>Local Filmmaker Showcase
>
>Local Filmmaker Showcase
>Saturday, November 28 at 1:30 p.m.
>
>
>
>Local filmmakers will present and discuss their creations in a special showcase
at the Library. Presenters will include Marla Cukor presenting the mystery
thriller "The Masquerade," Jamal Hall presenting "Strivin'" in which an inner
city kid dreams to overcome some life changing obstacles in his own home. Brian
Jude will present "The Last Days of Frank Whyte," a film about the perils of
life on the street. This event is free and open to the public and snacks will be
provided.
>
>
>
>All Library Programs are Free and Open to the Public.
>
>Central Library
>One Old Bridge Plaza
>Municipal Center
>Old Bridge, NJ 08857
>(732)721-5600 ext. 5010
>
>
>
>This program sponsored by the Friends of the Library
>

The legendary Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees brings his
silent-movie electronica scores to the west coast after a smashing debut in NYC
last month. Don't miss a legend!


LOS ANGELES

Wednesday, November 11th
8PM – 9:30PM
The Silent Movie Theater
611 N Fairfax
Los Angeles, CA

Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder, bassist, and songwriter Steven Severin
makes his LA debut for 'Music for Silents', where he'll do live world premiere
scoring to a screening of the 1920 masterpiece "Cabinet of Doctor Caligari",
plus a programme of scores to short films by emerging avant-garde filmmakers. A
rare appearance that is not to be missed!

Tickets and info: http://www.cinefamily.org/calendar/wednesday.html#severin1


Review of New York debut:
http://slowdivemusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/steven-severin-live.html




OLYMPIA

Friday, November 13th
Midnight
Olympia Film Festival
Historic Capitol Theater
Olympia, WA

Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder, bassist, and songwriter Steven Severin
makes his Northwest debut at the Olympia Film Festival with 'Music for Silents',
where he'll do live scoring to a screening of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". A
rare appearance that is not to be missed!

Tickets and info:
http://www.olympiafilmfestival.org/movies/the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari/

Review of New York debut:
http://slowdivemusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/steven-severin-live.html




LOS ANGELES

Wednesday, November 18th
8PM – 9:30PM
The Silent Movie Theater
611 N Fairfax
Los Angeles, CA

Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder, bassist, and songwriter Steven Severin
makes his LA debut for 'Music for Silents', where he'll do live world premiere
scoring to a screening of the Jean Cocteau's "The Blood of a Poet", plus a
programme of scores to short films by emerging avant-garde filmmakers. A rare
appearance that is not to be missed!

Tickets and info: http://www.cinefamily.org/calendar/wednesday.html#severin1

Review of New York debut:
http://slowdivemusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/steven-severin-live.html


SAN FRANCISCO


Banshee Steven Severin in San Francisco

December 1, 2009
8PM – 11PM
The Mezzanine
444 Jessie St
San Francisco CA

Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder, bassist, and songwriter Steven Severin
makes his Bay Area debut for 'Music for Silents' in SF, where he'll do live
scoring to a screening of the 1928 surrealist classic "The Seashell & the
Clergyman", plus a programme of scores to short films by emerging avant-garde
filmmakers. A rare appearance that is not to be missed!


Review of New York debut:
http://slowdivemusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/steven-severin-live.html

LOS ANGELES

Wednesday, November 11th
8PM – 9:30PM
The Silent Movie Theater
611 N Fairfax
Los Angeles, CA

Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder, bassist, and songwriter Steven Severin
makes his LA debut for 'Music for Silents', where he'll do live world premiere
scoring to a screening of the 1920 masterpiece "Cabinet of Doctor Caligari",
plus a programme of scores to short films by emerging avant-garde filmmakers. A
rare appearance that is not to be missed!


Review of New York debut:
http://slowdivemusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/steven-severin-live.html




OLYMPIA

Friday, November 13th
Midnight
Olympia Film Festival
Historic Capitol Theater
Olympia, WA

Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder, bassist, and songwriter Steven Severin
makes his Northwest debut at the Olympia Film Festival with 'Music for Silents',
where he'll do live scoring to a screening of "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari",
plus a programme of scores to short films by emerging avant-garde filmmakers. A
rare appearance that is not to be missed!


Review of New York debut:
http://slowdivemusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/steven-severin-live.html




LOS ANGELES

Wednesday, November 18th
8PM – 9:30PM
The Silent Movie Theater
611 N Fairfax
Los Angeles, CA

Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder, bassist, and songwriter Steven Severin
makes his LA debut for 'Music for Silents', where he'll do live world premiere
scoring to a screening of the Jean Cocteau's "The Blood of a Poet", plus a
programme of scores to short films by emerging avant-garde filmmakers. A rare
appearance that is not to be missed!


Review of New York debut:
http://slowdivemusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/steven-severin-live.html


SAN FRANCISCO


Banshee Steven Severin in San Francisco

December 1, 2009
8PM – 11PM
The Mezzanine
444 Jessie St
San Francisco CA

Siouxsie and the Banshees co-founder, bassist, and songwriter Steven Severin
makes his Bay Area debut for 'Music for Silents' in SF, where he'll do live
scoring to a screening of the 1928 surrealist classic "The Seashell & the
Clergyman", plus a programme of scores to short films by emerging avant-garde
filmmakers. A rare appearance that is not to be missed!


Review of New York debut:
http://slowdivemusic.blogspot.com/2009/10/steven-severin-live.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:


Siouxsie and the Banshees cofounder, bassist, lyricist, and songwriter Steven
Severin is a founding father of the avant-garde punk movement and has been
scoring soundtracks for film and television for the last several years. His
latest series of performance works, "Music for Silents", sees him performing
live electronic soundtracks to screenings of silent films, both old and new.





He will be coming to New York on Saturday, October 10th, at Le Poisson Rouge,
Greenwich Village. Steven will be performing to the 1928 French surrealist
silent movie classic "The Seashell and the Clergyman" (see URL to preview
below), as well as to other contemporary works made by up-and-coming filmmakers.
This show is for ages 18 and over and is his American debut.





Interview and ticket info here:
http://charlievazquez.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/interview-with-a-banshee/





This is the corrected YouTube clip for Steven Severin's "The Seashell and the
Clergyman", coming to Le Poisson Rouge, NYC, Oct 10th, 2009.





Preview clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVh8uRogl4k&feature=autofb

This is the corrected YouTube clip for Steven Severin's "The Seashell and the
Clergyman", coming to Le Poisson Rouge, NYC, Oct 10th, 2009.


Preview clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVh8uRogl4k&feature=autofb


Charlie Vázquez, NYC

Siouxsie and the Banshees cofounder, bassist, lyricist, and songwriter Steven
Severin is a founding father of the avant-garde punk movement and has been
scoring soundtracks for film and television for the last several years. His
latest series of performance works, "Music for Silents", sees him performing
live electronic soundtracks to screenings of silent films, both old and new.


He will be coming to New York on Saturday, October 10th, at Le Poisson Rouge,
Greenwich Village. Steven will be performing to the 1928 French surrealist
silent movie classic "The Seashell and the Clergyman" (see URL to preview
below), as well as to other contemporary works made by up-and-coming filmmakers.
This show is for ages 18 and over and is his American debut.


Interview and ticket info here:
http://charlievazquez.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/interview-with-a-banshee/


Preview clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0tknpfywKg&videos=W19ncJ_44iQ&playnext_from=TL&p\
laynext=1


Charlie Vázquez, NYC

Sunday, September 6, 2009, 7:30 PM
Hollywood Bowl
2301 North Highland Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90068
323.850.2000

Purchase your tickets today at the Hollywood Bowl Box office, over the phone, or
online at:

http://www.hollywoodbowl.com/tickets/performance_detail.cfm?id=4164

From Oklahoma! and The King and I to South Pacific and The Sound of Music, this
year our Movie Night celebrates the glorious Rodgers and Hammerstein movie
musicals. Hear the classic scores — and unforgettable songs like "Shall We
Dance," "If I Loved You" — live with film clips.

Featured Artists:
Hollywood Bowl Orchestra
David Newman, conductor

In the past couple of months I have seen at least 20 different movies. I've seen
movies such as "Heaven's Fall" and "Flyboys". I watched "The Ron Clark Story"
and even children's movies such as "Zoom". Of all those movies, one of the very
few that I liked was, surprisingly, "The Golden Compass" which was released this
Boxing Day.
Based on the first story of a trilogy by Philip Pullman, "The Golden Compass" is
about a young girl by the name of Lyra Belaqua (Dakota Blue Richards), who is
the subject of a prophecy concerning the fate of the world. The movie is set in
a parallel universe in which humans are accompanied by Daemons, an animal
representation of their souls. Mrs. Marisa Coulter (played by Nicole Kidman)
explains to Lyra that long ago when the people first disobeyed the 'Authority',
a particle called 'dust' was created. As children become adults, 'dust'
contaminates them through their Daemon. A sinister religious body called the
Magisterium (of which Mrs. Coulter is a strong part) tries to create a
population that will never question their authority by a process called
intercision. Intercision separates children from their Daemon before they can be
contaminated by 'dust', leaving them confused and easily controlled. Meanwhile,
children are being snatched up off the street by kidnappers called 'Gobblers',
to a facility in a vast ice-land so that they can be separated from their Daemon
and a new, compliant generation can be created.
The movie showed some witty examples of human characteristics. One fantastic
depiction of childhood and growing up was the Daemons. Young children's Daemons
can change shape into any animal they choose. As each child settles, chooses a
path and makes their life choices, so will their Daemon. Adult's Daemons settle
into one animal shape and do not change. This explains children's indecision and
how they are easily impressed.
A scene, in which one of the children escapes from the intercision facility,
sheds some light on the whole 'soul' business. The child has been separated from
his Daemon (soul) and is confused, weak and deathly pale. This perfectly depicts
the phrase 'to lose your spirit'. When someone is so lost and confused, they
have no faith in anything, they may still be alive but they seem to walk around
in a stupor, with no direction and no hope, they 'lose their spirit'.
Many recent movies have been dramas, and even romantic ones, that have tried to
portray a more realistic scenario by ending on a sad note. They show stories
about how bad things happen, not necessarily at the fault of the hero or
heroine, and unlike it is often portrayed in fairy tales, it cannot always be
fixed. While this is very true in real life, I personally don't find it
particularly appealing in a movie. I think we go to the movies for a bit of a
break from our lives, for some hope, and even to see someone else's life take a
turn for the better, so that we may have faith in the world.
"The Golden Compass" showed all of the things I love in a movie: great actors,
fantastic visual effects, amazing scenery, a great story and a good ending.
As one of seven different movies released on Boxing Day, "The Golden Compass"
was given the Boxing Day Crown. Other movies released on the 26th include "Alien
vs Predator: Requiem", "Enchanted", "Atonement", "PS I Love You", "No Country
for Old Men" and "Served the King of England", but it was "The Golden Compass"
that came in at the top of them all with over $1,613,225. Rightly so!

Stream Online Movies - The Future of Television: http://streamomv.like.to/

The call for entries for the Sixth Annual San Francisco International
Women's Film Festival is open.

San Francisco International Women's Film Festival (SFWFF), presented by the
Women's Film Institute (WFI), accepts films and videos of all
lengths and genres: narrative, documentary, experimental and animation.

Films and videos must be directed or co-directed by women. (Regular
Deadline: September 15, 2009)
Entry Fee: $25; with WAB Discount: $20

For more information, and to submit your film:
http://sfwff.com/submissions/index.html

Join Us at WFI - Creative Connections, an online community for film
fans, filmmakers and media artists to stay informed on the latest news
of WFI, as well as connect with other film fans, filmmakers and media
artists around the globe.

For more information visit: http://wficreativeconnections.ning.com

Please forward the link and encourage your friends and colleagues to
join.

SILVA SCREEN RECORDS PRESENTS

AFGHAN STAR—Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Soundtrack to Havana Marking's documentary film on Afghan TV American Idol-style
series, featuring the very best contestants performing the songs that held a
nation enthralled.

Winning two documentary awards at the Sundance Film Festival, the film is
unanimously praised in the press

"A fantastic documentary about a talent competition in a country where you would
never dream such a thing is possible!" - Oprah Winfrey

"Takes us somewhere few movies have…the film's hard-won good vibes had the
audience cheering!" - Ty Burr, Boston Globe

In Afghanistan you risk your life to sing and after thirty years of war and five
devastating years of Taliban rule, pop culture is beginning to return to the
country. Since 2005, millions have been tuning in to Tolo TV's wildly popular
American Idol-style series Afghan Star and voting for their favorite singers by
mobile phone. This documentary follows the dramatic stories of four contestants
as they risk all to become the nation's favorite singer.

The film opens across the US throughout summer and autumn.

Release date: September 1, 2009

###

For more information contact cinemediapromo@...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LALO SCHIFRIN SOARS WITH SKY RIDERS!

Aleph Records To Release The Beloved Soundtrack From The 1976 Film

(June 25, 2009- Los Angeles, CA) – Aleph Records will release the soundtrack for
Sky Riders on July 28.  Composer Lalo Schifrin wrote the score, which features
breathtaking sequences of music underscoring hang-gliders soaring through the
skies.

The 1976 film Sky Riders starred Robert Culp and Susannah York as Jonas and
Ellen Bracken.  The life of the international industrialist and his family seems
perfect until Ellen and the kids are kidnapped by terrorists in Greece and are
held in an abandoned monastery.  Inspector Nicholas (Charles Aznavour)
unsuccessfully attempts to free them leading Ellen's ex-husband (played by James
Coburn) to plan a rescue attempt of his own.  He hires a group of professional
mountain gliders to help rescue the Brackens from the mountain lair where they
are being held.

Composer Lalo Schifrin is a true Renaissance man. As a pianist, composer and
conductor, he is equally at home conducting a symphony orchestra, performing at
an international jazz festival, scoring a film or television show, or creating
works for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the London Philharmonic and even
The Sultan of Oman.

He has written more than 100 scores for films and television including the
classic scores for Mission: Impossible, Mannix, The Fox, Cool Hand Luke,
Bullitt, Dirty Harry, The Cincinnati Kid, and The Amityville Horror. Schifrin's
recent film scores include Tango, all 3 films from the Rush Hour trilogy,
Bringing Down The House, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, After the Sunset, and
Abominable.  To date, Lalo Schifrin has won four Grammy™ Awards (with twenty-one
nominations), one Cable ACE Award, and received six Oscar™ nominations.

Schifrin's score for Sky Riders incorporates many flavors.  He utilizes the
bouzouki and touches of a traditional Greek folk piece in "Climbers", eerie
suspenseful power cues like "The Terrorists", and traditional circus
instrumentation (brass, percussion, and glockenspiel) to achieve a lightness
underscoring the first appearance of the hang-gliders in "Flying Circus".

As described in the liner notes, by Julie Kirgo, Sky Riders is an interesting
score in the career of composer Schifrin.  Recorded in February of 1976, a year
that would see his Academy Award™ nomination for the more conventional
orchestral Voyage of the Damned, Sky Riders "would prove to be the last, for a
time, in that long, innovative line of jazz/funk-dominated scores with which
Schifrin made his reputation."  It would be over twenty years before Schifrin
would revisit that style, when asked by Brett Ratner to resurrect the funky
sound of Enter the Dragon for his 1997 film Money Talks.

Sky Riders will be available in stores and via iTunes July 28, 2009.

###

For more information please contact cinemediapromo@...

African American Short Films – Nationally Syndicated Television Program –
Accepting Submissions

African American Short Films, the only nationally televised showcase of short
films starring, produced, written and/OR directed by African-American
filmmakers, is accepting submissions for it's 2009 - 11 seasons. "African
American Short Films" airs quarterly on network affiliates in over 100 cities
nationwide. This is a wonderful opportunity for one to showcase their work on a
national level. Perhaps you've produced, directed, been in a short film OR know
of someone who has! Please pass this information along to others.

Submissions are accepted on an on-going basis. Accepted films receive
compensation.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Short films should be between 1-28 minutes in length. Viewing copies must be
submitted on VHS, Mini DV or DVD in NTSC format.
Short films may originate on any format or medium (i.e.; Mini
DV,
Digibeta, Beta SP, 8mm, 16mm, 35mm, etc.,...) Please note the running
time and format shot on.

Send submissions to:

Badami Productions

419 North Larchmont Blvd
P.O. Box #322

Los Angeles, CA 90004

ATTN: "African American Short Films"

Please include your contact information and tell us where you heard about
African American Short Films. Viewing copies will not be returned.
For questions or additional information email: lisha@... or go to
www.badamitv.com

Spread the word! Tell a friend or two or three about "African American Short
Films"!

http://de.groups.yahoo.com/group/fetisch_film_festival/

Festival focusses on depiction of
safe, sane and consensual erotic roleplay in films.

This year independentfilm MODERN LOVE IS AUTOMATIC
will be screened (portrays a nurse that takes a walk on the wild side)

In our Yahoo-group there is a big poll about musicvideos
featuring fetish-scenes

Enjoy!

Siouxsie and the Banshees cofounder, bassist, and songwriter Steven Severin
brings his Music for Silents show(s) to New York City, for the only USA
appearance on his current circuit, Saturday, October 10th, at Le Poisson Rouge,
Greenwich Village. In this rare interview, Steven talks about his creative
process during the scoring of original film soundtracks.


Read here: http://charlievazquez.wordpress.com/


This will be a rare multimedia event and tickets will go quickly!


$20.00 (please purchase in advance, as seating is limited.) Doors, 7PM, show,
8PM


Info and ticket purchasing here: 
http://lepoissonrouge.inticketing.com/events/43497

hi

here is a low budget and experimental film. indeed, it would be difficult to be
more low budget than this, apart from the fact that the base medium is celluloid
acetate. filmed in basically Super 8mm with some of the footage home-processed
and all of the footage home transferred: so quite a cottage industry project -
and effect - no Hollywood 'DreamWorks' here ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rglo4za0EHQ

the film also contains some stop frame animation and experimental optical
printing

inspiration for the film is from the Mabinogion

please enjoy :)

Ric

In an opinion poll organized in Japan sometime in the forties, 71% of those
interviewed were against the abolition of capital punishment. Since then years
have passed: we still have death penalty here and there, and still many people
believe that in extreme cases such a verdict is justified. Have they witnessed
an execution, ever?

Koshikei (Death by Hanging), made in 1968 by Nagisa Oshima.

I'm taking this time a totally non-systematic approach; trying to understand a
whole cinematic current just by watching movies that are totally unknown to me.
Each new movie as a new experience, adding just my own understanding to what I
have already got from films previously seen (I mean, films of the Japanese New
Wave).

It's refreshing while it makes serious folks crazy. I'm feeling like the
illiterate guy who went to a movie first time in life and was impressed just by
a little mouse who had been for one second in a scene: a tinny spot on one
corner. Nobody else had noticed the mouse (even the authors of the movie,
director, screenwriter, whichever).

What's more, Oshima seems to change the style with each new movie, so my way to
see his works is hundred percent craziness.

I started to write this post just a couple of hours after watching his Death by
Hanging. I had gone to the theater very tired and the extreme violence of
Oshima's sarcasm made me sick. Though I felt it was a great movie (how could
that happen? vibes, probably :)

So, I went the following day to watch it again. Crazy, isn't it? Well, not
exactly. Believe it or not, I was rewarded this time: a great movie deserves to
be tasted.

If The Night of the Killer reminded me of Jarmusch, this time the huge talent in
building a universe of macabre insanity sent me to La Muerte De Un Burócrata of
Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (and to all great Latino-Americans). And Kafka, too, came
into picture.

Is it a movie against the capital punishment? I think it's much more: it's the
whole system; the system is just bullshit. I cannot remember now a more nihilist
movie!

It starts in a strictly documentary style: the execution of a convict. The facts
are clear as hell: the convict raped and killed two high-school girls.

The prosecutor is present, also the prison educational officer: he has had long
discussions with the convict, to help him understand the gravity of the crimes.

A priest officiates the last rites. There is a small Buddhist shrine on the
wall. It is now closed, as the convict is a Catholic. After the religious
service is over, the convict is offered his last meal: cakes and fruit, along
with a cup of tea; then the last cigarette.

After all this is done, the convict is blindfolded and handcuffed, then led to
the execution room. A noose is passed over his neck. He is brought over a trap
that opens at the signal made by the execution officer. The body falls through
this trap and is throttled by the noose. A doctor establishes the absence of
vital signs and pronounces the death.

The legal procedure carries an inherent solemnity and is carefully observed in
all details: the system is acting to keep us safe; the system is in full
control.

However, there is a little something this time: the vital signs do not fade!
Usually it takes around twelve minutes, fifteen at most. Now, twenty five
minutes have passed, and nothing: the body refuses to die.

Who will take the control? The prosecutor declines: his only responsibility is
to witness. It comes to the prison commander: the convict should be hanged
again. Impossible: he is unconscious. The convict must be aware of what happens,
otherwise it would be no punishment, just killing. It comes to the doctor to
resuscitate the convict.

The thing is that the convict comes back to life with amnesia. He does not know
who he is, where he is, what's going on. So it comes to the educational officer.
He starts to explain, but the convict is like a new born: he is completely
ignorant of society, laws, morale, passions, and the like.

So the educational officer has to reenact the crimes in front of the convict, to
make him understand what he's done.

And once the reenactment takes the stage there is no more limit to pure
insanity: this film director, Nagisa Oshima, is nothing short of a madman
genius. What follows is a mix of real and imaginary (because some facts cannot
be recreated, only imagined), a mix more and more confusing for the personages
on the screen: from a point on nobody there knows any more what's real and
what's imaginary.

As the reenactment of the crimes advances the criminal himself seems more and
more innocent, while the prison officials get more and more out of control; and
the criminal cannot understand what's with this bunch of idiotic perverts with
hidden sadistic desires and killer instincts, each one with a background of real
war crimes. They are Japanese, for them he's just an anonymous R, the common
nickname they give to each Korean immigrant (one more detail, just to add to
this craziness: his real name is K, just as Kafka's hero).

The only person to keep cool remains Oshima himself, who's sitting at the
invisible board of the game and pushes the controls, adding to real and
imaginary a third dimension: the whole reenactment is so to speak reenacted
again for us, as The film director knows when to cut the action and insert his
own comments.

There is an amazing scene somewhere toward the end, like a complex musical
structure with two parallel motives: the prison personnel got drunk and they
chat about their own war crimes, ignoring the convict who is talking with his
sister (reenacted through the imagination of the educational officer); little by
little the convict understands from her what's all this about; meanwhile the
officials are progressing in their drunkenness.

And in the end the convict will understand that he is just a creation of the
system, he belongs to the system the same way the prison officials belong, the
same way all of us belong. He understands he is guilty, because once in the
system, each one is guilty; so he accepts to be hanged again, in the name of all
R's in the world, i.e. in our name. And the noose remains empty!

Is it because the movie played all time between real and imaginary? Is it
because we cannot distinguish anymore between real and imaginary? Oshima would
probably say that everybody deserves capital punishment: killing everybody is
killing nobody.

--- In cinema_underground@yahoogroups.com, "mouldypeaches215"
<mouldypeaches215@...> wrote:
>
> I just saw the new wicker man and really didn't like it. The oddest thing was
the casting of nicholas cage, it was kind of obvious that they were hoping his
celebrity status would draw in a wider audience. I wanted to know what everyone
thought about it? Should cult classics really be remade?
>

I would suggest that no film should ever be remade but that may be a little too
much of a hard-line position.
The Wicker Man remake (like The Ladykillers, The Italian Job, Hairspray etc.)
was never going to work as the film's strength develops from the time, place,
personnel and institutional constraints.
Imagine someone trying to remake 'Blue Velvet' or 'Psycho' (hang on a minute now
- Gus Van Sant's Psycho - that's a whole different ball game).

No - I reckon remakes are worse than sequels.

Neil

http://www.darkwindows.co.uk

I just saw the new wicker man and really didn't like it. The oddest thing was
the casting of nicholas cage, it was kind of obvious that they were hoping his
celebrity status would draw in a wider audience. I wanted to know what everyone
thought about it? Should cult classics really be remade?

--- In cinema_underground@yahoogroups.com, "deebee8686" <denysechellew@...>
wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have recently watched some of the Ralph Bakshi films inc fritz the cat,
coonkin and heavy traffic and would like to know your feedback on his work? Do
you prefer his politically based material or his transition to fantasy animation
like wizards?
>

I love Ralph Bakshi's work, Fritz the Cat is an amazing film. I don't get why he
got so much critism for moving to fantasy animation, I grew up watching his
version of the lord of the rings, so I suppose I am bias, but I actually prefer
his fantasy films, I guess its because they are films that can withstand time
due to their lack of reference to what was going on in society.

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival closes Thursday, May 7 with
Alexis Dos Santos' strikingly original feature, Unmade Beds. Set against a
stirring soundtrack, this youthful, sensuous and beautifully assured film is an
enveloping tale of two solitary ex-pats, wayward young souls crossing paths in
the cosmopolitan art-rock scene of a sprawling East London squat. Santos and
actor Fernando Tielve are expected to attend. The film begins at 7:00 pm on
Thursday, May 7 at the Castro Theatre, with a rousing after-party at Mezzanine
at 9:30 pm. Be seen with the coolest crowd and dance to hipster beats inspired
by Unmade Beds. Spoil yourself with fine food and excellent drinks. You must be
21+ to attend the party. For tickets and information, visit sffs.org
<http://fest09.sffs.org/films/film_details.php?id=93>.

Hi all,

I have recently watched some of the Ralph Bakshi films inc fritz the cat,
coonkin and heavy traffic and would like to know your feedback on his work? Do
you prefer his politically based material or his transition to fantasy animation
like wizards?

Hi Everyone!!! its me Carmen Im a new member of this group..

Perhaps it's my anti-humanist tendencies that are preventing me from swallowing
wholesale the successes of Slumdog Millionaire.

But as someone interested in films from the perspective of psychoanalysis,
philosophy, and ideological criticism, I found Slumdog Millionaire, while
visually stunning, well edited, paced and generally satisfying all of the
criteria of a 'good' or even 'great' film, it still left a sour taste in my
Marxist mouth.

I'm not trying to espouse any naive anti-establishment sentiment against
Hollywood or the 'culture industry' as Adorno put described it, but I still feel
that the Academy wouldn't have given the Oscar to a film whose subtext wasn't so
blatantly intertwined, through some unconscious umbilical chord perhaps, to the
ideologemes of the likes of Horatio Alger, whose works, bearing titles such as
Abraham Lincoln: the Backwoods Boy; or, How A Young Rail-Splitter Became
President or Adrift in New York; or, Tom and Florence Braving the World,
propagated the worst of American fantasy and capitalist ideologies, the very
ideologies utilized and 'meme-tized' to justify the very poverty which it
supposedly draws critical humanist attention towards. The all too common story
of 'pulling onself up by our bootstraps' (slumdog being a very slight
permutation of this trope) endorses the same old capitalist story about hard
individual work being the sin qua non of a rational, healthy democratic society.
A probing of this trope reveals however that no, not everyone can pull
themselves up, it is in a sense 'predestined' or 'written' (option D of the film
I believe) - in other words, determined or shaped by the contours of the system,
in this historicity, it is the shadow of capitalism, overaccumulation and
urbanization.


In other words, I found Slumdog Millionaire to be eminently de-politicized. The
tale ends in a rather typical hollywood ending, with many of the Oedipal
requirements satisfied: the production of a couple and the murder of the Primal
Father, all glazed over with a warm humanist coating. Despite its
cinematographic merits, and all of the other 'objective' ways of judging a film,
I will have to take a side here and critique it for its realism, a Capitalist
Realism to be precise (google K-Punk's blogs for more of this). Through the very
gesture of using realism as a standard - in the most basic sense, injecting the
reality principle as a governing mechanism into the production of the film, a
subversion of the dream-work- through which we can supposedly highlight, draw to
view, all of the miseries, joys, happiness, failures and complexities that
compose the human-condition, the film itself, and as some argue ARt in general,
become depoliticized, stripped of any political efficacy or meaning. It is
decontextualized in the name of realism, in the name of portraying situations as
closely as we can imagine experiencing them within the first-person. One can
only imagine a bio-pic of Hitler, where as much as his brutality and insanity is
highlighted, his human and touching moments with Eva Braun, images of his
weakness and misery, would all be BESIDE the point. Of course Hitler was a human
being, and this is exactly the problem. Human, all too human, perhaps.

Although I loved the Dark Knight, Zizek's criticism is proper. By attempting to
humanize the character, show all their complexity and depth, etc. films like
Iron Man, Spiderman and the Dark Knight simply de-politicize themselves, bury
their political subtexts beneath humanist dross, the idea that we are all the
same somehow inside, etc. etc.

One might protest, why does a film need to be political? Well, like Freud has
shown, everything is sexual, and everything is Political. The political and
libidinal are (including the history of the latter), the ultimate hermeneutic
background to our understanding. They, whether absent or present, condition our
very capacity to know, or in the case of film itself, to show.

In Slumdog, these horizons are deflated and shoved under a carpet. Although the
very contingency of everyday life is emphasized by the protagonist's almost
fatalistic journey towards love and money, this emphasis on fragmentation,
chaos, etc. works to undermine the hard-work of politicizing slum-dwellers.
Instead, a private, 'atomic' and 'nuclear' path is the structuring core. The
protagonist doesn't care about anything, really, other than his lost love, his
objet petit a, and the money necessary to sustain a comfortable life with her.
Although it doesn't seem like money is an issue, he says basically this much
while trying to convince his love to run away with him, although not verbatim:
"We will have all the money we need to live comfortably if I win this, run away
with me."

the only character here that could possibly be construed as an ethical ethical
agent is Salim (perhaps the feminine jouissance of Latika but I would find
plenty reason to find contention with a reading like that).

Retrospective of Indiana filmmaker Bilinski:

http://366weirdmovies.com/fringe-cinema-jacob-bilinski-becoming-a-master-of-his-\
medium/

Muri Shinju: Nihon No Natsu (Japanese Summer: Double Suicide, aka Night of the
Killer), made in 1967 by Oshima. His famous movies would follow, and I hope I
will be able to see some of them in April: there is an Oshima each weekend at
the AFI Theatre in Silver Spring.

It was my first encounter with Oshima and with a movie from the Japanese New
Wave. I had read some insightful info in the monograph of Tom Vick (Asian
Cinema). I will crystallize my ideas after watching several movies.

Some words about this one, the Night of the Killer: it called into my mind the
first movies of Jarmusch (the kind of Stranger Than Paradise), however it's
another animal; it is programatically against any value; any value in the
Japanese society, any Japanese myth, any concept of cinematic art; it's an
anti-movie with an anti-plot, by an anti-author. A girl is looking for sex
(well, it happens, you know), all males are jerks, so sex cannot be. And
gangsters are the number one jerks (this is a movie with gangsters and there are
a lot of Japanese movies cultivating the myth of the gangster, black dramas -
here is a black comedy: gangsters are just guys of nothing, crazy violent
impotent idiots; they think they're killers, actually they are not, they are too
impotent to kill - however in the end some of them kill here and there, just to
contradict even the logic of Oshima - as I said, he is an anti-author, whatever
that means).

Your spouse left one day to not return any more. It started like any given day.
He went to his work, and soon came back in a hurry, to leave the bike and take
the umbrella: it was cloudy and windy. In the evening you washed the baby: he
was three months old. Then you laid in bed, waiting for him; sometimes he was
back very late. Two police officers came instead: your spouse had committed
suicide.

At the beginning it had been horrible. Then, some years passed - the kid was now
five. Your relatives arranged a new marriage with a widower who was having a
daughter. You moved with your son there and started a new life.

It seemed to you that the wound was now healed. Your boy and his daughter coped
immediately each other and the new spouse was a kind man. You started to feel
love for him: so it seemed.

A visit to the old place made you realize that nothing was healed actually. You
realized that it was like your life had stopped in that night. You were not
noticing anything new anymore. The same scenes were turning in your head again
and again. The same recurrent dreams. The new place was like empty for you.
Sometimes you were observing suddenly a room, a piece of furniture; only it was
having a unique function: to remind you about the past. Any man or woman, any
event, seemed to connect you to a situation from the past. You were living like
in a dream that was coming again and again. Two or three moments that were
repeating in your mind: moments of happiness with your first spouse, or other
moments that had had no significance at all - now they were carrying something
like a hidden message, in relation with the suicide that had followed.

And you asked suddenly, why did he commit suicide, I cannot understand why, this
question comes again and again in my mind.

The new spouse tried to explain to you, there is a Maboroshi, a cheating light,
that appears sometimes to beguile us, and it is hard to resist it.

And you understood that no other answers were possible: you were to live with
your wound, because your life should follow your fate. Understanding this was
the only way to come to your terms.

This is Maboroshi no Hikari, the movie directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, with Masao
Nakabori as cinematographer. The story is told with a large economy of words, of
actions, of images: it is a supremely ascetic film. The people are always in the
distance, the images always in the dark. The only images that are clear are the
scenes remembered by the protagonist: the woman that lost her first spouse.

It is a very radical cinematographic approach. I should say that it cannot be
more radical than that. It is the movie from the mind of the protagonist.

But if you have the guts to follow this ascetic movie you'll be generously
rewarded. Because it is actually an exquisite artwork. Yes, many images are left
in obscurity: it is actually a great play of light and obscure. As for the
images that have meaning for the protagonist, the camera is in such moments like
caressing the whole: the scenery becomes then pure visual choreography.