Author: mauer

3 by Alan Clarke: Elephant, Made in Britain, The Firm

Alan Clarke may well be the anti-Leigh. They made movies at the same time, both primarily for British TV, and they covered a lot of the same bases; that is the lower, and working classes of Great Britain. Clarke seems to focus more on big problems, and characters that typify those problems, while Mike Leigh creates characters that are less intertwined with those problems, and instead just live their lives depite them.

Clarke, who is dead, was a much more action-oriented filmmaker, and, like Leigh’s TV work, the scenes are very well composed and blocked, though they’re not showy or flashy. Reynolds will therefore call them bland. A new box set of Clarke’s work is out in the US and this marks the first time most of these have been seen here.

Continue reading 3 by Alan Clarke: Elephant, Made in Britain, The Firm

3 by Mike Leigh: Four days in July, Grown-Ups, Kiss of Death

As a kind of three cheers to the public for deciding not to watch Michael Bay’s latest piece of crap, I thought I’d post on some of the old Mike Leigh films I’ve seen which have been recently released on DVD. I’m a big fan of this guy’s films. I really wish there was an American making equivalent films here, but of course, there’s no one to fund them and no one to show them, and no one to watch them either.

I’ll start with the one I watched most recently, Four Days in July (1985). This is one of the last films Leigh made for TV, and I thought it would be one of the most ‘violent’ or heartbreaking, set as it is in Northern Ireland in the mid-80s during the always tense time of the Orange men march through the streets of Codmonger, or wherever. Continue reading 3 by Mike Leigh: Four days in July, Grown-Ups, Kiss of Death

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Flipping channels the other day, I came across Johnny Depp on In The Actor’s Studio. He was talking about Sleepy Hollow, and how he was certain that he would be fired from the movie after it had been shooting for two weeks. When asked why, he said, here’s this very expensive film, with a lot at stake for the studio, and I am playing the lead character as a 14-year old girl. Why wouldn’t they fire me? Depp says Burton ran enough interference for him with the studio to keep it going, but yes, looking back on it, he was playing Ichabod Crane as a fourteen year old girl. Continue reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Solaris / Trials of Henry Kissinger

What a double bill.

Solaris – reams have been written about it, and I don’t need to add more really, but it was an interesting reaction to 2001, which Tarkovsky apparently thought was “cold and impersonal.”

I had trouble with the reactions of the characters to the events taking place – they just didn’t seem to be plausible. Especially since the pilot who had originally seen the manifestations years earlier, and tries to tell Kelvin about them on earth, seemed very believable in his reactions, both in the archive footage of his report and his meeting with Kelvin. Continue reading Solaris / Trials of Henry Kissinger

I Don’t Know Jack / Team America

I’ve seen a wealth of incredible documentaries over the past year or so. In fact, I’d say each of these was better than almost any current-run feature films I’ve seen in the same time frame:
Rivers & Tides
Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns
Riding Giants, and perhaps the best of the bunch:
Stevie .

So maybe I was getting suckered into thinking that docs these days are just really good. Well, in any case I was excited to see I Don’t Know Jack appear at my local video store. It’s about Jack Nance, who died after a fight at a donut shop in South Pasadena. Nance was Eraserhead, and had roles in almost all of David Lynch’s films. Continue reading I Don’t Know Jack / Team America

Stevie

This documentary from Steve James came out a few years ago, and I remembered seeing the trailer, but missing the film. Finally saw it last night, and it’s an outstanding piece of personal filmmaking that addresses the nature of documentary and objectivism. It also closely examines justice, faith, love, family, personal responsibility and the failings that come with being human. (A character in the film laments that she might have been able to help more, if she just wan’t so human.)

Steve James directed Hoop Dreams, and of course I thought that was a great film, even though I couldn’t relate too much to basketball playing prodigies in a big city. Stevie on the other hand was nearly filmed in my backyard. Continue reading Stevie

Andrew Durkin

Why doesn’t someone make a movie about Andrew?

Just kidding. But since many here know that particular Quiet American, I thought I’d point out that he got a Jazz Pick of the Week in this week’s LA Weekly.

you can read it here:
http://www.laweekly.com/calendar/picks/index.php

In the paper there’s a picture of Andrew – looking quiet – but it’s not on the web, because I am lazy. And not particularly good at my job.

12 oz mouse

http://www.adultswim.com/promos/12ozmouse/

The new animated series on Adult Swim debuted the other night. I lucked into taping it and have watched it a couple of times now. Drawn with a #2 pencil in the style of a 6 year old, it’s the story of an angry drunk mouse.

I’ve no idea if it’ll have the traction of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, but I hope so. It’s certainly starting better than the Bob Odenkirk-blessed Tom Goes to the Mayor.

They are running it again Thursday night – or Friday night. I can’t be bothered to check.
The link is to a short clip of the show. Enjoy.