So I went to the Harvard Exit last night for a screening of Mark Wexler's Tell Them Who You Are, his warts and all documentary about his irascible father, Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf). Midway through programmer Adam Hart's introduction, some yobbo near the front rudely interrupted to say he was there to watch a film and didn't need to be told what to think about it. Well, the crowd murmured their disapproval. From the expression on his face, it looked as if Hart might've thought we were muttering about him. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, a guy to my right yelled, "Just ignore the boorish man!" but Hart was visibly rattled, so he wrapped up his comments, beat a hasty retreat and the film commenced. I just wanted to mention the incident because I thought it was incredibly rude and made a lot of us uncomfortable. Alas, this gentleman--and I use that term lightly--has indulged in this sort of behavior before. A couple of years ago, Kathleen Murphy was attempting to introduce a film at the secret fest that had personal meaning for her. That same guy--grey hair, British accent--busted in to tell her (and his captive audience) that he didn't need to be told what to think. Murphy paused for a second and went on. It wasn't what she had been doing; nor had Hart.
So here's a hearty Bronx cheeer for the boob!
Wednesday, June 1, 2005
Sunday, May 29, 2005
The Return of Comments
I just posted a long review as a guest entry. This entry was posted into the comments of another, unrelated entry. Since it did not have a relationship to the content of that previous entry, it's technically spam. Therefore I did not publish it as a comment.
I noted that I would prefer folks to refrain from doing this. Sometime soon I suppose I will have a set of contributors' and commenters' guidelines to post someplace which may help to forestall confusion.
However, I'd love to see more unsolicited reviews coming in to be published here!
At the moment, we don't have a good method for publishing them, so send them directly to me at siffblog@whybark.com and I will run them as guest entries as I did previously. Additionally, I am initiating a dialog about continuing to expand the contributor base here. With luck, I will come up with an easy way for interested people to begin posting here. Stay tuned!
Dopo Mezzanotte: David Jeffers Guest Review
"For one person to be happy, another has to cry."
DOPO MEZZANOTTE /After Midnight
(Davide Ferrario, Italy, 2004, 92 minutes)
David Jeffers
Ironic humor, pathos and a profound respect for tradition are the sentimental foundation for this tale of Martino and his secret love for Amanda, his fast food muse. He is night watchman at the Mole Antonelliana, the unrealized synagogue turned National Museum of Cinema in Turin. Bound to tradition, represented in his Grandfather, but searching for his own identity through the vast archives he is entrusted to protect, Martino lives in a cinema purgatory of his own creation, relating more to his world of gadgets, Buster Keaton and the Lumiere Brothers than living breathing humans. Our perspective is via his first person narrative, at times more naive and youthful than we might expect. She is the wannabe bad girl, submissive girlfriend of hoodlum biker Angel. Amanda is part Fendi model, part Flora from Botticelli's la Primavera, stuck in a greasy red and yellow tile burger hell. When she deep-fries her idiot bosses trousers while he's wearing them, she seeks refuge from the police at the Mole to the surprise and amazement of Martino.
This film pays homage to film.
The cavernous, sacred setting, almost another character itself, Martino's lofty digs, his awe of Amanda and her peril suggest The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A bicycle ride with his girl on the handlebars is straight out of Butch Cassidy. He revels in the world of slapstick comedy from the silent era and it's overt, swooning, tinted romance. The humorous and almost sad sound of the Banda Tradizionale repeated throughout the picture brings to mind Fellini's Amacord. Martino executes the physical pantomime and one perfect wheeling turn, as Chaplinesque as Johnny Depp's dance of the dinner roles from Benny and Joon. In the end, Amanda, torn between Angel, an unfaithful dog, and Martino, an adoring puppy, reflects, and decides, not to decide. The final homage is a blessing,
"Two boys and one girl? I saw a French movie once."
"Was the ending happy?"
"They died."
The biggest problem with such an obvious reference is the inevitable comparisons, these three lack the depth and freshness of characters from a legend of the New Wave they seek to imitate. While very sweet and oh so curious, Franchesca Inaudi's Amanda hasn't the fire and soul of Jeanne Moreau's Catherine. Giorgio Pasotti's Martino and Fabio Troiano's Angel are merely dim reflections of those they seek to imitate. But hey, Icarus was having a great time until...
Written, produced and directed by journalist filmmaker Davide Ferrario, After Midnight is filled with pleasing and unusual images, the first and last we see, dust, floating in space. An iconic, towering, fifty foot image of Anita Ekberg, la Luna, again and again, as though the darkness of the world at night becomes the darkness of the cinema, Amanda's dream of freedom, running, as she
sleeps safely in Martino's bed, the flickering nickelodeon, literally walking and living in the camera obscura, the closing aperture of the lens. Comedy is always there, thieves drowning a car alarm in a bucket of water, the handyman Ivan, dropping from the sky for his morning coffee, Martino using his tiny antique camera to film Amanda's underwear, drying on a clothesline, two-bit gangsters singing karioke, badly, and Martino's constant eating of apples, "I hate the double fry special. I like apples," and Amanda realizes he wasn't there for the burgers, his secret love revealed.
"Always leave them wanting more," may always bring them back, but the unrealized also leads to frustration and disappointment. While on the right track, hopefully Ferrario learns and improves in subsequent films. Still, After Midnight is a sweet, endearing story of love, the movies, love and the movies and love of the movies.
"Tales are like dust. Movies may end but cinema never."
Image: IMDb (Francesca Picozza and Francesca Inaudi).
SIFF 2005: Junebug and That Man: Peter Berlin
(Phil Morrison, USA, 2005, 106 minutes)
Based on the description of this film, I was expecting a slice of Southern whimsy, but first-time filmmaker Phil Morrison is more ambitious than that.
Consequently, Junebug feels like two films in one, a comedy and a drama (in the production notes, Morrison cites Ozu as an influence). Personally, I preferred the comedy, but that may simply be because I was expecting it and because the two halves don't fit together as well as they could.
Still, I would recommend the film for Amy Adams's performance alone. The Catch Me If You Can actress plays Ashley, an eternally optimistic young pregnant woman, doing her best to make the most out of a bad situation--she lives with her in-laws and the bloom has gone out of her marriage to Ben McKenzie's Johnny. Celia Weston and Scott Wilson, who really seems to be on a roll these days, provide strong support as those in-laws.
Uptown: Fri, June 10, 7:00PM and Harvard Exit: Sun, June 12, 2:00PM.
THAT MAN: PETER BERLIN
(Jim Tushinski, USA, 2005,
80 minutes)
Back in the 1970s, when Peter Berlin was at the height of his fame, I was a big fan of The Book of Lists, so I'm going to rattle off a list of names and titles. If they pique your interest, I recommend checking out this fine film:
1. Tom of Finland
2. Boogie Nights
3. Andy Warhol
4. The Mayor of Castro Street
5. Sal Mineo
6. Wadd
7. Robert Mapplethorpe
8. John Waters
9. Armistead Maupin
10. Klaus Nomi
So there you go. Berlin (That Boy, Nights in Black Leather) was a stunning--and prodigiously gifted--German-born gent who, like the former Klaus Sperber (The Nomi Song), reinvented himself when he hit the States.
He spent time in New York, hanging out with Warhol and the gang, before he moved to San Francisco, where he became a cross between a Tom of Finland illustration and Luchino Visconti lover/muse Helmut Berger of The Damned.
He modeled and he made movies, but mostly he walked the streets looking fabulous in his revealing, custom-made outfits (those white pants!).
Amazingly, the blond bombshell is still turning heads at 60+. Berlin, in this film, is many things (here's another list): vain, smart, principled, loving, and funny. He's truly a one-of-a-kind, and I'm glad I made his acquaintance.
Egyptian: Sun, June 5, 6:00PM and Tues, June 7, 4:45PM.
Friday, May 27, 2005
SIFF 2005 Quick Hits: Ruan Ling-yu, the Minutemen, and Don Letts
Also, it isn't a SIFF film, but the Minutemen documentary We Jam Econo opens at the Northwest Film Forum this evening at 7pm. Producer Keith Schieron is scheduled to attend both the Friday and Saturday screenings. Seems like it would make a particularly nice teaser for Don Letts's Punk: Attitude, which screens tonight at 9pm at the Broadway Performance Hall.
Update: For Video Librarian in 2021, I reviewed Stanley Kwan's 1991 film about Ruan Ling-yu, Center Stage, about which I wrote, "Fortunately for audiences, her performance easily measures up to her heartfelt turn in Wong Kar-wai's acclaimed In the Mood for Love. If Center Stage represents the more difficult proposition, it confirms her status as one of Hong Kong's brightest and most beautiful stars. As Kwan asks in the film, 'Is it advantageous for a movie star to vanish at the peak of her brilliance?'"
Image from Silent London (Ruan Ling-yu).
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Jacques Audiard's Take on James Toback's Fingers: The Beat That My Heart Skipped
The Beat That My Heart Skipped / De battre mon coeur s'est arr
(Jacques Audiard, France, 2005, 108 mins.)
After the press screening of this inventive re-imagining of James Toback's Fingers (1978), I heard one pass holder proclaim, "Implausible!" I heard another take Romain Duris (the hippie drummer from When the Cat's Away, the upcoming Russian Dolls) to task for his visceral portrayal of a classical pianist (too much "face squinching," apparently). So don't say you haven't been warned. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I liked the film--and I thought Duris, who looks like Charlotte Gainsbourg's long-lost brother, was pretty convincing on the ivories. Granted, I quite like Fingers (I own the DVD), but I don't think it's a masterpiece. And although I don't think Audiard's fifth feature is as good as Read My Lips or A Self-Made Hero (still my favorite), the former SIFF Emerging Master does a surprisingly credible job at shaping what was very personal material for Toback (according to his DVD commentary) into a film with his own unique stamp on it.
[image]
The story, in brief, is that Tom (Harvey Keitel's "Jimmy" in the original) is torn between a life of crime (his father's profession) and life as a concert pianist (his late mother's calling). If that makes it sound like Mean Streets--with classical music standing in for Catholicism--that's because it is (a little). The tension comes from Tom's increasingly desperate attempts to reconcile the two. I guess it goes without saying, but there's no way this tale's gonna end well, and Audiard somehow manages to find a less portentious way to come to the same pessimistic conclusion as Toback. It's a neat trick. That said, The Beat That My Heart Skipped does get off to a slow start--it didn't really kick in for me till the last act-- and Tom is never a particularly likable character, but he is a sympathetic one.
The Neptune: Sunday, 5/29, at 6:30PM and Monday, 5/30, at 2PM. Postscript: The Beat That My Heart Skipped made my top 10 for '05.
Monday, May 23, 2005
SIFF 2005 Rambling: Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story, Mysterious Skin, 4, and Frozen
(Scot Barbour, US, 2005, 107 minutes)
I was Andy's biggest fan not because he was going to be a rock star. I was Andy's biggest fan because Andy was who he was. If you met Andy, you loved him like I loved him.--David Wood, Andrew's father
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
It's hard to predict whether viewers who aren't especially interested in the Seattle music scene will take to this well-constructed portrait. I am, so I did, though I was never necessarily a fan of Malfunkshun or Mother Love Bone--somewhat related bands Mudhoney and Nirvana were more my speed.
Andrew Wood, AKA Landrew the Love Child, was the flamboyant front man for those first two acts, the latter of which morphed into Pearl Jam after his drug-related death in 1990. For those who enjoyed Doug Pray's Hype!, I'd recommend Malfunkshun. Plus, it includes members of the title band and Mother Love Bone, like Stone Gossard and Greg Gilmore, producer/musician Jack Endino of Skin Yard, Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, Wood's family, friends and fiancée, and other interesting locals.
Neptune: Sat., 6/4, 6:30PM and EMP: Thurs., 6/9, 7:00PM.
(Gregg Araki, US, 2004, 105 minutes)
This evocative adaptation of Scott Heim's acclaimed novel is an impressive return to form for writer/director Gregg Araki (The Living End, The Doom Generation). More to the point, it's his best film.
Yes, Mysterious Skin is disturbing--it concerns sexual abuse and the results thereof--but Araki suggests more than he shows, and the filmmaker coaxes fine performances from his cast, particularly Joseph Gordon-Levitt (yep, that Third Rock from the Sun kid) as the sociopathic Neil, Brady Corbet as the likably pathetic Brian, and Mary Lynn Rajskub (24's Chloe) as a woman who also believes she was abducted by aliens. Oh, and Harold Budd and Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins provide the lovely score.
Egyptian: Thurs., 6/2, 9:15PM and Uptown: Sat., 6/4, 3:45PM.
Note: Araki is scheduled to attend both screenings.
4
(Ilya Khrzhanovsky, Russia, 2004, 126 minutes)
Imagine, if you will, a film filled to the brim with whining, whimpering, barking
dogs (lots of them), meat (lots of close-ups of cold carcasses and greasy,
slimy cooked pork), alcohol (lots of it, mostly homebrew), puke
(hey, where there's homebrew, there's puke), toothless old crones (lots of them, some gleefully topless), anatomically-correct cloth dolls with faces made out of chewed bread (masticated by the industrious crones) and, of course, suicide.
4 takes every Russian stereotype you can imagine and throws them all up--pun fully intended--on the screen. I understand there's a fair amount of symbolism behind the bewildering array of unappealing imagery, and viewers more intrepid than myself may well appreciate the meanings they convey, but I was too repelled to try to figure out what it all means.
Neptune: Fri., 6/10, 2:00PM, and Sat., 6/11, 6:30PM.
(Juliet McKoen, UK, 2004, 90 minutes)
The starting point was this powerful and poetic article called Salvaging the Sacred, in which Marion Partington, cousin of Martin Amis, describes the emotional effects of her sister Lucy being missing for 21 years. (Lucy was eventually discovered to be one of the West victims).--Juliet McKeon
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
The aptly titled Frozen is a mostly successful, but frustratingly static look at the consequences of an impeded grieving process.
Just as Kath (Shirley Henderson, the highlight of Sally Potter's Yes) can't properly mourn the loss of her sister, because a body has never been recovered, I found it hard to sympathize with her plight.
McKeon's debut feature presents an odd conundrum, because it's almost too successful at what it's trying to achieve, i.e. Kath's "frozen" state, emphasized by frequent shots of ice and water, ends up distancing us from her, despite Henderson's best efforts, and Sean Harris, the villain from Andrea Arnold's Red Road, makes for a fine foil. Still, Frozen is worth seeing, even if doesn't scale the same heights as Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher or Bruno Dumont's L'Humanite, the two films it reminded me of most.
Harvard Exit: Fri., 6/10, 7:15PM, and Sun., 6/12, 4:15PM.
Images: Guerilla Candy (Andrew Wood), The Moscow Times (4), the IMDb (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Brady Corbet), and Alt Film Guide (Shirley Henderson). Aug 12, 2007 postscript: The Malfunkshun DVD is out now.
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