Film
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Architecture Film Coast Modern charts a history of open spaces
Posted by Ben Sachs today at 09.00 AM
- Sansculotte/Wikimedia Commons
- Richard Neutra, who designed this Los Angeles residence, is one of the architects profiled in the film.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Opening Film Derek Zoolander, Jacques Demy, Henry James, and the rest of this week's screenings
Posted by J.R. Jones on 05.24.13 at 11:01 AM
Landmark film, landmark building: Shirley Clarke's audacious Portrait of Jason, a cornerstone of LGBT filmmaking, screens next Wednesday at the Portage Theater, which was awarded landmark status earlier this month by the City Council. Jason is the subject of this week's long review, accompanied by our coverage of the Asian American Showcase at Gene Siskel Film Center. Also recommended this week: About Sunny, a drama about the working-class poor in Las Vegas, with Penelope Ann Miller and Dylan Baker; Fast & Furious 6, the latest installment in the car-porn franchise; Jacquot, Agnes Varda's 1991 tribute to her husband, director Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg); What Maisie New, a millennial update of the Henry James novel; and Zoolander, the Ben Stiller comedy we've been panning for the past 12 years.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
LGBT Film Talking to founder Brenda Webb about new plans for the city's LGBT film festival
Posted by Ben Sachs on 05.23.13 at 01:38 PM
Last week it was announced that Reeling, Chicago's LGBT film festival, will resume this November following a yearlong hiatus. The fest took a break in order to reconsider its mission in light of the changing nature of film exhibition. Chief among its goals, festival founder Brenda Webb wrote at the time, was to "evolve [in a way] to better address the needs of LGBT filmmakers." Planning for this year's fest is still underway, though Webb has officially handed over key responsibilities to Richard Knight Jr., film critic for Windy City Times and codirector of the recent local production Scrooge and Marley, and Gretchen Blickensderfer, who will act as program director and managing director respectively. Webb will remain involved as executive director of Chicago Filmmakers, which oversees the fest.
I spoke with Webb yesterday about Reeling's evolution. She was enthusiastic about the future of the festival but remained realistic about the challenges it faces. "It's become really tough for independent filmmakers," she said. "A lot of the old model—launching your movie at a film festival, getting a distributor, getting a theatrical run, going to DVD—has changed. . . . In terms of LGBT films, festivals around the world have come to be seen as the main theatrical opportunity; there are fewer and fewer opportunities to get a theatrical run. That changes the nature of a festival from exposing work to supporting work.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Books On Video Arts Booze Film History Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby is not the first movie to insult F. Scott Fitzgerald
Posted by Ben Sachs on 05.22.13 at 01:24 PM
If nothing else, the recent release of Baz Luhrmann's Great Gatsby adaptation provides a good excuse to revisit the sole film on which F. Scott Fitzgerald received screenwriting credit, the 1938 melodrama Three Comrades. The movies are similar insofar that neither one really respects Fitzgerald's writing—the author was reportedly unhappy with Comrades because relatively little of his work made it into the completed film. Since it takes place in Germany, an executive at MGM submitted the script (cowritten by Fitzgerald and Edward E. Paramore Jr. from Erich Maria Remarque's novel) to the German ambassador for approval—the studio wanted to make sure that nothing in it would offend the tastes of the Nazi Party, who had been threatening to ban American films if they contained anything perceived as anti-German. (At this point the United States were still officially neutral in regards to Germany; furthermore most Hollywood studios were financially unstable throughout the Great Depression and were afraid to lose German ticket sales.) The ambassador proposed numerous changes to the screenplay, all of which were put into effect.
Seriously? Film Zardoz has spoken, and your penis may never be the same
Posted by J.R. Jones on 05.22.13 at 06:47 AM
There are good movies, there are bad movies, and then there's Zardoz (1974), which the Northwest Chicago Film Society screens tonight at the Portage. Fresh from the triumph of Deliverance (1972), John Boorman persuaded 20th Century Fox to bankroll his futuristic fantasy, set in the year 2293, in which Sean Connery struts around in a ponytail and porn mustache, wearing a red bandolero across his bare chest, red hot pants, and black-leather boots up to his thighs. At this point in his career, Connery had just sworn off playing James Bond because he thought the character was becoming a joke. So go figure.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Do This Film Music Black Cinema House has The Blues—and more—this Friday
Posted by Ben Sachs on 05.21.13 at 04:10 PM
On Friday night around 8:15 PM the south side arts organization Black Cinema House will host the first program in a summer-long series called "Movies Under Stars." Copresented by Chicago Film Archives, the outdoor series centers on documentary shorts about jazz and blues musicians, with other rare nonfiction works rounding out the lineup. This week's program consists of: The Blues, a 1973 doc by music historian Samuel Charters depicting southern bluesmen performing at home; Give My Poor Heart Ease (produced by the Center for Southern Folklore in 1975), which focuses on blues from the Mississippi Delta; and American Shoeshine, a 1976 doc in the direct-cinema mode about shoeshiners. The monthly series continues in June with more rarities from the Center for Southern Folklore archive; I'm most excited for the program on August 19, which features docs about Duke Ellington's 1964 tour of Japan and the great drummer Elvin Jones.
Speaking of Chicago Film Archives, a week from tonight the organization will present another free outdoor screening, this one on the lawn next to Logan Square's Comfort Station. The movie will be Burden of Dreams, a documentary about the infamous production of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo by the recently deceased filmmaker Les Blank. (And speaking of Fitzcarraldo, that movie screens a week from tomorrow in Doc Films's ongoing Herzog series.) It'll be projected from a 16-millimeter print from the Chicago Public Library's collection.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Film Politics News Remembering Chicago's great school boycott of 1963
Posted by Ben Joravsky on 05.20.13 at 03:27 PM
The city's all-powerful mayor was ignoring their pleas, so the public students of Chicago felt they had no choice but to walk out of school and march in protest.
That could be a headline ripped from today's pages, as students join parents and teachers to protest Mayor Emanuel's decision to close 54 public schools.
But in this case the protesting students were teenagers from 1963, and the mayor was Richard J. Daley.
They were protesting the segregation policy of cramming hundreds of students from city's then-burgeoning black population into rickety trailers rather than putting them in white schools with plenty of room.
Most of the protests were directed at school superintendent Benjamin Willis—the trailers were nicknamed Willis Wagons—but the power behind Willis was the first Mayor Daley.
In that regard nothing except the name has changed in 50 years. Today's CPS officials and board members are rubber stamps for Mayor Emanuel.
The Internet Moviegoing Film Small Screen The mixed blessing of watching movies online
Posted by Ben Sachs on 05.20.13 at 02:36 PM
It's increasingly common for distributors to make movies previewable on password-protected webpages, and for exhibitors to send critics passwords rather than discs, as they've done in the past. Truth be told, this is how I watched several movies I reviewed in the last month. There are obvious practical benefits to this arrangement: distributors save money on DVDs, and exhibitors don't have to worry about discs getting lost in the mail. From the reviewer's standpoint, though, there are deleterious effects on the movie-watching process. The most obvious is that the movie must be viewed on a screen that's, in most instances, smaller than a television. On top of this, a computer is also an avenue for competing sources of information like e-mail and news updates. I imagine this worries filmmakers even more than critics. How stressful it must be, knowing that the first people to evaluate your art must contend with so many distractions when they do it.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Weekly Top Five Film Weekly Top Five: Joseph Lewis and the B movie swamp
Posted by Drew Hunt on 05.19.13 at 02:00 PM
Tomorrow night, the University of Chicago's Doc Films will screen the Joseph H. Lewis noir Gun Crazy, one of the major works of classic B cinema and one of the most radical and thoroughly entertaining movies in American film history, period. Prior to a renewed interest in expressionistic style during the 1970s, Lewis was considered a simple B movie director in the United States. (That wasn't the case elsewhere, of course—the staff of Cahiers du Cinema sang his praises while his career was still ongoing.) Known for their brazen style, his films often dealt with sensational themes, such as sexual obsession, ethical/moral dilemmas, and hereditary or otherwise inescapable criminal behavior. But beneath the surface, one can detect Lewis's deep curiosity of human behavior as well as a particular affinity for film form.
Gun Crazy is obviously his foremost masterwork—Dave Kehr eloquently called it "One of the most distinguished works of art to emerge from the B movie swamp"—but his filmography features many exuberant and highly personal films. You can catch my five favorite after the jump.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Behind Our Scenes Opening Film An interview with Dan Sallitt, director of The Unspeakable Act
Posted by Ben Sachs on 05.17.13 at 01:05 PM
The Unspeakable Act, which screens this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center (and with writer-director Dan Sallitt in attendance tonight and tomorrow afternoon), is an opaque independent drama about family ties. The title refers to incest, although the movie isn't concerned with shock value or sex. Drew Hunt notes in this week's issue, "In the grand tradition of French director Eric Rohmer, The Unspeakable Act is a story in which transgression is considered but never acted upon." Teenage siblings Jackie and Matthew—bookish, introspective types who sometimes recall J.D. Salinger characters—have an extremely close relationship, but neither seems so impulsive as to push it into the realm of taboo. The movie is a mystery of sorts, inviting viewers to ponder the unspoken motivations behind peculiar behavior. Last week I spoke with Sallitt about his influences, his experience as an employee of the Reader in the early 1980s, and his particular filmmaking methods. Like his other three features, Unspeakable Act was entirely self-financed, with Sallitt doing most of the leg work in preproduction—the intimate nature of his approach, I think, has a direct impact on the artisanal quality of his finished product.
