Category: reviews

MEMBERS SCREENING: THIS IS IT
Saturday, December 19
Premiere Theater
Letterman Digital Arts Center

There are just a handful of seats left for our year-round members screening of Kenny Ortega’s This is It, presented by the Variety Screening Series. Kenny Ortega is expected to be in attendance.

The screening is on Saturday, December 19, at 2:00 pm.

MY TAKE – I knew nothing. This was a Variety Screening Series film and we were invited by the San Francisco Film Society. For the SFFS screenings I like to go cold because they are often on subjects that I might not choose to see. I didn’t know it was Michael Jackson.

What a surprise! I was never into Pop music or Michael Jackson and he has been out of sight or embroiled in court cases for at least 10 years… not making music. Here, he is totally on form as Ebert describes, and the singers, dancers and musicians in the cast are the world’s best. The film shows that they put out a world wide casting call and over 2500 auditioned. The dancers were most impressive. They and MJ were in perfect union through impossibly difficult moves, stops and starts. I thought of La Danse, a story of behind-the-scenes at Russian Ballet – I haven’t yet seen it, but Jon Carroll wrote about it – this dancing has to equal or surpass ballet. Awesome. And the hot blonde guitarist… also awesome as she jams with MJ and he says, “This is your time… hit your highest note.” Another revelation – through this show and the Q&A with Kenny Ortega, I realized that when Michael sings about love, he’s not singing about boy-girl or man-woman, he’s singing about mankind. This was a profoundly moving experience.
Continue reading “THIS IS IT” →

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival
23 April to 7 May
films of 23 to 26 April

A really busy 15 days… besides the Festival, The American Institute of Architects National Convention was in San Francisco – I volunteered there three days – and we had tickets to a Giants game. I volunteered for two days of the Festival, but didn’t have time to cash in my freebie tickets. We took a different approach this year. Carol and I picked films and bought tickets using CineVouchers. We covered every day of the Festival except opening night which included a party and cost $60.

We saw more films than ever – 20 for me, 16 for Carol, including 14 together. Eric was in town for a week in the middle and joined us for 4 films. All in all, together we saw 22 different films. Good times, and we never really felt burned out. Carol bagged two films, but I sold her tickets to the Rush Line for a profit.

Reviews and ratings – I copied the film descriptions from the online Film Guide or the Daily Scoop – shown below in block quotes – and appended “my take.” Stills are from the Film Guide, pictures from my camera. I rated the films * to ***** mainly for my own reference. Films that have distribution are noted. Enjoy.

ART & COPY
USA 4/24
CREDITS
Director – Doug Pray
Editor – Philip Owens
Distributed by Sony Classic

At their best great ad campaigns are magic, transcending grubby mercantilism to open new ways of thinking, seeing, being. Doug Pray (Scratch, Surfwise, Hype!) showcases the creative minds behind the most brilliant and influential campaigns of our time.

my take ***** – The film traces the history of creative advertising starting with first creative ad “THINK SMALL” by the Boston agency Doyle Dane Bernbach. They had the crazy idea to have the Artists and copywriters work together. Previously, copywriters wrote the ad copy and sent it to the art department for illustration.
Focusing on the One Club Hall of Fame, Doug Pray interviewed the principals of many of the winning agencies, a pantheon of creativity:
George Lois – Tommy Hilfiger,
Hal Riney – California Coolers. Hal would create a product called Bartles & Jaymes – “It’s Morning in America”
Goodby and Silverstein – Got Milk
Mary Wells – Alka-Seltzer’s “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”
Chiat Day – Apple Computer
Wieden and Kennedy – Nike, Just Do It

I was always awed by the great advertising represented by these men and women… there is so much bad out there.

(Untitled)
USA 4/25
CREDITS
Director – Jonathan Parker
Producer – Catherine di Napoli, Jonathan Parker, Andreas Olavarria
Music – David Lang
Cast – Adam Goldberg, Marley Shelton, Eion Bailey, Vinnie Jones, Lucy Punch
Distributed by Samuel Goldwin Films

Art for Comedy’s Sake_The stars of Jonathan Parker’s contemporary art satire (Untitled) continued to deliver laughs during their onstage appearance after the screening Friday night. Adam Goldberg, Marley Shelton and Eion Bailey swapped barbs with Parker and answered questions from the audience.
Parker described being intrigued by the idea of artists that take “a very serious approach to things that seem silly on the surface,” a subtle contradiction which actor Eion Bailey said drew him to the script.
“The screening of the contemporary art satire also welcomed various Bay Area crew members, including “local master of sound design” Richard Beggs, who captured the most, ahem, stimulating, leather squeaks and fabric rustles for the movie. The audience even witnessed a third row cameo from the film’s taxidermy artist—a rarely used credit, to be sure—who was responsible for the stuffed animal monstrosities featured in the film. Asked whether the faux artworks created for the picture were meant to parody any real artists—say, British artist Damien Hirst—Parker said that any affinity with actual art stars is purely coincidental. “Vinnie Jones being cast and speaking with a British accent was coincidental, and the fact that it was taxidermy was coincidental. We had our own taxidermist.” In any case, Parker made it clear that he wasn’t out to ridicule anyone in particular or indict bad art. “I’m a big contemporary art fan,” he said. “You don’t make a movie about it for three years without being a fan.”
The film’s title? Parker let the formaldehyde cat out of the bag on that one: The picture will be released in September as No You Shut Up. —RP

my take **** – There were a lot of witty, funny, send-up scenes. I loved the woman gallery owner and her collection of spectacles, hated the edgy atonal music group. All in all, good, spoofing fun. Continue reading “SFIFF52 Part I” →

The 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival
23 April to 7 May
films of 27 to 30 April

A really busy 15 days… besides the Festival, The American Institute of Architects National Convention was in San Francisco – I volunteered there three days – and we had tickets to a Giants game. I volunteered for two days of the Festival, but didn’t have time to cash in my freebie tickets. We took a different approach this year. Carol and I picked films and bought tickets using CineVouchers. We covered every day of the Festival except opening night which included a party and cost $60.

We saw more films than ever – 20 for me, 16 for Carol, including 14 together. Eric was in town for a week in the middle and joined us for 4 films. All in all, together we saw 22 different films. Good times, and we never really felt burned out. Carol bagged two films, but I sold her tickets to the Rush Line for a profit.

Reviews and ratings – I copied the film descriptions from the online Film Guide or the Daily Scoop – shown below in block quotes – and appended “my take.” Stills are from the Film Guide, pictures from my camera. I rated the films * to ***** mainly for my own reference. Films that have distribution are noted. Enjoy.

GOLDEN GATE PERSISTENCE OF VISION AWARD
LOURDES PORTILLO
Mexico 4/27

The Elegant Insurgent_On Monday evening Lourdes Portillo accepted what she called the “stubbornness award”—otherwise known as the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award—for her 30 years of fearless, innovative work in documentary filmmaking. As Director of Programming Linda Blackaby handed her the trophy, Portillo joked, “Today I’m really nervous and I feel like I have to maybe drink.”
In an onstage interview, film critic John Anderson asked the Bay Area-based filmmaker about the formative experience of moving to the U.S. from Mexico at the age of 13. Portillo replied that 13 was very special, because she was just old enough to retain a sense of self-possession in a society that “really diminished me as a human being.” She spoke of the distressing experience of looking around her school at Latina girls who were born here or had moved here earlier and had lost their sense of self-worth. “It really propelled me to make films that were meaningful, that looked at us as full human beings, with intelligence and humor.”
After a start in educational filmmaking, Portillo branched into more daring documentary work, exploring important Latino issues on both sides of the border. Señorita Extraviada, the film that garnered her the most attention (and the most death threats) was a jolting examination of the murders of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juárez. When asked how she is able to take on “things people don’t want to know about,” Portillo said it was part of her upbringing, and described a family that always talked about important issues around the kitchen table.
Renowned for her funny bone, Portillo said that documentarians should not take themselves so seriously all the time. Indeed much of her work contains playful fantastical sequences that show an imagination unleashed. Her latest film Al Más Allá, is a hilarious mix of fact and fiction about a clueless documentarian who tries to find a story of corruption in a sleepy seaside Mexican village. —LK

AL Ma°S ALLa°
dir Lourdes Portillo
prod Lourdes Portillo
U.S. Premiere. Tributes:
USA, 2008, 43 minutes

A documentary film crew arrives at a tranquil aqua-toned beach town on Mexico’s Mayan coast, chasing the story of three fishermen who happened upon a wayward package of cocaine—flotsam from a steady narco-stream flowing up from South America en route to northern markets. The fishermen sold it to the local police chief, who warned them (in vain) not to spend their money in town and prophesied, “Whatever comes from the ocean, has to go back to the ocean.” “I think it will take a few days to nail this one down,” opines real-life sound recordist Jose Araujo to the crew’s somewhat flustered and self-important director, played by renowned Mexican actress Ofelia Medina—a delightfully arch stand-in for this sly, prodding film’s real-life director, acclaimed Bay Area–based filmmaker Lourdes Portillo. Gazing at a nearby ruin, meanwhile, Portillo’s fictional alter ego resolves, “I have to find out what this has to do with the Mayas.” A playfully serpentine, semi-fictionalized investigation of a true incident thus de-centers its ostensible subject—three fishermen who never do appear, increasingly seeming the stuff of parable—while undercutting the “heroic” pretensions of the documentary genre itself. What emerges is a rumination on globalization’s violent erasure of local culture—but also on the manufacture of stories and the circulation of “truths” as the counterparts, and uneasy accomplices, of circulating goods, services and people in a voracious economic system that leaves much more than the occasional bag of narcotics in its wake. —Robert Avila

my take ***** – I had not heard of Lourdes Portillo. Interviewed by John Anderson she was a delight, a Mexican/American filmmaker living in San Francisco and focusing on Mexican Women’s civil rights. At the same time, she is witty, charming and often downright funny. Loved it.
The description above of Al Mas Alla is perfect. It was amusing – an insiders look, so to speak – watching a real film crew trailing the actress stand-in for Lorurdes Portillo, while she interviews real people in the dirt roads of the ex-pat community. Instead of seeing just the subject, we see the subject, the interviewer, the cameraman and soundman. We see them between takes, scrambling to get to the next location. Revealing and beautiful, you may find it on PBS or IFC. Continue reading “SFIFF52 Part II” →

San Francisco International Film Festival 52
23 April to 7 May
films of 1 to 3 May

A really busy 15 days… besides the Festival, The American Institute of Architects National Convention was in San Francisco – I volunteered there three days – and we had tickets to a Giants game. I volunteered for two days of the Festival, but didn’t have enough time to cash in my freebie tickets. We took a different approach this year. Carol and I picked films and bought tickets using CineVouchers. We covered every day of the Festival except opening night which included a party and cost $60.

We saw more films than ever – 20 for me, 16 for Carol, including 14 together. Eric was in town for a week in the middle and joined us for 4 films. All in all, together we saw 22 different films. Good times, and we never really felt burned out. Carol bagged two films, but I sold her tickets to the Rush Line for a profit.

Reviews and ratings – I copied the film descriptions from the online Film Guide or the Daily Scoop – shown below in block quotes – and appended “my take.” Stills are from the Film Guide, pictures from my camera. I rated the films * to ***** mainly for my own reference. Films that have distribution are noted. Enjoy.

RUDO Y CURSI
Mexico 5/1
Distributed by Sony Classic
West Coast Premiere.
CREDITS
dir Carlos Cuarón
cast Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Guillermo Fracella

Longtime friends and Y Tu Mamá También costars Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna suit up for this much-anticipated Mexican soccer comedy from the Cha Cha Cha Films producing dream-team of Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth; Hellboy), Alejandro González Iñárritu (Amores Perros; Babel) and Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También).
Bernal and Luna are two unruly hick stepbrothers in rural Mexico, united by a mother with questionable taste in men and their shared love for beer, fútbol and outdoing one another. When a fast-talking agent discovers their talents on the soccer field, but insists he can only make one of them a star, a new path for their rivalry suddenly emerges, taking them from their dusty banana plantation to the big stadiums—and bigger temptations—of Mexico City. Surprisingly, it’s the quieter, more artistic Tato (Bernal) who’s chosen to be the star, but that won’t stop the aggressive, hot-tempered Beto (Luna) from succeeding too (even if he has to become a goalie to do it). Soon it’s not life on the field that’s the problem, but the nights off it: If they survive the gambling, floozies, drugs and gangsters, they’ve still got to survive one another. Assisted by a sly script from director Carlos Cuarón (who wrote Y Tu Mamá También and is Alfonso’s brother) and by the polished Hollywood/Mexico talents of the Cha Cha Cha group, the charismatic Bernal and Luna turn this made-in-Mexico concoction of love, brotherhood and fútbol into a rousing comedy of truly universal appeal.

my take **** – I attended this film with Eric on Friday afternoon. It was good and funny, well acted and scripted. But the story was fairly predictable; it had less scope and emotional breadth than Y Tu Mamma Tambien.
Though it fails the comparison test, I can still highly recommend it, and it will come to a theater near you.

AN EVENING WITH FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA
USA    5/1

Coppola and Cohorts_Perhaps the most intriguing and unpredictable item offered in this year’s Festival catalog was An Evening with Francis Ford Coppola & Friends. At the request of the fabled filmmaker accepting the Founder’s Directing Award, the program would center not on the usual one-on-one onstage interview, but instead on a “moderated discussion” with FFC and various “esteemed friends and collaborators” To Be Announced. Who would show up? Would they stick to Topic A (Coppola and his career) or digress? Would they offer genuine insight, or would it turn into a sort of testimonial dinner?

As it turned out, Friday’s Castro Theatre “evening” was problematic only in that it provided too little of a very, very good thing. The friends and collaborators turned out to be four of Coppola’s oldest and most enduring—editing/sound design genius Walter Murch, director Carroll Ballard, scenarist-turned-director Matthew Robbins and George Lucas, whose name might ring a bell. All were involved in the earliest days of American Zoetrope, Coppola’s S.F.–based production company.
Ergo, the Castro event was like being a fly on the wall at a dinner chez Coppola (complete with spouses and various children present if not heard from) in which old friends waxed nostalgic about their crazy youthful days of collective risk-taking. Which exploits it just happens we already know a thing or two about, as it encompasses movies like Lucas’s now-revered 1971 directorial debut THX-1138, The Godfather, American Graffiti and Apocalypse Now. Eavesdropping on such reminiscences, one could sense a fair share of the audience felt it had died and gone to heaven. —DH

Continue reading “SFIFF52 Part III” →

San Francisco International Film Festival 52

23 April to 7 May
films of May 4 to 7

A really busy 15 days… besides the Festival, The American Institute of Architects National Convention was in San Francisco – I volunteered there three days – and we had tickets to a Giants game. I volunteered for two days of the Festival, but didn’t have enough time cash in my freebie tickets. We took a different approach this year. Carol and I picked films and bought tickets using CineVouchers. We covered every day of the Festival except opening night which included a party and cost $60.

We saw more films than ever – 20 for me, 18 for Carol, including 14 together. Eric was in town for a week in the middle and joined us for 4 films. All in all, together we saw 22 different films. Good times, and we never really felt burned out. Carol bagged two films, but I sold her tickets to the Rush Line for a profit.

Reviews and ratings – I copied the film descriptions from the online Film Guide or the Daily Scoop – shown below in block quotes – and appended “my take.” Stills are from the Film Guide, pictures from my camera. I rated the films * to ***** mainly for my own reference. Films that have distribution are noted. Enjoy.

CALIFORNIA COMPANY TOWN
USA 5/4
Director and everything else – Lee Anne Schmitt

Cataloguing California
A recording of a school choir’s last performance before the Eagle Mountain mine closes and the town is abandoned. A hulking prison—California’s largest—dominates the failed social experiment of California City. An oil refinery belches pollutants over Richmond, the state’s murder capital. These are some of the raw materials that form Lee Anne Schmitt’s California Company Town. In blending the sights and sounds of 14 specific locales, Schmitt attempts to create a catalogue of the state’s economically depressed towns, industrial wastelands and failed utopian communities. But, she says, “The film is less about individual histories of towns—any place in the state could be in the film. We all live in company towns.” Of her attempt to question why and how certain communities fail, Schmitt says, “I think of this as an archive. And this is, as all archives are, a subjective and flawed way of looking at history.” Silicon Valley—the thriving company town of today’s global economy—is provocatively featured as the caboose to Schmitt’s series of cities. When asked if her inclusion of the Google campus within an archive of failed communities is meant to foretell Silicon Valley’s ultimate demise, Schmitt demurred. “I never answer that question. Silicon Valley is the place I least like to talk about. Because it is not really a place—it’s an idea of a place laid upon other places with their own pasts. Some people find the footage atrocious, some find it positive. I guess that depends on your point of view.”—JP

my take *** – I didn’t get it. I understood the demise of the logging towns and the mining towns, but Richmond, Silicone Valley? When pressed, Lee Anne Schmitt would only say, “I spent three years shooting and a year editing and re-shooting.” It’s a very personal film and maybe she understands it, but it doesn’t communicate. That said, I’m glad I saw it… some of the photography and scenes are stunning.

HOME
Switzerland/France/Belgium 5/4
CREDITS
dir Ursula Meier
cast Isabelle Huppert, Olivier Gourmet, Adélaïde Leroux, Madeleine Budd, Kacey Mottet Klein

Continue reading “SFIFF52 Part IV” →