VOICE OVER

This wasn’t in the Sundance collection on YouTube, but is awesome. To say more would ruin the reward of taking the few minutes to watch it, ideally in full screen.

THE APOCALYPSE

Don’t let this one give you any clever ideas.

CATNIP: EGRESS TO OBLIVION?

It’s probably about time we took a look at this troubling abuse issue.

And this is actually part of what makes the film fun, in spite of its apparently heartfelt concern, dire warnings about our impending enslavement, and proposed solutions. I personally don’t question Gamble’s sincerity, but as the old adage goes, I also don’t question the sincerity of a crazed ax murderer on a rampage. On the one hand, Gamble comes across as a genuinely nice rich bloke who grew up in a bubble, and suddenly was exposed to some of the God-awful stuff going on in the world and got upset about it. On the other hand, the insane meandering from tinfoildom to cuddly new-ageyness to rabid anti-establishment libertarian rants against OTHER families of the global elite like the Rothschilds leaves one wondering if in fact Gamble’s whole shtick is an elaborate false flag, designed to keep a prole’s head spinning.

If Gamble is sincere in this epic effort, it certainly doesn’t help his credibility when half the experts appearing in the film have officially stated they were misrepresented, and the other half are paranoid delusional nutjobs talking about extraterrestrials and magical infinite power sources. But the fact that it’s almost impossible to find biographical info on the fellow – combined with the film’s bizarre obsession with connecting everything in the known universe to a mystical donut shape – makes the film a strangely amusing “meta” experience. I think I’m going to watch it again RIGHT NOW. Or at least after I make some Jiffy Pop and fashion the foil into a nice little hat.

The Thrive Trailer

If you’ve seen Mars Attacks, you know that Gamble isn’t the first to recognize the power of the donut:

For the record, the trailer doesn’t BEGIN to do the film justice, probably for commercial reasons, it focuses on dialogue and erotica. And although there’s a lot of unerotic “erotica” in the film, it’s hardly the core of the story.

An aerial view of the “set” of Problema

What would happen if you rounded up thought-provoking questions from people all over the world, then gathered about a hundred thoughtful people together in a huge circle, pointed cameras at them, and asked the questions one by one? Well, a cacophonous murmur would probably ensue, until you edited the results into some kind of cohesive whole, as director Ralf Schmerberg did with his epic film project Problema. The project was inspired by the Dropping Knowledge project, a global information sharing and media project founded in 2003. On a single day in September, 2006, over a hundred individuals – artists, scientists, writers, business people, and other thinkers – took their place around a huge circle in Berlin’s Bebelplatz. This was a powerfully symbolic choice – the Bebelplatz was the location of the infamous Nazi book burnings of 1933. With digital cameras pointed at each guest, hosts Willem Dafoe and Hafsat Abiola (founder of Nigeria’s Kudirat Initiative for Democracy) asked 17 of 100 questions that had been selected from the thousands that were submitted worldwide via the Dropping Knowledge project. The guests then responded in their own time, with the cameras all running continuously, all framing the guests in a tight headshot. Guest Wim Wenders – director of the film Wings of Desire – astutely pointed out the similarity between the resulting murmur and the way the angels in his film had no choice but to hear the thoughts of humans everywhere, which created much of the lush sonic backdrop of Wings of Desire. Schmerberg – Problema’s director – managed to capture much of this live feeling of the event by interspersing compelling, sometimes tear-inducing images with a lively mixture of both concise, eyes-at-the-camera answers, and almost out-take-like moments of verité in which the attendees fumbled with their thoughts or spoke in asides to the guests sitting next to them. The result is a thought-provoking documentary unlike any you’ve seen before. If you’re a caring person who lives in the so-called “First World”, a question like “Does our wealth depend on the Third World being poor?” might make you think “Well of course, and it’s a shameful tragedy”.  But you’ll suddenly be forced to ponder things like what a bogus concept the “Third World” is in the first place, or how much freedom you have if you live in a powerful western capitalist country, when a sophisticated, educated person from Colombia points out that he for instance is only able to visit a place like Berlin because of a four day visa connected with the making of the film. He otherwise is barred from our “first world” as a second-rate global citizen who “has no right to enter our paradise” as he puts it. Although you may find Problema quite watchable on your own, you might find it a lot more interesting if you watch it with some intelligent friends, so you can discuss the world of questions it is likely to raise in your heart and your head. To view the film as a particapatory event, the Problema website offers a screening  page that allows you to publicize the event, but you can just download it and watch it with friends if you like – it’s free, provided in multiple file formats, and can be downloaded by bittorrent or as a direct file.

I really don’t like zombie movies. Well, okay. I liked Night of the Living Dead when I was a kid. And Shaun of the Dead was fun. But in general, the basic idea behind a zombie movie – a mindless mob chomping on something that’s probably not healthy for them – is too much like just living in America – which I already do – for me to get excited about. Which is why it’s odd that I LOVED Pontypool, because it’s a zombie movie. Or is it? While the story does involve mindless mobs chomping on each other, they’re mostly offscreen. There is a bit of gore, but I wouldn’t actually call it gratuitous; it was pretty purposeful from a dramatic point of view. And the entire story pretty much takes place in the confines of a radio station, while the world outside is going mad. No, Pontypool is more a suspense film with cultural-linguistic and socio-political commentary. Sort of like Talk Radio meets the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast . But better. The film makes clever use of Antonin Artaud’s idea of theater as infection, and Burroughs’ concept of language as a virus. And the commentary I mentioned is used sparingly; this is really a pretty solid “low budget” suspense film, with a balanced dose of humor and a little mystery to engage you. Is it an alien zombie apocalypse? A biological warfare experiment gone wrong? Is the strange behavior of the unseen mobs being caused by something in the radio transmission? What if simply speaking transmitted a disease? How could you tell anyone? Except for that last question, these are familiar enough story premises, so Pontypool doesn’t kill them with exposition, instead letting them answer themselves as the story unfolds. But imagine if words broadcast over radio or television had the ability to spread a bizarre condition that in turn affected your speech to help transmit the condition further? That would be a prah. A prah. A prah. A prah. Oh crap. A prah. A PROBLEM. Actually, one of the most disturbing things about this clever little zombie suspense film is that it seems to be manifesting in the real world. See the two news clips below, after the trailer. Oh, and Pontypool was adapted from the book Pontypool Changes Everythingand is also available as a BBC radio play.

Global Toronto Reporter Mark McAllister Contracts The Pontypool Virus

CBS2′s Serene Branson Contracts The Pontypool Virus

Christmas is less than a week away, and you know what that means. Time to start over-anticipating the next holiday, i.e.: New Year’s Day. I’ve always been a bit perplexed by the holiday tradition of drinking your brains out on the last day of the year, as if that will somehow make it go away. The year, that is, not your brain. Even when I did drink – which used to be quite often – I certainly didn’t see anything especially exciting about drinking for a holiday, and now that I don’t, my New Year’s Eve is more often spent having a nice dinner and watching a movie or going to a party where I know that getting staggering drunk isn’t the over-arching theme. This year looks like a movie year for me, so if you’re thinking along the same lines, we’ve rounded up some interesting New Year’s themed films for your consideration. In my opinion, probably the best New Year’s film ever made was the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy. If you saw it but missed its message of circles, cycles, and beginnings-being-ends, give it another go-round, so to speak. On top of the always-stylish Coen Brother’s production and set design, it’s full of brilliant and over-the-top performances by Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman, Bill Cobbs, and Charles Durning. And of course Jim True-Frost as “Buzz the Elevator Operator”. I love this film so much that a couple of years ago I made it part of the evening’s party plan, cuing it to start at exactly 10:22:45pm so that Tim Robbins’ character would jump off the building at exactly midnight. Yeah, I know. A little weird. Anyway, this year I thought I’d break away from the Hudsucker tradition and explore some other New Year’s films. Some selections and unsolicited commentary below.

The Apartment	The most remarkable thing about the fact that The Apartment received ten Academy Award nominations and won five is probably the fact that it didn’t win all ten, or at least two more for Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon’s performances, the latter of which Kevin Spacey dedicated his Oscar for American Beauty to in 2000. Although brilliantly comedic, and definitely in the New Year theme, given its occasionally somber tone and thoughtful pace this might be a better film for New Year’s day itself, when there’s nothing to do but lie around and absorb its genius.
Rudolph’s Shiny New Year	This film takes the “holiday horror” genre to epic new heights, but perhaps the most horrifying thing is that I ACTUALLY WATCHED IT. The premise relies on a serious mythology mashup, with Father Time calling on Santa Claus to find the missing Baby New Year. Recognizing the commercial and economic catastrophe that would ensue if it remained December 31st FOREVER, Santa of course sends out an Amber Alert to Rudolph, the bastard child of Montgomery Ward, aircraft warning lights, and the bizarre myth of flying reindeer. This movie could have only been made in the 1970′s, when cocaine, marijuana, and LSD were staples at production meetings. Rudolph first hooks up in the desert with a Dali-esque camel with a clock for a hump, to find himself stalked by a buzzard named “Eon”, who is also looking for Baby New Year. Eon’s life depends on it; for some reason, although they say right in the dialog that an eon is an indeterminate period in time, Eon’s reign is officially over in exactly six days, when the new year begins. Soon Rudolph is hunting the “Archipelago of Last Year”, where all the previous old years retire on their own islands, and before you know it…. Oh fuck it. I confess. That’s when I stopped watching. Feel free to leave a comment telling me how they wrapped things up. At least a kid watching this would learn the word “Archipelago”.
Bridget Jones’s Diary	Bridget Jones starts right out with New Year’s resolutions, including losing weight, quitting smoking, and not having relationships with “alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts”. This film was made just long enough after Hugh Grant’s hooker incident (something the hooker recently publicly thanked him for) that you could almost – but not quite – pretend that Grant was only acting the part of the seedy character that embodies all of those traits. There’s little you can say about a film that so effectively does what it sets out to do, and Bridget Jones’s Diary certainly does what it sets out to do, with honest and touching humor, by exploring the kind of mild self-deprecation that many of us engage in routinely. A great date-at-home film, especially if you’re a guy out to show how sweet you really are underneath that raging drunk that’s suddenly surfacing for the first time this New Year’s Eve.
200 Cigarettes	I always hate playing the critic, because I create a lot of media, and, well, to be honest, a lot of it sucks. I’ll gladly make an exception in this case though. 200 Cigarettes is an amazing example of how in spite of having all the tools necessary to make a smash hit movie – bankable stars, a massive promotion machine, limitless music licensing funds, and a herd of producers to back things – you can still manage to produce utter drivel. In a way this is a fitting outcome for 200 Cigarettes; the film is the stillborn baby of the MTV network and its generation, and embodies everything that sucked about MTV’s evolution over two decades, an evolution that started its downward spiral in the first couple of years of its existence, when they chucked the “M” to focus entirely on the “TV”. Sadly, in spite of the fact that the film was the product of a network that calls itself “Music Television”, even the 200 Cigarettes soundtrack kind of sucked.
Entrapment	Everything must come to an end, and Entrapment does. Katherine Zeta Jones’, to be specific. As this review on eFilmCritic points out, the infamous “squirming through the lasers” scene keeps a gratuitously tight focus on Jones’ rear, and is “shown on the commercial, the preview and in the movie itself like 7 times. The challenge is this: Build a movie around it.” The only thing actually “New Years-y” about this film is the fact that the big heist takes place on New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millenium. It’s a fun action/suspense flick in any case, and a perfect vehicle for Sean Connery’s later-life suave bad guy persona.
Poseidon	This film will almost certainly go down in the anals of film history as a masterpiece. Maybe even the annals. One thing rarely mentioned in reviews is how brilliantly Richard Dreyfuss goes about finally outing himself with a not-so-subtle “SOS” to anyone willing to notice. I jest of course. I think. But Poseidon truly is a masterpiece. The filmmakers did an absolutely phenomenal job of recapturing the essential elements of 1976′s Poseidon Adventure, casting a bunch of familar B-List actors that they kill off one by one, so they could put the money where it really mattered, i.e., the special effects and budget for extras. Seriously, this film must have singlehandedly generated more revenue for the extras unions than all the other films of 2006 combined. This would be an especially great film to watch on New Year’s Eve if you got stuck babysitting annoying nieces or nephews. Getting hammered while the kids provided a real-life “Mystery Science Theater” greek chorus would make for a New Year’s Eve to remember. Especially when social services shows up after you start drunk dialing and call the ex who dumped you two days before Christmas and they get fed up and decide to bust on you.
After the Thin Man	If you know your film school drop out required viewing material, the “Thin Man” movies need no explanation. But if you don’t, the series of movies based on Dashiell Hammett’s stories follow the escapades of the suave, quick-witted and hard drinking detective couple Nick and Nora Charles. The one-liners are incessant, and delivered in a deadpan rapid fire fashion that ensures you’ll always catch a new one on repeated viewings, like when Nora says to her gun-toting husband: “Are you packing, dear?” and Nick replies: “Yes, darling. I’m just putting away this liquor.”
Sunset Boulevard	This one is on my list to actually watch this year, because I haven’t seen it since I was bombed out of my mind one New Year in the 80′s, and I barely remember it. Again, this is required film school dropout viewing. If you haven’t seen Sunset Boulevard, you can lay no claim to having any knowledge whatsoever of American film. It is, for instance, the origin of the now-archaic cliche “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” It also features the horrifying scenario of being tricked into a “New Years Eve party for two” by someone you’re not in love with.

I’ve always been a little befuddled by the average person’s resistance to science fiction as a genre. I can understand why a person would be put off by the schlockier segment of this market, but every genre of fiction has a large quantity of commercial tripe from which you have to pick the better material. I would argue in fact that some of the greatest fiction of the twentieth century would typically be categorized as sci-fi: Arthur C Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and other sci-fi writers wrote some of the most insightful social-commentary-as-fiction of the era, and yet other writers, like Anthony Burgess with A Clockwork Orange and Philip K. Dick’s stories like A Scanner Darkly and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? pushed the reader to explore social and psychological realms that are crucial to a modern person’s examination of life in our rapidly-evolving information and technology-driven world. In the case of Science Fiction film, the root of the problem is obvious. It’s the Hollywood marketing mindset. Blade Runner is a classic example of a brilliant film that nearly didn’t make it to market because test audiences “didn’t get it”. While Hollywood execs are (unfortunately) probably correct in their assumption that the average viewer isn’t very bright, there’s no reason to encourage their stupidity or mental laziness by focusing all the marketing dollars on dazzling schlockbusters like Avatar or the Star Wars franchise. Films like Alien, Blade Runner, The Matrix, TV productions like Battlestar Galactica, and even sci-fi comedy like Men In Black have proven that there’s a large audience with a long market life without adhering to the traditional Hollywood approach of staying in the safety zone of films with A-List actors, dumbed-down messages like Avatar’s ecotardedness, and massive product tie-ins that – in the case of films like Star Wars – generate more than twice the revenue of the films themselves. We’ll be back in part two with a look at how comedy can ease the pain of embracing sci-fi films, but below are a few more recent films you may have overlooked. Feel free to share suggestions for our expanded list in part three.

Moon	Sam Rockwell turns in a brilliant performance as Sam Bell, an employee of the energy company Lunar Industries, who gets to know himself in a surprising way as he wraps up a three-year solitary stint mining helium-3 on the far side of the moon. Kevin Spacey provides the perfect voice for his robot companion, GERTY. Directed by David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones with a budget of $5 million dollars
Cargo	Anna-Katharina Schwabroh plays Laura Portmann, a doctor who has signed an 8 year contract with a cargo ship to get away from a dying Earth and its overcrowded space stations. Although it gets panned by some critics for its flat characters, I think that’s part of what makes Cargo work. This is a slow-paced, stylish suspense film as much as a sci-fi film, and is worthy of note if only because it’s a Swiss sci-fi film, shot on a $2 million budget over eight years.
Sunshine	Although Sunshine is a stylish and well-acted sci-fi film, it’s also an interesting psychological drama, exploring another kind of power the sun seems to possess to us as humans. This film was massively undermarketed, and probably suffered from the deluge of films of the last few years with the word “sunshine” in the title. Great soundtrack too, by the way.
Primer	Primer is probably one of the best explorations of time-travel paradoxes you’ll ever see. Sort of like a non-violent “Reservoir Dogs meets Memento”, it’s tightly scripted, solidly acted, and a remarkably solid production all around, especially in light of the fact that it only cost SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS.

This is some of the kind of humor you can expect:

One of the contestants in the “cock opera”…

The official trailer…