split & quartered: the paintings of todd chilton

I've been inspired by the bold colors and the patterns and texture of Todd Chilton's oil paintings.  Check it out!

shoutouts!

I love Chris Pratt so much.

Final Girl's Film Club visits 80s horror flick The Initiation.

Sharon Olds on her forthcoming book Stag's Leap in Vogue.

Some mo' poems to read in latest La Petite Zine.

my new plaid pants visits Squirm too!

Cinema Du Meep embraces Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers.

compliance

Sometimes appreciation and admiration for a film grows with time.  It's been a few days but I still can't get Compliance out of my head. It was met with controversy at its Sundance premiere: people walked out, shouted out at the screen.  One would think that a movie like that would be shockingly obscene and over-the-top, but Compliance is a squirmy slow-burn because of its immediacy and claustrophobia. I'm anxious to see how the film fares when it opens up in more areas because I think it could bring up many fascinating conversations on human behavior (the Milgram experiment is often being brought up lately on the message boards)--something sorely needed in movies these days.  A film can embody the tone of its times, even if unintended, and Compliance has landed in a year of the Penn State controversy, the nauseating Chick-fila-A day and in an election year where many are about to vote against their own economic interests.

Writer / Director Craig Zobel was haunted by a story of a Kentucky McDonald's employee who was accused by a man over the phone, posing as a police officer, of taking money from a customer.  Under direction from the man on the phone, the store manager made the employee go through a series of humiliating acts including a stripsearch and sexual assault.  "I just kept wondering what it could have been like, in order for things to get as far as they did?  And what was the guy on the other side of the phone saying?" Zobel asked himself.  He quickly (in around a month's time) wrote a script based upon the incident.  Compliance ends up closely mirroring the story though this film is more than just a simple reenactment like the schlock ones on true life crime shows.



Much credit goes to Ann Dowd for her tremendous and quietly powerful performance as the manager caught up in the incident and implicit in its most galling moments.  The rest of the ensemble--notably Pat Healy as the creepy manipulator, Ashlie Atkinson as a co-worker, and Dreama Walker as the incredulous doe-eyed victim--are vivid but Dowd gives the movie an incredibly emotional pull, especially in its final moments.  She is particularly perceptive about her character: "...all it takes is that perfect storm of low self esteem, a woman who was pleaser who defers to authority, especially men.  A woman who's been probably told you are not worth a whole lot so you had better grab this guy and marry him because you won't get more opportunities.  What she does for others and the approval she gets makes her who she is.  Put that with a very busy Friday night when on your watch a lot of food is spoiled.  Too few staff and out of two key ingredients.  All of those things combined and then you have a detective on the phone.  Add that up and you have the potential for a real disaster to occur."

Amazingly the bulk of this film was shot in three days with the actors talking on the phone together.  One interesting aspect of Zobel's work here is the pacing.  Things are sometimes almost a beat short of what is expected and there are numerous closeups (the cinematographer is Adam Stone who has been gifted with creating disturbing, beautiful reworkings of the deceptively idyllic and seemingly complacent settings of George Washington, All the Real Girls, and Take Shelter) of the fried chicken and fries of the fictional ChickWich (the sort of corporate, sexist nature of its name doesn't seem to be a mistake) restaurant.  The orchestral score too by Heather McIntosh heightens this tense little story into a deeper realm of tragedy.  Zobel's direction creates an agonizing real-time feel.

I don't want to give too much away but those who walked out at Sundance, perhaps thinking the movie was simply exploitative, or maybe unable to handle the seemingly implausibility of the story and its characters, missed out on exactly what the movie is about.  I can't think of the last time I've seen a movie where dramatic irony was so frustratingly part of the action -- not just in a few scenes, but basically the entire film.  At first I found the rushing of scenes of the denouement unnecessary but in a way it was essential to the movie's sense of exhalation and reflection, giving it, I think, a reason to revisit and debate.  ***1/2

doin' the worm

I was so happy to catch a screening of Squirm at the Anthology Film Archives (an awesome place!) with director and scripter Jeff Lieberman, Producer Edgar Lansbury and star Don Scardino in the attendance.  This was a nice revisit to one of my favorite movies: a rural Georgia-set eco horror flick from 1976 where worms rise up to feast on townsfolk.  Scardino, an awkward nerd Mick from New York, arrives in Fly Creek with an interest in junk-shop antiques and a red-headed lady Geri (Patricia Pearcy).  When worm farm owner Willie Grimes (Carl Dagenhart) goes missing and Mick and Geri discover a skeleton, the two try to begin to unravel the mystery.  Meanwhile, the thunderstorm-struck town, soon becomes a haven for bloodthirsty worms.

Squirm remains an enjoyable feature, especially because of Rick Baker's inventive makeup, the quick pacing, oddball characters, its rural setting and the charm of Scardino in the lead.  It's sort of a cardboard tribute to The Birds with its big city outsider arriving in the small town, stern mother (the mother, played by Jean Sullivan, wanders around as if playing a matriarch in a Tennessee Williams play), and animal enemies that you wouldn't necessarily think of as murderous.  According to Lieberman, Martin Sheen, Kim Basinger, and Sylvester Stallone were originally attached to the film.  Who knows how their careers would have gone had they starred in this, but what an interesting concept!  Lieberman, who also did another bizarre and strangely affecting day-to-night-to-morning after horror flick Just Before Dawn, seems like he genuinely enjoyed directing the picture and movie-making in general.  Before the screening, he gave us permission to laugh, and that we did.  *** 

80s month!

This September I will be examining various, significant films of the 1980s on jdbrecords!  Hope you'll enjoy!

block party! - writer's block on film: a post by dan braun

Pen and a fresh sheet on a notepad. A suggestive cursor, blinking in equal parts tease, allure and longing, on a tablet or laptop screen.

Everyone who's ever presented a word – hundreds, thousands, millions of them, gradually over a lifetime – in physical form has confronted writer’s block, our efforts to battle it with our elongated tool of choice (writing implement, fingertips dangling above or nudging their corresponding home keys) obstructed for indeterminate and random amounts of time, upon each unsought visitation. Student, journalist, novelist, poet, screenwriter, playwright, regular or guest blogger: it's a beast of equal literary opportunity thwarting. Once it's been slain, however, the rewards are many – a rush of inspiration and ideas, a collective ‘Eureka!’ moment unlike any other.

Films about writer’s block have become a mini-genre unto themselves – The Shining, as my co-guest blogger Karen G. has expertly covered, perhaps being the best-known. Among some of the most notable others:

The Lost Weekend (1945) – “Don't wipe it away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle. You know, the circle is the perfect geometric figure. No end, no beginning.” Billy Wilder’s stark adaptation of Charles R. Jackson’s chronicle of alcohol addiction and its iniquitous clench, focusing upon the life of haunted writer Don Birnam (Ray Milland), during a four-day bender, stumbling through a despair-driven cycle of bar-to-bottle dependency along the streets of Manhattan.

Barton Fink (1991) – Penned during the struggles they experienced while writing the screenplay for Miller’s Crossing, the Coen Brothers’ darkly humored  tale of the title NYC playwright (John Turturro) who, having accepted an offer to scribe a B-movie Wallace Beery wrestling picture, holes up within the surreal confines of the Hotel Earle in L.A., and finds himself cornered by a lack of creative inspiration,  an increasingly bizarre set of neighbors and hotel employees (John Goodman, Steve Buscemi), and a series of unusual circumstances.

Deconstructing Harry (1997) – Woody Allen’s scabrously hilarious story of a thrice-married, pill-popping novelist Harry Block (Allen), on the verge of receiving an honorary degree from the college which expelled him decades prior, who is confronted by the people – family members, ex-friends, one-night stands – he has crossed at one point or another and who have served as unwilling inspirations for his mordacious literary works.

Wonder Boys (1999) – Director Curtis Hanson’s shamefully under-seen adaptation of Michael Chabon’s beguiling, Pittsburgh-set novel. Shaggy English professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is at multiple crossroads: separated from his wife, carrying on an affair with the university Chancellor (Frances McDormand), who also happens to be the wife of his department chairman, and stuck on the increasingly dog-eared manuscript of his second novel, with his editor (Robert Downey, Jr.) about to arrive in town.

Adaptation. (2002) – The best performances of Nicholas Cage’s career, as screenwriting brothers Charlie and Donald Kaufman (directed by Spike Jonze, and based on Charlie Kaufman’s real-life experiences in attempting to adapt Susan Orlean’s novel The Orchid Thief). While Donald – charming, slick, confident – becomes the toast of the studios, Charlie, painfully shy and borderline reclusive, finds himself increasingly mired within his task at hand, seeking advice from brusque script guru Robert McKee (Brian Cox) and Orlean herself (Meryl Streep).

Ruby Sparks (2012) – Co-directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ follow-up to Little Miss Sunshine. At the age of 19, Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) was the celebrated sensation of the literary world. Ten years later and struggling to regain his past glory, he creates a female character in Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan, the film’s screenwriter) who becomes both his literary muse and a very real person – as much a reflection of Calvin’s desired idealism as she is of his imperfections.

memorable details

Happy 113th to Alfred Hitchcock! Here are some memorable details from Psycho.