An interview with Alex regarding his latest film

http://moviemorlocks.com/2013/03/31/bill-the-galactic-hero/

Alex Cox Needs YOUR Help to Make his Next Movie

I think Alex Cox himself makes a persuasive pitch:



I myself am a proud contributor to the Bill the Galactic Hero movie project. Maybe you'd like to be a part of it, too?

You can contribute to Alex's Kickstarter project here, or read Alex's blog for more information about this exciting venture!

Criterion Streaming Every Kurosawa Film this Weekend

In honor of the great director's 103rd birthday. http://www.hulu.com/browse/picks/happy-birthday-akira-kurosawa

Five Ultra-Cool Films You Can Watch RIGHT NOW!*

I get it; you’re hankering for a really prime movie, but there’s nothing playing at the cineplex you want to see. Or The Video Station is closed. Or you’re procrastinating, and really shouldn’t leave home. (Insert excuse here.)

As it happens, there are some pretty spiffy movies on Hulu.com that their programmers, for whatever reason, have overlooked putting behind their pay wall.

In no particular order:

Army of Shadows

France, 1969

This is just a jaw-dropping film. Jean-Pierre Melville gives the full, unspeakably bleak picture of what working in the WWII French Resistance was like: the constant fear of being caught, the horrible assignments of killing your own countrymen (even if they are traitors), the coming to terms with how you’ll face your own death. There’s no sentimentality here.

Because Charles de Gaulle was unpopular at the time of the film’s release, it was panned in France and wasn’t released in America until its restoration in 2006.

Plus! It stars Jean-Pierre Cassel, Vincent Cassel’s dad.

The Birth of a Nation

US, 1915

You’re not going to watch this, are you? I could say that John Ford has a cameo as one of the Klansmen, that it was the first film to be shown at the White House—see? Your eyes are already glazing over. Fine. If you won’t eat the perfectly wholesome Cheerios, here’s something a little more Count Chocula-ish:

Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero (AKA Invasion of Astro-Monster)

Japan, 1965

This was one of my two favorite monster movies growing up (the other, of course, being King Kong Escapes, where Kong battles a mecha-Kong). The alien costumes are just super-cool 60s, and the sexy alien played by Kumi Mizuno lingered long in my memory.

For some reason, the beam effects are really well done—they’re a radioactive blue, and the force fields the flying saucers project around Godzilla and Rodan are 3-dimensional, shaded bubbles. Good job, Toho Studios!

 

Last Exile

Japan, 2003

I know. Calm down. This is really a TV anime series. But it beats the crap out of most movies with first-rate storytelling, character development, and pacing. I was ready to drop out after the first three episodes (“Jesus, is this story going anywhere?”), but my patience was well-rewarded.

Last Exile is set in a retro Steampunk future, on a colony world named Prester. Nations fight each other with flying battleship fleets...eh, I'm not doing a good job explaining this. Just go watch a few episodes. It’s Japanese, it’s a bit weird, but it’s also amazing storytelling, and unlike anything you’d ever see on American TV.

Santo Versus the Vampire Women (Santo Contra las Mujeres Vampiro)

Mexico, 1962

Christ, do you know how rare this movie is? After reading about it and seeing snippets on YouTube, I tried to snag a copy at the Video Station (no go). Even Netflix claimed it didn’t have a copy. (Really, Netflix?) To find it for free, on Hulu, is truly proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.

Brick

US, 2005

Brick is a smart, well-written film that breathes new life into the hard-boiled detective genre. Upon its release in 2005, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's acting career was losing steam, and Rian Johnson was an aging USC graduate who had been laboring to get his script made for seven years. Thanks to Brick, they're both A-listers, now. 

*If you have fast internet. But c'mon, this the second decade of the 21st century! Even the cool new Pope has fast internet.

You’re No Fool, Nosiree!

Walt Disney’s educational I’m No Fool series (made from 1955 to 1957) are the first projected films I can remember. In second grade, Mrs. Galloway, who was probably at or exceeding retirement age, gathered us around the out-of-tune upright piano and taught us to belt out rousing renditions of My Country ‘tis of Thee and America the Beautiful.

When she tired of that (or perhaps wanted a nap behind her desk) she’d haul out the battered Korean War-era 16mm projector and spool up one of these gems:

The theme song (“Oh, I’m no fool, nosiree…”) still leaps to mind from time to time.

I wonder if schools show these anymore. Or do they merely encourage the children (like a Roadrunner cartoon) to stick their fingers into light sockets, ride their bikes off cliffs, etc.?

It also occurs to me that the series is pretty death-heavy ("But fools find out / when it's too late / that they don't live so long."). How much does a second-grader really think about what the termination of existence means? On the other hand, that's what makes this series so awesome!

The series ran thusly:

• I'm No Fool With A Bicycle (10/06/55)
• I'm No Fool With Fire (12/01/55)
• I'm No Fool As A Pedestrian (10/08/56)
• I'm No Fool with Water (11/15/56)
• I'm No Fool Having Fun (12/15/56)
• I'm No Fool in a Car (1957)
• I'm No Fool in an Emergency (1957)
• I'm No Fool in Unsafe Places (1957)
• I'm No Fool in Unsafe Places II (1957)
• I'm No Fool on Wheels (1957)
• I'm No Fool with Safety at School (1957)
• I'm No Fool with Electricity (1957)

P.S. -- Mrs. Galloway, if you're reading this, I'm sorry for being such a little asshole in class. They didn't have good ADHD meds back then.

Robert Rodriguez Is the Ghost of Christmas Future

I was at Powell’s City of Books the other night, browsing through the film section, and I picked up a book of Robert Rodriguez interviews. Rodriguez talks about visiting Skywalker Ranch in the late 90s and puttering around with one of Lucas’ bleeding-edge HD cameras for the first time (George Lucas mostly filmed The Phantom Menace on 35mm, but as a test shot two scenes in HD).

Rodriguez was already a fan of video cameras, at least to practice with. Beginning filmmakers were better off learning their craft on video, he advised. It was cheaper, easier to use, and easier to edit. He shot El Mariachi on 16mm, then shot throughout the 90s and early 00s on 35mm. Clearly impressed by the HD technology, he shot Spy Kids II and Once Upon a Time in Mexico in digital. He never went back to film.

It’s clear in interviews from the 90s and early 00s that not only was HD a better experience for him as a filmmaker, film itself was kind of a drag. You were never sure, he says, what the film would look like when it got back from the lab. It was always different, never exactly what he intended the shot to look like. Only with the advent of HD cameras could he look in the monitor and feel confident that what he was seeing was what he was recording. And he could make changes on the fly given this feedback, something else film denies the filmmaker.

He recounts how he would shoot scenes in 35mm and then with a digital camera, and compare them side-by-side. To his surprise, sometimes the filmed image was underwhelming to his taste. He’d take the clips on the road with him when he gave talks, and show them to the audience. People were often incredulous: what do you mean, 35mm is worse? We were told it’s always better!

Rodriguez was also very much a practical effects guy early in his career. By necessity in El Mariachi, and by choice in later films because he felt he had control of practical effects. By Spy Kids, all special effects on film were getting him down. He talks about having to scan film frames, digitally remove grain, composite the digital effects, digitally add the film grain back, and then print the result back onto film. By Spy Kids II, he was done with that. He was shooting in digital, doing the lion’s share of effects digitally in post-production. It was cheaper, faster, and he felt he had more control and creativity.

* * * * *

It’s a bit scary how clearly Rodriguez saw the future. In the 90s he was just a young upstart, flinging rocks at the establishment. Nonlinear editing? Replacing 35mm cameras with digital cameras? Who is this guy? This is how we do things Uptown, kid. It's been good enough for 80 years, and it ain't gonna change.

Until it did. So fast that we’re still a bit dizzy.

The lever of change, of course, was money. The studios didn’t care about enhanced creativity, or greater filmmaking freedom. In digital production and post-production they saw the opportunity to save a LOT of money. And when the technology finally matured for digital projection, they salivated at all the money they could save not having to strike and distribute 35mm prints. All the extra control they gained over theaters was just gravy. No longer would physical prints go floating around, outside of their direct control. They’d know who was projecting a movie, when and where, every time. And without a password, that video file was dead to a theater.

It’s hard to argue with Rodriguez’s line of reasoning, creatively speaking. Filmmakers who want to shoot on film in the future are certainly welcome to, but they’ll have a tough battle convincing miserly studios to open up their pockets a little more. And when theaters get digital projectors, they’ll probably junk their 35mm projectors. In five years, who will have the equipment to project on 35mm?

For a little extra profit, the medium of film has been cast aside. I feel good about HD as a filmmaker, but I feel queasy about it as a filmgoer. It's now easier to make my sandwich, but sometimes it doesn't taste as good as it used to.

The House That I Live In

When I was an adolescent, I had a conflicted relationship with a friend. At one point, she aimed hard at my stomach with her fist. The impact was abrupt and surprising. That's kind of what  watching "The House That I Live In" is like...but in a good way, the way that a great documentary can hit you hard when you don't expect it.

I have read the statistics for years now about the failed War on Drugs, prison-industrial complex, inflexible mandatory sentencing guidelines, and destructive impact of the justice system on African-American communities and lives. Judges and prison administrators are fed up. Addicts are incarcerated and remain mired in addiction. Families are destroyed. Still, at the end of the 2012 Sundance-winning documentary, "The House That I Live In," directed by Eugene Jarecki, I sat in stunned silence with a million thoughts racing in my head about the connected dots. This rarely  happens to me and even less often about familiar topics.

"The House That I Live In," which the International Film Series is screening Tuesday, March 5th at 7 and 9pm, pulls together numerous different pieces of American dysfunction and inequality to present a devastating indictment of how our country deals with race and class. It sucks in the viewer with a  personal story, that of how the War on Drugs has affected the family of the director's childhood housekeeper. It interweaves this narrative with interviews with people involved in the system (judges, prison officials, prison guards, etc.), historical information about the War on Drugs, interviews with a senator who helped create the situation, and other broader information.

The cherry on top of the sundae is an interview with David Simon, creator of the HBO five-season  bravura meditation of the corrosive War on Drugs, "The Wire." As a journalist in Baltimore, Simon had
first-hand exposure to the Baltimore inner city and the impact of drugs on African-American communities. So, the man has cred and isn't just a Hollywood talking head. And any man who conceived  of each season of his show as a novel with a meaty and important overarching theme and can write a  scene where the principals communicate exclusively with various manifestations of a curse word is alright with me. Ok, sue me--I'm a fan, maybe even a rabid fan.

I thought Simon was going to offer some choice words about drugs and African-American communities. Instead, he delivers an analysis near the end of the film of how America has treated and conceives of  its underclass that put the previous material of the film into a context that totally blew my mind and brought up questions for which I have no answers.

In the waning of the empire, there are no endless opportunities and brighter days for everyone, much less our poor and working class. In an era of budget-cutting and austerity, educational institutions, never  stellar in poorer communities,cannot provide the way out. Hell, we are even cutting back food subsidies to poor mothers and their infants and toddlers. And there are politicians who are cheering on these measures. Simple reality in this country keeps falling into a bad case of surrealism. It stands to reason  that films that put the pieces together, rather than plunge me into escapism, blow my mind.

I know this probably reads more like a lefty screed and less like cinematic analysis. But when it comes down it, I believe that cinema is at its best when it opens my mind and makes me wonder about the world. Sometimes, this takes the form of a fictional aesthetically beautiful fantasy, like "Holy Motors" where I found myself contemplating reinvention and the protean nature of identity and performance. Other times, it is a documentary that slaps me across the face, holds me rapt with its varied way of presenting vivid and important information, and haunts me with its ideas.

The end result is this is a film that I want everyone I know to see. It's important, provocative in the best sense of the word, and worth the time. Hopefully, you can come up with better solutions to the issues that it brings up than I have.

If there's only one film that you see at the IFS this semester (and given the quality of the offerings, that would be a shame), show up for this film and invite your friends to come with you.