There’s been a lot of love lately over at Hammer to Nail with regards to American director Ramin Bahrani. First, producer Anne Carey wrote about why she loves his main creative collaborator, cinematographer Michael Simmonds. Next, I had a hearty soup of a conversation with Bahrani after MoMA paid him the honor of devoting an early career retrospective to him. And now, I’ve posted my review of Bahrani’s third feature, Goodbye Solo.
We are living through troubled times, people. Goodbye Solo doesn’t provide any cheap, easy answers, but the mere fact that Bahrani could have gotten this film made is an utter inspiration. That the film is one of the more tender, humane, and fully realized works of the year only makes it that much more of a thrill. If you’re going to support one movie this weekend—or whenever it happens to open in your nearby town—support Goodbye Solo. You won’t be disappointed.
Congratulations to David Redmon and Ashley Sabin for winning the “Ron Tibbett Award For Excellence in Film” at the 12th annual Magnolia Independent Film Festival in Starkville, Mississippi, this past weekend. I have seen an early cut of their latest film, Invisible Girlfriend, and consider it to be one of the more revolutionary and stunning new efforts of 2009. In the same way that Werner Herzog challenged notions of fiction vs. non-fiction when his career first began (and, I suppose, in many ways, still does), Redmon and Sabin are delivering a vision that the screen has never seen before.
Invisible Girlfriend follows Charles (those who have seen Kamp Katrina will certainly recognize him) as he leaves his family behind in order to pedal his big red beach cruiser through rural Louisiana in order to meet up with the New Orleans bartender he is convinced is the earthly manifestation of his invisible girlfriend Joan of Arc. Along the way, he has a variety of strange and uniquely Southern encounters, culminating in a climax that the most outlandish of screenwriters wouldn’t dare conjure.
It disturbs and disappoints me that Invisible Girlfriend might not receive the attention it deserves, particularly within our tiny little independent film world. I would understand if my parents don’t exactly get it, but as a filmmaker and a film lover, this is the kind of electrifying work that borders on the miraculous. Redmon and Sabin aren’t here to make a film about schizophrenia. They have set out to do something much, much braver: they believed and trusted in their subject and set out to document his deeply personal journey without judging him. In remaining objective and in taking a narrative approach to their material, the film gods have blessed them with one of the more impossible-to-believe climaxes in documentary history.
If you do happen to see Invisible Girlfriend and aren’t deeply shaken when the final credits roll, please contact me, because for the life of me I can’t figure out in this particular case how one’s reaction could be anything less than stunned. Most importantly, if you have the opportunity to see this groundbreaking film, do it right away.
I thought last month’s Chinatown/Zodiac: Director’s Cut double-feature at the Walter Reade was going to be impossible to top for the rest of the year, but yesterday afternoon’s “Film Comment Selects” one-two punch of hard-to-find 1980s documentaries from filmmaking duo Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines might have actually topped it. More so because I hadn’t seen either of them before.
Unlike Seventeen, Demon Lover Diary was directed solely by DeMott, but that’s because Kreines is the film’s main subject. Along with filmmaker Mark Rance, the three friends drove to the bleak Midwest to help a “friend” named Don make a horror movie. But when they got there, the nightmare began. Shot on grainy reversal 16mm film, Demon Lover Diary feels like the immediate precursor to films as diverse as American Movie, Baghead, and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. As funny as it is, there is a growing threat of danger throughout. I couldn’t tell if this was really there or if I had seen too many films and was transferring that feeling to what was happening on screen. By the end, I discovered that I was right.
What to say about Seventeen? Let’s start with wow. In a critical sense, the last act feels like it loses its focus and starts to unravel into a rough assemblage of scenes, but at the same time I want to stress this: I did not want this movie to end. It has one of the best party scenes ever, fiction or doc, which begins innocently enough, but derails into the type of drunken idiocy that makes Heavy Metal Parking Lot look tame. The night culminates in the harsh light of day, as one of the preposterously irresponsible fathers makes good on his threat to go fishing. Standing on a pier under a bright sky of full-blown daylight, he slurs the following line: “I usually don’t stay up this late.” It is just one classic delivery in a film that is jam-packed with them. While there are enough wow moments for several features, the wall-to-wall Top 40 music pretty much guarantees that Seventeen won’t be coming out on video anytime soon, which is a seriously major shame.
Speaking of Mark Rance, it just so happens that this particular “cast member” of Demon Lover Diary—who becomes the film’s outright hero when he sweetly makes out with one of the film’s pretty actresses—is responsible for this week’s most exciting new DVD release. Eagle Pennell’s previously lost 1978 classic, The Whole Shootin’ Match, which inspired Robert Redford to start Sundance, is getting a royally gorgeous three-disc home video treatment from Rance’s Watchmaker Films (I just learned that they’ll be releasing Sergei Dvortsevoy’s pre-Tulpan documentaries very soon—hot damn!). On one disc is the feature-film itself (read my Hammer to Nail review to see just how much I loved it). The second disc has many goodies: The King of Texas, a film made by Rene Pinell (Eagle’s nephew) and Claire Huie that works as a wonderful companion piece to the movie; Pennell’s first short, A Hell of a Note; and an interview Rance conducted with Pennell in 1981. The third disc is a CD of music made by Chuck Pinell (Eagle’s brother) for both The Whole Shootin’ Match and The King of Texas. Completing the multi-media experience is a booklet that collects reviews, reflections, and essays by critics and those who worked with Pennell.
As a tribute to yourself for having missed yesterday’s incredible double-feature at the Walter Reade, I suggest you drown your sorrows by buying The Whole Shootin’ Match on DVD. This isn’t one to Netflix. Purchase that sumbitch.
The 92Y Tribeca is quickly establishing itself as one of downtown Manhattan’s best new venues to catch some of indie cinema’s true gems on the big screen. Tonight at 8pm is Nina Paley’s Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You winner, the gleefully genre-bending Sita Sings the Blues.
Tomorrow night at 8pm, not only are they screening Josh Safdie’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed, but as an added bonus the line-up contains Josh’s early short We’re Going to the Zoo, as well as his brother Benny’s hilarious The Acquaintances of a Lonely John, which played with Pleasure on closing night during last year’s Director’s Fortnight. Josh and Benny and the Red Bucket team are in the final stages of locking picture on their latest feature, Go Get Some Rosemary, which stars none other than Ronald Bronstein. For too many reasons to name, this is easily one of my most anticipated films of 2009. Hurry up and finish that film, gents!
It’s been a long time since I posted a post at this place where I used to post a whole lot. Now I’m too busy posting at Hammer to Nail to post here. Shame on me. This is the posting place that won me my first four Pulitzers, how dare I turn my back on it just because I’m now flying in airplanes while wearing colorful sweatsuits and drinking alcoholic chocolate out of platinum chalices? Just because I have used my fingers to pole-vault into a whole new dimension, how dare I shun the mother that bore me? And so I will try my gol’darnedest to keep up a steady routine over here as well.
First up, I suppose, is Sundance. Now that I’m back in the comfort of my lovely, lovely home, and have had a few nights of decent sleep, the cream has begun to rise to the top. Here, in order of first-to-pop-into-my-head-and-on-down-the-line, are my most lasting Park City ‘08 memories…
— Burma VJ (This very well might be the only film that wowed me from beginning to end without an even minor quibble.)
— Mo’Nique’s performance in Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire (I’m putting this performance on par with Maria Falconetti’s in The Passion of Joan of Arc. Granted, they are very different feats of acting, but their impact is similar. They both left me feeling physically stunned.)
— Out of Our Minds (In only 28 minutes, the spectacle of this film toppled almost all of the features I saw in Park City combined. And it was a solar-powered production to boot!)
— Old Partner (This just might be my favorite cinematic love triangle ever, between an old South Korean farmer, his decrepit ox, and his nagging wife.)
— Stella Schnabel in You Won’t Miss Me (Schnabel has a fascinating presence and energy. Watching her Shelly Brown in action is like gawking at a mesmerizing train wreck.)
— The name song in Stingray Sam (I think it was the third episode when Cory McAbee unleashes a hilarious montage combining men’s names—“Billy and Rob had a son named Bob!”, etc.—that I wished would never end.)
— Sharon Lockhart’s Lunch Break (An 80-minute slow-motion dolly through the longest warehouse ever? Yes, please! One of the more exciting moments of the festival for me was wondering what that one worker was doing up there in the distance, only to discover that he was waiting for his microwave popcorn to finish popping. I pumped my fists in the air at that exciting revelation!)
— Big River Man (John Maringouin delivers a tale worthy of Herzog with this darkly humorous portrait of Martin Strell, who swims down the Amazon River even as his brain enters the Fourth Dimension.)
— Lil’ Wayne in The Carter (Adam Bhala Lough delivers with this glimpse into the syrup-glazed mind of Lil’ Wayne. One of my favorite moments is when Wayne explains to someone what his ESPN logo tattoo stands for: “You know what my shit mean, right? Entertainment… Sports… Network.”)
— Humpday (I am clamoring to see Lynn Shelton’s film again because I think it’s an incredibly intelligent interpretation of a formulaic Hollywood comedy. And I think the character growth of Joshua Leonard is especially original.)
— Rough Aunties (Could everyone stop sodomizing children, please? Even for like one week? Maybe two???)
— World’s Greatest Dad (I stand behind what Bobcat Goldthwait is doing. He is carving a niche as someone who is producing genuinely subversive riffs on the Hollywood formula. Some might say he’s playing so closely by the rules that he’s still guilty of the crime, but I think he’s having his cake and eating it too.)
— Children of Invention (Tze Chun shows a care, craft, and tenderness that really inspired me.)
— The Messenger (Oren Moverman’s directorial debut shows that he doesn’t just have chops as a writer. That said, his script for this film goes places where most Iraq-themed films wouldn’t dare to go. And not in crushingly dramatic places. I’m talking about believable, honest ones.)
— Everything Strange and New (Frazer Bradshaw’s off-kilter drama was an especially nice antidote to all of the broad stroke naturalism I’d been bombarded with all week. And not that it’s the reason to see the film, but there’s a scene here that takes Humpday to that next level!)
— Don’t Let Me Drown (I can never get enough of movies where high school kids look and sound like actual teenagers. This film gets that concept all the way right.)
— Johnny Mad Dog (It’s pretty much impossible to deny the power of this film, even if the question of purpose will be hotly debated. Some of the most powerful filmmaking I saw all week.)
— Five Minutes of Heaven (This is one of the best displays of direction in Park City. Exemplary filmmaking across the board.)
— Tyson (Mike Tyson talking for ninety minutes. It’s hard to fuck that up.)
And, lastly…
— Once More With Feeling (If this film cost more than 400,000 dollars, someone needs to be decapitated. No, I’m not kidding. Blade. Head. Goodbye. Or at least leave the business, please. This wasn’t just the worst film I saw last week. Before it had ended, it had catapulted itself into the upper tiers of my All-Time Worst list. The only people I’m excusing here are the actors, because I felt so sorry for them. I’m not even picking on the Sundance programmers here. How could the filmmakers actually present this to an audience and not feel complete and utter shame?
That is all for now. I promise to be back sooner than later with another meaty-ish post.
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