp. In an act of defiance inspired by her class reading assignment, The Scarlet Letter, Olive decides to respond to this attack by dressing in the tackiest Pussycat Dolls bustiers available, emblazoning upon each a stark red letter “A”. Wait, what? Read more »
Totally Bitchin’ Dead Guys: Leo McCarey & Bing Crosby (Part 2)
Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St Mary's.
THE BELLS OF ST. MARY’S (1945/DVD)
While Leo McCarey’s 1945 sequel to his 1944 Best Picture winning Going My Way didn’t rack up the Oscar wins like its predecessor—though it did receive several nominations—The Bells of St. Mary’s is every bit its match as a masterfully told, sweet comic masterpiece.
Bells follows Bing Crosby’s Father O’Malley to a new assignment—taking over at a rundown and fiscally struggling parochial school for an ailing priest who apparently couldn’t hack it living “up to [his] neck in nuns.” The problem with the nuns? Starting with Sister Superior Benedict, played by an Ingrid Bergman that could not possibly appear more beatific, they have their own particular ideas as to how children should be raised, and well, a man in 1945 has other ideas on the subject.
Surprising enough, NOT a dance battle.
For example, when a young male student gets beaten by a playground bully, the student follows a perilous path assigned to him by the nuns—turning his cheek, repeatedly, and being knocked silly for it. When O’Malley seems to brush off the incident, and appears kind of tickled by the bully’s display of masculinity, sister Benedict is (ever so gently) shocked, leading to a few words between them about what makes a man a man, and what a big part defending yourself plays into it. While Benedict still disapproves, she begins to doubt her peacenik ways—resulting in the purchase of a boxing how-to book and teaching the young boy and herself, in full nun gear, how to properly kick some ass. One more woman brought kicking & screaming into the world of rational common sense by a Man, 1944 style. DONE! (Insert wiping hands clean gesture here.) Read more »
