Every so often I run across a film that is garnering very little buzz, but looks like it has enormous potential. So, in an effort to help bring these smaller, obscure films a bit more buzz I plan on posting the occasional plug for the film. My inaugural pick is an upcoming animated horror film that looks absolutely amazing. Animated entirely in gorgeous black and white, the film is actually six animated shorts from the likes of Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, and Richard Maguire. I’d say more but I think the trailer speaks for itself.
Fears of the Dark opens at the Landmark Lagoon Cinema on November 14.
I am facing a bit of a crossroads at this moment. None of the new films being released today look like they are worth my time, yet one stars Eugene Hutz and features the music of his band, and one of my favorites, Gogol Bordello. Most will probably recognize Eugen from his scene stealing role in Everything is Illuminated, but Gogol Bordello is where his true genius is laid bare for everyone to hear. The problem is Filth and Wisdom is the directorial debut of Madonna, and the thought of watching her movie makes me want to dry heave. So my recommendation is to not go see Filth and Wisdom, but please watch Everything is Illuminated and track down a Gogol Bordello CD. I promise that you will not be disappointed by either.
Then on Tuesday the fantastic documentary Billy the Kid is finally released on DVD. It follows the adventures of a young boy named Billy, as he attempts to find love in his small town. It had a short run at the Parkway Theater here in Minneapolis, and now hopefully with this release it will garner a bit larger audience. It really is a great film, and easily one of the better films released last year.
I decided several weeks ago that I would get into the Halloween spirit by reviewing a horror film next week. So I did careful research and selected an interesting unknown Czech horror film that looked rather promising, but somewhere along the way I decided that I was possibly over thinking things. Sure a film that blends live actions with stop-motion animation as it delves into the struggle with sanity while delving into works by the Marquis de Sade and Edgar Allen Poe sounds deliciously fascinating and horrific, but this is Halloween we are talking about.
So I scratched that previous film (Don’t worry, it will be back) in favor of something a bit more fitting, gore. Specifically gore is direct relation to an HP Lovecraft film. And what goes better with HP Lovecraft then Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs? That is why next week I will be reviewing From Beyond.
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.
Being born in the mid-seventies, I grew up with a pretty severe lack of exposure to computers for the majority of my schooling. Sure we had a computer lab where we would learn how to use a computer, but that was rarely more frequent then once a week and the majority of that time was spent playing Oregon Trail. My family didn’t even have a PC until I was in High School, and even then most of my teachers preferred papers to be typed rather then printed on computers. Even when I went off to school at a Big Ten university in the mid-nineties, computers still were not a huge component of the work I did. Though it was in college that I finally began to use the Internet. First on Gopher and later through the World Wide Web. Back in those days 28.8k modems was scorching fast, and texting wasn’t even a blip on anyone’s radar.
Today college is a vastly different environment. Most students own their own laptops, attend classes online and have never lived in a world where computers and the Internet weren’t simply a seamless extension of their lives. So when director Melody Gilbert came up with the idea of filming a documentary about three students (Mitchell Lundin, Andrew Tate and Caitlin Magnusson) at Carleton college who choose to not use any computers for three weeks, I was immediately intrigued. Just how would they pull this off, and just how miserable will they become trying to accomplish such a task?
I have struggled with trying to come up with a suitable intro for this review. With its mix of sex and artistic flare it is a tough nut to pin down, and not typically the sort of thing I can readily compare to my everyday life. You see Marta’s Sex Tape is a very unique viewing experience, one that I wouldn’t not normally sit down to watch. Yet I am quite sure that is why I enjoyed it.
Marta (Pilar Padilla) is deep in debt and unsure how to drag herself out of this mess. Her friends can’t afford to buy any more of her paintings and she can’t get a job, so she decides to take a very unusual approach and make her very own sex tape in the hopes of selling it to a local pornographer. But unfortunately for Marta the tape is far too artsy, and while sex sells, there just isn’t any money in art.
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