Monthly Archives: November 2019

Music Video Of The Day: Jump They Say by David Bowie (1993, directed by Mark Romanek)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Though this is one of David Bowie’s most popular videos and also features one of the best performances of his often underrated acting career, the story behind it is a sad one.  Bowie wrote the song from the point of view of Terry Burns, his schizophrenic half-brother who once attempted suicide by jumping out of a window.  Though that attempt failed, a few years later, Terry did succeed in escaping from the mental institution where he was being held.  After escaping, Terry was hit by a train and killed.  Much like Bowie’s previous song, All the Madmen, Jump They Say was inspired by Terry’s life and Bowie’s own attempts to understand the source of his brother’s mental illness.

This makes the video all the more poignant as Bowie plays a businessman who comes to suspect that his colleagues are plotting against him and, in order to escape from them, ends up throwing himself from the roof of an office building.  Mark Romanek directs in such a way that it’s never clear whether Bowie’s character is correct to be paranoid or if it’s all in his mind.  Romanek throws in visual references to other films that dealt with the themes of paranoia and conformity, including A Clockwork Orange, Alphaville, and The Trial.  Romanek has subsequently gone from being an in-demand music video director to directing films such as One Hour Photo and Never Let Me Go.

When this video was released, Bowie was going through something of a career slump.  Jump They Say was a bit of a comeback for him, reaching number 9 on the UK charts.

Enjoy!

Film Review: Crawl (dir by Alexandre Aja)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Crawl is a masterpiece of the pulp imagination.

Kaya Scodelario plays Haley Keller, a swimmer at the University of Florida who has a loving but troubled relationship with her father, Dave (Barry Pepper).  With a Category 5 hurricane on a collision course with the state of Florida,  everyone has been ordered to evacuate the area.  However, Haley is concerned that her father may not have gotten the message or, being the stubborn type that he is, he may have gotten the message and just decided to ignore it.  (I could totally relate to Haley’s frustration.  When Dallas got hit by tornadoes last month, my Dad not only refused to hide in his laundry room but he also called me up to inform me that he was sitting out on his back patio watching for any twisters.)  With the storm raging all around her, Haley searches for her father.  When she finally finds him, he’s in the crawlspace of their vacation home.  He’s unconscious.  He’s wounded.  And he’s surrounded by alligators!  It’s now up to Haley to save the lives of not only her father but also the family dog.  And, of course, she has to do all of this without getting eaten by an alligator herself.  Even worse, even if they do manage to outswim the alligators, Haley and Dave are still going to have to deal with the ever intensifying storm that is raging outside.

Crawl is an intense and exciting film, one that clocks in at a brisk 87 minutes and which has a lot more going on underneath the surface than might be readily apparent.  Yes, this is a film about two people and a dog who are trapped in a flooded crawlspace by a bunch of hungry alligators.  And yes, I’m sure that some people will be totally boring and predictable and make a big deal about the film’s environmental subtext.  (“How many more innocent people have to be eaten by alligators before we pass the Green New Deal!?”)  But, at its heart, this is a film about relationships.  Dave has always been hard on Haley.  Haley has always both loved and resented her father.  The flooding and subsequent alligator attacks may justify the pressure that Dave put on Haley to become the best but, even more importantly, it allows Haley to show that she actually is the best and that she doesn’t always need Dave to tell her what to do.  With Dave spending the majority of the film incapacitated in one way or the other, it’s often up to Haley to keep them both from getting eaten as they try to move from one flooded location to another.  It’s up to Haley to keep fighting and fight she does.  Haley never gives up and never surrenders and, for me, Crawl is a thousand times more empowering than Captain Marvel or any of the other more obviously heavy-handed “girl power” films that have come out this year.

As directed by Alexandra Aja, there’s not a single wasted moment to be found in Crawl.  He plunges straight into the story and the film is pretty much an unrelenting thrill ride from beginning to end.  Even more importantly, Aja is smart enough to trust his audience to be able to read between the lines of this genre film without necessarily beating the audience over the head with its message.  This is a film that can be appreciated as both a thriller and a heartfelt look at a difficult but loving relationship.  This is a grindhouse film with a heart, featuring a strong and committed performance from Kaya Scodelario.  As Haley is, again and again, forced to prove her strength, she becomes a stand-in for all of us.  Crawl is genre filmmaking at its best, along with being one of the most impressive films of 2019.

Rhythm And Resonance : E.A. Bethea’s “Forlorn Toreador”

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

There’s a lot of talk these days about comics as poetry (or at least more than there used to be), but E.A. Bethea’s ‘zine’s have been comfortably aligning themselves  within that classification for a long time — even if they they don’t, in and of themselves, present literal poems all that often per se. And while her latest self-published opus, Forlorn Toreador, is perhaps the most confident and assured distillation of her singular ethos yet, again there’s not a poem to be found within it, yet the sum total of its contents plays out very much like an extended one.

Alternating between emotive text pieces, full-page portrait illustrations, and Bethea’s trademark scrawled-with-heartfelt-precision comic strips, the book has a transitional fluidity to it that’s more intuitive than it is strictly explicit, more exploratory than it is declarative. Much of the work is tinged with a more than a hint…

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Here Are The 2019 Independent Spirit Award Nominees!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here are the 2019 Indie Spirit Award nominations!  These nominations are meant to honor the best independent films of 2019 and their announcement marks the official beginning of awards season (at least as far as this sight is concerned!)  I hate to say it but I still need to see quite a few of the films nominated below so, for now, I’ll hold off on any editorial commentary.

For those looking for some sort of evidence of how the Oscar nominations can go, the Independent Spirit Awards can be an iffy precursor, just because several of the expensive, major studio contenders aren’t eligible to nominated.  (For instance, neither The Irishman nor Once Upon A Time In Hollywood were eligible.)  That said, for the record, the two biggest Spirit nominees are The Lighthouse and Uncut Gems.  Waves and The Farewell, which have been the center of considerable Oscar speculation, did not do as strongly in the nominations as many people apparently expected.  Make of that what you will!

Here are the nominees!

Best Supporting Female

  • Jennifer Lopez – HUSTLERS
  • Taylor Russell – WAVES
  • Zhao Shuzhen – THE FAREWELL
  • Lauren “Lolo” Spencer – GIVE ME LIBERTY
  • Octavia Spencer – LUCE
  • Best Supporting Male
  • Willem Dafoe – THE LIGHTHOUSE
  • Noah Jupe – HONEY BOY
  • Shia Labeouf – HONEY BOY
  • Jonathan Majors – THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO
  • Wendell Pierce – BURNING CANE

Best Screenplay

  • Noah Baumbach – MARRIAGE STORY
  • Jason Begue, Shawn Snyder – TO DUST
  • Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie – UNCUT GEMS
  • Chinonye Chukwu – CLEMENCY
  • Tarell Alvin Mccraney – HIGH FLYING BIRD

Best First Screenplay

  • Fredrica Bailey, Stefon Bristol – SEE YOU YESTERDAY
  • Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen – DRIVEWAYS
  • Bridget Savage Cole, Danielle Krudy – BLOW THE MAN DOWN
  • Jocelyn Deboer, Dawn Luebbe – GREENER GRASS
  • James Montague, Craig W. Sanger – THE VAST OF NIGHT

Best Cinematography

  • Todd Banhazl – HUSTLERS
  • Jarin Blaschke – THE LIGHTHOUSE
  • Natasha Braier – HONEY BOY
  • Chananun Chotrungroj – THE THIRD WIFE
  • Pawel Pogorzelski – MIDSOMMAR

Best Editing

  • Julie Béziau – THE THIRD WIFE
  • Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie – UNCUT GEMS
  • Tyler L. Cook – SWORD OF TRUST
  • Louise Ford – THE LIGHTHOUSE
  • Kirill Mikhanovsky – GIVE ME LIBERTY

Best International Film

  • INVISIBLE LIFE, Brazil
  • LES MISERABLES, France
  • PARASITE, South Korea
  • PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, France
  • RETABLO, Peru
  • THE SOUVENIR, United Kingdom

Best Documentary (Award given to the director and producer)

  • AMERICAN FACTORY
  • APOLLO 11
  • FOR SAMA
  • HONEYLAND
  • ISLAND OF THE HUNGRY GHOSTS

The John Cassavetes Award is presented to the best feature made for under $500,000 and is given to the writer, director, and producer. 2020 #SpiritAwards Nominees are:

  • BURNING CANE
  • COLEWELL
  • GIVE ME LIBERTY
  • PREMATURE
  • WILD NIGHTS WITH EMILY

Best Female Lead

  • Karen Allen – COLEWELL
  • Hong Chau – DRIVEWAYS
  • Elisabeth Moss – HER SMELL
  • Mary Kay Place – DIANE
  • Alfre Woodard – CLEMENCY
  • Renée Zellweger – JUDY

Best Male Lead 

  • Chris Galust – GIVE ME LIBERTY
  • Kelvin Harrison  Jr., – LUCE
  • Robert Pattinson – THE LIGHTHOUSE
  • Adam Sandler – UNCUT GEMS
  • Matthias Schoenaerts – THE MUSTANG

Best First Feature (Award given to the director and producer)

  • BOOKSMART
  • THE CLIMB
  • DIANE
  • THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO
  • THE MUSTANG
  • SEE YOU YESTERDAY

Best Feature [award given to the producer(s)]

  • A HIDDEN LIFE
  • CLEMENCY
  • THE FAREWELL
  • MARRIAGE STORY
  • UNCUT GEMS

Best Director

  • Robert Eggers – THE LIGHTHOUSE
  • Alma Har’el – HONEY BOY
  • Julius Onah – LUCE
  • Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie – UNCUT GEMS
  • Lorene Scafaria – HUSTLERS

The Robert Altman Award is given to the ensemble cast, director & casting director of one film: MARRIAGE STORY – Noah Baumbach, Douglas Aibel, Francine Maisler, Alan Alda, Laura Dern, Adam Driver, Julie Hagerty, Scarlett Johansson, Ray Liotta, Azhy Robertson, Merritt Wever

The Truer Than Fiction Award, in its 25th year, is for emerging directors of non-fiction features and includes an unrestricted grant. Finalists:
Khalik Allah – BLACK MOTHER
Davy Rothbart – 17 BLOCKS
Nadia Shihab – JADDOLAND
Erick Stoll & Chase Whiteside – AMÉRICA

The Producers Award, now in its 23rd year, honors emerging producers who demonstrate creativity, tenacity and vision, despite highly limited resources. The award includes an unrestricted grant. These are the finalists:
Mollye Asher
Krista Parris
Ryan Zacarias

The Someone To Watch Award, in its 26th year, recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision and includes an unrestricted grant. The finalists are:
Rashaad Ernesto Green – PREMATURE
Ash Mayfair – THE THIRD WIFE
Joe Talbot – THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO

The Bonnie Award will recognize a mid-career female director with a $50,000 unrestricted grant. The 2020 Film Independent #SpiritAwards Bonnie Award finalists are:
MarielleHeller
KellyReichardt
LuluWang

Music Video of the Day: Sky Kisses by Kedr Livanskiy (2019, dir by Sergey Kostromin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yay!  Kedr Livanskiy is back!

This video appears to be a nicely twisted take on Sleeping Beauty.  Admittedly, I do seem to ascribe a supernatural theme to every Kedr Livanskiy film that I see.  Usually, I’m assume that the videos are about vampires, just because Kedr Livanskiy’s surreal music often puts me in the mood for a Jean Rollin film.  This time, however, I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any vampires in this video.  Instead, there’s just a lot of sleeping, dreaming, and running.

Enjoy!

Mining The Past For Clues About The Present : Jeff Zenick’s “2016-1960”

Posted on by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)'s avatarRyan C.'s Four Color Apocalypse

Jeff Zenick’s art ‘zines are always an intriguing enigma, specializing as they do in portrait illustrations that tease out the essential truths of people, locales, and even eras with a kind of intuitive eye for what matters most — his heavy, thick line (often, it appears to this critic, rendered directly in ink, maybe even magic marker) accentuating the “macro” elements of a person’s facial features while downplaying, frequently even bypassing, the “micro” details that would benefit from, even require, a finer line. The result is a quietly breathtaking blend of “big picture” accuracy with singular expressionism, pictures of other people that are clearly and indisputably the product of one artist’s sensibilities.

What all this means is that Zenick is uniquely positioned to do something not too many can — tell a thematically and conceptually dense story while eschewing narrative altogether. He sells the scope of his ever-evolving project…

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