The deadCENTER Film Festival (June 10th—14th) derives its name from the sort-of-true fact that Oklahoma City is in the 'center' of the (contiguous) nation. Oklahoma might also be considered a 'dead center' as it is the farthest away from the coast lines of big-city urbanity. Whatever the case, this singular proximity from the film industry does not deter the locals from enjoying themselves. Enjoyment was the prime directive at the 2009 festival, with locations in downtown theaters, hotels, public parks and the arts district. Free-of-charge outdoor screenings drew crowds of film enthusiasts toting lawn chairs and ice coolers. Stella Artois, a sponsor of the festival, was readily available, and receptions were well supplied with featured delicious foods from local establishments. Filmmakers complimented the festival organizers with their enthusiasm and support and appreciated the audience turnout. Oklahoma has a strong theater community, which naturally turns to film as warranted. Viewers always like to see new works from local talent, even if it isn't very good, and having more permissive expectations provides an occasional surprise, like the thrill of a bit of fool's gold turning into the real stuff. This permissive attitude only encourages resident artists and musicians to really freak out, like local weirdo Matthew Alvin Brown in the film Rainbow Around The Sun. Support from businesses and donors, hotels and restaurants and an audience drawn from across the nation can make all the difference in an arts venture. Whether or not Hollywood notices, Okies are dancin' and rockin' and doin' all kinds of cool things just because they can. Continue Reading »
The House Next Door
Archive: June, 2009
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2009: Good Fortune
by Fernando F. Croce on June 23rd, 2009 at 1:35 pm in Festivals, Film
"You guys will go from last to first," Dominion Farms CEO Calvin Burgess condescendingly tells a crowd of Kenyans at an outdoor PR carnival in Good Fortune as he pumps up enthusiasm for his American company's project to turn a swath of the Yala Swamp into a $30 million rice farm. But Dominion's plan to flood 1100 acres of arable land and construct an irrigation dam takes little account of the area's farmers who are losing their homes and livelihood; they're a collateral nuisance. "My life is based on this soil...We don't want to become [Burgess's] laborers," says farmer and schoolteacher Jackson Omondi, one of three citizen protagonists in Landon Van Soest's documentary who object to the impact that purported anti-poverty programs, devised by foreign corporations or NGOs with the carefully negotiated participation of Kenya's government, will have on their lives. Are they short-sighted, unwilling to see that the status quo blocks "big-picture" progress in the modernization of Africa's continental economy? Perhaps, as a Dominion director sunnily puts it, the Yala farmers simply need to see that the submerging of their land provides a golden opportunity for "changing their careers into fishing and other pursuits." Continue Reading »
A Visit to a Girls' Locker Room: Every Little Step
by N.P. Thompson on June 23rd, 2009 at 4:30 am in Film
[Every Little Step is now playing in platform release; for expanded opening dates and theaters, click here.]
This curiously sexist documentary, co-directed by James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo, scampers around after every nubile young woman caught up in the audition process that went on for the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, yet the moviemakers assiduously avoid the male dancers. Why? Every Little Step telescopes eight months' worth of tryouts, callbacks, and final casting into 90 minutes, and much of the movie carries the feeling of being staged for the cameras. Early on, the viewers are introduced to a pale-complexioned girl with bone-straight corn-silk hair. She's named Jessica; there isn't anything particularly beguiling about her—she says nothing to prick up our ears, she's rather bland. In fact, Jessica Lee Goldyn has the distinction of being the milkiest, least memorable person on screen. Nevertheless, Stern/Del Deo appear to take it for granted that we, the art-house audience, in need of someone "up there" to relate to, will embrace this ash-blonde with pink lipstick, a woman without much of a voice, or a compelling figure, or much in the way of stage presence, as the Designated Representative of all our middle-American hopes and dreams.
On first viewing, Every Little Step, I thought, was made with great affection. Del Deo and Stern have only reverence for A Chorus Line, perhaps too much so. I wished they would have dug a little deeper for persons, especially amidst the standing-on-the-sidewalk Manhattan twenty-somethings heard in drive-by sound bites during the movie's early section, capable of articulating A Chorus Line's legacy in terms that push beyond predictable pop cultural pabulum. Continue Reading »
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2009: Tapologo
by Joseph Jon Lanthier on June 22nd, 2009 at 1:02 pm in Festivals, Film
A stone's throw from the Impala Platinum mine in South Africa, Freedom Park is a shanty town hell inhabited by sub-Saharan migrant workers that lacks even the most rudimentary community developments (running water, agriculture), and possesses a makeshift economy existing primarily to serve the whims of sexual predators. As a result, roughly 50% of the female citizenry, all of whom are de facto prostitutes, has contracted HIV. The documentary Tapologo circuitously follows a collection of nurses—most of whom are rehabilitated sex workers with AIDS themselves—who collectively founded the Tapologo Hospice in Freedom Park under the wing of a small group of doctors-cum-missionaries from the United Kingdom. Continue Reading »
Directorama: "Long Live the King"
by Peet Gelderblom on June 21st, 2009 at 9:10 pm in Comics, Film
[Author's Note: For more information or to browse earlier episodes, visit www.directorama.net.]
Click to enlarge:
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Peet Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design in Amsterdam. He founded 24LiesASecond, for which he wrote and edited several essays, and is the twisted cartoonist behind Directorama (the website as well as the book).
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2009: Mrs. Goundo's Daughter
by Joseph Jon Lanthier on June 21st, 2009 at 1:15 pm in Festivals, Film
Bestriding the line between global documentary and social exposé, Mrs. Goundo's Daughter lingers for one squeamish hour on the resilient African tradition of female genital mutilation (or FGM, as it is bureaucratically abbreviated). Juxtaposing interviews with the immigrant of the title—a Malian excision victim seeking asylum in the United States to protect her daughter from a similar fate—and footage captured in her homeland during FGM rituals, the film ponderously examines the practice's tribal significance. Continue Reading »
973 (115). Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954, Stanley Donen)
by Kevin B. Lee on June 20th, 2009 at 9:10 pm in Film
[Editor's Note: This is the latest entry in House contributor Kevin B. Lee's Shooting Down Pictures, a record of his ongoing quest to see every title on the list of the 1000 Greatest Films compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?]
It's easy to criticize this Western musical comedy retelling of the Rape of the Sabine Women as an unapologetically sexist defense of American Manifest Destiny principles set to song and dance. More interesting is the class logic behind the narrative that drives a band of backwoods brothers to abduct women from a neighboring town to become their spouses. The men, having been trained by their sister-in-law in the ways of civility, first attempt to court these women through the societal ritual of a barnraising. The underhanded trickery of rival courters from the town provoke them to violent outrage. The guileful townsmen represent civilization as corrupt; the resulting abduction of the women amounts a righteous revolt against class abuse. In the end, the two sides are hardly reconciled; the frontier (i.e. the brothers) takes only as much from civilization as it needs (in the form of these women) to perpetuate itself. The abrupt, somewhat unsatisfying resolution of a shotgun mass wedding caused by the perception of widespread fornication is the film's final raspberry at the laws governing civility.To read the rest of the article at Shooting Down Pictures, click here.
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2009: Look Into My Eyes
by Nick Schager on June 20th, 2009 at 1:48 pm in Festivals, Film
The title of Naftaly Gliksberg's Look Into My Eyes is an overt reference to its climax, in which the director—outside the courtroom where Holocaust denier Horst Mahler is standing trial—compels one of Mahler's "followers" to stare into his eyes, an act the man doggedly avoids because "Jewish people are part of the devil." Yet moreover, the documentary's moniker functions as an articulation of Gliksberg's modus operandi of visiting an assortment of locales (some of which he has ties to) and candidly discussing prevailing attitudes about Jews and Israel. Continue Reading »
972 (114). Heaven Can Wait (1943, Ernst Lubitsch)
by Kevin B. Lee on June 19th, 2009 at 9:10 pm in Film
[Editor's Note: This is the latest entry in House contributor Kevin B. Lee's Shooting Down Pictures, a record of his ongoing quest to see every title on the list of the 1000 Greatest Films compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?]
This autobiographically intoned life account of America's most genteel philanderer amounts to a series of paradoxes: a World War II production touting an unheroic, passive cad; the director who practically invented Hollywood urbane sophistication and suavity applying his trade on quaintly mannered, occasionally rustic Americana; and the famous "Lubitsch Touch" applied so gently here as to be almost touchless. The three paradoxes are linked by Lubitsch's desire to make a film both celebrating and sending up the moral absurdities of his beloved adopted country while having to toe the puritanical line of the Hays Code. It amounts to a celebration of obliqueness, where the offscreen shenanigans of Don Ameche are perpetually alluded to but never shown, leaving the portrait of this Gilded Age Casanova vaguely sketched. We can't tell to what degree he's successful at his romantic pursuits, or how much of it is a vain attempt to inflate his ego. Of course Lubitsch is all about reading between the lines, but almost too much here needs to be inferred by verbal references and the reactions of characters to unseen events. In other words, it's the first Hong Sang-soo movie ever made.To read the rest of the article at Shooting Down Pictures, click here.
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2009: Afghan Star
by Joseph Jon Lanthier on June 19th, 2009 at 1:22 pm in Festivals, Film
Afghan Star sets out with a delectably postmodern agenda: Closely following four contestants in the eponymous television program, Afghanistan's burqa-busting answer to American Idol, the documentary compassionately argues that one region's pop detritus is another's ideological maturation. After NATO chased the Taliban out of their war torn, totalitarian playground at the urging of the U.S. in 2001, remaining inhabitants were faced with the perplexing novelty of freedom of speech—at least as far as the Qur'an would allow. Broadcasting companies were quickly organized but overcome with the awkwardness of rebuilding media outlets after nearly two generations of stifled silence. The solution was, naturally, to seek a preexisting entertainment model and adapt it for Islamic viewers, and since a flood of American imports had already captivated the celebrity-starved nation, Afghan Star was developed—not only as a source of euphonic escapism, but as a sly way of uniting Afghanistan's collection of perpetually embattled provinces (contestants on the show are drawn from as many diverse corners of the country as possible). Continue Reading »
Summer of '84—The Day the Nerd Stood Still: Top Secret!, Gremlins and Ghostbusters
by staff on June 18th, 2009 at 9:30 pm in Film
[Editor's Note: "Summer of '84" is a co-production of The House Next Door and the Blog Talk Radio shows Back by Midnight (hosted by the initiator of this project, Aaron Aradillas) and Movie Geeks United! (hosted by Jerry Dennis and Jamey DuVall). Click the links above to access this series' corresponding podcasts.]
Gremlins, Ghostbusters and Top Secret! all opened on the same day in the summer of 1984—June 8th. Coming up with a "better" desert island list would not be at all taxing. But a more fun one? Now that would be difficult. They are three of the best films of '80s cinema: a trifecta that showcases not just vision and panache, but which also work as a most apropos representation of the decade's commercial cinema and its sensibilities. Are they perfect? Were the eighties perfect? You see my point. Continue Reading »
Video Essay for 938. The Saga of Gosta Berling (1924, Mauritz Stiller) featuring commentary by Jan Olsson
by Kevin B. Lee on June 18th, 2009 at 9:10 pm in Film
[Editor's Note: This entry is cross-published with Shooting Down Pictures.]
The Saga of Gosta Berling is Mauritz Stiller's epic adaptation of Selma Lagerlof's immensely popular novel. The film, in two installments ran well over three hours when it was originally released in Sweden in 1924. In a famous letter to the director, Lagerlof voiced dissent concerning the film version and its liberties over the text. The plot follows its title character, a young defrocked minister, who is entangled in various romantic and political intrigues with various parties connected to the grand Ekeby estate. Among his chief adversaries is Martha Dohna, the grand matron of one of the neighboring estates; among his chief allies is Countess Elizabeth, played by Greta Garbo.
Click here for the full transcript of this video essay.
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival 2009: My Neighbor, My Killer
by Andrew Schenker on June 18th, 2009 at 1:49 pm in Festivals, Film
Fast on the heels of Munyurangabo's brief New York run comes Anne Aghion's My Neighbor, My Killer, a documentary that, like Lee Isaac Chung's fictional film, examines the legacy of Rwanda's 1994 genocide. What the movies have in common is that, while directed by outsiders (Chung is Korean-American, Aghion French-American), both scrupulously avoid the glossy reductivism of higher-budget American productions that tend to render historical atrocity both overly familiar (because of recognizable genre tropes) and comfortably distant (because a lack of immediacy). While Chung uses local actors, films in the Kinyarwanda language, and confines the bulk of the action to a single local setting, Aghion deliberately avoids making concessions to viewers unfamiliar with the conflict and, with the exception of a few brief radio snippets, provides very little contextualizing information. Despite the films' weaknesses (in Munyurangabo, a last-minute plot development that seems to absolve the protagonist of having to kill, in My Neighbor a fragmented fly-on-the-wall perspective that, while illuminating, also risks a certain amount of confusion), what is at stake in the two projects is a new authenticity lacking from other Western treatments of the genocide, a respect for the Rwandan people and an understanding of the ways in which tragedy must give way to reconciliation in order for the devastated nation to continue. Continue Reading »
Summer of '84—Speed Is All You'll Ever Need: Streets of Fire
by Robert C. Cumbow on June 17th, 2009 at 9:30 pm in Film
[Editor's Note: "Summer of '84" is a co-production of The House Next Door and the Blog Talk Radio shows Back by Midnight (hosted by the initiator of this project, Aaron Aradillas) and Movie Geeks United! (hosted by Jerry Dennis and Jamey DuVall). Click the links above to access this series' corresponding podcasts.]
In 1984 it seemed as if this movie didn't succeed with anyone except me. For most viewers it was at worst inept, at best the original WTF? experience, long before WTF? was a standard abbreviation. The naïve dialogue and broad line readings, offbeat costuming, indefinite sense of time and place, and conspicuous absence of Bruce Springsteen seemed to put everyone off. But by the summer of '84, after a decade that had produced Hard Times, The Driver, The Warriors, The Long Riders, Southern Comfort, and 48 Hrs, Walter Hill had earned the benefit of the doubt; and the willingness of fans and critics to assume he didn't know what he was doing was baffling.
In a way, Streets of Fire was where Hill had been headed all along, combining as it did Hill's interests in street violence, existential man in an oppressive cityscape, the archetypal stories of Greek myth, military history, rugged teams of professionals and amateurs confronting forces of chaos, and the power of primitive storytelling in the manner of not only Boetticher, Karlson, and Fuller but of Homer. "Is this a sequel to The Warriors?" some asked. After all, it recapitulated the central image of gang violence and turf warfare in a megacity; and the iconic story of a kidnapped rock star and the petulant ex-boyfriend who leads a rescue mission to save her seemed as solidly based in the Iliad as The Warriors was in Xenophon's Anabasis. Continue Reading »
971 (113). The Pillow Book (1996, Peter Greenaway)
by Kevin B. Lee on June 17th, 2009 at 9:10 pm in Film
[Editor's Note: This is the latest entry in House contributor Kevin B. Lee's Shooting Down Pictures, a record of his ongoing quest to see every title on the list of the 1000 Greatest Films compiled by They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?]
Largely received with diffidence upon its initial release, Peter Greenaway's tour de force can now be respected as a bold vision of movie art in the multimedia age. Taking inspiration from Japanese courtesan Sei Shonagon's 17th century novel of the same title, Greenaway tells a story of a Japanese-Chinese woman's efforts to transform her childhood fixation on bodily calligraphy into a career as a writer, while avenging her father's sexual humiliation at the hands of his publisher. These themes of the artist's struggle to express herself while taking revenge against the abuses of the older establishment are nothing new to Greenaway's filmography (see The Draughtsman's Contract, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover). What is new is a distinctly feminine narrative voice that enhances the innate sensuality of the project; an unabashed mixing of languages and cultures in a stew of chic global mongrelism; and a hypnotic flow of screens within screens and texts used as creative adornment. (The film toys with foreign film viewing conventions, foregoing subtitles for some scenes in Japanese while deploying them elsewhere in ways so artistic you wonder why no one else bothers).To read the rest of the article at Shooting Down Pictures, click here.
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