COMIC-CON EPISODE IV - A FAN'S HOPE: MORGAN SPURLOCK'S ASTOUNDING DISAPPEARING ACT

Morgan Spurlock isn't the first name that comes to mind when discussing filmmakers that resist self-promotion.  In part, it's due to his coming along at a time when becoming the subject (or inserting yourself into the subject) of your film isn't frowned upon anymore.  Think of Spurlock, who always appears on camera in his films, as the logical outgrowth of the Michael Moore and Ross McElwee school of film; a modern, popular subgenre of documentary film driven by the personality of the individual who wears the director's cap.

Sometimes, his results have been great (for instance, Super Size Me or most episodes of his sorely missed television show 30 Days).  Other times, it's been difficult to come to grips with Spurlock's thesis due to his presence before the camera overwhelming the impact of the subject he's broaching (never more true than in his segment of Freakonomics), even when the proceedings have been entertaining enough.

Shockingly, in his latest work, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope, Spurlock simply vanishes, neither he nor his voice are featured anywhere in the film.  It's a completely unexpected left turn from the director, after some eight years of basically applying the same technique to every project, liberating the proceedings and allowing for the most mature work of his career to emerge.

As the title indicates, Comic-Con Episode IV is about the world's biggest annual nerd convention, some 40+ years into its existence; a place where comic book fans can mingle with action figure collectors, film and tv geeks and hot women dressed as Wonder Woman or other fantasy based characters (the film actually features a moment involving a "slave-trader" who deals exclusively in women dressed as Princess Leia).

Spurlock wisely chooses to document the event through a small number of characters attending the convention.  Among them, he's got two wanna-be comic book artists who head to San Diego to undergo portfolio reviews with the many publishers who set up booths there.  There's also a costume designer whose team has brought the characters from the video game Mass Effect to life in the hopes of having their talents discovered.  And, perhaps most endearingly, there's the nerdy young dude who spends much of the film orchestrating a marriage proposal to his equally geeky girl during a Kevin Smith q&a.

Additionally, there are interviews and appearances by more famous folk, such as Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Eli Roth, etc.

Yes, it's hard to swallow the use of the word "mature" to describe a film about toy collectors and fantasy-lovin' folk.  But, seriously, Comic-Con is a huge step forward in Spurlock's overall trajectory as a filmmaker.  Plus, it's REALLY entertaining and often quite heartwarming in its depiction of the passion that lies at the heart of fan culture. 

Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope opens at the Hollywood Theatre on Friday, April 6th.  Morgan Spurlock will be in attendance for the Saturday, April 7th show at 7:15pm.  More info here.



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GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING: IT'S HIS STRUGGLE, NOT OURS

There's a near absolute adherence to truth in advertising embedded in the title of Corrina Belz' new documentary, Gerhard Richter Painting.  It's a film almost entirely based in the observation of craft.  Belz' camera watches quietly and without emotion as the German master works his way through multiple applications and reapplications of color and texture, smeared and scraped across several massive canvases.  Those who work and live around the artist: his wife, gallerist and the odd friend or two from the past, appear briefly, temporarily interrupting his efforts, but the focus here is on Richter's communion with the works in progress as he dramatically morphs them over and over again, searching for an image that is neither preconceived nor, as he puts it, entirely unplanned.

At first, the filmmaking feels dispassionate, distant and without clear focus, soliciting a nervous discomfort when engaging with it.  But after a short while, it becomes clear that the approach mirrors Richter's own process, gaining clarity as it progresses.  As an interviewer, Belz pushes the painter to express that which he guards closely, moving into exchanges that feel psychoanalytical at times.  And the film excels in those moments when Richter loses his composure, like when he expresses doubt in the choices he's made on a particular canvas or while visiting the past through the display of old family photos.  Also quite revealing is the sight of the painter standing amongst his fans at the opening of a gallery retrospective of his portraiture; he bears the look of an animal searching for an escape from danger.

Richter's most at home in his studio, battling it out with the abstractions that he produces.  It's a tense thing to watch as Belz focuses the audience's attention on the painter's process of discovery.  Often times, we glimpse the appearance of forward momentum in a piece, only to watch helplessly as Richter smears another layer over the image with one of his large squeegees.  Yet, one has to allow Richter to be Richter in the end; after all, it's his struggle that is being fought here, not ours.

Gerhard Richter Painting plays at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Fri., April 6th at 7pm and Sat., April 7th at 4:30pm and 7pm.


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Help Spread the Gospel About THE RAIN FALLS DOWN ON PORTLANDTOWN

Hey faithful readers,

I've just added a bunch of social networking "share" buttons to the upper right hand corner of the blog's sidebar.  If you've been enjoying what's on offer here, please pass it along to others: friends, family, pets and other worthy adversaries (come to think of it, go ahead and rope in unworthy ones, too) who might like reading the blog, too. 

And remember, you can always subscribe to the Facebook page here.  If you'd like to get the blog's feed, you can sign up for that here in a reader format or get it via e-mail.

Cheers,
Nick

p.s.--here's what those oh, so attractive buttons look like: 

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B-MOVIE BINGO presents MULLET MANIA aka JOHN WOO'S HARD TARGET @ the Hollywood Theatre

There was a time when the mere mention of John Woo's name could send action-heads and film geeks into convulsive states of nerdy bliss.  Mind you, we're talking sometime around 1992, 'round when Hard Boiled and The Killer temporarily cemented Woo's place in the pantheon of all-time great action directors.  Then came Hard Target, the first of several U.S. productions to bring those assessments down to a terrestrial level.

Which is not to say that Hard Target, Broken Arrow and, especially, Face/Off are without their pleasures...their sheer audacity, hammy acting and (more than healthy) commitment to scenarios that refute logic make the pictures worthy of embrace by those who don't mind a lil' cheese with their cinema.  And, remember, one person's trash is another person's treasure...

All of which leads us to point out the B-Movie Bingo screening of Hard Target (featuring magnificent© supporting performances to JCVD's mullet by both Wilford Brimley AND Lance Henriksen!!!) this week at the Hollywood Theatre.  For those unsure of what B-Movie Bingo is, the Hollywood's listing offers up this explanation:

B-MOVIE BINGO is a game that is exactly like it sounds — OR MORE. It’s simple–we play bingo to the most awesome movie cliches ever committed to celluloid, like: “LONG BORING SCENE OR MALE PONY TALE”, “TEAMED UP WITH ROOKIE OR ANIMAL”, and “WHITE SUIT OR TROPICAL ENDING”. For maybe the first time in a theater, see the relatives and employees of A-list actors you know and love like Sylvester Stallone, whose brother bears a remarkable resemblance to him. Compete for prizes! Yell at your fellow movie nerds over the elusive and mysterious “BLANK SQUARE”! Relax: it’s B-MOVIE BINGO.

So, yeah, it's bingo + a dubious but fun movie.  Sounds like a time.  Check out the trailer:

The B-Movie Bingo presentation of Hard Target goes down on Tuesday, April 3rd at the Hollywood Theatre.  More info available here.

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CUTS: LIFE IN A NORTHWEST SHINGLE FACTORY

Charles Gustafson's 1981 film Cuts depicts lives lived in a northwest saw mill producing cedar shingles.  Filmed using cinéma vérité strategies, the 38-minute piece is a raw look at the hard-working, hard-living "shingle weavers" as they mesh themselves with the rhythms of their saw blades, transforming massive logs of cedar into roofing product.  No one in the factory romanticizes the difficult and dangerous work, the best some can muster is a half-bitter, half-boastful pride about their ability to do it well.

Several of Gustafson's subjects talk about the sting of the blade as it hits flesh and many bear the scars of a deep cut; on average, this crowd has fewer fingers per hand than what you'll see in most films.  One shingle weaver confesses that the fear after being cut is almost more difficult than the injury itself.  Another man, on permanent disability, drinks heavily as he speaks of the loss of his hand.  The statement that sums it all up has gotta be, "it comes down to this: you've got cedar, you've got shingles, you've got fingers.  That blade just don't stop."



Cuts plays in a double feature with Ron Finne's Natural Timber Country at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Mon., April 2nd at 7pm.  Finne will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&A. 


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THE KID WITH A BIKE: RETURN OF THE DARDENNE BROS.

Absence plays a strong role in the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (L'enfant, The Son), one could even describe the condition of loss as a recurring character within their celebrated body of work.  Often, as in their latest film, The Kid With a Bike, what's missing is within arm's reach, an unrealized desire made worse by proximity to what the character craves.

In The Kid With a Bike, it's the abandonment of a young boy named Cyril (Thomas Doret) by his father, Guy (Jérémie Renier), that drives the story forward.  As the film opens, Cyril begins to realize that his temporary stay at a home for boys is a far more permanent arrangement than his father had promised.  What's more, Guy has moved out of his apartment without leaving a forwarding address, selling Cyril's bicycle to a neighbor boy in the process.

Cyril retrieves his bike in a rough and tumble manner, presaging further violence down the line, and sets off to track down his father.  Returning to his father's last known place of residence, he comes under the notice of Samantha (Cécile De France), a hairdresser living in Guy's old apartment building.  Taking pity on the boy, Samantha aids Cyril in his search for his father but is unable to protect him from the harsh truths that await him.

The Kid With a Bike arrives with a built in audience.  The Dardennes are certified critical darlings and art-house favorites.  They're among a very small crowd of directors to have won the prestigious Palme d'Or multiple times at the Cannes Film Festival (this newest work took second place--the Grand Prix--at the 2011 fest).  Few directors working today operate with as unified of a vision as the Dardenne brothers; their extremely effective strategies rarely shift from film to film.

If you've seen one Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne film, you know what to expect here.  Handheld cameras track Cyril's every movement, watching him struggle against the circumstances he's been handed.  The worldview on display is bleak but doesn't rule out the possibility of redemption.  Moments of kindness temper the more tragic aspects of the story but, as in everything else in their filmography, the brothers persistently resist the urge to deal in sentimentality. 

Given that their best film, Rosetta, has fallen out of print on dvd in the U.S., newcomers to the Dardennes could do a lot worse than to become acquainted to their essential work via The Kid With a Bike.  Those already initiated in the Belgian masters' oeuvre will find much to celebrate here, too.

The Kid With a Bike begins its run at the Living Room Theaters on Fri., March 30th.  More info available here. 



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RED DESERT: ANTONIONI'S VISION OF A TERRIBLE, TECHNICOLOR REALITY

Illness abounds in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1964 masterpiece Red Desert, the director's first foray into (Techni)color filmmaking.  Antonioni regular Monica Vitti returns as Giuliana, a woman recently discharged from the hospital after an accident related to her flawed mental state.  But it's not just Giuliani who is ill; the entire backdrop that constitutes the world in Red Desert is an industrial nightmare, wheezing and coughing up various colors of smoke and haze, birthing an environment that mirrors our protagonist's cluttered and fragmented vision of a terrible reality.

Against this image of a ravaged landscape, Giuliana travels from place to place as if experiencing a vision, one where only she can see the natural being supplanted by the man-made.  Yes, there are signs that the environmental spaces depicted are objective: both her husband, Ugo (Carlo Chionetti), and his business associate, Corrado (Richard Harris, looking here at times like a young Marlon Brando), witness a monumental amount of built up exhaust being released from the factory that Ugo manages, while her young son, Valerio (Valerio Bartoleschi), asks why the smoke funneling out of the factory is yellow.

Giuliana's crisis, however, seems to derive from her inability to see these signs of the modern age as the progress that Corrado interprets them as being.  She may also be experiencing an existentially felt sense of responsibility for the wreckage she witnesses; after all, her husband supports their bourgeois lifestyles with his job at the plant.  No one else in the film seems at odds with their surroundings, while Giuliana struggles ceaselessly against them.

Much like in his 1975 film, The Passenger, Antonioni departs from the main narrative in the third act for a short tale relayed by one character to another.  In both films, the story is allegorical, aiding in the viewer's understanding of the exceedingly elliptical, primary storyline.  Giuliana tells her son of a girl who lives in isolation on an island that is quite the opposite of the polluted spaces seen in the rest of the film.  Paralleling Giuliani's predicament, the island girl stumbles upon an essential truth pertaining to her surroundings. 

A helpful bit of context when viewing the film:  Red Desert appeared within two years of the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, a text often credited with kick-starting the modern environmental movement.  Whether or not Antonioni's film was directly influenced by Carson's book, it's really difficult to talk about Red Desert without at least acknowledging the impact that the environmental movement has on one's understanding of the film.  It's possible to imagine Red Desert as a poetic lens through which to view the urgency of environmental concern or, conversely, a conceptual piece driven by the zeitgeist of the early-to-mid 60s environmental consciousness.

Red Desert plays at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium (in the Portland Art Museum) on Thurs., March 29th through Sun., April 1st at 7pm. 


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