It has been a few months since I have reviewed a film for this site that was not made earlier then 1970 and I figured it was time to change that. At least for this next week anyways. So I decided it was time to go old school. But not just old school, but old school cool. Which means film noir, French New Wave and Miles Davis. Next week I review Elevator to the Gallows.
Can we be honest with each other for a moment? I’m not much of a fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Oh sure I like the majority of songs, and the dance numbers aren’t half-bad and Meat Loaf makes anything awesome. Plus Tim Curry is a cinematic B-movie God and Riff Raff is a truly outstanding character. So yes, there is plenty to like about The Rocky Horror Picture Show even if I do think the whole thing is a bit overblown.
But lets be honest here. The movie loses serious steam by the third act as it desperately searches for a single decent joke or running gag to use with even minimal effectiveness. Plus Magenta creeps the hell out of me. But I think my biggest complaint about the film is that the fans, well, suck.
Forgive me if my mind is somewhere else today. It is difficult to select new releases to recommend when I have recently received word that Bruce Campbell, The Chin himself, will be coming to the Twin Cities for the opening of My Name is Bruce. Which means I will get to meet him. This, along with meeting the Coen Brothers a few weeks ago, really makes me so much cooler then any of you. In my mind.
Anyways, it is slim pickings once again for DVD releases on Tuesday. I’m tempted to pick The Happening, which I actually did enjoy, but decided I’d pick a film I wanted to see but only had a split-second release in theaters. That movie being Boy A.
For theatrical releases it seems as if somewhere close to two dozen films are being released this weekend. While Flash of Genius, Appaloosa, Religulous and A Girl Cut in Two all look interesting enough for me to watch at some point, this week I am recommending a movie that I have already seen, enjoyed quite a bit and am quite confident most people will not like at all because nothing really happens in it. This movie is better known as Blindness.
I’m not quite sure how I pulled it off, but I became a Ralph Bakshi fan at a fairly young age. My first introduction to him, as it probably was for most kids, was Bakshi’s failed children’s film Wizards. And by failed I mean totally awesome!
You see Bakshi was a bit of a novelty amongst American cartoonists in that he didn’t make animated films that pandered to children and their parents. He wasn’t much of a fan of Disney so when he made a children’s film about warring wizards in a post-apocalyptic world he made sure to include plenty of bloody violence, authentic Nazi war propaganda films and an assassin named Peace. Needless to say critics and parents were a bit bewildered by the film and it was soon relegated to obscurity.
From there I moved on next to Street Fight (aka Coonskin). Unlike Wizards, Street Fight was made specifically for adults as it was a parody of blaxploitation films and satirizes racist stereotypes. And as it was made for adults it came with an R rating attached. Now at the time I was around 13 years old, and the idea of an R rated cartoon seemed positively unthinkable, if not impossible to me. (Little did I know that Bakshi had already topped that rating with his first feature film Fritz the Cat, which had garnered an X rating.) Sure enough, like any blaxploitation film Street Fight was filled with violence, rampant cursing and even the occasional bit of nudity. Nudity in a cartoon? That’s unpossible! (more…)
Thanks to Switchblade Comb for the heads up on this. I only had the chance to catch one of the films in this series last time, and it was absolutely fabulous. Their are several more in this one I would like to watch, and hopefully a few more people will turn out to watch these locally [Minnesota] produced films. Also, after every screening their will be a Q&A with the cast and crew, while Pepitos will be running Homegrown Happy Hour specials next door. Come one, come all for a fantastic time of true Independent film making at its best.
SEPTEMBER 8 - Married at the Mall & Whole, two early films by Melody Gilbert. Married at the Mall is a delightful documentary that features an assortment of lovebirds who tie the knot at the Chapel of Love in the Mall of America, while Whole takes you into the world of people obsessed with becoming an amputee.
SEPTEMBER 13 - Stimulus, directed by Jason Schumacher. For most people, the nebulous time between high-school and college is a prime opportunity to develop and implement a plan for the rest of their lives. For Simon and Bert, it is much easier to spend the time aimlessly taking courses at the local community college or serving coffee for minimum wage. As the summer goes on, however, they are forced to reconsider precisely what their friendship means, as well as what kind of people they are developing into.
SEPTEMBER 22 - When the Sidewalk Ends, directed by Joseph Larsen. Haskel travels the midwest in search of vengeance for past, unspoken crimes. His journey doesn’t go as planned, however, as he instead spends his time apathetic in anonymous hotel rooms. From bizarre anime conventions to a femme fatale who might be working for the enemy, Haskel’s directionless path wears him down to where his ultimate destination no longer matters. The film is a hypnotic tale about a road trip to revenge, and how lonely and tedious such a journey can be.
SEPTEMBER 29 - Murphy’s Law, directed by Todd Pitman and featuring local band Look Down. For three weeks in July of 2006, one camera followed Look Down cross-country in a borrowed van on their first tour. Things quickly unravel as they deal with canceled shows, car trouble, label problems, and simply trying to get across the country with as little fuss as possible.
OCTOBER 6 - The Reception, directed by Jason Mitchell. The Reception is a feature length narrative/documentary hybrid shot entirely in 12 hours. Guests of the faux wedding reception ate and mingled as if at a real reception, with cameras rolling. A screenplay worked as a framework for a film where everyone used their own personal background to improvise strikingly realistic exchanges. A small two-camera high definition video crew captured candid conversations in a documentary style along with the scripted narrative. The result is a film that is funny, honest, and at times uncomfortably real.
OCTOBER 13 - The world premiere of Love: A Documentary, directed by Dave Ash. In the fall of 2006, videographer Ethan Burroughs was working on location at Cratech Industries producing a promotional film about the company. While taping interviews of employees, Burroughs befriended John Stevens, a mid-level financial analyst that was unresponsive to direct questions about the company. Instead, Stevens spoke earnestly and passionately about how he believed that God had recently chosen him to spread love and happiness throughout an uncaring world.
Sunday, October 12 will also be a Homegrown Grab Bag Day of features playing from 11 AM until 4 PM. This line-up has yet to be finalized.
The girlfriend and I had brunch at Gigi’s Cafe the other day and I had what one might describe as an epiphany. Gigi’s is a quaint little establishment that caters predominantly to those who are on the wrong side of thirty plus the occasional migrant hipster. Not exactly an eclectic clientèle but one that nonetheless manages to habitually visit on an almost daily basis.
On this morning we lucked out in that we somehow managed to avoid both the breakfast and brunch rushes allowing us to walk straight up to the counter and immediately order. Our server was a surprisingly tall, cute Asian woman whose nationality was difficult to discern. This afforded my girlfriend of launching into her thesis on how impossibly cute Asian children are. But while the girls are forever in bloom the boys ripen rather early and rarely retain their cuteness after puberty.
Now she repeats this lecture nearly every time we encounter a cute Asian child, clearly alluding to the fact that she would love to adopt one. But I also know she is incapable of controlling her urges, and what would start out as her wanting to help a poor abandoned orphan would quickly morph her into the Angelina Jolie of East Asia, picking out one from every country to add to her collection. This in turn would usher in the day that I come home from work to find her children hermetically sealed so that she might eternally preserve their cuteness … what a legal nightmare that will be.
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