We’re starting to hear some positive buzz about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Apparently it doesn’t rape or ruin your childhood; rather, it may make you feel like a kid again. This is what a toy/cartoon adaptation should do, we guess, but we still wish they’d made a Reagan-era-style war movie instead of a CG-heavy action blockbuster with too much comic relief. Because even when we were little we knew the property was a young person’s version of the conservative, Cold War-informed military pictures of the 1980s. And if Rambo could get his own Saturday morning animated series, why couldn’t we get a hard-R-rated G.I. Joe after all these years?
We know the answer to that question, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re disappointed. See, while others might feel GIJTROC has ruined their childhood by being too unfaithful to the action figures and show, we feel it’s ruined our childhood because it isn’t the movie we dreamed of. So that’s how the following list of films was selected. Instead of going for all the obvious remakes and video game adaptations (we’ve never cared about games), we’re focusing on movies that really turned our beloved films, comics and cartoons of our youth into something we’re now almost embarrassed to ever admit we enjoyed. …Read more
Art Radio International renegotiated the terms of its lease of the Clocktower Gallery with MoMA recently, consequently serving subleasers The Film-Maker’s Co-op (FMC) with an eviction notice. Founded nearly 50 years ago, FMC is one of the longest-running distributors of experimental and independent film in the world, its offices operating in the same building since 2000. The organization houses thousands of 16mm prints, many of them unique and irreplaceable including those by Stan Brakhage, Paul Sharits, Carolee Schneeman, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Jennifer Reeves, Jack Smith, Ken Jacobs, Peggy Ahwesh, Joyce Wieland, Michael Snow, Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, Martha Colburn, Leslie Thornton, and literally hundreds of other artists, as well as an invaluable paper archive of letters, program notes and other materials. According to sources moving these fragile prints will take thousands of dollars the Co-op simply can’t afford.
Art Fag City passes along word that a significant archive devoted to art and experimental film is in danger of becoming homeless. The FMC is petitioning Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Kate D. Levin in the hopes she’ll help them either stay in the Clocktower or find a new space (and presumably the resources for the move). More details at the link.
New York gentrification moves faster than video format extinction. Kim’s Video on Avenue A shut down while I was in grad school at NYU, and that made it hard enough to find VHS copies of older films that hadn’t yet been released on DVD (and hasn’t that space gone through like three cheesy bars since Kim’s lost their lease? Please advise.) Later, I ended up buying a bunch of those tapes (including Fassbinder’s Gods of the Plague and Herzog’s Where the Green Ants Dream) at Mondo Kim’s on Saint Marks. Now, that Kim’s location is getting ready to move, and they’re unloading their library of 55,000 video rentals in the process.
A couple of local eye witnesses have sent in reports of a flyer that’s being passed out at the store (Ray Pride has posted a scan), advertising Mr. Kim’s search for “institutions, schools, businesses or individuals who can accomodate Kim’s full line of film collection.” Apparently, they want to keep the collection intact; in fact, the stated mandates for parties interested in acquiring it are an ability to devote “3,000 square feet of space, committment to give access to Kim’s members (charging minimum membership fee), and maintaining the collection.” Takers can click above for contact info.
I’m finally heading back to New York tomorrow after almost 5 weeks away, and a number of can’t-miss film events are awaiting me. A sample:
Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light is finally, finally coming back to New York, a year after it screened at NYFF 2007, as part of a retrospective dedicated to the Mexican filmmaker at MoMA. Manohla Dargis raves.
Natural Causes, the relationship drama co-directed by sometime SpoutBlog contributor Michael Lerman (and featuring yours truly in a teeny-tiny cameo), has a one-night-only NYC preview on Monday night at the IFC Center. You can buy tickets here, and read our SXSW coverage of the film here and here.
IFP is launching a new series of screenings called First Weekend, in which they help ensure an indie release has a successful first weekend by inviting their members to buy tickets for a special screening featuring a discussion with the filmmakers and an after party. The first film to get the treatment will be Ballast, which we loved at Sundance, and which director Lance Hammer is self-distributing. It all starts at Film Forum on October 2. More info here.
“Narrative Jackass.” That’s the genre shorthand Micheal Tully has invented to describe Benny and Josh Safdie’s latest short film, There is Nothing You Can Do, and it’s pretty fitting.
The film was shot by Josh on a tiny prosumer video camera on a real-life, New York City bus crowded with both actors and unknowing actual riders. It stars Eleonore Hendricks from The Pleasure of Being Robbed as a young mother, and Benny Safdie as an irate businessman who complains that the noise coming Eleonore’s baby is distracting him from reading his newspaper. Various regular Safdie associates, including Ronald Bronstein, are planted around the bus, and when Benny starts harassing Eleonore, some of them rise to her defense.
The Safdies and crew pull off the street theater element so flawlessly that I’d love to see them turn this into a regular series––but not so regular that average New Yorkers start to recognize their troupe.
Both The Dark Knightand Man on Wirewere phenomenally successful at the box office this past weekend. The former, a huge Hollywood blockbuster based on a comic book, broke the record for greatest second weekend ever and the record for quickest movie to break the $300 million mark. The latter, an award-winning documentary about a man who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers, had the best non-IMAX per-screen average and the best opening for a documentary so far this year.
But the two films have more in common than their box office achievements, and I detail ten similarities between them below. My reason for the comparisons––some of which are, I admit, a bit of a stretch––is not just for the amusement of highlighting parallels between a blockbuster and a documentary. Rather, I hope that this list will encourage the millions of people who saw The Dark Knight to also seek out and watch Man on Wire, which is by far my favorite film of the year, so far, and is quite possibly the best doc I’ve seen in years.
Man on Wire certainly features everything that’s entertaining about The Dark Knight — save for a posthumous performance from Heath Ledger — though it does have a terrific posthumous performance by the World Trade Center. And it also appeals to moviegoers who aren’t into comic book movies (even those as non-comic-book-movie-like as TDK), too.
Criminal Clowns - Man on Wire’s Philippe Petit and The Dark Knight’s Joker (Heath Ledger) are each a form of jester jailed for unlawful acts. Petit doesn’t kill anyone, of course, and The Joker exhibits no ability to juggle, perform magic tricks or ride on a unicycle. Yet the two clowns share a common bond: neither can really answer the question of why they do what they do. Sure, their respective motives may be labeled — Petit acts out of pure passion; The Joker is an agent for chaos — but not in any way that satisfies the police or media. Man on Wire’s inclusion of a hilarious press conference held by the NYPD wins points over The Dark Knight’s cliché use of anger-filled interrogation scene. …Read more
Jonathan Levine’s crowd-pleasing (in terms of audience awards at festivals, not in terms of uplifting Hollywood endings) film The Wacknessopens in limited release tomorrow. In case you haven’t noticed from the ads and the soundtrack, it takes place in the New York City of 1994, a special time for the place because Rudy Giuliani had just become mayor and was beginning to clean up the city, Goldie Wilson-stylee (OK, not really Goldie Wilson-stylee, but who doesn’t love a good BTTFreference?).
NYC in the ’90s was quite special for me. It’s when I moved here. And moved here a second time (I’ve since moved here a third time), and watching The Wackness made me nostalgic for the decade. It also made me think of some of the other films from or set in that period, a number of which kind of define my experience with the city.
You knew this was coming: The Hollywood Reporter reveals that in addition to apparently ending his political career, Eliot Spitzer’s date with call girl Ashley Alexandra Dupre may have a lasting impact on New York state’s recently-resurgent film industry. Gregg Goldstein notes that although both the Repblicate state Senate and the Democrat state Assembly are in favor of upping the tax credits, they have wildly different visions of how the new plan should look. The Senate plan, in putting more emphasis on breaks for above-the-line costs such as actor salaries, would seem to benefit visiting, big-budget studio films; the Democrat Assembly plan, in focusing specifically on below-the-line costs, is more concerned with supporting homegrown talent, and is “meant to help build New York’s film industry infrastructure by supporting and establishing ongoing production jobs.”
So who’s gonna win? Right now the safe money says Spitzer’s replacement David Patterson will do everything he can to rebuild bridges broken by Spitzer’s scandal by playing nice with the Republican Senate. Also, he’s apparently BFF with Spitzer-hating Senate leader Joseph Bruno, which makes it all the more likely that he’ll turn his back on his own party in the name of post-prostitute reconciliation.
I wonder why the grassroots film community hasn’t made a bigger deal out of this yet. It’s enough to make a girl wish that Jem Cohen would start blogging.
There isn’t much to say about this new Cloverfieldspot, except to point out that New Year’s Rockin’ Eve isn’t the best place to premiere a trailer, in my opinion. I guess part of the target demo is sci-fi geeks without friends, a date or a party to attend, but then those geeks are probably doing something better than watching Ryan Seacrest ring in 2008 in Times Square. Sure, millions of TVs likely were tuned to Rockin’ Eve around the 11:50-12:01 mark, but it’s not as though the ball drop is like the Super Bowl. Most of us have the show on mute, because we’d rather listen to our dance music and our popping corks and our bubbly bubbling … and obviously our own shouting of the countdown, and so certainly missed any commercials.
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.
filmcouch-114
New York gentrification moves faster than video format extinction. Kim’s Video on Avenue A shut down while I was in grad school at NYU, and that made it hard enough to find VHS copies of older films that hadn’t yet been released on DVD (and hasn’t that space gone through like three cheesy bars since Kim’s lost their lease? Please advise.) Later, I ended up buying a bunch of those tapes (including Fassbinder’s
I’m finally heading back to New York tomorrow after almost 5 weeks away, and a number of can’t-miss film events are awaiting me. A sample:
