UNDER THE SAME MOON

Under the Same Moon (2007) dir. Patricia Reggin
Starring: Adrian Alonso, Kate del Castillo, Eugenio Derbez, Maya Zapata

***1/2

“Under the Same Moon” or “La Misma Luna” an under-the-radar Mexican festival circuit film quietly arrived on video a couple weeks back. In this day and age of social realism and cynical cinema, this film never did find its audience. This is no surprise. It’s uncool, unhip, old fashioned, and a little corny. But its optimism and heart on your sleeve sentimentality is a welcomed breath of fresh air. This simple tale of a young Mexican boy's journey to be reunited with her mother across the border is a near perfect rendering of the classic Odyssey-style storytelling and a small unearthed gem waiting to be discovered.

The opening establishes the two main characters, nine year old Carlito and his mother Rosario. Rosario crossed the border illegally 4 years ago and now lives in LA, working as a maid so she can properly provide for her son. Carlito lives with his grandmother in Mexico. His life is safe and secure, but he’s brave enough to mask his desire to grow up in the company of his mother. Breaking the bond of mother and son creates such a strong cinematic hook, the real world plausibility or logic of such a situation becomes mute. A dramatic event at the first act turn occurs which puts puts his domestic situation in question.

Carlito goes on a journey to find his mother, a journey which takes him across the border via a series of interesting characters, some good, some not so good, who help at each stage along the way. The less you know about the specifics of the story the better, because despite the Hollywood conventions it’s an unpredictable series of narrative twists and turns - something new and exciting is discovered with every new beat, scene and act turn. If I were teaching a course on screenwriting, “Under the Same Moon” could be a case study on the perfect structure and execution of its genre.

The finale is unabashedly 'Hollywood', but still thoroughly cinematic and satisfying. The perfect ending for this special film.

The anchor is a remarkable performance from youngster Adrian Alonzo – an astonishing performance comparable to any of the acclaimed child performances in recent memory ie. Haley Joel Osment, Abigail Breslin, Dakota Fanning etc. But the lack of recognition for such work is equally astonishing. Young Adrian holds down the film with complete authenticity. His sad but strong eyes instantly give Carlito the street smarts the character needs for us believe that he could make this journey.

The characters he meets along the way are introduced casually but slowly developed under our noses. Check out the loathsome Enrique (Eugenio Derbez) who enters the picture as a fellow border crosser who has no need to hang around a little nine-year old while evading the INS ( I wouldn’t either). But surprisingly Enrique hangs around long enough to become an integral supporting character, who learns something about honour and friendship along the way.

It would be easy to dismiss the film for simplifying complex issues, or the fact it makes no overt political stance on border relations between Mexico and the U.S. The border exists purely as a cinematic device or barrier between mother and son. The film is bigger than the political issue, because it’s a pure form of storytelling, which in the annals of history will survive long past it’s “political divisive” contemporaries.

Please see this film. Enjoy.

"Under the Same Moon" is available on DVD from Fox Home Entertainment

HEAVY METAL IN BAGHDAD

Heavy Metal in Baghdad (2008) dir. Suroosh Alvi, Eddy Moretti
Documentary

**

Acrassicauda means 'black scorpion' in latin. It’s also the name of the only heavy metal band in Iraq. Needless to say, heavy metal is frowned upon by the fundamentalist authorities, who see their music as a form of heretical Western propaganda. The filmed journey of filmmakers Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti to find this controversial band allows the audience a unique point of view into the Iraq War.

Alvi and Moretti are a pair of filmmakers from Vice magazine who, via their work with MTV, heard about this heavy metal band from Iraq. The notion of a metal band playing this type of music in the world's hotbed of conflict piqued their interest enough to bring their cameras and film a documentary. What they learn is what we've all known for some time, that after almost 5 years of war, the country is still as oppressed as it was during the Saddam rule.

For heavy metal junkies (like me), the film isn’t about music. In fact the music they play is pretty bad. The band plays mostly cover tunes, and their fan base consists of a handful of headbangers who seem to act more for the camera than the music. So it’s a bit of artistic licence and aggrandizement to call Acrassicauda an actual band. The film is about the effect of the war on the ordinary working people of Iraq – people like you and I who just want to play the music they like, and raise their families in peace.

The most fascinating element has little to do with the original intent of the filmmakers. I was shocked to see the extent of the westernization the ordinary Iraqi people. Bassist Firas Al-Lateef speaks like an ordinary American youth starting every sentence with ‘dude’. He speaks such good colloquial English, there is very little culture to discover in the film. Maybe this feeds the theme of the film – the fact that the world is so interconnected that Lateef, via Western TV and the internet, knows the freedom he was promised and can articulate it with our own words.

Like their contemporaries, Michael Moore, Morgan Spurlock, or Werner Herzog, the filmmakers use themselves as the narrative driving force (actually Alvi is the only one in front of the camera, Moretti is the operator). Unfortunately Alvi lacks the charisma of any of the above to make him a ‘character’ in the film. Sam Dunn, the director of “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey”, didn’t have much screen presence either, but his passion for the music made him interminable watchable. I don’t know if Suroosh even likes heavy metal? He never once discusses their music with the band.

Alvi also isn’t seasoned enough to make subtle his obviously leading questions. He’s constantly fishing for the salacious answers he desires to make compelling drama. And in the end, Alvi and Moretti resort to the most obvious act of forced emotions, when he shows a rough cut the film we're watching to the band members. That’s got to be a first in cinema. Watching the subjects watch their own film!

The film hopscotches through 3 years of the life of the band. And the camera seems to miss the most interesting moments. At one point the band members individually leave Baghdad for Damascus, after which the filmmakers track them down again for more of the same interviews. It would be nice to be present during this traumatic decision and action. As well, in the end, we learn the band broke up and sold their instruments to help pay their rent. Again, this could have been the most dramatic moment in the film, when the musicians literally 'sell out'. All we get is a brief text card before the credits role.

The individuals featured in this documentary are courageous citizens of Iraq – young people who love their country, but because of political decisions out of their control, live under threat of death or persecution. They speak passionately about their country and the lack of freedom which was promised to them by their new government. Their life experience makes all the problems in my existence petty and insignificant by comparison. It’s a shame the filmmakers couldn’t capitalize on missed opportunities and channel this in more cinematically-satisfying ways.

“Heavy Metal in Baghdad” is available on DVD in Canada from Alliance Films

INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE MCDONALD

The following is a chat I had with Bruce McDonald, director of "Hard Core Logo", and now his new film, "The Tracey Fragments" – a unique take on teenage angst, starring Ellen Page. Click HERE for the review. The film uses an experimental visual technique of fragmenting the traditional frame into an ever changing kaleidoscope of split screen and multiple image effects. Bruce’s talented editor Jeremiah Munce joins in later to discuss the editing of the film:

DFD: How did the project first come to you?

Bruce: A good friend of mine, John L’Ecuyer, he’s a filmmaker, he’s directed a lot of episodes of Regenesis. He gave me a copy of the book to read. I try to read things that people give me, because they usually give it you for a reason, cause they think you’ll like it. I loved it and I thought, wow, I love this girl’s voice, the attitude, the kind of darkness that’s in there. And I thought that would be a great character for somebody to play - a fresher take on the teenage years. An opposition to the fabulous John Hughes, “Pretty in Pink” and all those movies.

DFD: This is Maureen Medved’s first novel and first screenplay?

Bruce: She’s a big movie fan, so she was quite excited that I offered her first crack at the screenplay. And she did a really good job. It’s sometimes hard when you’ve just finished a novel, you want to keep everything in and she did a smart thing and picked just a slice of the novel to tell. There were some big chunks of the story that obviously couldn’t fit into 90 mins, but she did a great job and enjoyed herself.

DFD: Did the screenplay look anything like the structure of the finished film?

Bruce: Well there was always a little bit of play in the novel and in the screenplay, jumping around in time a little bit. But there was nothing that really approximated the fragmenting visual of the movie. I think we kind of took the lead off the narrative time jumping and thought, let’s take that one step further and really play with time and space.

DFD: I saw that you had 2 editors Jeremiah Munce and Gareth Scales. Who is Jeremiah Munce? He’s credited as the conceptual designer. I had never heard of him before, yet his work was quite brilliant. Was he integral to the concept and design?

Bruce: Well, Jeremiah Munce was kind of the brains behind the operation and we had worked together on a couple of things. We did this documentary on Robbie Robertson where we kind of previewed that style. Jeremiah was game for doing that with this whole movie. The material lent itself well to the technology and the stylized idea of a fractured portrait of somebody. But it was still going into uncharted territory. We didn’t really have a map. We had a few references like comic books and some 60’s pop art movies and that sort of thing. But he designed it and pioneered it. We then brought on a couple of these other guys. Gareth (Scales) came on as a kind of an apprentice co-editor and Matt Hannam came on as well as a third editor. It was so time intensive and so dense in terms of trying to achieve these things.

DFD: How long was the editing process?

Bruce: It was about 6 months, which is longish for a little independent feature and then after that was the sound design and sound mixing. So, you know, three guys for six months, carving out how this is gonna go, it’s pretty intense. Actually Jeremy is actually sitting right beside me here.

DFD: Hey Jeremiah. Your work was amazing. What was in your brain when you first thought of portraying this story this way?

Jeremiah: The idea was put to me and I sort of rolled with it - going with the idea of a fracturedness and capturing that fractured psychology of this young gal and representing that viscerally.

DFD: Going into the story and narrative structure, I saw two different Traceys. The Tracey in the bus and the one looking for her brother. The narrative ending of the film, is it on the bus?

Jeremiah: When you’re on the bus we’re with her throughout. That’s the present tense. Everything else is playing out in her memory. Eventually everything culminates to ground itself in real time. And the fracturedness achieves a kind of wholeness in the end as well.

DFD: If the film were to linger on past the point where the credits rolls, where would Tracey be later in life?

Jeremiah: I feel it’s such a coming of age tale. She survives so many hardships and she’s sort of experienced glimpses of intimacy and she came to realize how dysfunctional her parents are. There’s the tough self-possessed quality in that final walk that is inspiring. She’s a very tough young gal growing up. She’s returning back to this very messed up reality.

DFD: Ellen Page was pretty awesome. Can you me how she got involved and what it was like working with her?

Jeremiah: Working with her footage, she’s incredible. Every take was authentic, She was ON all the time. She becomes the character, she puts herself into it.

DFD: The Broken Social Scene music helped set the tone. Tell me about their involvement?

Jeremiah: We were working with temps tracks which had a different feel for sure. Dark, a little bit too dark actually. The subject and treatment of the material had a darkness to it. When Brendan Canning and Charles Spearin started providing the new tracks, the new score elements actually brought a counteractive ethereal lightness that just worked well and balanced things out.

DFD: Bruce is working on a documentary on Brendan Canning. Did that evolve from this film?

Jeremiah: No, that’s completed now. I think Brendan agreed to be involved knowing that Bruce was involved and he felt comfortable working with him. They go back before Tracey and have collaborated before.

DFD: Talk about the ‘Re-Fragmented Process’, where you posted raw footage online and allowed other filmmakers to reedit the film, into a trailer and other sequences.

Jeremiah: I thought it was fascinating. People put their energies into it and had fun with it. There were a few that did a whole re-edit, straight cut, of the film. But I think it was brilliant and an innovative marketing tool. It also mirrored the formal technical innovation that is present in the film.

DFD: Is one of them going to be on the DVD?

Jeremiah: Yeah, I think that’s happening.

DFD: That’s about it. Thanks for talking to me today. And good luck with them film, I hope it has legs and people get to experience it. It’s a great film.

Other related postings:
The Tracey Fragments
Hard Core Logo

IN PRAISE OF RICHARD FLEISCHER & "MANDINGO"

By Greg Klymkiw

Receiving critical jeers upon its release in 1975, Richard Fleischer’s film version of Mandingo, taken from the best-selling sex and slavery potboiler by Kyle Onstott and produced by the oft-loathed-and-scorned producer Dino De Laurentiis, did, like its recent cinematic blood-brother Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven’s All About Eve in a Vegas strip club) achieve considerable cult status as a bright jewel in the crown of unintentional high camp and laughs. I recall a critic in the long-defunct Canadian-published film magazine Take One (the 70s version, not the 90s reincarnation) bestowing a Mandingo “Please Don’t Whup Me No Mo’, Massah” Award for the Worst Film of the Year and, of course, there is Quentin Tarantino’s relatively recent laudatory misreading of the picture which placed it in the pantheon of stellar lower-drawer laugh riots like the abovementioned Showgirls. In spite of all this Golden-Turkey-styled attention, which includes critic Stephen Rebello’s inclusion of Mandingo in his tome on “bad movies we love”, I am happy (or depending on how you look at these things – sorry) to report that Mandingo is a genuinely terrific picture.

In examining what makes the picture great, it’s perhaps most valuable to try and assess why Mandingo has so long been the recipient of this sort of derision.

The source material, like many other great pictures (The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws – to name just a few), is derived from a trashy novel. Mandingo was first published in the 50s and not only went through the roof on its initial release, but also continued through the 60s and 70s to be a huge seller – receiving countless reprints. Author Kyle Onstott also wrote sequels entitled Drum (which was eventually produced by De Laurentiis to an even greater scornful reception) and Master of Falconhurst – all three forming a sort of unofficial trilogy. Onstott, upon his death, left one unfinished work which was fleshed out and published with the assistance of Lance Horner who went on to write several more sequels and then the torch was passed to Ashley Carter to generate even more sequels. All of the stories were set against the historical backdrop of the slave trade and featured explicit sex and violence that was, to say the least, uncompromising by the standards of the time.

As a kid, I remember the bookshelves of my local Coles bookstore in a north Winnipeg mall be filled to the brim with the Mandingo/Falconhurst sagas, and like most healthy young lads, I devoured them (along with their aforementioned pot-boiling brethren) like a greedy baby hippo – bewitched by the lurid covers of bosomy dusky beauties and brutish slave traders brandishing whips and delighting to Onstott’s ripe prose style and even riper dialogue. And make no mistake – while I read all the books in the series, it was the Onstott titles that shone – there was something truly special and compelling about the world he created. Either Onstott’s research in the period was utterly meticulous and reflected the horrendous, almost-surreal cruelty of the slave trade or he had the sickest imagination I had (or will have ever) experienced.

Mandingo was, of course, the crowning glory of Onstott’s trilogy and when, in my 16th year on this Earth I discovered that a movie version would be opening in my favourite downtown Winnipeg picture palace, the Metropolitan Cinema, I was in such a state of anticipation that I was experiencing the closest equivalent a young movie nerd can have to premature ejaculation – I harassed the theatre almost daily – pestering them with telephone calls inquiring as to the movie’s release date. (Remember, this was 1975, when movie theatres actually had live humans answering the telephones, when release dates were not set in stone and when a cinema had a “coming soon” or “next attraction” sign card affixed to a film’s poster at a particular theatre, then you could pretty much count on that being the very theatre that would show the picture.) I also saw every picture playing at the theatre so I could see the trailer over and over again and gaze hungrily at the poster in the “coming soon” case. Eventually, the sign card on the poster case and the tag in front of the trailer changed to “next attraction” and within a couple of weeks or so, my dreams of glory became a reality. On the opening Friday, I waited in line at the Metropolitan Cinema (a 2000-seat picture palace where I saw most of my favourite movies and where, interestingly enough, Guy Maddin recently shot Isabella Rossellini in the delightful short “My Dad is 100 Years Old”) and entered the theatre for the first noon-hour showing of the day. (Though the film was rated “restricted”, I had manufactured a fine fake I.D. for myself, which, incidentally, was so fine that this was something I did – manufacturing fake I.D.s for a price, of course – for many friends and acquaintances in my high school. That, of course, is another story.)

My anticipation was rewarded – I loved the picture so much I sat through it four times that day and would see it again many more times during its initial run and subsequent re-releases and repertory showings throughout the 70s and 80s.

And what of the picture? Well, I guess you were wondering when I’d get to that, weren’t you? Well, wait no longer . . .

Mandingo is, without question, one of the most powerful, lurid, shocking and downright entertaining movies – not only of the 70s, but also certainly of all time.

Set against the crumbling ruins of the stale, stench-ridden Old South breeding plantation Falconhurst, the film opens to the strains of a mournful blues tune composed by the legendary Maurice Jarre and sung by Muddy Waters as a group of black slaves are led down a dusty road and presented to a sleazy trader by the patriarch of this pit of sorrow and depravity, Warren Maxwell (deliciously played by the late, great James Mason – with his trademark mellifluous voice handling both the Southern drawl and the rancid, racist dialogue with all the skill and panache one would expect from a star actor of his stature). We watch with open-mouthed horror and disbelief as the trader, played sleazily by the magnificent character actor Paul Benedict (yes, Bentley from The Jeffersons), puffs on a saliva-dripping, well-chewed and obviously smelly cigar as he inspects the teeth, testicles, hands and, among other body parts, anal cavities of the slaves who must remain stoic, with eyes averted as they are poked and prodded like animals at a county fair livestock auction.

What makes all of this so shocking (remember, this was pre-Roots and post-Gone With The Wind) is how matter-of-fact everything is staged and presented. The lip smacking and eye rolling – long attributed to the film are nowhere to be found in this opening, nor frankly, in much of the picture (except, on occasion, when genuinely warranted). The actions of the characters are often crude, tasteless and over-the-top, but the cinematic treatment is most certainly not. In fact, the picture’s stylistic restraint on most fronts is what makes Mandingo so effective – as drama, as entertainment and as an expose of a dark period of 20th century history.

This is not to say there aren’t melodramatic aspects to the narrative borrowed by veteran screenwriter Norman Wexler from Onstott’s novel, but like any great drama they’re used to perfection. Besides, the notion that there’s something inherently wrong with melodrama is ridiculous anyway – there’s only good melodrama and bad melodrama, and director Richard Fleischer handles the melodramatic aspects of Mandingo’s story expertly. Besides, how can there not be aspects of melodrama in a movie aimed at the masses? Especially a movie set against a backdrop like this one.

And what a backdrop! What a story!

Everything in this film is driven by the two simple needs of a father and how their fulfillment has tragic consequences. Warren Maxwell’s craving for a pure Mandingo slave for breeding and prizefighting is rewarded when his son Hammond (Perry King) returns from a business trip with the sleek, beautiful, powerful, caramel-skinned Mede (heavyweight champ Ken Norton). While Hammond trains Mede in the art of bare-knuckle fighting, Maxwell frets that his son is not married and that there will be no heir to Falconhurst. Again, Hammond fulfills his father’s wishes and returns to Falconhurst with Blanche (Susan George), a blonde and beautiful Southern bell bride. Much to Blanche’s consternation, Hammond also returns to Falconhurst with a new slave acquisition. Ellen (Brenda Sykes) is a stunningly sultry bed wench Hammond favours because he believes his new bride is not a virgin and also because he wrongly believes that white women do not want to be “pestered” sexually (other than for basic purposes of procreation). In retaliation, Blanche blackmails Mede into servicing her needs sexually. Falconhurst becomes a miscegenation fetishist’s wet dream with all the white-black couplings inevitably leading to all holy hell breaking loose.

So what’s the problem? We have an unsparing look at the world of slavery adorned with dollops of melodrama. Why did critics hate this film and why did it earn the reputation as a howlingly bad (but entertaining) camp classic?

Could it simply be that Mandingo retained many of the more salacious elements of its pulp literature source and, in fact accentuated them? In addition to the graphic depiction of slavery and miscegenation, the picture features the following:

- Incest.
- Infanticide.
- Whoring.
- Wenching.
- Graphic bare-buttocked floggings with belts, paddles and whips.
- Graphic lynching.
- A character being pitch forked into a vat of boiling brine water.
- No holds barred and to the death bare-knuckle fist fighting (replete with biting and scratching).
- Oodles of nudity and sex (including some magnificent buttock shots of Ken Norton and a truly delightful full frontal view of Perry King’s majestic genitals). Oh yeah, we get to see many of the ladies nude also.
- More whoring.
- More wenching.
- Have I mentioned the incest?

While this is certainly an extensive grocery list of depravity would this really have been enough to raise the lily pure ire of critics? This was, after all the 70s, a decade of movies replete with mean-spiritedness, nastiness, violence and all manner of permissiveness, so was Mandingo the nadir of this excess or was it something else?

Did Mandingo, unlike many of the other 70s American pictures cut (as it were) too deep for critics to embrace its excess?

Was director Richard Fleischer’s uncompromising eye too much for them?

Fleischer was, after all, one of the most gifted major American directors who, like Howard Hawks before him, worked in a variety of genres (and often for “hire”) on a multitude of titles (over 50 pictures). This, of course, made it difficult for a lot of the myopic auteurists to pinpoint Flesicher’s “thing” (as it were) and perhaps they needed to use “moral outrage” (something I admit to having an intellectual knowledge of, but cannot say I have ever truly felt) to equate Mandingo with some of Fleischer’s more obvious gun-for-hire forays into filmic folly such as the execrable Dr. Dolittle (with Rex Harrison, NOT Eddie Murphy) or the noisy, impersonal Pearl Harbor epic Tora Tora Tora (which still manages to put Michael Bay’s rendering of those events to shame). And of course, the critics of 1975 had yet to experience Fleischer’s most odious work, an 80s remake of The Jazz Singer with Neil Diamond. If that had preceded Mandingo in the Fleischer canon, it’s conceivable those critics might have gone to the extent of forming an actual, literal lynch mob.

But in spite of all this, how could critics miss the boat on Mandingo? Fleischer, after all, won his only Oscar for a documentary and for most of his career he approached his subjects with the eye of a documentarian. From his noir classics at RKO (including The Narrow Margin) through to his stunning examinations of real-life serial killers in 10 Rillington Place (Christie), The Boston Strangler (DeSalvo) and Compulsion (Leopold and Loeb), Fleischer trained his camera on the dramatics by focusing, in an almost straightforward fashion on the mechanics of his subjects – he editorialized by non-editorializing. He even did this in his forays in action epics (The Vikings), fantasy (Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea) and science fiction (Soylent Green).

In Mandingo, actors deliver their lines with (mostly) straight faces. When Paul Benedict’s slave trader admiringly refers to Warren’s son Hammond as a “right vigorous young stud”, it’s funny, but not because it’s campy, but because it’s true. As the attractive, blond, blue-eyed Perry King swaggers into his first scene he is the epitome of young manhood – especially when the film matter-of-factly informs us that on a breeding plantation, it is the master (or in this case, the “young master) who has the “duty” to break in the virgin wenches on the plantation. When Hammond protests that the Mandingo wench Big Pearl is “powerful musky”, he does it with such a straight face that it’s not only darkly funny, but all the more powerful in the delineation between owners and slaves. Or when Warren complains about his rheumatism, a doctor recommends that Warren place his bare feet on the belly of a “nekkid Mexican dog” to drain the “rheumatiz” right out of the soles of his feet into the belly of the dog. Again, these conversations are presented so unflinchingly and straight-facedly that we laugh – almost good-naturedly at the period ignorance of the characters, but when Paul Benedict further informs Warren that a slave boy would do just as well as a “nekkid Mexican dog”, the laughs continue, but much more nervously, and finally, not at all as we hear how a human being can be substituted for an animal. When we see it, on several occasions – James Mason resting his bare feet on the belly of a little slave boy, it’s at first funny, but eventually becomes downright appalling. That said, one amusing moment with respect to the “rheumatiz” is when the slave boy, hoping to get out of this demeaning activity, holds his hand to his belly and moans, “Massah’s misery drain right into me.”

It is perhaps the film’s unflinching method of presenting all this insane dialogue from Onstott and Wexler’s pen that has contributed to Mandingo’s reputation as a camp classic? When Warren explains to Hammond that wives want their husbands to have wenches because it keeps them from “having to submit”, it IS funny. When the babies of slaves are referred to as “suckers”, it’s at first darkly funny because it’s so shocking, but as it’s bandied about so frequently, it becomes sickening. When a slave’s miscarriage is straight-facedly referred to as “she done slip her sucker”, it’s especially not funny. It’s horrific, particularly as it follows a scene when a character threatens to “whup that sucker right outta” her belly.

If anything, Mandingo’s reputation might ultimately be getting mixed in a bit with its notorious sequel Drum which was not only critically reviled, but even upon the eve of its theatrical release, was disowned by the studio. Drum is pure B-movie – no two ways about it, but it’s also, in its own way, marvelous entertainment, crisply directed by Corman protégé Steve Carver and featuring the brilliant Warren Oates taking over the role of Perry King’s Hammond and Ken Norton making a return appearance as yet another character altogether. The film also features the legendary Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith (Lemora) as Hammond’s slattern daughter who favours being serviced by her Daddy’s Mandingo slaves and lying about them to Daddy when they do not submit to her.

I remember first seeing Drum on a double bill with Mandingo in a Winnipeg Main Street grindhouse called the Epic. When I was a kid, the Epic was called the Colonial and was next door to two other grindhouses, the Regent and the Starland. Here in the stench of cum and urine, sitting on stained, tattered seats, my feet stuck almost permanently to the sticky floors and occasionally having to listen to old men getting fellated by toothless glue-sniffing hookers, I delighted, week after week to Hammer horror films, biker flicks and Corman extravaganzas. By the 80s, this grindhouse was the sole purveyor of cinematic sleaze in Winnipeg – alternating between standard action exploitation fare and soft-core pornography. Since I had missed Drum on its initial release, I was rather excited to catch up with it on a double bill at the Epic/Colonial. I even recall that the double bill was advertised thusly: “And now . . . the BARE ‘Roots’”. I was accompanied to this screening by two esteemed members of the faculty of English and Film at the University of Manitoba, Professor Stephen Snyder and Professor George Toles (screenwriter of such Guy Maddin films as Archangel, Careful and Saddest Music in the World). It was a glorious afternoon and it was certainly a coin toss to determine what was louder, the sounds of our laughter or the sounds of toothless hookers fellating old men.

Mandingo is a genuinely great picture. In fact, I would argue that it is both a serious dramatic expose of slavery AND an exploitation film. Not that this means the picture is a mess and has no idea what it’s trying to do, but frankly, this notion that there even exists such a thing as “exploitation” films is something I find just a little bit idiotic. Film by its very nature as a visual AND commercial art form is exploitative – it ultimately has to be in order to be successful. Like melodrama, it’s either good or bad. It works or it doesn’t. And Mandingo works – it communicates a truth as hard and blistering as we’ve seen on this subject. Frankly, not even Roots comes close to matching the sheer horror of Mandingo.

Alas, Mandingo has been released on a bare bones DVD with a mediocre transfer. Even the cover design is lackluster – the original poster a vivid take on the famous Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh pose from Gone With The Wind, but with it’s double dose of flame enshrouded miscegenation was not only great marketing, but a more-than-apt visual encapsulation of the movie. One only hopes it eventually gets the home entertainment treatment it deserves – without, of course, too much emphasis on its supposed camp value and more on its quality as fine a motion picture to grace the canon of a truly great American director, the much-maligned and oft-forgotten Richard Fleischer.

And fellas don’t forget – your wife craves for you to have wenches. Keeps her from having to submit. That's some great advice for the 21st century, mais non, ladies?

Uh, just kidding. Please don’t whup me no mo’.

THE WACKNESS

The Wackness (2008) dir. Jonathan Levine
Starring: Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen

**

“The Wackness” is a well-intentioned coming of age story of a New York City high school graduate set in the summer of 1994. Enjoyment of the film will depend largely on whether you like the main character. For me, it was intense dislike, but for other 20 and 30-somethings the time, place, situations and decisions will likely bring back either joyful or haunting memories of being a 19 year old.

This is the first 1990’s nostalgia film, and it’s just about the right time now considering filmmakers who were teenagers in the 90’s will be in their mid-thirties now. It happened with the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Levine is the first to stake his claim. Don’t think “The Wackness” is “Dazed and Confused” or “American Graffiti” for the generation X though, it’s a contained film with limited characters and a heavy concentration on the relationship of Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) and Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley).

Shapiro is a drug-dealing white hip-hopper. He travels around his neighbourhood selling weed from his faux-ice cream cart. He has a unique friendship with Dr. Squires, a fallen from grace psychologist who trades his insights for drugs. Shapiro pines after Squires’ daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), who finally shows some interest and agrees to go out with him. It’s a blissful affair until Shapiro makes a fatal mistake which threatens to turn away Stephanie for good.

It wasn’t so much Shapiro’s character which rubbed me the wrong way as it was Josh Peck’s performance. His wide-eyed, droopy mouth mumbling and laboured mannerisms befit his character’s personality – a shy, awkward nave who masks his insecurities with oversized hip-hop clothes, street-speak and cool drug dealing. Unfortunately mumbling without charisma is just dopiness. Don’t fault Peck though, the director could easily have told the actor to open his eyes and close his mouth when he wasn’t talking. If so, we would have seen a difference performance.

Jonathan Levine drops a lot of 90’s references – too many in fact. The cameo references include Nintendo, Game Boy, Tetris, Kurt Cobain, Rudy Giuliani, A Tribe Called Quest. Whether it’s a close-up of a Game Boy, or Shapiro blowing the dust from his Nintendo system or the number of musical references to ‘Boyz 2 Men’ and other bands of the era, its a concerted effort to pull a cheap laugh from the audience.

Ben Kingsley provides the only interesting character - a psychologist with a love for weed, and a hatred for his domestic life - who goes on his own journey of self-discovery (a midlife crisis really). He has the best lines and scenes in the film, which are enhanced through his against-type casting. His make-out scene with Mary-Kate Olson is funny, because he was in “Gandhi” and “Schindler’s List.”

The cinematography is all wrong and wildly distracting. DOP Petra Corner shoots the film with the palette of an action film – shot in anamorphic widescreen with its colours muted to an ugly greenish-grey. If Levine was biting the early 90’s style, he’d have bathed his film in bold saturated colours – a la “The Do Right Thing” or “Crooklyn”.

These are all superficial criticisms, but one essential element is missing from the film – a definable goal for Shapiro. The sessions with Squires expound on many things – music, sex, drugs, relationships – but we never get a sense of what he desires. Is it love? Is it the exotic unattainable Stephanie? Whatever it is, it’s too vague a carrot to chase after. And so, the film lost me quickly and early.

The Wackness

PERSEPOLIS

Persepolis (2007) dir. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
Voices by: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian

***

“Persepolis” is a film more to admire than to be truly entertained by. It's based on Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel about her own experience living in Iran during the 1979 revolution and the cultural identity problems of living in Vienna as a youth. A unique animation style and the unfamiliar political backstory make for a refreshing alternative to Hollywood animation, but the film is surprisingly empty and vacant emotionally.

Iranian youngster Marjane Satrapi and her family are the main characters who are animated in a unique 2-D B&W sharply contrast style. It’s 1978, the U.S.-based Shah of Iran rules, but seeds of a revolution are in place. Marjane is an only child and she was raised by secular intellectuals. And so when the government is replaced by religious fundamentalism of the Ayatollah Khomeni (his name isn’t mentioned for some reason), the Satrapi’s way of life is throw into upheaval.

Marjane is suddenly forced to wear a headscarve and she and all women in society are found to be lower class citizens. From this suppression Marjane develops her sense of independence and cultural revolt. ABBA and Michael Jackson records are traded on the street like drug deals, and Marjane is not afraid to experiment and experience the pop culture of the Western world. Marjane is sent by her parents to study in Vienna where she experiences a new world. Being uprooted though, Marjane losing her sense of home and identity. Her decision to return seems to weigh the lesser of two evils.

The simplicistic animation made up of strict black and white (there's not a speck of grey to be found) rudimentary, undetailed figures is a refreshing contrast to the photo realistic computer animation of Hollywood. The abstractness compliments the intellectual material. Certainly watching the Blu-Ray version is a glorious experience, since sharp lines and deep blacks are always represented best in high definition.

As a political statement and a piece of ideological discourse, it's an inspired creative endeavour, but as an engaging story it's an under-realized piece of cinema. The story feels like a series of vignettes roughly strung together with only the history timeline connecting the dots. There's very few emotional beats making her journey larger than the historical turmoil surrounding Marjane's life.

The DVD features the original French language audio track with English subtitles and an English audio track featuring the voices talents of Gena Rowlands and Sean Penn, who provides an especially lazy reading of his lines. I highly recommend going with the original French track, because without the whimsy of the French language, all poignant humour between the lines is lost.

The international success of "Persepolis" is no surprise, it's originality is more than enough to trump its faults. More films like this will find its way into theatres and DVD shelves. Watch for "Waltz with Bashir" a similar animated memoir, from the point of view of an Israeli soldier - to make a splash later in the year. Enjoy.

"Persepolis" is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Sony Picture Home Entertainment

Persepolis

AIRPLANE!

Airplane! (1981) dir. Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, David Zucker
Starring: Robert Hays, Julie Haggerty, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges

****

“Airplane!” wasn’t the first spoof film – Mel Brooks probably takes that honour – but it was so successful and influential it is most certainly responsible for spawning the dozen or so spoof knock-offs which seems to be an annual tradition these days. It was an essential film of my youth. It's juvenileness and crudeness dates the film compared to the politically correctness of today, but its still one of the funniest films of all time.

“Airplane!” spoofs the 70’s trend of disaster films such as “The Poseidon Adventure” and “Airport 1970”. Robert Hays plays Ted Stryker a former pilot and war vet who pines after his estranged lover Elaine (Julie Haggerty). When Elain leaves him at the airport for a flight, Ted overcomes his fear of flying and buys a ticket to chase after her. While in the air a sickness overcomes the crew and Stryker finds himself the only pilot who can bring the crew and passengers to safety. Stryker gets the girl and redeems himself for his painful mistakes during the war.

Hardly sounds like a plot synopsis of one of the funniest films of all time? This is the reason why “Airplane!” works so well – and where the recent crop of spoof films fail. “Airplane!” is rooted in a real story, which if told in another genre could actually work. Although the filmmakers try their best to score every gag, not everything hits the mark for everybody, but in between the lewd, rude and crude behaviour, there’s engaging and likeable characters. So when you’re not laughing, it’s not a chore to actually watch the film.

There’s an interesting psychological study in the viewing experience of this film - something about the inhibition and contagion of laughter. Having seen the film numerous times in my youth and loving every minute of it, this recent viewing after several years was different. The jokes were all very familiar, but I didn't find myself laughing. The set-up/punch line mechanisms were transparent and so it took a third of the way to get settled in.

The first joke that actually made me laugh out loud is one of the least famous. It occurs when the passengers are on the plane and the stewardess is handing out reading material. The old lady sitting beside Ted requests something light. So the stewardess suggests a small one page pamphlet on “Great Jewish Sports Figures”. It’s a throwaway joke, but for some reason had me laughing out loud for minutes. It was like a release of built up laughter with this minor gag setting me off. With this seal broken, for the rest of the movie I found myself laughing at almost everything that was thrown at me.

The second half is aided by Leslie Nielsen’s presence which takes the film to another level of painful laughter. Has there ever been a better deadpan? Seriously. Leslie Nielsen in his youth was a serious actor (see the great sci-fi picture “The Forbidden Planet”). In fact Marlon Brando once said he was Canada’s greatest actor – besting Donald Sutherland and Christopher Plummer. But after “Airplane!” Nielsen gained a second career as a deadpan comedian.

His Dr. Rummack is so wonderfully over-the-top serious. In fact, perhaps the most famous line in the film comes from him – Rummack: "Can you fly this plane and land it?" Stryker: “Surely you can’t be serious?” Rummack: “I am serious and don’t call me Shirley”.

The entire film is deadpan, and along with Nielsen, the ZAZ team round out the supporting cast by raiding some of the great authoritarian figures from television. Lloyd Bridges, who plays the Air Traffic Commander McClosky, was known for his adventure TV series – "Sea Hunt"; Peter Graves (Captain Oveur) was Jim Phelps in TV’s “Mission Impossible”; and Robert Stack was serious-personified as Elliot Ness in “The Untouchables.”

The recent airing in high definition on the HD Net channel was a great experience. The resolution and clarity was refreshing, but after years of watching the badly 'edited-for-content' television version, seeing it commercial free with all nudity, swearing and crassness intact made me feel like a naughty perverted youngster all over again. Enjoy.

WALL-E

Wall-E (2008) dir. Andrew Stanton

***1/2

Looking back after 12 years of feature filmmaking under Pixar's belt it's a remarkable string of successful and entertaining films - no duds whatsoever. Yet, when watching "Ratatouille" last year, a sameness in tone was setting in. Of course the audience for these films are kids first, adults second, but with the immense creative potential for the medium I couldn't help think it was time to break from the formula and create something truly groundbreaking for the medium/genre.

“Wall-E” manages to do just that - almost. This time director Andrew Stanton and the Pixar bunch go back to their earliest pre-Toy Story short films for inspiration - visual storytelling, attention to detail and a healthy dose of gosh-darn cuteness. With very little dialogue "Wall-E" tells it's marvelous tale of a stranger in a strange land with the visionary delight and social consciousness of the great films of the silent era. The film also doesn't know how much of good thing it has, and devolves in the second half into Pixar autopilot which had me yearning to see the first half again.

The setting is the future – Earth has become a wasteland of excessive consumption. Garbage is piled higher than skyscrapers and the extra large big box superstores are now empty shells. There is no one around, anywhere, except for one cockroach and one really cute robot, Wall-E. Wall-E is a waste disposal unit – about one foot square- like R2D2 meets Short Circuit. Every day Wall-E fastidiously goes about his business of finding junk, and either storing it in his small bachelor pad or squeezing it into stackable squares.

One day a spaceship lands on earth and drops off another robot, Eva – a reconnaissance version of Wall-E, except sleeker, more streamlined, more advanced and (most likely) female. Wall-E bonds with Eva as he educates her on his simple way of life. When Eve is forced to return where she came from Wall-E hitches a ride to a giant big-box cruise ship for humans in space. The hustle and bustle of the new world is culture shock, but Wall-E is a survivor and he inadvertently sparks a revolution against the despotic tyranny of the evil Hal-like robot Otto and return the lazy, gluttonous humans back to earth.

Let’s just get out of the way the fact that’s it’s thoroughly entertaining stuff for its entire 90mins and probably the best CG animated film ever made. Done. Now we can really talk about the near genius Pixar almost achieves and the frustration of missing that boat. The first third features only Wall-E and his mute cockroach friend. There is no dialogue, and so the film, like many critics have likened it to, is Chaplin-esque. Like the Little Tramp, Wall-E’s actions are like a silent dance of actions, movements and gestures. There's nobility in his work, but we equate his loneliness with sadness and words need not be spoken to convey the emotions of his sparse existence.

Then Fred Willard shows up on a TV screen (a live-action Fred Willard) which made me think that this film may not be an animated film at all – that real humans might, for the first time, join in a Pixar film. I salivated at the potential of merging live action with Pixar animation. In fact, with Wall-E alone on Earth, I never felt like I was watching an animated film at all. The rendering of the robot, the cockroach and the wasteland locale looked as good as live action – certainly better than any world George Lucas has created. The second half is a different film. The inspired CG existentialism gives way to cartoon people – once again. The same animation of humans we’ve seen in every Pixar film before it.

And there’s nothing wrong with that – it provides more than enough humour and exciting action to ramp the film up to a satisfying climax. But the disappointment, however slight, of not meeting the expectations it set in the first half cannot be ignored.

Could “Wall-E” have sustained the inspired ingenuity within the self-imposed restraints of its first half? Most certainly. It’s a shame Stanton didn’t try, but he still delivered to us enough intelligence, visual brilliance and cuteness to consider the film a masterpiece of its genre. Enjoy.

Wall-E

THE SWEET HEREAFTER

The Sweet Hereafter (1997) dir. Atom Egoyan
Staring: Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus, Gabriella Rose

****

It’s July 1st, 'Canada Day! To celebrate let’s revisit one of Canada’s best films – and my personal all-time favourite, “The Sweet Hereafter”. It’s a morose story, not quite the joyous experience through which to celebrate our national day, but the type of film which has represented our country proudly on the international stage.

Eleven years after it was made the film still packs an emotional wallop. It’s heavy material to say the least – the story of a town stricken with grief after a tragic school bus accident and the laywer who desires to unite them in a class action lawsuit – but a complex and rewarding experience with enough layers to warrant multiple viewings.

The film opens introducing Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), a lawyer, who is stuck in a car wash and can’t get out. It’s one of many layers of complex metaphors and foreshadowing which Egoyan will add to the story. Stephens has arrived in a small secluded unnamed Alberta town where a tragic bus accident has recently occurred which has killed many of the town’s children. Stephens is an observant ambulance chaser who one-by-one gathers the townsfolk in a class action lawsuit against anything that could bring them a monetary settlement.

As he moves through the town we meet the grieving families who are vulnerable prey to Stephens’ emotional manipulations. Like a door-to-door salesman, Stephens is smooth and comforting, but also sly and aggressive. But Stephens’ dispassion and talent at his job has resulted in a broken relationship with his own daughter, who continually torments him with threatening cell phone calls. Not everyone is convinced a lawsuit will heal the town's pain though. Billy the mechanic sees Stephens’ ambulance chasing as a threat to the community which will divide and destroy them forever. It will be the testimony of the accident's only surviving child - a young teenage girl Nicole (Sarah Polley) - who holds the power to heal the community.

Atom Egoyan masterfully layers characters' subplots, stunning visual imagery, evocative music & sound and thematic metaphors to paint his complex film. The most obvious layer is the shifting timeline. Many scenes are played out of order – before the accident, after the accident, flashbacks and scenes of a plane ride taken by Stephens’ 2 years later. We’re never lost in the time-jumping and so without the confusion the device is never gimmicky.

One of the layers is this unnamed town where a once unified community of citizens is threatened by big city politics. Billy’s (Bruce Greenwood) conversation with Sam (Tom McCamus) before Nicole’s deposition articulates this threat. It’s a great scene. Billy describes to Sam how the lawyers will start clamoring over each other over the right to the law suit and potential winfall from the tragedy. Billy’s argument may be hypothetical, or the truth – either way it convinces an eavesdropping Nicole to do the right thing. Though Atom Egoyan chose to ‘Canadianize’ Russell Banks' American setting the film is essentially borderless. The community could stand for any small town (Canada or the U.S.) which precariously survives by the will and fortitude of its citizens.

I’d even argue there are too many ‘layers’ in the film. Sarah Polley’s voiceover is perhaps the most manipulative. Egoyan returns occasionally to Nicole’s reciting of the Pied Piper of Hamelin story. Though it emphasizes the townsfolk's conundrum between grief and anger, the film remains powerful and complex without this on-the-nose metaphor. The same might be said about Nicole's incestuous relationship with her father, which is introduced but never adequately reconciled.

“The Sweet Hereafter” was made in 1997 – a special year in cinema. Perhaps the height of the 90’s independent movement, where emotionally complex films like “Breaking the Waves”, “Secrets and Lies” broke into the mainstream. It remains one of our crowning achievements. Maybe not ideal viewing for Canada Day, but a fine entry point into the nebulous world of Canadian cinema. Enjoy.

Other related posting:
The 10th Anniversary of 1997

Listen to the bad movie-trailer voiceover in this trailer:

CITY OF MEN

City of Men (2007) dir. Paulo Morelli
Starring: Douglas Silva, Darlan Cunha, Rodrigo dos Santos, Camila Monteiro, Jonathan Haagensen

***

Following “City of God” and the Brazilian TV series of the same name, Paulo Morelli’s “City of Men”, continues the tales of youth and gang culture in Rio de Janiero.  "City of Men" is the less flashier little brother to Mereilles' seminal film, but also a deserving follow up and, in many ways, a more satisfying experience.

Though similar in look and style, Morelli’s film is not a sequel to “City of God” – only the theme, location and visual style join the two films together. “City of Men” takes place in present day and portrays the lives of – Ace and Wallace – two 17 years old youths whose futures are uncertain. Being poor and uneducated, University is out of the question. The threat of gang involvement, which is only one degree of separation away from both boys, looms over them. One of the roots of their uncertainty is their lack of fathers.

Ace and Wallace decide to search to find their real fathers. If you’re poor, it’s difficult to leave the slum, so their search is a matter asking the elder locals. They discover both of them descend from the gangster lifestyle, which seems to breed a circle of crime. Ace discovers his father was killed during a gang hit many years ago, and Wallace tracks down his father, Heraldo, now on probation after a 15-year stint in prison. While Wallace’s relationship with his father grows, his friendship with Ace widens. When the local gang battles become more violent, suddenly Ace and Wallace find themselves as bitter enemies.

Morelli smartly contains his film and doesn’t try to outsprawl Mereilles’ epic. “City of Men” is focused on Ace and Wallace the entire film. The film doesn’t rely on the Scorsese-isms which Mereilles injected into his film. “City of Men” is a slower and more intimate realist experience.

The young men who play the rambunctious but dangerous street kids bring authenticity and warmth to the film. Even though violence and murderous behaviour is present, ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ aren’t so easily definable as in “City of God”. “Midnight” is the leader of one gang – he’s an honourbable young man who desires to organize the kids of his ‘hill.” Fasto, Midnight’s rival, splits from the gang after refusing to kill was one of his men for insubordination. “City of God” gave us true ‘movie-villans’ like L’il Ze – monstrous (but entertaining) caricatures of gang leaders. As a result, “City of Men” feels more authentic.

The first half of the film is the strongest – establishing the relationship of Ace and Wallace to the complexities of the street. But when the sensational gang battles enter the picture, Morelli’s characters take a back seat to the gunplay and the action. It provides a rousing final act, but at the sacrifice of its true heart.

What never wavers is the documentary-like street feel of the film. It’s gorgeous to watch. Morelli and cinematographer Adriano Goldman bathe their frames in sundrenched yellows and golds. A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. Enjoy.

“City of Men” is available on DVD from Alliance Films in Canada and Miramax Films in the U.S.

City of Men

CULT OF THE COBRA

Cult Of The Cobra (1955) dir. Francis D. Lyon
Starring: Faith Domergue, Richard Long, Marshall Thompson, David Janssen
Horror

**1/2

Guest Review By Greg Klymkiw

While one cannot justify delivering more than two-and-a-half stars for this copycat of Val Lewton’s “The Cat People”, it is a rating that doesn’t adequately represent the picture’s considerable entertainment value and its extremely interesting commentary on post-war life in America. “Cult of the Cobra” is another film from Universal Home Video’s magnificent DVD box-set “The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection” and though it lacks panache (save for the terrific cinematography of Russell Metty), it represents just the sort of picture that home consumption appears to have been invented for – a medium to deliver product that might otherwise be consigned to a slag-heap of forgotten cinematic refuse. And for “Cult of the Cobra”, the fate of neglect would be a shame. In spite of Francis D. Lyon’s perfunctory direction, there’s something extremely haunting about this story of a group of young American soldiers who have survived the horrors of war and yet, when the clouds of strife are lifted, find themselves stalked and cut-down on home turf by a mysterious, evil and (naturally) foreign killer.

While some contemporary audiences get all high and mighty in their idiotically myopic political correctness when it comes to the ethnocentrism of older pictures, they should just swallow a humour pill and enjoy the fact that the film begins in Asia. Yes, Asia! The film does not specify where EXACTLY in Asia we are – all that really matters is that we are not in AMERICA and that our brawny, normal, American and WHITE heroes are in a mysterious, foreign land. Foreign, in this context equals EVIL!!!!! And even though we’re supposed to be in “Asia”, we’re really in some crazed never-never-land of cloaked, turban-adorned snake charmers. Looking for some exotic action before returning to their normal lives back in America, our motley heroes manage to buy their way into a mysterious ceremony of snake worshippers where they witness a boner-inducing cobra-charming burlesque routine then interrupt the proceedings in that brashly rude, American way when one of them snaps a flash photo and then, to make matters worse, they engage in a brawl with these foreigners and steal their sacred snake basket. One of the soldiers at a later juncture opines that perhaps they went a “little too far”. You bet, fella! These goddamn foreign snake charmers don’t take to your kind at the best of times and now you’re in for one kick-ass curse that’s not only going to follow your infidel rump back to the homeland, but to your ever-loving grave. And believe, there ain’t nothing Homeland Security can do about cobra curses.

As the picture progresses, things get especially entertaining back in America when we primarily follow the adventures of roomies Richard Long (the eventual star of T.V.’s “Nanny and the Professor”) and Marshall Thompson (eventual star of T.V.’s “Daktari”) as they vie for the affections of wholesome platinum blonde apple-pie babe Kathleen Hughes. When she eventually picks stalwart hunk Richard Long to be her main swordsman, Marshall Thompson dejectedly finds himself in the arms of the mysterious, exotic and FOREIGN Faith Domergue. And a good thing too: Faith Domergue represents everything that was so great about 50s movie babes – nice full lips, melt-in-your-mouth curves and sex appeal that never lets up. (Domergue was especially semen-draining to young, pud-pulling male movie-goers in “This Island Earth”.) Domergue, of course, is an agent of the cobra-worshippers and her mission is to kill each and every last one of the infidel soldiers.

The cast and the vaguely derivative (but compelling) screenplay work overtime. Russell Metty, the cinematographer, especially delivers the goods. Metty, who shot most of Douglas Sirk’s great melodramas and, lest we forget, Orson Welles’s “Touch Of Evil”, contributes marvelous lighting and some really effective cobra point of view shots. One only wishes that Francis Lyon wasn’t such a dull director. His lack of voice is what keeps this picture from really soaring. It’s unfortunate, since Lyon was a great editor (he won an Oscar for his astounding cutting on the classic boxing picture “Body and Soul”), but as a director, he played things strictly by the numbers. This workmanlike approach is not always a bad thing in a director, but this picture is so entertaining to begin with that one wants it to be better than it ultimately is.

Alas, they can’t all be masterpieces. If they were, the world would actually be a dull place (oddly enough). It’s probably enough that this picture exists and that it’s as fun and interesting as it is. One does wonder, however, what it might have been like with a livelier directorial presence at the helm – a Jack Arnold, a Richard Fleischer, a Joseph Lewis or an Edgar Ulmer – or, for that matter, a producer like Val Lewton. In fact, any one of those directors and Lyon editing (instead of directing) might have delivered the goods.

It’s still a good picture though. Seeing these hunky, fresh-faced young soldiers get mysteriously whacked by the stunning Faith Domergue will keep you on the edge of your seat. And, you know what? I’m almost inclined to revise my two-and-one-half stars a little more in the direction of Heaven. I won’t, but one can dream, can’t one?

“Cult of the Cobra” is available on DVD in Universal Home Video’s “Classic Ultimate Sci-Fi Collection”

Please read these other similar postings:
The Incredible Shrinking Man
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THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS

The Tracey Fragments (2007) dir. Bruce McDonald
Starring: Ellen Page, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Ari Cohen, Zie Souwand, Slim Twig

***1/2

“The Tracey Fragments” is kind of a marvel, an emotionally powerful film about a young teenage girl who moves through a series of tramatic experiences over the course of a couple of days, told using a kaleidoscope of intricately designed split-screen effects. It’s audacious and in-your-face, but beautifully designed and executed. What could have been a stylistic crutch in fact aids in discovering the fragmented character of Tracey Berkowitz.

Ellen Page plays Tracey Berkowitz a 14 year old girl, whom we first see riding a bus dressed only in a wrapped up plastic shower curtain. Her voiceover describes her inner thoughts, which help trace back the state of her life and how she got to be on a bus wearing a shower curtain. Her voiceover isn’t so much narration as read-aloud random journal entries.

The narrative jumps from through many timelines and locations. We see Tracey as a young child mentally abused by her parents, we see her in her kitchen as a teenager being mentally abused by her parents. We see her in school being bullied by the ‘mean girls’. We see her visualized fantasies of her high school crush, Billy Zero. The connecting throughline is Tracey’s search for her younger brother Sonny, who has gone missing. Sonny is Tracey's  constant and the only one who brings order and normality to her increasing chaotic life.

The visual style is front and centre from the first frame. The film is shot ultra-low budget, using old fashioned Dogma-95 style DV camera work. This naturalism combined with it’s split screen effects create a unique visual style. Only Mike Figgis’ “Timecode” compares to the experimentation on display here. While “Timecode’s” four-quadrant action was distracting to the viewer, the design of the ever-changing visual fragments in McDonald's film is always cohesive.

Editor Jeremiah Munce is credited as the conceptual designer, and his kaleidoscope of imagery creates its own form of art layered on top of the actual story, dialogue and character we watch in these little frames. The imagery is edited and designed to be taken in as whole, instead of following the action of one specific frame. It’s a risky venture, but Munce and McDonald deliver a thorough satisfying experience.

Another layer of artistic brilliance is the music of Broken Social Scene (the acclaimed Toronto-based music ‘collective’), who provide a number of songs which serve as the soundtrack. BSS’s ambient soundscape set a tone of melancholy and sadness. It’s a great contrast to the often gritty and disturbing images we see throughout the film – the music acts as a warm breaze or gentle wave of sounds which pull the audience through the dirt and grime of Tracey’s adventures.

"The Tracey Fragments" is challenging, emotionally and conceptually. Admittedly, it’s a difficult film to dive into. And the first five or ten minutes will be a confusing experience. But Tracey's adventures slowly seep into your skin and in the end the whole is greater than the sum of it parts. Enjoy.

“The Tracey Fragments” is available on DVD from Alliance Films in Canada on June 30. The film is distributed by Thinkfilm in the U.S.

The Tracey Fragmen... | Ellen Page

WANTED

Wanted (2008) dir. Timur Bekmambetov
Starring: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Terence Stamp, Thomas Kretchman

**

“Wanted” will likely be a big money-making, crowd-pleasing surprise hit of the summer. It stands alone as the only violent action film of the summer – a rarity in today’s era of mass market blockbusters. As one would expect from a poster of Angelina Jolie holding a handgun that’s bigger than her arms, it’s a balls out action film and an onslaught of the senses. Other than a few shock and awe moments though it’s a largely uncreative adventure and a bore.

Wesley Gibson is a typical bored office worker who despises his cubicle jungle. One day, a super hot woman named Fox (Jolie) tells him his father, whom Wesley never knew, was a super-assassin who has just been murdered. And the man who killed him is looking to kill Wesley. Wesley is told he has the same aptitude for assassinations as his father and is asked to join a ‘Fraternity of Assassins” who kill people at the whim of a textile loom that channels the will of fate – seriously.

Wesley joins forces with the Fraternity, and is led by the zen-like Sloan (Morgan Freeman) into a series of assassinations. But Wesley yearns to go after the killer of his father, and he quickly gets the chance when the evil assassin Cross (Thomas Kretchman) finds him first. Mondo action ensues and Wesley fulfills his destiny to be the best assassin in the world.

The film is essentially “The Matrix” – with a few minor adjustments or twists in the second half. Wesley Gibson, like Neo, yearns for something more out of life – he can feel he is 'different' than other people, but just can’t put his trigger finger on it. Like "The Matrix" he’s tracked down by both a really hot chick and a sooth-saying elder mentor who speaks in philosophical hyperbole. They convince him he has extraordinary powers, though Wesley, like Neo, doesn’t believe it. Our hero must go through a series of grueling and painful trials to train and prove his fortitude, worthiness and dedication to the cause.

"Wanted" is blood brothers to “Shoot ‘Em Up” as well, another audaciously over-the-top action picture that wears its influences on its sleeve. The difference being “Wanted” doesn't feel as if it’s paying homage or reference to its influences, just blatantly copying them.

"Wanted" tries to fool us with quantity over quality. Being an action-film junkie with discriminating tastes for the genre, Timur Bekmambetov’s direction is sloppy and distracting. He takes time to craft his action set pieces – which the story moves itself around to fit into – but relies on frenetic editing to assault our senses. To go back to the "Matrix" films the Wachowskis smartly used minimal cutting and let what was on the screen wow us. By cutting, zooming, swishing its camera to the extreme "Wanted" sorely lacks this cinematic confidence.

There are about six wow moments – five of which you have already seen in the trailer. The sixth one comes in the big finale and should generate some laughs, but look between these lines and you’ll a find sub-standard action film – something which Tony Scott, John Woo, Michael Bay, Paul Greengrass, John McTiernan, James Cameron, The Wachowski Bros, Robert Rodriguez, have done better.

To cut Mr. Bekmambetov some slack, it’s his first Hollywood film after making a name for himself for his "Nightwatch" and "Daywatch" films in Russia - two parts of an action vampire trilogy which I could barely sit through half an hour of before getting confused. He translates his hyper-stylized techniques to "Wanted" pretty easily, but it’s nothing new – a rehash of the fast-slow bullet-time cinematography we saw in the "Matrix" 9 years ago. As for the story, there’s nothing to be confused about "Wanted".

As for Angelina Jolie – she’s sexy alright, but so gravely malnourished it’s distracting. There will likely be several more “Wanteds” made after its inevitable success at the box office. There's lots of backstory that needs to be fleshed out, so contradictorily, I actually look forward to part II, but perhaps only to know how the Fraternity figured out that their textile loom is asking them to kill people, and not just serve them coffee or something.

Wanted

OPEN LETTER TO HOLLYWOOD: No More Red Font Eddie Murphy Posters!!

Dear Hollywood Marketing Execs:

I was driving the streets of Toronto yesterday, and drove past a bus with a giant banner advertising “Meet Dave” - a new family comedy with Eddie Murphy. As we all know Eddie Murphy’s late career work (save the “Dreamgirls" blip) has been either milking "Shrek" for Dreamworks, or starring in kid-friendly family pictures such as this.

The “Meet Dave” banner, which is probably being plastered in every major city in Canada and the U.S., features the big mug of Mr. Murphy over top of the title in bold red font against a white background. Just change the title and the expression on Eddie's face and you have the poster for every other kid flick he’s made since “The Nutty Professor”.

For some reason this annoys me to no end.

Of course, the distributor who markets the film (in the case of "Meet Dave", 20th Century Fox) wants grab it’s audience by whatever means necessary and pull them into the theatre. One of their tactics is to have the poster or other promotional material quickly identify with or remind its audience of other successful films of the same genre. That's why the "National Treasure" posters vaguely resembles the "The Mummy" posters. But with these Eddie Murphy films, the lack of creativity is simply ridiculous.

Let's look at these some of these posters side by side:

I am not the audience for “Meet Dave”, so why am I so bothered? Perhaps it’s the uncreativity of the marketing department, which charge large amounts of money against the production to create the worst example of template marketing. It’s also a shameful reminder of the dreck that Eddie Murphy is making his living on these days – but as evidenced by his work in “Dreamgirls” he can still act.

If these six films weren’t overkill enough, they're branding Ice Cube's family films the same way:

I have no problem with these films which I’m sure bring much laughter to six-year olds but out of respect for Mr. Murphy and everyone else that isn't six, change your marketing campaign. At the very least, change the colour of the font. Please.

Thank you for your attention,

Alan Bacchus