Joshua Grannell (aka Peaches Christ) and I met up at the Duboce Park Café the Monday after Pride Weekend. As Peaches, Joshua had survived his Pilsner pork pull; an event he agreed to in support of his beloved BLT community. “Every year,” Joshua admitted, “Peaches seems to do less and less [at Pride] in an attempt to reserve energy for the next eight weeks [of Midnight Mass].” Being that it’s now official that this is the last year of Midnight Mass at the Bridge Theatre (“Peaches Christ: R.I.P.”), I felt it compulsory to find out what’s up. Although our conversation was primarily to serve my upcoming Fangoria article on Joshua’s recently completed first feature All About Evil (I’ll let you know when that hits the newsstands), I took time to probe about the summer swan song of the 12th season of Midnight Mass.
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Once again, Michael Hawley helps the Twitch readership keep abreast of one film festival after the other in the San Francisco / Bay Area. Thanks, Michael!
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) turns a ripe young age of 29 this year, continuing its reign as the oldest and largest festival of its kind in the world. Over the course of 18 days (July 23 to August 10) SFJFF will present 71 films from 18 countries—showcasing the best Israeli and Jewish Diasporan cinema to emerge in the past year. Although I missed last week’s press conference announcing the line-up, I’ve poured over the catalog and compiled this list of ten programs I don’t want to miss.
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Twitch has not as yet given the work of Jonathan Nix any attention. That will change. Better late than never, right? Jonathan’s work producing animated shorts and soundtracks for the same has won him critical acclaim at festivals across his native Australia and beyond, and his latest project is the very wonderful-looking The Missing Key. This planned 25-minute short appears to build on the whimsical baroque setting for his earlier piece Hello (2003), a melancholy Italianate fantasy world with a distinctive touch of the surreal, and so far it looks to be absolutely gorgeous. Find the synopsis and a two-minute preview trailer from YouTube embedded after the break.
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Shortly before the hordes began chanting, “The Daily is dead; long live The Daily”, David Hudson gathered reviews of Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, first from its Cannes debut, and then later mid-June when it opened stateside. Here in San Francisco, Coppola met with his audience at the film’s first screening at the Sundance Kabuki.
Outlining how The Godfather created a “tsunami of success” that irrevocably changed his life and filmmaking, Coppola has gleaned from the passing of years a restoration of creative spirit leaning into what he admits is his “second career.” Tetro is, in fact, the second film of his second career; Youth Without Youth being the first. Lustrously shot in digital and projected in 35mm, the film is a rapture to watch, even as its rich visuals disguise an anemic narrative that doesn’t quite ring true. One is grateful for what one has seen; but, not completely satisfied. I’m not a huge Vincent Gallo fan so I place the blame there—for me, he just couldn’t carry the movie—but, Coppola’s “discovery” Alden Ehrenreich has charisma to spare in his debut role and is a talent to watch in future years.
* * *
Michael Guillén: One of the images I’m going to carry away with me from Tetro is that of the staged dance sequence near the edge of the sea. It reminded me of One From the Heart for being thrillingly artificial; the kind of artifice that lends itself in some odd way to emotional authenticity. Can you speak to your use of theatrical artifice to create emotion in your films?
Francis Ford Coppola: Of course. Just as the story implies, when Bennie [Alden Ehrenreich] was a little kid, his older brother Tetro [Vincent Gallo] used to take him to movies that were a little bit advanced for a seven-year-old kid and gave him some books to read and what have you and that’s why the boy idolized his brother so much. It’s true, in my own life I have an older brother who took me to see the Korda films, The Red Shoes—of which there’s an excerpt in Tetro—and also Tales of Hoffmann, which is much stranger for a young kid. Just as the character Bennie says, whenever he thought of his brother he always thought of Tales of Hoffmann.
My idea was that—when Bennie is reading [Tetro’s] cryptic notes and writings—that he imagines the story as though it’s scenes from a Michael Powell / Emeric Pressburger dance film. The version of the story that the boy understands is as though it’s told in dance. It’s great that film is one of those mediums that can use different art forms to do different things. It was also fun for me—as someone who has admired The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus and all those beautiful Technicolor films—to get to fool with telling this little story in those images. The image you mentioned of the dancers on the stage with the sea coming in is very much inspired by the dance in The Red Shoes, as you can imagine.
Cross-published on The Evening Class.
Seventy years later and 1939 is still hailed as a benchmark year for Hollywood cinema. Celebrating that fact, this evening The Castro Theatre launches its 18-film tribute to 1939, including such classics as Son of Frankenstein and The Man They Could Not Hang, At the Circus and You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man, They Made Me A Criminal and Each Dawn I Die, The Women and Ninotchka, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Destry Rides Again, Wuthering Heights and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Tarzan Finds A Son and Another Thin Man, Gunga Din and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, wrapping up with Golden Boy and Only Angels Have Wings.
If you prefer your home entertainment system to a movie palace, at least 10 of those titles are likewise included in Turner Classic Movies’ 39-film tribute “1939—70th Anniversary of Hollywood’s Greatest Year.” Each Thursday night through the month of July, TCM will shoot off 1939’s most celebrated fireworks, including all 10 Best Picture Oscar® Nominees (reminding—in the light of recent events—that everything old is new again). Robert Osborne offers a preview of the festival at Now Playing: The Show and the full schedule can be found at TCM’s website. TCM’s “39 From 1939” Film Festival also features the premiere of the new Warner Home Video documentary 1939 (2009), which recounts the astonishing accomplishments of Hollywood during this historic film year.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has, of course, been screening all 10 Best Picture Oscar® Nominees throughout the Summer, with only four screenings left to go.
Of related interest, at One Way Street Alan Rode angles in on 1939 by way of a sterling portrait of “the incredible twelve month run of film roles by the great character actor, Thomas Mitchell.”
And, of course, no survey of any given year in cinema history would be complete without a tip of the hat to Thom Ryan’s Film of the Year. He chose Confessions of a Nazi Spy as his focus on 1939.
So, out of sheer curiosity, what is your favorite film from 1939?
Cross-published on The Evening Class.
The second and final batch of films were announced this weekend for the inaugural Shinsedai Cinema Festival happening here in Toronto between August 21st and 23rd. The second wave of titles are in red. And in other good news Jasper Sharp from Midnight Eye will also be coming to town from across the pond to be a part of the festival that weekend.
After a busy few weeks The Shinsedai Cinema Festival is proud to announce the final round of films of our inaugural line-up. Highlights include the Canadian premiere of Yuya Ishii’s surreal father/ daughter comedy Girl Sparks (left), Touru Hano’s moody and sexy indie horror film Thunderfish (Raigyo), plus a very special co-presentation with Toronto’s Reel Asian International Film Festival of the works of Kyoto-based video artist and composer Takagi Masakatsu including the North American premiere of Aruongaku, Takashi Tomohisa’s documentary of Masakatsu’s Tai Rei Tei Rio concert held on November 13th, 2008 at the Grand Gallery of the Iwate Museum of Art.
Bunny in Hovel - Mayumi Yabe (2009) short
Csikspost - Yumiko Beppu (2009)
Electric Button (Moon & Cherry) -Yuki Tanada (2004) feaure
emerger - Aki Sato (2008)
Freeter’s Distress - Hiroki Iwabuchi (2007) feature
Hottentot Apron: A Sketch - Kei Shirichi (2006) feature
Naked of Defenses - Masahide Ichii (2008) feature
Now, I… - Ysautomo Chikuma (2007) feature
Suzuki & Co. - Kazuo Kono (2008) short film
The New God - Yutaka Tsuchiya (1999) feature
Vortex & Others: 5 Short Films by Yoshihiro Ito (2001-2008) short film
Girl Sparks - Yuya Ishii (2007) feature
Little Birds - Takeharu Watai (2005) feature
Aruongaku - Tomohisa Takashi (2009) feature
Thunderfish - Touru Hano (2005) feature
The Evening Traveling - Akino Kondoh (2002) short film
Wiener Wuast & Israel Mix - Maya Yonesho (2008) short film
The Rule of Dreams - Naoyuki Tsuji (1995) short film
Right Place & Maledict Car - Kosai Sekine (2005) short film
A Woman Who is Beating the Earth - Tsuki Inoue (2007) short film
The finalized schedule for The Shinsedai Cinema Festival will be posted July 15th and tickets and passes will go on sale on July 20th!
There is no shortage of documentaries on the infamous Norwegian black metal scene, but it seems until now there has yet to be one that gathered together the figures that truly mattered on film, and got the key players in the movement to speak without censoring themselves. Filmmakers Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites have pulled off the nearly impossible task of penetrating the inner circle of a very secular scene with their new documentary, Until The Light Takes Us. Moving from their homebase of New York city to Norway for two years, Ewell and Aites have not only put together what looks to be the most cohesive and fleshed out documentary on the subject, but have also made something that is much more beautiful to look at than it’s counterparts, which all seem to suffer from a VH-1 Behind The Music asthetic.
The fact that Varg Vikernes, of the one man band Burzum, incarcerated for years after being found guilty of arson and murder, appears in the film is no small feat. He has, until now, refused to take part in any of the aforementioned films on the subject. As co-director Ewell put it “Making a black metal documentary without Varg is like making a Rolling Stones documentary without Mick Jagger.”
While one may or may not appreciate the genre of true black metal, one thing is for sure, the sociological apsect of the movement is as deep as anything that has occured in rock and roll. Moving from the psuedo Satanic stance of its origins to a Nationalist movement as the teenaged progenitors grew to manhood (yes, the original true black metal scene is completely male dominated) there is a lot of material to mine here for Ewell and Aites, both visceral and intellectual. Until The Light Takes Us is sure to blow many people preconceived notions to hell (or Valhalla, take your pick) with it’s engrossing tale of anti-Christian activism and extremely articulate interview subjects. I for one am seriously looking forward to seeing Until The Light Takes Us in its entirety.
Screening Dates and Trailer after the Jump.
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You shan’t be disappointed if you decided to take in the Trilogy of Trilogies: Master Animators program at the Worldwide Short Film Festival this year. If you don’t know Bill Plympton by name you certainly know him by his hand drawn animation style. The program offers three short films from Plympton and two other animators, Adam Elliot and Osbert Parker, whose work I was not familiar with before previewing this program. Plympton’s work speaks for itself. And while I was impressed with Elliot’s short films it was Parker’s film noir shorts that got the most love from me. Make sure you don’t miss out on this program. This program is playing at the ROM on Saturday, June 20th. Well worth it!
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Oh! Canada. My home and not so native land. Oh how you make me laugh and titter. Is it no wonder that one of our chief exports are comedians. We are so selfless when it comes to our comedy that we just have to share it with the rest of the world so we send out these comedy ambassadors in hopes that we can teach the world to laugh. And the depth of our comedic talent is on full display in the Oh! Canada: Canadian Comedy Shorts program playing on Saturday, June 20th at the ROM.
Personally I thought the program started slow but it picked up speed after the first three shorts and really paid off by the end. But comedy is fairly subjective and some of you may enjoy all or some of the program. You won’t know unless you buy tickets and check them out for yourself.
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A little while back, yours truly posted a ToM dealing with remakes that I felt, at the very least, equaled their inspiration for one reason or another. It shouldn’t surprise that reader response was pretty divided, with some people decrying the institution of remaking films as a whole while others brought up great examples I had boneheadedly missed. I thought we’d give this another go-round but change things up a little in that this ToM will focus on remakes that, in my mind’s eye anyway, sullied the good name of their source material. Here are five that get my fanboy blood boiling…
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No doubt about it, we’re smitten with director Cory McAbee around these parts and I’m anxiously awaiting my chance to catch his latest sci-fi / musical / western Stingray Sam. I’ll have to wait a little longer myself but if you’re in New York City you only have to wait until Saturday, June 8th when the film will be screened by Rooftop Films in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Hit that link for details! And check the trailer below the break!
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As Queers prepare to celebrate Stonewall’s 40th anniversary next month, it’s fitting that films spotlighting LGBT elders be at the center of this year’s Frameline festival. That was the summational spin placed on this year’s event by new Executive Director K.C. Price and longtime Festival Director Jennifer Morris, as they walked us through the 2009 line-up at last week’s press conference. The festival turns 33 this year, and here’s an acknowledged fact that always bears repeating—Frameline is the oldest and largest LGBT film exhibition event in the world. Appropriately, 2009’s rousing theme—“The Power of Film”—is emblazoned upon a purple, fist-pumping Socialist-Realism inspired logo, and the festival’s trailer features THE original Super-8 projector used at the very first festival in 1977.
At a time when many arts organizations are struggling to retain funding, Frameline has emerged relatively unscathed. Price explained that while many of the festival’s corporate sponsors have slashed all arts bankrolling, when it came to Frameline, “they just couldn’t do it.” Happily, this enabled a hold on ticket prices which are already among the lowest of all Bay Area film festivals. There’s more good news for the wallet. For those with weekday afternoons free (whether because of a job layoff or otherwise), the festival is introducing a $35.00 Weekday Matinee Pass good for all 15 Castro Theater screenings, Monday through Friday before 5:00PM. This breaks down to roughly $2.35 per show. Also new in 2009, audience members can eschew paper ballots in favor of voting for films by text-messaging. I’m mighty ambivalent about this one and hereby issue a warning: anyone seen texting their vote (and emitting that horribly distracting light) before a film is finished, will be smacked upside the head with a rolled-up Frameline catalogue by one very annoyed LGBT elder.
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What’s that? You didn’t know that Canada had demigods of Metal? For sure we do.
At fourteen years old, best friends Lips and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band Anvil, hailed as the “demi-gods of Canadian metal,” influenced a musical generation including Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax. Though Anvil never made it, they never stopped playing or believing. Following a calamitous European tour, Lips and Robb, now well into their fifties, set off to record their thirteenth album, “This is Thirteen,” in one last attempt to fulfill their boyhood dream.
And their movie, Anvil! The Story of Anvil is going to be making it rounds south of the border. The complete list is below. Some of them are single night gigs, others for as long as a week, so make sure you’ve got those dates circled in the blackest of metal black on your calender!
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Normally we shout out film events in New York, Toronto, Chicago or San Francisco, the residences of several of the writing crew around here. But sometimes, you want to shed some light on film events in other parts of the U.S.A. (And besides, you can drive to this one from Chicago if you want to!) Minneapolis locals rejoice, because that crazy Canuck cinematist Guy Maddin is doing a live commentary tracks to his own Saddest Music in the World on June 18th, 2009.
“The Talkies” is a pet project of mastermind Tim Massett and since 2006 it has created an intimate dialogue between the film’s director and the audience. Essentially it takes an idea typically associated with home DVD viewing – an alternate commentary track – and super-charges it. A director joins the theatre’s audience for a 35mm screening to provide commentary throughout his or her own film. Some of the previous directors include Hershel Gordon Lewis, John Cameron Mitchell, John Waters and George Romero. (Treats all around, they can program there in MN!)
The great thing with Maddin is that he has been doing this sort of hybrid film/theatre mixture for some time. Live narrations of Brand Upon The Brain! and My Winnipeg toured the world mixing up actors or musicians (or poets) as narrators, before the director started doing them himself. I’ve been to several of these. They are always a treat. The live component adds much to the evening. And given the state of the American recession, why not indulge in a little good old fashion ‘Merican can-do and showmanship in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. Or wait a minute, is it the other way around?
Hi y’all! Time to get silly.
Having never seen Cory McAbee’s previous film “American Astronaut” I had no clue what to expect from his latest sci-fi non-epic “Stingray Sam”. So as I waited for the venue to open its doors, I checked out the scores so far for the Silver Scream Award, which is the Imagine Film Festival’s yearly award based on audience ratings. Guess what: “Let The Right One In” dominated the chart as expected. But to my surprise “Stingray Sam” was in second place with almost the same score!
This made me very curious to say the least, as on paper this title didn’t look like an audience pleaser.
For “Stingray Sam” is mostly shot in black & white and on a below-low budget. It’s also allegedly meant to be seen on mobile phones as a series of six ten-minute episodes, and its director Cory McAbee even gave a masterclass during the festival on how to make mobile phone movies. It also features (gasp) songs.
The version of “Stingray Sam” shown at the Imagine Film Festival had a razorsharp image and good sound, but still… this was the movie that had a good chance of dislodging Alfredson’s much-heralded vampire movie from its first place?!? In fact, it DID reach first spot (albeit for a single day only).
Now that the festival has ended, “Stingray Sam” ended in second place with an audience rating of 8.8 out of 10 which is freaking high. The reason for its success is quite simple: despite (or maybe because of) its humble origins, Cory McAbee’s film is almost insanely entertaining. When you see the audience clapping and singing along with the opening credits (which are replayed in front of every single episode) you know there is something special going on…
More after the break: Space Cowboys! Bikini-clad Nightclub Dancers! Male Pregnancy Doctors!
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