Young Kong: Peter Jackson on set of “Braindead” (aka “Dead Alive”) (1992) (via amy-blue)
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The actual Buckner Ball
This week's new releases in Portland-area theaters.
Josh Brolin (left) and Will Smith in "Men in Black 3"Other than that, the old standbys: "Also Opening," "Indie/Arthouse" and "Levy's High Five."
New releases in Portland-area theaters not reviewed in this week's A&E.
“Ambrosia” Free premiere of a 39 minute sci-fi action film made in Oregon. (Living Room Theaters Thursday only)
“Chinese Take-Away” Story of an unlikely friendship between a Chinese emigrant and a Buenos Aires shopkeeper. (Living Room Theaters)
“Drone: Minimalism and Meditation” A selection of avant garde and experimental short films. (Hollywood Theatre, Monday only)
“Girl Power” A compilation of vintage Saturday morning cartoons originally geared toward young girls. (Hollywood Theatre, Wednesday only)
"Jon Jost at the Northwest Film Center” The great independent filmmaker (and sometime resident of Oregon) presents two films -- the 1977 classic “Last Chants for a Slow Dance (Dead End)” and the 2008 “Parable” -- as the kickoff to several days of screenings and workshops. (Northwest Film Center, Thursday)
“Michael Crichton Double Feature” Portland State professor Dustin Morrow presents and discusses “Looker” (1981) and “Runaway” (1984), both of which the famed sci-fi author wrote and directed. (Hollywood Theatre, Thursday only)
“Mighty Fine” Chazz Palminteri and Andie MacDowell in the story of a family that moves from New York to New Orleans. (Fox Tower)
“Point Break” The great surfing bank robbers film (shot partly in Oregon) presented in Hecklevision, which allows you to text your jokes and jabs to the screen. (Hollywood Theatre, Friday only)
“Saving Private Ryan” Steven Spielberg’s monumental 1998 World War II film. (Hollywood Theatre, Saturday and Sunday only)
“Squirm” Killer worms! 1976 cult fare. (Hollywood Theatre, Tuesday only)
“Ten” Abbas Kiarostami’s 2002 meditation on womanhood in modern Iran, built around ten conversations between female passengers in a moving car. (5th Avenue Cinema, Friday through Sunday only)
“Trannysnatchers!” Avant-garde horror with demon worship, gender-play and whatnot, all of it made in Portland. (Clinton Street Theater, Friday only)
The five films playing in Portland-area theaters that I'd soonest see again.
1) “The Deep Blue Sea” Terence Davies is the finest director you’ve likely never heard of, probably because his best films -- the quiet, devastating semi-autobiographical “Distant Voices, Still Lives” and “The Long Day Closes” -- were made more than two decades ago and he’s only had one film (“The House of Mirth,” an anomaly, really) get even a modest release since. Here, adapting Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play about a passionate woman (Rachel Weisz), her stodgy husband (Simon Russell Beale) and her unreliable lover (Tom Hiddleston), his immense, inimitable gifts for image-making and, especially, turning film into something like music are in full power. The effect is sometimes funny, sometimes dramatic, sometimes absolutely ravishing. Davies is a master, and this is his most accessible film. See it. Living Room Theaters
2) "Bernie” It’s a term of deep praise to note that writer-director Richard Linklater (deepbreath: “Slacker,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” “Waking Life,” “School of Rock”) is capable more than any contemporary American filmmaker of making terrific movies about nearly nothing. Here, working with a based-on-truth story, he gives us life in the small East Texas town of Carthage, where a beneficent funeral director (Jack Black) and a mean, wealthy widow (Shirley MacLaine) become unlikely chums and companions...under she mysteriously goes missing. Linklater weaves the dramatized version of the story with dry and deft interviews of actual Carthaginians (is that what they’re called?) and even several musical numbers in a perfect frappe of a black comedy. Fox Tower
3) "Sometimes a Great Notion" Before the Oscar-winning classic "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," another film crew came to Oregon to adapt a Ken Kesey novel for the big screen. Paul Newman, Henry Fonda, Richard Jaeckel, Michael Sarrazin and Lee Remick were the stars, and Newman produced and, after a dust-up with the guy he first hired, also wound up directing. The result was something of a misfire, but a spirited one (with a singularly indelible death scene), but the stories about wild times during its making are legendary and a real hoot. Oregon author Matt Love has written a charming book about the shoot, "Sometimes a Great Movie: Paul Newman, Ken Kesey and the Filming of the Great Oregon Novel," and he'll be sharing some of the amazing tales he's uncovered after a screening of the film at the Hollywood Theatre on Saturday night at 7 p.m.
4) “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” Jiro Ono is the owner of a Tokyo sushi bar with 10 seats and 3 Michelin stars, and David Gelb’s gorgeous and intimate documentary about the man and his obsession gives you an idea of how that can not only be so but be fitting. Jiro and his two sons (bound to the chef’s apron strings, almost literally) devote untold hours of work and thought to the perfection of sushi-making, turning a sometimes makework form of cookery into indisputably high art. At 85, the old master still works virtually every day, and the fruit of his focus is in servings of raw fish and warm rice photographed so lusciously that you can almost taste them. A mouthwatering film: literally. Lake, Laurelhurst, Living Room Theaters
5) "The Cabin in the Woods"
A slasher movie inside a horror movie of another sort inside yet
another narrative, one which looks out and the audience and asks why
they (that is, we) keep lining up to watch other people get
slaughtered. A group of college students head to the titular location
for a weekend’s bacchanal, only to be preyed upon and killed in grisly
fashion, as per the familiar genre rules. At the same time, a group of
bureaucrats/scientists in a control room manipulate the victims and
their killers in the service of...something. Director Drew Goddard and
his co-writer Joss Whedon have fun in the vein of “Scream” and in
the vein of “The Truman Show” -- and they come up with an intriguing
theory to explain the allure of horror films as well as a (literal) hell
of a climax. Bloody, funny, clever. multiple locations
Josh Brolin adds a dash of droll magic to a time travel subplot and lifts a film above its expected quality.
Josh Brolin (l.) and Will Smith in "Men in Black 3"
It’s rarely worth assessing a movie by considering what it might have been, but in the case of the third film in a series that has been dormant for a decade after a brilliant launch and a catastrophic follow-up, it’s almost unavoidable.
“Men in Black 3” reunites stars Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith with director Barry Sonnenfeld in a sequel that almost nobody but corporate moneymen was itching for. The Lowell Cunningham comic book series that inspired the previous two films about secret government agents keeping a lid on the activities of alien creatures who live on Earth hasn’t been active for almost 20 years, there haven’t been new episodes of the animated version of the material since 2001, and the 2002 “Men in Black II” seemed to have effectively killed off the franchise, possessing none of the verve or charm of its 1997 predecessor.
Factor in Sonenfeld’s absence from the big screen since the horrific 'comedy' “RV” (2006) and Smith’s steadily diminishing boxoffice stature, and it’s no wonder that expectations for a new “MIB” should be at rock bottom, a premonition only bolstered by word that the new film would have a plot involving time travel -- frequently a mark of creative desperation in these sorts of things.
How pleasant, then, to find that “Men in Black 3” is a fairly brisk, sometimes funny, periodically inspired film. Yes, it’s a special-effects sequel, with all the noise and excess that implies. But there’s more freshness to it than you would expect, and there’s a performance in the center that honestly makes it all worthwhile.
That would be the work of Josh Brolin, who is simply astounding as the 1969 version of Agent K (Jones in the present tense), whom Agent J (Smith) must go back in time to rescue from a time-traveling bad guy (the blustery Jemaine Clement) who seeks to kill the young K both for personal reasons and to facilitate an invasion of the Earth by his species.
Brolin does an uncanny Jones -- the still, probing eyes; the stiff, hunched shoulders; the brow and mouth pursed in doubt; the deadpan voice that somehow mixes a drawl with staccato. It’s an impression, yes, but also an interpretation: Brolin’s K hasn’t hardened into the Jones incarnation yet; his youthful verve and openness continually surprise J. And the wit comes as much from Brolin’s timing and control as from the sheer fun he obviously has playing the part. It’s not the sort of thing that will be remembered come awards time, but it’s one of the most enjoyable performances you’ll see in a movie this year.
Actually, “MIB 3” has a couple other terrific acting turns -- Michael Stuhlbarg (“A Serious Man,” “Hugo”) plays a sweetly prescient alien and Bill Hader, joins the ranks of, among others, David Bowie, Crispin Glover and Jared Harris in creating a droll and sharp Andy Warhol for the screen.
The latter appears as part of the time-travel story (turns out, per the script, that Andy was an MIB agent and his scenesters were mostly aliens), as are the 1969 Mets and the Apollo 11 space mission. These are all woven cleverly into a script credited to Etan Cohen (with, it seems, a small team providing assists) that manages to accrue depth and layers as it moves forward toward an action finale (something which “The Avengers,” which is a better movie in many ways, did not). And Sonnenfeld, who has sometimes been guilty of gratuitous garishness, keeps the gimmickry minimal, employing flourishes only occasionally and using 3-D almost naturalistically -- or as naturalistically as can be hoped for in a movie in which the villain has a deadly dart-spewing spider-thingy living inside of his palm.
So did the world need another “Men in Black”? No, not at all. But if there had to be one, then it’s certainly a relief that it should be one as agreeable as this.
(105 min., PG-13, multiple locations) Grade: B
Josh Brolin (l.) and Will Smith in "Men in Black 3"
She drummed for Hole and babysat for Kurt and Courtney -- and lived through hell and tells the tale.
Drummer Patty Schemel, star and subject of "Hit So Hard"In many ways, “Hit So Hard,” the story of Patty Schemel is familiar to the point of being clichéd: a ‘90s Seattle rocker spirals into alcoholism and drug abuse until she winds up homeless, then slowly achieves sobriety and a new life.
But Schemel ran in heady circles: she was chummy with Kurt Cobain and his missus, Courtney Love, and she played drums in Love’s band Hole at that group’s height. So her tale of downfall and survival has absorbing echoes and connections. What’s more, Schemel was an ardent videographer who, somehow, held onto her tapes, which means that her personal archives provide a truly rare view into the musical world known as grunge at something like its media-hyped height.
Director P. David Ebersole combines frank interviews with Schemel, her family and friends, and her bandmates to assemble this portrait of a talented woman dealing with the weighty pressures of the rock world, the drug world, and her own sexuality. But it’s a long film for such a familiar story. And, despite Schemel’s appealing candor, the highlight of the film is, by far, those precious images of Cobain horsing around with his baby daughter, helping Love write songs, and behaving like an ordinary fellow: peace, love and normalcy in the midst of madness and pain.
(103 min., unrated, probably R, Hollywood Theatre) Grade: B-minus
But Schemel ran in heady circles: she was chummy with Kurt Cobain and his missus, Courtney Love, and she played drums in Love’s band Hole at that group’s height. So her tale of downfall and survival has absorbing echoes and connections. What’s more, Schemel was an ardent videographer who, somehow, held onto her tapes, which means that her personal archives provide a truly rare view into the musical world known as grunge at something like its media-hyped height.
Director P. David Ebersole combines frank interviews with Schemel, her family and friends, and her bandmates to assemble this portrait of a talented woman dealing with the weighty pressures of the rock world, the drug world, and her own sexuality. But it’s a long film for such a familiar story. And, despite Schemel’s appealing candor, the highlight of the film is, by far, those precious images of Cobain horsing around with his baby daughter, helping Love write songs, and behaving like an ordinary fellow: peace, love and normalcy in the midst of madness and pain.
(103 min., unrated, probably R, Hollywood Theatre) Grade: B-minus
Catch 'em while you can!
Michel Piccoli in "We Have a Pope"
We've all wanted to do it. One dude did, and now probably wishes he hadn't.
I have no doubt the little so-and-so needed to be tossed from the theater. But as a parent (whose kids were taught IMPECCABLE theater manners), I can't condone this particular outcome. I can get behind the corporal punishment of in-theater talkers, texters and food-throwers, no question. But when minor children are involved, I think that the parents should be summoned and that the offended party should be allowed one free shot at each of 'em, with the tacit understanding that mom and dad will determine appropriate justice for their little darlings when they get 'em home.
Thanks to Movieline for posting the story, which leaves out one vital detail: what film were they watching? Given the date of the incident -- April 11 -- and the fact that 3-D glasses and a 10-year-old were involved, I'm guessing "The Hunger Games".....which is, of course, about violence among children.
You. Cannot. Make. This. Stuff. Up.
Alain Delon eat your heart out: 18 year old George Best in 1964, his 1st season for United (via Interleaning)
Federico Felllini’s “I Clowns”
Applications for a $3000 grant are now open.
Filmmaking is an expensive enterprise, which makes it hard. And indepedent filmmaking in a town like Portland is even harder. And it almost goes without saying, sadly, that it can be harder still for women filmmakers in Portland or hereabouts to raise money for their projects than it is for their male peers.
Heartening to learn, then, of a potentially game-changing grant being offered by Women in Film, Portland Oregon, an organization dedicated to supporting and promoting the work of women filmmakers in Oregon and Clark County, Washington.
In conjunction with the Faerie Godmother Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation, WIF-PDX is accepting applications for its 2012 Faerie Godmother grant, a package of services, goodies and support topped by a $3000 cash grant. The completed application, which is available online, is due on July 31. Bon chance!
Heartening to learn, then, of a potentially game-changing grant being offered by Women in Film, Portland Oregon, an organization dedicated to supporting and promoting the work of women filmmakers in Oregon and Clark County, Washington.
In conjunction with the Faerie Godmother Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation, WIF-PDX is accepting applications for its 2012 Faerie Godmother grant, a package of services, goodies and support topped by a $3000 cash grant. The completed application, which is available online, is due on July 31. Bon chance!
Federico Fellini & Alberto Latuada’s “Variety Lights”
World leaders watching the climax of the Champions League Final shootout.
Greatness (via theronweasleygeneration)
They came to Chelsea together in 2004….
Drogs
Posters for Federico Fellini’s “Variety Lights”
International posters for Federico Fellini’s “I Clowns”
This week's new releases in Portland-area theaters.
"Battleship"Lots -- and I mean lots -- of films and film events for this springlike weekend. At the multiplexes, we've got the boats-vs-aliens film "Battleship," the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy "The Dictator," and the star-packed mom-and-dad-com "What to Expect When You're Expecting." In the arthouses we have the dark marital comedy "Darling Companion," the dark true crime comedy "Bernie," the spree-killer satire "God Bless America," and the documentary "Mansome" about male grooming. We've also got a roundup of three local film events well worth catching: the annual Portland Queer Documentary Festival, the Great Northwest Film Tour of the documentary "Adventures in Plymptoons" about cartoonist Bill Plympton, and the brand new Experimental Film Festival Portland. Add a jam-packed "Also Opening" and "Indie/Arthouse" and "Levy's High Five" and your cinematic cups run way the heck over.
A new online system allows film lovers and local communities to bring special film events to theaters near them.
from "One Day on Earth"Heaven knows the modern multiplex experience -- a torture of in-theater advertising, unrepentant texting and telephoning, noisy snacking, and various other indicators of impending cultural collapse -- isn’t like that any more. And that’s without even factoring in the quality and monotony of the films that you can choose from, which, as we all know, are rarely as good as the best of what’s on TV on a given night.
But now there may be another way to go to the movies, to see films with a like-spirited community, to select what you’d like to see and when you’d like to see it, and to be joined in the screening by others, known to you or not, who share a similar passion for the same sort of thing, no matter how unusual or specialized it may be.
That’s part of the idea behind TUGG, a new service that combines crowd-funding, like Kickstarter, with the build-your-own-entertainment model of video-on-demand -- but in a movie theater. With relationships with movie theaters all across the country and a library of more than 400 feature-length films, including new independent films, classic Hollywood and foreign movies, dramas, documentaries, and genre pictures, Tugg allows film lovers or people with a common interest in a particular subject matter to create a screening at a local theater at a time and date of their choosing.
The system was developed over the past two years in Austin, Texas, and it has been out in the world in beta format since the South by Southwest festival in March.
In mere months, Tugg has been used across the US to spread new independent films outside of the traditional channels of distribution, to showcase small films that can’t necessarily sustain an weeklong run at a theater in certain communities, and to combine social issue campaigns with nights out at the movies. In April, an Earth Day screening of the documentary "One Day on Earth" resulted in 1800 tickets being sold through TUGG to screenings in 11 different cities; one Los Angeles theater alone had 400 attendees.
It’s a truly simple system: You create an account on Tugg and connect it to your social networks (Facebook, Google+, or Twitter), select a movie from Tugg’s library, choose a date and time, and select from among the theaters in your area that work with Tugg (the list includes many Regal and Cinemark theaters as well as local houses such as Portland’s Living Room Theaters). An invitation goes out to the people on your network, who can then reserve a seat for the event with a credit card. When a minimum percentage of the seats has been reserved, the screening is guaranteed as a go and credit cards are charged for the tickets. And then you and your friends (and friends of your friends) attend just as you would any ordinary movie screening -- with the novelty that everyone in the theater is connected by the fibers of social networks as well as by the desire to see this film at this particular time with this particular group.
from "#ReGeneration"“We heard about Tugg through our distributors,” Baker explains, “and we decided it was a great way to promote our project.” In Portland, Baker and company had a triple-threat of promotional tools: a strong interest in the subject matter of the film, a community which is already very supportive of independent movies, and Baker’s own web of personal connections. “Being born and raised in Portland,” he says, “I reached out to several people within the community to help spread the word. And of course I had some family and friends take part in the screening.”
“#ReGENRATION” is coming back for another bite of the apple in Portland, on June 6 (details). But another screening, of the documentary “El Bulli,” about the famed chef Ferran Adrià, was due to be held at the Living Room but failed to garner enough ticket reservations in time for the film to be shown.
Tugg co-founder Nicolas Gonda explains that, so far, the system works just as well for classic or narrative films as for new and issue-driven movies. “The films we’ve shown have really run the gamut, from classics like ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and ‘The Good, The Bad & The Ugly,’ to recent releases like ‘The Tree of Life’ and cult films like ‘The FP.’”
According to Gonda, “It may not make sense for a theater to program a weeklong run of a small independent film with no marketing budget attached. But in almost every community there is potential for like-minded individuals or organizations to facilitate a one-off screening through Tugg.”
The films are principally shown in the digital DCP format, but Tugg can also work with 35mm film prints and other formats. Currently, Tugg is in negotiations with major distributors to get even more films -- both back-catalogue and current releases -- into its system, and is seeking more theatrical venues in more communities as potential host sites.
“People nationwide are using Tugg to bring their communities together,” says Gonda. “We’ve received feedback from Tugg users who say it’s particularly rewarding to share a film with a theater packed full of your friends, family and fellow film fans.”
New releases in Portland-area theaters not reviewed in this week's A&E.
"Bill Cunningham: New York"“Daughters of the Dust” Director Julie Dash will be present for a screening of her 1992 feature about life in the Gullah regions of Georgia and South Carolina. (Northwest Film Center, Monday only)
“H. P. Lovecraft double feature” The silent short feature “The Call of Cthulhu” and the full-length “The Whisperer in Darkness” help keep Portland’s love of the cult writer alive. (Clinton Street Theater, Friday to Sunday only)
“The Killing” Stanley Kubrick’s great, tense, doomy 1956 heist movie. A perfect film noir. (Laurelhurst Theater)
“NW Animation Festival” A selection of short films from around the world. (Hollywood Theatre, Friday to Sunday only)
“Payback” Documentary, based on a Margaret Atwood book, about the culture of debt and bankruptcy. (Living Room Theaters)
“The Perfect Family” Kathleen Turner in a dark comedy about a mom trying to reshape her family into an ideal. (Living Room Theaters)
“Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview” Feature-length chat with the computer guru from the days when he was running the doomed company NeXT. (Hollywood Theatre)
“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” Before the internet meme featuring a sarcastic Gene Wilder, before Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, um, revisited it, the original 1971 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book became a classic for good reason. Presented in a sing-along version. (Hollywood Theatre, Saturday only)
“Zombie Dawn” Low-budget zombie movie from Chile. And if that isn’t intriguing enough, you get a free comic book with your ticket. (Kiggins Theatre)
Hope and Change
The five films playing in Portland-area theaters that I'd soonest see again.
"Jiro Dreams of Sushi"2) “The Raid: Redemption” An ultra-violent, wildly kinetic martial arts film that virtually strips itself of the narrative conventions of plot, theme and characterization to create a white-knuckle thrill ride. Writer-director Gareth Evans, a Welshman living in Indonesia, takes the simplest story -- a squad of cops attacks a Jakarta apartment house where a crime lord is ensconced -- and uses it to string together wild action sequences that leave the viewer as exhausted as if he or she had fought them. His stars -- Iko Uwais as a baby-faced cop and Yayan Ruhian (who also choreographed) as a stringy-haired bad guy -- are dazzling. The whole thing is pure cinema: the human body rendered as a machine capable of mayhem, daring, and, yes, grace. Academy, Laurelhurst
3) “The Portland Queer Documentary Festival” Now marking its sixth year, QDocs, as it’s known, continues on as the only festival in the hemisphere dedicated to non-fictional films dealing with LGBT issues (there’s also one in Australia, which is rather a schlep...). This year’s crop is predictably diverse, with several films on contemporary political issues such as marriage rights (“Question One”) and gay clergy (“Love Free or Die”) and a number of portraits of artists who have carved out space in fields not immediately associated with gay and lesbian performers such as country music (“Chely Wright: Wish Me Away”) and comic books (“King of Comics”). A particular highlight is “Vito,” a compelling, smart and moving portrait of the late film historian and activist Vito Russo. Many of the films will be presented by their directors or subjects; all screenings will be held at McMenamins Kennedy School. Full ticket and schedule information
4) “Bernie” It’s a term of deep praise to note that writer-director Richard Linklater (deepbreath: “Slacker,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” “Waking Life,” “School of Rock”) is capable more than any contemporary American filmmaker of making terrific movies about nearly nothing. Here, working with a based-on-truth story, he gives us life in the small East Texas town of Carthage, where a beneficent funeral director (Jack Black) and a mean, wealthy widow (Shirley MacLaine) become unlikely chums and companions...under she mysteriously goes missing. Linklater weaves the dramatized version of the story with dry and deft interviews of actual Carthaginians (is that what they’re called?) and even several musical numbers in a perfect frappe of a black comedy. Fox Tower
5) “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” Jiro Ono is the owner of a Tokyo sushi bar with 10 seats and 3 Michelin stars, and David Gelb’s gorgeous and intimate documentary about the man and his obsession gives you an idea of how that can not only be so but be fitting. Jiro and his two sons (bound to the chef’s apron strings, almost literally) devote untold hours of work and thought to the perfection of sushi-making, turning a sometimes makework form of cookery into indisputably high art. At 85, the old master still works virtually every day, and the fruit of his focus is in servings of raw fish and warm rice photographed so lusciously that you can almost taste them. A mouthwatering film: literally. Laurelhurst, Living Room Theaters
Shawn Levy's books include the best-sellers The Castle on Sunset, Rat Pack Confidential, Paul Newman: A Life, King of Comedy: The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis, and Dolce Vita Confidential.
He also wrote and narrated the podcast Glitter & Might. The former film critic of The Oregonian and KGW-TV, he has written for Sight and Sound, Film Comment, American Film, Interview, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Black Rock Beacon. He jumps and claps and sings for victory in Portland, Oregon.
