tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33211045394633855832024-03-19T02:14:23.411-07:00The House of SparrowsDavid Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.comBlogger277125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-71918681809447356622023-11-08T18:57:00.001-08:002023-11-08T18:57:02.666-08:00THE KILLER (2023)<p> It's an artfully executed, engaging, and expensive trifle. It isn't the ubiquitous brand names that do it, necessarily - the rampant brands only call attention to how difficult it is for an op like the Killer to remain unknown and off the radar. (And there's just, JUST, a little subversive giddyness at seeing the Amazon buying process taking up this much screenspace in a Netflix product.) That kind of anonymity costs, and the movie is as artful in showing us this as everything else. But the non-showy yet conspicuous outlay of cash becomes as obvious in Netflix's case as it is the Killer's - most obviously, it doesn't repeat the mistake of <i>The Gray Man</i> and actually takes us to the locations of each chapter. </p><p>The French comics upon which this movie is based come to the States in handsome, hardcover volumes, and such lavish presentation is at odds with the pulp roots of this kind of storytelling. A similar and strong disconnect is felt as we mentally tally up the expenditures on this insular, noirish tale of process and procedure. (I had a conversation with a filmmaker friend a while back, who lamented that his new film would only not look like a student film if he'd had six times the budget. This conversation popped into my mind as I clocked the number of caterers listed during <i>The Killer</i>'s closing credits - the food budget alone would likely have allowed my friend to commission a Reznor/Ross score for the work in question.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEeYvIPACAuxmnvstjQ7ihZVdws7Z6fx61lVOlwrskra5j-w6zt1SluPmhz8ua_riMiOCWNJ5veoWTAvUdOYCEE3XQSjd5caUFUtVwy1gtTZC1JgJ9xpZf10_P_7osxC0hGf6vABgUhB5JRUUdHKRwDL3COuYfOL1TeSzmf03r_9B5y61KlJ4pkPUhKsgR/s729/the-killer-fincher-fassbender-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="729" height="84" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEeYvIPACAuxmnvstjQ7ihZVdws7Z6fx61lVOlwrskra5j-w6zt1SluPmhz8ua_riMiOCWNJ5veoWTAvUdOYCEE3XQSjd5caUFUtVwy1gtTZC1JgJ9xpZf10_P_7osxC0hGf6vABgUhB5JRUUdHKRwDL3COuYfOL1TeSzmf03r_9B5y61KlJ4pkPUhKsgR/w200-h84/the-killer-fincher-fassbender-1.JPG" width="200" /></a></div><p>These issues aside (and they are largely <i>my </i>issues) the thing <i>moves </i>from start to finish, kicking off with a title sequence that's as quick a read as the title page of a comic. The movie builds nicely around Fassbender's almost non-performance as we clock the stark differences between what he thinks and what he does, observing with interest as he steadily breaks his own rules while something like humanity begins to surface. Fincher's style remains archly grand, and he seems to be leavening his own arsenal with a couple of tricks lifted from Soderbergh (who has himself lifted much from Fincher). For all its outlay on travel budgets each chapter is as tightly inscribed and actor-driven as the extended scenes of a Tarantino film; Fassbinder's suppressed laugh at the parable/best joke of 2023 levelled at him by Tilda Swinton is a crystalline moment, one of many scattered across the movie. But <i>The Killer</i> never feels as messy as a noir about a violent, meticulous but increasingly desperate man should. Netflix may have given Fincher the largest toybox with which he has ever played, and as fun as it is watching him cut loose, and watching this thing move, but we're never really on for the ride.</p>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-63302901669889196252023-08-02T18:29:00.001-07:002023-08-02T18:29:27.929-07:00WILL-O'-THE-WISP<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <i style="color: #99aabb; font-size: 15px;">"...it gives us wood, and so many wonders..."</i></span></p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Joao Pedro Rodrigues has a lot on his mind here, and just comes out and says it. Were he a younger filmmaker one might see this 67-minute opus as a kind of mood or aesthetic board, as it feels like a mess of things he wished (no, no, <i>needed</i>) to address. The symmetry of the palace dining room scenes and the classical tableau re-enacted by lusty firemen suggest Greenaway formalism; these touches are often so delirious yet composed that Rodrigues perhaps has been hit with an Andersonian whimsy and is running like hell with it (maybe through a screening of <i>Titane</i> from which he grabs a healthy shot of firehouse eroticism). There's even a bit of Godard in Prince Alfredo's naive but sincere appropriate of Greta Thunberg's speech in articulating his mission to his parents; he doesn't (yet) have the words, but he feels the urgency, and he's desperate enough to save the dying planet that he's willing to forsake his royalty and become a fireman.</span><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWtsrfjUnbB-9sSr2n7s_2uYyBTSB6qGEJGYIQoRBsJrtAyjy67G2_0JTyCghIslLJGUo9mmbcADQ7V7rAHFJUJZEvDI6u09_yLLOY-ScFDY9pUa3mL855fH0T8NQVK5d5cw56y14qqbzD0UBk2qeSe_GOPUAg4d60XU1pORJ7dk0dCebdfzUt6Z7Kl5Qi/s724/will-o-the-wisp-1-joao-pedro-rodrigues.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="724" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWtsrfjUnbB-9sSr2n7s_2uYyBTSB6qGEJGYIQoRBsJrtAyjy67G2_0JTyCghIslLJGUo9mmbcADQ7V7rAHFJUJZEvDI6u09_yLLOY-ScFDY9pUa3mL855fH0T8NQVK5d5cw56y14qqbzD0UBk2qeSe_GOPUAg4d60XU1pORJ7dk0dCebdfzUt6Z7Kl5Qi/s320/will-o-the-wisp-1-joao-pedro-rodrigues.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;">That directness may be key to our salvation, as laid out here - André Cabral's fireman Alfonso has plenty of reasons to distrust the motives of the young prince, and lays them out clear; but Alfredo recognizes the chip on Alfonso's shoulder, acknowledging the trauma that put it there (and even his own complicity in that trauma). But their attraction and love is undeniable against all this. The film parallels this in macro: even as it directly addresses environmental devastation and fascism (hell, it's the only new movie that has people dying of COVID) it acknowledges the need for pleasure and transcendence, which it more than delivers, through the delight of its forms, the warmth of its music, some truly offbeat comedy, more peen than you can shake a stick at, and an absolutely sensational dance sequence after the midpoint. (Bummed as I was to have missed a couple of screenings of this, I was happy to be able to rewind and watch this sequence two more times after the end.)<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Days later, and I'm thinking its brevity in relation to its themes is more an asset than a limitation. It's never messy in placing so much in its runtime, and doesn't pretend to any easy answers to the issues it presents, though generous enough to suggest that its pleasures remain within our reach. It's one of the year's best (and greatest).</span></span></div></div>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-23875950199730001912023-03-10T20:40:00.000-08:002023-03-10T20:40:45.271-08:00Unnamed Footage Festival 6(66) - five days!<p>My friends are back (and this is therefore not a totally objective post) with a new iteration of the <a href="https://www.unnamedfootagefestival.com/" target="_blank">Unnamed Footage Festival</a>, a celebration of found footage horror, faux documentaries, narrative films that tell their stories through in-world cameras, and other fascinating narrative/documentary hybrids. </p><p><a href="https://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/2020/02/unnamed-footage-festival-five-films.html" target="_blank">I noted previously</a> that "more and more movies are being made that confront issues of fantasy and reality in increasingly hybrid and bizarre ways, and UFF continues to cheerfully mutate to embrace them." During a conversation between screenings last year, film programmer Joel Shepard noted that this makes the festival a difficult thing for which to give a simple, elevator pitch, and that's what makes UFF so interesting. And though the designation for this sixth year (UFF 666) is a signal that it is leaning more on the found footage horror sub-genre it was initially largely formed to celebrate, there's still notable and considerable variety in the approaches taken by the filmmakers to make this a more than worthwhile stop for horror fanatics and adventurous filmgoers.</p><p>As a preview, I'll go through the five days of UFF666, noting my targets along the way. (Times TBA as of this writing.)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwATQbWX2egpz24Xay9sT4oX0JE2mBaemzMx0RKAj1V53WN8XsoXI5-SjGRmjk37TminQimr5IUW_RFSn7e9T1Yb3Bhr3t9VLQXikOVo-zn-Co3O8WDDhya4RFaas9gLrIqxgAqAcNkc5j-aU6FphVNrWnCfgLkHUczoqRSbocyC65j-OCjpoEr27IEQ/s500/cloverfield-poster.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="357" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwATQbWX2egpz24Xay9sT4oX0JE2mBaemzMx0RKAj1V53WN8XsoXI5-SjGRmjk37TminQimr5IUW_RFSn7e9T1Yb3Bhr3t9VLQXikOVo-zn-Co3O8WDDhya4RFaas9gLrIqxgAqAcNkc5j-aU6FphVNrWnCfgLkHUczoqRSbocyC65j-OCjpoEr27IEQ/s320/cloverfield-poster.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>The whole thing kicks off at the Alamo Drafthouse (2550 Mission Street) on Tuesday, March 21, with a prelude screening, if you will, of a 35mm print of Matt Reeves' <i>Cloverfield</i>. One of the more widely-released and seen found footage horror films (and maybe a bit undervalued, thanks to the backlash against its odd viral marketing strategy), the film tells the story of some friends in New York City frantically trying to survive the rampage of a mysterious monster wreaking havoc on the city. It's everything you want in a found footage horror movie, leavened nicely with giant monster carnage, at least one demolished national landmark, and a keenly felt and played romantic subplot. <p></p><p>UFF666PROPER opens Thursday, March 23 at Artists Television Access (992 Valencia Street). The fest's first feature is<i> Mean Spirited,</i> the first in a string of movies this year in which horrible social media influencers encounter maybe-a-bit-disproportionately-horrible fates. And it's being chased with the second edition of <i>Don't Stop Recording: "This Is Really Happening" Power Hour</i>, a wild and mind-bending collection of the most violent and bizarre moments from favorite and freaky found footage features. You'll want a beer for that one; UFF will provide.</p><p>UFF5 offered the theatrical premiere of Robbie Banfitch's far-reaching experimental horror film <i>The Outwaters</i>, and the film went on to become one of 2022's cult favorites. Banfitch cited UFF every chance he got for taking a chance with his film, and on Friday, March 24 he returns to UFF and the Balboa Theatre (3630 Balboa Street), bringing with him a pair of short <i>Outwaters </i>prequels (<i>Card Zero</i> and <i>File VL-624</i>) and his new world premiere, <i>Tinsman Road</i>, which promises a quieter yet engrossing mystery framed as raw miniDV documentary footage.</p><p><br />UFF then jumps to the recently-revamped (and quite lovely) 4 Star Theatre (2200 Clement Street) for a full weekend of screenings March 24 and 25. The final weekend is always a plethora of sensations, and it's well worth parking oneself and just letting the movies happen to one. Saturday/24 you have a pair of short film programs; the Shakespeare-in-Screenlife opus R#J; the politically-charged Lebanese haunted house story <i>What Is Buried Must Remain</i>. Sunday starts strong with the <i>Portrait of Jason-</i>modeled <i>The Gulf of Silence</i> (a feature length interview with fictional UFOlogist Dr. Laura Gale); the day's offerings include 2011 Australian indie sensation <i>The Tunnel</i> (and a new-ish making-of feature, <i>The Tunnel: The Other Side of Darkness</i>) and the Chilean black metal forest horror <i>Invoking Yell.</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpmdCuAMwFOnWSk7UaUOIpNBLMzrNcOJbkf6dTdk93vE5OD-xzAJJrte9KFsx1vpl1MEzo9ZHXX74dY6QeAc-7cfK4zcOpsLR0DOK5xaHTDP2BOl-_GJETNgoLv-f0FnXsQquH-lXv13_U4dWQeQ68iWBjmx8UjQrWl2UUYYlZw74u7XAmb4ORFH_GKQ/s800/invoking-yell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpmdCuAMwFOnWSk7UaUOIpNBLMzrNcOJbkf6dTdk93vE5OD-xzAJJrte9KFsx1vpl1MEzo9ZHXX74dY6QeAc-7cfK4zcOpsLR0DOK5xaHTDP2BOl-_GJETNgoLv-f0FnXsQquH-lXv13_U4dWQeQ68iWBjmx8UjQrWl2UUYYlZw74u7XAmb4ORFH_GKQ/s320/invoking-yell.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>New festival sponsor Good Vibrations will be on hand to give away a bag of carefully selected toys after Saturday's late show <i>Safe Word</i>, a kinked-up and delightful-looking <i>roman porno </i>from UFF favorite Koji Shiraishi. Similarly spicy is Sunday's marathon-viewing of the Onion's darkly-hilarious, dead-on reality TV spoof <i>Sex House.</i> And the whole festival ends triumphantly with <i>Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva</i>; the first film in this presumably-ongoing series was one of the most convincing and engrossing faux-docs this writer has ever seen, and director Dutch Marich returns to the Nevada desert to track more mysterious disappearances there, and document the emotional fallout back home.</p><p>Marich is but one of many filmmakers who will be present to discuss their work with you. Though I've highlighted the screenings that caught my interest I may well have skipped over what'll turn out to be your favorite UFF offering - the complete schedule, including start times and details on the short films accompanying each screening, can be found at <a href="https://www.unnamedfootagefestival.com/" target="_blank">the Unnamed Footage Festival's website</a>. See you in the dark.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDn0Xh8wDvEKTGUGkQnW09T6j12RVtemjFKt_QR08tzo5wnEe-X4BSVB1VeKpXVrldw2uYO_RZRH6bGv59GM4wFqmwLv2fim6MuSeJ1FW4cNjQgeBFuvH4Zb5xrDHBdNDQUzUwVBPc_B6qcANRD-wTgrlHusOIYxIYIPpexWl6tgv9xU-Gwz-j7SyggQ/s1000/UFF+LANDSCAPE+WEB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="1000" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDn0Xh8wDvEKTGUGkQnW09T6j12RVtemjFKt_QR08tzo5wnEe-X4BSVB1VeKpXVrldw2uYO_RZRH6bGv59GM4wFqmwLv2fim6MuSeJ1FW4cNjQgeBFuvH4Zb5xrDHBdNDQUzUwVBPc_B6qcANRD-wTgrlHusOIYxIYIPpexWl6tgv9xU-Gwz-j7SyggQ/s320/UFF+LANDSCAPE+WEB.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-39674623081842677812023-02-25T22:59:00.002-08:002023-02-26T17:22:46.642-08:00HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME<p>-So this thing came out when I was ten, and I remember two things about its release: first, the poster declaring that it contained "SIX OF THE MOST BIZARRE MURDERS YOU WILL EVER SEE." Second, a little blurb on the ads that said that due to the bizarre nature of the ending of the movie no one would be seated during the last fifteen minutes of the film. Now this was toward the end of the period when audience members would just show up whenever for a movie, then stick thru the next screening until they were caught up to the point at which they'd entered. But in my fevered brain I imagined screenings of this movie being cleared with fifteen minutes to go, with an ending so terrifying that it would only play to empty houses. A potent thing in the imagination of a young cinephile.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4M1b480np7uTC-hYGIywmSE7--jAbitrckR9bVBqPt1InXWgkL9FV1Vl99HbtFaYo-X0q2gvMZDX3Cu9JmKA2QXV99Q33dFrjS5quMu8gSyjBygwKcgn5Xzf2_dZ7VpdZN48yV3E9JMwiY2QlQ5aa8Z34ZL6nH2-yE8bga6ZwhDBbXL4gjVJNb_Qjyw/s444/happy-birthday-to-me-1981-1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="351" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4M1b480np7uTC-hYGIywmSE7--jAbitrckR9bVBqPt1InXWgkL9FV1Vl99HbtFaYo-X0q2gvMZDX3Cu9JmKA2QXV99Q33dFrjS5quMu8gSyjBygwKcgn5Xzf2_dZ7VpdZN48yV3E9JMwiY2QlQ5aa8Z34ZL6nH2-yE8bga6ZwhDBbXL4gjVJNb_Qjyw/s320/happy-birthday-to-me-1981-1.jpg" width="253" /></a></div><br /><p>-It wound up on cable a year or two later, and Dad and I watched it. I finally saw six of the most bizarre murders I would ever see, and was seated in the family room as that bizarre and unwatchable ending played out. And at the end I thought, well, that....wow, that's crazy.</p><p><br /></p><p>-About twenty years after that I'm working at an arts center on the other coast, and I get it in mind to program a small retrospective of films by J. Lee Thompson (likely a tribute series, as he passed away around that time). The initial thought was his Oscar-nominated <i>The Guns of Navarone</i>, <i>Cape Fear</i>, and maybe a couple of the Bronson collaborations from the 80s. The series didn't come together, but over the course of researching Thompson's career I saw that he'd directed <i>Happy Birthday to Me</i>. And I thought, well, that....wow, that's crazy.</p><p><br /></p><p>-Rewatching the movie now it falls in that interesting '80/'81 place where the slasher is taking off but isn't quite a franchise-ready model. So this shares the more overt murder mystery aspect of many of the more interesting movies in the subgenre at the time, and even though it reveals the killer about 2/3 through it still retains a trick or two up its sleeve. There's interesting and subtle social commentary as a bloody swath is cut among an elite clique of a hoity-toity prep school. And yes, it is startlingly violent, though I believe I've seen at least six other murders in movies that I'd consider more bizarre than those captured here. And none of the much-ballyhooed murders are anywhere near as genuinely disturbing as a protracted surgical sequence during one of the movie's numerous flashbacks.</p><p><br /></p><p>But if you're looking for assurances that this thing was in fact helmed by a guy who'd been nominated for an Oscar, they're there. Thompson clearly studied/was aware of mystery and suspense filmmaking, including the nascent subgenre in whose ghetto he was working, and attempts to grasp the style of his contemporaries. (The black gloves worn by the killer suggested he'd given <i>giallo</i> a once-over as well.) His composer Bo Harwood had learned his craft alongside Cassavetes, but this isn't his first horror movie, either, and he delivers a fully-orchestrated and shaded score. And Thompson's old school enough to unleash castle thunder during the storm that rages outside the climactic birthday party. </p>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-39302186666070474062022-10-23T20:58:00.006-07:002022-10-24T16:18:25.550-07:00BLOOD DAUGHTER<p>This will not be an objective post by any means - it's as much a celebration as a review or analysis. The fact is, my good friend and occasional collaborator Bryan Enk is screening his new work this month. It's called <i>Blood Daughter</i>, and it's his latest in an ongoing series of work (dating to his very first films) based on Bram Stoker's <i>Dracula </i>(the novel, and Coppola's film). This new movie brings Alex Johnson, the daughter of longtime cast member Chuck Johnson, into the extended family of collaborators in the title role. I am the first civilian to have seen the movie. I am delighted to say it's the finest work Bryan has ever done.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsDbuCC7Fru0dlk8X8UjjdkvEYwz9YxmLDWj85IWe0O6qeL4eoTjN5abnWwlCB1I4mdVuYFg0GKXDc9sJrRtXMc8y5ZbsTFDL2HkHCOxzqYCZB5VP5x1oKi_dbbOB62YoGeDLjCVWRc08jAIe8hxIiNtzPlMf_u88-j3zwKRF0pusuusrcbCJ9Ir6Uw/s792/blood-daughter-bryan-enk-2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="792" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsDbuCC7Fru0dlk8X8UjjdkvEYwz9YxmLDWj85IWe0O6qeL4eoTjN5abnWwlCB1I4mdVuYFg0GKXDc9sJrRtXMc8y5ZbsTFDL2HkHCOxzqYCZB5VP5x1oKi_dbbOB62YoGeDLjCVWRc08jAIe8hxIiNtzPlMf_u88-j3zwKRF0pusuusrcbCJ9Ir6Uw/s320/blood-daughter-bryan-enk-2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>Bryan casts his net even farther out this time, brining in elements, appropriately enough, of <i>Dracula's Daughter</i> and <i>Nadja </i>(and, in a key moment, Murnau's <i>Nosferatu</i>) as he pushes the story, begun in 1993, to the present, in which daughter Abby lives in a tower, her needs being met by her father and a number of servants kept in his thrall. Abby seizes the initiative and kicks off a battle for her own soul, which fractures into various fragments with which she spars as the moment of reckoning approaches.</p><p>For those familiar with Bryan's earlier films there's much to enjoy in seeing his gang back together, here as the same characters at significantly older ages - Andy Hunsaker's Claudius is clearly wearied from the intervening decades of investigating fucked up paranormal shit; hilariously, the late-40s David Jarrell brings the same youthful mannered pomposity to Lord Henry that he did in 1994, like he stepped directly into this one from <i>Dracula Returns</i>. </p><p>I wondered if many of the tight references to the earlier work would be lost on those coming to the corpus for the first time. Word from the initial screenings is that the resonance of these moments is felt, if not fully understood, by those meeting these characters for the first time. But Bryan's knack for fleet but slaying throwaway gags remains as sharp as ever, as does his ability to mine supernatural tension from concrete, every day settings and detonate little dream bombs with recurring phrases and images. Even if you're meeting these characters for the first time there's much to sink your teeth into.</p><p>And then there's Alex.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk-iLDva-0XbRZXwtLkz5bW91yPQSNMkDmKZG_ssaLs38Tq-1Fs0BZQ_e30rai3qeONXsTs8k5qErcVGiLg_sHAQaN7QdIi4pVK9H9MuJlLyIAG4OGitreXHvcpEb-qtqKnYFpWw47Q90NEE8fPqgqalurKmMXeuEZicb57t_xAxdRiYDXtu_CwifJUA/s1751/blood-daughter-bryan-enk-5.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="982" data-original-width="1751" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk-iLDva-0XbRZXwtLkz5bW91yPQSNMkDmKZG_ssaLs38Tq-1Fs0BZQ_e30rai3qeONXsTs8k5qErcVGiLg_sHAQaN7QdIi4pVK9H9MuJlLyIAG4OGitreXHvcpEb-qtqKnYFpWw47Q90NEE8fPqgqalurKmMXeuEZicb57t_xAxdRiYDXtu_CwifJUA/s320/blood-daughter-bryan-enk-5.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Alexandria Johnson has been present in this series, quite literally, from her birth (announced by the director in a meta-epilogue to </span><i style="text-align: left;">Bryan Enk's Dracula</i><span style="text-align: left;">). She takes focus here in thirteen roles (full disclosure: I'd missed a couple until reading Bryan's helpful list), and makes the single greatest, auteur-qualifying contribution I've ever seen an actor make to a Bryan Enk film. The dance between the earlier films and this new one, between youth and age, the various selves of the characters, is the most ambitious thing I've ever seen Bryan attempt, and Johnson's performances (as Abby's various selves and holy shit </span><i style="text-align: left;">as the characters of the previous movies</i><span style="text-align: left;">) are crucial to how fluid and effortless it all seems. The style of interacting close-ups continues as Abby and her Father begin their conflict in earnest (and Jeff Miller plays the weariness of eternity better than many on-screen vamps) - when the two finally collide in frame together the impact is fraught and thrilling.</span></div><p>I don't know what future this thing is going to have - whether it will become a festival sensation, an eagerly discussed movie that brings deserved attention to the earlier films, or yet another low-budget horror flick lost among the sea of them in the anonymizing streaming landscape. I'm invested in it, and am hopeful that the light of my friend's film does make it to the entire world, even more. Mainly, though, I just hope you get to see it, and dig it. Don't be afraid. Do as you will.</p>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-26149509797229134962022-06-02T23:35:00.004-07:002022-06-03T01:12:46.216-07:00CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022)<p>It's very much an old master returning to the stage with a greatest hits collection, which is no bad thing. There remains much pleasure to be experienced seeing and feeling the familiar technosex/bioport/ stilted dialogue/coexistence of analog and digital technologies (and what that coexistence suggests about the chaos of our time). But it's not the recognizable tropes that had them running for the exits at Cannes; on the other hand if you want the familiar, you deserve what you get seeking it in the corpus of David Cronenberg. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghCV9-acPnWf7aJ6ElsjecGphiAdbB67KFzfmo9Els7AX0u0jqVLOW4u-LBfGVuyzRFCRClvnoTKEPXBkfSlnbxbPVo-CzTts_mY0V_4VdY9W_2cPmK2iwfel9JaebWj244lMgUbqTEU-wG95tHN5bxKC3asVUhnMh_Gx2mR7nEA9Cg0CUcZf5B0MzdQ/s743/crimes-of-the-future-cronenberg-1.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="743" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghCV9-acPnWf7aJ6ElsjecGphiAdbB67KFzfmo9Els7AX0u0jqVLOW4u-LBfGVuyzRFCRClvnoTKEPXBkfSlnbxbPVo-CzTts_mY0V_4VdY9W_2cPmK2iwfel9JaebWj244lMgUbqTEU-wG95tHN5bxKC3asVUhnMh_Gx2mR7nEA9Cg0CUcZf5B0MzdQ/w200-h108/crimes-of-the-future-cronenberg-1.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>He ups the in-world stakes in a way that will alienate part of his audience, especially in the US at this particular moment, but it only underscores the urgency of the questions he's always been asking, questions that he (and we) are running out of time to explore: what are we making of our world? How are we changing to adapt to it? Do we possess not just the capability but the <i>faith </i>necessary to discard what we knew to embrace a future that may be better than our present? <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQRnlqY2Cs8AY6Nj-4sqBlr3Wpe2jQ3EzcbSTPy9Sgtflv8Y9uv869EKCs_tChPlVupHkEeNptf-zuK1XClRWVowiTKUelSk5mC5ajwK0B8ignQPUko62kvovmk-I6PtXzr5TFozPpGype8k_lI1k1Npt6ic5JSo_IfQr3oGtSTF-iZlb1Vr_tD29Bpg/s742/crimes-of-the-future-cronenberg-3.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="742" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQRnlqY2Cs8AY6Nj-4sqBlr3Wpe2jQ3EzcbSTPy9Sgtflv8Y9uv869EKCs_tChPlVupHkEeNptf-zuK1XClRWVowiTKUelSk5mC5ajwK0B8ignQPUko62kvovmk-I6PtXzr5TFozPpGype8k_lI1k1Npt6ic5JSo_IfQr3oGtSTF-iZlb1Vr_tD29Bpg/s320/crimes-of-the-future-cronenberg-3.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>On top of all of this: excellent use of the spaces in Athens to underscore the movie's themes; uniform commitment on the part of the cast; one of the best kisses I've seen in a movie of late; and the thing's funnier than you'd expect.</p><br />David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-37960644552952214102021-12-15T17:58:00.002-08:002021-12-15T17:58:42.072-08:00BENEDETTA<p>Anyone cornered by an atheist at a cocktail party knows that militant denial can be just as tedious as blind piety. You don't have to be among the faithful to be bored by films that bash religion. I'm as mindful (and weary) of the centuries-long and still ongoing cruelties and violence inflicted in the name of God. I fear that Hollywood has embraced the same awareness, to the point that filmmakers are allowed to indulge in a form of religion-bashing that makes for uniformly lazy storytelling. <a href="https://letterboxd.com/jo_brennan/film/saint-maud/" target="_blank">Jo Brennan's carefully articulated review of Rose Glass' SAINT MAUD</a> helped me understand why these movies have failed - for the most part, having made the observation that the church is corrupt, or that faith is the habitat of the delusional or the traumatized or the hypocrite, some filmmakers may be left sitting on a smug cushion of "oh did I just BLOW YOUR MIND?" while their movie just stops, having nowhere else to go.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgg9ZxeRPsVbfn4ul--ijFuiYICELQvi1wt2bD0bmPRZTE_OsOtvItY05I-lRzP-dfhHoj3D53QVINc8a9vGc5q9Io6DR2KvQKPukxz7hDz07yr3uI06z7CWWq1xCfz3MWP0Lm9jh1CFNzgEdHIQb7rUvGsXFnARsuftZlKFWo_rq_SIBItESd9GUNhJw=s851" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="353" data-original-width="851" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgg9ZxeRPsVbfn4ul--ijFuiYICELQvi1wt2bD0bmPRZTE_OsOtvItY05I-lRzP-dfhHoj3D53QVINc8a9vGc5q9Io6DR2KvQKPukxz7hDz07yr3uI06z7CWWq1xCfz3MWP0Lm9jh1CFNzgEdHIQb7rUvGsXFnARsuftZlKFWo_rq_SIBItESd9GUNhJw=w428-h178" width="428" /></a></div><p><br /></p>To be sure, Paul Verhoeven casts a whole lot of aspersion on the church in BENEDETTA; particular attention is paid to the tight grip the church makes on finances (the Abbess even makes the blunt point that her convent is not a charity), as well as the naturally human impulses that fly in the face of religious comport, human urges that only intensify under the weight of religious duty. And the thing has willful, even giddy, irreverence all through it, from its basis in the story of a 17th century lesbian nun to the fact that it's, y'know, a movie by <i>Paul Verhoeven</i> (who announces his intent from the start with not one, not two, but three scenes of scatological eruption blasting forth in the first half hour).<p></p><p>But the movie benefits strongly from Verhoeven's masterful touches. The hypocrisy of the church is revealed with a great deal of earthy humor (there is legend-level nun-side-eye in nearly every scene - just because they're devout doesn't mean they lack opinions), and Verhoeven and cast are as uninhibited in delivering Benedetta's visions as they are her sex scenes. There are generous cinematic allusions as well, mainly to Verhoeven's movies (Benedetta's sexuality confounds authority as strongly as Rachel's in BLACK BOOK; oddly, we also get a few nods to ROBOCOP, especially in the first third) but also Hitchcock's (a nun's ascent up a tower leads to an earthly plummet, as in VERTIGO - and what else is the inspired dildo but 2021's best Macguffin?).</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-v5D5IztfqRRLJZfBfT6OiUnOlzQppIWmOQrGH7cWTlgI2AM9_oFnW2U0mhM35ISF04mMbg1isXYspvwRTgeklS111CIf_7wdAVIGjcUtrmE4Zi4-dCA-ULIH8O9dA3KIYvSxzTZGDNZJjR1GQdPcuDa0w_vV1RL2LBBQcF9jQFWdCcqHnI87HZSZ9g=s853" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="853" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg-v5D5IztfqRRLJZfBfT6OiUnOlzQppIWmOQrGH7cWTlgI2AM9_oFnW2U0mhM35ISF04mMbg1isXYspvwRTgeklS111CIf_7wdAVIGjcUtrmE4Zi4-dCA-ULIH8O9dA3KIYvSxzTZGDNZJjR1GQdPcuDa0w_vV1RL2LBBQcF9jQFWdCcqHnI87HZSZ9g=w402-h167" width="402" /></a></div><p></p><p>But where Verhoeven leaves the wanna-be-blasphemers in the dust is in his earnest appreciation for, and preservation of, the mysteries of faith. The ambiguity is what drives this thing, as are the questions it raises that it is too smart and generous to answer for us. The earnestness with which Benedetta's love for Bartolomea intertwines with her love for Jesus is palpable; like Jesus, she squares the human with the divine in perfect harmony, and the true hypocrisy of the church manifests in its inability to recognize or understand this (indeed, that Benedetta attains her divinity through embracing her pleasure scares THEE SHIT out of the patriarchy, aghast that she, not they, were chosen.) The mystery is preserved right through the final title card of the epilogue, after which Verhoeven's credit tags the thing as loud as a thump on a Bible. The movie is funny, raunchy, downright horny, human, and ambiguous; and only one truly possessed by faith could have made it. Hallelujah, and amen.</p><br />David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-18954704402334049212021-08-16T19:09:00.004-07:002021-08-16T19:42:52.523-07:00THE GRAPES OF DEATH<p>Some of the greatest horror films are the saddest, the ones that capture the melancholy of being far from what you know, and knowing you will never return. The empty train that takes you to a world you no longer recognize. The friend who disappears. The newcomer who, through the sheer oddness of his body language, seems to bring hell with him. The landscape that looks too, too calm, the unsettled emptiness that surrounds you, wide open and free and making you know that nothing you knew no longer exists over the horizon. The intensifying nightmare around you, as everyone you meet is either deranged and psychotic or as helpless as you. And even when you find the one person you were heading toward in the first place they too have changed, and are begging for death. You don't feel the event that triggers all of this, it's just a slow escalation, a feeling of drowning when there's no water in sight. The finality that arrives and settles, for good, now that everything you knew is gone. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGKxBUhn8TBFzDWCA5rh3sUdfV9_Z6mC0HJOgg_TkHzDNTnMXfmQ97Mb9qrsL-9LwcsiyleO_5SYCN2tMWklSPu997iohCOEgMxE4ZIUlQb3SHDru0VzHzjArm22w_NV_sGaHWczcaD4ee/s772/grapes-of-death-2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="471" data-original-width="772" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGKxBUhn8TBFzDWCA5rh3sUdfV9_Z6mC0HJOgg_TkHzDNTnMXfmQ97Mb9qrsL-9LwcsiyleO_5SYCN2tMWklSPu997iohCOEgMxE4ZIUlQb3SHDru0VzHzjArm22w_NV_sGaHWczcaD4ee/w400-h244/grapes-of-death-2.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>Zombie horror is rife with movies that explore this emptiness. There may be no modern cinematic zombie more iconic than the first: Bill Hinzmann's awkward but suited creeper shuffles in under thunder as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD opens, wandering aimlessly through the empty cemetery before turning his sights on Barbara and Johnny. Hell does indeed come right behind him. And it explodes in George Romero's follow-up DAWN OF THE DEAD; the first third of the movie sketches in unforgettably economical terms how a zombie outbreak would lead to the absolute end of civilization, gelling nowhere so convincingly as when Fran's co-worker stares into space announcing, as he starts to truly grasp it, "Our work here is finished."</p><p>That horrible void literally spreads around the world, and a melancholy becomes pronounced in movies like Lucio Fulci's ZOMBI; there we start to feel that all bets really are off when dead people start moving and killing (the walking dead rarely feel so fundamentally <i>wrong </i>as they do in this film), and Fabio Frizzi's despondent main theme seems set to the rhythm of society's final heartbeat. Werner Herzog is more grandiose in NOSFERATU-PHANTOM DER NACHT; Klaus Kinski lends to his anti-human, parasitic Dracula an absolute helplessness to stop the feeding frenzy that is slowly murdering the world, and the victims can only live it up and get drunk even as the rats and coffins stack up around them.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDxI1VjUr-Eami-p4uhF3nZGpYyptgJQu8luswf0Cnoyfbk8Au661seflr5g6AgbE3VrbIuIj53O6-98pSYKkE5d3gtCpqhNPPL6hUYqlQbbL7x1z9xTFwyzcFZiQ5TD1FCO78sn9gB_GQ/s758/grapes-of-death-5.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="469" data-original-width="758" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDxI1VjUr-Eami-p4uhF3nZGpYyptgJQu8luswf0Cnoyfbk8Au661seflr5g6AgbE3VrbIuIj53O6-98pSYKkE5d3gtCpqhNPPL6hUYqlQbbL7x1z9xTFwyzcFZiQ5TD1FCO78sn9gB_GQ/w400-h248/grapes-of-death-5.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>With a resume that includes multiple surreal erotic vampire stories and hardcore pornography, Jean Rollin may not appear to be one who'd uphold this approach. To modern eyes used to the by now well-established tropes of modern zombie horror, THE GRAPES OF DEATH plays it surprisingly straight (indeed, it was Rollin's first critical and popular success.) The film makes more explicit the environmental threat that lurks in many of Romero's films: here, a new pesticide contaminates a remote French vineyard, infecting all who drink the wine made there with a disease that rots them physically and psychologically. The infected share with Kinski's Dracula an occasional terrible awareness that they are powerless to stop the violence they spread.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYLBRmEGkA2hkwH3y0Cg27f1dLFcqiagp7CarB2FzeeCy4IIhm9zctZ-jz7vNwsF7RAQkm_kC_W4ErtmUAbRziUVaziUXJuSiuUPvJbuUCyaeOZsmJUkqKuOll9ZvjnpBIhv6eIj-W5ayF/s878/grapes-of-death-1.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="878" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYLBRmEGkA2hkwH3y0Cg27f1dLFcqiagp7CarB2FzeeCy4IIhm9zctZ-jz7vNwsF7RAQkm_kC_W4ErtmUAbRziUVaziUXJuSiuUPvJbuUCyaeOZsmJUkqKuOll9ZvjnpBIhv6eIj-W5ayF/w400-h215/grapes-of-death-1.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>But the dream space Rollin actively investigated in his earlier work lends an expansiveness to THE GRAPES OF DEATH that only underscores its horrors. We experience the story largely anchored to Elizabeth (a sympathetic turn by Maria-Georges Pascal) and see this nightmare grow through her eyes. Though she weathers a number of one-on-one encounters with increasingly diseased and terrifying ghouls, many of the film's most striking moments see her isolated in expansive settings, airy but suffocating, as we see her options disappear around her.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV-iuPL-_u0odjeQ6Id-SMoPD3ZqaKQDuUNaIgMjQS-b7HrUVkCh7Un59MU6dMIAxP8URTSiP04E43IoiO79cA04rfmlHgYSlpo-R6SLltZhUdZvri37jNkJaeWuqatNCt3148Br5TMK4u/s777/grapes-of-death-3.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="777" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV-iuPL-_u0odjeQ6Id-SMoPD3ZqaKQDuUNaIgMjQS-b7HrUVkCh7Un59MU6dMIAxP8URTSiP04E43IoiO79cA04rfmlHgYSlpo-R6SLltZhUdZvri37jNkJaeWuqatNCt3148Br5TMK4u/w400-h248/grapes-of-death-3.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>Though Elizabeth's passivity is irksome to some viewers (just as Barbara's near-catatonia in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was, despite it being a logical response to the horror surrounding her), Pascal manages to hold our sympathies as her situation disintegrates. Anchored in the immediacy of her reality, her environment immerses us, and through her perspective we watch, we <i>feel </i>the world sliding beyond our control. Her reality becomes a nightmare, and we feel her hopelessness as that nightmare contaminates reality. Philippe Sissmann's sparse analog score feels even sadder than Frizzi's - it wouldn't surprise us to see him tinkering on a keyboard just out of frame, looking resignedly out into an abyss. The movie seems not to end as much as stop, and sticks with us so deeply that we feel that walking away from the movie will only take us deeper into its landscapes. I don't think we necessarily <i>need </i>to live in a world in which a pandemic continues to rage and keep us isolated from our loved ones to feel Rollin's void resonate powerfully post-experience, but it's sure as hell helping. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpqQ0r5ZjHDkFpNt6g6ZXBA1oujk5jDXvSLcBEnLOOEohmKWD7iiUHDxP5TbI9AK-RiAZmp1RCKUAqMN5zUT8fQMo2eazGCRpHn8Qq2FMYkMGcHX4IzRgIEuI3ukZpcy4Nv8FzpFyWGpc9/s774/grapes-of-death-4.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="774" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpqQ0r5ZjHDkFpNt6g6ZXBA1oujk5jDXvSLcBEnLOOEohmKWD7iiUHDxP5TbI9AK-RiAZmp1RCKUAqMN5zUT8fQMo2eazGCRpHn8Qq2FMYkMGcHX4IzRgIEuI3ukZpcy4Nv8FzpFyWGpc9/w400-h246/grapes-of-death-4.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-24884900181289127312021-02-17T20:33:00.003-08:002021-02-17T20:36:54.688-08:00the cat-turd on the cupcake<p>So late October 1993 I'm visiting a friend. Said friend is busy the weekdays I'm with him so I'm alone in his place. Waking up on my own damn schedule, I've time to myself. On two of those days, I figure, well I know he's a right-wing bogeyman but I've never actually seen his show directly so, in the interest of engaging alternative viewpoints to one's own, I spend the noon hour, on two consecutive days, watching The Rush Limbaugh Show.</p><p>I remember this was the time Al Gore was running around pushing hard for NAFTA, engaging the wiry H. Ross Perot in debate over the issue. To my surprise, Limbaugh credited Gore with winning that argument and laughed Perot off as an unhinged lunatic. So I thought well, alright what else does he have. My memories of specifics are hazy (by all means, if your recall of what you watched in October '93 is more crystalline than mine, please sound off), but I sure as shit remember how I felt at the end of both episodes: that for about the first two-thirds the man spouted rational, sometimes dull, occasionally-relatable common sense, but by the end of the episode he'd say at least one thing so heinous, at best illogical at worst out-and-out hateful, that just cast aspersions over even the agreeable shit.</p><p><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAHFTo6pdKAiejjzvEMK6uJ3BAhGDZcTJ4KiaSQCXBuIJ2fRj2KClkhlVQV-PUEkS-3VayZkjNyvZQwSVv1Wyvp4_myfuJsnIGjgaC3xt2chLpPX1dP3Tnryr0N4N7wKODxT_7dw4BJbeQ/s275/limbaugh.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAHFTo6pdKAiejjzvEMK6uJ3BAhGDZcTJ4KiaSQCXBuIJ2fRj2KClkhlVQV-PUEkS-3VayZkjNyvZQwSVv1Wyvp4_myfuJsnIGjgaC3xt2chLpPX1dP3Tnryr0N4N7wKODxT_7dw4BJbeQ/s0/limbaugh.jpg" /></a></i></div><i><br />You're at a buffet party, and you're walking along a dessert table upon which is placed a grid of totally passable, maybe even tasty-looking, cupcakes. You think yeah I'll give one of these a try but upon reaching the end of the table the cupcake you're about to grab has a cat-turd, placed oh-so-artfully, in the center of its icing. You draw your hand back, thinking, well, I'll grab another one but the cupcakes across the entire table (which are, at a glance, about 90% cat-turd free) now all seem suspect.</i><p></p><p>Anyone I spoke to about Limbaugh's show (aside from those who embraced all of it) noticed a similar ratio: yeah, anyone can be down with about 75% of it but that other 25% is just unconscionable. That 25% would be cherry-picked and soundbitten over the ensuing decades held up both as upright and correct straight-talk by rightists and lamentable dialectical evil by the left. (I'm positive the DNC raised thousands, if not millions, from those outraged by Limbaugh's excesses, and thus amplified his outrages among their consituents - it's why I'm convinced the Boeberts and MTGreenes of the Trump Republicans will never be ousted from their seats, as their hateful blathering provides too much easy copy for fundraising emails.)</p><p>And in fairly short order the inherent cruelty of that 25% became a political party's entire platform. More and more of the party faithful, confronted with that spread, went straight to the cat-turd cupcakes <i>out of preference</i> and chowed down. (Many, many more, who were initially more comfortable in the rational, common sense-fuelled 75% would eventually shrug and dive into those tainted cupcakes, out of loyalty or weird expediency. And they could no longer argue from a place of rationality without their opponents smelling the cat-shit on their breath.)</p><p>He should have been held at arm's length; instead he was amplified and held aloft. Discourse was coarsened and eroded, and his hatred and pettiness, his sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia etc. etc. etc, is now the standard of one of America's leading political parties. May he descend quickly, and may all who blindly parrot and echo his utter contempt follow in short order.</p>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-57937699590032673422021-01-31T21:01:00.001-08:002021-01-31T21:30:18.170-08:00top two, 2020<p>It's too, too late for a list, and I'm not even qualified to make one, really; for most of the last year my movies have come through the same screen as my news, my work, my socializing, etc. etc. etc. and a certain amount of weariness has set in as I feel an exhaustion that is, at this point, universal. It is a small thing, indeed, to not have been able to dive into cinema as usual, and a smaller problem, still, in the face of so many others. But it's a facet of what's been lost this year, a calamitous toll that even a modest retrospective like this must acknowledge.</p><p>So what I <i>haven't</i> seen outnumbers what I have: FIRST COW, the SMALL AXE series, SOUL, POSSESSOR, MANK (though I've little interest in that one, oddly), and many of the other heralded masterpieces of the year have gone by. In these times of nonstop anxiety and no-small-problems, the pain of not having had the experiences necessary to make any kind of guess as to the state of current cinema just calls attention to the larger issues plaguing all of us. Year-end list-making, in the face of that, seems a trivial indulgence, at best. I can't and won't list my ten favorites of what I saw and call that an educated guess as to what went down on our screens this year.</p><p>But two movies mattered deeply to me:</p><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaD1AQFbev27DhZJ1b-s9D_Ub-pVjbCyZOsq9eoB7p-JhnQj4gEWHeq9l_FXXHSJ_5Jz4hSHa2X_jPyiwENuemt5u9Lsisw3774l4hFSILKCRg3_yDWRtimGGHxeepeZ2JH3lfcLd_4uC5/s1200/bacurau-1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1200" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaD1AQFbev27DhZJ1b-s9D_Ub-pVjbCyZOsq9eoB7p-JhnQj4gEWHeq9l_FXXHSJ_5Jz4hSHa2X_jPyiwENuemt5u9Lsisw3774l4hFSILKCRg3_yDWRtimGGHxeepeZ2JH3lfcLd_4uC5/w259-h155/bacurau-1.jpg" width="259" /></a></div>Made in 2018 in the run-up to the ascension of Bolsonaro, the queer Brazilian western BACURAU perfectly captured the mood of this fractious year; its arrival on American screens about a month into lockdown was just the rallying cry many of us needed. The story of a small Brazilian village beset by imperialist forces bent on its eradication struck a blow for the representation of those Bolsonaro would suppress. But its political urgency was matched with a knowing savvy for the thrills of genre cinema; without wanting to be too specific, it was the rare movie that captured the spirit of the work of John Carpenter beyond a shallow name-check. Between the passion of its politics and the effective staging of its suspenseful moments BACURAU emerges as one of the finest, and most galvanizing, action movies of recent memory.</div><p>If Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles captured something universal about 2020, then Gaspar Noe (of all fucking people) cast a spell to create brighter things for 2021. Noe's eight-minute <a href="https://youtu.be/Dd5vHr-RJPg" target="_blank">SUMMER OF '21</a> promotes a forthcoming fashion line from the house of Yves Saint Laurent, so naturally is a feast for the eyes. But fashion houses are, perhaps unsurprisingly, generous in the leeway they give artists to present their work (indeed, a friend reminded me that Moschino observed social distancing by showcasing a 2020 fashion line through <a href="https://youtu.be/UWtvC3P0_Ts" target="_blank">an astonishing puppet show</a>). And even as YSL seem to have reined in Noe's more antisocial impulses the powerful cinematic sensibility he's honed over the years - his fluid camera, his breathtaking use of split-screen, his intrinsic grasp of the power of music (here a knowingly-deployed remix by SebastiAn of the Summer/Moroder smash "I Feel Love") - is used to powerful effect here (as is a silent but theatrically-present grande dame performance by Charlotte Rampling). With its fashion mansion in the middle of a dark and Gothic forest the movie feels as occult as SUSPIRIA, and one doubts that its COVID-resonant imagery is accidental (it begins with a heroine alone in a disheveled tower, then fleeing from an unseen menace - we can all surely relate). The models take their places in an audience, distant from one another but present together in their moment, and the image feels like a hopeful telegram from an immediate future. </p><p>May we all remain safe, and eventually re-congregate to share such moments. See you in the dark, eventually.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3_LVytiADBglnLO-uep_iip5XoJJef8lcwXgHtd0DqxKNqIb-vjP9pAzWjp6uznQWCCtTt8XMbIqwLWeJ9Fhgdh1zMro9HGqICaDk1_QTweo8WrUzQSaxIkmFw5nxffE3PQbJOZgBtQ28/s512/gaspar-noe-summer-of-21.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="384" data-original-width="512" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3_LVytiADBglnLO-uep_iip5XoJJef8lcwXgHtd0DqxKNqIb-vjP9pAzWjp6uznQWCCtTt8XMbIqwLWeJ9Fhgdh1zMro9HGqICaDk1_QTweo8WrUzQSaxIkmFw5nxffE3PQbJOZgBtQ28/s320/gaspar-noe-summer-of-21.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-56827012814846706612020-12-03T19:13:00.007-08:002021-12-03T14:24:34.279-08:00quarante et un minutes pour le 3 decembre<p><i>fast track associations<br />appear on parade<br />appear on parade</i></p><p>Going on nine months under shelter-in-place, finding occasion today to celebrate 90 years of a filmmaker who has changed how we view cinema, how we view the world, how we view the world through cinema, how we view cinema through the world.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj47IYziG7iAqC11Nv-e87a1RquMriOo5juTWqJ1Zr5pMznWa6A-XLy8JIOeyXCPAN4SN-TQNaQd4sVgA9WRHhiFFiCC1HkNcqV76SxgX_jimSfyNvvnPKFaQpPJzUJmzV4O9sjvCTcopc5/s546/jlgh1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="546" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj47IYziG7iAqC11Nv-e87a1RquMriOo5juTWqJ1Zr5pMznWa6A-XLy8JIOeyXCPAN4SN-TQNaQd4sVgA9WRHhiFFiCC1HkNcqV76SxgX_jimSfyNvvnPKFaQpPJzUJmzV4O9sjvCTcopc5/w199-h145/jlgh1.jpg" width="199" /></a></div>Stuck in semi-isolation from the world, noting firmly that it is NOT in accord with my desires, my mind jumps haphazardly from one thing to another. The isolation feels huge to me, but I have no illusions that my own perceptions are the world. My problems are tiny compared to the hundreds of thousands in my country alone who have died, and the families left mourning in their wake, and those who have recovered forever physically changed. Even as a new administration waits in the wings, their imminent arrival heralded by optimism and delight that finally there will be functional adults in charge, my anger remains at the administration that for the sake of raw power has allowed so many to be ground beneath the greed and stupidity of a homicidal septuagenerian toddler they allowed to take charge.<p></p><p>"And now there's Nazis again," laments a new favorite artist in a routine captured last year, through the same screen through which I take in news, entertainment, socializing. How sadly timely, then, the first episode of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire(s)_du_cin%C3%A9ma" target="_blank">Histoire(s) Du Cinema</a></i>, which posits (among many, many other things) that the explosion of World War II in 1941 was reality's revenge on cinema. How random and ugly the hate raging so strongly in the world that such forces are given such free reign to diminish our progress, to shit so wetly on our world, to undermine our imaginations, to deny the reality of the epidemic taking so many lives and livelihoods.</p><p><i>Forgetting about extermination is part of extermination itself.</i></p><p>The venues of pulp escapism are no help. Comic books are mired in their own capitalistic crisis of imagination - les Grand Deux, Marvel and DC, are both accepting their current lot as IP farms for big studios, the comics serving as placeholders, keeping their characters on ventilators to support their most important iterations on screen.</p><p>The King in Black, le Roi en Noir, began His invasion of comics yesterday, the first issue in the main book of a crossover that takes in damn near all of the heroes in the Marvel universe. A lifelong fan of comics, I want to be fired up by this thing, and I look at previews in vain for anything that will stimulate my imagination. All I see in the first nine pages are the beats of the same story - a massive threat from outer space approaching earth, the world's heroes gathering to counter it, the first waves of defense crumbling in the face of the oncoming threat.</p><p>I'm tantalized enough by the basic premise - that the main character among the heroes is steadily reformed villain/anti-hero Venom, a conflicted human given superpowers through his union with an alien symbiote that covers his face and body in a shiny black alien skin. The main villain, the titular King, is Knull, the alien monarch of such symbiotes.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitN-GPHt58GpQTJaON9dM-V8Ip0im1lF-Ld6sH6aPxCOHIAX_dRgV4mFWYG2kO0B8ABdeH2ezruD1_3hdZV7pdTwoFs4jhnkEd3pRHdwPuBOj3tFy4-orlW2coLVFQmBHHBZuiLfQAcosv/s907/jlgknull.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="907" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitN-GPHt58GpQTJaON9dM-V8Ip0im1lF-Ld6sH6aPxCOHIAX_dRgV4mFWYG2kO0B8ABdeH2ezruD1_3hdZV7pdTwoFs4jhnkEd3pRHdwPuBOj3tFy4-orlW2coLVFQmBHHBZuiLfQAcosv/w247-h163/jlgknull.JPG" width="247" /></a></div>On paper it's a richly evocative, sci-fi goth horror action epic, a grand war waged dans les ombres, and I look across sample pages for anything to hook me deeper in. I honestly can't tell from what I read if Donny Cates is a good writer or not (much as Matt Fraction's voice was completely drowned in the similarly far-reaching FEAR ITSELF crossover in recent memory). The script hits the same beats as universe-wide crossovers before it - the forces of INVASION! seem to have made a stop into Hot Topic before attacking Earth this time 'round, but there's nothing in what I see to suggest that anything is different in this current story that will once again change the face of the Marvel Universe forever. (Parenthetically, I note that Al Ewing's sterling IMMORTAL HULK book has a single-issue crossover with KING IN BLACK - it's a beautifully written, self-contained episode, but it would have worked with any other villain in the place of the symbiotes.)<p></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #303336; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 48px; font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 1.2px;">plus ça change, </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #303336; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 48px; font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 1.2px;">plus c'est la même </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #303336; font-family: "Playfair Display", serif; font-size: 48px; font-variant-ligatures: no-common-ligatures; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 1.2px;">chose</span></p><p>And I feel my age as I recall my past (nostalgia = our pain), remembering the moment in 1983 when a comic changed me, when Ororo flew down from the sky to rejoin her teammates and shocked them, me, le monde, with her appearance. Her long white mane shaved to a mohawk, clad in punk/BDSM leather. A woman with superpowers in ink, showing this regular human boy in flesh and blood what and who it was.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpRHqGf-r65hdX_aLFaUzPgLWEi4iXPV0zGejVT8QcnEk0jUmXDPQi1aRqDXLQbi9TA7KcfEBnL1I0i6zzQu79azfQOisyJz7QviVWVGgR30yKd9a_fd9EWtmJjKeGMOllk8lDhk0UL0sF/s700/Stormcomesout.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="694" data-original-width="700" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpRHqGf-r65hdX_aLFaUzPgLWEi4iXPV0zGejVT8QcnEk0jUmXDPQi1aRqDXLQbi9TA7KcfEBnL1I0i6zzQu79azfQOisyJz7QviVWVGgR30yKd9a_fd9EWtmJjKeGMOllk8lDhk0UL0sF/s320/Stormcomesout.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>As little as twenty years ago a writer now retired in disgrace dared to take Pekar's maxim that you could tell any story in words and pictures to the internet, and for a while a berserk imagination ran riot in comics as this man and those he inspired breathed life into the medium. More specifically, into the work of the Big Two.</p><p>But a dear friend reminds me that mainstream comics are now in a "shut up and play the hits" headspace, and I fully understand the market forces that are forcing that condition. And recognize all too well the fingerprints of faceless committee that turn that all-is-possible medium into so much</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL5P1Lm_YswxpcYdujoIcf48t_rXZ_64naZLXFrYMArjghsldIi5mgZmP0F3_GcwTWVX3Mbtgr6ChP01pvtdLtRNXsmFM2QevXcPyEhAQ0LNwxzmOdTqe29FT2QugGdVCIQ1ctgYvzYNVj/s627/CONTENT.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="372" data-original-width="627" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL5P1Lm_YswxpcYdujoIcf48t_rXZ_64naZLXFrYMArjghsldIi5mgZmP0F3_GcwTWVX3Mbtgr6ChP01pvtdLtRNXsmFM2QevXcPyEhAQ0LNwxzmOdTqe29FT2QugGdVCIQ1ctgYvzYNVj/s320/CONTENT.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I can not shake the feeling that we're in a time when we need wild creativity to take us outside ourselves, and sketch out new possibilities. These necessities are intangible, and thus completely foreign to the MBAs in charge of what we see. I'm hoping the administration revving up to take center stage next month (no matter how grossly the current diva continues to make its curtain calls insisting that The Show Must Go On) will take to heart the necessity of these intangibles, that it realizes that a better future is not just a childish daydream of its youngest constituents.</p><p>I yearn not for a past in which wilder flourishes were possible. I yearn for a present where such flourishes occur with regularity, exploding from flatscreens and magazines, eating away at the fabric of our dull reality to form doorways into better worlds. Where they blow fresh air in our faces, allowing us, even masked, to truly breathe.</p><p>And so I'm watching Godard, and much of it flies right past me, but I savor the incredible poetic ideas that detonate cleanly in my head, delighting that this man remains alive and active and even now is finding ways to bend the medium. I've read that he's working on two different projects right now, and can't wait to see them.</p><p>It amazes me how radical even his simple, direct gestures are. I muse how powerfully it would hit if, five minutes into <i>Avengers Endgame</i>, the audience were confronted with white text on a black background, no sound</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLMUi25B7NE3MHY8-nf-a3ZQ0z5veVElrkZuhxX6a_Lt4mN8wPSnmmgRflXR83cqGmu3-cMfCvR_afE_o8v6h3xVGmS-N1gGIco9js3FU92Cnc8CczFI7GEoWBT24fKy9LYxUFynWQVkj4/s825/endgamejlg.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="376" data-original-width="825" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLMUi25B7NE3MHY8-nf-a3ZQ0z5veVElrkZuhxX6a_Lt4mN8wPSnmmgRflXR83cqGmu3-cMfCvR_afE_o8v6h3xVGmS-N1gGIco9js3FU92Cnc8CczFI7GEoWBT24fKy9LYxUFynWQVkj4/w404-h170/endgamejlg.png" width="404" /></a></div><br /><p>Could anything dropkick the audience into the story faster? It's such a basic idea that it's amazing no one does it. It would be the first thing the suits would cut from the movie.</p><p><i>Contempt </i>remains, a dense and powerful story of The Dream Factory and those caught within it. A thrilling portrait of a brilliant artist pissing away the tall Hollywood dollars, and not a terrible place to start, if you're looking.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho_psasR09lx8Jg2lZURWepbPaXZQVzijW_MZaCUfgF7ok8iPYHibMqMWF3JLahBVZqZS-W3rML3TX8Uvw-8fLdAH0VtRXnmNEgWotAnbPsvbH8o8-Qth6LslTE03KnOvUwR20Hd3PviUq/s2048/jlg.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1363" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho_psasR09lx8Jg2lZURWepbPaXZQVzijW_MZaCUfgF7ok8iPYHibMqMWF3JLahBVZqZS-W3rML3TX8Uvw-8fLdAH0VtRXnmNEgWotAnbPsvbH8o8-Qth6LslTE03KnOvUwR20Hd3PviUq/s320/jlg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>Bon anniversaire, <i>sensei</i>. Et merci.</p><p><br /></p>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-22749187004911893392020-09-13T16:50:00.000-07:002020-09-13T17:15:38.441-07:00ANGSTBased on the disturbing case of Werner Kniesek, a man who committed multiple murders in a brief period of release from confinement, this movie captures the scheming of an anomic young man fresh out of prison. We are privy to his thoughts, his plans, his history, and his vision for his crimes as he goes from one potential victim to another, eventually winding up in an isolated-enough house where he terrorizes and systematically murders three members of a family. He leaves the scene of his crime, and heads into the world to wreak his larger vision upon the world.<br />
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I felt great after seeing this. <br />
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Though banned for its graphic violence, and long a hidden gem sought only by the most savvy and brave cult filmographers, this bleak and brutal film speaks way past the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_nasty" target="_blank">Video Nasty</a> audience. It is tense, disgusting, scrupulously honest, and morally sound. It is also subtle but unflinching in capturing the vast gulf between a would-be murderer's narcissistic delusions and his abjectly pathetic reality. Erwin Leder is marvelous as the nameless antagonist, so far gone in his psychosis that he is at times too comically incompetent to realize the grandness of his psychotic visions, the cool and calculating sadism of his ongoing internal monologue constantly undercut by his external struggles with the dead weight of his victims, his hapless premature ejaculations, his complete and utter inability to even pass for normal at a glance. </div>
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The movie is stylish but not showy. It is marvelously shot by Zbigniew Rybczyński (fresh off an Oscar win for his experimental short TANGO), who gives us maybe four looks in the movie that aren't vertigo-inducing crane shots or invasive close-ups. Tangerine Dream's Klaus Schulze underscores the thing with a menacingly percolating score. Gaspar Noe cited it as a strong influence (and one suspects Lars von Trier took notes, as well), but it's refreshing how devoid of post-modern irony the thing is. </div>
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After binging horror franchises from <a href="http://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/2020/09/thirteen.html" target="_blank">Friday the 13th</a> to Hannibal it was downright refreshing to watch a movie that flinched from neither the consequences of its psycho's crimes nor the confused dimensions of his humanity. Without finger-wagging or side-eying us it renders its verdict directly: this deranged asshole has a special plan for this world, and is to be kept away far away from everybody. Let us hope voters in November are as lucid. </div>
David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-88060541329217204502020-09-11T23:22:00.006-07:002022-01-05T18:06:34.543-08:00Thirteen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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0. I'm not necessarily a fan of the slasher genre, though I've seen an adequate horror-lover's share of them. With many, many hours to fill under COVID, and the franchise almost entirely available on the streaming platforms I'd just started watching regularly, I figured what the hell, I'll watch the Friday the 13th movies. This would be a chance to finally see the first two movies in the series (as well as some others I'd only seen in parts on television). I don't presume to make A Definitive Statement On The Series And Its Relationship To The Larger Culture (Or Even To Horror Cinema). I've watched the movies, done some (though not all) reading of background*, and recorded my impressions. My rankings of the series and other data bits are at the end; I've loved none of them but appreciate some more than others.<br />
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* = Stacie Ponder has written up all of the films over on her still-indispensable blog Final Girl - I'm grateful to her particularly for calling my attention to the often-berserk logos the movies threw at us. Such off-the-wall gestures are often where a low-budget movie's spirit truly lies, and more than anything it's those gestures that kept me engaged with the series even as one dead teenager began to resemble all the others.<br />
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1. the First<br />
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At the start there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to take from this seeing it for the first time 40 years on - you know who the killer will be revealed to be, and you know who's going to jump out of the lake in the epilogue, so finally seeing it is really just a chance to finally say you saw it, to check it off a list. So you recalibrate a bit, and try to be open - I know the basic story (which can be summarized very, very easily), so I look to the margins as openly as I can to see what else is there. <br />
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There's some (not a whole lot, but some) sensitive work by the cast, one or two memorable character turns, and a richly atmospheric setting. It all happens in less than 24 hours, during which clouds gather and then a rainstorm rages and subsides (and I like how the storm registers as an event in the movie, bringing an open quiet within which the tension builds nicely). Henry Manfredini's famous score feels sketchy, a few synthesizer and vocal noises put together as horror miniatures, but it works. Watching it forty years on it's odd how the gore effects, which were so scandalous in 1980, are barely lingered on. The violence isn't thrown in our faces long enough to really disturb us, though perhaps forty years later this series' true legacy is how it has desensitized us to this kind of violence. (Ballard's prophecy that we'd be ruled by elected psychopaths has come true.)<br />
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It does wear its influence of Bava's BAY OF BLOOD on its sleeve, mainly in the quiet and emptiness that surrounds its murder sequences. There are some unsettlingly fleet touches as well (the quick dart of a hand behind a curtain is the bit I remember most keenly). Movies hold one's interest with a lot less; franchises, though, you'd hope would be built on a base less flimsy.<br />
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2. the Best<br />
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The first film was trying something new but wasn't sure what; it built from the influence of a quietly atmospheric Bava film, but some of the spaces in the movie feel accidental. This one has a model to build on - we've done this before, let's expand on what worked - and is stronger. Better realized and delineated characters (including a few you actually come to care about), wild stylistic flourishes (Jason's reveal is sublime - Terry screaming and unleashing her shit right into the camera is bravura),<br />
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more elaborate kill scenes (including a great bit where a chair breaks under Jason's weight - we don't see onscreen psychos get tripped up by accidents enough). Even Manfredini's score is better resourced, his electronics boosted by some confidently-laid string arrangements that <i>don't</i> rip off Herrmann's PSYCHO themes. Bloody summer fun, if you can overlook the wild gaps in logic. I imagine Amy Steel's performance will remain one of the series' best leads. (EDIT: Indeed it did.)<br />
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3. Comin' At Ya<br />
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The creative team take a couple of steps back here - in part 2 they knew they were making a genre movie but that genre movie let its characters breathe and had strong connection between the set pieces. Here all the attention has been paid to the 3-D pop-outs with no care or detail put into anything else - Steve Miner made a more-than-coherent movie with 2 but seems handcuffed by the demands of the 3-D (and, no doubt, a studio that suddenly realized this franchise was a money-maker), and for all the eye-popping effects (right there on the title card!) the result is dramatically inert. Can't believe it took TWO people to write this, the most dull and rote script in the series (so far). Richard Brooks' Jason moves around like somebody's sprightly grandpa. The final barn fight gives it some oomph, with a lovely interior Louma crane shot that's more thrilling than any of the in-your-face effects.<br />
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4. the "Final" Chapter<br />
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A lot of the fans seem to love this one, and I understand why. Offbeat actors like Crispin Glover and Corey Feldman are brought in and given bits to do; I'm not as taken with Glover's dancing as some, but it's a solid step toward the flourishes that I value in genre programmers. The characters across the board have a spark that was missing in part 3 (the Jarvises are particularly likeable - the film would have benefited from a few more minutes with them), Jason's bulkier and more formidable, the killings become even more elaborate (Tina's slo-mo defenestration in the rain is GORGEOUS). Director Joseph Zito seems to have given this one a bit more zip, though it appears that's because everyone in the cast was totally unified in absolutely despising him.<br />
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INTERLUDE. THE LAKE.<br />
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If we assume that these movies are all in continuity with one another, oddities quickly emerge: we see Mrs. Voorhees driven mad enough by her son's drowning to terrorize Camp Crystal Lake for two decades. And yet her son survived and was close enough to witness her murder and thus get fired up to embark on his own rampages (and how the hell did he get to Alice's apartment and back?). The sprawling geography of 2-4 (which take place over about four consecutive days) suggests that the environs surrounding Crystal Lake are fairly vast, which might explain (<i>might</i>) how Mrs. Voorhees never saw the makeshift shack her son built within walking distance of the camp. I'm not surprised the video game took it all in - the designers must have had a field day with such evocative and expansive territory to map out. <br />
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5. A New Beginning<br />
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And here I part with the slasher orthodoxy - this widely-reviled entry has (as I make these notes) given me the most entertainment so far. It doesn't have jokes but it's nonetheless very funny: the smash-cut from Joey's axe murder to the POLICE SQUAD! shot of the arriving siren makes me laugh just thinking about it. Part 3 had actors struggling with a nothing script and as a result had no energy; this one has actors full-tilt embracing a nothing script and is a lot more fun. It keeps looking for something else to cram into the formula; what character bits can we explore, what skills did an actor say they had on their resume that we can have them do on camera. The characters feel...not real, exactly (the bickering greasers are straight out of a Sha Na Na skit - you can either shut down and hate the movie or roll with it and giggle, like I did) but it's fun to spend time with them (Violet's robot-dancing to Pseudo Echo's "His Eyes" is a particular highlight; Reggie, Demon, and Anita in the van is another).<br />
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6. He Is Risen<br />
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A whole mess of strong performances in this one: Thom Mathews is rootably determined as by-now-the-series-protagonist Tommy Jarvis, and Jennifer Cooke is more than likeable enough to sell her bewildering turn as his besotted co-hero; David Kagen plays a fine meat-and-potatoes arc as her lawman dad. Well-embodied by enthusiastically jobbing CJ Graham, Jason's supernatural rebirth starts its own continuity (which is smart), and the thing is surprisingly light-footed and pleasant-spirited. Tonally consistent (and Imma credit Tom McLoughlin, the series' first ever "written and directed by" credit) and downright silly at times (with Manfredini actually creating POLICE ACADEMY-style comedy score for the paintball sequence), but much of the comedy comes from actual jokes. In an odd first we actually see the camp counselors counseling campers at the renamed Camp Forest Green (hilariously, McLoughlin lingers on the shot below longer than a who-we-are-and-what-we-do Powerpoint presentation).<br />
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7. The New Blood<br />
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There's the series' best story here: the story of a girl beset by abilities she doesn't understand and a guilt she'll never shake, of the shadowy lake that seeded her talents and still holds her close, of the energies that still manifest around her upon her return to the lake, of the unspeakable evil she accidentally frees from the depths of the lake, of the doctor who says he's trying to help her but seems to be guiding her via his own agenda, of her escalating fear as she tries desperately to embrace the human comforts around her, her anguish at losing everything, her terror turning to anger as she finally becomes who she is, becomes strong enough to contain and destroy the horror she unleashed, of her finally seeing the love that was always there, in the lake, of her leaving her past behind, her old world burned down as she confidently steps forward toward the new.<br />
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Paramount was given all these elements (assembled by the wildly ambitious producer Barbara Sachs), as well as a stunt team leader who took so seriously the iconography of the villain he was asked to play that he set a record for being on fire. With a team poised to deliver something next-level, Paramount instead asked for the same idiot teenagers, more of the same gratuitous nudity, the same shallow formula. Few involved saw it as anything more than a job, and a job is what we got.<br />
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Tina Shepard deserved better.<br />
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8. Takes A Boat Ride, And Then Manhattan<br />
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The lower budgets of the earlier efforts made for sleazy viewing, but also allowed for genuine strangeness and off-kilter moments. The good news in 8 is the production values are higher: this one has some of the series' best camera work, and the characters are an improvement on the previous, feeling lived-in and semi-motivated (indeed, Saffron Henderson and Martin Cummins sell a shaded and tangible friendship between rockergirl J.J. and video student Wayne - you can imagine her crushing out on him thanks to his resemblance to David Sylvian). But the interesting ideas don't breathe and get glossed over, the spontaneity has been choked out of the series (even the endearing daftness of the title logos is gone - this thing has a generic Manhattan-in-the-80s title sequence that could have played before any movie set in Manhattan in the 80s), and it lingers on the suffering of its characters past the point of entertainment. It is firmly and unmistakably the product of capitalists at this point, which might be the scariest thing about it.<br />
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9. aw, hell.<br />
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It took Jason longer to get to Hell than it did for him to get to Manhattan. Paramount just threw their hands up and gave the franchise to New Line, and New Line resumed the ongoing battle to turn this thing into something. This one plays like the second part of a movie for which the first part doesn't exist - suddenly Jason's a worm that jumps from body to body and there are various agents after him. It's crazily mixed and gets a coupla points for some engaging character bits and inspired lunacy (a diner gets attacked and the entire counter staff take arms up in defense). To be damn sure it ain't lazy, but it gives us way too much to just take on faith, and there's nothing on screen to really give a shit about. Even Manfredini's just randomly stabbing at his new digital keyboard at this point, which mirrors the scattershot, throw-it-all-at-it approach of the movie as a whole. A movie this insane should be more fun.<br />
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X.<br />
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Couldn't find this one, and at this point in the series-thru I was getting punchy and contrary so damned if I was gonna buy it. My memories of this thing are good, with Kane Hodder as implacable as ever in both classic and future mode; Lexa Doig and Lisa Ryder effectively swapping their ANDROMEDA roles; David Cronenberg in a fine turn, during the movie's prologue, as an asshole scientist. I recall this being breezier than the others, more consistent and sure of itself - it feels like director Jim Isaac was given a solid script and a decent effects budget and left to it. (And how dismaying it was to find, while reading up on this movie, that Isaac died in 2012 - I wasn't the world's biggest PIG HUNT fan, but I would have been curious enough to watch another film from him.)<br />
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11. vs. Freddy...<br />
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Some of the luster has worn off, yet it's still my favorite movie in the Friday the 13th franchise. With director Ronny Yu (veteran of a mess of wuxia films and BRIDE OF CHUCKY) helming the thing the deck's stacked in its favor. The characters are richer (and even mourn the deaths taking place around them), and Jason becomes a semi-realized character rather than a cinematic device that exists solely to eviscerate teenagers (Yu's decision to recast Ken Kirzinger in the role since he had more soulful eyes than Kane Hodder pays off). The story leans hard into fantasy (and harder into a Universal horror influence than even McLoughlin did in part 6) and is better for it, with a nice balance between the milieux of the title characters (artfully color-coded). Freddy's quips make him unpleasant and gross as opposed to evil; Kelly Rowland's sassing of Freddy is an unmotivated low point that nearly derails the thing. TIMELY BONUS: the treatment of Freddy's rampage as a public health crisis. And the climactic battle delivers.<br />
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12. 09<br />
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Jared Padalecki and Danielle Panabaker lead a cast who could have done a lot more than they were asked to; their sympathetic work, some solid camerawork, and a tight contraction of years of continuity are undone by ugly sadism, under-baked supporting roles, derivations from other movies, and just too much bullshit (I can buy that Jason built a shack in the woods; I can buy the crawlspace underneath; I can buy neither the vast network of tunnels nor the rusty school bus within them). I'm really glad to have finished a damn-near-full series view-through.<br />
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13. TL;DR<br />
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I rank'em FvsJ; 2, 6, 5, X, 1, 4, 7, 9, 8, '09, 3-D. Favorite kills: the rain defenestration in 4; the face-thru-metal in 6; the liquid nitrogen in X.<br />
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<br />David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-69004993381668579952020-07-04T16:44:00.000-07:002020-07-30T13:19:28.369-07:00ZABRISKIE POINTIt ain't no fucking metaphor. Especially now.<br />
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And it wasn't the craziest idea back in 1970, either - Michelangelo Antonioni wasn't the first foreign filmmaker courted by Hollywood (Jacques Demy covered similar near-Hollywood geography just a year prior, after all). We'll hook him up with some solid American writers and he'll do for 60s counterculture USA <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowup" target="">what he did for Swingin' London</a>, right?<br />
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Right?<br />
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The thing was a nearly-legendary failure. Mainstream critics were alienated by Antonioni's usual poetry, and the hippies MGM were hoping to flock to the thing stayed away. Some argued that the nuances of American politics at the time were outside Antonioni's grasp, an assertion supported by his weary, paper-thin lead characters and attention to landscape. <br />
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But it grabbed me the first time I saw it, and it's deepened for me ever since. My sense is that Antonioni was absolutely true to what he saw during his American sojourn, because it's the America I see: the political left arguing about minutiae, blockaded by the police while the forces of capitalism work quietly and insidiously in the background. (And there seem to be some strong moments of connection with co-writer Sam Shepard, an ideal match for the project - the lonely cowboy at the bar and the swirling of car lot banners are particularly Shepardian moments that Antonioni realizes beautifully.) The whole thing is enough to make an earnest revolutionary wanna snag a plane and just fuck off somewhere. <br />
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And when what we love is taken from us, when only a bland, dull life awaits us, with our land paved over, our rich history packaged sold and forgotten, when the walls of the box truly manifest and start suffocating us, the only reasonable and effective revolution is one of absolute and utter destruction.<br />
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<a href="https://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/2010/07/identification-of-woman.html" target="">I've argued before</a> that I see Michelangelo Antonioni as a fantasist, that where others see metaphors for the pain of contemporary living I see a science fiction imagination running artfully riot. And so I see the grand finale of this movie not as a metaphor for Daria's emerging revolutionary consciousness but as her direct willing of the destruction of everything. (The Carrie Ending, I call it.) But within this fantasistic take I understand that it's Antonioni's realistic assessment of what he observed during his time here. As Kiyoshi Kurosawa would decades later, he internalized and fully understood what he was seeing here, and simply looked ahead and found an apocalypse as the inevitable, even necessary, conclusion.<br />
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And so I'm thinking of Zabriskie Point today. On this holiday from which I've been disconnected in recent years and especially so today, as the world around me erodes under the weight of an uncontained epidemic, with the loss of home and community very real threats for me and so many I know, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/we-need-live-it-white-house-readies-new-message-nation-n1232884" target="">the government's dithering incompetence now firmly hand-in-hand with deliberate malevolence</a>. On this day in which BLACK LIVES MATTER is painted on countless streets but <a href="https://justiceforbreonna.org/" target="">Breonna Taylor</a>'s murderers (Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove) remain free. I can't buy into the celebration of the spirit of America while I can see so clearly how that spirit has been corrupted and subverted and twisted to fuck over, dehumanize, and kill so many of its own citizens. <br />
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On this July Fourth, these are the only fireworks I really want to see.<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/guOmJM8xvHA" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-48095877343755244682020-05-26T19:22:00.001-07:002020-07-30T13:17:52.248-07:00Imported: The ListA link-crazy post, to keep the House tidy. <a href="https://letterboxd.com/HouseOfSparrows/" target="">Your proprietor is on Letterboxd</a>, and will link to my reviews of the films below there. <br />
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Top Ten Movies seen for the first time during lockdown, on <a href="http://cinephobe.tv/" target="">Cinephobe.tv</a><br />
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(all movies US unless specified)<br />
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<a href="https://letterboxd.com/houseofsparrows/film/the-city-girl/" target="">The City Girl</a> (Coolidge, 84)<br />
<a href="https://letterboxd.com/houseofsparrows/film/american-hot-wax/" target="">American Hot Wax</a> (Mutrux, 78)<br />
Citizens Band (aka HANDLE WITH CARE) (Demme, 77)<br />
The Black Marble (Becker, 80)<br />
Face to Face (Sollima, Spain, 67)<br />
Who Can Kill A Child? (Serrador, Spain, 76)<br />
What the Peeper Saw (Bianchi/Kelley, UK, 72)<br />
<a href="https://letterboxd.com/houseofsparrows/film/night-of-the-juggler/" target="">Night of the Juggler </a>(Butler, 80)<br />
<a href="https://letterboxd.com/houseofsparrows/film/midnite-spares/" target="">Midnite Spares</a> (Masters, Australia, 83)<br />
Crazy Mama (Demme, 75)David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-7372742082653478462020-04-30T18:34:00.002-07:002023-05-27T00:16:13.695-07:0070s-ish Horror Stay At Home Double FeatureDifferent times. <br />
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This thing has sat unwritten for a while - it seems stupid to write about cult movies when such large and devastating issues are unfolding outside the House of Sparrows. But the House is safe on lockdown, well-resourced and comfortable, if cluttered. And one of life's deepest challenges is that it doesn't stop - we don't cease to be ourselves or lose our interests just because we're under quarantine.<br />
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Upping the internet bandwidth and speed on this end has been an absolute godsend, making for better newsgathering and vastly improved viewing options. Loath as I've been to dive into the whole streaming sphere the distraction has been more than welcome, and it's been good to finally catch up with things that had eluded me previously. (Indeed, in honor of <a href="https://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/2019/06/walpurgis-night.html" target="">Walpurgis Night</a>, I think tonight is the night I finally take in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0843P4BVW/" target="">Sarah Phelps' adaptation of Christie's The Pale Horse</a>.) And it's been a pleasant surprise to find that the internet doesn't necessarily inhibit spontaneity (serendipity, even), that streaming movies occasionally co-mingle with the artful clarity of in-cinema double features. Two movies taken in on different platforms within 24 hours of one another had a lot to say to me, and each other.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5M8L1Q5MEVsB4TWOwQwbskjj-WIMFaypuyg4hzrI_D1IMw3ZrFUnpGWDrDT4AX1oFES7VbHTV5-3tfigiG_vD0I7-a2G3-lIGwcMqooXrpJP-5WzGa8rCf3LrwdxyjH4exiqGRSgd7niL/s1600/RWTD-1.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="477" data-original-width="860" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5M8L1Q5MEVsB4TWOwQwbskjj-WIMFaypuyg4hzrI_D1IMw3ZrFUnpGWDrDT4AX1oFES7VbHTV5-3tfigiG_vD0I7-a2G3-lIGwcMqooXrpJP-5WzGa8rCf3LrwdxyjH4exiqGRSgd7niL/s200/RWTD-1.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>Jack Starett's <i>Race With The Devil</i> has an absolute dream quartet of actors (Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Loretta Swit, and Lara Parker) as two married couples who take off in an RV for an off-season vacation, and run afoul of a cult of Satanists who spend the last hour of the movie stalking and chasing them across half of Texas. It's wildly implausible and incredibly fun, with our heroes responding with the hysteria and anger you'd expect people to feel under such dire straits. And it's an engaging combination of horror movie and car chase caper, with mounting paranoia and truly inspired stuntwork throughout. It's gritty enough to engage on the grindhouse level, and one might be surprised to recall it slipped out into the world with a PG rating.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBfI5cqf8QsvEKjbIEpyaVCalgw7n1WGBhS1alZN0wUHRvH-jtM0dTVE5ZjiE77K6XKBbXToOXf9Xk36oZgfHF4ahtpm_kgoLXqnXiKcK4SiaCGql-ixCsXLcjnYHZM-nUmzPySJ82-he/s1600/RWTD-2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="863" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBfI5cqf8QsvEKjbIEpyaVCalgw7n1WGBhS1alZN0wUHRvH-jtM0dTVE5ZjiE77K6XKBbXToOXf9Xk36oZgfHF4ahtpm_kgoLXqnXiKcK4SiaCGql-ixCsXLcjnYHZM-nUmzPySJ82-he/s320/RWTD-2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Horror filmmaker and musician Rob Zombie would have been around ten when <i>Race With The Devil</i> was released, and it's very easy to imagine the mid-1970s monster kid Zombie must have been seeing it multiple times. I hadn't intended to follow <i>Race </i>with a thematically similar motion picture, but Zombie's indie horror opus <b><i>31</i></b> would sit very comfortably beneath <i>Race</i> on a double bill, taking in as it does the story of a group of clowns who pile in a van and head off on a road trip only to run afoul of an oddly-aristocratic cabal who force them into a violent game with death as the stakes. (Sealing its kinship with the prior movie, the movie takes place on Halloween, 1976.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrz1DrykE-sqYoOLFhEQ3TLFSoHqWpit_6XQjBD8EuSq0TOFQ9182ZwjhqY0mEOb5BKRlUAMyd7rxW1HVN7M5XS3GiPJP5R0Bv-OxfGbmj6I7jKzDZY6AoM7zQ68TDWMLooNE7AC-8Jpb/s1600/31-B.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="1088" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZrz1DrykE-sqYoOLFhEQ3TLFSoHqWpit_6XQjBD8EuSq0TOFQ9182ZwjhqY0mEOb5BKRlUAMyd7rxW1HVN7M5XS3GiPJP5R0Bv-OxfGbmj6I7jKzDZY6AoM7zQ68TDWMLooNE7AC-8Jpb/s320/31-B.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><i><b><br />
31</b></i> clinched my suspicions that there are two Rob Zombies - a consistent-but-unimaginative writer and more-than-competent director - vying for supremacy of his brain, never mind his films. The story is a rote re-hash of <i>The Most Dangerous Game</i> that teases but doesn't pursue an obvious line of class-consciousness. But it's beautifully executed on a largely crowd-funded budget, unfolding in a palpably grimy setting shot through with moody atmosphere and striking use of color. There's always something to look at, and the textures of skin, wood, fog give it a tangibility that makes for effective horror (cinematographer David Daniels takes over for longtime Zombie shooter Brandon Trost and proves just as adept in making Zombie's outre world look and feel real.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0dXUduTyt4RvSNZK6KTWIrl3T0ESEGnb7joEIBvm0KTz1S04MxwqRfoHsQ9YFk4QuXICiC4bhKa676EEkiZnjfCBMNkzzaL67cxAPGSg4rXQdyZhgzde3qmnqc7CxG5yGpg3fZtgv9Nmz/s1600/31-A.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="1089" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0dXUduTyt4RvSNZK6KTWIrl3T0ESEGnb7joEIBvm0KTz1S04MxwqRfoHsQ9YFk4QuXICiC4bhKa676EEkiZnjfCBMNkzzaL67cxAPGSg4rXQdyZhgzde3qmnqc7CxG5yGpg3fZtgv9Nmz/s320/31-A.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Most of the characters of <b><i>31</i></b> speak in the same colorful yet witless white trash patois that Zombie has been putting in the mouths of 85% of his characters since <i>House of 1000 Corpses</i>, and most of the villains stalking them through the movie's lethal factory maze match the cheerful vulgarity of the protagonists with a similarly Southern-fried sadism. The cast uniformly commit to and sell their dialogue - as limited as Zombie's scripts often are I can't recall an actor who did anything less than demanded of them. Many horror filmmakers have either a strong visual sense or a sure hand with actors, but Zombie has both, and I suspect that many actors who continue to work for Zombie genuinely enjoy doing so. (The most striking figure is cut by Richard Brake as nominal-lead heavy Doomhead, who brings such terrifying and charismatic intensity to his monologues that I wished they'd been written by almost anybody else.)<br />
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This double-feature of not great movies took the edge off a couple of quarantine days, and offered a welcome reminder that cinema remains a living, breathing thing. An actor's medium that presents you new work by old favorites and introduces new favorites in even less-than-auspicious settings (I'd pay real money to see Richard Brake's MacBeth). A venue for ever-new, visceral thrills. A companion and friend even, especially, in times like these. As <a href="http://cinephobe.tv/" target="">my new favorite channel</a> says so charmingly, stay home/stay alive, friend.David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-86138936593224236482020-03-13T13:55:00.003-07:002020-03-13T14:11:59.981-07:00THE HUNTTwelve...eleven people with remarkably similar backgrounds find themselves on an open grassy plain, and are picked off with startling alacrity by unseen hunters. The quarries quickly realize they have common politics, and their roles in this hunt seem to confirm their absolute worst conspiracy theories about the liberal elites.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDbmh4NCsaQFhtexu6HjeCZ1O9PEDQLBkiqmHmH69VnOQ5OTTj0jB3kSdCtU6pDk4JZCJjBhO19UiFMY5-nugUNW8rJtNxnjMJGpKKTubTththAyf3JZNZuw5wyxwfCco5OLBpxYt8T1r5/s1600/the-hunt-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDbmh4NCsaQFhtexu6HjeCZ1O9PEDQLBkiqmHmH69VnOQ5OTTj0jB3kSdCtU6pDk4JZCJjBhO19UiFMY5-nugUNW8rJtNxnjMJGpKKTubTththAyf3JZNZuw5wyxwfCco5OLBpxYt8T1r5/s320/the-hunt-1.jpg" width="320" height="237" data-original-width="1024" data-original-height="759" /></a></div><br />
It wants so, so badly to tweak and provoke you. And indeed the delayed release of THE HUNT plays right into its story, with pre-emptive outrage becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But anyone who sees this has little to be outraged or fired up about. As a straight-up hunting humans thriller the movie delivers the goods: the pacing of the action is more than solid, with the opening salvos of the hunt keeping us off-kilter as our anchor characters wind up quickly dispatched. A well-placed flashback brings us up to speed with the impetus behind and reasons for the hunt, setting the table for a charged and well-staged final confrontation. <br />
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All of which would be just dandy if the movie didn't reduce so many of its characters, on either side of the political fence, to crass stereotypes. Its efforts to muddy the waters with some welcome ambiguity come too late to really resonate with the action comedy preceding, and the end rings hollow where it should soar. (An interview on the movie and its surrounding controversy with director Craig Zobel is somewhat helpful, as within it he cheekily declares himself an "equal opportunity offender," which relieves us of the burden of giving a shit about anything he says.) As striking and even engaging a thriller as it often is, its broad satire renders the thing too shallow to be anything more than a diverting thrill-ride. Which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't congratulating itself for being the most controversial movie of the year.David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-21352837701340657862020-02-25T18:44:00.003-08:002023-03-07T01:22:04.751-08:00Unnamed Footage Festival: Five Films<a href="https://www.unnamedfootagefestival.com/" target="">The Unnamed Footage Festival</a> holds a unique place among indie genre film festivals. It was initially conceived to spotlight new works in found footage horror; the subgenre started (in earnest) with the “rediscovered” film shot by the ill-fated filmmakers of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and that style has been embraced by many low-budget horror films since. But UFF has expanded their scope to include films that embrace some of the storytelling tactics of those films and expand on their strategies to pursue complex narratives and startling emotion. Films shot with the camera taking a single, fixed perspective; fake documentaries; appropriated footage recut into new sequences that suggest new narratives and pose questions about authorship, privacy, and ownership of the image; more and more movies are being made that confront issues of fantasy and reality in increasingly hybrid and bizarre ways, and UFF continues to cheerfully mutate to embrace them.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisYqBanXBBPgoReQuwAB0pkpkIQYuy6kseM4e0-lEt7FVNTVsKHzIC4JEXS5oHDMoWbro1Gzkm2Hjxx848i2U1VjcuNeNod8YhZXSXHrG0VuGPql59Zt7dQqa6VtSy9FeRj5MT4D9oSGfI/s1600/uff3poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisYqBanXBBPgoReQuwAB0pkpkIQYuy6kseM4e0-lEt7FVNTVsKHzIC4JEXS5oHDMoWbro1Gzkm2Hjxx848i2U1VjcuNeNod8YhZXSXHrG0VuGPql59Zt7dQqa6VtSy9FeRj5MT4D9oSGfI/s320/uff3poster.jpg" width="226" height="320" data-original-width="849" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>Full disclosure: the programmers of UFF are all dear friends, and I even introduced a screening at the festival last year. I follow UFF as not just a fan of low-budget horror and other modes of offbeat filmmaking, but as one invested in the work of my friends and enjoying their programming through the perspective of a friend hip to their tastes and processes. So here, to celebrate their third year in operation, to explore some of the things I find notable about their work, and to give others an “in” on what I find distinctive about the programming, are five of the many things I’m excited to check out at UFF.<br />
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(I’m going to have to miss both the opening night screening party at Artists’ Television Access, and the next night’s screening of MANIAC at the Little Roxie, so all of the screenings listed below take place at the Balboa Theatre at the dates and times listed. <a href="http://https://www.unnamedfootagefestival.com/" target="">The full schedule for the festival is here.</a>)<br />
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SKYMAN – February 29, 2pm<br />
A man who encountered an extraterrestrial as a boy eagerly awaits the alien’s return, and this documentary captures the days leading up to their expected rendez-vous. I’m excited to see a movie so firmly in UFF’s wheelhouse that abandons horror completely, and I’m moved that Daniel Myrick, one of the directors of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, is both sticking to the aesthetic of that monumental film and aiming for something humanistic and transcendent. If you’re completely horror-averse but want to attend and support a scrappy independent genre film festival, this is the one you want to go to.<br />
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MURDER DEATH KOREATOWN – February 29, 7pm<br />
A young man disappears during his private investigation of a neighbor’s murder, and the footage he shot documenting the larger conspiracy around the crime is assembled by an unseen but dedicated acquaintance. According to the program this was submitted anonymously. I can’t tell if this is a fake with which my friends are gamely playing along: they haven’t told me and I haven’t asked. I accept and embrace the mystery, and brace myself for wherever this takes us.<br />
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THE LOCK-IN – February 29, 11pm<br />
The discovery of a pornographic magazine unleashes unspeakable evil among a group of teenagers during an all-night event at their church. Yes, this is an Evangelical found footage horror movie, and it’s quite unlike any other movie I’ve seen. It has the torpor that comes with many movies made by non-professionals, and is too pious to really deliver the gruesomeness you’d expect in a horror film. And so when it does throw a jump-scare at you, the effect is delightful. I was at the screening where programmer Clark Little sprung it on the rest of the team; this is a movie he champions, out of love for the truly-out-there reaches of no-budget cinema (and a little cultural masochism). I suspect the effects of this at the end of a long day of programming, attended by the inebriation of a late-night screening, will be absolutely mindbending, and that Clark’s intro will be one for the ages.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj9SifeIOj8WoxQoyxz9VkjgoQ53KBeSy5bhgJQ9qS1WNwQ6knXfaLOhWn31wvxfHKcHC_zDHxwwIRf5103ghuMDev8G_o69J3SukX9OpEAJTIa3SnKLiwQg5r9AXmIABbTD5eCNw-GD_N/s1600/noroi+the+curse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj9SifeIOj8WoxQoyxz9VkjgoQ53KBeSy5bhgJQ9qS1WNwQ6knXfaLOhWn31wvxfHKcHC_zDHxwwIRf5103ghuMDev8G_o69J3SukX9OpEAJTIa3SnKLiwQg5r9AXmIABbTD5eCNw-GD_N/s400/noroi+the+curse.jpg" width="400" height="224" data-original-width="300" data-original-height="168" /></a></div><br />
NOROI: THE CURSE – March 1, 12:05pm<br />
UFF gives over a couple of slots of its final day to a celebration of Japanese auteur Koji Shiraishi. I can’t quite recommend A RECORD OF SWEET MURDER screening later Sunday night, but there’s enough artistry and imagination in that one to make me want to see Shiraishi’s earlier work. This one is notably the longest movie in the festival, taking in an abundance of characters and covering a number of different supernatural and psychological horrors in its documentary shot by a disappeared expert in the paranormal.<br />
<br />
FRAUD – March 1, 2:15pm<br />
I don’t understand why I enjoy novella-length movies (50-60 minute running times), but I’m delighted that so many of them pepper the UFF schedule. I’m quite keen on this one, in which filmmaker Dean Fleischer-Camp turns YouTube home movie clips shot by a suburban family into a 52-minute anti-capitalist odyssey.<br />
<br />
David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-17531952175145568042020-02-04T15:21:00.001-08:002020-12-23T18:09:56.302-08:00CREPÚSCULODoctor Alejandro Mangina is so sick he doesn't want to get well. Specifically, he has encountered old flame Lucia, posing for an art class, shortly before leaving the country and the chance encounter has inflamed his passion for her. These feelings are so intense they awaken a tumescent darkness inside him, a passion not diminished by either his time away or Lucia's marriage to his friend Ricardo.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj35b86bRIgCJSNk8XE6Wqfjr3wOfoRKnlgdmyuYR6C0CWolrfEBGzvuNrWPz9Tz8YTHH3E-r-sRRJmWG5lfLvsAJ-bmLmnDR7twgHWoAutuUmAA36TKj9qhU1wr-rkofdeSuVCR-voMHvr/s1600/crepusculo-1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="628" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj35b86bRIgCJSNk8XE6Wqfjr3wOfoRKnlgdmyuYR6C0CWolrfEBGzvuNrWPz9Tz8YTHH3E-r-sRRJmWG5lfLvsAJ-bmLmnDR7twgHWoAutuUmAA36TKj9qhU1wr-rkofdeSuVCR-voMHvr/s320/crepusculo-1.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>If <a href="http://noircity.com/index.html" target="">Noir City</a> has screened a movie hornier than CREPÚSCULO, I regret having missed it. The movie singlehandedly puts to pasture any notion that black-and-white movies were/are haughty and sexless. In terms of noir history it takes the erotic heat of John Dall's first look at Peggy Cummins in GUN CRAZY or the drum solo from PHANTOM LADY and sustains that energy for 108 bewildering, exhilarating minutes. <br />
<br />
But the machine that energy fuels is a delightful and fiery cinematic contraption. Writer/director Julio Bracho's theatrical bona fides are on glorious display, from the shadows that fall over the characters during moments of intensity to the gorgeous poetry of the language: the subtexts come pirouetting gorgeously out of the mouths of the characters, but the beauty of the language keeps us grounded in their emotions. The sensuality of the lead performances keeps us fully engrossed even as the more heady literary fanices unfold: Mangina has just authored a book outlining the psychological disintegration of a single subject, and we get the impression that his book (also called <i>Crepúsculo</i>) is adapting itself before our very eyes. And when the single first-person narration is suddenly taken over by all three participants in a crucial scene it feels like we're leaving the planet. <br />
<br />
During her sterling introduction alongside Noir City impresario Eddie Muller, Morelia Film Festival director Daniela Michel noted that <i>Crepúsculo</i> was the favorite Mexican film of <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/pierre-rissient-dead-clint-eastwood-jane-campion-cannes-1201960801/" target="">the late "man of cinema" Pierre Rissient</a> (which is enough to make me happily, humbly, reassess some of my unfairly stodgy impressions of the man.) Academic questions such as "what qualifies this as film noir?" are promptly forgotten as we feel like we're being absorbed into the warm, lush darkness of an overriding supercinematic consciousness. The invitation from a filmmaker like Bracho to dance is like the moment an irresistible femme fatale winks at us, a seductive shadow that promises rapture even as it shuts out the light. Leaving the cinema after such an engaging and luscious tryst we pull the shadows around us, willing the joy to linger, closing our eyes to trap the darkness, to let twilight linger just a little while longer. <i>That </i>is noir, ice cold and hot as hell.David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-55365251084845083912020-01-24T14:58:00.001-08:002020-01-24T14:58:33.662-08:00The Office Oscar Pool, And How To Run ItFirst, tell your supervisor that you want to do it. Don't ask "Hey, is it okay if I put together an Oscar pool for the office?" Say, "I think it'd be cool and fun if I put together an Oscar pool for the office." After all, the Oscars are one of the biggest shared spectacles of the year. More crucially, your supe will more than likely want in on it, and will say yes.<br />
<br />
Then: Email the office the details. For a nominal sum (like $5 - not a bankbreaker, but enough that they won't just throw away their guesses), they can participate in your Oscar pool. The person who guesses the most Oscar winners correctly gets the money collected. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglP0os3wmK4SNCPiZ2RlK70XZ8vUVLNI5gjdevenR6LBeggjvMI8e383ZHtMz86zWwmMK3cjlO0lJKp3-qKcaaQlugM6-cvR4q-cQX_0HjqSy2OQJth3i6jukSOvjjaYOUsX0iU2DqWEDo/s1600/oscars-money.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglP0os3wmK4SNCPiZ2RlK70XZ8vUVLNI5gjdevenR6LBeggjvMI8e383ZHtMz86zWwmMK3cjlO0lJKp3-qKcaaQlugM6-cvR4q-cQX_0HjqSy2OQJth3i6jukSOvjjaYOUsX0iU2DqWEDo/s320/oscars-money.jpg" width="320" height="168" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="630" /></a></div>You can go whole hog and get everybody to guess all the categories, but do NOT limit it to the ten major categories. Those'll be predicted in every news organ around the world the Friday before, and so you'll have the pot split by several coworkers who waited til the end to submit their guesses. The more minor categories are often where the pool is won. (Indeed, each time I've run the office pool it was Best Costume Design or even Best Makeup that put the winner over.)<br />
<br />
In the email out to everyone copy the categories and nominees into the body of the message. When people return their picks to you, they need only delete the nominees they don't believe will win. Their list, in an ideal world, will look like this (or at the very least follow this format):<br />
<br />
BEST PICTURE: Bokeback Mountain<br />
BEST ACTOR: Antonio Banderas, PAIN AND GLORY<br />
BEST ACTRESS: Cynthia Erivo, HARRIET<br />
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Brad Pitt, ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD<br />
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kathy Bates, RICHARD JEWELL<br />
<br />
etc. etc. etc.<br />
<br />
And if a list is in the body of an email back to you you can just print it out, on a single page even.<br />
<br />
So give people until the close of business the Friday before the Oscars (Friday, February 7) to submit their lists and their money to you. Most people will want to wait that long to see the major papers' predictions Friday morning, though you need not mention this in your initial email. AGAIN: Most of those predictions will be limited to winners in the top ten categories, which is why you'll want to have your coworkers betting on a larger number of categories.<br />
<br />
Watching the Oscars with these lists on your lap, checking off every correct answer on each list, will be an absolute blast. I guarantee this. You're likely to be more excited by the competition between your coworkers than anything happening on screen.<br />
<br />
On Monday (February 8), the participant with the most correct guesses gets the pot. If multiple participants tie with the most correct guesses, split the pot evenly among them. You might also considering awarding a small sum ($7, say) to a participant who submits the sole correct guess for a major category. (Years ago, Amy didn't think Crash would win Best Picture, since Brokeback Mountain was widely believed to be a shoo-in for it, but in her heart couldn't not vote for it - she was the only one who voted for it, and was rewarded for her faith with a small prize [the aforementioned $7]).<br />
<br />
Monday morning, either before or after you dole out the prizes, send an email to the participants (NOT the entire office - non-participants probably don't care, after all) announcing the winners, and list off the participants and their number of correct guesses.<br />
<br />
In the end it'll be a fun diversion for the office, and an Oscar-improver for you. If you think of something I didn't suggest above to make it work better for you, then by all means do it (and leave a comment here telling me what you did). From this point on, how things go in your Oscar pool is entirely up to you. Your word is final.<br />
<br />
(And under NO circumstances are you to share your own list with your coworkers.)<br />
<br />
Happy betting!<br />
<br />
(Arguably the most useful thing I wrote for a now-defunct workblog, saved by <a href="https://archive.org/web/web.php" target="">the Wayback Machine</a>.)David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-72178925337760168652019-12-31T16:33:00.001-08:002019-12-31T16:33:21.426-08:00top twenty and change, 2019THE TOP TWENTY (in order seen)<br />
<br />
The Image Book<br />
Us<br />
An Elephant Sitting Still<br />
High Life<br />
The Hidden City<br />
The Nightingale<br />
Asako I & II<br />
The Souvenir<br />
The Cleaning Lady<br />
Anima<br />
<br />
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Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood<br />
Amazing Grace<br />
Pain And Glory<br />
Give Me Liberty<br />
<a href="http://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/2019/09/in-fabric.html" target="">In Fabric</a><br />
Parasite<br />
The Lighthouse<br />
Black Circle<br />
Zombi Child<br />
Uncut Gems<br />
<br />
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HONORABLE MENTION TO A PAIR OF GENRE MOVIES THAT MAY NOT BE GREAT YET HIT ME RIGHT WHERE I LIVE:<br />
Doctor Sleep<br />
Knives Out<br />
<br />
A COUPLA MOVIES I CAUGHT UP WITH ON VIDEO AND KICKED MYSELF FOR MISSING THEATRICALLY:<br />
Serenity<br />
Alita Battle Angel <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha5ONVXeEjNCFv9I1IzCGwWoB8SSRjS-mnmSS_2sNmFmwyaJ2T67C5WL14AWrJ1z1-BSWE_eWcW6E3AsFZxSNXAygkGKBcmBxXbEmofhq4LHC5WGFu7v7mjm-w3zTgEDz5IF7CBjlEDiXP/s1600/alita-battle-angel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha5ONVXeEjNCFv9I1IzCGwWoB8SSRjS-mnmSS_2sNmFmwyaJ2T67C5WL14AWrJ1z1-BSWE_eWcW6E3AsFZxSNXAygkGKBcmBxXbEmofhq4LHC5WGFu7v7mjm-w3zTgEDz5IF7CBjlEDiXP/s400/alita-battle-angel.jpg" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="690" data-original-height="388" /></a></div><br />
SIX VERY GOOD MOVIES TO ADD TO ABOVE TWO MINI-LISTS FOR THE TOP 21-30:<br />
Little Women<br />
Crawl<br />
Bit<br />
Desolation Center<br />
Luz<br />
First Love <br />
<br />
AN EXQUISITE CORPSE:<br />
The VHS intros and opening dance number CLIMAX <br>+ the “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting” sequence ROCKETMAN <br>+ the midpoint gun battle PROJECT GUTENBERG <br>+ the “Rocket Man” sequence ROCKETMAN<br />
<br />
MOVIES I MISSED THAT I HAVE NO DOUBT WOULD BE CONTENDERS:<br />
Ash is Purest White <br />
Atlantics<br />
Hustlers<br />
Portrait of a Lady on FireDavid Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-79599903908456814192019-11-21T22:16:00.001-08:002019-11-21T22:16:31.504-08:00MACABRE“Ladies and gentlemen, for the next hour and fifteen minutes you will be shown things so terrifying that the management of this theatre is deeply concerned for your welfare…”<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO6m-8Bcda-ubAq9LrNCgvVqwVG2xE4g2pAG5IUthcuZtMsiCNVhXg7lO_5wqU4SHap0R2TAXqdHxja44ZB8N0Sx4CNffTKwt-XwfjxHEcbg9pThVw6UXfpcAz6MpmnFVardnsdZg5O036/s1600/Macabre-William-Castle-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO6m-8Bcda-ubAq9LrNCgvVqwVG2xE4g2pAG5IUthcuZtMsiCNVhXg7lO_5wqU4SHap0R2TAXqdHxja44ZB8N0Sx4CNffTKwt-XwfjxHEcbg9pThVw6UXfpcAz6MpmnFVardnsdZg5O036/s400/Macabre-William-Castle-2.JPG" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="993" data-original-height="558" /></a></div><br />
In the quiet but surprisingly busy small town of Thornton, local doctor Rodney Barrett races against time to save his daughter, who has been kidnapped and buried alive by a deranged killer. His frantic search coincides with the approach of midnight, when a bizarre funeral will take place. Back stories are revealed, suspects are ruled out, and Death itself seems to hover patiently on the sidelines, ready to claim more than one of the players as the thriller moves implacably toward its denouement.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNTDBdWyXQyY4V5QGTm7-Y6JHlZuzrq-b7Z3GwE7_FezCT91c_ibgz2e4K3GpidQBCBeGzCHZ3AFxaMuvIPnSpB4nh6RCRn9QoXbvFvhsyh_Nvu7RqogJx4jbEt_bemnwsBcnBf5GYNNM/s1600/Macabre-William-Castle-4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifNTDBdWyXQyY4V5QGTm7-Y6JHlZuzrq-b7Z3GwE7_FezCT91c_ibgz2e4K3GpidQBCBeGzCHZ3AFxaMuvIPnSpB4nh6RCRn9QoXbvFvhsyh_Nvu7RqogJx4jbEt_bemnwsBcnBf5GYNNM/s200/Macabre-William-Castle-4.JPG" width="200" height="112" data-original-width="994" data-original-height="557" /></a></div>Perfect viewing for November, this, the first of producer/director/impresario William Castle’s notorious gimmick movies. The film was ballyhooed with the announcement a $1,000 insurance policy taken out to cover any member of MACABRE’s audience who died of fright. Some audiences also saw nurses and hearses at the theatres where the picture was playing. Even without such elements physically present in the room with the viewer today they seem to hold a presence.<br />
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Based on a novel by at least a dozen authors, the movie's plot is all over the place, with a number of digressions into the past informing the story of the present. These flashbacks gives us relief from the race-against-time narrative, but each time we return to the present there's that damn funeral parlor clock again to remind us where we are. But Castle isn't simply jerking his audience around, and he quickly shows that he's smart enough not to depend solely on gimmicks for his movie's effects. His touch with his cast is surprisingly strong; the actors all make several chapters of exposition go down smoothly, and sweat and struggle admirably as the vise of the story tightens. (William Prince is solid as Barrett, mired in both a small town's gossip mill and a psycho's demented kidnap plot; Jacqueline Scott is particularly strong as the lovelorn but determined nurse who follows him deep into the dark.) <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmQtlUQl0rfTU03CmAIyj4OaD3Ur_uhJsoxLBgmQnfVbjJZ8YZmjIxDmcV-ci_mH7LBiZaQBud9Kt81DHuUy_OMz2SU1SSnE6oanyjXjZr9H9estaaDXaIumYOwGeJsaUv7PWJpOHKBY1U/s1600/Macabre-William-Castle-3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmQtlUQl0rfTU03CmAIyj4OaD3Ur_uhJsoxLBgmQnfVbjJZ8YZmjIxDmcV-ci_mH7LBiZaQBud9Kt81DHuUy_OMz2SU1SSnE6oanyjXjZr9H9estaaDXaIumYOwGeJsaUv7PWJpOHKBY1U/s400/Macabre-William-Castle-3.JPG" width="400" height="224" data-original-width="988" data-original-height="553" /></a></div><br />
The late-50s meat-and-potatoes acting keep it all grounded, but Castle expertly entwines some semi-Brechtian devices that only enhance the prevailing mood of cinematic dread; the thing often feels like an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents directed by Lars von Trier. But even though Castle on occasion goes deep into the dark aspects of the human psyche – greed, jealousy, lust, envy – he turns out to be too much of a good-natured showman to kick us into the dark and leave us there. There’s a genuine sense of grateful release when the clock is finally stopped on this tale, and we’re rewarded with a spookily charming end credits sequence that gives the living, the dead, and the movie’s creative team a well-earned curtain call. <br />
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Here in the House the whole thing provided an excellent Halloween hangover, a spooky thriller loaded with atmosphere, a perfectly chilly entertainment for the deepening autumn. Out of respect for the filmmakers' wishes, your proprietor will keep the secret of the story's ending to himself. Also per their wishes, though, I'm here for you if the fright turns out to be too much. See you in the dark.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmrTZ0CKH9CBkvEZctQopbmrZd5q6o0-7I4mcrJ0YjSIAygJo3akHVABj4tYq0RZa936Yuz3zU1couin-vtA9LxhEn8b7kfJt-ehGdPuP56GmzMELa0jXzecnqi9SLTXpS6zMZvnkfkiQ1/s1600/Macabre-William-Castle-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmrTZ0CKH9CBkvEZctQopbmrZd5q6o0-7I4mcrJ0YjSIAygJo3akHVABj4tYq0RZa936Yuz3zU1couin-vtA9LxhEn8b7kfJt-ehGdPuP56GmzMELa0jXzecnqi9SLTXpS6zMZvnkfkiQ1/s400/Macabre-William-Castle-1.JPG" width="400" height="225" data-original-width="996" data-original-height="560" /></a></div>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-91662047887724741602019-10-29T16:02:00.002-07:002019-11-01T12:04:24.781-07:00UNHOLY TRINITY: A Lovecraft TriptychOver the course of his career San Francisco theatre artist Stuart Bousel has crafted a staggering number of plays as adapter, writer, and director. Even his plays rooted in the most immediate and realistic of settings are informed by a strong grasp of the mythological, elevating even the grittiest work into the transcendent. Unsurprisingly, Bousel's work demonstrates an affinity for genre: his production of Wendy MacLeod's <i>The House of Yes</i> leaned beautifully into the Gothic horror lurking in the play's heart without losing its wit or humanity; and <i>Dick 3</i>, his adaptation of <i>Richard III</i> for San Francisco Theatre Pub (a group he co-founded), artfully transmuted the bloody and towering history play into a brisk, engaging and entertaining "Shakespearean slasher."<br />
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Bousel's talents (and many of his preoccupations) are on display in UNHOLY TRINITY, a triptych adapted from the writings of HP Lovecraft and Anne Helen Crofts. With startling smoothness, Bousel and his talented cast of eight actors bring Lovecraft's tales to life, capturing both the intense interiority of his prose and the expansive, cosmic dread of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. <br />
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Ever the busy artist, Bousel has curated a theatre festival that opens immediately after this production closes, but graciously took the time to discuss the origins of UNHOLY TRINITY, his approach to adapting Lovecraft, and his thoughts on genre and theatre.<br />
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<b>UNHOLY TRINITY has been gestating for a while, yes? (I recall actor Brian Martin mentioning a reading of THE DUNWICH HORROR several years ago.) What prompted you to explore the Lovecraft mythos on stage?</b><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw4D_iHsASlVzT58u-sUUSRkbNi3rOr6dStLkE48Y05cSSNz1dvJgPo2FaAzr2zDDGD70854p4I4xGKanhPFEcH6V_BDwUr75qaZY_EOOqhY-Uu-_WpfbA4LiKidVbBko1fGV6z79ECadb/s1600/UNHOLY-slider-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw4D_iHsASlVzT58u-sUUSRkbNi3rOr6dStLkE48Y05cSSNz1dvJgPo2FaAzr2zDDGD70854p4I4xGKanhPFEcH6V_BDwUr75qaZY_EOOqhY-Uu-_WpfbA4LiKidVbBko1fGV6z79ECadb/s200/UNHOLY-slider-01.jpg" width="183" height="200" data-original-width="200" data-original-height="219" /></a></div>So, I actually first staged <a href="http://www.lovecraft-stories.com/story/nyarlathotep" target="">NYARLATHOTEP</a>, one of the stories that makes up UNHOLY TRINITY, as my directing final my junior year of college. We had to stage a 10-15 minute piece that was expressly not intended for theatrical production, and I chose that, and while my staging was completely different from the one happening at the EXIT, a lot of the initial ideas that would eventually come together to make UNHOLY TRINITY were born. Then yes, many years later, for Theater Pub, I did a sort of radio version of <a href="http://www.lovecraft-stories.com/story/the-dunwich-horror" target="">THE DUNWICH HORROR</a> in which Brian Martin, who is in UNHOLY TRINITY was cast (as Curtis, that time around). So, I've been revisiting the material ever since, and my ultimate goal was to eventually create a piece very much in line with what's currently at the EXIT. Incidentally, I also adapted <a href="http://www.lovecraft-stories.com/story/the-thing-on-the-doorstep" target="">THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP</a> at one point, for my screenwriting class in college. It did not make it into this final version, but I had originally seen that, and not <a href="http://www.lovecraft-stories.com/story/the-dreams-in-the-witch-house" target="">THE DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE</a>, as the third piece in the trinity. DREAMS fits so much better though, as it has the link of academia which allowed the professor heroes of DUNWICH to be present through the whole evening, and create a through line rather than just have the show be an anthology (though it is that too). As for what draws me to Lovecraft... honestly, it's the language and the atmosphere he creates. I'm also originally from the East Coast, and there's an appeal to New England magic and witchcraft that I think a lot of us born and raised in proximity to those areas have as an intrinsic part of our childhoods. I love how Lovecraft mixes these historical and traditional folklore elements into his ultimate vision of secret cults trying to bring about the end of the world. <br />
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<i>The set, designed by Christian Heppenstal, lit by Curtis Overacre. Photo by Jay Yamada.</i><br />
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<b><br />
On the page, Lovecraft's language seems a bit tricky for theatrical adaptation. Can you talk about either the changes you had to make to make the tales work on stage, or what is inherent in the texts that made them ripe for this kind of exploration?</b><br />
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I approached Lovecraft's language, which <i>is</i> tricky (the man loves his run-on sentences) with the same approach I tend to take when adapting and/or cutting Shakespeare: i.e. carefully, and with the goal of helping what's at the core of the piece emerge, rather than attempting to impose my own agenda on it, using the language to create the tone and atmosphere as much as to tell the story in a straightforward sense, while using the cuts or changes to downplay or remove whatever I felt got in the way of the audience really appreciating the core of the piece. Lovecraft doesn't tend to have a lot of spoken dialogue in his stories, but he does in DUNWICH, actually, and even has a lot of dialogue spoken in vernacular and accents, which made that adaptation a little easier. With all the pieces, however, it became about deciding which character in the story would be the one to reveal what information, with what they knew, or didn't know, or were worried about, or were invested in, tending to determine when they spoke what part of the narrative. Once I knew which characters I wanted to extract from the works, I was able to slowly but surely carve out some distinct personalities and voices mostly just by making sure the parts of the narrative they spoke were consistent with who they were. In some places I definitely add my own dialogue, but I try to weave it in as much as possible. I think it's a huge credit to the cast that largely you can't tell exactly which writer is talking when, but if I'm being honest about a third of the text is me, two thirds Lovecraft. <br />
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<b>Your cast take a uniformly earthy approach to the text throughout UNHOLY TRINITY. Did you notice any particular challenges Lovecraft poses to actors that they don't encounter anywhere else?<br />
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The challenges the actors face are maybe less distinct to Lovecraft so much as common to heavily narrative, vs. dramatic, work as a whole. The real challenge is making storytelling into storytelling, not just reporting, which is hard to sit through for 80 minutes, you know? But then that's about each actor investing emotionally in the part of the story they get to tell. So helping them connect to the work and make it personal was the real challenge, so that we didn't end up with people just standing there, reciting a story for the audience, in monotone. I kept referencing Greek Tragedy, actually, and how the messengers in Greek Tragedy are really invested in the stories they tell, which is why their speeches are often the best ones in any given play, and real bring down the house moments if done well, and I kept encouraging the actors to always see everything they said as coming with a sense of urgency that was compelling them to share this story with an audience. They weren't telling this story because they wanted to- but because they needed to. <br />
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<i>Ellen Dunphy as Keziah Mason, THE DREAMS IN THE WITCH HOUSE. Photo by Jay Yamada.</i><br />
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<b>One of the more bracing aspects of your work over the years is your enthusiastic embrace of genre elements - one feels like many of your peers might regard genre (horror, especially) as a theatrical ghetto, but you embrace it with gusto. Do you sense a resistance among other theatre artists to rigorously explore genre? Do you feel (FULL DISCLOSURE as I do) that other theatre makers only approach genre and horror via camp?</b><br />
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The problem with approaching anything via camp as a means or aesthetic is that camp actually only works if it's organic- when it's engineered too consciously, it's no longer really camp, just campy, which isn't the same. But that's really a topic for another interview. I don't deny that Lovecraft has a certain goofiness to him and we try to lean in to those moments really hard, I just also make it a point to lean into the sincere emotions when they occur (rare in Lovecraft- so a lot of those we found as a troupe), and the beauty of the imagery, the language etc. I told the cast to play everything straight, and let the audience decide what had and hadn't aged well, or was sort of unintentionally ridiculous. I also steered away from flashy effects and boo moments, both of which I think often fail in theater, and is why horror as a genre isn't one we see much on stage. When we do, and when it works, it's usually a result of pacing, atmosphere, and precise but restrained use of heightened reality moments which draw an audience in, lull them into a false sense of security, and then find ways to get in under their skin- usually with emotional authenticity. I think SWEENEY TODD does this beautifully, and to a lesser extent, or maybe just in a different way, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Both of which are considered classics so I don't know that I agree that genre is a theatrical ghetto because the longest running show in the history of Broadway is a genre piece, you know? I think it's more that genre is just hard to pull off well, and so many companies shy away from it, or spoof it rather then present it with any kind of emotional truth or sincere celebration of the form. That said, there's been a lot more companies devoted to genre, whether that's fantasy or sci-fi or horror, than in the past, so if it's a ghetto, it is a progressively populated one. <br />
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Personally, I tend to think of a lot of my work as magical realist and or surrealist with a folklore/mythology bent. There are often elements of otherworldliness or enchantment but I'm not sure if that's the same as genre as most people mean genre. In fact, generally speaking, it's the genre world, not the more conventional theater world, that has rejected my work. So I'm not sure that I do see this resistance that you see, though I agree that strictly speaking, we don't see a lot of dyed-in-the-wool genre happening at, say, regional theaters. But like... HAMLET is a ghost story, MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM is a fairy tale, INTO THE WOODS is all the fairy tales, ANGELS IN AMERICA is full blown mythological epic, and as technology has become central to human experience we're seeing more and more plays we would have once considered science fiction, certainly as, say, Ray Bradbury conceived of it, THE NETHER being the first example that comes to mind. From where I stand, American Kitchen Sink realism seems pretty on the wane. Even if companies aren't leaning in to genre work, they are much more open to it than they have been in the past. It's definitely being taken more seriously as art. I think what will be interesting to see is if those genre artists who thrived partly due to the ghettoized nature of their work will continue to do so as wider audiences maybe come to expect more from the work than genre aesthetic alone. Ie. content. Because if we're gonna get real here, my issue with a lot of genre work (and I expect it's the case for those who poo-poo genre work in general) has been that often it lacks content and relies very heavily on aesthetic and the specific aesthetic of the ghetto it and its principal audience have occupied. <br />
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<b>What's next once UNHOLY TRINITY has completed its run?<br />
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<a href="http://www.sfolympians.com" target="">The SF Olympians Festival</a>, which I curate, and in which I have a piece that is getting performed on November 7th, and three pieces I am directing that will be performed on November 22nd. Find out more at www.sfolympians.com. <br />
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<i>UNHOLY TRINITY completes its run this weekend, with shows Thursday thru Saturday, October 31-November 2nd, at the Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy Street in downtown San Francisco. <a href="https://h-p-lovecraft.brownpapertickets.com/" target="">Tickets can be bought right here.</a><br />
</i>David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-90062525188533719672019-10-28T14:26:00.000-07:002019-10-29T16:23:13.110-07:00YBCA: IN A GLASS CAGEIt isn't necessarily <i>time </i>to fulfill <a href="http://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/2018/05/cinephile-at-large-again.html" target="">a semi-promise made last year</a>, but memories remain of the still-ended film program at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Some memories are stronger than others, and some experiences will stick in the front of my head until I put them down. Some of these posts will celebrate milestones in the film program. This one, however, centers not on the curatorial largesse of Joel Shepard but on a particularly memorable screening. One of the freakiest I've ever attended. Read on...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpg_MY0wInYZLw0_J6RVX0sjBG87xw7fDDd1QyXJHqRAFs5Kccm1ZfqLBIvnTJ1qGgUVJP0MSsBANjZaZq31CjBZo-xLudNLjmeGaC3hMLiznULuHhx6zlq5d7HKbUSgXcAaYN9wGHTO8J/s1600/in-a-glass-cage-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpg_MY0wInYZLw0_J6RVX0sjBG87xw7fDDd1QyXJHqRAFs5Kccm1ZfqLBIvnTJ1qGgUVJP0MSsBANjZaZq31CjBZo-xLudNLjmeGaC3hMLiznULuHhx6zlq5d7HKbUSgXcAaYN9wGHTO8J/s200/in-a-glass-cage-2.jpg" width="138" height="200" data-original-width="220" data-original-height="318" /></a></div>In A Glass Cage had a three-show run in May 2011 at YBCA. It was a new print that was making the rounds; smaller distributors announce their offerings to various theatres and programmers, and in those days Joel was often the only programmer adventurous enough to jump on some of the more esoteric films thrown his way. (There were a few restored classics over the years that Joel was astonished he landed; he couldn't believe that no other cinema in the Bay Area was as excited as he to show certain films.) The debut film by Spanish filmmaker Agustí Villaronga (who based it on the life of Gilles de Rais), In A Glass Cage tells the story of a decrepit Nazi child molester who falls into the care of one of his former victims. A certain level of controversy still hovered over the film given its rigor, politics, and explicit sex and violence. There were about fifteen of us in the audience, braced for something quiet, disturbing, and confrontational.<br />
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Interjection: YBCA's house managers fill out a report form at the end of every event. There's a box to check if everything goes fine and without incident, and a number of spaces to fill in details on anything that goes wrong (facilities things like the room being too cold or too warm, problems brought up by audience members, etc.)<br />
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So the movie quietly reveals itself to be an austere, slowburn treatment of its subject matter, creating a grey, humid world in which its characters regard each other with unspoken but deeeeep volumes of hatred, longing, and emotions too complex to express.<br />
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About twenty minutes in some guy and his date blow in, making quite a lot of noise as they get acclimatized to the low light of the movie and try to find the best seats. Plenty of space near the door where they could just sit the fuck down and not disturb anybody, but it's almost as if they deliberately pick (after much debate and calculation) the longest path across the space between the door and available seats. There's been very little exposition at this point in the movie, but the newcomers are a little louder than they have to be in trying to catch each other up.<br />
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Then the guy, from somewhere in his jacket pocket (which he makes a weird amount of noise trying to find), withdraws a particularly crinkly snack bag (Doritos or something) which he noisily opens and even more noisily starts eating.<br />
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Three rows in front of him, a reedy, older moviegoer (a regular I believe - don't recall exactly who but believe I had seen him there before or since), gets up out of his seat, walks to the aisle, walks back to this guy's row, walks up to him, AND SNATCHES THE BAG OUT OF HIS HANDS and storms back to the aisle, back down the aisle to his row, then back to his seat.<br />
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The Screening Room at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts seats 94 people, in eight rows of seats. It would be hard for all of this not to be noticed in the average house of your average multiplex, but this shit is EXPLODING and bouncing off the metal walls that line the powderkeg of this little room.<br />
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So the latecomer gets out of his seat, goes to the aisle, down the aisle, then up to the snatcher and demands to know what the fuck his problem is. The snatcher tries to make his case while keeping his voice down, God love him, though the particular mood of IN A GLASS CAGE has been pretty much destroyed by this time, as the drama unfolding in the audience has escalated far more quickly than Agustí Villaronga would have ever allowed. All of the moviegoers are completely distracted by the drama unfolding in their midst, which seems to be headed to a violent resolution more quickly than the movie. But someone in a seat near the door has left the room, and soon the house manager has poked her head in and left, and soon after that Security arrives to escort BOTH men from the screening room. (The latecomer's date follows him out.) None of them return, but no one in the audience is on the wavelength of the movie, and though the rest of the screening goes without incident the movie's chances at taking us in were pretty much dashed.<br />
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I later found that the latecomer had split from a performance in the Forum (a larger space on the floor below the screening room) and, having announced that the quality of that performance not to his liking, demanded to be let into the movie upstairs since he figured YBCA owed him one.<br />
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"Whatever the case," I thought to myself, "she won't be able to check that box tonight."David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321104539463385583.post-3860651063887533382019-09-20T15:33:00.001-07:002019-09-20T15:38:22.353-07:00IN FABRICA remarkable departure in this, the latest from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Strickland_(director)" target="">Peter Strickland</a>. I blanche when directors of offbeat movies are casually lumped in with David Lynch, but Strickland earns such a comparison, sharing with Lynch a drive to mine the mundaneness of his past for the menace lurking beneath. Like his previous horror-ish movie BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO the drab colors of the 70s/80s decor are pungent with a soul-deep rot lurking beneath; the analog tackiness of a TV advert for a department store's post-holiday sale warns us that only devil's bargains are to be struck there. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxUHQv9bMzflRskUK3kMeYh1mTF0zyXxMxfHSiEDkTBP2M_2fs4VjhxDFn53qojoGoLxXjvH6I_amSoi85mmManvFj5LejnH3a_NL-ZV7O-uamNnVIF6NThDMEFTQMTULNDPfuzJZ5e1r/s1600/in-fabric-strickland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxUHQv9bMzflRskUK3kMeYh1mTF0zyXxMxfHSiEDkTBP2M_2fs4VjhxDFn53qojoGoLxXjvH6I_amSoi85mmManvFj5LejnH3a_NL-ZV7O-uamNnVIF6NThDMEFTQMTULNDPfuzJZ5e1r/s320/in-fabric-strickland.jpg" width="320" height="180" data-original-width="477" data-original-height="268" /></a></div>Strickland's artistry has never been so arch as to eliminate humor, but he leans harder into comedy here, contrasting the wilfully British reserve of his characters against the encroaching surreality and alienness of his design. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is particularly affecting as a working class single mother, immediately landing our sympathy for being a normal person just trying to get through the damn day, not deserving to be caught in the gyre of a Peter Strickland picture. (She's marvelous in her scenes alongside Stickland company MVP Fatma Mohamed, whose intricately verbose sales pitches are simply too welcoming to be trusted.)<br />
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Strickland shares with Lynch a keen interest in the nuances of feminine anxiety, going deeper and with greater understanding and sympathy than most male filmmakers, and Jean-Baptiste's growing terror at the apparently cursed dressed she purchased is palpable. But his keen eye captures a particularly British strain of toxic masculinity in the second half as a clueless but determined washing machine repairman (a committed Leo Bill) is caught in the dress' machinations. The weirdness piles on, emanating from both the dress and from the world without, and the movie becomes exhilaratingly strange without ever alienating our sympathies for its doomed characters. It's a gorgeous labyrinth, like a Quentin Dupieux movie that doesn't despise its audience, its high weirdness sticking in the mind thanks to the lusciousness of its design.David Robson, Proprietor, House of Sparrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17512358627000077081noreply@blogger.com0