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Category Archives: Art
Saturday Matinee: Visioneers
Review by Eric D. Snider
Source: EricDSnider.com
Most of the individual components of “Visioneers” are not new, nor are the film’s ideas particularly deep. Yet somehow the combination, written and directed by brothers Jared and Brandon Drake — in their first film, amazingly — feels fresh and invigorating. It’s a high-concept comedy, but it’s down-to-earth and accessible, even a little touching. It’s a terrific start for a pair of new filmmakers.
The setting is a dystopian version of modern-day America, where the Jeffers Corporation is the most powerful entity in the world. Even the U.S. president kowtows to the monolithic company, whose employees are called “tunts” and “goobs” and work at ill-defined tasks at various bureaucratic levels. As with most firms in dystopian movies, it’s never established what, exactly, the Jeffers Corp. does, but its influence is felt everywhere. Common people greet each other with the “Jeffers salute,” which looks suspiciously like flipping the bird.
Our hero is a Level 3 tunt named George Washington Winsterhammerman (Zach Galifianakis). He’s the supervisor of a little pod of employees who work in a depressing office where an automated voice announces, every 60 seconds, how many minutes remain before the weekend. Everyone is generally disheartened and depressed, but this has been enhanced in recent weeks as citizens have been spontaneously combusting due to stress.
One way to avoid stress, of course, is to just accept things as they are. (“Forget ourselves, work together” is the Jeffers Corp. motto.) Unfortunately, George Washington Winsterhammerman has been suffering from dreams and ambitions lately, and it’s been established that this is a precursor to exploding. He has a wife, Michelle (Judy Greer), who spends all her time seeking happiness via TV products and eating a lot of butter, but he hardly loves her anymore. Instead, he looks forward to the few minutes each day that he can talk on the phone to Charisma (Mia Maestro), the Level 4 goob who supervises his department. It is the one time that George’s mood brightens.
As George worries more and more about the possibility of explosion, the film dives deeper and deeper into its satire of modern corporate-driven life, where happiness is elusive while complacency is easily achieved. It’s a simple truth that everyone wants to be happy. What separates us is how we go about looking for happiness, or whether we even look for it at all. Sometimes we try elaborate, stupid measures to produce happiness when the real solution is staring us in the face. George’s brother (James LeGros) has already found that pole-vaulting makes him happy, though his refusal to participate in the Jeffers-sanctioned programs has made him a government target.
“Visioneers” is about George’s search for meaning in his life, and comedian Zach Galifianakis plays the role with more conviction and depth than you might have expected. George is subdued and contemplative, but not boring — and that’s a fine line for an actor to walk. He earns laughs through the old-fashioned method of being the only sane person in a sea of crazies, but the filmmakers avoid overplaying the lunacy of the world they’ve created. Understatement is the rule.
And it works magnificently. Like I said, we’ve seen a lot of these ideas before. But even if it’s not reinventing the wheel, “Visioneers” still manages to be insightful, intelligent, and melancholically funny. If the Drake brothers have any more stories as good as this one, they could become an exciting new force in the film world. Let me be the first to give them a Jeffers salute, but in a good way.
Watch the film on Hoopla here: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/11670081
Two for Tuesday
Saturday Matinee: Valley Girl
80S BITS: VALLEY GIRL
By Richard Grey
Source: TheRealBits.com
With the release of a fourth American Pie film this year, one that largely looks back at the highs and lows of the 1999 original, it is tough to imagine a time when teen sex comedies weren’t a dime a dozen. When reflecting on Martha Coolidge’s 1983 hit film Valley Girl, what makes it stand out is just how much hasn’t changed in the last three decades. Some of the fashions might have altered, the music is now retro and valley girls have been parodied in everything from Frank Zappa music to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yet there remains a central familiarity that this film set the tone for in many ways.
In fair California, where we lay our scene, Julie Richman (Deborah Foreman) is a rich valley girl who has everything a young lady could dream of: cool parents, money, a gaggle of friends and the hottest boyfriend in town. After hanging out with her valley friends Loryn (Elizabeth Daily), Stacey (Heidi Holicker), and Suzi (Michelle Meyrink), she decides that Tommy (Michael Bowen) doesn’t respect her anymore and unceremoniously dumps him. When she meets Hollywood punk Randy (Nicolas Cage) at a party, the pair share an instant connection, and Randy falls in love hard, showing her a world she never knew existed. Yet Julie’s friends don’t approve, and she must decided whether to go with Randy or cave to peer pressure and reconcile with Tommy.
The disparity between rich and poor, and the class war it created, was a major theme in the films of the 1980s, proving to be the Romeo and Juliet stumbling block that stopped couples from uniting in Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful to name but a few. Just as the decade of decadence was getting underway, the familiar trope is pulled out here not so much as a cheap cash grab, but rather as a parody of the popular youth culture of the 1980s. More so than any other film that has lampooned or been set in the 1980s since, Valley Girl captures the era perfectly, from the plastic image-focused girls of the valley, to the New Wave punks of Hollywood, just as caught in the scene as the sex-obsessed girls.
Where most teen comedies are the fantasies of the middle-aged, who vicariously live out deflowering fantasies that they missed out in their own formative years, female filmmaker Martha Coolidge creates a world inhabited with real kids. Much of the film cleverly sits back and observes conversations, adopting an almost documentary approach to exposition. Refreshingly, this means that catching girls out in the nude or obtaining a pair of panties as a trophy are not the ultimate goals in the film, nor is there a contest to be the first past the cherry-popping post. These young characters are sexual active, aware of their own bodies but in contrast conflicted over the dichotomy between their feelings and social status. Through the mere act of listening, we find out their fears and their desires. Who knew that girls talk about sex almost as much, if not more than, boys?
Valley Girl is fuelled by a terrific New Wave soundtrack, making liberal use of The Plimsouls and Josie Cotton, who both appear in the film. Peppered with minor hits of the 1982-83 charts, “I Melt with You” by Modern English serves as an unofficial theme song for the film. The film originally had a lot more on the soundtrack, with the music rights costing $250,000 on top of the film’s original $350,000 budget. However, while The Clash, Culture Club, Bananarama, and The Jam all originally appeared in the credits to the film, none of their songs can be found in the actual picture thanks to an inability to secure the rights. Frank Zappa, whose satirical 1982 song “Valley Girl” served as the basis for the film, unsuccessfully attempted to sue the film’s makers for capitalising on his song’s name.
Trivia fans will know that this was the first film in which a young Nicolas Coppola first used his more famous stage name of Nicolas Cage, but the legacy of the film goes well beyond beginning the career that launched a thousand hairpieces. Apart from popularising the highly imitable “Valspeak”, Valley Girl opened the door for frank and open explorations of youth anxiety and sex, far more than the Porky’s films ever did. Indeed, a direct line can be traced between Valley Girl‘s star-crossed lovers and the Jane Austen-inspired Clueless. Like, totally for sure.
Watch the full film for free here: https://youtu.be/9VbyTLnRXCs
Two for Tuesday
Saturday Matinee: Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie
Review by Jim Tudor
Source: Screen Anarchy
Having never seen the comedic TV work of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (“Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!”), I went into their feature-length variation, “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie”, braced for a merciless expansion of inside jokes that I would be terminally outside of. Mercifully, I was able to navigate these strange waters successfully enough to understand and even enjoy the film, even as it came apart in places.
Aesthetically speaking, it’s got about as much going for it as an early Kevin Smith film. Comically speaking, it’s a downhill ride that starts out promising but then fizzles out.
Heidecker and Wareheim play fictionalized versions of themselves, occasionally wandering beyond the forth wall to further muddy the meta-waters. The laughs are the most solid in terms of the plot itself. When “Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” opens, we come to learn that that’s exactly what Tim & Eric have made – a movie, with a billion dollar budget. And it sucks in every possible way. Because they are morons, in every possible way. And the Hollywood execs who green lit their billion-dollar movie are bigger morons for letting it happen. They want their billion dollars back, but having pissed it all away on flamboyant houses, clothing, and a guru/mooch played by Zach Galifianakis, they have no choice but to take a job reviving the world’s deadest shopping mall, owned by a tyrannically delusional Will Ferrell. (And I do mean dead – the place looks like George Romero just got done shooting “Dawn of the Dead” in there four times over. It’s wolf-plagued and everything!) Huh? Don’t worry, it all actually makes an absurd bit of sense, and legitimate satire abounds… for a while. It’s semi-intelligent fun, until Tim & Eric as actual filmmakers (as opposed to the meta ones they are portraying on screen) (which makes this whole thing ultra-confusing to write about; great job on that, Tim & Eric) lose control of the whole operation, and simply opt to let it careen, because hey, who doesn’t love a wreck?
That said, there was a lot I didn’t get, and I’m not talking about the graphic shrim crapping sequence or appearances by “Awesome Show, Great Job!” stock actors that brought instant chuckles to the initiated viewers. What I didn’t get is why a promising comedy would willingly and irrevocably veer into the realm of the pseudo-sadistic, beyond the confines of dark humor. By taking full advantage of the freedoms of their R rating, Tim & Eric end up attempting to mine laughs by wallowing and attacking rather than through the time-tested methods of careful craft and construction. Maybe I sound like an old school curmudgeon when I say that they’re taking the easy way out, as they increasingly abandon what makes their film clever as the running time wears on. I get that Tim and Eric are absurdist comedians who’ve made their mark by seizing upon and distorting the familiar TV tropes we take for granted. But in this movie, what begins as a sly riff on consumption, advertising, and self-obsession becomes a manufactured midnight movie; a subpar comedic Jodorowsky film (of all things).
As would-be auteurs and stars of their own big-screen ego-trip, Heidecker and Wareheim make every attempt to turn their filmmaking shortcomings (budgetary, experience, etc.) to their advantage. (It’s clearly not really a billion dollar movie. Maybe not even a million.) 1980s corporate video aesthetic is embraced, and that much works. There are moments when it even looks and sounds like synth-fueled Video Toaster-generated cheese. Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gross, Robert Loggia, William Atherton, Will Forte, and Erica Durance, among others, all turn up in amusing roles. John C. Reilly indulges his shameless comedic side with a larger role as yet another moron, although he manages to steal every scene he’s in. So there are redeeming qualities. But Tim & Eric’s unwavering on-screen attempts to be as unlikable, despicable and morally bankrupt as the bloodthirsty Hollywood moguls they screwed over drowns everything by the end. Tim & Eric become the failed, new Butch & Sundance in a hail of ridiculous grindhouse-level violence for it’s own sake and it’s own sake only. This sort of thing could’ve been very smart and memorable, but in light of the utter lack of comedic build permeating this movie, it’s just whack-a-mole sound and fury, signifying only other signifiers.
Whether this obvious attempt to forge a deliberate cult classic out of their TV program will work or not, time will tell. Hailing from Will Ferrell’s Funny Or Die comedy farm, “Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” manages to both be funny and die. It’s the dying that’s easy, which this film proves. Even if it is funny for a while.
Watch the film on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/product/tim-erics-billion-dollar-movie
Two for Tuesday
Saturday Matinee: Winnebago Man double feature
From Wikipedia:
Winnebago Man is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Ben Steinbauer. The film follows the Internet phenomenon created by a series of twenty-year-old outtakes from a Winnebago sales video featuring profane outbursts from the salesperson, Jack Rebney. Originally intended as an inside joke, the video spread across the globe first on VHS then via YouTube and other online video sites, earning the salesman the title of “The Angriest Man in the World”. The documentary explores the story of the clips’ origins and how, two decades later, it affects the reluctant star.
Steinbauer released a short film Extraordinarily Unusual: Surprising the Winnebago Man in 2017, documenting his return to visit Rebney on his 87th birthday, bringing some of Rebney’s old friends to celebrate.
Watch Winnebago Man on Kanopy here: https://www.kanopy.com/product/winnebago-man
Extraordinarily Unusual: Surprising the Winnebago Man:
After the Crash 