fromsweetdreamstonightmares.

2011-11-19T00:48:00.000-08:00

50 STATES, 50 FILMS-THE FINAL CHAPTER

To Create and Complete (some final, passing words on the subject of the greatest Wisconsin movie ever made).

The time has come for me to end it all. With this twelfth and closing month in the last full year before the predicted demise of all things, the moment has arrived to address the last standing point of interest in this all consuming, state to cinema pair up. At long, long last I get to slap some lucky bastard of a film up on a metaphoric pedestal as a (hopefully) fitting representative of our oh so totally beloved fortress of dairy and booze stuffs, all-pro sports collectives and plus-size citizens (aka-Wisconsin).

But, which film do I choose? A troublesome dilemma, but not really. Do I go with Rodney Dangerfield mugging his way across the UW-Madison campus in the mid-80s feature length sitcom BACK TO SCHOOL? Nah, how about that grim yet proper, deep Gothic, Black River Falls based checklist of startling fatalities and somber, monochrome psychosis packaged (in book and film as) WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP? Eh, too one-note and stuck in the distant past. Maybe one of them low profile (not to mention quality) horror flicks (SEVERED TIES, THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION) they like to shoot in one of our lesser, remote towns? Certainly not the exaggerated qualities of something like the over hyped, Mid-Western hopping, Johnny Depp led lesson in old school, criminal glamor, PUBLIC ENEMIES?

I can do better, I think.

There is one film far better suited then any and all of these mentioned here (and several more that have slipped my cluttered mind, I'm sure, with good reason) and that film is called AMERICAN MOVIE.

Contained herein we have the perfect, personal saga, captured in the raw and sometimes earnest style of the scrape and scratch independent documentary form, that fully encapsulates many of the finer charms (and even some alarming quirks) that may feel overly familiar to anyone who has logged in a substantial measure of time in the Badger State.

It's all based around the lifeline of an exuberant persona named Mark Borchardt discovered by director Chris Smith while he was working on a separate, earlier project (AMERICAN JOB) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Mark is a head strong creative force of the most addictively absurd sort, bent beyond hell at completing a feature film entitled NORTHWESTERN. However, as the tempestuous fate of the grass roots gods would have it, Mark is compelled by way of erratic preparation and ever mounting debt to shift his ambitions to finish off his previously abandoned, but now more manageable short thriller film endeavor COVEN.

From this point, the film dives into an inspired and quite colorful breakdown and delineation (some might add, aberration) of the film making process by virtue of a motley line-up of none too professional, yet attractively rogue Wisconsinites, many well worthy of a film all their own

Mark's ceaselessly loyal right hand man is a deeply substance abused fellow named Mike Schank. A fairly portly and often scruffy looking gentleman with a penchant for acoustic guitar (he even put out a record-'Songs I Know') and gambling on scratch off tickets, Mike accompanies Mark throughout the body of his daredevil stab at cinematic infamy, laughing uneasily and injecting dumbfounding yarns from his drug addled past.

An equally significant compadre in Mark's immediate social circle is his frail and world weary Uncle Bill. Arguably the top bid for a sentimental favorite in the film (or, at least, in a tight tie with Mr. Schank), Bill is a wonderfully weathered ol' miser type who chills about his trailer court palace and endures frequent motor mouth visits from his financially handicapped nephew. Although Willie hems and haws (and hacks and coughs) at the idea of funding Mark's brand of distraction afflicted, stop/start style of movie making, he can often be seen filling space in and around the core action as a sort of begrudging moral anchor. Because, in Wisconsin, family is everything.

Oh, wait...

The remaining human satellites (both blood relation and otherwise) that rotate around Mark's cold hard real life vary wildly in their take on the man and his mission. His parents, though not without a loving respect for their child's flawed obsession, could do without the equally fanatic drinking habit (a shocking trait in these parts, I know) and persistent profanity (the guilty quality that earned this film its R rating) and would rest better if only he would settle into a solid 9-5 routine (a thing Mark loathes passionately). Two male siblings hold contrasting views on their brother and his bombastic exploits, one (the far more 'effeminate') seeing him as suitable for little more than factory labor. Other solid peripheral players include hangers on from the aborted NORTHWESTERN pre production days (a pair of whom, Dean Allen and Matthew Wiesman, earned tangential side coverage by the filmmakers that wound up, largely, as deleted scene fodder), COVEN cast mates and girlfriends past and present (as well as Mark's trio of kids who provide spunky comfort during even some of the lowest points in our hero's journey).

AMERICAN MOVIE earns its place as a chief representative of this Wisconsin by way of the ease in which the picture dips into and reflects back thick, genuine chunks of the state's culture and epic, idiosyncratic delights. The narrative thread covers a pivotal two year span, from 1995-97 and thus places the Mark Borchardt experience on a direct parallel with the rise to triumph of another long suffering (at the time) local institution, the Green Bay Packers. Said NFL forefathers complete their sole championship run of the Favre era just ahead of Mark's final stretch to his own, personal, happy ending, the wrapping up and premiere of COVEN in front of a packed and still disbelieving house of his many co-horts.

What Chris Smith and his main (no, only) direct partner in this necessary crime, Sarah Price have achieved here is nothing shy of a perfect inspirational miracle. It is smoothly and beautifully cut and arranged (with ample sonic assist from many a drifting Schank guitar piece) to best sell the soul and struggle of the entire of this most fascinating of down home, Wisconsin dream come (semi) true scenarios. The filmmakers never truly film down to their subjects and even manage to imbue their key protagonist with a heady level of gravity. By example, at several parts throughout the picture, Mark is shown waxing quasi-philosophical in his own abstract Mid Western reconfiguration of the English language on subjects ranging from basic life lessons to spiritual conflicts and even the juxtaposing of a standard, overcast Wisconsin terrain with the work of Ingmar Bergman.

Like with any piece of art I so self affectingly respond to and deem 'classic', I want to know and absorb every single incremental detail of its very existence. This begins with excessive repeat viewings (for this film, I've logged close to 100 such by now) and later by seeking out the participating parties in the mortal flesh. At a screening for AMERICAN MOVIE held at the upscale think joint, Lawrence University in shit-hot downtown Appleton, circa 2001, I managed to corner Sarah Price in the lobby and quiz her on, among other topics, the chance of ever baring witness to more of the alleged 70 hours of exposed footage apart from the finished film and the near hours' worth of DVD bonus scenes. She dealt with such fanboy gushing with a gentle demeanor and vaguely suggested I keep an eye on the internet for the unveiling of any additional footage. The same event also boasted a drunken Mark Borchardt ranting on about the Sundance Film Festival and porn star gang bangs and Mike Schank taking requests for acoustic renderings of everything from 'Smoke on the Water' to 'Reign in Blood'. Lawrence has never been nor probably ever will be a cooler place to hang in than on that night.

Beyond the success of AMERICAN MOVIE (Sony snapped it up for a cool $1 million) Chris Smith has progressed to helm well regarded work like the Errol Morris inflected HOME MOVIE, THE YES MEN (again with Sarah Price) and the compelling 'one man act' (if you will) COLLAPSE which allows former L.A. cop turned author/radical thinker Michael Ruppert to expound upon the issues and incidents that are corroding our nation's infrastructure and depleting our much coveted oil supply. The duo of Mark and Mike have expanded their cinematic careers as well. Sir Borchardt has made his way onto the David Letterman Show and bit parts in films like THE ONE (with Jet Li), CABIN FEVER 2-SPRING FEVER, THE GODFATHER OF GREEN BAY and BRITNEY BABY, ONE MORE TIME (reunited with Mike Schank as a faux documentary crew following a cross dressing male Spears impersonator as she/he travels to New Orleans to meet her/his idol, much better as a concept than as a finished film). Schank also pops up in Todd (WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE) Solondz's STORYTELLING but he's not forced to press his acting chops too hard.

I can also spot a thread of the story covered in AMERICAN MOVIE living on in the undertakings of several strong willed Wisconsin natives here and now. I see it in Hunter Adams who dived right in and crafted a delightful little Fox Valley based comedy, THE HUNGRY BULL with friends and family in tow. I see it even more in the growing Oshkosh juggernaut Head Trauma Productions, lead by the blessed forces of John Pata and Adam Bartlett. This duo birthed a hokey yet likable zombie short (BETTER OFF UNDEAD) several years ago and are now poised to drop a fat, full length feature (DEAD WEIGHT) in the impending, year to end all years, 2012. It can be seen in guys like Jason Buss and his peers in the Wildwood Film Festival each spring, and in people I know who have taken the influence to such diverse places as Minnesota and California to make it happen on film. I am pretty certain not one of these cats can say they've never crossed paths with the mastery of AMERICAN MOVIE, the greatest Wisconsin movie ever made!

You tell me different. Also, if for some stupid reason you've never seen or heard of this film, either get to it with much haste or move the fuck to Illinois.

Thanks. Experiment over. killpeoplenamedrichard@yahoo.com

Weaving Through Debris.

2011-09-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

(originally published in the September 2011 issue of The Scene)

Winding it all down to the wire, I find myself left with a lucky 13 states awaiting proper marriage with a suitable cinematic partner. It’s getting harder to find good lovin’ these days and in the movie/geographic matchmaking scene, it’s hardly any better.

But, I digress, let’s set to business and open it all up with a pair of impossibly dated time capsules wedding the multifaceted quirks of human behavior and mannerisms to their immediate surroundings. Both the ambitious and reverently revealing Middletown (for Indiana) and the playfully stupid Heavy Metal Parking Lot (for Maryland) address their chosen subjects with a strict anthropological objectivity, the goal is simply to share a slice of the American pie with as wide an onlooking crowd as possible.

Shepherded over by its creator, Peter Davis (the mind also behind the essential to watch, Oscar-adorned Vietnam war dissection Hearts and Minds) Middletown takes precious time to meticulously investigate the various, wide-ranging particulars of the populace of Muncie, Indiana. Leapfrogging across six separate episodes (five of which actually made airdates on PBS before unwarranted yet inevitable controversy set in) the project comes as close as any in recent memory to capturing the exact pulse of both a city and, in turn, a specific region.

Nestled snug to the east of the state (and sporting a head count roughly comparable to our so beloved Appleton), Muncie fits right and tight under the basic, presumed guidelines of small scale, Bible-belt all Americana. I imagine it stands today much the same as it did in the later 1970s when this program was assembled.
Taking its overlaying cue (and title) from a 1929 publication Middletown: A Study In Contemporary American Culture by esteemed scholars Robert and Helen Lynd, this Middletown digests its subject matter and reorganizes it into its six handy sub-sections. Said films (each helmed by a different party, including Peter Davis himself) focus with separate yet equal objectivity on things political (The Campaign), spiritual (Community of Praise), marital (Second Time Around) and athletic (The Big Game, and it’s basketball, as is to be expected in the Hoosier state) and the pains of youth and the lack there of.

The epic scale and the intimate detail hold hands productively throughout as the disparate citizens of this chosen hamlet extend their lives out in full for the camera eye. Standouts in this rather massive, archival undertaking include a gregarious Irish politico, an ex-marine turned Shakey’s Pizza proprietor and even a collective of lippy high school seniors in full rebellion mode (to be seen in the series closer Seventeen, which piles on enough curse words and touchy themes and ideas as to instigate an uproar and subsequent banning from being aired back in its day).

The success of this work as a whole is care the way it both provides its potential audience with an unsparing insight into a specific community’s pros and cons and how it manages to liken them to much of our own. In a way, Middletown serves as a mirror held up to anyone who chooses to pay it any mind. If one were to attempt a similar project in a different locale in our present here and now, sure the trivia of fashion and hip technology would prove markedly altered and the inevitable given regional inflections would seep through (plus, there would be far less smoking, everybody seems to be cigarette dependent in this damn thing!) but the essentials of the social, financial and emotional aspects of American living have remained largely a constant. Catch it all at icarusfilms.com.

Likewise, albeit on a far more compact, bootleg and some might say downright moronic scale is the mid-80s, Maryland/D.C. area relic Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

Now this baby began as a one-off public access short stunt by two local dudes (John Heyn and Jeff Krulik) seeking to share, in passing, the delirious/drunken celebratory silliness that is the tailgating sub-culture collecting outside a Judas Priest gig somewhere called Largo, Maryland. What came soon after was a steady building cult phenomena born of copious tape trading and rock star endorsement (it was reportedly a tour bus staple of a pre-martyrdom era Kurt Cobain and that one little folk band he played in) and, ultimately, the well-dressed out DVD release I’m now using as reference (get yours off the website heavymetalparkinglot.com) which goes a long way to demystify the legacy of the whole thing and give it a proper historic context.

What essentially consists of about 16 minutes or so of loud, inebriated (and often shirtless) working class dopers, basement rockers, big hair bitches and all around chuggerheads attains a bit of quasi-nostalgic legitimacy by way of numerous sequels, homages and exhaustive “Where are they now?” updates (they even managed to track down the elusive Zebra-Boy! If you have no idea who I am speaking of, watch the film, you can’t miss him).

I do realize the state-based significance of both John Waters and Barry Levinson, but nothing has ever sold me so deeply on Maryland as this retarded little work of art. I’m telling the lot of you now, if it is deep and insightful reportage you seek, if it is lasting mental nutrition you are lacking then this is certainly the place to look for...the exact opposite.

On to more modern meditations and the pristine Virginia-based farmland of What Remains. This location (near Lexington) serves as the living, loving and working space of the pro shutterbug Sally Mann. Mann, best known for her hot button collection of portraits and other captures involving her three children titled Immediate Family (which contained images that fell under the strict designation of child pornography care the religious right), subscribes to a philosophy of finding the appropriate muse within her familiar surroundings. First, she milks her family members for photographic effect (the mostly black and white prints are often glorious) and then moves with gradual progression toward the landscapes that encircle her home. She shoots in large format (film, remember that shit?) and imprints her work with a soul and an openness to the randomness of life or, “the angel of uncertainty” as she dubs it.

Her work addresses the fragility of existence (a trait possibly influenced by her father’s preoccupation with death). The peak exemplification of this comes when she pays visit to a University of Tennessee-based forensic study area and is allowed to shoot various decaying corpses. The set up might seem unsettling but the resulting photos hold an irrefutable power.

We follow Mann through a multitude of highs and lows, from the everyday living variety to the convoluted process of snagging gallery support. A man by the name of Steven Cantor had previously covered the crafting of Mann’s notorious Immediate Family project back in 1990 (a resulting short film, Blood Ties is part of this picture’s bonus materials) and again provides the guiding eye that allows the audience to step inside Sally Mann’s space and observe for a cool 80 minutes. What Cantor does here set up an open mic for Mann’s ample voice, both as an incredibly gifted, born photographer and as a strong-willed woman who makes her way through her life as she sees fit.

Being as I am a wanna be camera nerd my own damn self, I managed to cull many informative tidbits in relation to this wonderful art form and certain methods that I may wish to emulate and apply to my own approach to imagemaking. Thus, What Remains stands as both a compelling biographic portrait and as an information well for those seeking to learn and/or polish their “eye,” so to speak. (zeitgeistfilms.com)

Lastly, we slap this whole uneven thing upward to our nation’s very first state.

I Can See You marks yet another challenging entry from the New York-based, East Coast-minded mini-studio Glass Eye Pix. Founded in 1985 in good faith by actor/writer/director Larry Fessenden, this outfit has steadily produced some rather striking pictures. Key works of note include Ti West’s efforts The House of the Devil and The Innkeepers and Jim Mickle’s more ambitious than it can afford to be vampire opus Stakeland. They also found the time to fund this severely under the radar ditty from Graham Reznick and it’s a fitting fable for Delaware.

It all comes together so simple, a trio of upstart Big Apple ad campaigners abscond themselves to the deep woods to camp, frolic, snag photos and brainstorm ideas in prep for an impending big dog client. All progresses smooth and tidy I suppose as the lads wander and drink some with various fellow campers and even find the time for a little free-spirited skinny dipping. Soon, however, a fattening level of menace creeps into play and the tone of each passing situation shifts into a sort of collision of David Lynch savvy shadow mystery and Stan Brakhage abstract experimentation.

The whole thing is pieced together with an admirable level of skill and the story feeds its three leads (including one eerily Conan O’ Brian-looking sad sack who basically fills the obnoxious blowhard role all too well) with a heady succession of surprises and ultimately sets them on a course with things better left seen than explained. The fear of the unknown and all that, you dig? Our founding fathers would be so proud. There’s probably still a smattering of their tortured souls wandering them diabolical Delaware forests, creepy. (icanseeyoumovie.com)

And one more thing.....JOHN CARPENTER’S THE WARD.

After flirting with a near decade of non-activity, save a pair of underwhelming Masters of Horror episodes, the frail old gentleman who blessed us with Escape From New York, The Thing and several other major genre pieces (say, what’s the one with that masked dude knifing people?) is back to making movie babies and the first result is, well, meh.

This time out Carpenter follows the fateful trials of a troubled lass (the admittedly fetching Amber Heard), who is placed in a nuthouse for gals after she is found oblivious in front of a burning farm house. The script then finds various ways for our lovely young anti-heroine to clash with staff and inmates and wander dark hallways so that she may cross paths with a number of ghostly cliches.

It all plods along with unremarkable abandon toward yet another one of those twist endings you’ll never see coming unless you’ve already seen a lot of movies with twist endings before. In all good truth, I have seen much worse from an upper shelf genre brand name (i.e. Wes Craven’s woeful My Soul To Take), but that hardly excuses the middling vibe that embodies this thing. Oh well, welcome back John and better luck next time.

Outta words, outta time.

killpeoplenamedrichard@yahoo.com

THE EMPIRE OF WISCONSIN DESERVES A BALD EAGLE KISS (Flag Day 2011)

2011-06-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

bring out your dead (from the neck up) sons of Gawd, the stars an' stripes is a wavin'

SALUTE?

SOMETIMES, A BEAUTIFUL DELIRIUM.

2011-05-03T10:23:00.001-07:00

50 Films/50 States Part 5.

I have trouble dissecting the eccentricities of the human mind sometimes. Even though I am a card carrying member of this so-called 'race', I find that many of my fellow man, woman and child things possess a measured degree of character differentiation that sets them at sharp odds to my given perspective. Because of my nerdy predilection for cinema, I often find myself scrapping for clues to the how, what and why of the human mechanism within the confines of the motion picture medium. I got several choice examples of what I'm on about right here, plus it will serve to knock off a few more states in the process.

Take, for handy instance, the irresistible, eye sore of deliberate tragedy that is the life of Jonathon Sharkey. Here is a feller so bent in the direction of wrong that he can justify maintaining a lifestyle mash-up of blood drinking, neo-satanism and all around pagan/goth/macho posturing while fostering such lofty political ambitions as running for the part of Governor of the state of Minnesota! His bold and (some might add) dunder headed attempts at such serve as a sort of spring board for an awkward yet functionally amusing, shot for the bare minimum documentary/case study titled, in all fair taste, Impaler.

Said title hails from Sir. Sharkey's blunt platform of discipline in relation to a wide range of criminals and lowlifes. Sharkey states plainly, early on in the film, that any and all terrorists, drug dealers and baby rapers (for scant example) will be subject to blunt force trial, torture and eventually decapitation and impalement. This warped unit sees himself as a bastion of hope for his beloved America (Sharkey also holds future plans of a Presidential run, something that should fitfully suit another film, likely already in the works) and not some weak kneed failure like George W. Bush (himself a ripe target for Sharkey-esque impalement).

All this rant savvy 'look at me, I'm weird!' type nonsense leads to, really is a patchwork dissertation on the punishing particulars of living under the grip of mental illness. In this instance, the filmmakers (Texas native W. Tray White being the main man) have gleaned acute evidence of this man's suffocating urge to dance in the proverbial spotlight. You see folks, in addition to his proclaimed status as a devil adoring, vampiric lord, Jon claims to have plied his natural genius in such arenas as Nascar, pro-wrestling and Law (for a more expansive rundown on all this, check his IMDB profile- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2652647/bio- it'll enrich your life! no really!). Of course, all of this grows more and more pathetic as the film strays from in house chats with Sharkey and his school bus driver lady friend in snowbound Princeton, MN to outside parties (ex-spouses, pals and legal officials) who tend to highlight the copious holes in Sharkey's train of logic. Overall, not an unbearable slice of 'you can't make this shit up' style of human interest reportage. Plus, it always does my heart good to see any form of social commentary in relation to that lake and lousy sports team saturated state with the often odd-duck political representatives (Jesse 'The Body' Ventura, Al Franken, Brett Favre) that resides just to the west of us. Impaler can be readily snatched off of netflix...probably about all the effort one needs to expend on it.

A man of equally potent, yet immensely more positive, self design is humble, God fearing, workaholic South Carolina resident Pearl Fryer. The man is a self taught topiary wonderkind and honed local institution who finds himself in front of the camera lens for the quint little feature A Man Named Pearl. Like Impaler, this film serves as a small scale (though more effectively rendered) intro to a genuine American curio at large just off the beaten path. The precise setting is Bishopville (pop. 3,600-ish), located (in Lee county, what's said to be the poorest county in the state) out in the open spaces between the more sizable state populaces of Florance and Columbia. It is here that ol' Mr. Fryer has carved and maintained one of his state's (and most certainly his town's) more esteemed attractions.

Since relocating to Bishopville in the mid 1970s, Pearl has managed to stun and bewilder his mostly simple and set in their ways neighbors by transforming the yard of his domicile into an organic gallery of sprawling art. Pearl toils tirelessly at sculpting, trimming and nurturing the many elaborate designs in his 3+ acre garden that has earned a word of mouth legend that attracts bus loads of tourists to this sleepy little stop off the road that may have otherwise never even registered on most folks' radar. This ongoing life's work now works to solidify this community and keep it healthy. Mr. Pearl lends his knowledge and a shade of his potent work ethic to area (and, sometimes, statewide) children and students, attempting to instill in them a level of self value that can only grow and mature along with them. As a character, Pearl is a gentle, labor worn yet vigorous individual with an even balance of traditional rural morals and free spirit impulse. His thick east-southern drawl and wiry, lanky stance make for one memorable screen figure. Credit to directors Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson for collaborating on a warm and informative piece that always respects this southern gentleman and true artist for every quirky aspect that fuels him. Well shot and economic, A Man Named Pearl never wares out its welcome. Available from the good folks at Docurama, don't believe me? Check here- www.docurama.com/docurama/a-man-named-pearl-dvd-cd-set

A slight bit of pace changing for this next entry in that it is not so much a standard issue feature, per se, but more of an epic and on going small screen offering that breaks down the graphic dramatics of one urban locale yet plays it off as wholly symbolic of many of the other cityscapes in the given region.

Brick City, as the title suggests, is a deep rooted delineation of the largest city (Newark) in what is commonly passed off as the Garden State (New Jersey). Now, I know I could have easily picked this state off of my convoluted 50/50 checklist by virtue of some dispensable dick, tits and fart joke addled Kevin Smith movie or, maybe even something a tad more upscale, say the Louis Malle opus Atlantic City or....hell, there's even a movie called Garden State .

Nah brah, I'm sticking to the real shit. This here Brick City thing is a Sundance Channel backed series (season one covered here, season two recently completed) that covers the modern day quest of positivity obsessed mayor Cory Booker to restore order and integrity to the long impoverished and crime ravaged city he now oversees. Booker and his all star team of do good types and various, assorted low income street citizens work though the tension and turmoil of urban renewal and the challenges of slapping order over top of the kind of embedded chaos that doesn't conveniently subside.

The scope of this subject matter is intricately addressed within the project's 260 minute sprawl. Subplots, asides and effectively placed injections of humor work as second and third tier support systems to the greater central ambitions of community, family, economy and the cancerous detriment that the city's ever present criminal element brings (murder's the word, ya heard?!). At the front of it all is Booker, the bright light of hope or frustrating pain in the metro ass (all depending on which talking head's speechifying one buys into). The mayor and his tireless quest to reverse his city's negative level of notoriety and maintain the sanity of both himself and his loyal crew (gruff Director of Police Garry McCarthy most notably) veers back and forth from the cruel reality of gang related homicide, which is haphazard and unyielding, to a cheerful downtown distraction for the positive like a visiting big ticket circus troupe. Intermixed with Booker's renovation campaign are the immediately related struggles of several reformed gang banger cum social activist types, feuding politicos and even a feisty lawyer pulling to save one key (and very pregnant) young lady out of jail.

This truly is what one might legitimately refer to as 'quality television', the dearth of such stuff on the small screen in recent years (shows like 'Lost' and 'Dexter' not withstanding) makes a rare breakthrough like this one here ever more special. The team of Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin have assembled and finessed a staggering amount of material into a still fat and epic dissertation on the pains of urban discipline and the harsh truths of classism and social/economic imbalance that could well serve as a metaphor for most sizable cities in the state of New Jersey (I've been to Newark and been told by those in the know there various 'ghetto' anecdotes, with all the worst signs pointing to Camden). The show was first aired on the Sundance Channel but can easily be obtained in the ever dependable DVD format with a sprinkling of bonus features including input from executive producer Forest Whitaker (one can also obtain further background nuggets on Cory Booker care a defacto prequel of sorts titled Street Fight and covering Booker's initial trial and error attempts to become the Newark mayor-par excellence). So, without fail, you must get your Jersey learn-on the real way, track the first, five part, season of Brick City at all costs starting with this website; firstrunfeatures.com

Backing away from documentary overkill, it is time now to pay respects to a film I find is one of the best and most complete experiences of recent years. That and it all takes place in and all over my birth state of California. Paul Thomas Anderson's fifth feature, There Will Be Blood (Paramount Vantage) is, for me, a complete beast of a film that executes on such a high and consistent level of sheer film making finesse that reminds me once again what being a film geek is all about.

This is the movie that finally made full and robust usage of that most particular and fascinating of quality modern screen actors, Daniel Day-Lewis, that possessive screen presence that made the most of his place in such otherwise underwhelming A-list affairs as Gangs of New York and In the Name of the Father. Here, Lewis is given no restriction and the picture is his to dominate and he never disappoints, plowing through an epic (158 minute) saga of gusto, greed and the savage means to which the main character, an oil obsessed entrepreneur named Daniel Plainview hell bent on monopolizing the turn of the century California landscape, pursues his meal ticket, no matter the social, moral or spiritual cost. Plainview uses methods of keen manipulation and smooth oratory skills to rest area folk assured that his goals are lofty and genuine enough to prove beneficial toward them and their related communities in the long run. Meanwhile, he proceeds to dig and drill his way toward increasing wealth and a rapidly distancing attitude toward the very nature of mankind. Plainview finds direct conflict in the shape of several pesky, intrusive bodies such as a dodgy, alleged long lost sibling (Kevin J. O'Connor, hailing from, you guessed it- Fond Du Lac!) as well as an equally shifty young vessel for the good lord's word, a preacher named Eli Sunday (Paul Dano) who ultimately shares in Plainview's descent to the very bitter end.

What P. T. Anderson has done with this film, by far his best, is fashioned a magnificent, fully realized work of art, not simply dispensable commercialized 'entertainment' as fodder that passes by the eyes well enough without ever entering the brain for any substantial measure of time. He has even surpassed his previous, very good, Robert Altman in the time of Tarantino style fables Boogie Nights and Magnolia in terms of storytelling, strength of character and virtually every facet of technical prowess one can think of. The film looks grand, is cut great and boasts one immaculate sound mix topped, above all, by the eerie/beautiful minimalist score from Radiohead lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. Yes, my friends, this is, as in the parlance of the drunken youth of this sad modern hell, the shit. Eternal props to Anderson, D. D. Lewis and the rest of the There Will Be Blood commune. This is the perfect mix of light and dark, art and actuality, elegance and cruelty. Probably not the type of graphic banter many will agree upon in the direction of this film but, no matter say I, this is a glorious slab of misanthropic poetry set to separate the deep thinker with the keen sense of cinema from the gaggle of 'bros' in vapid search of the next big Hangover.

Ugh, all out of words. Next month, more movies, more states, more brotherly love for one and all!

SOME OF GOD'S CHILDREN ARE A BIT 'OFF'

2011-04-24T13:20:00.000-07:00

(can't stop them from doin' what it is they do.)

Continuing on with my savage, metaphoric bastardization of this great nation we all live and breathe and shit and sleep in, I have, for this handy fourth installment, chosen to zoom my mental lens in on five films mashing salt of the earth types (good, bad and well beyond ugly) up with the substantial place they occupy in their given states of residence. We will test moral waters, walk a crooked path with Jesus and fight the good fight as bread and butter folks cross mountains, scour the belly of mother earth and even stalk beasts of myth hoping to flush them out into cold reality.

Let's touch down first in the place that both the fictional Dorthy Gale and the very real William S. Burroughs once called home.

Kansas.

In recent memory, no one member of its population has the 'Sunflower State' been given less to boast about then the one Reverend Fred Phelps. Phelps is the prolifically hateful guiding force behind the Topeka based Westboro Baptist Church. Subscribing diligently to severely outdated Calvinist principles and preaching his thick headed brand of cruel, old god doctrine to a congregation of , mostly, his own family members, Phelps has worked the majority of his life at battling the filth of the earth and securing his place at the high ranks of an afterlife to be made up exclusively of a limited company of ultra-righteous brethren.

The Westboro posse's greatest contribution to 'can you believe that shit' style popular culture has come by way of a succession of wholly inappropriate protests of the funerals of various American soldiers and homosexuals, most infamously that Mathew Shepard, a Wyoming collage student who committed the deplorable crime of not being straight. Westboro protests are punctuated by a plethora of loud and obnoxious pickets signs that cover the full spectrum of unapologetic hate and disdain with oddly hypnotic abandon. The majority of all this could inspire knee-jerk laughter care the epic level of cold ignorance employed, then one is reminded that these bible bashing social terrorists really, REALLY believe this shit with all their (dare I say) hearts.

The antics of the Westboro knuckle draggers and their lanky, menacing front man Fred serve as the topic of a concise little number titled 'Fall From Grace'. The director, K. Ryan Jones gained access to the inner workings of the Westboro/Phelps complex and has scored interview time with most of the principal players, most significantly big Fred himself. The film does its best to try and dredge up the true demon behind the doings, but, for the most part, the Phelps family sports a decent poker face and adheres to its belief system with a wide fascist grin. Ole Fred displays a basic level of tolerance for the young punk behind the camera, but the whole thing feels smothered beneath a facade of meticulously managed fear. No one person in this family can truly manage a sane and sober mindset, not with the way they've been reared. The film even includes input (via telephone interviews) with two of the Phelps children who have long detached themselves from the madness and share potent details of abuse born of poorly misdirected anger issues that have long gone unaddressed. The Phelps saga is one of incredible, head scratching and very primitive delusion. It's a shocking waste of too many lives and a stark embarrassment in a low-key state mostly shrugged off as being made up of little more than farms, fields and flat spaces.

'Fall From Grace' is a worthy, if not landmark, documentary that can be culled from Netflix or this site here-fallfromgracemovie.net

Second up-Kentucky.

In the early 70s, a young and zealous filmmaker by the name of Barbra Kopple embedded herself deep in a brassy and ultimately violent standoff between nearly 200 coal miners and the thug level bullies representing the best interests of the big corporate entity that would never dain to walk in their shoes. The resulting film, 'Harlan County U.S.A.', charts the intense struggle of the strike from the frontline, with Kopple and her crew getting their hands way more than dirty and sweaty in the process.

Kopple's film, one of the first of its fashion to garner a substantial release (in the less glamorous, pre-Michael Moore world) works as an addictive, grunt level portrait of working class dog soldiers in a brutal war against a soulless disregard for basic human rights. The people of this Harlan County place (located at the far south-east portion of the KY) are a collective of amazing, hard faced country souls who have weathered ungodly hours, black lung, bent backs and lackluster wages in order to scrape by and live another day in rural hell. Their townships are of the most rickety and marginal fashion. No running water, garbage and plentiful rust raped reminders of how close to the bottom this community really is.

To wrap her camera around this elephantine struggle between have alls and have nots, Kopple and co toiled long hours for time on end, digesting the picket lines, court room drama, fierce pride and recollection of mining history (often brutal) and even a field trip style picket in Manhattan to spread the word to Wall Street stockholders, to build an epic stockpile of footage (to wit-not an anomaly for a documentary project) with which to sculpt a film that would live on to first win itself an Oscar (in 1976) and later a place in the National Film Registry (a segment of the Library of Congress). This director had her skills honed putting down alongside the Brothers Maysles and gleaned from them an ample respect for the particulars of persona and place. 'Harlan County U.S.A.' thrives off the richness of character in these rough but honest working folk and their powerful desire to set things to right.

The Criterion Collection (and they tend to do right by a lot of fine films) has the best possible edition of this thing on DVD (spine # 334, look it up at criterion.com) that slaps on outtakes, interviews, commentary and even a reissue panel from the Sundance Film Fest (circa-2005) featuring Kopple and a still vocal Roger Ebert. Another classic to add to the list, and the list is ever growing.

Sticking to the countryside and moving up and over a ways-Montana.

A strange little left field piece of work called 'Sweetgrass' seeks to bring the untrained eye in touch with the laborious practice of prepping and herding a mass of, sometimes unruly, sheep from point A-the ranch to point B-the grazing pasture, all via the less than forgiving Absaroka-Beartooth mountains (a mass of wild natural abandon that sprawls some 900,000 + acres, even bleeding over into neighboring 'frontier' state Wyoming).

The film tags along behind a small collection of all-pro ranchers as they enact the deed of pushing and prodding a mass of wholly bastards up and through the impressive terrain all the while balancing workman like resolution with occasional lapses into frustration (most deliciously evidenced in a very profane outburst played out against one of the film's many sumptuous landscapes shots.

'Sweetgrass' is the feature result of husband/wife filmmaking tandem Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash devoting a reported eight or so years studying, learning and documenting this nearly outdated and romantic throwback industry of cowboys making their way, big country style. The pair relate this ambitious endeavor by way of long, dreamy studies of the sheer scope of these 'Big Sky' spaces, takes that are (thankfully) bereft of the cumbersome inclusion of some narrator flooding your ears with the painfully obvious and/or trite. 'Sweetgrass' is a blend of cool, hypnotic dream state and hard, rigorous slice-of-life truth. The film waivers between the punch in/punch out mundaity attributed to getting a job done (cowboys banter, tell hick savvy jokes, doze off mid day) to the blunt facts of life (sheep giving sloppy, juicy birth, calves being pruned and tagged), all unblinkingly processed through the video camera eye.

It should come as no real surprise that Castaing-Taylor is a Harvard based Professor specializing in Anthropology and Social Sciences, he has an obvious affinity for cultural process and the little human details that give flesh and blood vibrancy to an act that would, otherwise, read as soulless and mechanical. He also know how to photograph those big open Montana expanses. sweetgrassthemovie.com

Speaking of Montana, you all remember that one 'weird' guy, David Lynch? Well he sites Missoula, the states' second largest city, as his birthplace. Now, while most folks fondly recall Lynch as the gleefully warped brain-trust behind such ready made eccentricities as 'Blue Velvet' and the short lived, small screen phenom 'Twin Peaks', I prefer to instead to do a quick run through of the true curio of his filmography, the G-Rated, Walt Disney distributed and Iowa based 'The Straight Story'.

The, based on a true, story goes like this, Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) is a twilight era old-timer who has just received word that his long estranged brother, Lyle, as come under ill health. Hoping to amend long standing bad blood and maybe even come to terms with his own very immediate mortality in the process, Alvin (legally blind and sporting duel crutches) makes haste on a retro John Deere riding lawn mower, under speech impeded protest from his daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek) from his root down in small scale Laurens, Iowa all the way east and up a fair bit to his brother's shack in Mt. Zion, Wisconsin (more on THAT state in a future issue). It's the journey between that fills out the near two hours that encompass this charming, philosophic and breezy slice of Lynch-Lite. En route toward his fated fraternal reconciliation, Alvin trades flavor, favors and wisdom with folks from all walks along the green, farm friendly sprawl of the thick of the corn belt.

'The Straight Story' marked a sharp measure of departure for Lynch in that it gained him accolades and attention from a whole different demographic then his patented film school hipster fan base. Farnsworth was Oscar nominated and most critics refrained from picking it apart. Though this film may never earn cult cred on par with the 'Eraserheads' and 'Mulholland Drives' that made and maintained his reputation, it still clings to several key aesthetic and thematic Lynch traits. The frame is still painted with striking and even rather poetic images, with special attention given to the vast, brooding properties of darkness and the running score is all haunting-romantic, as is the norm with Angelo Badalamenti on board. Quirky he may be, but David Lynch is a genuine film (as art) maker, now if only he can set aside that Transcendental Meditation bullshit and get on with the cinema!

Last Stop=Ohio!

Well, center-south in the state, around Scioto County seat Portsmouth, reside two infectiously driven, fully skewered mindsets who have forged a friendship, pastime and pursuit of dreams based entirely around the steadfast conviction that Bigfoots (not just one, mind you) do exist and are at plentiful large in the woods and countrysides of their immediate area. Wayne Burton and Dallas Gilbert have spent years contrasting the fairly bleak circumstances they subsist in (poor employment options and a dire lack of cultural stimuli) by attempting to position themselves as ambassadors and scholars of this whole Bigfoot mythology that (at least for some people) is just begging to be proven as fact.

The movie, entitled 'Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie', running just above an hour and slapped together on the HD low-end by someone named Jay Delaney, works better as a charming examination of two old pals who refuse to surrender their chief passion, regardless the cost. Think of it as lesser variant on the likes of that one 'Anvil' movie ('The Story of Anvil') with the guitars and other rock trinkets supplanted by largely unseen hairy man beasts (though not for lack of vague, unfocused snapshots). These determined gents weather all manner of mockery and false hope to steady their course and the odd humanity on display as a direct result is what informs the film away from just being another geek-show farce where the dip shit bumpkins serve largely as easy fodder for drunken ridicule (not that I've ever been guilty of indulging as such). Do the boys ever actually land proof of their elusive grand prize? For all their ramblings and religiously adhered to backwoods wanderings, the truth remains a matter of faith, a shadow captured by camera more then once but never rising above the many common prejudices of individual interpretation.

'Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie' is up for grabs on DVD care the oddball distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories (www.oscilloscope.net) or, more to the point, one can visit the real deal-notyourtypicalbigfootmovie.com which will link you up to all manner of stuff, including Dallas and Wayne's own website and a even a youtube channel for those who need to see it all (relatively speaking).

Seek and find, people.

A CITIZEN

2011-04-10T00:55:00.000-07:00

(UN) ACCOUNTED FOR......

this wisconsin is MOST WISCONSIN!

2011-03-26T01:26:00.000-07:00

IN GENERAL, THEY SAY WHAT THEY MEAN SOME.

WHAT?

LET THE RIGHT ONE....UGH.

2011-03-19T20:10:00.000-07:00

'LITTLE BASTARD'S PROLLY A COMMUNIST OR SUMPTIN'

THIS OCEAN HAS MANY FACES.....

2011-03-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

...SMILING AGAINST THE RIDDLE THAT IS WISCONSIN POLITICS.

WISCONSIN DONS ITS WAR FACE (VOL. 666)

2011-03-13T23:34:00.000-07:00

WISCONSIN AIN'T NUTHIN' TA FUCK WITH.

NEVER.

THIS WISCONSIN WILL NEVER FALL!

2011-03-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

AND.

IT.

KEEPS.

ON.

GOING.

WISCONSIN DONS ITS WAR FACE ON INTO INFINITY...PART IV

2011-03-06T03:14:00.000-08:00

BECAUSE THERE CAN, CLEARLY, NEVER BE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING TO TIDE YOU OVER.

WISCONSIN DONS ITS WAR FACE (III)

2011-03-01T22:43:00.000-08:00

SIGNS AN' SHIT...DUH.

WISCONSIN DONS ITS WAR FACE (VOL. 2)

2011-02-28T00:02:00.000-08:00

FOR ALL THE MANY ARRESTING FACES AMONG THE MADDING CROWD....

WISCONSIN DONS ITS WAR FACE (VOL. 1)

2011-02-27T00:48:00.000-08:00

BECAUSE, THE SUPER BOWL NOT WITHSTANDING, THE SO-CALLED BADGER, BOOZER, CHEESE HEAD, FAT CHICK LOVIN' STATE ABOVE ALL STATES HAS NEVER HAD A REASON TO STEP ITS VOICE UP TO THIS NOTCH UNTIL A CERTAIN CROSS EYED POLITICO DREW HIS LINE IN THE FLUFFY MADISON SNOW.

SHE WOULD HAVE CRIED.

2011-02-04T21:37:00.000-08:00

(I) HOLD YOU

(TO A) SOLID ABANDON

YOU WISH YOU COULD HAVE LIVED

AS SOMETHING

BETTER

NO LASTING IMPRESSIONS

THAT A BULLET COULDN'T TOP

WITH EASE

RELEASE

YOU MADE (SELFISH) A LASTING WISH

FOR OTHERS TO CUT/ AND/ PASTE/ TO/ SUIT/ THEIR NEEDS

A FALLING, FLAILING SOUND EFFECT

SERVING DEAF EARS (YOU)

DESERVED. TO. BE. HEARD.

(BETTER)

ON LIVING TERMS AND

SPLIT CHECKED AGAINST

A HEART-FELT

SURRENDER

MOTHER NEVER APPROVED OF

GUNS....

"EVER!''

YOU LET THE

BAD THINGS

IN? (and worse)

CRIMES ON THE MIND...

2011-02-04T20:33:00.000-08:00

50 states, 50 films... a non-linear, cinematic road trip (part 2)

By Richard Ostrom

Thus begins the second installment of my rather meandering attempt to marry at least one piece of motion picture art to each of the 50 of Uncle Sam’s little darlings. This month, I cast a glance at four separate slices of solid filmmaking based around criminal mindsets and/or the unfortunates who often suffer by association. Thus, the metaphoric road trip ambles on.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle: Massachusetts, don’t know it, never been there, specifically Boston, the biggest, baddest city within its boarders, working class and bullshit allergic from what I gather. I suppose there are plenty of easily accessed, highly touted cinematic essays on this city and state it is planted in. I could hit up anything from the recent spate of top dollar adaptations of native son author Dennis Lehane’s work (Clint Eastwood’s grandiose Mystic River or Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone perhaps?). I could even touch on Affleck’s sophomore directorial effort, The Town, an epic bank heist drama that batters its way through the thick of Boston’s criminal underbelly. It’s all legit, well done, commercial thriller business that goes significant lengths in cementing Affleck’s behind-the-camera cred. Props to all involved on this thing, the film as a whole conveys the specifics of its locale (explicitly, the criminal breeding ground of the rugged, blue-collar Charlestown neighborhood) and treats all involved parties (people, places, things) with a great level of respect; this is no B-grade also-ran, but, despite all this and for the purposes of this piece, I’m inclined to move on to another film altogether.

I suppose I will stick to the Boston underworld, but, how’s about we kick it back a few decades and bring up the quirk appeal in both the front line and supporting character ranks? Good idea, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and its wonderfully shopworn lead, Robert Mitchum invites any interested parties on a ride through the day-to-day struggles of the titular, low-ranked career criminal wrestling with the nagging distractions of potential incarceration and a shifty gun runner with a tendency to haggle. The film realizes this sad sack’s seemingly irrevocable dilemma by way of a polished combination of crisp screenwriting funneled through fine-etched performances by old man Mitchum, Alex Rocco, Richard (‘have a nice day’) Jordan and even the ever watchable Peter Boyle as the one “friend” that proves to be poor Eddie Coyle’s ultimate undoing.

This whole thing unfolds at a measured pace care the informed, veteran guiding hand of an Englishman named Peter Yates (who passed away just a few scant days into this year), whose body of work covered everything from an infamous Steve McQueen car chase thriller (Bullet) to would-be blockbusters that really weren’t (Krull, The Deep). This film is a semi-early career entry (circa 1973) that the director himself sites as one of his own favorites (as voiced in the Criterion edition commentary track in which Yates also emphasizes the value of the picture’s on-location shooting credo). The absorption of and interaction with the surrounding elements of the Boston metro area and related outskirts maintains a semblance of what I’d gather to be a genuine flavor of the period in this chosen locale. This Yates/Mitchum almost-classic sports more than a passing fatherly fraternity with the current, far more commercially embraced Affleck epic mentioned at the head of this article. Both trade heavy on regional accents and attitudes, both outline their illegal empires as a tad nervous and at risk of collapse, and both films address the subject of bank robbery as a greatly embraced avenue of financial gain. In the end of it all (for both pictures, actually) there is a morale the story must adhere to and justice must be meted out, often in the form of bloodshed.

‘Tis a hard form of livin’ over there in the thick of the big city, perhaps robbing banks and running firearms has something to do with it, just a passing guess. (criterion.com) spine #475.

Onward, over and up a spell to the north now.

Brother’s Keeper: One of the finest documentaries ever made. Had to say it, always wanted to put down words in favor of this baby for some time now and never got around to it, now’s the time. Upstate New York, early 1990s, is the setting (the minor townships, Munnsville and Stockbridge, in particular) and a trio of socially primitive farm-based brothers, the Ward boys, are the focal point. A fourth male sibling’s alleged murder is at the heart of it all.

It appears that said “late” Ward brother had been in nagging pain and discomfort for some time before he was finally found dead in the very shack he occupied with his fellow Wards for years on end. The surrounding, rather insulated community is thrown into a headline-making legal whirlwind when authority figures seek to convict one Delbert Ward for allegedly smothering his brother Bill out as a mercy killing, but a killing nonetheless. What follows is a hypnotic, immersive study of very off the radar, small town culture and, even more explicitly, three of the most humble “simple folks” ever uncovered by a form of media (thankfully it’s care of skilled documentarians Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger rather than some woeful, sensation-minded hacks). Each Ward brother is such a colorful shade of country character and they hold such fascinating, toil-aged faces meant to linger on in the memory.

As the drama intensifies and ol’ Delbert finds himself court bound to stand trial for that which he may or may not have gone and done, the film begins to peel away at the layers of this small-scale variant of society. Locals come out of the fog-draped countryside and area shops and diners to lend support (both moral and financial) for the Ward boys as the sheer level of shock swiftly being introduced into their basic lives threatens to upend them permanently.

You see, these boys have spent the lion’s share of their days on earth minding their own business via chores and such and they rarely set to bother with anybody. They lack even a fraction of a proper education and with minimal reading/writing skill sets, they are prime fodder for the formal brain trust of the New York legal system. None of the lads can hear worth a damn (especially Roscoe, who strains his ears endlessly) and one brother, Lyman, suffers from a naturally excessive nervous disposition which comes to an apex in an unsettling bout of courtroom questioning).

I’m not going to play spoiler and even hint at the outcome of the trial or methodically explain away all the subtleties and surprises of this longtime fave, suffice it to say, this here’s yet another pivotal reminder of the strong significance of the documentary format in cinema. No fiction film can, as the cliche so implies, render life as truly “stranger than.” You can’t so easily invent human curiosities like the Ward brothers, not in some focus group-based script conference.

This Berlinger/Sinofsky pairing has made a small, yet stable, career stake with this and a succession of non-fiction profiles lionizing grade A misfit types. Witness later films like the two West Memphis Three-based Paradise Lost pictures and even a dopey, past-prime metal band that lesser minds still ignorantly declare as “heavy” in the overlong but not entirely useless Some Kind of Monster for further evidence.

This here skin of the teeth, 16mm effort is still their finest achievement, marrying surreal (to some) small town ethics and the grander scheme of things that most folks dub “the real world.” The DVD reissue even manages to supply a previously abandoned sequence of the Ward fellas joining the filmmakers for a romp around the streets of Manhattan, giving us the chance to see the lads surrounded by the pre-9/11 sprawl of New York state’s most famous tourist haunt. Sometimes, as cultures collide, great art results. (docurama.com)

Ballast: Now on to the Mississippi Delta and another (southern) spin on the rural impoverishment thing. This spare, imperfect experiment in deep-drawn, thought-before-superficial-action storytelling seeks to weave its way into the emotional landscape of an audience member by allowing the texture of the main characters’ behaviors and gesture patterns carry the gravity of the rather sparse basic storyline farther than a wealth of hyperbole disguised as dialogue-laden screenwriting ever could. The fractional set up is thus: a man’s abrupt suicide leaves his brother (Michael J. Smith), an ex-wife (Tarra Riggs) and their heavily influential offspring (Jim-Myron Ross) to deal with the inevitable ripple effect such a violent act of self-absorbed defeatism is bound to instigate.

The trio live, work and cross each others’ damaged paths in a narrow little slice of poverty-level existence that seems to consist of desolation, petty crime, barely serviceable employment options and far too much quiet time spent alone inside one’s own head. The expected tensions arise not far removed from the moment the film establishes itself and begins to let its invented personas move about in this hope-deficient space of countryside nothingness it has cruelly provided for them. The man, named Lawrence, once held a passing dream of running a prosperous radio station with his now late sibling. In truth, the pair were forced over to the more practical constraints of owning and operating a roadside gas and stop convenience shack. The ex-wife has apparently moved on from drug addiction toward laboring over public toilets and, later, attempting to home school her son as a means to occupy his time away from depreciative nearby thugs.

The film is a stable, very credible debut from a guy named Lance Hammer (who once helped to fatten his resume with art direction/effects work on the two erroneous Joel Schumacher Batman sequels). Hammer savors the art of restraint in his handling of this heavy material and he shows a gift in his widescreen design scheme that allows the empty spaces that background the drama to, at times, even help to enhance the richness of the pervading sense of loss and dire dread at what (if anything) lies ahead. He fills his meager cast with area non pros who succeed in enhancing the regional flavor in effortless, small scale ways no top-line, overpriced line up ever could.

True to this less than perky synopsis, this is a film best suited to those with a taste for deep themes and the heavy treatment that, logically, often accompanies them. This is also not a story that has been designed to spell every moment out with utter, interpretation-defying clarity, Ballast is a tale of pain and fracture, told so as to elect intrigue if not complete understanding. This is a visit to a far to the side place that, while not all that appealing as a potential future hangout spot, is still given up as a quality study in hard living by what feels like real people at large in the same real world as ours, albeit against a bleak southern frontier of sorts, but real all the same. (ballastfilm.com)

Hold on, I gots some more depressing country shit for y’all...

Winter’s Bone: Placed deep in the Ozarks (that little plateau shared between Missouri and Arkansas) on the Show Me State side, is the strange, uncertain and not entirely how you’d think it would unfold saga of one headstrong, near-woman type named Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) who tires of aimlessly tending to her two younger siblings and vacant, speechless mother and sets to discovering the whereabouts of her wayward, drug-dealing pops. Her lack of relent gradually leads her to discover the less savory branch of the local, often interrelated, populace.

You see, believe it or don’t, one chief network of economic prosperity in these here parts involves the manufacture and distribution of that favored white trash sleep retardant, crystal meth. Also, folks who would deal in such legally unabiding practices tend not to respond in a pleasant light to any level of snooping and prying, so, in short haste, our plucky heroine finds herself skirting serious violence or worse as the shadows open up some and the bad people begin to appear.

The lass’s only dependable base of assist in all this turns out to be her, at first glance, unsavory uncle Teardrop (John Hawks), a speed-addled and emotionally conflicted hellion type who ultimately comes to rival his niece’s desire to gain knowledge of her father’s fate, even as that leads them both well away from the good graces of those with the means (and motivation) to quiet them both in the permanent sense. Given this borderline stereotype-inducing outline, one might lower expectations and proceed expecting a high-end Lifetime movie with injections of stale, hillbilly melodramatics. Perhaps a backwoods crime drama with a safe, pat conclusion that fells the baddies and whisks our girl Ree onward to finer pastures.

Not gonna happen. Director Debra Granik prefers to put an audience through much of the same uncomfortable uncertainty as her protagonist. Young lead actress Lawrence possesses her role and casts herself with fearless abandon upon a cruel environ cluttered with debris borne of both mother nature and tattered, unkempt men.

The film balances domestic simplicity and simmering, beneath the surface horror show creepiness to optimum payola. This off-radar subculture feels well developed and full bodied, which lends extra impact to the eventual moments of dire, plausible dread that come about when all bad truths come to light....sort of.

Oh, there’s even a chainsaw scene, but I’ll just let all you good folks discover the particulars of that for your own damn selves. (wintersbonemovie.com)

50 States/50 Films. Part 1

2011-01-03T22:03:00.000-08:00

(originally published in The Scene-January 2011)

So, this month kicks off a yearlong experiment in cinematic analysis that this column will undertake in hopes of gaining a deeper appreciation of the relationship between a motion picture and its chosen environment. Every film has to be set somewhere, and for the express purposes of this monthly, poor-man’s attempt at journalism, I choose to pinpoint a film set in each of the 50 sections of this, our so beloved, red-blooded behemoth, the United States of America.

That settles it, 50 states=50 films. One per state, and the rules for each are simple: each film must bare a genuine attempt to embrace and convey some substantial measure of legitimate representation of whichever state it happens to be planted in. The movie has to dip beneath the surface and get a feel for its setting and the kinds of personas that inform it.

Some cases can prove appealing, others appalling; either way, an impact must be made for a picture to join the club. This first edition will sort through four fitting examples, some more current than others (as will be the case on through to December), and each from distinctly colorful spots in this here America.

Down By Law jumps off first in the far, dirty southern reaches of Louisiana. Entry number three in director Jim Jarmusch’s indie-chic canon, the film puts Jarmusch’s relaxed, minimalist character study routine square in the midst of swampland after a meander through depressing, early ’80s New York (Permanent Vacation) and a sprawling trek from NYC to Cleveland and on to somewhere in Florida (Stranger Than Paradise).

The initial linking thread here is musician/thespian John Lurie, who has a role in each picture, here playing a small-scale mack daddy who falls for a police sting and finds himself sharing a ruddy jail cell with an aimless disc jockey (Tom Waits) and an endlessly babbling Italian fellow (Roberto Benigni) with a limitless enthusiasm for, well, “being.”

Their shared (mis)adventures entail a jailbreak followed swiftly by a whole lotta stumbling through the bayou woodlands and later a run in with a small, off-to-the-side eatery peopled by one lonely Italian woman (Nicoletta Braschi), who provides the men with a temporary safe haven and blossoming romantic potential for Benigni’s character.
What qualifies this particular film as a worthy representation of Louisiana (as opposed to some more obvious, up front choices; i.e. Angel Heart, Streetcar Named Desire, maybe even one of the many Katrina documentaries, whatever) is that it understands that little extra something that I find myself often looking for and, thus, have applied toward the meat of this experiment, the relation between the human characters in the story and the unique specifics of their surroundings.

Via careful, richly detailed monochrome cinematography by esteemed Dutch cameraman Robby Müller, the viewer is able to glean copious visual subtleties within the frame. His imagery breathes with a depth and weight that can almost be called a character in and of itself. From establishing shot passages of New Orleans’ architecture (French Quarter ironwork, inner city housing projects, jail cells and shotgun abodes all in the mix) and street-bound wandering souls, to moss-laden swamp waters and long, winding roads, Müller’s bold black and white bayou holds its own and plays fruitful accompaniment to the picture’s misfit trio.

This is a smooth and satisfying little neo-noir slice of life with top shelf, deadpan turns by both Waits and Lurie bounced to max effect off the pure mania of Bengini. Down By Law has been a member of the Criterion Collection (spine #166 on a two-disc set) since 2002 and that would be the only edition one ever need bother with. criterion.com

Moving one state straight north, Arkansas, brings us to a film which probably most readers have at least seen or heard of once. Sling Blade is both Bill Bob Thornton’s tour de force embodiment of a “mentally challenged” feller named Karl Childers and rich homage to his home state.

The resulting film was, of course, a genuine sleeper hit with award show adulation and of the moment pop culture referencing following suit as expected. What makes this film fit with the program here is its adherence to the rural culture of the small town that the endearing Karl must learn to get by in.

To recap the basic premise for anyone who may have forgotten or never bothered with the film in the first place, Karl has just been released from the “Nervous Hospital” (as he terms it), where he’d been placed for a homicidal outburst he had as a young lad (he offed his mom and her lover). With only a handful of books to his name, Karl re-enters society and quickly makes friends with a young boy (Lucas Black), his mother (Nataline Canerday), her homosexual buddy (John Ritter) and later finds an adversary in said mother’s drunken, abusive beau Doyle (Dwight Yoakam), who likes to yell and throw shit, y’all know the type.

Billy Bob expanded this story from a previously realized short (Some Folks Call it a Sling Blade) and he won an Oscar off the resulting script. The strengths in this picture, apart from the more obvious points of acting and direction, come from small, taken-for-granted details that inform the traits and behaviors of those who thrive within the storyline. The natural affinity Karl has for repairing and maintaining small engines is just an easy example; the quaint particulars of the dialog is another.

Sling Blade shares its residence in this month’s group of cinematic choices by way of building up some epic storytelling prowess off of a convincing small town foundation (it even manages to borrow that Down By Law brain trust-Jim Jarmusch-for a clever cameo).

Composer Daniel Lanois and cameraman Barry Markowitz blend the Gothic and the romantic vibes at a level that serves to equally complement the work as a whole, the end product looks especially masterful considering the less than $1 million in production costs. This film, too, has been double disc’d, this time by the Miramax goons, and even if you’ve already gone through it, it bares revisiting. miramax.com

Over to the east a spell, in that thing they call North Carolina, another filmmaker with leanings to rural folks and their day-to-day methods of gettin’ by named David Gordon Green, has set down roots for his debut film George Washington.

Carrying the heavy influence of the elegant human poetry of early era Terrence Malick (see Days of Heaven) and the bygone days of big studio, auteur-driven cinema, Green and his partners have sought to craft a proud, authentic, widescreen meditation on time and place.

The film centers on a fairly compact network of friends and acquaintances who live, love, meander, banter on about trivia on top of trivia with asides to things broken and tangential, and ultimately have to face a sudden interjection of tragedy.

Green and his cinematographer Tim Orr have taken extensive pains to give the film a class-A look to tell the interlocking life lessons earned and learned by the bottom of the economic food chain characters (black and white skinned alike) the film is based around.
Again, the lasting value of this piece, and what sells its depiction of back roads North Carolina, is the natural essence of people and place (with maybe just a few shades of something like Harmony Korine’s Gummo bleeding through). This is yet another strong presentation of an area without the convenient devices of formula and pricey effects dressing.

Gordon Green has gone on to further his reputation as a director that needs to keep making movies and telling stories, with such solid films as Snow Angels and Undertow under his belt (and yes, he’s the same guy who called the shots on the demented pot-head extravaganza Pineapple Express). What George Washington does is, for myself at least, serve as a primer of sorts on the human mechanics of a place slightly less familiar, of people not so much like me yet ever the more intriguing because of it. Props once more to Criterion for helping get this thing out into the world (spine # 152).

Ok, enough with the fictional shit, time to get real...maybe a little bit too real.

The fourth and final state to fall under the microscope this month would be the one mentioned in the title, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. This is a documentary centered around a year spent in the company of many, many members of the very sprawling White family tree.

This is a clan at once immortalized in a key track (“D Ray White”) on arguably Hank Williams III’s most accomplished album Straight To Hell and demoralized in the eyes of many of the non-kin types living in their immediate vicinity of Boone County, WV.

We are provided with insight into the ramblings and excesses of Jesco, Mousie, Maime, Poney (who has managed to escape to Minnesota, of all places) Sue Bob and so on, all giving not close to one good goddamn as they party out the rest of their highly dysfunctional days on earth, often under the clearly fed up watch of clan matriarch Bertie Mae.

Within this thing, you get it all -- alcohol abuse, pill abuse, firearm abuse, physical abuse, English abuse and abuse abuse. At one point, a woman is shown snorting drugs off a table during her stay in a hospital immediately post-childbirth.

One of many branch stories involves an imprisoned young man (that would be Sue Mae’s son, Brandon) relating how he wound up shooting his uncle, while another charts one of the White girl’s actually having a go of the rehab thing. The film (sporting several key members of Jackass as executive producers, as if that should surprise anyone) starts out as sheer train wreck genius but eventually just grows numbing. It all leaps around the clan White and even steps out into the sane world to lend screen space to several of the more upstanding Boone County citizens, one of whom makes the pivotal connection between such live in the moment, devil may care behavior and the undeniably harsh conditions of the major (legal) method in which people in this region (and of this lack of any stable education) can carve out a living, the coal mines.

So what does this nasty, redneck ass business have to do with the ongoing theme established here in this article? Well, if almost 90 minutes of watching some severely ugly bastards such as these drink, snort, fight and debase their way through waking life ain’t enough to stain one’s desire to pay a visit to the Western portion of them Virginias, then I’m afraid nothing will.

Here’s the website: wildandwonderfulwhites.com. Now, go git!

That should suffice for this first installment,
46 states/46 films to go...

Any suggestions? killpeoplenamedrichard@yahoo.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

SIGNIFICANT OTHERS.

2010-11-25T19:59:00.000-08:00

Again, into history, goes another year of mortal media shenanigans and cinematic peaks and valleys. For the previous 11 months I have attempted my usual routine of guiding reader attention toward certain things in the arena of film art that I humbly feel merit significant audience expansion. Invariably, along the way, a great many candidates must fall by the wayside, as I am only allotted so much space in which to gleefully rant away.

Here then are some of the honorable mentions I have witnessed in passing and even some brief verbal spite aimed at a few films that, I dare say, y'all should steer well clear of.

Not exactly a 'Best Of', nor a 'Worst Of' compiling, more accurately I deem it a 'Rest Of' round up of notable tids and bits from across the span of this casually fading thing we all will come to reflect back upon as 2010.

1. In Criterion We Trust.

Surely, this is not the first time someone has pointed extensive, wordy praise in the direction of the collector friendly home video institution, The Criterion Collection (I know I've shucked my share of kudos in its favor), so it should stand as a given that several titles from their ever impressive catalog would make the cut here. Most substantially, the company decided to grace two paramount early works by one Terry Zwigoff (the Wisconsin born, geek-chic anti-hero later to stand behind 'Ghost World' and 'Bad Santa' and the increased commercial acceptability both films would fleetingly allot).

The pictures (first 'Louie Bluie' then 'Crumb') stand as testament to Zwigoff's painstakingly curious affinity for outsider art and, to an even higher extent, those who stand responsible for it. Now, 'Louie Bluie' served as the break in point in regards to Zwigoff's directorial formulation. The project grew out of his intense love of old record collecting (mostly with a lean to obscurities from the dawn of the 20th Century) and many of the oft-unappreciated talents behind them. Zwigoff scraped meager fundage together to attempt an independent cinematic study piece based around one Howard Armstrong, a Tennessee based 'Country-Blues' tunesmith who's long standing nickname doubled as a handy title. It is within this scrappy little hour long experiment that we are given the basic strengths (attention to character ticks, networking out to various intriguing secondary persons to gain further insight into the main subject) that would mature enough to enable Zwigoff to achieve near masterpiece status with his sophomore effort.

'Crumb' sets out to investigate the creative engine behind Robert Crumb, the epic scale cult phenom most immediately recognizable as the father of Fritz the Cat and a fair collection of hippie era album covers (think Greatful Dead='Keep On Truckin''). This gaunt, thick speckled human anomaly survives under the constant prod of Terry Zwigoff's cinematic microscope by way of his own nervous brand of on screen charm, his genuinely innocuous sexual proclivities, copious samplings of his artistic output (well representing the span of his substantial career) and, not of least importance, the input of his remarkably bent male siblings, Charles and Max. It is by witnessing these two that any viewer will be able to surmise the specific role that Robert's pursuit of his bent artistic instincts would have in maintaining a relative semblance of sanity and a great measure of success throughout his life. Both the brothers are legitimately batshit in their own curious way, with Charles arguably stealing chunks of the show as he nervously banters with Robert on the subject of their childhood ups and (mostly) downs while ever so barely maintaining his fractional grasp on sanity.

'Crumb' serves as both a reminder of the importance of nurturing one's creative energy as well as the benefits to be reaped by not selling it short. Robert Crumb remains steadfast in his aversion to common place, pop culture dictated behavioral traits and can even be seen intentionally bastardizing such mannerisms as satire in his drawings. The film triumphs as a study of a variant of the so-called 'human condition' in that it fully embraces the potential of a nominal persona in a rampantly redundant society. What the Criterion folks have done with this critically lauded art house darling is to retro fit it in one of their customary, director supervised transfers that work to present the film as close to perfect as it can feasibly get . Next, they've fattened their new reissue (spine # 533) with a pair of director commentaries (one alongside Roger Ebert, from 2006, before that poor sap lost his voice to cancer) and a pile of raw outtakes and still shots. An accompanying booklet has the usual written banter (this time it's author Jonathan Rosenbaum) and a mini gallery collecting together art by all three Crumb brothers as well as Robert's son Jesse. As per usual with Criterion, the film has never looked nor sounded better (the same goes for 'Louie Bluie', though, in truth, this was the first time I'd ever even seen it.) and they show little sign of slowing down as they enhance their catalog with fine selections from both the current and historic factions of the cinematic realm. Already at large are the likes of 'Hunger', British helmer Steve McQueen's alternately beautiful and unflinching portrait of Bobby Sands and his monumental role in the 1981 Irish hunger strike that would lead to his martyrdom and Austrian Götz Spielmann's engrossing Revanche, which twists together the fates of a petty criminal, his hooker girlfriend and an emotionally taxed policeman in unexpected fashion. On the horizon are such fetching titles as Terrance Malick's return from self exile war opus 'The Thin Red Line', Stanley Kubrick's pre-Spartacus Kirk Douglas vehicle, 'Paths of Glory' and the, allegedly, really warped Japanese head trip horror fable 'House'.

The company is also responsible (for better or otherwise) for the home video birth of Lars Von Trier's latest challenge to all senses, 'Antichrist'. This time out, Von Trier was allegedly wrestling with a severe bout of depression as he set about delving into the turmoil of how a married couple must contend with the abrupt death of their infant child (he fell out of a window while they were getting frisky, as realized-penetration shot and all-as what oddly looks like some high gloss perfume ad). The pair (another Wisconsonite-William DeFoe and some french chick who looks even more malnourished than he does) abscond themselves to the woods to cope and instead find themselves facing persistent demons at seemingly every turn. Spooky sounds, mutant animals and incredibly brutalized genitalia flesh out the bulk of this less than spirited romp with nature. Bookended by some rather sumptuous black and white imagery, but the major gut of this thing is a one shot deal, if at all. For Von Trier die hards only.

To track down any of the above films, check-www.criterion.com

2. Vengeance, How I Love Thee.

As of this point in my recent cinematic experience, I have yet to be quite as struck by the sheer mastery of the medium as I am when I submit to the works of the mighty Park Chan-wook. Most recently, he has managed to reconfigure the oft-beaten path of the vampire scenario into a bent epic of salvation in spite of damnation called 'Thirst'. I covered that gem way back in February, so I will now pay passing respect to the year's best 'box set', Palisades/Tartan's 8-Disc packaging of Chan-wook's magnificent Vengeance Trilogy.

Said set is comprised of all three, thematically connected Park masterworks. 'Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance' is the lead off film, covering the unforeseen dramatics that ensue once a foolhardy fellow kidnaps the young offspring of a high ranking corporate type in order to derive a solid ransom to help save his dying sister. Once a swift succession of events are set in motion, leading to the tragic death of the little girl, the once orderly, high dollar pops turns to a path to self imposed justice. Perhaps, the most famous of the three pictures, 'Old Boy' gives up the results of a clueless man imprisoned 15 long years without reason and then suddenly set free with nothing but savage retaliation on his broken mind. 'Lady Vengeance' completes the set, this time with a female as the falsely convicted protagonist who finds herself on an elaborate payback campaign of her own. With this immaculate trio, Park Chan-wook strives to detail just how equally devastating an impact the easily chosen path of revenge can have on those who have already suffered indelibly, vengeance often proves to be but an extension of their torment.

Park crafts each chapter with fine, articulate balance of brutal intensity and graceful cinematic poetry. Each film is stacked with an even share of striking images, precise performances and inventive plotting that make for so much more than the standard issue 'right the wrong' outline. No cut rate bullshit here people, Park Chan-wook is among the finest currently practicing in the art of film. This fat box set comes full of legit evidence as all three phenomenal films come enhanced with commentaries, making of stuffs, interviews, deleted footage, press kits and (for 'Old Boy') even a 3 hour video diary (!). 'Lady Vengeance' even boasts of an alternate, 'Fade to White' version that, well, ends as the title dictates. Truly essential stuff for film lovers, fan boys and Asian cinema obsessives alike. www.palisadestartan.com

3. The Concept Heard 'round the World.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

Ok, take two ditsy American chicks, a flat tire in the German countryside, a remote locale and a gaunt, menacing doctor (who once maintained a career separating conjoined twins) and what do you have? Said females linked ass-to-mouth with some, random Japanese fellow to form 'The Human Centipede' of course. A Dutch director named Tom Six came up with the idea, so of course he had to bring it to the screen to share with the rest of us. Ultimately, it's the concept that carries the weight of what is, otherwise, just a few beats above average low grade, shock horror. Sure, there's the main visual of the centipede itself, as well as a few choice 'yuck! moments scattered about, but it all proves a tad mundane when one takes into consideration the expectations a person's mind sets in motion once such a high/low scenario is presented. Still worth a cheap rental, just to say you saw it.

A sequel (Second Sequence) is slated for next year, lucky us.

4. When the 'Good Guys' Do Less Than Good. (filmmakers I dig making films I do not)

There has arisen a moderate trend toward the negative in that several key filmmakers that I have long followed and greatly admired have begun to embrace projects of late that (at least within my humble perspective) fall well outside the perimeters of their standards. Now, as I have yet to catch David Fincher's 'The Social Network', I must, in all fairness, leave it well enough alone (I'm confident it is expertly realized and all, but a Facebook movie from the guy who did the great 'Zodiac'?). Elsewhere though, someone tell me why Edgar Wright, the man behind two of the freshest, genre blending hybrids of recent years ('Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz') would invest an obvious high level of blood, sweat and artistic energy into whatever the hell you'd call 'Scott Pilgrim vs the World'? I know it all hails from some cherished comic and blah, blah, blah and that go-to kids around the world will tell you it speaks to this generation's blah, blah, blah and so on and total bullshit. This does not address the simple fact that a whole lotta money, time and considerable union cash burning was utilized to dress up a simpleton story involving a less than geek level douche bag who finds himself torn between two unrealistically attractive chicks and the stock 'slackers' in his insufferable garage band. Oh, and the brother of that one time 'Home Alone' kid plays the gay roommate as a slightly exaggerated fag stereotype, so like, OMG! how topical. However, if you have a case of extreme pop-culture based, channel surfing, blah, blah, blah disorder, this movie will make you orgasm your retarded self to death, now get to it.

Next victim.

Can somebody please help me understand how the once incredibly inventive, hyper stylistic one of a kind man behind such seminal Italian giallo epics as 'The Bird With The Crystal Plumage' and 'Cat O' Nine Tails' can fall flat on his face by making a terribly mundane and lazy piece of emptiness called 'Giallo'? Dario Argento is not likely a filmmaker apt to please all tastes, even in a fan fanatic arena such as horror, but few can refute the distinction of his directorial voice, very much the highest example of style over substance, but what an often breathless style it can be. True, the finished film was re-cut by the producers and even the man himself disowns it, not to mention the disdain of lead actor Adrien Brody, who claims he was never fully paid! But this sad, uninspired mess could barely pass muster on some late night cable channel slot. It's just lacking everything, decent writing, plotting, set pieces, acting, everything. The story, something about a woman (Emmanuelle Seigner) who teams with a jaded cop (Brody) to find her missing sister whom may have become the latest victim of some deformed serial killer type, is never advanced far beyond the type of stale approach one might find on any number of those silly, major network crime shows with the initials in the title NCSISCSI or something (does it make a difference in the end?).Lots of chases, police procedural cliches and cigarette smoking fills the running time out. Not my idea of a good time, or a real Argento movie.

5. Good For Them Boys.

We wrap this whole endtime retrospective with a nod toward the future (or so I hope), at least in part, of this wonderful and troublesome thing we like to call the movie business. As much bitching and groaning as one might glean from this column of mine, I would hope they can also, on polite occasion, uncover a morsel or two that will serve to give them hope that there are, indeed, fimmakers and films out there that do thrive as worthy opposition to the bloated mental bankruptcy that helps keep bad comedians and remake happy producers off the unemployment line.

A man named Adan Green hit a two-fold punch this year as he managed to sneak back to back works under the commercial radar yet into respectable theatrical bookings for brief stab at the box office. His scheme didn't return much beyond pigeon scrapings in terms of absolute dollar, but both the decent 'Frozen' and the proudly moronic bloodbath 'Hatchet II' got one metaphoric foot in the door, 'Hatchet II' even managed to do so without bowing to the constraints of an MPAA rating.

Elsewhere, Chad Ferran bounced forward from a spate of earnest but overly amateurish time wasters ('The Ghouls', 'Easter Bunny Kill! Kill!') to hammer out a tight and surprising little head scratcher by the name of 'Someone's Knocking At The Door' a heady amalgamation of grind house sleaze, mind bending plot distortion, gleeful sexual depravity and more than a touch of quality, widescreen carnage. No lie, as much as I shrugged at his early work, this loving embrace of twisted psychosis and rubber reality narrative rape works on just about all levels. don't even worry what it's supposed to be 'about', seek it out and drink heavily while lots of strange shit unfolds before you. www.someones-knocking-at-the-door.com

Finally, two more that I'm not sure I can either pan or recommend in all legitimacy.

'Trash Humpers' is probably the next logical step for the guy who made arguably one of the defining indie geek shows of all time with 'Gummo'. Yet how many people will honestly make it through nearly an hour and a half of derelicts in old age masks raping inanimate objects and fondling fat whores while uttering really obnoxious non-dialog, all shot on sub-par VHS tape? Hell, I bought it. What does that say about me?

Never mind. www.trashhumpers.com

'Best Worst Movie' If ever a movie were non-deserving of such a badge of honor, it would be 'Troll 2', the cast off non-sequel that this movie attempts to rationalize as worthy of one of the most inane and pointless cult followings ever delusionaly fabricated. Cast and crew members are unearthed and pressed to recollect their part in some no-budget filmmaking that took place in rural Utah two decades prior. Main man George Hardy, a meat head Alabama dentist with a perma-grin played the dad in the movie (his on screen son, Micheal Stephenson, serves as director of this full length homage) and acts as tireless tour guide for much of what's seen here. There are 'Troll 2' parties and convention appearances and even a video game to help emphasize the 'so bad it's good' legacy. Still, try as I might, I cannot see 'Troll 2' as anything more than what it originally was, a cheap and instantly forgettable knock off of a much better Charles Band movie that is actually far more in need of a nerdtastic revival (c'mon, it's got Sonny Bono mutating into a big, uh, cabbage sack, or something).

Treasure for some, trash to others I guess.

Ok, that went on too long, but don't expect an apology.

HAVE NATION....WILL TRAVEL.

2010-11-12T00:46:00.000-08:00

CHECK YER LOCALE.

INDEED.

CRUEL NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL.

2010-10-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

There's one 'round every corner.

Within any so-called creative network, there always proves to be a heady handful of left of field types. Outsiders, creepy sons-a-bitches or 'fringe' players plying their indifference to convention and wrecking havoc on the safe and serene. These are the artistic marks on the human race that serve to set things off balance every now and again through both behavioral traits and tangible output, be it sonic, photographic, drawn out on any given material, whatever. This is the shit and these are the folks that work under the skin and into the subconscious, raping away at what the common man may perceive as 'A-OK!'

Now, I have sworn allegiance to both the bent dementia of the artistic outcast and the non-fiction form in moving pictures. I've been devoting ample time to both subjects in this here column of mine ever since day one ('tis true, just go dig through some moldy back issues at the Appleton Library), thus it would prove second nature for me to fully embrace and digest the coming together of inventive, yet bent, humanity and ace documentation.

A case in point........

The majority of the people I know and tend to run with address the scrappy hard rock sub-sub-sub genre of Black Metal as some kind of guttural train wreck clown routine drenched in quasi-medieval posturings straight outta some random B-movie redressing of deep-rooted Scandinavian folklore. Any average fool need not look further than established brutes Immortal and the layout imagery for their seminal record 'Battles in the North' as impetus to, either, bug your eyes way out in disbelief or let forth a torrent of savage giggles. Two dudes in corpse paint, all stone serious and posing dire with their guitars in a pile of bright, white snow, there you have it, black metal in a nutshell.

Not so fast with such simple, easy judgments, time to scratch just below the surface. Take a more explicit sampling of the recordings and press (and fanboy) response on through the years (in great particular-'Lords of Chaos:The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground' by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind and photographer Peter Beste's tome 'True Norwegian Black Metal') and one can discover a brutal, convoluted soap opera of double crossings, deceit, copious church crisping, murder fantasies (and realities), homo/xenophobic and barely disguised fascist leanings.

All of these handy, highly melodramatic nuggets find themselves dredged up to the surface yet again via an intertwining of dialogs and cultural samplings that make for the bulk of the meat in the newly presented study on this Norwegian Black Metal scene titled 'Until The Light Takes Us'. This rather earnest little slab of immersive reportage attempts to distill the epic scale madness and confounding (to the uninitiated) level of addictive appeal to those among us who've actually taken the time to 'get it' to a manageable degree. The two names behind this project, Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell, sought to gain unfiltered insight into the inner workings of this mini-phenom by uprooting themselves and moving to Norway to acclimate to the locals and generate trust and accessibility with many of the principles in the normally stand-offish Black Metal fraternity.

In the end, the pair have scaled their point of focus down to two primary voices. Gylve 'Fenriz' Nagell is a founding progenitor of the watershed genre outfit Darkthrone and Varg Vikernes established underground 'fame' via his hand in the notorious Mayhem and his own, one man, raw dog juggernaut Burzum. The choice of these fellas proves an apt one as they offer up sharply contrasting vibes as interviewees. Nagell resembles to me, the archetype death metal rat; skinny, disheveled, with stringy long hair and a mumbling, socially inept demeanor. Hardly an intimidating presence, Nagell is more reminiscent of the countless dudes in patch saturated black leather jackets I'm used to seeing skulking about at many a given metal gig. Vikernes, however, is as strong a persona as Nagell is shrug-shouldered and meek. Varg (sometimes known as 'Count Grishnackh' care, in part, of a predilection toward the works of Tolkien) is an alpha-male straight away, bold, articulate and unwavering in his apparent confidence as he attempts to address the depth of his pivotal role in black metal history from his pale, sterile cell in a maximum security joint in Trondheim.

You see folks, Varg was a very naughty lad, he was tried and convicted for the offing of one time band mate Øystein 'Euronymous' Aarseth (from Mayhem) by way of multiple knife wounds. Vikernes was also heavily suspected as a participant in the then rampant outbreak of area church burnings (a symbolic burden that the black metal scene would prove unable to fully divorce itself from that point on). Varg claims the Euronymous homicide as a 'kill-or-be-killed' situation in which he bested a man who was out to do him in.

The filmmakers chart all this tension and turmoil by bouncing the words of their primary talking heads off footage (both new and archival) of the scene itself, from raw early band formations and alterations (like the shotgun suicide of initial Mayhem frontman, er, 'Dead') to present day evidence of outside cultural encroachment (7-11 and McDonald's do not warrant much affection from these gents). They also manage to wrangle a solid supporting cast of scene players from such essential collectives as Satyricon, Ulver and Immortal (sans makeup, sadly) to augment the topics at large. We learn the whole disaffected youth scenario that led the lads to seek out the rawest possible outlet to vent against their oppressive 'perfect' culture (Norway is not known for poverty and strife, you see). The film goes for a sort of drifting pace that veers between Varg and Nargell, twisting their now very separate paths back around into their shared origins and back out towards the open possibilities that await both men and the now more renowned musical outlet they both, in a basic sense, still embrace.

If the film itself is not at all perfect, it does meander some from time to time as it were an awe struck, slightly stoned youth with a taste of ADD, it serves well enough to guide the clueless newcomer though the bare essentials of why some folks grow rather nerd obsessive over all this raspy and seemingly unpleasant noise-making. It's about stepping away from the constrictions of mainstream metal brands and styles and indulging in the unfiltered, raw power and aggression coming through the music. For the previously well schooled and 'total brutal' completest (the type who pointlessly boast over a rare vinyl 7" pressed in someones cellar in Austria or something), there is that extra shade of persona revealed in the occasionally rambling and less polished discussions at hand (especially in the case of the fidgety Nargell). Plus there comes a few unexpected asides like the sudden two-cents commentary provided by 'Gummo' mastermind Harmony Korine who gushes love for all things Black Metal over appropriately low grade footage of him in corpse paint geeking out solid in some unfortunate gallery. Sometimes, things just sound more fucked the further you attempt to explain them.

A smaller, Brooklyn based distributor, Factory 25, has stepped up to make the film available to one and all on both DVD and Blue-Ray formats. The film can be retrieved in both single and double disc packages. With that second disc, the willing viewer may witness an additional barrage of interview footage (which gives much needed expansion to the Immortal interview as well as a certain Kjetil 'Frost' Haraldstad of Satyricon who ends the film proper with a self-abusive performance piece that does little to dissuade the commonly held notion that this is, indeed, dangerous music). There is also several deleted scenes (on disc one), a theatrical trailer and a long winded lesson in the step by step evolution of the Black Metal scene from the expected Black Sabbath kick start on into the modern era delivered in mostly listless monotone by Mr. Nargell. In total, a worthy project well handled, but for the troublesome way the discs on the DVD version are encased (I damn near snapped both of mine in two trying to take them out...beware!)

Genuinely interested parties are greatly encouraged to stop here (http://www.factorytwentyfive.com/until-the-light-takes-us/ ) to satisfy any and all further steps that need be taken to make this baby theirs.

Enough pure crushing blackened hate for now, stay, uh, 'Evil' why don't you?

killpeoplenamedrichard@yahoo.com

NEVER A SLAVE TO INDUSTRY

2010-10-12T00:36:00.000-07:00

A FINE TIME TO FIND OUT YOU'RE THE SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE.

EXPENDABLE ME. (AKA-Every Good Boy Deserves a Body Count)

2010-09-14T11:07:00.000-07:00

Sylvester Stallone is feeling nostalgic, he’s consumed by an abstract yearning for the golden peak of the 1980s (and a touch of the succeeding 90s) when meat ruled the marquee. The flex-steady maestro behind the sweat laden brow of such one man brick walls as John Rambo and Rocky Balboa has just vomited his action hero soul up on celluloid for all the world to digest, tagged it ‘The Expendables’ and stuffed the retro centric result into movie shacks nationwide. The films’ extensive novelty value comes almost fully from a loaded cast of manly manness employed to FLESH out its’ shamelessly formulaic ‘rag-tag mercenaries attempt to thwart a third world dictator’ storyline. Many a heartfelt dose of top shelf thespian character development and deep existential contemplation follow suit (bullshit!). Oh, and lots of stuff get lit up, go BOOM!

The most sustaining after shock this beefcake almighty demolition parade left upon the nerd-chic brain pan of yours truly was the faded recollection of days now ancient when little studios that could, actually did. Believe it, or just play along, but there once was a time when dopey and violently quite charming non-intricate shoot ‘em ups appeared on a steady basis at my local Bijou to aptly sate a particular niche of sub-par exploitation devotees. No longer officially ‘grindhouse’ but not yet absconded from public awareness to direct-to-video oblivion, many such pictures managed a meager helping of box office attention before being supplanted by the next tacky trinket out the factory. Speaking of such factories, there were several notables. Let’s see, there was the Roger Corman fathered trifecta of New World Pictures, Concorde Pictures and New Horizons, Vestron (the ‘Dirty Dancing’ people) and even eternally smarmy huckster Charles Band’s infrequently worthy Empire Pictures (who helped propel the career of Stuart ‘Re-Animator’ Gordon and also made a bunch of movies with dwarves and shabby looking puppets) all of which made much cheap shit with lasting cinematic impressions on my young and feeble mind. None, however, held sway over the court of sub-important moviegoing at the level of prolific ferocity that The Cannon Group did.

You see folks, Cannon had a wee something extra, a spark of charismatic showmanship that culled its very impetus from both the brazen studio system of old (contract players and all that cunning, media savvy manipulation of the distribution process) and the brand of ‘quick scheme to make a buck while the gettin’s good’ philosophy that formed the appeal of many a William Castle type product. Keep it topical, keep it cheap, make it look flashy, get asses in seats. Such was the Cannon modus operandi, and it served them well, for a time.

But wait, first, a compact history lesson.

The Cannon Group was first given unto an unsuspecting movie going culture in the fall of 1967 care the efforts of Dennis Friedland & Chris Dewey, two entrepreneurial types who’d set up shop to both showcase lower profile international product as well as fund their own low cost ($300,000 or south) features. Along the way, these early era Cannonites struck minor paydirt with the Peter Boyle dark satire ‘Joe’. Sadly, the success story was short lived for Cannon’s young fathers and so in 1979 the pair sold their baby off for a strikingly low rate=$500,000 to two Israeli born cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. This duo had already been creating and hustling pictures in their homeland before making the leap stateside, Golan himself frequently took on the role of director as well (a position he would return to time and again during his Cannon tenure) and the boys had a plan cemented in their minds as to how they would make a lasting and financially fulfilling mark on this crazy American thing called ‘Hollywood’.

Golan-Globus (as the cult film world would come to know and adore them) set about procuring a fat catalog of inexpensive and genre faithful scripts to shove into production on the low cost/easy market tip. The fattest of their big screen returns came from the mass of grade B+ action epics and genuinely unabashed sequels to films most folks could have done without one of in the first place (‘Exterminator 2’, huh? why?). Granted, the company did branch out through the possibilities of several types of cinema, championed both break-dancing(more on this below) AND lambada pictures, helped run Tobe (‘Poltergeist’) Hooper’s career into the ground (regardless, I still love both ‘Lifeforce and ‘Texas Chainsaw 2’) and even courted art-snob and literary circles a few times (including both a later stage contribution from John Cassavetes-’Love Streams’- and oft lauded author Norman Mailer’s see-it-to-believe-it curo ‘Tough Guys Don’t Dance’) but the bread that held their butter was mostly laden with bullet shells, supplement infused musculature and many a simplistic line of dialog. It fostered the careers of Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Michael Dudikoff (c’mon, you remember the ‘American Ninja’ guy, don’t you?) and a waning Charles Bronson.

By the mid section of the 1980s, at the sheer height of their productive powers, the cousins were slapping the slick Cannon logo on as much as 40 or more films in a given 12 month period. Chuck Norris’ Vietnam war inflected tentpole ‘Missing In Action’ did enough wide release business to justify two follow ups, Van Damme flourished with his kicks (if not his line readings) in the supposed true story ‘Bloodsport’ (supported by a young Forest Whitaker) and old man Bronson would milk the shit out of his ‘Death Wish’ anti-hero, Paul Kersey, all the way to a part 5.

Much of this Cannon fodder adhered religiously to the bare bones b-movie mantra of self-righteous ‘good’ overpowering some form of leering ‘evil’ (often heavily stereotyped foreign people). No matter if it was Chuckie Norris single handedly deflecting an impromptu Communist infiltration in ‘Invasion U.S.A.’ or former television heartthrob Richard Chamberlain aping Indiana Jones in ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ (one of many blatant derivatives of Spielberg/Lucas’ beloved archaeologist the Cannon folks would cobble together), the end result remained the same, the world is rendered free of villainy care the fearless exploits of a grizzled scenery chewing second-tier hero.

Which swings this whole thing back in the direction of that new Stallone flick. You see, not only does ‘The Expendables’ bare strong stylistic and thematic similarities to an atypical Cannon action programmer, it also bares some fraternal ties on the casting front. Within the line up of the film, I counted at least four fellows who had participated in the solidifying of the esteemed Cannon legacy(and if I have overlooked someone, too bad). Not only are Dolph Lundgren (He-Man in the wonderfully clunky ‘Masters of the Universe’), Mickey Rourke (‘Barfly’-not quite action, but they can’t all be) and main baddie Eric Roberts (‘Runaway Train’) guilty by association, but the man in charge Stallone has not one, but two Cannon lovelies to call his own (‘Cobra’ and the arm wrestling standard barer ‘Over the Top’). So, as one can clearly see, the bloodline flows on, albeit at a considerably higher cost (‘The Expendables’ ran up a tab in the neighborhood of $80 million, that could easily have funded a dozen or so Golan-Globus puppies).

So, in the end, is it all worth it? Does a pricey, ensemble homage to the good if not so clean big screen heroics of yore really warrant any measure of genuine affection? Why, shit yes, it sure do. Sly and the family steroids have pummeled all the pieces in place to smack your ass back to the age of perfect, cut muscle fibers and bias, well timed gun play. From the moment the elephantine Lundgren bellows out ‘Warning Shot!’ ‘til the last bullet shell falls, ‘The Expendables’ lives up to the one thing so many of this year’s offerings fail to even touch (‘Inception’ not withstanding), it’s promise to give you a reason to head back to the theater. May the ghost of The Cannon Group smile down upon Stallone and his over stretched flesh, first ‘Rambo (2008)’ and now this, the man has made body counting fun again.

ALSO,

In keeping with this month’s ever compelling subject matter, I offer up a dandy double header I snapped up at one of the local Wal-Marts (yes-I gave some dollars to pure evil, if you don’t like it-invert me) for a basement level $5. The object in question is a two disc DVD repackaging of Cannon’s love poem(s) to the finest dance craze of the 1980s. ‘Breakin’ and the vastly superior ‘Breakin’ 2-Electric Boogaloo’ (think of it as ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, only with break dancing and an L.A. back drop, and no Billy Dee). Both fine features follow the plucky efforts of two street smart youths (Adolfo ‘Shabba Do’ Quiñones and the legendary Michael ‘Boogaloo Shrimp’ Chambers) and the sweet thang (Lucinda Dickey) from the wealthy side of town that wants hang and learn to be ‘real’. The trio utilizes their expertise in hip dance moves to put on a show and save both their street cred (in part 1) and save an inner city community center from demolition (the untoppable ‘Electric Boogaloo’).

Both films thrive as vivid and addictively cheesey time capsules of a prehistoric period when a pop, a lock, a drop and a spin could make you famous and ICE-T ruled the earth (he cameos in both films). Pure energy raised to a level of beautiful stupidity that just cannot be forced, the concept of cult status was created with movies like these in mind. More than recommended as a cure for the doldrums of sanity. VIVA CANNON!

For more great, disposable info on the Cannon Group, visit this=www.cannonfilms.com

AGAIN WITH THAT OSHKOSH ZOMBIE WALK.....

2010-09-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

BECAUSE MY MAN JOHN PATA AND THE OSHKOSH HORROR CREW KNOW HOW TO BLEED TERRIFIC ANNUALLY.

INFECTION-OSHKOSH ZOMBIE WALK 2010

2010-09-05T19:03:00.000-07:00

IT ALL TAKES PLACE IN THE PRESENT DAY AMONG THE FITFUL RUINS OF A HUMANITY GONE SOUR AND DRUNK WITH ITS OWN BLOATED SENSE OF SECURITY.

MORE FROM DAT APPLE/MADDEN 2 THE PEOPLE PART 2

2010-08-07T00:03:00.001-07:00

I LIKE TO MOBILIZE THE NEW YORK CANON BETWEEN FITS OF STREETWISE GENUFLECTION AND RANDOM CELEBRITY SIGHTINGS....ALL IN THE NAME OF PHOTOGRAPHIC 'PURITY'......YA.

Such a Thing, She Is.

2010-07-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

All up and down that boardwalk.

seeing the world in the palm of my eye.

2010-07-22T22:25:00.001-07:00

ONE STARE OUTSIDE THE REAL.

MADDEN2THEPEOPLE (PART 1)

2010-07-13T23:52:00.000-07:00

STUMBLING UPON A SHOOT FOR A MADDEN 11 SPOT IN THE SWELTERING CENTER OF TIMES SQUARE, JULY 6 TH........PLUS-DREW BREES AND SOME GUY IN A DOG SUIT.

NEW YAWK IN THAT 2010 THANG.

2010-07-13T00:29:00.000-07:00

BEEN DOIN' THIS METROPOLIS PHOTOGRAPHICALLY SINCE JUST BEFORE THEM BIG, BAD BUILDINGS WENT 'BOOM'....SO MANY FACES, SO MANY PLACES, SUCH PRECIOUS LITTLE TIME IN WHICH TO EXPLORE AND EXPLOIT THE TOTAL OF THEIR WORTH....NOT FOR LACK OF TRYING, MIND YOU.

FAITH NO MORE?

2010-07-11T02:31:00.000-07:00

IT'S QUITE AMAZING. ACTUALLY, THAT I EVER EVEN SNAPPED A SINGLE SHOT OF THESE 'BASTARDS' AS I ONCE GOT THE BOOT FROM THE BROOKLYN BASED WATERFRONT VENUE FOR POSSESSING A MORE THEN DECENT CAMERA AND AS A CONSEQUENCE, HAD TO GO AHEAD AND SNEAK INTO A GIG THAT I HAD ALREADY PAID MY $60+ IN TICKETING AND FEES TO SEE.......AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH=LOGICAL.

AS MOUNTAINS COME TO MOVE ME.

2010-07-09T01:05:00.000-07:00

I TUNNEL DEEP INSIDE AND BURY MY HOPES AS ASHES TO BE DIGESTED BY THE GREEDY VOID OF TIME.

There she goes, my beautiful world....

2010-07-08T00:33:00.000-07:00

Get Chicks Drunk....

2010-06-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

Works for this guy.

SKIN (1)

2010-06-25T23:58:00.000-07:00

A SIMPLE, PASSING FASCINATION WITH THINGS RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

THE POWER OF FEMALE PROJECTION

2010-06-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

have vagina.....will travel.

GIVE THAT GIRL THA SHOCKA!!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-06-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

YA HEARD?

sad to say, gone away........

2009-12-03T23:37:00.000-08:00

murdered by neglect

the last time we played together

skinned knees, left to bleed

subtext unforgiven

heave me over

topside

broken

all apart

cry them eyes out

livid

in a sad old memory

rotting

fetid and

something less for a collective lack

of

interest?

ONE WAY TICKET TO LOW BUDGET HELL...........AND BACK.

2009-10-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

(Originally published in the October edition of The Scene)

Life is shit, eat a bullet.

This is what appears to be the running philosophy throughout the mid 80s no-budget cult fixture 'Combat Shock'. The film is set in New York's Staten Island at a time when things where in a prime state of moral and aesthetic decay. This richly textured hellhole is the current residence/self inflicted prison of the tale's sorry protagonist, Frankie Dunlan, a filth and sweat laden Vietnam vet whose every waking hour plays out like a litany of all the things anyone clearheaded would try to sidestep in life. Frankie lives an utterly impoverished existence with his fat slob wife and Agent Orange tainted offspring in a fully soiled apartment. Income is less than sparse, the rent is woefully past due and the plumbing is an atrocity all unto itself. Faced with a family unit that is tired, irritable and starving in the face of a lumpy carton of sour milk and precious little else, Frankie takes it upon his hopeless self to venture out into the bleak surroundings to make one last, half-hearted stab at salvation.

Frankie's trek through the bargain rate Dante's Inferno that is his 'hood is peppered with the customary stumbling blocks of junkies, whores and the small time thugs that lord over them all. Between being roughed up and held up, the poor sod finds nothing but the negative in relation to employment options and, in turn, hope. Now, unless you happen to possess serious mental aberrations of your own, this synopsis is not going to read as 'feel-good' entertainment but, rather, an experimental endurance test devised to tap into a certain facet of the human psyche that lingers just outside the boarders of popular interest.

The project was brought to life on location and in complete guerrilla fashion by one Buddy Giovinazzo. Giovinazzo is yet another textbook case of the brand of D.I.Y. directors that seemed to live for (and, comparably, thrive by) the struggle of pure independent filmmaking in a time before the prevalence of such alternative distribution routes as DVD and the Internet. Sadly, as is the case with such peers as Jim 'Deadbeat at Dawn' VanBeeber, this resulted in a greatly minimized level of creative output as money conscious industry types were not exactly fawning over the concept of making product of a grim and uncompromising nature. Giovinazzo scraped and scavaged and tapped friends and family alike to make his stubbornly ugly vision come alive. His real life sibling Ricky inherited the lead role and proud brother Buddy works an epic level of pathos from every inch of his ragged, gaunt frame. He elects sturdy (if admittedly unpolished) performances all around with several key characters succeeding in pulling of some truly unnerving behavior (one stand apart moment involving a seriously jones afflicted junkie using a rusty coat hanger to open a vein deserves extra kudos for its genuinely unsettling qualities) and he even provides his non-hero with a gentile little moment of simple banter with a young girl, nevermind the fact that girl turns out to be a prostitute.

Following the completion of 'Comat Shock', Giovinazzo struck a distribution deal with the beloved low-rent Troma Studios (who retitled it from the original 'American Nightmares'). Troma then added Vietnam war stock footage and trimmed the copious violence to appease the omnipotent MPAA and earn a marquee friendly 'R' rating. They slapped a grossly misleading 'Rambo/Missing in Action' themed poster and stuffed it into any grindhouse dive that would take it. Now I guess it would be overstating the obvious when I point to the fact that 'Combat Shock' didn't become anything close to a box office phenom upon initial release, instead it had to gestate in the underground in the now familiar pattern that slowly builds a following for a film before earning it a second life as a 'special edition' DVD.

To their credit, Troma have packed the two-disc, 25th anniversary 'Tromasterpiece Collection' release with many significant goodies. Beside both the edited 'Combat Shock' cut of the film, there is the slightly longer (and rawer) 'American Nightmares' director's cut as well as a new documentary charting the butterfly effect the film has had in the independent film community (directors like John McNaughton, Richard Stanley and Jim VanBebber chime in on the subject) plus several early shorts and music videos (of Buddy and Ricky's band 2000 A.D.) from Buddy G's archives.

Apart from working the system to largely no avail to get other projects to fruition, Buddy Giovinazzo has also made a minor name as an author a collage film instructor and as a steady hand in German television (he jumped ship from America in the 1990s and settled in Berlin ). The man has managed to finish a handful of films as well. Several, including 'No Way Home' with Tim Roth and 'The Unscarred' are as of yet unseen by me, but I shall do my best to reverse that. His latest offering 'Life Is Hot in Cracktown', adapted from his own short story collection, just arrived on disc last month and gives full indication that Ol' Buddy has not lost his touch by a damn sight.

This film features a labyrinthine intersection of story lines involving street gangstas, deviants, addicts and even a blue collar married couple to throw us all for a loop. Giovinazzo as apparently assembled a bit more money and a rather impressive cast (Lara Flynn Boyle, Illeana Douglas, RZA, Shannyn Sossamon to name a few) to further address the ills of a low income, crime infected New York environment. He again displays a fearless take on the less glamorous side(s) of human nature but still finds time to let a little light shine through the grime. The best realized sub-scenario in all the pimping, thuggin' and melodrama comes care an awkward yet, oddly, sweet romance held between a pre-op tranny (a potent Kerry Washington) and her/his (uh?) eternally doped up Beau (Desmond Harrington). It really is their saga that proves the most endearing. In the end it just goes to show that the folks that should be behind the camera rolling it are fairly often left to fend for their own means and that helps to cause the art of film to become stifled, stilted or abandoned all together.

So, genuine film lovers not afraid to get some soot on their hands, step up.

This Buddy Giovinazzo fella needs your support.

Hunt 'em down....'Combat Shock' www.tromasterpiece.com

'Life Is Hot in Cracktown' http://media.lightning-ent.com/index_new

ALSO......

I'm pretty certain the last thing the cinematic world desperately needs is another Hurricane Katrina documentary, so why not two?

First we have 'Trouble the Water' (www.zeitgeistvideo.com) which separates itself from the rest simply on the strength of its central focus. Young, married Lower 9th Ward lifers Kimberly and Scott Roberts hooked up with filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (who've had a helping hand in several Michael Moore projects) at a shelter in the mid state Louisiana city of Alexandria. Meshing footage Kim snagged pre/during/shortly following the now legendary natural disaster with their personal hardships set against the dumbfounding broader picture of the collapse of order across the Gulf Coast, the film serves as one of the most concise, ground zero depictions of life in the wake of an unmitigated catastrophe. We tag along for the bumpy ride as the couple must leave their homestate for the first time in their short lives and find a way to retrieve and reassemble the scattered pieces of their lives sent flying to the four winds thanks more to an infamous failure of politics than the so-called wrath of god or whatever other nonsense the truly soulless among us prefer to believe.

Unlike the more extensive investigative works on this very same basic subject (i.e. Spike Lee's to-end-all magnum opus 'When the Levees Broke') this film triumphs not so much from the overburdened rehashing of the disaster itself that has now become sadly cliché (oh! the floating dead bodies and overturned vehicles, good lord the horror!) but by giving the screen over to the Roberts's themselves, to let them convey in words and gestures just how staggering an impact this misfortune of time, tide and human error has had upon them and the place they have always called home. Kimberly earns her right as the film's natural star as she makes her way through the rigors of recovery with a moxie that could have only been honed from her years on the street hustlin' and, later, bumpin' rhymes (she goes by the MC tag 'Black Kold Madina'). It's from this latter skill set that she provides the film with one of its strongest moments, an on the spot rendition of one of her own tracks, 'Amazing', which effortlessly fills in personal back story details with an articulate economy most screenwriters would die for.

It comes as no real surprise that this film managed to garner both a fairly substantial big screen berth and a Best Documentary nomination from the Oscar crowd, it is a powerful and important slice of (a greatly disrupted) life, a sharp piece of social criticism and ultimately an affirmation of strength through perseverance. Recommended to those whose range of compassion branches well beyond their own comfortable surroundings.

Similarly there is the slightly more scatter shot 'Kamp Katrina' (www.carnivalesquefilms.com) which plays more like an often dysfunctional group home movie then a polished feature. The locus this time 'round is a Bywater community (aka-Upper 9th Ward) fixture known as Mrs Pearl who opens her back yard to several wayward types in the fairly immediate aftermath of the big K. Her generosity benefits a mangy gathering of decrepit New Orleans standbys, drinkers, druggers and victimized dregs just looking for a place to 'heal' (don't miss the weathered lass with the removable eye). The movie burns most of its scant running time on various arguments and lapses in solid judgment, basically a low rent reality show meets soap opera thing with far more literal grit on its teeth. One thing that really works here (at least for my eyes) is a fair measure of solid visual representation of the rather bent charm of the Bywater neighborhood. I have ventured down its crooked streets dozens of times and crossed paths with colorful people and places on countless occasion, so it was kind of a fleeting thrill to go there again, if only care the confines of my television set. Recommended for N.O.L.A. or Katrina purists or if you stumble upon it by chance at the library, otherwise, don't try too hard.

Another month laid to rest like Patrick Swayze.

Wish me better luck next time, eh?

COMIC CON INT-2009

2009-08-23T18:46:00.000-07:00

Because there is nothing on this earth with as prevalent a selection of geeks, freaks,pulpy eyesores, famous and infamous citizens and ridiculously hot Asian chicks.

Plus, GWAR!

(Near) Forgotten Film Makers, Part 1

2009-08-01T18:27:00.000-07:00

This month I am beginning what I hope is only the first in a series of columns geared to draw attention back to some members of the movie-making fraternity who have seemingly fallen well short of their deserved place among the cinematic stars.

To start with, I have chosen to hone in on three particular talents who, though they had been on sabbatical from the big screen (by choice or otherwise) for some time, they have each found their way back to their calling and have spanking new cinematic spawn to share with the world entire.

First up is the criminally underrated Kathryn Bigelow. Trained as a painter before switching to film studies, Bigelow is the guiding hand behind a small army of cult phenoms as well as some effective (if not always commercially bonafide) big studio thrillers.

She first tested the cinematic waters with a short film called The Set-Up (1978), an attempt to deconstruct the employment of violence in film. She broke into features with a co-directing gig on a biker flick titled The Loveless and starring the soon to be famous Appletonite Willem Dafoe.

It would take until well into the 1980s before Bigelow would make the first film to truly set her apart from the madding crowd. Near Dark came as a result of Bigelow and her creative posse failing to find funding for what was initially to be a revisionist western. So she and her co-writer, Eric (The Hitcher) Red brainstormed their way into a meshing together of western tropes and vampire lore, keeping only the elements from both genres that held their interest and jettisoning the rest. The final film hit theaters on a rather limited scale care the slowly dying Dino DeLaurentiis-run company D.E.G. (which seemed more capable of blowing money than earning it) and had to settle for box office crumbs and rediscovery down the road via other outlets.

The shame of this all is that the picture is so much more than the also-ran it was made out to be. Bigelow proves from almost the very first shot that she is a natural born director and, better yet, she can wrestle with themes of violence, tense emotional conflict and horror as well as stage an action sequence on par with many a male peer. This last point becomes particularly more significant as her body of work grows.

Near Dark charts the unfortunate plight of a naive cowboy (Adrian Pasdar) who sets his sights on the wrong girl (Jenny Wright) leading him directly into the nocturnal embrace of a makeshift family of vampires. Said nomadic blood lusters are fleshed out with remarkable zeal by what is essentially a class reunion of sorts for several holdovers from Big Jim Cameron’s iconic Aliens (Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton and Janette Goldstein. Michael Biehn was also approached for a part, but passed). The movie builds on the seamless camaraderie generated by these anti-hero types as they struggle to cope with the hellish demands of their accursed immortality.

Two key traits Bigelow establishes here that she clings to time and again throughout her career are a unique approach to hard action set pieces and the violence they inevitably generate (less sensationalistic and more story motivated) and her adherence to giving ample meat to her female characters.

An example on that second bit can be easily gleaned from the dependent nature of Pasdar’s good ole yokel Caleb after he’s been “turned” by the fetching Mae, no matter how hard he resists, he always comes back to her sick, weak and groveling.

The director would improve upon her representation of women on screen subsequently with Jamie Lee Curtis’s emotionally fragile yet diligent cop in Blue Steel and again with Angela Bassett, whose steadfast bodyguard role in the uneven Strange Days provides great counter point to Ralph Fiennes’ often sniveling future world huckster.

Perhaps the biggest commercial reaction the director has received thus far came following the 1991 release of her adrenaline-junkie bank robber epic Point Break. An almost perfect meshing of cranked-up action flick and beach boy chic, the film stands as one of the more oddly unique big summer, would-be sensations to ever rear its nappy head. Macho has never been played so loose and with such a spirited, comic book charm. Plus, who doesn’t love the sight of meat-head Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Kiedis shooting himself in the foot? Classic, visionary nonsense to drink the night away to.

Sadly, everything Bigelow has touched since that Swayze/Keanu semi-classic has tended to die upon theatrical arrival. Both the high price projects Strange Days and K-19: The Widowmaker set their respective distributors back some and the would be art house darling The Weight of Water came and went with nary a ripple.

As a consequence, it would take nearly seven years before the arrival of her next film, The Hurt Locker. The film (currently in limited release) details the less than enviable day-to-day duties of an Iraq-based Explosive Ordinance Disposal bomb squad. Shot in Jordan with a multitude of film crews racking up a reported 200 hours of raw footage, Bigelow has somehow assembled what could be her most critically adored film to date.

The film stars Jeremy Renner (who once played a certain Milwaukee notable in a decent little number called Dahmer) as the wild card leader of the bomb squad who often lends as much tension to the task at hand as any bomb ever could. Assorted other dependable names including Ralph Fiennes, Anthoney Mackie, Guy Pearce and Evangeline (Kate from Lost) Lilly are on hand to lend support. If all goes well, this one could very well put Mrs. Bigelow firmly on the top shelf. She deserves it.

Shifting over to the seedy streets of 1980s New York City, one would have to look hard to find a dude who got more out of them for so little than Frank Henenlotter (perhaps Abel Ferrara or Buddy Giovinanzzo might qualify as runners-up, but more on them some other time). Beginning with the original Basket Case in 1982, Henenlotter forged a grimy vision of the Big Apple based around fringe ne’er-do-well types and the curious relationships they build with some odd and ugly (but in their own way rather lovable) critters. This running concept gave vivid birth to not only Basket Case and its two slightly less cheap and dirty sequels, but the cheeky-vulgar Frankenhooker and, best of all, Brain Damage. It is on this last one that I shall now go ahead and banter a tad.

The synopsis goes something like this; Brian (Rick Hearst) lives with his brother in an archetypical low-rent Manhattan apartment. One day he wearily awakens to discover that a mysterious parasitic ghoulie has made itself at home at the back of his neck. This remarkably unattractive creature has a name (Aylmer) a voice (provided by pioneering late-night horror movie host and disc jockey John Zacherle) and a sinister agenda. See, little Aylmer has injected our average Joe lead man with an addictive fluid that causes euphoric hallucinations (represented on screen by some sharp, beautifully dated bargain rate opticals), with this convenient “gift,” the little booger goads Brian to take him out in the night to find random street dregs to lobotomize. Any effort Brian makes to resist Aylmer’s bidding leads to withdrawal sickness. Thinly veiled substitute for heroin addiction? Hmmmm could be.

Brian soon shrugs off all normal commitments (obligatory girlfriend, hygiene, etc.) in favor of placating his new-found master. The majority of the film is dedicated to one inventively off-putting homicide after another. Brains, blood and even a gore-tinged variant on oral sex work to cement the whole thing as commercial poison, and make it charming as fuck to anyone with a taste for the bent and disturbed.

Brain Damage initially came out in 1988 with some of its juicier splatter bits neutered for R-rated approval. I first witnessed this thing on a VHS tape found at the old Menasha Super Valu (now a ghetto-fab vacant eyesore). Naturally, as media evolved and the DVD thing raped and pillaged the market, there grew to be a renaissance of cult movie labels and many of Henenlotter’s films gained a fresh start in uncut, deluxe form.

Brain Damage got the gore back along with a spiffy new widescreen transfer that suits its rugged visual aesthetic reverently thanks to a company called Synapse Films (the people responsible for unleashing Executive Koala, Street Trash and Entrails of a Virgin, you know, the good shit) thus providing this gnarly gem with the second chance it surely deserves.

As for Frank Henenlotter? Well he will be ending a protracted 16-year silence (initiated because he was sick of making Basket Case sequels) with Bad Biology. A subtle yarn of awkward love involving a young woman with seven clits and a penchant for orgasmic homicide and the spry fellow whose vicious, mutant sex organ wins her over. Henenlotter’s mission statement for the film is that he wanted to make something “funny, appalling and just plain wrong!” Most likely, this one will bump through various festivals on its way to video. Welcome back to the grind, Frank.

We wrap this rather unbalanced trilogy up with a nod in the direction of Allen and Albert Hughes. These fraternal twins from bad ass Detroit (Go Lions!) made big waves with their brilliant debut Menace II Society, a brutal urban head rush that plays like the no bullshit, problem child sibling to the far more mainstream testifying of Boyz N’ The Hood. They would only manage three more films before amicably taking a break from each other in 2001.

In the interim the pair would come together from time to time to collaborate on various commercials, episodic television shows or music videos. Smaller portions of the entertainment buffet to be sure, but it appears the twins have finally discovered another big screen project to lay claim to.

The Book of Eli (due in January 2010) stars Denzel Washington as a man harboring an important document while traversing yet another post-apocalyptic movie landscape. His goal is to keep the titular publication out of the wrong hands of a dictatorial baddie (Gary Oldman) as it could spell hope for a decaying human race. Now, while none of this spare plot info sounds utterly earth shattering (especially with Viggo Mortensen’s The Road set to tread a similar dying planet scenario scant months ahead of it) one has to keep in mind the quality of the Hughes Bros.’ potent (if scant) backlog.

Their third film, the 1999 documentary American Pimp is easily my fave. Electrifying and to the point, with endlessly quotable soundbites pouring with rapid articulation from an engrossing caravan of gentlemen whose bread and butter is based 24/7 around the baiting, hustle and penetration for profit of sadly ignorant and emotionally bankrupt young women. Oddly, the movie does less to shameface the art of streetwalker management than simply clarify the how, what and where of the whole dicey issue, even going so far as to give pimping and prostitution a good measure of historical context. After all, everybody wants to get their fuck on (whether they admit to it or not). That’s why this is the world’s oldest profession.

American Pimp mostly fell between the theatrical cracks following the Brothers' second feature, the overly ambitious yet not altogether unsuccessful Dead Presidents (which crammed Black Panthers, Vietnam horrors, drug addiction and a well staged bank heist into a 119-minute box) and the stylish Johnny Depp vs. Jack the Ripper thriller From Hell.

That last one served as a marked departure for the pair, more reminiscent of the gaudy Hammer films from the ’50s to the ’70s crossed with something Tim Burton might have done with a little more edge than anything that could be compartmentalized as a “black film.” The film was yet another adaptation of an Alan Moore graphic novel that pushed the revered scribe to distance himself from the Hollywood machine (still, the film shits all over League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, now THAT’S a film to get angered by).

The Brothers also endured their share of frustratingly unrealized projects, one of which, a biopic on the life of J. Edger Hoover, fell into a developmental abyss at Warner Bros., as well never achieving a financial or critical success to rival their initial venture. However, with a top tier cast (alongside Washington and Oldman will be Tom Waits, Ray Stevenson and that Flashdance maniac Jennifer Beals) a hefty budget and a likely wide theatrical berth, The Book of Eli should prove a much needed reversal of career fortune for the lads.

To be continued...

Unrelated Capsules.

'SPLINTER'

Employing the old horror standby of placing an abbreviated cast in an isolated situation beset by a menacing force, this unexpected treat proceeded to upend my minimal expectations and deliver a punchy, and dare I say even intelligent, ride. The setting is a rural Oklahoma gas station where one upwardly attractive couple have found themselves thanks to falling pray to a desperate pair of fugitives hell bent for the border. While seeking coolant for their overheated vehicle, the principles find that they have stumbled into an abandoned locale that has come under siege care a nasty, prickly, blood thirsty organism of no clearly defined origin. Plenty of sticky violence ensues as the cast count is whittled away and the tension mounts. Conceived, directed and acted with utter competence and conviction, this is a movie that utilizes its puny resources to the fullest. Tight, clever economic horror from a man named Toby Wilkins, who is apparently also responsible for 'The Grudge 3'. Can't win 'em all people, but don't worry none, this one will ply that horror itch quite well. Proceed to track it down posthaste.

'LUNCHMEAT'

Ok, this one is not movie but a magazine....a fanzine type thing to be exact. This dude from Pennsylvania sent me issue # 3 and I just had to pass on the love. This slick publication is dedicated to the memory of many a long out of print horror, exploitation and/or no-budget VHS release. Yes, y'all read it clear as crystal, VHS tapes of wild and forgotten shit like 'Mutant Hunt', 'Hellhole' and 'Zombie Nightmare'! They even lend some space to 'Candyman' helmsman Bernard Rose's maiden effort 'Paperhouse' which is actually legitimately decent. This thing is filled with choice images from many a colorful has-been, most of which I fondly recall adorning the moldy shelves of the long buried into memory Dean's Video (formerly located at 705 Appleton road in Menasha, right across from where the Red Owl used to be). So, if you ever wondered what happened to all those cheesy flicks you never had the heart to rent, now you know.

Further info (including subscriptions!) can be retrieved here: www.myspace.com/lunchmeatzine

I Check In With The Ladies.........

2009-07-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

....from time to time....just to see how they doin'.

Lodge Kerrigan....For Beginners.

2009-07-18T17:40:00.000-07:00

( This is and introduction to a pair of films made of the rare brand of genuine vision that reminds me why I bother to ever watch movies in the first place.)

There is a little girl at the heart of it all. Through the mire of maniacal, static sounds capes that only intermittently show reprieve. Or the panorama of bustling strangers at a bus terminal, at once overwhelming and unyielding. Said girl lies just out of reach for two desperate lives barely at functioning par within the final vestiges of sanity.

For Peter Winter, the girl is his last tangible fragment of a life abandoned for the mandated confines of a mental institution.

For William Keane, she is either a victim of a heinous abduction in the blink of an eye, or a fabrication in the troubled recesses of his mind.

For New York based filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan, these men serve as protagonists in two compatible yet separately effective meditations on the sometimes fragile nature of the socially imperfect.

'Clean, Shaven' is Kerrigan's debut effort and it builds its power off a sharp, minimalistic approach and the performance of one Peter Greene. Greene is probably most fondly remembered by all in movie geek land as the guy who laid uninvited pipe on poor Ving Rhames in a dank cellar in 'Pulp Fiction'. Here he plays Peter Winter, a wide-eyed apparent schizophrenic just reintroduced to the challenges of 'normal' life. He first whiles away his moments in his rundown auto adorned with layers of old newspapers (meant to keep him 'safe'). He then pays visitation to his less then welcoming mother before finally setting out to find the one thing that may bring him stability, his daughter. At the same time, a rather middling detective is developing suspicions about Peter in relation to the recent murder of a child.

The Winter character is etched out by Kerrigan and Greene through a series of panicked gestures and hectic actions. He is often subject to a barrage of grueling internal noises. Baring the likeness of harsh radio waves funneled through half blown speakers, the sounds are enough to push a questionable psyche toward dire extremes. At one telling point, Winter is seen crudely removing one of his own fingernails in hopes of diffusing the nuisance. Winter does such things, one must presume, in hopes of making himself more accessible for his inevitable reunion with his daughter.

'Keane', however, provides a more elliptic scenario for its titular character. See, William Keane spends the bulk of his days skulking around the New York City Port Authority bus terminal. It is here, we are lead to believe, that his only child was taken from him, leaving him broken and destitute. When away from the terminal, Keane exerts himself in multiple avenues of self-destructive behavior (i.e. drug intake and unsafe sex in public restrooms). Eventually he carves out a sort of companionship with a woman and her young daughter. Both are residents in the same moldy motel as he and apparently have their own problems to solve. Soon Keane is entrusted with the care of the child as the woman attempts to address her mounting personal woes. It is in the next few passages that the real tension develops. Is Keane stable enough to play guardian to this child? Is he at risk of some manner of outburst that may place the child in harm's way? Do his wires get crossed to the effect that he mistakes her for his own lost offspring?

In one scene the pair are in the midst of a friendly game of bowling. Keane loses all composure and lashes out verbally to both everyone and no one. Shortly thereafter, the little girl approaches and attempts to comfort and calm him. This is not entirely how I expected the sequence to play out, but it oddly feels right. Kerrigan has a natural gift for drawing realism via simple motions and gestures. Both his movies are built of them.

The major accomplishment made here by the director is bringing the audience as close as can be to the chaos of serious mental disorder. By maintaining consistent and unwavering focus on his central character in both pictures, Kerrigan is able to draw a more articulate performance each time. For instance, in 'Keane', the main character is shown making a noble attempt to maintain an attention to good hygiene care the sink and hand drier of a men's bathroom. The scene is deliberately played out just long enough to generate a tone of slight discomfort. The actor, British born Damian Lewis, embodies the moment with a perfect level of fervent contradiction. We can see this man struggling to retain some basic human dignity while aggressively trying to out wit the demons at large in his head. Likewise are the scenes in 'Clean, Shaven' when Peter finally tracks down his daughter. She is in the backyard of her adopted mother's house swinging on her swing set. Peter watches her from a slight distance, quietly, until she notices him. He blurts out a nervous greeting as he clings to a nearby tree, almost afraid she might run away screaming. Quite the opposite, she is moved to approach him and his frantic social paranoia partially subsides. In both scenarios these damaged, awkward men are brought closest to normalcy by the delicate trust of a child.

Lodge Kerrigan is the type of directer who in movie nerd terms is labeled a maverick. This would be the kind of filmmaker who does things for reasons deeper and of greater import then mere box office postings. He kicked his career off with 'Clean, Shaven' in the mid 90's generating solid (artsy) hype but scant else. Kerrigan has patiently produced a total of four features to date, only three of which have made the journey all the way to at least a handful of cinemas. One film ('In God's Hands') will most likely never see life in front of an audience, as it fell prey to extensive negative damage upon completion. In the remaining three (the two aforementioned and 1998's 'Claire Dolan' about an Irish prostitute trying to ultimately better herself away from pimps and johns) Kerrigan plays caretaker to deeply troubled souls at large who can only truly be redeemed by the purity of innocence.

So it goes without saying that this pair of less than mainstream character studies warrants the Fringe seal of approval. If you've made it this far into the article, you must be hooked (that or you've already read the rest of the stuff in this issue and have to kill more time). The extras on the discs themselves are rather spare. The Criterion reissue of 'Clean, Shaven' boasts the customary solid transfer, a commentary track and an audio essay on the films unique use of sound. 'Keane' features a shorter, drastically rearranged alternate cut put together by producer Steven Soderberg. This makes for an interesting example of a different perspective, I suppose, but in the case of both films I was really longing for some type of behind the scenes footage. Kerrigan's work is so intensely fascinating that it makes this particular audience member curious to see him in action. Either way I think you owe it to yourself to track down the Kerrigan filmography, and I've provided some links to help you get started.
www.criterion.com (for 'Clean, Shaven')

www.magpictures.com (for 'Keane')

www.killpeoplenamedrichard@yahoo.com (for unreasonable rounds of debasement in hopes of electing a cheap laugh at someone else's expense).

KEEP SHIT CLEAN

2009-07-16T21:36:00.001-07:00

Some folks just gotta go that extra distance to afford them cheap dollar store toiletries.

Rumor has it, however, that my man right here is an eccentric, reclusive millionaire.

If this is truth, what is his secret?

A lesser mind pines for the answer.

He Asked For A Dollar.....

2009-07-11T15:36:00.000-07:00

...I asked for a picture, that's how we work it, son.

SUFFER-THE-CHILDREN?

2009-07-07T16:53:00.000-07:00

Abortion is a hard sell, no mincing words. It's a challenge to garner a substantial audience around any type of film even touching on the deletion of a pregnancy. The concept rears its ugly head as an 'edgy' plot device in the occasional, often Oscar starved, mainstream drama ('Cider House Rules', 'Revolutionary Road'), fest-friendly indie satire ('Citizen Ruth') and the occasional dose of button pushing, low budget schlock ('The Suckling'). Yet for this complex and predominantly troubling social puzzle to take center stage usually means the over baked confines of cable network hard journalism or some right wing neo-zealot tirade. Recently, however, there has arisen a break from these trends in that filmmakers are employing more concise reportage and classier aesthetic approaches to attempt to sift through the convoluted wreckage that most reference as the abortion debate incorporating pro-lifers, pro-choicers and all the ground up little flesh-lings between them. Whilst brainstorming over potential focal points for this month's piece, I discovered a handful of such films that achieve (to greatly varying degrees) a level of intelligent insight across this oceanic battle of wills, beliefs and fanatically divided opinions.

Two minor works of note are worth mentioning in passing en route to a third, and irrefutably superior, film that is deserving of more intricate analysis. 'Unborn in the U.S.A.' (First Run Features) and 'Soldiers in the Army of God' (HBO) eye up mainly some of the more extreme representatives of the religiously inflicted pro-life stance. Much is made of the need to fight for the protection of innocent lives sucked from their mommy's tummy into a bloody oblivion. What, pray tell, does the opposition often do to help enforce the will of god? Badger all those who dare to enter a clinic, condemn the wayward heathens to eternal damnation and, when all that subtlety proves ineffective, bomb the fuck out of the clinic and/or gun down the heinous personnel either in the parking lot or (ever better) in front of their own home. Their lord sure works in mysterious (read:hypocritical) ways. The scariest thing about all of this is the blissful air content at large in the faces of convicted perpetrators of such an eye for an eye distortion of justice. Take Paul Hill (who's name and face are a reoccurring item in each of the films I viewed), this cracked nut is as devout in his homicidal conviction of 'doing the right thing' as any one being could ever be, and that is what gives the glaze in his eyes a unique form of menace. If this man claims to be a true man of god (he is a preacher don't ya know?!) then what madness in his degenerated mind passes for heaven? I pray to remain ignorant of such things.

In both these films we get a solid (albeit abbreviated) overview of the massive divide at hand across this nation when it comes to siding up on abortion. There is plenty of yelling and self-righteous banter to behold. Yet these two films are also exemplary of a shortcoming that holds them well afar of anything touching 'definitive' status. Neither work devotes quite enough time to let such ultra-touchy subject matter breathe and bare more encompassing analysis, both fall under the 90 minute mark (with 'Soldier's' just easing past one hour) and, thus, must pare their way past much essential information. It is best to regard both films, in hindsight, as tamer warm-ups to a far more substantial study like 'Lake of Fire' (THINKFILM). This is perhaps the bar-raiser that will remain unchallenged for, I would venture to guess, a long time to come. If abortion has tested audience endurance in the kind of compressed doses covered above, than the sprawl of this bastard should guarantee a truly selective following.

Now, devoting an entire 152 minutes directly to the subject, that takes resilience. In the case of director Tony Kaye, resilience and determination served as the foundation upon which he would power his way through some fifteen years or so of dogged research, interviewing, fact-checking and seemingly endless patience in his pursuit of covering all potential bases. Kaye is an audacious Englishman who has spent his career too far outside the creative envelope to even be concerned with pushing it. He has fine tuned his directorial hand behind award winning commercials and music videos for years before being handed the reigns to the neo-nazi soul searcher 'American History X'. It is with this fierce debut that Kaye made a name and reputation for himself more for his post-production battle of egos with star Edward Norton then for the considerable attributes of the movie (for details of this dude's often surreal behavior, check this confessional; /www.guardian.co.uk/profile/tonykaye). Such hot headed tantrum tossing secured Kaye's protracted estrangement from the Hollywood elite and brandished him a 'problem child' to this very day.

The sad fact of all this is that, when one observes the work Kaye has completed, it is immediately apparent that he is a legitimately gifted film maker. His eye for startling imagery is impeccable, this is a large reason why 'Lake of Fire' is so damn engrossing, even as it delves into ever more unpleasant waters.

'Lake of Fire' charts several avenues in the abortion debate with a neutral eye (or, rather, as close to such as the makers can muster). It pays visits to players on both sides of the court, weathers the fury, fanaticism, politics and pained pleas for peaceful solutions from voices across the nation who have had differing levels of interaction with babies, clinics, churches and protests. Along the way we meet saints (mostly debatable),sinners and middle ground folk who'd rather see us all 'get along'. There are vivid visions of pro-choice pride, pro-life extremities (the grim reaper even has a cameo, raising a handy plastic baby up high) and scholarly celebs from Noam Chomsky (who effortlessly details how, if one is truly 'Pro-Life' then they should-by extension-be against war, the manufacture of weaponry, poverty and so forth. Sadly, this is often not the case), Norma McCorvey (the 'Jane Roe' of the famous 'Roe V Wade', now happily 'born again') to Alan Dershowitz. The images range from casual to poetic to flat out questionable (more then one actual abortion is graphically represented for the unflinching camera), all of it presented in a cool black and white schematism running the scale from smooth to grainy.

Kaye's labor gives the film a gravity which mostly supersedes the easy temptation to settle for a cheap thrill or selfish bias. One complaint of note may directed toward the near-total absence on the pro-life side of more steady minded types who simply stand against abortion rather then the more flamboyant, brimstoners who tend to revere the Paul Hill types as 'heroes'. I mean, I have beloved family members who hold a strong sense of resistance to the concept of baby slaughter, but they are in no way prone to go eye for an eye with a bomb in their palm at the nearest clinic. Granted, these people are far less theatrical, but they still have a voice and could offer balance with the more prominent radical types. Not a fatal flaw, but the one missing element that would take this closer to perfect.

Now, everyone has a piece of mind set aside for the subject of abortion. I, myself, am of the humble opinion that the bulk of the decision making should be left up to the woman. Besides, if you really run it through your mind (putting aside any prejudices that may cloud your better judgment), if a woman has chosen to forsake impending motherhood, who's to say she won't follow through whether it's legal or not? (remember them coat-hangers people, they ain't no joke!-and this concept is touched on vividly as well) A wide span of voices stake out screen time serving to point/counterpoint this whole messy lot into some manageable shape and Kaye's lens is equally transfixed throughout. Some in the film argue, with sane articulation, that the absolute moment a sperm hooks up with an egg-that's the point when a new human life begins, and this is a process that should never be interrupted. Others lay a like minded concept out in more prehistoric terms, claiming all abortionists are blasphemers and should therefore be executed. We even hear from the mouths of several young women (all facing away from the camera) seated in a clinic waiting room, their crucial decision already made. Information and perspectives fly back and forth enriching the weight of this dilemma to a level that is staggering and, ultimately, frustrating.

What makes 'Lake of Fire' an important work is the lengths to which it emphasizes the glaring fact that, no matter which side you take, there are no easy answers (even if your religion, militia or sect has pounded it into your head to believe otherwise). It's like the esteemed Mr. Dershowitz says, recalling a story of a Rabbi relating his attempt to mediate a marital squabble to his seminary students, 'He hears the husband's view. "You're right," he tells him. He hears the wife's view. "You're right," he tells her. One of his students interjects: " But, Rabbi, they both can't be right." The Rabbi nods. "You're right," he says.

No one is ever truly right when it comes to abortion.

P.S.......Footnotes (to feed the mind further?)

'PRO-LIFE' (Anchor Bay)

Second contribution by elder statesman John Carpenter to the often underwhelming Showtime anthology 'Maters of Horror'. Carpenter improves well upon his previous offering (the dreadful 'Cigarette Burns') and even manages a few decent cheap (and gory) thrills along the way. The rather simple storyline involves a frantic teen convinced she was impregnated by an evil, inhuman presence. She finds convenient refuge in a nearby clinic and attempts to get her insides cleared out before she becomes a fatality and something horrible is spat out into the world. Problems ensue, however, when the girl's God fearing Father (Hellboy himself-Ron Perlman) and three brothers lay siege on the clinic (riffing on the director's 'Assault on Precinct 13') in order to protect the impending ankle biter. Major low budget gun play follows and there's even a late in the game cameo from the fetus's demonic pappy. Slight, hokey and altogether disposable, yet not with out B-level merit and is surely more then a few steps ahead of many of the series' other contributions.

Carpenter's long sabbatical from the big screen has gone on far too long, the restraints of the television frame are unsuitable for this man's bold, wide-screen eye. Allegedly, this drought is soon to pass as Carpenter has several feature projects in development (nevermind the unfortunate remakes of 'They Live' and 'Escape From New York'), the first of which is said to be the institutional ghost story 'The Ward' due out sometime in the next coming year. Cross thy fingers.

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (IFC Films)

Two Romanian collage students team to procure an abortion for one of them care the shady black market in an unnamed town during the final stretch of Nicolae Ceauşescu's communist reign. Their quest proves unnerving and emotionally damaging as the pair must navigate the underworld in grim secrecy with nary a guarantee of success. Tight, tense and coordinated with great skill by director Cristain Mungiu who, here, displays that he is a born filmmaker with the tools to lock an audience in without beating his message or themes over their head. The movie works to unsettle the viewer and keep him on edge and it addresses the subject matter with a clinical objectivity. These are not people the movie cares to judge, only study as they wrestle with the circumstances they have found themselves in.

A solid piece of drama and a rewarding (if not always pleasant) examination of certain unpopular avenues of the human condition.

That's enough dead baby banter for me, any feedback (or directionless word salads) may be directed this way-killpeoplenamedrichard@yahoo.com

I Shoot ROCK STARS.

2009-06-29T16:11:00.000-07:00

No matter the size, shape, color or poise. They can sweat, bleed, tumble and vomit all over their drunken fan base for all I care, just as long as they feed my lens with the filthy delirium of the underground.

Respect the scene, respect the sound(s).

POWER POINT(S) PERTAINING TO A FLESH PARADE.

2009-06-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

THE HUBRIS OF EXCESSIVE MACHISMO, UP FOR DISSECTION IN A PRIME TIME ENVIRON.

'MERICAN!

2009-06-15T16:09:00.001-07:00

EDEN TO ARTIFACTS

2009-06-11T15:48:00.000-07:00

Just a scant distance from the highway there is a place where wrought iron confections and stuffed, inanimate citizens hold court in a reality all their own.

They allowed me a few candid shots before their need for privacy took precedence.

ODE TO A MELVIN

2009-06-05T15:25:00.000-07:00

This man fronts what is arguably one of the more influential musical collectives around. The Melvins have been beating the ugly stick across the face of sonic conventions for well over twenty years and countless fine records..........here I proffer a pair of images generated during a two-gig+book signing extravaganza that transpired in lovely downtown Minneapolis, MN.

N'AWLINS DOIN' WORK

2009-06-04T16:19:00.000-07:00

Because places got to be got to, and the peeps...they needs to be seen.

Ya Heard Me?

STREETS OF NEW ORLEANS......PART ONE

2009-06-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

The City

The Sights

The Sounds

The People

The Places

The Smells

The Seduction

The Addiction Of A Would Be Photographer At Large In What Often Comes Dangerously Close To Paradise.

SINISTER...

2009-06-02T13:03:00.000-07:00

...and looking to take advantage.

Them tourists have no idea how very close to the unspeakable they often come in these parts.

AND ICONS....

2009-06-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

...are all around you....waiting to be deciphered.

THERE'S A LESSON TO BE LEARNED FROM DEMENTIA

2009-06-02T12:38:00.000-07:00

It may be carried deep within the philosophy that without a mind off kilter, there would be nothing in this life left to take you by surprise............but that is just one, not-quite-educated, theory.

Come Over To 125th Street, Stay Awhile.

2009-06-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

Up in Harlem I found myself sucked into the moment, time and again.

LITTLE GIRLs.

2009-05-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

with pops in their corner boasting his Sunday best.

SHOPPING.

2009-05-31T15:16:00.000-07:00

Everybody does it differently.

THE FACTS.

2009-05-31T14:58:00.000-07:00

Can't Be Avoided.

Old on the outside.....

2009-05-31T14:40:00.000-07:00

With a youthful vitality deep within.

A FORCE OF TWO NATURES.

2009-05-31T14:35:00.000-07:00

Another old SCENE piece.

There is a lot that can be said about Lars Von Trier. The Danish film making whirlwind has built up a reputation as being both problematic and endlessly innovative and in the process has received a fair dose of criticism and analysis as to the nature of his tactics. Chief among these are how he tries his damnedest to stump the viewer with each successive project and is always bent on redefining himself through his art. He has forged a resume that includes such startling achievements as the films 'Zentropa', 'Breaking the Waves', the loopy mini-series 'The Kingdom' (remade to ill effect by Stephen King-beware!) and served as one of the founders of the cinema movement Dogme 95 which posited a series of bare bones criteria under which their projects be made.

Some have pointed to his seemingly cold dissection of the human condition and this has been reinforced by many an observation from thespians who've toiled under him. He is alleged to posses a calculating and even cruel manner in his approach to the crafting of a film. Be it as it may, his dedication to his chosen craft is unmistakable and he dares to produce work that, love it or hate it, stands invariably apart.

A case in point is this months subject, 'The Five Obstructions', a piece that took me by sharp surprise at a time when I had been thoroughly abusing my senses with far too much glossy big studio jetsam. All I can remember is a trip to the library that resulted in me bringing home 'Superman Returns' and finding that, at the conclusion of that films ridiculous two and a half hour running time, being left feeling that the Hollywood blockbuster machine has finally ground itself to a stand still. So much sorrow from so much hype. Well anyways, I decided to cure my corporate movie hangover in the only way that seemed feasible. I put myself in true movie nerd mode and dug around for whatever odd ball shit I could to abate the pain.

Enter 'The Five Obstructions'.

The film is basically a document of a protracted duel of wills (taking place across several years) between two Maverick directors hailing from the film community of Denmark. The instigator of the whole affair is the aforementioned Von Trier who cobbles together a rather ingenious challenge for a long standing hero of his, a Mr. Jorgen Leth. Leth is the creator of a short film/anthropological satire from the 1960's entitled 'The Perfect Human'. A personal favorite of Von Trier's, the film simply displays a pale, lanky Dane acting out a series of mundane tasks and behaviors to the accompaniment of Leth's inquisitive narration. What the mischievous Von Trier has in mind is to have Leth re shoot his film on five separate instances. The major factor in each is a list of guidelines (the 'Obstructions' of the title) by which he must adhere.

Setting forth in each instance, Leth employs the restrictions to his increasing advantage, much to his counterparts chagrin. The first of these reworkings is set in Cuba (inspired by Leth's predilection for Havana cigars) and must not contain a single shot lasting more then 12 frames (equaling a duration of under a second). The end product maintains a wonderful, frantic vibe that sets the rhythm of the piece and sharpens the vibrancy of the already bold Cuban settings. A second assignment finds poor Leth absconded to the worst place he can imagine, which turns out to be the red light district of Bombay. This leads to a striking set piece in which Leth takes on the main role of a man at a table dining in luxury while through a silk back drop we can see a gathering of impoverished locals looking on. This results in scorn when shown to Von Trier who reminds his fellow auteur of an additional rule that dictated the surrounding environment not be shown. As punishment for this discrepancy, Leth is told to make his third version utterly free of obstruction, the thought being that lack of restriction will dull his creative impulse. Whether or not this is the case is left up to the viewer, but for me the results (set this time in Brussels, Belgium) bare more polish and diluted energy then its successors.

Seeing with increasing frustration that he is largely unable to trump his mentor, Von Trier suggests delving into a method which both men hold in contempt-animation. To create what the boys deem a 'stupid cartoon' Leth finds himself in Austin, Texas and acquiring the assistance of a certain Bob Sabistan who's rotoscoping expertise was the visual lifeline of the Richard Linklater films 'Waking Life' and 'A Scanner Darkly'. The end product, meshing footage from the previous pieces as well as earlier works from Leth's oeuvre, is the best of the lot. A fluid, stream of conscious tone poem that takes on a life independent of its siblings, it also represents another one up on the scheming Von Trier. His final proclamation is to simply have Leth serve as narrator on a fifth variant that Von Trier himself will helm and not take credit for, like taking the concept of homage to the next level.

At the close of this sprawling experiment, I found myself enriched at having been witness to the act of two genuine artists taking their allegiance to cinema in a fresh and uncertain direction. How likely would it be to see some over priced golden boy from tinsletown taking on such a dare as this? Can one even fathom five retakes on, say, 'The Bucket List'? Pardon me whilst I swallow a bullet.

No, I am afraid this is the type of wild tactic best served by the film community's more genuine participants. Those few who hold no fear in regards to a reexamination of that which makes them tick. If one is to learn anything from the endeavor of these two Danish tricksters it is that the creative juices are sometimes heightened more by the starvation of ones resources then by being spoiled by all the conveniences that ass loads of money (supplanting talent) can buy.

So be not afraid to give 'The Five Obstructions' a run through your little at home viewing device, dear reader, you might just gain a deeper appreciation of the art of movie making. On the other hand, this could all just make you think I'm delusional and you'll merely be inspired to cleanse yourself with another run through of 'Knocked Up by the 40 Year Old Virgin'...or something. Maybe that's why I write for this rag and not Maxum (*sniffle*).

But if your feeling it, you can find out more online by going here;www.kochloberfilms.com

My name is Richard and I value your opinion, especially when it's administered to this address;www.killpeoplenamedrichard@yahoo.com

Oh, I also saw these........

AQUA TEEN HUNGER FORCE-COLON-MOVIE FILM FOR THEATERS.

Being the (mis)adventures of a shake, a meatball and an order of fries committing nonsense of the oddest sort while verily abusing the time-space continuum. There's also a diabolic exercise machine at large and a full stock of wacky supporting creations contributing copious word salad banter to the free form, uh, story. More aptly put, this is the 'Gummo' of the animated cinema. It may just make your brain bleed out the backside of your skull and on down your spine, it's that stupid. Featuring delightfully terrible opening song by Atlanta's metal darlings Mastodon. Bless 'em.

RESCUE DAWN.

Able craftsman Cristian Bale does the malnourishment thing once again as captured Vietnam era pilot Dieter Dengler in the prolific Werner Herzog's closest flirtation yet with mainstream crossover. Herzog's expansion of his 1997 documentary 'Little Dieter Needs to Fly' still works the emotions to fair degree as Dengler and fellow starving P.O.W.'s craft a plan to escape their deep jungle prison in Laos and trek to the potential safety of Thailand. Overall, a might slicker and more refined then the average Herzog piece, with a feel good coda that feels largely at odds with the extensive jungle sequences (all in keeping with the director's renowned 'voodoo of location' philosophy) where, thankfully, the film devotes most of its' length. Best advice, watch this first and next take in the documentary which features the entire scenario recanted to engrossing effect by the real life Dieter Dengler (who passed in early 2001). Potent stuff indeed.

Y"ALL GOTS TA GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-05-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

PO-LICE, EAT A DICK-STRAIGHT UP!

IF CHARLES BUKOWSKI HAD NOT DIED,

2009-05-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

He'd be sitting on a bench in Berlin, scratching his nasty white ass.....here's proof.

Girl Up On It.

2009-05-29T23:00:00.000-07:00

Speaks for itself?

IF ONLY SHE KNEW ME?

2009-05-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

My posture might suggest to her a coital valentine unbecoming to a proper lady...........

A Fondness....

2009-05-28T16:45:00.000-07:00

Sometime long past, this jalopy made the heads turn in its favor baring due North with pretty, young Samantha riding shotgun unaware of the crude turn for the worse her long-standing innocence would take once they reached the drive in.

OBSCURITY DENIED!

2009-05-28T15:27:00.000-07:00

(originally published in the Scene-June 2007)

THE RESURRECTION OF ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY.

Long ago, in the (pre) DVD days of home video leisure there was this wonderfully suspect little sub-culture of the bootleg video tape. I discovered this world in the form of a thick, amply xeroxed catalog ordered from the back pages of Fangoria magazine. It featured a wealth of the finest in multi-cultural sleaze, monster, splatter and otherwise undefinable product that, for a plethora of reasons, was never destined for a day in the mainstream sun. Sure, it may have taken a bit to adjust to the often less then stellar picture quality accompanied by frequent poor sound, this and the common lack of subtitles on the many non-English films. But I soon grew addicted to the exotic goodies wrapped in reused brown paper packaging that I awaited endlessly at my mother's mailbox for. I built myself a fine little library of oddities that I was convinced would never rear their heads in any other format but this.

Oh how I have been proven wrong.

In a way it brings a fleeting form of nostalgia to cast those worn old bootlegs into trash can oblivion. Their third or fourth generation images exuded a charming delirium that went lengths to enhance the peculiarities that fueled these types of films. But with new technology comes new promise.

Slowly but steadily, the arrival of DVD (followed by Internet downloading) has opened wide many new niches in relation to so-called 'obscure' cinema. Smaller companies have taken up the crusade of breathing new life into long left for dead movies. They've been cleaned, repaired and supplemented in more ways then could ever have been fathomed by those dingy, brown paper bootleggers. Many of the films focused on in this very article began life before my loopy eyes as bootlegs.

It is in bootleg land that I first discovered the crazed majesty of a certain Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Jodorowsky is an enigmatic smorgasbord of cultural influences and artistic output. He has traveled the world as a mime, playwright, comic book writer, tarot card reader and, most significantly, filmmaker. His work is of the quality not quantity fashion, he has only produced six features and one short in his entire career. Two of said films, 'El Topo' and 'The Holy Mountain', were the pride of my bootleg collection, I watched and rewatched them thinning the tapes slowly to the breaking point. The time has come to finally upgrade with the release of not only these two films, but a full six disc box set devoted to the filmic universe of this startling and unique talent.

I suppose I should first clarify one thing, the title, 'The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky' (Anchor Bay Entertainment/Abkco Films) stands as a tad misleading. This set does not contain the complete Jodorowsky filmography. In truth, it covers the first half through the span of four films and two soundtracks as well as some bonus treats. Also I strongly recommend that the films be watched in order of when they were produced. I believe that Jodorowsky only got bigger, better and braver as he continued on his sublime cinematic tangent. To aid in this, I will break the set down disc by disc and give my two cent 'fringe' opinion on each flick.

We kick things off with 'La Cravate', a half hour short that served as Jodorowsky's introduction to the film medium. The piece is essentially a mime shtick involving two male characters (one an artist and the other a muscle man) and their dealings with a young lady who switches heads as an occupation. It is silent, short and rather whimsical with more than a passing resemblance to the likes of Chaplain or Keaton. This really serves as an intro for the beast of imagination that would son develop in later work. The story goes that this piece was stolen by the lead actress and thought lost for the better part of fifty years. Somehow it was uncovered in an attic in Germany and polished up for reintroduction via this set. Interesting stuff but keep in mind we're just getting started.

In 1968 Jodorowsky unveiled his debut feature 'Fando y Lis' to chaotic response in his then home of Mexico. Freely adapted (solely from memory, no script) from a play by sometime collaborator Fernando Arrabel and realized in high contrast black and white, the film feels like an aborted Felliniesque bastard flailing itself across the screen. What transpires is less a story than a feverish phantasmagoria committed to the celluloid real (something that holds true for the majority of Jodorowsky's work). A confused young man and his crippled lady are hell bent on finding the Eden like city of Tar. They shamble around treacherous quarries and brave all manner of revelers and deviants who appear at random along their path. The whole of this experience is initially tough to take, but upon additional inspection I am able to appreciate the sheer purity of form and lack of consideration for cliche at large here. It would be oh so easy to dismiss this as artsy fartsy dreck and leave it at that. I prefer to return to a difficult film sometimes and see if I can't dig deeper (especially when its creator progresses with successive works, as is the case here) and maybe uncover its secrets and surprises. After all, no significant film is ever meant to be viewed just once.

Next up is the film that initially put Alejandro Jodorowsky's name into the consciousness of multitudes. 'El Topo' arrived at the early tip of the seventies to almost single handily usher in the 'midnight movie' phenomenon. It tells the tale of an Eastwood styled drifter who, with his naked son in tow, tracks and challenges numerous outlaws and mystics before undergoing a radical transformation/rebirth of his own. The movie both feeds on and reconstructs many of the conventions and ideologies of the era; the western, the 'beat' film, exploitation cinema and spiritual diatribe. The film eventually won favor from none other then outlaw, hippie, cultural mega-icon John Lennon. Fact is, Lennon dug 'El Topo' so much he hustled Beatles manager Allen Klein to procure the film for American distribution. This led to an alliance of both prosperous and catastrophic results. Never the less, it is the reason 'The Holy Mountain' got made.

'The Holy Mountain' is, from this critic's standpoint anyway, a watershed in the arena of fantastic film making. It is startling and amazing in so many ways it almost feels like sensory overload. Anyone with a taste for the imaginative and visionary in their art will find paradise within this picture's running time. The storyline has something to do with a petty street dreg (who more then passingly resembles the Catholic white man representation of Christ) who is taken under the tutelage of a character called 'The Alchemist' (fleshed out by Jodorowsky himself) and led on a quest for ultimate enlightenment....or some such hippie shit. Whatever, the so called story is beside the point. This is the mother of all head trips and I challenge any skeptic to walk away from this journey unscathed, there is just far too much to take in. This is the type of stuff that makes most folks' dreams seem lethargic by comparison. You got everything you need to overdose to in this mother; screaming amputee midgets, orgasm machines, reptiles dressed as conquistadors attacking each other, birds fluttering out of bullet wounds and much, much more! This is the peak of Jodorowsky as a film maker and I urge anyone interested in taking part in this fantastic box set, save this one for last as it is well worth the wait.

Sadly, after completing 'The Holy Mountain', Jodorowsky would enter into what would become a thirty odd year feud with Allen Klein over a more commercial project the producer had in mind. Jodorowsky flatly refused and Klein withdrew his most accomplished films from commercial exhibition. 'El Topo' and 'The Holy Mountain' languished in cinema purgatory for the duration of their spat. In the interim, Jodorowsky continued his maverick path come what may. He would begin work on an adaptation of Frank Herbert's beloved sci-fi opus 'Dune'. This was to be a project that would have gathered a counter culture dream team together for a single ambitious extravaganza. The planned film was to star Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger and Orson Wells. It was to feature designs by H.R. Giger and a score featuring Pink Floyd. Oh the potential! Alas, the big shot money men got big time cold feet and the plug was pulled, only to be reinstated to unfortunate effect a decade later by Dino DeLaurentis and David Lynch. The Jodorowsky envisioning of 'Dune' remains one of the great unrealized projects in the history of film. Pity.

After this debacle, Jodorowsky would focus on various projects aside from cinema only to return in 1979 for another failure in the largely unseen (even by me) children's film 'Tusk'. This picture remains on the bootleg circuit in a French language only version. At any rate, Jodorowsky has since distanced himself from it.

Nearly nine more years would pass before the release of 'Santa Sangre'. The story of a once institutionalized boy and his long suffering, dismembered mother and the violence they inflict together is one of unsettling psychological power. The significant critical and theatrical attention leveled at this return to form must have seemed refreshing to a filmmaker who'd been separate from success for so long. 'Sangre' retains many of the visual tics of the director's notorious style while maintaining a largely straight forward narrative structure. Make no mistake though, this is no everyday movie. In one scene we follow a rather debauched night on the town with a posse of mental ward escapees which covers the spectrum from hookers to cocaine and so on. Now I don't want to give too much away here, like the best of Jodorowsky's works, this one subsists on surprise. It travels roads unexpected and finds many a unique (and sometimes horrid) wonder. The bad news is that this gem was left out of the new set due to ongoing litigation. The best bet is to track down an old copy in a dusty video store corner.

The same holds true for the next and final produced film from Jodorowsky to date.

'The Rainbow Thief' is another project that the directer now disowns. As he tells it he was hired by the producer to film his wife's script to the letter as a birthday gift for her. Thus Jodorowsky was given access to his biggest budget and name actors such as Peter O' Toole to shoot a light tale of an odd prince and a filthy beggar who become friends in a sewer. The resulting film swiftly died on all levels and stands as an unjust final note to an ingenious career.

Let's hope that the arrival of 'The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky' makes that all go away. The set is a godsend to any discerning fanatic of the arts. It opens the door to a body of work that has gone mostly unseen for far too long, and has certainly never been this exquisitely presented. The films have all undergone transfer overhaul and the final product is top self. After countless times sitting through the barely passable quality of those damn bootlegs, these discs make the experience as fresh as if the films came straight from the lab. The set features commentary, set photos, two soundtracks ('El Topo', 'Holy Mountain'), deleted scenes, script excerpts and a full length documentary. This last item, the 86 minute 'La Constellation-Jodorowsky' from 1990 is an engrossing insight into the man's philosophies, inspirations and theories on everything from his childhood to the art of self discovery that is film making. It features lively interviews with the directer as well as admirers like Marcel Marceau and Peter Gabriel(!). I think only complaint I hold on the subject of this bountiful new set is the lack of any accompanying booklet/liner notes. Though that may be due to the forthcoming publication of 'Anarchy and Alchemy', a literary analysis of the man and his art by Ben Cobb. Expect that volume by the end of the summer. Do, however, try to check out 'The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky' at your local media shack (i.e Best Buy, Exclusive Co.) and let it sink deep into your psyche.

For further info, you can web it up at, www.anchorbayentertainment.com
www.abkco.com

Hold on! Put that beer down you scumbag, I'm not done yet.

Here are some other hits and misses.

'Tideland'- A little girl gets lost in the wilderness of her own imagination following the back to back overdoses of her junkie parents. She finds solace in the company of talking doll heads and a local spastic who thinks he's a submarine captain. Oddly not as bizarre ass it sounds. In fact, the whole thing is a tad mundane in its quest to be eccentric and 'daring'. The latest offering from the once great Terry Gilliam, who continues to distance himself from the genius of 'Time Bandits' and 'Brazil'. Oh, and Jeff Bridges is in it.....sort of.

'Pan's Labyrinth'- Another little girl lost, only this time the result is one of the best fables (hell, movies!) of the year. Guillermo Del Toro puts himself one step closer to icon status with this rich, visually hypnotic tale of creaky ghouls and creepy men. Set in 1940's Spain at the height of fascism, the movie gracefully dances between vivid fantasy and cold, cruel reality. It propels its doe-eyed pre pubescent heroine into a race to change the fate of an alternate reality from certain doom to life affirming hope. A triumph of the imagination.

'Zodiac'- M.T.V. got nothing on this. David Fincher proves once and for all that he is beyond the A.D.D. of his music video past. Articulate and exacting, this is a major epic chronicling a rather dark chapter in our recent history. In the late 60's, the Bay area of Northern California is thrown into turmoil by a series of serial attacks accompanied by the media published taunts of the perpetrator himself. The movie also charts the repercussions that follow for years afterward as the Zodiac killer is never caught and simply buries himself into urban legend. Long, methodical and rewarding for the more focused movie goer.

To The Core....

2009-05-28T15:11:00.000-07:00

Drunk as a mother fucker, he said to me; 'I'm 37 years-fucking-old an I'm still into this shit. What the fuck is wrong with me?'

A man's got have priorities.

I see the water as an enemy.

2009-05-27T17:34:00.000-07:00

I am undergoing a (likely) fleeting fetish for horizon lines, particularly those found on tranquil bodies of water. That and I like to distort what would normally be considered rather done-to-death subject matter.

Did I succeed?

Don't care.

Frontier Status and Regret.

2009-05-27T15:44:00.000-07:00

Somebody claimed that an impoverished family of three plied their days inside the shack sans the luxuries of heat, running water and functional resistance from the malevolence of roaming mountain folk who often showed a suspect interest in the young mother and her (often) sickly infant daughter.........

...Of Oblivion

2009-05-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

TWO GIRLS-DEEP CUTS.

2009-05-27T15:04:00.000-07:00

(originally published in the SCENE newspaper-June 2009)

Release comes on strong in the world of 'Martyrs'. It comes via a succession of moist, life-claiming shotgun blasts that reduce an upper crust family to pulp. It comes also care some merciless self mutilation administered by both sharp objects and handy head to wall application. Said release has been brewing steadily and proves tragically overdue for a poor, damaged soul named Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) who has served out an inexplicable sentence as the subject of curious experimental abuse early on in her life. Escape and prolonged rehabilitation have done little more then fade the extremity of her external wounds. Deeper in, things have merely festered to a homicidal apex. This brings an adult Lucie to enact a methodical and graphically detrimental home invasion on the aforementioned family unit. She is convinced of their role in her past trials and seeks savage revenge to both even the score and ease the clinging burden of one particularly vivid personal demon.

Paired with this troubled creature on her hellish stab at some piece of mind is the more controlled Anna (Morjana Alaoui) who swiftly befriended Lucie while both were undergoing treatment for their separate abuses (Anna's past is only touched on during a brief telephone conversation with her mother). Anna questions Lucie's vengeful methodology yet does little to intervene and even sets about mopping up the bloody after-effects. Anna also dotes on Lucie to little avail, as the girl proves too far gone into some sort of nihilistic rapture at the conclusion of her killing spree and her actions only serve to pave the way for a whole new level of twisted revelation and, ultimately, a sinister passing of the torch that gives base to the film's title.

In lieu of divulging too many plot points and ideas that would rightly be tagged 'spoilers', I will instead pay focus on the significance of the film both as a technical achievement and, ever better, as a potent work or sheer (albeit painful) art. 'Martyrs' is the brainchild of upstart French auteur in waiting, Pascal Laugier, a man who toiled at behind the scenes DVD fodder for fellow countryman Christophe Gans. Gans, in turn, served as producer on Laugier's maiden feature, 'House of Voices', giving the man a shot at visual distinction. 'House of Voices' plays on the Gothic mood and tone of the whole haunted locale/ghost story routine. It is brooding and stylish with atmosphere to spare and it details its specter scenario in an abandoned orphanage setting that prefigures Juan Antonio Bayona's much praised 'El Orfanato' by several years. What one does not gather from this debut, however, is the sharp contrast the director's sights would take in his second work.

I shall come back to this point in a moment.

Origins (in brief)

For the past several years, the horror genre has seen a gradual rekindling in the country of France. A place best known for its 'new wave' phenomenon back in the day that catapulted the careers of Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol among others, France has held its film industry largely vacant on a substantial horror movement until recently. With the notable exception of entries like Georges Franju's 'Eyes Without a Face' in 1960 and some assorted low brow product from the far more exploitative Jean Rollin (i.e. 'Rape of the Vampire') horror films have remained a sad minority in the realm of French cinema.

From the tender early age of cinema, French film makers have been dabbling in horrific themes and imagery. Iconic directorial forefather Georges Méliès is said to have crafted the first ever horror film with the three minute short 'The House of the Devil' which he unveiled on Christmas Eve, 1896. The film's parade of bats, ghosts and wretched deities is often credited as one of the key seeds of influence that would go on to nurture the modern horror film. It is with such an example that one begins to recognize the groundbreaking tendencies that would inevitably reemerge on and on through the years. Such tendencies have never been more preeminent then they are here, in the 21st Century.

Beginning with a few modest art house fillers like 'With a Friend Like Harry...' the French slowly gained momentum genre wise completing an initial crescendo with the wacky international mini-blockbuster 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' in early 2001. The real uber-horror antics kicked in fully after the arrival of Alexandre Aja's 'High Tension' (aka-'Switchblade Romance') which ushered in the 'can you top this shit?' attitude toward depicting explicit acts of violent behavior geared specifically toward upstaging the lagging, sanitized direction frequently being taken by American horror films. Since its release (and mostly home video generated success), many other noteworthy pictures have followed suit. Tantalizing morsels like 'Them', 'Frontier(s)' and the deliciously excessive pregnant lady under siege shocker 'Inside' give their envelope pushing best in terms of form, content and the tossing about of splashy, all-out gore (with the substantial exception of 'Them' which feeds more off the creepy nature of its primary threat element in order to work at a viewer's psyche). Even the art house crowd proved subject to such ante-upping in the form of more class act meditations like 'Irreversible' and 'Calvaire', both driven by unsparing set pieces. Most of these films have built up audiences from across the globe and many of their creators have graduated to the sinful artistic vacuum known as Hollywood. But behind them back in Frenchy Land, they keep crawling out of the woodwork.

Which brings me right back around to this nasty thing called 'Martyrs'. What Pascal Laugier and co. have done here is create one of those rarefied works in which the element of horror is not based around stand alone, gore for gore's sake set pieces and a cast of simpleton caricatures just begging for hyper-stylized mutilation. By contrast, this film generates a genuine level of dread and uneasiness in regards to its protagonists and their plight. In part this is due to the performances delivered by the two leads. I find myself returning time and again to that pivotal home invasion sequence and the sheer velocity of the crippled emotional state actress Mylène Jampanoï is able to convey though out the course of her malicious agenda. The wealth of her internal torment helps to thicken the tone of the sequence and levels away any potential for a knee-jerk response to what transpires on screen.

This whole section of the film is what cemented its place in my mind along side such limited company as 'Henry-Portrait of a Serial Killer' and DIY maven Jim Van Bebber's trippy-bleak magnum opus 'The Manson Family'. It is films such as these that treat dark, horrific ideas with a level of reverence in regards to the fact that, yes themes and concepts such as those addressed in these films are often very tough going for an audience, but that in no way discounts the fact that they deserve to be explored for all their merit (whatever that merit may be) with out the handicapping of main-steam constraints. I was most impacted by this film's stern refusal to cop-out at any point along the way and when it progressed into an even more difficult second half it revealed itself to be alternately frustrating, pulverizing and achingly poetic. It may sound a touch odd to think like this but, I often found numerous elements of 'Martyrs' to be strangely beautiful (especially on repeat viewings, after any initial surprise is depleted). The technical aspects employed here are largely impeccable, particularly as it is a fairly low budget project. Laugier's direction is steadfast and complete, he rarely misses the mark (this is not to give the notion that the film is without flaws, yet what few there are tend to fall under the distinction of 'spoilers' and, as mentioned earlier, it behooves me not to touch on such things) and often times he manages to populate the screen with images that are destined to linger long and potently in the mind. The harsh violence thrives on the screen in great measure due to the superior effects work shepherded by a gifted technician named Benoit Lestang, a gentleman whose real life demons got the best of him as he took his own life shortly after the film wrapped. Pity.

Another thing that impressed me about this picture (and there are many things) is the method in which it utilizes its leads, not as the atypical 'hot chicks in peril', but as strong, organic presences who feed the drama with an energy that is realistic and immensely engrossing. To their credit, in the real world, both actresses are physically stunning works of human art (especially Jampanoï) but the film cares not how fine they are and that works wonders in the story's favor. This is no feather weight masturbatory parable involving nice pairs of breasts on the run from some malevolent machete. This is raw shit people, prone to divide and conquer and audience. This movie isn't here to help you pass the time nor get you laid on the first date.

This movie doesn't like you very much.

Either you can accept this, or retreat back to the comfort zone of whatever numbing mid-eighties dreck they've remade and poured neatly into your local cineplex. I'm sure it will be easier to swallow.