SWAMP&REVIEWS

FNC 2011 via Spectacular Optical

Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

Acclaimed British visual artist Steve McQueen (not to be confused with that Steve McQueen) did not make his first steps into the film world unnoticed. Indeed, Hunger, a stunning account of the Irish Hunger Strike of 1981, in which Michael Fassbender’s star-making performance confronted us with the mental and bodily repercussions of corrupt politics, was rightfully hailed as one of the greatest debut films of all time and best films of 2008. It came as no surprise that McQueen was going to team up with Fassbender again (with whom he is evidently building a Scorsese-De Niro relationship) for Shame, his exploration of urban alienation through the lens of an excruciating sex addiction. Incredibly precise in its composition, performances and script, Hunger is the gut-wrenching portrait of Brandon, through which McQueen exhibits his rare talent as a director and Fassbender confirms, yet again, he is one of the great actors of our time. Careful framing and impeccable sound design sustain tension out of thin air as McQueen takes us through a man’s self-destructive sexuality and his single relationship with his sister (interpreted brilliantly by Carey Mulligan) – a dynamic which escalates into a grandiose and spellbinding tragedy one can simply not look away from. Furthermore, McQueen’s unshakable aesthetic– rivalled this year perhaps only by Refn’s stellar Drive – makes it one of the most pleasing visual experiences of the year, in which the architecture and colours of the city have a voice of their own, yet merely amplify the human story McQueen and Fassbender decorticate with impeccable minutiae. Fascinating, beautiful and devastating, Shame is simply one of the best films of the year.

Time Walker (Tom Kennedy, 1982)

When sci-fi meets mummies meets teenage slasher narrative, you know you have a stunner on your hands. The most fun I’ve ever had with a mummy film - and probably my favorite if it wasn’t sacrilegious to prefer this to Karl Freund’s Karloff-starring masterwork - Time Walker is a schlocky genre hybrid that will blow you away if you give it the chance. Supposed to be the first part of a mind-blowing saga of cosmic time-hopping proportions, the sequel was (of course) never made…

Hey Arnold!, Season 1 (1996-1997) 

My close friends know because I haven’t shut up about it but this is the best DVD acquisition I’ve made all year. Okay, maybe not but it’s way up there. Every single episode is a gem, the Christmas episode had me crying and I’m currently pacing myself carefully to watch the remaining half of the season - that’s how good it is. I used to watch this show quite often as a kid but never actually realized how brilliant it was until now. The fine folks at Shout! Factory better announce the 2nd season DVD soon! I need more football-head!

Rocko’s Modern Life, Season 2 (1994). On DVD February 18th!

Lake Mungo (Joel Anderson, 2008)

Having seen a few films within the genre, the Australian sleeper Lake Mungo has to be my favorite reality horror/mockumentary/found footage horror film, or at least one of the greatest I’ve seen. Thoroughly brilliant in its documentary construct and in the way it relentlessly adds layers to its narrative, mostly by complicating it with new found media through which dark secrets about its protagonists can be revealed, Lake Mungo goes for the uncanny rather than the straight-up scare and will definitely leave a lasting impression.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher, 2011)

Things I need to do:

• Admit I’m excited for this film, despite it being a ridiculous remake of a film that came out two years ago and the beginning of a trilogy that will probably keep Fincher busy for the next 5 years or so - instead of working on original material.
• Watch Niers Arden Oplev & Daniel Alfredson’s 2009 trilogy.
• Watch the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street for Rooney Mara’s role as Nancy(!)
• Rewatch Fincher’s The Social Network
• Spread the KELLERHOUSE gospel, whose glorious artwork can be seen above.

 Ryan Gosling & Rooney Mara on the set of Terrence Malick’s Lawless (2012).

Childish Gambino - Camp (2011)

This is on a bus back from camp. I’m thirteen and so are you. Before I left for camp I imagined it would be me and three or four other dudes I hadn’t met yet, running around all summer, getting into trouble. It turned out it would be me and just one girl. That’s you. And we’re still at camp as long as we’re on the bus and not at the pickup point where our parents would be waiting for us. We’re still wearing our orange camp t-shirts. We still smell like pineneedles. I like you and you like me and I more-than-like you, but I don’t know if you do or don’t more-than-like me. You’ve never said, so I haven’t been saying anything all summer, content to enjoy the small miracle of a girl choosing to talk to me and choosing to do so again the next day and so on. A girl who’s smart and funny and who, if I say something dumb for a laugh, is willing to say something two or three times as dumb to make me laugh, but who also gets weird and wise sometimes in a way I could never be. A girl who reads books that no one’s assigned to her, whose curly brown hair has a line running through it from where she put a tie to hold it up while it was still wet.

Back in the real world we don’t go to the same school, and unless one of our families moves to a dramatically different neighborhood, we won’t go to the same high school. So, this is kind of it for us. Unless I say something. And it might especially be it for us if I actually do say something. The sun’s gone down and the bus is quiet. A lot of kids are asleep. We’re talking in whispers about a tree we saw at a rest stop that looks like a kid we know. And then I’m like, “Can I tell you something?” And all of a sudden I’m telling you. And I keep telling you and it all comes out of me and it keeps coming and your face is there and gone and there and gone as we pass underneath the orange lamps that line the sides of the highway. And there’s no expression on it. And I think just after a point I’m just talking to lengthen the time where we live in a world where you haven’t said “yes” or “no” yet. And regrettably I end up using the word “destiny.” I don’t remember in what context. Doesn’t really matter. Before long I’m out of stuff to say and you smile and say, “okay.” I don’t know exactly what you mean by it, but it seems vaguely positive and I would leave in order not to spoil the moment, but there’s nowhere to go because we’re are on a bus. So I pretend like I’m asleep and before long, I really am.

I wake up, the bus isn’t moving anymore. The domed lights that line the center aisle are all on. I turn and you’re not there. Then again a lot of kids aren’t in their seats anymore. We’re parked at the pick-up point, which is in the parking lot of a Methodist church. The bus is half empty. You might be in your dad’s car by now, your bags and things piled high in the trunk. The girls in the back of the bus are shrieking and laughing and taking their sweet time disembarking as I swing my legs out into the aisle to get up off the bus, just as one of them reaches my row. It used to be our row, on our way off. It’s Michelle, a girl who got suspended from third grade for a week after throwing rocks at my head. Adolescence is doing her a ton of favors body-wise. She stops and looks down at me. And her head is blasted from behind by the dome light, so I can’t really see her face, but I can see her smile. And she says one word: “destiny.” Then her and the girls clogging the aisles behind her all laugh and then she turns and leads them off the bus. I didn’t know you were friends with them.

I find my dad in the parking lot. He drives me back to our house and camp is over. So is summer, even though there’s two weeks until school starts. This isn’t a story about how girls are evil or how love is bad, this is a story about how I learned something and I’m not saying this thing is true or not, I’m just saying it’s what I learned. I told you something. It was just for you and you told everybody. So I learned to cut out the middle man, make it all for everybody, always. Everybody can’t turn around and tell everybody, everybody already knows, I told them. But this means there isn’t a place in my life for you or someone like you. Is it sad? Sure. But it’s a sadness I chose. I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy and got off a man more cynical, hardened, and mature and shit. But that’s not true. The truth is I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off the bus. I still haven’t.

Detlef (Thomas Haustein) & Christiane (Natja Brunckhorst) in Christiane F. 

Christiane F. - Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (Uli Edel, 1981)

This slightly romanticized adaptation of the infamous novel of the same name is one of the most hard-hitting films I’ve ever seen. 13-year-old Natja Brunckhorst give a mind-blowing as Christiane - who was in fact 12 in real life - in this film that features tons of heroin use, underage prostitution, a great performance by David Bowie, a gruesome scene of quitting cold turkey and much more, all set against the vibrantly photographed drug/club scene of West Berlin in the 1970s. To say this is recommended is an understatement: this is an obligatory dose of despair you won’t be able to look away from. 

jasoneisener:

“In true Golan-Globus style, I thought it would be a good idea to have a one sheet for my in-development doc on Cannon Films, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO, even before financing began.”- Mark Hartley 

Hey Arnold!, 1x03b: “Arnold’s Hat”

It’s so beautiful. A monument to my beloved. And yet… something is missing. But what could it be? - Helga Pataki

An old, somewhat revised, Scream 4 review of mine just snazzily posted by the fine folks of the Pelikula film blog, which I don’t contribute to nearly enough! Follow the blog & read away if you haven’t already!

pelikula:

Meta This Meta That
by Ariel Esteban Cayer

Scream 4 (2011)
D: Wes Craven
S: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Emma Roberts, Hayden Panetierre, Rory Culkin

Reuniting the original cast and supposedly building upon a whole decade of real-life technological advances and new conventions in the arguably declining horror genre, Scream 4 has the potential to be a clean slate for the tired franchise, one that would provide the same meta humor and wink at the genre Scream did so well back in 1996. Supported by the return of screenwriter Kevin Williamson (painfully missing from Scream 3), I had every reason to be excited for this new sequel. Sadly, Scream 4 falls extremely short and, while being somewhat enjoyable, is nothing more than a very useless film, one that tries hard to go back to basics and be smart and edgy, but is ultimately tailor-made for tweens that think they are horror fans because they have seen the Saw films and My Soul to Take.

In fact, being transposed in the Scream universe is one of the main reasons Scream 4 fails: Scream has always been about the Campbell-Arquette-Cox trio and despite their return and appearances, which are peripheral at best, the film is very much about the new teens, led by an incredibly miscast Emma Roberts. I can see how this is attractive to the early-teenage horror fan/trash (a quick search for “Scream 4” in the Tumblr-sphere is evidence enough) but for someone looking for a throwback to the old characters and tropes, this is a major disappointment amd even a bigger problem when came time for the killer-revealing 20-minute expositional speech that is now a staple of the franchise, for better or worse.

Certainly, Sidney has her interesting bookend moments and some of the new characters prove of interest. Hayden Panettiere’s hard-ass horror-buff bimbo (as if!), surprisingly, comes to mind, but in the end the film is nothing more than a very boring teen slasher, one that has been done better countless times.

The second and arguably biggest problem with Scream 4 lies in its metatextuality. Instead of poking fun at the new batch of films the aughts have to offer, Williamson turns the humor inwards, which quickly becomes extremely tiring. As soon as the opening, which I think is the strongest sequence of the film, washes off and the narrative becomes increasingly centered around Sidney’s cousin (What the fuck, you say?) and her annoying group of friends, missed opportunities accumulate and the essence is lost.

I also have to admit how much I wanted to punch the cinematographer in the face: the whole film is drenched in an over-abundance of soft focus. Everything is white-washed and everyone has a glow around them. Although this is ultimately just a nitpick, it is one of the ugliest aesthetics I have ever seen on screen and proves truly detrimental to my appreciation of the film, especially when compared to the original trilogy, which is definitely standard, very effective, and occasionally beautiful in its photography.

This might sound harsh, and I would be lying if I said there is no fun to be had with this, but what I feared the most is indeed true: Scream 4 is wildly unnecessary and only worth your time if, like me, you are a fan of the series and interested in picking it apart. Or if you’re 14 and think Emma Roberts is hot shit. Go figure.

Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzik, 1983)

Despite knowing all about the ending of Sleepaway Camp, its final 5 minutes still managed to blow me away. Easily some of the most unnervingly handled imagery I’ve seen since sitting through Inland Empire. I can’t talk about this much right now because I’m not sure what to make of, among many things, the homoerotic subtext, the film’s transphobic potential and what it has to say about the male gaze in slasher films. Either way, I’m amazed and will offer you this interesting piece of writing in the meantime - which you shouldn’t read if you want to ensure your experience of this 1983 Friday the 13th ripoff stays entirely spoiler free:

In Sleepaway Camp, “Angela’s transgender status is the penultimate lie in a long line of lies the filmmakers have heaped upon us. The audience is deceived by a villain disguised as a hero. The murderer has deceived the campers by being a quiet, unassuming girl whom they think they can bully with impunity. The girl has deceived everybody by being a boy. And the boy is deceiving himself and everyone else by pretending to be someone else entirely (i.e. his sister).

But Angela’s not deceiving everybody because she’s a trans* person. She’s deceiving everybody because she’s a (fictional) trans* person created by cissexual filmmakers. As Drakyn points out, the trans* person who’s “fooling” us on purpose is a myth we cissexuals invented. Why? Because we are so focused on our own narrow experience of gender that we can’t imagine anything outside it. We take it for granted that everyone’s gender matches the sex they were born with. With this assumption in place, the only logical reason to change one’s gender is to lie to somebody.

Thus, so many trans* characters in fiction are really cissexuals in disguise. Men only dress as women to hide out (Some Like it Hot) or trick their enemies (countless Bugs Bunny cartoons). And women only dress as men to break through the glass ceiling–Mulan does it to join the army, Yentl does it to study Jewish law. This view of transition is simplistic, cissexual-centered, and, like the characters who exemplify it, entirely made up.” […]

- “OMG! I’ve Found the ‘Transgender Agenda’!” via feministfilm

Because how does Angela’s gender even begin to justify her killing spree? Or is the whole thing ultimately a cautionary tale about imposing gender identification? I shall rewatch this in less drowsy and more clear-headed state soon, as I definitely to need to clarify some things before proposing a reading. Also, to be clear, the asterisk following trans (above) is used as an inclusive term, derived from the use of asterisk as a wildcard character, in search engines per example. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Babysitting all day to afford the Criterion 50% sale. #ballin’