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Movies
The Awesome Fest has been doing its name proud lately, bringing a ton of weird and great rep film to to town. They were extremely fast about obtaining the rights to show Beastie Boys concert video (sort of) made by Adam Yauch:
“Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!” is a 2006 concert film of the Beastie Boys, directed by Adam Yauch. It was created by giving camcorders to 50 audience members of a sold out concert at Madison Square Garden on October 9, 2004. The audience members were instructed to keep the cameras rolling at all times. For a low budget operation, all cameras were returned to the place of purchase for a refund. The film premiered at Sundance in 2006.
The screening's next Thursday, May 18; doors at 7, movie at 8. It's technically free, but the suggested $5 donation goes to a charity of Yauch's family's choice.
Movie critic (and the guy who compiles our weekly repertory film listings) Michael Gold reviews his favorite Netflix Instant flick of the week.
Maurice Sendak figured prominently in many childhoods, so the author/illustrator’s death yesterday naturally unleashed a wave of reflection on many an adult. For me, revisiting Sendak’s work (whether through a free trip to the Rosenbach or looping clips from Really, Rosie) was a reminder of the writer’s remarkable refusal to pander to children.
Far from Disney’s unblemished angels, Sendak’s protagonists were always defined by their decidedly human flaws. The bratty Pierre is unshakeable beyond contrition, while Outside Over There’s Ida is jealous and self-centered, and the mischievous Max takes tantrums to consummate heights. Even if the illustrator’s singular artistic style enraptured us as children, but his characters’ shortcomings are what made his stories so relatable — and what kept us coming back. Even at his most bizarre, Sendak was an author absolutely determined to treat kids like they were sophisticated adults. Like the author once told fellow illustrator Art Spiegelman, “childhood is deep and rich. It’s vital, mysterious, and profound.”
That sentiment — essentially, that kids are people too — has recently pervaded the work of a handful of filmmakers. Spike Jonze captured it beautifully with his adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are. So did Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, with animal denizens riddled with the same melancholy and anxiety as any of his adult characters. But for me, the director who best captures the darker aspects of childhood is Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón. In 1995’s A Little Princess, his Hollywood debut, Cuarón masterfully captured a child’s retreat into imagination to cope with trauma. As the imaginative Sara becomes a penniless orphan, the film employs dazzling sets and vivid color in her rosy fantasies, while employing dark, sickly hues for her confining boarding school. In doing so, A Little Princess urges its audiences—both grown and youthful—to let their creative potential flourish during their most troubling times. The same stylistic strands (aided by carefully restrained acting) carried into Cuarón’s adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. In both cases, I suspect the director’s mature filmmaking would have made Maurice Sendak proud.
(michael.gold@citypaper.net) (@migold)
Movie critic (and the guy who compiles our weekly repertory film listings) Michael Gold reviews his favorite Netflix Instant flick of the week.
Keep your eye on the French Riviera as the crowning jewel of film festivals slowly approaches. In exactly two weeks, stars and execs descend on Cannes’ red carpet for an ostentatious celebration of cinema. True, other festivals are more audience-friendly or far edgier (Proof: This year’s all-male competition lineup is dominated by the usual suspects, from Anderson to Vinterberg). But still, the French fest sets the tone for what will succeed and fail on the world cinema stage — even if its top movies never quite make it big stateside.
Take 2010 Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. The oneiric feature from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (whose staggeringly long name matches his movie's verbose title) captivated the Cannes jury, then confounded U.S. audiences and missed out on a coveted Academy Award nom. A shame (albeit an unsurprising one), since the meditative tale of the titular uncle’s preparation for death is stunningly poignant. Perhaps Uncle Boonmee’s plot, which features dead spirits converging on Boonmee's porch to help guide him into the afterlife, is a touch obscure. Yet its parade of mesmerizing images and its meditative pace make the movie into a dazzling exploration of film form. If Weerasethakul's enigmatic journey through Boonmee's life defies easy explanation, so be it. It remains exactly the type of challenging fare festivals were intended to reward.
(michael.gold@citypaper.net) (@migold)
Movie critic (and the guy who compiles our weekly repertory film listings) Michael Gold reviews his favorite Netflix Instant flick of the week.
Nothing against my colleagues, but writers tend not to be the most interesting of people. Versatile adjective-wielding skills are about as sexy as the ability to run a fish hatchery, and being a scribe largely involves staring at your computer and resisting distraction. Not to cast aspersions on Hollywood, but most scribes do not fill time by pursuing serial killers or circumventing the delusions of faded starlets. The day a young screen queen spends ten minutes agonizing over the proper use of “bemused” will be the day studio execs capture the authorial experience.
Strangely enough, the movie that best portrays the writing process casts pencil and paper aside. To get past his writer’s block, Italian maestro Federico Fellini penned the story of a film director, Guido, who can’t get his next effort off the ground. 8 ½, the movie that resulted, is a magically surreal exploration of Guido’s subconscious. As he searches for something to say, the director’s mind wanders indulgently from fantasy to fantasy. Fellini masterfully blends reality and fiction to show how inspiration can be elicited from the most unexpected sources. Every writer who has struggled to stay on track will relate.
(michael.gold@citypaper.net) (@migold)
With the help of City Paper film critics, Josh Middleton counts down this weekend's six new movie releases, from lowest- to highest-graded.
THE LUCKY ONE [ C- ] It’s easy to dismiss the schmaltzy romantic drama The Lucky One. After all, it came from Nicholas Sparks’ badly chewed ballpoint pen and was directed by Scott Hicks (Shine) with a paint-by-numbers approach to filmmaking. Read the rest of Gary M. Kramer's review here. (UA Riverview)
Movie critic (and the guy who compiles our weekly repertory film listings) Michael Gold reviews his favorite Netflix Instant flick of the week.
Sometime in the last 20 years, stoner comedies spun off into their own genre. Granted, pot has a long film 
history, stretching from the didactic morality of Reefer Madness to Cheech and Chong’s over-the-top antics. But for the most part, marijuana existed on the hazy fringes of the Hollywood screen, where it was occasionally referenced yet never quite depicted.
In the ’90s, though, the film industry mellowed out when Dazed and Confused burst onto the indie scene. This coming-of-age movie is not as bluntly drug-centric as the comedies that followed (think Friday, Half Baked and How High — none of which, regrettably, are on Netflix streaming). Yet director Richard Linklater’s largely plotless exploration of teenage society struck a chord with stoners everywhere by equating its central jock’s drug use with individuality. At the same time, Linklater’s observational style perfectly captures the listlessness underlying its characters’ substance-fueled actions. It’s that balance between criticizing and celebrating adolescent hedonism that makes Dazed and Confused a trailblazing entry into the stoner-comedy canon.
(michael.gold@citypaper.net) (@migold)
With the help of City Paper film critics, Josh Middleton counts down this weekend's eight new movie releases, from lowest- to highest-graded.
THE THREE STOOGES [ C- ] Drew Lazor's review is coming soon. Until then, knock somebody upside the head with a frying pan and yuk about it.
THE COVER:
- A.D. Amorosi chats with South Philly cloud rapper Lushlife in anticipation of his newest full-length, Plateau Vision. "I was a record digger from a super-early age, so I was taking in varied sounds and textures."
FEATURES:
- Shaun Brady writes about Space 1026's latest exhibit, "Phoning It in from Yogyakarta," an Internet-aided showcase of an Indonesian DIY art scene.
COLUMNS:
- MUSIC! In Reconsider Me, M.J. dances on the ceiling over Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down and
Tuskegee. And Peter Burwasser talks about Jan Krzywicki's commissioning of 25 new variations on Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, in Suite Spot. - GOSSIP! A.D. Amorosi talks Joltin' Joe, Bedroom Problems' and Walking Fish Theatre in Icepack.
- ART! Robin Rice Re:Views "Van Gogh Up Close" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
- BOOKS! Justin Bauer compares Mark Leyner's The Sugar Frosted Nutsack and Hari Kunzru's Gods Without Men, in Shelf Life
- SEX! Our resident sexpert, Meg Augustin, enlightens a man who gets turned on when his wife talks about getting it on with other dudes., in her monthly column, Sexy Time.
EVENT PICKS:
- LGBTQ! The Dumpsta Players look for 2012's Trashiest Prom Queen, The Heels on Wheels Glitter
Roadshow rolls into town for a night of femme-boosting theatrics, and the Liberty City Kings Drag and Burlesque crown Mr. Philadelphia Drag King. - FILM! International House screens George Méliès A Trip to the Moon along with Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange's The Extraordinary Voyage.
- THEATER! The Black Monk at Off-Broad Street Theater at the First Baptist Church, and Miskreant Puppets @ Keswick Theatre
- MUSIC! Tobacco/Com Truise @ First Unitarian Church, Amy Ray @ World Café Live, Mayer Hawthorne/Stepkids @ Union Transfer, Lambchop @ World Café Live, and the Race and Rock Scavenger Hunt @ St. Michael's Church.
AND MORE!
Photo by Neal Santos
Movie critic (and the guy who compiles our weekly repertory film listings) Michael Gold reviews his favorite Netflix Instant flick of the week.
With mega-geek Joss Whedon at the helm, I can guarantee without reading a review that Cabin in the Woods will be hilariously meta (but still, check out CP’s review tomorrow). And why shouldn’t it be? The horror genre is nearly as old as film itself, and yet the tropes haven’t evolved much: A grotesque monster threatens a hot girl until she can either be saved by hunky man-candy or work up the nerve to save herself.
Whether subtle or not, clever lampoons of scary movies are nothing new. But often overlooked is the inherent humor in the low-budget iterations that stretch the genre to its most absurd. Take Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives. Better known for the controversy it engendered rather than, say, stark cinematic genius, Israel Luna’s slasher flick follows the standard rape-and-revenge exploitation formula so popular in the ’70s. Yet Luna channels Roger Corman and Quentin Tarantino rather than Wes Craven, bringing violence and gore to an almost campy level. Even the central transgender trio’s catty dialogue feels like a deliberate maneuver to make the movie seem appropriately inept. While Luna may lack the in-jokes so crucial to Whedon’s oeuvre, Ticked-Off Trannies’ reliance on old standards makes for an entertainingly campy romp.
(michael.gold@citypaper.net) (@migold)
Movie critic (and the guy who compiles our weekly repertory film listings) Michael Gold reviews his favorite Netflix Instant flick of the week.
With Passover and Easter on the horizon, it’s a busy, religious week for worshippers of the Judeo-Christian persuasion. Whether purging your house from the scourge of carbs or solemnly washing your feet, it doesn’t take long for that religious observance to become fairly daunting. Dying eggs and looping “A Rugrats Passover” will certainly lift the mood, but with that comes pangs of guilt for skipping spiritual duties for more mind-numbing fare (same goes for watching Hop).
Firmly splitting the difference between religious reflection and secular entertainment, Holy Rollers is the perfect antidote to the spring holiday blues. Clad in all black and rocking some side curls, Jesse Eisenberg shines as Sam, a naïve orthodox Jew looking to make some extra bucks as a drug mule. The intense stigma the entrepreneurial Sam receives from his community will be a familiar feeling to anyone at the receiving end of scornful looks at family dinners. Eisenberg artfully plays a young man trying to forge his own path, but this coming-of-age story is laced with just enough religion to fulfill the week’s spiritual obligations.
(michael.gold@citypaper.net) (@migold)
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