Jett here:  I’m excited to introduce a new contributor to the site – Tim Hayes.  Tim’s a freelance writer based in the UK, who earns his living writing about business, science, art, and other topics in a land where, according to legend, the work of the journalist is respected and rewarded.

He writes about films too.  You can find him at www.timhayes.eu, Linkedin and on Twitter at twitter.com/pistolerosa.

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The trick to being a good troublemaker is to lob your brick and then vanish, so it’s entirely fitting that Richard Stanley had made his two recognized feature films by 1993 and has found other fish to fry ever since. Stuck as we are in a drought of troublemaking directors, that’s a shame. But it does leave his authentic piece of brilliance to stand in splendid isolation.

HARDWARE isn’t it. That movie has its admirers, and the filmmakers work wonders to create dystopia in sets that look about as big as a closet, but the very British late-1980s flavor of civilized anarchy has curdled a bit and drags like an anchor. Kudos to William Hootkins for delving so deep into sleazebaggery as a voyeuristic pervert that his sweat runs off the screen and pools on your carpet, but he and the other supporting cast wouldn’t be out of place in BBC’s The Young Ones. The tone of the UK comic 2000 AD is pretty clear too, even before the lawyers got into an argument over the story’s origins.

What does work, and well enough to signpost Stanley’s great gift, is the not-very-sub-text. Stuck in a land of sterilization and birth control, restless artist Jill, played by Stacey Travis as a ballsy flame-haired Final Girl, builds a surrogate child out of black market junk and gets an uncontrollable killobot for her troubles. The sequence where she builds the machine is a great piece of montage, with the beast watching the endless violence on television while Jill gifts him a body and paints it with the Stars And Stripes. Weaned on war crimes and punk rock, the kid duly goes after his mom with a phallic drill bit very close to the one last seen heading for a tender area of Julie Christie in DEMON SEED. Close, but no cigar.

But DUST DEVIL is the real deal. The best kind of horror film, in that it’s a sprawling, political, metaphysical fable cooked up by a production team clearly half out of their minds, it throws any hint of self-parody out of the window and delves deep into psycho-geography instead. Technically it’s about a shape-shifting hitch-hiking serial killer, played by Robert Burke in an outfit owing a debt to both Sergio Leone and Stanley’s old comrades in Fields of the Nephilim, who murders young women and then does very unpleasant things to them afterward. But the film is really about its setting, the Namibia/South Africa border in the early 1990s, where some strange and powerful magic is stirring. Sorcery envelops everyone, but especially the rootless and significantly-named Wendy, played by a convincingly frazzled Chelsea Field. As unsettled and paranoid as any white South African of the time, Wendy falls into the arms of her particularly lost boy in a suicidal swoon, the two of them dancing to Hank Williams’ Ramblin’ Man while the earth shifts under them.

The second-best thing about DUST DEVIL is this whole social dimension that Stanley frets away at patiently while the serial killer has his fun. Only Clive Barker, another fine troublemaker, has this knack in this genre to the same extent. (And Barker’s last film as director before he too tired of the struggle, LORD OF ILLUSIONS, post-dates DUST DEVIL by only a few years and shares a producer and a composer. They make a fine double bill.) DUST DEVIL’s feeling for the land of its birth, for desert and ruin and isolation, is right up there with WITCHFINDER GENERAL‘s empathy for English evergreens. It shows a whole country swimming up through the last throes of a nightmare and apparently calling up a demon in the process, with everyone caught at the moment that the fever breaks.

The best thing about DUST DEVIL is two of those people, the shaman Joe played by John Matshikiza and the cop Ben played by Zakes Mokae; two actors not demeaned in the slightest by the film’s wild mix of social witchcraft, playing two characters long since battered into shreds. The social document of these two South African performers playing out this story, both of them as freighted with past experiences as the characters they portray and both now gone, is not short of power. Mokae’s voice sounds like creaking shelves of history books. DUST DEVIL’s delirium finally crests when poor tormented Ben gets an inkling that he just might be a character in someone else’s film. Hypnotized by a vision of his wife as the Black Madonna, he lurches sideways out of his own movie in a flurry of sprocket holes. Free at last.

Tough to top that. And barring the disastrous miseries of Stanley’s attempt to film THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU, he hasn’t tried. Instead he turned that same eye for montage and illusion to documentaries, and if ever there was a convincing argument that the best documentarians are anthropologists, Richard Stanley is it. All his documentaries are worth the effort, but inevitably the humdinger is SECRET GLORY, a wild old girl of a doc taking in Nazism, mountains of crystal in the Tyrolean Alps, and the Holy Grail being carved out of a meteorite. Made in 2000 it fits neatly into the millennial vibe of the moment, while also looking askance at Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles and backwards towards Illuminatus!. Watched today, it also looks as if Stanley preempted the folks now thought to be reinvigorating the documentary form by a decade or so.

And he’s still out there somewhere, although for now it looks like the man’s puckish glee in getting behind the camera has displaced his analytical eye. Maybe Dr Moreau has to take the blame for that. But go and find SEA OF PERDITION anyway, to see what a self-aware director can do when at play in a nine minute short, and how a Martian temple and some shape-shifting SOLARIS-style manifestations can be created down one end of a beach in Iceland if a filmmaker has the nerve for it. Watch it for its female astronaut (niftily named Sly Delta Honey, a sign for any Lucius Shepard readers that this particular wanderer probably isn’t exactly in the land of the living either), stumbling around to John Barry’s music from MOONRAKER. Take the opportunity to see a fish-man space traveller saunter off to the strains of Paul Williams singing We Could Have Been Anything That We Wanted To Be from BUGSY MALONE. More troublemaking like this, please.

Bonded Labor/Debt Bondage according to Anti-Slavery International:

“A person becomes a bonded laborer when his or her labor is demanded as a means of repayment for a loan. The person is then tricked or trapped into working for very little or no pay, often for seven days a week. The value of their work is invariably greater than the original sum of money borrowed. Millions of people are held in bonded labour around the world.

Bonded labor has existed for thousands of years. In South Asia it took root in the caste system and continues to flourish in feudal agricultural relationships. Bonded labor was also used as a method of colonial labor recruitment for plantations in Africa, the Caribbean and South East Asia.

Bonded laborers are routinely threatened with and subjected to physical and sexual violence. They are kept under various forms of surveillance, in some cases by armed guards. There are very few cases where chains are actually used (although it does occur) but these constraints on the bonded laborers are every bit as real and as restricting.”

Shocked by modern day slavery, young filmmaker Gregg Helvey, (we discussed an earlier film of his here: Overexposed’ and Responsibility in Image Making), has made a fiction short ‘Kavi’, which portrays several days in the life of a young bonded worker.

It’s the best student film I’ve seen since George Lucas’s breakout ‘THX 1138 4EB’.

Set in a brickworks that could be anytime/anywhere, the images are corrosive, seething, painful.  The cast is powerful, the roles archetypal.  The photography has an oily sheen – as if the film stock itself is shamed by what it’s recording.

The image-making is simple – the compositions don’t bring attention to themselves till the end – when the pic allows itself, in relief, some wit as Kavi makes one small step for humanity*

‘Kavi’ has been shortlisted for a Student Academy Award – we’ll find out tomorrow what it wins.  Regardless of its honours ‘Kavi’ should be seen by the widest audience possible – if it’s on your favourite streaming service or in a festival near you please take the opportunity to watch it – it’s a small, yet important film that’s trying to make the world a better place – if only more movies, and people did the same.

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* Whitey on the Moon

Just finished watching Gregg Helvey’s 2006 USC student documentary, ‘Overexposed’, about the arguably corrosive effect pornography has on men’s sexuality and it got me to thinking: what responsibility do we image makers have when it comes to portraying the erotic in our mediums?

In this Pinewood Dialogues interview Werner Herzog says something to the effect that “unless you know the heart’s of men you have no right to make a film” – is the same true for erotica?

When I was eleven or twelve I spent a lot of time on my own in the TV capital of Holland: Hilversum, (never mind why I was there – the fact was I was alone and spent much time living in an artist’s studio).  Being at that age I was sexually curious and my only pictorial companion in those matters was a book on ‘Renaissance Masters Drawings of the Female Nude’.  This of course was very exciting and perhaps explains my fascination, extending into my teen years, with very curvy women.  I felt at the time that the images in this book had immense power over me, (as mentioned in ‘Overexposed’ men’s response to sexual imagery includes ‘drive’, something apparently not found in most women).  As an adult now planning to have children I can’t help but be concerned by the infinite amount of pornographic content available on the web for free.

So I ask: how is pornography affecting both men and women’s sexuality in the ‘post rise of the internet’ generation?  And what responsibilities do the makers of erotic images have?

Overexposed touches on these matters only slightly, but it is a short film, and a student one to boot, so it can be forgiven for not giving a deep analysis.

It does offer one way forward though for film makers: at the end of the doc we have a non-sexual scene of intimacy between a couple – will this type of thing – intimacy presented in a postive, and glamorous way, be a possible way forward away from the current crass, limiting and destructive portrayal of sex in our society?

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UPDATE May 7th, 2009:  If you’re interested in seeing ‘Overexposed’ please send an email to: info@overexposedthemovie.com to request a copy for free, (plus shipping cost)

(Jett is a Juror at this year’s Nashville Film Festival, (April 16th-23rd); he’ll be updating ‘The Film Talk’ throughout the Fest with thoughts on films seen both in and out of competition – as always Spoilers Ahoy)

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I Am So Proud of You / By Don Hertzfeldt

Normally.

Normally.

Normally I wait a couple of days after seeing a film before commenting on it – letting it digest, you know.  But I find myself with fierce urgency typing this – so compelled am I to tell you what I’ve just seen.  You don’t see two good films in a day, man.  I don’t see one good film in a month it seems – and I see everything.

So today – to see two extraordinary – remarkable – films requires an exclamation point at the end of this sentence, !

First – ‘I Am So Proud of You’:  It’s everything Benjamin Button wanted to be – an extraordinary meditation on life, childhood, aging, futility and the search for meaning.  Fusing the work of artists like Guy Maddin, David Lynch and Crispin Glover, animator Don Hertzfeldt has created a masterwork.

Watching this twenty-two minute life story of stick-figure, ‘Bill’, is to see someone in complete control of their medium.  It’s hysterically funny, whimsical, macabre, horrifying, sentimental, mawkish, chilling, insightful and sublime – all at the same moment.

Make the time to see this picture – if you can’t see it at the Fest then put it on your queue, your download in-box, your phone insta-list – whatever, whatever you use to view films – make a note and see it.

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‘I Am so Proud of You’ screens as part of the ‘Cartoons for Grownups’ program: Saturday, April 18th at 9:30pm and Tuesday, April 21st at 9:30pm.

Slaves / Directed by David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn

While ‘I Am So Proud of You’ uses a vast array of cinematic tricks and grammar to produce intense emotional effects in the viewer, ‘Slaves’ uses one very simple technique at the start and end to completely enwrap you in a story.

I say story – but that’s not right – let’s call it for what it is – the human condition.  This condition being the tendency we have to treat others in ways different than we would like to be treated – in short it’s 2009 and we allow slavery.

There are slaves here – just a plane ride away.

Does that bother you? Yes?  Well what are you going to do about it?  Anything?

In ‘Slaves’ we hear an audio recording of two escaped slaves giving a history – this audio interview has been animated – a method of film making very similar to what we see in ‘Waltz with Bashir’ – but with an important difference.

The audio in this film isn’t polished as in ‘Bashir’; we hear the interviewers having problems with recording equipment, futzing around with levels, bumping the mic, etc.  By letting us hear these technical problems at the start as well as at the end of the film, and by including other bits of business commercial cinema normally cut out such as sneezes and coughs our ‘cinematic minds’ are conditioned to believe everything we hear – in short – we accept we are witness to a truth.

This is motion-picture manipulation at its most elegant, most powerful and most justified – the same exhortation I used above for for ‘I Am So Proud of You’ applies to ‘Slaves’ -  I can’t think of two more important and urgent pictures to watch right now.

‘Slaves’ screens as part of the ‘Animating History / Animating Reality’ program: Saturday, April 18th at 07:00 PM and Monday, April 20th at 03:15 PM.

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An additional note: watching these films am struck again by the absurdity of categories for films – ‘animated movies’ – why?  ‘Documentaries’ – why? In an age in which in the Western world everyone has a video camera in their pocket, the need for ‘silos’ for different kinds of pictures becomes not just otiose but unhelpful – we’re at the beginning of an explosion of new types of moving pictures – why compartmentalise this new work?; (additional and perhaps contradictory thoughts on the subject can be found in this post).

(Jett is a Juror at this year’s Nashville Film Festival, (April 16th-23rd); he’ll be updating ‘The Film Talk’ throughout the Fest with thoughts on films seen both in and out of competition – as always Spoilers Ahoy)

Instead of Abracadabra / Written and Directed by Patrik Eklund / Starring Simon J. Berger

Chimay!

There, it’s done – I’ve found my mantra – the word that will restore my focus when I’m befuddled – bring me up when ever I’m down.

What’s that you say?  The hard-hearted cynic of ‘The Film Talk’ who vents spleen at Hollywood product like ‘Knowing’ whenever he gets the chance has been revitalised by a short Swedish comedic portrait of a failed magician who lives with his parents and whose magic word ‘Chimay’ is mistaken for ‘Shemale’?

Yes.  Yes, of course I have.

Without shame I say ‘Instead of Abracadabra’, (original title ‘Istället för abrakadabra’ – thankfully this isn’t the show and I don’t have to say that out loud), is the feel good hit of the…well, it was the feel good hit of this Easter Sunday.

That may not sound like a ringing endorsement.  But let me tell you something – I see a lot of films.

A. Lot. Of. Films.

I have stacks of screeners surrounding me as a write this – little known Abyssinian dramas tumble down from piles onto unsolicited mumblecore weepies shot entirely on Cell Phones shooting through Pixelvision viewfinders.

Not all of these films are gold.

So when a pic feels fresh, confident – is full of the razamatazz – full of the hoo-haa – full of Chimay! then I stir from the seemingly narcostised slumber that watching one bad student feature after another instills, (note to “Joe” who’s mortgaged his girlfriend’s house to pay for a ‘shot on 65mm’ dream picture about one crazy last summer before adulthood:  you can do better).

The acting is sharp, the camerawork witty – you will feel fear – you will laugh – you’ll worry about the characters – in short:  it’s a well made film.

If you’re at this year’s Nashville Film Fest try to make it to ‘Instead of Abracadabra’, (or go to the ticket booth and ask for ‘Istället för abrakadabra’ – go on, I dare you), you’ll leave the cinema shouting ‘Chimay!’*

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‘Istället för abrakadabra’ / ‘Instead of Abracadabra’ screens as part of the ‘Fun With Our Shorts On’ program – Friday, April 17 at 06:30 PM and Thursday April 23 at 01:00 PM.

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* I realise this sort of film critcism sounds like a puff piece – I think unconsciously I’m trying to get my name on a poster – you know, the kind of thing you’d see on ‘Fast and Furious’: “An Action Packed, Adrenaline-Fueled Thrill Ride!”  The fact that I’m blurbing for a little known Swedish Magician Pic, (is that a genre?), speaks volumes.  Chimay.

(Jett is a Juror at this year’s Nashville Film Festival, (April 16th-23rd); he’ll be updating ‘The Film Talk’ throughout the Fest with thoughts on films seen both in and out of competition – as always Spoilers Ahoy)

Streak / Featuring Brittany Snow – Rumer Willis / Written by Kelly Fremon – Allan Loeb / Directed by Demi Moore

Was Marylin Monroe beautiful?

I don’t know.

Her face and body have been reproduced so many times in the media that I find it impossible to form even a remotely defensibly objective view about her image or talent.  If only I could erase all knowledge of her then perhaps I could appreciate Eisenstaedt’s photos or Wilder’s ‘Some Like it Hot’.

With this in mind how am I able to see clearly the new short film ‘Streak’ knowing as I do that Demi Moore directed it?  If only I hadn’t looked it up on IMDB first.  But I did.

So this short flick, the story of a young woman who rejects the obsessive calorie counting of her gym rat pals and finds salvation in running nude, (streaking), can’t be separated in my mind from director Moore’s own use of her body as assertive career changer.

Seen in the context of Demi disrobing, (for the cover of Vanity Fair – pregnant! / thrusting herself on the stage in ‘Striptease’), ‘Streak’ is fascinating.

Freedom in nudity.

Rejection of suffocating social norms by running wild – your flabby bits wobbling everywhere for the world to see.

Well not quite.  ‘Cause the heroine of ‘Streak’ is actually in great shape – oh why couldn’t she have been played by someone with the body of Kathy Bates?

So in that sense the film disappoints – but, if I didn’t know the pic was from an Industry Superstar I’d applaud this first time helmer’s effort – and look forward to more films from said director.

In fact Ms. Moore has shown that she can direct – I would pay to see a feature film by her – she’s proven she can keep it all together and tell a well crafted and quite moving story.

Only, next time Director Moore – let it all hang out.

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‘Streak’ screens in the program “Grow Up Already – Coming of Age Shorts” – Tuesday April 21st at 1:00 PM and Wednesday April 22nd at 05:30 PM.

(Jett is a Juror at this year’s Nashville Film Festival, (April 16th-23rd); he’ll be updating ‘The Film Talk’ throughout the Fest with thoughts on films seen both in and out of competition – as always, beware the possibilities of spoilers)

Hot Dog / Written, Directed and Animated by Bill Plympton

My genial co-host Dr. Gareth Higgins has pointed out in this blog that the animated film ‘Bolt’ is not all it could have been:

Bolt – a computer-generated film whose end credits reveal beautiful pencil and paint images that could have made it a masterpiece. Instead, and regrettably, it looks more like an elongated version of the half-finished special features on a Pixar DVD.

It seems with that with ‘Bolt’ and many other contemporary animated pics the charm, whimsy and humanity have been sanded down / polished out – leaving a sort of mass appeal product that’s more analogous to a focus-tested toy for tweens than an actual movie.*

So thank God for Bill Plympton’s ‘Hot Dog’.

The simple story of a dog who just wants to be a fire house mascot and do some good yet is perpetually stymied, ‘Hot Dog’ is vigorously animated in a sharply personal style.  You don’t get a feeling there were a dozen teams of people working on this pic for years; no hunched animators toiling in lofts for a massive company that provides free massage services and a Foosball table in a sunlit atrium for relaxation.

There’s just Bill.

And his pencil.  Making one drawing after another.

‘Hot Dog’ is the third in the series of ‘dog’ pictures Plympton has done, (the others being the Oscar nominated ‘Guard Dog’ followed by ‘Guide Dog’), and it’s the best of the bunch.  More humor and pathos is packed into its 6 minutes, (!), than most feature films.

Most startlingly, unlike mass produced animated movies which seemingly must end in triumph for the hero, at the most basic level the ‘Dog’ pics are about failure – that may not sound like a good night out but ‘Hot Dog’ is the real deal – it’s tough being alive and when we see ‘dog’ try to succeed, even if he fails, it kinda makes you glad to be alive.

See ‘Hot Dog’ at the Fest if you get the chance.

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‘Hot Dog’ will screen Tuesday, Apr 21, 2009, at 7:45pm before 2 other Bill Plympton pics:  Fascist Santa and Idiots & Angels.

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Click here to watch ‘Guard Dog’

Click here to watch ‘Guide Dog’

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* An exception to this for me was ‘Kung Fu Panda’ – it’s better than Wall-E:

Kung Fu Panda is Better than Wall-E – The Annie Awards are Right

I’m loving my Blu-ray player and, inspired by the fact that a number of film critics I like have named Disney’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as one of the best releases of the past year, have been watching this fifty year old cartoon in ten minute bursts since the Netflix copy arrived on Monday.  It’s twee and sentimental, but also happens to be visually astonishing.  The backgrounds in particular are feats of the imagination that amaze; the wicked queen’s (if indeed she is a queen – I haven’t really been following the story) lair has the detail of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ while also reminding me of the production style Tim Burton used more recently in ‘Sweeney Todd’; and the character images are elegant and evocative – a comedy fat king, an embosoming fairy or three, a jutting-chinned handsome prince.  Beyond that, the way the Blu-ray makes the film look is almost too good; I like a bit of grain in my old film transfers rather than feeling like I’m watching a robot painting in ‘THX 1138′, but I suppose that’s churlish when faced with the upgraded image available on the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ blu-ray.

Having said that, I’m not writing here to encourage you to watch a Disney fairytale cartoon with Freudian resonance, engaging as that may be.  It’s the short film special feature included on the disc that blew me away.  ‘Grand Canyon’, a 25 minute live action film putting incredible photography – much of it aerial – of the canyon to the music of Ferde Grofé.  I remember seeing such nature documentaries when I was a kid, as the ‘B’ film before movies like ‘The Dark Crystal’; I remember being bored, the anticipation of the main event making patience impossible.  I’m guessing that ‘Grand Canyon’ might have been one of the film I couldn’t wait to end; and like many things I wasted as a child, having watched it again the other night, I wish I hadn’t.

Disney’s ‘Grand Canyon’, directed by James Algar is, quite simply, my film of the week; maybe the month; maybe the year.  The images evoke the stargate sequence of ’2001′, making it one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen; the fact that the images are timeless – the Grand Canyon was here before any of us, and will still be here after we’ve gone (if indeed we ever do leave here – but we’ll get to the theology of the afterlife in a future episode ;-)) makes it one of the most disturbing.  The lack of tricks available to film-makers in 1958 compared with today makes it a far more naturalistic short than might be made with a computer or IMAX; all to the good, as far as I’m concerned.  It’s like a live action ‘Fantasia’; and I’d guess that your feelings about ‘Fantasia’ will largely shape your response about ‘Grand Canyon’.  As Jett would say, ‘Go see it‘

Via Digg user AmyVernon comes the news that at least 10 short films being seen at Sundance this year are available for free on Apple’s iTunes:

Sundance from the Comfort of Your Home

If you have iTunes and want to go directly to the Sundance Shorts download area then click below:

Sundance Film Festival 2009, (will launch the iTunes app)

The image at top is from one of the available pics: ‘Magnetic Movie’ a beautifully produced short by Semiconductor Films – if you’re not a fan of iTunes you can watch it below via Vimeo.

Sundance says that the Shorts are also available via Netflix and Xbox – now I don’t have an Xbox so wasn’t able to try it out – but I do use Netflix’s Watch Instantly and gave that a go – but when I clicked on ‘Netflix’ I was taken to ‘Butch and Sundance – the Early Years, (seems like it’s just a ‘search for Sundance’ function), which of course reminds one of this:

Anyhew, check it out – am watching them all right now!