Category Archives: Film

Saturday Matinee: Nothing Lasts Forever

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“Nothing Lasts Forever” (1984) is the only feature length film directed by Tom Schiller (who was an early writer and director for Saturday Night Live), but it’s a remarkable one. The film takes place in a dystopian world in which the Port Authority controls New York and determines the career paths of citizens based on mandatory tests. After failing an art test, aspiring artist Adam (Zach Galligan) is forced to work as a Holland Tunnel inspector under authoritarian boss Buck (Dan Aykroyd). After getting a brief taste of the art world through an artist he has an affair with, he befriends a homeless man who gives him an opportunity to fulfill his destiny on the moon.

Nothing Lasts Forever could be characterized as a lower budget and more hopeful precursor to “Brazil”. Besides Aykroyd, the film features appearances by comedians such as Bill Murray, Imogene Coca, and legendary stand-up comic (and mentor of Lenny Bruce) Mort Sahl. Due to copyright clearance problems with a number of archive clips used in the film, it has never had an official DVD release.

Saturday Matinee: Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods

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Notes from GrantMorrisonMovie.com:

Grant Morrison is one of the most popular writers in comics, and one of the most controversial. He is the Rock Star of Comics, a philosopher and chaos magician, who has used his comics to change both himself and his audience. He is a man living on the border between FICTION and REALITY, and this is his STORY.

The film was produced in close collaboration with Morrison and features extensive interviews with him, as well as never before seen photos and documents spanning his childhood to the present day.

Complimenting Morrison’s own words are interviews with his closest collaborators and friends, including Frank Quitely, Douglas Rushkoff, Cameron Stewart, Phil Jimenez, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns, Jill Thompson and many more. The film makes extensive use of found and abstract footage to make the documentary feel like a Morrison comic.

Saturday Matinee: Mind Game

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“Mind Game” (2004) is possibly the strangest anime feature film ever made. It was produced by the groundbreaking Studio 4C animation studio and directed by Masaaki Yuasa, previously most famously known for his involvement in the “Crayon Shin-chan” series (sort of a Japanese take on “The Simpsons”). The film’s plot is deceptively simple, centering on a young man named Nishi who is killed while trying to defend his childhood crush Myon. After a short visit to the afterlife he has a chance to change his fate, transforming his previously dull life into a psychedelic, mythopoetic adventure. At times the film overwhelms the senses with its wild mix of animation styles, exaggerated colors and perspectives, absurd situations and wild soundscape by Seiichi Yamamoto of noise rock band The Boredoms. Mind Game has never had an official DVD release in the U.S. but last June a kind soul put it on YouTube for the world to enjoy.

Saturday Matinee: Duck, You Sucker! (aka A Fistful of Dynamite)

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Most people know director Sergio Leone for his classic collaborations with Clint Eastwood on the “Man With No Name” trilogy of westerns or his later epics, “Once Upon a Time in the West” and “Once Upon a Time in America”. Fewer are familiar with the film he directed between the “Once Upon a Time” films, “Duck, You Sucker!” (1971). Its relative obscurity in the U.S. could partly be attributed to the horrible marketing from its American distributor United Artists.

The film’s title and advertising may have misled viewers to think they were in for a lighthearted comedy. It does have comedic moments but also contained scenes of massacres, some of which was edited out. For the film’s initial U.S. release it was trimmed by over half an hour because of violent and politically subversive content. Leone reportedly believed “Duck, You Sucker!” to be a common American colloquialism and so was probably not aware of the title’s slapstick tone. Not long after its release the film was reissued as “A Fistful of Dynamite” to cash in on the Clint Eastwood westerns which were popular at the time. Many were probably disappointed to discover that Eastwood wasn’t in the film. To add to the confusion, the title “Once Upon a Time…the Revolution” was used for some European releases to associate it with Leone’s previous film “Once Upon a Time in the West”.

Though “Duck You Sucker!” is not quite on par with Leone’s more well-known westerns such as “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” and “Once Upon a Time in the West”, it’s still a great film though unfairly underrated. It contains many elements of classic Leone films such as beautiful panoramas, tense showdowns, extreme close-ups, morally complex characters, and a memorable soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. Similar to some of his earlier works, “Duck, You Sucker!” is at heart a philosophical action film exploring morality, honor, friendship, betrayal, idealism, pragmatism, redemption and the consequences of violence.

Update: Looks like MGM pulled it from YouTube, but the film is still available here: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/7555695/rod_steiger_james_coburn_duck_you_sucker_legendado/

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21vzyh_a-fistful-of-dynamite-1971_shortfilms

News Video Roundup

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1/27  Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change interviews Gerald Celente on a variety of topics including economic turmoil, bitcoin and revolution:

1/28 An informative primer from James Corbett on the use of propaganda, false dichotomies and “divide and conquer” tactics by the ruling elite to keep the public powerless:

1/28 Ben Swann on the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s lobbying efforts to create a Federal Ban on GMO labeling:

1/28 Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s exceptional response to Obama’s State of the Union address:

1/28 An inspiring scene from the underrated “musical documentary” The American Ruling Class (2005) posted by the filmmakers in memory of Pete Seeger:

Saturday Morning Matinee: The Net

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Notes by Other Cinema:

Ultimately stunning in its revelations, Lutz Dammbeck’s The Net explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th Century web of technology—a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.

For those who resist these intrusive systems of technological control, the Unabomber has come to symbolize an ultimate figure of Refusal. For those that embrace it, as did and do the early champions of media art like Marshall McLuhan, Nam June Paik, and Stewart Brand, the promises of worldwide networking and instantaneous communication outweighed the perils. Dammbeck’s conceptual quest links these multiple nodes of cultural and political thought like the Internet itself. Circling through themes of utopianism, anarchism, terrorism, CIA, LSD, Tim Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, The Net exposes a hidden matrix of revolutionary advances, coincidences, and conspiracies.

Saturday Matinee: Bad Boy Bubby

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In “Bad Boy Bubby” (1993), an Australian film by writer/director Rolf de Heer, Nicholas Hope gives a brilliant performance as Bubby, a man who’s been kept confined and abused physically and emotionally by his mother for 35 years. He eventually escapes and has a number of chance encounters which reveal different aspects of himself and society. The first portion of the film is the most brutal, but as Bubby ventures out into the world the film’s tone lightens a bit and becomes more of a traditional (yet still twisted) dark comedy. Bad Boy Bubby is definitely not for all tastes and is initially difficult to watch, but is ultimately rewarding for its uniformly great performances, writing and direction.