CineFile Video

These came in on Friday and they look beautiful. No model photos yet but use your imagination.  Click on T-shirts to the right and you’re on your way.

CineFile Video’s Director T-Shirts are now available to purchase on-line.

They’re 100% cotton and printed on American Apparel T-Shirts.

To order click “T-Shirts” to the right.

All orders are shipped via priority mail.

Scorsese/Scorpions coming soon…

Photos: Kate Stewart kate.stewart@mac.com

Howdy CineFiles,

I have some exciting news! In the last couple months, I’ve been working with Dan and Sammy Harkham, owners of the Silent Movie Theatre, to open a new revival house based out of their beautiful, historic theatre…The Cinefamily. We’re bringing the same sense of fun, wonderment, and enthusiasm that I hope we’ve communicated here at CineFile (and the bookshop Sammy co-owns, Family Books) to the programming at CineFamily, with a wide range of cinema from arthouse fare to Asian genre films to found footage nights and obscuro trash. Not only that, we’ve done some really great restorations to the theatre, including new sound , new screen, new concessions, ridiculously comfortable leather sofas in the front two rows, and, my personal favorite, speakers in the bathrooms so you can track the movie if you have to take a break.

One of my big concerns about programming a theatre was something I dubbed “The Big Lebowski Trap”. Now, I love Big Lebowski as much as the next person. It’s a great movie, worthy of the cult-like adulation, and consistently large turnouts it gets every time it pops up on the big screen. But I don’t particularly feel like it needs to be shown anymore. The Nuart’s done it just fine. Unfortunately, when you show a great movie that nobody’s heard of, but people would love if they saw—like Zulawski’s arthouse freak-out Possession, for example—no one shows. Why should they, if they haven’t even heard of it? So, as a programmer, you have to show Lebowski, and Goonies, and Evil Dead 2,and so on…but then, over time, I believe, enthusiasm is lost. Without the excitement of discovery, something is critically missing from the theatrical experience.

Now I could tell you our programming is gonna rock, that each film as been as personal selected for you as a track on a mixtape for a girl I’m trying to impress, and that every show’s gonna be as generous as possible, with bonus shorts and rarities from our personal archives, and but that’s still asking an awful lot of trust. $10 worth, to be exact.

So here’s what we’re gonna do. If you pay a reasonable flat rate—$25 bucks a month, the cost of two movies and a bucket of popcorn—I’m gonna let you come as much as you want—and I’ll give you that bucket of popcorn, too. Seriously. I want you to be able to take a chance, to check something out just cause you’re intrigued, or bored, or, just really like our popcorn. Cause I want to be able show Ninja 3, and say, “really, it’s a good trashy time, try it, you just might like it.”

Also, I’ve decided to make it easier to catch a whole series, if you’re interested. I don’t know about you, but these days, unless I’m totally obsessed, I can rarely make more than one or two movies of a week-long festival. So, for example, if you wanted to see our Toho monster movies in December, you could come just once a week—every Sunday—and catch them all. You know, like poker night. To make it more of a hangout, we’re gonna open the doors half an hour early, if you want to grab a coffee and a cupcake (supplied by New York’s legendary Crumbs),

Every day of the week is going to be a different theme, covering all kinds of cinema, from high art, to total trash. Here’s the breakdown:

Silent Wednesdays
Music Thursdays
Feature Fridays (2 different movies, one high art, one low)
Early Feature Saturday
Holy F*cking Sh*t Saturday night (you know, like our section—the weirdest, most other dimensional movies we can find)
Sunday Noir Matinees
Asian Sunday Nights (one high art, one low)

If you want to download the whole calendar, check out this PDF

To buy tickets, go to www.silentmovietheatre.com

To launch the theatre, we’re starting with a little Halloween festival, and if you look close, you’ll notice that we’re having a different horror movie for every theme.

Here’s the schedule:

10/25 Hell’s Bells
8pm

Our Halloween festival begins with a mind-bending, soul-stealing, ear-shattering tribute to the Satanic roots of heavy metal. Tonight, The CineFamily opens its vaults and unspools some of the rarest, weirdest and scariest film and video evidence of heavy metal’s awesome power to corrupt our youth. Witness how rock and roll mocks Christ, tempts the libido and promotes the worship of Satan, through album covers, music videos, backwards messages and occult iconography. The evening continues with a debauched performance by fallen woman Diamondback Annie, and culminates in the supremely evil concert film Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare. Hosted by Vincent Price, and “written” by Alan Rudolph, this rarely-screened movie from 1975 will be our final piece of damning evidence. If Halloween is the Devil’s favorite holiday, then surely heavy metal is his favorite music.

Our festival of Heavy Metal Casualties continues on Music Thursdays, through November.

10/26 Possession- Director’s Cut & US Cut (1981)
7:30pm & 10:30pm

It’s every director’s worst nightmare when studio hacks take the axe to their babies. Witness Polish director Andrej Zulawski’s delirious arthouse shocker and its mutated American offspring. Zulawski’s original film is possibly the best high art horror movie ever made, a shocking, surrealist masterpiece that functions as both a slimy creature feature, and a harrowing psychodrama about divorce. Possession is a totally unique film; the performances have the stylized emotional hysteria of a Ken Russell movie (characters are prone to seizures and self-mutilation, when they get too upset), but constrained within the formal rigor of a Roman Polanski, who not-coincendentally attended the same legendary Polish film school as Zulawski (Lodz.) Isabelle Adjani, whose primal scream performance won Best Actress at Cannes, was so disturbed by the final result she dubbed it “emotional pornography.” American producers, unsure what to do with this cinematic chimera, re-cut the film drasti

cally, making an already abstract plot flat-out nonsensical, and adding a screwy, solarized ending in a misguided attempt to turn it into a mainstream, psychedelic horror flick. Renamed The Night The Screaming Stopped, this version has become its own lost, grindhouse classic. The only thing madder than that, is what we’re doing—showing both movies in one night– the original monster and its diabolical doppelganger.

10/27 Process Media Presents: Creature with the Atom Brain (1955) introduced by Roky Erickson
7:30pm

Texas psychedelic legend Roky Erickson, lead singer of the 13th Floor Elevators and subject of the acclaimed documentary You’re Gonna Miss Me knows a thing or two about horror stories, as writer of classic spook-rock songs like “Stand for the Fire Demon,” “I Think of Demons,” “Don’t Shake Me Lucifer,” and the aforementioned “Creature with the Atom Brain”. Erickson will be on hand to introduce this feverish 50’s B-picture, his favorite horror film. Think of it as “The Godfather” meets “Dr. Strangelove” in Frankenstein’s castle: an exiled American gangster bent on revenge hires a maniacal ex-Nazi scientist to create radio-controlled killer zombies. Soon, the police, the army and the kitchen sink show up to battle it out in a climax your nightmares will take notes from. A signing of Process Media’s new biography Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and The 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound will follow the film, with author Paul Drummond and Erickson in atte

ndance.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
10:30pm

“Four more days to Halloween…Halloween…Halloween. Four more days to Halloween…Sil-ver Shamrock.”

If the lyrics of the above jingle make your hair stand on end, it’s probably because you were one of the legions of kids scarred by Halloween III: The Season of the Witch– the only entry in John Carpenter’s horror franchise not to feature the Michael Myers character. It’s set in the strange, all-Irish California suburb of Santa Mira (actually Humboldt County, which might explain the pervasive cloud of goofy paranoia), where the Silver Shamrock toy company manufactures Halloween costumes with a sinister side effect. If a child watches the company’s subliminal TV ad while wearing their signature Jack-o-lantern mask, they’re turned into a seething pile of snakes and bugs. The threat of ancient Celtic rituals aside, this compellinglyweird 1982 film may itself have been a conspiracy against critic Rex Reed, who claimed that Halloween II was so bad that he’d turn in his press card if they ever made a third. We’re still waiting, Rex.

Our festival of Threes (film franchises gone wild!) continues on Holy F*cking Sh*t Saturdays through November.

10/28 Nightmare Alley (1947)
1pm

Tyrone Power plays a con-man who gets mixed up in a sordid circus in this dark, cynical noir. Features a sultry femme fatale, alcoholism and a circus geek who bites the heads off of chickens. A cult classic!

10/28 Onibaba (1964)
7:30pm

One of Japan’s all-time greatest horror features, Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba plunges us to the depths of despair in war-torn feudalist Japan. In a barren rural landscape, an old peasant woman and her daughter-in-law eke out a meager existence by ambushing samurai and stripping them of their armor and goods. When a brutal mercenary imposes himself on their scheme, the women turn violently on one another. Jealousy, rage, and the haunted mask of a dead warrior transform the mother into a vengeful demon. Much like Akira Kurosawa or Masaki Kobayashi, director Shindo focuses on periods of feudal chaos and civil war to critique the lawlessness at the core of Japanese society. Masterfully shot in B&W ‘Scope and scored to propulsive tribal drums, Onibaba masks its stark realist themes with powerful images of supernatural possession.

Hausu (1977)
10:30pm

A delirious pop-horror fantasy from one of Japan’s foremost cult filmmakers, Hausu could be the most legendary horror film you’ve never seen. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi twists horror conventions inside out with a ghost story so visually over-the-top it makes Suspiria look like Leave it to Beaver. The plot, such as it is, follows Oshare (Kimiko Ikegami) and six schoolgirls as they take an ill-advised summer trip to visit her spinster aunt. Obayashi uses the thin story to cram in as many dazzling experimental effects as the human retina can absorb. Humans turn into piles of bananas, pianos devour their players, animated demons spew blood and appendages– Hausu is a gleeful genre-smashing melee and the weirdest horror film ever made.

This introduces a regular Sunday night series of Asian Cinema.

10/29 Creature Double Feature!
8pm

Pumpkinhead (1989)

Screen legend Lance Henriksen stars in this gothic horror flick directed by creature effects guru Stan Winston. When Ed Harley’s hillbilly son is accidentally killed by some no good city slicker teens, he calls upon the titular demon to reap his unholy vengeance. But at what price, Lance? AT WHAT PRICE?!?! As one would expect, the creature itself is spectacular, but Pumpkinhead also surprises with some spooky atmosphere and a career-making performance from its gaunt, craggy lead.

With…

Rawhead Rex (1986)

Horror writer/kinky sex guy Clive Barker disowned this
adaptation of his short story, directed by British no-name George Pavlou, but one has to really wonder why. Sure the creature looks like an 80’s metal guitarist with Down Syndrome; the story is mangled into a nearly incomprehensible mess and the script is uniformly terrible, but its still no less entertaining, in its own way, than Barker’s classic Hellraiser. Maybe if Barker would just loosen up his nipple clamps for a second he might find himself enjoying this dizzy, warts-and-all creature feature, or at least come to appreciate it long enough to allow for a decent DVD transfer to be released.

10/30 Homophobia! Homo-horror hosted by Jer Ber Jones
8pm

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

In the much maligned sequel to the seminal Wes Craven classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 features horror icon Freddy Krueger as a metaphor for the fey teenaged protagonist’s repressed homosexuality. Director Jack Sholder somehow failed to notice the clear homoerotic “subtext” of the film, despite a sequence that starts in a leather bar and climaxes in a boys locker room ass-whipping death.

With…

Jeepers Creepers (2001)

If Freddy’s Revenge is too subtle for you, prepare to be terrified and titillated by Victor Salva’s modern masterwork Jeepers Creepers. Salva fashions a creature from his own tortured id with the titular Creeper, a fiend that will stop at nothing to get his claws on hairless boy-toy Justin Long’s “peepers”. So come set your gaydar to “scream” for these homo-horror classics.

10/31 HÄXAN w/ Bob Mitchell on the organ (1922)
8pm

Join us for an evening of transcendent strangeness as we present Danish director Benjamin Christensen’s alternately horrific and hilarious 1922 pseudo-documentary about the history of witchcraft. Somewhere between a live-action Hieronymous Bosch painting and a painfully awkward session of Show-and-Tell, the vignette-style film features Christensen himself in the role of Satan. What begins as a dry instructional doc soon veers into mondo territory as Christensen catalogs ancient occult sordidness: nuns flip out, monks torture monks, flamenco-dancing witches make out with the devil. Häxan is acknowledged by most as the strangest silent film ever made. To be preceded by a shorts program and featuring live accompaniment on the organ.

This re-introduces our Silent Film series, which will continue every Wednesday night.

About The Cinefamily?

The Cinefamily is an organization of movie lovers devoted to finding and presenting interesting and unusual programs of exceptional, distinctive, weird and wonderful films. The Cinefamily’s goal is to foster a spirit of community and a sense of discovery, while reinvigorating the movie-going experience. Like campfires, sporting events and church services, we believe that movies work best as social experiences. They are more meaningful, funnier and scarier when shared with others. Our home is The Silent Movie Theatre, one of Hollywood’s most beloved and beautiful cultural landmarks. There, The Cinefamily will provide a destination spot for Los Angelenos and others to rediscover the pleasures of cinema.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW T-SHIRTS!

Caught this checking out zigzigger’s blog. The new lyrics questionably refer both to Anna Nicole Smith’s “grace” and her “brain”. If I hadn’t seen this on youtube, but seen someone pull this shit live at a karoake bar, I would though I’d seen a new god. Instead, it’s one of the worst videos I’ve ever seen. Context, context, context.

LOCAL TALENT:

The Science of Sleep

Michel Gondry’s first narrative feature not written by Charlie Kaufman is a painful confession wrapped in whimsy, and coated in plaster of paris and cellophane. Gabriel Garcia Bernal (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Motorcycle Diaries) plays a young artist/inventor whose sensitivity, creativity, and sensual lips, aren’t enough to win the heart of his neighbor Charlotte Gainsbourg–primarily because he mishandles every major turning point in their emerging relationship. The storyline has the kind of low stakes and personal tone that one expects from microemotional directors migrating through film festivals with Super-16mm films made starring their ex-girlfriends, or former crushes (Bujalaski, anyone?). But Gondry directs music videos, and his visual efflorescence temporarily camouflages the film’s small scale. Unexpectedly, this is where the film may disappoint; the conceit that Bernal can’t distinguish reality from dreams seems false next to the embarassing honesty of the central story, and the visuals are only occasionally striking, and often retreads of stuff he’s done better in the past. But Gondry has some astute observations that took me offguard: primarily, how unattractive we can be when in love. The behavior is mostly believable, though I like to think this is the kind of shit most of us figure out by the time we’re out of college. God, I hope so, anyways. You only act this way once, but Gondry has finally recorded it with his camera, and made it a little harder to forget.

Employee of the Month
All I can say about this Dane Cook workplace comedy is we watched Clerks 2 as a palate cleanser–suddenly Kevin Smith seemed relevant and witty.

Farce of the Penguins
March of the Penguins spoof, with Bob Saget making funny. One of our oldest customers came in while this was on the televsion: “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen you guys watching.”

Flags of Our Fathers
Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima, Part 1, is a cynical examination of hero worship, spending as much time with the after-effects of the flag-raising as with the actual battle.

Flyboys
Director Tony Bill (My Bodyguard) and producer Dean Devlin (Godzilla) come together to bring us a CGI-filled war and glory film about WWI pilots starring James Franco and Jean Reno.

Gridiron Gang
Based on a inspiring true story about teenagers at a juvenile detention center who gain self-esteem by playing football together. Starring the Rock.

The Grudge 2
Takashi Shimizu has now made this movie six times. This is sad, because he’d gotten it right the first time. By now, though, meowing cell phones and creaking monocromatic little-boy ghosts just don’t pack the same punch.

The Guardian
Kevin Costner is Louis Gossett Jr. and Ashton Kutcher is Richard Gere in this Coast Guard redux of An Officer and a Gentleman. This film is also a prequel to Costner’s Waterworld, as evinced by the ending.

Hollywoodland
Surprisingly clear-eyed examination of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of George Reeves, TV’s Superman. Ben Affleck as Reeves delivers his best performance to date. Professionally directed by Allen Coulter, who made his name helming a seasons worth of Sopranos episodes. It’s better than the Black Dahlia, the other 2006 L.A., period noir. Plus, it’s got tons of hot chicks in 50’s fashion.

The Marine (UNRATED!)
The first film solely developed by the WWE is an attempt to make an action star out of John Cena, self-proclaimed “Doctor of Thuganomics”, which I guess he picked up at the School of Hard Knocks. Opens with him inflitrating an Al-Qaeda compound in Iraq. And he looks like a steroidical Mark Wahlberg.

Open Season (animated)
In this amiable, expensive cgi animation, a ragtag group of forrest animals sneak into suburbia, and learn some lessons about friendship and family. Oh, hold, it, I think that’s Over The Hedge. In this one,…ah, whatever.

Running With Scissors
Shot in Dysfunctionoramascope!

Saw III
All of your favorite elements are back: Piss-colored lighting! Sharp, oily metal! Dripping black pipes! Torture! And, most importantly, Jigsaw, the supercilious psycho with the philosophical depths of a Korn lyric. Without spoiling the thrilling ending, I’ll tell you that it involves….ten plus minutes of exposition! The horror!

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
The “beginning” is hopefully the end–but horror franchises, like their mass murdering heroes, never really die. Oh, and this is the prequel to the remake, not the original, which was also different than Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. And, in yet another dimension, the Texas Chainsaw clan use their powers for good by battling crime and protecting wayfarers.

REGION-CODED IMPORTS:

Louis Malle Box Set:

-Black Moon
After the controversy surrounding Lacombe Lucien, a serious film about a French collaborator in WWII, Malle decided to make a film impossible to take seriously, and succeeded. This uncharacteristic foray into fantasy and dream logic by the usually down-to-earth Malle is one of those lysergic Alice in Wonderland movies that proliferated in the 70’s (Polanski’s What?, Lemora). Beautifully shot by Sven Nykvist, a blonde hottie (Rex Harrison’s grand daughter, Cathryn) wanders around a world with a literal war between the sexes, talking animals, unicorns, and Joe D’Allesandro.
-Fire Within
Malle’s most Bresson-influenced film is about a writer contemplating suicide. Featuring Malle’s muse of the time, Jeanne Moreau. Writer Jean Genet celebrated the film, saying, “Malle has effected something phenomenal, having turned literature into film, photographed the meaning of an unsubstantial, touching and rather famous book, and given its tragic intention a clarity it never achieved in print.”
-The Lovers
Along with Elevator to the Gallows, this film is credited with making a star of Jeanne Moreau.
>-May Fools
Made in 1990, this is one of Malle’s last films. Set during the May ‘68 student riots, you never actually see them, because the movie is a gentle farce about a family that happens to be out of town at the family’s country home for a funeral. Co-written with Bunuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere.
-Zazie Dans Le Metro
Made in 1959, Louis Malle’s most “New Wave” film features more film trickery than a gaggle of commercials, prefiguring the zany comedy of Richard Lester. The slender clothesline to hang the various episodes is a day in Paris from the point of view of a 12 year old girl left in the care of her transvestite uncle.

Fried Dragon Fish
An early film by Shunji Iwai (All About Lily Chou-Chou) involving a computer-operator-turned-detective, whose hunt for a stolen fish leads her to a guild of trained assassins, as well as obiquitous heartthrob Tadanobu Asano.

Two Hilarious BBC Spoof Shows

-Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
A note-perfect contemporary parody of low-budget 80’s horror television, complete with cheesy production values, stilted acting, and bargain basement special effects. The series-within-a-series is set at a haunted hospital, with a new monster every week, and its framing sequences are modern-day “reminiscences” by the cast and creators.
-Look Around You 2
Another brilliant recreation, this one of 70’s children’s science programs, with absurd weekly scientific explanations of subjects like health (including a facelift by the surgical computer Medibot), music (with a contest judged by the ghost of Tchaikovsky), and sports (with the introduction of gonnis, the sport between golf and tennis).

The Goddess of 1967
From Chinese art director Clara Law (Reincarnation of the Golden Lotus, Temptation of a Monk) comes this tale of a Japanese man who travels to Australia to buy a Citroen DS, a car that was nicknamed “Deessee”, or “Goddess” (hence the title). Once there, circumstances force him to hook up with a 17-year old girl and the two set off across the continent. A road picture with gorgeous cinematography that brings out both the beauty and terror of the Outback.

Memories of Matsuko
This tragic novel, tracing the sorrow-filled life of a Japanese woman, is warped by director Testsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls) into a candy-colored comedy with songs, while still somehow retaining its emotional effect.

Torchwood Season One, Part One
Incredibly disappointing spin-off of the recent series of Doctor Who, with square-jawed bisexual American pilot Captain Jack Harkness taking center stage. He’s the head of an incredibly inept special branch of the government, whose purported mission is to protect the world from aliens and supernatural menaces. The biggest problem is that he and his team are complete buffoons, making every possible mistake in handling crises, and often exacerbating them to the point of ridiculous civilian casualties. And, let me stress this, it’s NOT A COMEDY!!! These are our heroes, and while I can respect the creators for attempting to inject some human failings into their characters, there is a big gap between flawed and completely worthless. Torchwood manages to erase that line.

Two Films by Shane Meadows
Shane Meadows is a regional director from the industrial Midlands of England who favors naturistic acting, sometimes by non-professionals, and hand-held but artful camera work.

-Twentyfourseven
Bob Hoskins plays a coach who galvanizes the young men in a working-class own, pulling them away from gangs and into the world of boxing.
-A Room for Romeo Brass
The story of two twelve-year old boys and the charismatic older man who has his eye on one boy’s sister.

Letter From an Unknown Woman
Max Ophul’s classic.

“INDIE”:

The Puffy Chair
Back to Andrew Bujalski.

Like in Bujalski’s festival hits Funny Ha-Ha and Mutual Appreciation, the Duplass brothers have fashioned a understated, tragicomic film about the foibles of 20-something relationships using amateur actors, handheld camerawork, and a budget that could be raised from friends and family. The Duplass brothers are more willing to use classic dramatic structure and comedy artifice, with scenes that, beneath rippling shaky surface, are basically well-constructed farce. Bujalski will probably please the connoisseurs more, but The Puffy Chair is that half-step closer to the mainstream that predicts better commercial success. On a smaller scale, its the same phenomena that explains how a band like Nirvana could take the more challenging, but less accessible, music from cult bands like Sonic Youth, and sugar the pill just enough to make it real pop.

There does seem to be an emerging aesthetic of realism here. Since whats “real” is subjective, it doesn’t “really” exist as anything more than a group of conventions that express certain points of view. John Cassavetes’ reality looks awfully different than Eric Rohmer’s; the camera moves around a lot more, and people really freak out. It’s interesting to see how infectious these conventions can be; watching movies in the years after Husbands , like The Last Movie or anything by Norman Mailer, you often see actors doing there best to have the kind of honest raw emotionality of a Cassavetes film, and lots of repetitive, stultifying dialogue. What The Puffy Chair, Bujalski, and even Curb Your Enthusiasm have most in common, is an agreement of acting style. I found myself wondering how much of this was due to the influence of reality television. It’s like a whole generation learned how to act natural watching The Real World.

Wholphin #3
McSweeney’s publishers Dave Eggers and Brent Hoff named their DVD quarterly “wholphin” after a genuine, but rare, hybrid of dolphin and killer whale to emphasize the singularity of their visual magazine. What’s really unusual is a DVD magazine that’s actually good. Issue three keeps up the high quality with amazing selections by well-knowns like Dennis Hopper and Alexander Payne, festival favorites like the Zellner Brothers, and talented unknowns who are probably soon to be known. Also, the second half of Adam Curtis’ Power of Nightmares! (more…)

This is a little mash-up of drug use in the movies and on TV — the commonalities, clichés and a few genuinely beautiful moments. Per Hadrian’s request, here are a few words about how I did it. The process involved weeks of watching (or really, scanning through at 8x) over 50 movies, noting down the significant moments of drug use and drug-related dialogue, capturing the footage by hooking up my DVD and VHS players to my mini-DV camcorder (which meant figuring out how to break macrovision [i.e. copy protection] — not hard if you have the right player), importing the footage into Final Cut Pro and editing like a maniac for a week.

I do have a few regrets.

1) Shortly after I finished this pieces, I saw a European-region DVD of Emir Kusturica’s Life Is A Miracle, which features a scene of a gangster snorting a gargantuan rail of coke along train tracks. It would have been amazing to intercut that with the Modern Problems, D.O.A. and Heavy Metal footage.

2) I could have easily turned this into a 30-minute piece, but I was trying to keep it under (or at least close to) five minutes. There was so much great material I couldn’t use: Panic in Needle Park, Sarah: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, Party Monster, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and most especially Chris Rock in New Jack City.

3) I really, really, really wanted to end the mash-up with a clip from that touchstone of Reagan-era anti-drug propaganda, the Just Say No commercial where Dad angrily asks his kid how he got hold of drugs and the kids screams, “From you alright! I learned it from watching you!” I thought it would be a cinch to find, but I could not get my hands on this ad. If anyone has a dub of it (even a really cruddy one), please let me know. I am dying to re-edit the film’s conclusion.

Bandidas: Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz as bank robbers in the Old West. In chaps. Mmm.

The Bollywood Dance Workout: Indian musical style dancing that helps you burn off all that vindaloo.

The Covenant: Renny Harlin, director of beloved popcorn extravaganzas like ‘Deep Blue Sea’ and ‘Mindhunters’, helms this tale of lithe, CW-ready warlocks fighting each other with cheap computer-generated effects. It’s ‘The Craft’ for straight girls.

Conversation(s) with Other Women: Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart star in this romantic character piece, filmed entirely in split-screen, with the two leads meeting at a wedding and establishing (or possibly re-establishing) a relationship. The split-screen allows for the characters to have flashbacks, fantasies, and act independently of each other, but the bulk of the film is the courtship dance of their conversation.

Crank: A movie with an absurd premise that, thankfully, is not only aware of its own absurdity, but revels in it. It’s a demented mash-up of Rudolph Mate’s ‘D.O.A.’ and ‘Speed’ without a bus, with soccer-hooligan posterboy Jason Statham waking up with a drug in his system that will kill him if his adrenaline levels get too low. Vowing revenge on the gangster who injected him, he goes on a demented rampage: picking fights, stealing bagfulls of energy drinks, sniffing coke off of a dirty bathroom floor, even forcing an intern at gunpoint to shock him with a defibrillater. He drives through malls, beats up cops, has sex in public, and kills many thugs. It’s inspired less by films than cartoons and video games, with a style that’s most akin to the unconventional antics of Takashi Miike or ‘Run Lola Run’. In other words, Bresson fans and admirers of the Italian neo-realists should avoid this like the plague. For the rest of us, it’s a wittier-than-expected bit o’fun.

Extras, Season 1: Rick Gervais’ follow up to ‘The Office’ presents him as a similarly petty but slightly kinder version of his David Brent character, a ‘background artist’ named Andy Millman. While the excrutiating humor of the previous show is present in the self-delusion of the leads, the funniest moments belong to the guest stars, especially a foul-mouthed Kate Winslet in a wimple and a foul-minded Patrick Stewart pitching an invisible man script.

Idiocracy: Mike Judge, creator of ‘Beavis and Butthead’ and ‘King of the Hill’, continues his investigation of American stupidity in his second live action feature. Like Matt Groening’s ‘Futurama’, it’s a science-fiction story that follows the travails of a less-than-brilliant protagonist who’s cryogenically frozen in the present, then thawed in a strange future society. And, like ‘Futurama’ did to some ‘Simpsons’ fans, its genre trappings may alienate lovers of ‘Office Space’. This would be a shame, because ‘Idiocracy’ is both a clever satire of our world today and a great comedy with lots of laughs. Plus, Maya Rudolph is adorable.

The Illusionist: A moodily directed, well-acted turn of the century tale of a stage magician, the high born woman that he loves, and the police detective investigating him. In these roles, Edward Norton is suitably magnetic as the lead, Jessica Biel holds her own admirably, and, for once, Paul Giamatti gets to play something other than a schlub. Sadly, the ending is stolen shot for shot from ‘The Usual Suspects’, bringing a sour note to an otherwise classy production.

The King: A minimalist slice of American Gothic, from Milo Addica, the writer of ‘Monster’s Ball’, and James Marsh, the director of the gorgeous documentary ‘Wisconsin Death Trip’. Sexy, sexy Gael Garcia Bernal (‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’, ‘Bad Education’, ‘Amores Perros’, ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’, ‘Science of Sleep’, ‘The Crime of Father Amaro’, ‘Dot the I’, ‘Babel’) plays a young man named Elvis (hence the title) who travels to Corpus Christi, Texas to reclaim his place with the father who abandoned him. William Hurt is the father, who’s become a preacher, married and raised a family, and the intrusion of a sin from his past doesn’t sit well with him. The plot may sound like melodrama, but the execution is languid and beautiful. In a nutshell, it’s like the Mark Wahlberg/Reese Witherspoon movie ‘Fear’, but directed by Terrence Malick.

loudQUIETloud: A Film About The Pixies: A solid documentary about the recent reunion of the four most important people in late 80’s-early 90’s alternative music who did not shoot themselves in the head.

Million Dollar Mystery: The director of ‘Compulsion’, the cinematographer of ‘Black Narcissus’, and the screenwriters of ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ join forces to update ‘It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ into the eighties. Comic superstars Eddie Deezen, Rich Hall, and a young Kevin Pollock flail about desperately in a hunt for hidden cash. The film was a tie-in to a contest sponsored by Glad trash bags, and it failed to bring in enough in theatres to even cover the prize money.

The Night Listener: Robin Williams plays a late night radio talk show host who receives letters from a 14-year old listener who claims to be abused at home. Sadly, despite internet buzz to the contrary, it’s shooting title was not ‘Good Evening, Vietnam’. Toni Collette also stars.

Psychopathia Sexualis: High kink done in the style of silent films and early kinetoscopes. Someone will probably compare it to Guy Maddin, but it won’t be me.

Quinceanera: A festival crowd-pleaser about a pregnant 14-year old Latina who’s kicked out of her house and learns that family is who you have around you. Trust me, it sounds better in Spanish.

Snakes on a Plane: Nothing more can be said about this online. No, seriously, they passed a law.

The Snow Queen: A BBC adaptation of the classic fairy tale that nobody knows since Disney never got its grubby, pasteurizing hands on it. More power to the Brits, then, because they’ve created a delicate, artful adaptation, with real actors, manipulated to resemble moving hand-tinted photographs, moving across lush computer generated landscapes. The filmic equivalent of a book and a hot cocoa in front of a roaring fire.

Sparkle: Irene Cara, Lonette McKee, and Phillip Michael Thomas star in this Joel Schumacher-penned tale, a thinly-veiled fictionalization of the rise and fall of the Supremes. Thank you, ‘Dreamgirls’, for getting this one on DVD. This is the only theatrical venture from director Sam O’Steen, who’s most loved here for the TV movie, ‘Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby’, with Patty Duke as Mia Farrow and George Maharis as John Cassavetes. No, I’m not kidding; you can rent it here tonight.

Stand-In: See Hadrian’s post from January 8th.

This Revolution: Building a narrative film around your footage of a real life protest march does not make for ‘Medium Cool’. See this movie if you need further proof.

Van Gogh: A French biopic of Vinnie One-Ear. Contains more sex than ‘Lust for Life’.

Best of the Match Game: The 1970’s game show with more sexual double entendres than the complete oeuvre of Mae West. Features celebrity guests like Betty White, Richard Dawson, Mama Cass, and the god who walks like a man, Charles Nelson Reilly.

Black Dahlia: Brian De Palma’s adaptation of James ‘L.A. Confidential’ Ellroy’s fact-based noir starts out strong, with a brutal sensibility served by the director’s trademark technical prowess. Sadly, as it goes on, it collapses under it’s own baroque weight, with whiplash tonal shifts and performances ranging from subdued to histrionic. Featuring Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson, representing the former acting category, with Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, and, most importantly, Fiona Shaw in the latter camp. The best performance comes from Mia Kirshner, who manages to do more with her titular character’s post-mortem screen tests than the others do in the entire feature. Aside from that, cineastes may derive pleasure from De Palma’s signature jokey homages to his favorite directors, a conceit that’s so ingrained in him that he’s started homaging himself.

Dane Cook’s Tourgasm: Frat fave comedian Dane Cook and his entourage…I mean, three other comedians of equal stature travel across the country and defecate. Plus they tell jokes.

The Descent: In a year filled with spelunking horror (see also ‘The Cave’, ‘The Cavern’, ‘Caved-In’), this tale of cave explorers encountering subterranean monsters stands tall above the crowd. Director Neil Marshall’s previous effort, ‘Dog Soldiers’, was a sausage fest of British army men fighting werewolves, but here he utilizes a very fit all-female cast to squeeze every drop of suspense from the situation. He creates such a perilous, claustrophobic atmosphere in the cave itself that, by the time the monsters show up, you’re already on the edge of your seat. Highly recommended for anyone who appreciates good horror.

Factotum:  Matt Dillon is Charles Bukowski’s alter ego, Henry Chinaski, in this adaptation of the novel about working shitty jobs and drinking. Dillon presents a believably idealised Hank, and Lilly Taylor is such an adorable lush that she makes you want to go trolling Downtown dive bars for a floozy of your own. Like many filmed versions of Bukowski, it remains lodged in static bars and apartments, with less emphasis on the crushing grind of work than the book. Still, worth a look for fans and alchoholics.

Haven:  Orlando Bloom, Bill Paxton, Zoe Saldana, and Stephen Dillane star in this story of shady businessmen and a British national whose lives intersect in the Cayman Islands. Supposedly, it’s a hybrid thriller/love story, with a Soderberg-inspired nonlinear style. It also sat on the shelf for two years since it’s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, and was re-edited since then. Now you know as much as we do.  

Jackass Number Two:  America’s favorite bestial masochists are back, with even more good-natured self-abuse, pranks, and near-death experiences than before. This will either strike you as brain-dead, extreme-sports, gross-out, sub-Three Stooges cruelty or as the amazing, hilarious, and aweing next step forward in both popular entertainment and performance art.  

Last Kiss:  Hangdog heart-throb Zack Braff mopily inhabits the lead role in this remake of the successful Italian romantic comedy, penned by latterday-Lubitsch Paul Haggis. According to IMDB, ‘Anxieties threaten the future of a domesticated couple’. Sounds hilarious and passionate to me.

Monarch of the Moon:  Like ‘Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow’, which I promise I’ll mention in each and every one of these new release blogs, this film is a homage to the classic wartime movie serials like ‘King of the Rocketmen’ and ‘Flash Gordon and the Peril from Planet Mongo’. To the uninitiated, these were sequential short films that ran in installments before feature films, always ending in a cliffhanger to pull patrons back in next week. ‘Monarch of the Moon’ apes both the style and content of these, including the cliffhangers and chapter format, with robots, Nazi spies, superhero protagonists, and femme fatales. With its retro but clunky design and its cornball spirit, this succeeds far more often than the sleek computer effects and star wattage of ‘Sky Captain’.