Gentrification puts its best foot forward in a storefront just north of 125th Street in Harlem. The welcoming space houses a three-part business headed by documentary pioneer Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens, Salesman, Gimme Shelter.)
At Maysles Films, the film production arm, Maysles, his directing partner Bradley Kaplan, and their production team make documentaries as well as ads and other commissioned projects to help pay the bills. (Their latest doc, Muhammad and Larry, was part of ESPN's 30 for 30 series.) The educational branch of the operation, which includes after-school programs, a summer intensive, and a new class for adults, teaches people from the neighborhood—mostly middle school and high school students from Harlem and the Bronx—how to make their own films. And the Maysles Cinema screens a rich lineup of documentaries and a smattering of realistic narrative features, many of them tied directly to the life or history of the neighborhood. The cinema's screenings illustrate what its mission statement describes as "the Maysles Brothers' principle that the lives of ordinary people not only deserve, but demand, our attention." Each is followed by a discussion between the audience and people who were somehow involved with the film, usually as filmmakers or subjects.
The business was started when Al Mayles and his wife, Gillian, moved from the Upper West Side to Harlem five years ago. "After seeing a screening at the old Pioneer theater, they thought they'd contribute to their new neighborhood. It was really my mother who came up with the idea of starting a small movie theater," says their son Philip, now the co-programmer of the cinema in collaboration with Jessica Green, the former editor of Stress magazine.
Two of the couple's three daughters also work there, both as volunteers. Facilities Manager Rebekah Maysles manages the space; Sara is new media director. The small staff also includes Development Director Jason Fox and Education Director Vee Bravo.
True to the collaborative spirit that animates the cinema, the staff take turns fielding interview requests. I talked to Philip Maysles and Bravo at the cinema on a recent Friday afternoon. Continue Reading »
Given that video games are usually better than the movies based on them, it makes sense that the new Prince of Persia game would be just as happy to ignore the chestfest of a movie as I am. Instead, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is inspired by the popularity of the last generation's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time trilogy, ignoring 2008's poor, unloved, colon-less Prince of Persia (which I'm just going to call PoP-08 from here on, as though it was a Japanese energy drink). But for all PoP-08's controversial elements, it was creatively trying to build on what had worked in previous PoP games and throw out what didn't, and PoP: TFS left me longing for its relative success.
PoP-08's all-quick-time-event gameplay was an acknowledgement that platforming control had never worked very well on the animation-heavy PoP games, where you're frequently pushing a button and then waiting for the character to catch up. Instead, it went for eye-dazzling flow, a playable rollercoaster where you pushed the buttons in rhythm and enjoyed the show. Continue Reading »
I like a lot of things these days. I like the Best for Babes Foundation. I like Rachel Ford's status. I like the photo my husband posted of our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter scratching her ass in front of some student artwork—and I am duly pleased when four other people indicate that they like it too.
It's so easy to like things nowadays that I can forget how hard being a fan of a TV series used to be. Pre-Internet me had to bid high on dubbed "complete series" VHS tapes off of eBay, subscribe by mail to fan-produced, photocopied, and stapled zines, and pore over ancient issues of Starlog otherwise gathering dust in my parents' attic just to feed my obsession with the shows that consumed me.
I loved the world of TV fandom so much that back in 1996 I registered a domain name—tvgen.com—in the hopes of starting some kind of web-based clearing house for TV fans to meet other fans. I think I harbored secret hopes of financing a trip to Portmeiron, Wales, where Number Six from The Prisoner would magically come to life and whisk me off for a life of nonconformity and awesome scarves. Instead, I caved under my first offer and sold my future dreams for the ability to pay off my credit cards.
Ironically, as TV shows become more accessible, thanks to cable repeats, Netflix, streaming video, and TiVO, my ability to go nuts over a TV series seems to have decreased. It's so easy to watch every episode that it's even easier to give up when a show loses its footing. I'll just go searching for something more exciting, or have a tawdry one-night stand with a couple of Real Housewives. Continue Reading »
The first time I saw the trailer for Babies I thought it looked like the perfect high-concept doc: Pick four picturesque and far-flung parts of the world and film one baby in each for a year. Who could resist that? I thought. Well, apparently the answer is: me. Not that I hated the movie. Who could hate all those adorably intense little people? But it started feeling redundant long before it ended—and it's only 80 minutes long. Here's my review of it for TimeOFF .
The Obama administration is starting to take some serious heat regarding their response to the Gulf oil leak. Last week, choice words came from James Carville, Bob Herbert, and Tom Friedman, who makes some dubious connections to 9/11.
Forget stuffing pantyhose with dog hair. Now there's the "Kevin Costner Solution." Brought to you by Waterworld.
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.
If nostalgia helps to fuel the passion for the medium of video games (and from an industry standpoint, it appears to be a worthwhile pursuit), then 3D Dot Game Heroes is a fervent mash note to gamers hoping to reconnect with some past relationship. The game feels both familiar and alien, a facade of a childhood home with its blueprints ingrained in some forgotten recess of the mind. Those who grew up playing The Legend of Zelda, from which Heroes borrows heavily, may find themselves offended at first, then perplexed by their own faint smiles moments later. Is Heroes an homage? An unofficial sequel? A pastiche? What exactly were the intentions of the developer? No matter. Those hypnotized by the 8- and 16-bit action RPGs from decades ago will find their muscle memory bubbling to the surface again, and their childhood clocks resetting. Those not entranced by that idea—or at least willing to accept it—may find Heroes nothing more than a fleeting, frustrating novelty.
In Heroes, the player assumes the control of the descendant of an ancient hero in the land of Dotnia, a kingdom recently forced to upgrade to three dimensions in order to retain its relevance. It's a delightfully clever premise, but the narrative skeleton is old-school Zelda through and through: Traverse a large and varied landscape, gathering new items and abilities from self-contained dungeons that become progressively harder and more complicated as your hero fights to save the world from potentially Earth-destroying (and most definitely stock) dark forces. Clearly, the emphasis is on character development through gameplay instead of plot, as the hero can be swapped out for a multitude of other models at any time, ranging from the bland to the bizarre (and a simple character editor allows one to create and use a grid-based hero of their own design, a nice touch). Gamers looking for an engaging story or politically charged setting need to keep right on drivin'. But anyone who has played the original Zelda and its many clones knows that it isn't really about the story, but rather the satisfying feeling of trailblazing, familiarizing themselves with each new screen and poking through every nook and cranny until one forms an almost symbiotic bond with the game's world and can navigate by visual landmark alone. The Legend of Zelda perfected this genre (blending character leveling and item management with real-time and immediate swordplay), and Heroes is, well, a wholly faithful recreation of that design. It's hard to demerit a game that strives for that kind of a bar and almost—almost—reaches it. Continue Reading »
Just to dispel the myth that all critics are stick-up-the-ass prigs, I boogied my ass on stage at the finale of Hair with the rest of the patrons. But after making my unofficial Broadway debut on the Al Hirschfeld Theatre stage, it was firmly decided that being in the audience is the best way to experience director Diane Paulus's celebrated revival. So on to the burning question: How's it holding up? Well, one certainly misses its original leads (the charismatic, golden-voiced duo of Gavin Creel and Will Swenson), and I don't remember it being so insanely over-miked as to swallow up the performers' vocal acrobatics, but Paulus's unshakable, moving vision of hippiedom as a holding pattern for the young characters' slow ascent (or descent?) into adulthood is so pristinely omnipresent, watching it unfold remains quite a journey.
Still buoyed by Kevin Adams's thrilling light trips and the smashing Gerome Ragni/James Rado/Galt MacDermot score, Hair is an awfully hard show to completely muck up. Yes, the hobbling book remains a bit of an issue, and its central characters—including randy fuck-up Berger (Ace Young), cautious, angelic Claude (Kyle Riabko), and politically active, headstrong Sheila (Diana DeGarmo)—sometimes come off as archetypes of an era versus lived-in people. But when a new cast takes over, sometimes you get the benefit of seeing some of its inhabitants anew, and this cast has some choice supporting players. I never thought the moony, pregnant Jeanie was much of a presence before, but Annaleigh Ashford's sweet, self-aware take on her is surprisingly weighty, and the bit in which the Tribe encounters a hokey older couple can be too arch, but not now with Josh Lamon's engagingly funny turn as the female half, and he's equally as impressive as Claude's dad—a role usually played as an uptight dolt, but now with a layer of attitude that makes it pop. And DeGarmo, while shaky as a dramatic actress, absolutely nails it vocally on her two big numbers ("Easy to Be Hard" and "Good Morning Starshine"). Continue Reading »
Eric Bishop (Steve Evets), a Manchester postman, is half-beaten by life. With his bent, bony shoulders, scruffy beard, and worried eyes, he's a "scrawny thing," as he puts it. It's as if failure is literally eating away at him. But Looking for Eric is a Ken Loach film, so Eric is no helpless or pitiable pawn. He's a fully realized character, and his working class background has endowed him with strengths as well as burdens. Continue Reading »
"The Vampires of Venice" is a distinct step down for the season after the triumph of the Weeping Angels two-parter. It has some good elements in it, particularly when it concentrates on the central relationships between the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his two companions, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and her fiance Rory (Arthur Darvill). It's not so good, though, when it comes to providing a strong and interesting adventure in its own right. Writer Toby Whithouse previously provided the highly acclaimed episode "School Reunion" for the 2006 season of Doctor Who; he's also the creator of the supernatural drama series Being Human, so he should know a thing or two about writing for vampires. Unfortunately this episode works as a good-looking "romp," but nothing deeper, with its tone veering uncertainly between sci-fi, horror, and comedy. Continue Reading »
The Cannes Film Festival ended with its longest competition title, and it wasn't even a complete film. Nikita Mikhalkov Exodus: Burnt by the Sun 2 should, in fact, be called Exodus: Burnt by the Sun 2: Part 1, since what was screened was just one half of the final project. Exodus is essentially two and a half hours of Colonel Kotov (Mikhalkov) trudging through WWII battle zones to reunite with his daughter Nadya (Nadezhda Mikhalkova, the director's real-life offspring) without making very much progress at all. (Yes, I know a title card at the end of Burnt by the Sun says that Kotov and his entire family were executed. The film deals with that by announcing that it was, basically, a filing error.)
When Nazis attack the prison camp in which Kotov is held, he escapes, eventually joining up with other Russian soldiers to trek across the country while avoiding being killed. Meanwhile, his daughter does, well, pretty much the exact same thing, except she flees from a Soviet school. Mikhalkov, being a larger-than-life nationalist psychopath, doesn't half-ass anything. The entire movie is nonstop bombast, with huge battles, epic widescreen vistas, silent-film performances, and one of the most absolutely ridiculous scores I've ever heard in a movie. It can be very funny (largely because Mikhalkov clearly doesn't mean any of it as comedy), but it's mostly just exhausting, especially once the movie ends with Kotov and his daughter just as far apart as they were to begin with, and you realize that nothing you just watched mattered at all. I'm sure it will all be resolved in Exodus: Burnt by the Sun 2: Part 2, but I can't exactly say I'm counting down the days to find out. Continue Reading »
The new week's movie schedule in Friday's paper triggered the same old frustration: Everyone Else, Teza, and The Square all left before I had a chance to see them. I guess I need to watch a lot more than a movie a day just to keep up with the new ones that sound promising. I did get to Mother and Child, a tasteful tearjerker written and directed by Rodrigo García. García, who's Gabriel García Marquez's son, has done a lot of interesting work in cable TV, helping to develop and produce the English-language version of In Treatment for HBO and directing episodes of The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Big Love, among others. Continue Reading »
Having not seen Rachid Bouchareb's 2006 Grand Prix winner Days of Glory, I was a little skeptical about having to watch his Outside the Law, which early word suggested was a sequel to the previous film. As it turns out, previous knowledge of Days of Glory isn't necessary to enjoy Outside the Law, since it's not actually a sequel at all but a sort of thematic follow-up. What is necessary in order to enjoy Outside the Law is a hearty appreciation of cliché and preachy hand-wringing.
Despite not being a sequel to Days of Glory, Outside the Law does feature the same three actors who starred in that film, playing characters with the same names: Saïd (Jamel Debbouze), Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), and Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila), brothers living in France who form a terrorist organization to combat French violence against Algerians. Their story plays out via plot points and dramatic beats stolen straight from The Godfather and Army of Shadows, minus any of the traits that make those films such enduring masterpieces. Where they're fluid and graceful, it's clunky and bombastic. Where they're suggestive and haunting, it's ham-fisted and didactic. And where they're long for a purpose, it's just plain long, stretching its thin dramatic material out over scene after redundant scene. Right-wing protestors hit the streets of Cannes today to bemoan what they claim are significant factual inaccuracies in the film. Even if that's the case, they should cool it; Outside the Law is not even close to worth getting that worked up about. Continue Reading »
Red Dead Redemption is the game Grand Theft Auto always wanted to be. Developed by GTA masterminds Rockstar Games, this pseudo-sequel to 2004's Red Dead Revolver—a functional if underwhelming third-person western saga—thrusts you into a roam-all-you-want Old West sandbox environment, allowing you the freedom to concentrate on the storyline's primary missions or simply gallop about the vast plains, dusty deserts, and Mexican mountains, collecting rare herbs, hunting wild animals, and rescuing whatever damsel in distress you might happen upon along the way. Far less limiting than GTA's urban metropolises, which—because so much of those cities' interior spaces were inaccessible—always felt constructed out of paper houses, Red Dead Redemption's settings are fully, thrillingly alive, their functioning ecosystems, sudden dramatic occurrences, and operative economy all helping to create a sense of participating in a universe that operates independent of (rather than revolves around) you. To spend time in this adventure's locales is to feel a part of a wider world. And, consequently, to catch a glimpse at gaming's immersive potential.
As with its GTA predecessors, Red Dead Redemption is at once upfront about its cinematic influences and yet not beholden to them, using its myriad frames of reference to produce something both familiar and unique. You platy as John Marston, a former outlaw who's compelled in 1911 by the federal government—under threat to his family—to visit New Austin (a Texas stand-in) to track down and kill former criminal mate Bill Williamson. It's a task that goes awry at outset, thus compelling you to get Marston back on his feet and prepare for a siege on Williams's fort compound. If that basic setup sounds similar to countless classic and revisionist westerns, that's no accident, as allusions abound throughout Red Dead Redemption's lengthy campaign. As always, though, Rockstar doesn't name-check so much as simply tip the cap to its favorite celluloid ancestors, from Once Upon a Time in the West (and its depiction of encroaching modernity sounding the old guard's death knell) and The Wild Bunch (especially during the game's later Mexican Civil War sequences) to, in the name of a budding oil community, There Will Be Blood. Continue Reading »
Film Annex has launched www.abelferrara.com, a new Web TV channel broadcasting excerpts from the director's films, news about his latest projects, and more.
Pac-Man is celebrating his 30th birthday! Head on over to Google, wait a few seconds, and then waste the rest of your day reliving your childhood. It's Friday. Your boss won't mind.
Robyn premiered the music video for "Dancing on My Own," the first single from her upcoming album Body Talk Pt. 1, on Vimeo today. The song is slightly different from the version that's been floating around the Interwebs for the last few weeks, but it's still fucking fantastic:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to keithuhlich@gmail.com and to converse in the comments section.
The May 24 finale of the political-action series 24 marks the end of one of the most stylistically fresh and politically controversial programs in broadcast TV history. The video essay series "5 on 24" examines various aspects of the show, including its real-time structure, its depiction of torture, and the psychology of its hero, counterterrorist agent Jack Bauer.
For Matt and Aaron's written musings on the show over at Moving Image Source, start here.
Given that video games are usually better than the movies based on them, it makes sense that the new Prince of Persia game would be just as happy to ignore the chestfest of a movie as I am. Instead, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is inspired by the popularity of the last generation's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time trilogy, ignoring 2008's poor, unloved, colon-less Prince of Persia (which I'm just going to call PoP-08 from here on, as though it was a Japanese energy drink). But for all PoP-08's controversial elements, it was creatively trying to build on what had worked in previous PoP games and throw out what didn't, and PoP: TFS left me longing for its relative success.
I like a lot of things these days. I like the Best for Babes Foundation. I like Rachel Ford's status. I like the photo my husband posted of our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter scratching her ass in front of some student artwork—and I am duly pleased when four other people indicate that they like it too. 
If nostalgia helps to fuel the passion for the medium of video games (and from an industry standpoint, it appears to be a worthwhile pursuit), then 3D Dot Game Heroes is a fervent mash note to gamers hoping to reconnect with some past relationship. The game feels both familiar and alien, a facade of a childhood home with its blueprints ingrained in some forgotten recess of the mind. Those who grew up playing The Legend of Zelda, from which Heroes borrows heavily, may find themselves offended at first, then perplexed by their own faint smiles moments later. Is Heroes an homage? An unofficial sequel? A pastiche? What exactly were the intentions of the developer? No matter. Those hypnotized by the 8- and 16-bit action RPGs from decades ago will find their muscle memory bubbling to the surface again, and their childhood clocks resetting. Those not entranced by that idea—or at least willing to accept it—may find Heroes nothing more than a fleeting, frustrating novelty.
The Cannes Film Festival ended with its longest competition title, and it wasn't even a complete film. Nikita Mikhalkov Exodus: Burnt by the Sun 2 should, in fact, be called Exodus: Burnt by the Sun 2: Part 1, since what was screened was just one half of the final project. Exodus is essentially two and a half hours of Colonel Kotov (Mikhalkov) trudging through WWII battle zones to reunite with his daughter Nadya (Nadezhda Mikhalkova, the director's real-life offspring) without making very much progress at all. (Yes, I know a title card at the end of Burnt by the Sun says that Kotov and his entire family were executed. The film deals with that by announcing that it was, basically, a filing error.)
Having not seen Rachid Bouchareb's 2006 Grand Prix winner 
Red Dead Redemption is the game Grand Theft Auto always wanted to be. Developed by GTA masterminds Rockstar Games, this pseudo-sequel to 2004's Red Dead Revolver—a functional if underwhelming third-person western saga—thrusts you into a roam-all-you-want Old West sandbox environment, allowing you the freedom to concentrate on the storyline's primary missions or simply gallop about the vast plains, dusty deserts, and Mexican mountains, collecting rare herbs, hunting wild animals, and rescuing whatever damsel in distress you might happen upon along the way. Far less limiting than GTA's urban metropolises, which—because so much of those cities' interior spaces were inaccessible—always felt constructed out of paper houses, Red Dead Redemption's settings are fully, thrillingly alive, their functioning ecosystems, sudden dramatic occurrences, and operative economy all helping to create a sense of participating in a universe that operates independent of (rather than revolves around) you. To spend time in this adventure's locales is to feel a part of a wider world. And, consequently, to catch a glimpse at gaming's immersive potential.
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