Cult Movies

Well, that was a bit longer of a layoff between posts than I intended or anticipated, but I’m still here, folks. Let’s do Day Two!***********************************I have decided that Friday, April 26, spent bumping around from auditorium to auditorium and throughout the greater lobby area of the Chinese multiplex for the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival, was probably the single greatest day dedicated to watching movies that I’ve ever spent in my not-so-illustrious 53 years on this planet. Seven movies in a span of approximately 17 hours, with no breaks other than the time it took to get in and out of lines leading into the theaters and the restrooms. (I packed lunch and dinner.) The Swimmer, Voyage to Italy, Ruggles of Red Gap, I Am Suzanne!, It Always Rains on Sunday, Hondo and Plan Nine From Outer Space,all great in their own special ways. So what to do for an encore?Well, one thing was for certain—there would be nowhere near the amount of cinema consumed on Saturday as there had been the previous day. After I said my bleary-eyed post-Ed Wood good-byes to Richard and Ariel, I trudged through the front door of my humble Glendale manse at around 3:00 a.m., but I didn’t actually get to sleep until about 3:30. As I tumbled gracelessly down the rabbit hole toward some desperately need shuteye, I calculated my simple plan—I would set the alarm for around 9:00 a.m., thus skipping the festival of Bugs Bunny cartoons scheduled to celebrate the iconic character’s 75thbirthday which began around 9:30 a.m., and instead make my way back to the Chinese complex in time for the Deliverance screening which started around 11:45 a.m. I figured I could get by on somewhere in the neighborhood of six hours of sleep and still have enough in the tank to get me through the four movies I had on the docket for the day.But my dazed and confused body had other ideas. Without any electronic prompting from my clock, my eyes popped open promptly at 6:30 a.m., after two whole 90-minute sleep cycles. I was wide awake, exhausted but unable to keep my head from stirring about the movies of the past day and the ones yet to come. When it became clear, after a few minutes of tossing and turning, that I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, I decided to get up and start writing up what I’d seen of the festival so far. After logging part one of my post on Friday’s adventure, I hightailed it to the train station and hopped the one stop into Hollywood. This day would be slower, more measured, but still filled with the promise of transcending whatever physical reservations I had in favor of another brilliant experience.Once I arrived, with some considerable excitement I settled into my spot toward the front of the Chinese #1, the big centerpiece auditorium (477 seats) within the Chinese multiplex, in anticipation of seeing Deliverance on the big screen for the first time since 1973, when I was a 13-year-old high school freshman. I was already fairly movie savvy at that age, and I’d heard talk about the movie circulating since its release—by the time it made it to our hometown theater the Academy Awards for 1972 had already passed, so word of the grueling nightmares that awaited its four weekend adventurers (and those who bought tickets to see it) had trickled down even to the most isolated corners of Southern Oregon. But even if I knew (more or less) what to expect, my dad, who barely paid attention to the movies, wouldn’t have known Deliverancefrom Up the Creek. So when I cleverly appealed to his taste for the outdoors and casually suggested that maybe we could go see that new canoeing movie (I needed that accompanied adult to circumvent the “R” rating), he glanced at the tiny ad on the local movie calendar, which conveniently showed only the name of the movie, pictures of the actors looming over a silhouette of three men paddling their boat, and an ominous tag line (“Where does the camping trip end… and the nightmare begin?”), and agreed to take me to see it. Success

I was thrilled to see my friend Ethan Black set up a table at last weekend's Wonderfest Convention in Louisville, KY to sell his work. This was the first time he had done such a public offering and it was long overdue. He offered a combination of original pieces and prints and did pretty well for himself. I have posted his excellent short Halloween themed cartoon here before but I thought it was time to show you some of his painted and penciled art as well. Enjoy and you can see more over at his Facebook page - The Dark Art of Ethan Black.

In a nutshell: Ami is acting strangely after going missing.

If, like me, you are still lamenting the passing of the Great Man of Fantasy Filmmaking and you haven't seen this excellent documentary - now is your chance.

Title: Fast & Furious 6 (2013)Director: Justin Lin Cast: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Sung Kang, Tyrese Gibson, Gal Gadot, Ludacris, Luke Evans, Elsa PatakiReview: The important thing about a summer blockbuster is that it has to entertain; it has to blow you out of that seat and it has to make you leave that theater with a big fat grin on your face, and quite possibly the desire to see the film again. Fast Six achieves all these things with spectacular aplomb. With each film, the Fast and the Furious franchise has improved in quality; each film bigger than the last. Keeping in line with this tendency, Fast Six is more explosive and more action packed then the previous film and in my book that’s saying a lot because I truly enjoyed Fast Five (2011)! Aside from the fact that the film was shot in my home town and I had an amazing opportunity to see it getting made, Fast Five ended up being one of my favorites of the summer 2011 season, it was simply put a good action film. Now can somebody tell me how in the hell did this franchise which I initially disliked turn into one my favorite guilty pleasures?Fast Six starts out exactly where the previous one left off, with Toretto and crew enjoying the fruits of their last heist. Torreto is living in Brazil with Elena, his new girlfriend cop. Brian and Mia are learning how to become parents, and basically each of the characters has gone off into their own world, doing what they want with their millions, enjoying the fruits of their labor. Enter Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) the cop who almost caught Toretto and crew in the last film. Hobbs is having a hard time catching an international gang of thieves who are searching for the parts to build an emp device that could shut down a whole country for 24 hours. Hobbs needs the aid of Toretto and his team to stop these guys. Will the gang accept the mission?When talking about films of this nature, there’s a term used to describe the artifact that triggers the action in the film, I’m talking about ‘The McGuffin’ whatever it is that the good guys and bad guys are after in the film. The McGuffin is a name given to the excuse to get the show on the road. Sometimes, it doesn’t even matter what the McGuffin is, all that matters is how they go about getting it, which in a Fast and the Furious film means vehicular warfare and massive destruction of public property, and trust me, there’s lots of that in this film! The stunts are the best part of these films and this one delivers the goods when it comes to fast cars and destruction in massive amounts. The film has two major action sequences, but they are both extended, which means that they last for more than 20 minutes each. This is something I enjoy about the action sequences in these films, they are intricate and extensive! The same can be said for the chase sequences which take place in both the streets of London and Brazil. If you are a fan of cool cars and watching them fly in the air, you will be pleased. The whole thing about these films getting bigger and badder with each passing film stays true to the characters as well. These characters started out being a gang of street racing thugs from L.A. on the first film, by the sixth film they’ve turned into indestructible super heroes! They can jump from one moving car to the next! They can shoot their guns while jumping through the air! I mean, these guys can fall down a flight of stairs or crash into the windshield of a car and never even break a bone! Vin Diesel can even take a freaking bullet and go on driving in the next scene just fine. So my advice is to throw all your expectations of reality out the door. This film isn’t interested in being real, it just wants to wow you, entertain you with its exaggerated action sequences, which I have to say are truly fun. We get a bunch of cool cars, a tank and military plane! They really do go all out here in using all manner of cool vehicles.It was a genius idea adding Dwayne Joh

The buzz surrounding David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints has reached a deafening point. Praise has been heaped on the movie, everything from the direction to the pitch perfect acting, praise which has elevated the movie into the stratosphere. It's unlikely it can live up to the high bar but the newly released trailer certainly suggests that maybe, just maybe, this isn't a case of bloated expectations. [Continued ...]

Last Days on Mars could have been a good if it hadn't solely been made up of all the cliches that could fit a standard-sized whiteboard. [Continued ...]

Sebastian Silva's The Maid was a huge surprise, a funny and poignant drama about family, expectation and one woman's struggle to keep her job. The movie showcased Silva's dry sense of humour which may explain how he's ended up working with Michael Cera on not one but two films. One of those is the Sundance title Magic Magic which was also selected for the Cannes Director's Fortnight. [Continued ...]

Ran out out of Ghosthouse stuff, so back to Hausu. I believe this is the third time the film has supplied a MotD. Related PostsMonster of the Day #684 (May 7, 2013) Monster of the Day #683 (May 6, 2013) Monster of the Day #682 (May 3, 2013) Monster of the Day #681 (May 2, 2013) Monster of the Day #680 (Apr 23, 2013)

"At Any Price" casts Dennis Quaid as Henry Whipple, a big-business family farmer and salesman of genetically modified corn seed. Like the stereotype of a used-car dealer, this modern farmer is so smooth and insincere he literally slicks his hair down with his spittle-wetted palms before crashing a graveside funeral service, to get in an early bid on the dead man's property. "Time waits for no man," is his motto, along with: "Get big or get out." North Carolina-born Iranian-American independent filmmaker Ramin Bahrani hasn't gotten big, but "At Any Price" is a much more elaborate production than his previous features, the quintessential indies "Man Push Cart" (2005), "Chop Shop" (2007) and "Goodbye Solo" (2008). The latter movie gave a lead co-starring role to former Memphian and Elvis crony Red West, who plays Quaid's father in the new film. Although Bahrani doesn't focus this time on the immigrant experience, "At Any Price" is another of the director's examinations of America as a land of not just opportunity but harsh economic reality. This is ann idea ignored by most movies, which typically treat jobs as something to be ignored by attractive people in pursuit of love or adventure. The farm seen here is not the romanticized rural retreat of Kodak commercials but a high-stakes, high-pressure place of patent lawyers, copyrighted seeds and air-conditioned John Deere tractors equipped with GPS. Bahrani burrows deep into thhis environment; his evocation of place and culture is utterly convincing, even if his story seems to have gone before the cameras before it was quite ripe. Shot in Illinois by Bahrani's longtime cinematographer, Michael Simmonds, and edited by indie MVP Affonso Gonçalves ("Winter's Bone," "Beasts of the Southern Wild," Ira Sachs' made-in-Memphis "Forty Shades of Blue"), "At Any Price" is solid, almost square in its sincerity and traditional craftsmanship. It resembles a modest commercial release from the 1970s more than the gritty, obviously low-budget and more self-consciously atmospheric regional independent productions of Bahrani's past decade. The script, credited to Bahrani and newcomer Hallie Newton, contains enough incident for several movies or a full season of TV episodes ("Bate Motel," even). The result is Bahrani's most obvious film, a somewhat soapy drama that stumbles when it overemphasizes "issues" -- specifically, the controversy over GMOs (genetically modified organisms). When a high-school girl compares a farmer reusing patented seeds to a teenager bootlegging a DVD, Whipple says of his ironically named employer, the Liberty corporation: "They didn't just copyright movies, they copyrighted life." ("At Any Price" might be a companion piece of sorts to Gus Van Sant's recent disappointment "Promised Land," which placed Matt Damon in farm country.) A mannered actor whose pursed lips and strained grimaces sometimes suggest he never got over impersonating Jerry Lee Lewis, Quaid becomes increasingly effective as his deceptions unravel, and inconvenience is replaced by tragedy. His co-stars include Zac Efron as Whipple's resentful son, a would-be professional stock car racer whose dirt-track ambitions might have supported their own movie; Kim Dickens as Whipple's loyal wife; Heather Graham as his sexually available secretary; Maika Monroe as the son's girlfriend; and, best of all, Clancy Brown as a rival seed salesman. Early in the film, an outraged man refers to Whipple as a "shark"; later, Whipple, in turn, accuses the Clancy character of being a shark. Prompted by Quaid's signature ear-to-ear grin, the moviegoer may think of one of those cartoons in which a row of gape-mouthed fish are lined up by size, preparing to devour each other. Business as food chain? It may be an appropriate metaphor for Bahrani's message. Rated R for sexual content and profanity, "At Any Price" opens today (May 24) in Memphis exclusively at Malco's Ridgeway Four.