Mixing It “Up!” w/”Gran Torino”

One of the movies OFG members attended this past year was Gran Torino (as part of our Night Out at the Movies series at the Oswego Cinema 7).

Here’s another of those recut trailers on YouTube: this one cuts Gran Torino dialog into Up! clips.Enjoy.

A Most Successful YouTube Audition: “Ataque de panico!” (“Panic Attack!”)

Matt Goldberg on collider.com:

…Fede Alvarez, a Uraguayan filmmaker who created a YouTube hit with his low-budget sci-fi short, Panic Attack!, has signed a deal with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures to develop and direct an original genre project.  While Panic Attack! only cost several hundred dollars, his deal with Ghost House is reportedly in the six- against seven figure range (meaning that he’s being paid $X00,000 and if the film gets made he gets a bonus amount which would bring his salary to $X,000,000).  The same day Alvarez posted his video, Hollywood came calling as they were impressed with what he was able to accomplish with such a low budget. Alvarez’ short is less than five minutes long and is about robots invading and attacking the city of Montevideo.  That’s all that happens in the movie.  The robots invade and then they attack.  The end.  I do understand and congratulate what Alvarez on his success and his movie is technically impressive, but the story here isn’t Alvarez.  It’s the power of YouTube to create a calling card so fast and powerful that you can nab such an incredible deal.

Here’s the YouTube video that started the bidding war:

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‘Simply having a wonderful Christmastime…’

I saw the same clip from The Ten Commandments of Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea twice this week: last night as the Syracuse Crunch hockey team took to the ice (they won) and during A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël, 2008, dir. Arnaud Desplechin), when the family watches the movie on TV during their holiday visit.

Emile Berling, Mathieu Amalric, and Catherine Deneuve in "A Christmas Tale"

The film was a critical success (though I see from the sampling of comments on The New York Times on-line, viewers seemed to either love it or hate it). I didn’t have such strong feelings about it; I enjoyed it and wasn’t bored despite its length (2.5 hours). I haven’t seen any other Desplechin films; I don’t know if the unusual music and scene pairings and other attention-getting devices are typical. The story’s a well-worn subject: the dysfunctional family get-together over the holidays. I found what pleased me most about the film was its staying power. Too often it’s not only the blockbusters that seem to disappear from thought as soon as the credits end–for me, plenty of art-house films also seem as insubstantial. I thought about the characters and wondered about the Christmas (and Easter) story parallels that might be drawn days after I saw A Christmas Tale.

The film is out on DVD and it’s available on Sundance on Demand. (For you Time Warner customers: see your Free Movies on Demand channel). Postscript: For OFG friends who saw our screening of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, it was a twist to see Anne Cosigny and Mathieu Amalric work together in A Christmas Tale as well–not as close collaborators in Diving Bell, though, but as two completely alienated and hostile siblings.

A Seasonal List: 10 Christmas Movies

In the very entertaining 10 Bad Dates With De Niro: A Book of Alternative Movie Lists, edited by Richard T. Kelly (Overlook/Rookery: 2007), the final entry is Graham Fuller’s  ‘Ten Movies to Save Us All From Satan’s Power’. Here are his picks (minus his full comments). They’re a mix of some expected seasonal entries, but also some unusually dark ones, including a noir with an innocuous title (Christmas Holiday) and some cynical and sad office intrigue (The Apartment). Also featured: two great duos, Laurel & Hardy (Swiss Miss), and Tom & Jerry  (The Night Before Christmas).

10. Christmas Holiday (US, 1944, dir. Robert Siodmak)

9. Swiss Miss (US, 1938, dir. John G. Blystone)

8. The Man Who Came to Dinner (US, 1942, dir. William Keighley)

7. The Magnificent Ambersons (US, 1942, dir. Orson Welles)

6. Comfort and Joy (GB, 1984, dir. Bill Forsyth)

5. The Night Before Christmas (US, 1941, dir. William Hanna & Joseph Barbera)

4. A Christmas Story (Canada, 1983, dir. Bob Clark)

3. The Apartment (US, 1960, dir. Billy Wilder)

2. Scrooge (GB, 1951, dir. Brian Desmond Hurst)

1. It’s a Wonderful Life (US, 1946, dir. Frank Capra)

Link Added to The Auteurs

We’ve added a link to The Auteurs, a site for on-line film viewing. There’s a charge (usually $5) for the films offered, but every month the site features one or more free options.

Earlier, we posted the Pixies’ “Debaser” video; now here’s the song’s film inspiration, plus two other free films:

The Auteurs is now showing 3 films by Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel for free in the US to celebrate the release of the beautiful remastering of the filmmaker’s unheralded 1956 French/Mexican co-production Death in the Garden, shot in gorgeous Eastmancolor and starring Michel Piccoli, Simone Signoret, and Charles Vanel.

Death in the Garden and two classic Buñuel films from his earlier and most vividly surreal period, Un chien andalou (1929) and L’âge d’or (1930) are available to watch for free in the US. The Auteurs is presenting the 1956 film alongside more renowned films made before and after to put it on the context of his career.

(See The Auteurs under “On-Line Viewing Options” and the link to the 3 free Buñuel films under “As Mentioned in the Post” in the sidebar).

More On-Line Viewing: Rembrandt’s J’Accuse

Always on the lookout for features available for free on-line viewing, I found Peter Greenaway’s Rembrandt’s J’Accuse (2008).

The movie is an addendum to “Nightwatching,” Mr. Greenaway’s 2007 fictional feature about the painting that was part of a larger project of the same title that he created for the yearlong 2006 celebration of Rembrandt’s 400th birthday in the Netherlands. That project included an opera and a “re-presentation” of the painting. Mr. Greenaway was also the author of a handsome accompanying museum catalog. The “Nightwatching” project was, in turn, the first in an ambitious series Mr. Greenaway has undertaken titled “Nine Classical Paintings Revisited” that has, to date, included inquiries into Leonardo’s “Last Supper” and, as part of this year’s Venice Biennale, Paolo Veronese’s “Wedding at Cana.” (from “The Man Who Watched the Watchers” by Manohla Dargis, The New York Times, 10/21/09)

The film’s thesis:  the composition of “The Night Watch” shows that Rembrandt used the work to accuse the Amsterdam militia of murder within their own ranks. Throughout the analysis, Greenaway—who narrates the film, often seen as a talking head in a little box on the screen (Dargis  compared the sight to that of Jambi the Genie on Pee-wee’s Playhouse)—weaves in European history of many strands: political, religious,  and artistic.

See “As Mentioned in the Post”  or “On-Line Viewing Options” in the sidebar for a link to the film.

More Lists! Movies of Influence, Quality

A. O. Scott’s lists from his piece “Screen Memories” in The New York Times Magazine (11/15/09):

Movies of Influence: The 10 most culturally, commercially or technologically important, consequential or groundbreaking films of 2000-9, in no particular order

Zodiac
Other movies used computer-generated imagery to create spectacular worlds of fantasy or eye-popping action sequences, but in this film, David Fincher went further than anyone before in using this kind of digital technique in the service of heightened realism.

The Passion of the Christ
Not only the highest-grossing Aramaic-language movie in history, this movie was also a testimony to Mel Gibson’s bloody-minded independence and, most of all, a lesson for Hollywood in the power of Christian-themed popular culture.

Fahrenheit 9/11
Along with Gibson’s “Passion,” Michael Moore’s potent piece of agitprop gave the lie to the movie industry’s assumption that ideological provocation was bad box office. This movie, the first documentary to gross more than $100 million, spawned a score of imitators, including a few on the right, and also foreshadowed the emergence of a noisy, cantankerous liberalism on cable outlets during Bush’s second term (a political reality that Michael Moore was, of course, unable to prevent).

The Lord of the Rings
This billion-dollar trilogy, the last installment of which swept the Oscars, was a milestone in the geek ascendancy. It’s an epic in which the special effects and the source material are more important than the cast. Against all odds and the better judgment of most studios, Peter Jackson made three films at once and then sold them all to the same fans again and again and again. The theatrical releases, in consecutive years, turned out to be teasers for the DVD release. And the movie will remain a benchmark of hybrid cinema — half digital, half traditional — for a long time to come.

Funny Ha Ha
Andrew Bujalski’s first feature film helped spawn the low-budget, socially networked, slice-of-life cinematic movement called Mumblecore. The name has already come unstuck, and the quality of the work is uneven, ranging from videotaped navel-gazing to genuine generational insight. But the model of filmmaking and distribution that Mumblecore represents is likely to prove especially durable in recessionary times.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin
The first movie directed by Judd Apatow also represented the consolidation and extension of his brand of juvenile, heartfelt comedy, a style of humor at once anxious, honest and sentimental about sex and its consequences. Within a few years, even non-Apatow-branded projects were biting his trademarks, and his stock company of schlubby, funny, anxious dudes (with a few women cracking wise around the margins) seemed to be everywhere.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Ang Lee’s soulful art-house action blockbuster — the highest-grossing subtitled movie in America until “The Passion of the Christ” — was a fond throwback to the wuxia genre that Lee grew up with in Taiwan. But it was also prophetic — an early signal of China’s emergence as a pop-culture superpower and an example of the crossover potential of local genres in a global marketplace.

Amores Perros
The first and best of three collaborations between the screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and the director Alejandro González Iñárritu (the others were “21 Grams” and “Babel”), this rough study of chance, fate and violence in Mexico City helped establish the braided narrative as one of the dominant prestige genres of the decade. When “Crash” won the Best Picture Oscar a few years later, it was a sign that nothing spells significance like coincidence. But “Amores Perros” was also a sign that a border-crossing new wave of Mexican and Latin American cinema was on its way.

Diary of a Mad Black Woman
Tyler Perry made his name on the chitlin’ circuit, where his raucous, pious plays found an appreciative African-American audience. When he decided to make the transition from stage to screen, no major studio was interested, so Perry, helped by his cross-dressed alter ego, Madea, set about creating an entertainment empire. A canny self-promoter, a competent filmmaker and one of the few genuine populists in American pop culture, Perry is, with Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, one face of a new black-power structure that has become part of the American establishment.

Shrek
Pixar may have raised computer-generated animation to the level of art, but it was this loud, rambunctious DreamWorks adaptation of a William Steig picture book that set the template for 21st-century family entertainment. License a lot of pop songs, lock in merchandising opportunities, recruit A-list celebrities to read a script full of winking allusions and semi-rude jokes for the grown-ups and hokey morals for the kids, and watch the money pour in.

Movies of Quality: the best movies of 2000-9, accoridng to A. O. Scott — in nine double features and one six-hour epic

Wall-E (Andrew Stanton)and A.I. (Steven Spielberg): Visions of love in the post-human future.

Yi Yi (Edward Yang) and The World (Jia Zhangke): The joys and sorrows of everyday life in the era of globalization.

Million Dollar Baby and Letters From Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood): Late masterpieces from the last great classical American filmmaker.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu) and L’Enfant (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne): Realism from New Europe and Old Europe.

Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro) and Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze): Dark fairy tales for anxious grown-ups and the children who might comfort them.

The Best of Youth (Marco Tullio Giordana): Four decades of recent Italian history in a half-dozen sublime hours.

Darwin’s Nightmare (Hubert Sauper) and Iraq in Fragments (James Longley): Documentaries on environmental and political catastrophe raised to the level of poetry.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry) and Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar): The glories and perversities of love.

25th Hour and When the Levees Broke (Spike Lee): Two American disasters illuminated by an essential American filmmaker.

Gosford Park(Robert Altman)and Moolaade (Ousmane Sembène): R.I.P.

Glenn Tipton and “Glenn Tipton”

As a coda to our screening of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, here’s some Priest and a song named for a Priest guitarist (from Kil Sun Moon AKA Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters)…

Link Added for National Film Board of Canada

We’ve added another link for on-line viewing: the National Film Board of Canada site. (I think just about all the interesting films screened during my high school classtime were of NFB Canada origin).

Here’s a classic short, The Big Snit. (It’s on the NFB site, but I had to take this from YouTube because I couldn’t import the copy from north of the border for some reason….)

Link Added to Hulu

We’ve added a link to Hulu’s movie division. If you can deal with the brief commercial interuptions, there’s quite a diverse collection from which to choose.

I watched Roman Polanski’s darkly comic Cul-de-Sac.

For the third time, an impatient waiter cruised up to their table. “This place is good for meat”, Hector said. “What is your favorite dish?”

Switters stared wistfully into space. “Spring lamb Roman Polanski”, he said.

“It is not on the menu, I am afraid”.

“Just as well. It’s an acquired taste”.

– Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

(quoted in Christopher Weedman’s Senses of Cinema entry on the film)

OMG! OFG’s got a brand new blog!

The Oswego Film Group’s old website (www.oswegofilmgroup.org) is going dark…we’re now blogging (along with the rest of the world)!

British Film Series Continues at SUNY Oswego

The series, put together by Professor Helen Knowles of the SUNY Oswego Political Science Department, continues. All films are screened in Campus Center Room 118. Shows are from 7-9:30 PM and are free.

March 19: From Russia With Love (1963) Director: Terence Young. Starring: Sean Connery, Lotte Lenya, Robert Shaw

March 26: If….(1968) Director: Lindsay Anderson. Starring Malcolm McDowell, David Wood, Richard Warwick

April 9: Get Carter (1971) Director: Mike Hodges. Starring: Michael Caine, Britt Ekland, John Osborne

April 16: Local Hero (1983) Director: Bill Forsyth. Starring: Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, Denis Lawson

April 23: Brassed Off (1996) Director: Mark Herman. Starring: Pete Postlethwaite, Ewan McGregor, Tara Fitzgerald

April 30: The Full  Monty (1997) Director: Peter Catlaneo. Starring: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy

May 7: Calendar Girls (2003) Director: Nigel Cole. Starring: Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Linda Bassett

A downloadable poster of the series, including capsule descriptions of the films, is available as a pdf here.

Night Out at the Movies: Doubt, 3/16

The film group is presenting another Night Out at the Movies on Monday, March 16 at the Oswego Cinema 7. We’ll see the 8:20 PM show of Doubt. Immediately after the screening, we’ll meet up in the theater’s upper lobby and have an informal discussion about the film. (All patrons are invited to stay and join the discussion).

Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis star in John Patrick Shanley’s film based on his Pulizter-Prize winning play.

The film opens at the Oswego Cinema 7 on Friday, March 13.

Meryl Streep and Amy Adams

Best of the Festivals: Frozen River, 3/18

OFG continues its Best of the Festivals with Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Frozen River on Wednesday evening, March 18.

The free screening will be in Room P225 of the Campus Center of SUNY Oswego. After the show, we’ll discuss the film.

From the film’s website (www.sonyclassics.com/frozenriver/):

“Filmed in sub-zero weather in upstate New York, March of 2007, Frozen River is Courtney Hunt’s directorial debut…. [The film] is set in a real-life smuggling zone on a Native American reservation between New York State and Quebec where the lure of fast money presents a daily challenge to single moms who would otherwise be making minimum wage. Strapped for money and having been deserted by her husband, working class Ray (Melissa Leo), reluctantly teams up with Lila (Misty Upham), a widowed Mohawk Indian, to smuggle illegal immigrants across the frozen St. Lawrence River from Canada to the U.S. in the trunk of a Dodge Spirit. Both women swear each trip will be their last, but one final run across the river leads to a showdown with the law on all sides.
Frozen River stars Melissa Leo (21 Grams, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Homicide: Life on the Street), Misty Upham (Edge of America, Skins), Charlie McDermott (The Ten), Michael O’Keefe (The Great Santini – Oscar nominee, Michael Clayton, The Pledge), and Mark Boone, Jr. (Tree’s Lounge, Batman Returns).”

More Film Series on Campus

In addition to the British Film Series (see earlier post), there are other continuing film series on the SUNY Oswego campus:

Films begin at 7:15 PM in Room 118, Campus Center

German Film Series:

Wed, April 1: One, Two, Three (1961) Dir: Billy Wilder

Wed, April 29: Rosenstrasse (The Women of Rosenstrasse) (2003) Dir: Margarethe von Trotta

Spanish Film Series:

Wed, April 8: Camila (1984) Dir: Maria Luisa Bemberg

Wed, April 15: La historia oficial (The Official Version) (1985) Dir: Luis Puenzo

Syracuse International Film Festival

This year, the festival runs from April 24 – May 3. (See link).

This coming week, the festival is having free screenings of some of the past seasons’ short films:

Monday, March 23, 7 PM: Sugarpearl Espresso Bar (800 Burnet Avenue, Syracuse)

Wednesday, March 25, 7-9 PM: Wescott Community Center (826 Euclid Avenue, Syracuse)

Free Screening: The Vanishing Corporal (Le Caporal Epinglé)

We’re screening Jean Renoir’s 1962 film The Vanishing Corporal (Le Caporal Epinglé) on Tuesday, March 31, at 5:45 PM. The free screening will be in the Community Room of the Oswego Public Library (120 East 2nd Street). A discussion will follow immediately after the show.

The Time Out Film Guide entry on the film:

A deceptively slight tale of the attempts by three Frenchmen to escape from a Nazi prison camp during World War II, this late addition to Renoir’s impressively wide-ranging oeuvre is nevertheless suffused with the same warm and generous humanism as the great Régle du Jeu or Grande Illusion. Though the whole thing is played as a comedy, the scenes in the prison camp display Renoir’s characteristically sharp eye for regional and class differences, even under the yoke of common suffering. The final parting on the bridge in Paris is a scene which will ring loud and true for anyone with the slightest sense of the value of freedom and friendship.

George Toles on SUNY Oswego Campus

Screenwriter George Toles will be visiting the SUNY Oswego campus March 30 and 31.

A Canadian screenwriter of both features and short films, Toles discusses the craft of screenwriting. His screenplays examine psychosexual and complex cultural relationships among modern communities through dynamic, often disturbing, and peculiarly humourous plots. Among his screenplays and writing credits are Edison and Leo (2008), My Winnipeg (2007), Nude Caboose (2006), Brand Upon the Brain! (2006), The Saddest Music in the World (2003), The Cock Crew (1998), Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997), Sea Beggars (1994), Careful (1992), and Archangel (1990).  (ARTSwego)

On Tuesday,  March 31 at 12:30 PM, George Toles will give a talk in Room 114 of the Campus Center.

Suggested On-Line Viewing: Amazing Mr. X AKA The Spiritualist

This week, VCI Entertainment releases “Classic Film Noir, Vol. 3″. One of the films included is Bernard Vorhaus’s 1948 thriller, Amazing Mr. X (released in the UK as The Spiritualist). The film was

photographed by the brilliant and eccentric John Alton, one of the seminal stylists of film noir. “It’s not what you light,” Alton once observed. “It’s what you don’t light.”….

“Mr. X” is a gothic thriller starring the Austrian actor Turhan Bey, who brings all his exotic charm (Turkish father, Czech mother) to the role of a fraudulent psychic consultant attempting to draw a wealthy young widow (Lynn Bari) into his clutches.

The New York Times, March 29, 2009

Though Mr. Alton’s work won’t be seen to its best advantage, you can watch the film on-line at a few sources–I watched it in QuickTime at the Internet Movie Archive site.  Check it (or any of the many other options there) out. (Click onto sidebar link On-Line Viewing Options: Moving Image Archive and search for “Amazing Mr. X”).

Syracuse Intl Film Fest: Info Now Available

Check out the link (to the side →) for the upcoming Syracuse International Film Festival. A detailed festival schedule of this year’s films is now available at their website.

Link for Dryden Theater

We’ve added a link to the film schedule at the Dryden Theater in Rochester’s Eastman House. (Really, it’s not that far….)

In addition to their film series, the Eastman House offers exhibits, a grand house (with a history of its interesting master), and soon-to-be blooming gardens.

More Suggested On-Line Viewing: El sexto sentido (The Sixth Sense)

The Europa Film Treasures site is still new; it has a modest number of films on-demand right now, but is well worth checking out.

I picked out a film I knew nothing about: a silent 1929 Spanish film, El sexo sentido (The Sixth Sense)–and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The film was recently screened by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Here is their description:

The waves of avant-garde cinema that swept across Europe in the ’20s had a lesser impact in Spain, Buñuel and Dali notwithstanding. One remarkable exception was architect Nemesio Sobrevila’s The Sixth Sense.

Carlos takes his chronically depressed friend León to the mysterious Professor Kamus, who demonstrates his latest invention, The Sixth Sense, a super-camera that captures images from anywhere and everywhere. During his “projection-therapies,” León chances upon some images of Carlos’s girlfriend Carmen that makes him suspect she’s not being totally honest.

Part breezy Lubitsch-style comedy, part meditation on how to derive meaning from images, The Sixth Sense is a delightful, unexpected gem.

To link to the site, click onto “Europa Film Treasures” under “On-Line Viewing Options” on the sidebar.

SUNY Oswego’s Hart Hall International Film Festival

The festival runs Saturday, April 4 and Sunday, April 5. Here’s the schedule:

Saturday

2:00 PM  The Counterfeiters (Germany/Austria/France)

4:00 PM  Drunken Master (China)

6:00 PM  Caramel (Lebanon)

8:00 PM  Slumdog Millionaire (GB/India)

Sunday

2:00 PM  The Band’s Visit (Israel/US/France)

4:00 PM  The Closet (France)

6:00 PM  Sukiyaki Western Django (Japan)

8:00 PM  Singh is Kinng (India)

Syr Intl Film Fest ‘09: Tickets

Tickets are now on sale at the Syracuse International Film Festival’s website  for this year’s entries.

Click onto the link on the sidebar to take you to the site.

OFG Profiled in Syracuse Post-Standard

The group snagged the front page of the April 9 Neighbors section (Oswego County) in the Post-Standard. (See the link under Press).

Anyone who’s checking out our blog because of the article: welcome! Please send us your e-mail (oswegofilmgroup@yahoo.com) and we’ll put you on our mailing list. Also, become a friend of our Facebook group (search Oswego Film Group).

Thanks to some folks who were not included in the article or cover group photo (not viewable with the on-line article, I’m afraid): planning group member Mac McKinstry and Matt Tunis (who headed the group with Tiffany after Jon’s departure).

Also, OFG founder Mr Peck’s  first name is spelled Jon.

A Screening of Foxy Brown, 4/16

There’ll be a screening of Foxy Brown, starring Pam Grier, Thursday, April 16 at 7 PM on the SUNY Oswego campus in Lanigan Hall 107.

A talk-back session will be held with SUNY Oswego History professor Ken Marshall.

Trouble the Water Airs 4/23 on HBO

A documentary that the film group had recently looked into bringing to town, Trouble the Water, will be shown this Thursday, April 23 from 8:30-10:15 PM on HBO.

New Orleans’ Ninth Ward residents Kimberly Rivers Roberts and husband Scott didn’t have the means to leave town when Hurricane Katrina blew in. But they did have a camcorder, and Kimberly’s harrowing footage of her neighborhood’s nightmarish ordeal is woven seamlessly into directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s Oscar-nominated documenatry about the disaster. Human in scale, the film follows the charismatic Robertses and their family and friends as they rebuild their lives after the storm. It’s a fascinating, heartbreaking, and hopeful must-see.

[Rating:] A–Missy Schwartz in Entertainment Weekly,  April 24-May1 issue

For more information on the film, please visit its website:

www.troublethewaterfilm.com

“Don’t See Your Film in My Film!”

I was thinking of a museum screening I attended of an Indian film years ago. The director was there: I remember him wearing a pale, pale blue scarf, perched on the edge of a metal chair. He was seated next to a moderator who asked him a few questions after the film.

When questions from the audience were taken, one gentleman was called on and, in the course of his question/comments, apparently gave his interpretation of the director’s work. The director immediately jumped out of his seat. Glaring, he shook his finger at the audience member impudent enough to put forth his take, responding, “No! No! Don’t see your film in my film!” The whole room froze. After some uncomfortable moments, the flustered moderator quickly drew the question and answer period to a close.

What a change from a common response by an artist to the question: “What did [X] in your work mean?” The answer is so often something along the lines of: “Well…, it means whatever you think it means.” Ha! With this director, what he meant was his business, not yours. (You want to know what something means? Hey, you go write something!)

Syracuse Film Fest: Ben-Hur (1925) w/New Score

The Syracuse International Film Festival opens with a screening of the silent feature Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ at the Palace at 7 PM. Directed by Fred Niblo, the film stars Ramon Navarro and Francis X. Bushman. The Syracuse screening features a new score by J. C. Sanford with the Central New York Jazz Orchestra.

The 1925 extravaganza cost approximately $4 million (making it, by some accounts, the most expensive silent ever). Such an undertaking involved, predictably, plenty of revisions to the original plans for the picture.  The production, originally shot in Italy, was moved to California. (Unconfirmed:  the “famous chariot scene was filmed at what is now the intersection of LaCienega and Venice Boulevards in Los Angeles.”) The film features some scenes in two-strip Technicolor. Supposedly, dozens of Hollywood’s future stars were among the film’s extras. (Who can be spotted in which scene? Unknown. But keep your eyes peeled.)

Saviours Screens 4/30 on SUNY Oswego Campus

The Irish documentary Saviours will be screened on Thursday, April 30 at 7 PM in Room P322 in SUNY Oswego’s Campus Center. (There is no charge for admission).

(Room P322 is in the Poucher wing of the Campus Center. That’s on the far right of the complex. There are several entrances to the Center: on the left side, the center, and the right side.  Room P322 is one flight up and just across the hall from where Frozen River was screened.)

‘Saviours’ is the directorial debut of Liam Nolan and Ross Whitaker, two Dublin filmmakers who came together to produce a 25-minute documentary but realised they could gather enough material for a feature film. Filming then took place over the following two years but with no budget.

Set in St Saviours Olympic Boxing Academy…, in the heart of Dublin’s north inner city, the film follows the fortunes of three boxers whose fights come in and outside the ring.

Abdul Hussain is originally from Ghana but is seeking asylum in Ireland because he fears for this life should he return to his native country….

Dean Murphy is the local lad trying to make good….He has the talent and ambition to make a good career from the sport, but he needs to overcome injury and the distractions of working class life.

Before Darren Sutherland was winning Olympic medals and being pursued by the sport’s top promoters, he was a young Dublin lad trying to combine college life with a promising amateur boxing career…..

The fighters are coached and cajoled by their wily, humorous trainers, brothers Jim and Pat McCormack. Both were champions in their heyday and have been passing on their knowledge to generations of local lads for over 30 years. They treat the fighters as family: they are upset by Darren’s lack on interest; take Abdul to their heart and treat Dean as one of their own sons….. (Glenn Mason, RTÉ Entertainment)

The film has been judged “a small wonder…The film is raw and deglossed. But it contains riches….’Saviours’ is the kind of film-making that bottles inspiration and itself is the product of such. If this is what impoverished fim-making can do, then bring it on.” [Paul Lynch, (Irish) Tribune Arts]

In my favorite flipside to screaming hyperbolic film blurbs, there’s this:

Entertaining and honest, ‘Saviours’ fails to disappoint. (Gavin Burke, Entertainment.ie)

Let the Right One In Screens 5/13

OFG will screen the Swedish film Let the Right One In on Wednesday, May 13 at 7 PM in Room C114 of SUNY Oswego’s Campus Center. This screening is free and open to all. After the film, we’ll discuss it.

A fragile, anxious boy, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his stronger classmates but never strikes back. The lonely boy’s wish for a friend seems to come true when he meets Eli, also 12, who moves in next door to him with her father. A pale, serious young girl, she only comes out at night and doesn’t seem affected by the freezing temperatures. Coinciding with Eli’s arrival is a series of inexplicable disappearances and murders…. and for an introverted boy like Oskar, who is fascinated by gruesome stories, it doesn’t take long before he figures out that Eli is a vampire. But by now a subtle romance has blossomed between Oskar and Eli, and she gives him the strength to fight back against his aggressors. Oskar becomes increasingly aware of the tragic, inhuman dimension of Eli’s plight, but cannot bring himself to forsake her. Frozen forever in a twelve-year-old’s body, with all the burgeoning feelings and confused emotions of a young adolescent, Eli knows that she can only continue to live if she keeps on moving. But when Oskar faces his darkest hour, Eli returns to defend him the only way she can… Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson weaves friendship, rejection and loyalty into a disturbing and darkly atmospheric, yet poetic and unexpectedly tender tableau of adolescence. Let the Right One In is based on the best-selling novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist.  —from the film’s press materials

A chilling fairy tale. As delicate, haunting and poetic a film as you’re ever bound to see.  —director/producer Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth)

Check out this recent interview in the Bright Lights Film Journal with the director Tomas Alfredson, discussing–among other things–how he (indirectly) directs his child actors, which painters inspire his films’ look, and how his drumming is better when he’s behind a camera than behind a drum set. (See Interview link on the sidebar).

Lake Placid Film Forum: 6/11-14

Check out the schedule for this year’s Lake Placid Film Forum (running June 11-14) on the link in the sidebar. This year’s guests include directors Paul Schraeder, Joe Berlinger, and (from last year’s breakout festival film, Frozen River) Courtney Hunt. Other festival guests scheduled are authors Russell Banks and Richard Russo.

From Joe Berlinger’s Crude (showing at this year’s Lake Placid Film Forum)

Suggested On-Air Viewing: “Stranded” Airs Tue, May 19

On Tuesday, May 19, the Independent Lens series on PBS airs Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountain. Locally, it airs on WPBS (Channel 14 on Time Warner Cable) at 10 PM.

It is one of the most astonishing and inspiring survival tales of all time. On October 13, 1972, a young rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay, boarded a plane for a match in Chile—and then vanished into thin air. Two days before Christmas, 16 of the 45 passengers miraculously resurfaced. They had managed to survive for 72 days after their plane crashed on a remote Andean glacier. Thirty-five years later, the survivors return to the crash site—known as the Valley of Tears—to recount their harrowing story of defiant endurance and indestructible friendship. Previously documented in the 1973 worldwide bestseller Alive (and the 1993 Ethan Hawke movie of the same name), this shocking true story finally gets the cinematic treatment it deserves. Visually breathtaking and crafted with riveting detail by documentary filmmaker (and childhood friend of the survivors) Gonzalo Arijón with a masterful combination of on-location interviews, archival footage and reenactments, Stranded is by turns hauntingly powerful and spiritually moving.  (Zeitgeist Films)

“The Narrow Margin” Screens 5/27

We’ll be screening the 1952 classic thriller The Narrow Margin on Wednesday, May 27, at 7 PM in the Community Room of the Oswego Public Library (120 East 2nd Street). We’ll discuss the film after the screening. The event is free and open to all. The film runs 71 minutes.

This film noir was directed by Richard Fleischer. Early in his long career, he directed thrillers/crime dramas such as Bodyguard (1948), Follow Me Quietly (1949), Trapped (1949), Armed Car Robbery (1950), and His Kind of Woman (1951). He went on to direct works as varied as Fantastic Vogage, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Conan the Destroyer. The Narrow Margin stars crime drama veterans Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor.

From the Time Out Film Guide:

Fleischer has yet to have his critical day: with Blake Edwards, he is one of the last surviving classically trained American directors. Here is classic pulp premise (cops escorting hoodlum’s widow to Grand Jury trial with a pack of killers bent on eliminating her before she talks); essence of B movie casting (the malevolently magnificent McGraw and the sleazy siren Windsor); and classic setting (transcontinental express train with every passenger, every stop  a possibly malign menace). Teeming with incident, it is fashioned into a taut, breathtakingly fast and highly suspenful ’sleeper’ par excellence.

Considering Cannes 2009: Festival Wrap-up

If Cannes this year was (reportedly) less congested and crazed than usual, there was still apparently plenty shown at the just-concluded festival that earned praise and plenty that brought outrage.

Here’s a rundown of the major winners:

Palme d’Or
DAS WEISSE BAND (The White Ribbon) directed by Michael HANEKE

Grand Prix
UN PROPHÈTE (A Prophet) directed by Jacques AUDIARD

Lifetime achievement award for his work and his exceptional contribution to the history of cinema

Alain RESNAIS

Best Director
Brillante MENDOZA for KINATAY

Jury Prize
FISH TANK directed by Andrea ARNOLD

BAK-JWI (Thirst) directed by PARK Chan-Wook

Best Performance for an Actor
Christoph WALTZ in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS directed by Quentin TARANTINO

Best Performance by an Actress
Charlotte GAINSBOURG in ANTICHRIST directed by Lars von TRIER

See link to The Guardian’s Cannes coverage.

Suggested Theater Viewing: Up

The first animated feature to open Cannes (this past month)–a worthy choice. Beautifully nuanced details and textures. A highlight is early on in the film–the backstory Carl and Ellie, the couple who lived in that house that takes flight. The 3-D does not have that gimmicky “It’s coming right at you!” feel. Rather, it just enhances the whole experience. Highly recommended.

Check out the link in the sidebar for the movie’s production notes. The filmmakers explain their theory of  “simplexity” to get the right mix of realism and caricature. Also, the influence of directors Kurosawa (especially “Ikiru”) and Ozu as well as illustrators like Mary Blair and George Booth on the film. Plus, exactly how many balloons are holding up that house.

from Disney artist Mary Blair

from cartoonist and artist George Booth

Horror (With the Best Intentions): Shaun Luu HorrorFest, 6/13

Attending the Palace Theatre for an evening of Sergio Leone’s Clint Eastwood westerns (Eastwood in Eastwood?), we realized this was another Syracuse movie venue we should note. (Spotted in the audience: OFG founder Jon Peck). This was a Brew & View evening (Saranac and Middle Ages beers on sale) with a discount for even a half-hearted attempt to dress in western or Civil War garb. Interestingly, the evening was sponsored by a local lodge of the Masons, who distributed literature on Freemasonry.

We also spotted fliers for this weekend’s Shaun Luu HorrorFest 2009. The festival (in its fifth year) raises money for University Hospital and the Golisano Children’s Hospital in memory of Shaun who was part of the city’s hardcore scene until his death from brain cancer at age 23. On Friday, the 13th, the festival will screen eight films (in 35 mm, if available) at the Palace Theatre. The following day, more than a dozen bands will be playing at the Wescott.

For more information, visit the Palace Theatre’s website (www.palacetheatresyracuse.com) and http://www.youtube.com/ShaunLuuHorrorFest

from one of the scheduled films, Dario Argento’s Deep Red (1975)

Seen at Silverdocs: Winnebago Man

Washington DC’s Silverdocs festival, in its seventh season, has become one of the major US showcases of documentaries. Sponsored by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the Discovery Channel, the festival “has both bolstered and capitalized on Washington’s reputation as ‘Docuwood,’ a city that churns out more nonfiction films than anywhere else in the United States” (The Washington Post Weekend, 6/12/09). Films screen at the AFI Silver (a beautifully restored deco theater) and the Round House Theatre in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland (the ‘Silver’ in Silverdocs).

We saw one the screenings, Winnebago Man. I confess I was completely in the dark about the film’s inspiration: a videotape that was dubbed and passed around starting in the late ’80s, outtakes from an industrial film made for Winnebago showing the spokesman cursing his flubbed lines, the crew, pesky flies…. When YouTube appeared, the tape made Winnebago Man (sometimes called the Angriest Man in the World) known worldwide. Ben Steinbauer, a fan of the tape, was intrigued enough to search out the story behind the tape and track down the man himself, Jack Rebney. The portrait of the cantankerous but dignified Rebney is funny and bittersweet.

After the screening, the director and two of the producers were there to take questions. Ben Steinbauer, the director, suggested giving Jack (who lives in a cabin in the northern California woods) a call. (See photo above).  Steinbauer held his iphone up to mic: we heard an update from Jack and some in the audience asked him questions directly. Mr Rebney left us with the directive to keep our wits about us and to (politically) “Act! Act!”

(One audience member was a young girl who, we assume, wasn’t fazed by the film’s blue language. She was interested: she asked a question and was standing waiting to talk to the filmmakers at the end of Q&A session.)

Check out the original video and read more about the film in posted link.

Recommended Viewing: Brighton Rock

I saw this on TCM earlier this year and highly recommend it. Keep your eye on the TCM schedule to catch it; it’s not available yet on US-formatted DVD (though it’s been released in the UK).

The film (also known as Young Scarface) was based on Graham Greene’s book, with Greene providing the screenplay (revising Terence Ratigan’s draft).  Directed by John Boulting in 1947, Richard Attenborough (years before he began directing) turns in a devastating turn as Pinkie, a baby-faced and cold-blooded gangster. (The ironic ending reminded me of the final scene of Gumshoe (1971).

Still More Recommendations (But Let’s Stick With Green)

Calling all Time Warner subscribers: I hope you’re more diligent than I am about checking in to see what’s available on the cable service’s Free Movies on Demand channel.

Yesterday I found two films on the channel’s Sundance menu that I”d recently seen via Netflix: Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days and Army of Shadows.

I also scanned the TCM menu on the channel and found (and watched) Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun zankolu monogatari), Nagisa Oshima’s second film. Made in 1960, it wasn’t released in the US until the ’80s.

A little background on the filmmaker (best known in this country for In the Realm of the Senses):

Born into a family with samurai ancestry and socialist leanings, Mr. Oshima studied law at Kyoto University, where he became active in the left-wing student movement. His youthful ideals extended into his film career, and his interest in cinema as a revolutionary tool — along with his gift for acid polemics and his pop touch with political material — earned him repeated comparisons to another ’60s titan, Jean-Luc Godard  (Tired of being called Japan’s answer to Mr. Godard, Mr. Oshima suggested that Mr. Godard be considered the Oshima of France.)

Like all iconoclasts, Mr. Oshima has a patricidal aspect to his career. “My hatred for Japanese cinema includes absolutely all of it,” he declared. When he made a television documentary on Japanese cinema in 1995, he included only one clip each from older masters like Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi.  (Four of his own films made it in.) Where others saw refinement, Mr. Oshima saw meek politesse and ossified ideals of beauty. This is a filmmaker who once wrote an essay titled “Banish Green” and excised the color from his movies because he thought it too soothing.

It was not just Japanese aesthetics but a whole system of Japanese thought that Mr. Oshima sought to probe and overthrow….

Mr. Oshima threw in his lot with the underclass. His protagonists tend to be rebels, outcasts and criminals. Many of his plots pivot on scams, executed with either casual or desperate cruelty and typically doomed to backfire. (From “Safeguarding a Japanese Master’s Place in Film” by Dennis Lim, The New York Times, 9/25/08)

Set against the backdrop of the student protests of the US-Japan Security Treaty*, the self-involvement and scams of Cruel Story of Youth’s two young lovers are contrasted with the disillusionment of the girl’s older sister and her former boyfriend, two lovers who thought they would be the ones to create a new Japan.

The film “was a surprise box office hit… and went on to become an icon of the taiyozoku, or ‘Sun Tribe,’ films, the popular cycle of overripe youth exploitation pictures that were an important staple of Japanese cinema during the early 1960s.” (Harvard Film Archive)

*In the film, a clip from a newsreel of South Korean students protesting was a revelation–these were uprisings that came years before the student sit-ins and marches that I associate with the ’60s.

The Book and the Movie

This week, after seeing the latest Harry Potter movie installment and finishing reading In a Lonely Place, I was thinking about the liberties taken with interpreting written fiction for the screen. Not having made it to the sixth book, I could take Harry Potter 6 as I found it, unfettered by noticing, as my more widely-read movie companion did, what was left out, what was really from the seventh book… The Potter movies struggle to streamline the length of the original source. It remains a plot-driven, visually-inventive story, though

The movie can bear little relation to the orignal source, though.

In a Lonely Place, the 1947 thriller by Dorothy B. Hughes, is so unlike the film noir classic of the same name that you have to wonder why the filmmakers didn’t pick a new title and new names for the characters. The changes from the book to the screen go well beyond those necessary to bring the inner life of the characters to the screen. The book shadows the main character, a serial killer in Los Angeles (always known to the reader) . Unlike the book,  the film (which contains only one of the murders) is “interested neither in creating mystery nor in following a process of detection….Above plot [the film] promotes character and both psycholgical and social portraiture, using the suspicion of murder as a pressure to dramatise the course of a romance from the discovery of love to its disintegration.” (V. F. Perkins’ essay on the film in The Book of Film Noir) (The poster above, though, seems to push the mystery/suspense aspect).

Does anyone, not having read the assigned book for book club, take the chance and instead watch the movie version? (When I was kid, I think some kids thought the Classics Illustrated comic books would cover their book report assignment…) Don’t assume just because you know the book, you know the movie (or other way round).

Take the Quiz

The subject of the Pop Quiz included in the latest Education section of the NY Times is film studies. (I took quite of few lucky guesses: you’d think I really knew the horror genre: I managed to successfully match each film to the director–how I’m not sure.)

The multiple choice questions are on film history, the business, westerns, horror films, and 2 extra credit questions on film noir.

Give it a go; it’s fun and a nice change from those tissue-light quizzes on Facebook! (Look under the As Mentioned in the Post links).

Scores to Settle: Two Films about Revenge

Two films I recently saw on cable dealt with revenge (that dish, as the saying goes, best served cold). One film did serve it cold: The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de pages); the other, at a boil: Dead Man’s Shoes.

The Page Turner (2006), directed by Denis Dercout, stars Déborah François as

Mélanie, the small town butcher’s daughter whose ambitions as a pianist were dashed during a childhood exam when one juror, a famous concert pianist [Catherine Frot], distracted her by signing an autograph. A decade on, this shy girl is somehow hired as governess to the woman’s son, and soon she’s assisting as page turner as Frot prepares for a comeback concert. Is Mélanie plotting revenge? Nursing a crush? Or hoping to bask in reflected glory? This cool, elegant and often witty film remains admirably ambiguous until the final scenes, and even then wisely forgoes tying up too many loose ends. (Time Out Film Guide)

The film plays with some our plot expectations, learned from other suspense dramas.

Look for Déborah François in her first film, L’Enfant, a film we hope to show this fall as part of our OFG offerings.

Déborah François in The Page Turner

Dead Man’s Shoes (2004) is from British director Shane Meadows, who wrote it with the film’s lead actor, Paddy Considine.

Something is rotten in a Midland village, though from initial appearances it runs no deeper than the petty drug-dealing, porn and Pot Noodles that charcterise the lives of local goons Herbie, Soz, Tuff and Sonny. Considine busts their chops, steals their stash and daubs taunts on their walls before they have time to figure out who he could be; even when they do, they don’t realise quite how scared they should be. (Time Out Film Guide)

Paddy Considine (with Toby Kebbell) in Dead Man’s Shoes

This was my first exposure to Shane Meadows; his best known work in this country is probably This is England (2006). Paddy Considine was terrific, as expected.

Sidebar: If they cast a biopic of the band X, I’d pick Considine (l) to play John Doe (r). Seeing as Doe has plenty of acting gigs on his own CV, maybe the two should be cast as brothers sometime….

“Got me a movie/I want you to know…”

…..

….don’t know about you
but I am un chien andalusia….

“Debaser” / The Pixies / written by Black Francis

File under: Songs That Feature Movies.

Related files: The Book or the Movie (such as Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”) and Title Same as the Movie’s, but Unrelated (Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”)

Deco Still Lives

…in Oswego. Having attended a screening at the beautifully restored Silver Theater (now the AFI Silver) in Silver Spring, Maryland earlier this summer, I was reminded how lucky we are to still have an a deco movie theater here–a little careworn but, unlike so many others in surrounding towns, not shuttered.  The theater, built in 1941, was designed by architect John Eberson and is on the National Register of Historic Places. For more information on the Oswego Theater and other historic movie houses, please visit the Cinema Treasures website.

Update to Frozen River Post, 3/09

A conversation with our friend Kevin made me think some more about this film and how Frozen River was viewed from the Mohawk perspective.

This is from ‘Frozen River’ Draws Mixed Reaction’, an article by Denise A, Raymo published in The Press-Republican (Plattsburgh), March 29.

Glory Cole, director of the Akwesasne Library and Cultural Center,…asked patrons who have checked [the DVD] out and the staff who have watched what they thought of ‘Frozen River.’ “Most of them said it made us look pretty bad. But I told them, ‘It’s just a movie. It’s meant to be entertaining. It wasn’t billed as a documentary.’….But Cole said she does wonder about the impression viewers from other parts of the United States are left with concerning Akwesasne Mohawks and American Indians in general….” A majority of the movie was filmed in Plattsburgh, which is what surprised some Mohawk people who saw it. “The only thing anybody really recognized around here was in the beginning of the movie, and that was the sign on the bridge to Canada,” Cole said…. She said many remarked on the misrepresentation of certain well-known Akwesasne sites, such as the Tribal Council Community Building and the Mohawk Bingo Palace, which are both large, bright structures, not the small, dingy buildings depicted in the film.

Shannon Burns, editor of the Indian Time newspaper on the Mohawk territory, said she interviewed Hunt in 2004, when the director was researching a short feature on the reservation, but could not get her questions answered or telephone calls returned once the full-length movie was out. “The premise of the film isn’t good for Akwesasne,” Burns said in a February editorial. “Camp-dwellers who smuggle humans across the river? It’s not that anyone here thinks we don’t have crime, but don’t we have enough real crime and a bad enough reputation without films that give an entirely false impression of the Mohawk community?”

Doug George-Kanentiio, former editor of Akwesasne Notes and co-founder of the Native American Journalists Association, said ‘Frozen River’ is flawed. “The reservation is perceived as a place to be feared, the Mohawks grim and dangerous,” he said in a recent editorial piece. “There is nothing appealing about reservation life — no mention of our schools, ceremonies, health centers or arena. “We remain a vague people, distrustful of the outside world, even as we seek to use our status as an indigenous community for profit and without any consideration for those we exploit along the way,” George-Kanetiio said. “I hope this movie will result in a better one told from our perspective –someday, perhaps.”

Hamilton Theater (Hamilton NY)

We’ve added a link to the theater in Hamilton, New York.

The theater’s offerings include their Indie Films @ 5:30. Films scheduled include:

August 12-16: Departures (dir. Yojiro Takita)

August 19-23: Summer Hours (dir. Olivier Assayer)

August 26-30: Anvil! The Story of Anvil (dir. Sacha Gervasi)

Other series offered by Hamilton Theater include their Book & Movie Club, Children’s Matinee Series, Midnight Movies, Silent Films, and special screenings of Grand Operas.

For more information, see the link on the sidebar.

“Terry and Julie…

..pass over the river where they feel safe and sound…”

So maybe the ‘Terry and Julie’ of the Kinks classic “Waterloo Sunset” weren’t really Terence Stamp and Julie Christie (as was often presumed). In a 2004 interview in The Independent, the song’s writer, Ray Davies, said he didn’t write ‘for stars’ and that the pair he wrote about in the song were ‘real people’.

Still–whenever I hear the song, in my mind’s eye, ‘Terry and Julie’  remain Stamp and Christie, as seen in John Schlesinger’s 1967 film, Far From the Madding Crowd.

Illuminating Oppression: Film Festival 9/10-12

Syracuse University’s Syracuse Symposium presents the documentary series Illuminating Oppression, its 7th Annual Human Rights Film Festival from September 10 through 12.

Thursday, September 10, 7 PM: Zones of War

Behind Forgotten Eyes, dir Anthony Gilmore, 76 min, 2007. “[The] Japanese Imperial Army coerced, tricked, and forced more than 200,000 Korean women into a brutal and systematic form of sexual slavery.” The film features first-hand accounts and the aftermath of this abuse; a discussion with the film’s co-director Ryan Seale follows the film.

Friday, September 11, 7 PM: The Line That Defines

Still Human Still Here: Destitution of the Refused Asylum Seekers, dirs Marc Hoeferlin, Barney Broomfield, 12 min, 2007 “…depicts the predicament of refused UK asylum seekers….”

Pray the Devil Back to Hell, dir Gini Reticker, 72 min, 2007 presents the “story of a small band of Christian and Muslim Liberian women, who took on violent warlords and the corrupt Charles Taylor regime, and won a long-awaited peace in 2003 for their shattered country.”

Saturday, September 12, 1 PM: Not All in Good Faith

Under Construction, dir Zhenchen Liu, 10 min, 2007 “…depicts the plight of thousands of Chinese families forcibly displaced from their homes as city planners tear down parts of Shanghai’s old town to regenerate the city.”

Up the Yangtze, dir Yung Chang, 93 min, 2007. “The Three Gorges Dam is the backdrop for this…disquieting glimpse into the future as flood waters spill over the banks on the Yangtze, forever altering the landscape and lives of the people who eked out a living along the legendary river.”

Screenings will be held in the Life Sciences Complex Auditorium on the Syracuse University campus; the films are free and open to all.

For more information on the series, please visit syracusesymposium.org

Free Speech/Free Press Film Series: SUNY Oswego

SUNY Oswego’s Civic Engagement Coalition is presenting a semester-long celebration of the US Constitution’s First Amendment.  All screenings are free and held in the Campus Center on Thursdays at 7 PM (unless otherwise noted; see first film scheduled). For more information, please contact Professor Helen Knowles of the college’s Political Science Department (helen.knowles@oswego.edu).

September 15 (Tuesday), at 8 PM, in Room 228: Good Morning Vietman (1987) features Robin William’s portrayal of disc jockey Adrian Cronauer during the Vietnam War and “some of the tensions that occur when freedom of the press meets military regulations and the complexities of American foreign policy.”

September 24, Room 201: The Killing Fields (1984)

October 1, Room 118: RKO 281 (1999)

October 8, Room 201: Citizen Kane (1941)

October 15, Room 118: Call Northside 777 (1948)

October 22, Room 201: Good Night and Good Luck (2005)

October 29, Room 118: All the President’s Men (1976)

November 5, Room 201: The China Syndrome (1979)

November 12, Room 118: Network (1976)

November 19, Room 201: The People Versus Larry Flynt (1996)

December 3, Room 118: Shattered Glass (2003)

December 10, Room 201: Deliberate Intent (2000)

At the Drive-In: Triple Feature (featuring The Hurt Locker)

Many of us saw Tarantino’s movie about movies (that happened to be set in WWII) already in Oswego or the Syracuse area. I don’t think The Hurt Locker’s played in Oswego, though (has it?). It’s part of a triple bill coming to the Midway Drive-In this coming weekend (September 18-20):

Inglorious Basterds (start time 8 PM: Friday, Saturday; 10:25 PM: Sunday)

The Hurt Locker (start time 10:45 PM Friday, Saturday; 8 PM: Sunday)

Valkyrie (start time 12:25 AM: Friday, Saturday, Sunday)

Admission is $6. See the link (under Links) for more info.

Mr & Mrs Wizard Indeed

An article (“Mr. & Mrs. Wizard”) in the Sunday New York Times Men’s Fall Fashion Style magazine caught my eye. The piece focussed on Powers of Ten, the classic short that begins at a picnic on the shores of Lake Michigan–and travels (how many was is?) light years into space–and then reverses the journey all the way back to the level of an atom.

I remembered seeing the film, but hadn’t realized that the filmmakers were Charles and Ray Eames. (Okay, I also didn’t realize that Ray was a woman and the two were a married couple; I’d always assumed they were brothers!) Quick: word association–Eames…. Did you think ‘chair’?

That’s understandable, but I discovered that the Eames designed “everything from toys, games, houses, books and movie sets to leg splints for the United States Navy. They also found time to pursue parallel careers as educational filmmakers.”

Check out more on this renaissance couple’s work at their foundation’s site and the Library of Congress’ exhibit site:

http://eamesoffice.com/

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/eames/

Upcoming Fall Film Programs in Syracuse

The Palace Theatre continues its Brew and View series:

Sept 18: Jaws, The Birds

Sept 25: Giant Gila Monster, Jurassic Park, Alligator

Oct 9: The Blob (1988 re-make), Nightmare City (aka City of the Walking Dead), Night of the Creeps

Oct 23:  Repo Man, Rock N’ Roll High School, Wizard of Gore (HG Lewis version)

For more info, please visit the Palace’s website (see the Links sidebar).

The Syracuse Cinephile Society presents its Hollywood finds at 7:30 PM on Mondays at the Spaghetti Warehouse (680 N Clinton St):

Sep 21: Bulldog Drummond (1929); Sept 28: College Holiday (1936); Oct 5: 13 Hours by Air (1936); Oct 12: White Heat (1949); Oct 19: Tin Pan Alley (1940); Oct 26: Mark of the Vampire (1935) and Murders in the Zoo (1933)

‘Saviours’ Star Darren Sutherland Dead at 27

We were shocked and saddened to hear that boxer Darren Sutherland was found hanged in his London home. The 27-year-old, one of the three boxers we saw featured in Saviours, had won an Olympic medal and was seen as one of the brightest lights in the sport. What a heartbreaking coda to the story we’d seen; our thoughts go out to his family, friends, colleagues , and fans.

New Link: The Red House, Syracuse

We’ve added a link to the film happenings at the art center in Armory Square, The Red House.

Come Join Us: The Informant!

Come join us at the Wednesday evening screening of The Informant!, now playing at the Oswego Cinema 7. After the show (which starts at 7:40 PM), we’ll regroup (Greene’s?) to discuss the film. (Since we didn’t arrange this last week, we won’t be having our usual Night Out discussion in the theater’s upstairs lobby as we usually do).

Check out the A. O. Scott article on the film, published in Sunday’s New York Times, for some good potential discussion topics. (For the link, please see the sidebar).

OFG Presents “The Class” 9/29 at SUNY Oswego

Our first offering this season will be the acclaimed French film, The Class (Entre les murs). There will be a free screening on Tuesday, September 29, at 7 PM in the Campus Center Auditorium/118 on the SUNY Oswego campus.

“Directed by Laurent Cantet, the film follows a year in the life of a French schoolteacher working in a tough multi-cultural section of Paris. Based on a best-selling autobiographic novel by François Bégaudeau, who plays the main character. ‘The Class’ is brought alive by the performances of the non-professional actors playing the students.” The New York Times

The film won the 2008 Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or. Please learn more about the film at The Class’s website; you’ll find a link on the sidebar.

“Degham (Body)” at SUNY Oswego, 10/5

There will be a free screening of the film Degham (Body) on the SUNY Oswego campus on October 5. This documentary looks at transgender issues in the lives of five women in India. The film, directed by Vishnu Mathur, is in Tamil with English subtitles and runs 1 hour, 35 minutes. The screening will be at 6:30 PM in the Campus Center Auditorium (C118).

“The Lives of Others” at SUNY Oswego, 10/7

The Academy Award winning German film, The Lives of Others (Dan Leben der Anderen) will be screened on Wednesday, October 7 at 6:30 PM in the Campus Center Auditorium (118) on the SUNY Oswego campus.

The 2006 film, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck,

set in East Berlin, mostly during the mid-1980s, chronicles the consequences of the Minister of Culture’s decsion to investigate a successful playwright…and his actress lover…. Those profoundly affected by the bugging of the couple’s apartment are not only the artists and their friends, but the surveillance expert in charge of the operation [played by Ulrich Mühe], who comes to question the ethics of his work for the Stasi. The complex, lucid script and the sombre noir camerawork establish an atmosphere of fear, doubt and suspicion, and the superb performances ensure that this taut thriller succeeds as convincing (if controversial) historical re-creation and as a compelling tale of individuals tragically shaped by the society in which they live. (Time Out Film Guide)

The film runs 138 minutes; the screening (presented by the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures) is free.

“Carmen” at SUNY Oswego, 10/28

Carlos Saura’s Carmen (1983) will be screened on Wednesday, October 28, at 7 PM in the Campus Center Auditorium (118) on the SUNY Oswego campus.

Conceived by Mr. Saura and Antonio Gades, the famed dancer-choreographer and former director of the National Ballet of Spain, this ”Carmen” combines dance, Bizet music and a modern if very slim narrative to find its own contemporary equivalent to the passionate 19th-century grandeur of the opera.

Mr. Saura, who directed the film, and Mr. Gades, who choreographed it and plays a central role, use as the frame of their film the story of a dance company rehearsing ”Carmen,” a production that seems to be as freely conceived as the film itself….

Virtually the entire film is set in a large rehearsal hall in which Antonio and his dancer-singers, in practice clothes, go through the key scenes of their production, dancing sometimes to Bizet music – taken from a recording of the opera starring Regina Resnick and Mario Del Monaco – and sometimes to flamenco music provided by the troupe’s own musicians.

In this way the film serves up bits and pieces of the opera to surprisingly moving effect. There’s a riveting sequence near the start of the movie when Paco De Lucia, the guitarist in the movie as he is in life, adapts a Bizet melody to become a flamenco lament. The opera’s fight between Carmen and another woman, who also works in the cigarette factory, becomes a dance of the sort of blinding vicious energy that one seldom ever encounters in an opera house. In this way, too, Mr. Saura succeeds in rediscovering many of the emotions that may elude today’s opera audiences. (Vincent Canby, The New York Times, 10/20/83)

The screening is free.

“Julie & Julia” + “500 Days of Summer” at the Drive-In, 10/2-4

The drive-in season for this year is drawing to a close…but this weekend the Midway Drive-In is showing a triple feature with two of this summer’s most celebrated films: Julie & Julia and 500 Days of Summer.

On Friday and Sunday, Julie & Julia will be first on the line-up, starting at 8 PM; on Saturday, the film starts at 9:50 PM.

On Saturday, 500 Days of Summer is first up at 8 PM; on Friday and Sunday, it will be shown at 10:15 PM.

(The last movie of the bill is My Sister’s Keeper).

For more information, please see the link to the Midway on the sidebar.

Always Room for One More…Top 100 Films List

Yet another Top 100 Films list, this one published in September in the British newspaper The Independent. Critic Anthony Quinn’s picks are a mix of the expected canon on the greats, the popular,  the obscure (at least to me), and the rather puzzling. (I jotted down of the films–listed singly on the site in groups of 20. Most of the years and directors were taken from the Time Out Film Guide. Check out The Independent’s site with photo stills and brief captions on each film; the link is on the sidebar).

100. Army of Shadows/The Army in the Shadows (1969: Jean-Pierre Melville)

99. The Wages of Fear (1953: Henri-Georges Clouzot)

98. Unforgiven (1992: Clint Eastwood)

97. Election (1999: Alexander Payne)

96. Los Olvidados (1950: Luis Buñuel)

95. Don’t Look Now (1973: Nicolas Roeg)

94. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975: Peter Weir)

93. Together (2000: Lukas Moodysson)

92. Nights of Cabiria (1956: Federico Fellini)

91. I Am Cuba (1964: Mikhail Kalatozov)

90. La Kermesse Héroique/Carnival in Flanders (1936: Jacques Feyder)

89. Trainspotting (1995: Danny Boyle)

88. The Leopard (1963: Luchino Visconti)

87. Peeping Tom (1960: Michael Powell)

86. Diner (1982: Barry Levinson)

85. Ridicule (1996: Patrice Leconte)

84. The Reckless Moment (1949: Max Ophuls)

83. The Searchers (1956: John Ford)

82. The Lusty Men (1952: Nicholas Ray)

81. Mean Streets (1973: Martin Scorsese)

80. Duel (1971: Steven Speilberg)

79. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938: Michael Curtiz)

78. The Lives of Others (2007: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

77. Rififi (1955: Jules Dassin)

76. The Deer Hunter (1978: Michael Cimino)

75. La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928: Carl Dreyer)

74. Rumble Fish (1983: Francis Ford Coppola)

73. In a Lonely Place (1950: Nicholas Ray)

72. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955: Ingmar Bergman)

71. Barry Lyndon (1975: Stanley Kubrick)

70. The Lost Weekend (1945: Billy Wilder)

69. Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972: Werner Herzog)

68. Rebecca (1940: Alfred Hitchcock)

67. Wild Strawberries (1957: Ingmar Bergman)

66. Rashomon (1951: Akira Kurosawa)

65. Tokyo Story (1953: Yasujiro Ozu)

64. Downfall (2004: Oliver Hirschbiegel)

63. The Dark Mirror (1946: Robert Siodmak)

62. Toy Story (1995: John Lasseter)

61. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)

60. Psycho (1960: Alfred Hitchcock)

59. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970: Vittorio De Sica)

58. The Fallen Idol (1948: Carol Reed)

57. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978: Fred Schepisi)

56. His Girl Friday (1939: Howard Hawks)

55. LA Confidential (1997: Curtis Hanson)

54. There Will Be Blood (2007: Paul Thomas Anderson)

53. Sullivan’s Travels (1941: Preston Sturges)

52. Ball of Fire (1941: Howard Hawks)

51. Overlord (1975: Stuart Coops)

50. Meet Me in St Louis (1944: Vincente Minnelli)

49. Sunset Boulevard (1950: Billy Wilder)

48. The Conversation (1974: Francis Coppola)

47. Gone With the Wind (1939: Victor Fleming)

46. Touch of Evil (1958: Orson Welles)

45. L’Atalante (1934: Jean Vigo)

44. Nashville (1975: Robert Altman)

43. It Happened One Night (1934: Frank Capra)

42. Oliver! (1968: Carol Reed)

41. Taxi Driver (1976: Martin Scorsese)

40. Blue Velvet (1986: David Lynch)

39. Breathless (1959: Jean-Luc Godard)

38. Once Upon a Time in America (1983: Sergio Leone)

37. Manhattan (1979: Woody Allen)

36. L’Enfant Sauvage (1969: François Truffaut)

35. Duck Soup (1933: Leo McCarey)

34. The Last Detail (1973: Hal Ashby)

33. The Apartment (1960: Billy Wilder)

32. Groundhog Day (1993: Harold Ramis)

31. On the Waterfront (1954: Elia Kazan)

30. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942: Orson Welles)

29. Alien (1979: Ridley Scott)

28. The Red Shoes (1948: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)

27. Casablanca (1942: Michael Curtiz)

26. Fear Eats the Soul (1973: Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

25. The Rules of the Game (1939: Jean Renoir)

24. The Third Man (1949: Carol Reed)

23. Sherlock Junior (1924: Buster Keaton)

22. Raging Bull (1980: Martin Scorsese)

21. The Big Sleep (1946: Howard Hawks)

20. Citizen Kane (1941: Orson Welles)

19. A Man Escaped (1956: Robert Bresson)

18. Sweet Smell of Success (1957: Alexander Mackendrick)

17. Notorious (1946: Alfred Hitchcock)

16. The Godfather (I & II) (1971/1974: Francis Ford Coppola)

15. To Have and Have Not (1945:  Howard Hawks)

14. Night of the Hunter (1955: Charles Laughton)

13. This Is Spinal Tap (1983: Rob Reiner)

12. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949: Robert Hamer)

11. Brief Encounter (1945: David Lean)

10. Chinatown (1974: Roman Polanski)

9. The Conformist (1970: Bernardo Bertolucci)

8. Vertigo (1958: Alfred Hitchcock)

7. Great Expectations (1946: David Lean)

6. The Battle of Algiers (1965: Gillo Pontecorvo)

5. The Lady Eve (1941: Preston Sturges)

4. The Wild Bunch (1969: Sam Peckinpah)

3. Singin’ in the Rain (1952: Stanley Donen)

2. Double Indemnity (1944: Billy Wilder)

1. All About Eve (1950: Joseph L Mankiewicz)

Clip of the Day (circa 1899)

Syracuse Peace Council’s Screenings

We’ve added a link to the Syracuse Peace Council’s website. The group holds screenings (on many) Saturdays at 8 PM at the ArtRage Gallery (505 Hawley Avenue). Upcoming scheduled films:

October 10: The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

October 17: The Eleventh Hour

October 24: Angels and Insects

October 31: Halloween Movie Marathon (from 6 PM – 2 AM)

The group suggests a $5 donation at the screenings.

In addition, there will be a free screening of the documentary Rethink Afghanistan at the ArtRage Gallery at 7 PM on Wednesday, October 14.

Double Feature: Anvil! The Story of Anvil w/Heavy Metal Parking Lot

Coming soon to the SUNY Oswego campus: two documentaries kick off OFG’s music series File Under: Eclectic. The films will be screened on Wednesday, November 4, at 7 PM in the Campus Center Auditorium (C118). The screenings are free; a discussion will follow the films.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil:

At 14, Toronto school friends Steve ‘Lips’ Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, went on to become the ‘demigods of Canadian metal,’ releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982’s Metal on Metal. The album influenced a musical generation, including Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax….. But Anvil’s career took a different path–straight to obscurity.

Director Sacha Gervasi [himself once a teenage fan of--and even a roadie for--the group] has concocted a wonderful and often hilarious account of Anvil’s last-ditch quest for elusive fame and fortune. His ingenious filmmaking may first lead you to think this is a mockumentary, but it isn’t….[We] see the reality of their day-to-day lives as they struggle to make ends meet, take a misguided European tour, and engage in antics on the road–which is not always lined with fans. Gervasi even finds a softer center to this raucous film, introducing us to band members’ ever-supportive, but long-suffering, families…. Anvil rocks–it has no other choice. (John Cooper, Sundance Film Festival Catalog)

Anthony Lane found the movie “the most stirring release of the year” and in his review in The New Yorker concluded:

This film is not about rock music at all, …; it is about time, and how it threatens to fade us out like a song on the radio, and why, risking ridicule, and leaning on love, we should crank up the volume and keep going….

On the same bill, Heavy Metal Parking Lot:

The legendary 1986 short film that documents a group of metal fans congregating before a Judas Priest concert. The kids-in-the-parking-lot interviews are funny–and sometimes disturbing.

Washington DC area filmmakers Jeff Krulik and John Heyn used borrowed equipment, shot without permission from the venue, and initially didn’t even copyright the work. The result became an underground hit. HMPL fans make copies and distributed them; the buzz about HMPL began to grow as it drew attention from bands including Nirvana and the Lemonheads and directors Sofia Coppola and Cameron Crowe.

The film, after all these years, has outgrown its underground status: it’s been ranked 6 in SPIN magazine’s list of top 20 rock movies and 16th out of the Top 100 Most Metal Moments on VH1.

Link Added to The Little

We’ve added a link to The Little, Rochester’s independent film theatre and café. The theatre (celebrating its 80 anniversary) is currently showing Bright Star, Capitalism: A Love Story, My One and Only, Lorna’s Silence, It Might Get Loud and ImageOut, the city’s lesbian and gay film festival. (The festival continues through October 18. For a link to the ImageOUT site, please see the sidebar under Mentioned in the Post).

Clip of the Day: Cardboard Animation by Sjors Vervoort

Link Added to UbuWeb’s Film & Video

We’ve added a link to UbuWeb, a source of audio and visual avant-garde works. The site has 1,000 films and video from 500 artists.

Link added to World Cinema Foundation

We’ve added a link to the free films available on-line at the World Cinema Foundation site.

This is from the  WCF’s mission statement:

The World Cinema Foundation (WCF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and restoring neglected films from around the world – in particular, those countries lacking the financial and technical ability to do so.

Established by Martin Scorsese, the Foundation supports and encourages preservation efforts to save the worldwide patrimony of films, ensuring that they are preserved, seen and shared. Its goal is to defend the body and spirit of cinema in the belief that preserving works of the past can encourage future generations to treat film as a universal form of expression.

Cinema is an international language, an international art, but, above all, it is a source of enlightenment. There are wonderful, remarkable films, past and present, from Mexico, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Central Asia that deserve to be known and seen. Martin Scorsese has created the World Cinema Foundation with the specific purpose of calling attention to the global cause of film preservation.

Martin Scorsese’s Top 11 Scariest Movies List

Speaking of Scorsese (see yesterday’s post), here’s the director’s picks for the scariest films, compiled for The Daily Beast. (See As Mentioned in the Post under Links).

The Haunting (1963)

Happiest of Halloweens to one and all!