The Rake Magazine

Author: Peter Schilling

  • Faster Pussycats! Kill! Kill!

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    Grindhouse, 2007. Written and directed by Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror) and Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof). With additional trailers written and directed by Rob Zombie, Eli Roth and Edgar Wright. Starring Rose McGowan, Kurt Russell, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Marley Shelton, Jeff Fahey, Naveen Andrews, Michael Biehn, Stacy Ferguson, Quentin Tarantino (unfortunately), Michael Parks, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Tracie Thoms, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and the incredible Zoe Bell, as herself!

    Now showing in theaters around town.

    Where did Quentin Tarantino come from? Biographies say Tennessee, and as he ages he’s beginning to resemble one of those toothless, banjo-picking hillbillies from Deliverance. We see him in the years between movies hawking the less-then-quality work of friends in the industry (Hostel most notably), and know that the guy is a fiend for strange music and even stranger (and awful) movies. He is a product of a middle-America that loves its lowbrow but also a guy for whom the video store fed an enormous cinematic appetite which grew into a tremendous talent. The guy clearly devoured movies by Howard Hawks, Godard, Russ Meyer, and, of course, the grindhouse movies you can’t even get on DVD (though something tells me you will after today). I’m as yet unsure as to whether Tarantino’s Death Proof is a great only because it sits next to Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror, or a masterpiece on its own. What I do know is that, like Pulp Fiction before it, Death Proof in particular, and Grindhouse in general, is one hell of an experience, hilarious and disturbing, and totally, utterly surprising in spots. It’s the movie of the year.

    I give you this very blurbable quote because Grindhouse really is such a creature: a film for both the arrogant cinephiles to devour (complaining all the while that it’s not showing at the Lagoon) and a night at the pictures for the doofus who adores 300.

    If there’s a weakness in this funhouse ride, it’s Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror. Terror is both a true grindhouse film and a watered down version. It’s plot is deliciously ridiculous: a biological weapon is accidentally released (in the form of a green gas) that turns the townsfolk into flesh eating zombies. A group of misfits is caught in the center of this horde, including Cherry, a go-go dancer; El Wray, a mysterious tow-truck driver who has terrific aim; a husband and wife team of doctors, and the woman is a whiz at injections and is having a lesbian affair; and a bar-b-cue joint and its owner. There’s a pair of sexy twins as well, who don’t do a whole hell of a lot.

    Their mission: to survive the onslaught and get away to Mexico, “with their backs to the sea” to protect themselves.

    Rodriguez sets the pace for the twin-bill, with a goofy 70s synthesizer music (though the title track is awesome) that reminds one of the John Carpenter films, outrageous grainy close-ups, cheap drama, and oodles and oodles of heads exploding. But he seems to have forgotten grindhouse films so bereft of talent, and so unbelievably dull, that we can see that they function as mere distraction at the drive-in, something to catch from the corner of the eye between hits off the bong and struggling to free oneself from clothing. These films literally gave viewers jolts of tits and blood, and no one cared about the plot, for crying out loud. If anything, the baseness of the movie often prompted a person to light up or turn to sex.

    So it is with Planet Terror. Rodriguez is really little more than a talented hack, his past films reflecting a charlatan’s love of buckets of cheap blood and little else (as opposed to those horrormeisters like Sam Raimi, who could really create tension to go with the blood). And I’m baffled about his fear of nudity. Planet Terror–and Sin City before it–has a dancer, but this dancer, while gyrating like crazy, keeps her top on throughout. You can bet that the grindhouse directors wouldn’t cotton to that.

    The acting is all decent: no one is really bad, and no one in this movie stands out, either, which is just about right. Bruce Willis makes an appearance, and Rose McGowan as Cherry is pretty damn good. The rest hold their own.

    Planet Terror is just good enough to get us to a brilliant intermission of retro ‘coming prevues’ ads and cheap trailers, all of which make you wish first, that we had seen any of these films instead of Planet Terror and secondly, that Terror would have been better as a trailer in front of Death Proof. The trailers are more violent, more sexy, more disturbing than what you’ve seen prior. And they do a swell job of getting you to the meat of the film.

    For when Death Proof descends upon us, we’re in a totally different world. Tarantino has cheated here, leaving his friend, Robert, in the figurative dust. Gone are all the scratchy prints, the dumb music, bad close-ups, the melting film (though there’s still a reel missing–a joke that punctures both movies, and quite effectively). Death Proof is slick, trashy, and one of the best made movies in an already strong year.

    The plot is deceptively simple: a maniacal stuntman stalks sexy young women, not individuals but groups of friends, and then kills them with his “death proof” car, an awesome black Dodge Charger with a cigar-smoking duck hood ornament. Only the driver’s immune from death.

    And oh, boy, does Tarantino love his actors. This son of a bitch is my favorite for digging around and unearthing the old souls to inhabit his sicko films. Tarantino’s not going to troll for Oscar winners, but seems to be the type of man who watches movies and lunges after those small performances that just light up a screen. With Kurt Russell, he has again found a leading man who will take this film up and down its thrilling drive–Russell’s both sweet and menacing. And the women in the film! Our first group of gals are a bunch of fun-loving sexpots, a radio personality named Jungle Julia (Syndey Tamilia Poitier) and her pal Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito) and Shanna (Jordan Ladd). Julia and Arlene are the focus here, riffing on boyfriends and lap dances, twirling their hair and grinding to the music in the jukebox (and this being a Tarantino film there’s some great songs). Later, we get Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), Kim (Tracie Thoms) and Zoe Bell–playing herself. Zoe fucking rocks. A real-life stuntwoman, New Zealand hard ass, lover of muscle cars and dangerous living, she’s reason enough to see Death Proof. And where Rodriguez seems to avoid nudity and sex in his films like some sort of teenager scared of the female body (twice now we’ve seen go-go dancers that don’t go topless in his movies–a ridiculous concept for a grindhouse film, I might add), Tarantino loves and admires the women in his movies. They talk and are not talked down, are sexy and command that power, and here, are tough and wrecked and then tough and triumphant. No, there’s no nudity in a Tarantino film, but the sex just drips off the screen.

    Death Proof could not be a grindhouse film: it deserves to be paid attention to, enjoyed and, if you’re interested, analyzed. It’s brilliantly directed, for starters, with Tarantino’s usual fluid camera and his great eye for talk–he outdoes Altman in his little scenes about nothing. Discussions over breakfast, of driving in a car, the movies the girls love, all flesh out character and subtly, so subtly set the tone for the rest of the film. Everything is a surprise in Death Proof, yet thanks to the talk, talk, talk, nothing is out of character.

    There’s not enough gratuitous sex and violence to make Death Proof work at the drive-in frenzy that was a grindhouse. Both directors seem to think they’ve made something so unbelievably exploitative that the queasy should stay away. No, I could, and will, watch this film again and with people I know couldn’t handle the real thing. In Tarantino’s case, he has patience, and is willing to let his characters dictate the terms of Death Proof, as opposed to the visceral need for blood and boobs. Like some of the great action thrillers of the 70s, the violence takes its time before exploding, and there’s not much of it, just enough to raise the tension, release it, and then create a sense of menace for the rest of the movie.

    Supposedly, they’re considering a sequel to Grindhouse, and I beg the filmmakers, especially Tarantino, to reconsider. This is lightning in a bottle you can be sure. But it makes me happy. Someday, perhaps, we’ll see Grindhouse in some old beat up drive-in, with the cars shaking, blue smoke rising from the lowered windows, and a number of future filmmakers gazing intently and lovingly at the big screen.

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  • Little Town on the Corner

    You can find Mt. Holly on Google Maps, one lonely dot near the center of Shakopee. Zoom in and see that the city resides entirely on the corner of Third Avenue East and Holmes Street, across from the Scott County Jail. The town consists of a tidy 1940s bungalow and a single pine tree. Until very recently, Mt. Holly had but one resident: its mayor, Mike Haeg.
    The minuscule municipality experienced a three-hundred-percent population increase when Haeg’s wife and two children were granted citizenship by the mayor, also the town’s leading advocate of population control.

    “People often ask, Why your own town?” Haeg says. “I always tell them I want an elected official who shares my interests.”

    Haeg is a gregarious man, tall and eager to shake hands, a proud member of Mensa who works with an advertising concern in downtown Minneapolis. He and his wife Tammy and their two children, Jackson and Autumn, live, to all appearances, a normal life, except that every night they come home to the smallest town in Minnesota.

    In the autumn of 2004, Mike and Tammy were renting in Minneapolis and seeking to buy a home, but couldn’t afford property in the city. While visiting Tammy’s parents in Shakopee, her father nodded toward the future Mt. Holly and said, “Watch that house, the owner’s going to die any day.” Sure enough, the elderly owner expired within twenty-four hours, and, soon after, the Haegs purchased their first home.

    Mt. Holly came into existence about a year later, when Haeg was beginning to feel the malaise of a man who’d moved from the bustle of Minneapolis to the sleepy commuter paradise of Shakopee. One night, while reading a book about homesteaders, it occurred to him that he should try to make his own city. “Nowadays, you really can’t just go somewhere and start a town—but I was tired of saying I was from Shakopee,” he says.

    After nearly a year of trying to get Mt. Holly recognized by the state, Haeg was about ready to give up. “Nobody could get past the why to tell me how,” he says. “People thought I was one of those crackpots trying to avoid taxes.”

    Haeg recalled, from a class on the history of marketing he’d taken years ago, that the first man to sell advertising was from the pleasant-sounding Mt. Holly, New Jersey. So one day, when renewing his driver’s license, he simply wrote ‘Mt. Holly’ as the city. A flustered clerk allowed the heretofore fictitious locale on state-sanctioned paperwork, making the little village official: On October 27, 2005 (recognized by the four citizens of the new town as Founder’s Day), Mike Haeg’s new driver’s license read “Mount Holly, MN.”

    For Haeg, Mt. Holly is not a mere novelty. He has a vision. He wants to see it grow into a cultural center for Shakopee’s youth. He’s planning on opening a silkscreen studio in his attached garage and constructing a stage where local bands can play.

    “Kids in the suburbs can’t always get to Minneapolis,” Haeg says. “I want them to have a place to express themselves.” He’s seeking grants to offer workshops in photography and art as well.

    Mt. Holly’s civic ventures are already becoming a vital part of the local scene. There’s Hi-Billy Days (Mt. Holly celebrates its Hi-Society and Hillbilly roots), the annual Soybean Feed (ten bucks gets you a seven-course vegan meal from traveling chef Joshua Ploeg, and all the euchre you can play), and camping trips organized by Mt. Holly’s own Fraternal Order of the Sasquatch (F.O.O.T.S.).

    The mayor has ambitious plans for Mt. Holly’s infrastructure, as well. By this summer there will be a “Welcome to Mt. Holly” sign in the front yard, city-limit postings, a unique Mt. Holly zip code, and certified status as a Tree City, USA.

    “I think you need a ratio of one planted tree per ten residents. We’ll plant four and skewer the whole thing,” the mayor says.

  • A Kornukopia of Kids' Flix This Weekend

    Once again, it’s a children’s holiday, film-wise, here in our lovely city. Saturday at 10:15, the library‘s showing the lovely Horton Hears A Who (1966) and Sneetches and Zax (1972). Both films are light years better than the horrible, hateful Jim Carrey and Mike Myers vehicles of the past few years. The two cartoons are the creation of Chuck Jones and Fritz Freling (respectively), two of the geniuses in the Warner Bros. stable (Jones also directed the superior Grinch cartoon). Wendy Knox will be telling stories before the show.

    Sunday at 2, Cine-Kids, the Alliance Francaise children’s film program, will be screening Loulou et Autres Loups, which I would gladly take in if I could speak a word of French (no subtitles here). These nifty animated shorts “hope to break stereotypes of the Big Bad Wolf.”

    Yes, I am aware that cornucopia is spelled incorrectly.

  • The Curmudgeon Presents: The Ten Most Overrated Films of All Time

    Being grouchy from both the inanity of the Oscars and the fact that Zodiac continues to fare poorly against 300 and Wild Hogs, I found myself playing the list game, hopefully releasing some of the bile that’s accumulated over the years. A caveat: some of these movies listed below are actually decent. In fact, a couple of these films I’ve enjoyed very much, just not as much as the majority of the world. And time is of the essence, as there is not one film from this year, as it is a film’s staying power that makes it overrated. For instance, Little Miss Sunshine is horribly overrated, as is The Departed, both films faring better at the box office than Children of Men and Cache, to name but two. However, time may heal those very public wounds. If they’re still being regaled in fifteen years, then I’ll amend my list. Dogs are left out–everyone knows that Congo is hideous, therefore it’s not overrated.

    Furthermore, the Academy has no bearing on this list. Gandhi and Titanic took the brass ring, but so what? They’re not overrated by anyone but the Academy.

    Of course, I also haven’t seen everything that’s ever been released. Great are the gaps in my history: there’s a dearth of Chaplin, Cassavetes, Hal Hartley, and others whose works I’ve caught glimpses of, were unimpressed, and therefore resisted future screenings. If you see something here you dislike, complain. If you want to post a grumble about my leaving David Lynch off the list, fine, but I love Lynch, and that’s how it goes. Keep that in mind… and post your own complaints, or the movies you think are overpraised hoo-hah. Maybe next week I’ll post an under-rated list.

    10. Psycho, 1960. My father saw Psycho recently, and said, “I forgot that I was bored by it the last time”. So true: Psycho has not dated well. The film’s not necessarily bad, it’s just not that great (though it gets worse when placed beside Hitchcock’s other classics, including and especially Rear Window, a much better examination of voyeurism and its trappings). Watch it again, however, and it starts to get a bit creaky. Gone are the rich characterizations of Hitch’s past films, and really, the central conceit, which everyone knows by now, isn’t enough to float an oddly tension-less film. Not to mention the fact that Perkins has been much better doing nearly the same shtick, including Orson Welles’ The Trial and the underrated Pretty Poison.

    9. Fargo, 1996. I like Fargo. Despite this, I still don’t believe it belongs in the Coen Brothers’ top five (Miller’s Crossing, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, Blood Simple, and Barton Fink are all better). Fargo is well made, but empty. Is it a crime caper, a comedy, a meaningful examination of life on the frozen prairie or the wages of greed? Who knows? Too often, emotional connections are never fulfilled, characters killed or tossed aside cruelly. What, for instance, is the point of the scene in which the rotten father (played by William H. Macy) comforts his son… who is never seen again? Or the father-in-law who gets blown away? The movie reaches for moments of intense emotional clarity, only to devolve into jokes like the shredding of an accomplice in a wood chipper, which has had tongues wagging now for over ten years (please stop–it’s not that incredible). And then there’s Marge, a character who no one really seems to know. Can anyone truly relate to her? What are her goals, ambitions, sorrows, frustrations?

    8. To Kill A Mockingbird, 1962. Perhaps it’s the source novel that should bear the blame, but this classic has always grated on my nerves. Maybe it’s the endless preaching, the lessons that are hammered on your skull every fifteen minutes, or perhaps it’s that the true story is not about little Scout learning her lesson, but poor, crippled Tom Robinson having to defend himself, unsuccessfully, from the charge of rape. He dies, of course, but the little white girl sure grew up fast! And consider the names: Atticus, Scout, Dill, Boo Radley, Heck Tate, Robert E. Lee Ewell, and… Tom Robinson, the black prop with the dull moniker (why bother to give him any character?). Here, African Americans are there for white folks to earn salvation, to learn lessons, or reveal their dark side. And Gregory Peck has been so much better in stronger films (Duel in the Sun, Cape Fear, and Roman Holiday to name three). Why, you might forget the guy has range…

    7. American Beauty, 1999. A rotten, hateful, misogynist film. Apparently, ladies, you can only find beauty by paying attention to the guys in your life who film garbage blowing in the wind. Annette Bening is light years better than Kevin Spacey, and her role is thankless, the shallow woman for whom Spacey gets to bounce his lines off. See, Spacey’s character knows that red convertibles and underage girls are transcendent, but Bening’s love of fine clothes and SUVs is a reflection of her shallow nature. Go figure. Unfunny, un provocative, and deeply insulting, I am at a complete loss as to why anyone likes this film.

    6. The George A. Romero Zombie Flicks. Night of the Living Dead (1968) isn’t bad, with its political message shoved on at the very end, and quite potent. But then Romero got it into his brain that these were going to be serious films. Dawn of the Dead (1978) with its goofy blue-faced zombies (yes, makeup wasn’t that bad then, even in cheap films) is dull; Day of the Dead (1985) is worse, claustrophobic without tension, mean-spirited and lacking wit; and Land of the Dead (2005) wowed critics because it took on the Bush Administration! That’s a bold move in 2005. Interesting to see that the underclass of Romero’s Land are the Irish, and that his cities, and his undead, don’t contain Muslims or Asians. This is important because Romero seems to think of himself as a social critic, and yet he seems more a man who is the product of his times than someone who thinks outside of the box. Without that, his films had better be interesting. And they’re not.

    5. Nashville, 1975. A perfect summary of Robert Altman’s erratic career. At times brilliant, with some magnificent performances, like the always splendid Lily Tomlin. But mix that in with the self-indulgent crap Robert Carradine calls acting, and then fold in all the songs that were written by Hollywood stars who don’t seem to have a clue what a country-western song should sound like, and this is one flat cake. Nashville’s ending is insulting, as is Altman’s need to browbeat you with obvious clues as to the identity of the assassin (“Are you a musician?” asked over and over, to which we eventually shout “no, he’s going to shoot someone!”) Altman cares little about his audience, with his gratuitous celebrity shots (a common occurrence in his movies), and his lack of understanding the eponymous city or its music. No, he’s better than those rubes, and his arrogance comes through. Technically interesting (especially the sound), it’s still baffling that his so-called ‘command’ of all his characters is what is praised, as so many are forgettable. Considering Altman’s made McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Gosford Park, that Nashville is considered his masterpiece is confounding.

    4. An American in Paris, 1951. Easily the most difficult entry on this list, as American isn’t a bad movie, and in fact is downright fun the first time around. But it’s widely acclaimed as one of the greatest musicals ever, and it isn’t. In fact, it really isn’t close, for you’d have to forget Singin’ in the Rain, Fred Astaire, and many, many others. As a vehicle for both Gene Kelly and Oscar Levant it’s wonderful, but the plot is creaky, nonsensical, and its ballet goes on and on and on, and only emphasizes that there’s no plot to keep you occupied. The film also lacks wit. Singin’ in the Rain, for instance, is an abundant pleasure even without the singing and dancing. An American in Paris is not so good in its quiet moments, actually quite a forgettable experience outside of a few great songs (and how could you go wrong with Gershwin). A film whose potential was never realized.

    3. All About Eve, 1950. Considered the apex of sharp wit, All About Eve should also be regarded as the nadir of story-telling technique. A film that begins with so much narration you feel as if you’re watching a book on tape. When it finally gets rolling, well, then the action stops while another character sits down and tells a story, with cuts to the actors shocked faces at the words coming out of her mouth. It only gets worse. You could rightly criticize My Dinner With Andre as dull, but Eve is roughly the same film, all yakity-yak. Does anybody actually do anything in this movie? The answer’s a resounding no, and the performances are sterile and hackneyed to boot. This film walked off with an armload of Oscars and has been widely regarded as one of the few films to deserve them. Horribly dated, lacking insight, not even fun by bitchy standards, All About Eve is instead a wretched bore.

    2. Schindler’s List, 1993. The greatest Holocaust film ever made. We know that because Spielberg and his minions have made sure to tell us, over and over (even going so far as to distribute the thing to schools). True, Schindler’s List has about 90 minutes of great filmmaking. Too bad, then, that it’s still got another 100 minutes to account for. Included in its crimes are the creepy shots of the doomed blonde girl in the red coat, apparently heading off to die, and, we learn, one of the secret motivations for Oskar Schindler’s kindness. A girl in a red coat in a black and white film? Why, it’s just another way for the master of schmaltz to drive home a point. Of course, Spielberg has a dozen moppets flung about (he could quite possibly be the worst director of children), including one cute little boy in a toilet, who, like the rest of them, has no personality or character. Spielberg’s camera zooms around like he’s chasing giant sharks again, and the whole thing looks like Nazi Germany from an Indiana Jones perspective. Then there’s the patronizing attitude toward the victims, culminating in Schindler’s reminding a rabbi that it’s the Sabbath, so why doesn’t the old fellow go ahead and pray. News to Spielberg: you can bet that the rabbis knew exactly what fucking day the Sabbath was on, and did what they could to praise their God, without Schindler’s little grin to egg them on. Or the fact that the director didn’t trust us to have a film with an enigma at its center, and Schindler, in the last ten minutes, becomes a weepy and sentimental guy, thus sparing an unintelligent audience difficult questions about the nature of selflessness. The problem with Schindler’s List is that its failures are so great and resound so loudly that they upend its strengths. Furthermore, I’m convinced that Polanski saw this too, and that The Pianist, flawed though it is, is a no-holds-barred response to many of Spielberg’s soft-centered conflicts (most notably the scene with a Nazi officer’s gun jamming–there’s one in each film, and Polanski’s is truly disturbing.)

    1. Every Kubrick film since Spartacus. What happened to Stanley Kubrick? The Killing is very good, Spartacus is fun, and Paths of Glory could be the greatest anti-war film ever made. All three are masterful, moving, with rich characters carrying plots that are both supremely entertaining and challenging. You can’t walk away from Paths of Glory and not be moved.

    Then he made Lolita, which to this day makes you wonder if he read the damn book. Nabokov wrote a screenplay that wasn’t used, and what Kubrick did was take a curiously touching (and disturbing) story and make it into a collection of cheap double entendres and empty performances, including an indulged Peter Sellers and a wasted Shelley Winters. That film was the beginning of Kubrick’s removal from the world of people–only George Lucas’ second Star Wars trilogy is colder and less human than the Kubrick oeuvre. Dr. Strangelove is fun, but it doesn’t withstand repeated viewings, its jokes echoing through empty rooms, as if delivered by robots. 2001 is itself a joke, a vision of the future and the dawn of man whose depth has been eclipsed in imagination by any number of Star Trek episodes (and that is not to praise Star Trek). It is overlong, obsessed with its special effects, a story that could have been told in a twenty minute short and with an ending calculated to take advantage of an audience of stoners. A Clockwork Orange is a loud, boorish insult, poorly acted (Kubrick was never an actor’s director), and cannot be said to have influenced anything of quality, though it’s look can be seen most notably in the idiotic Pink Floyd’s The Wall (that’s a legacy for you). Orange has so little to say about the nature of violence, and there’s tons of other movies (Peter Weir’s Witness comes to mind) that speak with much clearer insight on this subject. These four films alone make you wonder if Kubrick has actually ever known people who have been in love or victims of violence.

    Of course, after Clockwork Kubrick was pretty much through: I haven’t seen Barry Lyndon or Eyes Wide Shut, though perhaps someday a cruel judge will sentence me to endure both. Stanley’s movies since that time have all been flops, barely resonating with society in general and Hollywood in particular. The Shining was easily the most popular, though it ushered in the age of Screamin’ Jack, and Kubrick couldn’t get over his new toy (the Steadicam use was gratuitous and called attention to itself). Again, what could have been a decent horror film is bogged down with Kubrick’s usual ponderousness and his inability to relate to his characters.

    Finally, Full Metal Jacket utterly ruins a magnificent little novel (The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford) that was absurd and could have been Kubrick’s second anti-war masterpiece after Paths of Glory. But look at those two films: in Paths there is a perfect balance between beautifully executed shots and the actors within them. It boasts a tight script, intelligent and emotional performances, and comes in at a brisk 87 minutes. With Full Metal Jacket (and who knows where that title came from, as the Hasford loathed it), Kubrick again treats the examination of war and violence as mere intellectual exercise, as opposed to being something that actually affects people. The casting of Matthew Modine as Private Joker is a reflection of Kubrick’s inability to see his characters as people–Modine was never a great actor, had virtually no range, and is as full of himself as Kubrick (he once claimed he’d never made a bad movie… you’re asking for it, kid). Hasford’s Joker is loud, rude, fighting against what the military and Vietnam does to him, a sort of Randle Patrick McMurphy in fatigues, while the Joker of Full Metal Jacket has as much to do with a human being as, well, as HAL did in 2001.

    David Thomson wrote that Kubrick “was a ‘master’ who knew too much about film and too little about life–and it shows.” Indeed.

  • Rediscover Your Love of Movies (And Go Bonkers!) At the Library This Saturday

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    There is nothing–I repeat, nothing!–more intriguing cinematically this weekend than the selection of children’s films at the Central Library. Oh, you can check out the movies you should have seen over the past few weeks, or haul your child to see Terabithia, which, for my money, ought to have left that mysterious book alone (and allowed our collective imaginations to outdo the ridiculous CGI). This Saturday’s showings are particularly fascinating: Folklore Restaurant, for ages 3 and up, and later, the manic Bonkers, which looks like oodles of fun.

    Ah, but you scoff, do you? Worldly sophisticate you are, why would you, childless you, take in morning movies amongst the kiddies? Or, cutting-edge parent that you might be, why waste time with a movie, especially ones with subtitles?

    Because here you will find a morning and afternoon of cinematic magic, that’s why. For the childless and jaded, I can think of no better opportunity for a person to reclaim their love of cinema by watching youngsters react to the beauty they witness on the silver screen. And with these Saturday screenings, you’re also watching movies made with, dare I say it, love–a love of storytelling, filmmaking, and a respect for the audience.

    At 10:15 you’ll see Folklore Restaurant, a lovely fairy tale, locally made, which is described as a “trio of fox tales from Native America, Finland, and Japan.” The director, Tomoko Oguchi, will be on hand to answer questions and perhaps give the enthralled some insight into her animation techniques (using washi, a Japanese paper). Screened with Folklore Restaurant will be a number of number of other shorts, including Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears.

    Around 1:00, we’ll get a sneak preview of the Childish Film Festival’s Dutch film Knetter (Bonkers). Here’s a film that kids can really sink their teeth into, and a have a blast besides. The story of a girl whose mother suffers from manic-depression (hence the name–she’s bonkers), this is a crazy-fun film that appears not to sugarcoat life. There’s a single mom with a mental illness, sexually active, the grandmother dies, the girl gets an elephant. In America, the subjects would be driven into our heads with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, or softened for the kiddies. Can’t have Mom with boyfriends, and discover the two of them (gasp) in bed. If you do, well, then the movie’s for adults–got to spare our young ones the grim nature of life. Hogwash, I say. Why is it that Europeans alone seem to understand that children can learn about the darkness of life from the art they participate in? It beats me, but the preview for Bonkers is one of the most loving, exciting, and hilarious shorts I’ve seen in ages. Parents: don’t deny your child this experience. If only this child of a single-mom with depression had this to latch on at an impressionable age, well, I’d have been a lot happier knowing there were others like me out there. Maybe I’d have even finagled an elephant as a pet!

    Both movies are being shown in the Pohlad Hall at the downtown library, the first at 10:15 (ages 3 and up) and the second at 1:00 (8 and up due to subtitles). Whole Foods Market’s providing the snacks. See you there!

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  • Who's Your Monster?

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    Gwoemul (The Host), 2006. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, written by Joon-ho and Baek Chul-hyun and Ha Won-jun. Starring Song Kang-ho, Ko A-sung, Bae Doon-na, Park Hae-il, Byeon Hee-bong, the cockeyed Paul Lazar, and, as the voice of the beast, Oh Dal-su.

    Now showing exclusively at the Uptown Theatre.

    There’s a multitude of beasts in The Host, a new South Korean monster movie that has hit our shores with all the fanfare of, well, of a giant fish emerging from the Mississippi. Aside from the titular Host, predators include America, Chemicals, Technology, and others–probably dozens of others, small cultural references that elude those of us who don’t live in South Korea. As usual, man has created the creature: here, an anal-retentive American officer has ordered a poor, subservient Korean to dump bottles and bottles of formaldehyde down the drain, where it pours into the mighty Han river. Voila, the Host emerges, one that looks like a catfish, lopes like a greyhound, and pirouettes off bridges with the ease of a Brazilian cliff-diver. Frankly, the creature is beautiful. And in keeping with the tradition of the great monster movies the director, Bong Joon-ho, has made sure to show that the beast in question is as much a victim as the people he pursues for his nightly repast. It is possessed of a sense of dignity, and there is an understanding that, after all, he’s not a serial killer, but merely an animal. Sure, he eats people, but there’s no malice involved. Unlike The Host’s cinematic counterparts (like the meanies in Alien or last year’s Descent) we feel for both victim and killer.

    After The Host’s explanatory prologue (the dumping of formaldehyde), we go to the pacific shores of the Han river, where we get to see our first monster, Gang-du (Song Kang-ho). Gang-du is a giant, a sleepy, hungry giant of a man, who can’t seem to wake up and peel his face off the candy bars he’s selling, and looks as if he’s going to stumble with every lumbering step. He works in a measly little snack stand with his hard-working father (Byeon Hee-bong), a weary man who’s raised his three kids after his wife abandoned the family. And what a family! Aside from the loafer, there’s Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na) who, unbelievably, is a professional archer with a tendency to pause before releasing her arrow, disqualifying her in a gold medal international competition, and leading us to wonder just how she’ll fare when she has to kill the big fish. Then there’s older brother Nam-il (Park Hae-il), an unemployed college graduate who is also an unrepentant drunk, frustrated that he cannot find work after studying for so long. Perhaps most incredibly, of the three it is Gang-du, the slob and bum, who has a child, Hyun-seo (Ko A-sung), a sharp little girl and the pride of the family.

    One typical afternoon–typical being Gang-du and his father serving snacks to Seoul’s riverside picnickers–a giant fish swims around the murky waters of the Han. The people stop and stare and taunt the thing as it circles menacingly. Suddenly, in the periphery, the creature has leapt ashore and, again in typical monster movie fashion, sends great waves of people scrambling to flee from its hungry jaws.

    This is an incredible scene, and the director shows off his considerable skills here alone. The live-action churning of the manic crowds like a great human tsunami, coupled with the special effects creature–at this point still a shock to behold–are breathtaking. I haven’t seen such manic choreography in years and years, if ever perhaps. Monsters chasing great crowds of people seem to be a specialty of Asian cinema, perfected, of course, with Godzilla, and something even Spielberg couldn’t capture in his awful Jurassic Park II. Parked cars, trailers, overpasses all become methods of escape and traps where the unfortunate meet their gruesome end. We are swept along in this tide, dually hoping for the escape of the heroes we’ve come to admire, and, really, trying to beat the next guy so that he–not us–will be the monster’s next meal.

    In the confusion the little girl, Hyun-seo, is lost, carried away by the creature to its lair for later devouring. The Host then begins its long route through a variety of genres: government conspiracy (the creature is supposed to have a contagion, giving the Americans and Koreans the right to quarantine our heroes, and keep them from finding her), fairy tale (girl in the lair), comedy, drama, horror. But at its heart is a tale of a dysfunctional family brought together under trying circumstances involving both the beast and the government–so trying, in fact, that at times the film resembles less a creature feature than some sort of odd hybrid between Godzilla, Little Miss Sunshine and Brazil. As a friend put it (albeit about a theater production in town), the film is diffuse, spreading its horror, its humor and pathos, and even its character development around so thinly as director Joon-ho tries to cover everything plaguing Korea in its two hours.

    Some of this works, some of it doesn’t, but what makes The Host narrowly miss being a classic of the genre is that the creature eventually loses its ability to frighten. Apparently the monster’s main weapon of destruction is picking people up with its long tail and smacking them on the sidewalk. We don’t need more blood necessarily, but we do need more thrills, less of the creature in the light, more people being swallowed, and something much more visceral than fatal concussions. Even the monster’s regurgitation of bones and trash lacks slime and blood. As the movie proceeds, Joon-ho then makes the error of taking his criticisms too seriously, and the film eventually begins to slow down considerably.

    But The Host is beautifully directed, well acted, and worth seeing–were it only playing a couple of months later at our local drive-ins! No, The Host is art-house fare, and our suburban and country cousins will have to settle for garbage like Dead Silent instead. And that’s worse than monsters popping out of the Mississippi if you ask me.

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  • Three Films, Three Venues, One Busy Weekend

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    If you’re looking for a distraction from the misery of rain pounding snow into thick, icy crusts, well, you’ve got it in spades this weekend.

    On Friday night, the Alliance Francaise is going to have a screening of the little-seen (as of late) 1983 classic Rue Cases-Negres (Sugar Cane Alley) at 7pm (donations accepted). This is the story of a family trying desperately to rise above their hardscrabble life hacking away at sugar cane in Martinique.

    Saturday morning, the Central Library continues its Movietime For Kids series, a wonderful alternative to the garbage that spews out of the TV at that time (or anytime, really). From 10 to 12, we’ll see Dan the Accordion Man warm up the kids with his awesome riffs, and then watch one of Disney’s truly great films Make Mine Music, which highlights some of the animated shorts from Fantasia, Peter and the Wolf, and The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met.

    Saturday’s piece de resistance is Intolerable an entertaining and thought-provoking short from director Alison MacLean and starring actor/author/adventurer David Rakoff. Intolerable isn’t so much a story as an actor’s exercise: Rakoff waits at a table and explains to the bewildered talent auditioning for a role in a fictional film called Flight. Essentially, Rakoff explains, the actor is supposed to conjure up that thing that scares them the most, and flee from the room, down the hall (and past the other surprised actors), and not return. It’s not so simple, though, as Rakoff ratchets up the tension by openly provoking some of the poor souls, like the guy who is told that they need him to sing, but not that song, stop snapping your fingers, you’re horrible. “I was called in here to snap!” the guy shouts, though that’s certainly not why he was called in.

    Intolerable is a sharp, intelligent, entertaining short film, a great study of editing, casting prowess, and acting. It also points to the fact that the Oscars are buffoonery on even this scale: I saw all the nominated shorts and none of them, not one, held a candle to this film–with the film that did win, it would be akin to You, Me, and Dupree taking the best picture award.

    Intolerable shows at the Walker Cinema on Saturday night at 7:30 with The Music of Regret, no doubt another quality short that was ignored at the red carpet.

  • God Is In The Details

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    Zodiac    , 2007. Directed by David Fincher, written by James Vanderbilt. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, John Carroll Lynch, Chloe Sevigny, Dermot Mulroney, Philip Baker Hall and Elias Koteas.

    Now showing in theaters around town.

    There’s a scene early on in David Fincher’s masterful Zodiac, in which we see the opening routines of the day at The San Francisco Chronicle and a mailman’s route to said newspaper. A letter is sorted; simultaneously the reporters grab their coffee en route to work. We see that the letter is hauled in bags through the streets, into the Chronicle building. There, the scribblers meet, sweat over articles, and gather in the editor’s office to chew over the events of the day and how they’ll lay on the front page. Finally, the secretary has opened the letter and bursts in on the pow-wow, and hands off the note–now bearing dozens of fingerprints–to the editor, who reads the Zodiac killer’s note. The chase is on.

    Zodiac is not your usual serial killer movie. In fact, those folks with a serious blood lust, hoping for another Se7en experience will be disappointed–there is precious little blood in Zodiac. What we get instead is a very detailed investigation, a chase that takes a path so twisted, so winding, that’s it’s a wonder that Fincher’s able to keep us abreast of everything. But he does. The result is a film about brilliant people (including, perhaps, the killer) and how their pursuits can, and do, warp them. And eventually liberate them, giving them something to live for.

    On a hot Independence Day in 1969, a young couple is seen waiting patiently for the other to make the first move in a secluded spot outside of Vallejo. It’s the usual scene: girl with braces, a guy trying to be cool, leading up to the first clumsy kiss. But the girl is married, and a car pulls up. Is it the husband? Thank God, no, they think, until this stranger, a silent, lumbering man, brutally empties his gun into these two. The young man, Mike Magau survived; his date, Darlene Ferrin was pronounced D.O.A. at the hospital.

    A short while later, the Chronicle receives that first letters from the killer, who as yet remains nameless. But as the white shirts in the newsroom ponder what to do with this thing, Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a political cartoonist for the newspaper, finds himself with an unquenchable curiosity, and scribbles down the anagram that the killer included in his letter, and which the murderer claims will identify him, if broken. Assigned to the story is the flamboyant crime writer Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr., in full-on stoner mode, and outstanding). The two men could not be a better study in contrasts. Graysmith is an avowed Eagle Scout first-class who wants to solve the case Hardy Boys style, while Avery is a coke-snorting, booze-hound who is as eager to analyze the Zodiac killer (making the claim that the guy is a repressed homosexual).

    Mirroring these two in the police department are the investigation team of David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards). Toschi is a famous cop, the inspiration for Steve McQueen’s Bullitt, and eventually Dirty Harry and the Michael Douglas character in Streets of San Francisco. His squarer half, William, is a perfect foil–calm, collected, and both know exactly what they’re doing. And when a cabbie is shot by the Zodiac in San Francisco, they’re on it like bloodhounds.

    The Zodiac killer appealed to this odd collection of men as crossword puzzles attract folks from every walk of life. Their personalities are honed on the chase–Graysmith’s dogged civilian pursuit, combing libraries and files; Avery’s crack reportage, needling the killer to the point that he (Avery) was a target; and the officers, who are seen pursuing this case with such precision and determination its like watching a great jazz trumpeter riff through the most difficult tune.

    Zodiac is a movie about thinking, about how people set their minds to work out problems, and where that path leads them. Here, it leads them down strange alleys and darkened basements, routes that often, so painfully often, end up nowhere. The Zodiac himself changes so often he’s like a ghost–he’s ambidextrous, throwing handwriting experts off; his notes and cryptograms are so brilliant, referencing dozens of different sources, that three of the four have yet to be deciphered today; his M.O. changed on apparent whims. Obvious suspects are interviewed, investigated, closed in on, and then, with one contradictory piece of evidence, released–and in some cases, reopened, new evidence fingering someone, only, again, to watch that case fall apart.

    The Zodiac shot young adults in the dark while they sat in their vehicles; in broad daylight, masked, he stabbed a couple and left them for dead by a lake (again, the man survived, the woman died); he shot a cabbie in one of Frisco’s wealthiest sections; he threatened bombings and delivered perfect diagrams of a homemade explosive and threatened to shoot children as they departed a bus; he picked up hitchhikers, killed in the ‘burbs and the cities of northern California. Then, when it seems as if the police have settled on a geographical range, it is discovered that he killed far south, near Los Angeles.

    To make matters worse, the Zodiac took credit for other’s crimes, and then we find there were likely murders he didn’t take credit for, in places no one figured he’d go.

    Fincher’s Zodiac takes a long time to resolve itself, and its ending is profoundly frustrating. The Zodiac case is never wrapped up with tidy little bows and perfect folds, and at times takes on an almost otherworldly sense, as if murder and pursuit are somehow a part of a divine, existential game. Fincher’s camera tracks police cars from on high, sometimes at the height of the spans on the Bay Bridge, through the fog. Like some sort of wicked God, he watches as the dots scurry and chase another elusive dot, one that has murdered yet another dot. There is very little emotion, very little terror, but remains an utterly compelling film, with mercilessly little backstory–we get nothing about Graysmith’s first divorce, and Fincher never hovers over the marital, emotional, or substance abuse problems of his characters. All of whom, it might be added, are portrayed by a bevy of actors guided by a strong hand like I haven’t seen in ages: Gyllenhaal’s Graysmith is a wide-eyed Hardy Boy, Bryan Cox’s Mario Belli is perfectly hammy, and John Carroll Lynch, as a suspect, is frightening, but never too much so. The rest of the cast is equally sound.

    I doubt Zodiac will fare well at the box office, and one can only wonder what The Departed’s chances would have been had this film been released in December. As it is, Zodiac is one of the most intelligent thrillers in many a year, and a truly great film.

    In brief:

    Black Snake Moan (area theaters) is a hideous motion picture. Opening with a wonderful shot of Christina Ricci flipping off a giant tractor, the film is a painful bore. Despite it’s chained heroine, it’s as timid as if it were written by Nicholas Sparks. Ricci’s character finds a not-so-strange redemption from Samuel Jackson, spouting fire and brimstone (but with little of the thrill as his sermons in Pulp Fiction), the nudity is tedious, the direction mundane. A failure on every level (including the rancid singing by Ricci and Jackson)… Tears of the Black Tiger (Lagoon Cinema) is pulpy, violent, melodramatic, turgid and light years more fun than Snake. An homage to Thai westerns of the 60s and 70s, it’s the story of a poor young man who cannot marry his true love, the daughter of a wealthy and powerful province governor. So this boy becomes The Black Tiger, and, of course, the girl (who still loves him), becomes engaged to an ambitious cop. A bit too long, but a hypnotic and colorful (my God, the colors!) entertainment… The Italian (Edina Cinema) is a relentlessly bleak film about a young orphan promised to a wealthy Italian couple. Hence his at times derogatory nickname. While waiting for the paperwork to come through, the boy watches in horror as the mother of an orphan long since adopted kills herself in despair. Determined to find his own mom, the kid hightails it from the orphanage and the hunt is on. In spite of its subject, and the myriad of defeats this poor little fellow goes through (try not to cry), The Italian is as hopeful a movie as you’ll see, as small characters in this boy’s life offer little kindnesses that help him on his way… Amazing Grace (Lagoon Cinema) is awful, a weepy tearjerker about the young stud William Wilberforce (played by the intriguingly named Ioan Gruffudd) who, through his dogged efforts to convince British Parliament to ban slavery, becomes a hero and nearly a saint. Of course, why spend even a lick of time with any of the African protagonists, like Oloudaqh Equiano, an prince who helped convince the hero to act–ignore Equiano’s status as a guy who physically survived all the crap Wilberforce yaks about, or that Wilberforce’s butler has more memorable lines, or, most egregiously, that Equiano’s played by Sengalese singer Youssou N’Dour, who doesn’t even sing the title song. A wretched and insulting movie.

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  • Children, Get Thee To The Library!

    This weekend, Deb Girdwood and Isabelle Harder’s throwing a little movie party at the Central Library downtown. Deb and Isabelle could be called the Queen of Children’s Films in the Twin Cities, responsible for the Childish Film Fest at the forthcoming Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. Harder believes, quite rightly, that there’s a dearth of good children’s films available on the big screen. There’s virtually nothing better than watching a bunch of kids howling with glee at their favorite film, although what they can choose from at the Cineplexes is simply awful.

    So where do they go? As adults we get to decide between violence and special effects, stadium seating at the malls, costume dramas at the Edina or German Oscar winners at the Uptown. Children aren’t so lucky, and neither are their parents. I wince just thinking about having to take kids to see the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

    Well, to heck with that. What could be a better Saturday morning treat than to pull on those moon boots, ignore the cheap cartoons, and head down to the library to watch perhaps the greatest children’s film ever made, The Red Balloon? There’ll be dancing to a DJ, and then the classic Iranian film Children of Heaven.

    And you know what? Afterwards, the kids will find themselves… in a library! Where they can check out that delightful story Minn of the Mississippi, also recommended by the river-loving Harder!

    The Red Balloon shows at 10:15 in the morning; Children of Heaven at 1:00 pm in Pohlad Hall. Red Balloon is appropriate for kids 3 and up; Children is for 8 and older (due to subtitles).

    This series will continue through the 24th, and feature some awesome films. Look here for more information each Thursday!

  • Conversations Real and Imagined: Scorsese's Acceptance Speech

    At the mention of his name, and with a look of profound relief and that usual squirrel-spark in his eyes, Martin Scorsese nods to himself, rises from his chair and makes his way to the stage. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and that tall brunette, whose presence speaks of sold souls, waits to hand Martin his Oscar. Hugs are exchanged. Martin admires the little gold fellow. He steps to the mike, and begins.

    Thank you, thank you everybody. Academy members, Steven, Francis, George, boy, this is an honor, thank you so much. I have so many people to thank, I barely know where to begin.

    I guess I’ll begin by offering my gratitude to Paul Greengrass, Alfonso Cuaron, Pedro Almodovar, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Guillermo del Toro, and any other director this year who made powerful and original films, much better than my own. It feels strange being up here, looking down at these directors, remembering when I was beaten by films like Rocky and Ordinary People and Dances With Wolves, a trio of perhaps the most embarrassing Oscar wins in its admittedly weak history. I know what it feels like, boys, to think about the little masterpiece you made and watch that big-budget, heavily-marketed, lugubrious film pass you by. Or the award for the guy who gets it just because he’s paid his dues.

    See, I paid my dues. I know The Departed is far from my best, ignores so many of the things that made my other films great, and is such a bald-faced attempt at winning the little gold man that it’s nearly embarrassing. But it worked. Now I can move on and make the movies you want me to make.

    See, for the longest time I did exactly what I wanted to do, and look at my success–money, popularity, films that are not only acclaimed by critics but the public as well. Good god, you’d be surprised how many people will see me on the streets and go, “You lookin’ at me?” or “You think I’m funny? Funny how? Funny like a clown?” or even that guy at the deli who calls himself Rupert Pupkin, claims that he even had his name changed legally. Well that’s great. It’s wonderful. People know me, they love me. But my best work–just like the best work of the directors I just thanked–didn’t get me one of these.

    Now you may ask yourself: why the heck do I care if I get an Oscar, when so many great directors never won the gold? Good question. In fact, a friend of mine–he’s a sommelier at this great little restaurant in wine country–pointed out how similar my career was to Hitchcock’s. Critical and popular. Thrillers that meant more, so much more. Old Hitch’s immortal, just as I will be regardless of whether I ever win one of these. Well, my friend’s right. I don’t know what to say except that these little gold statues are an addiction, I think. I don’t know.

    A girl no longer in my employ also pointed out that, for a man who directed the life of the Dalai Lama, I sure seem to have jettisoned my Buddhist belief in rejecting attachment. Again, I have to say she’s right.

    The Oscars are a funny thing, aren’t they? I mean, so many people watch them, and tomorrow the sales for The Departed are going to skyrocket. And that’s great. If you’re going to make it in Hollywood, really you have to sell your soul at least a little bit, and if you want one of these, you have to sell your soul a lot. The statue is a way of showing, to a world of people who might want to live a good and decent life, the sacrifices we make when we want to give you Taxi Driver or GoodFellas. I mean, I try to have it both ways, making those little PBS movies about Dylan and the Blues, but really I can’t. I had to hurt or kill a very important part of myself to win an Academy Award, and I did it because… well, I’m still not sure. Right now I’m just giddy to be up here, spilling my guts.

    The thing that scares me is this: that same woman who wondered about my Buddhist beliefs also wondered, once I’ve given myself over to making the kind of movies that will win me an Oscar, if I can ever go back. If I can ever be edgy again. Pure. Or if I’m stuck casting guys like DiCaprio and Nicholson, instead of talented, hungry newcomers. If I’ll be able to make the cinema charged with electricity, the way guys like Cuaron and Lynch and Tarantino still do. Guys who don’t give a shit about Oscars.

    The answer is that I don’t know.

    Well, at least I’ve got my Oscar. That’s out of the way. Francis, you’ve got yours. Stephen, you’ve got yours. Hmm. But I remember, Francis, looking at the your Godfather statuettes, behind that thick glass at your vineyard. I was surprised: yours were almost black. They tarnish so easily, don’t they?