SOMETHING WILD!

Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels, and a wicked Ray Liotta make this Jonathan Demme road movie turn from screwball comedy to nightmare thriller faster than you can say "psycho ex-boyfriend." A brilliant and entertaining film that surprises you at every turn, and one of the best films of the 1980s.

Charlie (Daniels) is a timid square who thinks he's a rebel (so many of those around, eh?) and punky femme fatale Lulu (Griffith) pulls him into a wild ride of sex and madness. You could go on about Demme's critique of middle class values, American violence, subcultures, and high school reunions, but that would spoil the fun and give you the wrong idea. If you've never seen this, watch it here in its entirety.

Live a little, Charlie!

MY VOYAGE TO ITALY

I've been preparing for a trip abroad by reading books and watching films. It's pretty easy to get me to do these things. I'm reading my way through the Dark Ages, the late Medieval Period, and the Renaissance...and zipping through Netflix watching Italian movies, new films, travelogs, and some old favorites. There is a risk in revisiting things you loved when you were younger ("The Catcher in the Rye," for example) but some things seem to get better with age--take Fellini. Watching La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 again, I'm astonished. Especially with the latter, since I've seen La Dolce Vita several times over the years but I hadn't seen 8 1/2 since my twenties. Time plays its tricks. The film is identical, frame for frame, to what I saw back then but I've changed and grown and lived a good stretch of life since then and from this vantage point watching the film is an entirely new experience. Heraclitus had a point.

While everyone is rushing out to see the new Star Trek, stay home. Think up an excuse. Then pop La Dolce Vita into the box. Or 8 1/2. Take a deep breath and open your eyes for a lesson in cinema as well as life. Keep it to yourself. If you tell some people you like Fellini they might think you're putting on airs, or you're pretentious, or that you couldn't possibly understand what he was getting at. These people are fools. They have no poetry in their souls. You're better off without them.

Martin Scorsese talks about 8 1/2 in this clip is from his excellent documentary on Italian cinema, My Voyage to Italy.

Part 2 is located here.

PRIMER

An ingenious mind-bender shot for a purported $7,000 in Super 16, Primer is a better science-fiction film than George Lucas could make with all the money in the world. And it's only technically sci-fi. It's difficult to pigeon-hole a film that so successfully mixes science, philosophy, and the nature of reality in such a disarming way, and without resorting to the standard science-fiction tropes.

See, it's all about the story. With little or no money, DIY filmmakers (such as writer/director Shane Carruth) must rely on their wits since they can't dazzle you with expensive special effects and big name stars. Primer begins with four engineers working nights and weekends in a garage building error-checking devices. They spend their free time tinkering with this and that, and accidentally tear a hole in the space-time continuum. To tell you more would spoil the fun. Primer won Sundance's Grand Jury prize in 2004.

31-year old Shane Carruth wrote, directed, and acted in Primer. Carruth was a math major in college who worked as an engineer before teaching himself filmmaking. He was interviewed by the Village Voice:

How did you come up with the film's principles of time travel?
Richard Feynman has some interesting ideas about time. When you look at Feynman diagrams [which map the interaction of elementary particles], there's really no difference between watching an interaction happen forward and backward in time. That's something I got interested in early on. I always knew what the story was thematically before it turned into science fiction. It would be about trust and how that's linked to what's at risk. I was reading about innovation and that's where I got the setting. Now what is this device? At that point, I'm where a lot of sci-fi writers are—just going through the list of what this thing could be. When I got to the ability to affect time, there was a lot of material to mine that I hadn't seen before—it's usually warpspace or wormholes. In almost any time travel story, people pick themselves up at one point in time and then immediately exist at another—they move from the present day to the 1950s or prehistoric times, and I never liked that because if I were to jump back a day, I'd find myself in a different space because of the orbit of the earth. Whenever you're addressing moving in time you need to talk about space. When you walk to the door you have to walk every moment between here and there, so it seems that, if you're moving through time backwards, you should have to pass through each moment back to get there. That would be the price you pay.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Watch these clips and rent or buy Primer soon.

FELICIDADES!

Gwyneth Paltrow, or a small brown country of no consequence

In case you missed it, Salvadorans voting in Sunday's election put Mauricio Funes of the FMLN, the former rebel party, in control for the first time, ending two decades of right wing Arena party rule.

The US media didn't highlight the story, and it figures. The U.S. should be ashamed of its history with the tiny Central American country. The U.S. isn't very good at finishing things (Afghanistan, Iraq, V...) but it sure jumps into bed with plenty of nasty people for expediency sake.

Jennifer Anniston, or the CIA secretly torturing prisoners at "black sites"

According to CNN ("Leftists Claim El Salvador Presidency," a nice value-laden header):

"Mauricio Funes, a member of a political party that waged guerrilla war against the government 17 years ago, claimed the presidency of El Salvador on Sunday night." It goes on, almost in passing. "The FMLN, which is the Spanish acronym for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, was formed in late 1980 as an umbrella group for five leftist guerrilla organizations fighting a U.S.-backed military dictatorship. The guerrillas and the government signed a peace pact in 1992 and the FMLN became a legitimate political party. By some estimates, 75,000 Salvadorans died during the war."

Mauricio Funes, or the cast of "Friends"

Bury that below the fold. A newsreader might stumble upon the phrase "U.S.-backed military dictatorship" in a country where "75,000 Salvadorans died." It's kind of messy and requires explanation, and we Americans (Norteamericanos, that is) are so busy, go, go, go. We don't have time for the follow-up story. Or the backstory, for that matter. Or history in general.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, or thousands of "disappeared" dissidents

Dictatorships are depressing, and our attention span is short. News crews need to cover more important things, such as the ongoing love story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and poor jilted Jennifer Aniston. Or the woman with octuplets. Or anything that affects our pocketbooks, and jostles our Comfort Zone. Besides, news needs to be flashy to compete with "America's Most Idle" and "Big Fat Loser." A few important stories slide.

Don't get me wrong. The El Salvador story is out there. But not nearly as prominently displayed as one would think considering our history propping up this quasi-fascist police state for so many years. I'm not naive; I don't expect the news to trumpet shameful episodes of our past, but I expect some sense of recognition and historical responsibility, especially regarding conditions we've helped create. We can be a force for great good, or we can continue to support convenient bullies, and we won't know the difference without a truly independent news media asking tough questions.

Julia Roberts or nameless Salvadoran exercising democracy

Jack Kennedy once said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. In this rare instance, the revolution was peaceful and that should be celebrated.

¡El Cambio es Hoy!

HERE COMES OSCAR!

It's Oscar weekend, and may the best movie win. Actually, it's not about the best movie or the best actor (Benicio was brilliant in "Che" but wasn't even nominated) but about backstage politics and take-no-prisoners lobbying. Okay, so no "Che," and no "Dark Knight." "The Visitor" was excluded, and so was "In Bruges," but they basically got it right, didn't they? They generally do, don't they?

Well, no. Not necessarily.

Lost in space? "2001: a Space Odyssey" not even nominated for best pic in 1968

Take 1968, for instance. That year "Oliver!" won best picture against nominees "The Lion in Winter," "Rachel, Rachel," "Funny Girl," and "Romeo and Juliet." "2001: a Space Odyssey" wasn't nominated for best picture that year (it got a director nod) and neither was "Rosemary's Baby," "Battle of Algiers,""Faces," or "The Producers." Neither was "Once Upon a Time in the West," "Planet of the Apes," "Bullitt," or "Night of the Living Dead." The best they could come up with was "Oliver!"

"Oliver!"???

What's the dang deal? The game is rigged. To help clarify the confusing world of the Academy Awards, here's an interview with Harvey Weinstein, master of greasing palms and mercenary awards campaigns. He's one scary dude. Click here to read the Weinstein interview. Click here to read Weinstein's latest press release regarding Best Picture nominee "The Reader."

Tom Cruise hugs movie mogul Harvey Weinstein

If you're like me, you're already going over your tux with a lint brush. This should be fun. See you Sunday...Ciao, baby!



A list of nominees for this years Academy Awards, click here.