Two more movies last Thursday, the last night at the Balboa theater (it moved to the New People Center in Japantown starting Friday)
First up was what was supposed to be the opening night film, were it not for DCP issues--Lucky McKee's ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE. This is a great, fun film and I can see why they wanted it for opening night. We start with a student video project showing the popular kids--cheerleaders and jocks--having a great time...all the way up until a tragic accident. In the aftermath of that, the girl who was doing the video project decides to try out for the cheerleading squad. She's actually doing it for nefarious reasons, but becomes friends of the girls on the squad. Then it takes a very weird left turn. The head jock is a major asshole, the weird goth girl is an actual witch, and...I've already given too much away. Let me just say it's bloody, funny, and sexy--all things I like. Great flick.
Then the next show started off with THE SHINNING. That would be the Simpson's parody that was completely unannounced (but all the regulars knew it.) A wise man (okay, not to name drop but it was Ernie Fosselius, director of HARDWARE WARS) once told me that you should always watch the parodies before seeing the real thing. So this was a good move.
Then Stanly Kubrick's classic THE SHINING, in glorious 35 mm! Okay, maybe not "glorious" but in a perfectly watchable, somewhat faded 35 mm print with some of the most iconic scenes cut out (Wheeeeere's Johnny?) Presumably this was done by a rogue projectionist, and I know a lot of audience members were pretty upset about it. Festival producer George actually posted a Facebook apology about it. For my money, it's still excellent. And I've seen enough faded 35 mm prints to not mind what I saw. And I know 35 mm is getting to be rare enough that I appreciate any chance to see it. And if you really want to see it, the screening next Thursday will be on Blu-Ray. You have a chance to see what's more annoying, a faded, chopped 35 mm print or seeing the movie played backwards over itself.
Also, this is the first time I've seen it since watching ROOM 237, so this was the first time I could catch a lot of the weird things--like the car that almost hits everyone before disappearing in the reverse shot, or the fact that Jack's reading a Playgirl magazine in one scene. Pretty cool.
Total Running Time: 234 minutes
My Total Minutes: 344,538
Monday, December 9, 2013
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Jason goes to Holehead the Roxie and watches IS THE MAN WHO IS TALL HAPPY?
So I meant to make it to Holehead for the 7:00 screening of ON AIR. But I had to work a little late, and the Balboa Theater is way up in the hinterlands of the Outer Richmond. If it was still at the Roxie like in previous years, I would be there in plenty of time, but by the time I got on BART it was clear I wouldn't make it there before 7:30 at the absolute earliest (if I didn't have to wait for a bus at all.) So...I just stopped at 16th and Mission and caught...whatever was playing at the Roxie.
IS THE MAN WHO IS TALL HAPPY? is an animated conversation between director Michel Gondry and linguist/intellectual/activist/one of the most influential men in the world Noam Chomsky. And when I say it's animated, it's both lively and presented as animation. In fact, in the introductory remarks, said over animated footage of him animating the movie, Gondry explains how all movies purporting to show the philosophy and ideas of a person is actually a lie. The director necessarily has to edit it down to a watchable size, and in doing so the director chooses what to keep, what to throw out, and how to arrange everything. Therefore the movie becomes the director's philosophy, not the subjects. Seeing no way to overcome that, Gondry instead uses animation to emphasize this, to show the unmistakable hand of the director. Also, it makes it a lot more fun to watch than a talking head.
By the Way, in the same way this review is not Gondry's vision, nor Chomsky's. I've done my best to accurately reflect the film (from memory, after one viewing) but I choose the words and what points to emphasize. As much as I'm trying to tell you about Chomsky, or Gondry, I know (and you should to) that I will end up telling you more about myself.
Chomsky himself is a fascinating man and one of the preeminent thinkers on the subject of thinking. I love his explanation of Galileo's great philosophical leap--to be puzzled by what seems simple and obvious (e.g., the Aristotelian view that rocks fall and steam rises because it is finding it's natural place.) And he claims our understanding of linguistics is still at the Aristotelian stage and needs to find the capacity to be puzzled by things that seem simple. For example, what's a dog? Gondry starts by musing how he saw pictures of dogs (or tigers, or any number of exotic animals) before he saw one in real life, and it's interesting how he can know a creature is a dog the first time he sees it in real life. But Chomsky counters this, and explains that what you think of when you think 'dog' is not the physical form. It's something physicists can't measure (yet...as a physicist I have to be stubborn and insist someday we'll be able to do anything.) It's "psychic continuity"--whatever trait a being (or even object) maintains whether or not it changes its physical form. If a spell was cast on a dog and turned it into a camel, then the spell was reversed and it returned to its dog form, a child can tell you it was the same being all along. Similarly if I take a branch from a tree and use it to grow a new tree, it has the same DNA as the original tree. But even if it grows to the same shape it's not the same tree. For that matter (and this part isn't in the movie, it's something I thought about during this discussion) I don't know if I have any molecule in my body that has been there since birth. Yet my "me-ness" has persisted uninterrupted quite well, thank you. Here's the kicker--as far as we can tell, other animals don't think that way. For them if a dog turned into a camel, that's a different animal. Humans are the only ones who think in terms of psychic continuity, as far as we know.
Anyway, the conversation continues, it becomes self-referential as Gondry starts talking about wanting to finish the movie so Chomsky can see it, and commenting on the rough cuts. This poor blog couldn't possibly cover it all, but it's a fascinating conversation that occasionally made my head spin but always kept my interest.
Running Time: 88 minutes
My Total Minutes: 344,304
IS THE MAN WHO IS TALL HAPPY? is an animated conversation between director Michel Gondry and linguist/intellectual/activist/one of the most influential men in the world Noam Chomsky. And when I say it's animated, it's both lively and presented as animation. In fact, in the introductory remarks, said over animated footage of him animating the movie, Gondry explains how all movies purporting to show the philosophy and ideas of a person is actually a lie. The director necessarily has to edit it down to a watchable size, and in doing so the director chooses what to keep, what to throw out, and how to arrange everything. Therefore the movie becomes the director's philosophy, not the subjects. Seeing no way to overcome that, Gondry instead uses animation to emphasize this, to show the unmistakable hand of the director. Also, it makes it a lot more fun to watch than a talking head.
By the Way, in the same way this review is not Gondry's vision, nor Chomsky's. I've done my best to accurately reflect the film (from memory, after one viewing) but I choose the words and what points to emphasize. As much as I'm trying to tell you about Chomsky, or Gondry, I know (and you should to) that I will end up telling you more about myself.
Chomsky himself is a fascinating man and one of the preeminent thinkers on the subject of thinking. I love his explanation of Galileo's great philosophical leap--to be puzzled by what seems simple and obvious (e.g., the Aristotelian view that rocks fall and steam rises because it is finding it's natural place.) And he claims our understanding of linguistics is still at the Aristotelian stage and needs to find the capacity to be puzzled by things that seem simple. For example, what's a dog? Gondry starts by musing how he saw pictures of dogs (or tigers, or any number of exotic animals) before he saw one in real life, and it's interesting how he can know a creature is a dog the first time he sees it in real life. But Chomsky counters this, and explains that what you think of when you think 'dog' is not the physical form. It's something physicists can't measure (yet...as a physicist I have to be stubborn and insist someday we'll be able to do anything.) It's "psychic continuity"--whatever trait a being (or even object) maintains whether or not it changes its physical form. If a spell was cast on a dog and turned it into a camel, then the spell was reversed and it returned to its dog form, a child can tell you it was the same being all along. Similarly if I take a branch from a tree and use it to grow a new tree, it has the same DNA as the original tree. But even if it grows to the same shape it's not the same tree. For that matter (and this part isn't in the movie, it's something I thought about during this discussion) I don't know if I have any molecule in my body that has been there since birth. Yet my "me-ness" has persisted uninterrupted quite well, thank you. Here's the kicker--as far as we can tell, other animals don't think that way. For them if a dog turned into a camel, that's a different animal. Humans are the only ones who think in terms of psychic continuity, as far as we know.
Anyway, the conversation continues, it becomes self-referential as Gondry starts talking about wanting to finish the movie so Chomsky can see it, and commenting on the rough cuts. This poor blog couldn't possibly cover it all, but it's a fascinating conversation that occasionally made my head spin but always kept my interest.
Running Time: 88 minutes
My Total Minutes: 344,304
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 5
Two more movies last Tuesday. I'm trying to catch up so let's just jump right in.
First up was THE CEMETERY. A cynical team of "Ghost Seekers" spends the night in an allegedly haunted cemetery in the middle of the Pennsylvania woods. The legend is that in 1671 this was the site of a plague of demonic possession. Or...it was a site where a bunch of sadistic, bloodthirsty priests tortured the natives to death while trying to "convert" them, and then with no more victims and a taste for blood, they turned on themselves. Anyway, the jaded, cynical, and very horny ghost seekers set out to find demons...or prove they don't exist...or just fuck around in the woods. You can guess how this will turn out. With lots of blood, nudity, and comedy. Nice.
Next up was THE DIRTIES, a very clever movie about cinephilia and school shootings. Matt and Owen are best friends and movie geeks (Gotta love a movie that opens with kids making a Gaspar Noe reference.) They're also teased by bullies. Not as bad as the kids in AN AMERICAN TERROR, but enough to be kinda miserable in school. For their school film project, they have and idea for a film called THE DIRTIES. The titular Dirties are a gang of bullies at school, and Matt and Owen will play the heroes who take them down in an orgy of violence. And it's pretty funny how they steal footage at school for use in their movie. But when their teacher nixes a rough cut of their film...reality and fantasy blur, as it looks like Matt might just take it to the next level. I can't help but make a comparison to AN AMERICAN TERROR, because I loved both movies, they're both about (planned) school shootings, but beyond that they're very different movies. AN AMERICAN TERROR presents a situation so horrible that shooting the school bullies is almost a rational act, and it's about finding the inner strength to not do it. THE DIRTIES presents a world where kids are just kind of dicks but a mass shooting would be decidedly crazy, and it's about finding the inner sickness to go through with it. And it's about using movies to find that inner sickness. Which for a film nut like me is kinda scarier.
Total Running Time: 161 minutes
My Total Minutes; 344,216
First up was THE CEMETERY. A cynical team of "Ghost Seekers" spends the night in an allegedly haunted cemetery in the middle of the Pennsylvania woods. The legend is that in 1671 this was the site of a plague of demonic possession. Or...it was a site where a bunch of sadistic, bloodthirsty priests tortured the natives to death while trying to "convert" them, and then with no more victims and a taste for blood, they turned on themselves. Anyway, the jaded, cynical, and very horny ghost seekers set out to find demons...or prove they don't exist...or just fuck around in the woods. You can guess how this will turn out. With lots of blood, nudity, and comedy. Nice.
Next up was THE DIRTIES, a very clever movie about cinephilia and school shootings. Matt and Owen are best friends and movie geeks (Gotta love a movie that opens with kids making a Gaspar Noe reference.) They're also teased by bullies. Not as bad as the kids in AN AMERICAN TERROR, but enough to be kinda miserable in school. For their school film project, they have and idea for a film called THE DIRTIES. The titular Dirties are a gang of bullies at school, and Matt and Owen will play the heroes who take them down in an orgy of violence. And it's pretty funny how they steal footage at school for use in their movie. But when their teacher nixes a rough cut of their film...reality and fantasy blur, as it looks like Matt might just take it to the next level. I can't help but make a comparison to AN AMERICAN TERROR, because I loved both movies, they're both about (planned) school shootings, but beyond that they're very different movies. AN AMERICAN TERROR presents a situation so horrible that shooting the school bullies is almost a rational act, and it's about finding the inner strength to not do it. THE DIRTIES presents a world where kids are just kind of dicks but a mass shooting would be decidedly crazy, and it's about finding the inner sickness to go through with it. And it's about using movies to find that inner sickness. Which for a film nut like me is kinda scarier.
Total Running Time: 161 minutes
My Total Minutes; 344,216
Friday, December 6, 2013
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 4
Okay, I'm falling too far behind on my blogging. Stupid...employment.
Last Monday started with GHOSTLIGHT. So...a guy wins a radio contest with a $50,000 prize. All he has to do is spend one night in an old theater that's the site of a famous murder 80 years ago. Despite that kinda cheesy sounding setup, I was willing to give it a chance. There's a domestic drama with he and his wife obviously trying to get over some past trauma (no spoilers, but I think it was supposed to be a surprise. It isn't.) The owner of the theater is appropriately eerie looking/acting. The acting is...not great, but good enough for Holehead standards. Ah hell, I'll jump right to what ruined it completely--the music. We start with a dream sequence of a woman...I guess you could call it "singing" because that's what she's trying to do. But it doesn't end there. The soundtrack in general is badly overdone with creepy music, or stingers to tell you when to be frightened. I like to be generous and believe if the soundtrack weren't so over-the-top bad and insulting, there might be a watchable movie in there (some of the audience wasn't so charitable.) As it is, I left the theater with one question--has director Jeff Ferrell ever...heard...music?
Then the late show at least had a solid musical footing. DISCOPATH is the story of a man with a bit of a mental problem. Normally Duane is just kind of a socially awkward loser. But when he hears disco music, he freaks out and kills people (hence the title.) This stems from an old childhood trauma that is about as silly as 'Disco killed my father!' And that's the thing about the movie--it's pretty silly, with amazing cheesy clunker lines like, "Calm down! Your friend is dead!" that had the audience laughing pretty hard. But this isn't really a movie that takes itself seriously, and even the dumbest moments had a sort of cheesy 70s exploitation vibe to it that made me willing to roll with it and have a good time. Plus (without giving anything away) the ending was pretty damn cool, and leaves it open for a sequel.
Total Running Time: 171 minutes
My Total Minutes: 344,055
Last Monday started with GHOSTLIGHT. So...a guy wins a radio contest with a $50,000 prize. All he has to do is spend one night in an old theater that's the site of a famous murder 80 years ago. Despite that kinda cheesy sounding setup, I was willing to give it a chance. There's a domestic drama with he and his wife obviously trying to get over some past trauma (no spoilers, but I think it was supposed to be a surprise. It isn't.) The owner of the theater is appropriately eerie looking/acting. The acting is...not great, but good enough for Holehead standards. Ah hell, I'll jump right to what ruined it completely--the music. We start with a dream sequence of a woman...I guess you could call it "singing" because that's what she's trying to do. But it doesn't end there. The soundtrack in general is badly overdone with creepy music, or stingers to tell you when to be frightened. I like to be generous and believe if the soundtrack weren't so over-the-top bad and insulting, there might be a watchable movie in there (some of the audience wasn't so charitable.) As it is, I left the theater with one question--has director Jeff Ferrell ever...heard...music?
Then the late show at least had a solid musical footing. DISCOPATH is the story of a man with a bit of a mental problem. Normally Duane is just kind of a socially awkward loser. But when he hears disco music, he freaks out and kills people (hence the title.) This stems from an old childhood trauma that is about as silly as 'Disco killed my father!' And that's the thing about the movie--it's pretty silly, with amazing cheesy clunker lines like, "Calm down! Your friend is dead!" that had the audience laughing pretty hard. But this isn't really a movie that takes itself seriously, and even the dumbest moments had a sort of cheesy 70s exploitation vibe to it that made me willing to roll with it and have a good time. Plus (without giving anything away) the ending was pretty damn cool, and leaves it open for a sequel.
Total Running Time: 171 minutes
My Total Minutes: 344,055
Monday, December 2, 2013
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 3
So THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE ended on one screen in the Balboa Theater just in time for me to walk out and back in to the other screen and catch the first movie at Another Hole in the Head.
The first movie there was an ultra-low-budget oddity from South Africa, BLOOD TOKOLOSHE, which wasn't helped by the fact that they couldn't show it at the right aspect ratio and so everything was squeezed into 4:3 (yes, some Africans are very tall and very skinny, but not all of them are!) It's a story of a businessman who hires a witch doctor to make him rich and have lots of women. The witch doctor summons a Tokoloshe, a demon who will do the businessman's bidding but has to drink victim's blood to do it. This works for the businessman as long as he follows a few simple rules--like thank the demon every day, don't steal the Tokoloshe's blood, etc. Seems like an easy rule to follow, but greed gets the best of him, the demon is on the loose, and the witch doctor and the local priest have to set their differences aside and fight it. The acting is pretty damn bad, and if I hadn't been to South Africa before (for the World Cup in 2010) I would have been pretty bored by this. As it was, little things kept reminding me of my time there. Things like newspapers plastered everywhere with the front page displaying one giant headline. Or when one woman refuses to take a 200R bill--almost nobody takes 200R bills, they're too widely counterfeited. Other than that, the best I can say is I hope they learned some things making this and that BLOOD TOKOLOSHE 2: REVENGE OF THE TOKOLOSHE is better.
Then it was time for the highlight of the festival so far, AN AMERICAN TERROR. It's set in Colorado, deals with school shootings and other acts of senseless violence, and is unapologetically sympathetic to the shooters. Josh wakes up with voices in his head telling him to give up. He lives in a trailer park, his parents ignore him, the popular kids at school bully him, he only has two friends and they're equally unpopular as him. After a particularly mean and humiliating event (broadcast on Youtube, no less) they finally decide they've had enough and plan to attack homecoming with guns and pipe bombs. It's set up to be an interesting horror/drama about being bullied and what it takes to become a "deranged" killer (in fact, it's most interesting aspect is that the killing isn't deranged at all. By this point it has become a completely rational act.) And then in the search for weapons it becomes a very, very different film, more along the lines of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE or SAW. And...I feel like I should have been disappointed because I was all psyched up to see the school shooting from the shooters point of view (that sentence sounds bad, but they really made the bullies awful people who deserved to die.) But the psycho redneck freak they run into is so impressive I didn't care, I'd rather watch him anyway. I don't want to give too much away, but the set pieces in the underground lair are...amazing. And--if you watch all the way through the credits--it's set up for a sequel that I would like to see.
Oh, and as for all the sympathy with the school shooters above. I'm not saying that school shootings are a good thing, or that any real kids deserve to die (kids in horror movies, on the other hand....) But I'm a nerd who's last name is a slang term for penis. I know something about being bullied. And when the Columbine shooting happened (which I learned about when I made an off-hand pipe bomb joke at work and my colleagues gave me an 'I cannot believe you just went there!' look) and everyone was asking 'How could they do that?' I was asking myself 'What kept me from doing that?' And this film offers me an answer--that I was strong enough that none of the teasing and bullying could hurt me.
Next up was THE COHASSET SNUFF FILM. You all remember the 2009 string of murders in Cohasset, MA, right? Where Colin Mason murdered three girls in his school and uploaded the footage to the Internet? If you don't, it's probably because there was a massive cover-up. Things like that just aren't supposed to happen to small, affluent New England towns. Anyway, director Edward Payson, with help from true-crime collectors, pieces the definitive story together. Colin is a pimply-faced teen playing with his camera and pretending to be way more bad-ass than he is (other than...when he's strangling his victims.) In fact, if he was more impressive as a killer I'd probably like this movie a lot more.... Oh, crap, I broke the premise that these are real events. Nope, it's just a movie. And as a movie...well, I stand by my statement that Colin was just not a charismatic killer. That's probably the point, that a harmless looking kid can be a killer in plain sight with no one noticing. In fact, rather than hiding from the cops he has more trouble making anyone notice he exists. That's the point...but it doesn't change the fact that he failed to hold my interest most of the time. The rest of the movie--the collectors, the macabre cult built up around him (the restaurant he used to frequent is now Mason Burgers and they serve serial-killer themed burgers,) the interviews, the full-frontal nudity of one of his victims--that all works. But without a charismatic killer, the movie is kinda flat.
And finally, we ended the night similar to how we started, with a foreign oddity. This time it's from the Philippines, and the movie is THE GRAVE BANDITS. Decades ago a meteorite with an alien virus landed near a small island in the Philippines. The virus turns people into flesh-eating demons. But the meteorite is also a very pretty and valuable jewel, so pirates and a scientist search for it with the unwilling help of a local girl. And they find it, and the virus gets out and they start destroying each other. Luckily it's confined to this small island. Unfortunately Romy and Peewee--homeless orphans who make a living by robbing graves of the jewelry of the recently departed--flee from an angry mob and make their way to the island. So all hell breaks loose, lots of zombie-demon flesh-eaters. Miraculously, the scientist and the girl are alive. The scientist because he hid in a tree. The girl because she grew up on the legends of the demons and knows things about them like how the smell of alcohol confuses them so they won't attack. So we get lots of fighting demons and lots of running from the demons. It's also pretty funny, and actually a pretty good time, if a little on the long side at 100 minutes.
And that was day 3 at Holehead. Not too bad, and much better than day 2--both in the quality of the films and in the technical issues (not that there weren't any, just that they were...tolerable.)
Total Running Time: 342 minutes
My Total Minutes: 343,884
The first movie there was an ultra-low-budget oddity from South Africa, BLOOD TOKOLOSHE, which wasn't helped by the fact that they couldn't show it at the right aspect ratio and so everything was squeezed into 4:3 (yes, some Africans are very tall and very skinny, but not all of them are!) It's a story of a businessman who hires a witch doctor to make him rich and have lots of women. The witch doctor summons a Tokoloshe, a demon who will do the businessman's bidding but has to drink victim's blood to do it. This works for the businessman as long as he follows a few simple rules--like thank the demon every day, don't steal the Tokoloshe's blood, etc. Seems like an easy rule to follow, but greed gets the best of him, the demon is on the loose, and the witch doctor and the local priest have to set their differences aside and fight it. The acting is pretty damn bad, and if I hadn't been to South Africa before (for the World Cup in 2010) I would have been pretty bored by this. As it was, little things kept reminding me of my time there. Things like newspapers plastered everywhere with the front page displaying one giant headline. Or when one woman refuses to take a 200R bill--almost nobody takes 200R bills, they're too widely counterfeited. Other than that, the best I can say is I hope they learned some things making this and that BLOOD TOKOLOSHE 2: REVENGE OF THE TOKOLOSHE is better.
Then it was time for the highlight of the festival so far, AN AMERICAN TERROR. It's set in Colorado, deals with school shootings and other acts of senseless violence, and is unapologetically sympathetic to the shooters. Josh wakes up with voices in his head telling him to give up. He lives in a trailer park, his parents ignore him, the popular kids at school bully him, he only has two friends and they're equally unpopular as him. After a particularly mean and humiliating event (broadcast on Youtube, no less) they finally decide they've had enough and plan to attack homecoming with guns and pipe bombs. It's set up to be an interesting horror/drama about being bullied and what it takes to become a "deranged" killer (in fact, it's most interesting aspect is that the killing isn't deranged at all. By this point it has become a completely rational act.) And then in the search for weapons it becomes a very, very different film, more along the lines of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE or SAW. And...I feel like I should have been disappointed because I was all psyched up to see the school shooting from the shooters point of view (that sentence sounds bad, but they really made the bullies awful people who deserved to die.) But the psycho redneck freak they run into is so impressive I didn't care, I'd rather watch him anyway. I don't want to give too much away, but the set pieces in the underground lair are...amazing. And--if you watch all the way through the credits--it's set up for a sequel that I would like to see.
Oh, and as for all the sympathy with the school shooters above. I'm not saying that school shootings are a good thing, or that any real kids deserve to die (kids in horror movies, on the other hand....) But I'm a nerd who's last name is a slang term for penis. I know something about being bullied. And when the Columbine shooting happened (which I learned about when I made an off-hand pipe bomb joke at work and my colleagues gave me an 'I cannot believe you just went there!' look) and everyone was asking 'How could they do that?' I was asking myself 'What kept me from doing that?' And this film offers me an answer--that I was strong enough that none of the teasing and bullying could hurt me.
Next up was THE COHASSET SNUFF FILM. You all remember the 2009 string of murders in Cohasset, MA, right? Where Colin Mason murdered three girls in his school and uploaded the footage to the Internet? If you don't, it's probably because there was a massive cover-up. Things like that just aren't supposed to happen to small, affluent New England towns. Anyway, director Edward Payson, with help from true-crime collectors, pieces the definitive story together. Colin is a pimply-faced teen playing with his camera and pretending to be way more bad-ass than he is (other than...when he's strangling his victims.) In fact, if he was more impressive as a killer I'd probably like this movie a lot more.... Oh, crap, I broke the premise that these are real events. Nope, it's just a movie. And as a movie...well, I stand by my statement that Colin was just not a charismatic killer. That's probably the point, that a harmless looking kid can be a killer in plain sight with no one noticing. In fact, rather than hiding from the cops he has more trouble making anyone notice he exists. That's the point...but it doesn't change the fact that he failed to hold my interest most of the time. The rest of the movie--the collectors, the macabre cult built up around him (the restaurant he used to frequent is now Mason Burgers and they serve serial-killer themed burgers,) the interviews, the full-frontal nudity of one of his victims--that all works. But without a charismatic killer, the movie is kinda flat.
And finally, we ended the night similar to how we started, with a foreign oddity. This time it's from the Philippines, and the movie is THE GRAVE BANDITS. Decades ago a meteorite with an alien virus landed near a small island in the Philippines. The virus turns people into flesh-eating demons. But the meteorite is also a very pretty and valuable jewel, so pirates and a scientist search for it with the unwilling help of a local girl. And they find it, and the virus gets out and they start destroying each other. Luckily it's confined to this small island. Unfortunately Romy and Peewee--homeless orphans who make a living by robbing graves of the jewelry of the recently departed--flee from an angry mob and make their way to the island. So all hell breaks loose, lots of zombie-demon flesh-eaters. Miraculously, the scientist and the girl are alive. The scientist because he hid in a tree. The girl because she grew up on the legends of the demons and knows things about them like how the smell of alcohol confuses them so they won't attack. So we get lots of fighting demons and lots of running from the demons. It's also pretty funny, and actually a pretty good time, if a little on the long side at 100 minutes.
And that was day 3 at Holehead. Not too bad, and much better than day 2--both in the quality of the films and in the technical issues (not that there weren't any, just that they were...tolerable.)
Total Running Time: 342 minutes
My Total Minutes: 343,884
Jason watches THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE
In preparation for this review, I went back and read my review of THE HUNGER GAMES. Holy cow, I devoted a lot of that to comparing it to BATTLE ROYALE. Nobody's talking about that anymore, which is good because the comparison wasn't really that apt.
Now we're on Katniss' and Peeta's Victory tour, being showered as the new darlings of the capitol but also seeing how her victory (and defiance of the rules) has sparked more rebellious spirit in the people. President Snow pays her a personal visit and assures her if she can't convince the people--especially him--that her love story with Peeta is absolutely true--that she'd rather die than be without him--than there will be hell to pay. If not for her, for her family, friends, and the whole district.
Philip Seymour Hoffman shows up, at a party in the capitol but not dressed as outrageously as everyone else. He's the new game designer, and cryptically mentions that Katniss' victory convinced him to come out of retirement. And he has a great twist for the new games. It's the 75th Hunger Games, and every 25 years there's something called a "quarter quell." This being the third quarter quell, the games have a special twist--the tributes shall be selected from the ranks of the victors. Since district 12 has only 3 victors--Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch (Woody Harrelson, becoming more interesting than just the cynical drunk he was in the first movie)--we get the ridiculous scene of all the pageantry of selecting Katniss' name from a pool of exactly one female. Peeta volunteers as the male tribute, and finally an hour and a half into the movie we actually get to the Hunger Games part. The competitors are now older and (mostly) deadlier, and none are very happy about being there (well, maybe the ones from districts 1 and 2, where training to be a tribute is a career track.) Alliances are formed and...well. I won't give away the ending. I will say I predicted some of it. And it's basically all a setup for the third movie, the rebellion, and an actual war. And I'm looking forward to that.
If I think about it, all my objections about the unrealistic world-building in the first movie still hold, but...they just don't bug me anymore. It's entertainment, and for what it is it's pretty damn good. I'll just accept that it takes place in a world so stagnant that this system really could hold for 75 years. But it's finally cracking.
Running Time: 146 minutes
My Total Minutes: 343,542
Now we're on Katniss' and Peeta's Victory tour, being showered as the new darlings of the capitol but also seeing how her victory (and defiance of the rules) has sparked more rebellious spirit in the people. President Snow pays her a personal visit and assures her if she can't convince the people--especially him--that her love story with Peeta is absolutely true--that she'd rather die than be without him--than there will be hell to pay. If not for her, for her family, friends, and the whole district.
Philip Seymour Hoffman shows up, at a party in the capitol but not dressed as outrageously as everyone else. He's the new game designer, and cryptically mentions that Katniss' victory convinced him to come out of retirement. And he has a great twist for the new games. It's the 75th Hunger Games, and every 25 years there's something called a "quarter quell." This being the third quarter quell, the games have a special twist--the tributes shall be selected from the ranks of the victors. Since district 12 has only 3 victors--Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch (Woody Harrelson, becoming more interesting than just the cynical drunk he was in the first movie)--we get the ridiculous scene of all the pageantry of selecting Katniss' name from a pool of exactly one female. Peeta volunteers as the male tribute, and finally an hour and a half into the movie we actually get to the Hunger Games part. The competitors are now older and (mostly) deadlier, and none are very happy about being there (well, maybe the ones from districts 1 and 2, where training to be a tribute is a career track.) Alliances are formed and...well. I won't give away the ending. I will say I predicted some of it. And it's basically all a setup for the third movie, the rebellion, and an actual war. And I'm looking forward to that.
If I think about it, all my objections about the unrealistic world-building in the first movie still hold, but...they just don't bug me anymore. It's entertainment, and for what it is it's pretty damn good. I'll just accept that it takes place in a world so stagnant that this system really could hold for 75 years. But it's finally cracking.
Running Time: 146 minutes
My Total Minutes: 343,542
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Jason goes to Holehead--Day 2
So the second day of Holehead started with some free Saturday morning cartoons of the 80s and 90s, because...that's just the kind of odd festival it is. And Saturday morning started at 1:00 pm, because that's definitely the kind of festival this is. Free sugary cereal (I ate too much and got kinda sick, so I had to balance that with a couple of beers) and SUPERFRIENDS (a weird space-Arabs episode), SMURFS, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (the origins episode where April O'Neill meets the turtles), CARE BEARS (learn sportsmanship with magic bears who help you cheat and win!), SHE-RA (crossover episodes featuring HE-MAN and SKELETOR), THUNDERCATS (the origins episode, where before they land on Earth they're actually walking around on their spaceship naked--but covered in cat fur. That's right, a little naked-ish Cheetara action! And I feel dirty writing that). Anyway, it was free to everyone, and quite a lot of families brought their kids there. A lot of them were asking the Balboa Theater management about doing this again, so...maybe?
Then the festival continued with...a surfing documentary? Okay, some explanation is necessary. Because the Balboa Theater is a new venue for the festival, and because it's near-ish the beach (certainly nearer than the Mission), the organizers of the festival thought it would be fun to take a break from horror and do a kind of mini-fest of surfing documentaries at the Balboa. And so H2INDO was the first one they booked. And then they couldn't find any more. But they talked to the director and he was super-excited to play the festival, especially at the Balboa. Then at the last minute he couldn't make it (or, I guess, convince any of his friends to go) so we ended up with a surfing documentary in a horror festival with maybe 5 people in attendance, myself included.
It's a shame this wasn't played in the right context, because it's actually a pretty good movie. It explores the world of the surfing sub-category or Stand Up Paddling through a two week trip to Indonesia with 7 giants (old guard and new stars) of the sport. I'll admit I know nothing about the surfing world, but for some reason the name Dave Kalama seems like someone I should know. The rest of them are Connor Baxter, Slater Trout, Talia Gangini (the one girl among all these guys,) Chuck Patterson, Dave Boehne & Jamie Mitchell. First-time director Brent Deal writes himself into the movie by essentially integrating his "making of" scenes into the film, starting with the phone call from his main backer--his grandma--agreeing to give him the money to make his movie. Then it's off to Indonesia with the gang, where he obsesses over how he doesn't know how to shoot surfing scenes--shooting from the boat is too shaky, and shooting from land he can't get good shots, so he gives all credit on his first day to his assistant who is shooting in the water. At first the idea of focusing on his struggles to make the movie seemed kind of self-indulgent, but eventually I realized that since he's a novice to Stand Up Paddling, having himself as a character actually serves as the point of view of the audience, letting us discover the world as he does. Too many surfing documentaries (in fact, action-sports documentaries in general) fail to do this, and end up being movies by and for the surfing/action sports community that aren't all that accessible to those outside. So that novice point of view is greatly appreciated.
Anyway, I've gone a full paragraph and haven't even explained what Stand Up Paddling (SUP) is. You might have seen those guys on big surfboards standing up with a long paddle (as opposed to lying on your board and paddling out.) Well...the guys standing up and paddling are doing SUP. Simple as that. Staying upright and using the paddle makes it easier for newbies to learn, and you can surf in more "junk" waves that shortboard surfers would pass up. And those shortboard surfers don't like these "spoon goons" getting in their way. That's a part of the story that plays heavily but isn't very well explained (mostly because it's explained by people who don't agree with it) but surfers can be very territorial and shortboarders don't think SUP is "core" enough to share the waves. Whatever, SUP looks like a heck of a lot of fun, and the movie ends up--despite Brent Deal's early concerns--getting some absolutely awesome shots of it.
Then the next show--exactly six hours after the beginning of the festival day--was the first horror movie of the day. And PINUP DOLLS ON ICE made me yearn for more surfing documentaries. Okay, not really, but it made me yearn for a goodhorror any-genre movie. It's derivative of any number of slasher movies, but with the misogyny dialed up to eleven and the intelligence dialed down to zero. The Pinup Dolls are a retro burlesque act that despite being introduced as kick-ass girls who will beat a guy with a baseball bat because he owes them money, but as soon as the generic-homicidal-maniac-with-a-weak-backstory-told-through-gratuitous-exposition-long-after-we've-stopped-caring shows up, they turn into quivering, scantily-clad (or not clad at all) weaklings who can't recognize and pick up a weapon in a roomful of weapons (hell, they're all wearing spiked heels and none of them think to take them off and use the heel as a weapon; instead they'll all try to run in them.) What bothers me most is that it was pretty well made. It was well shot, the bloody effects were good, and the acting was...energetic, if not exactly great. It bugs me that some obvious skill went into making something so distasteful, pointless, and dumb.
Then the next film was the highlight of the night, Bobcat Goldthwait's latest directorial effort, WILLOW CREEK. Set in...or at least near...the site of the famous Patterson-Gimlin footage, we follow a couple of documentary filmmakers on the search for Bigfoot. Or at least he is on the search for Bigfoot. She's along because they're a couple and she supports him. So they travel to the town of Willow Creek, California, home of the Bigfoot museum (and Bigfoot Burger, and multiple Bigfoot statues, and lots of ardent "squatchers.") They interview locals, hear some Bigfoot-themed folk music (this part blurs reality and fiction.) And for the first hour or so it plays out as if it's a pretty cool Bigfoot documentary. Then they go on a camping trip, against the warning of an angry local (San Francisco's own Bucky Sinister, who was there for the screening) and...well that night it turns into a genuinely scary horror movie. There's an already-famous 17 minute scene of them sitting up in their tent at night listening to noises and freaking the heck out. As someone who has in my youth spent more than a few nights in a tent in bear territory in Alaska (and with Boy Scouts who like to prank you by faking bear attacks) I can tell you how scary that can be. And as someone who watched the scene with THE HUNGER GAMES blaring in the theater next door, I can tell you how important it is to watch it in a well sound-insulated room, because that kinda broke the scene a little bit. But just a little bit, the scene was still excellent and made me jump at the right moment. I've said this quite a few times, but I think Bobcat Goldthwait is one of the most interesting directors working today, and Bucky Sinister related that Bobcat calls this time "the Ed Wood part of his career" where he will make the movie he wants to make, take a studio note from nobody, and then figure out how to sell it. Kudos to him for this movie, and for that attitude towards filmmaking.
Then we ended the night with a valiant attempt to watch BUCK WILD. More mis-adventures in Holehead screwups, the copy of the movie never arrived. So we watched a screener--an online screener via Vimeo. And it started out okay, despite poor audio and a watermark across the bottom, it actually looked okay. We met the main characters--a group of young men off on a hunting trip on Buck Wild ranch in Texas. There's the leader, the horny one, the glasses-wearing nerd, and the crazy cousin. And we meet the bad guys--Billy Ray (who we are assured is a bad-ass despite dressing like a gay pimp and speaking in a British accent) and his gang. And we're introduced to the concept of the Chupacabra. And then...the movie freezes up. And we fuck around with getting Vimeo to play it. And we switch to non-HD. And it works some more. The video quality isn't that great, but it's still watchable. And the horny friend is attacked by the Chupacabra-infected ranch owner's daughter. And they accidentally shoot the ranch owner, and the crazy cousin totally non-accidentally drugs the ranger, and the nerd accidentally drives his 4x4 onto Billy Ray's property and...the movie freezes again. And this time they just can't get it to play. So we call it a night. Too bad, because it was looking pretty promising, had a good mix of comedy and horror, and wacky characters that kept your interest even if they were over-the-top, unrealistic, and one-dimensional. But, those are the breaks, and they've become a bit too common at Holehead.
So that was day 2 at Holehead. Only half of it was horror, and only half of that was watchable (but at least WILLOW CREEK was pretty great.)
Total Running Time: 451 minutes (only counting completed programs)
My Total Minutes: 343,396
Then the festival continued with...a surfing documentary? Okay, some explanation is necessary. Because the Balboa Theater is a new venue for the festival, and because it's near-ish the beach (certainly nearer than the Mission), the organizers of the festival thought it would be fun to take a break from horror and do a kind of mini-fest of surfing documentaries at the Balboa. And so H2INDO was the first one they booked. And then they couldn't find any more. But they talked to the director and he was super-excited to play the festival, especially at the Balboa. Then at the last minute he couldn't make it (or, I guess, convince any of his friends to go) so we ended up with a surfing documentary in a horror festival with maybe 5 people in attendance, myself included.
It's a shame this wasn't played in the right context, because it's actually a pretty good movie. It explores the world of the surfing sub-category or Stand Up Paddling through a two week trip to Indonesia with 7 giants (old guard and new stars) of the sport. I'll admit I know nothing about the surfing world, but for some reason the name Dave Kalama seems like someone I should know. The rest of them are Connor Baxter, Slater Trout, Talia Gangini (the one girl among all these guys,) Chuck Patterson, Dave Boehne & Jamie Mitchell. First-time director Brent Deal writes himself into the movie by essentially integrating his "making of" scenes into the film, starting with the phone call from his main backer--his grandma--agreeing to give him the money to make his movie. Then it's off to Indonesia with the gang, where he obsesses over how he doesn't know how to shoot surfing scenes--shooting from the boat is too shaky, and shooting from land he can't get good shots, so he gives all credit on his first day to his assistant who is shooting in the water. At first the idea of focusing on his struggles to make the movie seemed kind of self-indulgent, but eventually I realized that since he's a novice to Stand Up Paddling, having himself as a character actually serves as the point of view of the audience, letting us discover the world as he does. Too many surfing documentaries (in fact, action-sports documentaries in general) fail to do this, and end up being movies by and for the surfing/action sports community that aren't all that accessible to those outside. So that novice point of view is greatly appreciated.
Anyway, I've gone a full paragraph and haven't even explained what Stand Up Paddling (SUP) is. You might have seen those guys on big surfboards standing up with a long paddle (as opposed to lying on your board and paddling out.) Well...the guys standing up and paddling are doing SUP. Simple as that. Staying upright and using the paddle makes it easier for newbies to learn, and you can surf in more "junk" waves that shortboard surfers would pass up. And those shortboard surfers don't like these "spoon goons" getting in their way. That's a part of the story that plays heavily but isn't very well explained (mostly because it's explained by people who don't agree with it) but surfers can be very territorial and shortboarders don't think SUP is "core" enough to share the waves. Whatever, SUP looks like a heck of a lot of fun, and the movie ends up--despite Brent Deal's early concerns--getting some absolutely awesome shots of it.
Then the next show--exactly six hours after the beginning of the festival day--was the first horror movie of the day. And PINUP DOLLS ON ICE made me yearn for more surfing documentaries. Okay, not really, but it made me yearn for a good
Then the next film was the highlight of the night, Bobcat Goldthwait's latest directorial effort, WILLOW CREEK. Set in...or at least near...the site of the famous Patterson-Gimlin footage, we follow a couple of documentary filmmakers on the search for Bigfoot. Or at least he is on the search for Bigfoot. She's along because they're a couple and she supports him. So they travel to the town of Willow Creek, California, home of the Bigfoot museum (and Bigfoot Burger, and multiple Bigfoot statues, and lots of ardent "squatchers.") They interview locals, hear some Bigfoot-themed folk music (this part blurs reality and fiction.) And for the first hour or so it plays out as if it's a pretty cool Bigfoot documentary. Then they go on a camping trip, against the warning of an angry local (San Francisco's own Bucky Sinister, who was there for the screening) and...well that night it turns into a genuinely scary horror movie. There's an already-famous 17 minute scene of them sitting up in their tent at night listening to noises and freaking the heck out. As someone who has in my youth spent more than a few nights in a tent in bear territory in Alaska (and with Boy Scouts who like to prank you by faking bear attacks) I can tell you how scary that can be. And as someone who watched the scene with THE HUNGER GAMES blaring in the theater next door, I can tell you how important it is to watch it in a well sound-insulated room, because that kinda broke the scene a little bit. But just a little bit, the scene was still excellent and made me jump at the right moment. I've said this quite a few times, but I think Bobcat Goldthwait is one of the most interesting directors working today, and Bucky Sinister related that Bobcat calls this time "the Ed Wood part of his career" where he will make the movie he wants to make, take a studio note from nobody, and then figure out how to sell it. Kudos to him for this movie, and for that attitude towards filmmaking.
Then we ended the night with a valiant attempt to watch BUCK WILD. More mis-adventures in Holehead screwups, the copy of the movie never arrived. So we watched a screener--an online screener via Vimeo. And it started out okay, despite poor audio and a watermark across the bottom, it actually looked okay. We met the main characters--a group of young men off on a hunting trip on Buck Wild ranch in Texas. There's the leader, the horny one, the glasses-wearing nerd, and the crazy cousin. And we meet the bad guys--Billy Ray (who we are assured is a bad-ass despite dressing like a gay pimp and speaking in a British accent) and his gang. And we're introduced to the concept of the Chupacabra. And then...the movie freezes up. And we fuck around with getting Vimeo to play it. And we switch to non-HD. And it works some more. The video quality isn't that great, but it's still watchable. And the horny friend is attacked by the Chupacabra-infected ranch owner's daughter. And they accidentally shoot the ranch owner, and the crazy cousin totally non-accidentally drugs the ranger, and the nerd accidentally drives his 4x4 onto Billy Ray's property and...the movie freezes again. And this time they just can't get it to play. So we call it a night. Too bad, because it was looking pretty promising, had a good mix of comedy and horror, and wacky characters that kept your interest even if they were over-the-top, unrealistic, and one-dimensional. But, those are the breaks, and they've become a bit too common at Holehead.
So that was day 2 at Holehead. Only half of it was horror, and only half of that was watchable (but at least WILLOW CREEK was pretty great.)
Total Running Time: 451 minutes (only counting completed programs)
My Total Minutes: 343,396
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