• Way back on Monday, we introduced our entry in the Top 25 Foreign Films List sweepstakes.
• We remembered Groucho Marx by swooning over Zeppo.
• We wondered why the Balls of Fury guy is playing Alfred Hitchcock instead of Orson Welles.
• We totally forgot about that whole spontaneous combustion sub-theme to Max Headroom.
• Chuck Klosterman was all, “I discovered Bujalski!” and we were all, “Sigh.”
• In the space of three weeks, Werner Herzog went from Great American Hero to Treasonous Traitor.
• There’s a conspicuous lack of Gere in this I’m Not There trailer.
• Bill Murray saves the world: the fundamental rescue fantasy of our generation?
• By Wednesday, the MumbleBacklash was already brewing…
• …but Hannah Takes the Stairs still sold tons of tickets on its first day…
• …And there are three Mumblecore movies that you haven’t even heard of. Go see them next week.
• I confessed my secret dream to write about Eyes Wide Shut for a living.
• On this week’s episode of FilmCouch, we talked about Trapped in the Closet (which ended), Superbad, and a punk rock high school flick that you can watch on YouTube.
• These are the 15 movies that I want to see at the Toronto Film Festival.
• If you see one documentary about a guy who thinks he’s dating Joan of Arc this weekend, it should be Kamp Katrina.
• Quiet City director Aaron Katz talks about Van Morrison, fantasy baseball, airplane traffic jams, and the pros and cons of being labelled Mumblecore.

Going beneath the surface of Superbad (Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen). Questioning the “substance” of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet. Also, the high school comedy that should have made it, Karina investigates whatever happened to High School Record.

Download FilmCouch #34 or subscribe in the iTunes store (search for “filmcouch” or click here to launch iTunes) and a new free episode will download every Friday. Join the FilmCouch group

Superbad Trapped in the Closet High School Record

With Chapter 22 of Trapped in the Closet now live at ifctv.com, each episode of the hip-hopera commissioned by the Independent Film Channel has been released into the ether, and our long national ironic nightmare/guilty obsession is, for the time being, over. Watch it here — it’s a lot like Pillow Talk, except instead of Rock Hudson and Doris Day, there’s a philandering bisexual pastor and a midget. And, if you just can’t get enough of Sylvester, Twan, the lesbian waitresses, Rosey the nosey neighbor and the rest of the crew, you can watch this preview of IFC’s “exclusive interview” with R. Kelly, in which the maestro explains his creative process (”I always tell people, Trapped in the Closet is an alien,” he says, “Because it’s something I’ve never seen, since I’ve been on the Earth”) and hints that you haven’t seen the last of the Closet gang.

• Assessing the first IFC-produced chapter of Trapped in the Closet, I wrote that “From the first shot, it’s immediately apparent that Trapped’s production values have been elevated somewhat since Chapter 12 was released two years ago” and expresed concern that this and other noticeable changes “could have profound implications on Trapped’s signature, quasi-Brechtian manner of storytelling.” Then IFC TV’s general manager was like, “No you didn’t.”
• We played our part in hyping Hannah Takes the Stairs by posting Matt Dentler’s interview with one of Hannah’s many love interests, Mark Duplass.
• “Star-making is not just a hobby of the delusional rich, as it is in Sunset Boulevard; it’s not quite the cosmic structuring myth that it becomes in A Star is Born. It’s sexual fetish, and as such, it’s somehow simultaneously frivolous and primal.” With Anthology Film Archives paying tribute to Vincente Minnelli’s melodramas, I took a closer look at The Bad and the Beautiful.
• I wouldn’t die for Elvis, but I did pull together a list of links to help commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death.
• On the podcast, Kevin and Paul got their hearts broken by No End In Sight, and I wondered if celebrities should break up with their causes after watching The 11th Hour.
• “Screw the script–that voyeuristic long shot of Molly Ringwald on the stairs is how John Hughes became the voice of (highly commercial) teen alienation.” In the latest installment of The Micro Five, I take a look at dancing-in-the-library scene from The Breakfast Club, plus four other 80s musical interludes.
• I got the day’s second Xanadu reference out of Andrew Grant who, along with his Benten Films partner Aaron Hillis, dished pop cultural preferences for The Media Diet.

With all this Trapped in the Closet hullabaloo in the air (yes, I just typed “hullabaloo”, and no, Firefox’s automatic spell checker had no problem with it), how could I resist Same Dude? Currently featured on YouTube, the hipster/nerd girl takeoff on R. Kelly and Usher’s Same Girl is the brainchild of Hannah Bos and Frances Chewning, who star in and produce the “Choose Your Own Adventure” web series The Mimi and Flo Show.

By transplanting Kelly and Usher’s blinged-out creation to Brooklyn, Bos and Chewning get away with some pretty great visual gags, such as when Mimi laments the loss of her “potential husband” on the 61 bus instead of a private plane, and when the girls drown their sorrow in chocolate and marshmallow fluff. But I have to say, I am a little disappointed that Same Dude cops Same Girls lame “whoops! They’re twins!” ending. When I saw Mimi with that frying pan, I was really hoping for some violence.

For more on Bos and Chewning’s shorts, check out MimiAndFlo.com

Evan Shapiro, general manager of IFC, wrote a long comment on my review of Chapter 13 of Trapped in the Closet. I’ve pasted it below; my response is after the jump.

First of all, thank you for such an insightful review of “Trapped” Chapter 13. Regardless of how one feels about the entire project, or the individual episodes, “Trapped” evokes strong opinions, such as yours.

I can assure you, that I do take seriously my point of view (which you call a “provocation”), that with “Trapped”, Kelly follows in the footsteps of John Waters.

“Trapped”, like many of Waters’ films have, exists on the fringe of mainstream culture, but also on the forefront of the current (or next) cultural shift.

Yes, there are many traditional elements to his storytelling that allow us to define it as a ”soap”. But those elements are also universal to many great stories - no matter the era.

I believe that, in his latest ten chapters, Kelly uses pop music composition, musical theater techniques, independent film sensibilities, controversial (even outlandish) cultural iconography and of-the-moment currency, to weave a truly modern epic, with Barnum-esque scale.

New York Magazine’s website compared “Trapped” a modern Dickens novel - albeit with a bit of irony, I imagine - the way we are releasing it day by day, and how Kelly’s audience hangs on every chapter.

Regardless of how you feel, you have to admit, somehow, “Trapped” has become a minor cultural phenomenon. But, it’s more than that.

“Trapped” gives us a glimpse into the future of storytelling - good old fashion drama, married to current cultural movements, distributed at once to an on-demand community of fans and detractors, who make the conversation ABOUT the work, its own self-generating content.

As to your creative constructive criticism on Chapter 13… I think, if you remain tuned in to all the new chapters, you will NOT be disappointed. Kelly takes his characters, and his writing, to a whole new, crazy level of brilliance, outrage and alienation.

evan shapiro
general manager
ifc tv

…Read more

Recently, IFC’s Evan Shapiro defended his company’s production and distribution of new chapters in R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet saga by comparing the “hip hopera” pioneer to postmodern trash god John Waters. Trapped, according to Shapiro, “challenges the traditional mores and sexual stereotypes of the current climate as boldly — and hysterically — as many films coming out of Hollywood or the indie movement.”

In the current climate of posture-as-polemic, it’s impossible to gauge exactly how seriously Shapiro intended us to take that provocation, but I certainly kept it in mind whilst watching Chapter 13 of Trapped (the first Chapter to be produced under the IFC deal), which premiered on IFCTV.com last night. New episodes are set to premiere every evening on the site for the next ten days.

From the first shot, it’s immediately apparent that Trapped’s production values have been elevated somewhat since Chapter 12 was released two years ago. The story has moved out of the closets and cupboards and kitchens of Slyvester and crew, and on to the streets of Chicago (or, at least, a decent facsimile thereof). There are sophisticated camera movements, and lush, dissolve-heavy montages. Whereas the soundtracks of previous episodes barely allowed Kelly the time to take a breath, Chapter 13 concludes with a musical interlude that’s actually about the passing of time.

…Read more

One made Maggie Gyllenhall pretend to drink goats urine; the other has been accused of his own scatalogical crimes. What else do R. Kelly and John Waters have in common? I’ll let Evan Shapiro, EVP and general manager of IFC, explain:

[W]hen I brought Trapped in the Closet into the office to screen it for my bosses, people at the company suggested that I seek counseling.

Call me crazy (or obsessed), I find something in Trapped that makes it a natural next step in this experiment. While it might not be on the scale of Midnight Cowboy, in its own iconoclastic, pop-culture way, Trapped in the Closet challenges the traditional mores and sexual stereotypes of the current climate as boldly — and hysterically — as many films coming out of Hollywood or the indie movement. The cheating women, the closeted preacher, the pop star hiding in the closet, the adulterous midget with a paternity problem — Kelly makes a case to carry the mantle of John Waters into the new millennium. You may laugh, but you can’t look away.

You’ll find much more from Shapiro here, and though most of the insights take the form of barely-veiled plugs for IFC TV’s summer slate, it’s always nice to see a powerful TV executive draw attention to his pun on the term “doing it.”

Sorry, I can’t resist. Remember when I warned you about IFC’s plans to produce and distribute 10 additional episodes of Trapped in the Closet? Um, well, a preview of the first of those episodes is now up on Stereogum (via Fimoculous). Actually, it’s only about 16 seconds of preview–the first minute forty is an R. Kelly-guided recap of the first … uh … season?–but in that 16 seconds, we get glimpses of a gospel choir, an aircraft that at first looks kind of like a spaceship but on further inspection seems to be a helicopter, and the return of the midget.

All that’s great, but I’m really posting about this for two reasons: 1) R. Kelly told Variety that he thinks of Trapped in the Closet as “an independent film,” and 2), the first comment on Stereogum made me laugh out loud: “I like this better when it was called Blue Velvet and it didn’t star R. Kelly.” You may now tell me about your dream R. Kelly/David Lynch collaboration in the comments.