HOME ROOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Funky Forest: First Contact on DVD

Haunting and Lovely

Official Site
Let the Right One In Director Slams Remake

WEDNESDAY: Michel Gondry Book Launch and Signing

Tomorrow night the uber-cool "curated bookstore" Family on Fairfax will play host to filmmaker Michel Gondry, as he launches two new books -- one a do-it-yourself semi-memoir inspired in part by his film Be Kind Rewind, called You Like This Film Because You're in It; the other a comic book written and drawn by Gondry titled We Lost the War But Not the Battle, which Family describes as an "action-packed comic book [which] tells the story of four friends, the French army, and a beautifully horrifying conspiracy to take over the world. This one has it all: guns, girls, death, friendship, Mia Farrow, and so much more." The launch will be followed by a signing and a live DJ set from J-Lep.

For those in need of a brief refresher course in the sparkling hallows of Mr. Gondry's imagination, Tragically Hipster is once again pleased to oblige:


"Fell in Love With a Girl" (music video)


"Les Callioux" (music video)


"If You Rescue Me" (from The Science of Sleep)
WHERE: Family on Fairfax
WHEN: Wednesday, October 22nd 2008 @ 7:30p.m.
COST: Free, but you should probably buy something and support cool local businesses.
MORE INFO:Family website.

THIS WEEKEND: All-Night Horror Show at the New Beverly

Because nothing says "Halloween's Coming" quite like severe eye trauma gags, the New Beverly Cinema is having a twelve-hour all-night horror-thon this weekend, screening a half-dozen disturbing, disgusting, but otherwise distinguished films over Saturday night/early Sunday morning. Tickets are but a scant $20, all films play in "glorious" 35mm (as opposed to the lackluster kind), and all proceeds go to benefit retrofits at the New Beverly (which could frankly use a couple of them oh-so-lovely leather couches that grace the Silent Movie Theater just down the way).

Set to play: Creepers (featuring a teenaged Jennifer Connelly who can talk to bugs); The House on Sorority Row (about the recondite perils of college hazing ritual-interuptus via slashing); In the Wall (a short film so hip and now that we've never even heard of it before!); Zombie (Lucio Fulci's loving undead tribute to amateur enucleation); a "top-secret surprise movie" (which will hopefully literally be Top Secret); The Power (in which Aztec dolls do the kind of damage that only Aztec dolls can); Teenage Mother (chronicling the life of a... wait for it... teenage mother); and wrapping things up with a double-plus-good early-morning screening of Raw Force (which eatmybrains.com describes as "a bikini kung-fu zombie action car crash of a movie," and then goes on to mumble something about a place called "Warrior Island" and how a lot of the footage has actually been pirated from Roger Corman. And are you really going to question the taste of a site called EatMyBrains.com?).

WHERE: The New Beverly Cinema
WHEN: This Saturday, October 18, 2008, at 7:30pm
COST: $20 + $1 service fee (if tickets are ordered online)
MORE INFO: New Beverly Midnights (MySpace page)

"In My Soul, I Know I Am Asaad Kelada."

LINK:
Gilmore Girls: The Complete Second Season

FREE -- Shadowplay Takes Film Cheerleading to a New Level

Over on his excellent Shadowplay blog, David Cairns has decided to take an unusually active hand in promoting the work of French auteur Julien Duvivier: by giving away DVD-Rs of his 1939 film La Fin Du Jour (The End of a Day) free to all who request it:

In a daring rear-guard action to promote the reputation of defunct French film director Julien Duvivier, Shadowplay is GIVING AWAY DVD-Rs copied from a decomposing late ’80s VHS off-air recording “borrowed” from the Lindsay Anderson Archive in Glasgow. I will personally send a copy to everyone who asks for one. The quality of the disc will be shit. The quality of the film is unspeakably superb.

To the best of my knowledge, the film is not available on DVD or VHS in the U.S., and foreign copies are distinctly lacking in English subtitles.

Having never seen any Duvivier myself, I'm eager to take a look at his work. The New York Times review of La Fin Du Jour from 1939 is aglow with love for it:

[T[he story of the film is that of a home for old actors, a reliquary of glorious memories, a restless tomb for dreams that never were fulfilled. It is a sentimental film, as such things must always be; but it is droll, too, and almost cruelly objective. Charles Spaak, who wrote it; Julien Duvivier, who directed it, and the fine cast that played it have stoutly resisted the theme's inherent tendency toward self-pity and self-ridicule. Nothing would have been more banal or bathetic than an actor's home filled with mirror-posing Hamlets or dear old ladies bent over yellowed scrapbooks. Simply for the record, and as a tribute to Gallic self-control, there are none of them in the film...

Duvivier's understanding of [his characters] is too thorough, too temperate, too sympathetic to permit him to shape their drama deliberately into farce or into melodrama. To see it as a whole one would also have to recall the beautifully happy old couple who sat hand in hand through the film, speaking of their children and grandchildren and deciding finally to get married.

To see it whole one would have to hear the speeches at the protest meeting, when all the guests voted to demand a radio in every room and two free stamps a week, not realizing the home was about to be closed through lack of funds. To see it whole one would have to follow Duvivier's camera through the empty corridors at night, with ghostly applause echoing everywhere -- the echo of a hundred taunting dreams.

To take advantage of this shockingly generous offer, head on over to the Shadowplay blog and drop a line in the comment thread. (And a nice "thank you" wouldn't be out of place, either.)

LINKS:
Shadowplay: The Willfully Eccentric Film Blog of David Cairns
Shadowplay: The Great Duvivier Giveaway

The New Beverly and Seth Green Unleash a CAVALCADE OF HORRORS Tonight

The New Beverly Cinema's latest guest-programmer festival starts tonight with a double-feature of Robocop and Die Hard, introduced by Seth Green. If you've somehow managed to live a full and complete life without ever having seen the latter film -- and really, what are the chances? -- we'll point you to an early review by the Outlaw Vern, the internet's resident expert on Badass Cinema:

[In Die Hard] Bruce Willis is a conflicted type hero very much of the '80s movie heritage of which he is most definitely a part. Coming to LA to spend christmas with his wife and kid, it is revealed he lives in a different city than his wife and right away gets in an argument with her, knowing all along that he is fucking things up. Before he can even say I'M SORRY three times fast the gal is held hostage by a group of germans who take over the building and plan to steal all the money. Bruce sneaks off with his little cop pistol and the rest of the film tells the story of how one man can kill all of the terrorists by himself using makeshift weapons and detective work -- all so he can make up with his wife.

Now especially at christmas time a motherfucker that watches this movie may very well believe it is meant as a jesus type story. The part of Jesus is played of course by Bruce, who sacrifices himself to save the other people in the building. The disciples include the cop Bruce talks to over the walky talky, who follows his teachings even while the commanding officers and fbi don't believe in Bruce and even hope to get him out of the way. I don't know maybe the other 11 are the guys he mentions from his squad who are taking bets on Bruce. Also judas is played by the smarmy fucking yuppy cokehead who pretends to be bruce's friend but turns him in to the evil king Hans Grueber.

Festival programmer Seth Green is best known, depending on your circle of geekery, either for his role as Oz on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for playing the part of "the wacky geek kid" in any number of second-rate action-comedies, or as the co-creator of the amazing series Robot Chicken:


"Seth Green's Cavalcade of Horrors" as it has been dubbed will continue for the next two weeks and feature, amongst others, Albert Brook's hilarious Defending Your Life and a Phil Joanou double bill of Three O'Clock High and State of Grace.


WHERE: The New Beverly Cinema
WHEN: September 3 through 15, at 7pm
COST: $7 gets you in to both films.
MORE INFO: The New Beverly's MySpace Blog

FRIDAY -- Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher

Tomorrow at the Silent Movie Theater the Cinefamily will be screening Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsay's little-seen first film (which is not to say that her second film exactly tore up the box office either). The last film in Cinefamily's "Female Gaze" series is also its best. Ramsay has an uncanny eye for detail; it plays more like a series of compelling still-photos than a traditional narrative.

Quoth the Cinefamily website: "Ratcatcher is a grim coming-of-age tale set in working-class Glasgow during a sanitation strike, but director Lynne Ramsey's imaginative flights of fantasy and masterful filmmaking seem to help her characters transcend the world of garbage and grime they inhabit. She selects her details with the taste of a great short-story teller, just a couple at a time; each image and sound is beautiful in some way, rich with potency. Ratcatcher ... represents the best of a trend towards a modern poetic realism -- films trying for hyper-realism in location and characters, but seeking to create a strange, mysterious quality, rather than just a gritty documentary world."


WHERE: The Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax
WHEN: Friday, August 29, 2008 @ 7:30pm
COST: $10
MORE INFO: The Cinefamily Website
Or you could just buy it on Criterion DVD

Return of the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie!

Whit Stillman's "Metropolitan"
Hulu.com seems determined to prove itself an unexpected asset to the human race. First, they agreed to provide hosting services for Joss Whedon's amazingly amazing supervillian musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog ; now, they've put up the entirety of Metropolitan, Whit Stillman's 1990 comedic masterpiece, free for your viewing pleasure.


"You don't have to have read a book to have an opinion on it."
(The guiding philosophy of most of my college essays.)
Stillman has thus far only directed three films, what he calls his "comedy of mannerlessness" trilogy, each of which chronicles the waning days of a particular social schema. Barcelona, set in the 80's, is about the end of the Spanish sexual revolution; The Last Days of Disco, set in the 70's, kind of lets you know what you're in for right in the title; and Metropolitan, set in the 60's, details the final years of the bourgeoisie "debutante" culture.

The appeal of these films lie with Stillman's own particular brand of comedy, which is like a cross between a Woody Allen film, a Jane Austen novel, and a particularly observant New Yorker cartoon. It's a dry wit that plays upon the intelligence and self-awareness of its viewer, as in this scene, where one of the New York "preppies" bemoans the inappropriateness of that descriptor, and proposes what he believes to be a more dignified alternative:


"The term is brilliant, and long overdue."
LINKS:
Metropolitan on Hulu
Metropolitan Criterion Collection DVD
Barcelona DVD
Whit Stillman Interview at IFC.com

Speaking of men in masks... Batman review!

The previous post about making owl masks inspired me to write briefly about seeing The Dark Knight this weekend.


As I'm sure everyone under the sun already has heard, read, or seen (if not verified for themselves)... The Dark Knight is a FANTASTIC movie! And not just in a hot summer action movie kind of way (though it is that). And not just in a comic-book cool-style kind of way (though it does look incredible). And not just in a nostalgic remembrance of Heath Ledger kind of way (though it will make you wish he were still with us).

The Dark Knight is just a damn good movie!

Great actors (and 1 actress), in great characters, giving great performances, delivering a great script, under great direction, on great sets, in great costume and make-up, that is all filmed great-ly, and enhanced with great effects... you get the point.

But in spite all of the great-ness, it is Heath Ledger who steals the stage every time the Joker appears on screen. All personal tragedy and remembrance aside, Heath's Joker is still the singular most compelling criminal character I have ever seen on screen! His unquenchable thirst for chaos without motive is truly frightening! His pure joy in watching society rage is maddening, and his genuine disappointment when those he torments respond nobly is horrifying! Of course, a great deal of credit is also due to writer/director Christopher Nolan; but there is no doubt that it would not have carried such a severe punch were it not for Heath Ledger's thoroughly convincing embodiment of the Joker.


We miss you, Heath!

p.s. - Mark my words... Heath Ledger, Oscar for Best Actor. Well deserved.

Sing Along With the Horrible Doctor

Following some unfortunate technical glitches, the first two parts of Joss Whedon's three-part web serial Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog have finally dropped online, and they are awesome.

Horrible is the story of the titular Doctor ("with a PhD in Horribleness"), a wanna-be mad scientist desperate for membership in the Evil League of Evil; the girl at the laundromat he pines for but has never spoken to; and Captain Hammer, Dr. Horrible's superheroic arch-nemesis. It is, naturally, a musical.

Those of you with social lives more active than my own might not instantly identify Joss Whedon as the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, recent Astonishing X-Men scribe, and co-writer of the first Toy Story movie. Whedon also wrote and directed Buffy's musical episode, which was notable not merely for featuring choreographed dancing vampires, but also for having songs that were actually, you know, good. Word on the street is that Dr. Horrible will see a DVD release in the near future, and feature a sung audio commentary.

WHERE: http://www.drhorrible.com

PRICE: Free until July 21st, or download the whole thing for just $4 on iTunes.