Some slight disagreement and perhaps some slight insight into two of the films of the Summer: THE AVENGERS and THE CABIN IN THE WOODS.

Running time:  38 minutes and 26 seconds – 35.3mb

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Oslo, August 31

After 8 exhausting and exhilarating days, the 2012 NASHVILLE FILM FESTIVAL is at an end. I was so consumed with the fest and my day job that I haven’t had a free moment to post on The Film Talk for the past three days. Here’s what I saw Tuesday though Thursday.

LA CAMIONETA: THE JOURNEY OF ONE AMERICAN SCHOOL BUS was not on my original docket; but I had nothing in that Tuesday night slot, and the reviews seemed positive. My chief worry about subject documentaries, that the subjects can overshadow the quality of filmmaking, was quickly assuaged. The documentary follows a U.S. school bus from the Texas auction lot all the way to the final buyer in Guatemala. Boy, I’m glad I gave this one a shot. Every aspect of the production was professional, artful, and highly-skilled. Director Mark Kendall told the story with a great respect for his subject and an eye for detail. Early on in the film, we learn that Guatemalan bus drivers are preyed upon by extortionists who demand money for protection. Those who don’t comply are killed. New footage shows one bus ablaze, bombed, 7 passengers dead and more injured. Documentary filmmakers too often rewrite the facts (THE KING OF KONG) or stand idly by while the subjects are in danger (BLACK BULL) for the sake of the story. It is to Mark Kendall’s great credit that he decided not to follow the bus on its highly-dangerous city route. As he explained in the Q&A, he did not want to risk the lives of the bus operators by bringing a camera on board. It would have made for a compelling ending to the film. But some things are more important than images. Kudos to Mark. I eagerly await his next film.

Next up was UNDER AFRICAN SKIES, a documentary about Paul Simon’s return to South Africa to reunite with the GRACELAND musicians, directed by Joe Berlinger (BROTHER’S KEEPER, PARADISE LOST). First off, let me confess that I lack the Paul Simon gene. His music just doesn’t do it for me. I showed up for the consistently great work of Joe Berlinger. Even if you’re not a Simon fan, you’ll find much to like, especially the extended discussion of the controversy surrounding Simon’s decision to break an international embargo to record in Apartheid South Africa. In the end, I found Simon’s arguments much less persuasive than Artists Against Apartheid founder Dali Tambo’s. UNDER AFRICAN SKIES is slick and high in star power (Oprah Winfrey, Paul McCartney, etc), but it so lacks the grit and artistry of Berlinger’s earlier films that I wonder if it’s primarily a meal ticket. Grit or no, the film is a worth your time.

I started out Wednesday with the Romanian film ADALBERT’S DREAM, a film I had reviewed for the Nashville Scene. Yes, I liked it so much, I watched it for again. My second viewing only deepened my appreciation. Here’s my Scene preview:

This biting Romanian satire opens with the final moments of the 1986 European Cup, when Steaua Bucharest goalie Helmuth Duckadam miraculously blocked all four of Barcelona’s overtime spot-kicks. The next day, it’s all safety engineer Iulica and his factory co-workers can talk about, back-handedly praising Helmuth by wondering, “What’s wrong with him?” A fitting metaphor for life in Communist Romania where beneath the surface, the real economy bubbles — Iulica sells tickets to private screenings on his contraband VCR, a lathe operator makes extra utensils on the sly, another worker smuggles eggs in her hair buns. While the workers attend the premiere of Iulica’s two new “work safety” films, another accident occurs, perhaps inevitable in a culture where survival means keeping up appearances while looking the other way.

My final film Wednesday was the only repertory film of the fest: Brian DePalma’s glorious rock opera PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE. I had really hoped Paul Williams would attend the screening, but sadly he was not due until the next day’s screening of PAUL WILLIAMS STILL ALIVE. While the direction was choppy and the character motivations obfuscating, Paul William’s songs were great and the set and costume designs positively inspired. There were several unexplainable lapses of competence including vocals mixed way too low in some songs and the clearly miscast Jessica Harper. I can see why PHANTOM was a flop, but I can also see how it has slowly gained the status of a cult classic. As late shift organizer Jason Shawhan astutely pointed out, Swan’s Death Records bears an uncanny resemblance to Nashvillian Jack White’s Third Man Records.

I asked off work on Thursday to cram in more films on the festival’s final day. The first was Jennifer Baichwal’s documentary PAYBACK based on the Margaret Atwood book of the same name. Jennifer’s last NaFF entry was MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, and it was one of my favorites of that year. After buying my ticket (and before the screening), I learned of the PAYBACK’s mostly-dismal reviews. Critics accused it of being desultory and unfocused. While I agree with that assessment, I still recommend the film. The book and film set out to explore the subject of debt in all its forms. In the case of the film, that meant the debt BP owes the environment, an Albanian assailant owes his victim neighbor, and Florida apple orchard companies owe their workers. The subjects are disparate in category and scope, and that may be magnified by a pesky sub-theme of conservationism in two-thirds of the main stories. We so want this to be a ’cause-doc’ in the vein of FOOD, INC or LAST CALL AT THE OASIS. Perhaps the fault lies with Baichwal in not properly managing our expectations. Yet I feel, like MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, PAYBACK is philosophical exploration, not a conclusion. Meandering isn’t a weakness. It goes with the territory.

My second film Wednesday was OSLO, AUGUST 31, two days in the life of Anders, a recovering heroin addict. NaFF 2012 was an extremely strong year, and yet this film was easily, EASILY, my favorite film of the festival. Second-time director Joachim Trier isn’t a master in the making. He’s already there. An early scene takes place in a cafe. Anders helplessly eavesdrops on the conversations surrounding him. The scene is composed with such effortless skill and beauty that it rivals the best moments of Tarkovsky, Bergman, or Dreyer. Yeah, the film is that good. See it any way you can.

THE DYNAMITER won the festival’s narrative prize (announced the day before), so I decided to watch it instead of 5 BROKEN CAMERAS. While I wouldn’t have awarded it the prize when PILGRIM SONG and ADALBERT’S DREAM were eligible, THE DYNAMITER was thoroughly entertaining. I agree with Jim Ridley’s assessment in the Nashville Scene when he said, “. . . a real diamond in the rough. … Comparisons to Days of Heaven and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows suggest less the style or level of accomplishment than the mark the movie leaves in memory.” NOBODY KNOWS it isn’t. But it’s still an impressive debut from director Mathew Gordon. Keep an eye out for him.

Of course I was going to enjoy the closing film PAUL WILLIAMS STILL ALIVE! The star and director attended, and how can you be bet against the man who wrote RAINBOW CONNECTION? The documentary tracks down the reclusive songwriter and former television icon and offers a glimpse of what his life has become (celebrity gold tourneys, concerts in the Philippines). A big part of my enjoyment came from the osmotic energy of Paul Williams being in the house. The lively Q&A also was fascinating. Without that contact high, I may have given the film a decent 3 out of 5 stars. If you enjoy William’s work, don’t miss it.

And thus ended the 2012 Nashville Film Festival. I can honestly say that this has been the best year of the 6 I’ve attended. I screened 22 films. I’ll end my coverage with my top 5. I was not able to view the documentary prize winner SALAAM DUNK or the acclaimed ABSENT, 5 BROKEN CAMERAS, A TRIP, or GIRL MODEL. Thanks for reading. Next stop: Cannes! (I can dream, can’t I?)

1. OSLO, AUGUST 31

2. ELENA

3. ADALBERT’S DREAM

4. PILGRIM SONG

5. THE INTOUCHABLES

<– Naff Day 5

Tony Youngblood is a film and music snob and producer of the experimental improv music blog and podcast Theatre Intangible. His favorite films include Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray, Abbass Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician, Lee Chang Dong’s Oasis, and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap.

It’s a blast from the past Dear Listener – a special Member’s Only episode from 2010: Reviews of THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS , THE ROAD, THE BOOK OF ELI and UP IN THE AIR.

Running time:  1 Hours 21 minutes and 35 seconds – 78.4mb

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Elena

While I sit in theatre chairs waiting for films to begin, my mind wanders. At film festivals, my mind wanders farther, deeper, and, at the end of 11 solid hours of screenings, straight off the deep end. Occasionally, I think of little nuggets to post. For example:

Things to Bring to a Film Festival:

1. A light jacket. I don’t care if it’s warm outside. There’s a good chance the theater will be COOOOOOLD. A jacket doubles as a seat saver, a snack stuffer, and a pillow. Don’t leave home without one.

2. Pocket snacks (granola bar, trail mix, etc).

3. Collapsible water bottle.

4. Chewing gum. Let’s face it, you could use a breath freshener (and a popcorn kernel dislodger).

5. A small backpack or shoulder bag. This is a must if you’re lugging around film guides, snacks, water, etc.

6. A paperback. You may have lots of downtime. Put down that cell phone and pick up a book!

7. Pills. In my case, pain pills, allergy pills, and heartburn pills.

8. An electric cattle prod. When the person in front of you starts texting or talking in the middle of the movie, do you really want to get out of your seat to tell a manager? A quick jolt is worth a thousand words.

Ok, maybe not electric cattle prod. But I can dream.

On to the reviews.

I started Monday evening with the Russian drama ELENA, the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize winner at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. I don’t want to give too much away (this is the type of film where the less you know, the better), but let’s say it explores the relationship between a late-life married couple and their non-mutual children. ELENA started off slow and methodical but quickly drew me in. What I loved most was the way it subverted my preconceptions about the characters. Some viewers may feel cheated by this. We are used to films that clearly tell us who is the hero and who is the villain. Once we make up our minds, it causes cognitive dissonance to have those conclusions questioned. ELENA is my favorite film of the fest so far. The Phillip Glass score is also a treat!

It’s not an Asian crime-noir unless the assassin dotes on a pet. In the case of Thai master Pen-Ek Ratanaruang’s HEADSHOT, the pets are the aquarium fish he lovingly feeds. I’m a big fan of Ratanaruang’s other work, but the early reviews for HEADSHOT were mediocre at best. I came out very pleasantly surprised. They said the non-linear plot was convoluted. I found it unexpectedly easy to follow. They said the film was boring. I found it immensely entertaining. The film feels like Ratanaruang’s attempted break from the art house circuit to the mainstream Thai box office, and maybe that’s what bothered the critics. To summarize: an incorruptible cop is framed for murder. When released, he becomes a hitman for a secret organization that targets crime lords and corrupt officials. He’s shot in the head during a job, and when he wakes up three months later, he sees everything upside down. There were a few too many “come on!” moments for me to put it in my top films of the fest, but I enjoyed it all the same.

Tonight I’m screening LA CAMIONETA: THE JOURNEY OF ONE AMERICAN SCHOOL BUS and Joe Berlinger’s UNDER AFRICAN SKIES. I’ll tell you about them tomorrow!

<– Naff Day 4

–> NaFF Days 6-8 / Wrap Up

Tony Youngblood is a film and music snob and producer of the experimental improv music blog and podcast Theatre Intangible. His favorite films include Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray, Abbass Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician, Lee Chang Dong’s Oasis, and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap.

The Intouchables

I’ll have to make this one quick. I have to leave to see ELENA in 25 minutes.

First up on Sunday was BEAUTY IS EMBARRASSING, a very nice documentary about artist and former Chattanooga resident Wayne White. Wayne is responsible for designing and voicing Randy, Dirty Dog, and other puppets on Pee Wee’s Playhouse. For those of you who grew up watching the show like me, the section about the seminal children’s program is worth the price of admission. Wayne spoke after the screening and proved he was even more charismatic in person than on screen. A well-made movie about a fascinating and extremely-talented character.

The French animated film TALES OF THE NIGHT (IN 3D!) may be mildly entertaining to French children, but to American kids who don’t read books let alone subtitles, I suspect the film will be a bore. I found it entertaining enough but perhaps a bit too inconsequential. Someone please tell me why a movie featuring computer-rendered versions of shadow puppets would need to be in 3D? It brought absolutely nothing to the experience.

I had a couple of hours to kill. NaFF really wanted me to see STREET PAPER because it was the only film playing in that time slot. The roughly-made documentary about Nashville’s street paper THE CONTRIBUTER may not win any awards, but I’m glad I saw it. The characters were fascinating, and I can safely say no other film this year will change my outlook as much as STREET PAPER did. Every month, I’ll be buying the CONTRIBUTER from the seller on Thompson & Nolensville that I up until now have ignored.

The major winner of the day was the French “feel-good” film THE INTOUCHABLES about a paraplegic man’s budding friendship with his unlikely caretaker. This is the second highest grossing film in French box office history. Yes, this type of slickness usually makes me run for the door . . . BUT! . . . despite that, it actually works. I was not prepared for how much I enjoyed this film. The only thing that really irked me (and this is a sore point) is the casting of an able-bodied actor in the role of the paraplegic man. (See: GLEE / Artie controversy.) Sure, Francois Cluzet did a fine job; but disabled actors have a hard enough time as it is getting film and television acting roles. There are plenty of disabled actors who could have brought their life experience to this part. Perhaps the filmmakers thought the idea of a truly disabled actor in the role was just a little TOO real, and there lies the sad state of affairs we are in.

By the time ALPS began (the follow-up to Giorgos Lanthimos’s DOGTOOTH), I was exhausted. Perhaps partially due to my yearning for sleep, I just didn’t connect with the film. ALPS wasn’t without merit, and fans of DOGTOOTH will likely enjoy it, but I found the film a bit too in love with its premise. Normally when other people in the audience are laughing and I’m not, I wonder what it is I’m not getting. In this case, I wondered what they weren’t getting. There were some very funny moments to be sure, but I speculate people primed for DOGTOOTH-level weirdness were laughing at shadows.

More tomorrow! Time for ELENA!

<– NaFF Day 3

–> NaFF Day 5

Tony Youngblood is a film and music snob and producer of the experimental improv music blog and podcast Theatre Intangible. His favorite films include Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray, Abbass Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician, Lee Chang Dong’s Oasis, and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap.

Pilgrim Song

After assembling my list of films to see at the 2012 NASHVILLE FILM FESTIVAL, I worked out a schedule. Unbelievably, Saturday (the day with potentially the largest audience of the fest) was bare. I had PILGRIM SONG at 1pm and V/H/S at 10pm with nothing in between. So I re-studied the films and worked out three pick-ups — films I didn’t have high confidence in but would keep me in the seats and (hopefully) surprise me. This is a bit of a shame considering how many films I wanted to see but couldn’t because of scheduling conflicts: LAST CALL AT THE OASIS, DAYS OF GRASS, GEORGE THE HEDGEHOG, ABSENT, and GIRL MODEL most notably.

I started the day with a film I had high hopes for: PILGRIM SONG, a piece about a Louisville teacher’s hike through the Sheltowee Trace Trail directed by Martha Stephens. There are many reasons to be suspect of American films shot on video with partially non-professional casts at regional American film festivals. I usually avoid them like the plague. But there was something about the trailer (and, admittedly, an early review) that made me want to give this one a try. I passed over the safe bet LAST CALL AT THE OASIS for this. So I entered the theater expecting a nice little film with pleasing bluegrass music shot in my home state of Kentucky.

The film took my expectations and shot them through a canon! This is a beautiful, touching, skillful, and mature work about a man’s passage from boy-child to adulthood. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Martha Stephens is definitely a director to watch. PILGRIM SONG plays again on Tuesday, Apr 24, at 4:30. Go see it!

Next up were two rock documentaries: THE GODMOTHER OF SOUL: SISTER ROSETTA THARPE and LOUDER THAN LOVE: THE GRANDE BALLROOM STORY. I try and avoid “subject” documentaries at film fests because I feel the films  take a back seat to that which is being profiled. In the case of these two films, the subject is extremely fascinating. I knew little about the pioneer rock & roller Rosetta Tharpe and even less about Detroit’s 60s rock bastion the Grande Ballroom. The films educated me, and I’m glad I saw them. Subject matter: 5 stars. Now on to the production.

THE GODMOTHER OF SOUL is well enough made, but I can’t help but feel that its home is the small screen — and indeed, as it turns out, it was made for British television. LOUDER THAN LOVE was the labor of love of television producer Tony D’Annunzio. He produced it over the course of four years, as money came in and as former Grande bands toured through Detroit. Hats off to Tony for finishing this film and capturing so many memories about the Grande. But there are problems. First, the interview clips are edited so tightly, that there is no room to breath. I quickly became exhausted from sound-bite after sound-bit. It felt like Tony had a wealth of material that he was trying to cram into 75 minutes. Next: stylistic choice. Interviewee after interviewee talked about Detroit’s lack of pretensions and affectation. From the town that created the MC5 and the Stooges, substance ruled over style. Crowds were brutal to what they perceived as bullshit. And yet, LOUDER THAN LOVE is extremely slick, glitzy inter-titles zooming over scenes of the now-abandoned Grande Ballroom. Come on now, Tony, kick out the jams!

Ok, I have about 10 minutes before I need to leave for today’s crop of films. (BEAUTY IS EMBARRASSING, TALES OF THE NIGHT, INTOUCHABLES, and ALPS.) I’ll have to make the last two reviews quick.

SAVE THE DATE is an American romantic comedy starring Lizzy Caplan, Martin Starr, Allison Brie, and Mark Webber. Caplan and director Micheal Mohan attended the screening. After the film, Micheal told us that the film was being considered for widescreen distribution and that he wanted to move out of this studio apartment. He pleaded with us to “like” the film on Facebook and tell all of our friends how great it was. I have no desire to hurt Michael’s chances. . . so I’ll move on to the next review.

The last film of the night was V/H/S, a found footage horror anthology by David Bruckner, Glenn McQuaid, Ti West, Adam Wingard, Radio Silence and Joe Swanberg.  (Joe and I attended the Cinema & Photography department at Southern Illinois University around the same time, though I don’t recall ever meeting him.) Joe and Producer Roxanne Benjamin spoke after the film. Roxanne said the filmmakers were each told to go make a found footage horror and that no one knew what the others were doing. That was unfortunate. The result is an extremely uneven, radically tone-shifting, overly-long, and unforgivably-silly horror anthology made by 10 white dudes in their 20s and early 30s. The problem with commissioning big-name directors to make an anthology film is the way it ties your hands. Ti West’s segment about a pair of wild west vacationers should have been cut. But who’s going to tell that to Ti West? My favorite segments were by Joe Swanberg and Radio Silence. Joe’s idea was innovative — the whole film a screen capture of a Skype conversation. Radio Silence’s short was everything the others should have been: economical, doing exactly what it set out to do and getting out of the way.

I’m late! More write-ups tomorrow.

<– NaFF Days 1 & 2

–> NaFF Day 4

Tony Youngblood is a film and music snob and producer of the experimental improv music blog and podcast Theatre Intangible. His favorite films include Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray, Abbass Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician, Lee Chang Dong’s Oasis, and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap.

Attenberg

As I write this, the clock strikes 12AM on Saturday morning, and I come upon a realization: I’m going to be doing quite a lot of hustling this week. For the past two nights, I’ve hustled from work to cinema, cinema to concert, concert to computer, and computer to (presumably) bed. And those were the easy days. My weekend docket includes an intimidating 10 films. As I’m very fond of sleep, I have to figure out a way to write faster.

Here it goes. My first film of the fest – and my only film on Thursday – was ATTENBERG, a Greek slice-of-strange directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari, the producer of the 2010 NaFF standout DOGTOOTH and 2012 NaFF entry ALPS. 23 year old Marina gropes for some kind of connection with someone other than her dying father and her best friend Bella. Somewhere around the third or fourth silly walk, I wondered if all the weirdness was thrown in for weirdness sake. But oddly, it didn’t distract from a very touching portrait of a girl in transition. I really enjoyed this film.

Oh, and the soundtrack features a Daniel Johnston song. Tip of the hat to the king of awkward / beautiful.

My sole flick on Friday was BESTIARE, a near-wordless experimental documentary by CURLING’s Denis Côté. BESTIARE was mostly recorded in a Canadian safari-park, featuring long takes of the various animals exhibited. Near the beginning, I wondered if the director was too in love with his prettily-framed shots. That hunch soon faded as I became washed in equal portions of awe and fidgetiness (the Bela Tarr effect). The film was not about the animals, who we see prodded in cages, gawked at in their habitats, and eventually stuffed and hung on the wall. Rather, BESTIARE is a film about humans and their control of the world. We never see the animals in natural environments. Every frame reveals a human’s mark: a cage, a pen, a feeding bowl. In one scene, a baby chimp hugs a teddy bear, presumably a surrogate mother. The chimp doesn’t seem to notice that the teddy bear is upside down.

Tomorrow (or I should say this afternoon), I’m banking on PILGRIM SONG and V/H/S to be the day’s winners. I’ll also most likely check out the rock docs THE GODMOTHER OF ROCK & ROLL: SISTER ROSETTA THARPE and LOUDER THAN LOVE: THE GRANDE BALLROOM STORY. And because I have a soft spot in my heart for Lizzy Caplan (TRUE BLOOD, PARTY DOWN), Alison Brie (MAD MEN, COMMUNITY), and Martin Starr (FREAKS & GEEKS, PARTY DOWN), I’m on for the potentially-hazardous American romcom SAVE THE DATE.

<– NaFF Preview

–> NaFF Day 3

Tony Youngblood is a film and music snob and producer of the experimental improv music blog and podcast Theatre Intangible. His favorite films include Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray, Abbass Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician, Lee Chang Dong’s Oasis, and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap.

Oslo, August 31

Tony Youngblood here coming back from a long absence to tell you about the 2012 NASHVILLE FILM FESTIVAL, beginning today at the Regal Green Hills Stadium 16.

I helped Jett and Gareth engineer The Film Talk podcast live from the fest for the last two years. While they won’t be able to attend this year, I’ll be on hand to provide daily commentary.

The Nashville Film Festival (or NaFF) may not have the festival clout of Sundance or Toronto, but it’s still a solid regional festival with the potential to become a heavy hitter. Artistic Director Brian Owens helms a programming team that selects challenging, beautiful, and ripe-to-be-discovered films from around the world. You get a sense of personality in the selections, a focus, heart. Unlike many regional festivals, NaFF doesn’t simple cherry pick the highlights from the majors. They watch LOTS of films. They pick what they like. If Sundance passed, Sundance be damned. NaFF began in 1969 as The Sinking Creek Film Celebration, a champion of experimental films, and it still carries the bold, independent spirit of its roots.

Last year, we were treated with new films from auteurs like Monte Hellman, Catherine Breillat, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. At first glance, this year’s schedule lacks the big ticket items. But a closer look reveals a rich selection of world cinema. This may actually be the richest crop of films in the 5 years I’ve attended the fest. We have HEADSHOT, a new crime-noir from Thai master Pen-Ek Ratanaruang; ALPS, the new film from the director of DOGTOOTH; OSLO, AUGUST 31, the universally-acclaimed new film from the director of REPRISE; Canne’s Un Certain Regarde winner ELENA; and, proving that it’s not NaFF without a documentary by Steve James or Joe Berlinger, UNDER AFRICAN SKIES, Berlinger’s doc about Paul Simon’s return to South Africa.

And there’s more. I saw Jennifer Baichwal’s awe-inspiring documentary MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES at NaFF 2007. After the film, Al Gore appeared out of nowhere and presented her with the Reel Current award. Jennifer is back this year with PAYBACK, a philoso-doc based on the Margaret Atwood book exploring ‘debt’ in its various forms.

There’s ADALBERT’S DREAM, a Romanian New Wave black comedy that I had the privilege to review for this week’s edition of The Nashville Scene. You can read that along with my review of the Mexican films ARTIFICIAL PARADISES and BURROS here.

And it wouldn’t be Music City USA without a crop of music films. THE GODMOTHER OF ROCK & ROLL: SISTER ROSETTA THARPE, LOUDER THAN LOVE: THE GRANDE BALLROOM STORY, and BRICK AND MORTAR LOVE (featuring Nashville record store treasure Grimey’s) strike me as the most interesting. The closing film, and one of the films I’m most excited about, is PAUL WILLIAMS STILL ALIVE, a biopic about  the under-appreciated songwriter. He wrote RAINBOW CONNECTION for THE MUPPET MOVIE and co-scored (and starred in) Brian DePalma’s PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, which, by some stroke of genius is playing NaFF. Williams will attend the festival and (hopefully!) make an appearance at the sure-to-sell-out PHANTOM show.

On Wednesday evening in one of the hardest choices of the fest, the only screening of PHANTOM is pitted against the only evening screening of OSLO, AUGUST 31. Scheduling snafus happen at all fests, but they seem to happen particularly frequently at NaFF. On Monday, you must choose between the only evening screening of HEADSHOT and the only evening screening of PAYBACK. I always choose the films I want to see first and then figure out where they fall in the schedule. This year, my Saturday schedule had a 7 hour gap between the 1pm PILGRIM SONG and the 10PM V/H/S, a horror anthology directed by Ti West, Adam Wingard, and Joe Swanberg among others. On the other hand, my Sunday schedule was positively brimming, a hard choice at every time slot.

But schedulers can’t predict the tastes of every film-goer, and they are faced with the constraints placed upon them by the studios. Some films only allow a single screening. Some directors or actors can only be in town to present on a single day. But all in all, I managed to work in almost every film I want to see, even if it means I have to find some way to take off work on Thursday, April 26th to work in a few musts.

So many films, so little time. Watch this space in the coming days for my thoughts on the films of the 2012 NASHVILLE FILM FESTIVAL. And now, on to Green Hills to see my first film of the fest: ATTENBERG.

–> NaFF Days 1 & 2

Tony Youngblood is a film and music snob and producer of the experimental improv music blog and podcast Theatre Intangible. His favorite films include Eric Rohmer’s The Green Ray, Abbass Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician, Lee Chang Dong’s Oasis, and Rob Reiner’s This Is Spinal Tap.

Here it is Dear Listner, Episode 200 in glorious MP3 form! A review of TITANIC plus a brief look at COMIC-CON EPISODE IV: A FAN’S HOPE.

Running time:  44 minutes and 39 seconds – 41mb

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I gave this talk a while back at the Reel Spirituality Conference, at Fuller Theological Seminary. Some folk have been asking me to explain how I engage with cinema, so here are a few thoughts:

There’s a stunning moment toward the end of ‘Make Way For Tomorrow’, Leo McCarey’s unimpeachable 1937 masterpiece, and the film that Orson Welles described as the saddest movie ever made, when our heroes – and victims, Barkley and Lucy, ageing parents reduced by the Great Depression to not being able to afford their home, and about to be split up by their grown children, none of whom are willing to care for them meaningfully, spend an afternoon reminiscing about their honeymoon.  They share a meal at the hotel they had visited 50 years before, they recite poetry to each other, they decide to dance together.  The audience knows that this is quite possibly the last time they will see each other.  At the dinner table, Barkley and Lucy, played by Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi do something usually associated with Brechtian theatre; or a more recent postmodern sensibility.  They turn toward the camera, and stare piercingly into our eyes.  Into our souls.  They are asking us to visit with them, to sit still for a second and really identify with them, to actually face their sorrow, and our complicity in the sorrow each of us may cause in the course of a lifetime.  It’s an astonishing moment; ‘Make Way for Tomorrow’ may well be the saddest movie ever made.

Make Way for Tomorrow

We may also feel that today’s conference has been an embodiment of the kind of moment captured on film at the end of ‘Make Way for Tomorrow’ – with those of us whose vocations as critics seem to be being forced aside by the callous children of social media, non-paying super-blogs, and film studios who don’t care what we think.  To this, I would want to offer a note of caution – there’s something else about tomorrow that the movies teach us; and all is not lost.  We’ll get to that teaching on tomorrow later; for now, let me tell you a story about myself.

In the Beginning…

1.  The places that matter to me are frequently not real.  They’re places I’ve seen dancing on a white screen, animated by dusty light in a darkened room.  They’re places I’ve been to without leaving the (dis)comfort of a plush red seat with no legroom.  They’re places that seem bigger than real life.

These places exist, because In The Beginning, the Creator, in the form of two French engineers, down on their luck, perhaps too dependent on Maman, and not sure what to do with their lives, had an idea.  On a winter’s night in the early 1890s, it occurred to them that what the world in mid-Industrial Revolution needed most was to have the opportunity to watch pictures dancing with light and dust.  The well-being of the planet could be nurtured by thirty feet high images of men with guns, women with perfectly fake breasts, and young men having sex with cherry pies.  That was the gift of the Lumiere Brothers.  If you visit the cemetery where they’re buried, you can find their grave easily – it’s the one with the neatly tilled soil – they’ve turned over in shame so many times that it always looks like their plot was freshly dug.

In spite of the sometimes embarrassing nature of their legacy, when I reflect on what makes me human, or at least what makes me feel human, because, God knows, there’s enough out there that tries to deal death to any sentient notion of experiential human-ness, I find my thoughts turn, more often than not, to the movies.

I think my soul finds rest when the curtain goes up, in the way that, for some people, watching football on television can make them feel at home in themselves.  I often feel whole when I’m in a cinema; partly, I think, because it connects me with the innocence of childhood, and partly because, for the two hours or so that I’m in that space, nothing else can touch me.  One of the characters in ‘Death of a Salesman’ iterates, even lives by the shibboleth ‘attention must be paid’, that’s a call so powerful that it can kill – and I wonder if it’s also because the film I’m watching has no choice but to pay attention to me that I like to go to the movies so much.

And every once in a while, someone on the screen says or does something that makes me feel understood, as when William H Macy’s Donnie Smith in ‘Magnolia’ cries ‘I really do have love to give, I just don’t know where to put it’, or when Gene Hackman’s master thief in David Mamet’s ‘Heist’ explains how he gets away with it: ‘I’m not smart, I just imagine what people smarter than I would do in the same situation and then I do that’, or when I watch ‘The Wizard of Oz’ every December and am reminded that my fears are just an old man behind a curtain, who only has the power I give to him.

And if the notion of using a fairy tale wizard as a psychological tool strikes you as odd, I guess I should say that I have long believed that the way cinema portrays life doesn’t have to be ‘real’, as long as it’s not fake.  But my reasons for seeing film as something worthy of an investment of precious time are more than psychotherapeutic; they’re sociological, and perhaps even prophetic.  Arthur Miller, author of that same attention-giver ‘Death of a Salesman’ was described on his death by Time magazine as a ‘slayer of false values’, and the best cinematic art does just that.  Chuck Palahniuk told me once that he wrote the section in ‘Fight Club’ about IKEA catalogues as postmodern pornography because he wanted to satirise his own superficiality – the book is about the author’s own attempts to break free from mediocrity.  And so, failing thought it may be, is this paper.  And the films I most give a damn about are the ones that give a damn about me – or at least about people generally, and the struggle to be human in a technophiliac world, driven by the forces of what it’s too easy to call (because it’s real) the military-industrial-media-entertainment complex.

2.Martin Scorsese famously spent his early years in a movie theatre because of asthma; I did it because I didn’t like playing rugby – and that’s the only other thing that was available on bleak Northern Ireland Saturdays.  I wonder now whether or not I would have been any good at rugby had Marty McFly not gone back to the future in such compelling fashion.

My Childhood Mentor

It was the first movie I saw more than once at the cinema; and on the day my elementary school exam results were issued I chose to see it a third time rather than take a family day trip to Dublin, which at the time was the most exciting place I’d ever been.  That kind of commitment is a bit like that of the smoker who can’t afford to buy groceries, but can always find enough money for cigarettes.  Friends and lovers alike have found my willingness to drop everything in favour of the movies endearing, at least the first time, although the charm of considering cinema more important than real life soon wears off.

There are angels on the streets of Berlin.

But that’s only because the world is made up of two kinds of people – those who get movies, and those who don’t.  The first kind, my kind of people, can sit in the enclosed darkened room at any time of day, and get excited when the lights go down, no matter what is about to appear on screen.  We travel half way round the world to visit film festivals to see movies that will be released at home in a few months anyway; we pay good money to go to Berlin for a morning just to see the statue the angels perch on in ‘Wings of Desire’; we fall into ourselves with delirium when we catch a glimpse of Isabella Rossellini on the street; we stay up late to watch films we’ve only vaguely heard of because our fellow cinematic nerds have said the cinematographer ‘has a wonderful eye’, or that the movie influenced the mid-wave of the post-apocalyptic Mongolian agricultural documentary movement, or perhaps merely because someone told us the director’s dog has a great bark.

3.  For what it’s worth, this is what I think about the power of cinema: it makes us imagine something bigger than ourselves.  I’m not sure I can do that with words, but not being fulfilled by the real temples of organised religion has allowed me to kneel at the altar of the white screen and demand that it answer my life’s questions.

Smaller in Real Life

I think about the magic of cinema, the God’s-eye view we have of those on screen; and how when I met a Big Star I felt weird because he wasn’t as tall as he should be.  Given that that would be around 18 feet, this shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but inasmuch as Al Pacino’s character in Michael Mann’s ‘Heat’ believes that holding onto his angst keeps him sharp, I suppose for me, holding onto my naivety might keep me in touch with the kind of innocence of which a cynical world needs a great deal more.

I think of a hundred heroic films that made me feel like anything was possible, or romantic comedies that taught me something about love, or dramas that helped explain the meaning of life.

I think of ‘Magnolia’ and wonder at its capacity for squeezing in what is wrong with modern North American middle class life, and how the opportunity for redemption cannot be engineered, but must simply be received. And ‘Broadway Danny Rose’, and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, and ‘Limbo’ and everything else John Sayles has ever made.

I think of ‘Jean de Florette’ and ‘Manon des Sources’ and how they begin as innocuous dramas about a dispute between neighbours, but conclude with you being terrified for the characters, and you want them to love and not destroy each other, because they make you think about how knowing one extra piece of information about a person can change everything.  The fearful miracle is that it can make you love instead of killing them.  And ‘Fanny and Alexander’, and ‘Au Hasard Balthasar’, and ‘La Regle du Jeu’ and ‘The Grey Zone’ (by the most undervalued/underrated/underknown director working today).

I think of the best double bill I ever curated – two films that have far more in common that you would think, both stories about the search by ordinary people for a sense of purpose and success, centred on ‘making it’ in the film industry, and raising issues  of what might get sacrificed along the way, these two films which are, of course: ‘Mulhulland Dr.’ and ‘The Muppet Movie’.  Trust me – they belong together.

I think about how sometimes I’d prefer the magic of cinema to stay where it used to be – in my heart; and I wish that I didn’t have to force myself to become innocent every time I see a movie – I wish for the time when there was no difference between my belief about what was possible, and Hollywood’s vision.  I wish for a time when I didn’t have to work to put myself in the frame of mind that believed in the possibility of hope.

And I think about going to see Julian Schnabel’s ‘Basquiat’ in a Kansas City art house on a day in the summer of 1996 when it appeared that only single men were allowed into the theatre.   Thirteen of us, sitting alone, dotted around the cinema, enraptured by the imagery that told of this broken artist and Reagan-era Warhol cohort.  The film ends with the telling of a medieval myth about a prince locked in a tower by his evil relatives; to alert the local peasantry to his predicament, he bangs his crown off the wall, but they hear this only as music…it was an image with the potential to become the definition of cliché, but to us in the audience, it spoke only of the way we feel about the world.  As Henryk Gorecki’s ‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ reached its long crescendo and the prince banged his head harder, a guy in the front row of the Kansas City theatre flung his arms in the air, and held them there, as if this were a worship service.  This was worship – of a kind; worship of the divine so many of us still want to believe in or hope for, and perhaps also of the extraordinary creative urge of which humans are sometimes capable.

‘Basquiat’ is the kind of film that might make the Lumiere Brothers feel their endeavours were not wasted; and this is germane to our discussion for one simple reason: I would not have gone to see ‘Basquiat’ if it had not been for film criticism.  I would not have gone to see ‘Basquiat’ if it had not been for Roger Ebert, who at the time of its release wrote the following:

‘Anyone who has ever painted or drawn knows the experience of dropping out of the world of words and time. A state of reverie takes over; there is no sensation of the passing of hours. The voice inside our head that allows us to talk to ourselves falls silent, and there is only color, form, texture and the way things flow together.

There is a theory to explain this. Language is centered on the left side of the brain. Art lives on the right side. You can’t draw a thing as long as you’re thinking about it in words. That’s why artists are inarticulate about their work, and why it is naive to ask them, “What were you thinking about when you did this?” They have given it less thought than you have.’

And this is why the critic is necessary.  Because the function of the critic is not the same as the function of the artist.  Criticism, of course, may be artful, just as film-making is sometimes artless; but the primary function of criticism is closer to that of spiritual director than poet.  In short, if we are ultimately all one person made in the image of God (that’s a hypothesis, of course, but you don’t have to agree with it to keep reading), and the task of being human includes freeing ourselves from mutually exclusive interpretations, or what Freud in Nicholas Meyer’s ‘The Seven Per-cent Solution’ calls ‘less finite solutions’ to human problems than killing each other, and to become more than the sum of our parts by hearing the voices of – and thereby honoring the image of God in – others, then the role of the critic is supremely important: because critics show us what it is that we’re doing.

This matters because – obviously – art matters.  And, as Ebert said in his ‘Basquiat’ review, artists don’t always know what it is they are doing.

For instance, ‘Shutter Island’, for me, the most artful and theologically important film released in 2010 (and by di Caprio’s presence evidence that massive celebrity does not necessarily preclude high art’s potential) speaks profoundly about the lament that America needs to sit with if the wound of 9/11 and the projected shadow that followed are to be integrated into the national psyche; but I’m not sure than even Martin Scorsese knows that.  It takes the hermeneutic community that becomes possible when people who didn’t make the film but live as informed audience members to reflect back on what the film may mean so that readers might be provoked to think further about the value of this art object in their lives.

Because none of this makes sense apart from everyday human experience.  I project my desire onto the narrative arcs stewarded by films as various and diverse as

‘Andrei Rublev’,

‘Field of Dreams’,

and ‘The Exorcist’.

As Proust wrote of characters in novels, I see myself revealed in cinematic representations of 15th century Russian icon painters, 20th century hippy farmers in Iowa, and ancient but new Catholic demon expellers.  Now, I don’t paint icons, and I don’t farm, and the last time anyone threw up in my face it wasn’t Linda Blair – but the archetypal journeys of Andrei Rublev, Kevin Costner’s hippy farmer, and Jason Miller’s Fr Karras in The Exorcist speak profoundly to me about my own journey.

James L Brooks wrote a line worth the $120 million budget of ‘How Do You Know?’, a film not thought by many to be the revelation of a profound mystery about human existence, but nonetheless worth reflecting on – ‘Life is about finding out what you want, and learning how to ask for it’.  This may sound selfish at first, but understood more thoughtfully could be seen as a postmodern variation on what St Augustine understood as the injunction to ‘love God, and do what you want’.  And all fiction is about this: people finding out (or not finding out) what they want (or don’t want) and learning how to ask (or not ask) for it.  All fiction is reflective of the nature of being human: because to be human is to be a storyteller.  We tell the story of our lives, and this story circumscribes for us what we believe to be possible.  Film-makers tell us a story about their lives, and their vision of what is possible in the world.  Critics are supposed to interpret this story.  It was ever thus.  This happened, surely, in biblical times – Jesus was a critic of his social order, and of the stories people believed and lived from.  It happened at regal courts when jesters whispered satire in the ear of the king.  It happened in 19th century Denmark when Soren Kierkegaard suggested charging a fee to theologians who wanted to attend his bible studies, as they/we make our living off the crucified Christ, we should be prepared to pay for the privilege of participating in the Christian community.  It happened in the 1970s when the New Zealand poet James K Baxter quit his high-paying job as a university professor to found a community in the wilderness, the sole entry qualification to which was a willingness to admit personal brokenness.  And it happens today, every time film critics manage to bypass snark and shortcut to share humbly and with grace our response to the art objects we are privileged to see before the public do.

I want to conclude by acknowledging the economic precariousness we face as critics.  Some of us are lucky to be paid to work full-time as film critics.  I am not one of them.  Some of us are lucky to be paid to work full-time as theologians.  I am not one of them.  But as I think that all of us are called to be both critics and theologians, I get to do the work, whether I get paid for it or not.  The economic model that has sustained film criticism (and academic theology) for the past half-century will give way to something else.  If I ruled the world, I’d want that something else to be reminiscent of an egalitarian locavore non-nuclear family community, where we work and live together, earning what we can from meaningful income-generating work, sharing our goods with each other, and sitting round tables talking about what the latest

Michael Haneke, or

Michael Apted, or

(even) Michael Bay

says about the nature of being.  But that’s a few years off.

For now, let us recognize this, with humility:

It’s a high calling, to be a critic.  I don’t intend that to enlarge our egos – there are many high callings, chief among them in my view is that of getting to be a human being, so recognizing the importance of the act of criticism is certainly not any kind of avowal of superiority over others.  But it is a spiritual discipline that can assist ourselves and others in learning how to take that universal calling – being human – more seriously, and to understand it better.  In the sacred act of call and response that we and film-makers are stuck in together, whether we like it or not, criticism is half the work.  They call, we respond.  We do not best serve our calling by resorting to easy snark, personal insults, or by equating the task of criticism with just criticizing.

Critics have a role to play in helping the world tell its own story.  We have privileged access to the newest variations on that story, every time we go to a preview screening.  And we get to help hold cultural, psychological, and spiritual memory.

We can look back on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, and write about how it still feels ahead of its time, and more than that, speaks profoundly to our hope that ancient truth doesn’t need to be adapted: in short – love does conquer all.

We can help our audience respond to ‘Shutter Island’ or ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ by saying how each feels like a religious icon of lament, and that if you don’t learn to face the darkness of your past, you will simply keep hurting yourself, and everyone around you.

We can declare from the rooftops that it is entirely consistent to be thrilled, moved, and even inspired by the horrific sacrifice in ‘The Exorcist’

and moved by the end of ‘ET’

and stimulated to be more compassionate for the suffering people of the world by Atom Egoyan’s ‘Exotica’,

and distressed by ‘The Elephant Man’

and provoked to think about the relationship between dreams and reality by ‘Eyes Wide Shut’

and historically challenged by the too-recently departedTheo Angelopoulos’ ‘Eternity and a Day’.  And that’s just a few films beginning with the letter E.

In short, critics can nurture a space in which people can find their own way toward interpreting the art they are watching, and to dialogue with themselves about what it means to be human.  This is a high calling indeed.  We owe it to ourselves, and to our calling to respect the difference between criticizing and critique; between snark and thoughtful challenge; and between personal insult and encouraging improvement.  It’s a high calling that doesn’t depend on money, isn’t determined by the market, and isn’t even about whether or not we get to do this for a living.  It’s about who you are, how transparent you are willing to be with your readers about how your projected desires found (or didn’t find) resonance on the screen.  In my judgement, there are only two qualifications: you need to know something about movies; and you need to want to be more human.

In the new world of the democratization of criticism, we may feel threatened by how 140 characters or less might have the power to undermine our work.  But as the Franciscan activist priest Richard Rohr says, the best response to the bad is the practice of the good.  Social media doesn’t have to be a threat: in fact, it actually opens up space for more authentic dialogue between critics and our audience, and between critics and film-makers than was ever previously possible.  So please, tweet away.  Facebook your desire to live differently after seeing Gaspar Noe’s ‘Enter the Void’; blog how your hopes and dreams are in a recursive relationship – shaping and being shaped by – your experience of Abbas Kiarostami or Steven Spielberg or Wim Wenders or Edward Yang or Hirokazu Koreeda or Mike Leigh or Jim Jarmusch.  And, if you can, make money from it.  But above all, be faithful to the calling of being a critic in the context of something called the arts and humanities: your calling is to help rehumanize the world.  And don’t be afraid of tomorrow, because if what Elvis Mitchell earlier called the boringest and most racist movie of all time – and therefore one of the most important – teaches us anything about tomorrow, it is that tomorrow is another day.