Notes from Underdog.

Dos Americas: The Reconstruction of New Orleans (film)

 (Passing this along. If you're in SF, check out the screening; if you're not, keep your eyes out for this one.)

La Raza Centro Legal and Upheaval Productions present...

Dos Americas: The Reconstruction of New Orleans
A new documentary by Upheaval Productions

Post-Katrina reconstruction is still in progress throughout the Gulf
Coast, with much of the City of New Orleans still in ruins. This
documentary focuses on those rebuilding this city through interviews with
some of the estimated 100,000 Latino migrant laborers who have converged
in this area over the past two and a half years. Despite terrible working
conditions, massive fraud, a housing crisis, severe harassment by law
enforcement, and very limited resources, New Orleans’ Latino community has
mushroomed since the storm and is establishing an infrastructure
proportional to its size.

Take a look at how this community is organizing to defend itself against
numerous injustices and the attempts to bridge the gap between themselves
as new residents and the pre-Katrina population, all within the extremely
unique and tragic context of post-Katrina New Orleans.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion with local immigrant
justice organizers and one of the filmmakers!

***¡Presentado en inglés y español!***

WEDNESDAY, JULY 30TH at 7:30PM
at the WOMEN'S BUILDING
3543 18th St. btw. Valencia and Guerrero
San Francisco, CA 94110

***THIS EVENT IS FREE***
(donations will gladly be accepted)

For more information and to see a trailer please visit:

http://www.upheavalproductions.com

PRESENTED WITH HELP FROM THE FOLLOWING ORGANIZATIONS:
La Raza Centro Legal
Upheaval Productions
San Francisco Day Labor Program
Katrina Solidarity Network
The Friendly Fire Collective
...and more to come

Spaced: At last! A review of the new US box set.

(This review was also published on GreenCine's Guru review blog.)

Spaced

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5):
Disc (Season) One: ****½
Disc (Season) Two: ****
Bonus Disc: ***½

After several years of hearing about a wonderfully quirky British show called Spaced, and then hearing still more about it when its creators went on to make the highly regarded genre-busting film comedies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and then finally seeing some bits of said show on a bootleg DVD someone had sent me, made from the fairly barebones UK region 2 release, now at long last comes a proper US release of the entire series. Fans of those films should rejoice, for herein is the germination of everything director Edgar Wright and company would subsequently produce, and yet may never quite top.

For those many of us who are already familiar with how sharply funny Simon Pegg and his frequent compadre Nick Frost can be, it is Jessica Stevenson (who now uses her married name, Hynes) who might be the real revelation to Americans here. In the UK she's quite well known as a comic performer on stage and in TV (and has been a collaborator with Pegg for some time), but it's a delight to see her here at her likable best, a semi-spastic but earnest wonder, the perfect foil for Pegg's manchildish character. The show centers around Pegg's Tim and Stevenson's Daisy, two strangers who meet when apartment hunting and decide to make a go of searching for a flat together. They discover it's easier to find a place they love if they pretend to be a married couple. And if that sounds like the set-up to a terrible American sitcom, it very well might, but in Spaced it is the perfect set up for Wright, Pegg and Stevenson's loopy humor and (cornucopia) of loopy characterizations -- which generously lends itself all the way down to a rich supporting cast.

Those players include the inimitable Julia Deakin, a tight-lipped, chain-smoking landlady and mother of a troubled teenage daughter (whom we never see in full); Mark Heap's Brian, a moody painter; Katy Carmichael's Twist, Daisy's fashion-conscious, blunt-mouthed friend; and, oh yes, Aida the Dog doing fine work as Colin the Dog, who joins the cast mid-way through the first series.

As in their films, there are the expected numerous pop culture references but also an impressive number of ingenious sight gags, filmmaking tricks (zooms and sweeps), flashbacks, cutaways, tangential but inspired bits (as in the gleeful moment in the clubbing episode in which their ecstasy-ed-out friend Tyres(!) finds a rhythm in a ringing phone and from his POV it turns into a deranged musical number in his head). All the first season episodes are standouts but I am particularly fond of several: "Beginnings," where it all, yes, begins; "Art," a delirious episode that lampoons pretentious performance art and features a bit of foreshadowing for Shaun of the Dead; and the sweet natured final episode of the first series which even offers a touching finale (which at the time the creators thought might be it). And the episode in which Daisy first acquires the dog also features a memorable paintball battle.

While Season One is arguably (if minutely) superior to Two, the latter has its share of wondrous moments. The second picks up some months later (and aired some two years after the first series), and finds Daisy having returned from a spiritually enlightening trip abroad. The first two episodes contain very arguably the finest Anti-George Lucas/Phantom Menace running jokes ever, including a moment in the comic book store in which Tim works that is almost indescribably funny. The second series also has a few more (but still very few) bits that don't quite work and doesn't quite sustain the level of energy as the first, but these are quite honestly small nitpicks. It remains inspired. Oh, and comic book geeks in particular will enjoy many of the comic-al in-jokes.  (CONTINUES...)

Awesome T's for Film Geeks

The aptly named CineFile sells some very cool t-shirts. Wish I got commission for this but I don't, but it's still worth it.

(Thanks, Maian!)

The difficulty of consistently churning out great teleplays, as seen on TV. (Rescue Me edition.)

There's a superb episode of the TV series "Rescue Me," toward the end of its first season -- the third from last to be precise -- in which Denis Leary's character's mom passes away, his dad comes to live with him, and several other subplots that can't be done justice in describing here. It was written by Leary and his co-conspirator in "Rescue Me," Peter Tolan, who have written the majority of the show's episodes. It is so much better than the couple of episodes that came right before it.  In fact, after watching the three DVDs that comprise Rescue Me Season 1 (2004; it's now into season 5), it's hard not to see the show's initial run as quite uneven. And often brilliant. 

Maintaining a high level is a real challenge for a TV series these days. That's why short runs are often better (See: Lost); the writers can really focus on the core of the story, the key characters and plots (and most interesting subplots). At times Rescue Me has felt a little lost itself, sometimes playing up the farcical elements too much, too broadly, at other times going too far over the edge. But when it's on, it's really been on.  And in Season 1, when it was still finding its way a bit, basically every other episode leaned into greatness.   There were some plot threads that seemed dropped, others that went on too long, but, again, when it hit its stride it was capable of giving us an uncomfortable great hour of television.

The characters are sometimes not just assholes, but nervwrackingly so -- misogynist (and there have been times when the show itself has had no idea how to portray women), selfish, homophobic, abusive. Their antics in Season 1 at least are as often tiresome as they are entertaining.  But it's also one of the few shows that willfully, sometimes even gleefully, pushes our buttons, the American taboos, left and right, until we are confronted with our own inner assholes. 

In short, at its start, Rescue Me was uneven, often trying to do too much, tackle too many issues and purposely push buttons, but when it finds its rhythm, particularly in scenes with Leary reacting to the nightmares around him (Leary's at his best when he goes off) or in some ingenious black comedy, at its best it's pretty unforgettable.

Rescue Me: Season 1:  ***
(One episode per disc gets ****)

Paddle to the Sea and The Red Balloon: Childhood memories

(originally appeared on GreenCine Guru)

Rating (out of 5):

Paddle to the Sea: ***½
The Red Balloon: ****½

I have the vaguest of recollections of the Canadian short film Paddle to the Sea, from probably around

 

the time I was in elementary school in the late 70s, probably rolling my eyes at the start -- "what's this dumb movie about a carved Indian in a canoe?" -- until becoming, many years later as an adult, completely engaged and enraptured by the story. Then, it was probably a jittery, wobbly film print played on a dirty projector, the voice over narration skipping and the sound warbling; now, thanks to Criterion and Janus, Paddle to the Sea has been digitally remastered, likely looking as good as it ever has, even if a bit faded, and is as lovely as ever. The simple story follows a wood carving from its inception, created by a Native boy living in remote Canada, who sets the little figure - a man in a canoe - free above a river, with a request carved at the bottom to return the boat to the water if found. The film follows the progress of the little boat - called "Paddle" - from body of water to body of water, through the seasons, found by various people, set free again and again, making it through various hazards.

It's surprising how touching the simple film is, and there are little messages to be received by willing children, too, as Paddle sludges through mucky, polluted water near industrial plants, and as kids learn to respect the boat's wishes. But it is the marvelous photography, which combined with the film's overall documentary-like feel, that makes viewing it such a breathtaking experience.

The DVD doesn't come with any extras, alas, and one has to wonder why Criterion didn't release all three of the classic children's films - this, The Red Balloon, and The White Mane - together on one DVD, but they likely wanted to honor each of them with their own disc; at least they have priced them accordingly. Still, the film is a treasure, and it is good to see it on DVD.

Before I even knew there was a film called The Red Balloon, I knew of a little hardcover photostory called "The Red Balloon," that I was given when I was about five or six. This was before there was home video (the mid 1970s) so it wasn't that odd, I suppose, but fortunately, my father eventually procured a copy of the film, to show a class he was teaching, and finally, the concept of the book was soon forgotten. Either way, the images left an indelible impression.

The Red Balloon won a Best Short Film Oscar for Albert Lamorisse and -- even more astonishingly -- for writing the best original screenplay in 1956. Astonishing because the film has almost no dialogue. It's essentially a simply plotted fantasy with a realistic backdrop - the city of Paris - about a young boy and a balloon with a mind of its own.

It's interesting to read some of the critical reception given the film at the time of its release, almost all of it unilaterally positive, though, oddly, one reviewer in the Washington Post in a critique called it the "most seamless fusion of capitalism and Christianity ever put on film."

To a child's eye, the film seems an innocent parable, a call for escape by the end, but with no awareness of France's recent history of war and occupation, it seemed then more simply a tale of a boy my age and his magical balloon.

This was my first introduction to the City of Light, and I don't know if it's ever looked more beguiling, before or since. The photography is clearly among the best ever seen in a "children's film." And here in this new digitally remastered DVD from Criterion, it looks especially amazing, from the very first frame. Yes, the red pops off the screen, but the entire piece looks gorgeous. As with the other discs in this series, there are no extras to speak of but the film itself is childhood magic revisited.

Oozing Ed Wood Jr. Pulp, Forgotten Films Mutate in Closet -

Passing this on from Terminal Pictures' Andre Perkowski:

Oozing Ed Wood Jr. Pulp, Forgotten Films Mutate in Closet -
Finally Pried from Death-grip of Crackpot Creator

Way back during those quaint days near the turn of the millennium, a ridiculously overambitious 22 year old me began a project to make a trilogy of feature films based on Edward D. Wood Jr. pulp novels and old screenplays. Though highly impractical and fueled by a budget 1/40th or so of Wood's films even without even accounting for inflation, I managed to shoot two of them:  "DEVIL GIRLS" and "THE VAMPIRE'S TOMB" - shot on a patchwork mix of Super-8, 8mm, 16mm, and DV - everything from hideously outdated Soviet (!) filmstocks to good old 'Merican machine gun camera film, With acres of stock footage and scrupulous dedication to the angora-ed one, a sickly joyous cathedral to his enthusiasm against all odds. It was almost a religious endeavor, the kind of strange crusade that seemed to make sense at the time. Recently, through acts of dark alchemy and forbidden science, I've assembled them into a viewable form... restored, revised, riddled with lost scenes and all that shot on film footage I could never manage to afford paying for at the time... Now it can be told! From beyond space and time, across the churning seas of bad continuity!  Here are some enticing trailers, with Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre doing the voiceovers:

From The Wire Season 1: Chess scene (and screenwriting 101)

You can probably teach more about writing a scene for TV (or film) from The Wire, and from this one terrific scene from the first season of The Wire, than from any class or book. Watch it, "read it," know it, live it.

THX in the Forest: The primate audience is listening.

Dirty Harry Collection: Deluxe Edition

(This review originally appeared on GreenCine Guru)

Dirty Harry Collector's Edition: The deluxe treatment to make your day

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5):
Dirty Harry ****
Magnum Force ***
The Enforcer **½
Sudden Impact ***
The Dead Pool **½

If you watch enough Dirty Harry movies consecutively -- say, all five of them, as I did this past week, in viewing the newly remastered Dirty Harry Deluxe Collector's Edition from Warner Brothers -- you either go mad, or you start to spot a number of interesting patterns. Such as:

Being assigned as Harry Callahan's partner is not that different than becoming the latest Spinal Tap drummer in movie mythology -- both positions are seriously bewitched and essentially doomed. This does not go unnoticed by the screenwriters; in even just the second film Magnum Force, Harry  (Clint Eastwood) makes his new partner nervous by alluding to this fact. 

Of course, most famously, the police captains over Harry are always demoting and transferring him, looking for any excuse to get rid of him because "he doesn't do things by the book," only to have to bring him back to Homicide because they're too myopic and/or incompetent to solve anything without him.

Each film of course has the requisite car chase(s), Scene Where Callahan Goes Too Far and Crashes Something to Save the Day, one dimensional depictions of fringe groups (students. hippies and radicals, and so on) -- even if the films sometimes then subvert those expectations.

Taken as a whole, the Dirty Harry series is a fascinating study of an American period that begins with the disillusionment and tumult felt in the early 70s and ends with "Morning in America" era Reagan (and some disillusionment beginning to be felt with that as well). Individually, the films are certainly a mixed bag, but even the lesser films in the series have a certain fascination about them. And each of these new discs offers up enough extras to make not only a die-hard fan happy, but film students and cultural historians, too. And each of these new DVD includes a host of supplemental features -- also of varying quality but with several new documentaries worth watching for any DirtyHarryologists out there or anyone seeking more background on the series.   (CONTINUES BELOW)

Wondering out loud...about LA-bashing.

Watching the Lakers being dismantled by the Celtics in Game 6 of the NBA finals - and congrats to the Celtics, this Lakers fan can admit they were the better team and deserved their championship - but hearing a few rounds of "Beat LA" during the game made me start wondering aloud about where the tradition of that chorus comes from. I hear it much more often here in San Francisco, as a Dodger fan in "enemy territory" (and I say that good-naturedly). It makes sense here, in a way, because of the longtime Dodger-Giants rivalry, and the geographic proximity the two cities have. But as one who has lived in both southern California, including LA for two years, and for a long time San Francisco I can vouch for the fact that they are much more vociferous about hating Los Angeles up here than they are in LA about SF. Angelenos tend to not care very much. Sure, Dodger fans hate the Giants, but it rarely becomes about the city.

And then with Boston of course a lot of it comes from the long historic rivalry the LA Lakers and Celtics have had over the years, going back to the 60s and up through pretty much every decade except the last one. There's been some bad blood, animosity between the teams, that's spilled over to the fans and that's just part of that tradition. But a lot of it stems from stereotypes people have about LA, and the hatred starts to get beyond reason.

Those stereotypes are played up in the media; you can see it when the Lakers play on TV. There's the celebrity montage, cameras finding whatever celebrity they can find in the crowd, playing up the Hollywood angle. (Of course, there were about as many celeb Celtic fans seen in Boston this series, but because LA = Hollywood, it makes sense that people would have the stereotype that most Laker fans are movie stars.)  There's the "LA is a horrible place to live" stereotype and "people who live there have had their minds rotted by too much sun and bleach" -again these stereotypes have a grain of truth to them (and Woody Allen would agree with both of them), but they get played up beyond reason  to where people are almost rabid in both their beliefs and their hatred.

There were a few columns written by Bill Simmons on ESPN about LA vs. Boston that are so contemptible (and basically meant to be, as sportswriter Simmons switches to his fan hat and tosses journalistic integrity out the window in an attempt to stir up the masses) that I won't even link to them here. You can search and find them.  But they're just an example of that sort of crass, almost propagandistic one-dimensionalizing of LA.

But Los Angeles and its people make up such a complex place, it's huge, it's almost mind-boggingly diverse. And even though the film industry is absolutely one of the major employers in the place, and proudly so, the majority of the people working in that industry are much more blue collar than people outside that world realize. Of course we just see the in-front of camera glamor and the famous directors, but the people who work in that field -- and I was one of those grunts -- are much more regular Joes (and Josephines). It's ethnically diverse: 44% non-white + 17% Hispanic, and is home to people from more than 140 countries speaking 224 different identified languages. (As Wikipedia notes:) Ethnic enclaves like Chinatown, Historic Filipinotown, Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Tehrangeles, Little India, Little Tokyo, and Thai Town provide examples of the polyglot character of Los Angeles. It's also home to an array of some of the nation's finest museums, an incredible  choice of music,  some of the finest restaurants in the world, many great universities, and so on. 

All that said, there admittedly were things about LA I couldn't stand, and I'm very happy living in the Bay Area (though I left LA to return to SF for a family illness, as well as a job offer, not directly because I hated LA), but San Francisco certainly has flaws, too. And I came to have some affection for Los Angeles after leaving it.

But "Beat LA" is a chant that isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and that's fine. I only hope people will leave it as a superficial sports thing and not carry it into the realm of irrational hatred and stereotyping. There's a smugness that I've seen from people  who don't live in LA about LA that only serves to reflect back on them.