FILM REVIEW: ORGASM, INC.

Orgasm Inc. director Liz Canner.

The load down

By Ed Rampell

In the early 1960s Pres. Kennedy announced America would land a man on the moon by the decade’s end. Science’s current counterpart to the space race is the cum-petition to send women over the moon. That is to say, to create something that’s a gender equivalent to those drugs and treatments aimed at overcoming erectile dysfunction. This sex aid for women to achieve orgasms could take the form of a sort of female Viagra, or perhaps cream, shot, surgery or even electrodes invasively inserted into the spine. In any case, the race is on, and, as every salesman knows, sex sells, so there’s gold in them thar hills.

Director Liz Canner’s uncanny documentary may have started out as a cinematic rumination on female pleasure, but it ended up becoming an expose of Big Pharma. According to Canner, she was originally hired by a pharmaceutical firm to edit erotic videos that would be used during clinical trials of a cream intended -- with a little help from our pornographic friends -- to aid human female lab rats to attain orgasms.

However, the company that hired the cagey Canner -- who has a background of making human rights documentaries about subjects such as Nicaragua, LAPD and the L.A. riots -- got much more than they bargained. Like that health insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter, Canner grew increasingly disturbed by what she was in a unique position to witness, and the filmmaker went rogue.

The result is Orgasm Inc., a probing look at what could be called the “Female Sexual Dysfunction Pharmaceutical Surgical Complex” (FSDPSC). Pills, surgery and other treatments can be costly and contain health risks, so according to the doc, in order to overcome these objections Big Pharma, et al, concocted the myth that Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD) is a “disease.” Not only that, but having identified a dire need, the FSDPSC is riding to the rescue with the cure to this ailment it has identified and propagandizes about.

However, there’s a fly in the ointment (literally and figuratively). Females happen to be different from males, and the solution (assuming, of course, that there’s even a problem to be solved to begin with) is not simply a feminine version of those boner pills exalted in those schmaltzy commercials advising men what to do if their erections last longer than four hours, etc. As Dr. Sigmund Freud asked: “What do women want?” That’s the $64,000 question or, in the quest to create a female Cialis, etc., probably more like a $64 billion question. Like braggadocio partners, so far these pills, etc., promise more than they deliver, and in a sense, this is the perfect film to open in L.A. on April Fools’ Day.

Canner provides a valuable service in her doc by exposing the fact that most of the public pitchmen and women for these various drugs, etc., aimed at inducing vaginal and clitoral orgasms are paid by the same industry they are ballyhooing. In addition, these TV therapists, scientists and the like do not disclose their financial ties to the firms manufacturing the products they’re appraising and praising. During the Iraq War it was exposed that a number of those retired officers, etc., pontificating in news media outlets were actually paid by the Pentagon, and even provided daily talking points to them. When it was exposed that pundit/ bandit Armstrong Williams was secretly taking money from the Bush Administration while pushing Bush educational policies and bashing those of opponents, Williams’ “defense” was that he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong.

Perpetrators of these covert conflicts of interest are worse than immoral, they’re amoral, absolutely lacking any sort of ethical compass. When Charles Ferguson confronts culprits of “say for pay” and insider trading in his Oscar winning Inside Job, the perps have cognitive dissonance, since they operate in a realm that’s so sleazy and corrupt they simply can’t recognize what’s right and wrong. (The legal definition of insanity, by the way.)

The corruption Canner cannily exposes in Orgasm Inc. makes a strong case that during this High Renaissance of Insider Trading and Conflicts of Interest we need a sort of truth in advertising law applied to pitchmen/women, requiring them to disclose their financial ties regarding what they’re pitching. Instead of being fobbed off as an independent expert, if some talking head (no pun intended) is taking money from a company whose products or goals he/she is endorsing, this should be disclosed to viewers/listeners/ readers, etc. So when some behind-the-scenes Pentagon goon poses as a disinterested commentator, but is really being paid off by a think tank funded by the defense industry, a label will identify him/her as such onscreen, etc. Let’s call a flack a flack -- and Canner does a great job doing just this. (BTW, in the interests of full disclosure I think that the United States of America should now be legally forced to change its name to the Incorporated States of America. I’m just saying…)

The worst abuse Canner exposes in Orgasm Inc. has to do with what’s called Designer Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation surgery. Much has been revealed about the dangers involved with “boob jobs," but this doc exposes plastic surgery on female private parts, to reduce the length of their vaginal lips and so on. (Maybe soon we’ll need labia labels?) In any case, the doc’s feminist spokespersons make a strong case that this is just a high tech version of the kind of female genital mutilation decried in “backwards” Third World nations. Holy clit!

Sexuality is a very powerful force, and our acceptance, sense of self-worth, being attractive, intimacy, need for physical and emotional satisfaction, and much mysteriously more, are wrapped up in it. Human beings are social animals; we’re not created through asexual reproduction. What Canner craftily shows is that the Female Sexual Dysfunction Pharmaceutical Surgical Complex preys upon women, exploits and heightens their insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, promising them pleasure, cum-panionship, approval, etc. All of which they, and their purveyors, stand to profiteer from -- whether they deliver the goods or -- like so many snake oil salesmen/women of the past -- don’t.

Canner’s technique (filmmaking, that is) is pretty conventional here. No Michael Moore-ian panache or cinematic style a la The Kid Stays in the Picture, that well-made 2002 doc about producer Robert Evans. She is also guilty of a certain amount of Puritanism when it comes to nudity. Like the pill pitchers she exposes, Canner knows full well that sex sells -- hence her doc’s catchy title, and its titillating, provocative ad depicting an apparently naked young blonde embracing a bottle of pills in between her spread thighs, head tossed back in what seems to be an orgasmic delight worthy of Meg Ryan in that famous When Harry Met Sally restaurant scene.

Yet there is no graphic nudity in Orgasm Inc. -- even when this could have greatly benefited viewers. For instance, when discussing vaginal plastic surgery, it would have been useful for audiences to actually see what’s being spoken about. Labia, vulva, etc., before and after operations. After all, film is a visual art form, not just talking heads (of which this doc is full of), and artists have fought valiantly for decades for the freedom to depict sexuality openly. It’s a mystery that, having legally won this free expression battle in America, so few of today’s (non-porn) filmmakers use that hard fought for liberty. The only genitalia to be seen onscreen in Orgasm Inc. comes in the form of pubic puppets (I kid thee not, Dear Reader). If there is sexual dysfunction en masse in America, it is precisely this unnatural attitude toward the human body, male and female, which results in puritanical perversity, obsessions and sexual repression. Alas, this otherwise insightful, inciting documentary may be somewhat guilty of perpetrating what it condemns.

FILM REVIEW: SOURCE CODE

Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) in Source Code.

Moon beams

By Don Simpson

Okay soldier. You are in an isolated container of some sort. We are communicating with you via a television monitor. When you get too confused, we will show you some playing cards to jog your memory. Otherwise, just sit back and enjoy the train ride. It is not your train ride, it is a dead teacher’s train ride, but we hijacked the final eight minutes of said teacher’s memory, and we will continue to send you back, soldier, to relive those very same eight minutes over and over again until you solve the puzzle. What is the puzzle? Plain and simple: find the bomber, save the world. And remember, this is purely a simulacrum of the past -- it can in no way effect the present. Time travels in one direction, just like the train you are on. This is not time travel. Reality is already in the past, you cannot effect the present. Whatever you do, please do not try to save the pretty woman -- the one named Christina (Michelle Monaghan) -- seated across from you. She is not your mission; she is already dead.

Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the soldier in isolation going through an existential crisis -- a predicament that is not all that dissimilar to Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell’s lead character from director Duncan Jones’ astounding cinematic debut, Moon). Like Sam, Colter is all alone with very limited (and restricted) telecommunication functionalities. Colter’s last recollection of reality is when he was a U.S. Army helicopter pilot fighting in Afghanistan. Now, his only connections to the outside world are the flickering television images of a fellow soldier, Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), and her mad scientist boss, Dr. Rutledge (Jeffrey Wright). Colter does not remember signing up for this mission, whatever the hell it is. (Umm... Beleaguered Castle anyone?) According to Dr. Rutledge, Colter’s mission is part of the Source Code experiment, which is “a powerful weapon in the war on terror.” (When we learn the truth behind the Source Code, that single statement resonates with countless ripples of profundity and terror.)

With fleeting allusions to Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day and a roundabout of Alfred Hitchcock films, Source Code is essentially a long lost episode of Quantum Leap (with a few Twilight Zone moments tossed in for good measure) during which the DVD purposefully skips a few dozen times before reaching the end of the third act 90 minutes later. (The train and the whole eight minute thing seemed to jog a classic R.E.M. lyric from my memory: “Take a break, driver eight, you’ve been on this train to long...”)

It seems far too easy to nitpick Source Code to pieces, especially the scientific logic behind Dr. Rutledge’s theories of his Source Code. The scientific explanations seem incredibly thorough (and overly explained), yet in retrospect they do not make any sense. And I also fear that Jones reveals far too many cards, way too soon. Personally, I would prefer a lot more ambiguity -- or I at least want to have more time to theorize about what is really happening to Colter.

What really irks me about Source Code is that it has one of those endings that is totally schlocky, yet Jones can always fall back on the excuse that the final scenes are probably all in Colter’s mind. But the conclusion confirms for me that Source Code is pure Hollywood fodder -- okay, that is a slight exaggeration because Source Code is certainly more intelligent and better acted than most Hollywood films. But Moon is quantifiable evidence that Jones can do much better than this; there is something very special about Moon and Source Code pales in comparison.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: SUSANNE BIER

In a Better World director Susanne Bier.

Senseless and sensitivity

By John Esther

Another intense family drama by the director behind Open Hearts, Brothers, After the Wedding and Things We Lost in the Fire, the latest film by Susanne Bier, In a Better World, examines the various levels of tolerance some people will accept before retaliating.

Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a doctor working in an African desert camp where girls are often brought in after being cut open by a local warlord named Big Man (Odiege Matthew in a role he seems born to play).

Back home in Denmark, Anton's estranged wife, Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), is trying to raise their son, Elias (Markus Rygaard), a socially misfit kid who gets into a heap of trouble after befriending the new boy in town, Christian (William Jørgennsen), a bitter boy with a chip on his shoulder called Dad (Ulrich Thomsen).

When a plan of attack goes dreadfully awry -- although it could have been much worse -- it becomes clear that mother, father, husband, wife and son need to learn the value of forgiveness in a world riddled with revenge.

Days before In a Better World won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (Denmark) I met up with the Danish director in Beverly Hills. As she moved around on the slippery couch quite a bit, we talked about her latest film.

JEsther Entertainment: Why did you want to make this film, tell these stories?
Susanne Bier: Because I thought it was interesting. I thought the whole thing about revenge and forgiveness seemed like something which sort of creeps upon us in our vocabulary. It's about time to make a movie that dealt with those kinds of things.

JE: Do you think there is a greater thirst for revenge now than in the past? SB: There's a greater acceptance of revenge as a notion. If you look back the past five or six years the notion has become an accepted term.

JE: Worldwide? In particular places?
SB: In the Western World, yes. It's very hard for me to say what it's like in Asia.

JE: What kind of political intentions did you have behind making In a Better World?
SB: I don’t think I had political intentions. I had intentions dealing with ethic or moral issues. I very consciously did not deal with political things. This film deals with moral issues: the whole issue of revenge and forgiveness; the whole notion of violence and non-violence; and the whole ideal about being a decent human being and what that implies. I didn’t want to set it in a definite political context or religious context either. That way we could keep the universality of the moral issues.

JE: Do you think Anton has the right response in these situations, incidences where people are seeking revenge?
SB: I don’t think he has a correct or non-correct response. He's trying hard to remain stoic upon what he believes is right and, like all of us, at some point he has a breaking point. His breaking point is an interesting point because that's where you as an audience feel, "Oh great, we got rid of this guy. We don’t want Big Man to go around doing the sort of atrocities we know he's going to be doing. Once he's well he's going to go out and cut up stomachs of small pregnant girls." You don’t want him to be able to do that so there's a strange sense of relief at the same time you clearly realize Anton is feeling defeated.

JE: Big Man's death is a self-defense mechanism for the "girls of the future."
SB: You can say that. I'm not sure that's the correct mechanics, but you can say that.

JE: How do you deal with your thirsts for revenge? How do you negotiate that energy into something else?
SB: The way we feel offended in everyday life and the way we want to deal with feeling offended is usually pretty easy to deal with. Unless you've been exposed to real atrocities, it's hard to predict your capability to deal with them. As a general rule I do believe in forgiveness. All adult human beings know that the spiral of revenge is terribly tragic.

JE: A lot of your films deal with tragedy. Is there a reason why you are drawn to characters with intense internal conflicts that manifest themselves outward?
SB: My movies are dramatic movies. If you look at great dramas, they are pretty violent, pretty powerful. There's been a particularly European tradition of being withheld and sort of subdued by your scale of dramatic expression and I don’t really believe in that. I actually believe in telling the stories with a lot of emotion. You're probably much more capable of reaching an audience if you feel you've got an important story or if you feel you have something in your heart which you think is important to convey.

JE: Do you see your films as a response to the lack of intensity in European drama?
SB: You don’t make sort of intense movies because you think other movies are boring. You make movies because you think this particular story is right. When I get the criticism of my movies being incredibly dramatic, I kind of go, "Yes, great. Thank you," even if it's not meant that way. I actually happen to think it's great.

JE: I was not posing it as a criticism –
SB: No, I know you were not.

JE: Do people actually criticize your films for being too dramatic?
SB: Actually it's interesting here, because I'm Danish, my movies are sort of "art house." In Europe I'm so mainstream, that I'm not entirely accepted among certain movie circles in Europe. I'm quite pleased with that. I mean, if you think moviemaking is about talking to two people in a very sophisticated cinema, far away from everything, be my guest. I just don’t believe it. I actually believe in making accessible movies with real content.

JE: Now that you say that, when I was at Sundance in January (where In a Better World screened), I was sitting around with a few Scandinavian filmmakers and there was a surprisingly intense debate over your films.
SB: Yeah.

JE: What do you think about the film's Oscar nomination?
SB: I'm very happy. I'm very proud. I get to wear a long dress.

JE: Do you think the Oscars usually get it right with the winners?
SB: Nobody gets it right always. I do tend to like the Oscar movies.

JE: They are usually dramas.
SB: [Laughs]. Yeah. Sometimes certain comedic performances do not get appreciated because they are comedic performances. And those can be the most difficult to put out. So tell me about this Sundance Scandinavian discussion. I think that's very interesting.

JE: Some thought you were too commercial. They thought your Oscar nomination came through name recognition since you had done Things We Lost in the Fire (with Halle Berry) and Brothers was adapted into English (withTobey Maguire). Others did not see how being commercial was a bad thing. And how could your films be so commercial since they were so intense? There were fans for Sweden's Simple Simon, which did not make the cut.
SB: Okay.

JE: You are also one of the few female filmmakers consistently working. Do you see progress for women trying to make it in this business?
SB: It's probably a bit easier, but society still places a big emphasis on women having to choose between their careers and having children. Society should change that. It's a huge pressure on younger women.

JE: Lastly, what do you think of these interviews where you discuss yourself and your work? Does it serve the film? Should the work speak for itself?
SB: That's a very theoretical question. Yes, I would prefer for my work to speak for itself, but that's not the reality. The reality is that I need to generate interest. If you are serious about your work, this is just as an important part as shooting the film.

JE: Do you read interviews with other directors?
SB: Sometimes. In Europe, particularly, directors can be very pretentious. That doesn’t make me terribly keen to see a film. I'm very sensitive to the education of a particular project. If I read a director, and the director seems sincerely dedicated, it is going to make me interested.

FILM REVIEW: POTICHE

Suzanne (Catherine Deneuve) and Maurice (Gérard Depardieu) in Potiche.

Strike de jour


By Ed Rampell

In the past few years the movies have been prophesying and mirroring social upheavals. Cut in the merry mode of Karel Reisz’s 1966 Marxist madcap Morgan!, Canadian writer-director Jacob Tierney’s uproarious 2009 film, The Trotsky, stars Jay Baruchel as a Montreal high school student who fantasizes he’s the reincarnation of the Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. The deluded teenager tries to organize a union at his dad’s factory, then leads a movement to form a student union, using social media to rally pupils for their high school’s class struggle. Baruchel’s droll The Trotsky is a “holy Tehrir.”

The 2010 British film, Made In Dagenham, stars Sally Hawkins as a factory worker who leads a real life strike for equal wages and women’s rights. Even a re-mastered version of Sergei Eisenstein’s immortal 1925 masterpiece, The Battleship Potemkin, about a sailors’ mutiny that triggers a mass strike in Odessa was theatrically re-released this month.

Now, that quintessence of French femininity, the exquisite Catherine Deneuve, is getting into the act. Writer-director Francois Ozon’s Potiche, based on the play by Barilet and Gredy, is the latest addition to the growing cinematic strike wave. Like Baruchel’s The Trotsky, Deneuve’s Suzanne Pujol is related to the owners of an umbrella factory in a French provincial town, formerly owned by her late, paternalistic father, and now run by her despotic, reactionary, philandering hubby, Robert (Fabrice Luchini, whom I last glimpsed in 2008’s highly enjoyable film, The Girl From Monaco).

No, the French word, "Potiche," is not some sort of Gallic corruption of “Che” as in Guevara. The closest translation is "Trophy wife," although it could mean anything that is suppose to be decorative (and quiet). I suppose it represents Suzanne’s role as a bourgeois homemaker (with the help of the help, but of course) and mother. When first seen in character onscreen, Denueve, long renowned for her unearthly beauty, looks positively schlumpfy, like a very ordinary hausfrau. Initially, I felt disheartened to see the Chanel shill and actress who’d starred in Luis Bunuel’s 1967 surreally kinky classic, Belle de Jour, and who exemplified “class” and elegance for a generation of viewers looking so plain.

But as strikes sweep her family’s factory in 1977, Suzanne finds inner resources of resolve, and there’s more to this ornamental madam than meets the eye. She seeks out Babin (Gerard Depardieu, another heavyweight of French cinema -- both literally and figuratively, as the actor has become morbidly obese), the mayor who is a member of the French Communist Party (PCF), to amicably settle the brewing brouhaha. Here, the story takes an unexpected turn, in terms of the relationship between the proletarian man of the people and the bourgeois goody two shoes.

The umbrella factory resuscitates the lusciousness that first graced the screen in Jacques Demy’s 1963 musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Suffice it to say that once Suzanne enters the fray she becomes transformed -- psychologically as well as physically, as the renowned radiance Deneuve has been known for emanating once again illumines the silver screen, and it’s wonderful to bask in her effervescent presence again. Finding her footing, Suzanne transcends the economic realm and, in our day and age of Sarah Palin, enters politics. This is not to imply at all that she’s a reactionary like Alaska’s lobotomized, vicious ex-guv, that Godzilla from Wasilla.

In fact, Potiche’s politics are peculiar. Suzanne rejects rabid rightwing austerity economics (a knowing nod to today’s dire crises). But the film does not see Babin and the PCF as an alternative, either. Depardieu -- who once portrayed the French revolutionary Georges Jacque Danton in the Polish director Andrzej Wajda’s 1983, Danton -- depicts Babin with empathy, and he has a few good lines about being a devoted lifelong leftist who may never live to see the revolution he’s dreamt of and worked for, but he has his problems, too.

Like Daniel “Danny the Red” Cohn-Bendit’s Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative, written in the wake of the historic May 1968 worker-student revolt in France, Potiche seeks a third way, another path between the traditional right and left. But instead of opting for anarchy like Dany le Rouge did, Potiche chooses a combination of feminism combined with the paternalism of Suzanne’s late father -- a sort of matriarchal maternalism.

Even if Potiche’s politics aren’t your cup of tea, it is a heady brew of comedy, romance, class struggle and song. And it’s a kick to see those French cinema stalwarts Depardieu and Deneuve – who first co-starred in Francois Truffaut’s 1980 anti-Nazi, The Last Metro -– reunited onscreen. Along with The Trotsky and Made In Dagenham, the delightful Potiche tackles the class war in an extremely entertaining, thought provoking, funny way. Don’t miss it.

DVD REVIEW: BLACK SWAN

Nina (Natalie Portman) in Black Swan.

White out

By Allan Heifetz

The rock star called Pink in Pink Floyd’s The Wall had a great many reasons to go completely bazonkers. His soldier dad died when Pink was little, his mom smothered him, his wife left him, the drugs, the drink, the Nazi-flavored paranoia, etc. All of these nasty ingredients combine in the end to smash Pink’s sanity. Nina, the meek ballerina of Black Swan, is also a sensitive artist with a large handful of issues that threaten her mind and eventually her life. She lives in near seclusion with her creepy and resentful mother (Barbara Hershey) and dances for a prestigious NYC company that runs her ragged physically and emotionally. Her scary director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel, playing the President of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace), demands perfection from her as well as 24-hour-access to her emaciated booty.

Nina has a brief moment of elation when she wins the coveted lead role in Swan Lake in which she must dance as both the white and the black swan. Her triumph is snuffed out after word is spread that she’s sleeping with the director. Nina becomes an outcast as Thomas continues to bully her into melding with her inner Black Swan in order to unleash the sexual, amoral and dark spirit inside. Alas, Nina is severely blocked sexually and can’t even successfully masturbate. Lily (Mila Kunis), a pretty, sexually open and popular dancer, tries to befriend Nina, but Nina’s delusion and paranoia quickly snuffs out that relationship. Nina is soon convinced that Lily is out to steal her role and destroy her. Nina’s hallucinations ramp up as she spirals down the crazy hole. Which side will seize control in the end; the white or the black? Always bet on black.

Black Swan is truly a rare bird; an extremely bleak story about ballet that somehow became very popular with filmgoers. Even though Natalie Portman put people in seats with her super-tortured and Oscar-winning performance, it’s Darren Aronofsky’s playfulness and technique with a camera that makes this horror story watchable and even fun. This is a horror movie where even the jump scares are artistic and breathtaking and the CGI effects are subtle. Black Swan feels like a little sister to Repulsion (1965), director Roman Polanski’s ode to isolation and sexual psychosis. If Repulsion is the ultimate “Girl descends slowly into madness” movie, then Black Swan just might be the Princess ballerina of the sub-genre that I might have just made up.

As far as DVD extras, there is an interesting, 30-minute behind-the-scenes documentary that leaves you wanting more. Unfortunately, that’s it.

The Blu-Ray extras reportedly offer the above documentary, plus three other behind-the-scenes pieces.

THEATER REVIEW: THE MERCY SEAT

 

Aftermath

By Miranda Inganni 

Due to unfathomable tragedy, Ben (Johnny Clark) is given a chance to change his life.

Set on September 12, 2001, Ben and his boss, Abby (Michelle Clunie), are holed up in her huge New York City home, waiting -- literally and figuratively -- for the terrorizing dust to settle in Neil LaBute's play, The Mercy Seat, making its Los Angeles premiere at [Inside] the Ford.

Married with children, Ben can't decide if he should answer his cell phone as his wife repeatedly calls. If he talks to her, he'd have to tell her the truth -- that he's alive because he's cheating on her.

Abby is honest yet manipulative, while Ben is honest yet naive. Abby's bitterness blinds her and she can't let him forget that he's married. She holds it against him, even though they are both willing participants in their affair. Ben comes across as conceited --  removed and seemingly unconcerned with the reality of his life. They both want everything to be fine, which is, of course, an impossibility considering the circumstances. While they dust off the ash from outside (dusting off reality), they can't shake the anger and resentment they have for each other.

As Ben's boss and senior (she's supposed to be 12 years older than he), Abby is in the position of power and authority, but she is at his mercy when it comes to their love. They both toy with the idea of capitalizing on the tragedy unfolding around them (a perfect American opportunity a la Shock Doctrine), running away to live happily ever after, but even they seem to sense that it's a fallacy. Instead they play the blame game and exchange barbs. She pretends everything is all right, faking her reality, running to the market to buy his favorite cheese. He ignores his reality, switching off his cell phone so as not to be bothered by its incessant ringing and the inevitable conversation answering it would entail. As a result, neither one is very likable and both are petty.

Running approximately 100 minutes sans intermission, LaBute and director Ron Klier's The Mercy Seat -- which has nothing to do with the brilliant Nick Cave/Mick Harvey song, later covered by Johnny Cash, about the electric chair -- both versions are played/mixed before and after the play (it's a pretty lame title for the play) -- examines opportunity at the point of crisis (the same word in Chinese, so they say) and having the courage, or rather stupidity, to cease on it. Ben's plan to avoid confrontation with his wife is incredibly idiotic and childish. If one wants to label LaBute "misogynistic," The Mercy Seat is not the place to do it. Abby is far more sympathetic than Ben.

While there isn't much in the way of physical chemistry between Clark and Clunie, both actors do a fine job. Clunie has great stage presence (though she plays too much with her hair), and both she and Clark deliver spirited performances full of spite and underlying emotion; do they love each other or simply hate themselves? Unfortunately, Clark's performance is understated where Clunie's comedic timing is sharp, resulting in her stealing the show.

If the worst tragedies bring out the best in people, I'd hate to see what Ben and Abby would be like normal day.

The Mercy Seat runs through April 24 at [Inside] the Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd., East, Hollywood, Ca. 90068. For more information: 323/461-3673 (GO-1-FORD); www.fordtheatres.org

SXSW 2011: ATTENBERG

Bella (Evangelia Randou) and Marina (Ariane Labed) in Attenberg.

Zooropa 

By Don Simpson

Writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Attenberg opens with a few feeble attempts at open-mouthed French kisses exchanged between Bella (Evangelia Randou) and Marina (Ariane Labed). The absurdly uncomfortable exercise is not one that is fueled by hormones or attraction, this is purely a learning experience -- the purportedly sexually advanced Bella is hopelessly attempting to teach her sexually naive 23-year-old best friend, Marina, how to kiss.

Marina still resides with her dying father, Spyros (Vangelis Mourikis) -- the architect who, back in the 1960s, developed the drearily concrete seaside town that they still inhabit. A daddy’s girl from her id to her superego, Marina and her father enjoy an absurd yet loving relationship that occasionally borders on taboo. We sense that Marina’s primary impetus to finally become sexually awakened is her father’s terminally ill condition; as if she is trying to replace her father’s love...or something like that.

Marina is the focal point of Attenberg and the audience quickly learns to observe Marina in the same manner in which she observes the world around her. Marina has learned most of what she knows about the world by studiously watching, alongside her father, Sir David Attenborough’s nature television programs. She perceives the world as a giant zoo: people are just another animal species and cities/towns are the cages that contain them. It is no wonder she views the world in this manner. She lives in a town that seems to be physically walled off from the rest of the world and being the only child of a single parent has proven to further shelter Marina from “normal” life experiences. 

Tsangari provokes the audience to study Marina as Marina discovers that she is a sexual being and explores the related implications. We clinically observe Marina’s advanced communication techniques (she speaks in Greek, sings in French, plays strange rhyming word games with her father, and makes animal noises for no particular reason), her wildly expressive movements (she and Bella walk/dance in carefully choreographed movements), and her obscure musical tastes (her favorite song is Suicide’s “Be Bop Kid”) in order to develop a novel ethnographic hypothesis explaining what the behaviors of this virgin subspecies of Homo sapiens might possibly mean to humankind. 

Attenberg is certainly not as fantastically absurd as Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth -- which Tsangari produced -- but the two Greek films do share a certain cinematic kinship in farcically discussing the effects of overly restrictive parenting, specifically related to the social and sexual repression of the offspring. One might say that Attenberg is like the mellow chaser used to calm the crazy rush after experiencing the sheer frenzy of Dogtooth, but it is certainly no less meaningful and pervasive.

DVD REVIEW: SASHA

Sasha (Sasa Kekez) in Sasha.

Croatia coming out

By John Esther

Released today on DVD, Sasha tells a very familiar story about a gay teenager, Sasha (Sasa Kekez), who must hide his feelings for members of the same sex from his family while overexposing his feelings toward a mentor with heart of cold, Gebhard (Tim Bergmann).

The son of Croatian parents living in German, at the insistence of his mother (Zeljka Preksavec) Sasha has been taking piano lessons from Gebhard. Dad (Pedja Bjelac) is not too pleased with his son endeavoring in anything has effeminate and effete as artistic endeavors, but lets it slide because Sasha has a “girlfriend,” Jiao (Yvonne Yung-Hee), who is also a musician training for the same upcoming all-important audition.

Already unnerved by living in the closet, Sasha starts to unravel when Gebhard tells him he is leaving for Austria. Sasha, in his adolescence naïvete believed he and Gebhard would always be together, even if Gebhard never showed any type of emotional reciprocation to Sasha.

When Sasha relates his brother heart to Jiao, she has her own emotional panic as she has strong feelings for Sasha. Obviously she, like Dad and dimwit Uncle Boki (Jasin Mjumjunov) has no gaydar. But Sasha's mother and younger brother (Ljubisa Lupo Grujcic) do -- although they do not dare say the words out loud.
Written and directed by Dennis Todorovic, Sasha does not breaking any narrative frontiers. There are plenty of coming out stories these days and the ending here is quite conventional and some of the dialogue rings hollow. However, the fine acting, pace and score make it worthwhile viewing, not enough to buy the DVD (which does not seem to offer any bonus features), but catching it via cable or Netflix should work.

SXSW 2011: THE DISH AND THE SPOON

Rose (Greta Gerwig) and Boy (Olly Alexander) in The Dish and the Spoon.

The woman with the thorns in her sides

By Don Simpson

We first meet Rose (Greta Gerwig) as she drives her car amidst some sort of intense emotional breakdown. Still clad in pajamas, Rose wanders into a convenience store located somewhere in Delaware to stock up on donuts and Dogfish Beer purchased with the change she scrounges from her car’s ashtray. Refueled with a hefty dose of sugar and alcohol, Rose continues her drive to the coastal town where her family’s vacation home is located.

Before heading to the shuttered house Rose climbs the spiral stairs of a cement lookout tower (used during World War II to search for German U-boats) where she meets an absurdly dislocated British manchild (Olly Alexander), a lost puppy of sorts who resembles a vaudevillian mash-up of Bob Dylan, Robert Smith, Oscar Wilde and Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp. It is not without purpose that a woman who has partially de-evolved into a sobbing, tantrum-throwing child meets an ambiguously-aged male who feeds her childlike tendencies, but also desires her love and affection. Whether that is the love and affection of a mother-figure, a lover or both has yet to be determined. The British lad represents the most simple and innocent form of love, but it also does not hurt matters that he has enough money to support Rose’s bender for a while.

It is not long before we learn the reason that Rose is in such a state of emotional disrepair: her husband has cheated on her, shagging one of Rose’s friends no less. The harlot in question just happens to live in the very same quaint seaside town where Rose’s bender has marooned her. Okay, it is not as much of a coincidence as it seems. It turns out Rose has arrived here quite purposefully to "kill the bitch." Rose and her Boy-friend thus proceed to alternate whimsical adventures with the development of their asexual romance with schemes to avenge the woman who slept with Rose’s hubby.

My unwavering love for Gerwig is pretty well known from sea to shining sea, but for those of you who have been residing under a rock since Hannah Takes the Stairs, let me warn you that I sometimes find myself a wee bit biased when it comes to reviewing films featuring Gerwig. That said, Gerwig’s unyieldingly emotional Tilt-a-Whirl of a performance in The Dish and the Spoon is by far the best of her career. Unleashing an endless plethora of emotions, Gerwig may totally let herself go at times (to transcendental results) but we never lose our sense of Rose’s reality as a human being. In Gerwig’s hands, Rose is a magnificent humanization of juxtapositions: juggling a dire sort of fragility with enduring strength, humor and beauty with ugly emotional breakdowns.

Alexander portrays the boy who fell to earth -- since Rose never once asks his name, we will never know what to call him (Alexander is credited as "Boy") -- with a frail and sweet persona, yet a mysterious presence. Alexander’s character seems to be not of the same time or place as Rose; and not just because of his accent and fashion sense, but his archaic taste in music and cultural naivete play into this as well. The Dish and the Spoon contemplates history in many literal manners (historical costumes, old-timey music, the characters’ discussion about Thanksgiving), but it is director and co-writer Alison Bagnall’s clever toying with the historical ambiguity of Alexander’s character -- who appears to be torn straight from a 19th-century novel -- that really turns any sense of reality on its head.

Bagnall, who co-wrote Buffalo ‘66 with Vincent Gallo, takes a fairly extreme risk allowing Gerwig to portray Rose’s turmoil and anguish with intense sincerity during some scenes while playing the same emotions for comedic affect in other scenes. Bagnall also reveals a real (or reel) knack for never allowing The Dish and the Spoon to veer too far into the realm of overly precious tweeness. Recalling Blue Valentine, an all-so-cute song and dance scene is one of the lighthearted highlights of an otherwise emotionally intense film. The Dish and the Spoon is incredibly sincere and brutally honest in its portrayal of the highs and lows of relationships -- especially in its representation of the rage and sadness that are closely associated with romance.

SXSW 2011: INSIDE AMERICA

A scene from Inside America.

Deep Southland tales

By Don Simpson

Metal detectors welcome us to Hanna High School in Brownsville, Texas. Then, on the other side of the threshold, we are greeted by police monitors and drug dogs in the hallways. Trust is not a virtue to be found in Hanna High School -- the one thing that the rich and the poor students have in common (other than the American flag that they must pledge their allegiance to on a daily basis) is that they are all bad.

Otherwise, director Barbara Eder’s Inside America works as an analysis of juxtapositions.

The film starts as a group of poor teenagers steal beer from a neighborhood convenience store; then we cut to an ROTC drill squad raising the U.S. flag in front of the high school. Later the ROTC drill squad’s maneuvers are juxtaposed with cheerleader practice and the loud arguing between the poor teens is juxtaposed with the barking orders of the ROTC drill squad. Poor students in ESL classes are juxtaposed with rich students in modeling class. Broken homes -- kids living with foster parents, grandparents or drugged-out parents -- are juxtaposed with the overbearing parents of the rich kids. The poor kids get bad grades and have bad attendance records while the rich kids appear to be passing their classes just fine. Most importantly, the rich kids are U.S. citizens and the poor kids are illegal immigrants or at least do not have a social security number.

As we learn during one of the classes, the students are taught that even the poor and underprivileged can realize the American dream (you know, the old Victorian house with a white picket fence). They can be a part of it; work their way up from the bottom to the top. Who knows how they will be able to do that without social security numbers -- especially if the political right enacts more state laws similar to the Arizona immigration law (SB1070). One of the more humorous (albeit tinged with bitterness) moments is when one of the ROTC students is asked to describe the American way of life. He responds: “Following orders.”

Eder focuses primarily on six high schoolers: Patty (Patty Barrera) lives with her two grandmothers (Cary Gonzalez and Jovita Gonzalez), she is turning 18 soon and her family is trying to set her up with a good (religious and wealthy) boy (Eduardo Aramburo) from church; Patty is dating Manni (Raul Juarez), a tortilla factory worker who lives with his mother (Criselda Argullin), a drug addict; Zuly (Zuleyma Jaime) is trying to figure out where she is going to live once she turns 18 and must leave her foster home; Aimee (Aimeé Lizette Saldivar) is the head cheerleader, frontrunner in the ”most beautiful” contest at Hanna High, and heavy cocaine user; Aimee’s boyfriend, Carlos (Carlos Benavides), is an anti-immigrant ROTC student who enjoys shooting his paint gun at freaked-out bystanders while speeding around town in his big ass truck; Ricky (Luis De Los Santos) is a shy and naive nerdy kid who gets picked on in school and hopelessly tries to sell cookies so that he can travel with the rest of the school choir to Disney World.

Eder’s feature film debut is a raw, brutal and jaded perspective of Brownsville and, from what I have heard about Brownsville, it is pretty damn near spot on. Inside America is based on Eder’s -- a native Austrian -- experiences as an exchange student in Brownsville in 1994. Eder dedicates herself to discovering the truth in this story by utilizing non-actors -- real gang members, beauty contestants and illegal immigrants. Inside America is very clearly a critique of an outsider looking in (Eder seems intent on revealing herself as an outsider by way of the film’s soundtrack), but sometimes it does take someone as far removed as Eder to show the people living inside America the truth.

FILM REVIEW: THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (REMASTERED)

A scene from The Battleship Potmekin.

Stills the greatest

By Ed Rampell

At an Oscar party this year, actress Magi Avila asked me if I had a favorite film. Interestingly, I think that the best movie ever was made before the cinema had sound and color (except for that hand tinted red flag, that is!). Nor are there conventional movie stars or a sexy love story in director Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 masterpiece, The Battleship Potemkin, based on the real life saga of a revolt aboard a ship that spread like wildfire to the port city of Odessa.

When I was a student revolutionary I read Rosa Luxemburg’s stirring 1906 pamphlet The Mass Strike, and never forgot one line that made an indelible impression upon me: “But in the storm of the revolutionary period even the proletarian is transformed from a provident paterfamilias demanding support, into a ‘revolutionary romanticist,’ for whom even the highest good, life itself, to say nothing of material well-being, possesses but little in comparison with the ideals of the struggle.”

Yes, what I am referring to is the romance of revolution, when people are lifted up out of their petty mindsets and ruts and all things suddenly seem possible. Unlike general strikes, which are generally planned and called for by trade union leadership, mass strikes usually spontaneously originate and, in fertile soil, mushroom and go viral. Most recently, a Tunisian vendor who set himself on fire in order to protest the state’s abuses there set off the uprisings now rocking North Africa and the Middle East – and arguably, Wisconsin.

In the case of The Battleship Potemkin, as the title cards -- all 146 have been restored in this remastered edition -- reveal, what instigates 1905 czarist Russian sailors is being forced to eat maggoty meat. This touches off a mutiny, and then a strike by Odessa’s working class, as, literally, a cast of thousands pour across the screen decades before CGI, in support of their mutinous mates. This movie’s “stars,” of course, are the aroused workers and sailors, finally standing up for their rights and breaking the chains of oppression in order to win a new liberated world. What is extremely notable is the mass psychology of the people in the act of defiant solidarity and rebellion -- they are nearly ecstatic. For instance, more recently we saw this elation among the crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square as the populace threw off their tyrants.

Of course, the czarist pigs must put the workers back into their place(s) and stamp out this outpouring of mass joy and unity, so they sic their Cossack dogs on the unarmed civilians in what is arguably the silver screen’s most terrifying scene of violence en masse. The Odessa Steps sequence is a tour-de-force of montage, with rapid editing that pops your eyes and tugs your heartstrings. It is to the mass drama what Alfred Hitchcock’s pulsating Psycho shower scene is for slasher/ serial killer flicks and what the shootout at the O.K. Corral is to Western enthusiasts. The throbbing, powerful Odessa Steps’ five or so minutes will make you sit on the edge of your seat, and it has been oft spoofed and referenced in many movies, such as Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables and most recently in the aptly named The Trotsky.

This Cossack carnage, however, never really happened as portrayed onscreen. According to legend, while planning Potemkin Eisenstein stood atop the Odessa Steps chewing cherries, taking in the vista of this Ukrainian port city. When he spit the pits out of his mouth Eisenstein noticed them bounce down the stairs, and the germ of an idea was born. Thus, the stuff of legends. Be that as it may, this spectacle of cinematic slaughter brilliantly shot by Eduard Tisse only “lies” in order to tell the truth about the brutal repression of the czarist regime.

The sailors aboard the battleship boldly respond to the mass killing. Eisenstein symbolically uses stone lions to express the rising of the proletariat (this was rather hilariously spoofed in a sex scene in Woody Allen’s Love and Death). But the rebellious sailors must pay for their mutiny on the Potemkin, and the czarists deploy a squadron to defeat the revolutionaries. Undaunted, the Potemkin courageously steams toward the entire battle fleet, sort of like Gary Cooper almost single-handedly taking on all the bad guys in High Noon. What happens next, Dear Reader, is not only one of the greatest moments in the history of revolutions (yes, it actually happened!), but in film history.

Around 1922, Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin declared: “For us, the cinema is the most important of the arts.” Alas, Lenin never lived long enough to see Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin. This silent film speaks volumes. With its jubilant, triumphant vision of human solidarity it arguably did more to spread the gospel of the revolution more than any book or pamphlet by Karl Marx, Lenin or Leon Trotsky ever did.

I hadn’t seen The Battleship Potemkinon the big screen since my Hunter College cinema professor Joel Zucker screened it for our film history class and I’m happy to report that it remains my favorite movie of all time.

FILM NEWS: HOLLYWOOD PROTEST

Demonstrators and tourists in front of the fabled Chinese Theatre during the antiwar protest. Photo by Horace Coleman.

Antiwar Activists Arrested at Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre

By Ed Rampell

A March 19 antiwar demonstration in Los Angeles ended with around nine activists being taken away by L.A.P.D. officers after they occupied the courtyard of Hollywood’s world famous Chinese Theatre. Up to 25 veterans or relatives of military personnel deployed to Iraq and/or Afghanistan staged the sit-down strike on the cement blocks bearing movie stars’ footprints and inscriptions in front of the Asian-themed movie palace Sid Grauman opened in 1927. The protesters held photos of their uniformed loved ones and placed boots with name cards over the cement that had been autographed when wet by celebrities such as Clint Eastwood. The sit-down strikers also displayed a cement slab of their own engraved with boot prints and the words “Forgotten Dead,” plus a placard that read: “True Cost of War, 5,941,” referring to the number of U.S. servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The act of civil disobedience began around 3:15 p.m. as an antiwar march and rally protesting the eighth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, plus the Afghan and now Libyan wars. A speaker on the truck that served as a stage commented that the sit-in participants were “Disrupting business as usual, taking a stand by sitting down.” About 40 armed L.A.P.D. officers surrounded the peaceful activists, using metal railings and bicycles to cut the courtyard off from throngs of demonstrators, tourists and superhero impersonators in front of what is now Mann’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd.’s celebrated “Walk of Fame,” with its inset stars honoring various Tinseltown talents.

A policeman videotaped the courtyard occupiers and a policewoman kneeled to talk with participants in the action, which included Dede Miller, the sister of noted “Antiwar Mom” Cindy Sheehan (who reportedly took part in a Northern California protest) and aunt of Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq and whose photo Miller held. The sit-down strikers also included members of Military Families Speak Out, a national organization of people opposed to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who have relatives or loved ones currently in the military, or who have served in the military since the fall of 2002.

The uniformed officers conferred with an African-American man in a suit who may have been a theater employee, as well as with attorney Jim Lafferty, an organizer of the peace march and rally and head of the L.A. office of the National Lawyers Guild. This reporter, who was in the frontline of the crowd watching the unfolding drama, overheard a sergeant give orders to L.A.P.D. officers: “Take responsibility for the arrests. Two at a time.” At this point about six policemen were admitted from the sidewalk into the Chinese Theatre’s courtyard. One protester, a middle aged man who’d earlier given an angry speech at Hollywood and Vine about what the Iraq War had done to his PTSD-suffering son, was allowed to leave the courtyard, and then delivered another address from the truck/stage.

One by one, beginning with a woman, up to nine sit-down strikers rose and were peacefully led away, accompanied by an officer on either side, as supporters in the crowd applauded and cheered their comrades on, sometimes by name. One women escorted off the property wore a Code Pink T-shirt. Another woman gave the peace sign behind her back as officers accompanied her across the courtyard to an entrance way of an exit leading outside of the theatre complex. The last protester was taken away by police around 4:05 p.m. According to Lafferty, they were booked and charged with trespassing, and then released. The rest of the demonstrators left the scene of their own accord, apparently without being arrested. The black man in plainclothes returned the boots representing fallen warriors to the sidewalk. Police were still inside the theatre courtyard as late as 5:00 p.m.

Coincidentally, one of the cement blocks the sit-down strikes had occupied bore the footprints and inscription of Tom Cruise. Shortly before the civil disobedience had begun, Ron Kovic -- the paralyzed Vietnam vet portrayed by Cruise in Oliver Stone’s 1989 antiwar classic, Born On the Fourth of July – spoke onstage to thousands of rally-goers while ensconced in the wheelchair he’s been confined to since Kovic was shot 43 years ago in Indochina.

“The power of the people is unbeatable,” declared Kovic. “We see it in Tunisia, Cairo. We are not exempt in this country from sweeping change… It can happen here… We are moving into a period of great change.”

Kovic then led the crowd in an a cappella rendition of John Lennon’s "Give Peace a Chance."

Other notables at the demo included actor James Cromwell, who was Oscar-nominated for playing the farmer in 1995’s talking pig comedy, Babe, and more recently appeared in Secretariat, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who won two Academy Awards, including for the 1976 Woody Guthrie biopic, Bound For Glory. The Foo Fighters’ Chris Shifflet spoke and sang onstage. Marci Winograd, a perennial left-leaning Democratic congressional candidate now seeking to replace Rep. Jane Harmon, also denounced the wars.

Empty military footgear symbolizing fallen warriors were placed on spots bearing celebrity footprints. Photo by Horace Coleman.

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, which had organized the peace rallies and march, estimated the number of L.A. participants to be about 4,000 people. The event started at noon with a brief rally at the fabled intersection of Hollywood and Vine, followed by a march down Hollywood Blvd. to Sunset Blvd., past CNN’s L.A. headquarters, then back up to Hollywood Blvd., where a second and longer rally was held in front of the Chinese Theatre. Along the way, marchers encountered a handful of religious counter-demonstrators, who they outnumbered by more than 100 to one. The peace parade was led by Kovic, who frequently flashed the peace sign with his fingers. Marchers held antiwar banners and signs and chanted slogans such as: “Hey Obama We Say No, The Occupation’s Got To Go. Hey Obama, Yes You Can. Troops Out of Afghanistan.” An overhead blimp carried by demonstrators bore a banner asking: “How’s the war economy for you?” Speakers emphasized the economic costs of the wars, which they estimated to cost $700 million per day, while schools, hospitals and other essentials were being cutback.

Rally speakers denounced not only the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the spread of warfare to Libya; the allegedly abusive treatment of imprisoned PFC Bradley Manning, accused of giving classified information to WikiLeaks; as well as the perils of the ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Japan. There were demonstrations at other U.S. cities, such as at Washington, D.C., where more than 100 demonstrators, including Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, were arrested outside the White House.

SXSW 2011: SILVER BULLETS

Kate (Kate Lyn Sheil) in Silver Bullets.

Swanberg song

By Don Simpson

Blurring the line between fiction and reality, writer-director-producer-cinematographer-editor Joe Swanberg' film’s opts not to formally name any of the characters in Silver Bullets, most likely because all of the actors are playing fictionalized versions of themselves.

Joe (Swanberg) and Kate (Kate Lyn Sheil) are an onscreen couple who often work together on films -- the former as the director and lead actor, the latter as the lead actress. When Kate accepts the leading role as a werewolf in a new Ti West project, Joe finds himself casting a new leading lady, Kate’s friend, Amy (Amy Seimetz). Jealousy ensues. Joe rightly assumes that Ti has his eyes set on Kate while Kate becomes very upset that Joe would cast her friend in his next project because she knows that this also means that Joe and Amy will establish an extremely close (and naked) on-camera relationship. Oh, what an incestuous world of celluloid!

I do not think it is too much of a stretch to state that Silver Bullets is Swanberg’s most Godardian film to date -- and that is not just because it features a girl with a gun or an onscreen director with a penchant for cinema theory. This is a film in which Swanberg puts himself under the proverbial microscope, in true self-reflexive fashion, questioning his role as a filmmaker and as a sexual being.

Swanberg’s cinematic output has traditionally burst with unbridled sexuality -- a quality that I suspect may have caused some arguments with his off-screen lovers over the years. (Swanberg is currently married.) Silver Bullets appears to be Swanberg’s way of working through all of that, while directly addressing past criticisms of his work -- primarily that he is a predatory director who makes movies solely for the opportunity to make out with attractive actresses. It is important to note that Silver Bullets is much more sympathetic towards Kate; revealing Joe as a two-timing cheat.

Silver Bullets is also the most stylistically playful of Swanberg’s films, at least since Hannah Takes the Stairs. Swanberg tinkers not only with the visual aspects of cinema but with its narrative conventions as well. I have never really thought of Swanberg as an editor, but he does a beautiful job tying together Silver Bullets’ concurrent stories in an overtly artful fashion. Despite being completely unscripted, Silver Bullets is dramatically more complex than Swanberg’s previous efforts; it is also his most cohesive and coherent, especially in terms of purpose. Silver Bullets represents a clean break from Mumblecore (a genre not known for profound messages) for Swanberg. He has a lot to say, and the messages are relayed loud and clear.

Swanberg also premiered Uncle Kent at Sundance Film Festival 2011.

SXSW 2011: MY SUCKY TEEN ROMANCE

Kate (Elaine Hurt) in My Sucky Teen Romance.

Big gulp

By Don Simpson

Every decade there seems to be a new cinematic approach to the vampire genre -- a majority of which involve some sort of adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. There are classics (Robert G. Vignola’s The Vampire, F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, Universal’s and Hammer Films’ Dracula franchises, etc.) as well as the reverential revivals of “serious” vampire films that were released in the 1980s (Tony Scott’s The Hunger, Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys, Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, etc.) and 1990s (Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker's Dracula, Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos, Michael Almereyda’s Nadja, Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire, etc.). In one way or another, cinema history leads us to the more recent past, with films such as Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In (and Matt Reeves’ remake, Let Me In) and the Twilight franchise. (To be perfectly honest, I am not quite sure how or where the tween-tastic Twilight franchise fits into the history of vampire films, if it does at all.)

There has also been a slew of vamp comedies and satires over the decades (Charles Barton’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, Stan Dragoti’s Love at First Bite, Mel Brooks’ Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Malcolm Marmorstein’s Love Bites, etc.); but, for me (I by no means purport to be an expert on this subject), Joss Whedon’s television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is the first production that matches note-for-note a snarky sort of irreverence with a catholic reverence for not only the vampire genre but for pop culture history as well. This is kind of sort of where 18-year old writer-director Emily Hagins enters the fanged foray with My Sucky Teen Romance.

My Sucky Teen Romance is not nearly as snarky or catholic as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, the tone is completely different, but both productions are coming from the same sort of sucky high school existence. As for the remainder of the vampire film pantheon, I would place My Sucky Teen Romance somewhere along the lines of The Lost Boys and Near Dark -- though My Sucky Teen Romance is not nearly as dark. Heck, My Sucky Teen Romance is probably the most colorful and brightest vampire film of them all!.

This is Kate’s (Elaine Hurt) last week in town before she leaves for college and she is spending her final weekend with her best friends at the local sci-fi convention, SpaceCON. A fan-boy’s fantasy, Kate is a cute girl who likes comic books.

Kate meets Paul (Patrick Delgado) at the local grocery store (which also happens to be my neighborhood grocery store: Crestview Minimax IGA). Kate attempts to chat-up Paul, mentioning that she likes the comic book that he is reading, but he, like many comic book geeks, is completely clueless to her advances.

Fate -- or maybe it is just plain old-fashioned bloodlust -- brings Kate and Paul together again at SpaceCON. Paul is looking remarkably paler and his teeth have become quite fangy. Oh, wait, he must be dressed up in a vampire costume for the convention! Soon Kate is dressed up as a vampire too.

When Nancy Drew (Emily Hagins) goes missing, Kate and her friends -- Allison (Lauren Lee), Jason (Santiago Dietche) and Mark (Tony Vespe) -- become suspicious that danger is afoot in the form of Vince (Devin Bonnee). So they form their own version of Whedon’s Scoobies. Kate slowly evolves into a vampire expert (of sorts) while Jason relies on his impressive knowledge of monsters (he watches a lot of horror movies)... Oh, and as luck would have it, Harry Knowles is hosting the Vampires 101 panel at SpaceCON today! So Austin.

Although My Sucky Teen Romance is purposefully referential and shies away from any pretense of realism, the story is so much more real and grounded than the Twilight saga. As a teenager, Hagins clearly understands her teenager characters better than most directors who are not teenagers. (I imagine that Hagins has probably experienced a sucky teenage romance more recently than 99.9 percent of all other film directors.) It also helps that the characters actually look like teenagers.

My Sucky Teen Romance is unmistakably a film for teens by teens. The news is that -- at least judging from Hagins’ film -- the awkward romantic (or lack thereof) experiences of teenage comic book/sci-fi/horror geeks has barely changed in the past three decades; so I expect that most aged comic book/sci-fi/horror geeks will be able to appreciate Hagins’ knack for teenage suckiness as much as I do.