On Sunday at True/False, filmmaker/blogger AJ Schnack screened the first thirty minutes of Convention, his verite-style film documenting the 2008 Democratic National Convention with an eye on the Denver locals (politicians, city administrators, journalists, protesters) who were in the mix. Shot by Schnack in collaboration with nearly a dozen documentarians (including the Oscar-nominated directors Laura Poitras and Julia Reichert, and Daniel Junge, who directed the Oscar-shortlisted They Killed Sister Dorothy), the film’s making-of process was almost as much of a serendipity-dependent feat of execution as the event captured on screen.
As his, uh, primary inspiration, Schnack cites Robert Drew’s Primary, a Direct Cinema landmark documenting the Wisconsin primary race between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. The first American nonfiction picture filmed with sync sound, its IMDb profile reads today as a who’s-who of 60s documentary film: Drew as audio recordist, Albert Maysles and Ricky Leacock behind the camera and D.A. Pennebaker in the editing room. Time will tell if Convention’s slate of collaborators seems as starry 50 years on, but in the present it stands out as a film built out of and on top of connections made on the film festival circuit. If, in the context of the incestuous world of indie film, that hardly seems all that noteworthy, it is relevant that the production seems to have harnessed the scrappy, obsessive energy of that rather insular community and put it to the service of documenting an event that could potentially have meaning to a much larger segment of the population. …Read more
It’s been a huge week in history, but not so huge at the box office. We decide to take a look back at some classic movies with conscience, each made at a pivotal moment in America history. Movies where the hero doesn’t stand up to a diabolical villain, but instead has to face a latent evil embedded in society. We discuss Fury, The Ox-Bow Incident, 12 Angry Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird, among others.
Karina reports on here disappointing experience of being shut in on Halloween. It wasn’t the lack of social engagement that spoiled the evening, it was sub-par horror programing on Turner Classic Movies. She offers some sound advice for putting together a killer classic horror marathon.
Are you walking around with your “I Voted!” sticker proudly adhered to your chest? If not, get out there and do some lever pulling, chad punching, and ballot dropping. Then take the rest ofthe day off and watch one of these movies that’ll get you through the rest of election day and away from the nail-biting edge of election return coverage. There are a few minor spoilers inside, but don’t view that as me messing with the ballot box. You’ll still love the movies more than CNN’s infographics.
It’s the old man versus the young, less-experienced black man. No, I’m not talking about McCain and Obama. This is the election battle between Emperor Palpatine and Lando Calrissian for the leader of the Star Warsgalaxy. But if the good folks at Funny or Die intended for real life analogy then that means Sarah Palin = Darth Vader and Joe Biden = Chewbacca — speaking of which, isn’t it time we have a candidate with some awesome facial hair, preferably the sideburn-mustache combo (aka “Friendly Mutton Chops”) sported by Chester Arthur?
Despite the issues with his age and appearance, Billy Dee Williams is pretty awesome to have appeared in this video. It would have been even cooler, though, if he’d cracked open a can of Colt 45 at the end, for the clincher. Otherwise, the clip peaks with Admiral Ackbar’s “It’s a trap!” (a nice touch considering I found the video via the Ackbar-obsessed Fark.com). As for the answer to the question of what Calrissian is smuggling this time? I’d say he’s got a couple doughnuts hidden in those cheeks (and yes, they have doughnuts in the Star Wars galaxy).
Before you go to the polls today, you need to understand where the candidates stand on the really big issues. No, I don’t mean silly stuff like the economy. I mean the issues that threaten to plunge the world into an era of scorched, apocalyptic savagery. Sure, an ongoing war in the Middle East and gradual climate change are kind of scary, but how will Obama and McCain respond to the threats that can wipe out 99% of humanity overnight? These are dire times, and doomsday cinema has made one thing clear: this will probably be our last president before Armageddon sweeps from sea to shining see, so we’d better choose wisely.
After the jump we look at where the candidates stand on the issues, from Alien Invasion to Zombie Plague.
Late last Friday, word began to circulate that social historian and famed lefty Studs Terkel had died at the age of 96; Roger Ebert, Chuck Tryon and filmmaker Steven Bognar are among the many who have offered memories and appreciations. I went on YouTube this morning to find footage of the man, and I stumbled on this clip of Terkel talking about his participation in Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool. The nine minutes of footage were collected by Paul Cronin, ostensibly for his documentary on the making of Medium Cool, Look Out Haskell, It’s Real. Make sure to watch it all the way through to find out what happens when Cronin calls Terkel “The Poet of Chicago.”
The 30-minute Barack Obama infomerical just ended on the East Coast, and since it was partially directed by An Inconvenient Truth Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim, it makes total sense for us to write about it on a movie blog! Spoilers after the jump!
And the right thing sure ain’t any sort of riff on Jungle Fever. Spike was in Toronto promoting both his film Miracle at Saint Anna and the relatively new online film festival Babelgum, where he serves as “the ultimate jury.” Meaning, he picks the final winner.
We caught up to ask him what he thought about vice presidential nominee and hockey mom Sarah Palin, and it looks like he wants a showdown between Barack and Sarah.
“I think with that speech…when she said that speech it allowed Joe America to go after her. None of this stuff about how you can’t go off on her because she’s a woman. The stuff the she spoke, he should go after her hard. It’s time to take the kid gloves off.”
Can we assume that Spike is ready for some Democratic mudslinging? If he doesn’t ultimately direct the definitive Obama biopic with Denzel Washington playing a prominent role, then there is no justice in the world.
On Monday, I’m flying to Denver to spend a couple of days hanging around the Democratic National Convention before heading up to Telluride on Thursday. If I was reading that sentence unawares, two questions would inevitably come to mind. First: “Why, Karina, are you going to a political event when you have a movie blog to write?”
Answer: there actually are two major film events happening over the three days that I’ll be in town. The first, the Denver Film Society production Cinemocracy (previously mentioned here), will screen ten finalists in a short film competition that’s been winnowing down submissions online for months. You can watch the films and vote for your favorites here.
The second event is the Impact Film Festival. Founded this year by Jody Arlington, Jamie Shor and Kimball Stroud, IFF will screen “socially-themed documentary and dramatic films” every day at both the DNC and RNC. Films on the program include Battle in Seattle, I.O.U.S.A., and Flow. Check out the Bside page for info on the full lineup.
California may have spent the last five years under the rule of a Republican movie star, but news that major industry players are anything but super-lefty liberals still seems to strike many as a surprise. Responding to a story in which it’s casually mentioned that Dennis Hopper is expected to attend the Republican National Convention, Defamer’s Kyle Buchanan writes, “Did we miss the memo that said the countercultural director of freaking Easy Rider was a Republican? We’d assumed his appearance in the right-wing Zucker film An American Carolwas a strict paycheck gig…”
I’m not sure when the “memo” first went out, but Hopper has been a registered Republican for over 25 years. …Read more
Never one to pass up an opportunity for bullying, Michael Moore has posted excerpt from his new book on his website, entitled “How to Blow It.” It’s a snide, six point “blueprint from the Democrats’ past losing campaigns” to ensure that “the Democratic Party establishment, can help elect John Sidney McCain III to a four-year extension of the Bush Era.” As Nikki Finke points out, the final item on the list is “especially intriguing” — in that Moore conflates his own self-importance with Democratic cowardice.
“Denounce me!,” Moore shouts. Obama, he says. “Better denounce me or [Republicans and pundits] will tear him to shreds. He had better back away not only from me but from anyone and everyone who veers a bit too far to the left of where his advisers have told him is the sweet spot for all those red state voters.”
Remember, this is an Opposite Day list, which means the clear implication is really, “Embrace me or you deserve to lose.” Because we certainly haven’t wasted enough time talking about which candidatesare in bed with which media figures, right?
My version of The Godfather would open with a voice in the darkness saying, “I don’t believe in America. The American Dream is a once-beguiling fairy tale; show’s over, y’all.” But The Dream is still real to many people, and the violence that powerful private interests have done to it in the last century pains them like a kidney punch.
Gonzo journalism pioneer Hunter S. Thompson was one of the wounded, and so is Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Darkside), the far more straight-laced director of the entertaining documentary Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson. They share a proprietary sense of outrage over abuses of power they’ve witnessed in their times. For them, America’s Nixons, Enrons and Bush-Cheneys have desecrated the church, the front lawn. For all their passionate trouble-making, there’s no denying that Gibney and the late Thompson, two white males who came up through America’s hallowed institutions (Thompson through the U.S. Air Force; Gibney through Yale), are insiders.
When I went to interview Gibney about Gonzo, I remembered the film’s procession of leathery right-wingers and elites, former Thompson nemeses, who have warm, friendly things to say about “Dr. Gonzo” now that he’s dead, now that his caricature as a gun-toting drughead has endured beyond his politics. I wondered if, in the end, being inside got the hole dug any better than chucking rocks from outside.
I’ll be MIA for the rest of the afternoon––I have to record a podcast and then go vote––so while I’m gone, check out this terrifying trailer for the original The Manchurian Candidate. I haven’t seen this film since shortly before Jonathan Demme’s remake came out (that film, by the way, was apparently the highest grossing political film since the Carter administration), but I don’t remember the score being nearly this creepy.
From a McClatchy story from yesterday afternoon, long before Hillary Clinton’s “unexpected” win in the New Hampshire primary:
Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker, a New Hampshire resident who’s endorsed Obama, said in an interview the day before the primary…that, if elected, Obama had the potential to be a Lincoln or a Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“He is the embodiment of our wish for ourselves, his ability to transcend the same-old same-old,” Burns said. “He’s a wonderful messenger who carries a complicated message to the rest of us of what we want to be . . . of a whole legacy of promise.”
I’m still trying to work out what it actually means for a messenger to carry me a message of who I want to be, but I do know that Burns has a thing about “transcendent presidents”––that’s the phrase used to describe Lincoln in the official synopsis of The Civil War.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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On Monday, I’m flying to Denver to spend a couple of days hanging around the Democratic National Convention before heading up to Telluride on Thursday. If I was reading that sentence unawares, two questions would inevitably come to mind. First: “Why, Karina, are you going to a political event when you have a movie blog to write?”
Never one to pass up an opportunity for bullying, 
