// Category Archive for: Movies

Assemblog: February 8, 2013

Europa Report, photo from the film’s Facebook page.

New this week on Popshifter: Chelsea finds Richard Thompson “still relevant” on his new album Electric and introduces us to the beautiful protest music of Víctor Jara; Cait praises the “warm, intimate solo collection” of songs on Chris Stamey’s Lovesick Blues, calls the two new Townes Van Zandt discs of demos and rarities “close to perfection,” and says Mary Gauthier’s long-anticipated Live At Blue Rock was “worth the wait”; Emily describes Hayden’s Us Alone as “recommended listening”; I suggest Goblin’s The Awakening box set for fans and not-yet-fans, and review this Wednesday’s wonderful Ty Segall show in Toronto.

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Assemblog: February 1, 2013

Vanishing Waves

New this week on Popshifter: Paul examines “Wrestling’s Dark Heart” and reviews the game Cart Life; Maureen recommends The Sessions as “a gem of a film;” I get excited about new music and videos from Parenthetical Girls, Iceage, and Jesca Hoop and review the excellent but troubling film Compliance; and Elizabeth talks about Netflix, Wall Street, and why televangelism means we can’t have nice things like a la carte cable in this week’s installment of “TV Is Dead, Long Live TV.”

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DVD Review: Compliance

By Less Lee Moore

It’s difficult to review a movie like Compliance. Usually the tag line, “Inspired By True Events” signals a couple of hours of cinematic hyperbole. Even documentaries aren’t immune from altering or omitting facts to suit the filmmakers’ agenda(s). What’s most disturbing about Compliance is how scenes that might trigger the viewer’s bullshit meter actually did occur. While much of the dialogue used to illustrate the events may have been created, the scenarios themselves are real.

Anyone who has worked in a fast food restaurant (or as industry parlance prefers, a “quick-service restaurant”) might immediately feel discomfort during the opening scenes of Compliance, not because of any horrific events taking place, but because of the remarkably authentic atmosphere of what takes place in those environments.

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Movie Review: The Sessions

By Maureen

TM and © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

I knew very little about The Sessions going into it. I knew that it was about a man suffering from polio (John Hawkes) who hires a woman to have sex with him. That was enough to pique my curiosity, and so I watched it.

The Sessions is based on the life of a real-life man, Mark O’Brien, who contracted polio at a young age and has to spend all but about four hours per day inside an iron lung to keep him breathing. Even when outside this device, he is required to remain flat on his back on a gurney with portable oxygen.

He manages to work his way through an English degree at Berkeley, and when the story picks up in 1988, he is 38 years old and working from home as a poet and occasional journalist. He’s contacted about a news story about sex and the disabled, and his quest for professional research opens a world of personal doors and discoveries for him.

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Blu-Ray Review: Hard Core Logo: All Access Edition

By Melissa Bratcher

There are few movies I love more than Bruce McDonald’s 1996 Hard Core Logo. It’s a rock mockumentary about an obscure Canadian punk band who reunite for one last tour, hoping to recapture what fleeting fame they once had. When it came out in the States, it was advertised as a movie in the vein of This Is Spinal Tap. While it is occasionally hilarious, it has a dark, seamy underbelly. It’s not a feel good movie.

Hard Core Logo’s two stars, Hugh Dillon and Callum Keith Rennie, share an electric chemistry. Their scenes together don’t feel like acting. Dillon hadn’t acted a great deal before Hard Core Logo, and what he doesn’t have in technical “acting” skill, he makes up for in sheer magnetism. His character, Joe Dick, is by turns funny, malevolent, pathetic, and always fascinating. He is a mostly charming manipulator.

One of the finest actors around, Callum Keith Rennie is his icy cool counterpart. Rennie’s Billy Tallent is a gifted guitar player, just about to break through with another band after years of paying his dues slogging with bands like HCL. He reluctantly rejoins his comrades for a last tour, with an eye to the end, where he’ll join with indie sweethearts Jenifur.

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Assemblog: January 18, 2013

Bates Motel

New this week on Popshifter:
J Howell likes the new Atoms For Peace single “Judge, Jury, and Executioner”; Cait raves about The Definitive Shoes Collection; JG Thirlwell gives us his Best Of 2012; Emily says John Cale will always be cool; Chelsea suggests Erin McKeown newbies check out her latest album Manifestra; I interview Resolution directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead; give my Top Ten Picks for 2013 movies and the Sundance Film Festival; and discuss new music from Adam Ant, Iceage, and Suede.

Remember when I said I wasn’t going to talk about the Oscars? I didn’t lie, but I do want to talk about something Oscars-related (though technically, it’s just about awards in general).

Over the last few months, we’ve seen a lot of “Best Of” lists for movies. Some of these are even compiled and counted and used to determine the “Best Movie” announcement for a particular group or publication. In that way, they’re sort of like mini-awards ceremonies, except no one goes home with a gold statue.

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Best of 2012: JG Thirlwell

Einstein On The Beach, Photo © Lesley Spinks

Music
Here is some popular music I have been absorbing this year. Some on this list came out this year and some didn’t.

Swans, The Seer
Anthony Pateras, Collected Works 2002-2012
Scott Walker, Bish Bosch
Francisco López, Nowhere: Short Pieces from 1983-2003 (ten-CD box set)
Motorpsycho and Ståle Storløkken, The Death Defying Unicorn
Jason Kao Hwang, Symphony of Souls
Dominique Leone, Dominique Leone and Abstract Expression albums and Summer EP
Normal Love, Survival Tricks
Loka, Passing Place
Yamantaka // Sonic Titan, YT//ST
Anna Von Hausswolff, Ceremony
Dan Deacon, America
Jóhann Johannssón, The Miners’ Hymns
Chemical Brothers, Hanna OST
David Bedford, Star Clusters
Carlo Savina, Malenka OST
Various Artists, Touch. 30 years and counting

With honorable mentions to Anna Calvi, Forma, Paavoharju, Mariel Roberts, Battles, Chelsea Wolfe, and The Can Tapes.

As I said last year on this very website, my main musical diet is C20 classical, contemporary composition, soundtracks, and the darker end of prog rock, and I spend much of my time writing new music—I completed the fifth season of The Venture Bros. as well as writing various commissions, arrangements, and installation pieces in 2012. As a listener, generally I found this to be another disappointing year for new music.

Concerts
I went to a bunch of concerts and event in 2012. Here are some of the most notable . . . (all shows in NYC)

Jan 13: David Linton at the Clocktower gallery (installation)
Jan 31: Jóhann Johannssón and Bill Morrison, Miners’ Hymns at the Winter Garden
Feb 03: Michael Gordon and Bill Morrison, Decasia at The Winter Garden
Feb 25: Bjork at Roseland
Mar 23: William Basinski at The Kitchen
Mar 25: Francisco López at Issue Project Room
Apr 15: The Sinking of the Titanic, Gavin Bryars Ensemble and Philip Jeck at the Barbican, London
Apr 28: Yarn/Wire with Tristan Perich at Issue Project Room
Apr 29: Ruins Alone, Child Abuse, Behold The Arctopus at Death By Audio
May 12: Musical Box perform Lamb Lies Down On Broadway at Tribeca Performing Arts Center
Jun 13: Yamantaka // Sonic Titan at Mercury Lounge
Jun 20: Philip Glass Ensemble at Rockefeller Park
Jun 29: New York Philharmonic play Stockhausen and Boulez in 360 degrees at Park Ave Armory
Jul 07: Morton Subotnick, The Music of Richard Lainhart at Pace University
Aug 25: Darcy James Argue + Escort at World Finacial Center
Sep 11: Arnold Dreyblatt at Our Lady Of Lebanon
Sep 14: Eleh, Lary 7 at Our Lady Of Lebanon
Sep 17: Deerhoof, Buke And Gase at Music Hall Of Williamsburg
Sep 18: Gamelatron at the Clocktower gallery (installation)
Sep 23: Einstein On The Beach at BAM
Sep 25: Lesley Flanigan Salon at 16 Beaver
Oct 05: Demdike Stare at the Bunker
Oct 23: Tony Conrad at NYU Gallery
Nov 15: Lydia Lunch RetroVirus at Knitting Factory
Nov 16: Holly Herndon at 285 Kent
Dec 08: Bassoon/Sarcaustic at Jack
Dec 11: John Zorn, new works for strings at Miller Theater
Dec 15: Michael Gordon’s Timber at BAM

I also keep a Tumblr blog where I talk about events that I check out, and other cultural obsessions, etc.

Film
Films I dug included:

The Snowtown Murders
Hanna
Headhunters
Holy Motors
Dark Horse

Some of my own performance highlights included Manorexia at the Roadburn Festival, plus collaborations with Zola Jesus with Mivos Quartet at The Guggenheim, Vinyl Terror & Horror at the Swedish Energies Festival, Philip Jeck with the Touch crew at Experimental Intermedia, and Marc Almond at Antony’s Meltdown.

Find out more about JG Thirlwell on the Foetus.org website and his Facebook page.

Sundance 2013: Top Ten Picks

By Less Lee Moore

Il Futuro

It was nearly impossible to narrow down the films at this year’s Sundance into a Top 20, much less a Top Ten. I tried to pick my top choice from each category to give the best indication of the diversity of films screening at this year’s festival.

1. Shorts Competition: The Capsule
Information on this film is scarce, but Sundance’s website description, taken directly from the film’s website, is captivating: “Seven young women. A mansion perched on a Cycladic rock. A series of lessons on discipline, desire, discovery, and disappearance. A melancholy, inescapable cycle on the brink of womanhood—infinitely.” The Capsule is a French production with a Greek cast from director Athina Rachel Tsangari, who produced both Alps (2010) and Dogtooth (2009). Read more …

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Resolution: Interview with Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead

By Less Lee Moore

Resolution

Resolution was the most unexpectedly intriguing movie of 2012 for me (review). The trailer was fascinating, but I had no idea what I was in for. I could say much the same about writer/director Justin Benson and co-director/cinematographer Aaron Moorhead. Their abilities at keeping an audience transfixed extended beyond the movie and into the intro and Q&A for Resolution at its Toronto After Dark screening.

Luckily, I was able to catch up with the pair a few days ago, in anticipation of Resolution‘s upcoming release on VOD and in theaters. Here’s what they had to say.

On the new poster for Resolution:
Justin: In general, when you make a movie and you make your own key art and you’re really happy with it, you then show it to the distributor who probably has their own ideas, which are very well placed: this is to sell it on VOD. And then you wait for months to get kicked in the balls, thinking it’s gonna be terrible. But we were so happy . . . nothing against horror movie posters, but it doesn’t look like a horror movie poster. There’s something very odd about the poster but it doesn’t look like a horror movie poster.

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Movies: Ten To Watch In 2013

By Less Lee Moore

Passion

I still haven’t seen all the 2012 films that I wanted to and I’m already thinking about what 2013 has in store. Those who complain that there aren’t any good movies anymore are just not paying enough attention. It was tough to pick from the three Ryan Gosling films scheduled for this year and I guess I cheated a little by including two Noomi Rapace flicks on this list, but I will not apologize. I also didn’t include the requisite blockbusters like Star Trek: Into Darkness, Man of Steel, Pacific Rim, Thor: The Dark World, and Iron Man 3 because that’s just too easy (plus, I’ll likely see them all anyway). If Terence Malick’s Knight of Cups comes out this year, go ahead and pencil that in at #11.

Here are ten films that I do not want to miss in a theatrical setting this year.

1. Dead Man Down (March 8, US)
Noomi Rapace teams up with Colin Farrell and his real Irish accent. Farrell is New York hitman Victor who has been blackmailed by his new neighbor Beatrice (Rapace) into killing his crime lord boss, played by Terrence Howard, the man who brutalized her and left permanent scars on her face. Dominic Cooper and Isabelle Huppert also star. As much as Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was visually superior to Oplev’s, consider those films were made for TV and at a fraction of the budget for the big screen adaptation. They’re still excellent movies, anyway, and with a cast like this, I can’t be anything but excited. (trailer)

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