I don’t recall learning about the My Lai massacre in school. At least not in high school, during our study of the Vietnam War. It’s not terribly surprising, though. The American education system by and large doesn’t teach our nastiness or failings, our exceptions or hypocrisies. It teaches the grace notes and snow-capped peaks, and more or less lets students find the rest on their own, allowing the conservative punditry class to then take aim at the notion of broader truths by labeling them “liberal.”
For PBS’ American Experience series, writer-director Barak Goodman returns to the Vietnam War and the small village of My Lai, where in 1968 the blood of nearly 500 civilians was spilled by the hands of American soldiers. In My Lai, the infamous massacre is revisited in heart-crushingly direct fashion, and the result is a supremely relevant and indispensable historical document that showcases how morality can come unglued in combat.
Featuring new footage, uncovered documentation and compelling and exclusive interviews from both American soldiers who were on the ground during the event and innocent Vietnamese who watched their entire families get brutally slaughtered, My Lai takes viewers into the trenches of the Vietnam War, asking tough questions that America depressingly seems to revisit on an almost generational basis. In this case, the chief questions is what drove a company of soldiers — ordinary young men from all across the country — to commit the worst atrocity in American military history? Were they “just following orders,” as some later declared? Or did they crumble under the pressure of a vicious war in which the line between enemy soldier and civilian had been intentionally blurred?
Goodman lays out the facts of the event in straightforward, unbiased fashion, letting interviewees like photographer Ronald Harberle, squad leaders John Smail and Kenneth Hodges and team leader Thomas Turner tell their stories. Some, like Hodges, seem relatively unaffected by event, while others are obviously haunted. Regardless, what isn’t under dispute is the event’s subsequent cover-up (the company responsible for the terrible raid gone wrong was ordered not to speak to any press, and then sent directly into the jungle for 54 days), and the heroic efforts of a small group of courageous soldiers who broke ranks to first try to halt the atrocities — the heroic efforts of American helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who intervened and saved at least a dozen Vietnamese women and children from advancing U.S. soldiers, are something to ponder — and then bring them to light. A warning note to potentially squeamish viewers: some of the images in My Lai are graphic, but the descriptions are even more heartrendingly violent.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, My Lai comes to DVD in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound audio track. It has a static menu screen, and is divided into 10 chapter stops, but has no additional supplemental features beyond a clickable link that displays some information about the PBS web site. It’s a shame, because some sort of further talking head contextualization of the various parallels between this terrible incident and other American military cover-ups (just wait until Amir Bar-Lev’s The Tillman Story hits theaters this fall) would have been a knockout blow. As is, though, this powerful documentary definitely leaves an emotional mark. To order a copy of My Lai or other PBS titles, phone (800)PLAY-PBS, or click here. Alternately, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) C- (Disc)
Resisting the urge to open our conversation with, “Foursomes… I’m
something of an expert, and felt the geometry was off — the physics
too. Care to comment?,” I chatted by phone recently with 25-year-old Jillian Murray, the star, along with Ashley Parker Angel, Marnette Patterson and John Schneider, of Wild Things: Foursome, a characteristically twisty continuation of the sex-soaked and deceit-fueled series set in Southern Florida.
The movie’s story? When race car-driving hotel magnate Ted Wheetley dies
suddenly, his hard-partying son Carson (Angel) submits to a quickie
marriage to his girlfriend Rachel (Patterson, who’s apparently already
had the film scrubbed from her IMDb profile). A rape accusation follows
from the less privileged Brandi Cox (Murray, above), and the double-crossing and back-stabbing
slowly starts to unwind, as detective Frank Walker (Schneider)
investigates, seemingly unable to remember (or access any public records
that would show) the exact same things that have happened recently in
the tony little town of Blue Bay. My conversation with Murray is
excerpted below:
Brent Simon: So… what gives with Blue Bay? All this lying, murdering and sexual promiscuity…
Jillian Murray: It’s an interesting town, right? I want to live there.
BS: When you’re doing a film that basically has an airy sense of self, and a sense of its purpose, yet tracks so closely to the plots of its predecessors, and is in fact set again in Blue Bay, is there any benefit to going back and watching the other films in the series?
JM: I don’t think there is a benefit, no, because you’d be copying someone else’s character. I mean, it’s not the same characters, [and] it’s more stylized, but it’s (still) a lot of seduction and murder and wealth in Florida. Those are things that you don’t need to watch the other ones for. You’d be doing it just for the character stuff, and I don’t really want to get lost in what their ideas are of their characters. It’s easier for an actor to just focus on their own thing.
BS: Tell me a bit about your background. You moved out west when you were still a teenager, is that right?
JM: I was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. My father retired, so we moved to Arizona, and I went to high school there. And then the day I turned 18 I went to L.A. to try to act.
BS: Was that all surging adolescent confidence, or did a performance instinct kick in when you were younger?
JM: Actually, I wanted a career that had to do with being creative. I read a lot as a child, I loved novels and would create additional backstories for characters as I would read them. And then I saw that there was a casting cattle call, an open call, in Tucson for an independent film. I guess about 2,000 people went and I got my first audition, and started acting. I liked being able to let loose in an audition room. It just felt right. You got to do whatever you could, and if it worked great, and if it didn’t it was, “Oh well, on to the next thing.” It felt freeing.
JM: You have to have a very thick skin, because you’re going to be dealing with hundreds or thousands of people telling you, “Oh no, you don’t have the right look. You’re not pretty enough, or tall enough, or skinny enough, or whatever.” Right when you become insecure, you lose, you don’t book anything. Because you won’t be able to go into a room and convince someone that you’ll be able to carry a film and have them bet this many millions of dollars on you. So I think if you’re thick-skinned you can handle it. And you can get very close to booking something, and then the money falls through [which has nothing to do with you]. It’s definitely a roller coaster.
BS: And yet auditioning is a different animal from actually performing on set.
JM: It is. In auditioning, sometimes you don’t even have the script. You just have to make really strong choices, and assume this character may be doing this because of this (other thing). In a way it’s exciting when you put it all out there, because you don’t know what will happen.
BS: I understand Wild Things: Foursome was shot on location in Florida. Being in a place can sometimes help with the story, I imagine, but there are also a lot of distractions, especially if you’re close to the night life of Miami.
JM: Most of the films I’ve done have been on location… and it’s usually more beneficial. You can get sucked into this whole family with your cast and crew, so you’re very comfortable. There’s no L.A. distractions, no agent calling you and saying, “Well, you’re off on Saturday, so can you do this audition?” Miami was a little different because you do have the nightlife and you do have the beaches and the warmth, the sexiness of that whole state. So that was a little distracting, but you work with it. (laughs) I definitely did some Miami nightlife; I went on some boats on the weekend, hit the beach at night.
BS: I don’t know if the working title was Wild Things: Foursome, but —
JM: (interrupts) It was not. I’m not a fan of the title, I’ll just put it out there.
BS: Is that simply because then you have to have that conversation with your parents, telling them its title?
JM: Well, my mom knew about the film, and I told her what I was going to be doing. We’re not really that close-minded, or old-fashioned. I guess I’m young, so I might as well do [nudity] now if I’m going to do it at all. (laughs) But it was originally called Criss-Cross. And then it changed to [just] Wild Things. It was always the same company. They were implying it was going to be another Wild Things installment. And then probably after the fifteenth day of filming (we heard) the studio wanted to call it Foursome. Every single actor had a meeting in my hotel room, and we flipped out. We had people crying. It was bad. I was crying, I was really upset about it.
BS: I’m so sorry.
JM: But you know what — it’s just a name in the end. The movie’s not that bad. It makes it sound like some softcore thing, which it’s not. I understand as a title it’s catchy, and I hope it sells because of that. But I would have preferred a different name.
BS: When you’re doing a scene like the one that lends the movie its title, I imagine it’s important to establish a certain level of rapport with the actors, yet you don’t want it to be too choreographed. I imagine it’s not something you want to rehearse a lot.
JM: You’re talking about the shower scene, I assume? I thought I was going to be so shy, but I was the only person that was like, “Woo, let’s start, let’s go!” They put a little sticker around your private parts, and you’re pretty much walking around like a Barbie doll. I’m amazed. I thought I was going to be shy, but it felt so freeing to walk around naked.
JM: That’s funny. I think Ashley wore a sock. And especially the fact that most people would not be comfortable in that situation makes you like, “Oh, yeah!”
BS: As Brandi you have another element of physicality — you get to run around and fire a gun a bit.
JM: I’d never done that before, and it was really exciting, though. It’s a real gun with blanks, and you have spots to hit as you’re running. So you’re living in a videogame, with this one continuous run-through. We had about an hour-and-a-half with the police. I used to go to the firing range years ago so I had some knowledge, but it makes me want to buy a gun. (laughs) But I’m so emotional, I’d probably snap one day at the mailman. So to avoid jailtime I think I’m going to keep a gun out of my house.
BS: The scenes that unfold post-credits and fill in the double-dealing and back story — was it a chore to keep those straight? Because Brandi has a lot of side deals, as do other characters.
JM: It does get a little confusing, because everything is done out of order, and (owing to) whether certain actors are available on certain days. I have a formula I started using on another film: on every page, I just put where the character is on that day. That’s the easiest way to keep track.
BS: What’s next on the horizon for you?
JM: I have a comedy with Lara Flynn Boyle called Cougar Hunting; I play her daughter. And I have a bunch of films I’m producing this year that hopefully you’ll hear about and see very soon.
Batsuit nipple enthusiasts take note! Later this month, the American Cinematheque will present a three-day retrospective of Joel Schumacher’s films, including a special 25th anniversary presentation of 1985’s St. Elmo’s Fire and an advanced screening of the July 30 Hannover Films release Twelve, starring Chace Crawford, Emma Roberts and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.
Actually, that lead is a bit of bait-and-switch, since neither Schumacher’s derided 1997 Batman entry nor say, his almost equally lambasted 1999 return to multi-hyphenatedom, Flawless, will be screening as part of the series. Instead, beginning on Friday, June 25, the Egyptian Theatre will screen Falling Down and Flatliners. The former stars Michael Douglas as William Foster, a divorcee and unemployed former defense engineer who goes on a violent rampage across the city of Los Angeles as he tries to get home in time for his daughter’s birthday party. Flatliners (1990) centers on a group of medical students who use physical science in an attempt to find out if there’s anything out there beyond death. Schumacher will be on hand to introduce both screenings.
On Saturday, June 26, the Egyptian will host an advanced screening of Schumacher’s latest film. Based on the Nick McDonell novel of the same name, Twelve follows a high school dropout-turned-drug-dealer (Crawford) through New York’s Upper East Side. His lucrative life sours when his cousin is brutally murdered on an East Harlem playground and his best friend is arrested for the crime. Schumacher and other special guests will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A. The weekend-long retrospective will culminate on Sunday, June 27, with a special presentation at the Aero Theatre of Schumacher’s 1985 cult-classic St. Elmo’s Fire, which chronicles post-graduation life for a group of friends as they adjust to the responsibilities of encroaching adulthood.
Tickets for Falling Down, Flatliners and Twelve can be purchased at the Egyptian Theatre’s box office, located at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard. Tickets for St. Elmo’s Fire can be purchased at the Aero Theatre’s box office, located at 1328 Montana Avenue. Tickets for all events can also be purchased online via Fandango.
While the regular DVD market is facing dwindling sales, boutique distributors are delving into the treasure trove of heretofore marginalized titles — particularly in the foreign and genre markets, and from the 1960s and ’70s — that often never received a proper commercial release on VHS, let alone their due in theaters. Two such debuts arrive on one disc in the form of Mondo Macabro’s DVD release of The Sadist with Red Teeth and Forbidden Paris, from Belgian filmmaker Jean Louis van Belle.
Starring Daniel Moosmann and Jane Clayton, 1970’s micro-budgeted horror flick The Sadist with Red Teeth represents an across-the-pond precursor to the sort of cheap, slapdash, from-the-hip genre fare that Roger Corman would later have such success with in the United States — except with more of an infusion of grandiloquent delusion. In the movie, comic book artist Daniel Bernard (Moosmann) becomes convinced that a near-fatal car crash (in which a friend perished) has turned him into a vampire, but it’s not before the advice of his creepy doctor (Albert Simono) comes into question.
Forbidden Paris, meanwhile, is a mondo-style shockumentary concentrating on the seedy underbelly of 1960s’ Paris — a sort of black-and-blue valentine to the city of lights that serves as spiteful, nasty counterpoint to some of the love letters of the New Wave. There are a few arresting moments of anthropological/sociological interest here — a family preparing for the fallout from an H-bomb, a freaky free love community — but the film’s narration comes across as piecemeal and haphazard.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, the double-feature from Mondo Macabro comes to DVD with a pair of brand new anamorphic transfers from the respective original film negatives. There is also a very good half-hour documentary featurette on ven Belle which interestingly delves into his editorial experience and philosophy on filmmaking, though it’s shot and pieced together in a willfully cryptic style that eventually begins to grate. There are also introductions to the movies themselves by van Belle, and previews for other Mondo Macabro titles. To purchase via Amazon, click here. C- (Movies) B+ (Disc)
By turns wry, sly, irreverent and provocative, Defamation asks the question, “What is anti-Semitism today?” Intent on shaking up the ultimate “sacred cow” for modern-day Jews, Israeli-born director Yoav Shamir embarks on an engaging, thought-provoking documentary quest to ascertain whether anti-Semitism remains a clear and immediate, ever-present threat, or is instead more of a scare tactic used by right-wing Zionists to smear their critics.
Spanning several continents, and speaking with an array of individuals from across the political spectrum (including the national director of the Anti-Defamation
League, Abe Foxman, as well as its fiercest critic, professor and author Norman Finkelstein), Shamir bravely, gamely digs into the realities of anti-Semitism today, with curiosity much more of his guide than any predetermined ideological road map. His findings are both enlightening and sometimes shocking. Whether assaying the exhaustive statistical cataloguing of anti-Semitic “acts” that is then in turn used in fund-raising and, by extension, political arm-twisting, or traveling to places like Auschwitz alongside Israeli school kids,
and simply observing the psychological and social effects of how they’re being raised and taught that Jews are hated by almost all other cultures and ethnicities, Shamir eschews simple, pat answers.
While the sense of humor that informs the picture is a welcome,
leavening presence, Shamir’s biggest gift is his flexibility, and
complete lack of assumptions; with Defamation, he creates the
cinematic equivalent of one of those newfangled exercise machines that
targets only the muscles you didn’t really know you had, and certainly
don’t spend any time working out. The film racked up an impressive slate of festival awards — the Stanley Kubrick Award for Bold and Innovative Filmmaking at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival, the prestigious Grierson Award for Best Documentary at the BFI London Film Festival and the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Warsaw Film Festival, among others — and rightly so, for its that sort of arena that is its most natural home.
Audiences expecting the more definitive moral or statistical “outcome” of a filmic lecture will come away disappointed, but those who ponder and more deeply weigh Palestinian suffering alongside an Israeli right to existence and defend itself will likely be smitten with Defamation, because it posits at least the existence of ulterior motives or unintended consequences in the levying of charges of anti-Semitism. One teacher holds forth sourly on the “industry of death and violation” that the ADL encourages, and how its too-frequent cries of victimhood devalue real discrimination and hatred. The ADL’s Foxman seems to tacitly acknowledge this when he ruminates, “How do you fight this sinister, conspiratorial view of Jews without using it?” That is to say, the power of the ADL and broader Jewish-American lobby, exists in part because they are able to pull the levers of power by playing on deeply held beliefs that Jews “control” the media, financial markets and government(s). Slippery slope, that. Without malice, however, Shamir digs into the equally intriguing notion that the ADL is a way for many Jews to exercise Jewish identity without religious practice.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Defamation comes to DVD presented in anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo track that for the most part more than adequately handles the title’s relatively meager aural demands, except for when a couple of interviewees dip into a secretive whisper, since they’re at a fund-raising event, and don’t want to be overheard. Default English subtitles are also included, since a bit of the movie, understandably, dips into Hebrew. The only DVD bonus features consist of a textual filmmaker statement and biography. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) C- (Disc)
His partner in beloved Mr. Show mayhem, Bob Odenkirk, has gone on to steal scenes in Breaking Bad, but David Cross hasn’t exactly disappeared into anonymity. He played identity-confused Tobias Funke on the wildly funny Arrested Development, while plenty of the adolescent set will recognize him as the smarmy record executive from the two hugely successful Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. Stand-up comedy is still in his heart and blood, however, which explains Bigger and Blackerer, his third comedy concert album and second DVD on Sub Pop Records.
Its title a riff on Chris Rock‘s Emmy-winning 1999 comedy concert special Bigger & Blacker, Cross’ DVD arrives with a crushed-velvet-Elvis-style cover that would make any kitsch collector beam with pride. Recorded over two separate, back-to-back sets on the same night at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre, and directed by Lance Bangs, the show opens with a kiddie emcee, “Lil’ Davey Cross,” doing a brief foul-mouthed bit, before Cross himself arrives to much fanfare.
It’s a bit surprising, given his veteran status, how much nervousness Cross still conveys on stage, but he incorporates some of that into his set here with a meta routine, in which he twice gets into it with audience members — one of whom is signing in ASL but misrepresenting his material, and the other of whom (the same guy, actually) is live-blogging the show and slagging Cross. These bits are amusing, but do drag on a bit. Cross is at his best when he’s just in warped observant storyteller mode, riffing on the supernatural powers of balance of heroin junkies and other things that get his goat, so to speak. He gets five or six minutes of pure gold out of a British “date rape awareness” postcard he stumbled across while visiting the United Kingdom.
A lot of Cross’ material is also politically-inflected. He cops to following the health care debate with great interest, since he’s “a fan of misspelled, grammatically incorrect hyperbole.” He also uses the Bible and Armageddon as windows into a scabrous examination of fundamentalism and the American religious right
(which, not surprisingly, he has issues with). And, amusingly, Bigger and Blackerer also provides insight into why Orthodox Jews are the true victims of global warming.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, David Cross: Bigger and Blackerer comes to DVD presented in a fold-out cardboard case with a clear plastic snap-in tray. A nice fold-out poster of the DVD and album cover (above) is tucked away in the sleeve, and bonus features include a small slice of excised material, much of it as funny if not even more so than the rest of the concert. In these deleted scenes, Cross assays Coors Light drinkers (and their need for cans that affirm their beer’s coldness), yogurt, and the inanity of certain Sky Mall products, like a “time mug.” There’s also seven minutes’ worth of material from a 2004 Seattle performance, in which Cross expresses outrage at the notion of electric scissors. Anyone familiar with Mr. Show‘s “Coupon: The Movie” sketch will smile in tangential reminiscence. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B (Disc)
Neil deGrasse Tyson, as habitual viewers of The Daily Show and/or The Colbert Report know from his many appearances on those respective programs, is entertaining as all get-out, an engaging, chatty fellow who makes science cool. And ever since Pluto was downgraded from planet status, he’s been at the center of a swirling, out-of-this-world controversy.
Profiling this scientific contretemps in compressed but not slapdash fashion, the hour-long The Pluto Files, based on deGrasse Tyson’s book of the same name, details the efforts of its crusading astronomer, who is at the head of the team behind the recent uproar over Pluto’s status. Since its discovery in 1930, Pluto has held a warm place in the public imagination. So, when the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium stopped calling Pluto a planet, director deGrasse Tyson found himself at the center of a firestorm — a firestorm led by angry, Pluto-loving elementary school students.
So what is it about this cold, distant rock that captures so many hearts? Oscar-nominated writer-director Terri Randall keeps this NOVA production smooth and streamlined, and
wisely gives the personable deGrasse Tyson plenty of room to operate. Her subject doesn’t disappoint, as he details the amazing story of Pluto’s initial discovery as well as the captivating science that surrounds this former planet, including the possibility of finding more Pluto-like objects in the mysterious Kuiper belt — an area of icy rocks at the edge of the solar system. From the scientists trying to classify Pluto to die-hard “Pluto-philes,” deGrasse Tyson takes viewers along on a fascinating journey through an engaging cast of characters with just one thing in common: strong opinions about Pluto.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Pluto Files comes to DVD presented in widescreen, with an English stereo audio track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of this title. Supplemental extras include a clutch of featurettes examining the formation of the universe, a smattering of outtakes, and an audio commentary track with the always entertaining deGrasse Tyson. To order a copy of The Pluto Files, Extreme Cave Diving or other PBS
titles, phone (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; or, if Amazon is totally your thing, click here. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Knuckle-duster cinema is a healthy straight-to-video sub-genre, for sure, but it’s usually rooted in stories of guys making their way up in the world, and not necessarily cross-pollinated with the DNA of mama bear protectionism. Trading in feminine-fringe fisticuffs in passably similar fashion to last year’s Fight Night, though, Bare Knuckles peddles an inspired-by-a-true-story tale of a cocktail waitress and single mom who steels her nerves to do “whatever it takes to provide for her daughter,” a cinematic sales phrase that usually involves the baring of much more skin than in this PG-13 flick.
For boxers and cagers, sometimes the lines blur between professionally sanctioned bouts and vicious backyard brawls tied to illegal gambling. When waitress Samantha Rogers (Jeanette Roxborough), trapped in a job she hates but willing to stay for the daughter she loves (Teya Roxborough), ends a bar fight between two drunk women, she catches the eye of a down-and-out fight promoter, Sonny Cool (Martin Kove). Sensing a lucrative partnership, he introduces her to “the show” — a highly lucrative, extremely dangerous and of course completely illegal underground world of high-stakes, all-female, bare-knuckle fighting. Blood-letting and deception ensue, against enough of an estrogenized backdrop of parental courage and love to hold the attention of at least a portion of the typical Lifetime set.
The chief appeal of Bare Knuckles centers around showing, in
puffed-chest fashion, how far a woman will go to provide for the ones
she loves — even in arenas maybe not conducive to her most immediate strengths. So while the world of mixed martial arts is increasingly popular and mainstream, hardcore fans of such head-clubbing mayhem may find their patience tested by all the feelings on display. Still, Roxborough’s performance is steely and committed (she picked up a Best
Actress prize at at the Downbeach Film Festival), even if she’s frequently not given the best dialogue with which to work. It helps, too, that the movie features a real-life female brawler like Bridget “Baby Doll” Riley,
a Black Belt Hall of Famer and the owner of five World Kickboxing titles and one
World Boxing title; she helps give Bare Knuckles a musky scent of authenticity. This isn’t the reinvention of the wheel, it’s true, but a rental won’t bruise your wallet if you’re so inclined.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Bare Knuckles comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional Spanish and English SDH subtitles. Its bonus features consist of a music video for the song “American Girl,” performed by Mylin, and a fairly cursory behind-the-scenes featurette. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C- (Disc)
I generally dig the work of director James Mangold, but there was something bugging me, in back-of-the-mind, lingering fashion, about the impending Knight and Day, his summer action confection reuniting Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. And I finally figured it out. It’s the TV ads’ use of Muse‘s “Uprising.” Trailers that use really popular, of-the-moment music frequently (not always) have big tonal problems, and so the use of a surging chart hit or on-the-rise band, particularly in heavy rotation small screen advertising, is an empty signifier; it’s meant to prod and rouse and make the movie seem in thumping lockstep with the zeitgeist, when it’s frequently not, and sometimes the exact opposite. It’s a shortcut end-around figuring out a more effective and honest way to sell the narrative, in other words, a not infrequent sign of makers’ (or at least distributor’s) remorse. One wonders if Cruise (or Mangold, for that matter) even knows who Muse is.
It’s a happy birthday to Annette Bening, who, as improbably as it may seem, turns 52 today. Bening’s marriage to Warren Beatty probably cost us a handful of great performances around a decade back, but after doing the family thing for a bit (and tackling some stage work, to mixed reviews) Bening is back, and in Mother and Child and this summer’s The Kids Are All Right, she has two powerhouse performances that virtually guarantee her a Best Actress Oscar slot. So kudos, AB.
Small screen sensation Lost may have wrapped up this past week, but there’s another showdown this week set largely on an island and centered around feuding factions — some desperate for survival at any cost and others more sanguine about their fate. With his sixth zombie film, Survival of the Dead, writer-director George Romero tells the Hatfield-and-McCoy-esque story of one banished patriarch, hell-bent on clearing Plum Island of zombies like so much dead brush, who hooks up with a group of self-interested mercenaries and clashes with a longtime nemesis who thinks it morally wrong to dispatch afflicted loved ones. I recently caught up with Romero to talk about his filmmaking niche, tribalism, balancing practical and CG effects, and why he doesn’t think zombies have health club memberships. For the interview, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
Picking up immediately after the events of 2008’s Diary of the Dead, Survival
of the Dead is the sixth film from writer-director George
Romero to posit and examine a world where humans are in the minority, and flesh-eating
zombies rule. It’s also a sad confirmation of if not his complete creative bankruptcy then certainly his wildly diminished gift for imparting glancing metaphorical dread.
The film opens off the coast of Delaware on Plum Island (based loosely on the same-named remote animal disease center 100 miles northeast of New
York City, in the Long Island Sound), where zombiedom is apparently only the latest wrinkle in a generations-long struggle for power between two families. The O’Flynn clan, headed by patriarch Patrick O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh, dialing up the Billy Connelly), approach the zombie plague with a lock-and-load, shoot-to-kill attitude. The Muldoons, headed up by Shamus Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick), feel that the zombies should be quarantined and kept alive, in hopes that a solution will someday be found.
When Shamus and his crew get the drop on Patrick, they force him into exile by boat, where on the mainland he meets up with a band of soldiers, headed by the square-jawed Sarge (Alan Van Sprang). After a shootout and standoff, a cajoling Patrick rebrands himself and misrepresents his mission, sneakily getting Sarge and his military brethren to sign on for a return to the island. There, they find that the zombie plague has fully gripped the divided community. As the battle between humans and zombies escalates, Patrick has to come to terms with a difficult reunion with his infected daughter, Janet (Kathleen Munroe).
A huge part of Romero’s justifiably earned credit as a master genre filmmaker lies in his blend of humor and pointed social commentary within the horror milieu. Survival of the Dead reveals, though, in the starkest terms possible,
that a large part of Romero’s reputation has always been a result of diminished expectation — of his penchant for being able to do more with less, in terms of production resources and a professionally trained cast.
Many other reviews will likely pull punches regarding the craftsmanship of the film, but Survival of the Dead repeatedly exhibits poor choices on both narrative and technical levels, from picking the wrong point of entry into the story as a whole and dawdling with less interesting set-ups to flatly framing its action. In fact, none of the attack sequences are either executed at a skill level high enough to raise heart rates, or even staged in a fashion to evoke such feelings.
Furthermore, there’s a warped, nonsensical nature to the film’s interior logic. (Hammy performances and awkward, emotionally-on-the-nose dialogue don’t help matters.) Characters are by various turns motivated by money (in a world where clearly this no longer matters) and misplaced senses of air-quote glory, even when they’re aware of the apocalyptic conditions of the world beyond the story’s most immediate borders.
Most damningly, though, Romero doesn’t seem to bring into focus any viable subtext, to prop up what is otherwise an exceedingly one-note, uninteresting conflict. There’s the faintest hint of Shamus serving as a stand-in for isolationist/anti-immigration viewpoints (“We have an obligation to protect what’s ours,” he thunders at one point), but this isn’t ever developed in a substantive way, and so interpretations in this regard wither on the vine. Even Romero doesn’t seem to know — or care — where all of this is really going. Somewhat miraculously, the film builds to a climax — involving the attempted training of zombies to eat animal meat, rather than persons — where even
one of the main characters dozes off. If a gun-toting fundamentalist in a supposedly tense standoff in a world full of marauding zombies can’t be bothered to stay awake and invested in the proceedings, how can an audience? (Magnet, R, 90 minutes)
The hilarious money quote of explanation from Lionsgate’s Wednesday statement: “We want to capitalize on the revolution in social media by letting audiences and critics define this film concurrently. In today’s socially connected marketplace, we all have the ability to share feedback instantly around the world. In keeping with this spirit, Lionsgate and the filmmakers want to give the opportunity to moviegoing audiences and critics alike to see Killers simultaneously, and share their thoughts in the medium of their choosing.”
This ignores some facts, of course. Sandwiched in between the releases of Gerard Butler’s The Ugly Truth and Law Abiding Citizen, each of which screened for critics and posted an opening weekend of over $20 million, Lionsgate released Gamer in September of last year. It didn’t screen in advance for critics, and it opened to around $9 million. But hey, a bonus to whomever at Lionsgate drafted the above response; it’s good, hard spin. Ridiculous, but in a finger-to-the-wind, let’s-toss-this-into-the-zeitgeist-peppermill-and-see-if-it-takes kind of way.
Advances in science, technology and medicine have taught us that keeping fit and maintaining a nutritious diet can prevent diseases and promote a longer life, but did you know there are actually ways to train the brain so that you’re conditioned to live healthier? Along with The New Science of Learning: Brain Fitness for Kids, hour-long PBS documentary Brain Fitness Frontiers delve into this very subject, instructing audiences about the brain’s “plasticity,” and the huge benefits cognitive training can have on everyday life.
Hosted and narrated by Peter Coyote, Brain Fitness Frontiers is built around interviews with luminaries of science and medicine, including Dr. Michael Merzenich, Dr. John Donoghue and Dr. Skip Rizzo. Deftly utilizing these experts of their field, director Eli Brown challenges many misconceptions about brain development, and offers forth examples of how ordinary people are using their brain’s variability, and the power of neuroplasticity, to create lasting and astonishing changes. Neuroscience research and cognitive training alike are explained in layman’s terms, making for an engaging viewing experience.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Brain Fitness Frontiers comes to DVD presented in 1.76:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo track. In addition to a link to PBS’ web site, a small clutch of additional interview footage is offered forth as a supplemental bonus. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or simply click here. Or if Amazon is totally your thing, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) C+ (Disc)
One doesn’t fire up a DVD entitled The End of Poverty? thinking there are finger-snapping good times on the horizon for the next 90 minutes or so, especially since the red question mark at the end of the film’s title (contrasted with its black text) looms rather ominously. Yet the clear-eyed, straightforward manner in which this affecting documentary — which premiered at Critics’ Week at Cannes last year, and subsequently played at more than 30 international festivals — plumbs its subject matter serves as a powerful natural depressive for anyone with a heart and an ounce of curiosity about the state of the world at large.
Narrated by Martin Sheen, director Philippe Diaz’s film reframes the debate over extreme poverty, laying out the case that while human struggles over resources and land are a fairly natural thing, there in fact exists enough of everything (space, food and resources) for a far more equitable system of national governance and international relations. With a variety of interviews that extend beyond the parameters of just the usual talking heads of academia, Diaz provides a superb thumbnail sketch of the history of colonialism,
and its lingering effects, generations on. Assaying unfair debt, trade and tax policies, the movie imparts important details without becoming overly wonkish.
Part of this owes to the fact that Diaz smartly mixes in case study-type interviews with often surprisingly eloquent laborers who are basically indentured servants. It’s heartbreaking, listening to the Brazilian sugar cane cutter who for 17 years has toiled for the equivalent of under $40 a month, rising at 1 a.m. for breakfast and funding repairs of his own work equipment. Some of the movie’s proposed macro-solutions to poverty are more open to debate, so the film undeniably works best an ire-provoking indictment of conspicuous consumption, particularly amongst certain industrialized nations. With only five percent of the world’s population, the United States still consumes a quarter of its natural resources, and produces around 30 percent of its pollution; overall, less than a fifth of the Earth’s population uses more than 80 percent of its resources. There’s a moral component to this struggle, certainly, but as Diaz also justly, implicitly notes, this sort of path isn’t eternally sustainable — it’s a breeding ground for discontent, radicalism and revolution, and all the further instability that eventually brings.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a snap-release tray, The End of Poverty? comes to DVD on a region-free disc in what’s billed as a “special educational edition,” replete with extra DVD-ROM content and a handful of other disc-situated bonus features. Befitting its area of inquiry, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Swahili subtitles are also included. There’s a downloadable study guide at the film’s web site, but on the DVD there’s 32 minutes of additional interview material with author Susan George, professor Chalmers Johnson, University of Nairobi constitutional law professor Okoth Ogendo and Gitu wa Kahengeri, leader of Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising. There are also trailers for a quartet of other Cinema Libre home video titles. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) B- (Disc)
Vin Roberti, Chairman of Palisades Media Corporation, announced today that veteran industry executive Soumya Sriraman has been named President and CEO of Palisades Tartan US and UK. “Soumya’s executive background with the studios and entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with her fresh perspective and keen insights, make her an ideal fit for our growing company,” stated Roberti. “We are looking forward to her immediate contributions.” Sriraman, for her part, returned the love: “Vin’s track record of success with Palisades is reflected in the amazing catalog and team he has built. I am a huge fan of the Tartan catalog and plan to aggressively rebuild the brand and introduce American audiences to a new collection of cutting-edge and remarkable films,” she said.
Straddling both continents, Palisades Tartan has emerged as one of the premier distributors of independent and arthouse cinema in the United States and United Kingdom, and has been at the forefront of a couple consumer trends, particularly as it relates to Asian cinema. Roberti and Sriraman added that they planned to aggressively build the Palisades Tartan brand in the American and British territories with new strategic acquisitions and mergers over the coming year. Sriraman remarked that despite shrinking shelf space, newer delivery mechanisms, including digital platforms, represented a significant opportunity, offering consumers many viewing modes to whet their appetite for independent films.
The titular ditty’s crunchy guitar riff, which was recently (and rightly) lauded in one of those VH-1 song-list countdown specials, is an enjoyably filthy thing, all forward-leaning adolescent momentum and pelvic energy. So it’s no surprise, really, that You Really Got Me: The Story of the Kinks gives good attitude while also maintaining a pinch of mystery, interspersing an array of superb color and black-and-white concert footage, from the 1960s right on through to the ’90s, with some nice biographical nuggets.
Of all the British bands that broke through commercially in America who
were part of the so-called “British Invasion” of the ’60s, the Kinks may have been the most quintessentially English. Led by Ray Davies and his younger brother Dave Davies,
the group burst onto the music scene in 1964 with their groundbreaking
hit single “You Really Got Me,” which topped the U.K. singles chart and made the American top 10 to boot, spawning an entire generation of power-chord riffs (American musicologist wrote that the song “invented heavy metal”). That tune gets a loving treatment here, of course, but some of the other performances
in the international collection of footage are equally notable, including “All Day and All of the Night,” “‘Til the End of the Day,” “Waterloo Sunset,” “Days” and “Celluloid Heroes.”
A lot of reach-back, artist-specific concert docs like this have the advantage of a handful of performances that have been rarely seen since their first rotation, if at all, outside some regional broadcast and promotion. But if there’s not any artist participation, and the talking heads aren’t lively and informed, they too often can sputter and fail to capture what’s intriguing about Band X or Artist Y. Thankfully, You Really Got Me: The Story of the Kinks also contains comments from various members of the band, including both the Davies brothers and drummer Mick Avory. The gentlemen talk about their roots as a rhythm-and-blues band, and their maturation as musicians. The band continued touring until mid-1996, and despite Dave Davies suffering a stroke in 2004, certain rumors of a reunion persist out there in various corners of the Internet. If it never happens, this title at least showcases the Kinks’ worthy legacy.
Housed in a regular clear plastic Amaray case, You Really Got Me: The Story of the Kinks comes to DVD on a region-free disc presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio, with an English language Dolby digital 2.0 stereo audio track. Its supplemental features consist of… well, nothing really. But the nice slate of captured musical material makes this disc alternately thrash and kick, and sing and soar, and that’s good enough for properly aged or curious rock ‘n’ roll fans. To purchase the DVD, click here; or if you’re all about Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)
Since its small screen inception in 1998, Sex and the City, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, has served as a chatty, fashionable sounding board for the thrills and travails of big-city professional women, and the turbulence in romantic expectation that the changing landscape of gender roles has wrought. The follow-up to the series’ enormously successful transition to the big screen, Sex and the City 2 spins forward its heroines on an adventure abroad. The result is a bloated, wearyingly unsubtle and dramatically inert valentine to conspicuous consumption. Writer-director Michael Patrick King, who served as show runner on the TV series for most of its duration, aims for a comedy of material extravagance, but his tone is so willfully broad as to cause dissociation with almost any sentient adult, regardless of income bracket. Working with a reported wardrobe budget of $10 million, Oscar-nominated costume designer Patricia Field at least gives armchair fashionistas much to ogle. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., R, 146 minutes)
A documentary investigation into surging American religious fundamentalism, and in particular its fetishistic preoccupation with end-time prophecy and the Bible’s Book of Revelation, Waiting For Armageddon is a fascinating look at the intractability of a certain subset of religious thinking, and how seemingly at odds it is with the very idea of modernity while simultaneously peddling a curious, blinkered sort of global engagement. Notably, this First Run Features title doesn’t arrive at its provocation cheaply, but instead through substantive examination of serious questions.
Co-directed by Kate Davis, Franco Sacchi and David Heilbroner, Waiting for Armageddon focuses largely on Israel’s unique status as the blasting cap of religious conflict in the Middle East, and explores the condescending, head-patting triumphalism of much of America’s 50-million strong Evangelical
community when it comes to the Jewish state. In their narrative, support for Israel is but a simple, necessary card to flip on the yellow brick road toward the Rapture; Muslims get evicted from the Holy Land by the Jews, who then rebuild the Temple of Solomon to jibe with Biblical prophecy, so that Christ can then return and trump all others. (As the chosen people, of course, Jews get “last-call dibs” on recognizing the error of their ways, and accepting Jesus as the son of God.)
Interviewees here include investigative journalist Chip Berlet, who
specializes in the study of right-wing movements and other extremism within the
United States, but the film is thorough and fair-minded — there’s no voiceover narration, so a wide range of subjects get to directly voice their beliefs and opinions, allowing viewers to decide for themselves. The picture that emerges — not surprising to those who actually grew up in or around pockets of such fundamentalism, but perhaps a revelation to some of the so-called media elite — is that many if not most religious fundamentalists are not super-ignorant, actually, but rather overwhelmed by the pressures, despair, poverty and manifold injustices of modern life.
There’s the fascinating and of course rather depressing spectacle of bearing witness to a mother who raises her children telling them they most likely won’t live to graduate college or get their driver’s license; in this sort of environment, where’s the personal incentive to learn or grow rather than just blindly embrace prepackaged dogma? (It doesn’t exist, of course.) There’s also a bit of an unseemly voyeuristic thrill in some of these “Rapture junkies,” in the feeling that they on a certain level want to see and/or bask in the suffering of others, perhaps if only a means by which to elevate themselves. Regardless of these unpleasantries, and the particulars of some of the more radical viewpoints espoused, one can certainly empathize with each interviewee’s own quest for centeredness and order, whether fully articulated or not. That yearning is a very human one, in my book.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Waiting For Armageddon comes to DVD presented in anamorphic widescreen, with an English language stereo audio track. Supplemental bonus features include an interfaith roundtable discussion, as well as a scrollable text statement from the filmmakers. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) C (Disc)
A late and somewhat out of place grab, but teabonics is something to behold, truly. I realize that mocking Tea Party protesters for the creative “grammer” of their signs in some ways only emboldens them, reinforcing the death-grip paranoia of this cleverly constructed narrative of their persecution at the hands of the media elite. But… so be it. Sometimes an idiot just needs to be revealed as such. That’s the case with some (not all) of these folks.
Adapted from the same-named series of Saturday Night Live short comedic sketches about a clueless, angsty soldier of fortune whose talkative nature habitually prevents him from disabling a series of bombs, the willfully crude and vulgar action-comedy MacGruber should end the series of big screen bombs adapted from the show. A foul-mouthed send-up of testosterone-infused, small-budgeted ’80s action flicks, MacGruber is more of a functional than revelatory success — its script doesn’t really substantially or satisfyingly delve into a number of amusing character defects it sets up for its self-involved hero. But there’s undeniably a woolly, shambling charm to the film, particularly in the contrast found between Will Forte’s blustery, buffoonish performance, and Kristen Wiig’s tight-lipped, nervous energy. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. (Universal, R, 90 minutes)
Is Lionsgate making junketeers sign nondisclosure agreements barring any pre-release voiced or written critical opinions (i.e., reviews) for Killers, its Ashton Kutcher–Katherine Heigl action comedy, opening June 4? Yes, yes it is. Make of that what you will.
