Amy Grimehouse Presents... Tod Browning's Freaks

On Wednesday night I went to Amy Grimehouse Presents... Tod Browning's Freaks at the Book Club in Shoreditch. Having never seen the wonderfully sickening Freaks (1932) before, I think this was the best possible way to be introduced to it. The screening was held in the basement bar of the Book Club, a great little hole which has lightbulbs stuck on every inch of the ceiling, and was preceded by a Design-Your-Own Freak competition (our team's effort is below) and a Freaks based pub quiz (we came second and got a free drink each).



Before the film actually began, we were treated to the classic Drive-in movie countdown, which American readers might remember from their younger days (video below) and a couple of Betty Boop cartoons, one of which she blacked up in (!).

Then came the feature presentation - Freaks is a pre-code horror film which tells the story of a group of sideshow performers. A beautiful trapeze artist tricks the leader of the sideshow into marrying her - she's actually after his substantial inheritance. When the rest of the sideshow performers find out, they hatch a plot to get revenge on the 'normals'. Freaks is an enthralling, controversial and spine-chilling film, banned in the UK for 30 years and effectively ruining Browning's career. He probably thought it was worth it, though.

Amy Grimehouse Presents... are also going to be hosting special screenings of Showgirls and a double bill of Carrie and The Shining in the near future.

Sundance London: Capsule Reviews

I recently attended the first ever Sundance London (you can read my Movie Farm article on the festival here). Out of the fourteen films that were screened, I saw ten - here are my quick capsule reviews of the films I saw, along with some photos I took of the O2 during the festival.

(Lots of women at Sundance this year - I guess that's the answer to the Cannes question; they're not in Competition in France because half of them are in the US making indie flicks - which Cannes doesn't really cater for).

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (Terence Nance)

A short film extended into a feature length documentary (with some cool animation) in the form of a deep and meticulous self-examination. Nance explores his own romantic relationships (one in particular) in an experimental, fragmentary, and slightly pretentious way. A bit heavy-going, but quite intriguing - almost stream-of-consciousness cinema.

Finding North (Kristi Jacobson, Lori Silverbush)

Revealing documentary about the issue of hunger/the poverty line in the USA (the world's richest country). Considering the sheer amount of cheap food there is in America, it seems impossible to believe that there are millions of people living there who don't have enough to eat. This documentary examines the problems inherent in the US social system in detail - interesting stuff, and well made.

The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield)

The was the opener for the Sundance Festival in Utah earlier this year (Greenfield also won the best director award). Gripping doc about billionaire couple Jackie and David Siegel, who attempt to build a 90,000 square foot mansion in the style of the palace of Versailles, only to fall foul of the recession. A lot of the appeal of this film is just the opportunity to gawk at these super-rich weirdos, but beneath that is an undercurrent of doom concerning the current financial crisis.

Safety Not Guaranteed (Colin Trevollow)

This was probably the best dramatic film I saw at the festival (although For Ellen was hard on its heels). Three journalists track down a man who placed a classfied ad for people to go time-travelling with him (based on a real advert, would you believe!). A charming, heartwarming comedy which is also delightfully deadpan, with a perfectly executed denouement. Will leave you grinning for hours, if not days.

Nobody Walks (Ry Russo-Young)

A family takes a young female filmmaker into their home, only for her to inadvertantly become a spanner in the works. Honestly, I was quite bored by this film - it's clearly supposed to be a stark portrait of human interaction, as well the East Coast US lifestyle, but it doesn't have much depth in either characters or plot, nor is it that interesting visually - the use of sound is pretty good (one of the characters is a sound/foley artist), but that's about it.

For Ellen (So Yong Kim)

Paul Dano stars as a struggling musician on a road trip to fight his estranged wife for custody of their daughter (whom he has never met). The film concentrates almost solely on Dano's character, making him the focal point through which the audience experiences the story. He is a truly great actor, with more than enough skill to carry this off. Sparse, subtle, and moving - this one was brilliant.

The House I Live In (Eugene Jarecki)

Jarecki explores the devastating effect that the so-called 'war on drugs' has had on the US in this important and fascinating doc. The startling facts are set out clearly and uncompromisingly, illustrating how the US judicial system has in fact worsened America's drug problems to an insane degree.

Chasing Ice (Jeff Orlowski)

This was the best of the documentaries I saw (and it had some pretty stiff competition). The film follows photographer James Balog and his project Extreme Ice Survey, which has documented the melting of glaciers through time-lapse photography. The images are amazing, and so is the science - anyone who is still sceptical about climate change will have to strongly resist the urge to take themselves out of the gene pool after seeing this film.

LUV (Sheldon Candis)

A simple, emotional film about a young boy's relationship with his criminal uncle. This film promised more than it could deliver - unlike For Ellen, which causes the viewer to connect emotionally through charged and understated scenes, LUV takes your emotional response for granted, and so doesn't bother to truly get you involved. Quite a ripping story, with some good performances, but nothing special.

Filly Brown (Youssef Delara, Michael D. Olmos)

Female LA street poet Majo gets into trouble when she starts making it big in the music world. Some good performances in this one too, especially from Gina Rodriguez (who learned to rap for the film), but again the emotional side of it was out of whack. It was pretty mawkish throughout, and by the end it was a sticky puddle of soppiness on the floor of the Sky Superscreen.


To finish off, here are my own personal KINOLENS Jury Awards:

Best Overall Film: For Ellen, Chasing Ice (Tie)

Best Documentary: Chasing Ice

Best Dramatic film: Safety Not Guaranteed

Best Performance: Paul Dano

Best Director: Eugene Jarecki

Sexism Debate Rages on at Cannes 2012

I wrote a piece for Subtitled Online about the sexism debate that has sprung up around Cannes this year (if sexism and cinema is a subject that interests you, you may also want to check out my pieces on the hunt for the new 'Hunger Games' director and the Bechdel Test).

The 65th Cannes Film Festival, which kicked off on 16th May 2012, has come under heavy fire from critics who have accused the festival of sexism. Of the twenty-two filmmakers whose work has been selected in competition this year, not one is female. This has sparked a very strong reaction, spearheaded by an opinion piece published on 12^th May in French magazine Le Monde.

For the rest of the article, head over to Subtitled Online...

Sundance London

Apologies for the lack of KINOLENS posts this week; I kinda burned myself out over the Sundance weekend, plus on Wednesday night I was at a Pre-Cannes event helping out with some interviews, which was great fun but very tiring (articles on that also coming up). Anyway, here is my write up of the first ever Sundance London for Movie Farm: Sundance London 2012.

I am also planning to review the festival/films in a bit more depth here at KINOLENS, hopefully starting later today if I have time, so look out for that.

Cannes Line-up Announced

For the full list of Cannes entrants this year, head over to Movie Farm...

While it looks as though there are plenty of brilliant directors and intriguing films being exhibited at Cannes this year, it has already been noted by many that there is not one female director in competition. This was also the case in 2010, and the festival found itself subjected to accusations of sexism.

In 2011, a handful of female filmmakers (including Lynne Ramsay for We Need to Talk About Kevin) were included, but this year it seems Cannes is turning back into a boy's club. Still, what can you expect from a world in which the first and only woman ever to win a Best Director Oscar did so only in 2010 (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker).

The fact that female filmmakers don't get nearly as much recognition as male ones is one of my pet hates, so you may well be subjected to a blog post on the subject in the near future.

Sundance London

The first ever UK Sundance Festival will be taking place from the 26th to the 29th of April this year. There will be a special selection of 14 films chosen from among those screened in January at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, plus music events and 'An Evening with Robert Redford' on the opening night.

Those of us who invested in advanced ticket packages have this week been gearing up make our film choices online - apparently I will get half an hour to make my choices, starting from 9 am tomorrow. This is slightly nerve-wracking, but hopefully it will all come right in the end. This morning I have been extremely organised, and made three seperate ticket booking plans - Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. Now let's just hope I don't oversleep and the internet doesn't choose tomorrow morning to play silly buggers. Otherwise, I'll have to get my tickets at the O2 box office with the common herd.

Anyway, the films I am most looking forward to seeing at the festival are:

Nobody Walks – The story of a family who take a young artist into their home, directed by Russo-Young.

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty – A partly animated film by Terence Nance. An artist considers the ideas of experience and emotion after he is stood up on a date.

The Queen of Versailles – A documentary about a billionaire couple who have built a 90,000 foot square mansion based on the palace at Versailles.

For Ellen – A drama starring Paul Dano and directed by So Yong Kim. A struggling musician must drive overnight to fight his estranged wife for custody of their daughter.

LUV – With an appearance from Danny Glover, drama LUV is set over the course of one day and shows a shy thirteen-year-old boy bonding with his troubled uncle.

Chasing Ice – A documentary by Jeff Orlowski highlighting the dangers of climate change through the work of National Geographic photographer James Balog. The film follows Balog as he crosses the arctic capturing disappearing ice fields with time-lapse cameras.

Finding North – A documentary looking into issues of food supply and hunger in the United States, the richest country in the world.

The House I Live In – A Documentary by Eugene Jarecki examining America’s ‘war on drugs’ and how it has destroyed families and communities in the US without ever seeming to have an effect on the drug trade.

Surprisingly the Grand Jury Prize Winner from Utah, Beasts of the Southern Wild, is not going to be screened in London, which is a bit disappointing - however, the line up is still looking pretty good, if a little documentary-heavy. If I play my cards right (and the darn thing hasn't sold out already) I may even be able to get in to see the Sundance Kid himself, Robert Redford. I'll post an update when I've recovered from the ordeal of booking...

Hold Onto Your Butts...

Rereleasing movies is a hot issue - at least, one would imagine it to be a very hot issue in some head offices. I'd like to have been a fly on the wall of the boardroom in which this latest rerelease decision was made; I can just imagine a load of frowning guys in suits trawling through lists of popular movies, wracking their brains over which one would make them the largest possible amount of money if it were once again to be made available to the masses in supersize form. And then, suddenly, one guy spots a promising title out of the corner of his eye; he searches back up the list, before finally alighting on Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park. A strange, crazy glint of light appears in his eyes, as one by one his colleagues stop shuffling their papers and turn to him, both excited and unnerved by his manic expression.

"Gentlemen," he says. "I think I've got it."

There is a pregnant pause. And then;

"Jurassic Park."

There is a stunned silence as the magnitude of the suggestion makes its way around the table in a Mexican wave of synergistic telepathy, until finally it reaches the chairman. All eyes upon him, he shifts slightly in his seat. A note of unease enters the atmosphere, as all wait to see whether the idea will be raised to a pedestal, or nailed to a cross. Finally:

"Jones," the chairman says, eyeing his surbordinate. "You'll be made regional manager for this."

He favours Jones with an awed stare of approval, as the rest of the besuited men cheer, rip off their ties and start planning their next month long trip to Monaco. Jones meanwhile, sits quietly, not quite believing what he has just achieved.

In truth of course, it didn't happen that way at all. Jurassic Park has only been rereleased because it will very soon come out on blu ray. But surely even if this were not the case, it would have been a damn good decision anyway. Especially seeing as the movie has not been majorly changed at all (why mess with perfection), so we are not faced with a hideous, Star Wars-esque 'Godless abomination', as Amy McGoldrick put it. No, it's still the same old Jurassic Park, only bigger, louder and much much scarier; you can really appreciate the significance of being inside a car which is getting beaten to shit by a T Rex when you're watching it take place on a screen as high as five double decker buses. Not to mention the surround sound; I wouldn't be surprised if people walking past the BFI IMAX this weekend thought there was a freak earthquake going on.

Jurassic Park is only getting a very short release, so if you're desperate to see it, I'd get a move on and spare no expense.

The Twilight Saga is Decadent and Depraved

(This is a re-post from my old blog, a small homage to Hunter S Thompson I wrote a couple of years ago. Enjoy).

The Twilight Saga is Decadent and Depraved

“Oh God,” I said, as we rounded the corner onto Sidwell Street and glimpsed the blue glow of the Odeon, “I thought this movie came out a week ago?”

“It would appear not,” murmured Sophie Rickard, the erstwhile companion of almost all my cinematic forays in the city of Exeter.

“What in the hell is this? Has there been some kind of accident? Or a fire, perhaps?” I continued incredulously, as we began to attempt to squeeze our way through the noxious rabble that had that fateful day crawled out of the proverbial woodwork in order to bear witness to the latest instalment of the Twilight Saga, New Moon. We later discovered that what we had assumed would be a quiet, almost deserted showing of said film was in fact, due to a heinous release date fuck up on our own part, taking place on only the second day after it had been released.

Having kicked, scratched and bitten our way to the desk, during which time Sophie was forced to wrench herself from the grip of a weeping teenage girl who had somehow mistaken her for Ashley Greene, and I knocked another off her feet with a swift swipe to the ankles, we managed to obtain tickets. These were of course, by that time in the evening, worth more than their weight in gold, and we were forced to stuff them into our shoes and pretend to be hysterical in order to get back through the crowd, out the front door of the cinema, and into the queue, which by then stretched half way along the street.

As we looked about us at the various cliques of whispering, trembling teenagers with wide, shimmering eyes and palpably damp skin, we began to concoct ways in which we would explain our presence there should any of our peer group happen to pass by. We settled on the rather improbable story of holding a place in the line for our younger sisters. We got around the fact that neither of us in fact have younger sisters by arranging that if an acquaintance of Sophie’s should pass by, the younger sister we were waiting for would be mine, and vice versa. However, if someone we both knew had showed up, we would have been screwed.

After waiting about another half hour, during which the front section of the queue attempted to mount some sort of botched attempt at surging the doors, and were promptly chastened with water cannons, we finally made it into the cinema. The few hours that followed are difficult to describe, especially considering that my tortured psyche made a very valiant attempt to black them out during the next few days, which I mostly spent, according to reliable sources, giggling in my bedroom. I recall only a few significant happenings, such as the constant gasps of disbelief and delight which occurred whenever a main character took his shirt off, or walked in slow motion, or indeed, did pretty much anything. Then there was the girl a few rows behind us who seemed to be suffering some kind of fit of sobbing hysteria for the entire length of the film (seriously). And of course, the gasping, screaming, crying, hugging and general ripping up of fake velvet cushions which occurred following the last line of the movie, “Marry me, Bella”.

Sophie and I leaned against each other for support as we were propelled back through the cinema, down the staircase and out into the street, where we finally managed to make a break fro it when we saw a gap in the scrum, and run back around the corner to our house, where we dead bolted the door and kept watch at the front windows, broken whiskey bottles at the ready, until the last few stragglers had been rounded up by the vigilante groups the Mayor had dispatched for this purpose. Needless to say, never again will we get caught out in the Odeon on the the opening weekend of a Twilight movie - at least not without a can of mace and a couple of pointy sticks.