Cheryl Eddy Archives — Page 31 of 37 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The sound of success

September 26, 2007

What does every rock doc tell us? Success in the music biz comes at a price, paid in any manner of ways — from the brawling egos of Dig! to the therapy sessions in Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Inevitably, every film in the genre’s gonna have certain similarities (drama, heartbreak, testimonials as to the subject’s tune-tastic genius); the best of the bunch also feature a compelling story, aided by access that opens up a little corner on a world that makes millionaires of a few while viciously stomping on the dreams of many.

Jeroen Berkvens’s A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake is barely feature length at 48 minutes, which makes sense when you learn that the singer-songwriter was only 26 when he died, leaving behind precious few photos and zero films of his all-too-rare gigs. The talent of the enigmatic Drake — now known as "that guy who sang that song on that Volkswagon ad" — is discussed in worshipful tones by Paul Weller and others; his hushed, folky songs are played over footage of city- and landscapes, with the suggestion that Drake’s music must be the chief means of unlocking his mystique. Other valuable insights are provided by Drake’s sister, Gabrielle, who reads his letters and points out that despite coming from a privileged, supportive family, he was depressed for almost all of his life. "I think he had rejected the world," Drake’s mother recalls on an audio recording made after the musician’s fatal overdose. "Nothing made him happy."

Bummed out yet? Why not? Fortunately, Chris Suchorsky’s Golden Days injects some hope into its tale of Brooklyn band the Damnwell’s long, hard road to discovering that signing with a major label can be more trouble than it’s worth. Technically slick, Golden Days is an engaging tale, even if you don’t care for the Damnwell’s brand of upbeat pop rock — which exactly matches their nice-guy personalities. As two band members are listed among the film’s producers, I can’t help wondering if there were any ugly scenes left on the cutting-room floor. Fistfights? Drug binges? Brawling egos? Not behind this music, apparently.

GOLDEN DAYS

Sat/29, 7 p.m.; Oct. 3, 9:15 p.m.

Roxie Film Center

A SKIN TOO FEW

Oct. 3, 7 p.m.; Oct. 9, 5 p.m.

Roxie Film Center

Witch, please

September 18, 2007

› cheryl@sfbg.com

If you can end your Toronto International Film Festival experience with a movie that climaxes in a 10-minute fistfight (roofs collapse, cinder blocks are smashed, tables become splinters, ankle bones snap like twigs, and vengeance is won … but at what price?), that qualifies as a joyous note in my book. And fortunately, it’s my book we’re talking about — specifically, my TIFF screening list, which by the end of my festival stint was completely mangled by incoherent scribblings and intricate schemes involving cinematic scheduling and basic human needs (chief among them sleep, which was often totally disregarded).

There’s a fine art to festivalgoing. I’m not sure I’ve mastered it yet. But I managed to see 26 (and a half) movies, probably missing some that I should have seen and certainly digesting a few disappointments. Another critic could spend a week in Toronto and see none of the films that I saw; my tastes run toward horror, documentaries, Hollywood and accessible indie stuff by directors I admire, and Hong Kong cinema (like the ankle buster mentioned above, the Donnie Yen–<\d>starring Flash Point). Plus, you gotta work in at least a few totally random selections — otherwise, what’s the point of being surrounded by cinema 24-7?

The big bananas in the horror bunch were Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears, the long-awaited conclusion to his witch-happy Three Mothers trilogy, and George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, hyped as the legendary zombie king’s return to no-frills filmmaking. I also followed my thrill-sniffing snout to Spanish newcomer Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage and the French Frontier(s), directed by Xavier Gens (whose Hollywood debut, video game–<\d>based Hitman, is currently trailered on Death Sentence). I’m a huge fan of Argento’s gialli and flashy, trashy, blood-soaked horror epics — and while I’m aware of the argument that he hasn’t made a great film since 1985’s Phenomena, Mother of Tears offers vintage pleasures galore. You want a coherent story and subtle acting? Look elsewhere (perhaps to the ghostly, Guillermo del Toro–<\d>produced fable The Orphanage). Argento’s tale starts with a cursed urn and snowballs into mad hysteria, grabbing a gold-toothed witch, Argento ex (and Mother star Asia Argento’s real-life mother) Daria Nicolodi, a creepy monkey, and exorcist Udo Kier en route to a church-burningly ridiculous conclusion. In other words, I loved it.

I wasn’t as sold on Frontier(s), a well-made but derivative Texas Chainsaw Massacre descendent that squanders its interesting Paris riots context. And it’s my sad duty to report that Diary of the Dead is hardly essential Romero. Glowing reviews published elsewhere baffle me. Diary works an of-the-moment theme of kids subverting the mainstream media via user-controlled Internet sites — post–<\d>undead apocalypse, the only source of truth for the masses. But it becomes caught up in Making a Statement, and its narrative device — camera-wielding film student obsessively documents the undead uprising — is completely irritating. Sorry, but I’ll take the flawed-but-fun Land of the Dead any day.

Enfolded into my documentary diet were several music-themed entries, including Heavy Metal in Baghdad and Joy Division, and the doclike narratives Control and I’m Not There. We all know things are bad in Iraq, but Heavy Metal puts them on a regular-dude level that CNN reports don’t often facilitate. Metal outfit Acrassicauda love Slayer and Metallica, and they (and their fans) just wanna rock. At the start of the film (exec-produced by Spike Jonze and codirected by Suroosh Alvi, the cofounder of Vice magazine, and Eddy Moretti), the musicians claim they aren’t a political band. Attitudes change, thanks to Scud missiles (which destroy their practice space and all of their instruments), pressure from a culture that frowns on long hair and headbanging, and a post–<\d>Saddam Hussein environment of extreme danger (machine-gun fire is just part of the street noise). Less contemporary but no less absorbing is Joy Division, Grant Gee’s reverent and artful look at Manchester’s pioneering post-punkers. Lead singer Ian Curtis is the focus of Control, a black-and-white wonder by music-video vet Anton Corbijn that focuses mostly on the troubled Curtis’s rocky personal life. Meanwhile, Todd Haynes creatively interprets the music biopic — as he’s done before with Superstar and Velvet Goldmine — with I’m Not There, a freewheeling (yet carefully calibrated) look at Bob Dylan. An array of famous folks — the stunning Cate Blanchett among them — portrays an array of Dylanesque characters. Though I could feel the movie being deliberately arty at times, it worked for me. And I’m not even a huge Dylan fan.

I’m running out of space, and I haven’t even gotten to three of my favorite TIFF films, so I’ll just lump ’em in here. Son of Rambow got mad props at Sundance, and with good reason; you’d have to be completely heartless to not love this tale of two British boys who bond over the one thing they have in common: First Blood. You know you’re gonna see No Country for Old Men anyway, because seeing the new Coen brothers movie — well, that’s a no-brainer. Lucky for you, it’s their best film in years. If Oscar don’t bite, there’s no hope for Oscar. I know the gold guy will totally ignore Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely, and that’s OK. I doubt the multiplex crowd will go for its sweetly bizarre tale of celebrity impersonators (Michael Jackson and Marilyn Monroe specifically, but other faux familiar faces, including Abe Lincoln and Buckwheat, make appearances) — and that’s not even mentioning Werner Herzog or the skydiving nuns. Amid all the witches, zombies, and actual movie stars, it was my favorite TIFF film.*

Tonight on KQED: “Lumo”

September 18, 2007

A young woman struggles to heal from the aftereffects of a traumatic rape in Lumo, a moving documentary about a tragically common occurrence in the Congo, “where rape is used as a weapon of war.” In Lumo’s case, she develops a fistula (which makes her incontinent) and may never be able to achieve her dream of being a mother — plus, her family shuns her. Fortunately, she’s welcomed into a hospital for rape survivors, staffed by kindly doctors and counselors, and populated by other women who’ve been through similar traumas. There’s hope in recovery — but as the film points out, the horrors of violence against women in unstable nations is an ongoing, urgent problem.

Lumo airs tonight as part of the P.O.V. series on KQED Channel 9 at 11 p.m. For more information about a local organization working to help women like the film’s subjects, visit the web site for the International Pediatric Outreach Project.

Freddy Krueger: song-and-dance man

September 13, 2007

Jason had a bigger knife, and Michael Myers got the trendy Rob Zombie treatment. But ol’ razor-hand had the best musical moments by far. The highlights:

Dokken, “Dream Warriors” – Is Patricia Arquette scared of Mr. Krueger — or Don Dokken’s fashion?

The Fat Boys, “Are You Ready for Freddy?” – Clad in striped sweaters, the Fat Boys are enticed to spend the night in “Uncle Frederick’s house.” Plus: Freddy raps!

There’s no YouTube video of DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s “A Nightmare on My Street.” So here’s a truly bizarre karaoke version. Some context for this performance might help … though it’s kind of more amazing without.

Northern Frights

September 11, 2007

FESTIVAL REPORT Leave it to me to pack as much violence as possible into my first days at the Toronto International Film Festival. (And that’s with only having seen one entry in the horror-heavy Midnight Madness series.) In Spanish spookfest The Orphanage — featuring a Poltergeist shout-out for Zelda Rubenstein fans — fingers are slammed in doors, limbs are snapped, and a few unfortunate, uh, accidents occur. Jodie Foster goes aggro with a cause in The Brave One, poppin’ pricks with a pistol (and other handy tools). But the standout gross-outs so far are the Coen brothers’ Cormac McCarthy adaptation No Country for Old Men and Dario Argento’s long-awaited final entry in his Three Mothers trilogy, Mother of Tears.

"If this ain’t the mess," reckons No Country‘s Texas sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), "it’ll do till the mess gets here." The mess, later dubbed a "colossal goatfuck," is indeed a doozy of a rural crime scene, involving gun-shot bodies both fresh and long bloated, a dead dog, a truckload of drugs, much spent ammo, and a missing satchel containing $2 million. Clutching that dough is Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a ne’er-do-well who soon realizes his windfall will also be his downfall — in the form of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, exquisitely coiffed), a ruthless killer hired to hunt down the cash. No Country for Old Men is certainly the greatest Coen film in a good while — no Tom Hanks joking about waffles here. It’s beautifully shot and edited (aside from a maybe too-extended ending), and while there’s not much dialogue when Ed Tom’s not onscreen, every nugget’s worth waiting for. Bardem is particularly golden, but the whole cast is on point.

And yeah, since I know you wanna know, Mother of Tears is likewise certainly the greatest Argento film in a good while. I’m not saying it’s a perfect film, but it has all the gnarly stuff you expect from the director of Suspiria, Inferno, Phenomena, and Tenebre: over-the-top occult themes, shrill acting (Asia Argento’s the lead, and she turns it out), goth punk gangs of giggling witches, a plot that makes only sporadic sense, Udo Kier (as an exorcist!), a pounding electronic score, and, of course, eye gougings like they’re going out of style. Thank goodness they never will. (Cheryl Eddy)

For more reports from the Toronto International Film festival, go to Pixel Vision at www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision.

Stuck inside of Toronto with the movie blues again

September 11, 2007

Day Five of the Toronto International Film Festival: I had to make a Bob Dylan pun above because today I saw I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’ tribute to the star (focusing on the young, exciting, pre-Victoria’s Secret sellout years, thankfully). There’s a lot going on here — I’m sure you’ve already heard about the gimmick of having several different actors play Dylan or Dylanesque characters. It makes for a fascinating comment on perceptions of stardom and celebrity — and art, I guess — with stirring music (duh), contrasting visual textures, and some random cameos by an enormous cast (David Cross as Allen Ginsberg — works for me). A few moments felt transcendent (Cate Blanchett was my favorite Dylan); others felt clipped from A Mighty Wind. This was maybe the only movie at the festival where I got that overwhelming, I’m-enveloped-by-this-film feeling … which is not to say I was one hundred percent in love with it. But it was plenty stirring.

Just like a … woman?

Meanwhile, unless something bedazzles me during my half-day tomorrow, I think I’m ready to declare my personal best-of-fest.

“It’s meant to be funny!”

September 10, 2007

Day four of the Toronto International Film Fest: So, I was wrong. Nick Broomfield’s Battle for Haditha isn’t a documentary. Hell, it doesn’t even have any voice-over. It’s a drama — a docu-drama — that reenacts a real-life Iraq war incident in which a roadside IED led to the death of one American solider — and in turn, many Iraqi civilians (including children) shot to death by the fallen soldier’s weary, emotional, and confused squadmates. Shot in Jordan, the movie goes for a Flight 93-style realism, using mostly non-actors who represent more or less the characters they portray (Al-Qaeda aside, I’m guessing.) After the doc Heavy Metal in Baghdad, Battle for Haditha is the second Iraq-themed movie I’ve seen at the Toronto International Film Festival, and there are others on the bill I won’t have time to see, like Brian DePalma’s Redacted. Iraq is totally trendy … and timely. And in my festival-addled mind, I just realized tomorrow is September 11.

Although Nick Broomfield is best-known for films like Kurt and Courtney and Biggie and Tupac, his latest is a fact-based drama, similar to his 2006 film Ghosts.

Things that aren’t there anymore

September 8, 2007

Day three of the Toronto International Film Festival, and on the heels of Control comes Joy Division, a documentary about the groundbreaking (and heartbreakingly short-lived) post-punk band. While the narrative Control busied itself more with Ian Curtis’ complicated personal life, Joy Division taks a closer look at the band’s music, rise to fame, and also the roots of their dark, moody sound — specifically, the city of Manchester in the late 1970s, where as one interviewee points out, “Nothing looked pretty.” Just about everyone still living who had anything to do with the band chimes in on the doc, which benefits from director Grant Gee’s ability to contextualize Joy Division’s place in landscapes physical, sonic, and artistic. (He also made the 1998 Radiohead doc, Meeting People is Easy.) There’s a great attention to detail — the film visits places that are crucial to Joy Division lore, like the Factory, now shut down and living on only in the collective rock n’ roll memory. Some great Joy Division peformance footage too — seeing the doc so soon after seeing Control made me truly appreciate actor Sam Riley’s portrayal of Curtis. The resemblance is pretty spooky.

Fun fact: the artist who designed this iconic album sleeve did so without ever having heard a note of Joy Division music.

Sleep is for sissies!

September 7, 2007

Er, actually, I shouldn’t say shit like that, considering whatever cruddy virus I carted from California to Canada is lingering, probably due to acute lack of shut-eye. I am now officially “that coughing asshole” during quiet moments in movies.

Fortunately, the flicks on my schedule today at the Toronto International Film Festival haven’t been too library-like. I hit up the 9am (ouch) screening of Heavy Metal in Baghdad — a doc about Iraq’s only heavy metal band, although at present it would seem Iraq has zero metal bands, considering the members of the outfit profiled here, Acrassicauda, are currently hiding out in Syria. Produced by VICE films, exec produced by Spike Jonze, and inspired by an MTV trip to Iraq soon after the war broke out, I could easily see this doc finding a home on VH-1 or MTV. It’s got a little too much filmmaker presence for me (voice-over, appearing on-camera, and so on), but it’s hard not to love any film that delivers a political message for the kiddies snugly wrapped in a burrito of heavy-metal appreciation (with some intimate glimpses at post-Saddam Iraq, where the sounds of machine-gun fire are just part of the urban landscape). Metal fans can’t even headbang in Iraq, much less grow their hair long for maximum hair-whip effect … but Acrassicauda (a type of scorpion) learned to speak English by listening to Slayer, Metallica, and Mayhem records. Now if that ain’t the very definition of metal, I don’t know what is.

This is the CD a band member holds up to illustrate “what life here looks like.” Dude ain’t joking, neither.

Love will tear us apart … and, uh, so will the bullets

September 6, 2007

Day one of the Toronto International Film Festival. New this year: badges with bar codes. Now, when you enter a screening room, they zap you in the badge instead of making you sign in. There’s also a lot of construction going on in the mall that envelops the main festival theater. This is my third year at TIFF, but things feel a little unfamiliar so far.

Not the case with the movies (or the ancient-popcorn smell that fills the theaters…rank, yet comforting somehow). I’ve already seen some really great ones. Been up since 4am California time (is there any other time, really?) and I’m up at the same time tomorrow, so I’ll keep this post pretty brief.

The day began as more of my days should: with a satisfying jolt of Spanish horror.

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave … amigo.

Spaghetti eastern

September 4, 2007

› cheryl@sfbg.com

How many times am I gonna have to rave about Exiled before you go see it? It’s been a year since I first caught it at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival; the 2007 TIFF starts Sept. 6 and features Mad Detective, Johnnie To’s latest collaboration with Wai Ka Fai (Fulltime Killer). Needless to say, I’ll be first in line at that flick — and perhaps, like Exiled, it’ll play the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival before finally opening in theaters. So you missed Exiled at the Asian fest, and you missed To’s Triad Election when it rat-a-tatted through town a few months back. I hope you’re paying attention now, because you’re getting another big-screen crack at Hong Kong’s most exciting director since John Woo skedaddled for Hollywood. Don’t sleep on it.

If you’ve seen Exiled, of course, you know what I’m jawboning about. A sort-of sequel to what was previously held to be To’s best film (excluding 2001’s wondrously wrong Love on a Diet), 1999’s The Mission, Exiled happens upon a group of gangsters at a crossroad. Control of Macau is about to be handed to China, and triad kingpin Boss Fay (Simon Yam) is determined to maintain his position in the underworld. Meanwhile, outcast foot soldier Wo (Nick Cheung) has ill-advisedly returned to town with wife (Josie Ho) and baby in tow. Dispatched by Fay to take him out are Wo’s former compadres Blaze (Anthony Wong), Tai (Francis Ng), Cat (Roy Cheung), and Fat (Lam Suet). He’s their bro, so they don’t wanna kill him. These are assassins with hearts as generous as they are deadly. A compromise is reached: before Wo dies, the band will reunite for one last crime — the spoils of which will set his family up for life.

Of course, even the simplest plan is destined to go awry in a milieu geared toward staging as many balletic sequences of slo-mo gun-fu as humanly possible. As our antiheroes ride a hail of bullets through coincidences tragic and unbelievably convenient, To charges the action with an inspired array of spaghetti western motifs. World-weary Blaze needs only a cowboy hat (he rocks sunglasses instead) to be Lee Van Cleef’s fashion heir. The soundtrack twangs with plaintive guitars. Tables are upended in a restaurant shoot-out that mirrors the kind of Wild West brawl a hunchbacked Klaus Kinski might set off. A gold heist (because it’s good to be bad, or even ugly sometimes) is discussed. A harmonica emerges from a pocket while a campfire blazes.

To say much more about the plot would spoil its breakneck twists and turns, but know this: Exiled makes its lasting impact with its tone, which is palpably shaped by the tension of uncertainty and moral ambiguity. Plus, it doesn’t get much better than a movie that balances hair-trigger violence with moments of gentle humor, as when a battle royale segues into an impromptu dinner party — and the realization that spent bullets are floating in the tea.

Though Yam makes an over-the-top villain — and the actor playing the region’s police sergeant, who is predictably days from retirement, trowels on the whiny smarm — the film’s core ensemble of gangsters speaks little and expresses less, at least overtly. Wong’s face barely changes expression throughout. Still, it’s evident that the bond between the men transcends triad politics; when they gather for a snapshot at the film’s beginning, it’s contrasted with a photo of the group as cocky youths. Clearly, a lot’s happened since then. We don’t know precisely what, but friendships that go beyond who’s been ordered to kill whom have been well established — even as the code of the gangster is understood as law. "I have to kill you," Blaze tells Wo without affect. And Wo knows.

Wong — a Hong Kong superstar who’s slated to appear in the next Mummy film, forebodingly subtitled Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, alongside Brendan Fraser and Jet Li — gives a subtle performance that’s Exiled‘s heart. Though much screen time is given to Ho’s anxious wife, Wong’s quietly resigned hit man carries more power. His greatest moment of emotion comes when he realizes that the gang, seemingly on the brink of freedom, is obligated to follow through on a promise made to a fallen partner in crime. It’s a dilemma fit for any good pistol opera — and Exiled just happens to be a great one.<\!s>*

EXILED

Opens Fri/7 in San Francisco theaters

Class of 2007: King City

August 29, 2007

Superlative: Most Likely to Carry a Django Reinhardt Album While Wearing a Master of Puppets T-shirt

Quote: “It’s cartoon music. You can’t really go wrong with it.

Here’s a question: where on earth would a group of metalheads and hard-core punkers come together and start playing toe-tapping swing ditties? Only in King City, baby — a mysterious burg where headbanging and devil horns are replaced by tango dips and jazz hands, and the music is suitable for smoky cafés, exotica bars, and backyard fiestas. Together since 2003, King City is a side project for talented locals known for their participation in other notable bands: percussionist Chewy Marzolo performs with local metal heroes Hammers of Misfortune; Marzolo and guitarist Rich Morin played together in metal-punk combo Osgood Slaughter; and bassist Joe Raposo (currently on tour with Celtic punks the Real McKenzies), drummer Boz Rivera, and guitarist Chris Rest (also of punk unit Lagwagon) were in SoCal hardcore outfit RKL. Trumpeter Keith Douglas rounds out King City’s population.

Marzolo says King City’s 2003 founding was "kind of just a big accident. Rich, who’s the main guitar player and writer, basically pieced a bunch of songs together that had nothing do to with metal or punk. It just seemed like a really fun excuse to drink beer and play cartoon music, and it’s continued to be fun."

Though King City’s songs — heard on their 2007 debut, The Last Siesta (Antebellum) — are rooted in ragtime, swing, and Latin jazz, their true origins are a bit more beastly. The sound is "closer to Metallica than it is swing," Marzolo explains. "We don’t come from jazz backgrounds. I mean, we understand it, and we’ve studied it a little bit here and there, but when it comes down to actually playing music, we understand rock and metal and punk. With King City, we’re not trying to beat people over the head with volume, speed, and power. There’s a kind of lightheartedness about it, but I think [the music] makes the same sort of impact, ultimately. It’s just not done through Marshall stacks." (Cheryl Eddy)

www.kingcitysf.com

www.myspace.com/kingcity

Reasons for the season

August 28, 2007

FILM On any given day, on any given Muni, you’re likely to hear John Carpenter’s Halloween theme trilling out of some kid’s cell. Sprung from one gloriously terrifying, terrifyingly simple idea (in a word: babysitters!), the seminal horror series welcomes its ninth installment with Rob Zombie’s remake of the 1978 original. I can hear you, horror snob: "Ninth installment? Remake? Why the fuck would I wanna see that?" Well, really, it’s simpler than a razor-bladed Snickers bar:

1) Halloween sequels are generally enjoyable — and I’m not even talking about the attempts to hipsterfy the series with entries starring Josh Hartnett (1998) or a webcam (2002, which also featured Busta Rhymes delivering the immortal line, "Trick or treat, motherfucker!") I’m talking the shit that nobody ever watches, except us late-night cable addicts: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) and Halloween 5 (1989), i.e. the Danielle Harris–as–Michael Myers’s–long-lost-niece era; and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), starring a pre-Clueless Paul Rudd. Don’t get me started on Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), or I’ll be singing about Silver Shamrock long past Oct. 31.

2) The Carpenter universe allows for remakes. One of the director’s best efforts is The Thing (1982), a most righteous reimagining itself. In recent years, The Fog (1980) and Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) have been snatched up by a Hollywood that thinks nobody remembers the early ’80s. Halloween is his most sacred product, but it’s also his most unusual, taking on a life beyond the Carpenter canon. Michael Myers is a universally recognized movie monster, sharing Halloween Superstore costume-rack space with Freddy, Jason, and Austin Powers. If Tinseltown was molesting They Live (1988), we might have words. But Myers’s kill-crazy, supernatural blankness lets him roam different landscapes (Haddonfield, private school, the Internet) for different directors and remain reliably menacing.

3) Which brings me to Zombie. He’s a huge horror fan anyway, and if you’ve seen The Devil’s Rejects (2005) or House of 1000 Corpses (2003), you know he’s all about paying homage to terror cinema past. But he’s got his own style too — gruesome, jump-cutty, and nihilistic. He’s also inspired enough to cast Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Loomis (and Danielle Harris as Annie Brackett) in his remake. Hell, even Danny Trejo is in this thing. Is Zombie’s Halloween any good? Am I steering you wrong? I can’t even say, man. I’m seeing it the day before you do — right after I interview Zombie. Ass-backwards, yes. But it’s Halloween, a remake of my all-time favorite movie, not to mention my all-time favorite holiday. I’ll eat some razor blades myself if I have to. (Cheryl Eddy)

To read an interview with Rob Zombie, click here.

HALLOWEEN

Opens Fri/31 in Bay Area theaters

See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

I talked with a Zombie

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August 28, 2007
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The busiest guy with an undead name in showbiz? Rob Zombie. Like a certain mask-wearing maniac, the man can’t be stopped – at least when it comes to doing press for Halloween, his latest film, which opens Friday, August 31 (giving you a full two months to prepare for the actual holiday). I zoomed into the office after an ill-advised night out for my 8:45 a.m. interview. My phone was lit up like Vegas – Mr. Zombie was running a bit late, could I hold on for a few minutes? Yeah, I could hold on to talk about Halloween – John Carpenter’s 1978 original is my go-to favorite film citation, and I’m anticipating the remake with every bloody bone in my horror-geek body. I don’t like doing interviews before I’ve seen the film, but again – it’s Halloween, dude. A movie that – let’s be honest – needs no enhancement to be scary, even in 2007. But I’m willing to see what Zombie has to offer. Which leads me to my first question …

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What do you think makes you different from other directors who’ve remade horror films (see: The Hills Have Eyes, Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Fog, etc. etc.)? I know you’re a huge horror fan…

Rob Zombie: It’s hard to say. All directors are different. And for me to assume I know who they are and what they do and what their motivations are would be presumptuous on my part. But the only thing that I know is that what makes this remake possibly different from others is that it’s not just a job. If you’re gonna take on something, you have to take it on because you have some passion for the project. Because I’ve been offered other things in the past and I’ve turned them all down because I was just kind of like, “Why would you remake that? Who give a shit?” So I mean, maybe that’s different. Sometimes people just take on jobs that they really don’t have a passion for, and it shows.

High-risk headbanging

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August 22, 2007
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The Toronto International Film Festival posted their schedule today, and among the docs is something called Heavy Metal in Baghdad — a behind-the-scenes look at Acrassicauda, “the only Iraqi heavy metal band.” (And, I’m guessing, one of few Iraqi bands, period, these days.) Watch the trailer here. As you can see, co-directors Eddy Moretti and Suroosh Alvi (Vice magazine co-founder; the film is produced by mag affiliate VBS.tv) went the distance for the story. Which is, you know, totally metal of them. Before it became a feature, parts of the doc comprised a YouTube series of the same name.

METAL is a universal language!

Listen to clips of Acrassicauda — according to the band’s website, “a Latin term for one of the most dangerous and unique kind of black scorpions [that] lives in the Iraqi deserts” — here or at their MySpace page.

TIFF is pretty reliable insofar as booking the big music docs that soon make their way to San Francisco — Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey in 2005; American Hardcore in 2006. I’m definitely gonna catch it when I head to the fest in a few weeks…stay tuned.

Fall Arts: Before and after Halloween

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August 21, 2007
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› cheryl@sfbg.com

1. Death Sentence Not to be confused with The Brave One (see "Popcorn — and Human Pies"), but you’re forgiven if you do: old-school vigilantes are the new hotness. Splat packer James Wan (Saw) directs this adaptation of Brian Garfield’s novel — the sequel to Death Wish — in which a brush with violence turns a mild-mannered dude (Kevin Bacon) into the human equivalent of Judas Priest’s Screaming for Vengeance. (Aug. 31)

2. Halloween John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) is damn near perfection. Its sequels are no less delightful ("Eight more days till Halloween, Silver Shamrock!"), but all have lacked the artistic impact of the original. This ninth trip to happy Haddonfield is technically a remake, which under normal circumstances would be outright sacrilege. But as I’ve been intrigued by director Rob Zombie’s previous films — and the cast he’s lined up is pretty mind-blowing, with Udo Kier, Ken Foree, Adrienne Barbeau, Clint Howard, Danny Trejo, and about a zillion others — I’ll have to see the thing before I start, uh, screaming for vengeance. (Aug. 31)

3. The Darjeeling Limited So you didn’t really dig The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, except for the Willem Dafoe parts ("Not if I see you first, sonny"). You know you’re duty bound to see Wes Anderson’s latest, which stars Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman (who cowrote the script with Anderson and Roman Coppola) as brothers traveling across India. Prediction: there will be quirkiness. (Sept. 28)

4. Into the Wild Director Sean Penn adapted his screenplay from Jon Krakauer’s best-seller about a recent college grad who up and moves to the Alaskan wilderness. Emile Hirsch — one of those young actors who shuttle between arty (The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys) and big-budget (2008’s Speed Racer) — stars as the lad yearning for adventure. (Sept. 28)

5. Elizabeth: The Golden Age Whoever heard of Cate Blanchett before Elizabeth? Cast in every movie made since (seems like, anyway), the striking Aussie returns to the character that made her famous with Shekhar Kapur’s sequel to his 1998 tale about Queen Elizabeth I’s rise to power. Clive Owen appears (as Sir Walter Raleigh). Helen Mirren does not. (Oct. 12)

6. Rogue The director of Wolf Creek does the Australian tourism board another favor. A giant favor, in fact. A giant, crocodile-shaped favor. I believe the phrase you’re looking for is "Fuck yeah!" (Oct. 12)

7. American Gangster This film’s got a checkered backstory — it was supposed to be made a few years ago by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), and when the production went south, Denzel Washington got something like $20 million as part of his play-or-pay deal. Ridley Scott’s in the director’s chair now, with Russell Crowe and moneybags Washington having a thesp-off amid the 1970s Harlem drug trade. (Nov. 2)

8. Leatherheads When George Clooney acts, I’ll most likely see the movie. When Clooney directs, my ass hustles to the theater — even for a romantic comedy … about football … set in the 1920s. John Krasinski (The Office) and Renée Zellweger (The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre) star alongside the sultan of suave. (Dec. 7)

9. I Am Legend Holy long-in-development blockbuster — can you believe this movie’s finally coming out? The director of Constantine puts wily wisecracker Will Smith through his sci-fi paces in Richard Matheson’s tale of Earth’s last (human) inhabitant. (Dec. 14)

10. Aliens vs. Predator If you go see The Christmas Cottage — the first and hopefully last movie inspired by one of Thomas Kinkade’s stunningly craptastic paintings — you are hereby sentenced to spend all of Jesus’ birthday watching the Predator go mano a tentacle with Alien critters galore. I’ll be the sicko in the seat next to you, bleary-eyed from my traditional holiday Silent Night, Deadly Night–<\d>athon. (Dec. 25)<\!s>*

The great Oz speaks

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August 21, 2007
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By Michelle Devereaux

True, Frank Oz has made his living for the last twenty years as a director of glossy, big-budget Hollywood comedies: from the mega-hits (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob?, In & Out) to the occasional colossal flop (The Stepford Wives). And for the discerning nerd, Yoda always he will be. But for me, it’s hard not to meet the man and think of him as anything but a pig. Oz not only provided the voices of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, and the Swedish Chef, among other classic Muppet characters, he’s also a master puppeteer in his own right.

So how to “keep the Muppet questions to a minimum” as instructed by the publicist on the occasion of his new movie, Death at a Funeral? (Especially when Oz himself makes an off-the-cuff remark about going “whole hog”? Well, it helps that Funeral is actually pretty amusing. An ensemble farce about a repressed English clan attending the funeral of a patriarch with a scandalous secret, the film features British vets like Rupert Graves, Robert Vaughan, and Ewen Bremner, plus American actors Peter Dinklage and Alan Tudyk (a standout). I sat down with Oz to discuss the movie, his desire to become a master of the “dark” arts, and other things (sigh) no
Muppet.

Taking the joke too far?

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August 15, 2007
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Arcade fire

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August 14, 2007
2

› cheryl@sfbg.com

"That ape is very cunning, and he will do what he needs to, to stop you." This nugget of wisdom, tossed off by a spectator who’s hoping to witness a record-setting Donkey Kong score, is at once simple and poignant — much like The King of Kong, which chronicles the rivalry between two of the game’s elite players, both men in their 30s who take the pursuit of arcade excellence very, very seriously. As in any great sports story, there’s an underdog (determined newcomer Steve Wiebe, a family man who teaches middle school science) and a seemingly infallible champ (hot-sauce tycoon Billy Mitchell, a legend since the early 1980s). There’s fierce competition, triumph over daunting odds, bold statements like "Anything can happen in Donkey Kong," and the judicious use of motivational pop songs. But the drama in The King of Kong (subtitle: A Fistful of Quarters) is so gripping, "Eye of the Tiger" is almost an afterthought.

Gripping drama? Wrought from grown-ups hunched over video games? Yeah, you heard me. Some outlets — including MTV.com, which ran an extensive piece on Mitchell — have suggested that Kong director Seth Gordon applied some editing-room finesse to heighten the tale’s tension, and there are moments that achieve near-Shakespearean levels. Wiebe, so outwardly unremarkable that nobody he encounters in the gaming world remembers how to pronounce his name, has been second best all his life. His Kong skill springs not from talent but from determination, with hours logged at the machine he keeps in his garage. After he records himself earning a previously unheard-of million points (even as his young son screams, "Daddy, don’t play!" in the background), he comes to the attention of Twin Galaxies, the organization that tracks and regulates video game records. (Twin Galaxies guru Walter Day — a key player in the yet-to-be-released film Chasing Ghosts, another 2007 doc about arcade games — really deserves a full portrait of his own colorful life, which encompasses not just gaming but also folk music and Transcendental Meditation.)

Mitchell, Twin Galaxies’ star ambassador, also takes note. Kong may be slanted against Mitchell — he’s blow-dried, attired in tacky ties, and apparently cocky — but his actions in the context of the film do seem questionable. Why wouldn’t he show up to defend his title at a competition transpiring mere miles from his Florida home? Why would he demand Wiebe demonstrate his prowess in person — then overshadow the man’s success by submitting a videotape with a superior score? Who knew you could set a video game high-score record with a videotape, anyway?

Trust me, even if this all seems silly in the abstract to you, it becomes entirely dire once Kong sucks you in. Gordon doesn’t make fun of his subjects, and he never once belittles them for their laserlike devotion to a certain barrel-hurling ape — although some of the secondary players invite ridicule due to their incredible nerdiness. At any rate, there’s precious little time devoted to the game itself (notable exceptions include a look at a Donkey Kong "kill screen," which comes when the game runs out of memory and little Mario spontaneously keels); it’s suggested that the best of the best advance thanks to technique and luck — and, possibly, the good graces of whoever’s in charge.

For the eventual winner, the benefits reach beyond a line in Guinness World Records. "It’s not even about Donkey Kong anymore," a tournament bystander opines, and he’s right. That the game is from an earlier, more innocent era — compared to Grand Theft Auto, Donkey Kong looks like child’s play — is key. One competitor’s holding on to teenage glory, while the other’s trying to make up for teenage failures by tasting true glory for the first time.<\!s>*

THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS

Opens Aug. 24 in Bay Area theaters

See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

www.picturehouse.com

New! Odd! Fantastic!

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August 7, 2007
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› Cheryl@sfbg.com

Rampaging genitalia, families of half-wits, towns shielding deadly secrets, and the end of the world — yep, there are good times to be had with the selection of new films in Dead Channels: The San Francisco Festival of Fantastic Film. The most buzzed-about title, Uwe Boll’s Postal (it’s a war-on-terror comedy that pokes fun at Sept. 11, among other topics; Seinfeld‘s Soup Nazi plays fun guy Osama bin Laden), wasn’t available for prescreening. But no matter — it’ll be far more rewarding to see the thing on the Castro Theatre’s giant screen, with the notorious Boll in person, at Dead Channels’ opening night Aug. 9.

Noteworthy picks include Canadian filmmaker Maurice Devereaux’s End of the Line, which offers more jolts per capita than much of Dead Channels’ other fare. A sinister dude on the subway is something just about every woman has encountered — but it only gets worse for a psych-ward nurse (Ilona Elkin) whose commute home coincides with an evangelical cult’s realization that the apocalypse is nigh. Piety has seldom been so gruesomely rendered. A more lighthearted look at the end of civilization is crystallized in Minoru Kawasaki’s The World Sinks except Japan, in which freaky natural events cause all the continents to sink into the ocean, save you-know-which island nation. World leaders and American movie stars swarm Japan, which is none too thrilled about playing host to so many refugees. The film is a tad overlong, but there are some juicy moments of satire, including a glimpse at a beleaguered Japan’s most popular television show — which basically involves a giant monster stomping on as many foreigners as possible.

More somber is Simon Rumley’s The Living and the Dead, which features a mentally challenged lead character (played with precious little showboating by Leo Bill) whose descent into madness is witnessed with horror by his bedridden mother (Kate Fahy). The location is a massive English manor house, as frightening and confusing a spot as End of the Line‘s subway tunnels. Some creative camera work, including the use of fast-motion footage to demonstrate what goin’ cuckoo feels like, makes for a more dynamic thriller than the film’s small cast and single setting would suggest.

The most conventional (not always a euphemism for "sucky") Dead Channels flick I watched was Harry Basil’s Fingerprints, dubiously notable for the presence of Laguna Beach hottie and US Weekly fixture Kristin Cavallari in a supporting part. (Hey, rolling your eyes expressively is totally what acting is all about!) Somber teenager Melanie (Leah Pipes) gets out of rehab and moves back in with her varyingly supportive family, who’ve relocated to a bucolic village still haunted by a long-ago train wreck that killed several schoolchildren. Possibly owing to her heroin-tastic past, Melanie proves supernaturally sensitive; after receiving some ghostly nudges, she sets about uncovering the town’s long-buried secrets. Fingerprints plays a little like a Lifetime movie with slasher elements, and it also employs the spooky-kid motif that was all the rage in scary movies a few years back. But besides the curiosity casting of Cavallari — unnecessary bubble-bath scene alert! — and Lou Diamond Phillips (as a sympathetic teacher), the film is actually pretty entertaining and solid, if inevitably derivative.

Fairly unlike any film you have ever seen before, or will after, is Hot Baby!, the seriously bizarre brainchild of Bay Area filmmaker Jeff Roenning. There’s a scene or two that recalls The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other don’t-get-off-the-highway chillers, but mostly it’s an over-the-top array of shifting tones and character arcs, with a high schooler (Adam Scarimbolo) curious about his long-absent mother at its center. Plus: sexual-predator hypnotists, vengeful hookers, and doughnut jokes! Maybe even weirder is The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon, writer-director-star Annette Ashlie Slomka’s take on a female mad scientist who conducts her sexually charged experiments with Herbert West–<\d>like focus. The film’s interesting premise is hampered by its amateurish execution, but it still features a rather horrifying penis monster — and what more can you really ask for?<\!s>*

Click here for reviews of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Welcome Home Brother Charles

DEAD CHANNELS

Aug. 9 – 16

See Film List for venues and showtimes

www.deadchannels.com

Tim McGraw’s balls

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August 3, 2007
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Blessed be to the advances in technology that allow alert concertgoers to capture performers at their most uncouth.

Most recently, Faith Hill upbraided a front-row fan for gettin’ too gropy with hubby and tourmate Tim McGraw’s private parts (TMZ has the video here). And of course there’s the now-famous Beyonce tumble (TMZ has it here).

Who needs concert videos when the between-songs shit is so juicy? Anyone who owns a copy of Having Fun With Elvis On Stage — no songs, just banter, some of it quite rambling and surreal — knows what I’m talking about.

Holiest of holies

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July 31, 2007
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If you’ve seen the late, great MTV sketch comedy show The State (look for the long-awaited DVD in October) or 2001’s summer-camp-movie parody Wet Hot American Summer, you can imagine what the Bible’s gonna look like in the hands of director David Wain. Or maybe not — in The Ten, Wain and cowriter Ken Marino interpret the 10 Commandments with typically off-the-wall (and thus completely unpredictable) humor. I recently spoke with Wain, who doesn’t fancy himself the next Cecil B. DeMille ("I never saw [The Ten Commandments], but I’m gonna check it out") but does have a firm grip on the funny.

On how The Ten fits into the slew of films about spirituality: "I certainly don’t think of it as a biblical film. It’s really just using the 10 Commandments as thematic launching-off points for 10 entertaining stories. We’re not out to make any particular point about religion. [Our takes on the commandments] are fast and loose — we’re like the Roger and Me of biblical movies."

On the script: "With each [commandment], we tried to attack it from a different angle and come up with something that was in a slightly different style and genre and yet sort of have a cohesive sensibility. We just said, ‘What is covet thy neighbor’s wife? Probably prison rape.’ And so on."

On the cast, which features members of The State and also several big-name actors: "We were huge fans of Winona Ryder and begged her to do it, and she said yes. We were very lucky, because I think actors saw that it was something different and not a big time commitment, so we were able to get a level of cast that we really never would have dreamed of."

And, of course, one you’ll have to see the movie to appreciate, on Oliver Platt’s Terminator impression: "Not only did he not have it [before the movie], he never got it. I mean, the average guy on the street does a better Arnold Schwarzenegger than Oliver Platt does. And I think that’s what’s funny about it." (Cheryl Eddy)

THE TEN Opens Fri/3 in Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

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Cheryl Eddy

The sound of success

Witch, please

Tonight on KQED: “Lumo”

Oh, the humanity

Freddy Krueger: song-and-dance man

Northern Frights

Stuck inside of Toronto with the movie blues again

“It’s meant to be funny!”

Braaaaaaaaiiiiinnssss!

Things that aren’t there anymore

Sleep is for sissies!

Love will tear us apart … and, uh, so will the bullets

Spaghetti eastern

Class of 2007: King City

Reasons for the season

I talked with a Zombie

High-risk headbanging

Fall Arts: Before and after Halloween

The great Oz speaks

Taking the joke too far?

Arcade fire

New! Odd! Fantastic!

Tim McGraw’s balls

Holiest of holies