THIS WEEKEND YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Jerry Aronson took the pic above. That handsome devil to my right is director Derek Cianfrance. He and Joe Curtis (co-writer), Jim Helton (co-editor), and other folks hailing from hereabouts are currently making a splash with the film BLUE VALENTINE. It was one of the best films at Sundance last year, and if you buy a ticket to see it this weekend you're not just supporting one of our own, you're also helping push cinema away from its current shallows, obsessed with teen demographics, and upward toward something more adult, interesting, and intelligent.

Wide Release vs Platform Release

Big studio films usually enjoy a wide release with three to six thousand prints flooding the nation on the same weekend. Their fate is determined by their weekend grosses. Smaller films get specialized releases (aka: platform releases). This means a handful of prints are screened in certain key markets. BLUE VALENTINE, for example opened a couple weeks ago in four theaters in NYC, a few more in L.A. It did well there, so they struck more prints and now push it out a bit wider. BLUE VALENTINE opens this weekend in Colorado. I've already seen it, but plan to buy two tickets this weekend to help it gain momentum. Here's why you should too.

Authentic vs Phony

It's as clear as putting Jeff Bridges up against Matt Damon in TRUE GRIT - Jeff's character plays the authentic part with his boozy, blotched skin, straggly beard, stained clothes, and yellow teeth. Matt's mega-watt movie-star smile is not without reason as he's supposed to be a squeaky clean Texas Ranger - but it's a distraction nonetheless, one that reminds us we're watching a millionaire movie star. It's a great film, and lots of fun, but full of patented movie contrivances (ie: a person's foot being caught by a dangling root as they fall into a pit full of snakes). This kind of artifice is commonplace in movies. It's a testimony to our love of distractions , ones that take us away from the every day pitfalls of real life. Even so, for me Jeff Bridges' character was far more interesting than Matt Damon's character. Why? Everything about him seemed more authentic. Y'know: grittier.

I miss the "true grit" that American movies used to have. The late sixties and early seventies were full of great examples. Even the blockbusters back then, like THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) had a "man, that's what it's really like on the streets" kinda feel to 'em. Speaking of Gene Hackman, I have to add that a few years later he starred in another film with even more true grit: SCARECROW (1973) - which focused on an ex-con drifter and a homeless ex-sailor. The locations were real: Colorado gets a couple nods (Canon City and Denver), and so does Michigan, Detroit. You see parts of America there that don't normally get the time of day. Thinking about drifters takes my mind to MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) and FIVE EASY PIECES (1970) - also great examples of films infused with an authenticity for the battles of the human spirit, and both also show us places and times that we recognize as genuine. And then, of course, there are the films of John Cassavetes, which alone deserve their own essays and contemplations.

JAWS (1975) and STAR WARS (1977) ushered in the new model... and here we are still, swimming in tent-pole, big-studio films that get churned out like sausages at a factory. The cinematic marketplace is now a ruthless arena dictated by the box office and the reality is that we, the customers, make it or break it with the tickets we buy - and specifically the tickets we buy on the opening weekend.

Go!

So that's why I want to urge everyone reading this to go out there this weekend and buy a ticket to see BLUE VALENTINE. This is a film with true grit. It makes Jeff Bridges' so-called "true grit" look like a cardboard cutout on an old STAR TREK set. BLUE VALENTINE hearkens back to a time when filmmakers were interested in showing us the messy and harsh realities of what it means to be human. Now, granted, there are a lot of other movies out there that will be competing for your attention, like THE GREEN HORNET, TRON, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, etc. And I know some folks out there have been forewarned that BLUE VALENTINE is a harsh toke, and so they might ask themselves, well... what's the point of watching a relationship disintegrate before your eyes?

The point of THE GREEN HORNET will probably be "avoid explosions." The point of TRON will probably be that "3-D is kinda cool." The point of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS will probably be to "not get tied down." Not having seen any of these, I'm guessing here, and these are all good points. But I think BLUE VALENTINE has something to say about love and the nature of being human. Which is to say, the point will be evasive - but much more interesting. Especially as you will be in the hands of a passionate filmmaker who really cares about tapping into something genuine. It's a very personal film, one that deserves your support.

As I would like to see more films like this, I urge you to go out and buy a ticket to see it this weekend. If we do, we help make it. If we don't, we help break it. And we all sorta broke the whole damn contraption already when we fell too far in love with the big studio blockbusters of the mid-seventies. It's time to take back the marketplace from all the computer generated piffle that riddles the multiplex. Make a difference this weekend: buy a ticket to a film that looks into the human soul. It might even help the next person out there who wants "to keep it real." It'll pave the way.

BLUE VALENTINE opens this weekend at the locations below. We bring it to IFS again on March 5th with Derek in-person. I encourage you to see it BEFORE that - for all the aforementioned reasons - and then to come back and see it again for free and with fresh eyes after a couple months have rolled by.

- Pablo Kjolseth, IFS Director

BLUE VALENTINE's opening weekend can be caught at these theaters:

Highlands Ranch 24

Westminster Promenade

Century 16 - Boulder

Mayan Theatre

The Greenwood Village

IFS SPRING 2011 TO BE ONLINE JANUARY 1ST.

SUNDANCE SHORTS, UNCLE BOONMEE, ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE, and much, much more... all coming soon to the IFS. We are holders of the flame, providing "reel" celluloid, great films, and all at affordable prices! Thanks for supporting us and enjoy the holiday break. We look forward to entertaining you again in the Spring.

Tip of the hat to IFS regular Julia Joun for sending this our way!

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/an-iranian-directors-impassioned-defense/?emc=eta1

Get Ready for PEEPING TOM!

My TCM post this week takes a look at the film screening this Wednesday at IFS:

A nice 35mm print of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) is making the theatrical rounds thanks to Rialto Pictures. (Its next three screening engagements are in Boulder, San Diego, and Charlottesville.) Peeping Tom has interesting similarities to Aflred Hitchcock's Psycho. Both were released the same year and feature seemingly shy and timid protagonists with murderous issues. More importantly, both films show venerated directors working at the peak of their powers and delivering an artistic tour-de-force on that core subject that weds an audience to any film: voyeurism. There are also some very important differences. Psycho was shot in black-and-white with a budget of under one million dollars and reaped profits that skyrocketed to a worldwide gross beyond the $50 million mark. Peeping Tom had a similar production budget, but was shot in Powell's preferred color-saturated medium of Technicolor and was a financial disaster. Even worse, it dealt Powell's career a crippling blow. Both have now long been studied and revered as masterpieces, so what went wrong for Peeping Tom?

One theory is that Hitchcock was expected to deliver the macabre, whereas Powell (along with frequent collaborator Emeric Pressburger) was associated with accessible classics like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Black Narcissus (1947), and The Red Shoes (1948). It's a sad fact; most people don't like surprises. It reminds me of Adam Sandler fans who walked into Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (2002) and then stomped out in a confused rage worthy of Happy Gilmore. Another theory is that Peeping Tom pushed the topic of Scopophila uncomfortably into the foreground whereas Psycho alludes to it obliquely. Hitchcock's elaborate visual grammar makes it easy enough for any intellectual to dissect, but Psycho also delivers a murder mystery that can be enjoyed by crowds who don't want to get squeamishly self-conscious on the subject of their own pleasures in watching a person being murdered.

In Peeping Tom, Carl Boehm plays the part of Mark Lewis, a 16mm cameraman obsessed with capturing the essence of the moment when a person realizes they will die. A customized tripod holding the camera becomes the murder weapon, and a parabolic mirror is added for the benefit of the victim to witness their own murder. Phil Hardy nails it best (no pun intended) in his Overlook Film Encyclopedia for Horror:

The Chinese-box structure allows us to watch the image of a film-maker filmically penetrating the object of his desire while he, and we, watch her looking at her own image, unsettlingly splitting the audience's identification process as we - and he- are both in the position of aggressor and victim, at both ends of the sado-masochistic spectrum. To prevent any avenue of escape or defence, Powell also introduces subjective camera techniques for his soft-porn images, and later, when the police have discovered his victims, links Boehm's obsession with exactly the kind of images viewers seek in "normal" cinema: scenes showing attractive women, action, emotion, investigations, drama - although each is somehow turned back upon the audience, the porn model is revealed to be scarred, for example.

Peeping Tom's foregrounding of Scopophilia is precisely why it is even more relevant today than ever before. Never before in the history of mankind have so many people derived pleasure and/or cues for how to behave as they do today from a steady stream of visual stimuli. Be it airports, at the bar, on the TV, cellphone, laptop, or a passing digital monitor of any kind... we are all bombarded by visual images on a level hardly imagined by our predecessors. Ad folks call these "impressions." The average person today probably receives as many of these "impressions" in one week as people during the time of Psycho and Peeping Tom received in the fullness of a whole year. Ironically, rather than becoming more visually literate most of us have succumbed to either a surrendered fatigue or even a blissful acceptance.

Voyeurism has gone viral and continues to fascinate the most uncompromising cinematic intellects of our day (Michael Haneke's Funny Games comes immediately to mind), but Peeping Tom still towers over the many films that have tackled the subject. Lovingly crafted, criminally reviled in its time, it remains a prophetic power-house of insight into a dark corner of the human psyche that has grown exponentially in our current climate. Think of this country, traumatized by past events, with each person packing a camera in their cell phone, capturing images from Abu Ghraib on down to the most private act in a dorm room, and then posting it to a social network where everyone else can further poke and prod the subject to death (sometimes quite literally, as in the case of Tyler Clementi). We are a nation of Peeping Toms, but unlike Mr. Lewis, only a small minority care to see the reflection.

For more on Peeping Tom, click on the TCM essay below by Felicia Feaster:

http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article.jsp?cid=102783&mainArticleId=102771

WestWord talks with the animator behind HOWL

Susan Froyd (WestWord) snagged an interview with New Yorker cover artist and HOWL animator Eric Drooker. Read the article by clicking on the link below:

http://blogs.westword.com/showandtell/2010/10/artist_eric_drooker_on_animating_allen_ginsbergs_howl_for_a_new_film.php?page=2

HOWL screens tonight and tomorrow at 7pm & 9pm.

PULL MY DAISY - a rare, short 16mm film, starring a young Allen Ginsberg, will precede the 7pm show at 6:30, and follow after the 9pm show.

Notes from the IFS Desk - 10/15/10

The Boulder Valley Media Alliance tagged along on a recent trip to KGNU, and they put together this clip that is less than four-minutes-long. You can see it here:

http://www.bv22.org/archive?vid=226

Sunday: IFSfan Event #3 w/ special guest Michael Aisner

Muenzinger Auditorium, Sunday, Oct. 17th, at 7pm only: Michael Aisner & Mrs. Carpenter.

Crawling terror -- 100 feet high, destroys everything in its path...

---- the dramatic synopsis of TARANTULA!!

The most maligned creature in all the world -- the sweet tarantula has been the victim of a cruel and insidious Hollywood, who seized on the lovable, harmless, hairy, fanged spider as some evil, dastardly treacherous wretch, dripping with poison and an insatiable thirst for voluptuous bombshells. What? This is not Godzilla or Rodan, it's just an overgrown, comely arachnid that is profoundly misunderstood! What is this about -- this absurd portrayal of these delights of the den. Well it's unfair!! And this movie, this Hollywood movie was where it started -- right there in 1955!!! Do not go to this!! It's not fair to tarantulas and will just make you scared, and laugh and scared and laugh. It's JUST NOT RIGHT!!

Michael Aisner, longtime Boulder tarantula lover will share blissful moments with his 8-legged concubine Miss Carpenter, the most beautiful tarantula in all the world. And she is so excited to honor the 33 miners of Chile, her home country!! You can hold and kiss her but leave before the movie starts. It's JUST NOT FAIR to her kind!!