Why, Stanley? Why?

 

My local theater recently ran a Stanley Kubrick mini-fest (Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon).  While watching Ryan O’Neal plod woodenly through the Seven Years' War, it hit me once again: why did Kubrick often choose such bland, terrible lead actors?

He didn’t cast that way all the time (think Peter Sellers in Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, Jack Nicholson in The Shining, and terrifically vibrant Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange), but he often did (O’Neal, Keir Dullea in 2001, Matthew Modine in Full Metal Jacket, Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut).

This question has always vexed me about Kubrick. Recently in Powell's film section, I was reading John Baxter’s Stanley Kubrick: A Biography and stumbled upon Baxter’s explanation. Kubrick, he opines, didn’t want his movies to look too real. He liked them to feel abstract, removed from normal experience. He felt that bad actors (or good actors exhausted and wigged out from 20-30 consecutive takes) gave an off-kilter performance that contributed to the feeling of abstraction.

I don’t know how I feel about this explanation. Nobody ever accused Kubrick of being sloppy or careless, so he obviously put a lot of thought into what lead actor he wanted, and the performance he wanted to get. To me, these bland-tacular performances pull me out of the movie, and I end up thinking about the terrible acting while the movie rolls on.

What do you think? Does anybody have a better explanation?

Side by Side

  Given the trend of digital projection posts on the blog, I thought it might be pertinent to mention Keanu Reeves' recent documentary, Side by Side, on the transition of cinema from primarily 35mm film to digital both in production and presentation. Reeves speaks to a huge number of modern directors, from Martin Scorcese to David Lynch to Lars von Triers.
  Salon published a terrific interview with Reeves (who is transitioning to producing and directing at this stage in his career) in September , which you can find here.

  If all this talk of digital filmmaking and projecting leaves you cold, well, you can always get into the holiday spirit by watching Christopher Walken deliver the most Christopher Walken performance of all time:

Ravi Shankar at 24fps

Ravi Shankar 1920-2012

I am sitting at my desk with iTunes open and listening to Ravi Shankar.  If you download his music, one track could very easily be over 28 minutes.  That’s a quarter of the time it takes to watch a feature-length film or half of an hour-long documentary.  28 minutes could be a journey, a distance, an entire movement.  If you watch the music instead, it’s a cinematic birth. Maybe it has five acts? There could be a pre-amble, there could be a birth, a death, a walk in the park, voices in the chorus, landscape unfolding from the window of a train, beautiful love making in daylight, exquisite meals happening, contemplations, conversations, dreams, desires of a young man named Apu? Mahatma? dances in the court with the Indian girls, intrigue, murder, intoxications of all kinds and then the denouement, the rest and relaxation, and sleep…for another departure is around the corner.

David Barsamian

I don’t know much about ragas, but David Barsamian does.  You hear his voice on KGNU and 125 other radio stations.  He is the founder and director of “Alternative Radio” and maybe you see him riding his bicycle around town or shopping at Ideal.  He never seems to age. He knows how to listen to a raga and he knows how to talk about it.  Really.  So go to him if you need the facts.  I only have the stories the music can tell me.

Waning Crescent

Ravi passed on December 11 - that was Tuesday this week.  Tuesday was a waning crescent at 4.6% in Scorpio.  The moonrise was at 5:11am and it set at 3:17pm.  They say being born is like the rising sun and dying is like the setting moon.  Ravi was 92.  It’s wonderful to live that long, right? He died in San Diego, California.  Have you ever been to San Diego?  The light is soft and the air is infused with seawater. There are rosemary plants the size of bushes along the sidewalks - unthinkable here in tough-to-grow-rosemary Colorado. Dr. Seuss lived in San Diego.  It is the land of Horton, that famous cat with his hat, and grumpy Grinch. The flora and fauna of San Diego could have easily inspired a doctor like Seuss.  Can’t you see Ravi’s music flowing out of San Deigo, moving 

Lorax Scenery

with the ocean air currents and slowly, magically, growing?  It’s moving across the continent and kissing you with tenderness and planting a story in your mind.  It’s bidding us farewell, for now.

It’s cinematic music. 

I’m not alone in re-imagining his music for the 24fps crowd. Richard Attenborough and Satyajit Ray worked with Ravi and I’m sure Wes Anderson’s “The Darjeeling Limited” has some roots in Ravi.

Ravi was nominated for an Academy Award for his score of Richard Attenborough’s  “Gandhi” in 1982.   He lost to John Williams, for E.T.

Satyajit Ray

He composed the music for Satyajit Ray’s “Apu Trilogy”.  Have you seen these films?  They are so beautiful.  I mean really stunning.  You watch one of his films and feel the tremendous burden of love, death, desire, and peace.  You have the realization that sadness and happiness are a construction.  You will never know the whole story of why.  It is better to be at peace than to struggle.  You are finally allowed to say, with your whole heart, “Everything will be ok, no matter what!”  And that is Ravi’s music too.  

Ravi composed the music for “A Chairy Tale,” which was nominated for an Academy Award for best live action short in 1957.

And of course we all know about the mutual love affair of Ravi and George.  As my sister said in her recent FB status: “The great band in [the] sky keeps gettin' better 'n' better... It's just down here, that it seems a bit empty...”

Ravi, I’ll be listening and watching your music. Peace to you on the journey.

Blogs worth checking out:

http://cinemasojourns.com/

What Movie Are You Seeing, Really?

 

My neighborhood theater is now showing a Kubrick retrospective. My first thought was “Ah! Four Kubrick masterpieces on The Big Screen, in 35mm!”

Not quite.

The theater’s website explains “ALL FILMS IN 35MM / EXCEPT ‘DR. STRANGELOVE’ / DIGITAL RESTORATION (DCP)”.

So, it is projecting Dr. Strangelove digitally (using the commercial Digital Cinema Package standard). Which “restoration” is this? Is it really a “restored” version, or was it just scanned and cleaned up a bit?

They do not say.

I would hope that it’s some fancy, 4K-resolution Criterion Collection-or-better restoration, but unless the theater tells me, I can only noodle around on the web and guess. (Or I could call the theater—but why wouldn’t they just put this information on their website in the first place?)

This is the Brave New World of digital projection, which is basically caveat emptor. Anything can be digitally projected, so how do you know what your hard-earned dollars are paying for? DVD quality? 2K? 4K? A restoration by a reputable company that specializes in such work?

A few months ago I dropped in on another theater in Portland that was showing Casablanca for free. It turned out to be DVD quality, projected in the wrong aspect ratio.

This problem has also been creeping into film festivals for the past few years. The Telluride Film Festival now routinely charges at least twenty dollars (much more if you’re a passholder) for a digitally-projected movie—maybe it’s a classic that you very much looked forward to seeing in the native format. But TFF won’t tell you on their program how it’s being projected.

And this is unacceptable. Without knowing how a movie is being projected, how can you make an informed decision as to whether or not the movie experience is worth the asking price?

Film festivals are trying to get away with withholding this information because it’s cheaper for them to project digitally, and they hope only a few people will get pissed off enough to demand a refund. It’s a cold, calculated business decision. But, without telling a potential customer upfront exactly what is being shown, and in what format, it is dishonest.

I don’t think my local theater is trying to be shady, but this half-assed way of describing what exactly they’re projecting is probably going to be the norm, unless we as cinephiles demand they do better. If theater owners realize that customers are withholding dollars because they’re not getting enough information, they’ll hop right on that.

And, oh yeah:

THE INTERNATIONAL FILM SERIES ALWAYS TELLS YOU HOW THEIR FILMS ARE PROJECTED!!!

Because that’s the kind of stand-up dudes they are.

Death of Cinema - in 3 parts.

Below are two essays and one excerpt that were brought to my attention by David Bordwell. The first two are links to articles written in 1999 by Godfrey Cheshire that very prescient. (Long, but worth the read.)

http://nypress.com/the-death-of-film-the-decay-of-cinema/

Part 2 of of Cheshire's  "Decay of Cinema" can be found here (some overlap here, but if you skip down to the 12th paragraph that starts off with 'When people first saw film..' you can pick up the thread from there):

http://nypress.com/part-two-of-the-death-of-film-the-decay-of-cinema/

More recently, Tarantino also weighed in on the subject of cinema being dead, because it's now mutated into a different beast altogether ("television in public"):

Tarantino: No, not at all. But I don't intend to be a director deep into my old age.

Russell: Wait a minute. That's bad news for everybody.

Tarantino: I'll probably just be a writer, or I'll just write novels, and I'll write film literature and film books and subtextual film criticism, things like that.

THR: Why do you plan to make that change?

Tarantino: Well, part of the reason I'm feeling this way is, I can't stand all this digital stuff. This is not what I signed up for. Even the fact that digital presentation is the way it is right now -- I mean, it's television in public, it's just television in public. That's how I feel about it. I came into this for film.

Affleck:  Digital projection as well? 'Cause film's over. I mean, there are no film projectors in the country.

Tarantino: Yeah, and that's why --

Russell: I won't shoot digital.

Tarantino: No, I'm not talking about shooting digital.

Russell: Do you shoot digital?

Tarantino: No, I hate that stuff. I shoot film. But to me, even digital projection is -- it's over, as far as I'm concerned. It's over. So if I'm gonna do TV in public, I'd rather just write one of my big scripts and do it as a miniseries for HBO, and then I don't have the time pressure that I'm always under, and I get to actually use all the script. I always write these huge scripts that I have to kind of -- my scripts aren't like blueprints. They're not novels, but they're novels written with script format. And so I'm adapting the script into a movie every day. The one movie that I was actually able to use everything -- where you actually have the entire breadth of what I spent a year writing -- was the two Kill Bill movies 'cause it's two movies. So if I'm gonna do another big epic thing again, it'll probably be like a six-hour miniseries or something.''

(excerpted from here):

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ben-affleck-quentin-tarantino-4-394576

For a more optimistic view, read link below (which has a number of very interesting comments too):

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/film-culture-isnt-dead-after-all.html?_r=0

Also, looking forward, is this bit on The Dawn of High Frame Rate Cinema:

http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/the-hobbit-debuts-high-frame-rate-cinema

Movie Review: Holy Motors

Leos Carax

Holy Motors
115 minutes
Writer and Director: Leos Carax
Starring: Denis Levant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, Michel Piccoli
Cinematography: Caroline Champetier
Editor: Nelly Quettier

Eva Mendes and Denis Lavant

Kylie Minogue

Sadly, I haven’t seen any of Leos Carax’s other films. Perhaps you’ve seen "Boy Meets Girl", "Mauvais Sang", or "The Lovers on a Bridge"?  I’ll be sure to look for them after seeing his latest effort, "Holy Motors". Carax is a Parisian; it’s in his blood, his vision, humor, style and all over this film.  Paris is that grand city of lights where stories unfurl in the dark and, if you are lucky, you witness something magical, incredible and delicious without a ribbon of sunlight to adorn it. Even the famous Poilâne bread is baked in the middle of the night.  

Oscar (Denis Lavant) is on an journey of episodic delight.  I understand that Carax has many muses and Denis Lavant is one of them.  He is in almost every scene and possesses the physical agility of a tree monkey. He's fun to watch.  It’s a smooth and even performance in a film that is nothing but bumpy and surprising.  

Carax himself opens the film.  After waking from a dream (or are we entering his dream?) his hand turns into an allen wrench and allows him to open a secret door to a movie theater where an audience is fast asleep while a movie unspools.  The camera is on the balcony with him in the back row. Has he revealed himself to us?  Are we that audience in his dream? Is this an invitation to go on a ride?  There are eleven episodic tales depicted in "Holy Motors" and we begin in the pre-dusk hours as an industrialist in suburban Paris kisses his children good night and is whisked into his waiting limousine by Madame Celine (Edith Scob), his sexy and mature chauffeur, who doubles as a guardian angel and confidante. 

It’s worth noting that this film is based on a short that Carax made called "Actors". I haven’t seen this film, but just the title helps you understand the edifice that Carax is constructing with "Holy Motors".  Although we are taken on a episodic journey, we are essentially always in one spot, with the actor, as he delves into one character after another.  After he is killed, dies of natural causes, or the script spits him out, he returns to the limousine where Madame Celine puts him back together again until his next part.  And the ride continues. 

The transformations that we witness are enhanced by make up, hair pieces, CGI effects, prosthetic limbs, and fabulous costumes. As we become engaged, we realize it is make-believe, movie magic, dramatic storytelling and pure fantasy that is sucking us under.  Take special note of a dry and speechless performance from Eva Mendes in a killer episode of almost pornographic devilish delights and later, a key scene with Kylie Minogue where the artificial wall within a wall is broken even further. 

During the screening I attended in New York at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, an elderly couple seated in front of us left after the Eva Mendes scene.  And shortly after, a few other couples found the exit doors too.  It is not easy storytelling, exactly because the story is outside of the film. You are not witnessing a traditional linear plot for 115 minutes. You are on the fringe, where it can be a bit more interesting sometimes.  

As an analogy, think of a farmer’s market as a movie.  The beginning, middle and end of the farmer’s market is a linear story.  You are engaged in the traditional structure of the story.  Then go to just one vendor  and witness a single player (or actor) of the farmer’s market as a man, a husband, a father, a son, a brother, an activist, a farmer and so on.  This human being is all of these things.  Yet, when you pass his or her stand, you see only the farmer selling vegetables as part of the greater whole of the “film” that we have constructed.  In "Holy Motors", you are seeing the actor embody the man, the farmer, the husband and so on.  There is no edifice. There is no place to be something other than the role, the part, the gig, the performance. If you love the construction of movies, as I do, you’ll appreciate the edifice coming apart at the seams and revealing something humorous, playful, and spry.   And as you witness this, remember what actors do, what kind of risks they're willing to take at the beginning of a career and how they make decisions about a particular role. And then think about aging actors who have fewer and fewer parts and want to take less and less risks towards the end of a rambunctious and creative career. You can tell they did a movie just to take the money and run.  If you need help, imdb Nicolas Cage. 

Acting is a curious art.  When I’ve met actors, I notice that they don’t have much to say, they don’t take up very much room psychologically and they have the ability to blend in quite well, if they are not overly famous. When an actor is really good, it’s as if they have that magical and temporal ability (mixed with a tremendous amount of insecurity) to be a form that is ready and willing to be filled by a story, a character, or a fictional personality for a brief moment in time, perhaps just long enough for a director and confident personality like Carax to capture what it’s like and share it with us, the audience in the dream.  

As an aside, there were moments of transcendental filmmaking for me in "Holy Motors" that can't be explained in a review because they had no beginning, no middle and no end.  They existed and were gone  - all for no apparent reason except to celebrate the freakish and wonderful moments that happen when people move from one space to another. 

Go see the "Holy Motors" when it plays at IFS and let me know what you think! umorera (at) gmail dot com.

Actors Acting

Actors Acting

Actors Acting

"Re-Animator" and "The Terminator" – Outrageous Connections!

Truth is stranger than fiction when it comes to ties between 1984’s The Terminator

and 1985’s Re-Animator!

• Re-Animator and The Terminator were filmed concurrently at the same studio in Los Angeles.
• The first re-animated corpse (in the morgue, not the cat or Dr. Gruber) was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body double, Peter Kent.
• At the time of shooting, co-star Bruce Abbott’s wife was Linda Hamilton. Later, she would marry The Terminator director James Cameron.
• James Cameron’s dad has a cameo in Re-Animator as a hospital patient.
• Both movies shared the same production crew. After The Terminator wrapped, the crew went directly to work on Re-Animator.
• Re-Animator co-star Bruce Abbott was born in Portland, Oregon.*

*This has nothing to do with The Terminator. It is merely a shout-out to my new city.

With 35mm Film Dead, Will Classic Movies Ever Look the Same Again?

By Daniel Eagan (The Atlantic)
 

inShare28 Nov 22 2012, 1:11 PM ET 56 Beloved 20th-century movies—and their distinct aesthetic—could be in danger.
 

Wikimedia

In June, director Martin Scorsese wanted to show his 1993 film The Age of Innocence at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's editor for the past 40 years and a three-time Oscar winner, called Grover Crisp, the senior VP of asset management at Sony, for a 35mm print.*

"He told me that they can't print it anymore because Technicolor in Los Angeles no longer prints film," Schoonmaker recalled. "Which means a film we made 20 years ago can no longer be printed, unless we move it to another lab—one of the few labs still making prints." (Crisp did supply an archival print for the screening.)

Jimmy Stewart Is Ready to Give You the Beatdown You So Richly Deserve

Did you ever wonder why Jimmy Stewart changed from this:

...to this?

Two things, really—World War II, and Anthony Mann.

Stewart saw his fair share of combat in WWII—more than his fair share, really. Initially drafted by the Army and rejected for being underweight (he was 6’ 3’’ and weighed only 143 pounds!), he hit the weights and re-enlisted in the Air Corps, just squeaking by. He entered the service as a private, but ended the war a full Colonel commanding the Army Air Force 2^nd Bomb Wing. Although he was eventually promoted to staff officer and didn’t have to fly daily bombing missions, Stewart assigned himself as a combat crewman until promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1944.

In fact, after WWII Stewart was still an officer in the Air Force Reserve. In 1966, Brigadier General Stewart flew on a B-52 bombing mission during the Vietnam War.

It wasn’t apparent in his youth, but clearly James Stewart had some steel in his spine.

Like many GIs, Stewart returned from the grimness of combat a changed man. America had changed, too—it was ready for darker movie fare, with protagonists who had trouble in their past and conflicting, perhaps-not-completely-wholesome desires. Enter Anthony Mann, a director who was very much at home in this territory, and had by the early 1950s made a number of Film Noirs whose gritty protagonists dragged one foot in the criminal demimonde.

The combination of Mann and Stewart was electrifying, and audiences knew it. These are not your John Ford, straight-up-the-middle westerns, with John Wayne dispensing rough justice and sleeping soundly about it that night. In a Mann/Stewart western, justice is whatever you can defend with your gun—or your knife, or your bare hands. And you might have to break some eggs to get the job done. Things The Law isn’t going to like.

If you’re ready for a dark trail ride into the seamy underbelly of Manifest Destiny, give one of these a try:

Winchester ’73 (1950)

Bend of the River (1952)

The Naked Spur (1953)

The Far Country (1955)

The Man from Laramie (1955)

Vyer Films Online

 Hello, fellow IFS aficionados! I thought while we while away these long winter days, dreaming fondly of the darkened Muenzinger auditorium, we might avail ourselves of an exciting new online offering.
  Like our beloved IFS, Vyer films offers selections out of the mainstream. In their own words, "Hollywood makes movies for toddlers, tweens, and teenagers. We find and stream films for everyone else."
  They specialize in films previously unreleased in the US, something I imagine most IFS fans will find of particular interest.
  You can watch the first fifteen minutes of any film for free, then it's $7 for a "lifetime" rental.

Do We Need More Star Wars Movies?

As we hurtle helplessly towards Thanksgiving, my mind cannot help but turn to—Star Wars!

Ahem. Actually, I don’t remember most of that abomination, but I do remember the animated segments, which are quite good, in a late 70s Heavy Metal style.

However, I digress. Since George Lucas sold Lucasfilm to Walt Disney for just upwards of four billion dollars, Disney lost no time announcing that a new trilogy is in the works, and that Lucas is being retained as a creative consultant.

Of course, the question “do we need more of this franchise?” is moot, since Disney bought the company to continue flogging this dead, incredibly profitable horse—and flog it shall, with abandon! The question then becomes “will these be movies we want to go see?”

The Empire Strikes Back was just a Hell of a movie. It didn’t try to be a rehash of the first movie, and it was all the better for it. The pace was relentless and the dark tone was just the tonic for the overbearing sweetness of the first movie. It also (wisely) gave Luke the boot and let the two really exciting characters get together—Han and Leia.

After that, the franchise went downhill for me. The second trilogy was just a mess. So much so that I didn’t even bother seeing that Attack of the Clones sandwich filler.

Lucas is amazing at tapping into his nostalgia and turning those happy memories into movies. It was the clout he gained by making the highly profitable American Graffiti that allowed him to make Star Wars in the first place. He and Steven Spielberg then went on to repackage their love of old cliffhanger serials as Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Lucas’ technical skills are also highly developed. He founded Industrial Light & Magic to help with the production of Star Wars, and it has rightly become an 800-pound gorilla in the special effects industry.

His writing and directing skills are—let’s put it this way. Lucas wrote the original stories for all of the Star Wars films, but handed over the directorial and scriptwriting reins for The Empire Strikes Back. He started creeping back in Return of the Jedi, taking half the screenwriting credit with Lawrence Kasdan. He wrote the screenplays for and directed the entire second trilogy (except for Attack of the Clones, in which he shared screenwriting credit with Jonathan Hales).

Look into your heart. How did you feel about each of those films?

I’m not opposed to more Star Wars films on principle, but I won’t throw Disney my money if they can’t be bothered to make films worth seeing. If Disney wants to take the best ideas that Lucas has and wed them with good storytelling and inspired direction (is Joss Whedon doing anything these days?) then the franchise is on firm footing and will make shareholders happy for years to come.

If not, then good luck to ya, Disney. The fanboys will keep buying tickets (for a while), but not me.

Sundance Selections

Greetings, DCFNs--(aka: deep cover film nuts--by way of Nigel Andrews of The Financial Times)
Since this semester's IFS schedule is coming to a close, in the interim i thought i'd write a bout a few of the films i had the opportunity to see at this past January's Sundance Film Festival.
Some of these have had limited releases nationwide, others have been released only in NYC and perhaps L.A., and some will only see the light of a big screen in true art houses like the IFS or the Boedecker.
  The ones i've listed below, no matter how small their true release periods were, are making their way to DVDdom and streaming. (i am not a video streamer, so i've no info about whether these are available in that format.) Often this is the only format in which films without stars or large promotional budgets will become available to film freaks like us in non-major markets. Here are some to be on the lookout for:

The Invisible War--A searing documentary that looks deeply into the war on women in the U.S. military. Women who've been raped (and one man) are the brave narrators here of what they have gone through, and their complete frustration in holding the perps accountable. Devastating and essential. Yes, it's a difficult film to watch, but when the verdict of a civil court regarding these crimes is that "rape is an occupational hazard for women in the military," (so just suck it up, girls) it seems to me that citizens of this country, as divorced as most of us are from the armed forces, should sit up and take notice. Doesn't it seem like this "finding" should appear on recruitment posters, at least in the fine print??? The atmosphere for women in the society at large is often toxic, but this encompasses an entirely other order of misogyny.
Shown at the IFS on 11/11/12, now available on DVD.

Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare: Our healthcare system is broken. Potent forces fight to maintain the status quo in a medical industry created for quick fixes, rather than prevention; for profit rather than care. Healthcare is at the center of an intense political firestorm in our nation. But the current battle over cost and access doesn't address the root of the problem: we have a disease-care system, not a health-care one. After decades of opposition, a movement to introduce innovative, low-cost methods of prevention and healing is finally gaining ground.
  The filmmakers combine dramatic personal stories with the efforts of leaders trying to transform healthcare at the highest levels of medicine, industry, government, and even the U.S. military. Fascinating, especially for showing how the military, with it's huge patient base, and wishes to cut costs in health care delivery, is leading the way in innovative and alternative therapies. Who knew?
Now available on DVD

Searching for Sugar Man: This one had a fairly wide release into mainstream theaters. It showed here for several weeks at the Century multiplex.
  With great music from the main character, a forgottten poet and songwriter named Sixto Rodriguez, this is an amazing "truth is stranger than fiction" detective story. It follows the winding trail of a couple of South African music fans who set out to find out the truth about Rodriguez, whose two albums from the 70s, which never went anywhere in the U.S., became gigantic, generation-spanning smash hits in South Africa, beginning during apartheid. Just how they even got to the country is a little sketchy, and they were subject to censorship by the government, yet, because there was such demand among the young people, there were people who saw there was money to be made and got them in.
  The albums had no information about the artist, and there were rumors that he'd killed himself in one of several dramatic ways...but nobody really knew. When you find out, along with the
detectives, what the real truth is, you'll be blown away! It's one of the most human, uplifting and incredible stories i've ever heard. Don't miss it!!
It's possisble to "pre-order" this on Amazon, but there's no set release date--be on the lookout!

The House I Live In--Truly great--it won the documentary grand prize . An extremely in-depth look at drug policy and the war on drugs in America for exactly what it is. David Simon breaks it down at the end thus:
(paraphrasing) It's not even really about drugs anymore, but all about economics realities and poor people. We've systematically lost the bulk of our entry labor jobs, and America just doesn't need the poorest 1/3 to 1/4 of it's population. So let's just get rid of them. Warehouse them in prisons, sometimes whilst getting what amounts to slave labor out of them, and make a profit for some other people while we're at it.
AND, i must add, a comment from the great Gloria Steinem on Bill Maher some time ago. When asked why the right was so insistent on making birth control of all kinds and abortion in particular very hard or impossible for women to secure, she stated "These men want to control the means (human beings as far as prison slave labor goes) of production." 'Nuff said.
A film that deserves, but didn't receive, wide distribution. It could ostensibly show up on PBS, HBO or one of the indy film channels. It's had a limited release in the cities, including Denver, but, like "The Invisible War", it's not a "fun film." Essential viewing, though. Also, don't be surprised if it gets a "best doc" Oscar nomination. For now, no presence on Amazon. DVD??

The Law in These Parts: A fascinating film if you are at all interested in the irreconcilable situation between Israel and the Palestinians.

From a review advertising the film's opening at the Film Forum in NYC 11/14/12:
Since Israel conquered the territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, the military has imposed thousands of orders and laws, established military courts, sentenced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, enabled half a million Israeli "settlers" to move to the Occupied Territories and developed a system of long-term jurisdiction by an occupying army that is unique in the entire world.

The Law In These Parts explores this unprecedented and little-known story through testimonies of the military legal professionals who were the architects of the system and helped run it in its formative years. The film attempts to ask some crucial questions that are often skirted or avoided: Can such an occupation be achieved within a legal framework that includes genuine adherence to the principles of rule-of-law? Should it? What are the costs that a society engaged in such a long term exercise must bear?
---
As the situation in the Middle East gets hotter by the hour, this film is more timely than ever.
This has not played in our area, and there are no DVD release dates yet. Be on the lookout. It's another one that could appear on PBS, HBO or one of the indie film channels.

5 Broken Cameras--Here is a film from another POV entirely. Palestinian/Israeli co-directors, take a look at Israel's encroachment through the settlements. The title comes from the 5 video cameras that the Palestinian director/cameraman used throughout his village's peaceful protests of the constant theft of their land and heritage. We, the audience, are actually witness to each camera being smashed as it's filming of these protests comes to an abrupt end. I've never seen anything like it. Tremendously frustrating, informative, and sad. Truly a chance to be in the shoes, and look through the eyes of a Palestinian person.
This was one of the first films to get distribution after the festival. It received good notices, but i don't think it ever showed in our area. It will be released on DVD 1/15/13.

Monsieur Lazhar: This is among the most heartfelt, genuine films i've seen in a good long time. Nominated for the foreign language Oscar, It's the story of the tragic sudden suicide of a teacher in a Montreal primary school and the exile of a beautiful man from Algeria, who becomes the substitute for the class of the deceased. This film is filled with fully-formed characters, among them two children in the class, Alice and Simon, who have been particularly deeply wounded by the suicide.
  While Msr. Lazhar teeters on the brink of deportation every day (nobody is aware of this but the audience and him), he brings all he has to offer to healing these children and giving them a place of safety and self-expression. There is conflict and misunderstanding as well as cultural clash along the way, but mostly there is tenderness and love. In the hands of the wrong filmmakers this could have been so sugary sentimental, but instead it's a tribute to the powers of the human spirit to rise again after grave injury. i guess you can tell i loved it!
Played several calendars ago at the IFS, and had a semi-national release. Now available on DVD.

Ai Wei Wei, Never Sorry--An inspiring look at a brave artist living inside China. Ai Wei Wei lived in NYC for about 10 years in the 90s, and then, as China opened up, he returned, already a famous artist in the world at large. As he says here, because he is famous, it's his duty to take chances and challenge the government in it's treatment of the Chinese. The first action he took was around a devastating earthquake in which hundreds of children were killed because the government had built substandard schools. His tools are the internet and twitter on which he has a gigantic following. He invited citizens to join him in interviewing parents regarding the names of their children who were lost. Needless to say the government didn't appreciate this. He got a lot of publicity and cooperation. People want to feel that they can make a difference--a feeling's that harder and harder to come by.
  Ai took the names of all these children and put them each on a red backpack like kids carry to school, and then built a giant display for them all. It's an overwhelming sight. So much more powerful than just a list of names could ever be.
  This is just one of the many art pieces we see inside the film. Ai Wei Wei fully cooperated with the filmmaker and the interviews with him are terrific.
This film showed at both the Century and the Boedecker. May appear on PBS, HBO or one of the indie film channels. Available on DVD 12/14/12.

Detropia--This is an engaging, compassionate, and beautiful film about a very sad subject: the near death of Detroit, Michigan. Two young filmmakers, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (their previous doc, "Jesus Camp" got an Oscar nomination) take a look at the crumbling city, interview many residents who've made their lives there and are sharing in the death throws, some who feel they must leave, and some who elect to stay though "the house is burning down." The film is infused with energy and elegy.
Played 10/28/12 at IFS. Will come out on DVD 1/15/13.

Sleepwalk With Me--Such a fun and original film. This is the story of a stand-up comedian, played by the director, Mike Birbiglia, who has just begun his career at the slop bottom. He is now on the road constantly, and has some severe sleep-walking issues. Pretty dangerous when you are sleeping somewhere different, amongst strangers, every night. It's hilarious, and has great supporting actors too, especially Lauren Ambrose as Birbiglia's long-suffering fiancé.
This played at the IFS 10/8 and 10/9/12 as well as the Boedecker. It will be released on DVD 12/18/12.
LINDA STONEROCK,  DCFN

Inside The Mind of Cary Grant

Over the weekend (or “le weekend”, as the French say) I re-watched Father Goose, a favorite of mine from growing up. (It was a staple of weekend movie fare on Ted Turner’s WTBS on the weekends in the early- to mid-80s.)

Father Goose is your standard late-Grant-era light romantic comedy trying to ride the financial coattails of 1959’s Operation Petticoat. Grant produced the film through his Granox production company, and so had a high degree of creative control. At this stage of his career Grant was becoming weary of playing the romantic lead to women half his age, but he smelled an Oscar in the upbeat, family-friendly story. (Grant never received an acting Oscar, although he was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1970.)

Grant would later say that the role of misanthropic, unshaven, boozy Walter Eckland was closest to his real personality. Usually the epitome of crisp, suave sophistication, Grant was certainly playing against type in Father Goose (catnip to the Academy). As I was recently reading Marc Eliot’s Cary Grant: A Biography, it became clear that this is more than a breezy, off-the-cuff statement: it says something profound about who Cary Grant really was.

Take a look at Father Goose’s opening credit sequence:

Eckland eats a sandwich, drinks a (Bomber? Did they call them bombers back then?) of beer, and hums along to the radio while he steers his launch into port. In fact, he untucks his shirt in the opening credits, and it stays untucked for the rest of the movie.

According to Eliot’s biography, this is exactly the kind of man Grant was in his private life. His needs were small (he only wanted a bed, a few chairs, a radio, and a refrigerator, Eliot says), and to relax he would often just lay in the sun, listen to the radio, or read while in the company of someone else. In the 30s his lover and companion Randolph Scott introduced Grant to Howard Hughes, and the two apparently got along famously, in large part because both were privately laconic and unassuming. Eliot paints a peaceful, domestic picture of Grant and Hughes hanging out together in Hughes’ mahogany study, with Hughes working on new aircraft designs and Grant sitting nearby, smoking and reading a book. They would do this all afternoon and into the evening, with perhaps nothing more than a few words spoken between them.

Filmmakers often project their inner selves upon the screen, and in this case, I think Grant is lowering his guard and letting you see exactly who he is, and what makes him happy.

A sandwich, a beer, humming along with the radio on a nice day.

Wake in Fright: A Primer of Sorts (No Spoilers!)

Wake in Fright landed in Portland a few weeks ago (at my neighborhood theater!). I'm a great fan of early 70s transgressive cinema, and this film is an amazing ride. Here are some interesting factoids to ponder before you see it at the IFS.

The Beginning of the Australian New Wave?

Wake in Fright was released in 1971, before the Australian film industry started making an international name for itself with films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Mad Max (1979), Breaker Morant (1980), and Gallipoli (1981). Although arguably not a completely "Australian" film since the director Ted Kotcheff was Canadian, the screenplay was based on an Australian novel.

The Screenwriter Knew What He Was Talking about

The screenplay, in fact, was based on Australian Kenneth Cook’s novel of the same name. After high school, Cook worked his way around Australia, bouncing from job to job (lab technician, boatshed operator, journalist, and television documentary maker). It seems likely that he experienced the charms of Australian desert town life firsthand. It is believed that Cook based the novel’s fictional Bundanyabba on Broken Hill in New South Wales.

Gosh, Haven’t I Seen this Godforsaken Landscape in other Films?

Excellent question! You have, indeed. Parts of The Road Warrior, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and Mission: Impossible II were filmed in and around Broken Hill.

Actors to Watch out For

Jack Thompson was just starting out at the time of Wake in Fright, but over four decades he has appeared in over 100 films and is still working today. He had a memorable turn as the military defense lawyer in Breaker Morant, as well as popping up in Kojak: The Price of Justice and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones.

Yes, he was the dude who played “Crocodile” Dundee’s friend (in both movies). John Meillon started his acting career at eleven in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio program, and was the voice of Victoria Bitter commercials until his death in 1989.

Do you really need me to list Donald Pleasance’s numerous acting triumphs? He’s played everybody from Blofeld in You Only Live Twice to Halloween’s Dr. Loomis, is what he’s done. 

Where Has this Film Been for 40 Years?

Although it was a hot ticket at its 1971 Cannes Film Festival premiere, and received excellent international reviews, Wake in Fright did poorly in Australia (perhaps it cut a bit too close for the domestic audience). The prints eventually disappeared, and the last one known to exist was too degraded for transfer to videotape or DVD. After a decade-long search by the original editor, Anthony Buckley, in 2004 the negatives were discovered in Pittsburgh, in a shipping container marked “For Destruction”. Sydney’s AtLab Deluxe digitally restored the film (with the support of the Australian National Film and Sound Archive). This restored version was invited back to Cannes by guest curator Martin Scorsese, and was shown at the Sydney Film Festival in June, 2009. This time the home team showed more enthusiasm, and a limited Australian theatrical release was followed by DVD and Blu-ray distribution later that year. Wake in Fright is currently being distributed in the United States through Drafthouse Films.