THEATER REVIEW: THE ROYAL FAMILY

A scene from The Royal Family.

Wise-eyed Geer

 

By Ed Rampell

 

George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s 1927 The Royal Family is a love letter to the act of acting, and, in particular, to the actors and actresses who trod the boards and appear onscreen. Modeled after the Barrymore clan, The Royal Family'sCavendishes are the first family of America’s thespians. Greasepaint coursing through their blood they are theatrical in every sense of the term, as well as free spirits similar to the Sycamores in the anarchistic screwball comedy You Can’t Take It With You, which Kaufman co-wrote with Moss Hart for the stage in 1936 and with Robert Riskin for the screen in 1938 (co-starring a certain Lionel Barrymore, BTW).

 

Who better to incarnate this dynasty of performers than members of the House -- or, rather, amphitheater -- of Geer, a real life line of stage of screen artistes, descended from legendary, lanky Will Geer (1954’s The Salt of the Earth, 1972’s Jeremiah Johnson, and ultimately as America’s beloved über-grandpa from 1972-1978 on TV’s The Waltons)? Ellen Geer, the venerable Artistic Director of theWill Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, plays Fanny, the aging, ailing, grand dame of the thee-a-tuh and matriarch of the Cavendishes. Ellen’s sister, Melora Marshall -- a shape shifting actress known, among other things, for her gender bending roles (she portrays the male character Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew, one of the other plays this troupe is presenting in repertory this summer) -- here plays Fanny’s daughter, actress Julie Cavendish. Willow Geer -- who, offstage, is Ellen’s actual daughter and Marshall’s niece -- portrays ingénue Gwen Cavendish, the onstage child of Julie at the beginning of her acting career.

 

The Geers’ in-law, Abby Craden, depicts Kitty Dean, who is dissed and disdained by the Cavendishes for committing the unforgivable, heinous crime of being a lousy actress. This presents an artistic challenge for Craden -- who has portrayed Cleopatra and Queen Elizabeth in Theatricum Shakespearean productions and also appeared in numerous plays presented by the A Noise Within company -- because Craden actually is quite a good player.

 

The Royal Family's action takes place entirely in the Cavendishes’ sprawling home. Comebacks, romances, premieres and more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy are hatched on the premises in this madcap comedy and merry meditation on the nature of celebrity. The Cavendishes are fiendishly funny, hammy, scenery-chewing, attention seeking troupers, for whom the play’s the thing (along with the moolah, adulation, and gratification applause brings). If Fanny is patterned after Ethel Barrymore (who threatened to sue the playwrights and after Royal’sBroadway premiere “only nodded coolly to Kaufman when the two met at parties,” according to Howard Teichmann’s biography of the writer), then Tony Cavendish is clearly inspired by that matinee idol, John Barrymore.

 

The estimable Aaron Hendry’s two-fisted Tony steals ever single scene he’s in, like Winona Ryder let loose in Saks Fifth Avenue. Hendry, who also plays Petruchio this season in the Theatricum’s Taming of the Shrew, portrays his swashbuckling character with great panache, and is heaps of fun to watch in every scene he steals, dashing from brawls, paparazzi and lovers seeking to serve him legal papers for “breach of promise” lawsuits. Both playwrights knew Drew’s forebears, the Barrymores, but there is scant if any mention by Kaufman and Ferber of the carousing John Barrymore’s legendary, prodigious drinking. Their farce focuses on the foibles of actors by trade, and in particular on the few who attain stardom and are firmly fixed in the public eye.

 

The stage and screen credits of Kaufman, of course, include the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, as well as Dinner at Eight (with Ferber), Nothing Sacred, The Man Who Came to Dinner and other classics. Ferber, who likewise was a mid-Westerner with a German-Jewish and newspaper background, was also a novelist who wrote the books Show Boat, Giant and Cimarron, which were adapted for the screen. A film version of their The Royal Family was directed by George Cukor in 1930 and in 1977 there was a TV movie version. Given today’s snaparazzi and the TMZ, tabloid press with TMI about celebs, it would be a hoot to update this 86-year-old play.

 

In any case, Susan Angelo ably directs what is now a period piece, with a cast that includes Theatricum alum Alan Blumenfeld as Oscar Wolfe, a commercial theatrical producer who yet dreams of producing at least one play with redeeming artistic value. Tim Halligan drolly depicts the over-the-hill Herbert Dean who dreams of returning to the limelight. Andy Stokan and Bill Gunther both play the long suffering suitors of, respectively, Gwen and Julie, who have the impossible task of competing for their affections with the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd.

  

The Royal Family is delicious fun with the Geers in fine form and moving in high Geer. This is a rollicking, royal romp full of Bohemian bonhomie, an ode to those who have been bitten by the acting bug -- and to those of us who enjoy watching them prance about on- and offstage in their not-so-private lives.

 

 

The Royal Family runs through Sept. 28 at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum: 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, California, 90290. For repertory schedule and other information call: 310-455-3723 or see: www.Theatricum.com.

 

LAFF 2013: LEVITATED MASS

A scene from Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer's Monolithic Sculpture.

Rock and road

By Miranda Inganni

Energetic and highly enjoyable, director Doug Pray’s Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer’s Monolithic Sculpture brings to life the 2012 journey of a giant piece of granite through darkened city streets that caught the attention of mainstream media and sleepy communities alike.

In the late 1960s artist Michael Heizer envisioned the idea for “Levitated Mass,” a hulking rock balanced on top a long walkway. Decades later, Heizer received a call from his friends at Stone Valley Quarry in Riverside, CA saying that they had found Heizer his rock. Blasted out of the ground, the enormous mass sat where it was until a suitable location was found and the money raised to attempt to move it. No small feat, indeed. Step in Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan and the art-loving donors who helped fund the $10 million transportation project.

Pray’s film does not try to explain Heizer’s vision, though Pray includes many clips from previously recorded interviews and shows a number of Heizer’s other installations and exhibits. And though it took over a year to figure out the engineering and logistics, the rock only traveled for 11 nights. Along the way, something seemingly magical happened, wherever the rock went, people followed. The public’s response was overwhelming. Some folks were bewildered, others saw a conspiracy, but mostly people were impressed at the largesse of it all.

With cinematography by Christopher Chomyn, Edwin Stevens and Pray that expertly captures the scale of the rock and the undertaking and a score by Akron/Family which highlights the drama and suspense (literal and figurative) of the film, Levitated Mass is a movie that will be sure to get audiences discussing the meaning of art and the amazing feats that humans continue to accomplish.

 

THEATER REVIEW: YES, PRIME MINISTER

A scene from Yes, Prime Minister.

We are amused

By Ed Rampell

Yes, Prime Ministeris in the tradition of the British drawing room comedy, which is characterized by witty repartee among usually upper class characters and largely set in the room of a house where guests are entertained. However, this work has one major difference: its drawing room is located in Chequers, the official countryside retreat of the British PM. That’s “PM” as in Yes, Prime Minister, the West End and BBC hit by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, which is now having its U.S. debut at the Geffen Playhouse.

As such, Yes, Prime Minister’s bristling dialogue is decidedly political and full of humorous social commentary about the British power elite, plus the expediency and opportunism that characterizes affairs (figuratively and literally) of state. The barbs about the BBC, celebrity activism and what may be the first drone strike joke launched from the stage of a major play fly fast and furious in English accents. There’s something rotten in the estate at Buckinghamshire, where the PM, his advisors and the Kumranistani Ambassador have gathered at Chequers to try to navigate a path more circuitous than a slalom run in order to clinch a deal with a (fictional) oil-rich Central Asian nation that could pull the U.K. and the European Union out of the grips of recession.

The careers -- and collective asses -- of the Prime Minister and his flunkies are also on the proverbial line. As members of the political class survival of their positions -- and pensions -- are first and foremost in their thoughts, with the well-being of the British people a sometimes distant second.

The New York-born Michael McKean more than holds his own, but as Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby Dakin Matthews almost steals the show. Appleby is the consummate career civil servant who speaks in the bureaucratese jargon that George Orwell denounced in 1984 and his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” wherein Orwell criticized politicians’ “inflated style… A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity… politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

But keep your eyes on Sir Humphrey -- behind his funky functionary lingo he is the ultimate survivor, and he’s not about to be voted off the sceptered island. Jonathan Lynn adroitly directs his cast composed, surprisingly, mostly of Yanks, although Rogue Machine company member Ron Bottitta, who plays a cameraman and is the understudy for other roles, was born in London. The other cast members from the colonies include Jefferson Mays (a veteran of Broadway, off-Broadway and the big and little screens) as Bernard Woolley, the unctuous, eager to please goody-two-shoes Principal Private Secretary to the PM. Tara Summers (who co-starred on the tart Boston Legal TV series) excels as the younger, hipper, scheming, less scrupulous Special Advisor to the PM Claire Sutton. As the Kumranistani Ambassador Jerusalem-born Brian George (a veteran of TV sitcoms and dramas) saunters in and out of the Chequers drawing room in his slippers and robe. In a brief appearance as the BBC’s Director-General, Time Winters scores points about the relationship between the fourth estate and the state -- especially when the latter holds -- and pulls -- the purse strings. This is all the more delicious when one considers that a TV sitcom version of Yes, Prime Minister has aired on the Beeb, biting the hand that feeds it.

The single set by scenic designer Simon Higlett, a West End stalwart, seemed to this untutored eye to perfectly capture the architectural ambiance of Chequers, that rural residence that goes at least as far back as the 16^th century. Sound designers Andrea Cox and John Leonard’s sound effects almost literally had me jumping out of my seat a couple of times.

Yes, Prime Minister is not a play for a nitwit -- but for those who like their wit to be Brit, sly and wry, this reviewer resoundingly votes in the affirmative. Harrumph!


Yes, Prime Minister runs through July 14 at The Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For more information: 310-208-5454; www.GeffenPlayhouse.com

 

LAFF 2013: DORMANT BEAUTY

Maria (Alba Rohrwacher) in Dormant Beauty.

Death panelists

By Ed Rampell

Marco Bellocchio rocketed to fame in 1965 with Fists in the Pocket, a riveting look at epileptics, and 1967’s China is Near, which daringly dealt with Maoism when this was a strictly taboo topic. The Italian director’s leftist bent was also evident in 2009’s Vincere, about the son of Mussolini and his mistress. Bellocchio is still pushing the proverbial envelope -- his latest offering, Dormant Beauty, sort of combines the searing look at sickness and hard hitting politics of his first two features with yet another forbidden subject.

 

The topical Dormant Beauty is about -- depending on your point of view -- the right to die, or perhaps, rather, the right to life. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy is torn apart by warring factions who oppose state sanctioned and administered deaths, in particular, for people in comas. Bellocchio skillfully interweaves news footage about an actual 2008 court battle involving Eluana Englaro -- a woman who had been in a vegetative state for 17 years and is about to be removed from life support -- with several private stories that are variations on the same theme, proving once again that the political is also personal.

 

Tony Servillo (2008’s Il Divo, 2010’s Gorbaciof) stars as an Italian senator, Uliano Beffardi, who decides to go against party discipline and do that odd thing in bourgeois electoral politics: take a principled stand in favor of the right to die and deciding to end one’s own life. In the process the senator ends his own political life. (At one point a protester mocks him for turning his back on socialism.) Previously, the senator’s own wife was dying in the hospital and now Beffardi’s daughter, Maria (Alba Rohrwacher), has joined the religious zealots who vociferously oppose the right to die. She has one of Dormant Beauty’s two “cute meets”, as she romances Roberto (Michele Riondino), whom she encounters through demonstrations regarding the fate of the comatose woman. Although they are on opposite sides of the issue, the couple provide the movie’s nude scene. Roberto’s brother, Pipino (Fabrizio Falco), is a right-to-die fanatic as angry and disturbed as any of the characters in Fists in the Pocket.

The sensuous Italian-Iranian actress Maya Sansa plays a suicidal thief and addict who has the movie’s other cute meet, with the compassionate Dr. Pallido (the director’s son, Pier Giorgio Bellocchio). Playing true to type, the great French actress Isabelle Huppert (1974’s Going Places, 1980’s Heaven’s Gate, 1982’s Godard’s Passion, 2012’s Amour) portrays a thespian called Divina Madre, whose own daughter hovers between life and death in a coma.

It’s an odd thing that (especially in this country) the so-called right to life movement fanatically opposes abortion and assisted suicides, but often the very same leaders and rank-and-file true believers are gung ho when it comes to capital punishment and going to war. I guess matters of life and death are like comedy -- it’s all in the timing.

Be that as it may, this Italian writer-director remains in good form and renders a trenchant, poignant, thoughtful look at this controversial issue.

 

 

 

LAFF 2013: AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY

Grace Lee Boggs in American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs.

Lee winding road

By Ed Rampell

American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggsis engagingly, wittily directed by Grace Lee. No relation to her documentary’s subject, Lee first stumbled upon Boggs a decade ago while making another nonfiction film, 2005’s The Grace Lee Project.

The director appears onscreen in American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee, but the focus remains fixed on Boggs. Lee has a good film sense and her techniques run the gamut, from naturalistic talking heads footage -- including of Bill Moyers, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis and Danny Glover -- to the imaginatively cinematic. For example, in sharp contrast to most longwinded leftwing intellectuals, Lee humorously sums up Hegel and Marx in 30 second montages, and creatively uses reverse motion historical news clips to represent going back in time for this biopic about Boggs.

Boggs attended the LAFF screenings in her wheelchair, took part in Q&As with Lee and appeared on Tavis Smiley’s PBS talk show on June 21. An inspiration on- and offscreen, this radical icon remains full of grace -- bogged down she’s not, as she remains ready for the revolution -- whatever form it may take.

 

 

LAFF 2013: OUR NIXON

Richard M. Nixon in Our Nixon.

In your ears and in your eyes

By Ed Rampell

Our Nixonis a compilation film by Penny Lane about the only U.S. President (so far!) who resigned and had to leave that office is disgrace. The documentary is largely composed of and culled from 500 hours of never-before-publicly-seen Super 8 home movies shot by three Nixon aides that were seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigation, then filed away and forgotten -- until the intrepid (and obstreperous) Lane unearthed and rescued this cinematic treasure trove for posterity. She has shaped out of the raw material of this footage an eye-opening insider’s glimpse of President Richard Milhous Nixon and his benighted administration.

Lane painstakingly matches sound and wry musical choices to the silent chronicles and adds archival video from network news vaults. From a film form point of view this is a fascinating exercise in cinema verite. The fly-on-the-wall Nixon remix includes celluloid shot by advisor John Ehrlichman, Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman and special assistant Dwight Chapin. The documentary reminds us how young this regime’s hacks and hatchet men were -- Ehrlichman was 43, Haldeman 34 and Chapin a mere 27. But boy were they ever on the wrong side of the 1960s/1970s generational divide!

Chapin, the youngest, went to college with dirty trickster Donald Segretti, whose Nixonian specialty was “ratfucking,” (pardon my French, but the Nixon administration was known for its “expletives deleted”) the Democrats, such as that phony “Canuck” letter to presidential candidate Sen. Edmund Muskie that supposedly caused him to cry and appear weak; tossing marbles on the ground at a Democratic rally, and other pranks gone beserk. The film discloses that “Segretti” translates, appropriately, from the Italian to “secrets” in English. This is who Nixon’s henchmen hobnobbed with: Verily, ye shall know them by the company they keep!

Our Nixon contains great behind-the-scenes footage of historic events, such as Tricky Dick’s 1972 breakthrough Beijing trip, where the veteran anti-communist met with Mao and applauded a performance of the revolutionary ballet The Red Detachment of Women. The documentary also has surprises, such as: Did you know that the right’s idiot savant, William F. Buckley, was on Nixon’s China trip? And Tricky Dick’s comments on Henry Kissinger (the National Security Advisor’s sex life is far more offensive to Nixon than his mass murders), eavesdropping, approval ratings, etc., are eyebrow- and hair-raising.

The documentary’s most jaw-dropping moment took place not behind closed doors in the Oval Office but in the White House’s East Room on Jan. 28, 1972 when Nixon -- presiding over a dinner marking the 50^th anniversary of Reader’s Digest -- introduced the decidedly unhip Ray Conniff Singers by defiantly snarling: “And if the music is square, it’s because I like it square.” But then, one of the singers did something cool enough to give Nixon indigestion. Canadian alto Carole Feraci pulled a Medea Benjamin, held up a banner saying, “Stop the Killing” and proclaimed to the astonished crowd that included aviator Charles Lindbergh, astronaut Frank Borman and Alice Roosevelt Longworth: “President Nixon, stop bombing human beings… You go to church on Sundays and pray to Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ were here tonight, you would not dare to drop another bomb.” As the bandleader tried to snatch Feraci’s banner the 30-year-old held onto it and added: “Bless the Berrigans and bless Daniel Ellsberg.”

Lane is the perfect name for someone who compiles documentaries out of archival footage -- after all, the Beatles song entitled “Penny Lane” is all about a trip down, well, memory lane. After the LAFF screening, Penny Lane did a Q&A and buttons declaring “Hi. I’m an effete, impudent intellectual snob,” were handed out to viewers.

Our Nixon is a pointed reminder about the U.S. surveillance state run amok as America grapples with another presidential Big Brother snooping scandal. 

 

 

LAFF 2013: FOREV

A scene from Forev.

Too early to be securely

By Don Simpson

Sophia (Noël Wells) is the type of girl who drunkenly brings random guys home to her apartment with the naïve hope that it will be the beginning of a beautiful long-term relationship. Her neighbor, Pete (Matt Mider), is a socially awkward computer support technician who works from home, therefore he rarely leaves his apartment. Hence he is hopelessly single.

Nonetheless, Sophia and Pete spontaneously find themselves engaged to be married. (Nope, she isn’t even preggers!) They go on a road trip across the Southwest to pick up Pete’s sister (Amanda Bauer) from college. Mayhem ensues, as the trip puts their (non-)relationship to the test.

Forev is a somewhat typical, yet smartly written, rom-com that quickly evolves into a quirky road movie which contemplates the meaning and significance of marriage in our modern world and whether or not dating (or sex, for that matter) should be a required precursor. Not all that long ago, Sophia and Pete’s rapid-fire engagement would not be all that surprising. Nowadays, they seem a bit nuts; yet within the cinematic universe of Forev, Sophia and Pete are given ample motivation to justify their sense of desperation.

At Sophia and Pete’s age, everything seems like an eternity. They are stuck in a purgatory between college graduation and settling down into family life, and they are both growing increasingly impatient with the pace of their lives. They have been waiting forever (in the figurative sense) to take the next step in life — in this case, marriage — yet it never comes. Of course, if and when they do get married, that means being with their significant other forever -- if they take their vows seriously. That is a lot of forever for two people in their 20s.


Forev screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, tonight, 9:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: Forev at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: FOUR DOGS

Oliver (Oliver Cooper) in Four Dogs.

Encino Man

By Don Simpson

Oliver (Oliver Cooper) is a struggling actor who lives with his aunt (Rebecca Goldstein) in Encino, California. Actually, Oliver is taking a break from acting, spending his days smoking weed in his aunt’s house while she flies around the world as an airline attendant. It seems as though the only way he legitimizes his free room and board is by taking care of his aunt’s four dogs while she is away. Otherwise, Oliver is just a lazy, 20-something slacker, caste in the mold of Jonah Hill.

Lonely and secluded in suburbia, Oliver creates a strange array of characters to entertain himself, essentially developing his own invisible friends. Oliver’s only real friend, Dan (Dan Bakkedahl), is twice his age. They met a while ago in acting school, though neither one of them seems to understand why they are friends. Misery loves company, I guess; or maybe misery just enjoys having a miserable friend with a car to shuttle him around. Both men — or, rather, man childs — do share a certain kinship in their desperation for female attention. Oliver quickly develops an obsession with the soon-to-be-divorced Diane (Kathleen McNearney), while Dan is fixated on an acting partner from school.

Writer-director Joe Burke’s Four Dogs focuses on the averageness of Oliver and Dan’s existence as well as the averageness of cookie-cutter life in Encino. There is nothing glitzy or glamorous about life in this Los Angeles suburb, nor is there any grit or sleaze.


Four Dogs screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival June 22, 9:40 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: FD at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: IN A WORLD...

Carol (Lake Bell) in In a World...

Hear me roar (sort of)

By Don Simpson

In a world where men — such as Carol’s father, Sam (Fred Melamed) – are worshipped for their booming bass voices that accompany the trailers for Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, Carol (writer-director Lake Bell) works as a lowly speech and accent coach for actors. Luckily for Carol, a new wave of female-centric blockbusters has begun, thus opening the possibility for Hollywood’s first female voiceover artist.

Bell’s In a World... reveals the chauvinistic and incestuous tendencies of Hollywood, showcasing just how ridiculous it is to have the same male voices attached to every movie trailer. She might not be any better than her male counterparts, but Carol is incredibly unique because she is a woman. Now that Hollywood action films have finally opened their arms to female heroes, it only makes sense that they retain that strong female voice in the trailers to those films. It seems logical, but not necessarily in a man’s world.

In a World also speaks directly about the female voice as Carol works with women to correct the way in which they speak. Often, women are judged by the sound of their voice. If a woman speaks in a high-pitched Valley Girl tone with a lot of filler sounds, she is typically not taken seriously by men. Even Carol conforms as much as possible to the voiceover industry standard by lowering the frequency of her own voice whenever she is on the microphone. In other words, to break into a man’s world, you must play by their rules and abide by their standards with the hope of eventually making changes from the inside.

Female writer-directors are unfortunately a rare breed in Hollywood, so we need women like Bell to bring their voices to the forefront. As In a World... suggests, this is not an easy proposition. It is one met with ridiculous resistance from the old guard of Hollywood. In the end, the decision will have to be made by fans. If films with powerful women sell tickets at the box office and do well in home video sales, then Hollywood will have no choice. In a World... is a worthy crossover comedy that seems independent but has enough star power to hold its own in the box office.

LAFF 2013: INEQUALITY FOR ALL

A scene from Inequality for All.

Freedom to monopolize

By John Esther

Thanks to theReaganite fiscal policies over the past 30 years, the economic disparity between rich Americans and the rest of America’s people has increased monumentally. The middle class is disappearing into the poor while the rich get richer. This is not good news for Americans, even the rich. Our economy thrives on consumption and when the middle class are not doing their dutiful duties by consuming, we all suffer.

At least that is what Robert Reich says.

A United States Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, Reich is now a teacher at UC Berkeley who occasionally goes on the airwaves to present the neo-liberal economic policy point of view.

With a great amount, -- perhaps a little too much -- of reverence for his subject, director Jacob Kornbluth traces Reich’s roots before and during his Clinton years as well as capture Reich’s academic life today where he can pack a large classroom of students while increasingly being ignored by mainstream media. 

Since trickle down economics/austerity fiscal planning has been refuted by every legitimate economist (and the poor quality of reality itself), the contents of Inequality for All are hardly revolutionary, but the documentary is an amusing piece of non-fiction.

Equaling the paying field, The Los Angeles Film Festival is screening Inequality for All for free.


Inequality for All will screen at the Los Angeles Film Festival June 22, 8:30 p.m., at California Plaza. For more information: IFA at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: POLLYWOGS

Sarah (Kate Lyn Sheil) and Dylan (Karl Jacob) in Pollywogs.

Minne me

By Don Simpson

Recovering from yet another failed relationship, Dylan (co-director Karl Jacob) retreats back to his rural Minnesota hometown for a family reunion. In cinema and literature, an urban protagonist often returns to their rural hometown out of necessity, and they do so with apprehension and fear. These characters are stereotypical patronizing urban elitists, who are eventually forced to learn that the town they left behind is not all that bad. In the case of Pollywogs, however, Dylan has returned home to reboot his life, to get back on track again. While he may not be able to work in a lucrative career here, this quaint Minnesota lake community serves as a magical respite from his not-so-happy adult life.

Upon arrival, idyllic memories of Sarah — Dylan’s first love at age ten — rush straight to his head; then, as fate would have it, Sarah (Kate Lyn Sheil) appears at Dylan’s family reunion. They have not seen each other for 18 years, yet they both have held onto idealized fantasies about what it would be like to reunite. That is a heck of a lot of pressure for two single people who may or may not be wanting to fall back in love.

Dylan and Sarah form a cute foursome with Dylan’s cousin, Julie (Jennifer Prediger), and her husband, Bo (Larry Mitchell), which temporarily eases the romantic pressure. Luckily, they have plenty of booze and weed to calm their nerves and a sauna to steam things up. The drastic juxtaposition of sweating in the hot sauna and shivering in the frigid lake seems like a perfect metaphor for the fluctuating hot and cold feelings between Dylan and Sarah.

They are obviously confused and who can blame them? They were once so close, but that was so long ago. Dylan and Sarah barely know each other any more. Eighteen years have passed. Dylan is now a full-fledged New Yorker, while Sarah seems temporarily content with taking care of her ailing grandmother in Minnesota. As their pasts begin to inform their present, Dylan finds himself desperately pawing at Sarah because he is the type of person who anxiously jumps from one relationship to the next, but Sarah immediately regrets reciprocating his affections and begins to cower away. Having once been forced by her parents into living on a Branch Davidian commune in Colorado, Sarah is wary of doing anything that she does not want to do. David may be primed to jump off the (literal and figurative) cliff, but Sarah pauses and eventually chickens out.

Co-directors Jacob and T. Arthur Cottam approached this project with story points, then developed the characters and dialogue during a six month rehearsal process. The result is a foursome of fully realized characters whose actions are all backed up by motivations. That is not to say that the script is saturated with expository dialogue, because whenever characters are interrogated about their feelings or past, it is done so with the utmost level of naturalism.

The emotional honesty of Pollywogs is much too powerful for this story not to be rooted in some sense of reality. While we might not all have romantic crushes from age ten to fondly look back upon, most of us have some sort of idealized notion from our past that we would like to somehow reinstate into our present lives. The problem is that our ten-year-old selves are hopefully nothing like our fully-matured selves, so something that enraptured us back then will probably not have the same effect on us now. That is why the resolution of Pollywogs is so important. Jacob and Cottam could have very easily chosen to go with an overtly saccharine Hollywood ending, but they opt to conclude the film in a manner much more true to real life.

LAFF 2013: FORTY YEARS FROM YESTERDAY

Bruce (Bruce Graham) in Forty Years from Yesterday.

When the eclipse arrives

By Don Simpson

When Bruce (Bruce Graham) returns home from his morning jogging regimen, the very last thing that he expects to see is his wife, Suzette (Suzette Graham), dead on their bedroom floor. Considering the shock that weighs heavily upon Bruce’s face, we can only assume that Suzette’s death was totally unexpected. Being that the film begins with Suzette’s death, we never get to experience the two characters interacting with each other; and instead of relying upon flashbacks to explain Bruce and Suzette’s past, Forty Years from Yesterday allows Bruce’s intense state of grief to speak for itself. Barely able to pick his feet up off the floor as he walks, this version of Bruce is drastically different than the one who was jogging at the onset of the film. As we watch Bruce mope aimlessly around the quiet house, we begin to imagine just how much this man loved his wife.

All the while, we also observe as Robert (Robert Eddington) and his two assistants — Lowell (Matt Valdez) and Lawson (Wyatt Eddington) — extract Suzette from Bruce’s home and prepare her for the funeral. Everything they do is calculated and regimented, reminding us of the professional side of death. Dealing with death, day after day, Robert’s detached and emotionless persona is a necessary protection for his career. So whereas Bruce’s half of the narrative is dripping with raw emotion, Robert’s half of the narrative is coldly clinical.

Forty Years from Yesterdayis a gorgeously minimalist meditation on the moods and tones experienced shortly after a loved one’s death. We observe the characters — all of whom are non-actors — as if they are subjects of a cinema verite documentary. Since Bruce internalizes most of his feelings and reactions, conversation is kept to a bare minimum. Alexander Sablow’s camera allows every line and pore on Bruce’s face to function as a roadmap for his feelings as well as his personal history. Graham handles with surprising skill and fortitude the burden of having to carry much of the narrative solely with his face.

Bruce’s house plays just as major of a dramatic role as the people who walk within it. Just prior to Suzette’s death, the house appears to be a living and breathing organism; the blowing curtains of the bedroom give shape to the air (and life) as it passes in and out of the house. Then, as we acclimate to the interiors of the house, it begins to function (quite subtly, I might add) as a museum of memories, filled with reminders of Suzette’s life in that space.

Forty Years from Yesterdayoperates in sharp opposition to Hollywood films about death; there is no soundtrack to trigger our emotions, nothing is over-explained or over-sentimentalized. Directors Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck have quite purposefully made a film that may not be enjoyable in the traditional sense, there is no comedy or light-heartedness to ease the heartache, but that is only because they are striving to achieve a greater level of realism. Regardless, Forty Years from Yesterday is a transcendental experience that plays to the inherent — yet, woefully underused — strengths of the cinematic medium.


Forty Years from Yesterday screens at the Los Angeles Film Festival, June 22, 7:30, Regal Cinemas. For more information: FYFY at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: ALL TOGETHER NOW

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A scene from All Together Now.

Into the woods they go

By Miranda Inganni

All Together Now narrates roughly 24 hours at a noise-rock concert in the woods (with a parking lot), where the teens and young adults have gathered to navigate through their aspirations, sexual inclinations and lots of libations.

Co-written and directed by Alexander Mirecki, All Together Now intertwines the tales of numerous attendees at this decidedly indie event that Ron (Lou Taylor Pucci) has cobbled together. Underage, gothy Ashley (Hannah Sullivan) and her friends are dropped off by her dad, Bruce (Hal Dion). Before heading to the parking lot to wait for his daughter and aliens, Bruce leaves Ashley (who is documenting the scene with her phone) with his trusty employee, Richard (Will Watkins), and his girlfriend, Tegan (Monika Jolly), to keep an eye on the youngsters.

Meanwhile, Michelle (Lindsey Garrett) muses about what she wants to be when she grows up while falling for Ron. Additionally, young Gulliver (Jerry Phillips) screams along to his father’s instrumentation as the first performers of the evening. When his father, George (James C. Burns), tries to kill the soundman, and is himself subsequently subdued, Gulliver is taken under the wings of two attractive twenty-something year old groupies to party the night away. Anon (Luke Stratte-McClure) hitches in -- looking out of place in his clean suit – until he is confronted by Able (Tucker Bryan), who doesn’t seem to know when to quit. Most excitingly, however, Ron’s overwhelmingly enthusiastic friend, Zeke (James Duval), has shown up with two anvils and enough gun powder to send one of them flying into the night sky. (What could possibly go wrong?)

Shot by Zoran Popovic in gritty super 16, the film feels like footage from a makeshift outdoor concert, and the lighting leaves a lot to be desired. (Who is the mysterious third person holding the flashlight on Anon and Able as they walk away from the show?). Mirecki does a good job of weaving the music in and out of the story -- the audience never spends too much time in the corrugated tin shack in which the bands actually perform, but there are too many moments of meandering in the film.


All Together Now screens at Los Angeles Film Festival June 20, 7:10 p.m., Regal Cinemas; June 22, 9:50 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: ATN at LAFF 2013.

LAFF 2013: PURGATORIO

A scene from Purgatorio.

Over theirs

By John Esther

Two men stand outside a large fence waiting for the right time to climb over, leaving a family behind. Another man leaves water for those who have made it over the fence while another man goes around picking up what he thinks are clues for people who have crossed the border unannounced. Others are imprisoned by drugs, violence and vengeful fantasies. Borders as large prisons.  

Bullets litter automobiles, kill three policemen, and a local drug dealer. Deadly currency. Automobiles, planes and buildings rust in the dessert sun. Scrapyards of paradise lost. (Forever?)

Drug gangs rule the land, abandoned dogs roam the land while others just run to wreck it. To be sure, a few good men and women remain, but the ugly weight of a divine comedy has turned into a human tragedy. It is hard to strive when one can barely survive.

These are ideas, attitudes and illustrations of Rodrigo Reyes' Purgatorio: A Journey Into the Heart of the Border. An intellectually impressive and refreshingly angry documentary -- which also happens to be the best thing I have seen at LAFF 2013 hitherto -- Reyes moves around an undisclosed part of the Mexican-U.S. border casting his eyes toward unnamed men and women beaten by the system while lending his ears to people who have not been beaten by the system, yet.

Between the interviews, Justin Chin's cinematography captures the haunting landscape where our "hero" shakes his tongue, trying to find salvation in a cold and indifferent universe. If this is purgatory, how can the inferno be worse?

Highly recommended.


Purgatorio screens at the Los Angeles Festival June 20, 7 p.m., Regal Cinemas. For more information: Purgatorio at LAFF 2013.