Category Archive: Uncategorized

1. Streamers: AFS Programmer Lars Nilsen Presents a Genre Grab Bag for Home Viewing

   July 13, 2020 11:30 am Leave a Comment

   For this week’s Streamers recommendations we turn to our own AFS Lead Programmer Lars Nilsen, who is known for having tastes that encompass the whole of Cinema, from the exalted heights of art films to some of the deepest crevices where not-art films reside. As one of the founders of the American Genre Film Archive and a current advisory board member, he is a recognized authority in the field so we asked him to select some genre films – elevated and otherwise that you might enjoy.

   Here are his picks:

   

   DREADNAUGHT

   (1981, Dir. Yuen Woo-Ping) – Streaming on Amazon Prime

   Usually when martial arts films attain a high plateau of artfulness, it is because in some sense the makers sacrifice action and melodrama to give the film a gloss of “real-movie” respectability. The Yuen clan will have none of that. Director Yuen Woo-Ping and his brother/collaborators here tell a story of a revenge obsessed killer who hides out in a masked theater troupe. There are several sequences here that are as good as anything you’ll ever see in a martial arts film, including a gravity-defying fight between two “dragons” that will leave you gasping for air.

   

   GANJA & HESS

   (1973, Dir. Bill Gunn) – Streaming on Amazon Prime

   A unique, Black-bohemian take on that old chestnut – the vampire story. Made on an extremely low budget on grainy-looking 16mm film stock, this film finds yet a new angle on vampirism, which even at the time was a badly distended metaphor. Here it comes to represent both addiction and also the “blood” of African traditions. Maybe best of all is the cast, Duane Jones (NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) as Dr. Hess Green is excellent, as is Marlene Clark as Ganja Meda. Her voice is wonderfully expressive and gives her character added dimensions. Gunn himself plays an important part in the film, as Ganja’s eccentric husband. The music by Sam Waymon – processed with echo units to add elements of dreamlike reverie to the fantasy scenes, is – like the rest of the film – spectacularly effective despite the economy of its means.

   

   THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK

   (1974, Dir. Francesco Barilli) – Streaming on Kanopy

   I’ll be damned if I can tell you what this movie is about. It stars the fascinating Mimsy Farmer as a woman haunted by traumatic memories who may or may not in fact be pursued by a real antagonist. The giallo-esque plot is labyrinthine, and if you lose the thread of it, don’t worry too much. It was never that important anyway. More than anything this is a photographic study of Farmer and her psychologically fraught surroundings. The mise-en-scene is full of layered and reflecting compositions suggesting that a state of wildness and chaos is closing in at the edges of the frame. Directed by 30-year old Francesco Barilli with stellar production design by Piero Cicoletti and cinematography by Mario Masini.

   

   THE BELLE STARR STORY

   (1968, Dir. Lina Wertmüller and Piero Cristofani) – Streaming on Amazon Prime

   This must be the only Italian Western directed by a woman – Lina Wertmüller took over direction after a few days shooting. It is the sort of low-budget western that proliferated in the wake of Sergio Leone’s genre-defining classics. It certainly lacks the polish of much more expensive Leones, but it has a charm all its own – and one certainly senses that the approach to gender is very different than in most of the other films of this kind. Elsa Martinelli plays the outlaw Belle Starr and George Eastman plays the role of Larry Blackie, their love story is as rough and violent as the old west – as they say. This is an odd one, and not for everyone, but if you enjoy Italian Westerns, take a look at this one.

   

   DEMENTIA aka DAUGHTER OF HORROR

   (1955, Dir. John Parker)

   Not to be confused with Francis Ford Coppola’s DEMENTIA 13, which is also good. This is perhaps the best example of nightmare-put-on-film before David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD. There is no dialogue in the film – though one version contains narration. The soundtrack consists of a relentless but beautiful score (credited as New Concepts In Modern Sound) by George Antheil which features the soaring, theremin-like sounds of singer Marni Nixon. The story is about a young woman who commits a crime and is pursued down noirish night streets by demons of guilt and societal retribution. Surreal and inventive. A complete outlier in film history.

    

2. AFS Viewfinders Podcast: How To Cut a Great Trailer with Editor Trevor Lee

   July 9, 2020 2:29 pm Leave a Comment

   The film trailer is an art form in itself, and, for many of us, an invisible art. We don’t even know the names of the people who cut the trailers, or how it’s done. If you have ever sat in your seat and watched the seemingly dozens of trailers* unfold before a film starts, perhaps you have wondered about the process by which the decisions are made.

   We have too, and we happen to know an expert, so we asked. Trevor Lee, née Trevor Garza, is an editor who has cut a good number of trailers for us at AFS. He has also worked – pre-pandemic furloughs – for the Alamo Drafthouse in the same capacity, and also edits for national distributors. In the podcast that follows he discusses how he got his start in the field as part of his AFS internship and went on to learn a lot of important lessons.

   He is, as you will note, fairly obsessed with trailers and their inner workings. He is a perfectionist and the work speaks for itself. This is a pretty arcane subject we admit, but it is always interesting to hear someone who really excels at a trade describe it in detail. You can listen to the podcast here.

   During the course of our conversation Trevor mentions a few of the trailers he has cut for AFS, as well as some trailers that inspired him. We share them below. You can also check out some of his other work or get in touch with him via his website.

   
   “A labor of Quarantine Love. This was my experiment to see if i could make a super trailer that kept your attention the entire time rather than checking your watch for when it was over. Very proud of it.”

   
   “My first trailer for Kino Lorber. A beautiful and exquisite film that I hope my trailer does justice.”

   “To date my favorite trailer for an individual film.”

   Inspirations:

   
   “A far cry from the bombastic trailers you get for most blockbusters these days. It starts out very quiet and simply uses the momentum of Hans Zimmer’s magnificent score to build to a colossal end. It’s a trailer that’s honestly better than the film.”
   
   “Here is another trailer that feels like an emotionally stirring 2 minute short film. This trailer still makes me feel all the feels and I can remember the insane hype I had for it in the wake of Malick’s magnum opus Tree of Life. The film is good, definitely the best of what I call his “Improv Trilogy” but this trailer is one of the most emotionally resonant trailers I’ve ever seen.”
   
   “This might be the greatest trailer of all time. A Serious Man is one of my all time favorite Coen Brothers films and I would never in a million years think of cutting a trailer with this energy for that film. But that’s what makes this such a stroke of genius. If I ever watch this trailer, I watch the movie within a few days.”

   —

   *We should note here by means of patting ourselves on the back that we limit our trailer reels at the AFS Cinema to 4 short trailers each. Carry on.

3. Watch This: Teen Ennui In the ADHD Films of Makoto Nagahisa

   July 7, 2020 4:43 pm Leave a Comment

   Japanese director Makoto Nagahisa has said that he strives “to bring a speed, dialogue, and sound that doesn’t exist in current filmmaking.” Based on his Sundance award-winning anarchic short AND SO WE PUT GOLDFISH IN THE POOL and his new feature WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES (coming to our Virtual Cinema this Friday, July 10th), we would say he is succeeding. Both works crackle with a manic energy and hyper-stylized visuals that create a striking juxtaposition against their precociously deadpan protagonists (the self-declared zombies) – barely-teenage nihilists who just want to watch their mediocre worlds burn.

   With these first two titles, Nagahisa has thrown in his bid for the title of Japan’s Most Frenetic Filmmaker, giving contemporaries like Sion Sono (ANTIPORNO, WHY DON’T YOU PLAY IN HELL) and Takashi Miike a run for their money. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Watch AND SO WE PUT GOLDFISH IN THE POOL below for a taste of Makoto Nagahisa’s paintball-splattered pop-art sensibilities, then scrape what’s left of your brain back into your skull and come back this weekend for his debut feature, WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES.

4. Watch This: Ennio Morricone’s Radical Proto-Noise Music

   July 6, 2020 12:14 pm Leave a Comment

   It is a sad day for music and film lovers, as we have lost one of the greatest composers of the last century. Ennio Morricone made a household name for himself with his evocative Western soundtracks that permanently burrowed into the popular conscious. But his skill for cinematic expression extended far beyond those catchy whistles and blazing fuzz guitars. He composed masterpieces across the full scope of human emotion, from romance to comedy to terror. He owned them all.

   One of the many assets that set Morricone apart was his penchant for experimentation. This was most apparent in his genre film scores, where you can find him conjuring tidal waves of buzzing, droning, electric cacophony. His score for A LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN contains some prime examples of his manic musical mood swings, where gauzy dreamscapes suddenly mutate into walls of nightmarish noise.

   Morricone sharpened his experimental ear in the early 1960s in the visionary ensemble Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza (aka Il Gruppo / The Group), which he co-founded with composers Franco Evangelisti and Egisto Macchi. Their aim was to capture unfiltered “instant compositions,” and what they recorded was far ahead of its time, fusing elements of Miles Davis’ acid jazz, musique concrète, and even psychedelic funk to create a sound some have likened to later krautrock heavyweights like Can and Faust.

   While some might associate improvisation with a casual “no rules” approach, Il Gruppo’s sonic experiments were more like mad science. The 1967 German documentary below captures a moment in which The Group tinkers over the treated strings of a grand piano, looking more like neurosurgeons than musicians (perhaps they were, in some sense). Il Gruppo‘s sonic excursions contain the seeds of what would become Morricone’s compositional tool-kit: dissonant atonal brass swells, psychedelic effects-drenched arrangements, jazzy mod drum breaks, and much more. It’s a true privilege to witness some of the great Italian composers collaboratively dissect their art form and reassemble it into something entirely original. Enjoy Theo Gallehr’s fascinating Nuova Consonanza, Improvisational Composition Collective.

    

   For further reading, we recommend this excellent guest blog post on giallo film arrangements with Dallas-based film composer Curtis Heath, from our 2018 series devoted to great Italian horror film scores.

5. 1990 – The Year SLACKER Broke: Hear the Whole Story from Linklater & Friends

   July 5, 2020 8:31 am Leave a Comment

   Richard Linklater’s film SLACKER, made in Austin on a minuscule budget with a huge cast of local performers, is bound to be on anyone’s short list of most important Texas films, and is certainly the most Austin of all Austin movies. It was a national breakout hit – as these things go – and quite literally changed the national cultural dialogue in a lot of ways both substantial and trivial after it was released by Orion Classics on July 5, 1991.

   But, and this is the part of the story you may not have heard before, it almost never broke nationally. Only a few festivals accepted it, distributors didn’t think they could promote it, and, as you will hear him say in the new video that follows, he had downsized his expectations considerably, and was ready to execute a fallback plan of selling VHS tapes of SLACKER “in the back of Film Threat magazine.”

   But he wasn’t done yet. In the absence of national distribution, he took the movie to Scott Dinger, owner and manager of the Dobie Theater on the edge of the University Of Texas campus. Dinger agreed to play the film a couple of times a day and it became a sensation, selling out dozens of shows in the 200 seat auditorium. The secret, other than the high quality of the film, was the promotional efforts that Linklater and his cohorts made – inspired by several years of promoting film screenings for the Austin Film Society, which Linklater founded in 1985.

   At the same time, John Pierson, the producers’ representative who was shopping the film, was making headway in convincing the heads of Orion Classics that the film could find an audience, with the box office totals from the Dobie run as a convincing piece of evidence. The deal was done, and the rest is history.

   Here is a new, original video about the events of 1990 featuring interviews with Linklater, Dinger, and writer Alison Macor, whose 2010 book Chainsaws, Slackers, And Spy Kids covers the whole story as part of an overview of 30 years of Austin film history. Special thanks to the RICHARD LINKLATER: DREAM IS DESTINY filmmakers for originally finding much of the b-roll footage and photographs here. Enjoy.

6. Joyful Noise: The Music Films of Robert Mugge

   July 1, 2020 3:52 pm Leave a Comment

   Filmmaker Robert Mugge claims he never meant to spend his career making music documentaries, but we sure are thankful he did. Beginning with his 1980 film SUN RA: A JOYFUL NOISE, Mugge has crafted intimate portraits of legendary Black musicians, capturing invaluable snapshots of the artists and their creative environments. With the recent streaming availability of a huge portion of his filmography via Amazon Prime, we felt the time was right to revisit some of our favorites.

   Mugge was raised in a civil rights household and politics are ingrained in his filmmaking. Although not a music doc, his 1978 film AMATEUR NIGHT AT CITY HALL: THE STORY OF FRANK L. RIZZO applies the form’s conventions to a profile of the notoriously racist, authoritarian mayor of Philadelphia. In doing so, Rizzo’s blustering huckster routine, eerily echoed in today’s political arena, is reframed in the context of the cheap entertainers that could be found serenading the inebriated working class in dive bars and VFW halls across Philly.

   

    

   Moving forward, Mugge made the sage decision to let his politics speak through the rich perspectives of his subjects. His next film, 1980’s SUN RA: A JOYFUL NOISE, is full of colorful off-stage interviews that vividly bring to life the world in which Sun Ra’s seminal space jazz was produced. In one such scene, we visit Arkestra member Danny Thompson’s community-building convenience store, Pharaoh’s Den, where he shares his motivations, “I felt like something needed to be done in the neighborhood for the young ones who would listen… they need to be taught discipline from a young age so when they get older there won’t be no problems.” From a cultural and historical perspective, the value of these ample interviews cannot be overstated. In just one of many mind-expanding monologues, Sun Ra, framed in front of Reagan’s White House, offers this prescient dissection of our dysfunctional justice system: “You can’t have a justice department that only penalizes people when they do wrong, and doesn’t do anything to help them when they’re trying to do right.”

   

    

   Perhaps Mugge’s most inherently political musical subject is Gil Scott-Heron, whose heady mix of poetry, soul-jazz, blues, and funk is widely considered the blueprint for hip-hop. You’d be hard-pressed to find a song in his uncompromising discography that doesn’t take a civil rights issue to task, from his biggest hit “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” to the amnesty plea for wrongfully-convicted Gary Tyler in “Angola, Louisiana.” In BLACK WAX, we follow the charming, lanky songwriter as he struts around the nation’s capital shouldering a boom box and singing along with his scathing ode to the “outhouse of bureaucracy, Washington, DC.” As with A JOYFUL NOISE, we cut in and out from blazing nightclub performances to evocative locations where our subject unleashes unfiltered opinions. The scenes of Gil Scott-Heron coolly ad-libbing acerbic observations among wax figures of the founding fathers and Uncle Sam are well worth the watch. If, by the time the film reaches the final performance of the Reagan-skewering “B-Movie” with Scott-Heron hypnotically incanting “This ain’t really your life, ain’t really your life, ain’t really nothing but a movie,” you aren’t ready to storm the streets, you should check yourself for a pulse.

   

    

   Other highlights from Mugge’s filmography include the up-close and intimate THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO AL GREEN (1984), featuring stripped-down performances from the soul singer that will give you chills, and SONNY ROLLINS: SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS, which takes audiences behind the scenes into the jazz giant’s rehearsals and shows. Incredible instances, big and small, are archived in these indispensable documents, including the moment when Rollins leaps off a stage to play among the crowd, but fractures his heel bone instead. Without missing a beat, the legendary performer lays down and seamlessly continues the show.

7. Watch This: Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks’ Seminal Skit “The 2000 Year Old Man”

   June 30, 2020 2:01 pm Leave a Comment

   We were deeply saddened to learn of Carl Reiner’s passing this morning. His contributions to modern comedy are far too numerous to count. Perhaps one of the greatest testaments to his timeless humor comes in the form of one of his earliest and most beloved creations with his close friend, Mel Brooks. The two had met working on Your Show of Shows in the early ’50s, where Reiner was an actor and Brooks was a writer. As Reiner recalls, he had the inspiration for a sketch where he would be a news announcer reporting on absurd events…

   “I turned to Mel and I said, “Here’s a man who was actually seen at the crucifixion 2,000 years ago,” and his first words were “Ohh, boy.” We all fell over laughing. I said, “You knew Jesus?” “Yeah,” he said “Thin lad, wore sandals, long hair, walked around with 11 other guys. Always came into the store, never bought anything. Always asked for water.”

   The two loved the bit–apparently more than the show’s producers–and so “The 2000 Year Old Man” instead became a regular party gag, with Reiner and Brooks improvising brilliantly quippy interviews to the astonishment of their audiences. It was soon their most requested sketch, leading them to record an album in 1960 at the behest of fans Steve Allen and Sid Caesar.

   Reiner remembered: “We weren’t sure yet whether everybody was going to like it. And it was Cary Grant, who was my neighbor at Universal, he came over and I gave him a record and I said the new record came out, you may like this. And he came back a week later, said, Can I have two dozen? I said, What are you going to do with them? He said, I’m going to take them to England. I said, You’ll take these to England? He said, Yeah, they speak English there. Anyway, he came back and said, She loved it. I said who? The Queen Mother. I said, You played this in Buckingham Palace? He said yes. And then Mel says, Well, if the biggest shiksa in the world loves it, we’re home free.”

   The 2000 Year Old Man became a mainstay throughout Reiner and Brooks’ careers, generating over 5 albums, dozens of TV appearances, and even an animated TV special in 1975. Its influence can’t be understated – their first album’s success was an early breakthrough for Jewish humor in mainstream entertainment, and the skit’s format expanded the notions of what stand-up comedy could be, upending the traditional formula of canned jokes and punchlines by introducing character-based humor and on-stage improvisation.

   Here’s just a taste of The 2000 Year Old Man from a 1967 performance on the Colgate Comedy Hour. Many more hours can be found by digging around on Youtube or listening to the Shout Factory compilation.

    

8. Streamers: Chale Nafus Presents Some Recent Watches

   June 29, 2020 4:38 pm Leave a Comment

   During this quarantine period, when so many people are spending much more time at home, we have been asking some of our friends in the film community for some streaming recommendations.

   Chances are, if you are an AFS member or a regular attendee of the AFS Cinema, you already know Chale Nafus, former Director of Programming at AFS. Before his legendary 12 year run programming for AFS, he was head of Austin Community College’s RTF department, where he mentored countless young people who were interested in film. One of those students, Richard Linklater, went on to found AFS, and Chale was there to pitch in the whole time. The Chale story is too big to go into, and our debt to him is too great to go into now, but you can read more about his amazing journey in Raoul Hernandez’s article here.

   We were thrilled when Chale sent us this essay about some of the more recent films he has watched on streaming services. It gives us something of the feeling that his perceptive xeroxed movie notes had. So, without further ado, here’s Chale Nafus:

   

   

    

   Let’s start out with a double feature of two films from the era of the Great Depression — À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ (René Clair, France, 1931, Criterion Channel) and MODERN TIMES (Charlie Chaplin, USA, 1936, Criterion Channel). The French film considers the lives of two convicts, Louis and Emile, who spend their days with other prisoners assembling toy horses. After his escape, like any stereotypical capitalist of the time, Louis uses stolen money to methodically turn himself into a titan of industry. His memories of the toy horses in prison become a line of men assembling the parts of record players.  When his old cellmate Emile shows up, Louis gives him a job on the assembly line, but Emile’s mind often wanders off into daydreams of the office worker Jeanne. Consequently, he brings chaos to the rigid orderliness of manufacturing. Louis, already married (unhappily), is not really interested in love so much as money and power. Inevitably the two people who should really be together end the film heading down the road to new adventures. With the avant-garde music of composer Georges Auric, the striking set design by Polish modernist artist Lazare Meerson, and spoken dialogue throughout, À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ is a delightful film embodying the best of silent cinema compositions and the new technology of sound film. 

   Although he denied ever having seen Rene Clair’s comedy, Charlie Chaplin put certain scenes into MODERN TIMES that suggest otherwise. While the characters and stories are very different, both films deal with dehumanizing elements of 20th century life, before and during the Great Depression. Chaplin simply knew how to fully exploit all the comic elements of his settings. It’s impossible to forget the factory scenes: Chaplin dragged through the gears of the monstrous machine, the automatic feeding machine, and the use of television as a surveillance tool.

   In the same way that Louis became the accidental winner of a bicycle race by stealing a bike and crossing the finish line first in the French film, Chaplin becomes the unintentional leader of a Communist protest march by running after a lumber truck to return their red flag. For this and other reasons, he goes to prison, so often that he really feels comfortable there and doesn’t want to be released. Although made nine years after the first all-talking THE JAZZ SINGER, Chaplin used the new technology for music and very clever comic moments, such as the duel of the gurgling stomachs and the barking dog. He adamantly stuck to being a visual director. Of course, there is love in MODERN TIMES, and this time, rare for the Little Tramp, it is not unrequited. The two people going off down the road at the end of this film are likewise the ones who should be together. 

   

   Two people who definitely should not be together are Al Roberts and a woman we only know as Vera in DETOUR (Edgar G. Ulmer, USA, 1945, Criterion Channel). Obviously, Jack Kerouac never saw DETOUR before writing “On the Road”, or he would never have started his first trek across America using his thumb. Al and Vera are both hitchhikers with dark pasts. When fate throws them together on a California highway, Vera starts concocting an evil scheme which could only lead to greater trouble for them both. Al tries to be a decent guy, but the fates see him as a toy to toss about, while Vera is so dangerous and evil that most men would be safer bedding an electric lawnmower. At least they would have good chances of just a mild shock, survivable moments of strangulation, or some painful but healable cuts. With Vera, they would get full deadly doses of all three. Ulmer’s low-budget 68-minute film for a low-rent studio can still enthrall us 75 years later. 

   

   Changing course but still looking at bigger-than-life, uncontrollable characters, MILES DAVIS – BIRTH OF THE COOL (Stanley Nelson, USA, 2020, Netflix) takes us deeply into the life and mind of jazz-god Miles Davis. Specializing in documenting African American lives in the 20th century, Stanley Nelson was bound to finally confront the mysterious genius, but he waited until he had produced 30 other documentaries. One does not approach Mount Olympus casually. Using interviews with people who knew Davis and original footage of numerous performances, Nelson intermingled Davis’s own words, raspingly voiced by Carl Lumbly. The musician’s abuse of alcohol, drugs, and women isn’t ignored but fades into the background whenever he puts lips to horn and blows out all his moods. We are treated to fine examples of each of his musical styles – bebop, sensuous, lyrical romantic, cool, blue, and dozens of improvisational approaches. His encouragement of young musicians is remarkable, but we can’t be surprised by his sharp dismissal of those who have displeased his ears. A man who could compose and play such music has to have been complex, sometimes unlikable, but never forgettable. As Quincy Jones remarks, “He makes my soul smile.” 

   

   SEBERG (Benedict Andrews, USA, 2019, Amazon Prime Streaming or Kanopy streaming) is not a film I would have recommended earlier this year, but now because of the rise of Black Lives Matter and anti-racism protests, I think that even this anemic film has something to say to contemporary audiences. Barely 18-years-old, Jean Seberg was discovered and burned by Otto Preminger for his SAINT JOAN (1957), but she became a different kind of French heroine when she starred as Patricia Franchini in Godard’s milestone New Wave film BREATHLESS (1960). Seemingly not interested in New Wave Jean, this “bio-pic” instead focuses on her return to America to work in Hollywood around 1969. Not really knowing what to do with an actress accustomed to the freedom of French filmmaking in the 60s, she is stuck into a musical Western (PAINT YOUR WAGON, 1969) featuring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood bursting into song. What does make SEBERG watchable is the actress’s interest in various Black Power movements – the Black Panthers for one, but more importantly Hakim Jamal, Malcolm X’s cousin, who is more focused on educating young Black children than overthrowing the government. But, as seen in the movie, it is J. Edgar Hoover’s racist paranoia that led the FBI to try to destroy Jamal by destroying Seberg’s career and sanity through COINTELPRO, the Counter-Intelligence Program, using audio bugs, visual surveillance, innuendo, and lies planted in willing or unquestioning media. The film shows how one powerful government agency determined the Black Power movement could be discredited and destroyed through attacking their radical-chic allies and financial benefactors. At best, SEBERG is a cautionary tale; at worst, it is rather disjointed. Even so, it is thought-provoking to compare this representation of what happened fifty years ago with what is going on now. Also on the plus side is that the soundtrack contains Miles Davis’s “Green Haze,” Abu Talib’s “Blood of an American,” Sun Ra’s “Ankh,” and Nina Simone’s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.” 

9. Remembering Adrienne Shelly

   June 24, 2020 1:10 pm Leave a Comment

   Everyone who has ever appreciated the work of writer/director/actor Adrienne Shelly (born on this date in 1964) feels a complicated tangle of emotions about her. She was murdered in 2006, and her final film, WAITRESS, which she wrote and directed, was released the following year to acclaim that she was never able to enjoy. Her career was still on the rise and her death is too cruel to contemplate. A tragedy for cinema and for the many people who loved her.

   But this is a body of work that deserves to be celebrated for its vitality of expression. You can get a sense of Shelly’s energy in this trailer for Hal Hartley’s 1990 film TRUST:

   That’s an indie movie star for you. But she also wrote and directed films. Here’s the trailer for her directorial debut feature SUDDEN MANHATTAN (1996):

   As well as the uniquely Shelly-esque romantic comedy I’LL TAKE YOU THERE (cheesy trailer alert):

   It was WAITRESS (2007), however, that seemed ready to introduce her into the top rank of American independent filmmakers. When it was posthumously released, it garnered acclaim from all quarters. It says a lot that even with the loss of Shelly so fresh in people’s minds that they were able to enjoy the film’s light comic touch. Subsequently, the film has become a classic with people who work in restaurant service. Enjoy the trailer below, and maybe shell out a couple of bucks to stream the film here if you haven’t yet had the pleasure.

    

10. Don’t Worry: It’s Only 1995 – Let’s Go to the Movies!

    June 23, 2020 5:04 pm Leave a Comment

    Nostalgia is always a safe way out in times of turmoil – or if you’re trying to come up with a subject to write a blog post about. To that end, we were poking around some of the archived issues of the Austin Chronicle and looking around to see what movies were playing around Austin in June 1995, and, in fact, it looks pretty good from here, especially since we’ve been starved for the theatrical experience during the quarantine.

    So, let’s step into the Time Machine for a few moments, back before anyone heard of the Corona Virus, before the Y2K crisis devastated the World Economy. Let’s go to the movies. Here’s what’s playing on Austin screens this month – June 1995.

    

     

    Wong Kar-Wai’s epic ASHES OF TIME, reviewed here by Joey O’Bryan (who would go on to become a Hong Kong screenwriter – he wrote FULLTIME KILLER!). As O’Bryan says, it “is so structurally complex in its unfolding of plot and characters, not to mention so ruthlessly revolutionary in its destruction of typical narrative techniques, that films like Pulp Fiction look like simple A-Z storytelling by comparison.”

    

     

    The still not properly appreciated Joel Schumacher has a new one has a new one, BATMAN FOREVER, reviewed here by Marc Savlov. Warning: Schumacher seems to be laboring under the deeply misguided idea that a superhero movie should be colorful and fun and not a Wagnerian exercise in pain and self-abasement.

    

     

    CONGO, reviewed here by Steve Davis, gets the “BOMB” rating, and that doesn’t mean “the Bomb” like, say, today’s top hitmaker Montell Jordan, it means bad. Reportedly the Taco Bell CONGO cups are excellent however.

    

     

    A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM, reviewed here by Marjorie Baumgarten, is the documentary story of a single photograph – a stoop-side portrait of a veritable galaxy of jazz stars, as they gathered together in 1958 – 37 years ago – for an Esquire photo shoot. It’s an excellent documentary, and highly recommended.

    

     

    JLG BY JLG, reviewed here by Baumgarten, is the latest from Jean-Luc Godard. He’s getting into his tender late years now, so this may be one of his last naval-gazers. Let’s appreciate his philosophizing and dense word-play while we still can. He is forever a treasure.

    

     

    There’s a new Hal Hartley, AMATEUR, reviewed here by Alison Macor. This is one of Hartley’s best yet, and a signal American indie of the year, as Macor writes: “A Hal Hartley film is an acquired taste. A viewer can slip in and out of appreciation for Hartley’s work, but it takes a true Hartley-ite to champion all of his films without pause. With Amateur, Hartley has once again proven that he’s cornered the market on independent film etiquette: making the film’s narrative just left of center, casting actors with whom you’ve worked previously, having them deliver dialogue with deadpan slyness.” There you go. See it.

    

     

    A new Charles Burnett film is always cause for celebration, and a Burnett film with marquee stars aimed at a mainstream audience is truly unique. THE GLASS SHIELD, reviewed here by Baumgarten, is, as she notes, “rich and rewarding,” The subject matter, racism and sexism within a disturbingly insular police department, is deeply resonant.

    And here are some of the trailers you’ll be seeing in theaters this month – remember that Austin is a small city, and we don’t get the major art film releases until many weeks after the big cities, if even then.

    Terry Zwigoff’s CRUMB

    (UT Alumnus) Tsui Hark’s THE LOVERS

    Wayne Wang & Paul Auster’s SMOKE

    Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s PARTY GIRL

    Todd Haynes’ SAFE

    As you can see, it’s a great time for filmgoing, so gas up the Ford Escort and let’s go see some movies.

11. Watch This: Abbas Kiarostami’s First Short Film

    June 22, 2020 11:47 am Leave a Comment

    The late Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (born on June 22, 1940) was a giant of Cinema. His feature films, which played in festivals around the world and often had substantial arthouse runs in the the film capitals of the world, helped to give Iran a place at the table in terms of contemporary artistic expression. Interestingly, his first films were shorts made as part of his day job for the government.

    For twenty years, Kiarostami worked for Iran’s Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. He made films that were intended to help kids develop the coordination of their values, judgment and actions. The situations depicted in the films could be quite simple – seemingly trivial even, until we actually consider the thought processes being depicted, which are often pretty complex – especially for the youthful target audience.

    For example, in 1975’s TWO SOLUTIONS FOR THE SAME PROBLEM, two boys have an argument over a book, tearing it in the process. We are shown two possible outcomes of the situation. In one, the two have a violent fight, and in the second, the two boys work together to repair the binding.

    In the following short film, THE BREAD AND ALLEY (1970), Kiarostami’s first as a director, a boy returning home from the bakery with bread is menaced by a dog in an alley. He discovers a solution – but one that cannot be used by the next boy confronted with the problem of the dog.

     

12. Watch This: The Shattering Legacy of Ella Fitzgerald

    June 18, 2020 3:06 pm Leave a Comment

    In the ’70s when home cassette decks were just hitting the scene, one manufacturer of the palm-sized magnetic miracles had a brilliant idea for an ad campaign. The great singer Ella Fitzgerald was enlisted to make a television commercial in which she sang a note at the exact pitch that would shatter glass and then the stunt was replicated with a recording of her voice – on Memorex tape of course. The commercial was a great success, the slogan “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” became part of the culture, and Fitzgerald was brought back again and again to reprise her shattering triumph.

    Here are a selection of the commercials. You might not want to play these near your windows.

     

     

    In fact the commercials became so popular that this absolute Giant of music found herself recognized in the street not for her extraordinary talent, her reinvention of popular song, or her decades of tireless work as an ambassador of jazz, America’s greatest contribution to musical culture. Rather, she was (and savor the way she says it in the following interview) “the Memorex lady.”

    All of this is a lot of fun, and we’re thrilled that the success of the campaign gave Fitzgerald some mad money to enjoy life with, but the fact is, that it’s only the tiniest episode of a life full of triumph over early adversity, commitment to social advocacy, resistance to discrimination, and – oh yeah, some of the most beautiful and thrilling music ever made by anyone, ever.

    That part we can’t really share with a short YouTube video, but fortunately some good folks have made a new film all about Ella Fitzgerald’s life and art. It is called ELLA FITZGERALD: JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS, and it opens in the AFS Virtual Cinema on Friday, June 19. Watch the trailer here, and do yourself a favor, watch this film.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or1kqkeGXrI