Category: Film & TV

  • Crispin Glover’s Underworld Freak Show

    NYT:

    Unsettling and often quite absurd, his labor of love, almost 10 years in the making, is predominantly inhabited by people with Down syndrome, whose dialogue is often indecipherable. There is also a person with cerebral palsy; three naked women with monkey faces (played by pornographic-film stars); a menacing Shirley Temple doll; Mr. Glover himself, as the apparent ruler of an underworld freak show; numerous snails; and a man in blackface who injects the snails’ slime in hopes of becoming one. What is it indeed.

    Here.

  • A Visual Chronicler of Humanity's Underbelly, Draped in a Pelt of Perversity

    A Visual Chronicler of Humanity's Underbelly, Draped in a Pelt of Perversity

    NYT:

    The new film “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus” is a fantasy of a different order. Its marble-white Venus is Nicole Kidman, who here wears a conceit rather than a sable. The film’s core idea is that Diane Arbus, who trained her photographic gaze on nudists, twins, grimacing children and the retarded, liberated her muse by coaxing out her inner freak. The film conjures a conduit to her liberation in the furry form of Lionel, a neighbor played by Robert Downey Jr. The actor’s involvement is something you need to take on faith, since he spends most of the film covered in fur, a costume that suggests the bewitched prince in Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” and makes Mr. Downey look like an immaculately groomed Shih Tzu.

    “Fur” is a folly, though not a dishonorable one. It was directed by Steven Shainberg, whose last feature, “Secretary,” was a tender love story about a shy masochist and the boss who spanks his way into her heart. The film was funny and modest, and it treated the putative perversions of its characters with the kind of good, gracious humor that insists on respect for everyone involved. “Fur” is a more ambitious work, in part because of Ms. Kidman, whose talent cannot obscure that she has been grievously miscast and left to indulge her mannered coyness.
    Here.

  • Borat Banned From Russian Movie Theaters

    The Moscow Times:

    The distributor, 20th Century Fox in Russia, can appeal the agency’s decision in court, Vasyuchkov said, adding that he had never heard of a non-pornographic movie being banned. Hundreds of hard-core pornographic movies are currently licensed by the agency for distribution.

    “We got the news today,” said Nikolai Vorunkov, deputy general director of Gemini Marketing, the movie’s distributor in Russia and a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox. Vorunkov said he remained hopeful that a solution could be found.

    “There was some kind of explanation that the movie might create tension between races and nationalities because of its far-from-simple humor,” said Vorunkov, adding that the movie was now unlikely to open before the New Year — if ever.

    The film can be downloaded illegally on the Internet, however.

    Here.

  • Eko's dead. Let's kill more people on "Lost." In this order.

    Tim Goodman’s The Bastard Machine:

    So let’s off some more “Lost” characters. In this order:

    1. Claire. She’s pointless. Let Desmond raise that baby. He’d at least save it.
    2. Sawyer. Enough already. The accent and the nicknames are more annoying now than ever. Too much screen time. Shoot him in the eye, Freckles.
    3. The Others. Boooooo-ring.
    4. The Tailies. I think one of them is left. Hey, thanks for stealing Season 2. You owe me 22 hours.
    5. The “Lost” writers. So, wait, according to evil Ben/Henry, what the Others really want is help from our beloved castaways. They just want to get along? And perform spinal surgery? This was all an elaborate ruse to evoke sympathy, friendship and empathy? With friends like these…Oh, and will one of the writers fess up that the Jurassic Big Bad that ate the dude from Felicity/Alias/Heroes ain’t coming back? Don’t lie to me like I’m Montel Williams.

    Here.

  • The real face of Boratstan

    Observer:

    And then she takes us – Steve, my travelling companion, and me – into a cafe where we have a bit of cake.

    ‘What’s it called?’ I ask.

    ‘The cake? It is known as “nigger in the foam”.’

    So, you see, wrong, wrong, wrong. Or, perhaps, just a little bit right. And although the sequences in Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film, Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan, that purport to be in Kazakhstan were filmed in Romania, he didn’t pick Romania, or Belarus, or Uzbekistan. He picked Kazakhstan.

    Poor Kazakhstan. First Stalin, now Borat. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for the government and its blundering attempts to first sue Cohen and then hire a Western PR firm and launch a debunking marketing offensive – although the fact that Nazarbayev is alleged to have stashed $80m in an offshore account goes some way to mitigating my feelings in this.

    Here.

  • Stinkers of the Season

    Stinkers of the Season

    The Moscow Times:

    Filipp Yankovsky’s “The Swordbearer”

    The film’s hero, Sasha, is played by the lithe Artyom Tkachenko, who occasionally looks like a new version of the antihero that the late Sergei Bodrov Jr. played in Balabanov’s “Brother” films, but without any of the charisma. He has one distinguishing feature: a blade-like instrument that has been embedded — mysteriously, and unexplainedly — in his hand since childhood.

    It’s the kind of protection device that Russian gangsters could only dream of, given that it vanishes at will. When required, it can wreak bloody havoc on a whole range of supporting characters, from prison guards to prisoners, as well as on some others who are closer to the movie’s main romantic action: a developing relationship between Sasha and Katya (Chulpan Khamatova, a talented actress who really should know better than to commit to this kind of schlock).

    The final scenes, involving some spectacular helicopter shots, suggest that Sasha’s hidden talent could be an asset for the Russian forestry industry as well, as he manages to demolish a fair proportion of seaside trees in the film’s concluding chase.

    For those who cherish graphic depictions of various kinds of severed limbs, there’s much to enjoy here (there are also some intriguing sex scenes for viewers who find that gushing blood isn’t enough). In terms of sheer sadistic effect, “The Swordbearer” competes with “Junk” and “Hunting for Piranha,” two other Russian films from earlier this year that stood out on the violence front — though given their disappointing results, it seems audiences aren’t exactly queuing up for gore. Perhaps a welcome thought if you’re coming home on a dark night.

    Here.

  • Taking stupid seriously

    Taking stupid seriously

    LA Times:

    BORAT’S interviews fall into roughly two categories. He seeks out self-consciously genteel, almost impossibly schematic “life coaches” of one kind or another — people whose job it is to tell others how to date, tell jokes, find work, etc. — and barrages them with questions, requests and opinions that, despite being completely outrageous, consistently fail to get a rise or a reaction stronger than “We don’t do that here in America” or “That’s not a customary thing to do in the U.S. at all.” On the one hand, you have to admire his interviewees’ tact and even keel. On the other, you can’t believe that they don’t react more strongly than they do.

    He also hangs out with “normal people” who happily reveal their prejudices. Shopping for a house, in one TV episode, Borat asks a real estate agent about a windowless room with a metal door for his mentally disabled brother, whether he may bury his wife in the yard if she dies, and whether black people will move into the neighborhood. At the wine tasting, he asks if the black waiter is a slave, to which the “commander” of the Knights of the Vine society in Jackson, Miss., replies that there was “a law that was passed that they could no longer be used as slaves — which is a good thing for them.” (“Oh, good for him, not so good for you!” Borat yelps, picking up an undercurrent that may not have even been evident to them.)

    Here.

  • This Roadie's Life

    This Roadie's Life

    LA Weekly:

    Do you have a Brit-humor-obsessed friend who pesters you to get in line and admit once and for all that Steve Coogan is a comedy god? Maybe he’s shoved one of Coogan’s Alan Partridge videos in your hands to get you up to speed on the egomaniacally obnoxious, socially inept talk-show-host character that has made Coogan a deity in the U.K., or dragged you to a movie theater to see Coogan’s star turn in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. That person is a good friend.

    But if you’ve ignored the pleas, let me speak for your friend and tell you that you can get in on the ground floor Friday night with Coogan’s newest character, Tommy Saxondale. He’s a bearded, cantankerous, acrimoniously divorced ex-roadie with one fist still raised in rebellion, the other around a pesticide hose. Tommy has left the world of Jim Beam breakfasts, rock-star chumminess and changing Peter Frampton’s vocoder fuse for the life of a vermin killer. And why not? Music has gone in the crapper since “electronic bleeps and farts” replaced awesome fret work, according to Tommy, but he clings to the notion that even from his comfortable suburban existence with shop-owner girlfriend Magz (Ruth Jones), he can still do his part to give the finger to authority. Tommy’s idea of therapeutic betterment? Calmly telling the session leader in his court-ordered anger-management class that the notion of anger being bad is “horseshit”: If General MacArthur’s reaction to Pearl Harbor had been “to go someplace quiet and do some deep breathing,” he insists, “you’d be goose-stepping into this meeting!” Rock and roll!?

    Here.

  • THE GRINDHOUSE TRAILER IS UP

    THE GRINDHOUSE TRAILER IS UP

    What Would Tyler Durden Do:

    Finally a trailer for the Quentin Tarantino / Robert Rodriguez movie “Grindhouse”. I think I read it’s a remake of “Sense and Sensibility”, but that might not be right. Rose McGowan plays a stripper with a gun for a leg, Kurt Russell plays a maniac killer and I play an hotshot Navy SEAL, kicked out of the service for a crime I didn’t commit, lost in the bottle but finding peace by helping the disenfranchised. In the movie, you may ask? No, my friends, in my incredible real life.

    Here.

  • Offensive and unfair, Borat's antics leave a nasty aftertaste

    Guardian:

    There is a further reason why Baron Cohen causes injury and offence. Under Stalin’s forced collectivisation in the 1920s, about half the ethnic Kazakh population were deported or starved to death. In the early 1940s, entire populations of “anti-Soviet” peoples – including Tartars, Chechens, Ingush, Volga Germans and Koreans – were dumped in the Kazakh steppes. The one positive outcome of the forced population movements is that Kazakhstan has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the world. Just over half of the 15 million population are ethnic Kazakhs, about 30% Russian, and the rest from a dozen different nationalities. There are more than 100 different ethnic and religious groups.

    Given what we have been through as a nation, racial and ethnic tolerance is regarded as a practical necessity and part of our contemporary identity. It is no exaggeration to say that the stability of the modern Kazakh state depends on a shared recognition that we must do nothing to disturb the harmony among this complex mosaic of peoples. Consequently, Kazakhs generally do not care for racial slurs or think much of those who indulge in them.

    Here.

  • Kazakhs Shrug at ‘Borat’ While the State Fumes

    Kazakhs Shrug at ‘Borat’ While the State Fumes

    NYT:

    Mr. Ashykbayev denounced Mr. Cohen’s performance as host of the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon last fall, in which a skit mocked the imperial aura that surrounds Mr. Nazarbayev, the country’s president since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Mr. Ashykbayev suggested that Mr. Cohen was acting on behalf of “someone’s political order” to denigrate Kazakhstan and that the government “reserved the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of this kind.”

    Mr. Cohen, who is Jewish, responded, as Borat, in a video posted on his Web site, citing Mr. Ashykbayev by name and declaring that he “fully supported my government’s decision to sue this Jew.”

    “Since the 2003 Tulyakov reforms, Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in the world,” he goes on in the video, citing fictional details in the absurdly stilted English that is central to his act. “Women can now travel inside of bus. Homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hats. And age of consent has been raised to 8 years old.”

    Here.

  • Kazakhstan fights back ahead of Borat film release

    Kazakhstan fights back ahead of Borat film release

    Guardian:

    Kazakhstan: land of superstition, religious intolerance, political suppression and goats. Wrong. Kazakhstan is actually a country of metals and machinery, an outward-looking, modern nation with a stable economy that attracts foreign investors to its cosmopolitan capital.

    The Kazakh government took the unusual step yesterday of publishing a four-page colour supplement in the New York Times in what appeared to be in part an attempt to head off the fallout from a satirical film due out in November. Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is the latest work from Ali G creator Sacha Baron Cohen. The film lampoons the central Asian nation through Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakh journalist who travels to the US to report on local customs.

    Here.

  • Street Trash (1987) DVD available at Netflix

    Street Trash (1987) DVD available at Netflix

    Genres: Comedy, Horror

    Tagline: Things in New York are about to go down the toilet…
    Plot Synopsis: When a liquor store owner finds a case of “Viper” in his cellar, he decides to sell it to the local hobos at one dollar a bottle, unaware of its true properties. The drinks causes its consumers to melt, very messily. Two homeless lads find themselves up against the effects of the toxic brew, as well as going head to head with “Bronson” a Vietnam vet with sociopathic tendencies, and the owner of the junkyard they live in.
    Plot Keywords: Surreal | Disturbing | Female Frontal Nudity | Female Nudity | Breasts | Gross Out Comedy | Male Frontal Nudity | Close Up Scene | Homelessness | Gore | Insanity | Mutant

    Here.

  • Hollywood turns cameras on Karadzic

    BBC:

    The film, called Spring Break in Bosnia, tells the true story of a group of journalists who in 2000 went on the trail of Europe’s most wanted man, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

    In the course of their adventure, they got mistaken for a CIA hit team.

    Here.

  • It Was Loud. It Was Fast. But What Did It Mean?

    NYT reviews American Hardcore. My review from a January showing at Sundance is Here.

    NYT:

    Musically hardcore was a repudiation of almost everything, from disco to the dilution of first-generation punk labeled new wave to, of course, the same high-flying and deeply loathed bands, like the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Journey, that the original punks also despised. Hardcore was more than noncommercial; it was anticommercial. No one in the movement made more than spare change, and many lived hand to mouth. Poverty was synonymous with purism.

    Directed by Paul Rachman, from a screenplay by Steven Blush based on his book “American Hardcore: A Tribal History,” the film, which is filled with grainy archival clips of hardcore performances, is a toned-down cinematic equivalent of the music: fast and loud, but not too loud. The movie scrambles to cover so much territory that there is room only for musical shards and slivers; few complete songs are heard, and no signature anthems stand out. These excerpts are spliced with pungent bits and pieces from dozens of interviews, the whole crisply edited into a rapid-fire history. If 9 out of 10 bands are groups almost no one ever heard of, the movie’s encyclopedic concept is touchingly thorough.

    Here.

  • LovePixel

    Here.

  • Back to the computer

    I’ve been in Vegas photographing Warren Jeffs and my Powerbook is in the shop. I’ll post something about photographing Jeffs once I get a minute or two.

  • Bizarro Documentary Trailers from Finland

    Bizarro Documentary Trailers from Finland

    From WFMU’s Beware of the Blog:

    Every week or so I can expect an email in my inbox from my friend Jussi in Finland, asking me if I know some totally-off-the-wall obscuro 1980’s metal band whom he worships. Recently he sent me a link to a documentary trailer for Shock Tilt, a film recounting the story of a Finnish group who went to Germany to seek fame and fortune only to have their lead singer butchered by their creepy manager, which became a big national news event.

    Here.

  • Doctor Who loses momentum

    From the Guardian:

    It’s another mystery for Doctor Who – where have the viewers gone?

    BBC1’s Doctor Who revival has been lavished with critical praise and awards, but there are signs midway through its second series that viewers may be tiring of the time travelling sci-fi drama.

    Saturday’s Doctor Who, the seventh out of 13 episodes in the second series, was the lowest-rated yet since the show returned last year to rave reviews and big audiences.

    Here.

  • Strap Happy

    From the Guardian:

    Last year’s Cannes film festival opened in a discreetly classy, impeccably French fashion with Dominik Moll’s Lemming. This time around the Cote d’Azur is set to become one big Hollywood circus, complete with a nocturnal laser lightshow that looks set to induce epileptic seizures in the old women and small dogs who routinely prowl the Rue d’Antibes. Incidentally, there was a press screening of The Da Vinci Code late last night. By all accounts, the film sucks to high heaven.

    Here.