In The News & On the Web

"...a sense of desolation was tearing me up inside, like termites in a fallen tree trunk." Werner Herzog documents life in the jungle. -New York Times

Driving, violence and Los Angeles are among the twelve things Woody Allen just doesn't get. -A.V. Club

Go the distance with Claude Chabrol in honor of his 79th birthday.
-Film Studies for Free

A remake of An American Werewolf in London? Really? -Bloody Disgusting

Richard Corliss rediscovers "the Birth of a Nation of porn."
-Undercurrent

And happy 20th birthday to Do the Right Thing. -St. Petersburg Times

Big Man Japan: Badass or Bust?

Did you catch Big Man Japan at Facets Cinematheque? What did you think?

Give us your thoughts on the mockumentary detailing the life of a lonely, ginormous superhero charged with protecting his country from equally huge, insano monsters. Love it? Hate it? We want to know!!

This Week at Facets! June 26-July 2!

Monsters and superheroes of all shapes, sizes and varieties invade the Cinematheque this week!

A wickedly deadpan spin on the giant Japanese superhero, the mockumentary Big Man Japan is a portrait of a pathetic but unique hero--a middle-aged slacker living in a rundown, graffiti-ridden slum whose job involves being shocked by bolts of electricity that transform him into a stocky, stick-wielding giant several stories high who is entrusted with defending Japan from a host of bizarre monsters!! Whew!

"Decidedly odd, even by Japanese standards...tears-down-the-face funny and a genuine, jaw-dropping oddity" -Variety
"I hurt myself laughing" -Village Voice
Recommended! "Strange...hilarious" -NewCity Chicago

Check the trailer!




Big Man Japan runs Friday, June 26 - Thursday, July 2! Additional info, tickets and more available here.

Facets Night School's first session comes to an end this Saturday, July 27 with There's No More Room in Hell, So Let's Go Shopping, a presentation by Facets editor Phil Morehart (yours truly, ahem) on George A. Romero's masterpiece of zombie horror, Dawn of the Dead.

Romero's sequel to Night of the Living Dead ups the zombie action, violence, gore and nihilism to follow a quartet who find refuge from the flesh-eating undead in an abandoned shopping mall. Or do they? I'll dish on this landmark horror masterpiece, from its bleak satire of American consumerism, comic book action and groundbreaking gore FX to its impact upon the horror genre and regional independent filmmaking.

Trailer!



Lecture begins at MIDNIGHT! Come early for a pre-lecture reception featuring spooky music by DJ BananaJam of the Undead and zombie face-painting!

For info, tickets and more, visit Facets Night School online.

Coming soon! Tilda Swinton stars in the festival fave, Julia, opening July 3rd, and Facets Night School's second session begins on July 11 with Brian Elza's lecture on Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible!


- Phil Morehart

Just Say No to Mahmoud

The great Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf (director of Kandahar, Moments of Innocence and Gabbeh, among others) is urging the international community to not recognize President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"This wasn't electoral fraud. This was a coup," Makhmalbaf told reporters in Rome. "What we ask of foreign governments is to not recognise Ahmadinejad's government."

Reuters has more here.

Also, you can find brief remarks from Makhmalbaf on Youtube here (I'd post the clip myself, but embedding has been disabled by its owner, unfortunately).


- Phil Morehart

In the News

Is it over for Iranian cinema?
-GreenCine

Sony scraps Soderbergh and Pitt's Moneyball. -Variety

At the Death House Door goes Outside the Frame. -The Boston Phoenix

Suzi Doll digs into a good movie youll never see in theatres--except at Facets, that is. -Movie Morlocks

Fifteen horror films Socialists could love, including Raimi's latest, Drag Me to Hell. -io9

This Week at Facets! June 19-25!

It's another packed week at Facets Cinematheque!

The 7th Annual Chicago African Diaspora Film Festival opens tomorrow night. The fest is an eclectic mix of foreign, independent, classic and urban films representing the global Black experience through an extraordinary range of subjects and artistic approaches.

This series features eleven films, including eight Chicago premieres, covering locales as diverse as the USA, Algeria, Cape Verde, and Somalia, Haiti, Cuba, Senegal, Nigeria and Brazil.

The 7th Annual Chicago African Diaspora Film Festival runs Friday, June 12-Thursday, June 18. Visit the Cinematheque online for the complete schedule, further details, tickets and more.

Facets Night School continues this Saturday, June 20 with David Bowie's Codpiece, or: How Girls of the 1980s Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Backlash, Cary Jones Elza's exploration of Labyrinth, Jim Henson's live-action/puppet amalgam starring Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie.

Cary will map Labyrinth's gender and sexual politics to uncover the way gender is represented in the context of the 1980s; the way memory and spaces are represented; where the film falls in the cycle of fantasy films of the 1980s; and also why Labyrinth is so beloved by women who grew up in the 1980s. Lecture, screening and post-screening discussion--only $5!!

Trip out to the trailer!



Lecture begins at MIDNIGHT!

For info, tickets and more, visit Facets Night School online.

Opening next week: Giant superheroes and monsters run amuck in Big Man Japan!

Enjoy!


-Phil Morehart

Remembering Allan King

Canadian documentary filmmaker Allan King died June 15 at his Toronto home. He was 79.

King was one of Canada's best; an acclaimed pioneer of the cinema verite and direct forms whose best works documented the lives of his fellow countrymen. His first major film, Warrendale (1966), which follows children in a Toronto mental health institution, prompted Jean Renoir to note, “Allan King is a great artist. His remarkable work exposes one of the most suspenseful actions I have ever seen on a screen.”

The versatile King also worked in features and television, winning the Grand Prix at the Paris International Film Festival and the Golden Reel Award for the highest grossing Canadian film of the year with his 1976 film, Who Has Seen The Wind.

The clip below finds King discussing his award-winning 2003 film, Dying at Grace, which follows palliative care patients at Toronto’s Grace Hospital. It was a work King took on to confront his own questions and thoughts on dying. His observations and revelations are especially poignant.


- Phil Morehart

In the News

Mohsen Makhmalbaf claims Iranian presidential candidate Mousavi was told he won. -Real nNews Network

A collection of videos the Iranian government doesn't want you to see.
-Breitbart

Luc Besson builds big in Paris. -Variety

Filmmaker Havana Marking talks about the dangers of being an 'Afghan Star'.
-The Huffington Post

The Ghostbusters were assholes.
-Overthinking It

Hollywood robots invade Pittsburgh!
-Wired

The Russians Are Coming...Again!

Michelle Nelson hits the wayback machine to examine a classic American comedy for Facets Features.


The idea that all humans, regardless of race, creed or nationality are at their very core, decent and kind beings is not a new idea to Hollywood. The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming (1966), was certainly not the first feature to build a story around that theme and it hasn’t been the last, but it’s certainly one of the best.

Norman Jewison, who went on to direct In the Heat of the Night, takes a stab at a fairly straightforward, slapstick pile of ridiculousness pulled from the Nathaniel Benchley novel The Off-Islanders. Though straightforward, the film itself is a pile of miscommunication and misunderstanding that sinks so deep it’s hard to see the possibility of a resolution at the end. This is actually a delight, considering the above mentioned, often cliche theme of the film. Without being heavy handed or preachy, Jewison and company manage to deliver a movie that quietly exploits the fears of the time without pointing fingers and calling people stupid.

Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint and Alan Arkin lead a fantastic cast through joke after joke that still land laughs long after the threat of the Soviet Union has disappeared. Unlike science fiction movies of the time which used aliens as a cover for Communism in general and the Soviets in particular, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming doesn’t hide the main issue. Just under half of the movie’s dialogue is in Russian without English subtitles. If you’re watching it on DVD, which I assume you are, don’t cheat and put the subtitles on. The words aren’t clear, but Jewison, Rose and Hal Ashby (one of the film’s editors) make their meanings clear. And it’s better to get thrown into the misunderstanding. Trust me.

Without giving anything away (although the movie’s been around long enough there probably isn’t much to give away), there was one scene which elevates the film from a slap-the-knee-remember-it-when-you’re-older comedy to a legitimately well-done, thought-out picture. The moment involves a shooting. Immediately after the gunshots, there’s silence. You sit, waiting for the moment to reveal itself. Is he dead? Is he alive? This is the moment upon which everything hangs.

If he is dead, Jewison and Rose are condemning the modern American. Frightened of everything, the modern man would, like his heroes of the old west, shoot first and ask later. But unlike the cowboy western wilderness, the modern world was not built on that system; in fact, we imprison those who act in such a manner. For such a ridiculous comedy, it is too harsh of a message.

If he is alive, though, what could they be trying to pull? What point of any worth would Jewison and Rose be making? To have us laugh off every dramatic turn then not deliver the deliberate switch in tone seemed like a failure of a story and a waste of two hours.

Those tense two minutes after the shooting have been burned on my mind. I remember every pan, every cut, every line, and it feels like I will forever. The balance struck in that scene sets the tone for the final act of the film. It makes every laugh easier, each pang of drama more dramatic, like I had been born a second time just to finish the film. Jewison, Rose Arkin and Reiner nailed (with a capital N, tripled underlined nailed) it.

Of course, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming is not perfect. A romance is thrown in so offhandedly and haphazardly that it seems as if some producer saw the film, said “Hey, they should fall in love,” and then it happened. It fits in the overall scheme of things and the filmmakers wring it for laughs, but it’s barely worth anything and the movie would benefit from the slight trim in time.

I know it’s only been 43 years since the movie was released but who said anniversaries and commemorations had to come in 5’s and 10’s? If you’re looking for something to spend the night in with, I absolutely recommend The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. Sure, it’s aged a bit, and some jokes will undoubtedly fall flat, but if you can’t laugh at Alan Arkin’s Russian there’s a serious possibility you can’t laugh at all.

Here’s the trailer, although it’s my opinion that the trailer is funnier after seeing the movie instead of the other way around.

This Week at Facets! June 12-18!

The Cinematheque is packed this week!

The 7th Annual Human Right Watch Traveling Film Festival rolls into Facets for a week of documentaries and features that stimulate passionate conversations about human rights and inspire new generations of human rights activists. Eight films total--many festival award-winners-- are being featured, stretching from Nepal and Kashmir to the Gaza Strip and the USA. This is essential cinema.

The 7th Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival runs Friday, June 12-Thursday, June 18. Visit the Cinematheque online for the complete schedule, further details, tickets and more.

Things are happening Saturday, June 13th as Facets Night School presents, The Making of a "Feature-length We-don't-know-what" or: How the American New Wave Birthed the Documentary Hybrid.

Facets staffer Amy Boyd unpeels the wild layers, possibilities and ambiguities of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, a recently-rediscovered counter-culture classic from 1968 that "(blurs) the lines between art and artifice, truth and fiction, illusion and reality" (Boxoffice Magazine), while also examining the documentary hybrid genre and more. Lecture, film screening and post-screening discussion--only $5!!

Trailer time:



The action begins at MIDNIGHT. Pre-lecture festivities begin at 11pm. It'll be happenin'!

For info, tickets and more, visit Night School online.

Coming next week, The 7th Chicago African Diaspora Film Festival!


- Phil Morehart

This Week at Facets: June 5-11!

We have a great line-up of features at Facets Cinematheque this week! Sincerely boffo.

Carlos Reygadas' masterpiece Silent Light returns for a special week-long engagement. I don't throw the words "masterpiece" around often, but Reygadas' film deserves it--if anything, for its beautiful six-minute opening shot charting a starry night's slow, multi-hued slip into morning sun.

Not yet convinced? Check the trailer...



Silent Night runs from Friday, June 5th - Thursday, June 11th. Visit the Cinematheque online for further details, tickets and more.

On the wackier side, Facets Night School continues on Saturday, June 6th with Regurgitating a Cult Classic: The Hidden Feasts of Eat the Rich.

Facets staffer Lew Ojeda serves up the revolutionary comedy of bad manners, Eat the Rich--a wild, anarchistic, cannibalistic banquet of buffonery straight from Thatcher's England in the '80s. Fascist ministers, Russian spies, would-be Leftist rebels, inept terrorists and goofy freedom fighters are all skewered in Peter Richardson's hilarious political satire set around a restaurant that serves man...literally! Features appearances by Paul and Linda McCartney, Miranda Richardson, Robbie Coltrane, Lemmy from Motorhead, Koo Stark, Bill Wyman, Jools Holland and Sandie Shaw and music by Motorhead!

Again, trailer time:



The action begins at MIDNIGHT, Saturday June 6th. Lecture, film screening, post-screening discussion, DVD raffle, pre-show grindhouse trailers--all for only $5. Arrive early for a slice of Lew's special cake!

Visit Facets Night School online for further details, tickets and more!

Coming next week: The 7th Annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival!

See you there!


- Phil Morehart