FILM
Adam Underhill
Frost/Nixon: in review
12.21.08
If you are too young to know which came first, Deep Throat or “Deep Throat,” now is a good time to wiki some history on the presidential scandal known as Watergate. These days there will certainly be plenty to read about, as infamous informer Mark “Deep Throat” Felt has passed away just days before Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon sees its nationwide theatrical release on December 25th. There have been other notable films on Richard Nixon, but Howard’s is different as it catches the man post-presidency, trying to secure his legacy against the reportage of David Friost, a rival in some ways as complex as Nixon himself. Adam Underhill reviews.
Amy Meyerson
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
10.21.09
The adverb 'complexly' crops up repeatedly in the work of David Foster Wallace to describe among other things: 1) the irreverence of a palely freckled marketing focus group facilitator, 2) the patterns of shadow on trees, grass and shrubbery on a still, green day at the height of spring and 3) the series of hook and eye knobs on a blouse which women can undo easily and men cannot. It's a fitting word to recurr in his work, often indicating a point at which his impressive descriptive powers had reached their limit, and emblematic of an aesthetic not easily translated to the screen. Amy Meyerson looks at the difficulties of adaption through John Krasinski's recent film of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
Andy Beta
Staring Back at Chris Marker
11.04.07
"Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future," wrote T.S. Eliot. No filmmaker has absorbed this vertiginous lesson better than cult documentarist Chris Marker. Apropos of the long-awaited DVD release of two Marker classics, and a new book of his photographs, Andy Beta explores intertextual connections that reach across decades.
Benjamin Strong
Son of Kong
01.15.06
Strong, a film buff reared on late 70's blockbusters, questions Peter Jackson's "purist" remake of the 1933 original. He also posits which one of the 3 Kongs is more relevant to this day and age, coming to his answer through a personal reflection on family, violence and refuge.
Brian Pera
Real Escapism: Kentucker Audley and Team Picture
11.03.08
Brian Pera reviews Ketucker Audley's Team Picture, which started gaining attention at last year's Memphis Film Festival. Since then it has been featured in New Talkies: the DIY Generation series at IFC, and film scholar Ray Carney included it as part of Independent's Week: New Independent Cinema 2007 at the Harvard Archives. Team Picture has been embraced by - yet stands apart from - the current laissez-faire Youtube genre trend "mumblecore." Pera argues that Audley wields a unique style that bridges somewhere between the verité of a Cassavettes or Antonioni - the scenes slow and thoughtful, the directing more slight-handed than sleight of hand, and the final product beautiful and with purpose.
Daniel Hamilton
The Informant! Denunciation vs. Deflation as Rhetorical Strategies
10.12.09
Hollywood has responded to the economic crash with the lightning quick reflexes of a short-selling day trader: swapping glitz and glamour for a hint of class consciousness with recent films like Public Enemies, The International and Sam Raimi's Drag me to Hell. Stephen Soderbergh, on the other hand, is at least four movies deep in his own immersive and idiosyncratic investigation of the ways economic systems damage both the winners and the losers. Soderbergh refuses to demonize his corporate lackeys and instead de-glamorizes the system in which they participate through his depiction of gold tinted frames, fluorescent lighting and Marvin Hamlisch's brilliantly kitschy soundtrack.
Darius James
The Zombie Monologues
10.30.09
Each year at this time the dead rise from their graves but way back in the summer of 1961 Nazis revivified deceased plantation slaves through the powers of voodoo during the midday movie on WNEW's Jungle Jive at Five. A young tyke at the time, Darius James was thirsty for any televisual images of African-Americans even the eye-popping antics of Mantan Moreland and discovered more than he bargained for. James is the author of the novel Negrophobia and That's Blaxploitation!, a book every bit as stylized and opinionated as the films it profiles.
Eli S. Evans
The Wrestler: The Redemption of Mickey Rourke
02.03.09
The line that keeps circulating about Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is that, in it, we witness the resurrection of Mickey Rourke. This ain't exactly the truth. Rourke, the once baby faced tough who earned early comparisons to Dean and Brando, never went anywhere, 'cept away from Hollywood for a bit, a circuitous route that saw him back in the boxing rings of his pre-acting youth and on the shit list of most everyone in Tinseltown. But he's crept back with his villainous role in Sin City, and what happens in The Wrestler isn't necessarily Rourke's resurrection, but his redemption. A welcome return to form, however it's put. Review by Eli S. Evans.
Emily Carter
Kim Ji-woon's Tale of Two Sisters
03.03.10
Alfred Hitchcock either popularized or created the term "MacGuffin" to describe any highly valued object that sets the plot in motion: the ticking bomb, top secret microfilm or the stolen necklace. Is it a stretch to say that in a romantic comedy, the completion of the romantic union is a type of MacGuffin? U.S. films often trot out romantic or sexual union as kind of plot device, while several Korean films I've seen seem to use the re-completion of the family unit as one of the central concerns. Director Bong Joon-ho's excellent 2006 swamp monster film, The Host revolves around a family getting their daughter back after she's been eaten by a giant mutant squid and dragged into the sewers. (Fittingly, Bong's latest film which opens next month is titled Mother.) Kim Ji-woon's particularly unpleasant depiction of "blended" family life, oddly helped Emily Carter, author of Glory Goes and Gets Some, to heal the wounds in her own.
Gean Moreno
A Cinema of Poverty: an interview with Caveh Zahedi
09.11.06
One of the first things I saw from Caveh Zahedi was a clip of him trying to convince Will Oldham to do mushrooms with him. Later, I saw a video-still of Oldham laughing wildly and driving through the woods in what looks like a fancy go-kart. It wouldn't be the only time Zahedi documented psychedelic indulgences, but there's more to his films than just tripping out. Gean Moreno interviews the no-budget filmmaker about confession, fandom, and divine intervention.
Jason Jude Chan
Holiday with Preston Sturges
12.23.08
This holiday season forget about George Seaton and a Miracle on 34th or Frank Capra and his Wonderful Life; for a change of pace, if you happen to be in New York City, come down to Film Forum for an homage to one of Hollywood’s greatest, Preston Sturges, the writer and director of Christmas in July and many other brilliant screwball comedies. The festival “Essential Sturges” runs from Christmas Eve through New Years day. Jason Jude Chan previews.
Jon Frosch
Titles a la Francaise
06.20.06
Jon Frosch is a new writer for Fanzine and he explains France's insidious plot to stereotype the children of America by retitling French releases of Hollywood films according to their whims. It might be lost in translation or maybe we were justified in the whole Freedom Fries affair. Either way, something is going on...
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jacques Tati's Trafic on Criterion DVD
06.26.08
Critic and scholar Jonathan Rosenbaum has written definitively about French director Jacques Tati over the years; Fanzine is pleased to have Rosenbaum's take on Tati's Trafic, newly available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.
Kevin Killian
Charlie Chan on Boot DVD
07.21.05
Author Kevin Killian begins his column FILM WORLD by trying to watch every pirate Charlie Chan film on DVD (all 42), and in the process comes to some startling Freudian conclusions! Don't miss seeing Kevin see the unseeable.
Mark Asch
We've Lost Control (of the Ian Curtis Legend)
10.10.07
Anton Corbijn’s new black-and-white biopic of Ian Curtis, which opens today, has the approval of the singer’s widow, whose memoir it is based on, and the backing of numerous film critics, many of whom can still remember their first intoxicating spin of Unknown Pleasures. But Mark Asch wonders whether something doesn’t get lost when we demystify our rock icons.
Masha Tupitsyn
Jaws Revisited
09.15.08
Like a survivor from a good shark gnashing, what we see in a feature film is really the remains of a great deal of cutting and slicing. What happens in the editing room often stays in the editing room. Of course with the advent of DVDs we now get a lot more options in viewing a film, with the outtakes, deleted scenes, etc. Recently a retrospective of Spielberg films aired on TV, and here Masha Tupitsyn revisits with fresh perspective the collector's edition DVD of the director's 70's blockbuster Jaws.
Matty Byloos
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
11.20.09
It seemed like the type of thing that could only happen in a cinematic equivalent of Fantasy Baseball, that Werner Herzog would direct Nicolas Cage in a sequel to Abel Ferrera's sexually graphic 1992 cult film. It was enough to make you picture Cage shaking off the shackles of too many action movies, opening and closing his hands as if realizing his autonomy for the first time. And yet like so many fans and amateur sports statisticians, who thought they had the perfect starting lineup, Bad Lieutenant finds itself deservedly shut out of the playoffs.
Mike Powell
Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie comes to Criterion DVD
10.11.07
Schweeet! (you saw that joke coming, but...) It is sweet that Dušan Makavejev's 1974 cult classic has infiltrated the somewhat taught sieve of great films that is the Criterion Collection of DVDs. It's a sexually unabashed film that no doubt the Swedish national socialists (Swedish national socialists?) who recently smashed an Andres Serrano exhibit would love to get their nasty hands on (but that's another story). Mike Powell reviews.
Nancy Keefe Rhodes
Interview with Roger Warren Beebe
12.06.07
Filmmaker Roger Warren Beebe believes experimental movies are for the masses, and to prove it he led an avant-garde roadshow across the States. Nancy Keefe Rhodes talks with the director about his tour and the varieties of non-commercial filmmaking.
Paddy Johnson
Review: Who Gets To Call It Art
02.06.06
Peter Rosen's film looks at the New York art world of the 1960's, focussing on art connoisseur and critic Henry Geldzahler...perhaps a tad too much.
Rayvon Pettis
The Little Prince of Purple Rain
08.15.09
It’s been a rough season for '80s pop. The summer of 2009 has seen Michael Jackson go down somewhat ingloriously, only to rise again in death, forgiven for our incessant gawking at his late public misadventures and/or overexamined life. Then, close on heels, John Hughes, the period's auteur of adolescence passed. Thank god we still have the indefatigably funky Prince going strong. 25 years after his sorta-biopic's release, it’s time to reflect on a film that captured best perhaps the '80's raison d'être, Purple Rain, released during the apex of Prince's reign (thank god we no longer have to call him “the artist formally known as” even though I just did). Review by Rayvon Pettis, who is, incidentally, just a tad younger than the film itself. Art by Danny Jock.
Samantha Culp
White Girl Under Asian Neon
07.21.05
Rounding out this month's occidental perspectives on Asian film, Samantha Culp finds herself ever more like a koi in a tank, oggled and scrutinized because of the popularity and frustrating legacy of Lost In Translation
Scott Bradley
The Hurt Locker
08.03.09
Due to some technical difficulties, I'm a little late getting up Scott Bradley's review of The Hurt Locker, the latest film from director Kathryn Bigelow. It's another war movie, but unlike other war movies, The Hurt Locker is, as Bradley says, the first great Iraq war movie, putting it on par with such classics as Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and Coppola's Apocalypse Now. It's high praise for Bigelow, whose work showed early promise with Near Dark before later finding an unevenness which apexed with Point Break. The Hurt Locker, which was written by war journalist Mark Boal, appears to have shone a light back on her talents.
Tao Lin
Three Documentaries by Werner Herzog
11.02.09
Writer Tao Lin and director Werner Herzog share a certain interest in stunts that, rather than a means to an end, begin to seem like an extension of the work itself. Herzog's film Heart of Glass was performed almost entirely by a cast of hypnotized actors and, after daring Errol Morris to complete his first documentary, Herzog famously ate his own shoe. Tao Lin has funded his literary efforts in part by selling shares in his forthcoming novel Richard Yates ($2000 per) and using eBay to sell Gmail chats with him on various substances such as methadone, adderall, green juice and iced coffee. ($31-$61) Lin's recent novella Shoplifting from American Apparel is an engaging and unusual read that packs a lot of twists into its seemingly straightforward sentences. More on Herzog from the Fanzine later this month when Matty Byloos reviews his upcoming Bad Lieutenant 2: Port of Call New Orleans.
The Fanzine
Film Poll 2007
12.31.07
Welcome to the first annual Fanzine year-end Film Poll. Don't expect to find Oscar nominees, sleeper hits, or good taste in this survey. This is strictly about our love of movies. Contributors include Benjamin Strong, Mark Asch, Samantha Culp, Kevin Killian, Michael Louie, and Nancy Keefe Rhodes.
Zach Baron
Save The Receipt: Rethinking Wes Anderson
10.17.07
Wes Anderson's latest movie, The Darjeeling Limited, has provoked a number of critics to express their exhaustion with his hermetically sealed realm of white bourgeois male privilege. Zach Baron wonders whether these critics aren't missing the point.