Category: Documentaries (Page 30 of 43)

More LAFF: How do you mend a “Paper Heart”?

June 27, 2009 /

If documentaries necessarily involve a potential for abuse, simply because the perceived reality of film is so open to manipulation through editing and other tricks of the movie trade, documentary/fiction hybrids offer the opportunity for extreme confusion and manipulation. And, boy, is that the case here.

While the actual write-ups for “Paper Heart” were vague about the premise, a fellow LAFF-goer casually told me that it involved some kind of recreation of the romance between comedian/performance artist Charlyne Yi (“Knocked Up“) and the future of comic understatement, Michael Cera. Thus, watching the film, I became convinced I was seeing some kind of fictionalized retelling of a real-life romance. I am informed, however, in David Poland’s interview and from the post film Q&A that the relationship in the film is utterly and entirely fictional, so I assumed I was wrong again and the pair don’t date and never have. But after a bit more research I have information that indicates that Yi and Cera do have a relationship, just not in the one the movie. Except that the movie deals with what are Yi’s supposedly real feelings about love and how could that not affect her real or imagined romance with Cera? Of course, that’s none of my business and that’s probably a big part of the point.

The whole layers of fiction and reality thing got even more complicated when, at the post-screening Q&A, cowriter-director Nicholas Jasenovec stated categorically that story portions of the film were fictional while the documentary portions were not. Fine, but then a pre-teen boy who appears in the film opining on romance joins the discussion and, asked about he was found for “Paper Heart,” he and Jasenovic state that he was found through a casting process to join what appears to be a conversation with more or less random school children, and he is an actor.

When Jean Luc Godard uttered his most quoted line, that cinema was truth, 24 times a second, and every cut is a lie, I think this is kind of what he was talking about. But, so what?

Continue reading »

Documentaries, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movies, Reviews

What the wild & wonderful Whites won’t do (probably)

June 26, 2009 /

One screening I’ll be attending tomorrow for sure at LAFF is “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia,” about a rather intense West Virginia family into various forms of criminality, dysfunction and tap-dancing. I’m looking forward to it (you can see the trailer here), but below is something I won’t be expecting to see.

Documentaries, Movies

“We Live in Public” and the arrival of the new flesh

June 25, 2009 /

First of all, my apologies for subjecting you to the picture above of “Luvvy,” the frightening Mrs. Thurston Howell III-inspired clown alter ego of dot-com millionaire turned visionary self-described artiste Josh Harris. However, it’s arguably one of the less disturbing images available from what is probably going to be the most newsworthy film I’ll see at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and maybe anywhere else for a while.

It seemed even more that way when I learned while writing this post that Michael Jackson, an early experiment in living in public, had passed away at UCLA Medical Center — less than a quarter mile from the coffee house I’m writing this from. There’s a weirdness floating over L.A. right at the moment (as well as what sounds like a thousand helicopters).

Ondi Timoner’s “We Live in Public” scored the grand jury prize at Sundance this year, and not for no reason. If there’s any doubt that, despite the lack of flying cars or commercial space travel, we live in a science-fiction world, this film’s look at Harris’s ethically questionable but fascinating experiments in weirder-living through ‘net-driven intrusion does the trick. Philip Dick would be quite comfortable here and the Marshall McLuhanesque nightmare envisioned by David Cronenberg 1986 science-fiction classic, “Videodrome,” with its talk of media-generated “new flesh” seems closer than ever. (Naturally, a remake is in the offing.)

After making a bundle by arriving very early at the commercial and entertainment possibilities of the webtubes, Harris spent a huge chunk of his earnings in 1999 and 2000 on “Quiet.” It was an ultra-“Big Brother” type experiment in which hoardes of NYC hipsters and artists were sequestered in a high-tech bunker and placed under constant Internet surveillance, subjected to Stasi-style interrogations, and otherwise robbed of their humanity with their full cooperation. People who heard about it were able to see everything, and that includes all the stuff you’re thinking of (though judging from the film, a few people at least resorted to the old PG-13 movie trick of making love underneath blankets). Since there was also quite a few guns around, for some reason, it’s no surprise that the NYPD finally broke the thing up, though the situation had already turned a bit ugly, though not gun-ugly.

Continue reading »

Documentaries, Movies, New Media, News, Sci-Fi Movies

Rip! A Remix Manifesto

June 25, 2009 /

A movie about the art form of mash-ups that features mash-ups of the movie within the movie itself? We’re pretty sure we just heard the space/time continuum begin to rip at the prospect. Director Brett Gaylor attempts to make sense of the intellectual property laws that allow some musicians to steal riffs and make millions (Led Zeppelin, the Stones), while other, more cutting-edge musicians are branded as criminals (Girl Talk), and the end result is “Rip! A Remix Manifesto,” a wake-up call to Big Media that, whether they like or not, the rules have changed. Gaylor declares Walt Disney to be the first mash-up artist, and absolutely pummels publishing company Warner-Chappell for refusing to let “Happy Birthday” to enter the public domain (it’s true: if you sing that song, ever, you’re a thief), and for suing Radiohead fans for mash-ups once W-C acquired the rights to In Rainbows. Truth be told, the doc isn’t quite a five-star affair – we were frankly surprised that he didn’t mention when John Fogerty was sued for ripping off one of his own songs – but we’re giving it an extra star because “Rip!” addresses an issue that needs to be sorted out sooner rather than later. Indeed, one could argue that the music industry’s very survival depends on it.

Click to buy “Rip! A Remix Manifesto”

Documentaries, External Movie DVDs, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies

“Branson” and the world outside LAFF

June 22, 2009 /

There’s an idea out there that documentary filmmakers require more good luck to make a successful project, and though Brent Meeske took some three and half years to complete his work after another film died aborning, he clearly made some remarkable luck for himself with “Branson.” It starts out somewhat slowly, but what emerges is a compelling chronicle of the ups-and-downs of several talented but far from famous performers trying to make a life in the small city in Missouri that could best be described as Las Vegas, but with a vastly lower budget and constructed to Ned Flanders specifications.

At times, the hugely corny but enthusiastic performances may make us feel we’re in Christopher Guest/”Waiting for Guffman” territory. The post screening discussion revealed that at least one of the performers chronicled, evangelical Christian and New York transplant Geoffrey Hastings Haberer, was more than aware of the Guffmanesque aspects of Branson performances. Still, though its connection with Jack Black might worry some, this is not a film that in any way condescends to its subjects. At the same time, I’m not sure I’d be writing so favorably about it were it not for the far more troubled, yet also incredibly talented, performer who walks away with the film, Johnny Cash impersonator Jackson Cash. His Olympian personal struggles and powerhouse performances have moved even relatives of the late legend of American music to marvel at the similarity.

As he proved in a remarkable live performance following the film, Jackson Cash is really not impersonating Johnny Cash at all in any normal sense of the world. He simply performs Cash’s material with such clarity, honesty, and with such a remarkably similar voice (the result, Cash says, of damage to his larynx delivered by an angry drug dealer), that the differences between this man in black and the earlier one dissolve.

He wowed the film festival audience at a post screening concerted, which included at least one clearly enthralled well-known director, so things may be looking up for this remarkable performer, whose personal demons (drugs, possible bipolar issues, etc.)  make up a significant portion of the more dramatic material in “Branson.” I hope real success and stability are in the offing for Cash, as a brief conversation with the man indicated that he is very much as advertised: the real deal.

***

A few brief items from more or less outside the world of the L.A. Film Festival:

* Den of Geek passes along a Reuters report of director Michael Bay critiquing the marketing of the “Transformers” sequel about to hit theaters. (Hint, he apparently doesn’t think it’s a sequel at all, but an “event.”)

* Nathaniel R. has sixty ways to celebrate Meryl Streep’s birthday. (Guess how old she is.)

* Box Office Mojo has the “actuals” from last weekend. No big surprises, but they report that “Star Trek” is now officially the most successful “Star Trek” film of all time, adjusted for inflation. For once, I agree with the masses. I might quarrel at times with the hyperactive visual style of the film and I wouldn’t make any particular claims to greatness for it, but nor would I for “The Wrath of Khan.” All in all, it couldn’t happen to a nicer little space opera.

Actresses, Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 Premium Hollywood

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑