James Bond Weekend #2: From Diamonds Are Forever to The Spy Who Loved Me

So, I'm sitting down in the front row of the theater, writing something or other while getting ready to watch Diamonds Are Forever on Friday night, and ten or fifteen minutes before the movie, I hear "obsessed lunatic?", and Dave Kornfeld is standing above me.

Dave's the head projectionist at the Somerville Theatre, who pulled him out of retirement as they upgraded the theater from second-run to first-run and also built out the booth. I've encountered him on the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival message board and heard stories of his encyclopedic knowledge of film aspect ratios from the folks at the Million Year Picnic, and, yeah, I have called him an obsessed lunatic on occasion. He can tend to make discussions one-sided with expertise and attitude. I have called him an obsessed lunatic on occasion, though I'm not sure how it got back to him.

But, let's be honest, I say "obsessed lunatic" with appreciation. My SXSW bunkmate from a few years back, Jason Whyte, was celebrating as his local theaters went digital not because he doesn't appreciate film, but because the 35mm projection at his local theaters was so bad that this was the best chance of presentation with any sort of consistent quality. As many will tell you, including and especially Dave, digital isn't really that sort of guarantee. The weekend I saw these movies, there was another note in the paper about the projection issues at the now-all-digital AMC Boston Common. This doesn't happen so much at Somerville, because Dave has extremely high standards. He'll grudgingly admit that prints were decent after projecting them, even if he was enthused about not finding any splices on the print beforehand. It is extremely unlikely that you'll ever hear complaints about the light being too dim there - heck, when they were showing silent movies last year, he pulled out a special extra-bright bulb to replicate the carbon-arc lamps they used back when those movies were made. He's got all the equipment for 70mm in the booth and is frustrated that the technicians haven't been out to hook them up yet. I often joke that we'll know when the Somerville Theatre has installed digital projection from the news reports of an armed standoff between Dave and some guys from Sony in Davis Square.

The upshot: If quality projection is your main concern, stop complaining about how the national chains are and head a few extra stops up the Red Line to Davis. The tickets are cheap and they put real butter on the popcorn, too.


So, that covers the presentation. How about the movies themselves?

Overall, not so great. The 1970s weren't a great time for the James Bond series. It's easy to blame it all on Roger Moore, but in many ways he's just a symptom of a larger problem or two. For as much as James Bond became the standard for this sort of picture, it seems like the series became awfully reactive. Diamonds Are Forever was pushing back against On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Live and Let Die tried to ride the Blaxploitation wave, Moonraker would be a response to Star Wars. Imitations and parodies had started to appear in earnest by then, and the producers seemed to be doubling down on the stuff that was identifiabley Bond.

Not that this sort of reactivity is always bad; Casino Royale benefited by integrating parkour and switching Bond's game of choice from baccarat to poker. The 1970s films were just rather obvious about it.

Plus... Well, by the time you get to the tenth movie in a series, even the most wide-open setting narrows as the desire to deliver a bigger threat, and it's apparently tough to top "space laser".

Diamonds Are Forever

* * * (out of four)
Seen 4 May 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (James Bond Weekend, 35mm)

By itself, Diamonds Are Forever isn't a bad Bond movie, but it comes right after On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is among the best. The opening, where Bond pursues Blofeld with ruthless zeal, is pretty terrific, but not long after that, it's like Bond has forgotten Tracy completely, like we can't even get a full movie of intense, angry Bond.

It's also the start of two or three consecutive James Bond movies that have big, destructive car chases that actually really suck, because they tend to just involve James Bond driving around while terrible pursuers basically drive off the road because they just are not very good at this sort of thing. It's tremendously frustrating, because there are great car chases being shot in the sixties and seventies, and this really isn't one of them.

The rest of the movie is frequently sloppy, too. Sure, Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint are a fun pair of assassins, but the story with Blofeld pretending to be a Howard Hughes analog always feels like Bond is too far behind what's going on, and the final confrontation with Blofeld leaves a little to be desired.

Live and Let Die

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 4 May 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (James Bond Weekend, 35mm)

At times, it seems like the switch to Roger Moore is going to herald a real shift in the series, with supernatural elements suddenly popping up in the script and imagery, Blofeld and SPECTRE nowhere to be found, and Roger Moore just not seeming to have any idea of how to do the rough-and-ready side of Bond.

But, man, all of that pales compared to how the plot and execution of this thing is right on the border of offensive, arguably tilted toward the bad side. Look at in context, placed between two movies about space lasers, and what is it offering as a threat on the same level? Black people. There's one black CIA guy, and every other African-American character is either part of Mr. Big's conspiracy to hook the entire world on heroin or looks on as they kill any interloper. Oh, and there's Sheriff J.W. Pepper, who is inexplicably popular enough to show up in the next movie, and throws a few "boys" out there. Sure, it's not likely meant negatively - this is the blaxploitation era and the 1970s, and meant to communicate something vibrant and powerful, but given how conservative a property Bond is by nature, and how it's nearly forty years later, this does not look good at all.

It's not all bad, of course. Though the picture manages to overuse it pretty severely, Paul McCartney and Wings contribute a kick-ass theme song. And Yaphet Kotto is a fantastic antagonist, with gravitas enough to be a worthy adversary, imposing physicality, and the ability to pull off a last-act swerve that highlights just how much he enjoys being the unrepentant villain of the piece.

This is probably as bad as Bond gets, and a pretty terrible start to the Roger Moore era.

The Man with the Golden Gun

* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 May 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (James Bond Weekend, 35mm)

The Man with the Golden Gun, meanwhile, isn't quite so tone-deaf - although it does feature what is perhaps Roger Moore's most embarrassing moment, when he's bailed out by a couple of teenage girls (who, in what's sort of an annoying "hey, 'oriental' is all the same" moment, are the niece of a Chinese character but apparently Thai and experts in a Japanese martial art). It's still not exactly good, but it's got Christopher Lee, which makes up for a lot of sins.

Lee's appeal here was roughly the same as Kotto's in the previous movie - he matched up well with Moore's Bond both as bon vivant and in the action sequences, and when it came time for the gloves to come off at the end of the movie, he wasn't afraid to just go for it. The writers make a wise decision in not making his Scaramanga good at everything (he may be ruthless and a peerless assassin, but he cheerfully admits to not understanding the science involved), and both henchman Herve Villechaize and moll Maud Adams add a gleeful amorality.

It's enjoyably big, at least, and has a few fun action sequences. It makes a nice ramp up for the next one.

The Spy Who Loved Me

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 May 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (James Bond Weekend, 35mm)

What's this, a good James Bond film with Roger Moore? So it is! Will wonders never cease?

There's a reference to On Her Majesty's Secret Service in this one, and it's related to what makes this one so good - it's one of the few James Bond movies to this point where the female lead is really an equal/complement to 007, and the story actually involves some sort of human interaction and motivation, rather than Bond just being this force of nature that the ladies are helpless against and for whom "be knocked unconscious" is a practical intelligence-gathering method. Watching Roger Moore and Barbara Bach's scenes is actually fun; there's something going on.

Richard Kiel's "Jaws" is a more memorable henchman than Curt Jurgens's Stromberg is a villain (although, man, there's the series being obviously reactive again), but Stromberg's got maybe the coolest villain lair in Atlantis of any of the movies. With the "tanker", it gives Bond and Agent XXX two big assaults to mount, and that's after a bunch of fun action scenes with Jaws. There is, I think, one of those "drive around until the other cars spontaneously crash" car chases, but otherwise, this is one of Moore's best Bonds, and one worth placing with the rest of the series.

This Fall in TV 2012: Sifting through what the networks will inflict upon us this fall

Remember what I said about writing being habit? Here's another example. I used to regularly write up the fall schedules based on the upfront stories for the Home Theater Forum, but even though I drifted away from that site a couple years ago (I joke that I was shunned after saying I really don't care about lossless audio), I did it last year and felt the itch again this year. So, let's go!

As per usual, the information comes from The Futon Critic. The bolded selections are the things I plan on watching, comments follow.

SUNDAY

07:00 - ABC - American's Funniest Home Videos
07:00 - CBS - 60 Minutes
07:00 - Fox - NFL Overrun
07:00 - NBC - Football Night in America

07:30 - Fox - The OT

08:00 - ABC - Once Upon a Time
08:00 - CBS - The Amazing Race
08:00 - Fox - The Simpsons
08:00 - NBC - Sunday Night Football

08:30 - Fox - Bob's Burgers

09:00 - ABC - Revenge
09:00 - CBS - The Good Wife
09:00 - Fox - Family Guy

09:30 - Fox - American Dad

10:00 - ABC - 666 Park Avenue
10:00 - CBS - The Mentalist

* Plus, you know, various cable series and Masterpiece Mystery while that's still running, as it should be finishing up its summer session with new Wallander while the network shows are premiering.

* I see 666 Park Avenue has Mercedes Masöhn from The Finder as part of its cast, which apparently means the writing was on the wall for that show a while ago. Bummer, it was much more fun than I expected after its poor backdoor pilot on Bones, and it had a downer ending. I may give this a sample for some of the supporting cast (her, Terry O'Quinn, Vanessa Williams), but it's a horror premise that doesn't do much for me.

* Man, that really just leaves The Amazing Race and The Good Wife for me. Good for them to keep chugging along.

MONDAY

08:00 - ABC - Dancing with the Stars
08:00 - CBS - How I Met Your Mother
08:00 - CW - 90210
08:00 - Fox - Bones
08:00 - NBC - The Voice

08:30 - CBS - Partners

09:00 - CBS - 2 Broke Girls
09:00 - CW - Gossip Girl
09:00 - Fox - The Mob Doctor

09:30 - CBS - Mike & Molly

10:00 - ABC - Castle
10:00 - CBS - Hawaii Five-0
10:00 - NBC - Revolution

* This will, believe it or not, be Bones's eighth year. That means that by the time it's over, David Boreanaz will have played Seely Booth more than Angel.

* Revolution's basic premise - oh no, electricity has stopped working! - is scientifically dumb. But the creative team of J.J. Abrams, Eric Kripke, and Jon Favreau certainly makes it worth a look.

* I should really have been watching How I Met Your Mother, what with liking everybody on it.

TUESDAY

08:00 - ABC - Dancing with the Stars Results
08:00 - CBS - NCIS
08:00 - CW - Hart of Dixie
08:00 - Fox - Raising Hope
08:00 - NBC - The Voice

08:30 - Fox - Ben and Kate

09:00 - ABC - Happy Endings
09:00 - CBS - NCIS: Los Angeles
09:00 - CW - Emily Owens, M.D.
09:00 - Fox - New Girl
09:00 - NBC - Go On

09:30 - ABC - Don't Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23
09:30 - Fox - The Mindy Project
09:30 - NBC - The New Normal

10:00 - ABC - Private Practice
10:00 - CBS - Vegas
10:00 - NBC - Parenthood

* Tuesdays used to be packed. Now, just a couple of things I want to see. And they're sitcoms! Weren't those declared dead a few years ago?

* Vegas might get a sample, based on the nice cast (Dennis Quaid & Michael Chiklis). Weird thing is, Frank Darabont's got a different historical crime series coming out soon. How's this becoming a thing?

WEDNESDAY

08:00 - ABC - The Middle
08:00 - CBS - Survivor
08:00 - CW - Arrow
08:00 - Fox - The X Factor
08:00 - NBC - Animal Practice

08:30 - ABC - Suburgatory
08:30 - NBC - Guys with Kids

09:00 - ABC - Modern Family
09:00 - CBS - Criminal Minds
09:00 - CW - Supernatural
09:00 - NBC - Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

09:30 - ABC - The Neighbors

10:00 - ABC - Nashville
10:00 - CBS - CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
10:00 - NBC - Chicago Fire

* Wow, Supernatural moves away from Fridays; has it actually become popular (by CW standards) rather than just dependable? But, of course, it's moved to coincide with something I'm already watching.

* Nashville and Chicago Fire may both get samples; I like Connie Britton for the former and would like to see another good firefighter show now that Rescue Me is done. Still, that's a high bar to clear.

* The Neighbors, with its aliens-in-the-suburbs premise, can't be anything but horrible, can it?

THURSDAY

08:00 - ABC - Last Resort
08:00 - CBS - The Big Bang Theory
08:00 - CW - The Vampire Diaries
08:00 - Fox - The X Factor Results
08:00 - NBC - 30 Rock

08:30 - CBS - Two and a Half Men
08:30 - NBC - Up All Night

09:00 - ABC - Grey's Anatomy
09:00 - CBS - Person of Interest
09:00 - CW - Beauty and the Beast
09:00 - Fox - Glee
09:00 - NBC - The Office

09:30 - NBC - Parks & Recreation

10:00 - ABC - Scandal
10:00 - CBS - Elementary
10:00 - NBC - Rock Center with Brian Williams

* CBS is going to give me a weekly dose of Sherlock Holmes and Lucy Liu? Yes, please, thank you! I know some are up in arms about it, but many of them act like Steven Moffatt created Sherlock Holmes or was even the first to place him in the present day.

* On the one hand, Last Resort has Andre Braugher commanding a nuclear submarine on the run after refusing to fire missiles without confirmation and taking up residence on a tropical island. That's a cool premise for a movie, but I'm not sure how you make a series out of it.

* Maybe I'll check Person of Interest out again. I watched the first few episodes while waiting for something else to start last year, and didn't feel the need to stick around, but didn't really dislike it.

FRIDAY

08:00 - ABC - Shark Tank
08:00 - CBS - CSI: New York
08:00 - CW - American's Next Top Model
08:00 - Fox - Touch
08:00 - NBC - Whitney

08:30 - NBC - Community

09:00 - ABC - Primetime: What Would You Do?
09:00 - CBS - Made in Jersey
09:00 - CW - Nikita
09:00 - Fox - Fringe
09:00 - NBC - Grimm

10:00 - ABC - 20/20
10:00 - CBS - Blue Bloods
10:00 -NBC - Dateline NBC

* Wait, Touch sticks around but The Finder doesn't? That is just unfair and wrong, as Touch drove me away after two episodes with its stupidity (as much as I liked Heroes, even to the end, hearing about the golden mean seemed to collapse Tim Kring's mind).

* Only 13 episodes of Fringe, which at least will get a proper send-off. Like most sci-fi shows, its mythology came to dominate too much, but it stayed consistently fun and clever throughout. Please have Brad Anderson direct the final episode.

SATURDAY

08:00 - ABC - Saturday Night College Football
08:00 - CBS - Repeats (Crime)
08:00 - Fox - Sports
08:00 - NBC - Repeats

09:00 - CBS - Repeats (Crime)
09:00 - NBC - Repeats

10:00 - CBS - 48 Hours Mystery
10:00 - NBC - Repeats

* I hear TV networks used to actually try on Saturday nights, once upon a time.


THE BENCH - ABC

The Bachelor
Body of Proof
The Family Tools
How to Live with Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life)
Last Man Standing
Malibu Country
Mistresses
Red Window
(Celebrity) Wife Swap
Zero Hour

* I'm already hoping for The Family Tools to be mercy-killed so JK Simmons can move on to something good.

* Red Window has Rhada Mitchell, and is thus worth a look. Zero Hour looks likely to be a stupid conspiracy show, but could be kind of demented in scale.


THE BENCH - CBS

Friend Me
Golden Boy
The Job

* With Blue Bloods still on the schedule, is CBS really going to have two shows about New York City police commissioners once Golden Boy premieres?


THE BENCH - CW

The Carrie Diaries
Cult

* I said it last year, but... Ugh. Why is this network still here?


THE BENCH - FOX

American Idol (Tentative Wednesday and Thursday 8:00pm)
Animation Domination High-Def (Saturday 11:00pm)
The Cleveland Show (tentative Sunday 7:30pm)
Cops (tentative Saturday)
The Following (tentative Monday 9:00pm)
The Goodwin Games (tentative Tuesday)
Hell's Kitchen

* The Following is mildly interesting for having Kevin Bacon, but the "network of serial killers" idea seems a little much. Maybe I'm getting squeamish in my old age.

* Looking at this list and the stuff premiering in the fall... Fox's most intriguing new show appears to be The Mindy Project, a sitcom starring Mindy Kaling. She's great, but whatever happened to the daring, try-anything Fox?


THE BENCH - NBC

Betty White's Off Their Rockers
The Celebrity Apprentice (tentative - Sunday 9:00pm)
Do No Harm (tentative - Sunday 10:00pm)
Fashion Star (tentative - Sunday 8:00pm)
Hannibal
Howie Mandel's White Elephant
Infamous
Next Caller
Ready for Love
Save Me
Smash
Stars Earn Stripes
Surprise with Jenny McCarthy
1600 Penn

* Man, what is the hold that Howie Mandel has on NBC?

* Somehow, I've never seen a Hannibal Lecter anything. I'm not starting now.

* Even taking into consideration that the network will have time to fill on Sunday, once the NFL season finishes, this is not the bench of a confident network. There's both a lot of filler and expectation of attrition here (several returning comedies only have 13-episode orders).

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 18 May 2012 - 24 May 2012

So, I didn't do this last week as I went head-down on IFFBoston stuff, and neither heard complaints not saw a really noticeable downtick in hits, but I found myself losing track of what was playing and what I wanted to see. So I'm back at it, just because I need to do so.

That last sentence likely describes blogging and writing in general.

• It looks like a pretty unimpressive week in the mainstream theaters, and that's even with me being one of the few people who had been looking forward to Battleship. The way I figured it, it was a big blank slate with which Peter Berg could do any insane thing he wanted, and, hey, that's a fun cast. But successive trailers have done less and less as it looked more and more Transformers-like. It plays the Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square, Boston Common, and Fenway.
  
  Another movie with a potentially decent ensemble cast, What to Expect When You're Expecting, gives us several couples with kids on the way. There's some good folks in it - Cameron Diaz, Chris Rock, Anna Kendrick, Dennis Quaid, Elizabeth Banks - so it could be all over the place. Plays at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Fenway, and Boston Common.
  
  A couple other things have already opened - Dark Shadows last week and The Dictator back on Wednesday. Johnny Depp and Sasha Baron Cohen with stupid haircuts. Both play the Somerville Theatre, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square, Boston Common, and Fenway.
  
  Boston Common also has a few limited releases opening. The most notable is likely Warriors of the Rainbow - Seediq Bale, which was Taiwan's submission to the Academy Awards last year. It's a big action/adventure about the native Taiwanese who rebelled against the occupying Japanese (including Masanobu Ando). Down the hall (awkward segue alert!), Native American teens compete in a lacrosse tournament in Crooked Arrows, with Brandon Routh apparently the biggest name, apparently as the father of one of the girls. There's also Mansome, the new documentary by Morgan Spurlock about male grooming. Man, I bet other documentary filmmakers look at his ability to get movies into theaters with immense envy.


• Over at the Coolidge, Marley opens up in the GoldScreen after a run in Kendall Square, and Headhunters moves over to the screening room after opening there last week. On film, the new opening is Bernie, Richard Linklater's strange-but-true tale of mystery with Jack Black as a funeral director who insinuates himself into the affairs of a local widow (Shirley MacLaine), and Matthew McConaughey as the sheriff. Lots of people are mentioning Fargo when referring to it.
  
  In terms of special engagements, there's a couple of midnights: Friday and Saturday at midnight, there's Event Horizon, with Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill in an early flick by Paul W.S. Anderson, while Friday also features a "video mixtape" by the Whore Church, with a live heavy-metal pre-show. Sunday morning, director Robert Thalmeim will be present for the Goethe-Institut screening of Westwind, his film about two East German twins in 1988 who may find themselves pulled in different directions.
  
  And, on Monday, the Big Screen Classic is a great one - Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, one of the all-time great screwball comedies, with Hepburn as a dizzy heiress fixated on Grant's paleontologist. Every minute of this is hilarious.


• Bernie also opens at Kendall Square, as does another movie by a frequent pair of collaborators. Lawrence Kasdan directs Kevin Kline in Darling Companion, in which he plays a man whose wife (Diane Keaton) loves her dog more than him... and who loses it. Sadly, it's been getting toxic reviews. They also open Surviving Progress, a documentary about "progress traps", tempting advances that may have deleterious long-term effects, and The Hunter, with Willem Dafoe as a big-game hunter who comes to Tasmania to try to catch the last Tasmanian tiger.


• The Brattle has a couple of small premieres for the weekend. The Color Wheel has director Alex Ross Perry and Carlen Altman playing bickering siblings trying to put up with each other as they help each other move, while God Bless America is the latest from Bobcat Goldthwait, featuring another male/female pair, this one fed up with modern American life and looking to kill the worst aspects of it. God Bless America has the late shows (9:45pm, with midnight on Friday and Saturday) while The Color Wheel runs earlier.
  
  After that, there are a number of one-night bookings: On Monday Night, the Massachusetts Campaign for a US Department of Peace & Nonviolence presents The Dhamma Brothers with filmmaker(s) in person to discuss their film about how a mediation program changed an Alabama prison. Tuesday's guest is the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, who present their spoof Freak Dance. No guest Wednesday, because that's when the new 35mm print of F.W. Murnau's Sunrise finally arrives for a "Wordless Wednesday" screening. And on Thursday, "Reunion Weekend" begins, with a 25th Anniversary double-feature of The Princess Bride and Spaceballs.


• ArtsEmerson's Paramount Theater actually had The Color Wheel last year, and has more recent indie films this weekend as part of their "Festival Focus" series. Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31st has single shows on Friday and Saturday; it follows a Norwegian man at the end of his drug rehabilitation program who may be on the brink as he heads to the city for a job interview. Neighboring Sounds comes from Brazil (and the consulate is making the Friday night screening a free one), with Kleber Mendonça Filho observing a tense neighborhood through the eyes of the private security firm hired to patrol it.
  
  Saturday and Sunday afternoon, meanwhile, are taken by French Cancan, a 1954 "Renoir in Technicolor" entry, with Jean Gabin as the founder of the Moulin Rouge who started the cancan craze.


• Apparently, by not doing this last week, I missed the start of The Story of Film at the MFA, a fifteen-part series being (mostly) shown in chunks of two episodes. Episodes #3 to #10 play over the weekend, with #9 through #11 playing Wednesday and Thursday. The other "Exclusive Screening" is Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, a re-presentation from the Boston Turkish Film Festival that starts out as the search for a missing person and expands into a broader examination of Turkish life; it plays Friday evening and Saturday morning.


• The Harvard Film Archive presents "The School of Reis: The Films and Legacy of António Reis and Margarida Cordeiro this weekend and next; it features a more-or-less even split between movies made by the influential Portuguese filmmakers and the artists they influenced.
  
  Less heavy - a Sunday afternoon screening of BMX Bandits as part of "Bay State Bike Week", featuring a very young Nicole Kidman as one of a group of teenagers getting into mischief (and paired with an I Love Lucy episode, so you get bonus redheads on bikes!).
  
  Monday night's screening, part of their continuing "¡Qué Viva Eisenstein!" series, is two incomplete Sergei Eisenstein films: ¡Qué Viva Mexico!, shot in 1931 but left incomplete when the producer backed out and the director was recalled to the Soviet Union, is a mostly complete history of Mexico missing its climactic sequence (assembled by Grigori Aleksandrov after Eisenstein's death), while "Bezhin Meadow" only survives as a half-hour collection of stills.


• The Regent Theatre has one more screening of Yellow Submarine, Saturday at 10:30am.


• Fresh Pond opens a new Hindi action movie, Department, about a special police unit that is later accused of corruption. I can't find much English-language infomration on it, but director Ram Gopal Varma is a big enough deal that his new films are an event (though I must admit, the one I've seen, Rann, didn't do a whole lot for me).

My plans? Not really set in stone aside from Warriors of the Rainbow - Seediq Bale. I suspect that I will be weak and see Battleship and/or Darling Companion, even though I have been thoroughly warned. I also want to see Sound of Her Voice, and had better hop to it, as it's been cut down to half-a-screen at the Kendall after opening last week.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.08 (Closing Night, Wednesday 2 May 2012): The Queen of Versailles

And the last night, as usual, comes at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in the big room. We all know what that means - duck!


The IFFBoston staff has prizes for you - look out!

Apparently, the festival staff did not get rid of all of the previous year's t-shirts a week earlier at opening night. They also had plenty of chips from Utz and fruit bar things from another sponsor that they were determined were not going to sit around in their pantries. A surprising number of them found their way to the older lady sitting next to me, and I won't say that I wouldn't have preferred she snack on those rather than the gigantic, smelly pickle she did pull out.



After that, the award winners were announced - find them here - and seeing as I didn't see many of them, I've got little to say about that, other than that Fairhaven may have benefited from a large contingent of locals voting in the audience award. Awards at film festivals are an odd thing, even compared to the end-of-year variety; when you see the laurel-leaves on posters or packages, you've really got no idea what the competition is or who the voters are. It's weirdly without context, but the potential is apparently tempting. Still, based on what I did see, some of these must have been pretty good to edge them out, so congratulations.



This is, I think, the second time I've seen Lauren Greenfield at IFFBoston; she was here six years ago with another documentary, Thin, which I quite liked, and she's had a documentary short here at some point in between. She answered a few questions about the subjects, with a great deal of the interest being related to one of Jackie's friends back in her home town and her comment to Greenfield (alluded to in the view) that the director perhaps knew her husband's mind better than she did at that point. Greenfield talked about finding a somewhat unexpected love story in the movie, which wasn't exactly what she expected. For the most part, though, the film spoke for itself.


And so, the festival ended, the folks in those top two bits of Horrible Photography had a good night's sleep, and got started planning the 2013 festival the next day. For my part, it's time to start focusing on Fantasia Festival -- anybody want to split a room in Montreal this July/August?

The Queen of Versailles

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 May 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Times are tough for everybody, although "tough" can be a relative concept. The further you get from the bottom, not only does it get further from what many would consider really difficult, but harder to sympathize, at least in the abstract. The Queen of Versailles aims to make the abstract specific, and if not sympathetic, at least interesting.

Jackie and David Siegel can be seen as the epitome of conspicuous, wasteful consumption. As the film opens, Jackie is 43 and David is 72, with seven kids of their own and one niece of Jackie's that has come to live with them. David is a billionaire, having built a time-share empire from the ground up, and while they currently live in a twenty-six thousand square foot home, they are building a much larger Versailles-style mansion - at ninety thousand square feet, it would be the largest single-family home ever built in America. At least, they are until the financial crisis, when people stop spending on things like timeshares just as David is trying to open a massive new property in Las Vegas.

The Siegels live large as the movie begins, arguably grotesquely so. The parties with every entry in the current Miss America pageant are kind of amusingly grandiose at times, sure, but it's the ingrained excess in other places that may make the audience uneasy. It's not enough to have one badly-trained, yappy little dog, for instance; Jackie has many and has had many more. A comment she makes about nannies making it easier to have kids kicks that feeling up to the next level. The palace that they intend to build is the most obvious example, but in some ways, as much as it's gaudy, it's just building a nice house with all the amenities they can afford; it's amplified, but not different, compared to a random audience member's desires and experiences.

Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.07 (Tuesday 1 May 2012): Paul Williams Still Alive and Rubberneck

Ah, the Tuesday of IFFBoston. The "showcase day", when the festival shows two movies that aren't deemed to be opening/closing night material but are worthy of being shown without alternative screenings. During the three previous years, a different venue got this day (the ICA in 2009-2010, with a tendency toward documentaries on the creative process; the Stuart Street Playhouse last year, in what amounted to the venue's swan song); this year, it was at the Coolidge, although upstairs rather than in the main theater.


See? "Cooldige" behind Paul Williams Still Alive director Stephen Kessler.

This was kind of an interesting Q&A, if only because it occasionally made me wonder whether Kessler completely recognized what film he was making. He mentioned at one point that Paul saw it as a film about recovery, but the expression he gave indicated that he really didn't see it that way. Talking with my friend Beth afterward, though, she sort of had the idea (which I, admittedly, run with in the review) that it was less about Paul's recovery then Stephen's, with Paul as the counselor who eventually weans him off low self-esteem and fantasies. It's perhaps an unusual take, and from the way he talked about working with his editors (who had to convince him to put himself into the movie), it almost seems to have made it into the movie completely as subtext.

Or at least, it sounds that way from the way he talked about it. I doubt that one can make a movie that holds together that well by accident, especially since that seems to be such a major theme. Maybe he, much like Paul, doesn't really want to talk about himself, and so downplays that.

There were, of course, the inevitable questions about whether Paul is working on anything, leading to the much-repeated news that he's collaborating on something with Daft Punk, which should be interesting, if nothing else. And whether they still hang out together, which led to this:



Mr. Williams seemed surprised by the call, but really, you'd have to think this was inevitable.

(Yeah, I know that photo looks worse. I have no idea why the Coolidge uses those red lights during the Q&As other than maybe wanting only the official photographers with huge flashes to have usable pictures. I have no idea how that first one came out well.)

After that, a quick trip to the lobby before it was time for Rubberneck:


Cast & Crew of Rubberneck, with writer/director/star Alex Karpovsky holding the mic.

As you might expect for a movie shot and set in Boston with a ton of local actors and crew had a lot of guests.

I kind of wish I liked it more. I saw what I think is Karpovsky's first feature, The Hole Story, at the same festival (in the same room!) about seven years ago, and while he's got access to some better equipment and has improved technically in many ways, I think that in some ways, Rubberneck is weaker in part because it's more sound. The Hole Story wound up losing the plot but had Alex playing a main character that was something of an individual, while there's nothing terribly odd or illogical about what happens in Rubberneck (by true-crime standards), but it winds up very generic.

And with that, it was time to get home and sleep fast before work and the last day of the festival.

Paul Williams Still Alive

* * * (out of four)
Seen 1 May 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

It's okay to look at the title of Paul Williams Still Alive and have a reaction somewhere between dismissal and dread. Documentaries about musicians who have faded into obscurity in part due to substance abuse are so common that festivals might as well list them as their own program. This one, at least, finds a couple of ways to present things differently, although the results are a somewhat mixed bag.

It's easy to be wary of these differences from the start, when director Stephen Kessler's description of Williams's career as a singer/songwriter/celebrity in the 1970s focuses just as much on how he viewed it as an awkward kid in New York as it does on Williams's actual work, if not more so. For all that he was a huge fan, Kessler assumed (as many did) that Williams had died sometime in the 1980s, only to learn of the man doing an appearance at a screening of Phantom of the Paradise (the truly bizarre 1974 Brian De Palma update of The Phantom of the Opera in which Williams played the villain as well as writing the songs) in Winnipeg. Once there, Kessler asks permission to tag along and make a documentary on Williams's life and career, although Williams often proves to be a reluctant subject.

Paul Williams Still Alive won't necessarily be disappointing to those looking for a straightforward biography, but there's a lot of Stephen Kessler in the movie, even if he does not always appear on camera all that much. It's a balance that the movie quite often struggles with; having an idea of just how intrusive and annoying having someone chronicle your life can be makes Williams's clear annoyance at various points funny as opposed to really uncomfortable, but Kessler lays it on rather thick at times. The filmmaker's initial fannish excitement at hanging out with Williams the way he'd dreamed of doing as a kid giving way to the discovery of a real human being rather than just a celebrity persona eventually becomes the actual story the movie tells. There are a lot of times, especially toward the start, when many in the audience will wish for Kessler to fade into the background because he's not what they came to see, and even when he starts to feel more integral, that first impression can be hard to shake.

Full review at EFC.

Rubberneck

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 May 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

It doesn't happen very often, but Rubberneck is almost too simple to classify. It's got characteristics of both a thriller and an indie drama of the character-study variety, but the only thing that seems unique about it is the setting, which doesn't contribute much to making the action interesting.

One night after a research laboratory's holiday party, scientists Paul (Alex Karpovsky) and Danielle (Jaime Ray Newman) hook up. That's enough for Danielle, but eight months later, Paul is still hung up. Kathy (Dakota Shepard), the girl he sees on occasion, bears a strong resemblance to Danielle, who finds herself attracted to new hire Chris (Dennis Staroselsky), not aware of just what sort of issues Paul has had since he and sister Linda (Amanda Good Hennessey) were abandoned by their mother.

Simplicity can be a fine thing for a movie like this; it would be easy for Karpovsky (who also directs) and co-writer Garth Donovan to pile subplots and twists on top of their story, but they opt not to. If there were more to that story, that would be admirable, but Rubberneck is so straightforward that some sort of digression might be welcome. Instead, it follows an uninspiringly logical outline, maybe not quite predictable but seldom surprising, with one thing leading to another without any sort of random event that might make the audience reconsider what is going on.

Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.06 (Monday 30 April 2012): The Revisionaries and Headhunters

The Monday on the IFFBoston schedule is sort of an in-between day - it's not a big moviegoing night in general, so few of what are expected to be the big premieres are playing (although the demand for El Bulli last year seemed to catch them by surprise). It's a good night to catch up on short programs and maybe a repeat or two from early in the festival, and not have to walk around that second corner to get to the end of the line.

To take last things first - as I did in reviewing, so that something would be in time for its Boston opening - I quite liked Headhunters, and more than just a little delighted when it ran on 35mm film. A few years ago, I mentioned that most of what I saw at a festival was on video and was told that it was probably just a combination of luck and the fact that I was selecting smaller entries to watch; I don't think that would be the case any more. I wouldn't be surprised if the only two things on film were Headhunters and Beyond the Black Rainbow, both already picked up for distribution by Magnolia and, with Boston dates already booked, playing IFFBoston as a sneak preview as much as anything. I get it - print costs are expensive, especially for independent filmmakers - but 35mm still looks a lot better than HDCAM.

There was also talk about the seemingly-inevitable American remake, which is unfortunate. While there's nothing in Headhunters that specifically precludes Americanization - heck, they could even retain Nikloj Coster-Waldau, who has done a fair amount of English-language work (I'm likely the last one who thinks of him as the title character in New Amsterdam rather than the guy in Game of Thrones) - the fact is, if you're doing one, you're doing it for the people who don't have the flexibility to see something with subtitles. And while the plot likely isn't going to be simplified much - it's pretty darn simple - it will probably get a string of flashbacks added to the end, and two of the most memorable action bits will likely get neutered.

But enough about that. The Revisionaries delivers some Horrible Photography:


The Revisionaries director Scott Thurman

Why yes, I was in an even-numbered screen at the Somerville; how did you guess?

Thurman came across as quite a nice guy, soft-spoken with just enough twang in his voice to indicate that he was likely able to put some of his subjects at ease by being a local as opposed to some interloper looking to make them appear foolish. He had a few interesting stories, and said that Don McLeroy wound up taking the movie over somewhat because he really does come across as the most entertaining subject on camera, a goofball whose simple conviction makes him unimaginably dangerous.

That McLeroy is pretty much exactly what he appears to be led to one of the strangest comments of the festival, that McLeroy actually liked the film and appeared with it at Tribeca. I suppose, from his point of view, the movie doesn't come off as alarmist, but shows him and his allies mostly getting what they wanted, with him as a genial everyman leading the charge. In some ways, that may be the most frightening thing about the experience - that McLeroy and others like him are not only trying to push their anachronistic, superstitious beliefs on the world, but think they come out of a movie like this looking good.

McLeroy didn't come to Boston, and while it's fun to think he would have been torn apart if he had, I don't know that we're a more dangerous audience than Tribeca. I did find the overt hostility of the audience during the documentary a bit discomfiting, though. One of the things that makes it really easy to dislike the current generation of Republicans is how rude and didactic they can be, and one doesn't expect the other side to act the same way (which has, arguably, been a weakness); hearing a bunch of people hiss and boo during a movie seems out-of-character, like both sides have now abandoned civility.

I felt a bit sorry for Thurman dealing with the audience at points; he was making a movie that they more or less agreed with, but got lefties saying he wasn't sounding the alarm loudly enough when it comes to the theocracy that the Right is trying to establish and science guys wishing he'd laid out the difference between a theory and a hypothesis better (and wondering why an anthropologist rather than a biologist was the pro-science voice we heard). I tended to gravitate toward the latter crowd, but it is in our nature to be a nit-picky group.

The political nature of the doc makes it a tricky one to review; it has some weaknesses as a film that I may be willing to overlook because I generally agree with its point of view and because it is presented in an entertaining manner. I think I'm all right at evaluating how well-made a film is rather than how well it synchronizes with my world view (I've started a few reviews with "____ is an important subject and thus deserves a better movie than ____" before), but education, and especially science education, is something I care about enough that it's very difficult for me to not phrase things in terms of "good guys" and "bad guys" and make the response to what I wrote about my personal political beliefs as opposed to the quality of the film. I don't know that I entirely managed it, but a quick look around the other reviews linked on IMDB suggests I did better than some.

The Revisionaries

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #4 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

It's easy to hear a phrase like "culture wars" and think that it's over-stating the matter; most people, most of the time, stick to their own thing, grouse that there's not more that reflects their beliefs and tastes, and leave it at that. But as The Revisionaries demonstrates, it's a very real thing, and one of the front lines is the Texas State Board of Education.

This is because the group decides on the standards that textbooks must meet in order to be used by a large population, and since publishers aren't looking to publish multiple editions, this can impact the education of children well outside their borders. As the film starts, in early 2009, the board is attempting to decide the language to be used when discussing the theory of evolution. The focus soon comes to rest upon Don McLeroy, the head of the Board, who is not an educator but a dentist, and a young-Earth creationist at that. He and fellow conservatives like Cynthia Dunbar (who is a professor at Liberty University as well as a board member) are one side of the fight, while the other side is mostly represented by lobbyists like Kathy Miller (Texas Freedom Network) and Eugenie Scott (National Center for Science Education) and witnesses like anthropology professor Ron Wetherington. McLeroy will also soon be facing a re-election campaign.

That director Scott Thurman chooses to focus on McLeroy is kind of unusual; it's fair to say that the film's sympathies lie with McLeroy's opponents, and the usual technique is to follow the heroic underdog. Then again, the "antagonist" in a documentary is seldom as gregarious and willing to grant access as this guy. There's nothing obviously shifty or deceptive about the guy, and that may be why he's so willing to have Thurman's cameras follow him - he genuinely feels that he has nothing to hide, and is so certain of his convictions that he can't understand why his opponents are so mean to him.

Full review at EFC.

Hodejegerne (Headhunters)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, 35mm)

What makes for a good thriller? There are many recipes, but it's the results that matter; the audience should spend as much time as possible excited by what's about to happen, in addition to what's going on in the moment. Headhunters does a legitimately exceptional job of that, letting the audience enjoy the roller-coaster ride its unlikely protagonist is on without playing down to anybody.

Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) is an Oslo corporate headhunter who between his expensive house, lavish gifts to wife Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund), and girlfriend Lotte (Julie Ølgaard) is living well beyond his means. He finances this lifestyle by moonlighting as an art thief, using intelligence he gleans at his day job and a partner who works for an alarm company - Ove (Eivind Sander) - to get things done quickly and quietly. At the opening of Diana's new gallery, he meets Clas Greve (Nikloj Coster-Waldau), a recent arrival from Denmark who is both perfect for a CEO job he's recruiting for and the inheritor of a piece lost since WWII - although things that look too good to be true often are.

Director Morten Tyldum and writers Lars Gudmestad & Ulf Ryberg (adapting a novel by Jo Nesbø) don't mess around with just how bad an idea stealing that painting is, or anything, really. Headhunters lays most of the information that the audience needs to know out early, and there's not a lot of it - just enough to kick off an entertaining chase. And once that's on, it's one thing after another with nary a moment for Roger or the audience to stop for breath, with the focus tightening to Roger as the movie goes on so that cut-aways don't slow things down. Even last-act revelations (which are actually pretty slick) don't require a pause to explain things.

Full review at EFC.

Two nights at the Arlington Captiol: The Pirates!: An Adventure with Scientists and Nesting

Actually, three nights at the Capitol this week, including The Avengers on Monday. As a venue, it's got its issues - five of the six screens have center aisle, which is a bit of a nuisance for those of us who like to sit in the center - but like their sister theater in Somerville, it's a nice place that prides itself on good presentation, and the ice-cream shop in the back

Nesting showing up there seemed kind of unusual, though. It's the right place for it - if you're going to book a theater to show your tiny indie movie for a week, the 48-seat room is probably the proper size - but even with that being the case, the Regent down the street seems to be used for that purpose more often, or the microcinema at the Somerville. Theater #6 is generally the "last stand" of a movie on its way out of town or used for birthday parties.

I wonder how many similar venues it's playing in across the country right now. I got a heads-up on this one because the lead actor is from Massachusetts and the distributors were hoping for an interview, which I don't really do between the day job and everything else (all I could spare was a middling review), but it's not listed in many places. It's not really a bad movie, and in some ways that works against it - it doesn't have the resources or ambition to really flop big. It's capable enough, with a few good jokes, but never puts itself out there in a way that not just pleases audiences, but maybe convinces festivals or distributors to give it a shot.

Still, one thing about a 48-room screening room is that a couple dozen people (some of whom likely know Todd Grinnell) feels like the movie is pretty well-attended. I've been to movies with bigger crowds that felt abandoned, whereas my opinion of this one likely benefitted a bit from having that much reaction in a small space.

The night before, there were, I think, three of us there to see The Pirates!, which isn't that bad after a couple of weeks. After seeing it, I'm a bit less outraged about the name change from "The Pirates! in An Adventure with Scientists" to "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" for America, mostly because there's only one scientist in a major role. Still, the rationale behind it is troublesome - someone at Sony Pictures quite likely believed that having "scientists" in the title would scare kids away, and, more importantly and sadly, ticket-buying parents might not want their children seeing anything that involved those terrible scientists! In specific terms, it's not really objectionable, but the thought process behind it is awful.

(Which dovetails nicely into the next thing I'm writing up, but that's for tomorrow...)

The Pirates! in An Adventure with Scientists (aka The Pirates! Band of Misfits)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 May 2012 in the Arlington Capitol #4 (first-run, Real-D 3D)

It's a bit of a puzzle to fans of the medium (and quality family movies) that Aardman Animation is not more popular in the U.S. Is it just too British? It can't be the quality of their work - even something like The Pirates!, which isn't quite as brilliant as Chicken Run or their Wallace & Gromit pieces, has a tremendously impressive amount of quality packed into every frame and the animation thereof.

Though his crew loves him, The Pirate Captain (voice of Hugh Grant) is considered a joke by other aquatic marauders, so he sets out to win the annual Pirate of the Year Award with equal parts delusion and determination. He finds no booty on any of the ships he raids, although a passenger on one, the Beagle, believes that his parrot Polly is quite extraordinary. Promised rewards beyond compare, the crew and this Charles Darwin (voice of David Tennant) voyage to London to present Polly to the Royal Society, even though The Pirate Captain's trusty Number Two (voice of Martin Freeman) finds the whole thing suspicious and it brings them perilously near the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (voice of Imelda Staunton).

Aardman productions, whether stop-motion like this film or CGI like the recent Arthur Christmas, tend to be simple in concept but meticulously constructed in production, and The Pirates! is no exception. From the way that the pirates are named, Gideon Defoe's original book (which he adapted as a screenplay) at least imitates something pitched to those whose age has not attained a second digit, and the vast majority of the jokes are some variation on "this character is rather dim". Defoe, director Peter Lord, co-director Jeff Newitt, and the rest of the filmmakers pack creativity into every corner, though, whether it be with amusing anachronisms (and other liberties taken with history), background gags that will eventually give home audiences' freeze-frame buttons a workout, and tossed-off references that will amuse the adults in the theater without leaving a hole in the movie for the kids. It's cognizant of being a kids' movie about thieves and cutthroats without ruining the fun.

Full review at EFC.

Nesting

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 11 May 2012 in the Arlington Capitol #6 (first-run/four-wall, video)

Nesting is a nice enough little indie comedy that does nobody any harm and has the occasional pretty decent moment. That's a nice starting point, but the movie could use a little bit more of everything, from resources to rewrites.

Neil (Todd Grinnell) and Sarah (Ali Hillis) have been married a few years, just long enough that Neil is starting to wonder when the fun girl he married became the yuppie with the fancy coffee machine and planning to redecorate their house. Since this work is going to require them to be out of the house for a few days, they decide to go on a vacation that detours through their old neighborhood, leading (as it does) to them breaking into their old apartment.

Writer/director John Chuldenko doesn't have a bad idea here; the characters start at a place that many at that age will find familiar and the premise of trying to return to their old lives with potentially disastrous results is kind of clever. Unfortunately, Chuldenko doesn't seem to have developed it nearly as well as he could have. The "marriages often fall apart at the 'nesting' stage" theme is laid out baldly but not strongly in the first act, and the end doesn't really have a strong statement on the subject. There's also a weirdly materialist streak to the end that doesn't necessarily sit right.

The big picture has its issues, but Chuldenko does come up with some neat details. There's a fun, off-beat sequence at the beginning that involves Neil taking advantage of his unusual job; the middle section where Neil and Sarah have a series of odd misadventures in their old neighborhood has a bunch of nifty single-use characters and odd situations that are good for a chuckle. There's a number of pretty good lines in there. There are also a few bits where the filmmakers' ambition exceeds their capabilities - it's probably not the best idea to mention a comically large disaster (and pictures of it) if you don't have the budget to actually show it. And while a montage at a certain point would have been a cliché worth mocking, the moment does need something showing us that people are doing stuff.
Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.05 (Sunday 29 April 2012): Fairhaven, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Girl Model & Keyhole

This is how it starts... I know I'm not going to get a This Week In Tickets post done during the festival, but I figure the next week isn't unreasonable, and then when that week passes I'm barely done writing up February, and before you know it it's Fantasia time and I haven't done one since April...

Well, anyway, time to stop worrying and show off some horrible photography. It's a shame there wasn't a full set - at first, Guy Maddin was going to come with Keyhole, then there was talk of him doing a Skype Q&A, but when the movie ended we just all wound up going home. Sad; having his picture be a photo of a head projected on a screen with a webcam underneath and someone pointing at other people amused me. And I wanted to ask him how excited he was to have the NHL back in his town; one of the most memorable things about when he brought My Winnipeg to the festival four years ago was how thoroughly incensed he was at his hockey team being stolen away and the old arena demolished (in fact, the footage of the new one was all on video, because "it doesn't deserve film!").


Fairhaven writer/director/star Tom O'Brien & producers

As you might expect, there were a lot of people from Fairhaven, MA, here for this one, although they were much less rambunctious than the previous night's crowd for Booster, although it got off on some amusing tangents.


Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry director Alison Klayman and editor Jennifer Fineran

Another thoroughly pleasant pair. Like a lot of documentaries, many of the questions in this Q&A were about what happened to the people involved in the action after the filmmakers stopped rolling, which in this case is pretty much where they were when the film ended. One person raised her hand to mention that she was a Tufts student doing a thesis on Ai Weiwei.


Girl Model (and Downeast) filmmakers Ashley Sabin and David Redmon

I am quite frankly shocked that the pictures I had from this screening came out this well. I remember it being a little darker and Redmon always looking at the floor so that his hat blocked his entire face.

I mention as an aside in the review that I really hope that when Girl Model does get released on DVD, it's with some sort of commentary or featurette that reflects what they talked about here. Because, contrary to what you may expect after having only watched the film, the project was actually initiated by Ashley Arbaugh, who came up to them after a screening of a previous film to say she had a subject for a documentary for them, though the version she pitched hinted at prostitution and more obviously criminal behavior. Watch the film, and you're likely to wonder why Arbaugh allowed herself to be interviewed or signed a release, but hearing that this movie was in some ways her idea makes things even stranger.

You can still see traces of that initial pitch in some of her interview footage, and it does make me wonder whether the modeling agencies and the like were very careful to keep certain things out of sight. Sabin & Redmon describe Arbaugh as being about as reliable behind the scenes as she seems stable in front of it, apparently misrepresenting who the crew was, craving attention, and flat-out contradicting herself at times. It actually makes an already interesting documentary even more fascinating, but it must have been a bizarre experience to live through.

Fairhaven

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

If you're going to go through a time of self-doubt or regret, you could find worse surroundings than Fairhaven, Mass. It's got the kind of snow dirt and smoke don't seem to stick to, there are good friends there to support you, and your problems are taken seriously without being blown out of proportion.

Take, for instance, Jon (writer/director Tom O'Brien); a man in his mid-thirties, his job on a fishing boat is steady but makes it hard for him to find time to write, which is his true passion; his girlfriend Angela (Alexie Gilmore) teaches "laughter classes" and talks about open relationships in a way that sounds cool but makes him nervous. His best friend Sam (Rich Sommer) has a great daughter but hasn't really been with any one since divorcing high-school sweetheart Kate (Sarah Paulson), who has since remarried. The other guy they were close with as kids, Dave (Chris Messina), has been away for ten years but has returned for his father's funeral.

There's no terrible, hidden dysfunction underneath the surface here. Characters' issues are pretty much what they appear to be, and the secrets revealed, while not quite inconsequential, are the sort that hang over the characters uneasily rather than ominously. O'Brien seems to have a sense of proportion about things; these aren't the sort of problems that are solved with outbursts, and they're not made so for dramatic effect. A moment which a different film might milk for tension instead has the guys teasing Kate about her new husband being older man, for example, a certain manifestation of Jon's insecurity also manages to serve as a running joke.


Full review at EFC.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #3 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is an odd duck, even by installation-artist standards. That it's often an affable, upbeat eccentricity may help explain why a government not known for free expression let the outspoken Ai be for so long (along with his international renown). Such an artist in such a situation can't avoid trouble forever, but the type he winds up making tends to be interesting.

The movie opens innocently enough, with Ai in his Beijing home/studio, supervising the fabrication of pieces meant for upcoming shows, talking about art in a broad sense and telling the audience how one of the dozens of cats that share his space can open doors. And while some of his more obviously confrontational pieces (like a "perspective study" photograph of his middle finger and Tienanmen Square) and stances (helping design the "birds' nest" for the Beijing Olympics and then boycotting the games) don't seem to draw a reaction, a seemingly much more innocuous project - documenting the children who died in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake - gets his popular blog shut down. Ai takes his message to Twitter, but...

It may initially seem like an odd thing for the People's Republic to go to the wall over, both because Ai's actions seem far more humanitarian than political, and because, well, why make civilian casualties of a natural disaster a state secret? As the film points out, there is an underlying cause aside from random tragedy - shoddy construction materials used in many of the area's schools - but both artist and filmmaker are humane enough to not try and score obvious political points from dead children. There's a connection be made between schools literally collapsing and Ai Weiwei's comments about Chinese art schools not teaching artists what they need to know, but director Alison Klayman doesn't push that (if it's even intended). If anything, the intent seems to be to show that Ai's activism springs from concern about his people rather than his government.


Full review at EFC.

Girl Model

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #3 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

When one sees a documentary with a title like "Girl Model" on a festival schedule, it's probably not a bad idea to schedule a little time between it and the next film to wash a bit of the scummy feeling off. What's particularly interesting about this one is that it is that sort of uneasy-making movie without a doubt, but it also presents a bit more complex than just exploitation. Girl Model is not ambiguous, but still capable of leaving the audience unsure about what it has seen.

We start in Siberia - Novosibersk, to be precise - where model scout Ashley Arbaugh is looking for some fresh faces for an agency in Japan. Out of a large crowd assembled by NOAH Models (which has the local market cornered), Ashley chooses Nadya Vall, a willowy thirteen-year-old who has the agency employing Ashley craves. Nadya goes off to Japan alone, despite not speaking Japanese or even English, and Ashley heads back home to Connecticut.

It's not long before filmmakers Ashley Sabin & David Redmon reveal that Arbaugh also modeled in Japan in her teen years, and one hopes that we're not watching history repeat itself. Nadya is a sweet kid who probably thought that she was going to be the plucky heroine in a rags-to-riches fairy tale, and while the audience doesn't witness much in the way of active malice, loneliness and confusion soon take their toll. Redmon & Sabin are pretty hands-off with Nadya and her roommate Madlen, getting a little background information from those around the young Russian girls without doing much to diminish the audience's sense of just how strange this must seem.


Full review at EFC.

Keyhole

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #5 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Winnipeg-based director Guy Maddin has never been anything less than unconventional, but some of his more recent efforts have met the mainstream halfway; they were peculiar films but the audience didn't have to take up residence in Maddin's head to understand them. Despite having a few actors that the audience will recognize at the top of the cast, Keyhole is half a step back toward strange, but manages to be more intriguing than confusing.

The cops have got gangster Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) and his gang on the run, eventually cornering them in his mansion. It's a terrible place to make a last stand, but escape seems to be far from Ulysses's mind; he means to find his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini), who has shut herself in her bedroom since the death of most of their children. That sounds like it should not be difficult, but Ulysses's memory isn't working quite right, and he's relying on a young woman (Brooke Palsson) to show him the way, but she seems both psychic and disoriented, likely as a result of her recent drowning.

That will throw a person, but the lines separating life and death are different in Keyhole's world. The mansion is filled with ghosts, and after the shootout ends, Ulysses asks those who have died to step outside, so that the police can get them to the morgue. Maddin and co-writer George Toles don't specify the rigid rules of a fantasy universe here; while not every interaction between the living and the dead is weighty and symbolic (some are just crude jokes), the basic idea seems to be that death and loss can be handled in many different ways. Sometimes, the survivors can seem more like ghosts than the departed.

Full review at EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 May 2012 - 10 May 2012

I'm not going to get cutesy over what the main event is this weekend; I've been psyched about the idea for too long - that's why it's especially hilarious that I probably won't get to see it until at least Monday!

• That main event is, of course, Marvel's The Avengers, which is like if you decided that Iron Man 3 should also be Thor 2 and Captain America 2 and guest-star the Hulk. Oh, and have the guy behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguably the last really successful new superhero, direct. It's already opened huge internationally and will likely do the same stateside. It plays at the Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square, Boston Common (including the Imax-branded screen), and Fenway (including the RPX screen). Each actually has a full day's worth of screenings in both 2D and 3D.
  
  It's not the only movie opening with a packed cast, although there's likely little overlap between it and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which features Bill Nighy, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith as English retirees in India. That's a pretty exceptional cast for what appears to be a feel-good comedy. It plays Kendall Square and Boston Common.


• If you want big action and quintessentially British people, the Somerville Theatre has their second James Bond Weekend, with four more 007 films playing on the big screen in 35mm. Diamonds Are Forever and Live & Let Die play Friday night and Saturday afternoon, while The Man with the Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me run Saturday night. $10 per, $20 for a weekend pass.
  
  Now that IFFBoston is over, they have to restock their screen, so they pick up Damsels in Distress from the Kendall and both The Hunger Games and The Cabin in the Woods from the Capitol (the latter actually returning after vacating the premises for nine days).


• If you haven't gotten enough film festival time in from IFFBoston, the Boston LGBT Film Festival will be taking place at a number of venues, taking over the entire schedule for the Brattle Theatre and Museum of Fine Arts while also playing a number of shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art and Coolidge Corner Theatre.
  
  (Okay, not quite the entire schedule at the MFA; there's a free screening on Thursday 10 May at 5pm of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design's 2012 Animation Senior Show, with 22 shorts from graduating MassArt students!)


• The Boston LGBT Film Festival has single shows at the Coolidge from Tuesday the 8th to Thursday the 10th, and this midnight show on the 4th and 5th (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, with a special pre-show drag performance) is also co-presented by the festival.
  
  There are also a few other special screenings: Talk Cinema finishes their season at 10am on Sunday with 2 Days in New York, so those of us that missed it at IFFBoston have a second chance (albeit without Julie Delpy in person). Monday evening is the latest "Sounds of Silents" presentation - 1929's Picadilly, featuring Anna May Wong and a new score from the Berklee College of Music's Department of Film Scoring. On Wednesday, they'll be playing George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Martin Scorcese's epic new documentary on the late Beatle.
  
  They also pick up a couple of movies leaving Kendall Square: Ewan MacGregor and Emily Blunt in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen on film and Turn Me On, Dammit! in the video rooms.


• All those movies moving away from Kendall Square are making room for more than just a couple screens of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The one-week booking is This Is Not a Film, a documentary that follows famed Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been sentenced to six years of imprisonment and banned from making films for twenty years, shot by a friend on a phone and small DV camera and smuggled out of the country. They also get The Skinny, a story of five friends (all black and gay, one female) meeting up in New York one year after graduating from college. Life lessons ahoy! There's also a single screening of Joffrey: Marvericks of American Dance at 7pm on Wednesday the 9th, documenting the first truly American ballet company.


• ArtsEmerson's Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theater has two restoration prints on tap. The final "Gotta Dance" selection plays Friday at 6:30pm, Saturday at 8:30pm, and Sunday at 2pm, and it's a good one: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell playing beautiful gold-diggers on a transatlantic cruise for director Howard Hawks. The same period also produces The River, the first film in their "Renoir in Technicolor" series, with Jean Renoir and his nephew/cinematographer Claude capturing India at the end of the colonial period. It plays Friday at 8:30pm and Saturday at 2pm & 6:30pm.


• Yellow Submarine has apparently had a painstaking 4K digital restoration, and that new print/digital file will pop up at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on Thursday the 10th for the first of ten shows over the next week and a half. It's... odd, but it's still the Beatles. Well, sort of (others voice the Fab Four outside of the songs).


• The Harvard Film Archive is running the final weekend of Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Cinema Novo and Beyond, with Senhor dos Santos appearing in person at 7pm on Friday (for Rio, Northern Zone), Saturday (How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman), and Sunday (Music According to Tom Jobim, his latest). Two other dos Santos films do not have an appearance scheduled - Hunger for Love: Have You Ever Sunbathed Completely Nude? on Sunday afternoon and The Third Bank of the River on Monday evening.

My plans? Bond Friday and Saturday night, 2 Days in New York and baseball on Sunday, Picadilly Monday, and The Avengers on Tuesday (I mean, I've got to see it before hitting the comic shop on Wednesday, right)? And that's probably enough!

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.04 (Saturday 28 April 2012): Time Zero, Knuckleball!, Think of Me, and Booster

I planned for this to be the crazy marathon day and maybe the fact that it wasn't that kind of gauntlet wound up being for the best - watching six films doesn't sound like a whole lot more "work" than four, but running from one theater to another means not eating real food, keeping one part of the brain running hot while the rest idles, with little exercise... It's surprisingly grinding.

But let's get started with the first opportunity for Horrible Photography:



I appreciate the bow tie. It's snazzy, and I do like it when filmmakers dress up a bit for their film to play a festival. I'm going to have to buy a new suit for my cousin's wedding this June because I left my only suit in a hotel room of the last wedding I went to (several summers ago), so it's not like I feel they should be worn often, but guys - you're doing something special and representing not just your own work, but that of your cast and crew - shave and look nice!

I must admit, though, that though I mostly liked Time Zero, a fairly prevalent theme in the first half hour or so rubbed me the wrong way. As much as I dig the way these cameras create "instant artifacts", the pity for the poor kids who won't grow up with shoeboxes full of Polaroids is just kind of annoyingly myopic - both in how horrible it is that the next generation won't have the exact same childhood we did any more than our exactly replicated our forebears' (where's the wailing over the loss of the daguerreotype? You had to sit for twenty minutes and there's silver in it, so it's even more precious than your pre-digital photographs!) and how laughable the notion that today's kids won't have the same level of access to memories because of it. To be honest, I suspect that they'll have rather the opposite problem - it's not like my brothers are taking baby pictures down from Facebook and Instagram as their daughters grow older!

Despite that, I did enjoy the movie. I do wish it had started on time - it was delayed about a half hour to accommodate a 1pm (rather than 12:30pm) showtime that somehow got spread, which meant that by the time it was done, there was no way I was getting to Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. Too bad, it might have been fun to do back-to-back reviews of movies about instant photography and highly time-consuming and involved photography.



There were a lot of other chances to double up on movies this year, though: Two Detroit docs, two photography docs, two Chinese activist docs, two with Lauren Ambrose (see below), quite a few musician docs... and two baseball documentaries. I liked both, although in some ways Knuckleball! had a more immediate connection, as I was at a game or two featured in the movie (feel free to page through "This Week In Tickets" posts to figure out which ones)... although we weren't really celebrating the knuckler as the quest for 200 wins dragged on.

I won't be doing a full review of this one right away, as it's got weird embargo rules - no reviews until its Boston opening, although the Q&A implied it would be going straight to DVD and the MLB Network, with maybe a special event screening or two this summer (likely with Tim Wakefield present). And embargo without an embargo date is just weird on top of the usual "since I was given a press pass to represent EFC, I can't post about it, but if I'd bought my own ticket and not known about the embargo, it would be fair game, even though I'd write the same 6-8 paragraphs" that goes hand-in-hand with festival-related embargoes.

That said, I kind of get why there's not a real major release planned - I'm not sure how this plays to an audience that's not full of Red Sox or Mets fans. Your team vs. ballplayers in general is the difference between there being all-out cheering during the baseball footage in the movie or just polite attention.



Think of Me - pretty good movie, nice director, with a fair amount of talk about which elements were autobiographical. I probably could have made it to the Brattle and back for 2 Days in New York with Julie Delpy doing a Q&A instead, but the Red Line was unpredictable this weekend, and, besides, that will be getting a release and I don't know about Think of Me.



Not pictured - Adam Roffman taking control of the Q&A so that the lady behind me didn't ruin it. Not that her being a really annoying disruption was entirely her fault - I heard her assuring the people sitting next to her that she wasn't high but had a neurological issue. My initial reaction was "suuuuuure!", but I think even people who aren't all there will generally notice that they're the only one not being cool and dial it back, but she had this overreaction to everything that really got uncomfortable after a while. Then, during the Q&A, she stood up and thanked the filmmakers for acknowledging that everything in Boston has to go through the Asian Mob first (what?). Pretty soon the Q&A became sort of rapid fire, as Adam was pointing to the next person immediately after each question was answered so there wouldn't be a space where people could insert themselves.

Kind of a shame that the session really couldn't be relaxed, because director Matt Ruskin and stars Nico Stone and Adam DuPaul were likable folks with great stories of shooting a movie in Boston with no money but a ton of passion, and there were a lot of local folks there.

It still went on long enough for me to miss Beyond the Black Rainbow at the Brattle, but that's okay - it's on the new calendar and I was dragging, and while I want to give it another look, it did have me drifting during the afternoon when I saw it at Fantasia; who knows how much I could have handled at 11:30pm!

Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Instant photography is pretty darn cool, both as concept and technology, and most of the core audience for Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film probably already feels that rather strongly. The rest of the people who might watch it also aren't likely to need a whole lot of convincing. It's a bit less than ideal, then, that director Grant Hamilton spends so much of the film on saying so, because there is much more interesting material to come.

As many of the photographers and enthusiasts interviewed for the film lament, younger people might not recognize that Polaroid was until recently not just a generic electronics & imaging brand, but one synonymous with self-developing film and the collapsible cameras that took those pictures. In February of 2008, they quietly let it be known that they would be ending production of their signature product, leading to initial despair and then an audacious plan to purchase a Polaroid facility in the Netherlands and produce new instant film within a year - a plan so unlikely that it was called "The Impossible Project".

The Impossible Project changed the nature of Time Zero; what started as a eulogy suddenly had the potential for an actual story with a triumphant conclusion of sorts. Without that, it seems likely that the length of a short would have been better-suited to this topic than that of a feature; the opening half hour that focuses on the upcoming end of an era already contains a fair amount of repetition and filler - as peculiar as the guy described as Polaroid inventor/founder Edwin Land's bodyguard is, including him really brings nothing to the movie.

Full review at EFC.


Knuckleball!

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

A lot of reviews of sports movies will start out with the writer saying something like "Knuckleball! isn't really about baseball", but let's be honest: Knuckleball! is about baseball. Following R.A. Dickey and Tim Wakefield and their peculiar pitch is about as baseball-specific as you can get, and while you can find a more general message (say, that it's possible to thrive even if you do things a different way), that's in part because we humans are built to search for that sort of relevance. There's still a lot of baseball.

And that's cool, because baseball is fantastic, and directors Ricki Stern & Anne Sundberg shoot the game nicely, using the knuckler's unnatural sort of motion as both transition and punctuation. They've got a pair of genial main subjects in Wakefield and Dickey, along with access to plenty of other colorful characters filling out the fraternity of knuckleball pitchers.

I'll recommend Knuckleball! to people when I can post a real review, but it's made for a niche audience, no question. Baseball is in the foreground here, and players on northeastern teams in particular. You've got to be down for that, although those who are will find it pretty entertaining.


Think of Me

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #5 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Lauren Ambrose has been building a solid body of work since her teens, mostly as part of quality ensembles. Here she's got a lead role, and while it's not likely to be the one that makes her a household name - the movie's too small and the character's not an obvious heroine - it certainly doesn't bring her average down. And though she's in every scene, she's far from alone in delivering the goods here.

She plays Angela, a single mother in the less flashy part of Las Vegas whose call-center job just barely makes ends meet. Her daughter Sunny (Audrey Scott) is just about to turn eight and is falling behind the other students in her class with a possible reading disability. At work, she commiserates with Max (Dylan Baker), the guy in the next cube, and learns of an investment opportunity from her boss (David Conrad). It's not the kind that sets one up for life but it would give her a bit of a cushion. Of course, she's not the type for whom this sort of thing goes smoothly.

Yes, Angela is more than a bit of a screw-up, but she's a walking disaster as the movie begins rather than a crashing one, and not completely unsympathetic. We're not given much of a sense of what her circumstances were like when Sunny was born, but somehow she's managed to get this far without everything falling apart. Writer Bryan Wizemann presents her as someone who has made grudging, minimal concessions to being a responsible adult and parent - she knows she has to have a job, but also blows it off very easily when she doesn't feel like working. She's dressed like someone who can afford to be a lot more carefree and provocative, for that matter.

Full review at EFC.


Booster

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Booster doesn't do a whole lot; it could almost survive with its plot removed. It's the sort of independent film that comes across as authentic to those from its neighborhood and has a sharp enough read on its characters to work for those outside. Filmmaker Matt Ruskin doesn't have the resources for a lot of criminal activity, but observes well enough to make up for it.

Simon (Nico Stone) is a shoplifter who has honed his craft well; he can boost items large and small without getting caught, even if they've got an anti-theft tag on them, and while the operation is small - his friend Paul (Adam DuPaul) gives him a "shopping list" and moves the results - it works. To be fair, he is spotted lifting some perfume by a girl that works at the drug store, but Megan (Kristin Dougherty) winds up more interested in getting to know him than reporting him. The trouble is, Simon's brother Sean (Brian McGrail) tends to go for bigger game and has been pinched for armed robbery. He's looking at a long stretch unless Simon pulls a few jobs with the same M.O.

Though there are scenes of Simon casing shops and crime is a part of nearly every conversation, even in a nursing home, Booster is not a caper story with a lot of complex moving parts. Neither brother is pulling especially elaborate jobs, to the extent that Simon lining a bag with aluminum foil to fool anti-theft devices is about as tricky a plan as these guys go in for. There are occasional reminders that Simon had better get started robbing laundromats if he doesn't want his brother to go to jail, but they could almost be notes to the writer/director - didn't he sell this to us as a crime film?

Full review at EFC.