Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008)
August 5, 2008
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Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008)
dir. Alex Gibney
121 min
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson moved me to do two things: 1. realize how ridiculously great Johnny Depp’s portrayal of him was in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and, 2. read more of his work. I’m not gonna front like I know a everything about dude, so I can’t really judge how accurate or faithful this documentary was to his life and work. But it works like a good documentary should: to turn one’s unfamiliarity into interest, and turn interest into action.
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Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet, 2007)
August 4, 2008
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Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)
dir. Sidney Lumet
116 min
Have you seen the one where a white, dysfunctional middle-class family implodes, when, out of financial desperation, a bumbling family member conceives a “simple” plan (a robbery, a heist, a murder, etc), only to have it all backfire? Yeah, you probably have, either from a Coen brothers joint or one of their many knockoffs. It seems like these kinds of films are the most surefire way, besides playing a loveable retard or glorifying European history, to get the Academy’s attention. Unfortunately, 83-year old Sidney Lumet, a legendary, if overrated (yeah, I said it), filmmaker (Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico) with an eye for intensity and tension-building pacing, got stuck with one of these tired-ass scripts, delivering the well-crafted and well-acted but sadly hollow Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007).
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Trailer: Whatever It Takes
August 4, 2008
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HT to nha_hang_chay
Looking forward to Christopher Wong’s documentary about education reform in the South Bronx: Whatever It Takes. He has a blog documenting the film’s production at the Center For Asian American Media (which is also funding the film). Here’s the trailer:
War, Inc. (Joshua Seftel, 2008)
August 1, 2008
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War, Inc. (2008)
dir. Joshua Seftel
106 min
Getting the mainstream-movie-watching-ass homie to catch an indie flick at an indie theater is a most difficult task. The reason I succeeded this time was by announcing that John Cusack was gonna be in it. Because even though he pretty much plays the same character, there’s something everyman about him that we all love, right?
Thanks to the super-independent Midtown Theater in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, we caught a screening of War, Inc., a dark comedy and political satire targeting (the Afghanistan/Iraq) war, occupation and the big business that drives it all. Brand Hauser (Cusack) is a CIA assassin sent to a Turaqistan to assassinate a potentially threatening political figure named Omar Sharif (the funny name gag doesn’t stop there, either). Hauser is half Jason Bourne, half the dude Cusack played in Grosse Pointe Blank - an apolitical bad-ass with a gun and a conscience who chugs hotsauce to cope with his stressful job.
The X-Files: I Want to Believe (dir. Chris Carter, 2008)
July 30, 2008
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The X-FIles: I Want to Believe (2008)
dir. Chris Carter
105 min
I’m sure many were anticipating it, but even as a former fan, The X-Files: I Want to Believe just seemed like a random-ass release. After the debacle that was Step Brothers and after a couple of action flicks, we caught I Want to Believe in Alexandria, Virginia, close to where most of the story was located (crazy seeing the Pentagon on the drive back after). Playing by fanboy rule number 9, section 3, article B, I will attempt at reviewing without divulging any plot descriptions or events.
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Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1922)
July 29, 2008
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Nosferatu (1922)
dir. F. W. Murnau
84 min
It would be too easy to either fully clown or fully praise Nosferatu (1922). I was impressed with the film’s technical aspects (especially for ‘22) and historical value, but I also couldn’t help but laugh throughout. Being a silent film, I thought I’d watch it on the laptop during Hieroglyphics‘ set last night. Here’s how it worked.
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Orapronobis (Lino Brocka, 1989)
July 26, 2008
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Orapronobis/Les Insoumis (Fight For Us) (1989)
dir. Lino Brocka
90 min
Philippines
Imagine if Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and some other Hollywood bigshots grew some balls, banded together under a political banner, and dedicated their craft, while still working within the “established” film industry, to fearlessly attack and expose government corruption and big business. As co-founder of Concerned Artists of the Philippines, Lino Brocka (1939-1991) and his colleagues did just that. At the height of his popularity, Brocka, the PI’s foremost filmmaker, took a decisive stand against the Ferdinand Marcos regime, getting a bunch of his social-realist themed films banned from theaters in the process.
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Kidlat Tahimik: Mababangong Bangungot/Perfumed Nightmare (1978) and Turumba (1983)
July 24, 2008
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Mababangong Bangungot (Perfumed Nightmare) (1978)
dir. Kidlat Tahimik
93 min
Turumba (1981)
dir. Kidlat Tahimik
94 min
Kidlat Tahimik (Eric De Guia) is a weird dude, an anomaly - in a good way. Many have attempted to slap labels on him: experimental, alternative, art-house, even “political.” But labels like these tend to marginalize, deter mass audiences, and confine an artist’s work to a handful of connoisseurs who pick apart its form but can’t grasp its essence. The Latin filmmaker-driven Third Cinema movement’s primary objective was to liberate film from the bourgeois vicegrip and place it in the hands of indigenous or revolutionary (preferably both), anti-colonial filmmakers like Tahimik, who, in the spirit of that famous Marx quote, sought not merely to interpret the world, but to change it.
His first two films, Mababangong Bangungot/Perfumed Nightmare (1978) and Turumba (1981), take cues from the Third Cinema movement approach (influenced by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s manifesto Towards a Third Cinema), standing (far) apart from mainstream Philippine cinema. Both films are set in the Philippine countryside during the height of Marcos’ martial-law regime, when even mainstream cinema was led by directors (Brocka, Bernal, De Leon) who dared to speak out with conventional narrative dramas.
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ABOUT
Prometheus Brown is a college dropout who went to graduation anyway. When not re-considering going back to school, he writes, records and performs as the emcee half of the Seattle-based duo Blue Scholars and is a cultural worker contributing to Bayan-USA.
