Reviews

Review Reminder Roundup: FROZEN PLANET, SHAME, BEING ELMO, SLEEPING BEAUTY

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:02:36 -0500

Hello fellow sojourners in the stateside mass media marketplace. Here's another chance to reminisce about the last month or so in home entertainment. Virtually everything you see here is something I wanted to see, a personal favorite or a film I hated enough to warn you about. That's why it winds up in the column. I do my best to approach what I'm doing here as a defense of curatorship and not just review whatever the PR types hype my way. What a world we live in huh? There's beauty everywhere in in the darkest tales but what else would give us hope in a darker than dark world than the chance to encounter the light however fragmented it's beam may be. So until next month when the demons of deadline demand know that I'll be out there looking for signposts, going where they lead, and reporting back the results.

A Streetcar Named Desire:The Original Restored Version BluRay

If you've never seen A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) I envy you. Besides the raw power of the film itself which features director Elia Kazan and actors Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh at the height of their powers, there is the near unreal quality of image and audio here. I would go so far as to say I have rarely ever seen a BluRay of a film this old that looks this gorgeous. This is the restored version that would have been seen in 1951 if the Legion of Decency had not demanded changes and offers up strong adult drama that will undercut anyone who thinks that black and white films are toothless. Necessary viewing at the very list. Virtually all the special features from the 2006 video Special here are re-presented including an audio commentary, feature length doc on Kazan, a number of featurettes totaling more than an hour in length total, Brando's screen test, half an hour of outtakes and finally trailers. The book packaging is excellent offering a variety of stills and a lot of basic information.

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Frozen Planet: The Complete Series (David Attenborough-Narrated Version) Bluray

On a short list of what big screen TV's and BluRay players were invented for lies almost everything the BBC has produced in the way of nature docs. This is no exception. Prepare to be amazed and watch this on the biggest TV you can find. You get all the episodes of the show and a series of extras that are absolutely outstanding including mini-docs on the effects of Global Warming, the day to day work of scientific expeditions at the South Pole, featurettes detailing the making of each episode and a whopping 47 video shorts that give everyone involved in this remarkable series the chance to talk about their experience making it. Also included is a nifty 60 minute highlight compilation.

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Don Juan Demarco Blu-ray

This is a charming if largely forgotten little movie somewhat in the vein of They Might Be Giants (1971) meets Benny and Joon (1993). Marlon Brando plays a psychiatrist tasked with curing Johnny Depp who plays a delusional young man who is convinced he is the living embodiment of Don Juan. But what the film is really about is nature of love. Faye Dunaway plays Brando's wife who, like most of the women the patient meets, wonders why he needs curing at all. She would love to have a little more romance if only the doctor could learn from his patient. The only extras here are a music video and the isolated stereo score by Michael Kamen. But the sound and the video are marvelous. Fans should definitely upgrade and first time viewers could do worse than purchase.

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Shame Blu-ray/ DVD + Digital Copy

What happened around Awards season? This is a deeply nuanced look at the psychology of sexual addiction that should have gotten alot more love than it did. Fassbender was an easy pick for best actor but to not even get a nom? Director Steve McQueen also made some bold choices in his storytelling. What do you expect from a bunch of voters who couldn't also neglected to award Tree of Life anything. Graphic and bordering on the melodramatic at times, Shame (2011) isn't easy to watch but neither are people who struggle on the edges of sanity. Ready to step into dysfunctional shoes? Then, I can't think of a better film from last year. Unwilling to view for fear of being contaminated? Then remember that the title of the film is Shame for a reason. This isn't prurient display intended to inflame anything other than empathy. Shame also has one of the best final shots in 2011 cinema. No real extras which is basically inexcusable. But the film does look and sound dynamite.

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Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey DVD

Anyone with any affinity for the Muppets at all needs to see this. Heck if you just like to dream big Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey (2011) will tickle you hard- pun intended. This much heralded doc tells the story of Kevin Clash a young kid who seemed destined for the sort of success that only comes from being nice, hardworking, truly gifted and willing to learn. I'll go so far as to say that this should be required viewing in grade school and the younger the better, as Clash' humility and infectious sense of destiny combine to create the ultimate feel good you-can-do-it-too, experience. A small caveat would be that the film's short runtime (less than 90 minutes) offer scant opportunity to explore the effect being Elmo had on Clash as a husband and father. We hear only too briefly about his constant absence. Extras you get on this DVD include several featurettes exploring everything from Clash mentoring other young people to the Sundance Q and A.

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Chinatown BluRay

Only saw this a few years ago and it left my jaw on the floor. I remember feeling like I had been told the world's grimmest joke and been left to decide whether to laugh or cry. Director Roman Polanski directs Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, a mountainously evil John Huston and a host of other great character actors in a chilling modern noir that also happens to be laugh out loud funny. Would be gumshoe good-guy J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) gets in way over his head during what should be a routine case becoming a punching bag in the process. This is cinema for the ages not just because of the way Polanski and cast play with cliches but because of the way they craft them into an unforgettable tragic, even horrifying yarn. There's stuff about evil in here but there's also a lot about naive te and that's the stuff I find scariest of all.

Nicholson was well known by this time but Chinatown (1974) is the film that launched him into superstardom. All of the many excellent extras from the 2009 "Centennial Edition" DVD are included here the best of which is a feature length commentary featuring David Fincher lobbing questions at screenwriter Robert Towne. A feature length doc titled Water and Power underscores just how wild the real life history of the ginormous aquaducts and pipe systems that give water to the desert city is. The few remaining featurettes examine the historical importance of Chinatown from the point of view of various industry professionals.

The pic and audio quality here is a definite upgrade. But if you're a film grain fiend I can see how Chinatown would have been better left alone, film grain fully intact. It's a minor nit pick considering the generally excellent release and I'd highly encourage a purchase, especially for first time viewers of the film.

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Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol Blu-ray/DVD Combo +Digital Copy

This was even better the second time around. Spectacular goofy, action-driven fun from start to finish makes this, in my mind, the best of the Mission Impossible films (and I'm a real fan of the first one). The Dubai sequence alone is breathtaking but by the time you add in the sense of humor and absolutely spot on fight choreography the only question is how much of an action snob you are. Me? I like it mainstream, indie, you name it. This is also the least annoying of the MI flicks treating Ethan Hunt and company as what they are, genre cliches. But though winks abound this isn't quite satire as the sense of danger to Hunt and his team is palpable throughout. This is also Simon Pegg's best cinematic turn since Paul (2011). Tech heads will find the audio and pic breathtaking. The extras are good. The many lengthy featurettes can be watched picture in picture and Brad Bird provides optional commentary on about 15 minutes of deleted scenes. I still would have preferred a straight commentary.

If I had to pick one thing to love most about this movie it's the grin inducing wonderment I feel at the thought of Brad Bird nailing this project so hard. The days when anybody ever wondered if the man would be recognized for his talent are long over and here he takes a really fun franchise and breathes huge life into it. MI III wasn't bad at all but this film may well be an American action classic.

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The Wicker Tree BluRay

I watched it twice. The first time with somewhat lowered expectations but a real desire to connect with it on it's own terms. The second time was in hope that I may have missed some of the comedic edge. Final verdict? This was quite simply one of the worst films I've seen this year. The Wicker Man (1973) is a genre classic pitting competing worldviews against one another in a slow-but-sure build to a horrifying finish. Remade in 2006 and starring Nicolas Cage the film was badly re-envisioned as a feminist piece but still managed to generate some ideological complexity and campy charm. This version has absolutely nothing to recommend it. Performances are amateurish at best from the two leads and the rest of the more experienced cast is lost in the trying to bring the bad writing to life. Worst of all this is a movie that, unlike the original, has nothing new or worthwhile to say about it's subject, religion. Video is okay but not spectacular. Sound fares a lot better. Extras are sparse. For once the lack of an audio-commentary is welcome. Any attempt to explain this would be horribly embarrassing for all concerned. There is twelve minute behind the scenes featurette and about 15 minutes of deleted scenes.

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Sleeping Beauty DVD

Easily the strangest film I have seen in a while this bold rethinking of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale is most definitely not for kids but thinking adults who are able to handle the erotically charged content are likely to find themselves challenged on the subjects of desire and the need to move past objectification in human relationships. Emily Browning bares all for the role of Lucy a young college student whose lackadaisical attitude towards sex extends as far as using a coin toss to decide whether to hook up with a stranger. After taking a job as a lingerie waitress she is offered an opportunity to become a Sleeping Beauty which entails being drugged and offered as a passive sexual object for people she will never meet. Inevitably she begins to long for this forbidden knowledge. What she discovers is a deeply unsettling truth about herself and the nature of physical love but that revelation may come too late to salvage what is left of her relationships in the real world.

There are no extras here which seems a sad shame for a film produced by Jane Campion, especially a film as compelling as this. Sleeping Beauty (2011) is gorgeous to look at on top of it all. What should be titillating never is. Instead the casting of Browning in the lead is a compelling idea all on it's own. The child actress turned starlet was last seen in the film Suckerpunch (2011) which offered a bone-headed, ham-fisted and disingenuous take on female empowerment. Here Browning is in the hands of a narrative and a director (Julia Leigh who also write the novel that became the basis for the excellent The Hunter (2011) last year) that have much to say. This is highly recommended.

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Camelot BluRay Book

Book packaging nice. Movie, very, very silly. You have to an absolutely hopeless romantic not to giggle an awful lot when watching this ultra foofy version of the sixties musical. The marvelous musical numbers do save this from being just another counter culture relic and they are buttressed by a stunning cast that includes Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero in the lead and character actors like Lionel Jeffriess and David Hemmings in supporting roles. But Camelot (1967) is a creature of it's time and at three hours viewers had better count on a full immersion flower child free love baptism. It Ain't Hair but it ain't Oklahoma either.

Should you upgrade? I would. As always the book packaging is nifty, and there is a solid new commentary track with film critic Stephen Farber that runs the entire length of the film. I tried comparing the extras package here but couldn't find specs on the old SE. What I did find leads me to believe this is original material for the most part. It's not a ton of stuff. You get a thirty minute vintage promotional TV special, a well done featurette on the end of the mogul system in Hollywood ( of which Camelot played a large part), five separate theatrical trailers and a CD featuring four tracks from the film.

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Road Racers BluRay

Is it possible to love a filmmaker and yet not love most of his films? Robert Rodriguez has been living the dream for a while now and in that time he's given us a couple of undisputed classics. Sin City (2005) is, for me, easily his best film. Spy Kids (2001), The Faculty (1998), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and El mariachi (1992) are great genre romps. But I could take or leave anything else in his catalogue except for maybe his contribution to Grindhouse, Planet Terror (2007). Why? The guy has, like a lot of filmmakers been content to play with his tools, ending up with movies that are about as enjoyable as they were to make in the first place. Road Racers falls cleanly in the category of worth seeing without really being anything very memorable. This is early nineties tongue in cheek action stuff.

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Review: THE DICTATOR Not Altogether Great, But Still Retains Power

Tue, 15 May 2012 18:21:32 -0500

Here we have a fish-out-water story which transports the protagonists from their far-away homeland, to New York City. The CG may not be the best, and it plays more than a bit blue. No, I'm not talking about THE SMURFS, although the argument could be made that the lead in this film bears certain similarities to a cartoon. This is THE DICTATOR - the latest character-driven comedy from Sasha Baron Cohen. Once again, we are given further proof of Cohen as the Peter Sellers of our day - in more ways than one. Like Sellers, Cohen has a certain fearlessness, deriving from his clear need for complete immersion into his characters. He is chameleon-like; his timing - even on lesser jokes - is impeccable. His characters (Ali G, Borat, Bruno, and now dictator Aladeen) are as deeply flawed as they are eventually sympathetic.

Blu-ray Review: THE GREY Is Surprisingly Light On Wolf Punching

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:33:25 -0500

The characters stranded with Liam Neeson among the wilds of mountainous, snowy Alaska are a motley crew of criminals, the lost, and the broken whose choices in life have led them to the very the end of the continent, and through fate, have found their lives in more desperate circumstances still after a harrowing plane crash. I suspect if you asked any of them why there were now forced to make a southbound trek from the wreckage of their flight towards what they hope will be safety, at least a couple of them would attribute it to a well-deserved hell (or at least purgatory) for lives poorly lived.

But making his characters suffer, bringing them to some great epiphanies about their lives or some sudden change isn't what The Grey director Joe Carnahan seems especially interested in. While undoubtedly the six men making the journey for survival (and that number is always dwindling, dwindling) have their share of sins to answer for, it's not really how they lived that concerns the Narc director, but how these men face death and die. And death is around every corner: from the threat of starvation, through exhaustion, through sheer stupidity and fear, and of course, from the ever-present wolves that begin stalking our cast even as the flames of their wreckage still lights up the night.

And the whole thing is so grim, and full of hurt, and grief, and there's a strange poetry to the rhythm of it--the men walk, they talk, they occasionally fight the wolves and the elements (and each other) and they die. Neeson's character Ottway, a crack shot responsible for clearing the area around the oil rig clear of wolves knows the animals and he knows death. He's there in many cases to guide the other actors to their ends, soothing them in those last minutes. Ottway's narration throughout the film comes from a letter he's written to his wife and given what the movie is about and the hangdog expression his character wears throughout, it's clear that death isn't done with him yet.

As shot by DP Masanobu Takayanagi, the wilds of Alaska (well, British Columbia standing in for Alaska) are imposing, the trees, the mountains, the cold and weigh down on the characters. It's an imposing movie to look at. As for the wolves, we hear them more than we see them, growling and snarling in the dark and off in the distance. They're a less successful element of the movie, most of them onscreen poorly-constrasted CG creations (it's the color, which is too vivid against the snow and the grain of the movie).

Again, there's a poetry to the whole movie that upends what could easily be a simple survival movie, a bloody thing about men fighting wolves, each other, and the elements. The Grey takes its time to watch these men struggle (and fail) to survive and there's a kind of beauty in that. Don't go into it expecting Neeson to give you another one of the tough guy roles he's been unexpectedly given since Taken--this isn't that movie. It's something else, something terrible and more interesting besides.

Special Features

The disc includes deleted scenes and feature commentary by director Joe Carnahan and a couple of his cohorts making the movie. Carnahan jokes that they're drinking whiskey during the viewing, and there's a certain amount of on-air score settling going on that leads me to believe he wasn't joking so much. Carnahan is candid about making some of the tough calls to get the movie cut so it has just the right tone, alludes to tensions on the set, and generally treats the commentary less like a guide to the making of The Grey and more a series of alternately fond and angry recollections.

The Disc

This is a modern studio film (albeit with a slightly lower than normal budget) so you can be sure that it looks good. Carnahan goes for a slightly grainy look which makes the image feel extra textured on larger screens. The effect is scaled back for nighttime scenes avoiding grain storms. It's a good-looking disc.

The Grey is available on DVD and Blu-ray now.

Udine 2012 Review: UNBOWED

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:30:00 -0500

In June of this year, two Korean actors will be feted at the famed Grauman's Chinese theatre on Hollywood Blvd., where they will have their hand and footprints cast in the pavement; the first Asian performers to be honoured in such a way. One is Lee Byung-hyun who, rather than being one of the nation's best or most long-standing thespians, is the one with the highest international profile. He is making a name for himself in the US industry and will soon be seen in G.I. Joe 2 and then the sequel to Red (2011). In fact, the former will be opening mere days following the aforementioned ceremony so his selection does smack of opportunism.

However, the second star has all the hallmarks of greatness that such a distinction would indicate, and then some. Ahn Sung-ki is a legend in the Korean film industry and is probably its most respected star. One of his earliest roles was in Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960) and he starred in a series of classics starting in the 1980s, such as A Fine, Windy Day (1980), Im Kwon-taek's Mandala (1981), Whale Hunting (1984), Park Kwang-su's Chilsu and Mansu (1988), The Taebaeck Mountains (1994, also Im Kwon-taek), Lee Myeong-se's Nowhere to Hide (1999) and many, many more. Even now he is still one of the country's top working actors and earlier this year he proved that he could still draw in the crowds just as well as anybody. He has won the Grand Bell Award (the Korean Oscar equivalent) no less than six times but he seems almost certain to pick up his seventh accolade later this year for his latest performance.

Following its release earlier this year during the lunar day holiday, Unbowed met with much the same reaction as last year's Silenced. They were both incendiary courtroom dramas based on real events that became big commercial and critical hits while also serving to open up long overdue national dialogues about Korea's justice system and its rampant cronyism. In fact, in the space of just a few months there were three high profile Korean courtroom dramas that connected with audiences, the other being The Client (2011), itself a strong feature which also alluded to problems in the country's legal system but was mostly a generic (and fictional) piece.

Kim Kyeung-ho (Ahn Sung-ki), a university mathematics professor, was ousted from his position in the mid-90s for insisting that an incorrect question on the institution's entrance exam be removed. Following protracted and ultimately fruitless trials and appeals he found himself, in 2007, aiming a crossbow at a judge outside his home. Unbowed chronicles the court case that followed and highlights the broken legal system in Korea through this true story.

Chung Ji-young is most well know for making a few war films in the early 1990s, such as The South Korea Army (1990) and White Badge (1992), and Unbowed is his first feature in 14 years. The industry has changed a great deal during his absence yet his film is vivid and burns with urgency. Chung keeps things relatively simple from a mise-en-scène standpoint yet his unobtrusive and effective style leaves the film in the hands of its strongest elements: the excellent cast and brilliant script.

Ahn Sung-ki is perfect for this role, there's really no other word for it. He is absolutely convincing as a fiercely intelligent and pragmatic man driven to the edge and his standoffs with the cold judge (Moon Sung-kun, equally formidable) are intense and cathartic. Though Ahn has done some great work in the last 15 years, this turn his reminiscent of his powerful roles in the socially conscious films of the 'Korean New Wave' from the 80s and early 90s. He spends almost the whole film handcuffed and sitting down yet he is magnetic, his performance is, just like his character, passionate and galvanised.

The film's plot is naturally dialogue-heavy and requires a lot of context but the script manages to succinctly bind the many pieces together into a seamless 100-minute narrative. The complex legal machinations of Professor Kim's legal debacles are relayed in a remarkably clear fashion without ever being toned down. The film's pacing is fast but it never feels rushed yet it is the dialogue is the scenario's greatest asset. Like all of the best courtroom dramas, such as Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Unbowed is the kind of successful rendering of a dense and complicated subject that makes you feel a little smarter after having seen it.

Korean viewers connected with the film in a big way earlier this year and a lot of that had to do with its depiction of current social ills, which are in desperate need of redress. But in the end the success of Unbowed is entirely of its own making; it is an invigorating and electrifying work and there hasn't been a better legal thriller in years.

Blu-ray Review: DEMONS 1 & 2 Steelbook (Arrow Video)

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:35:33 -0500

Demons.

In 1985, Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava put together what is probably the greatest of all Heavy Metal horror films, Demons. Sure, other films have focused more on the music, and there are no musicians or bands in Demons, but the atmosphere, the pacing, and the attitude is clear, this is a heavy metal movie. Written by Argento and directed by Bava, the film is a blast of gooey fun that encompasses all that was great about '80s horror. There are fantastically outdated outfits, flashy music, and, best of all, plenty of practical gore and creature effects to keep the kiddies squirming in their theater seats. Demons is a classic, and if you don't agree, we can take it outside.

When a young girl is approached by a weird, silent dude in a shiny metal mask with free passes to an unnamed film in a deserted movie house, who is she to say no? So begins our descent into Hell. The sparse crowd at the Metropol, all lured by the promise of a free film, is soon swept up in a wave of demonic possession, not the cutesy kind where you lay in your bed, puke, and spin your head around, but the nasty kind where you turn into a crazy goblin and attack your friends. Little effort is taken to flesh out the characters, however, we do get to see plenty of flesh ripped out of them as the film rolls along. This is not a film about emotions or dread, this is a film about blood, guts, and neon green puke, and I like it.

Demons is easily Lamberto Bava's best film. He hasn't approached this level of success since, however, if this is the legacy one has to leave, I think I'd be satisfied. With help from some regulars from Argento's early '80s films, Bava makes his mark on the horror world boldly. Besides writer/producer Dario Argento, this production features the composing work of Claudio Simonetti of Goblin (Deep Red), who does a brilliant job matching the aesthetic of the film, and the F/X mastery of Sergio Stivaletti, who was fresh off of a triumphant performance in Argento's Phenomena. That being said, the vast bulk of the talent in Demons is clearly behind the camera, and not in front of it.

The acting in Demons is pretty much universally mediocre. However, any fan of '80s Italian genre cinema will be aware that with most of the films boasting international casts, there was almost always a major language barrier on the sets. The same seems to the the case with Demons. Even though the spoken language on set was clearly English, the cast seems to struggle, and at times the film devolves into forced melodrama. However, they are being chased by snaggle-toothed demons, so I'm willing to give it a pass as long as the film delivers the creeps.

Honestly, Demons is far from perfect, and if I were grading on a scale to match serious films, it would fall somewhere near the bottom, but Demons has something that most serious films don't, fun. The film is riotous fun, and it starts with the opening credits and goes right on through the closing credits, there is not a minute of screen time wasted, and that's how a film should be. The combination of the talents behind the scenes makes for a wonderfully enjoyable film that rightfully holds a place in the pantheon of '80s horror, and Arrow Video has done it up right!

Then there's Demons 2. The less said about the sequel, the better. While not a disaster on Return of the Living Dead Part 2 scale, it certainly marks a sharp drop off in quality. The very contained logic created for the creatures in the first film is strained, and there seems to be no forward motion in the plot. I know, plot is often less important in these films than action, but in its attempt to feel claustrophobic, Demons 2 abandons tension for the sake of pacing, and I just found it pretty boring. Claudio Simonetti and his heavy metal compatriots are replaced by the new wavey sounds of Simon Boswell (Santa Sangre), and a host of post-punk bands, who add little to the proceedings. The most fun I had with the film was the ridiculous '80s party clothes and soundtrack, but once the actual demons appeared I lost interest. It should be the other way around. It wasn't.

The Discs:

This steelbook from Arrow Video contains two Blu-ray discs, one for each film, with their accompanying video extras. Video and audio quality for the two are very similar, so I'll combine the reviews for brevity's sake. The video looks fantastic. While I was initially taken aback by the lack of color saturation I was used to seeing with the contrast boosted DVD presentations, it dawned on me that this color palette was probably more accurate. The image isn't dull, but it is less garish than I'd seen before. On the other hand, the image sharpness and texture makes a huge leap up from SD, with depth and texture that looks quite astounding. There is evidence of natural looking grain, and ample fine detail, especially when it comes to Stivaletti's creature effects, which look good enough to reach out of the screen. A very pleasing video presentation.

The audio department is more complicated, though no less impressive. The Italian and English language dubs are different enough that they warrant inspection. The Italian dub has the background score and music tracks much higher in the mix than the English dub. This has the effect of heightening the tension and making the film feel as though it is paced even tighter than it actually is. The English dub focuses more on the dialogue, which pushes the music into the background. My initial thought was that perhaps the Italian track is just louder overall, but on closer inspection, the dialogue is mixed at the same level on each, which means that the music was intentionally given a bump on the Italian track back in 1985. There are also a couple of different music tracks on the different dubs, something I didn't expect to hear! For a film that relies so heavily on music for its atmosphere, Arrow Video did a marvelous job with the sound, and both audio tracks are huge and sound great!

Oddly, while there are several video based extras on the discs, not all of them deal directly with Demons. The first is another in the continuing series of Dario Argento interviews that Arrow and High Rising have featured on all of their Argento discs. Another Demons extra shows Claudio Simonetti talking about his score for the film and how important it was to the feel of Demons. I'm not usually a big fan of these guys tooting their own horns, but in this case, he's right. Without Simonetti's score, Demons is another, probably inferior, film altogether. The last extra focused on Demons specifically is an interview with Sergio Stivaletti, who is happy to talk about his time on the production, which was great and provided some classic creature get-ups and gore gags. There are also a couple of pieces with Luigi Cozzi, who loves talking about horror in general and Argento related films specifically. Lastly, each disc features audio recollections of the film, moderated by High Rising. These aren't so much running commentaries as extended interviews. The participants are listed below, I was less engaged by these than I could have been, but for the right fan they are gold.

The finished product also features a booklet with writing from Calum Wadell, but this was not available for review.

If you were worried about the Blu-ray presentation of Demons, consider your fears debunked. Arrow Video have postponed and postponed this release hoping to get it just right, and this time they've succeeded. This is the best image quality from them on an Italian film in a LONG time, and I am thoroughly satisfied. Highly recommended!

Be aware that Arrow Video's Blu-ray presentation of Demons is, as reported, locked to Region B

HotDocs 2012: PUSHWAGNER Review

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:00:00 -0500

An aging Norwegian pop artist, Hariton Pushwagner, is the subject of this larger-than-life documentary, directed by Even Benestad and August B. Hanssen. And it's a great doc about an eccentric artist, rivaling Crumb in its charm and scope.

It is clear from the beginning, as this pint sized, chain smoking, always inebriated man lets us know just who is in charge; he dictates the first scene of the film, "Ok, it starts with me reading a book, now you ask me a question 'what are you reading Push?' and I just hold up the book over my face like this." We soon find out that there is no need to cover his face. Resembling Harry Dean Stanton on a bad day, his face, devastated by years of drug abuse and alcoholism, is worth a thousand words. The book he is reading is Lord Byron's Selected Letters. He goes on saying that one has to live like he reads. "This will be a meta-movie, " he predicts.

Pushwagner's philosophy: one has to be living in action, not in theory, is what he realized late in his life. As the lawsuit proceedings against his former assistant, Morten Dreyer (in his muddled mental state, Pushwagner apparently signed a contract enabling Dreyer all the rights to his artwork in the 1990s), put much stress on his mental health and aging body, he knows that he hasn't got much more time left. His only regret in life is everything but the moment right now. His only pleasure left in life is the booze, fame, TV appearances and meeting adoring fans.

The main attraction of the documentary is of course, Pushwagner's idiosyncratic art: crudely drawn, yet extremely detailed Kafkaesque nightmares of banalities of everyday life. Benestad and Hanssen makes the most of these bright colored, repetitive figures and buildings to their advantage in computer animation sequences such as the artist's best known work, Soft City.

A born exhibitionist, Pushwagner is not shy about his dark past. In one of the many hilarious sequences in the film, he eagerly shows the film crew around where he spent his nights in his homeless days- next to an air duct of a roof of some building. It kept him warm on winter nights. He loses his trace of thoughts in an impossibly tiny shack where he used to sleep. He and the team also reenact his collapse from a kidney failure and subsequent hospitalization. But it has a lot of tender moments too. A footage of him visiting the deathbed of his long time mentor/collaborator, novelist Axel Jensen is very touching.

Lack of dates and contexts surrounding the artist, unless you are Norwegian, it is perhaps hard to imagine the whole magnitude of the tragicomedy that is Pushwagner's life. But with loose, intimate and visually inventive storytelling with compelling hero, Pushwagner is a great entertaining documentary and the one to remember.

Dustin Chang is a freelance writer. His musings and opinions can be found in www.dustinchang.com

Review: Andrey Zvyagintsev's ELENA

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

Acclaimed Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (The Return, The Banishment) taps into the rich tradition of film noir, as well as the influence and cultural echoes of such diverse Russian forebears as Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Tarkovsky, in his latest work Elena, a superb slow-burn drama in which the peripheral details have as much impact as the main plotline. Zvyagintsev offers sharp, caustic social commentary on contemporary Putin-era Russia, where class warfare and the attendant divide between the haves and the have-nots prove to be not only insurmountable, but to have deadly consequences. Its impeccably composed, stark visuals lending a near-apocalyptic mood that permeates every frame, Elena leaves the viewer with a chill that lingers long after the end credits have rolled.

Beginning and ending with a shot of birds alighting on a branch outside a palatial, upscale Moscow apartment (just one example of how natural landscapes inform the human action throughout the film), Elena is named after its protagonist (played by Nadezhda Markina), a sixtyish woman living in that apartment who is married to Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov), a rich businessman. They met each other years before when Elena was a nurse and Vladimir was her patient; Elena's caretaker role has continued into their married life, in which her main job is to attend to her husband's needs, getting him out of bed and handling all the domestic duties. Though they outwardly seem to be a loving couple, this is belied by the fact that they sleep in separate beds, which make Elena as much a maidservant as she is a wife.

Elena and Vladimir both have adult children from their previous marriages, each with their separate problems. Elena's son Sergei (Alexey Rozin) is a dissolute layabout, living in a rundown tenement in the suburban outskirts of Moscow who depends on the financial largesse Elena manages to wheedle out of a grudgingly tolerant Vladimir. Sergei constantly bickers with his wife, usually over his equally aimless and undisciplined teenage son Sasha (Igor Ogurtsov); Sergei's lack of emotional maturity is neatly represented by the beer bottle that is constantly at his mouth, echoing the milk bottle in the mouth of his infant son. Vladimir is estranged from his daughter Katya (Elena Lyadova), whom her father terms a "hedonist," similarly to Sergei lacking gainful employment, apparently spending most of her time indulging in one-night stands and alcohol.

The needs of Sergei and his family, whom Elena cares for fiercely and seemingly without judgment, form the catalyst for the main conflict of the film. Elena is very much concerned about getting her grandson Sasha into college so that he won't be drafted into the military, and perhaps harboring an unspoken wish to prevent him from ending up like his father. Elena repeatedly asks Vladimir for money to help him go to school, presumably to help bribe the right people, since Sasha won't get into a good school with his grades alone. Vladimir, openly resenting having to provide for Elena's family, puts his foot down, refusing this latest request for assistance. Later, when a health scare and a belated reconciliation with his daughter causes Vladimir to redraft his will, Elena contemplates taking drastic measures to protect her own future financial stability as well as her son's family's. Without giving too much away, if you've seen The Postman Always Rings Twice or such latter-day European re-imaginings as György Fehér's Hungarian film Passion (1998) or Christian Petzold's German film Jerichow (2008), you'll probably guess where this story is headed.

With now just three features to his credit, Andrey Zvyagintsev has catapulted himself to the ranks of the finest world directors, and certainly one of the best filmmakers to come out of Russia; Elena is his finest creation yet. Zvyagintsev and his collaborators, especially his brilliant regular cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, excel in every department; especially impressive is how Elena's cinematic frame teems with details that complement the main action and provide acerbic and disturbing commentary on modern Russian life. For example, television - sometimes heard, sometimes seen - is a constant backdrop to many interior scenes in the film. The inane cooking, dating, and advice shows that blare in the background are the new opium of the people, to borrow from Marx's famous maxim concerning religion, that prevent citizens from thinking too hard about their circumstances and the societal injustices and socioeconomic inequalities that have placed them there. (Not to mention the conditions that have allowed an authoritarian ex-KGB man have constant rule over Russia for what, with the latest election, will be close to two decades.)

Elements of the natural world, especially animals, exist as portentous symbols of the ominous fates awaiting the human characters; for example, the loud cawing of crows (never a good sign) is heard throughout. Late in the film, Elena's train passes by a dead horse on the side of the tracks, an unmistakable metaphor for the evil that Zvyagintsev sees shaping the universe he creates in Elena, as well as the world he sees around him. In his director's statement, he says that Elena gave him the chance "to explore the central idea of the early modern period: survival of the fittest, survival at any cost ... Ever-increasing disengagement and individualism mean that people start to behave more and more like a bunch of tarantulas in a jar."

I must mention two more elements that contribute to Elena's artistic success. Nadezhda Markina's central performance is a riveting and complex one that elicits both sympathy and revulsion with equal intensity, as we see what Elena is truly capable of when push comes to shove and the drive for self-preservation becomes an all-encompassing force, subsuming any sense of morality, scruples, or even love. The starkly understated, yet intense action of the film is propelled by Philip Glass's propulsive score, taken from his 1995 composition Symphony No. 3. This piece recurs throughout the film, mostly in scenes with Elena traversing the sharply disparate worlds of wealth and privilege represented by her rich husband's neighborhood, and the relative poverty of the crumbling high-rise inhabited by her son. Glass's music plays during an overhead shot of a newborn baby playing on an oversized bed, which becomes a deeply unsettling symbol of the unending cycle of dog-eat-dog materialism that Zvyagintsev so vividly, and unforgettably, depicts.

Elena opens at Film Forum in NYC for a two-week run from May 16 through May 29. It will also have a sneak preview at BAM tonight at 7pm as part of BAMcinématek's retrospective "The Next Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev." Zvyagintsev will have a Q&A after the 6:50pm screening of The Return on May 15, and after the 8pm screening of Elena on May 16.

Click here for more information and to purchase tickets for BAMcinématek's retrospective.

Click here for more information and to purchase tickets for Elena's Film Forum run.

TV Review: GAME OF THRONES S2E7, A MAN WITHOUT HONOR

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:45:24 -0500

[Twitch is reviewing Game Of Thrones on an episode by episode basis throughout the current season. Please note that these are being written from someone who has very deliberately NOT read the books so as to come to the story fresh and will not be reading the books until after the series concludes. Should you wish to compare and contrast the books to the show please be courteous to those who have not read them yet by limiting discussions to the timeline currently played out on screen as well.]

After turning in one of the most kinetic episodes of the season with last week's The Old Gods And The New, director David Nutter turns in a comparative snoozer with this week's A Man Without Honor. Too many strangely hanging plotlines and too little Tyrion Lannister - indeed, the general lack of events in King's Landing in general is perplexing given the major turn there last week - make this one of the the softer episodes of the year. Which is not to say there isn't still plenty happening.

The episode begins with Theon waking in bed, alone, in Winterfell and quickly learning that the two Stark boys - the biggest bargaining chips he has in his own bid for power - have escaped. And suddenly Theon goes from being able to present himself to his father as the triumphant conqueror to being the guy who couldn't keep a crippled child captive. And he is not happy. The chase is on, a chase that ultimately begins with two burned bodies being displayed in Winterfell in the first of what should be a number of tense cliffhangers in the episode. It's sadly the first of them to not quite work as it is entirely obvious that Theon has substituted a pair of orphan children from a farm the Starks passed in a bid to regain the appearance of power. The absence of half-giant Hodor and the wildling girl Osha in the hanging is a dead giveaway and Nutter's presentation doesn't give the audience any real reason to believe that these might actually be the Stark boys.

Jon Snow gets the real dog of the story lines this time, wandering dimly through the frozen wastes north of the wall with Ygritte, who quickly realizes that Snow is a virgin, mocks him for it and leads him into an ambush. Snow has had some great moments in the series but this storyline is continually exposing him as too stupid to live, really, but gosh does he ever have full, pouty lips. This is all leading to Ygritte and her people trying to recruit Snow to their cause, obviously, but unless Snow mans up and does something interesting soon this plotline runs the risk of becoming the equivalent of Twin Peaks' Donna and James - the bit you fast forward over to get to the good stuff. Again, the 'dramatic' cliffhanger moment - the ambush being revealed - lacks the punch it really should have.

The best bits this episode belong to the ladies: Catelyn Stark, Sansa, Arya, Daenerys and Cersei.

We'll begin with Catelyn. The military camp of Robb Stark gets a lot of screen time in this episode, particularly the pen where Jaime Lannister is being held captive. It's the first time Jaime has appeared on screen and he's looking rather haggard and somewhat despairing. So despairing that he kills a fellow captive - one of his own cousins - to lure in a guard and stage an escape. Which works for about five minutes before he is recaptured and dragged back through the camp where Robb's men are braying for his head. Enter Catelyn, forcing her own men back to protect Lannister - the only bargaining chip she has left to get her daughters back. Michelle Fairley gives a fabulously nuanced performance as a woman caught between conflicting urges here, particularly as Lannister taunts her over her dead husband's infidelity. This is the one cliffhanger that truly works this week thanks to Fairley's performance, Catelyn putting herself in a position where it appears equally likely that she may either offer herself up as a human shield to protect Lannister or simply kill him herself. We'll have to wait until next week to find out.

As for Arya, there is certainly no big action for the younger of the Stark daughters this week in Harrenhall but it does become abundantly clear that Tywin Lannister knows more about her than he has been letting on, the master of the Lannister clan pointing out openly that Arya's speaking patterns have given her away as a high born girl and not the stone mason's daughter she has been claiming to be. Does Lannister know the truth? He certainly could and what will Arya do now that she knows her position is not secure?

And then there's Daenerys. Again, on her own she's still a rather pouty girl prone to tantrums and demands but things just got interesting in Qarth. And while she may not be the most interesting character herself right now she is absolutely the catalyst. Seeing Daenerys' dragons as the key to some advancement of their own Pyat Pree - the creepy bald man from the House Of The Undying - has struck a deal with Daenerys' host Xaro. Pyat gets the dragons - and Daenerys to raise them - and Xaro gets to be king of Qarth. There's only the matter of the Thirteen - Qarth's ruling council - to deal with, which Pyat handles easily, sending projections of himself to slit all of their throats simultaneously. It's the second magical assassination of the season and there is obviously a whole lot more on the magic side to explore once Daenerys bows to the inevitable and heads to the House Of The Undying - where her dragons are being held - herself.

And then there is Cersei and Sansa, their stories tied together by the arrival of Sansa's first period. Why does this matter? It means Sansa can now bear Joffrey's children, which means it's now time for her to be married to the monster. And, strangely, seeing the young girl in this situation seems to awaken some humanity in Cersei, who first summons Sansa to her chambers to give her some surprisingly frank advice - love no-one but your children - before meeting with Tyrion - his sole appearance - for an equally frank and, honestly, somewhat despairing, conversation regarding what to do with Joffrey. He's out of control and mad with power. They both recognize it and suddenly it's not out of the question that Tyrion and Cersei may put aside their personal dislike of one another to depose the boy king. They're certainly not looking to make his life any easier.

Blu-ray Review: JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (Twilight Time)

Sun, 13 May 2012 22:20:58 -0500

The work of French fantasist Jules Verne has fascinated readers for over a hundred years. When I was young, probably around ten or eleven, I was a devotee of Verne's. I collected his better known works and read them over and over again, voraciously. His unique vision of the march of science turned men into explorers, and the great unknown into familiar territory in the minds of his readers. In other words, the works of Jules Verne are perfectly suited for adaptation to the silver screen, and many filmmakers have taken up the call over the years. Probably the most frequently adapted of Verne's books is Journey to the Center of the Earth, and this 1959 film version is undoubtedly the best known version of the story, with good reason.

Most people, even those who haven't read the stories, can surely glean some idea of the plot of the film from its title alone. Therefore I'm not going to give a plot synopsis, it seems a bit silly.

What is interesting to me is the choice of Journey as the story to which filmmakers attach themselves. It seems that with the progression of time, Journey to the Center of the Earth is probably the last remaining story that retains any shred of mystery. Verne's other major works, From the Earth to the Moon, Mysterious Island, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, were all written at a point in time in which their subject matter was still beyond the wildest fantasies of contemporary readers. However, in the years since we've gone to the Moon, charted every last inch of the Earth with the help of satellites, and sent men into the deepest crevices that the Earth has to offer. However, we've not sent a man to the Earth's core.

Modern science has a lot to say about what we would find on a journey to the Earth's center, and it doesn't look at all like what Verne describes. However, we can't prove it. All we have are measurements, charts, and Earth samples. This scientific evidence, though compelling, leaves just enough room in the imagination to go on the adventure with Professor Lindenbrook and his compatriots to see what is really down there. The center of the Earth is the final frontier, the last place that Jules Verne's stories took us that we haven't been able to go on our own. This is why the story is still so compelling, this is why we still make films out of Journey to the Center of the Earth, and this is why they are still thrilling.

Henry Levin's 1959 version was made in the golden age of science fiction filmmaking. The film stars James Mason, and young heartthrob Pat Boone as the explorers determined to find their way to the Earth's center. Journey features some very impressive production design, and offers up fantastic visuals to help illuminate Verne's ideas of the underground wonderland. In addition, Bernard Hermann's bombastic score is a marvelous thing to behold, even if it is interrupted occasionally to give Boone a chance to croon for the ladies. Though the film runs a bit long at nearly two hours, I was riveted the entire time.

One of the things I'd hoped to gain from this viewing of Journey to the Center of the Earth was to engage my son in my old obsessions, which has been a hobby of mine since becoming a parent. I wanted him to feel the wonder in watching Verne's story that I felt while reading it. Unfortunately for me, Journey ran a little bit too slowly, with no major action happening until nearly the second hour of the film, and he drifted in and out of interest, at least until the final thirty minutes. Maybe a film like this is a bit much to ask of a seven year old.

Later in the day, I took my boy to see the most recent Verne adaptation, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. I had no real hopes for this film, however, it did something amazing, it got my son interested in the stories that I so loved as a child. Today he went out with his grandmother and bought his own copy of Journey. I think our little warm up yesterday did what I wanted it to, and for that I thank Mr Levin and Twilight Time for reminding me how great these films and stories can be.

The Disc:

Twilight Time's Blu-ray presentation of Journey to the Center of the Earth looks pretty damned good. As with the recent Blu-ray edition of Bell, Book, and Candle, wide shots are a bit mushy, but not unduly so, however, closeups are fantastic. The image shows a healthy about of grain, and the colors are glorious. Even more of an upgrade than the video is the DTS-HD four channel lossless audio track, which gives Hermann's score the attention it deserves. I was blown away by the audio presentation on this disc, and have rarely heard any so good.

As usual, the extras on the disc are limited. Twilight Time does give us an isolated music score, which in this case is marvelous, as well as a trailer. There is also the wonderful essay from Julie Kirgo, which is always a treat and is only slightly secondary to the films when it comes to my anticipation of Twilight Time releases.

Twilight Time have released another gem in tip top form. Journey to the Center of the Earth doesn't have quite the action adventure feel of The Mysterious Island, but it is a great telling of a wonderful story. Definitely recommended.

Review: RISING STAR's Future Looks Bright

Sun, 13 May 2012 01:35:34 -0500

Rising Star is a romantic comedy that is written, directed and produced by Marty Lang, an independent filmmaker who is interestingly also a university professor of Film. One of the appeals of this film, at least for me, is therefore to see how Lang puts theories into practice. Pleasingly, Rising Star does not disappoint. It is light-hearted and unpretentious, unlike many of the romantic comedies coming out of Hollywood these days.

Most of the film takes place on one Saturday. When the two lead characters, Chris (Gary Ploski) and Alyza (Emily Morse) travel from place to place after meeting each other and starting to fall in love, audiences get treated to a mini-tour around Connecticut, which includes both the attractions such as the famous Mark Twain House & Museum, and the neighborhood including the poorer areas. Having great company always makes travelling more fun, and the likeable Chris and Alyza certainly make the experience a joyful one.

It is ultimately the witty conversations between the two characters, however, which make the journey worthwhile. One topic discussed that should resonate strongly with many viewers is finding the balance between work and passion. There are many lines of brilliance in the dialogue, thanks to a clever script written by Lang himself, and it certainly feels as if he has projected himself into the character of Chris.

Gary Ploski and Emily Morse are fantastic as the film's leads. While playing two characters that are very, very different in their personalities and views of the world, the chemistry between them is great. In support, Michael Barra, who plays Chris' co-worker Brent, offers a genuinely funny performance.

Also worth a mention is the fantastic music by Thomas Varga, and the film will probably benefit from featuring a couple more songs in its first half. Do make sure you stay behind when the end credits roll if you don't want to miss the hip-hop performance by rapper '3XL'.

Rising Star is a wonderful independent film that audiences should find breezy, enjoyable and disarmingly charming. It may just be the most relaxing way for anyone to spend a couple of hours in a lazy afternoon.

Rising Star has had two well-received screenings at Seattle True Independent Film Festival. Check out the official website and Facebook page for more screening information.

BREAKING: It has just been announced that Rising Star won two Awards at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival, including Best Premiere for drawing the biggest audience and Best On-Screen Romance. Congratulations to Marty Lang and his entire cast and crew for these well-deserved Awards!

FULL MOON TRILOGY: Swanberg flies to Toronto to talk DIY filmmaking

Sat, 12 May 2012 13:04:20 -0500

There was all this talk during the early days video revolution that filmmakers would be freed from the constraints of a Hollywood system in order to make small, independent films. During Hearts of Darkness, shot midway through one of the most logistically complex films ever made, Coppola famously pines for a day when some young person will take cinema by storm using digital tools, upending traditional modes of narrative and production.

Over the last several years, Joe Swanberg has been churning out intimate, self-reflexive films at an astonishing rate. Some have championed this "DIY" style, celebrating the immediacy and intimacy of the presentations, Coppola's dream come to life. Others have dismissed them as poorly lit, poorly composed, badly acted pieces of narcissistic, masturbatory garbage.

"It's just another movie where you're complaining about making movies" - Kris Swanberg in the closing scenes of her husband's film The Zone

Having just screened the films named as part of his "Full Moon" trilogy, at first glance I was certainly leaning towards the later conclusion. There's an unrelenting amateurishness about most of the film on first blush - clunky and stilted dialogue, repeated themes of men drinking beers and women bearing their breasts, while shot after shot sees dreary looking people sitting in front of their Macbook's as they use FinalCut to slice yet another take on life in Hipsterville.

We get loads of full frontal nudity, occasionally from both genders, with a group of young men and women lacking the figures or looks to be considered "movie star" attractive by mainstream Hollywood standards. Shot with a grungy, lurid way that's fitting for the aesthetic of rabid anti-establishment storytelling, this it the stuff that the majority of film audiences would utterly abhor.

To jump into the "meta" cesspool that some would expect these films to have crawled out from, the moniker of the director seems quite fitting. On the one hand, this Swan gives us Ugly Duckling cinema, unabashedly dreary, with poor sound mixes, awkward compositions with interminable closeups that are meant to illicit reactions of anything from lust to ambivalence. Similarly, taking the other half of his name, for some this is the very thing that is an antidote to mainstream filmmaking, a superficial looking looking thing floating in an ocean of mediocrity that's powerful enough to sink even our most titanic of cinematic expectations.

Yet because of some strange, hypnotic effect the films end up being far more enjoyable as you watch several of them in a row. The repetition from film-to-film makes you recognize that moments that seem meandering or improvisatory are now explicitly intentional, echoing from film to film. Once you get past some of the more egregious elements, there's a compelling, almost addictive neurosis that ties the whole thing together.

Summarizing effectively such languid, some would say meandering films would a fool's errand, but you can sort of tease a general narrative thread out of all of them. Silver Bullets is ostensibly about an actress cast to shoot a werewolf movie. Her boyfriend, played by Swanberg, is also a filmmaker, jealous of her connection with the horror director she's becoming close to (played by another indie darling, Ti West).

The complicated sexual dynamics that occur between actress and director, the lies actors and directors tell one another as they exploit the emotions of their collaborators, as well as the neurotic uncertainty plaguing competing filmmakers is spelled out through a series of shots set on couches and beds, in wooded areas, makeup rooms and basement rec-rooms. This film has a unique and haunting score dominated by cellos, easily the most accessible and unreservedly enjoyable part of the work.

Art History may be the best of the lot, with a concise narrative revolving around the shooting of a sex scene, both both actors and directors finding their own feelings compromised by the intimacy of the shoot. Dreamlike shots of swimming naked people, harshly lit scenes of fucking, and trying to maintain professionalism in the face of lust and envy sees Art History as the most eloquent exemplar of the themes share by these three films, but probably the least immediate. As a stand alone film I fear it would be a frustrating experience full stop, but in the context of the other two its undercurrents become more clearly understood.

Finally, The Zone plays the film-in-a-film cards with a few decks added. Here we've got a group of actors gathered together, starting out with a prayer that they're awkwardly directed off camera to participate in. We then have a series of sexual interactions, more showering, beer drinking and record playing, more miserable people making films within the film for reasons that are never explicitly expressed.

The motivation for making the films seem entirely tacit - the director apparently has some unexpressed drive, and the actors are caught within the perversity of the situation, either oggling their costars or breaking down their uncertainties on screen. The last scene of The Zone\ references Art History, with Swanberg's wife explicitly asking if the director is repeating himself. She then goes on to ask the central question raised by all these films: "Was that the point, or is that just what happened?" By the time we get the third step away from the core, Swanberg is toying with the comforting notion that there are actors being themselves, and then performing within the major work. By forcing the audience into questioning the times the film uses the tools and tonality of documentary, Swanberg's actual directorial intent is revealed.

The numerous echoes that ring throughout each film will be for some evidence of conceptual continuity, while for others they'll be simply evidence speaking to a paucity of original ideas. Again, on closer examination, each shower scene, each awkward scene of coupling, speaks to a slightly different facet of the same perturbing discomfort. It's as if each film were in some ways drafts of the same script, stories told in slightly different ways yet speaking to a shared common notion.

Each film demonstrates that feigned or acted intimacy captured on film may have an undercurrent of truth, that one gives themselves to another person in small, compromising ways even while under the aegis of "pretend". Similarly, the documentation of true feelings, of actual events occurring both on and off set, is just as constructed and emotionally manipulative. The meta-ness of the presentations in fact reinforces the artificiality of it all.

Often, the films play as if we're watching rushes, those scenes normally left on the proverbial cutting room floor in more conventional films. We get an admixture of these glimpses of process with the occasional brazen, unabashedly cinematic moment, a collision which is occasionally, much to my surprise, quite effective.

The films are suitably concise, each running just over an hour. Cerebral and calculating, there are brief moments of violence or kindness that break through and affect the audiences in ways that conventional fiction films strive to. It's when we ignore the constant emphasis on the lying nature of the camera and performances that are being paraded in front of our eyes that the films manage an emotional connection with the work. We are occasionally startled at a given outburst, sucked into the awkward warmth of an embrace, and this is when these films work best.

The New York Times considers Swanberg's films to be "insufferable", while even some of those supporting these works consider the likes of Art History to be "inconsequential" and evocative of Kevin Smith's Zack and Miri. For such staunchly miserable films, filled with angst and feigned intimacy, it's much more easy to completely dismiss the lot as the mere playthings of actor/director's with too much time on their hands. They play on first blush as overly earnest, student-film-level character pieces with plenty of voyeuristic kinkiness to make them seem "arty".

Yet I find myself after living with these three works, back to back, being sucked into the world that Swanberg is creating. I should hate these films, by any rational measure, yet there's something inviting in the cloistered presentation, as if watching you become part of the small group crafting these works, part of some tribe teasing out new ways to tell stories by having some kind of anti-narrative. By the time I finished the third film, I found myself caring about the emotional state of these actors, obsessing about camera shadows that interrupt moments of intimacy. I'm left feeling awkward as characters seem to become too close to their fellow players, as I too am left emotionally engaged with the raw emotions displayed supposedly without filter, yet obviously filtered throughout.

Swanberg's chiseling away at something, railing against conventional notions of objectivity or simply toying with the tropes of Indie digital filmmaking, it's unclear. What is apparent is that when this topography is revealed, one begins to accept the rhythms and quirks of his storytelling still. Like abrasive jazz or the clusters of a contemporary orchestral score, order is seen from the chaos, and it becomes, if not exactly enjoyable, then at least something one can come to terms with.

These are not films one "likes", at best they can be appreciated as something different from what you're normally exposed to on a cinema screen. With an audience, they're sure to play even more strangely, the naked emotions and naked people will definitely cause some frisson with a open minded crowd.

These works are so derisive of the needs of conventional storytelling that they border on the solipsistic, yet they do avoid a number of pitfalls that would have removed any hook with which an audience could grab a hold of. Again, almost against every impulse, one finds themselves carrying about the pasty group of sulking actors and filmmakers, concerned about their well being and their neurotic, self-effacing ennui. Underneath the excessive intellectualizing and rabid smashing of the fourth wall we're left at crucial moments to care, to be startled by a particular reaction or glance at the camera.

For the brave or the foolhardy, for those open to the experiment or masochistic to embrace something outside their comfort zone, giving these films a chance may prove to be worthwhile. Try to forgive the apparent petulance of the seemingly tortured director and his manifest derision for his audience, you may just find moments of genuine, positive engagement with these works.

Take the opportunity to see them as parts of a whole, and I think you'll uncover something that in the end may very well lean towards the extraordinary. Or, you know, you might fucking hate these films as pretentious pieces of lifeless shit. Really, in many ways, I think both reactions are entirely appropriate, ideally felt at the same time. If there was a single word for holding feelings of both loathing and appreciation for a work, feelings that evolve throughout the experience of living with these films over their running times, then I'd choose to use it here.

Ultra 8 Pictures, CINSSU and Refocus co-present DIY Art & Life: A Day with Joe Swanberg at Innis Town Hall in Toronto. Tickets available here

Review: Ashvin Kumar's THE FOREST

Sat, 12 May 2012 02:50:01 -0500

The list of lauded short film directors who've fallen into obscurity after attempting the jump to features and failing to connect is a long and sad one. Ashvin Kumar, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his short Little Terrorist in 2005, will hopefully not meet that same fate. Kumar's long moth-balled debut feature, The Forest, is a tense thriller that not only delivers thrills, but also explores the psychology of its subjects in an entertaining and thankfully non-pedantic way. If The Forest is any indication of what the future holds for Ashvin Kumar, you can sign me up for his fan club right here and now.

The story begins with a familiar enough trope, a couple going through some marital issues decides to go on a getaway in the titular forest in an attempt to rekindle the fire between them. In a somewhat contrived but effective twist, they are met by and old flame of the wife, Radha (Nandana Sen), who happens to be an inhabitant of the forest and one of it's caretakers. The husband, Pritam (Ankur Prikal), isn't particularly fond of the arrangement, but is too wrapped up in his own machismo to think much of the conflict. Meanwhile, Arjun (Javed Jaffery), the intense ex is on the prowl, and will do whatever it takes to reclaim what he believes is rightfully his.

In the midst of the exposition, we are also informed that there is a man-eating leopard on the loose in the forest, which is convenient for the story, but not so convenient for the trio of competing lovers. When one of the local stewards of the forest is attacked and nearly killed, Arjun retrieves his barely living body and brings it back to the cabin in which they are all staying. The leopard has the scent of blood and is tracking his kill, but will the animal violence and jealousy inside the cabin claim its victims first?

Kumar's script is remarkably tight, and in keeping with I'm sure in a miniscule budget, the laserlike focus of the film turns what could be a silly premise into a genuinely gripping thriller. The Forest only features five named characters, and no scene ever includes more than four of them, this incredible management of limited resources leads Kumar to turn these characters, who could easily slip into stereotypes, to breathe a bit and evolve over the space of its brief eighty-five minute run time. When the ex-lovers are left alone together, and it ends predictably, the film could have devolved into melodramatic mush, but the introduction of the leopard into this lover's quarrel creates surprising alliances and enemies, though not in the way you might imagine.

The comparison between the animal nature of the leopard, who has been forced into hunting man through no fault of its own, and the animal nature of the troubled married couple and the sexual interloper is pretty obvious, but effective. Just when you think that the leopard is the thing which is the most deserving of our fear, the reptile brain induces jealous rage in Pritam, which leads us to wonder who the true mindless beast is in this story. No one is innocent in The Forest, and Kumar's ability to create real tension and weave as complex an emotional story as he does in such a short film is really very impressive.

I sincerely hope that this late release for The Forest, which was completed in 2009 but just saw release in India and on VOD around the world via Mela this weekend, sparks some interest in this filmmaker who obviously has some serious skill. The trailers for The Forest do not do it justice, especially for non-Hindi speakers like myself, but trust me when I tell you that this film is worth your time. I wish India made more thrillers like this, and hopefully someone will give Ashvin Kumar a chance to make that wish come true.

Blu-ray Review: THE WOMAN KNIGHT OF MIRROR LAKE (FUNimation)

Fri, 11 May 2012 22:44:34 -0500

If you would have told me fifteen years ago that Herman Yau would be among the most respected names in Hong Kong historical martial arts cinema, I probably would have laughed my ass off. However, here we are in 2012 and Yau has two pretty damned solid historical action dramas under his belt, Ip Man - The Legend is Born and now The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake. Don't get me wrong, when it comes to scale Yau has a ways to go to compete with the big boys like Wilson Yip, but the production value that he's able to put on screen is pretty damned impressive.

The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake takes on the story of one of the first and most prominent female revolutionaries in China, Qiu Jin, as she fights the good fight both against the Qing Dynasty and for gender equality. The story is split pretty evenly between her battles against the patriarchy of traditional Chinese society and her battles against the imperialist government, and both stories are quite competently told. The more engaging of the two stories, for me at least, is the story about the equal rights battle, since we've seen so many revolutionary films in the last decade from China. Qiu Jin (Huang Yi) challenges not only the traditional place of women in the home, but also gender roles on a larger scale, which is something a bit new for a film of this nature.

I mentioned above that Woman Knight may have a hard time competing on the scale of something like the Ip Man films, but it has something even a bit better in my opinion, it has flash. The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake felt, to me, like a throwback to the historical wu xia films of the late '80s and early '90s. I got the vibe of a Once Upon a Time in China from this film, with the historical material providing a basis upon which a fantastically entertaining kung fu epic could be laid. This was something that Yau's previous film, Ip Man - The Legend is Born, accomplished capably, and I think that his history in exploitation film works to his advantage here. If there's anything that's a crime in the sleazy Cat III films of Hong Kong's recent past, it's dullness, and this is a cardinal sin that Yau doesn't seem to know how to commit. The film moves fast, and even at a lengthy 115 minutes, it felt very swiftly paced, and that is crucial.

In addition to Huang Yi, the film has a fantastic supporting cast that boasts some of Hong Kong finest character actors and Yau veterans. The two most inviting faces for me were the ever present Suet Lam and the greatness that is Anthony Wong. Wong, in particular, turns in a perfectly low key performance as a local lawman sympathetic to Qiu Jin's cause but hamstrung by the government he represents. Suet Lam plays on the other side of the fence, attempting to arrest and convict Qiu Jin of anti-government activities. Both are solid as usual, and are good to see whenever they grace us with their presence.

The real star of the film, though, is the action, and Yau doesn't skimp on that. Huang Yi holds her own pretty damned well, and her main adversary, played by Xiong Xin Xin, is a force to be reckoned with. The pair weave their way through opponents both with bare hands and armed, and do so with fluid grace and powerful skill. Sure, there are others getting in on the fighting action, but once these two appear on screen, they are the draw, and they have some fantastic fights. I'm not sure exactly how much of the film is fighting, but it seems like a lot, and in this case, that's a good thing.

The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake is a very good film. I'm not sure that Herman Yau has made a great film in this vein yet, but if his progression from The Legend Is Born to Woman Knight is any indication, it isn't far off. Personally, I kind of miss the old sleazy Yau, but if the trade off is that we get fun films like Woman Knight, I'll take it.

The Disc:

FUNimation has put together another very good product for Herman Yau's newest film. Woman Knight looks and sounds great, as one would expect. The image is bright and contrasty, since most of the film is shot in broad daylight, there isn't my grain to be seen, but there is ample detail and it looks fantastic in motion. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Mandarin audio track is also pretty impressive. There are enough battle sequences to show off your speaker system to your friends, and plenty of oomph in the low end.

The main extra on the disc is a making of featurette. This short piece begins with some behind the scenes footage and graduates to some pretty fluffy interviews about how great it was to work on the film. Pretty standard stuff, nothing too in depth. There is also a trailer, so there's that.

In this case, the real draw is a fun action film with a lot to say. The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake shows Herman Yau as a director who continues to grow even after 20+ years in the business, and that's something to be admired. I dig it.

Udine 2012 Review: DANGEROUSLY EXCITED

Fri, 11 May 2012 17:02:06 -0500

After being in the doldrums for a few years, Korean cinema seems to have regained its stride as it rebuilds its reputation abroad. However, as much as I'm thrilled to see new Korean film festivals, on-demand ventures and even a free classic Korean film youtube channel, when it comes to Korean entertainment, the word on everyone's lips these days is k-pop.

Hollywood's Rihanna, Beyonce, Jay-Z, Usher and co. are getting some serious challenges from the likes of 2NE1, Girls Generation, Big Bang and BoA with their sharp moves, fresh threads and slick videos. The industry has featured in many recent Korean films, like the k-pop themed drama Mr. Idol (2011) and horror White: The Melody of the Curse (2011) and its stars are also making strides to the silver screen, such as Big Bang's Top in 71: Into the Fire (2010). Personally I don't really listen to pop music so k-pop tends to fall just outside my radar though even I am aware when someone like Rain goes to do his military duty! The sector is so big that it's hard to ignore it.

Koo Ha-jong's Dangerously Excited instead focuses on different styles of modern Korean music, vaguely labeled as 'indie' or independent, lest we forget that k-pop is not the only music in the land. It is a charming little film about a civil worker who takes pride in and excels at his job. One day his duties require him to evict an indie rock band from their apartment and following a series of events he winds up host to the young musicians and subsequently fills in for their bassist.

Yoon Jae-moon takes the lead in this film and though he is recognizable from a host of major recent Korean films (The Good, the Bad and the Weird, 2008; Mother, 2009), this is the first time I've seen him assume the principal role in a feature. He's a natural fit as the straight-laced office worker who treasures the order in his life and his performance never veers into caricature. Instead, his slight mannerisms and idiosyncrasies add expressive layers to a standard fish-out-of-water character.

The music in the film probably won't be considered 'indie' by most Western listeners, but it is still a welcome change of pace from the carefully fabricated songs from the more commercial k-pop scene. Though in the end, Dangerously Excited doesn't really seem to be a film about music, instead it works as a cautionary tale. Both from the point of view of its lead who, despite finding pleasure in something outside of his orderly and ordinary existence, is wary of upsetting the established social order for fear of reprisal, and the band who can't even find a place to live as they refuse to conform to social norms.

Yoon's protagonist is quite detailed but we don't learn much about the band members, who are symbolic rather than fully fleshed out. This inevitably means that it is a little difficult to care about their travails and this is to the film's detriment. Koo should either have made the film all about the lead or given the secondary characters more definition. Though speaking of co-stars there are a handful of very welcome cameos from some of the best actors in Korea who should be recognizable to any fans of Korean film.

Dangerously Excited made for very pleasant viewing and I look forward to Yoon as a lead in future films but I can't imagine that this one will connect with local viewers when it opens in Korea in July. Instead, just like the film's indie musicians, it may be viewed with apprehension by spectators, who will likely shun it in favor of the summer season's high profile offerings, both from at home and abroad. Nevertheless I do think that sophomore director Koo Ja-hong has potential as a strong storyteller and I hope he can hone his skills with his next outing.

Review: Calvaire (Personal Favorites #80)

Fri, 11 May 2012 05:10:22 -0500

Fabrice du Welz raised quite a few heads when he released Calvaire. Not only are Belgian horror films a rare commodity, for a freshman effort Calvaire felt surprisingly mature and focused. Clearly this wasn't some kind of semi-professional one-off, but a film that bared the director's lasting intentions. Genre fans were pretty disappointed when du Welz' follow-up (Vinyan) didn't turn out to be a straight horror flick, but at least they'll always have Calvaire to revisit.

Calvaire is one of the few films that get noticeably better which each consecutive viewing. The first time I watched it I found the first half of the film somewhat slow and uneventful, but knowing what is to come you'll find a lot of subtle (and often very funny) foreshadowing tucked away in those early scenes. Little moments of genius that betray the twisted second half of the film and make the first half of the film a lot easier to sit through.

Calvaire (or The Ordeal) is just what it promises to be for main character Marc Stevens, a low-ranking singer who travels between retirement homes and small fairs to earn a few bucks. Untalented folk like that actually make up a big part of our local "artists", Calvaire is du Welz' way to take revenge for their horribly constructed and badly worded attempts at music that bother unsuspecting people watching TV or trying to do grocery shopping.

After a short introduction deglorifying Marc's life as an artist we see how the poor man gets stranded in the middle of nowhere. A passerby directs Marc to the nearest inn where he can spend the night. The next morning Marc's van turns out to be beyond repair, so he is forced to spend the next couple of hours in company of Bartel, owner of the inn. After some idle chit-chat Bartel discovers Marc's profession, which brings back his own past as a stand-up comedian. A critical mistake as Bartel has trouble coping with the ghosts that lie buried in his memories.

To make sure Calvaire looked its very best, du Welz claimed the skills of now famous cinematographer Benoît Debie (Innocence, Irréversible, Vinyan, Enter The Void), without a doubt one of my favorite visual magicians. His work for Calvaire is superb, capturing the dreary and misty surroundings of the Belgian Ardens. There are some superbly shot scenes hidden away, particularly in the second half of the film. Not only the camera work itself, but also the use of color and light is sublime and help to set the ideal atmosphere for Marc's trying adventure.

Calvaire's soundtrack is a very solid affair, relying heavily on soundscapes and brooding ambient patterns. It really suits the film atmosphere, making the setting even more backwards and depressing (improbably as it sounds). There are a few vocal tracks (when Marc performs) which are spot on, then there is the now-famous bar scene that features one of the greatest songs ever to played on a badly tuned piano.

The acting too is A-grade. Laurent Lucas does a stellar job as the unfortunate Stevens, but its Jackie Berroyer that shines as Bartel. His facial expressions and subtle mannerisms really make his character a true sight to behold. He's a sick little puppy, but at the same time he has a certain air of sadness and loneliness that elevates his character above most horror icons. To top it off, there's Philippe Nahon making a small but noteworthy appearance as head of the local community.

Calvaire is not so much a true horror film as it features little gore, nor is it very tense or scary. Instead you get a truly amusing dark comedy where the main characters is punished for his artistic crimes. Stevens finds himself amongst a bunch of freaks and weirdos who provide the perfect setting for some absurd and pretty sick form of humor. The poor man goes through hell, but you can only smirk at the crap Stevens has to endure.

Not everyone is going to appreciate Calvaire's particular sense of humor, for some it may be a little too absurd at times (the midgets are a good example, so is the bar dance), but if it suits you then du Welz' film is easily one of the best in its genre. It's beautifully shot, consciously directed, perfectly acted and a perfect mix of a twisted backwards horror with a dark and nasty comedy. Fabrice du Welz may not be the most prolific of directors, but when he releases a film he makes sure it counts.