Sweet Baby Jesus: YEEZUS

A couple weeks ago, rumors and rumblings gave way to a trailer; the Margiela mask is coming to the big screen.  Yeezus will become a full length, feature film to be directed by long time West collaborator and music video maven, Hype Williams.  However, no further details have been released on the film at this time.

Say what you will about Mr. West, but the man is gifted.  If the screen adaptation of Yeezus draws any influence from past projects, including the 2010 short film Runaway –  released ahead of his fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – we’ll all be winners.  And if the trailer is any indication, it’s sure to be full of dark creatures, imagery and suggestion.

Kanye West is one of the rare artists whose work can transcend medium and style.  This next step in his artistic evolution has the potential to rocket him – and his ego – to new heights.

Cinema Salem and BIG BAD WOLVES

Since my last post, I’ve been from Denver to Miami to Englewood, FL to Miami to a Caribbean cruise to Miami to Boston. That’s a lot of Florida. To go from sun-n-fun to dreadful faw-king cold is dreadful faw-king dreadful.

No likey.

So on my day off, I plotted a regrettably un-scenic course to nearby Salem and Cinema Salem, a four-screen theater that turned out to be in a semi-shabby shopping mall. Not a good sign. Theaters in semi-shabby shopping malls tend to make for lackluster viewing experiences. While in Miami, I caught the MONUMENTS MEN in a semi-shabby shopping mall theater and it was the worst movie-going experience I’d had in a long time. Elderly people talking throughout the movie. Elderly people answering their cell phones with “What?! I’m in the movie theater right now!” and then just continuing the conversation like they weren’t in the movie theater. Elderly people wheezing behind us throughout the movie. And, of course, bored teenagers texting and playing video games in front of us.

BUT THIS WAS WAY DIFFERENT.

(Apologies for shitty iPhone photos.)

Three of the four screens at Cinema Salem feature regular movie fare using Sony 4k projectors. The other screen has just 18 (!) seats and apparently screens only indie and obscure flicks. I asked one of the managers how they pick which flicks get the “Screening Room” treatment.

Her reply: “Distributors send us movies and if we like them, we screen them in there.”

That’s a killer approach. Three screens showing mainstream, revenue-generating movies and one tiny screen for films that maybe no one else is playing.

In fact, Cinema Salem is the only theater in either the Boston or NYC areas that’s showing BIG BAD WOLVES, the Israeli black comedy/thriller I caught today.

With the screen, seating area, and sound equipment shrunk down to almost a living room level, it was a unique viewing experience. But I loved it.

Again: an eighteen-seat screening room that shows first-run indie films that aren’t appearing elsewhere. And they use real butter on their popcorn. Fucking amazing.

BIG BAD WOLVES was also great. Written/directed by Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, it’s a pitch black comedy. Or a thriller with moments of absurdity. I just glanced at a review that basically calls it a failed Tarantino flick, but that’s not an accurate judgement. It’s much less stylized and talky and self-obsessed. It is, though, kinda hard to describe.

I admit the tone was a bit jarring at first, what with the movie veering from truly grim shit like the rape and decapitation of young girls to broad comic moments like the tazering of a small yappy dog. But it (mostly) worked. Why? Because the directing was confident and the script stays (mostly) a step ahead of the audience.

BIG BAD WOLVES opens with a beautiful and ominous and ultimately unsettling slow-mo sequence of children playing hide and seek in an abandoned building. It’s a bit of bravura film-making. These dudes know what they’re doing. In some moments, the camerawork is self-conscious (lots of movement and, especially in the first fifteen minutes or so, dramatic angles that can lend an unnecessary weight to shots) but they seem in command, and conveying their vision, rather than just dicking around.

Anyway anyway anyway. A young girl is kidnapped. And we follow three men involved. The father. The cop. And the suspect. The father and the cop are both convinced that the suspect is guilty. And we end up in some brutal situations where various parties try to prove their guilt or innocence.

The film has some great surprises and twists (you’ll probably figure out the big twist at the end, but maybe not quite how it’s delivered).

What was most striking about the movie, to me, was its commentary on internet culture. How the internet gives us a medium to ignorantly indict, judge, and punish people. What propels the plot forward is that the cop is caught, on video, “questioning” (with his fists) the suspect and that video is immediately posted on YouTube. People in the community see it. The cop is fired for bringing bad PR to the department. The suspect, a teacher, is fired when students and teachers assume he’s a pedophile rapist/murderer because he’s a suspect being interrogated by the cops. (They’re apparently unconcerned about the illegality and viciousness of the “questioning”.) Everything unravels from there.

I love this because the movie isn’t overtly about damage the internet can cause. It doesn’t dwell on it. It just assumes that this is a fact of life in 2014. Moments in the real world are captured, processed online, and the results in turn impact the real world. It’s a daft cycle. And it’s representative of how characters in the movie act. The cop and the father KNOW the suspect is guilty. They don’t mind beating him and torturing him and humiliating him. They don’t have any clear proof. But they’ve judged him and are ready to punish him. Much like how trolls and YouTube commenters and the mindless among us judge and demean celebrities and athletes and anyone caught up in the endless/meaningless content cycles that power Facebook and Twitter and BuzzFeed and etcetcetcetc.

I mean, the mindless among us (probably) aren’t going to buy a house in the middle of nowhere just so we can rip someone’s toenails out. But they have their verbal knives out. Always. And they’ll use them. Always.

Not bad thematic work for a thriller.

Good movie. Good theater. Good day.

Top Five Things I Watched: Tyler RE Smith

Just like Mr. Peltier’s more impressive list, this is a quick gathering of 5 things I watched in 2013–not necessarily 2013 US theatrical releases. It’s also a cross-platform list that’s sensitive to where I watched what I watched. Because watching LAWRENCE OF ARABIA on your iPhone doesn’t hold a candle (or match) to watching… see numero uno.

One common thread to my picks–all of them pay close attention to the specificity of their settings. I love when something puts me there, into the world of the show.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA on the big screen!

Surprisingly, I missed this whenever it was played at the Normal Theater, but I finally caught it at one-day screening at a Baton Rouge multiplex–part of an on-going classics series. Peter O’Toole. Omar Sharif. David Lean. I don’t remember a whole hell of a lot of plot specifics, but I do remember being pressed back into my seat by the endless beautiful desertscapes. Gorgeous. And a viewing experience not likely to be repeated in the near future.

MOONE BOY on Hulu+

A good blending of sweet and mean, this perfectly-cast Irish sitcom from Chris O’Dowd takes place in a very specific time and place: Boyle, Ireland in 1989. The series hits its stride after dumping some of the more fantastical elements of the first episode. Bonus points for introducing me to Wheatabix.

GRAVITY at Alamo Drafthouse in Austin Fuckin’ Texas

Pure popcorn spectacle from Alfonso Cuaron. A shipwreck story with Sandra Bullock doing her best sad nerd and George Clooney doing his best George Clooney. It’s a simple story bolstered by ratcheting tension and some pleasing technical wizardry. Also the first movie I saw at the Alamo Drafthouse–so it gets an unfair bump due to the Drafthouse rebooting my faith in the movie-going experience. Suck it, all other theaters.

HIGH MAINTENANCE a webseries on Vimeo

The webseries, elevated. The episodes are tied together by the appearance of a nameless pot peddler. Outside of our bearded dealer, each ep has a different cast and a monster of the week feel–only the “monster” is something plaguing young urbanites. Suffering through a passover seder. Being an AirBnB host. Cancer. Hey, it ain’t all jokes. Sharp sharp sharp.

TOP OF THE LAKE on Netflix

A moody Kiwi import from Jane Campion that features one of my favorite actors David Wenham. A big city cop played by Elisabeth Moss comes home to small-town New Zealand and gets caught up in the disappearance of a local girl. Unpredictable, cool, twisty, and twisted. Big characters and incredible scenery. I wish my regular running route took me past sublime craggy coastlines and primeval rainforests. But I’m glad it doesn’t take me through the misogyny, incest, pedophilia, and murder that haunts the inhabitants in the series.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

The last 20 minutes of CAPTAIN PHILLIPS. Stunning filmmaking and acting.
ARCHER. Forever sploosh.
BESIDE STILL WATERS. Shit title, great movie. Fave of Austin Film Fest.
CRACKHEADS. Another AFF fave. I met up with the filmmakers–accessible, enthusiastic, and funny filmmakers.

I’M BACK… and also in Austin, TX for the AUSTIN FILM FEST

Who knew that working 70-ish hours a week (outside, in the sun, on my feet) would sap my willpower to sit in front of my computer and string together coherent/relevant blog posts on screenwriting and movies? I guess I probably did. In the back of my head. The same part of my brain that’s suggesting I fix that disconcerting *CHUNK* noise that my truck is making before I drive from Texas to Michigan at the end of the month. Will that happen? Who knows.

In related news, the Austin Film Festival gears up on Wednesday for a fun week of conference panels and festival screenings. And I will be attending as much of it as possible while I base myself in a tiny cabin in someone’s backyard (thanks, Airbnb), and since gorging on movies and panels is all I have on the docket, expect daily updates from weird/wonderful Austin.

Currently, I’m at Thunderbird Coffee, where they also have beer on tap. Later this afternoon, I’m going to try to hit a showing of GRAVITY at the Alamo Drafthouse. Is this heaven? It may be.

The Rep: Web Series and Documentary

When I was ten, in central Illinois, a restored 1930’s movie theater opened up. The first movie I saw there was Vertigo, with my old man. When I became a volunteer there later that year with my mom, the first movie I worked was Gone with the Wind. To a ten year-old kid, GWTW’s run-time is approximately an eon long, but I survived and kept volunteering and seeing movies there until I left for Baton Rouge at age 23. The Normal Theater was like church to me.

Earlier this month, the Normal Theater showed a documentary about small repertory movie theaters called The Rep.

As per the website: “The film follows the lives of three uber film geeks during the first year of operations of a single-screen repertory cinema. Dubbed ‘The Underground Cinema’ by its gang of misfits, Alex, Charlie and Nigel will stop at nothing to see their theatre succeed. In the face of strong competition from big box theatres, local cinematheques and home video, it’s a constant struggle to stay afloat. Throw in 12-hour workdays, having no semblance of a personal life and all the normal stresses of working day in/day out with the same people… things couldn’t be much more of an uphill battle.”

Theaters like this are breeding grounds for movie geeks and god knows we need more movie geeks (you can’t have enough people scoffing at the stinking pile of debris that is Transformers/G.I. Joe/Battleship). These are places where people can see the new cut of Metropolis and Caddyshack in the same month. Or understand the immense beauty of Lawrence of Arabia in a way that a TV screen, no matter how ludicrously big, cannot provide.

Kinda like the mini-surge of in popularity of vinyl records, theaters like this are slowly rising from the shadows of the multiplexes. The Alamo Drafthouse (of the famous and harshly enforced ‘no texting’ policy) is putting up carefully picked franchises around the country. The Normal Theater is still chugging along. But it’s an uphill slog.

I haven’t yet had a chance to see The Rep in its feature doc form, but I have watched the five episodes of the web series and they struck a chord. As I’d bet they will in anyone who’s worked at or frequented a small or rep or independent movie theater. These are the movie dorks you’d want to hang out with and the theater you’d want to hang out in.

Unless you’re in Fresno, Pittsburgh, or Melbourne, you won’t get a chance to see The Rep on the big screen in the next month. But it is hitting VOD on September 3rd, which is where I’ll be catching it.