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Nothing
would be greater cause for joy than to think that the 1970s-style
sci-fi film is enjoying a second orbit. Writers in major daily
newspapers and across the Twitterverse are talking about Solaris
again (even if it's for the wrong reasons). Duncan
Jones, whose 2009 Moon
was a smartly devised homage to the era, scored big with his recent Source
Code—which
resonated more for its existential quandaries than any pyrotechnic
flash...Even if that doesn't add up to a zeitgeist moment, it doesn't
hurt that an actual film of the era and genre gets its never-intended
American theatrical debut next week: World
on a Wire,
the 1973 production made by Rainer
Werner Fassbinder for German
television.
Read
more >> |
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In
This Dispatch:
- What's
New: Take Me Home Tonight, Dive! Living Off America's Waste and
more.
- What
We're Watching: Cracks, The Music Room, and Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and To
Kill a Mockingbird.
- Explore:
DVD of the Week: Skidoo
- Contest:
Of Gods and Men Giveaway.
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In
his podcast
with Aaron Hillis for GreenCine Daily, Topher
Grace, co-writer of Take Me Home Tonight,
discusses the process of bringing to life this "lost John Hughs film...
in the style of the great 80's films like The Breakfast Club."
It's an 80's film without making fun
of the 80's, a light, fun-filled romp
that clearly shows its rom-com and epic-one-night-adventure comedic
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Documentarian
Jeremy Seifert wants to show you how to eat trash. Dive!
re-examines the role of food in a society that wastes half of all that
it produces and still leaves many hungry. James
van Maanen at Trust Movies finds
that the doc derives strength from its central character and creator:
"husband, father, dumpster diver and activist -- (Seifert) comes across
as a sweet, home-made kind of guy, friendly and easy-going but serious
and real. He's given us a movie with similar qualities." |
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A
coming-of-age (but not coming-out) movie that takes us back to a
British all-girls school during the 1930s -- complete with requisite
lesbianism, nude scenes, and a backward glance at the young ladies,
fashions and automobiles of pre-WWII-- Cracks,
the first full-length film from Jordan
Scott (daughter of Ridley)
is a ripe piece of cinema that is, fortunately, still a short distance
from going bad. You can bite into its succulent fruit and enjoy the
sweet taste, while realizing that, by tomorrow, it will have passed
optimum status. But that's tomorrow. Why carp when we still have today? Read more >> |
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Over
the opening credits of Satyajit
Ray’s 1958 The
Music Room (Jalsaghar),
a chandelier drifts out of the darkness, slowly swaying into view like
some luminescent deep sea creature. This chandelier, one of several
that hang in the titular room, will
come to symbolize the flickering (pre-electric) light of a way of life
that is quickly disappearing. The
Music Room is a fin de
siècle story along the lines of The
Leopard
or The Magnificent Ambersons,
detailing the last member of a feudal dynasty’s slide into
obscurity. When we first see Lord Roy (Bengali matinee idol Chhabi
Biswas), he is alone on the roof
of his decaying palace, lost in thought. A sparse exchange with his
servant (Kali Sarkar) reveals that Lord Roy has no idea what month or
season it is.
Read more >> |
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A
treasure-trove of fascinating information about media-shy/burned author
Harper
Lee, her landmark book To
Kill a Mockingbird, the fine
movie made from it (and much more: even Truman
Capote has a major role here), HEY,
BOO: Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird
should have the billion-odd fans of the book lining up to learn more
about it -- and the woman who created it. "Landmark" because it enabled
white America, north and south, to begin coming to terms with the
country's major social problem, racial prejudice, the book remains a
force for understanding and change. Further, it is probably one of the
few "modern classics" taught in schools that does not always need to be
force-fed. Read more >> |
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Otto
Preminger's 1968 satire Skidoo
takes its title from a word dating back to the 1920s, meaning to get
out while the getting's good... But by Skidoo,
using outmoded slang to tag a saga of free love and LSD comes off as an
elderly guy throwing embarrassing jive at the kids. Skidoo
features Jackie
Gleason asking "What is he, a
faggot?", and near-objectively portrays the fault lines of the '60s a
year before Easy Rider
and Medium
Cool
busted the counterculture open for adventurous multiplex viewing, yet
has always been synonymous with irredeemable failure. (See also: Ishtar,
Heaven's
Gate,
and other re-evaluated cases.) Skidoo
isn't the sad attempt of a former taboo-buster to get hep with the
rebels he helped spawn: it's exactly the sour but well-argued film
Preminger intended rather than a jaw-dropping fiasco.
Read more >>
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The
New York Times' A.O.
Scott praised Of
Gods and Men
as "supple and suspenseful, appropriately austere without being overly
harsh, and without forgoing the customary pleasures of cinema. The
performances are strong, the narrative gathers momentum as it
progresses, and the camera is alive to the beauty of the Algerian
countryside." On behalf of GreenCine and Sony Pictures Home
Entertainment, you may enter to win the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack of what The
Christian Science Monitor's Peter
Rainer called "a transcendently
uplifting tragedy. Go here for more info >>
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