last blogpost on the race to blog mountain (denver premieres 3/13/09)

Nevermind the trees, do you think he can even see
the forest with that thing on?

Timecrimes - This first-time feature by Nacho Vigalondo has the potential of being a nice little slice of mixed-genre fare with some action, suspense and gratuitous nudity all tied up in a bow of time traveling paradoxes. While investigating the forest behind his house where he caught a girl disrobing, a shlub named Hector discovers that a man with pink bandages wrapped around his face is stalking him. Running away from the bandaged creep, Hector stumbles across an isolated building that turns out to be physics lab. A scientist inside tells Hector to hide inside of the large metal contraption in the center of the room which, unbeknownst to poor Hector, is a time machine. After climbing out of the machine, the sneaky scientist tells Hector that he has been sent an hour and a half back in time. This, as you can guess, complicates Hector's life immeasurably. Last year when this movie was riding high in the festival circuit there were talks of a U.S. remake in the works that had, at various times, George Romero and David Cronenberg attached to direct. I think it's safe to say that if those two were interested in remaking this film then there has to be something worthwhile here. (Pike)

The Last House on the Left -Today, Wes Craven’s film The Last House on the Left (1972) is alternately the most overly-praised and unjustifiably reviled pictures from the heyday of the late 60s/early 70s American horror renaissance. By some, the film is analyzed within inches of it’s ineptly rendered life as a horrific primal scream aimed at the atrocities committed by the American forces during the Vietnam War. By others it is seen as a truly depraved piece of work, made by lunatics for lunatics who get off on sadistic violence. Both takes are over estimations of the movie's intent and impact. What the film does have is an uneasy juxtaposition of pathos, violence and tin-eared humor presented in a completely amateurish manner (this was basically Wes Craven's first film so when I use the word "amateurish", I mean it more as a matter of fact than a back-handed slight). Add to the mix producer Sean S. Cunningham's (later of Friday the 13th fame) penchant for using Jack Chick style old-testament moralizing to prime the plot (If the girls didn't fall away from the path by trying to buy pot, then they wouldn't have had to die!) and you get a structurally confused film that begs to be read into due to its general thematic and tonal incoherence. So now we have a remake, produced by Craven, that tries to up the ante of nonsensical elements by leaving one of the girls alive and using a microwave as tool for revenge? Well color me surprised if this turns out to be anything more than a quick cash-in for all involved. (Pike)

Miss March - Really? Really, is that what you came to this blog for? Shouldn't you be watching hockey or Fox News or something? (Dex)

Race to Witch Mountain - Oh man, I hope this Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson/Carla Guigino headlined remake of the 1975 live-action Disney sci-fi flick Escape to Witch Mountain does well - maybe then my dream of a brand new Song of the South will finally become a reality! (Dex)

Ink - This week the locally filmed, locally produced sci-fi/dark fantasy film Ink begins a two week run at the Starz FilmCenter. This is what they have to say about it:

As the light fades and the city goes to sleep, two forces emerge. They are invisible except for the power they exert over us in our sleep. These two groups battle for our souls in our dreams. Through good dreams one force supports our hopes and gives us strength. Through nightmares the other force leads us toward desperation. In this high-concept visual thriller, part It's a Wonderful Life and Sin City, John and his daughter Emma are thrust into a fantastical dreamworld battle between good and evil where the most precious elements - love, loss and redemption - are at stake. Filmed and produced entirely in Colorado!

Here are the first two trailers:
Trailer 1
Trailer 2

Gomorrah - The tension - not to mention the irony - between life and art is highlighted in the film adaptation of Roberto Saviano's critically acclaimed expose of real-life Italian gangsters; while author Saviano is now the proverbial "marked man," his life taking a Rushdie-like turn (alas, it would seem, without all the glamour that accompanied Salman's potential martyrdom), this piece from the Independent UK reports that Camorran gangsters were all too happy to participate in any cinematic recreation of their sleazy lives. What must feel like a gut punch to poor Saviano is that regular Juan and Juanitas have been almost as upset at the journo for busting their acceptance of and compliance in the region's ubiquitous gangster culture, but have apparently flocked to theatres to see it on the big screen:

In one scene early in Gomorrah, Marco and Ciro – two delinquents who dream of being big-time gangsters – steal guns from the Camorra. They treat the weapons as if they're toys or film props, letting rip with machine guns and rocket launchers for the sheer pleasure of it. Earlier, we've seen them giving their Tony Montana impersonations, recreating Al Pacino's demise in Scarface. On the one hand, their behaviour is pathetic and immature. On the other, it is exhilarating.

The Italian audiences who flocked to see Gomorrah in the summer aren't going because they want at last to see a truthful exposé of organised crime in Naples – they've been drawn by the intensity of the film-making. This is precisely the problem the gangster genre always faces; the films are celebrations of action and danger, not sociological dramas.

[Matteo] Garrone claims that when he was making Gomorrah, he was looking more to the example of Italian neo-realist movies like Roberto Rossellini's Paisa and Rome, Open City than to the world of Scarface, Little Caesar and Goodfellas. His film, which comprises five different stories, was shot in the Camorra's backyard, using mainly non-professional actors. There is no commentary; this is not one of those clichéd yarns in which a detective or journalist infiltrates the Mob. The storytelling is matter-of-fact.

"When you get there [to Naples] and see life from the inside, it is not easy to understand where is evil and where is good. There is a grey zone in the middle," the director says of a society in which everybody from housewives to politicians, street kids and elderly tailors is ensnared by the Camorra. "I wanted to make the spectator feel that he was there, with these people."

[snip]

This is a virtuoso piece of film-making, but the sheer vibrancy of the storytelling gets in the way of any message Garrone might want to impart. Other Italian film-makers have had similar problems. In 1985, Giuseppe Tornatore made The Professor, based on the life of Camorra boss Raffaele Cutolo. He elicited an intelligent, complex performance from Ben Gazzara as the Mob boss who controls his empire from behind prison walls. Like Garrone, Tornatore tries to show the inner workings of organised crime in Naples, but audiences still approached The Professor as a thriller.

Gomorrah picked up the Grand Prix at Cannes; look for it at the Mayan. (Dex)

denver premieres for 1/30/09...and this time, it's personal.

Dude, see? See? Qui-Gon Jinn didn't die, dude! He's back! Qui-Gon's back!

The Uninvited - In a surprise bit of meta-casting, Elizabeth Banks reprises her role as Laura Bush in this kinda-sorta-remake of the 2003 South Korean chiller, A Tale of Two Sisters (which, by the way, is carried by all fine video stores throughout the Capitol Hill area, and is doubtlessly much cheaper to rent).(Dex)

Waltz with Bashir - This highly praised piece of experimental autobiography appears in wide release just as Israel ends yet another senseless attack on the Palestinian people, this time in the Gaza Strip - irony, thy name is award season.

That a movie which bothers to reflect on one of the most wretched episodes in a long, long line of wretched episodes in the history of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians can open in a nation hypnotized by anti-Muslimism and the apparent strategic necessity of "our staunch ally" is notable, but as with any sort of discourse involving Israeli crimes (and as always, U.S. culpability at some juncture) in the Mid-East, that's only the beginning, and things get more uncomfortable the deeper we go: would audiences (and indeed, critics) be as receptive to a cutting-edge docudrama told from the POV of the victims, or would they cry "extremist propaganda"? And does that fact that filmmaker Ari Forman's story of rememberence and guilt is an animated one help convey the surreality and nightmarishness of his memories, or just obscure the fact that the '82 invasion of Lebanon happened to real people, in a real place? Is it a teachable moment, or a chance to duck responsibility? This one may be worth catching, if only to get a sense of where the conversation - such as it is in this country - might go.(Dex)


Taken- You have probably seen the trailer for this film and , like me, thought, "What the hell is Liam Neeson doing slumming in this piece of crap?" Well, after taking a look at Mr. Neeson's "esteemed" career I have come to the conclusion that I was partaking in what the scientists who study the reasoning abilities of the human mind call selective thinking. In my mind I was convinced that Liam Neeson was an actor of serious intent, above wallowing in a C-grade genre picture just to make a buck. I mean, after all he played Oskar Schindler for crissakes! Looking at Neeson's page on Imdb though disabused me of my faulty thinking, and how! For every Schindler's List, or Rob Roy or Husbands and Wives there was a Krull or Next of Kin (with Patrick Swayze) or The Haunting remake. It doesn't stop there though! How about the movie Satisfaction, which was supposed to be Justine Bateman's big break after the TV show Family Ties where she plays a member of a Bangles-like girl band called 'Mystery' (oh my gahd is that like, Julia Roberts on Bass!?!) and Neeson playing a bar owner/Bateman's daddy figure love interest. To continue with a list of films like Nell, The Dead Pool, High Spirits, Star Wars Episode I and K-19: Widowmaker only proves the point further that Liam Neeson is not slumming in this new movie but rather following a well established career arc. He is a ham from the C-list that gets thrown an A-list bone every once in awhile. He must have taken career advice from Ben "you can only play Gandhi once" Kingsley while they were working together on Schindler's List because they both have walked down the same path of being acclaimed and respected actors all the while signing up for one piece of shit movie after another. Next time Kingsley puts out a movie I'll list some of the winners he has been in and it might amaze you to see that Neeson, although he has attached himself to some of the most mediocre-to-awful films (listed above) made in the last twenty years, is a piker by comparison. (Pike)

New In Town- Another stupid fish-out-of-water comedy, this time starring Renee Zellweger who plays a big city executive who comes to a little Minnesota town to get the ball rolling on the 're-org' her company has planned for the local manufacturing plant. At first she treats the locals like dirt in her sassy, superior big city ways but sooner or later those quirky locals break her down with all of their naive, corn pone Americana cuteness, and teach our girl how to live, love and be happy. If this sound like a movie you are going to go see, please do me a favor. When you buy your ticket, buy a ticket for anything else that is playing at the time and then sneak in to see this. You might feel a little guilty sneaking around but that will be nothing compared to the guilt you would have felt after purchasing a ticket to this movie and realizing, as the final credits roll, that the twelve bucks you just spent gave some Hollywood studio executive the go-ahead to insult you again a year from now with New in Town 2- Down on the Farm. (Pike)

Frozen River- A hit at last year's Sundance Festival and a 'best of 2008' pick by some prominent critics, first time writer/director Courtney Hunt's Frozen River is a story about two women who smuggle Chinese illegal immigrants into the U.S. from Canada across the frozen St. Lawrence River. Melissa Leo (who is nominated for an Academy Award for this picture) plays Ray, a woman with a high school aged son, a low paying job, and a husband who just split for Atlantic City with the money for their double-wide trailer down payment. On top of this, she finds her husband's car is being driven around by a local Mohawk woman (Misty Upham). Lila, the Mohawk woman, tells Ray that she knows a man on the reservation that will buy the car for well above resale value but when the women take the car to this man, they find they can make a faster buck, not by selling the car to the man, but by working for him to transport illegals across the border. This film, along with Waltzing with Bashir are probably the only things worth catching this week, so watch the trailer and see if it's for you. Besides, if the film does promote the idea that, "crime pays, social consequences be damned" as David Edelstein's review points out, then I'm all for that. (Pike)

a dex divided against himself, cannot stand

Err..gahh..must..look away from possible remake of splatterpunk classic..but..I can't! I can't do it! Oh, God, why?

Click here to see the rumor that if proven true, may break my heart. Break it in two.