Category Archives: Saturday Matinee

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: Music Double Feature

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“Scratch” (2001) is a well-researched documentary directed by Doug Pray about the origins and culture of the hip-hop DJ scene from the 70s to around 2000. It features performances and interviews with legendary turntablists such as DJs Q-bert, Shadow, Premier, Rob Swift, Krush, Cut Chemist, NuMark and Mix Master Mike, as well as early pioneers such as Afrika Bambaataa and GrandWizard Theodore .

The producer of the soundtrack to Scratch was Bill Laswell, who was also a co-writer and producer of Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit”, one of the first hit singles to feature record scratching as an instrument. Though not as well known as he should be, Laswell continues to be among the most groundbreaking, versatile and prolific living musician/producers. His music draws inspiration from funk, hip-hop, rock, post-punk, jazz, world music, hardcore metal, electronica, ambient, dark ambient, film soundtracks and experimental genres. Artists he has produced or performed with include Afrika Bambaataa, Johnny Rotten, Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger, the Ramones, Yoko Ono, Motörhead, Swans, Whitney Houston, William S. Burroughs, Paul Bowles, Robert Quine, Fred Frith, John Zorn, Brian Eno, David Byrne, Fela Kuti, Ginger Baker, Henry Threadgill, Sonny Sharrock, Sting, Nine Inch Nails, Ozzy Osbourne, Tori Amos, Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Medeski Martin & Wood, DJ Krush, the Orb, Mike Patton, Tetsu Inoue, Pete Namlook, and the Master Musicians of Jajouka. In 2006 he and a number of his favorite collaborators including Buckethead, Pharoah Sanders, Foday Musa Suso, Bootsy Collins, Toshinori Kondo, Hamid Drake, Zakir Hussein, Ustad Sultan Khan, DJ Disk, Karsh Kale, and Nils Petter Molvaer among others appeared on the PBS program Soundstage. They performed live sets from some of the various projects Laswell has been a central force behind over the years such as Praxis, Material, and Tabla Beat Science.

Saturday Matinee: Massacre at Central High

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Though its unfortunate title makes it sound like a standard slasher film, Rene Daalder’s “Massacre at Central High” (1976) (aka “Blackboard Massacre” or “Massaker in Klasse 13”) is actually a clever political allegory in a high school setting. When new student David observes the degree to which the student body is dominated by a small clique of thugs, he sets out to liberate the school from its oppressors. Though he succeeds, conflicts soon arise among various factions to fill the power vacuum. Losing patience with everyone, David begins planning the destruction of the entire high school. The film is dated in terms of fashions and soundtrack and hamstrung by a low budget and occasionally stilted dialogue, but its message is timeless and problems it addresses such as bullying and high school violence are even more relevant today. Massacre at Central High is likely an inspiration for the later cult film “Heathers” (1988).

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: Anima Mundi

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“Anima Mundi” (1992) was the third collaboration between director Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass (following Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi). It was produced in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund’s Biological Diversity Campaign and features amazing, beautiful and hypnotic images of a multitude of animal species from around the world. At just under half an hour, it’s a relatively short film but well worth seeing, especially for fans of non-narrative documentaries such as Koyaanisqatsi, Baraka, and Samsara.

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

Sunday Matinee: The Spook Who Sat by the Door

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“The Spook Who Sat by the Door” (1973) is one of the most unabashedly radical revenge fantasies ever filmed. Based on the 1969 novel by Sam Greenlee, the film was directed by Ivan Dixon, and co-produced by Dixon and Greenlee, who had to resort to grassroots community fundraising to get it made. The plot centers on Dan Freeman, a covert black nationalist who infiltrates the Chicago offices of the CIA as a token black employee in a clerical position (they seat him by the door to demonstrate their commitment to diversity for visitors). After learning what he needs to learn, Freeman promptly resigns, gets a new position as a social worker in the ghetto, recruits an army of freedom fighters and teaches them CIA guerrilla warfare tactics in preparation for an uprising. Not surprisingly, the film was removed from theaters shortly after release due to pressure from the FBI and was not available on home video until 2004.

The full version of the The Spook Who Sat by the Door presented on the following YouTube video is preceded by interviews with Sam Greenlee who provides details about how his film was suppressed by the government: