Friday, October 31, 2014
"You and the Night": a young couple hosts an orgy -- transition to the afterlife?
The new French film by Yann Gonzalez, “You and the Night” (“Les
rencontres d’apres minuit”, literally, “the encounters after midnight”) is a
bit of a metaphorical set piece, almost like a ballet to the music of M83.
A young husband and wife, Matthias and Ali (Niels Schnieder
and Kate Moran) and their transvestite maid Udo (Nicolas Maury) invite four
guests into their chateau for a night-long bisexual orgy of sorts. The guests are “The Stud” (Eric Cantona), “The
Star” (Fabienne Babe), “The Slut” (Julie Bremond), and “The Teen” (Alain
Fabian-Delon). You wonder how the young
couple can afford such a palatial property.
What follows seems rather haphazard for a while, as they “interact”
in psychedelic surroundings, and tell their life stories, rather
obliquely. The movie moves outside, to
the beach particularly, and then tyo a movie theater, where they watch themselves. A tragedy ensues for one of the hosts. At dawn, the remaining attendees are treated
to a wintry scene of pristine beauty, under a rather odd rising sun. Have they all passed into the afterlife? Is this their “last night” – for all of
them? I wonder. The outdoor part of the film was shot in the
Loire Valley, which usually would not have winter weather like this.
The director has an interesting eye for masculinity. The “stud” is your leather-bar bear, but the
other two young men are indeed soft-skinned, and we have the “drag queen”
too.
The DVD includes an odd short film by the director, “We Will
Never Be Alone Again” (“Nous ne serons plus jamais seuls”), ten minutes, in
somewhat grainy black and white, with a reduced aspect ratio. A number of teens enjoy dirty dancing at a
party (not shown particularly clearly), and then walk out into the dawn in a
rather bleak landscape, but all in love.
The official site is here, from Sedna films with DVD from Strand Releasing. Sedna is the name of a planetoid beyond Pluto,
and it seems like a fitting name for the production company. The film was a hit
at Cannes. It can also be rented from
Amazon online.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
"In the Cut": Jane Campion's film of Susanna Moore's police "love triangle" in NYC comes across as implausible
“In the Cut” (2003), a French-produced (English language)
police thriller set in New York City, seems a bit cynical now when viewed on
DVD. It comes from director Jane Campion
(“The Piano”) and a novel by Susanna Moore.
The film presents a high school English teacher Frannie Avery,
socializing inappropriately with a student in a bar, when they witness some
explicit behavior. Soon, Frannie is
getting visits from a detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) about a murder of a young
woman in a courtyard near her apartment.
Soon, her own sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) meets a grisly end
too, as Fannnie finds the dismembered corpse.
There follows the improbable spectacle of Frannie’s having a
“relationship” with Malloy, yet afraid of him as she thinks there is reason to
suspect him of the murders. Some of the
scenes are quite grisly and others show a rather unbelievable amount of passion
given the circumstances.
The official site for the DVD is still out there, here (Sony Screen Gems). The film can be
rented on YouTube for $2.99. I was still
living in Minneapolis in early 2003 and I’m surprised I missed it.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
"St. Vincent": a grizzled veteran steps up to what he has to do, for others
The little dramatic comedy “St. Vincent” starts with a shot of a
grizzled old man (Bill Murray) smoking, in bed.
This is a character who is definitely not wholesome eye candy. Gradually we learn of his struggles: he was a Vietnam era hero, who bounced
around, and now bets at Belmont trying to catch up with his debts (the “debt
collector” is played by Terrence Howard from “Hustle and Flow”). His wife is in assisted living on a locked
Alzheimer’s wing, and he lives in a messy Brooklyn rowhouse with a selfish cat
that doesn’t particularly love him. (A
pooch woudn’t fit in here.)
One day, a neighbor’s moving van knocks down a tree,
damaging his antique car and property.
He meets the neighbor, Maggie (Melissa McCarthy), a single-mom nurse
with a little boy Oliver (Jaeden
Lieberher) in a custody battle after a messy divorce. The interaction that follows practically
compels Vincent to “babysit” for the boy most of the time, and play
grandfather. Yes, he gets paid for it,
and needs the money.
Vincent is the personification of street smarts, which he
tries to teach Oliver, who is more likely to see someone like Mark Zuckerberg
as a role model if only he gets the chance.
His Catholic school teacher (Chris O’Dowd) will do the best he can.
The screenwriting (by director Theodore Melfi) piles on one
catastrophe after another upon the major characters, which is what movie
pundits say agents look for in screenplays.
I rather disagree, and it gives the movie a hysterical quality – but after
all, this is supposed to be a tragic-comedy.
I could say that this is a film about moral dilemma, about
stepping up to do for others what you have to do. Sometimes, you "must". That idea occurs at the end, where Vincent is
made a “saint or orphaned children” in a Catholic school ceremony. It seems like we forget that a lot of moral
debate centers around making real sacrifices for others when we have to. For example, a lot of people who don’t have
their own children wind up taking care of “OPC” (other people’s children), a
point that can stir some resentment in me because I did not see myself as
competitive enough to become a father.
There is a line where Vincent says that some people are too
self-absorbed to have children (a thought in Phillip Longman’s “The Empty
Cradle”). Maggie mentions that Oliver is adopted because as a wife she hadn't been able to have her own children. I play this card in the short
story that ends my DADT-III book, the story being called “The Ocelot the Way He
Is”, where family responsibility is imposed at the same time the world faces a
calamity, but the protagonist (“me”) has gotten “what he wants” anyway.
The script mentions Sheepshead Bay a lot, but seems to be
film in locations near the Verrazano Bridge. But Sheepshead was one of my
favorite subway destinations within NYC when I lived there 1974-1978.
The official site is here. The Weinstein brothers were executive
producers.
I saw the film at Angelika Mosaic in Merrifield VA. There was a fair daytime crowd, which
applauded the movie at the end.
Wikipedia attribution link for Sheepshead Bay bridge,
Brooklyn.
Bill
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
"Sundays and Cybele": 1962 French tragedy based in unfounded suspicion of a man befriending an orphan girl
“Sundays and Cybele” is a tragic New Wave drama, filmed in
black-and-white Cinemascope in 1962 by Serge Bourguigon, based on the novel Bernard
Eschasseriaux, “Les dimanches de la ville D’Avray” (“Sundays in Ville d’Avray”,
a Paris suburb).
The central character is a former pilot Pierre (Hardy
Kruger), who is shown doing bombing missions over Vietnam in the late
1950s. At the time, it was called French
Indochina, before the United States took over the responsibility for defending
Vietnam from communism, which would provide a major episode in my own life (the
draft). He has reason to believe that,
in the fog of war, he has killed a Vietnamese child, and the guilt destroys him
when he returns home. Years later, the
deaths of civilians from bombings would become a main point of protests against
the US war in Vietnam, especially the bombing, most of all under Nixon.
Pierrre has a low-key girl friend Madeleine (Nicole
Courcei), and is not getting far in the relationship. He
comes out of himself when he sees a little girl Cybele (Patricia Gozzi)
being left at an orphanage by a disinterested father. He starts seeing the girl every Sunday and
pretends to be her father. She says that
when she is 18, she will marry him (he is 18 years older).
Madeleine finds out about the “relationship” and tells a
real suitor, a doctor Bernard (Andre Ourmansky), who becomes suspicious of
Pierre’s intentions and tells police.
A climactic a tragic encounter occurs in the woods at night,
after Pierre climbs a tower to find a toy (with a little echo of Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”).
Police shoot him, and then the girl screams the famous line that ends the film,
“I am nobody”.
The DVD from the Criterion collection (the film originally
belonged to Sony and Columbia) contains a modern interview with the director,
now in his 80s but very articulate. He
says he wanted to keep the classical music score (including Bach, Albinoni, and
Respighi, with original music by Maurice Jarre) non-conspicuous, but I thought
I heard the theme from the Liszt “ad nos” at one point.
The character Cybele (or Francoise) might be compared to Eppie in "Silas Marner", the George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) novel I read in tenth grade, where Silas, the miserly weaver, befriends a child. The film would seem to have a lesson for Russia (and former satellite countries) that have horrific orphan crises, where kids brought up in them become criminals. Yet the leadership (Putin) believe that the kids have to be protected from "foreign" and "western" (and especially LGBT) parents.
The film won “Best foreign language film” in 1962. It was
released in November (right after the Cuban Missile Crisis) when I was a
patient at NIH, and the tragic story reflects the paranoia of the times.
Wikipedia attribution link for drawing of Sorbonne
Labels:
Communism,
crimes against minors,
foreign language,
New Wave
Monday, October 27, 2014
"Citizenfour", latest documentary by Laura Poitras, makes Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald into movie stars; how did she get this made?
“Citizenfour” is a stunning “filmed as is” docudrama of the
meetings between Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker
Laura Poitras (the director) as well as later Ewen MacAskill, in June 2013 in a
hotel in Hong Kong.
The film was produced by HBO, Praxis and Participant media,
and distributed theatrically by Radius TWC.
The aspect ratio (1.66:1) is slightly less the usual, suggesting
television-intended, and the sound doesn’t seem to have full Dolby, given the
conditions under which the film was shot.
As the film opens, we see a long corridor or tunnel, with
the pencil-point of light at the end.
Poitras narrates, and describes how she is on a government watch list
herself with DHS (wiki ). The tunnel comes to an end and opens
up on Hong Kong.
We also have an early scene with Glenn Greenwald lounging at
his Brazil home, preparing to go on a mystery mission before the encounter. We glimpse his hairy body and the camera
often dawdles on his dog, which dearly loves him. His male partner, David Miranda, will appear
at the end when he is detained because of Glenn’s reporting for the Guardian.
I don’t know how Poitras pulled all this off, but the camera
goes all over the world, to Rio and Brasilia, to Russia (for Snowden’s “resting
place” with his girl friend), and to Berlin, where Poitras lives, and also to
Brussels, where the EU challenges the US NSA, as well as to NSA facilities in
Utah and in Britain.
But Edward Snowden is the charismatic star of the film. About half of the 114
minute length is taken showing Snowden’s articulate explanations of how NSA
snooping works (illegally), as her lounges around in the Hong Kong hotel in
informal garb. The camera lingers on his
soft face, that has some minor skin irritation, and sometimes on his smooth, almost
hairless arms and upper chest. The
intimacy of this movie is plainly shocking. When Greenwald and Poitras first meet him, they don't know who he is or who he works for. He was a kid born in North Carolina.
A lot of time is taken, also, in showing computer chat
between Snowden and Poitras after he leaves Hong Kong (and winds up in
Russia). Julian Assange appears, helping
arrange his asylum from his own perch in the Ecuadoran embassy in London. It’s ironic that Putin has helped Snowden,
who is motivated by liberty interests of
all people, when Putin has behaved like a dictator since, with respect to the
anti-gay propaganda law (indeed ironic given Greenwald’s participation) and
obviously with his “invasion” of Ukraine and duplicitous behavior on the
Malaysian plane crash,
The film explains, toward the end, that the “illegality” of
the government’s actions is not an affirmative defense in a trail for
espionage. It also goes into how we have
co-mingled liberty with a notion of privacy that no longer exists anyway, given
social media and the Internet.
Snowden explains how "metadata gathering" works pretty clearly. At on point he left me wondering of the NSA could snoop on cloud backups -- of computer files never sent or published anywhere. Just yesterday, Carbonite on one of my computers suddenly got itself uninstalled. It sent me a chilling thought half way through the movie.
There is a lot of embedded CNN coverage.
Snowden explains how "metadata gathering" works pretty clearly. At on point he left me wondering of the NSA could snoop on cloud backups -- of computer files never sent or published anywhere. Just yesterday, Carbonite on one of my computers suddenly got itself uninstalled. It sent me a chilling thought half way through the movie.
There is a lot of embedded CNN coverage.
The official site is here (TWC). The title of the film is usually spelled as one word and is most correctly written in capitals ("CITIZENFOUR"). Some sources may spell it as two words ("Citizen Four").
I saw the film on a Monday afternoon (delayed in getting to
it by a busy weekend in New York) at Landmark’s E Street Cinema in Washington,
and the weekday audience almost half-filled the large Auditorium 1.
I don't usually give star-count ratings, but this one deserves five stars if any film does.
I don't usually give star-count ratings, but this one deserves five stars if any film does.
Wikipedia attribution link for Hong Kong NASA photo.
Update: Nov. 23, 2014
I've reviewed Glenn Greenwald's book "No Place to Hide" on my Book Reviews blog Nov. 22, 2014. There's a lot of material on "what journalism is" as well as a detailed account of the 10-day meeting with Edward Snowden in the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong.
Update: Nov. 23, 2014
I've reviewed Glenn Greenwald's book "No Place to Hide" on my Book Reviews blog Nov. 22, 2014. There's a lot of material on "what journalism is" as well as a detailed account of the 10-day meeting with Edward Snowden in the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong.
Labels:
HBO,
Participant Media,
Poitras,
TWC,
Wikileaks
Saturday, October 25, 2014
"I Am David": a boy escapes a Stalinist concentration camp in the early 1950s
“I Am David”, a 2003 by Paul Feig, based on the book by Anne
Holm (with alternate title “North to Freedom”) is to be commended for
presenting Stalin’s concentration camps after WWII (instead of Hitler’s). In 1952, David (Ben Tibber) escapes a labor
camp in Bulgaria with the help of his mentor Johannes (Jim Caviezel), who gets
killed as a result. With only a compass,
David must navigate, often hitchhiking, all the way to Denmark to deliver a
secret letter, but really will get reunited with his mother.
Along the way he meets a lot of interesting characters, and
in one scene rescues a girl from a burning barn.
The film shows lots of flashbacks to the camp in sepia
tones.
The painter who takes him across the border from Italy into
Switzerland says to him that he is a man of few words (but a lot to say), which
could mean that someday he can be a man “of great power” if he wants to
be.
David is rather rough when he plays with the woman's cat.
David is rather rough when he plays with the woman's cat.
The film was developed by Walden Media and Lionsgate but
shown largely in “independent” theaters.
I’m surprised that I missed it during my last months living in
Minneapolis.
Friday, October 24, 2014
"In a Dark Place" is a setting of the Henry James novella "The Turn of the Screw"; so is a Britten opera
“In a Dark Place” (2006), directed by Domato Rotunno, is, on
the surface, a gothic, ghost-story horror film shot mostly outdoors on a wintry
estate in Luxembourg. But it is based on
the 1898 novella “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James (text), which had also inspired the 1954 chamber opera by Benjamin Britten.
Sexual exploitation, leading to demons in the mind, drives the
story. In the beginning, Anna Veigh
(Leelee Sobieski) is called into the meeting with the headmaster (Thomas Sanne)
of a private school where she teaches art.
He accuses her of trying to be an “art therapist” but starts making
inappropriate advances while firing her.
But then, inexplicably, he arranges her to take a live-in position at an
estate, Bly House, where she will raise two children Miles (Christian Olson)
and Flora (Gabrielle Adam). Is this so
she keeps quiet about his own abuses?
Soon, though, a menace grows, She learns that Miles has been expelled from
school, and eventually that he may have been sexually abused. Around the estate she starts seeing faces,
ghosts. A long sequence of incidents
occurs, that tests whether the ghosts are real, in her own mind, or whether she
is becoming one herself.
The music in Britten’s opera was interesting in that it
bordered on using twelve-tone technique.
As with “Peter Grimes” and “Billy Budd”, Britten was seen as willing to
skirt the topic of homosexuality in a time that it was taboo. In the movie, there is a violin passage that
seems to come from Britten.
I await the DVD for Jody Wheeler’s “The Dark Place” on Dec.
2. I don’t know whether the story is
based on the James novella, but it sounds as if it is.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
"The Skeleton Twins": the Duplass Brothers give us a dramedy with a disturbing and unconvincing back story
“The Skeleton Twins” (directed by Craig Johnson) starts with
an image of Milo (a hairy-chested Bill Hader) reclining in his bathtub, and
then we see the redness of hemoglobin in the water. Then we see Maggie (Kristen Wiig), whom we
will learn soon is his fraternal twin sister, assembling the sleeping pills she
will take, when she gets a cell phone call that her brother is in the hospital. It was only the loud music of Milo’s LA
apartment that attracted help in time. We’ll
say now that this film is a wannabe romantic comedy, and does not go the course
of “Wristcutters: a Love Story”. Milo
will wear wrist bandages and covers for the rest of the movie.
Milo and Maggie must have a lot of genes in common: they’re
both unstable, and both attracted to men.
Maggie invites Milo to come stay with her in upstate New York while he
recovers.
Milo has work problems.
He says he is an actor, but he can’t get work without an agent. I’ve heard that one before. Maggie encourages
him to get a menial job doing yard and brush removal work. He’s not very good at it; his movements are slow, he doesn’t gather
enough brush in one swoop, and, well, he’s lazy; he’s god to “learn to work”,
as my father would have put it. Later,
Milo has trouble on a rope-climbing attraction. But it's fall, not too cold, and there will be a Halloween party. Suffice it to say, it doesn't help "politically" that the Duplass Brothers present a stereotyped gay male character as physically lazy or indifferent; I had some of those problems myself as a kid, but that is by no means "normal" in the gay male community today.
Some of the movie is about Maggie’s own stumbling marriage,
and Milo wonders if he can be a good “gay uncle”. Maggie sees a buff-and-tattooed swimming
instructor Billy (Boyd Holbrook) on the side and goes nowhere. But the subplot that got my attention, and
that strains credibility, is Milo’s relationship with former high school
English teacher Rich (Ty Burrell, from “Modern Family”).
About two decades before, Rich had a “relationship” with
Milo, when Milo was only 15, the age of a high school sophomore. So the question now is, why is Milo still “attracted”
to him. Let’s add that the incident was handled “quietly”; Rich resigned and was not prosecuted. He rebuilt his life and has a wife and
son. He is trying to get a romantic
comedy screenplay sold, and Milo even promises to get it to an agent (which,
remember, Milo doesn’t have).
One way this could have happened is that the teenager could
have set it up and acted as the “aggressor”.
This idea sounds shocking, but it was behind the screenplay “The Sub”
that I wrote and posted on my own site, and that caused so much consternation
when I was subbing (back in 2005).
There
is a hint of that in “The Zero Theorem” (Sept. 23), when the precocious
character Bob seems to be luring Leth, and Leth eventually gets in trouble for
it. But in this film, Milo has little
charisma and it’s not credible that he would or could have done that as a teen.
You would think that Rich would stay as
far away from Milo (and likely legal troubles, even twenty years later) as
possible. For many people, this topic
isn’t funny.
The official site is here. The film is produced by The Duplass Brothers
(Jay and Mark) and isn’t exactly up to the credibility of “The Puffy Chair”. The tagline is “Family is a cruel joke.” The film was produced and distributed by the
partnership of Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions (which supplies the trailer above). Lionsgate uses its new Wagnerian
introduction.
I saw the film before a small audience at the AMC
Shirlington in Arlington.
The film has no relation to “The Skeleton Key” (2005, Iain
Softley, Universal), a gothic thriller near New Orleans involving a hospice
nurse.
Picture: mountains near West Point, NY, my visit, 2011.
Labels:
crimes against minors,
Duplass,
indie drama,
LGBT,
Lionsgate,
Roadside Attractions
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
"The Blue Room": A stylish French mystery that reverses the "omniscient observer" role
“The Blue Room” (“La chambre bleue”), by Mathieu Amalric,
purports to be a spoof of 1940’s mystery film making. Shot in dogme and the old “1.33:1” aspect
ratio, but garish in boudoir colors, and with a film noir music score Gregoire
Hetzel (with melodramatic use of a Bach-Busoni Chaconne on the piano) it seems
a bit manipulative and fluffy, if brief at 76 minutes.
Julien Gahyde (Amalric himself) and Esther Despierre
(Stephanie Cleau) carry on a passionate love affair in a “blue room” in a
resort near the coast. But that is a
flashback, as both are in the French courts system, being interrogated and
going to trial. The movie plays a trick
in not telling the viewer what they’re in trouble over at first, a rather
inverted reverse of the (literary agent's) omniscient observer problem, where the reader or viewer
often knows things the protagonist characters don’t (because in much fiction,
one character has to “discover” what another lead character knows, as in my own
novel). That is, here, the characters know more than the viewer; usually, the viewer knows more than any one character.
It becomes pretty obvious, though. Each of the couple’s legal spouses have shown
up dead. That’s the trouble. We get a graphic description of how Nicolas
died of digitalis poisoning. Are the
couple in cahoots, or did Julien fall for a “femme fatale” and is he going to
go down for what he didn’t do? So perhaps on my comment on "observation": maybe Julien doesn't know as much as he should. But he's the storyteller, right?
The official site is here (IFC and Sundance Selects). I saw the film at the West End in Washington
before a surprising weekday crowd, in the smallest auditorium.
Wikipedia attribution link for picture of Lourdes, which I
visited in 2001.
Labels:
courtroom drama,
dogme,
foreign language,
IFC,
indie comedy,
mystery,
Sundance
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
"Felony", an Aussie thriller, is a Shakespearian moral tragedy and lesson in bike safety
The new Australian film “Felony” by Matthew Saville is like
a Shakespearian triple tragedy (maybe it does follow one of the plays), as
moral corruption finally undoes not just one but three Sydney police
officers. The film was produced in part
with Roadshow Pictures, that is Village Roadshow, which usually works with
Warner Brothers for films shot in the US.
The film is comparable to “The Judge” (Oct. 16) and I think more
intense.
After taking a bullet in his vest and narrowly escaping
serious wounding, police officer Malcolm Toohey (Joel Edgerton, who also wrote
the screenplay) has a few beers and even talks his way past a DUI
checkpoint. (I’ve encountered only one
of these in the past five years or so, on a Friday night on Lee Highway in
Merrifield VA.) But as he drives down a lightly traveled
street (and in Australia they drive on the left, like in Britain) he meets a
kid (Alex Haddad) on a bicycle going against traffic (wrong way) and feels a
bump against his left side view mirror.
He looks behind and sees the kid down.
As a purely bicycle safety issue, it’s important to remember
that auto side view mirrors have gotten bigger and could strike cyclists. The kid was also going the wrong way, which
increases risk of not being seen in time.
Malcolm stops and calls in the accident but, in the time before the cops
and ambulance arrives, straightens his side view mirror and starts to cover up
the wreck.
Soon his boss Carl Summer (Tom Wilkinson, from “In the
Bedroom”) joins him in rationalizing the cover-up. Dr. Phil would have a field day analyzing
this (and I except him and his son to see this film). Malcolm has to field questions like, "How does it feel to be a hailed a hero?" But the youngster in the group, Jim Melic
(Jai Courtney) starts noticing troubling inconsistencies in the story and the
prods Carl to take the crash seriously.
The boy is in a coma, and will either die or become a vegetable. Jim starts to have a relationship (platonic)
with the boy’s mother. But the character
is interesting. Jim, with his short-cropped perfect hair, and EDS suit,
form-fitted to a wrestler’s body, is made to look like the perfect man, a James
Bond or Clark Kent type.
He keeps his suit
on while doing a lot of hacking and gumshoeing on the computer to investigate
the accident on his own. Once in a
while, his collar is left open at the neck, to reveal thick chest hair. His “images” on Google are not always as
perfect, and that’s the price of making a living as an actor.
It’s a bit of a spoiler to explain how Jim and Carl get
taken down. More medical tragedy
follows, and probably prison time for maybe all three.
Had the officer not covered up the hit, I’m not sure what
would have happened in court.
Involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide? Well, the boy was going the wrong way and may
have accidentally veered too close himself.
The boy might be at fault. That’s
a good question for auto insurance claims adjusters who may see this
movie. When driving, the law in most
states says you must stay three feet away from cyclists (if passing them in the
same lane) to avoid this kind of tragedy, but the cyclist could suddenly lunge. I like the idea of dedicated bicycle lanes, and
I think that cyclists should obey the same laws as cars, including honoring
traffic lights and stop signs. It’s
dangerous to have to pass the same cyclist more than once because he ran
lights. Cyclists should also be expected
to stop in situations where it would be difficult for drivers to see them (as
when they right-turn across bike lanes).
The biggest objection to wrong-way cycling is side-street turners won’t
see them in time. I’ve had a couple or
narrow “wrong way” misses myself, at least one with a kid I know and who is
normally very responsible, and in college now.
The Facebook site is here (Benaroya, Village Roadshow Pictures, and Gravitas Ventures). I labeled this as "courtroom drama" to link it with the "Judge" movie; the story should have wound up in court and probably will after the fact. I would give it at least four stars out of five. It will be in the Oscar race. The brooding music score by Bryony Marks is impressive.
On bicycle-driver safety, there's one other idea to remember, "dooring". Read this bike safety guide.
On bicycle-driver safety, there's one other idea to remember, "dooring". Read this bike safety guide.
The film is available on Amazon instant play and at the West
End Cinema in Washington DC.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Abel Ferrara's "4:44 Last Day on Earth": what it would be like if you knew exactly when the world would end
“4:44 Last Day on Earth” (2011, directed by Abel Ferrara) is a somewhat brief apocalyptic drama, showing what the last day of life on Earth might be like if we knew that the world would come to an end suddenly.
Willem Dafoe plays Cisco, a second-tier actor, holed up in a
modest Manhattan apartment in an older neighborhood with Skye (Shanyn Leigh),
having some tender intimacies, dealing with familial and neighbor
relationships, while pundits ranging from Al Gore to the Dalai Lama pontificate
about our sins as a people, and news commentators try to stay on the air as
long as possible. One of them says “it
doesn’t matter where you live or how much money you have.” Skye comforts herself with her abstract
painting (in blues and purples, as if she were a Jackson Pollock), and Cisco
keeps loaning his Internet rig access to people wanting to connect with family
all of the world.
The cause of the catastrophe is said to be an opening of the
ozone layer, although it’s hard to see how that would cause a mass extinction
at a specific, predicted time. AL Gore blames human activity and pollution. Some people wonder if “they’re wrong.” Two
hours before the end, there is a fireworks show. Nevertheless, about an hour before the end
(about an hour into this 85-minute film), northern lights (aurora borealis)
start to appear, and winds pick up, and a bizarre haze settles in. The Internet, and the power, start to go out
about three minutes before the end. As
the film ends, the screen turns white, which it remains as the credits roll
(printed in black, like on typical paper).
The official site for the film is here (IFC). The film can be rented on YouTube but it's unusually pricey.
Some disaster newscasts have speculated that a gamma ray
burst could cause extinction of human life.
Some gamma rays may travel slighter slower than light and such an event
might be predictable shortly after a supernova, but the closest star to us
capable of such an outburst upon explosion is at least 8000 light years away,
and most such stars are near the centers of galaxies. Gamma ray bursts vary in content and
strength, and can destroy the ozone layer, or cause most of the oxygen in the
atmosphere to be consumed by nitrogen.
They may happen once every ten million years or so, but someday a future
civilization might have to deal with one (Wikipedia article )
Another idea could be the sudden loss of the Earth’s
magnetic field, or a sudden pole shift, like in the novel “The HAB Theory” by
Allan W. Eckert (1976), which I don’t recall being filmed.
I can imagine a film, possibly an extended short (call it “Overnight”),
where someone knows that this is his last day.
He finishes his self-publication on the computer, locks up the house,
gets taken by van to a termination center.
He goes to a dinner and reception and then retires to a cabin-like room
in a hotel. He watches his life in a
media center, and has one last chance to post online. Then gradually, his access to media is taken
away, and his own stuff is taken down.
The room darkens. He has a last
snack and last drink of water in the room alone, and lies down and dies. Someone comes for the body, to haul it away
for cremation. But then “he” wakes up in a similar room, and the windows open
to show a community on another planet.
The media comes back on, and he sees only the briefest summary of his
previous life. He is invited to a meeting,
no food or drink, and finds out he is part of a “family of souls”. He will be engaged “where he is”, until he learns what kind of life he will
lead next time to balance his karma. In
the very last scene, we learn Earth is approached by a death star, a brown
dwarf.
Wikipedia attribution link for supernova picture
Sunday, October 19, 2014
"Mysteries of the Unseen World" from NatGeo: 3-D science class for middle schoolers
The National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian,
the Samuel C. Johnson IMAX Theater, is showing “Mysteries of the Unseen World”,
directed by Louie Schwartzberg, in 3-D, from National Geographic.
The documentary focuses on things that are too small, too
big, or happen too quickly or too slowly to be “seen” in a normal way.
Back in the 1950s, Disney created a sensation with “time-lapse
photography” showing how flowers bloom.
The same concept could show how a baby matures into adulthood and how a
handsome young adult ultimately, imperceptibly at first, ripens and matures and
then frankly ages.
Much of the film concerned a typical family in a high-rise
apartment, which appeared to be located in New Orleans.
The “too small” portion showed how rain drops bounce as
perfect spheres, progressively smaller, when they hit puddles. It also showed the appearance of very small
animals like mites and rotifers. It
traced the development of the compound microscope, which we all used in biology
class in high school, and of the electron microscope.
But the most interesting sight in the film might be a
200-mile hypothetical elevator to space, ridden by a space-shuttle-like device,
with views of Earth from the elevation of an orbiter, but with ordinary people
as paying passengers.
The official site is here (NatGeo).
Labels:
3-D,
IMAX,
NatGeo,
science documentary,
Short films
Saturday, October 18, 2014
"Whiplash": Miles Teller carries the film as an athletic drummer
“Whiplash” (directed by Damien Chazelle) is a confrontation
between two strong characters: 19 year
old conservatory student Andrew (Miles Teller, who dominates the film), and the
sharp-tongued band class leader Fletcher (J. K. Simmons) who barks at his
students like a Marine drill sergeant. I
never thought of a music college as like the military.
I also never realized there was so much skill involved in
playing drums, which becomes a bit of an athletic activity. Fletcher keeps setting up “contests” with
other drummers, especially Ryan (Austin Stowell), and frankly acts like a
bully. A few times, he utters lines
about gay pride that are a bit short of homophobic, but they shock us when we
hear them now. In fact, Andrew has a
girl friend Nicole (Melissa Benoist) whom he ditches in one coffee shop scene
because, well, she isn’t going to be good enough for him when he has to strive
for such perfection in his own life craft. I know the feeling.
There is a critical sequence where the kids take a bus out
to suburban New Jersey to a concert.
When the bus gets a flat tire, Andrew rents a car (not sure how he does
this under 25) and wrecks it, talking on the cell phone as he drives, and
crawls out after the car rolls over and still gets to the concert, all
bloodied. Not sure how the other kids got there.
A critical plot point concerns a band member’s losing his
printed score and not having memorized the music (the title “Whiplash” refers
to one of the items they play). I
wondered, why doesn’t he use iPads for the score?
I’m not sure I buy Fletcher’s quasi-redemption or Andrew’s
conquest in the final performance.
The official site is here (Sony
Pictures Classics). This film was a
major hit at the 2014 Sundance.
There is another YouTube clip where Miles Teller (himself a
musician) drums with The Roots on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on
NBC. I would wonder if he has performed
with The Metropolis Ensemble.
The film takes places in New York and New Jersey, but all
the indoor scenes were filmed in LA, as was the one outdoor crash
sequence. This film does not have the New
York State trademark for indie film.
I saw the film before a fair Friday night audience at the
AMC Shirlington.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
"The Judge" provides extensive courtroom drama, but doesn't always follow the law
“The Judge”, the new drama film by David Dobkin from Warner
Brothers and Village Roadshow (which often used to produce big dramatic
pictures together), is set in southern Indiana.
There are low ranges and hills around Brown County State Park, around
Nashville, which I remember visiting in 1970 when on a long travel assignment
with my first job with RCA. (Bloomington and Indiana University are nearby.) It gets
hilly around the rivers, even as the prairie drops in elevation.
The film,
however, was filmed in Massachusetts, which makes the rustic setting look more
mountainous than it can be. I like to
see outdoor scenes shot where they really are supposed to happen. Around 2000, I made a friend, a law student at Southern Illinois
University, originally from Evansville, IN, and I understand that he is now a
prosecutor in the area. All of this came
back to me as I watched the film. The film also has two tornado siren scenes and some effective windstorms.
Robert J. Downey, Jr. plays Hank Palmer, a hot-shot defense
lawyer in Chicago, whose reputation is to get guilty clients off. Downey bounces through the film with the body
language of a 25-year old (even though he is almost 50). The movie starts with a rather embarrassing encounter
in a men’s room (cats urinate to mark their terrirtory), before it opens
up. While in court, Palmer gets a cell
phone call that his mother in a southern Indiana town has passed. He has to ask for a continuance.
He goes down there and immediately meets his
dad Joseph (Robert Duvall, 83) still on the bench as a county judge prolific in
his cases and uncompromising with defendants, and two brothers Glen (Vincent D’Onofrio),
who had lost a chance for a baseball pitching career to a mysterious accident
and is now overweight, and Dale (Jeremy Strong), who likes to play at making
movies but seems somewhat autistic and protected. The first night, Joseph goets out for
groceries. The next day, after a humorous
exchange about driving skills when parking by backing in, Hank notices some damage
and blood on the grille of his dad’s Cadillac.
He goes back to the airport, and as his plane leaves, gets another cell
phone call that his dad has been arrested for a hit-and-run death of a
pedestrian.
So Hank now gets to defend another maybe-guilty client, his
dad, taking over from a listless county lawyer (Dax Shepard), who vomits
outside the courthouse before every hearing, opposing a sharp prosecutor (Billy
Bob Thornton), who wants to go for first degree murder, claiming that the judge
targeted a nasty former defendant who had gotten off easy on a technicality,
after a happenstance angry encounter at the convenience store. There are some problems with the legal
scenarios: this sounds more like second degree
murder, not first; and the sentencing
would not happen at the same time as conviction. So the “courtroom drama” is
not as realistic as it should be.
There is another subplot, involving the judge’s legacy, and
his keeping his cancer and chemotherapy secret.
There is a harrowing scene where Hank has to, rather suddenly, take care
of his dad’s vomit and profuse diarrhea.
There's a scene late where the prosecutor says is that the law is the only way to make people equal. True. I can recall a meeting in Boston with another friend in the movie business who thought that "courtroom drama" was the best way to translate my first book into film, but that isn't the path that I followed.
The story does remind us that senior citizens can suddenly go very wrong, with tragic and perhaps shameful results.
The story does remind us that senior citizens can suddenly go very wrong, with tragic and perhaps shameful results.
The official site is here.
I saw this film at the AMC Courthouse in Arlington before a
substantial Wednesday night audience.
Picture: Near Brown County State Park, Aug. 2012, my
strip.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
"Campaign of Hate: Russia and Gay Propaganda" documents Putin's recent anti-gay law with interviews
Tonight, HRC and Reel Affirmations hosted a screening of “Campaign
of Hate: Russia and Gay Propaganda”, directed by Michael Lucas (who did the QA)
and Scott Stern.
The film, 78 minutes, presents many interviews with LGBT
people in Russia, many of them by Lucas, some anti-gay average citizens, and at
least one anti-gay politician who was partly behind the 2013 law, which
presents an dissemination of information of “non traditional sexual lifestyles”
in front of minors. Sometimes the law is
characterized as prohibiting publish speech, discoverable by minors, suggesting
that gay relationships were equivalent to heterosexual marriage, or that gay
people were equal to “normal” people.
Therefore, arguing for your own equality is a crime.
The film could be compared to the BBC-HBO fifty minute film “Dispatches:
Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia” by Ben Steele, reviewed on my TV blog
Feb. 9, 2014. That later film has
created a sensation by its depiction of anti-gay vigilantism that the law seems
to excuse or even encourage. As well as
ABC’s report “Moscow Is Burning” about the now closed Central Station disco in
Moscow, reviewed Feb. 15. 2014 on that blog. But this newer film is much “quieter”.
During the QA, Lucas said that Russian authorities might not
find the film objectionable, as it is a documentary, and lets some Russians
state their anti-gay views with a straight face.
The interviews to hit the tendency of Russian culture to
associate homosexuality with pedophilia.
But moreover, it takes the position that Russians have lost a lot if
individual freedom since about 2000 as Putin consolidates power. Aa the economy stagnates, Vladimir Putin
looks for scapegoats, and finds LGBT an easy mark. The film also takes the position that
Russians tend to believe that homosexuality is a cultural import from the West,
and they’re supposed to hate the West as part of Russian nationalism. Since the fall of the former Soviet Union at
the end of 1991, religion has become stronger in Russia, and the Russian
Orthodox Church has reinforced anti-gay ideas.
The film covers the intention of Putin's regime to take children away from same-sex couples, which "will happen". They would be put into orphanages. Yet most kids who grow up in Russian orphanages turn out to become criminals, it was said in the QA.
The film covers the intention of Putin's regime to take children away from same-sex couples, which "will happen". They would be put into orphanages. Yet most kids who grow up in Russian orphanages turn out to become criminals, it was said in the QA.
Still, there is such obvious circularity in their
views. Putin has also made a lot of
Russia’s low birthrate. It’s pretty
obvious that he thinks that gay men and women, if allowed to speak, will encourage
others to have fewer children by the examples they set. There is also a degree of fascism in the
views now (even though Stalin-style communism was vehemently anti-gay, and
ironically Russia actually dropped its sodomy law in 1993). There is an idea that you should be fit to
carry on society, or else, accept subservience or perish (which is pretty much
what Nazi Germany believed).
In the QA, I asked a question about how asylum was working
out from Russia and other countries, as the press has been vague on this
sensitive point. The discussion went
into several areas. Lucas mentioned that Israel has to make sure that people
trying to emigrate from Palestine and claiming to be gay aren’t
terrorists. He also made an interesting
point about ISIS: that in Britain, many
of the young men recruited to go fight in Syria and now Iraq were bullied as
kids because they were redheads.
A
couple of asylees were in the audience.
One person from the DC Center (link) pointed out that you can be a member of a persecuted social group to apply
for asylum without proving you are gay.
As I noted on my LGBT blog Oct. 3 and Sept. 29, 2014, the question of
how LGBT refugees are supported while here has been little covered by the media
– but they can’t work for six months.
Back in 1980, there was pressure in Dallas for LGBT people to house gay
Cuban refugees, and that caused a lot of controversy (especially with the local
Catholic Charities). That kind of
appeal hasn’t been made this time, and would be politically controversial with
regards to overall immigration policy --- very much, morally double-edged.
The official site is here (Breaking Glass Pictures, in Philadelphia). There's more video from the QA here.
The film could well be compare to documentaries about anti-gay measures in some other countries, as with "God Loves Uganda" (Oct. 2013) and "The World's Worst Place to Be Gay", as well as accounts of Nazi policy as in "Paragraph 175" (2000), and "The Consequence" (1977) and even "The Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality" (2004) based on Lothar Machtan's controversial book,
The film could well be compare to documentaries about anti-gay measures in some other countries, as with "God Loves Uganda" (Oct. 2013) and "The World's Worst Place to Be Gay", as well as accounts of Nazi policy as in "Paragraph 175" (2000), and "The Consequence" (1977) and even "The Hidden Fuhrer: Debating the Enigma of Hitler's Sexuality" (2004) based on Lothar Machtan's controversial book,
Monday, October 13, 2014
"Men, Women and Children": Jason Reitman shows how his characters all stumble around living on the Internet
“Men, Women and Children”, Jason Reitman’s latest film,
tells its non-visual, indoor story (the film was made near Austin, TX) as a
series of encounters between the adult and high school teen characters, all
caused by their interactions in social media.
The result is a bit slow.
Reitman encompasses the film with a rather silly meditation,
as narrated by Emma Watson (who also narrates the early part of the film) of
the Vogager, launched in 1977, leaving the Solar System now, leaving behind
Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot”, where all human interactions, including now cyberspace,
occur.
As the film opens, Don Truby (Adam Sandler) finds his own
home computer unusable because of malware, and starts looking at porn on his
son’s homework computer. The 15-year-old son Chris (Travis Tope) is venturesome
enough, very much discovering young women in the real world. The mother (Rosemarie DeWitt) very much
watches the kids’ Internet access, using the latest monitoring tools. Eventually she will destroy her daughter’s website,
which went over the top as she tried to win an acting contest. In another family, Tim Mooney (Ansel Elgort)
quits the football team, stranding all his buddies, saying that football is
meaningless. You see, he has read Carl
Sagan on line. He wants to get good at
some computer game. His relationship
with his dad (Dean Norris) has become strained ever since his mother left. Tim gets into a fight and gets
counseling. You wish he could turn out
like “Mason” in “Boyhood”. (This film reminded me to see the PBS Frontline film "League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis", on the TV blog Oct. 14.)
A lot of the film shows relationships building and dying in
chat sessions (or with texts). People
get blocked from sending texts, and blocked from seeing others’ Facebook pages (like here ). I simply have never used social media
for really “social” purposes this way (at least to date someone). I use it mostly for publication and circulation
of news. The issue of one girl's racy website barely touches on the conflicts that can occur from web publishing. Teenagers known to me generally don’t use social media with this sort
of aggression.
The official site is here. The film is formally distributed by
Paramount. But this first week it is
showing in only one theater in DC, Landmark, which specializes in independent
film. (In the past Paramount has used
its Vantage or Classics brands more often than it does now.) The title can also be spelled “Men, Women
& Children”.
Sunday, October 12, 2014
"Pride": Solidarity between the LGBT community and mine workers in "The Iron Lady's" Britain, not overplayed
“Pride”, by Matthew Warchus, certainly provides lilt, as it
is practically a full fledge British musical and comedy about political
solidarity leading to an unusual episode of gay history. The film starts at Gay Pride in London in
1984, when some gay activists circulate the idea of helping raise money for the
coal miners striking in Wales. Conservative
Margaret Thatcher, “The Iron Lady” (Jan. 26, 2012) was the common enemy to be
faced. In fact, in the prelude to the
film, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” gets sung to lyrics about solidarity,
Fred Waring style. (I remember the real anthem in mixed chorus in middle
school.)
Now, I personally am not a fan of linking “gay equality” to “socialism”
(which some props in the film do), nor do I personally like to be recruited to
pimp to raise money for “other people’s causes”. Stepping back from this, I understand the
need for unity of sorts. I marched in
parades and demonstrations a lot more in the past. But I’ve never belonged to a union, and I’ve
never done without my own wages for the good of others. In fact, in my world, there was a tendency
for singles to work for less and lowball the market.
Much of the story is told through the eyes of a fictitious
and very likeable, even charismatic, participant, Joe (George McKay), who, at
20, can’t legally be in bars, where he often shows in the film’s many disco
scenes that offer wonderful 80s music (which I miss in discos today). In one scene, his mother confronts him with the circular argument that he will have to live in secret (without a family), and she seems unaware of the logical flaw. Other activists seem to have been real,
including Mark (Ben Schnetzer). Bill
Nighy plays Cliff, a union official who eventually says he’s gay.
Of course, the film covers the issue of the public
perception of the union’s accepting the participation of a gay group (GLSM, or
Gays and Lesbians in Solidarity with Miners), driven into the dirt by
conservative tabloids. Mark comes up
with the idea that if you’re called a name, you own it. “Pervert” becomes part
of the group’s trademark.
The miners eventually lose and go back to work in March
1985, but return for Pride March in 1985 at the end of the film. Joe has dropped out of school for his
activism (a sacrifice), and on his 21st birthday, has to figure out
how to resume his own life.
The film brings up AIDS about half-way through, first with
an embedded TV report. It wasn’t until
April 1984 that HIV (or HTLV-III) was announced as the cause of AIDS. There is a line about taking the test, but
here was no antibody test until well into 1985.
Mark, according to the credits, dies of AIDS, but another character, one
of the first to be diagnosed as HIV+, is still alive today. There always were
long-term non-progressors, even before modern medications.
The film is quite entertaining, and never gets too lost in political correctness (which I had "feared" going to see it). The Welsh scenery (some of it in winter, and some of it with shots of bridges and superhighways from air, people driving "the wrong way") is spectacular in wide screen. Only one or two lines mentions the economic importance of coal; the pollution issue and working conditions (I think those are big problems) are never addressed. I could compare this, however, to "Coal Miner's Daughter" (1981, by Michael Apted, where Sissy Spacek plays Loretta Lynn), "Matewan" by John Sayles, and various films about mountaintop removal reviewed on this blog.
I've been in London twice, 1982 and 2001. That's not enough times. In 1982, I visited a gay bar in Soho and witnessed a fight (one of only two in my lifetime in a gay bar), and then went to a downstairs disco.
The official site is here (CBS Films, Pathe, Calamity, and BBC
Films). The film opened in mid-September
but release was expanded this weekend. I
saw it at the Angelika Mosaic in Merrifield, VA before a large Sunday afternoon
audience (at least 2/3 full in a large auditorium). And a new restaurant across the street, True
Food Kitchen, has long lines. And the
new Ted’s Bulletin is busy, too.
Wikipedia attribution link for view of Hyde Park, where I stayed in 1982 some nights.
Labels:
coal mine issues,
HIV issues,
indie comedy,
LGBT,
musical
Saturday, October 11, 2014
"Kill the Messenger", the story of Gary Webb and his "Dark Alliance" series, lays out problems with journalistic integrity, and intelligence services (Michael Cuesta)
“Kill the Messenger” is an important film for journalists,
even (or especially) those who enter the field as amateurs or wind up
there.
It is based on the book by Nick Schou, which is in turn
drawn from the book and newspaper series by the subject, Gary Webb (Jeremy
Renner), “Dark Alliance”. It is written
by Peter Landesman, and directed by Michael Cuesta, who had directed “L.I.E.” (“Long
Island Expressway”) which I had seen in Minneapolis on the evening of September
11, 2001, for a screening. I director
was forced to stay in town three days by the events, and I met him in a downbar
bar “afterparty” afterwards. I had a conversation
with Cuesta about some liberty issues (DADT and other matters like national
security) in the wake of 9/11 as it had just happened, and I wonder if that
stuck with him.
Gary Webb’s series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News
exposed the role of the CIA in funding the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s
who smuggled drug back into the US, most of all the ghettos in Los
Angeles. The film starts out in
documentary fashion with Richard Nixon’s saying that drug use is a national
security problem as much as the Soviets, followed up by Ford, Carter, and especially
Ronald Reagan, capping off with Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” program that got
traction in the late 1980s. But Reagan
saw stopping the Cubans and left-wing influence in Central America as
instrumental to winning the Cold War, but Congress didn’t want to give him the
money, when he was cutting social programs so much (including allegedly
underfunding AIDS research) and busting unions.
So Reagan, the story goes, turned to both Oliver North and the CIA. Scott Herhold has a retrospective article in
the San Jose Mercury News about the case here. The paper took down the series, but it’s available
elsewhere, like here (on a “Niue” domain).
After the introduction, the film presents an early
interaction between Webb and his female editor, where Webb talks about civil
asset forfeiture (a big action item for the Libertarian Party in the late
1990s). The Washington Post has a stunning story (Oct. 12) about police abuse of civil forfeiture, which can happen without proof that a crime has actually been committed, here.
The film shows Webb’s building up his contacts, and visiting
a drug kingpin in a jail in Nicaragua.
His own teenage son Ian (Lucas Hedges, another rising teen acting star
who dominated “The Zero Theorem” [Sept. 23]) is the first to find the series
online (in the 1996 Internet). At first, the major newspapers act as if the San
Jose Mercury News doesn’t matter, as it is viewed as a smaller local rag (like
The Washington Times). But soon, after
pressure – including CIA dirty tricks -- from the underlings of the Clinton
administration, they are claiming that Webb can’t produce his sources for fact
checking, and publishing stories casting doubt his account. Webb’s protests that the CIA “is what it is”
fall on deaf ears. Nevertheless, he says
that he never really did cay that the CIA deliberately turned poor people in
the ghettos of LA and other cities into drug addicts to give the rebels
income.
The epilogue of the film shows former CIA director Deutsch
admitting the CIA involvement in 1998 testimony, at a time when the country was
kept distracted by Bill Clinton’s scandal with Monica Lewinsky.
The film also mentions Honduras, now (along with El
Salvador) one of the two Central American countries contributing the most to
the illegal child immigration problem in 2014.
At least two churches with whom I interact have sent youth-and-adult
groups to Central America for mission work.
The First Baptist Church of the City of Washington DC has supported a
mission in Nacascolo, itself the subject of a slide show that almost amounts to
a short film. Nicaragua would sound like
a less than safe destination today. And
Trinity Presbyterian in Arlington sends groups to Belize to work on missions in
the summer, although Belize is a much more stable place, apparently. And one other group (in Ohio) has sent
relatives (as engineering college graduates) to work in Guatemala. Still another church sent a small number of
young adults to Kenya. The idea of sending people overseas to volunteer is
becoming all the more dangerous, both because of violence and political
instability , and, recently, infectious disease. This is becoming a new subject for film.
Also, on the subject of journalistic integrity, it's well to mention that in 1996 a Tacoma, WA newspaper removed a lesbian reporter from her job (and assigned her to copyediting) because ot thought her public gay rights activities compromised her "objectivity" as a reporter. The state supreme court upheld the action at the time.
My "cf" (Films on threats to freedom, from Profile) blog has a review of a film on danger to journalists in the line of duty March 3, 2009,
The official site is here (Focus Features).
I saw the film at the Angelika Mosaic in Merrifield VA,
before a fair audience Saturday afternoon.
I expected the crowd to be bigger.
Wikipedia attribution link for San Jose Mercury News
headquarters (by CoolCaesar, under Creative Commons Share-Alike 3.0 license).
Update: Jan. 16, 2015
Facebook comment on the movie and Webb's experience by Philip Chandler.
Friday, October 10, 2014
"Retreat", UK horror film from 2011, seems applicable now to pandemic fears as Ebola-like disease goes airborne
It seems interesting that Sony, Samuel Goldwyn, and Magnolia
Pictures (Magnet) all have their hands in the Welsh horror film “Retreat”,
which seems timely now given the worldwide explosion of Ebola virus. The premise of the film reminds one of the
“28 Days Later” movies. The film,
released in October 2011, is directed by Carl Tibbetts.
A nice young couple, architect Martin (Cillian Murphy) and
journalist wife Kate (Candie Newton) rent a cottage on an offshore island from
Doug (Jimmy Yuill), to get away from it all (and repair their relationship
after a miscarriage). But a fall
extra-tropical storm hits and the generator fails, and help is slow in
coming. Then a soldier Jack (Jamie Bell)
is found washed up on the shore. When
they bring him in, Martin finds a gun, which he tries to hide. When Jack recovers
enough, he tells them that the whole world is engulfed by what sounds like an
airborne version of Ebola (it’s called ”R1N16”). Jack insists that the house be sealed, and
starts to behave aggressively. We get an
idea of his temperament from some well-placed tattoos.
Is he to be believed?
Perhaps the occasional sound of aircraft above should be fair warning.
Well, this may be a movie where “not all ends well”, in fact very little. They say civil liberties mean nothing if
“everybody’s dead”. Would the government
really kill civilians to “spare the rest of the world”?
There is a scene where Martin has asthma attacks (playing
into the Enterovirus 68 idea, belatedly), but when he starts bleeding out, that
is evidence that he’s got the virus. The
soldier says that the government used him as a “lab rat”.
The official site is here.
I viewed it from a Netflix DVD. The film can be rented from Sony on YouTube
for $9.99. The DVD has a "Making Of" featurette.
Wikipedia attribution link for picture from Scottish uplands I think the script mentioned Scotland rather than Wales (where it was actually filmed).
I visited Scotland by train in November
1982. The film clocks at exactly 90
minutes, as if intended for TV, but it is also wide anamorphic.
Labels:
horror,
indie drama,
Magnolia Pictures,
pandemics-cf,
Samuel Goldwyn
Thursday, October 09, 2014
"Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back": PBS documentary feature preceded Ron Howard's blockbuster film
“Apollo 13: To the Edge and Back” (1994) is a PBS-WGBH
documentary directed by Noel Buckner and Rob Whittlesey, 82 min, is a good
supplement to the acclaimed film by Ron Howard from Universal, simply “Apollo
13”, which I saw twice (once on a flight back from San Francisco in late 1995,
with a passenger audience that cheers). The film seems to be narrated by Will Lyman,
who does the Frontline series.
The crew comprised Lovell, Sweigert and Haise. The film
points out that Jack Sweigert was the only bachelor.
Two days into the mission, as the compound craft approached
the Moon, there was a cascading failure, leading to fire and explosion, and progressive
loss of fuel and oxygen from the Commnd/ Service Module. The crew had to cramp together in the Lunar
Module until re-entry, which was accomplished by allowing a sling-shot around
the Moon, allowing gravity and orbital mechanics to work naturally.
The documentary focuses a lot on the pressure on the
computer workers back in Houston and also on Long Island. It’s amazing how far technology had advanced
in 1970, twenty years before the Internet.
Civilization has changed course, emphasizing communication, as the idea
of putting “Man in Space” (almost a trademark of Dan Fry’s “Understanding”
group in Arizona in the 1970s, which I sometimes attended) became more elusive.
When I was substitute teaching in the fall of 2004 at a
middle school, the eighth graders watched the main Universal film “Apollo 13”
(for science class) and had to write a paper suggesting how the accident might
have been prevented. One kid, as I
recall, wrote a particularly lucid answer.
(The YouTube featurette above comes from NasaFlix.)
I watched the film on a Netflix rental.
Wikipedia attribution link for Apollo 13 passing moon, here. Second picture is mine, the full Moon the day after a lunar eclipse. The "ring" is an artifact of the photo. On a clear dry night you can see the mountain scenery on the Moon with the naked eye from a very "high" perch.
I must say, I’m looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar”.
Wednesday, October 08, 2014
"Hector and the Search for Happiness" is indeed a feast for the eye, especially in Shanghai
“Hector and the Search for Happiness”, by Peter Chelsom,
plays out the idea of intellect vs. organic life for a psychiatrist, who has
intellectual ideas about what happiness should be, but really can’t communicate
it to his well-to-do London patients because he hasn’t really experienced it himself.
The premise sounds rather like it came from Paul Rosenfels, who developed a
complete theory of psychological polarity and then really lived it (see Books, April
12, 2006). Somehow the concept of the movie reminds me of composer Hector Berlioz and his tone poem "Harold in Italy". (Don't mix up the first names; I did for a while.)
Hector (Simon Pegg) first visits Shanghai, and the film
really opens up here, with stunning views (in anamorphic wide screen) of the modern
sci-fi city on both sides of the river, some of them from his hotel room, where
he has hired a prostitute believing some sort of relationship can happen. (He’s estranged from his wife, played by
Rosamund Pike.) Along the way, we see
some real Chinese food porn, worthy of Anthony Bourdain (TV blog, Sept. 29,
2014). But his misadventures lead to a confrontation
with a biker in the poorer sections of Shanghai, again looking very realistic.
His next destination is a monastery in the Himalayas, filmed
in India (and reminding one of a sequence near the end of the “Grand Budapest”
movie). He’s shown taking a train, some of which could have included the high
speed train from Beijing to Lhasa. Then
he moves on to the back country of South Africa, where he goes on safari and
samples the low standard of living in the back country after meeting a White
gay doctor (Barry Atsma) who runs a mission clinic (the movie was made before
the Ebola crisis and there’s a scene that gently recalls Rocky Braat’s “Blood
Brother”, Feb. 16, 2014 here). But his
street smarts are tested when he gets kidnapped by thugs and he talks them into
releasing him. Finally, he flies to LA,
and samples the Santa Monica and Venice beaches. And then back to London, his marriage, and
his patients.
The official site is here from Relativity Media, with production resources from Canada (DGC), the UK and
Germany, with the locations given above.
I saw the film at the Cinema Arts in Fairfax VA before a
fair weeknight audience.
Wikipedia attribution link for Shanghai picture.
Tuesday, October 07, 2014
Mix "Left Behind" with "Airport" and add Nicholas Cage (although I'll take Chad Michael Murray, even if God doesn't)
There’s a new “Left Behind” movie, with Nicholas Cage, whose
energy for a remake is about like what he put in to “The Wicker Man”. It is directed by V. Armstrong, and written
by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim La Haye, only loosely based on the novels. The 2000 film with Kirk Cameron was discussed
here Jan. 24, 2011. In fact, this movie
seems like a merger with the old “Airport” franchise.
Cage plays an airline pilot Rayford Steele, with a religious
wife (Lea Thompson) and energetic but secular-humanist daughter (Cassi
Thomson). Cage gets called in to fly to
London the night of his daughter’s birthday.
The film spends at least thirty minutes in a verbose prologue,
introducing a very likeable journalist, Buck Williams, played by Chad Michael
Murray (“One Tree Hill”).
After the flight takes off from JFK to London, the movie
bifurcates, spinning a story in the airport cabin, while tracing the movements
of his family members on Long Island. There
is some tension among the passengers, one a Muslim, another a dwarf, another
grotesquely obese. Buck seems to get
first class and turns out to be the (non-believing) peacemaker.
There is a thud on the plane, and suddenly about a third of
the passengers are gone, their clothes intact.
We don’t see them disappear. The
copilot disappears. It’s a while before
Steele knows that this is worldwide, and that this is indeed The Rapture of the
Believers.
Like “The Remaining” (Sept. 24), the film shows the
immediate aftermath of The Rapture, without much of a clue as to how society
will settle out (in the series “The Leftovers”, it’s tree years later, and here
there’s not enough time for a Guilty Remnant).
This one is different in that there are no corpses. The theological point claimed is that God
took away the Believers to protect them from the Tribulations, which will
involve persecutions (like what happens now with ISIS in Syria and Iraq). It’s a very group-centered (of family and
tribe-centered) system that filters down to define personal morality necessary
to survive and become relevant in such a world – and you wouldn’t want to be
Left Behind after all. Buck seems like a
good enough person, and will have a lot to report on as a journalist. Steele seems to get converted.
The plot conclusion, where the daughter helps Steele crash
land (after a mid-air collision) gets pretty silly. Some of the scenery looks like the
Rockaways.
The official site is here for E-one and Freestyle Releasing. I saw the film in a large Regal auditorium
Tuesday afternoon with few spectators.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)