Screened at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
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By Keith Uhlich
A good night's sleep and a little distance softens my initially harsh reaction to Kira Muratova's Two in One (Dva v odnom). That, in addition to two laudatory articles by Jonathan Rosenbaum (one on Muratova overall, the other on her apparent masterpiece, The Asthenic Syndrome), convinces me to suspend overall judgment of the director at this early point of consideration. Continue Reading »
"What are you chasing?" Dr. Melfi asks Tony Soprano, whose compulsive gambling is destroying his life. "Money. or a high from winning?" The episode's title, "Chasing It," seems to promise an answer, but it's another form of evasion. Tony pointedly doesn't reply to Melfi in his session. He seems to respond later, when he apologizes to Carmela for belittling her adventures in real estate; she notes the illogic of Tony's betting ever-larger sums of money hoping to win his way out of debt, and he replies, "You start chasing it, and every time you get your hands around it, you fall further backwards." Continue Reading »
Screened at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
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The first thing we see in the Iranian film Fireworks Wednesday (Chaharshanbe-soori), directed by Asghar Farhadi, is a young couple on a motorcycle—he in a leather jacket and jeans, she in a full black chador—as they ride along a deserted snowy road, laughing and talking over the roar of the bike. She, perched behind him on the motorcycle, flips through some photos they've just had developed, reaching over his shoulder to show him some of them. She teases, "What are you looking at here?" We get a brief view of the photo and see two laughing faces—but he is obviously glancing down at her chest. He teases, "What, I can't check out my bride-to-be?" In the next moment, her billowing chador gets caught in the back wheels of the motorcycle, and they come to a grinding halt. Continue Reading »
1. "Fighting about the war": From The Economist. Which somehow makes me think of this.
["The stage has been set for months for the showdown between Congress and the White House over Iraq. A bill on military spending, which calls for George Bush to start withdrawing American soldiers in October, has been in preparation for weeks. Mr Bush has repeatedly promised to veto it. Now, with deliberate timing, Congress's Democratic leaders hope to get Mr Bush to use his veto on Tuesday May 1st, four years to the day after he proudly declared an end to big combat operations in Iraq."] Continue Reading »
On paper, The Mormons sounds about as thrilling as mandatory Bible-study class: a two-part, two-night documentary about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, from its founding in 1830 to its present-day struggles with mainstream American culture. Don't be daunted: This joint venture between two PBS series, Frontline and American Experience, merges the former's muckraking candor and the latter's knack for capturing history's complexities. It's meticulous and addictive—the TV equivalent of a thick nonfiction book that you start reading after dinner and finish at dawn. And that's apart from the polygamy issue—highlighted, to the Church's chagrin, on the hit HBO series Big Love—which gets discussed at length near the end of Part One.
1. "Dutchman's Noah's ark opens doors": Also to be used in the promotional campaign for Evan Almighty.
["A half-sized replica of the biblical Noah's Ark has been built by a Dutch man, complete with model animals. Dutch creationist Johan Huibers built the ark as testament to his literal belief in the Bible. "] Continue Reading »
Screened at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
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By Steven Boone
The trailer for Vivere piqued my interest immediately. Stuffed with gorgeous urban cinematography and gorgeous earthy women from three generations, it seemed like a potent jolt of pure cinema. A lot of the imagery—of three females brooding, bitching and bonding—was favorably reminiscent of other recent arthouse classics. Yet Vivere also seemed as if it would offer its own distinct surprises. Well, that trailer was a clever deception. Continue Reading »
1. "What You Should Be Watching This Weekend": Reverse Shot points us in the right direction via a little necessary defacement (see above). Click here for information on and screening times for Robinson Devor's Zoo.
["Prepare for Horses!!!"] Continue Reading »
Screened at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival.
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By Keith Uhlich
I'll do my best to refrain from making baaaaaad puns (well, that tears it!) at the expense of the New Zealand horror-comedy Black Sheep, though it should come as no surprise that writer/director Jonathan King's feature debut invites, and no doubt welcomes, such "wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say-no-more" ridicule. Continue Reading »
1. "Famed Hollywood lobbyist Jack Valenti dies at 85": This funeral has been rated NC-17. A G-rated version will be made available for schools and airplanes.
["Jack Valenti, a former presidential aide who became Hollywood's emissary to Washington and developer of the U.S. movie rating system, died on Thursday at age 85, his longtime spokesman, Warren Cowan, said."] Continue Reading »
By Andrew Dignan
At its worst, Lost is guilty of employing its flashback structure to draw simple conclusions and character development by proxy. It uses contrived real-world parallels to tie up its themes in a giant red bow, allowing its once innovative format, initially an effective short-hand to explore its enormous cast, to grow stale over time. Afterall, who hasn't groaned through countless "Jack is driven to 'X' because he once had to deal with 'Y' years ago" storylines?
Occasionally though, the show transcends this flaw which has seemingly been engrained in its DNA, crafting a multi-pronged narrative which not only sustains itself dramatically on multiple temporal levels, but where the intersection of the two actually compliment one another, lending thematic weight to scenes both on and off the island. Continue Reading »
1. "'Captain America' arrested over pants-burrito": Kinda just speaks for itself, don't it?
["A doctor in Florida is facing charges, after being accused of groping a woman while wearing a Captain America uniform with a burrito stuffed down his tights. The incident, hardly fitting behaviour for a superhero, happened after 54-year-old Dr. Raymond Adamcik went on a bar-crawl with a number of other costume-wearing medics. Witnesses said that Adamcik was walking around with the burrito tucked into the waistband of his costume, asking women if they wanted to touch it. When one woman refused to touch the burrito, it is alleged that the doctor removed the snack and groped her."] Continue Reading »
1. "The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky": House contributor Jeremiah Kipp delves into Anchor Bay's new Jodorowsky box set.
["El Topo, a mystical outlaw clad entirely in black, leads his naked child to the wasteland, where borderland towns have been wiped out by marauding thieves and the puddles are red with blood. Father tells son, "Today you are seven years old. Now you are a man. Bury your first toy and your mother's picture." The cult audience that tapped into the hallucinatory surrealism of Alejandro Jodorowsky was comprised of midnight-movie freaks and counterculture intellectuals, stoned hippies, and avant-garde artists. But I discovered El Topo somewhat differently, not as an adult seeking either a movie as part of my LSD experience or as an apostle of Gurdjieff and Eastern spirituality. Instead, I stumbled upon El Topo as a child not much older than El Topo's and was transported to a wild fantasy realm. Children can tap into that surrealist dream logic very easily, since they can run around a playground and transform the jungle gym into a spaceship and sticks into swords. When El Topo shoots a rock in the desert and water spews forth into his girlfriend's mouth, the child may not comprehend the sexuality of that image, but they nevertheless accept it."] Continue Reading »
1. "Cinematical Seven: Most Overrated Actors": Something of a joker (Photoshopped, people) to start off the day.
["Heath Ledger got lucky. Before Brokeback Mountain, he was on a career track to oblivion. Decades from now, nobody will ever remember The Patriot, The Four Feathers, The Order or Ned Kelly, and nobody would be able to pick Ledger out of a lineup. But then he was cast in that socially responsible epic Western, which was safe and bland and pretty and made people feel good about themselves. But at the same time, he stumbled upon a great trick, and one that hasn't been used in so long that people have forgotten it: he mumbled. Marlon Brando wowed people for years by using this trick. Apparently, if people can't understand what you're saying, they assume it's something profound. Ledger's mumbling worked so well that it didn't even matter that he obscured the film's final line of dialogue, and his momentum was such that he even earned a few rave reviews for the dim-witted Casanova, released a few weeks later. Now he has joined the Serious Brooders club (Joaquin Phoenix, James Caviezel, Eric Bana, etc.). It will be interesting to see if he can out-brood Christian Bale in the next Batman movie."] Continue Reading »
"Is this what life is like at our age?" asks Carmela Soprano, as Tony prepares to flee New Jersey while the FBI excavates the site of his first murder.
"The tomatoes are just coming in," Tony replies, a tad wistfully. Continue Reading »
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