Cheryl Eddy

Martial bliss

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TAKE ACTION Hey, Donnie Yen fans! Director Wilson Yip’s Flash Point — in which the charismatic martial arts star (2002’s Hero, 1993’s Iron Monkey) plays an aggro cop on gangster-beatdown detail — is actually getting a local theatrical release. Currently, Yen is in Shanghai shooting Yip Man, which he describes as "the story of Bruce Lee’s teacher, a master of the Wing Chun kung fu style." He’s a busy guy, and he could probably flatten any fool with a flick of his pinky finger. Fortunately, he typed up some answers to my e-mailed questions instead.

SFBG On Flash Point — among other films — you’re credited as the "action director." How does that role differ from "fight choreographer," which you’ve served as on films like 2002’s Blade II and 2005’s SPL (a.k.a. Kill Zone)? Is it difficult to direct yourself when you’re also acting in the scene?

DONNIE YEN I think it’s a difference between the way action is treated in Hong Kong and in Hollywood. [In Hong Kong,] my job is to "direct" the action, and when I’m shooting the fight sequences, I take over the set. I choose the camera angles and see how the drama intercuts with the action. In Hollywood, you "choreograph" working with the main director. In the old days of Hong Kong action cinema, when the action director worked, the "drama" director went home!

SFBG Which fight scene are you most proud of?

DY Of my own stuff? I’d have to say the final fight in Flash Point, between Collin Chou and myself. That was definitely the toughest action scene of my career, and I think it shows! I really like the way we managed to apply MMA [mixed martial arts] techniques on-screen, especially some of the dynamic takedowns, which we haven’t really seen before.

SFBG You’ve worked on both Chinese and American films. What’s the biggest difference between the two industries? Are you interested in having a Hollywood breakthrough like Jackie Chan or Jet Li?

DY As I mentioned earlier, I have much more control over the final product in Hong Kong. I mean, on Flash Point, I’m the producer, the star, the action director…. Of course, I have to give credit to [director] Wilson Yip, who I have a great relationship with. This is our third film together. However, I would still like to work in Hollywood, providing it’s the right role in the right project.

SFBG Flash Point is a "modern" film, but you’re best known for period films like Hero. Which do you prefer?

DY Honestly, I just like to keep challenging myself. For example, Flash Point has a really raw action style, very MMA influenced, but now I’m starting Yip Man, which is about Bruce Lee’s teacher, and so it’s all classical kung fu movements but presented, hopefully, in a new and dynamic way. I would say that, technically, period films are more challenging, because, like with Hero, you’re performing in traditional Chinese clothing, and the movements tend to be more complicated. The modern films, like Kill Zone and Flash Point, are tough because of the degree of real contact when you get slammed about during a fight scene. They’re both challenging in different ways.

SFBG What are your thoughts on CGI-enhanced fight scenes versus the old-fashioned kind?

DY We used a lot of CGI in [2006’s] Dragon Tiger Gate, because the story and the style of action demanded it. I think it’s probably been overused in some films to compensate for the fact that the stars of the films can’t actually do their own action! In my own films, I tend towards keeping it as real as possible, and we only use CGI for shots that would really be impossible to do live on the set. There’s definitely very little CGI in Flash Point!

Flash Point opens Fri/14 in Bay Area theaters

Borts Minorts

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PREVIEW Leap year is here! Looking for a suitably unusual event to celebrate this once-every-four-years occurrence? I strongly suggest scampering over to the Hemlock Tavern for a Club Chuckles lineup that’s poised to scramble the brain of any comedy connoisseur. Headliners Borts Minorts defy simple description. See, there’s this guy in a hooded white unitard and a headset mic who sings and flails and contorts — he might be an alien or an android, but it’s doubtful anything but an actual human would be able to bring such pure and bizarre joy to the stage. Equally enthusiastic are the Borts backup dancers, who flaunt leotards and fishnets (and the occasional pair of lederhosen), and whose energetic choreography demonstrates limber limbs and an admirable appreciation of jazz hands. Borts’s music is similarly befuddling, in the best possible way — a combination of samples, keyboards, horns, drums, theremin, slide whistles, a single-stringed bass made out of a snow ski, and god knows what else, but I guarantee you’ll not see anything as sense-assaultingly entertaining this leap year, or any other year. Local duo Ramshackle Romeos render classics like "Feelings" with nearly as many instruments as a full orchestra (including a mean musical saw), and comedians Drennon Davis and Alex Koll rock the mic between musical numbers.

BORTS MINORTS With Drennon Davis, Alex Koll, and Ramshackle Romeos. Fri/29, 9:30 p.m., $8. Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF. (415) 923-0923, www.hemlocktavern.com

Grrrl power chords

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

Bay Area filmmakers Shane King and Arne Johnson totally know what you’re about to ask them, because it’s the question everyone springs right off the bat: What are a couple of dudes doing behind the camera of Girls Rock!, a film about an all-girls rock ‘n’ roll camp?

The answer is so meaningful that the pair don’t seem to mind sharing it (again). Once King and Johnson (friends since fifth grade) heard about Portland, Ore.’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, they were irretrievably inspired. In the process of scouting out documentary subjects, Johnson caught a talk by Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein. Someone asked her if she thought rock was dead, and in response she discussed her experiences teaching at the camp. "The idea that somebody of Carrie Brownstein’s stature would be stumbling around with a bunch of eight-year-olds, teaching them windmills, was just — well, I called Shane up [immediately]," he says.

Having grown up in Portland, where they recall "enthusiastically slam-dancing at L7 shows," King and Johnson felt particularly connected to the topic and eagerly moved forward — though wooing the camp proved difficult at first.

"The camp was, understandably, very skeptical [of us] and protective of the girls," King remembers. The duo shot footage of the camp’s after-school program, Girl’s Rock Institute, and interviewed teachers and young participants; the resulting short proved promising.

The bulk of Girls Rock! takes place in the summer of 2005, focusing on four campers as they practice instruments, form bands, write songs, and build confidence and social skills: teens Misty (a former meth addict) and Laura (a headbanger who worries about her appearance), and eight-year-olds Palace (a girly-girl with anger issues) and Amelia (a budding noise-rocker who has trouble sharing the spotlight). King and Johnson took care in choosing which girls to follow, though they knew they wanted first-time campers.

"We realized that [the camp] really had a huge impact on girls the first time they went," Johnson says. "One father described his daughter as ‘going supernova’ after the camp. So we knew that was going to be the most dramatic thing to show." King and Johnson traveled around the country, meeting 25 girls who were planning on attending camp for the first time.

"From talking to the camp staff, we knew that it was important to girls in ways that weren’t just about music," Johnson says. "Laura was the first person we interviewed, in Oklahoma. She was like, ‘I really love death metal, and I can’t find any boys who will let me be in a band.’ Suddenly we realized there was another metaphor happening, about the tension between our culture and these girls."

The themes of Girls Rock! are further illuminated by fellow Bay Area filmmaker Liz Canning’s animated collages. The sequences spell out what young girls are up against, with colorful graphics backdropping an array of sobering statistics, like "The number-one wish of teenage girls is to lose weight."

"People have told us, having seen the film, that it was upsetting to see those pieces, and that they wish we hadn’t included them — like, ‘Why not just celebrate the girls and leave all that stuff behind?’<0x2009>" Johnson says. "Our response is that we’re two liberal, feminist guys, and we didn’t know these things. How can we assume that everybody else is going to be able to see these girls’ struggles, and contextualize them?"

The filmmakers hope Girls Rock! will lead to camps springing up all over the country — as well as nudge grown-ups toward a new embrace of feminism. Most important, "The [campers] are cool, and loud, and angry, and funny, and sloppy — and yet nobody is saying they’re stupid or ugly," Johnson says. "[If there is] a girl in Indiana or somewhere who’s trying to form a rock band or do something that she thinks she can’t do, if she sees this film, she might think, ‘Wait a minute — why am I afraid of this?’ Then I’ll feel like we’ve done what we came to do."

GIRLS ROCK!

Opens March 7 in Bay Area theaters

www.girlsrockmovie.com

“Who were those guys?”

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Anyone who knows me understands — or at least acknowledges — my Freddy Krueger obsession: the holographic Freddy watch, the Freddy sweater, the talking Freddy doll, the glazed-over look in my eyes when I rhapsodize about the human-head pizza served in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master‘s scene at the “Crave Inn” diner. (Best…crunching sound effects…ever).

A Nightmare on Elm Street — specifically the third installment, a.k.a. 1987’s Dream Warriors, possibly the series’ strongest entry — is also the reason I became a Dokken fan. This film has it all: a young Patricia Arquette, a Freddy-propelled sleepwalking human marionette, John Saxon, Freddy’s nun-tastically elaborate backstory, the line “Welcome to prime time, bitch!”, and Nightmare‘s best theme song (apologies to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince). That last item comes courtesy of Dokken’s “Dream Warriors,” co-written by the band’s George Lynch and Jeff Pilson. It was released Feb 10, 1987, just days before my 12th birthday. Being a sick-minded sixth grader, I was already deep into Freddy. “Dream Warriors” quickly became my favorite song.


Ain’t gonna dream no more!

Text-messaging the apocalypse

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HORROR FILM Jacob Gentry, one of the three codirectors of The Signal, assures me he’s "fully prepared for the zombie apocalypse." His cohorts, David Bruckner and Dan Bush, agree that they love zombie movies. But they would also like to make it clear that The Signal — which supposes that "a rift in the electromagnetic sector" has infected cell phones, televisions, and other devices, inspiring all who experience it to inflict terrible violence — is not a zombie movie.

"If you took all 360 channels of your satellite TV and spat them out in one single signal and turned the volume up, would you become a little bit more frantic?" Bruckner asks. "If it pushed one person to the point of pushing another person, could it start a giant chain reaction of violence across the country?"

Bush adds, "I look around me and I see a lot of pissed-off people that are really close to some sort of violence as it is. In our movie the people are conscious, they’re rational, they’re aware of their decisions — they’re not bloodsucking morons."

Yep, they’re rational — and that’s what makes them so spooky. The Signal unfolds in three chapters, each helmed by a different director. Every segment is told from the point of view of a different character: cheatin’ wife Mya (Anessa Ramsey), her lover Ben (Justin Welborn), and her jealous husband, Lewis (A.J. Bowen).

"The first section is visceral and straightforward," Bruckner explains. "Then we get into the second section and we get inside the head of someone who’s very, very signalized. From his perspective it takes on a black-comedy tone. Then we get to the third section and we focus on the hero and his journey."

Cinematic gore and chaos are always enjoyable, and The Signal, which taps into the totally legitimate notion that humans are slaves to their technology, conveys an overall feeling of psychic dread. But the film’s middle section, in which a weapons-wielding Lewis home-invades a failed New Year’s Eve party, is the film’s strongest. Perhaps it’s because humor is the most comfortable way to digest the film’s suggestion that anarchy is just one fucked-up frequency away.

THE SIGNAL

Opens Fri/22 in Bay Area theaters

IndieFest: “Pop Skull”

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Any movie that kicks off with a warning to epileptics — high strobe content ahead! — is gonna attract a certain lurid interest. Adam Wingard’s Pop Skull follows a small-town drug addict (co-writer Lane Hughes) as he lurches from hallucination to barely-tolerable reality; his flash-happy mind often seems garbled from the ghosts of experimental films past. The film’s jarring sound design, in particular, owes a lot to the avant-garde. Disturbing imagery and a sense that the things we’re seeing may or (more likely) may not really be happening to our scruffy hero adds to the film’s overall sense of creepy unsettlement. I watched it on DVD in my living room and it made me jumpy — catch it tonight at the Roxie and the effect will no doubt be amplified to freakish degrees. And yeah, that’s a recommendation.

Pop Skull screens tonight, 9:30pm, at the Roxie. Visit the IndieFest web site for more info.

Wherefore art thou, Romero?

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On returning to his independent filmmaking roots: When we made [1968’s Night of the Living Dead] we were just a bunch of young people in Pittsburgh. We had a commercial production company, so we had our own equipment, and we audaciously decided that we should go out and make a movie. So the first one was real guerrilla filmmaking — but actually the first five or six films that I made were completely independent. After Dawn of the Dead [1978] we hooked up with a distributor-production company, and they financed us to some bigger budgets. But even those films were independent. There was a period when I was courted by Hollywood and made a couple of studio pictures and was getting very discouraged. Finally, the last zombie film that I made, Land of the Dead [2005], was for Universal. And they really let me alone — they let me make that movie. But it was a grueling process. And I realized, "Man, this is all getting too big. It’s approaching Thunderdome here." I felt this incredible disconnect with the roots, with where it all came from. I really wanted to throttle down and back up and see if I had the energy and the chops to go do another really low-budget film. I needed to revitalize myself.

On the trend of movies using the self-filming technique: I haven’t seen Cloverfield. Redacted, I guess, was similar. Vantage Point I haven’t seen. I thought that we would be the originators of it, but now I guess I have to say we’re part of a trend. I think there’s some kind of collective subconscious — all the world has a camera these days. I think it’s rather obvious for fiction writers, filmmakers, whatever, to take note of that and use it. It’s pretty scary, this blogosphere — man, you just wonder who’s out there throwing up all these ideas.

On finding truth in the media, be it mainstream or underground: To me that’s the argument that’s central to [Diary of the Dead]. When there were three networks, sure, [the news] was all being managed and controlled and spun, no doubt. Now it’s completely unmanaged. And it’s not even necessarily all information — it’s opinions, viewpoints. Anybody could get on there with any kind of an idea and find followers. That’s what spooks me. What would you rather have: it being controlled but not be insightful, or would you rather have this chaos? And I don’t have the answer to that. I almost blame the public more than anybody else for being suckered into it and not bothering to do their own homework. People would rather have somebody tell them the way it is, and go along with it.

On the living dead: The zombies, to me, don’t represent anything except the disaster. They could be a hurricane. They could be an approaching asteroid. My stories have always been about the people and how they respond or fail to respond or respond improperly — and keep trying to preserve the world as they knew it instead of readjusting to whatever these changes are on the planet. The zombies are just zombies. They’re the reason that I can get these movies made. They’re the fun part of it! But to me, they don’t represent anything in particular.

MyZombieSpace

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

George A. Romero’s new movie, Diary of the Dead, isn’t really by Romero. It’s not even called Diary of the Dead. It’s actually called The Death of Death, and it’s by ambitious student filmmaker Jason (Joshua Close), who happens to already be shooting a horror movie when zombie o’ clock rolls around. At least that’s the conceit of Diary, a supposedly self-filmed tale that was completed long before Cloverfield stomped its way across New York City but will no doubt be seen as hooking onto that film’s monster success.

Jason and his film-school buddies — including his take-charge girlfriend, Debra (Michelle Morgan) — first learn about the zombie outbreak from a radio broadcast. As the film progresses (it’s a road movie, with much chugging down rural routes in a Winnebago), the kids remain connected to the outside world via television and, more important, the Internet, portrayed as the only reliable information source as chaos takes over and cell phones go dead.

While there are some juicy zombie scenes and a few crowd-pleasing moments (nobody who sees Diary will forget the Amish guy), the film is less concerned with glorious gore than, say, the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake. Romero is known for making horror films "with an underlying thread of social satire" (just like Diary protagonist Jason), but here the thread is laid completely bare. Debra’s somber voice-over tends to overexplain, uh, everything; as in Cloverfield, none of the characters are particularly interesting or sympathetic, and the device of having the camera be part of the story rapidly becomes annoying.

Still, you gotta give the director props for his message, no matter how obviously he states it. Most horror films that try to make a statement stop at a vague pronouncement about the world being fucked. Romero’s smart enough to zero in on a particular problem — Internet-age information overload! — and incorporate it in a story that manages to implicate the viewer at the same time. If we’re witnessing The Death of Death, are we not the intended audience that kept Jason’s hand firmly on the record button even as his friends died around him?

DIARY OF THE DEAD

Opens Fri/15 in Bay Area theaters

www.myspace.com/diaryofthedead

IndieFest: “Sexina, Popstar PI”

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By Jennique Mason

“She has the boobs and brains of a queen, she’s every man’s dream …” When have truer words been spoken? As sung by Monkees heartthrob Davy Jones in the film’s theme, Sexina: Popstar, P.I. is the long-awaited answer to critically renowned films like Austin Powers and Legally Blonde.

sexinapostersm.jpg

Directed by Erik P. Sharkey, this East Coast production — complete with villain Adam West (TV’s Batman) — goes inside the pop music machine, literally! On the surface, Sexina may appear to be your average pop star singing sensation, but undercover she’s hot on the trail of a kidnapped scientist manufacturing cyborg boy bands. That sort of crime stopping clearly speaks for itself, but what I wanna know is, where did co-star Allyn Rachel come from? I want her to be in my movie. She may get overshadowed by Sexina (played by Lauren D’Avella), but Rachel’s lezzie publicist was sensational. As for the rest of the movie — chock full o’ elements like high school girls with brigades of vibrators, Paula Abdul fans, some unicorns, and oblique Britney references (“Kevin Tenderloin,” “I did what again?”) — Sexina is like totally crunk. I know that I won’t soon forget the film’s message (delivered in song!) that “having a vagina rules.” Indeed.

Sexina: Popstar, PI screens at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, Feb 14 and Feb 16, 9:30 p.m., Roxie Film Center. For additional Guardian coverage of this year’s IndieFest, check out reviews here and here and right here — on upcoming PixelVision posts.

Hungry men

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

"This is not a midlife crisis," 51-year-old John Zeigler insists. "I see this as a wonderful adventure." But when the this in question is a 3,000-mile rowboat race across the Atlantic Ocean, it’s hard not to speculate about his motivation. Zeigler’s teammate, 41-year-old Tom Mailhot, shares Zeigler’s determination, not to mention his daddy issues — as Row Hard, No Excuses is quick to point out, both men feel they have something to prove to their respective fathers (perhaps by coincidence, the doc’s director, San Francisco’s Luke Wolbach, coproduced the film with his father). After a failed hockey career and an early exit from college, Mailhot is dead set on rowing his way to victory: "It’s important to me to finish what I’ve said I’m going to do."

But back up a sec. Yeah, I said 3,000 miles, all the way from the Canary Islands to Barbados. The Atlantic Rowing Challenge is no joke, with duos spending 50 to 100 days at sea in hand-built boats that contain all of their food and other supplies. It also requires $19,000 in entry fees, not to mention time away from jobs and families. "This is really a mind game," one of the other participants notes; the race draws a colorful, international crowd of serious athletes who, necessarily, are all a little nuts. At least, that’s what Zeigler and Mailhot discover once they’re adrift on the ocean: close quarters shared between "a perfectionist and a bull" draw subterranean personality conflicts into the boiling sun; the task of rowing, rowing, rowing can cause inconceivably bizarre injuries (including a tremendous butt rash that nearly cripples one of the men); and transcendent moments, when they finally come, can involve some mighty trippy hallucinations.

Row Hard, No Excuses relies quite a bit on video-diary footage shot by the men, and as the days stretch on the film’s themes of competition, masculinity, and — no matter how in shape these dudes are — aging come into undeniable focus. Similar in some ways to Touching the Void (2003), Row Hard is especially effective in illustrating how extreme physical conditions can lay bare a person’s true self; the race also helps both men gain new appreciation for their lives on dry land. The press notes specifically ask reviewers not to reveal how the men fare in the race — so I won’t — but even as it approaches, the finish line seems less important than Row Hard‘s deeper message of self-improvement by any means necessary.

After seeing the muscle-bound geezer posing in the promo photo for The Bodybuilder and I, you might be surprised to hear the film is pretty similar to Row Hard, No Excuses. Made by Canadian Bryan Friedman, it is ostensibly about Friedman’s father, Bill, a 59-year-old who found his way into the competitive bodybuilding world after a self-esteem-crushing second divorce. But Bryan, who spews some unnecessarily literal voice-over, quickly lets us know he never liked his father because Bill was basically AWOL for Bryan’s entire life; he also finds Bill’s new pursuit utterly ridiculous. After witnessing Pops bake under a tanning lamp, Bryan muses, "Here’s a guy who could spend so much time and energy on a bizarre hobby but who could never spend any time and energy on a relationship with his own son."

It soon becomes clear that The Bodybuilder and I is more about the I than anything else. Oh, you get well-oiled, senior-discount-qualifying beefcakery, but you have to sit through some major family drama to get there. Still, the circumstances are so oddball (seriously — would you want to see your estranged dad in a Superman Speedo?) and Bryan Friedman so unflinchingly honest about his misery that the film’s shortcomings are eventually overcome. Once Bill’s big competition rolls around, the weepy father-son bonding feels well earned — plus, you won’t want to miss cinema’s most gob-smacking "How does that head go on that body?" moment since 2001’s Ichi the Killer.

THE BODYBUILDER AND I

Sat/9, 5 p.m.; Sun/10, 2:45 p.m.; Roxie

ROW HARD, NO EXCUSES

Feb. 16, 2:45 p.m.; Feb 17, 9:30 p.m.; Victoria


The 10th San Francisco Independent Film Festival runs Feb. 7–20 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Film Center, 3117 16th St., SF; and Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., SF. For tickets (most films $10) and additional information, see www.sfindie.com.

Speed reading

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In 2005, Xiu Xiu embarked on a tour and invited their fans to send them blank Polaroid instant film and an SASE. In turn, photographer David Horvitz took on the task of documenting the group’s travels, snapping shots in places ranging from backstage nooks to hotel bathrooms. Each day, Horvitz mailed packages containing 10 unique candid photos to the fans who provided film and envelopes: anyone who participated was rewarded with personal art from the tour. But Horvitz first scanned the photos and compiled them to create Xiu Xiu: The Polaroid Project (Mark Batty Publisher, 126 pages, $24.95). The result is a book containing nudity, blood, and urine, as well as empty skies, ocean views, and the landscape of backwoods America. The reader is left to fill in the blanks and imagine the circumstances behind each photo Even for those unfamiliar with the band, the adventure is well worth it. (Vice Cooler)

Continuum’s 331/3 series takes an unexpected turn with critic Carl Wilson’s witty, insightful, same-named exploration of Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk about Love (Continuum, 176 pages, $10.95). Tellingly, the book is subtitled A Journey to the End of Taste; the 1997 album — which sold more than 30 million copies and contains the dental-office standard “My Heart Will Go On” — is not. Wilson discusses how his feelings for his fellow Canadian’s music shifted from loathing to — well, he never becomes a fan, but during her Vegas show he has a moment of near appreciation. Along the way, he peers into the singer’s soul, touching on Quebec’s cultural history (including Dion’s rise from hometown hero to international superstar), Dion bashing at the height or depths of Titanic mania (in a chapter titled “Let’s Talk about Hate”), and the meaning of schmaltz, via analysis and some well-placed pop-cult references. He also investigates bigger questions that transcend the Dion debate: by whose standards, exactly, do we define guilty pleasures — and bad taste? (Cheryl Eddy)

You are your own worst enemy

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By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

In his third report from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, it’s Midnites for Maniacs programmer and Guardian contributor Jesse Hawthorne Ficks reflects on his personal best of the fest.

Downloading Nancy – directed by Johan Renck (Canada)
Pain and sadness inhabit most of us. Extreme anger can turn into apathy, and relentless insecurity can turn into absolute self-destruction. In Johan Renck’s debut feature, shot by Christopher Doyle, each moment, every shot, even the slightest gesture, accentuates the film’s gut-wrenching tone. A married couple of 15 years has lost their magic. More than that, they’ve lost the feel of one another. Albert (Rufus Sewell) is putting all of his energy into an interactive golf game that airport passengers can practice while Nancy (Maria Bello) spends her days attempting to connect with someone, anyone, online. While the structure of the film slowly unfolds, we are forced to figure out the whys and whens on our own. The cold blue settings, the silent snowy sadness, the frigid impending dread drifting from one scene to the next: it all traps you in this brutal way that makes you want to run out of the theater. In fact during the press screening, dozens of people were leaving and it was not it in a casual way.

The 96-minute Downloading Nancy is pure emotion. And through all of the self-effacing and self-infliction that the characters encounter, you care. You care immensely about these depressed disasters doing the best that they can. You experience their darkest moments and you feel what they cannot. In fact, you’ll feel so much that you’ll have to decide if you can stay and watch. This is not only the best film at Sundance this year, it provides insight into where you might be headed if you don’t start fighting for yourself.

Viva Elvis Pez-ley!

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Available for $19.99 on the Pez website…

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You get Army Elvis! Sideburns 1960s-Hollywood Elvis (drool)! 1970s jumpsuit Elvis! Sweet! Plus you get a CD with three era-appropriate songs: “Hound Dog,” “Follow that Dream,” and “The Wonder of You.” AND, duh, three thingies of baby aspirin-tasting Pez candy.

Still, I’m a little disappointed…no Hillbilly Cat Elvis? No Gold Suit Elvis? No 68 Comeback Black Leather Elvis (the dreamiest Elvis by far, for my money anyway)? No Hawaii Elvis? No Karate Elvis? No Elvis-Meets-Nixon double set? The possibilities are endless, really.

Quoth Guardian Calendar Editor Duncan Scott Davidson: “It’s not for Priscilla anymore…now you, too, can eat candy from the King’s neck.”

This brings me to a larger topic…Elvis-themed candy in general. It’s pretty easy to find around Valentine’s Day. If you love an Elvis fan, get them some of this action.

Video Mutants: Reflections of Damon Packard

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Though Damon Packard considers himself a filmmaker, not a video artist, his wonderfully unique and often bizarre works are right at home in our Video Mutants issue.

Watch and learn, kids!

The trailer for The Untitled Star Wars Mockumentary.

Reflections of Evil trailer.

Video Mutants: Prince of theme parkness

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>>Click here to view some Damon Packard vids

› cheryl@sfbg.com

Try explaining a Damon Packard film to someone who hasn’t seen one and you will fail. The best you can achieve is a description: "It’s a sequel to Logan’s Run, kind of, but with a lot of 1984, clips from Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator, and roller skaters jamming to ‘Never Knew Love like This Before.’<0x2009>"

Seriously, can you even imagine what that’s like? Step inside 2007’s SpaceDisco One and enter the world of a filmmaker who makes movies unlike anything you’ve seen before — except for the parts you have seen before. Every time he uses nonoriginal footage, it’s worth paying extraclose attention; though Packard would rather use only his own material, his choices of appropriated footage are never random. Why else would he include a clip of Dirk Benedict (Starbuck on the original Battlestar Galactica) padding dejectedly around the British Celebrity Big Brother house in a film that pays homage to — and mourns the lost aesthetic of — 1970s sci-fi movies?

"I’m not really into mashup-type stuff," the Los Angeles–based Packard explained to me. It was New Year’s Eve eve, and we were sitting in the basement at Artists’ Television Access — a dark, chilly space crammed with TV monitors and other electronic odds and ends. "In SpaceDisco, I didn’t plan on using any [nonoriginal] footage. It’s just a case of not having the money. It takes money to go out and shoot original footage. You need actors, props, costumes, and locations. That’s the short answer to it. [The nonoriginal footage] was just replacing things that I needed — I needed some shots of spaceships and things like that. For the most part the film is all original."

SpaceDisco One, in which Hollywood’s Universal City Walk stands in for the Ministry of Truth during the film’s 1984-inspired scenes, works real news footage into its narrative. At one point, a giant screen beaming the face of radio host Alex Jones attracts the attention of SpaceDisco‘s Winston Smith character — himself a result of Packard’s interest in recontextualizing familiar or favorite characters.

"I love the idea of taking characters from other films and utilizing them in some way — taking Arthur Frayn from Zardoz [and using him in] SpaceDisco," he said. In keeping with SpaceDisco‘s positioning as a Logan’s Run sequel, several of Packard’s leads are written as the daughters of characters from that film. "And of course Smith and O’Brien from 1984 — all sort of meeting up in the same universe. I like that idea, taking characters and settings from other films and coming up with a new adventure."

Anticipating my next question, he added, "I don’t know how that will ever translate into something in the [mainstream film] world professionally, because of copyright issues."

So far Packard hasn’t run into any cinema-related problems with the law, aside from being booted from a theme park while grabbing shots for 2002’s Reflections of Evil, an epically surreal study of LA paranoia. "[My films have all been] independent films made for no money and no distribution, or very minor distribution," he said. "Once it gets to a point where I have a budget and there’s real distribution, [using copyrighted material] would be a whole different situation."

He’s also never heard a peep from his celebrity targets, specifically Steven Spielberg (his childhood idol, who might frown on Reflections‘ depiction of Schindler’s List: The Ride) or George Lucas, who’s showered with ire in 2003’s The Untitled Star Wars Mockumentary. That film manipulates DVD featurettes from the newer Star Wars films, with wraparound footage (reaction shots, responses to conversations, the occasional porn snippet) adding a whole new level to the average Jedi’s beef with Lucas. It’s payback for Greedo shooting first and Jar Jar Binks, but to Packard, Lucas’s addiction to technology is symptomatic of a bigger issue — how Hollywood films have changed dramatically in the past 30 years.

"I don’t dislike Lucas," Packard noted, though a viewing of the hilarious Mockumentary might suggest otherwise. ("Angry black people became a strong inspiration for George," a faux Industrial Light and Magic animator notes while working on the schematics for a character described as Mace Windu’s streetwise brother, pointedly referencing the observation that some of Lucas’s Phantom Menace creatures seem ever so slightly racist.) "I would actually hope that he would have a good laugh at it if he ever saw it. [With Mockumentary] I was just expressing my disappointment in the new generation of Star Wars films and how Lucas has become part of that whole system of becoming obsessed with CGI and digital effects."

But Lucas is hardly alone, according to Packard. "It seems like all of the film industry is operating in this vacuum where they aren’t aware of what they’re doing. They’re out of touch with what audiences are interested in seeing — [although] maybe it’s just the reality that I’m experiencing. I don’t understand how most [mainstream] films get green-lighted; it’s just more of the same thing over and over, just variations on playing-it-safe themes, following the same formulas. Like Transformers. It was a film that I just — why? I was baffled by that film. It was kind of entertaining — I saw it in IMAX — but who would think that was a great idea? There’s nothing new or special about doing a Transformers movie."

That’s not to say Packard hates every new movie; you may have noticed he submitted a top 10 list to the Guardian‘s 2007 year in film issue, with favorites like No Country for Old Men and Paris, Je T’Aime. One of his friends in LA gave him a hard time for not including Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.

"He was really upset," Packard said of the Dead fan. "He thinks it’s Sidney Lumet’s best film. I disagreed. I thought it was OK, but it doesn’t compare to his early works at all. It would have been much better if it was made in the 1970s with a sleazier cast, sleazier characters, and not [set in] a modern strip mall. The characters didn’t feel credible — they just weren’t very interesting. Things aren’t that interesting these days."

Watch a Packard film — and if you haven’t, you must; Other Cinema is working on a release of SpaceDisco One for later in 2008, and at least one version of Reflections of Evil is available at Amazon.com — and it’s clear he’s inspired by the 1970s and more than a little nostalgic for them. At 40, he’s too young to have been part of what he views as Hollywood’s last golden age.

"The late ’70s and early ’80s were the beginning of the downfall of cinema — the beginning of the blockbuster film and special effects. Suddenly the quality levels, the character-driven films, were diminishing [in favor of] special-effects extravaganzas," he said. "If I went back in time, it would probably be even more difficult to get into the film business [than it is now]. Still, I think it was a better time in a lot of ways. My films are always making a statement about the way things have changed for the worse."

Though he’s a YouTube user and sees the finer points of shooting on video (though he prefers film), Packard’s view of his future as a filmmaker is surprisingly old-school. Specifically, he would like to make more narratives. His dream projects are an "analog fantasy film without the overuse of CGI" and a longer version of SpaceDisco One, which now clocks in at less than an hour.

"I’ve always wanted to make big films, not small independent art movies. But my creative sensibilities seem to be so off the wavelength of the average person. The way people react to my films — they can’t understand them. They need to have something palatable," he said. He blames Hollywood — at one time a creative haven where up-and-coming directors like Robert Altman could make offbeat films like 3 Women — for creating the apathetic-audience monster. "I don’t know if there’s any hope [for the future of movies]. That should be a theme of [your] article: is there any hope? God only knows." Insert your own A New Hope wraparound — the exploding Death Star, perhaps? — here.

www.myspace.com/choogo

Heartbroke mountain

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Film intern Jennique Mason pays tribute to Heath Ledger.

“I love you baby…” You remember, those bleachers and Letters to Cleo on the roof? Yup. You heard it. Hunky Heath is dead! Growing up with him, charting his successes, his breakthroughs, his 10 Things I Hate About Yous, quite frankly, I’m devastated. According to the Hollywood Star, and every other internet rag obsessed with celebrity, the Australian-born actor was found dead in his SoHo apartment this afternoon. Naked and unconscious with a bottle of sleeping pills on his night-stand, Ledger appears to have been paying homage to Marilyn Monroe. But Marilyn lived to be 36 — Heath has officially checked out at the tender age of 28. Leaving a fine array of films behind him — including recent triumphs like Brokeback Mountain and I’m Not There, and the next Batman installation, we’ve lost one helluva an actor and a heartthrob. These days, talents with both qualities are becoming increasingly obsolete.

HeathJoker.png
Ledger as Batman nemesis the Joker in The Dark Knight, out this July.

In a dark and lonely place

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By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

Back with his second report from the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, it’s Midnites for Maniacs programmer and Guardian contributor Jesse Hawthorne Ficks.

In Bruges – directed by Martin McDonagh (UK)
Colin Farrell is the most underrated, overhated actor of the the past few years. His range was genuinely stunning in Sundance’s opening night film. This purposefully offensive comedy follows two hired guns (Farrell and Brenden Gleeson) as they are sent to do an unknown job by their boss (Ralph Fiennes) in the yuppie little town of Bruges (in Belgium). Written and directed by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, the film has a David Mamet sense of misanthropic morality that is quite rewarding for those with a similar anger towards the world. Farrell has the perfect delivery for this sensibility — watch In Bruges and his pitch-perfect performance in Woody Allen’s misunderstood masterpiece Cassandra’s Dream, and you too will become a believer.

Diary of the Dead – directed by George Romero (USA)
As the 67-year-old horror director spoke after his latest zombie movie-social satire, I truly felt a sense of joy exuding from the man. George Romero’s newest entry confronts our confused and destructive world once again, this time by following a crew of film students who, while making their student film, realize that zombies have taken over their town and that they suddenly need to make real choices for the first time in their lives. The film is filled with some of the most inventive zombie deaths this side of the UK and has a friendly sense of humor to go along with its deeply cynical view. While Diary of the Dead is not as powerful as Frank Darabont’s adaption of Stephen King’s The Mist, Romero has made an honorable attack on our society while having a whole lot of low-budget fun.

Shorts are the new features!

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By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

From the Sundance Film Festival: Midnites for Maniacs programmer and Guardian contributor Jesse Hawthorne Ficks reports on some fest favorites so far.

sundance_marquee.jpg

Aquarium – directed by Rob Meyer (17min)
Even though you’ve seen Rushmore and Freaks and Geeks, this awkward white kid angst flick delivers exactly what you’ve come to want. Plus with Kaitlin Kiyan’s nuanced ethnic girl-next-door performance, it almost makes-up for the genre’s mind-bogglingly racist Su-Chin from current quirkfest Juno.

Sick Sex – directed by Justin Nowell (12min)
Ever thought your lover was lookin’ hella hawt while they were sick in bed? This dude does his best to pitch the idea of “sick sex” to his sickly grrrlfriend, resulting in some depressingly hilarious results.

Sikumi (On the Ice) – directed by Andrew Okpeaha MacLean (15min)
This quiet cinematic journey evokes the realism of Nanoonk of the North , enabling the viewer to ponder the purpose of our existence. And that’s all in 15 minutes. Someone’s gotta give the director the money to turn this thesis project at NYU into a feature film.

Welcome – directed by Kirsten Dunst (12min)
Winona Ryder arrives at her Lost Highway-esque home one night only to experience some pretty freaky sounds happening in all the rooms she’s not in. I genuinely jumped out of my skin while watching this creepfest.

Spider – directed by Nash Edgerton (9min)
If you’re the kind of boyfriend who loves pulling mini-pranks on your partner, watch this heartbreaking shocker immediately before pissing them off again. I guess this is a comedy — but Jesus, this movie is traumatizing.

Pariah – directed by Dee Rees (27min)
Not only the best short of the festival, Pariah could be the best film of the festival. Actress Adepero Oduye is hypnotic as a 17-year-old lesbian struggling with her identity at school and at home. Complex dialogue and powerful situations will leave you emotionally wrenched. Plus, Wendell Pierce (Bunk on HBO’s The Wire) packs quite a punch as the confused father.

Because Washington is Hollywood for Ugly People – directed by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung (7min)
Winning best title of the fest, this collage of hyperactive video game footage has meticulously detailed designs of political figures fighting each other while inhabiting celebrity bodies. MC Paul Barman narrates this clusterfuck, bringing it to the level of downright brilliant. Also worth watching is Hung’s five minute Gas Zappers.

Holy fuckin’ wonderful!

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By Jennique Mason

This documentary film by Sam Wainwright Douglas and Paul Lovelace achieves the unbelievable feat of capturing Greenwich Village’s two most notorious folkies: Steve Weber and Peter Stampfel. In the wake of the Beats and the
dawn of the hippies, the Holy Modal Rounders destroyed what was then the relatively predictable boundaries of the folk genre. Discovered by most through the Easy Rider soundtrack (“If You Wanna Be A Bird”), they stand as the remnants of a generation who knew if Khrushchev and Kennedy would only drop LSD together, there would be world peace. If it’s hoop snake you’re after or you wanna make your own party, at the end of the day in the words of Rounder Harold Reisch, “once you get past the humiliation of it all, there’s some fun to be had.”

Holy_Modal_Rounders1.jpg
Fiddler Peter Stampfel and guitarist Steve Weber forge a bond based on a shared fascination with American roots music and psychedelia.

The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose plays tonight, 7 p.m. at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center. Wavy Gravy and co-director Paul Lovelace appear in person.

Happy Elvis’ Birthday (a day late)

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Cause nobody rocks the jailhouse like a jailbait Fergie.

Bad to the (funny) bone

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HELLA SKETCHY Stop acting like you don’t love bad movies. Me, I’ll go to the mat for Point Break or Reign of Fire any day of the week. This is why I feel a kinship with Michael J. Nelson, formerly of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and currently of RiffTrax.com, which peddles Nelson’s downloadable commentaries for more than 50 snarkworthy movies and TV shows. A past favorite at SF Sketchfest, "RiffTrax Live!" invades the Castro Theatre as part of this year’s fest, with MST3K vets Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett taking on the notorious Plan 9 from Outer Space. I got Nelson on the phone for a pre-grave-robbin’-aliens chat.

SFBG You’re showing the colorized version of Plan 9, whose DVD has your commentary track. Will the live show have different jokes? And how many times have you seen the movie?

MICHAEL J. NELSON Some of the [jokes] will remain the same, but most of [them] will change. I’ve probably only seen [the movie] all the way through about 10 times, but each time through, it takes hours and hours, so it adds up to 100 times or something.

SFBG Don’t you get sick of it?

MJN The craft of the joke writing is what I love and what energizes me. Also, when you become so familiar with a movie — it’s weird — it’s almost like seeing the movie at a different level. There are some movies that I couldn’t take that with — bad movies that are just bad and boring. And Plan 9 is one of those that’s obviously stood the test of time because it’s funny-bad. Most bad movies are not funny-bad. They’re just bad — grinding, horrible bad.

SFBG How would you define a good-bad movie?

MJN It has to be sincere. It has to take itself seriously, and then it just has to fail in some really silly ways, rather than failing in some really boring ways — goofy elements [like] ridiculous costumes or dialogue [that makes] you just wonder, how could they have possibly written that?

SFBG Is it ever hard for you to watch a movie and not make fun of it?

MJN No, it’s pretty easy. I think if you’re in the business you do tend to be more critical — there are people who watch movies, just, [like,] "I don’t really care. I enjoyed it. I don’t look at it critically." I’ve gotten to the point where I respect that view. I just happen not to be one of those people. I watch and I’m hypercritical. But when the movie is good I have no problem enjoying it.

SFBG Do you think MST3K influenced audiences to heckle the screen?

MJN I think it encouraged people in what they already did, which was get together in groups and watch these cultish movies. Or to interact when things like Batman and Robin come along, where your only recourse is to shout back at the screen. In general, though, I think people did it in a party atmosphere — we always said, "Don’t go to the theater and do it!"

SFBG What are the elements of newer good-bad movies, like recent Rifftrax.com selection 300?

MJN I think the excesses of modern movies have become the funny thing — the thing that makes you laugh is the way that they calculate how they think they can get a reaction from you. It’s sort of a cynical act: "Let’s figure out exactly what the average guy would like, and let’s just give it to him in giant doses." They try to entertain the living hell out of you, and when they fail it’s kind of funny.

RIFFTRAX LIVE!

Jan. 17, 9 p.m., $25

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.ticketweb.com

SF SKETCHFEST

Jan. 10–27

See Web site for program info

www.sfsketchfest.com

Metal is forever

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Andreas Geiger turns his camera on his hometown of Donzdorf, Germany, a tidy little village containing half-timber houses, oompah band–loving old-timers, and the hugely successful metal label Nuclear Blast. Clocking in at just under an hour, Heavy Metal in the Country does peek into the Nuclear Blast HQ — where middle-aged moms carefully tape-gun mail-order packages stuffed with Eddie statues, Cannibal Corpse LPs, and T-shirts glorifying corpsepainted Norwegians Dimmu Borgir — but this isn’t a doc about the label. The film’s main focus is Donzdorf’s populace: in addition to Nuclear Blast’s Markus Staiger, who founded the company as a teen 20 years ago, we meet some dedicated local metalheads (including a 12-year-old Star Search contestant who worships AC/DC) and a few residents (like the town’s vicar) who admire metal’s ability to inspire, even if they think it’s inspiring all the wrong things. Fans of the local scene, take note: a shot in a record store features a quick cameo from Bay Area folk-metal outfit Slough Feg’s self-titled first release.

HEAVY METAL IN THE COUNTRY

Sun/13, 10:30 p.m., $8–$10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

Year in Film: Tonight we dine in hell

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

Ah, 2007: as of this writing, the five top-grossing movies of the year were three-quels (Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End), a chunk of Harry Potter’s golden calf (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), and the world’s flashiest ad for eBay (Transformers). That the biggest box office hit (Spidey raked in more than $336 million) was also the biggest disappointment is only fitting in a year that was characterized by new heights of hype. Did anyone really like 300 beyond its campy and mockable aspects, or did they just think they liked it because the Internet told them to?

I’ll admit I’m crabby, but I’m a victim of hype as much as anyone else. (The trailer for Iron Man and hell, even just the poster art for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull are making me greet 2008 with giddy anticipation.) I probably saw more than 300 movies (including 300) this year, many from the Tinseltown factory — a place that saps originality, force-feeds us things like fat suits and the Rock, and still leaves us frantically panting for more. And when I say us, I mean me. But although the overriding trend for 2007’s mainstream movies was mediocrity and there’s a feeling as December ends that the past 12 months were full of a whole lotta nothing, there were also some thematic similarities worth noting. (Note: there might be some spoilers here, so if you’ve been eagerly awaiting Death Sentence‘s cable debut, you’ve been warned.)

BUNS IN THE OVEN As I noted in my Juno review ("Birth of a Sensation: Ellen Page and Juno," 12/12/07), that film, combined with Waitress and Knocked Up, made 2007 the year the ever-popular celebrity-baby trend jumped from the pages of US Weekly to the big screen. In Waitress an unhappily married small-town gal is impregnated by her surly hubby; she soon falls for the hunky new guy in town, who happens to be her doctor. In Knocked Up a hot, mysteriously single TV reporter decides she’ll pop out the kid of a one-night stand she can barely stand to look in the eye. And in Juno a tart-tongued high schooler — in a family way after an experimental dalliance with her best friend — plucks her kid’s adoptive parents from the PennySaver. Each of these films have unique moments: Keri Russell’s Waitress postbirth epiphany; Knocked Up‘s awkward baby-on-board sex scene; and Juno‘s simple acknowledgement of the fact that abortion is a safe, legal option for women who find themselves unprepared for motherhood. By contrast, check out Romanian import 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, opening in early February 2008. A harrowing look at the illegal abortion trade in that country’s Communist 1980s, it well earned the top prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and contains nary a hamburger phone.

WESTERNS First the pirate movie made a comeback, and now we’ve got all kinds of westerns filling up our eyeholes — including the year’s best film, No Country for Old Men, a contemporary spin on the genre that imagines the Wild West as not just a place but a state of mind. More cut-and-dried was 3:10 to Yuma, which featured good guys, bad guys, shoot-outs, stagecoach robberies, and some seriously old-school hat fetishizing. Harder to classify: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a hypnotic, arty, lengthy study of the western myth from within the myth. The title characters — portrayed in great turns by Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck — are neither heroes nor villains, but rather men with guns and very few morals, those they have applying to loyalty, decency, and respect for human life. In short, fascinating.

SCREAMING FOR VENGEANCE It’s true, I’m a Charles Bronson fanatic who has often and loudly praised the wonders of the Death Wish films, including my personal favorite, Death Wish 3. So I anticipated the double-decker revenge sandwich of Death Sentence and The Brave One with a certain gruesome glee. Too bad neither movie really rocked it. Death Sentence — directed by Saw‘s James Wan and starring Kevin Bacon — went the distance by offing women and (oh god, no!) children. The Brave One offers a few pleasures, namely that scene on the subway in which Jodie Foster pops a guy for, basically, getting up in her face. Mostly, though, both films spent way too much time showing how their protagonists felt after committing acts of violence: fear, guilt, elation, excitement, or otherwise.

True vengeance films don’t bother with that shit — they start with a grievous act (in Death Wish 3 it’s the senseless killing of Bronson’s military buddy, whose biggest crime is living in a crummy neighborhood overrun with cartoonish gang members) and move right into the payback’s-a-bitch phase. Cops who secretly support the good work of heavily armed vigilantes are also a traditional staple; I don’t think Terrence Howard’s sad-eyed, Foster-followin’ Brave One detective really qualified. I can see updating the vengeance film for these more sensitive times, but — wait, no I can’t. Vengeance films with morals bad. Who needs ’em?

OH YEAH, THAT WAR THING You know when you turn on the news, and you see that story that was on yesterday, and last week, and last year too, about that business going on in Iraq? Wait, you don’t watch the news? Nah, neither do moviegoers, who didn’t give two poops about movies with Iraq war themes (I’m including everything from In the Valley of Elah to The Hills Have Eyes 2 here). I suppose if Blades of Glory can’t heal a broken nation, neither can Paul Haggis.

HORROR IS DEAD I almost forgot about The Hills Have Eyes 2 until I typed it above. There was no singular horror sensation this year, or even a really good sleeper, like 2006’s The Descent. Other releases that underwhelmed the horrorati: 1408, Resident Evil: Extinction, 30 Days of Night, Halloween, The Reaping, Vacancy, 28 Weeks Later, and Saw IV (already in the works: Saw V). As usual, the best horror films were in limited release (The Last Winter) or foreign — spooky Spanish thriller The Orphanage, which pays homage to Poltergeist among others (including The Others), hits theaters Dec. 28.

THE MAGIC NUMBER? This was the year of third sequels, some already mentioned above, of which only The Bourne Ultimatum did anything interesting. The slate for 2008 is pretty much locked in — this time next year, Avatar! — and it’s choked with a fair amount of sequels. Batman, Hellboy, Harry Potter, the Mummy, Indiana Jones, James Bond, Rambo, the Narnia kids, and the Star Trek crew are all poised to lead you back into butter-flavored temptation. Now, I don’t think the fact that a film is a sequel automatically means it will suck: I’m willing to sit through just about anything, because no matter how much crap I see, or how many films start off great and veer horribly off course (here’s lookin’ at you, I Am Legend), I never give up hope for the movies. And if that makes me no better than one of 300‘s digitally enhanced Spartans facing certain doom, so be it. See you next year! *

CHERYL EDDY’S TOP 10

1. No Country for Old Men (Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, US)

2. Grindhouse (Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth, Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, and Rob Zombie, US)

3. Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, France/US)

4. I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, US)

5. Zodiac (David Fincher, US)

6. Superbad (Greg Mottola, US)

7. The Wizard of Gore (Herschell Gordon Lewis, US, 1970) with Lewis in person, Clay Theatre, Nov. 2

8. Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine, UK)

9. Control (Anton Corbijn, UK/US/Australia/Japan) and Joy Division (Grant Gee, UK, 2006)

10. SpaceDisco One (Damon Packard, US)

Birth of a sensation

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Unplanned pregnancy is so stylish these days. As Waitress, Knocked Up, and now Juno have demonstrated, we’ve come a long way since a downtrodden Madonna informed Danny Aiello of her delicate condition in the "Papa Don’t Preach" video (1986). Of course, Juno is the only film among 2007’s baby-on-board crew to seriously consider abortion and settle on adoption; it’s also the most sympathetic to its female protagonist, who is thankfully more relatable than Keri Russell’s small-town pie chef or Katherine Heigl’s impossibly hot TV reporter. She’s a high schooler, she’s caustic as hell, and even if she’s occasionally too much of a screenwriter’s construct, it’s hard not to eagerly await her next wry, preternaturally mature observation.

Pitch-perfect as this pocket-size punkette is Hard Candy‘s Ellen Page, whose breakout status after Juno‘s release will be either matched or exceeded by that of hipster scribe Diablo Cody (director Jason Reitman already won over everybody with Thank You for Smoking). Sort-of couple Juno (Page) and Paulie (Michael Cera) consummate their mutual crush on a whim; cue bun in the oven. Ever the anti–after school special, Juno faces the news with eye-rolling determination. Before long, she’s plucked a yuppie couple (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) from the "desperately seeking spawn" want ads. At first entirely uninterested in getting to know her baby’s adoptive parents, Juno finds herself drawn to them, especially to the dad-to-be, a failed rocker turned jingle writer whose interest in the preggers teen is maybe not entirely wholesome.

Whatever — people aren’t gonna go see Juno for its social commentary, or its take on teen pregnancy, really. This is one of those flicks with Heathers-like glib-clever-snarky dialogue that beg repeated viewings, memorization, and repetition. Besides a terrific script, the film also boasts a stellar cast, with Juno’s parents played by Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons, and a cameo by The Office‘s Rainn Wilson. (Cheryl Eddy)

JUNO

Opens Fri/14 in Bay Area theaters
www.foxsearchlight.com/juno

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