Category Archives: Movies

On movies, video, projection, and the like.

James' Big Lebowski Party rocked

Posted on by
Reply

I headed over to James' place and a few of the people from MEETinROCHESTERMySpace link had already arrived; Ali had a few things to do first so she got there a bit later: not long after Mr. Lebowski was in seclusion in the West Wing.

Anyway, The Big Lebowski is still great. The whole slacker philosophy of The Dude warms my heart: pretty much a hippie, but without the glom-on Communistic need-more-than-they-are-able whinyness that turns your average free-living hippie into a damn dirty hippie.

I opted to dress up … I don't think anyone else did beyond maybe a Hawaiian shirt. I approximated the Dude's look when he's introduced: sniffing quarts of cream in the grocery store while wearing slippers, boxer shorts, and a terrycloth robe over a dingy T-shirt. When I stopped for wine I almost paid by check for effect, but it came to more than $0.60.

After the movie I ended up staying very late — generally hoarding the conversation to be all about me and what I've done in the last few years. I guess people were interested, but I was being pretty conceited about it and didn't really pay much attention. Well, save for the fact that nobody really tried to change the subject. Most people stayed until at least 11 or so, but I left James and Ken around 3:30 or so.  Yeesh.

The Savages at the Dryden

Posted on by
Reply

Tamara Jenkins' The Savages played at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) and Ali and I went to see it. They also screened one of her short films from film school, Family Remains. It had a very stylized veneer and told the tale of a mother and daughter who need to confront the death of the divorced husband. It was generally pretty good, but obviously less skillfully made than Jenkins' later work.

The Savages was an excellent film as in its own right. It tells the tale of two siblings, Jon and Wendy, reunited when their father is diagnosed with dementia. They put him in a nursing home near where Jon lives in Buffalo and end up learning a lot about one another's lives in the process.

I was disappointed to that some scenes felt contrived — although Ali disagrees and enjoyed the organic serendipity of it. In one case, it's important for Wendy to meet with Howard, one of the caretakers at the nursing home. She had brought her cat from New York and is allowed to let it stay at the nursing home. I thought it contrived that the cat gets in a fight with another cat at the home, so when Wendy goes to get it, she and Howard end up cornering it under a couch which and end up having a conversation one-on-one.

In all, though, that's a minor fault. One of the best things about the film is that Laura Linney as Wendy and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Jon are both excellent leads. To be completely honest, though, the movie is stolen by a perfectly invisible performance by Philip Bosco as their dad, Lenny.

Make Way for Tomorrow at the Dryden

Posted on by
Reply

I went to the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) to see Make Way for Tomorrow. Tamara Jenkins gave a brief introduction after Jim Healy — the film was influential when she was writing her own film, The Savages. I liked her breezy, run-on way of talking and identified with "guilty writer syndrome" where rather than writing the script for The Savages, she took a break to see Tôkyô monogatari (Tokyo Story) at a local film house, as it's on many "must-see" lists, particularly for filmmakers.

So upon watching it, she discovered it was based on a film from the 1930's: Make Way for Tomorrow (which, in turn, is based on a play and book). She and her husband sought to find a copy, and after exhausting film and video sources, they turned to eBay where they bought a VHS copy that was recorded on late-night TV, commercials-and-all. Presumably she got to see a private screening during her visit: she quipped that she has greatly enjoyed Rochester even though she's only seen it from the interior of the Dryden Theatre: she spent her time watching movies from the Eastman House archive.

Anyway, Make Way for Tomorrow was the saddest movie I ever saw. It starts out with a family of adult siblings being called to their parents' home. Their father explains that he failed to pay the mortgage and the house is being lost to foreclosure. His kids are relieved to find they have 6 months to vacate, but when they ask, he admits that the 6 months runs out in just a few days. The siblings try to accommodate their parents but all of them also try to maintain their own lives as if there were no disruption.

It's clear that all the parents (Bart and Lucy) want is to be together, but they have no means to do so on their own. Initially they're housed just a few hundred miles away on the East coast so they write letters to one another and rarely call (I guess they didn't have unlimited long distance). The siblings make a ditch effort to house their parents in the much more temperate climate of California with their sister. But when they find she is only willing to take care of Bart, they elect to put Lucy into a nursing home and send Bart alone.

The siblings are welcome their parents' meager request to spend one last day together. They spend it around New York — Bart still trying to find work to make ends meet. In lieu of dining with their children, they visit the hotel where they had their honeymoon and are welcomed by the staff. But alas, Bart's train is to leave and they get to the train station to say goodbye.

Just before Bart boards, he turns back to Lucy and says [pardon my paraphrasing], "and just in case there's a wreck or anything happens and I don't see you again, I just wanted to say that the last 50 years with you have been the best I could ever hope for." Lucy reciprocates — and it's abundantly clear that they will not ever see one another again.

I tried to explain the film to Ali when I got home but I broke down telling her about the last scenes. It's really unbelievable and deserves to be seen by many more people.

A documentary about Hunter S. Thompson

Posted on by
Reply

I arrived at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) a bit early and was instructed to segregate myself around a barrier. On one side was the line of souls waiting to buy tickets for this night's screening Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I stood on the other, alone — at least for the moment.

Since it was the first Friday in May, I was celebrating No Pants DayMySpace link. I was wearing a dress shirt, sport coat, black socks, Italian leather shoes, and black boxer shorts. A laminated pink card dangled around my neck. I had lazily acquired from a volunteer at the office of The Rochester High Falls International Film Festival (RHFIFF) at the last possible moment. It said "Press".

To be perfectly frank, I'm not a follower of Thompson — I had heard of his "gonzo journalism" style and had read little of his blunt, often insightful style but knew little else. I even had a crummy, expensive burger at his former haunt, Woody Creek Tavern (2858 Woody Creek Rd., Aspen, CO), and knew several people living in and around Aspen when his ashes were blown out of a cannon.

We shuffled in to the theater once it was emptied of its former contents. I sat in the back corner of the lower area as I often do to avoid having to confront any obnoxious audience member. I watched as each person found their place. Younger hipster sycophants drifted to the upper, more secluded level while their older counterparts avoided the stairs and stayed on the lower level. Each group was desperate to acquire vicariously what can truly only be done in person: to have an interesting life.

That said, the movie itself was fascinating and fantastic, covering a an engaging subject with lots of archival footage, great music, great editing … the whole deal. Afterward they revealed it would be given a mid-sized theatrical release around July 4.

But I was more interested in the concept of shooting big guns. It seemed like a great way to relieve stress or something … there really isn't another way to put it because shooting guns is like a core experience unto itself. Just like there isn't another way to explain what it's like to smash something with a hammer. I figure guns are the same kind of thing, only you get to do it from farther away.

And there's fire involved.

Vito [Friscia] After [being a 9/11 first responder]

Posted on by
Reply

My first film at The Rochester High Falls International Film Festival (RHFIFF) was Vito After — the documentary about Vito Friscia and his battle with health issues following being a first-responder at the 9/11 attacks. It was a very nice film about the man and increased awareness of the scope of the problem: both in the cops' unwillingness to answer surveys honestly from their self-sufficient tough-guy personae (Friscia is shown marking "no affect on quality of life" despite a nagging cough), and in the mystified medical professionals who have been unable to decipher solid answers from the deluge of illness and conditions. During the question-and-answer, Friscia was there along with filmmaker Maria Pusateri. She said that the group shown doing the research was running out of money and the federal government was not supplying more — in fact, this was the only mention in the film or the Q-and-A of the government; the movie refreshingly doesn't target blame on any group as it's simply not really knowable who is "to blame".

Coffee With … Beautiful Chaos

Posted on by
Reply

I headed out to Spot Coffee (200 East Ave.) this morning to catch the Coffee With … event of The Rochester High Falls International Film Festival (RHFIFF). This event is one of the most consistent winners in my book — I enjoy getting to sit down and talk with creative people. It's always semi-controlled chaos as it's never certain who (among the filmmakers) will show up and who (among the festival goers) will show up so it might be just a handful, or it could be hundreds.

This time it was in-between. The meeting area was the upper balcony at Spot and there were about 40 people there total of which there were (I think) about 8 filmmakers. It was crowded and challenging — but so personal. I got to chat with a bunch of people including Donald Pusateri who was having a ball at the festival as the husband of filmmaker Maria Pusateri (whom I also met later) — she made Vito After about her brother-in-law Vito Friscia and his battle with health issues following being a first-responder at the 9/11 attacks. I also got to meet Alex Miltsch, the president of Rochester Park Studios (789 Elmgrove Rd.) — hopefully they'll do well, even if it's a risky venture.

And — as certain as I am to run into festival director Catherine Wyler herself was Jerry Stoeffhaas, Deputy Director of The New York Governor's Office for Motion Picture and Television Development and Nora Brown, Assistant Director of The Rochester/Finger Lakes Film and Video Office.

Searchers 2.0 will be a cult movie

Posted on by
Reply

I went to see Searchers 2.0 at the Dryden Theater at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) I really didn't know what exactly to expect — it was billed as a tale of two actors who are determined to confront a screenwriter who mistreated them many decades prior. In essence, that's what it is: two guys get together and discover that both of them are movie trivia buffs, both were in the same movie as child extras, and that both were abused by the director for no apparent reason. They do what any one of us would: they get on the road to seek out the aging director and beat the crap out of him.

The movie itself was made on the cheap and it shows, giving it a Clerks-like feel. Writer/director Alex Cox was obviously a film-buff himself and paid homage to more films that I could identify — his characters believe themselves to be experts in cinema yet are often wrong in their details.

But it's the aura of the experience that makes it so memorable. I got the feeling that it wasn't edited (neither script nor film) all that much which is why it channels a very pure idea — one that isn't necessarily accessible to the audience. There's the idea of a long-dead need for vengeance — and the whole unnecessary-ness of it all. There's also a romantic view of the solitude of the road trip shared among its participants. And, of course, a love of movies and movie-making.

Anyway, producer Jon Davison was there in person — a jovial character who was ecstatic to see his film with an audience, and who temporarily suspended his retirement to make this film. After the screening, he was joined by Jim Healy and Alex Cox (by telephone [which actually worked pretty much fine, much to my surprise]) for question-and-answer. There really wasn't much in the line of questions — Searchers 2.0 doesn't leave one with questions.

It's just more of an uneasy feeling that maybe you should go back and watch what you saw one more time … not for any specific reason, though. And for that reason, I think Searchers 2.0 is going garner a cult following.

Emerging Filmmakers #46 at the Little

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight was The Emerging Filmmakers Series #46 and Ali and I made it to The Little (240 East Ave.) to see it. I liked ABC Movie by Elisabeth Tonnard once it got rolling and I figured out the literary angle of the visual collage that plays on "apple", "book", and "clock". Fallen by Jon Noble was a zombie horror short on a budget … although imperfect, there's a solid talent there. The real gem of the evening was Last Time in Clerkenweell [not Bathtime in Clerkenwell as I had noted … although the descriptions and reviews seem remarkably similar to what we saw] by Alex Budovsky — it was a superb black-and-white animation set to a catchy song. It had an art-deco feel to it as well as a darker military-jingoism just under the surface.

At times, though, I found that I was being more critical than usual. I recall being able to look at a work and see the artistic merit, or a glimmer of skill somewhere, but it seems I'm now a cynic about it and judge things quickly as crap. Like Untitled by Eva Xie: I found it to be a blunt so-so metaphor on the gradient of going from a girl to a woman; its artistic technique was akin to being clever with language by removing all but the punctuation marks to make your point. ",,.,,'.:-;." if you know what I mean.

But even that really had its merits — after all, for what is often a first-time film for someone, just learning all about making it is a challenge. It's much harder than it appears. [You may not argue that point until you produce a short film that beats all that I've seen before.]

Anyway, I liked all the films at least a little. The Can Man by Sean Cunningham was a strange film that reveals a sinister world of bleak post-apocalyptic dehumanization. Boxed In by Joy E. Reed was a coming-out story between a woman and her mother and it did a good job of revealing some rather deep characterization. SNEW by David Lachman and Jody Oberfelder was a nifty playful piece with cut-out letters and people — a somewhat experimental piece that was fun to watch. And finally, Loose Ends by Rachel Gordon was an okay, professional-looking production about a woman dealing with dating in her 20's.

I thought it was interesting that Karen vanMeenen had selected two films with a literary metaphor. I don't recall having seen that before, but maybe it's fresh in my mind what I think the bias might be.

Atonement 'fore Penelope at the Cinema

Posted on by
Reply

Ali and I headed to The Cinema TheatreMySpace link (957 South Clinton Ave.) to see the double-feature: Atonement, and Penelope. This time, we didn't get a chance to hang out with the cat — I guess it's done with us.

So Atonement took me a while to get into. I had thoughts of the day swimming around and couldn't get into it fully. I noticed that the foleying was performed louder and more stylistically than in other movies — obviously for artistic effect but, to my ear, deliberate to the point of distraction.

The story is not particularly unusual: Briony — a young girl — misinterprets the passionate love between her sister, Cecilia, and her beau Robbie as some bad thing in her sexually-budding mind. Through a lie of serendipitously important placement, she gets them separated. The World War II intensifies, and Robbie leaves to fight, able to see Cecilia only briefly.

As the emotions intensified — from the sterile complacency of the aristocratic life to the ragged edges of human existence — I became much more engaged in the film. And then was absolutely surprised to find it has a bit of a twist ending — one that looks squarely at what is real and what is not, unraveling the tapestry laid before me.

Penelope, on the other hand, was brutally terrible.

The story is that Penelope was affected by a curse of her father's lineage such that she was born with the appearance of a pig. To break the curse, she must wed one of her own — another "blue-blood" aristocrat. Unfortunately, her appearance is so hideous that all suitors literally run away from her at first sight, never getting to know the kind person she is inside. So does she finally find her prince? Will the curse actually be broken?

Let me save you 102 minutes of your life: yes, but it's the down-to-earth guy who actually likes her and he's not really a blue-blood, and yes, but the curse is edited partway into the film so that it's when she finds the one who loves her truly — and it is she that finally loves herself that breaks the curse, turning her back into regular-old Christina Ricci.

The fundamental flaw of the film is that it attempts to hit the exact middle-ground of all aspects. It's a cartoonish fairy-tale set in realistic modern-day England. Penelope is so hideous that she drives suitors away, but she's not bad looking at all. The chemistry between the designated couple is vaguely lukewarm — more like cooked pasta than a roaring fire. The resolution is absolutely insipid — that the curse forged in vengeance against a whole bloodline is really just a way for a girl to get through her issues and the evil witch was a big-hearted softie after all.

And then there's the script — oy. The fundamental message is that superficially loving mothers end up smothering their children's sense of self and must be shut the hell up. Or at least that may be on the mind of the scriptwriter. Then again, I guess if you love Everybody Loves Raymond, then — as this is the same writer — you'll probably love this script too. And apparently so do hundreds of commentators on Internet Movie Database.  And I find that to be more disturbing than the fact that this movie got made at all.

Casino Royale and Bad Day at Black Rock

Posted on by
Reply

So Ali and I spent half a day together watching movies. A friend of mine had recommended Casino Royale — mostly because of the free-running sequence in the beginning — but we just watched the film anyway. As James Bond movies go, I guess it's fine. Maybe I just ran out of interest in such fantastic stories and we were both annoyed at the predictable and annoying plot twists. I also didn't like the impossibly evil and impossibly genius villain — obviously a staple of Bond films, but comically absurd to me now.

The other film I picked up at The Rochester Public Library (115 South Ave.) on VHS (although they had it on DVD as well from Webster, I think). It was Bad Day at Black Rock and I discovered it looking for movies made near Burning Man in Nevada — particularly Gerlach, the Black Rock Desert, and the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation — that were otherwise not about Burning Man.

The movie is really quite good: a sort of socially-conscious noir-western set shortly after World War II. A stranger appears in the tiny town of Black Rock looking for a man named Komoko. The town descends from being unwelcoming to downright hostile toward him as they try to collectively hide the secret they failed to forget from 4 years prior.

In most of the establishing shots I was trying to figure out where they were in that part of Nevada, considering seriously where 447 crosses the railroad tracks at Gerlach. I thought I'd do more research and stumbled upon the WikiPedia article [which outlines the whole plot in detail, FYI] but it made no mention of filming anywhere in Nevada — citing only California — and sets the film in the fictional town of Black Rock, Arizona.

Returning to the Internet Movie Database's page, I found that the shooting locations no longer mentioned "Black Rock, NV". Returning to the location browser, I checked the nearby Nevada locales and noted the film's sudden absence from the lists. So I think I ended up accidentally watching the movie for the wrong reasons, but in the end, it was a really good film.

Incidentally, there is a town of Black Rock: in both Arizona, and Nevada. There's even one in New York. None of them look like they're "towns", though — more like "places" … possibly with black rocks. My old DeLorme map software reports (with map data from 1996) three in Arizona along with one in Nevada — none of which are near the ones found by Google. The one in New York agrees pretty much right on the spot.

None of them are even close to The Black Rock Desert, Nevada.