When I saw that Tabloid (2010) would be playing at MIFF in 2011 I think I may have actually gasped in delight before quickly uploading the MIFF website to secure a ticket. And I am so glad I did.

Tabloid is Errol Morris’ most recent documentary and it follows the life of extraorindaryJoyce McKinney: beauty queen, fiancée, kidnapper, escort, dog-lover, stalker, and seemingly misunderstood prey of the British tabloids. Throughout Tabloid Morris once again exhibits his masterful use of documentary cinema as he draws out the story from his subjects whilst simultaneously drawing the viewer in.

In the early 1970s, McKinney had just been crowned Miss Wyoming World and began dating Kirk Anderson, whom she eventually became engaged to. Yet Anderson was sent to England as a Mormon missionary by his church, something that McKinney believed was against his will. Thus with the help of childhood friend Keith May she chartered a private plane to England to find him, rescue him, and bring him back home. Reports differ as to whether Anderson went willingly with McKinney or was forced at gunpoint into her car- but what happened afterwards played out on newspaper headlines across the world, causing ‘The Case of the Manacled Mormon’ to become hot gossip.

According to newspapers, McKinney had kidnapped Anderson, taken him to a country town and shackled him to a bed until he was able to escape and call for help. Bondage had been involved. People began questioning where she had acquired the funds for her botched rescue-attempt. Eventually McKinney tricked British customs officers and illegal flew back to America where the drama did not end.

I suggest you watch Morris’ television show First Person in order to get a sense of Morris’ style, and to also hear some amazing stories (personally I recommend ‘The Killer Inside Me’ and ‘The Little Gray Man’- both available on youtube).

Tabloid is showing at The Shadow Electric (outdoor cinema in Melbourne), this Thursday 2nd February. Doors open at 6pm.

  This film with its hit-list cast is generating the kind of buzz that makes me vomit in my mouth a little bit, and damn it all if I wasn’t a little biased by the Oscar-bait concept and title. But regardless of my utterly unfair prejudices, this film is very well done.

  We were fair warned of full frontal nudity and R-rated subject matter, which seemed a little OTT but that they seemed giddy at the prospect of Michael Fassbender’s wang and just couldn’t quite contain themselves. And not to trivialise a film that is both beautiful and harrowing, but what a wang it be. And the places it does go…

“]

[WANG PICTURE REDACTED

  Sex addiction is a very modern sort of theme, and I’ve seen a number of films either directly about it or at least nebulously involved. And finally I have seen one that answers a question that has been burning in my mind since I first found out boners make boys feel nice. In an effort to avoid spoilers I’ll not say what that question is and how it is answered, but it’s nice to see Steven McQueen thinks outside the box (so to speak). And while I don’t wish to be fatuous in general, I feel an awful lot of reviews you’ll read will be dreary pieces of gravitas. THAT, my friend, is not fair to the gentle humour McQueen also represents. There is light in this dark world, it’s only made sadder that the leads aren’t cast in the glow.

  Now this is a serious film, as you’ve no doubt heard, so no dicking the toaster or secret diary of a call girl-esque fetish tourism. The title is apt, the Shame sits like a third character in every scene, squatting over any potential happiness Brandon and his sister Sissy (she’s hot for a reason) may dream of. The tension between these two is palpable, and I don’t mean that in a bullshit Brad-and-Angelina-punch-and-snog way, I mean these two characters are torn in so many directions that any semblance of stillness is just a thousand ropes pulling them tight. It’s electric viewing.

See?

   One could follow the trend and mention Carey Mulligan’s stirring take of New York, New York, but it’s easy to tug at the heart with a song. Frankly, it’s just the most potent example of McQueen’s long-take formula, and if I may I’d state an extended shot of Brandon jogging through the night streets of the song’s New York is what adds kick to the juice.

  This film is the devastating flipside to our hyper-sexualised culture, the sex becomes meaningless and titillation impossible. We know Brandon is a complicated creature, and McQueen respects his characters enough not to sensationalise their turmoil by exposing it. All we know is Brandon and Sissy are damaged people with surrogate tear ducts: Sissy her veins, Brandon his cock. The saddest moments in this film are orgasms, the deadest places are the most opulent, and the most happens at the slowest times. Well worth seeing, and if the Oscars were worth a damn I’d probably give a couple to this picture.

You will not find this guy on chat roulette.

In cinemas February 9

Grr

There must have been a point, probably around the time  that cinematic blight The Phantom Menace was pooped onto our screens, where the once esteemed actor Liam Neeson said, “screw it, I’m just going to do action movies and make millions”. Clash of the Titans, Narnia, Taken, The A-Team and other forgettable outings have reduced him to a handy blockbuster actor. But credit to him, he still manages to add magnetism and actorly resonance to these otherwise superficial roles.  He is, after all, Liam Neeson: Savior of the Irish (Michael Collins) the Scottish (Rob Roy), and the Jewish (Schindler’s List).

The Grey is the latest in Neeson’s roles that revolve around him as a centripetal force, on whom everyone else’s fate hangs. Ottway (Neeson) is a wanderer; heartbroken and suicidal, he finds himself working on an oil-rig in the remote Alaskan wilderness, charged with protecting his co-workers from the roaming wolves that surround the station. A hunter.

Brr

After a plane trip home goes spectacularly awry, he finds himself stranded with the survivors; a disparate collection of rugged outcasts. It soon becomes apparent that no rescue is coming, and this dysfunctional group must rely on each other to survive the blizzard, lack of food and, most alarmingly, the large pack of territorial wolves determinedly whittling down their numbers.

 From this point on Director Joe Carnahan’s The Grey becomes a viscerally intense and bloody film, and a respectable member of the snow-survival genre alongside The Thing, Cliffhanger, Alive and The Shining*. The gray wolves are represented with a primal-fear-producing malevolence; It made me hate wolves a bit.  

grr

It’s like jaws on ice.

The Grey is in many respects standard action film fare, but it stands out from the pack for a number of reasons. While sometimes hamstrung by cliché, the performances from the largely unknown cast are excellent. The roles are well carved out, and give shape and colour to a motley group of men reduced to a struggle to fulfill basic needs. It’s also spectacularly shot; Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi captures the harshness and serene beauty of the Alaskan wilds marvelously. Definitely worth seeing on the big screen.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of men in this movie; in fact the only the only female exists in flashback. I mention this, because I like women. Nonetheless, this was bloody entertaining. Forget Twilight for your wolf fix, go see The Grey.

*Could we add Home Alone, Empire Strikes Back and Die Hard to this list? Any others?

Three and a half stars.

In Cinemas February 16 (through Icon Distribution)

Did a search for trailers for the Sundance 2012 film’s announced earlier this month. All text below is copyright Sundance and not by me.

* = films i’m excited about.

THE AMBASSADOR

“An enigmatic and decadent white diplomat arrives in central Africa sporting dark glasses, riding boots, and a cigarette holder. He has recently bought an ambassadorship and claims to be a do-good rich businessman spearheading a diplomatic mission. Officially, he is there to start a factory that will employ locals to produce matches. Unofficially, he has really come to gain access to the area’s vast reserves of diamonds. It soon becomes apparent that, in this postcolonial economy, nearly everyone is out to rip off everyone else, and the dangers become all too real.

Mads Brügger returns to the Sundance Film Festival (The Red Chapel won the World Dramatic Jury Prize in 2010) with yet another brilliant example of gonzo filmmaking. Armed with a diplomatic passport, a hidden camera, and his razor-sharp wit, he risks life and limb to uncover deep-rooted corruption that allows others to continue to get rich from Africa’s resources. THE AMBASSADOR is a genre-breaking tragicomedy that establishes Brügger as a singular voice in the documentary world.”
- T.G.

AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY*

Ai Weiwei is known for many things—great architecture, subversive in-your-face art, and political activism. He has also called for greater transparency on the part of the Chinese state. Director Alison Klayman chronicles the complexities of Ai’s life for three years, beginning with his rise to public prominence via blog and Twitter after he questioned the deaths of more than 5,000 students in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The record continues through his widely publicized arrest in Beijing in April of 2011. As Ai prepares various works of art for major international exhibitions, his activism heats up, and his run-ins with China’s authorities become more and more frequent.

In this unprecedented look at Ai and those close to him, Klayman’s camera captures his forthrightness and unequivocal stance. He gives a larger picture of the artist as an individual, a symbol of China’s oppression, and a powerful voice against a country that still denies its citizens many basic freedoms. - K.Y.

ELENA*

“We are proud to welcome back Andrei Zvyagintsev (whose first feature, The Return screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004) with his extraordinarily gripping new film, Elena—made with support from the Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Award.

Elena has a warm but passionless late-in-life marriage with wealthy Vladimir, to whom she is more caretaker than spouse. Each has grown children from previous relationships, but Vladimir is dedicated to his distant, spoiled daughter and resents having to provide financial aid to Elena’s hapless, unemployed son and his struggling family. As Vladimir’s health declines, and he makes concrete plans to leave everything to his own offspring, Elena must decide swiftly between her loyalty to her husband and her allegiance to her own flesh and blood.

Part domestic thriller, part morality play, all a comment on contemporary Russian class warfare, Elena delivers an intense and haunting experience, offering keen insight into human nature. Throughout, the chilling tension is sustained and heightened by Philip Glass’s striking score and Zvyagintsev’s stark visual style.
- H.Z.”

BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!

n April 2009, Swedish filmmakers Fredrik Gertten and Margarete Jangård learned that the world premiere of BANANAS!*—their documentary about a lawsuit against the Dole Food Company—would take place at a major film festival in Los Angeles. Within weeks, they were embroiled in a legal and public-relations battle to save their premiere, their film, their reputations, and their freedom of speech.

While censorship is, sadly, nothing new, its insidious power gains startling immediacy by playing out in front of Gertten’s camera. The filmmakers find themselves painted as villains due to Dole’s shrewd PR moves—even before their film has been screened. Gertten takes the offensive, filing a countersuit and media campaign of his own to confront Dole’s overgrown schoolyard bully tactics.

As demonstrated over the past several months in actions held around the globe, corporations are being taken to task for their disproportionate political and financial influence. BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!* is a telling case study of the power of individuals to fight back.
- B.T.

ABOUT THE PINK SKY*

“Izumi, a headstrong high-school girl with a cheerfully cynical outlook—she routinely “rates” the newspaper by assigning articles positive or negative values—finds a wallet containing 300,000 yen (almost $4,000) and the owner’s ID: Sato, a wealthy high-school boy. Instead of returning it, Izumi lends a hefty sum to an older fishing buddy with financial problems. Her classmates Hasumi and Kaoru later force her to return the wallet to Sato, but, unable to account for all of the money, Izumi agrees to help him console a friend in the hospital by creating a newspaper containing only “good news.”
Keiichi Kobayashi’s serene, coming-of-age story avoids the customary trappings of teen culture and genre with a pronounced sense of quiet. With its lively, black-and-white cinematography and long takes, Kobayashi’s aesthetic—drained of color and clutter—feels like a dream or a distant memory. About the Pink Sky owes its underlying energy to the young actors (all newcomers) with real chemistry, who deftly balance the quirky humor, teenage uncertainty, and subtle shifts in adolescent consciousness.”
- J.N.”

ABOUT FACE

“Portrait photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s lush new film is an intimate view of the women whose images have defined our sense of beauty over the past five decades. An uncensored look at many of the biggest names in modeling, About Face reveals the stories behind the magazine covers displaying these multicultural pioneers. Each woman is candidly interviewed in the studio and shares her experiences, ideas on longevity, and philosophy of life in the fashion industry. Elegant archival footage and interviews with designer Calvin Klein and agency head Eileen Ford round out this absorbing chronicle.

About Face is a step back in time to a glamorous, yet complicated, era when drugs were rampant and women were routinely harassed and mistreated. The divergent attitudes among the women about everything from the business of modeling, to aging and plastic surgery, are fascinating and priceless. This insightful documentary celebrates the raw intelligence and staying power of these timeless icons. - L.V.”

5 BROKEN CAMERAS

“Five broken cameras—and each one has a powerful tale to tell. Embedded in the bullet-ridden remains of digital technology is the story of Emad Burnat, a farmer from the Palestinian village of Bil’in, which famously chose nonviolent resistance when the Israeli army encroached upon its land to make room for Jewish colonists. Emad buys his first camera in 2005 to document the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. Over the course of the film, he becomes the peaceful archivist of an escalating struggle as olive trees are bulldozed, lives are lost, and a wall is built to segregate burgeoning Israeli settlements.

Gibreel’s loss of innocence and the destruction of each camera are potent metaphors in a deeply personal documentary that vividly portrays a conflict many of us think we know. Emad Burnat, a Palestinian, joins forces with Guy Davidi, an Israeli, and—from the wreckage of five broken cameras—two filmmakers create one extraordinary work of art.”

CHINA HEAVYWEIGHT

CORPO CELESTE [no subs]

“Premiering at the 2011 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Corpo Celesteshowcased the talents of its remarkable young writer/director, Alice Rohrwacher, whom we eagerly welcome to the Sundance Film Festival.

After growing up in Switzerland, 13-year-old Marta returns to a city in southern Italy with her mother and older sister. Independent and inquisitive, she joins a catechism class at a local church. However, the games and religious pop songs she encounters there do not nearly satisfy her interest in faith. Struggling to find her place, Marta pushes the boundaries of the class, the priest, and the church.

Contemplating religion is an enduring tradition in Italian cinema, but Rohrwacher brings a fresh inflection and a provocative artistic vision. Her vérité aesthetic emphasizes character and subtle behavior. Uninterested in shallow critique, Corpo Celeste posits a girl who is resolutely searching for deeper truths. Marta instinctively rebels against the apathy and hypocrisy of the adults around her, including a priest who is more interested in his career than he is in faith. Ultimately, her spirituality is as much of the Earth as it is of the heavens.

- J.N.”

DECLARATION OF WAR

“The opening night film of the 2011 Cannes International Critics’ Week and France’s official 2011 Academy Award entry, Declaration of War is, above all, a love story.

After meeting at a party, Romeo and Juliette (they can’t believe it, either) fall in love, move in together, and have a child, Adam. The young couple, wearily navigating early parenthood, begin to suspect that Adam has a medical problem, a fear that’s confirmed when doctors discover a brain tumor. Gathering family and friends, they declare war on his illness, and their storybook romance plunges into an unrelenting world of hospitals, exhaustion, and uncertainty.

More heart than heartbreak, Valérie Donzelli’s second feature transforms the “disease drama” into an exuberant, fiercely original experience. With multiple narrators, cinematic flair, free-spirited editing, and eclectic music, Donzelli’s energetic style invokes la nouvelle vague but is also purely expressive—of laughter and tears, hope and fear, joy and anger. Written by Donzelli and Jérémie Elkaïm (based on their real-life experience), Declaration of War is a beautiful portrait of love and survival.
- J.N.”

SHORT FILMS

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared*

Le Mystere Picasso is a documentary which looks at Pablo Picasso’s creative process. Using a transparent ‘canvas’ the viewer is given an uninterrupted view off Picasso’s paintings as they go from basic brushstrokes to complicated and complex figures. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.

The Wages of Fear is another Cannes Film Festival winner, this time the 1953 Palm d’Or. Clouzot’s first international breakout film is set in South American and follows the travels of four European men hired by an American oil company as drivers. After introducing the men through their visiting of the local cantina, Clouzot follows them as they develop a deep rivalry between each other, becoming more obsessed with the idea of a fortune that awaits them at the end of their job.

Yeah, this guy knows a good ass kicking.

There are worse ways to spend a mildly hungover Sunday afternoon than watching Kill Arman in its entirety. The series features our man Arman, a tailor and party boy who for reasons not gone into (presumably shits and giggles, which is reason enough for me) goes around the world getting eight colours of snot beaten out of him by genius practitioners of deadly fighting. He goes to South Korea, China, Japan, England, Cambodia, and a few other joints to enjoy his face-pummeling, and while I don’t envy the brain-kicking he routinely enjoys, everything else maintains a nice level of vicarious enjoyment. But aside from watching a comparatively tubby man getting punched to custard every few days and being physically humiliated by five year-olds hourly, there are thoughts to be provoked here.

Extreme Martial Arts were developed in nations with a combination of economic, environmental, and political brutality, combined with harsh authoritarian rule. While sometimes the social structures that birthed these fighting style shave themselves withered and decayed, they present the interesting flip-side to our current prevailing libertarian western idiom. If you are willing to submit to doing exactly what someone else says from a young age, and follow a rigid set of rules your entire life, you can achieve extraordinary things. Our mindset suggests this may not be worth the implied loss of free-will, that whatever super human feats your body may be coaxed into are not worth the resulting lack of individual identity.

Indeed a social system that neglects orphans and poor children so thoroughly that their best option for survival is to enter a temple and be hit with sticks for fifteen years (but good sticks), could scarcely be considered amazing. Except that those kids can do amazing things, while those of us with happy childhoods are barely able to jog for our seat on an air-conditioned train. It is true any human being could be capable of the grueling physical development of young Shaolin students, but it is the centuries of method and study that have made this possible. And those centuries of method are characterised by a startling disregard for human life and the poor.

Also, breaking bars of iron with your head seven hours a day and running up and down mountains doesn’t leave a lot of time for your reading and writing and arithmetic and you know, fun.

And there it is.

The modern western martial art Arman learns is street warfare in America. This is ghetto-defence, another example of poverty and generally horrible ways of life resulting in being able to beat people up almost supernaturally. You could say it’s an argument for terrible lifestyles. Do we need one of those?

The rigidity of the structure of these Martial Arts is feared not just by us squishy whiteys, but also by the actual ruling systems of the countries they come from. Recognising the danger of groups of people single-mindedly dedicated to anything, many of these arts have been almost wiped out. The Shaolin School Arman visits has been forcibly moved from it’s temple by the communists and put it a rather hideous ‘modern’ concrete cell block. It is allowed to exist, but largely because Shaolin is now a source of national cultural pride. Bokator in Cambodia was almost completely destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, and all Martial Arts were banned. The ones that continued to thrive were similarly adopted by the state either as a display art, or a genuine military tactic. OR, they were entertaining as hell to watch, such as Boxing (which as a war weapon is pretty stupid, what with it’s gentlemanly rules and purely incidental killing blows). Frankly, the actual killing arts are considerably more respectful of the human form than Boxing. It’s like they just threw Boxing in there to embarrass Europe, and fair enough.

All in all, Arman doesn’t get very good at fighting. He doesn’t wind up hospitalised either, which is apparently only because the masters are pulling their punches. This is a noble code to live by, but if there’s one appetite this series whets without satisfying, it’s bloodlust. I kind of just want to see two Okinawa Karate masters beating the living hell out of each other. This is entertaining, a little superficial, and features a bunch of extremely decent tussles. Get amongst it.

By Ben Buckingham (@dissolvedpet)

Ned Beatty is one of those actors who used to pop up all over the place, but rarely got the recognition he deserved.

It hasn’t exactly gotten better for him over the years. You might squeal piggy and never give a thought to Ned’s brave performance as one of the few male Hollywood rape victims. You may cry out that you’re not going to take it any more, and forget that Ned towered above any Satan with his networking skills and commanding presence. In the case of Spring Forward, there is no memorable quote or brash violence. There was also no release in Australia beyond a long forgotten MIFF screening.

It is a great shame for such a confident and beautiful film about the bond between two men.

Directed and written by Tom Gilroy, an actor of straight-to-DVD and TV, it is a skilful, elegant film about a developing friendship over 12 months. Curiously, it was filmed chronologically over the course of an actual year and is divided loosely into four season-bound segments. Spring Forward captures a rhythm of life that is too often missing from dramatic works.

It is, for the most part, a two-hander, Murph (Ned Beatty) and Paul (Liev Schreiber, another actor who deserves more attention) as they live their lives. These men are brought together by a job, working for the Parks and Recreation Department in Connecticut. Murph has been doing it for a while. He has seen many a season come and go, calmly watching the ups and downs of the world pass by. Paul has just been released from prison after serving time for armed robbery; he has had it hard, that he wants to turn his life around.

The basic plot description and the trailer set the wheels of groaning into motion. Your automatic schmaltz deflectors go into action. But this isn’t that film.

There are very few big dramatic scenes and this is no melodrama. Instead, their lives mirror the leaves in the parks under their stead, gradually turning from lush green to vibrant orange and then back again. Despite the stillness, change is ever present. It is a film of precise and empathic performances, with slowly shifting moments of possibility interjecting from outside. While it is a small-scale film, it never feels slight. These two men are full and alive. There is melancholy and joy, and it is a simple, beautiful pleasure to accompany them on this year of their lives.

Due to the ridiculous classification system in America, this film was slapped with an R-17 (our equivalent MA15+) due to some swearing and one scene in which the two characters partake in a joint. There is nothing offensive here, nothing to corrupt or harm, but much to enjoy. It is available on a region 1 disc put out by MGM, very inexpensive. However, if you are in Melbourne, it will be screening at Screen Sect at Bar Open, 317 Brunswick St, on the 19^th of December at 7:30pm. Cost is $5 for a monthly membership.

Seek Spring Forward out.

The plot centre around a small town whose moral order has been kept in check because of the citizen’s fears that if they told someone’s secret, someone would tell theirs. Now, however, a series of letters have been written damning everyone in the town and leading the small-town world into chaos. As the villages turns upon each other even more secrets emerge, with tension mounting not in who the letter-writer is, but on what they will expose next.

To end the evening is a documentary on the aborted Clouzot film ‘L’Enfer’ entitled Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno (2009) by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea. Originally to be made in 1964, L’Enfer was a psychological study of jealousy, seen through the relationship of a husband and his young, audacious wife. Diverging from his usual form of Classic Cinema, Clouzot had planned a film filled with optical illusions as a way of expressing the inner psychological anguish of his characters. Due to money and time constraints, as well as Clouzot’s hastening descent from the public eye and cinema circles, the film was never finished.
Bromberg and Medrea’s documentary brings together a collection of test shots taken by Clouzot, re-enactments of scenes, and interviews to create an insight of what would have been a fantastic piece of cinema.

To begin the retrospective this week we have Les Diabliques, based on the novel She Who Was No More and reportedly adapted into a film by Clouzot before Hitchock had the chance to. The plot- drastically changed by Clouzot- follows the wife and mistress of a sadistic and cruel boarding school headmaster as they plot, scheme and eventually murder him. Yet when the drowned body disappears and reports of the murdered man begin to be cited around town emerge, the two women slowly begin to be driven mad with guilt and worry.

The first film made after his government-forced censorship, Quai des Orfevres was re-written by Clouzot from memory as the original novel was out of print. A Private Investigator tries to uncover the murder of a sleazy film producer who often ‘discovered’ girls at musical halls and dance acts. His most recent discovery was Jenny Lamour who would do anything to become famous, even in spite of her jealous boyfriends threats of murder if she went to the producers house. Which much focus put on the psychological drive and make-up of characters, Quai des Orfevres is often seen as the pinnacle of post-war crime films.

As a writer, May’s work is an odd blend of adventures set in the Wild West with eccentric characters and fanciful plotlines, and has sold millions of units across the world. He is known for being a childhood idol of Adolf Hitler who went to a lecture given by May days before his death in 1912.

Karl May dressed as Old Shatterhand, his alter-ego and main character in numerous novels.

Here, Syberberg’s film is second in a trilogy (following Ludwig- Requiem for a Virgin King (1972) and Hitler- A film from Germany (1977)) that looks at the German psyche, nationalism, and the aesthetic and mythic origins of the Third Reich. Focusing on the last ten years of May’s life Syberberg is able to highlight the impact this figure had had on Germany through dynamic and often juxtaposed performances.