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Buster Keaton Series at Webster University

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On September 23, 2007

In Film

For those of you in St. Louis, Webster University is running a Buster Keaton Retrospective starting September 28th and running through October 14th. If Charlie Chaplin is the king of silent comedy with a streak of pathos, then Keaton is the kind of silent deadpanning. Both are incredible filmmakers, but laugh for laugh, I might actually have to give Keaton the edge. The General still stands as one of the greatest comedies ever made, silent or not. If you get the chance, you should try to get down to Webster and see some of these classics.

The General still

Here’s the schedule. All the features start at 8:00pm, and are accompanied by a shorter Keaton film; as a further treat, each is screened with live musical accompaniment, just like they would have been when they were first released.

  • Three Ages – September 28th
  • Our Hospitality – September 29th – I’ve seen this one and enjoyed it a lot, but it’s been a while; Northerner Keaton inherits a Southern manor home, only to be embroiled in a long-standing feud
  • The Saphead – September 30th (screens with Sherlock Jr., which would actually be the draw for me – Keaton is a projectionist drawn into the movies he shows)
  • Battling Butler – October 4th
  • The Navigator – October 5th
  • Go West – October 6th
  • Seven Chances – October 7th
  • College – October 11th – the view of college in silent films is always fascinating to me, whoever’s doing it; I don’t think I’ve seen Keaton’s version, but if you ever get the chance to see Harold Lloyd‘s The Freshman, it’s a lot of fun (Lloyd is the now-much-lesser-known third great comic of the silent era)
  • Steamboat Bill, Jr. – October 12th – Lots of great sight gags in this one, largely based around escalating natural disasters that Keaton narrowly manages to escape.
  • The Cameraman – October 13th – This one is a lot of fun, too, but then I’m always a fan of films set in the movie industry.
  • The General – October 14th – This is it, folks. If you ever only see one silent film in your life, ever, make it this one. Yes, even over Chaplin. Of course, you should also see Chaplin’s Modern Times, but it’s not showing at Webster right now, is it? So yeah. See The General. I only wish I were in St. Louis to see it myself.

Theatrical Pick for 9/14/07 – Eastern Promises

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On September 14, 2007

In Film

Eastern PromisesOkay, now, both sources I’m using for movie release information (IMDb and FirstShowing.net) say that David Cronenberg‘s Eastern Promises is opening in wide release this week. I don’t know how wide “wide” is, though, since it isn’t playing in Austin or St. Louis, and is only in one theatre in Dallas. Still. The other openings this week don’t appeal to me, so I’m going to highlight it anyway. Eastern Promises concerns a midwife (Naomi Watts), who is drawn into the underbelly of the Russian mafia when she tries to discover the background of a teenage mother who died in labor. It’s also got Viggo Mortensen as one of the Russians she encounters. The last Cronenberg-Mortensen outing was A History of Violence, which I didn’t really understand when I watched it because I kept being distracted, but is pretty close to the top of my rewatch list. Based on the buzz I’ve read out of the Toronto Film Festival, Eastern Promises more than delivers. Speaking of TIFF, is now a good time to point out how much I want to be a professional film critic and hang out at film festivals? I thought it was. I’ve been salivating over the TIFF dispatches. Anyway, here’s the trailer for Eastern Promises, for whenever it ends up coming out near you. (And here’s a good review from the New York Times–I’m so glad A.O. Scott is back; I missed him when he was on vacation a month or so ago).

Also coming out this week in wide release:

And in limited release:

  • Across the Universe – I’ve mentioned Julie Taymor‘s 1960s Beatles-inflected musical drama before, and the mixed reviews coming out of TIFF are pretty much what I expected. I’m still hoping to like the film, though.

  • In the Valley of Elah – I severely disliked director Paul Haggis‘ last film Crash (yes, the one that won the Oscar; don’t care, I hated it), but his new one, about a man (Tommy Lee Jones) investigating the disappearance of his just-back-from-Iraq son, looks rather good (trailer)
  • King of California – I’m not always a huge Michael Douglas fan, but this trailer cracked me up. Hadn’t heard of the movie until I watched it, so I have no idea what the buzz is like. (trailer)
  • Silk – This Keira Knightley picture snuck up on me! Also has Michael Pitt, in a 19th century story about a young man going to Japan for the silk trade. (trailer)
  • Fierce People – Rather than join his anthropologist father in his work with indigenous peoples, a young man ends up going to live among a group of super-rich people and decides to study them instead. Looks amusing enough. (trailer)
  • December Boys – Daniel Radcliffe plays an orphan who ISN’T Harry Potter. (trailer)
  • Moving McAllister – Straight-laced company man gets tasked with taking care of the boss’s niece and ends up with more than he bargained for, like a whacked out Jon Heder along for the ride. I’m torn between quirky indie and dumb roadtrip film, but leaning toward the latter at the moment. (trailer)
  • Ira and Abby – Indie romcom about two strangers who decide to get married; I really liked Jennifer Westfeldt in Kissing Jessica Stein–might be fun to see her play not a lesbian (she also wrote both films). But the reviews have been mediocre at best. (trailer)

Whew, that’s a lot of stuff coming out. If I really were a professional movie critic, I’d be busy, wouldn’t I?

July 2007 Reading/Watching Recap

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On September 14, 2007

In Books and Reading, Film, Reviews

In an effort to get caught up on these recap posts, I did shorter write-ups on some of the films I didn’t care about as much (and I’m going to do the same thing for August, hoping to get it out by, you know, the end of September so I can, you know, do September’s). I intended there to be more shorter ones, but it turned out, I cared about a lot of the films this month. Ah well. If I give a quickie reaction to something you’d like to hear more about, let me know and I’ll do a more detailed writeup on it later. I doubt most people read all these anyway. Not that that’s why I write them; I write them so in ten years I can look back and see how stupid my reactions to thing were when I first saw them. ;)

After the jump, reactions to Happy Feet, Orlando (book and film), Vivre sa vie, The Fountain, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the Three Colours Trilogy, Winter Light, Renaissance, Little Children, Sophie’s World, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and more.

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DVD Pick of the Week – Away From Her

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On September 11, 2007

In Film, Television

Away from HerLet’s just abandon any idea that my picks of the week are recommendations from personal experience. I only see about two or three films a month in theatres, so most of the time I’m going to be picking the films that I most want to see or that I’ve heard good buzz about. And I’ve heard great buzz about Sarah Polley’s directorial debut, Away from Her. I find it really interesting that Polley, who’s 28 and best known for her acting in indie films, chose to make her first film as a director about an aging couple dealing with Alzheimer’s. And apparently she does a really great job, too, as does veteran actress Julie Christie as the struggling woman. I’m always glad to hear about good films from women directors, because dang it, we need more good women directors. So I’m hoping to catch Away from Her soon.

Other notable releases this week:

  • Bones: Season Two – I quite enjoy Bones, though there were several story decision in the latter half of Season Two that didn’t make a whole lotta sense
  • Grey’s Anatomy: Season Three – And I’m addicted to Grey’s, even though last year’s finale made me pretty mad, not to mention scared about how this season will go
  • Supernatural: Season Two – Lots of my friends watch this, but I never have. Someday. That’s what DVDs are for.
  • Las Vegas: Season Four – Another one on my “eventually” list
  • Charmed: The Final Season – I’m amused that apparently the Charmed producers can’t even remember how many seasons there are; or they’re just happy to be done with it
  • I Dream of Jeannie: Season Four
  • Snow Cake – Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, and Carrie-Anne Moss deal with a tragic accident and autism, which just seems like too much depressing stuff for one movie.

Theatrical Picks for 9/7/07 – 3:10 to Yuma and Pierrot le fou for St. Louisans

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On September 6, 2007

In Film

In wide release, we have 3:10 to Yuma, the latest in a series of attempts over the last decade or so to bring the western back. Most of these attempts have been massively unsuccessful, but from the advance buzz, 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (opening in two weeks in limited release) could make this the year that changes that. Russell Crowe takes on the role of a captured outlaw, while Christian Bale assumes responsibility for getting him to the train station in time for the 3:10 train to Yuma, where he’ll be tried. The film is a remake of the 1957 film of the same name, directed by Delmer Daves and starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin–I haven’t seen the original, so my point of reference is that it sounds sort of like High Noon in reverse. I’m planning on going to see it on Saturday. In the meantime, here’s the trailer, and here’s an extremely positive review from CinemaFusion. (It’s sitting fairly pretty on Rotten Tomatoes, too, with a score of 82% Fresh).

Other wide releases this week are Shoot ‘Em Up, which looks like it could be all kinds of terrible, but also all kinds of fun, what with Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, and Paul Giamatti largely tasked with shooting stuff up, and The Brothers Solomon, apparently the latest in the increasingly annoying category of stupid buddy comedies. However, it does have Jenna Fischer in it, and she’s so adorable on The Office that I hesitate to scratch it completely off my “rent sometime after I’ve watched everything else” list.

On the limited release side of things, there’s Hatchet, which would be a prime example of the sort of horror movie I HATE, and In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary about the 1960s-1970s Apollo moon missions which looks quite interesting. But if you live in St. Louis, you have the opportunity to see Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou at the Tivoli in the Loop. This film is out of print on DVD, who knows when it’ll be back (but hopefully the theatrical rerelease means it’ll be put back on DVD soon), and I only wish I were in St. Louis right now to see it, because I haven’t and I REALLY REALLY want to. It’d probably be a little fanatical, though, to travel 800 miles to see one film, though, wouldn’t it? Yeah, that’s what I thought. I keep trying to see if it’ll turn up in Austin, but my knowledge of where to look for classic rereleases in Austin is shoddy at best. Here’s the Post-Dispatch’s item on the film. And here’s the trailer, but I warn you, trailers for Godard films are not really very helpful at finding out what they’re about (although I’m starting to question more and more if “what is it about” is a helpful question to ask about a film anyway). The title card that says “Belmondo and Karina in a Godard film” is all I need to know about it to Want.It.Now.

(On a tangentially related subject, I just ran across a trailer that had been removed from YouTube due to copyright violations–I mean, okay, yeah, I suppose trailers are copyrighted. But how in the world does “fewer people see the trailer” translate into “more people see the film”? Trailers are marketing materials and marketing materials are more effective the more people that see them, right? So you should post them everywhere that’ll take them, right?)

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