CLOUD ATLAS at Fantastic Fest

Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas in September 2012. 

You all know that the movie CLOUD ATLAS opens today, yes? It's all about time and souls and spirits who find their way into your life in one way or another.
  
After a surprise screening of the movie at found its way into my life during Fantastic Fest, I couldn't help thinking that in my own life, many of the people who seem like they should be in your life have a fairly unique way of introducing themselves.

Oftentimes such people enter your life by first catching you up on the major details of their story so far--sort of like filling you in on the details of a movie where you stopped in the middle.

As for the movie, go see it!

My only regret about that screening--being too shy to talk to Lana Wachowski when I saw her sitting in the Highball after the screening.  If I hadn't been so shy, I would have told her that she has great pink hair!

Fantastic ALIENS baby cake!

 I'm still recovering from Fantastic Fest. But today I wanted to share this picture of the cake that my friends (known as "The Charlie's") made for their own baby shower cake. Because every single time I look at a picture of this cake, I think how awesome it is.



It was also tasty!

The alien was hand-sculpted, not some store-bought plastic prop.

Fantastic Fest: The Seventh Inning Stretch

With the major craziness of the weekend of Fantastic Fest behind us, it's time to look at what films you can--and should--still catch at the festival as of Tuesday afternoon.

 The films are listed in the order of the effort that you should spend on getting to see them:

I should totally call these "Half-Dead Reviews." They aren't proper reviews, just a guide to where you should park yourself during the rest of the festival.

I Declare War: this low budget film with child actors is amazing. Well paced and tight, it feels far fresher than anything else at Fantastic Fest this year! See it now, as it doesn't have distribution. Doubt you'll see it on another big screen in America with the children swearing like they do.

Berberian Sound Studio: Sure, being released onto the Internet  in a couple of weeks, but trust me, if you are into eye candy and atmosphere you want to catch this one on the big screen. This beautifully shot film isn't about the the plot, it's about the creepy sounds and visuals. (If you are a fan of 70's Italian cinema, this should be at the top of your list.) 

The American Scream: A great solid documentary focusing on three families in New England who create their own "Haunted Houses." It's airing on the Chiller network in late October, if you have the Chiller network.

Looking forward to the DIY Wackiness at Fantastic Fest!

Never mind the hella-awful Austin allergy forecast (which features the four icky horsemen of the achoopocalypse riding into town on their microscopic horses) ...but today is the first day of Fantastic Fest, 2012. It's a good thing.

While I'm most certainly looking forward to the films--and maybe even having a Heathers moment with Winona Ryder in the ladies' after Frankenweenie -- I'm super stoked about seeing my friends and seeing the DIY weirdness that always comes out at the festival!

True confession: I'm all about the costumes and the fun to be had at a horror movie festival.

A couple of years ago, the Fantastic Fest opening film was the wee-vampire film Let Me In (2010) the American remake of the amazing Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In (2009).

Yet the opening night craziness featured not only a children's choir, but dudes dancing in Viking horns, and an oath sworn while drinking a green vial of liquid. This was all nonsense tied to Let Me In in the most tangential ways.

Tim League as a Viking.

Pop Culture Remixing: Why it matters that we keep remaking familiar pop culture properties.

At 11 p.m. on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, my husband and I walked into the Chaparral Ice rink in North Austin. Despite the warm day, I was carrying my winter coat, hat and gloves. We were going to the theater!

Less a traditional theatrical experience and more of a chance to see a comedic trainwreck, we had tickets for Aliens on Ice by The Old Murder House Theatre.

Yes, we’d paid to see the movie “Aliens” recreated at an ice rink by a cast just slightly beyond being able to stand up on their ice skates.

That Saturday night was do-it-yourself (DIY) theater at its finest. One theatrical set was comprised of hand drawn illustrations on cardboard that were attached to a pink ironing board. You could clearly see the duct tape holding things together.

Costuming wasn’t much fancier. The mostly male cast changed characters by adding or removing wigs in full view of the audience. One alien picked up his headpiece as he skated by. It had fallen off during a dramatic fight scene. This show was a very long way from Broadway.

Despite the ludicrously low production values of “Aliens on Ice” the audience was mostly eating it up, laughing along at the comedy.

That night at the ice rink, we’d happened to sit next to our friends Charles and Charlene Smith, who’d left the kids home and who were out on their date night. Charlie Smith, 31-- whom I know from my own lower-rent theatrical collective/charity project of Scare For a Cure—had actually worn out the VHS tape of “Aliens” when he was younger. Later, Smith owned up to having played “Aliens” on the playground, much the way some kids played “Cowboys and Indians.”

Before that ice show, I’d never seen the movie “Aliens.” Yet I laughed so hard during the production that I managed to send myself into coughing fits.

I wasn’t surprised to see the rest of the audience also enjoying itself. During the show they were immersed in pop culture, something that’s as comfortable as a pair of much-loved flannel pajamas for many Americans.

“Aliens on Ice” it isn’t alone in allowing people to immerse themselves in pop culture.

Over the last few years I’ve noticed an increasing number of creative projects based around the idea of “remixing” fictional properties created by a different author.

I’m defining “remixing” as someone taking a fictional universe created by one person, then creating another project based on that universe.

Thus “remixing” might include what happens when the works of Jane Austen are updated to become “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” or when people revisit characters first found in L. Frank Baum‘s “Wizard of Oz” books resulting in the musical “Wicked.”

Here's the Bumper for that Column that I wrote about Scare last year!

It's September, which means it's totally time to start getting ready for the enormous haunted event SCARE FOR A CURE .

Today I ran across the cell phone bumper that a lot of people from Scare helped make. I wrote about that shoot and SCARE for a column in the Austin-American Statesman last year.




If you want to see the work that it took to do this make-up, check out the Flickr set.

BOOKS: "One Day." Reading the book moments before the movie came out!

On my way back to Austin from my summer adventures, I read the novel One Day by David Nicholls.  I read it in pretty much one giant gulp.

While I had toyed with the idea of buying the book a number of times--at both the airport and at Target--I didn’t do it until a European dude recommended it to me. Later, when I told him I was reading it, he said that he hoped I loved it.

Which is a very unusual thing for a straight man to say, or, at least, it would be an odd thing for a straight American man to say.

In America, One Day would be termed “chick lit.” It’s in the pink ghetto of writing marketed to women, mostly because it deals with the emotional lives of people. In America, mass-market literature about feelings is pretty much the providence of women.  I don’t generally see straight dudes reading books where the characters have feelings, but that could be because I live in the machismo-poisoned land of Texas.

If you've missed picking up the book, the premise is that Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley kind of hook up in 1988 at the end of their studies in Edinburgh. The book follows their friendship over the next 20 years, dropping in on both of them each July 15th, which happens to be St. Swithin’s Day. Sometimes there are big changes from year to year in each of their lives, sometimes there aren't.

I really enjoyed One Day, although, in some ways, it was strange reliving tidbits of the 80’s. (In 1988, as Dexter rags on “that Tracy Chapman tape” I knew exactly how annoying and overplayed it was at the time!)

FILM: BELLFLOWER (2011) is a Bad Bromance

The car from the film visiting Austin, Texas during SXSW 2011

Last week I saw the movie BELLFLOWER, which, based on the trailers and the general buzz about the film following Sundance, I had totally expected to love.

Instead I was disappointed by this pre-apocalyptic bromance of a film.

Since I’m totally against spoilers, I’ll just let you know that the film is about two angry dudes in their early 20’s who like to blow things up, and deal with their feelings by blowing things up.

I have no problems with dudes blowing things up. The @madspark is one of my real-life friends, and he blows things up on a regular basis, partly because he can think of cool ways to do just that.

Maybe it’s a good movie to see if you are an angry dude. But not if you are a woman.

My husband didn’t care for the film much either, and he likes DIY pyrotechnics an awful lot.

The MEDUSA, outside the Alamo Ritz, SXSW 2011

FILM: Madness at the Movies

Recently, I've watched both the French film Seraphine (2008) and the most recent cinematic version of Jane Eyre.

The representation of madness in these films couldn't be much different.

In Seraphine--based on the real life of primitive artist "Séraphine de Senlis"--we watch as the painter slowly goes madder and madder, and is later committed to the asylum where she dies. At no point is her madness is she attractive. She is a peasant who paints her way out of poverty, only to leave the world of sense and reality.

In the current Jane Eyre, the madwoman in the attic is crazily beautiful, passionately attached to her husband, vile to Jane, and beautiful in an eerie and otherworldly way. She's a heiress fallen on bad times.

What does the difference between these two versions of madness mean? Heck if I know.

Sometimes I just observe, without having an answer for everything.

I feel at home in New York...and sometimes I wonder why.

A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to flee a big snowstorm in Boston, and go spend some time in NYC.

When I was there I stayed with my cousin, her baby Hudson, and my Aunt Diane, whose flight had been delayed for a couple of days by the snowstorm.

Since the last time I visited, my cousin has moved to Brooklyn, a borough where I've never spent much time. Yet, it feels very much like home, as does the rest of NYC.


In a lot of ways, this makes little to no sense. After all, I only lived in NYC long enough to get mail there while I was doing a brief program at NYC in the early 90's. For years afterward, I was lucky enough to visit my former roommate Cora, and get to briefly drop into her NYC life. Hanging out with Cora and her modern dancer/Martha Graham School of Dance friends, I got a window into the city that I would have never gotten as a plain ole tourist.

But as for part where NYC feels like home, I can't really explain it, expect to wonder if maybe it has something to do with television and movies.


While I was in the city in early February, I stumbled across the filming of a remake of the 80's movie Arthur, starring Russel Brand. The filming had closed down the front entrance of the Strand book store, (close to Union Square.)

I couldn't help but wonder if all of the location filming that's been done in NYC has sunk into my brain, making me feel at home just because of all the images that I've absorbed from the screen over the years.

I spent some time contemplating this, until I came home to Austin. While sitting on the floor feeding my dog, I looked up at a favorite childhood toy that I had recently rescued from my mother's garage. It was a plastic copy of a toy brownstone, made as a Sesame Street tie-in during the 70's. It's kind of eerie how much the plastic toy looks like a real brownstone!

 

So does my strange at-homeness in NYC have something to do with mass media? Maybe.

Cronocrimenes at Fantastic Fest (2007)

Tim League of the Alamo and Nacho Vigalondo during the Cronocrimenes Question and Answer session following one of the first screenings of the movie in the states (2007).

Growing up in the small working-class refinery town of Deer Park, Texas in the eighties, I tried very hard to escape the place without actually leaving.

Being hard-up for a time travel or teleportation device, I used the very best substitute I had: homemade cassette tapes of the 70’s punk and new wave bands that I loved—like the Ramones and Blondie. Closing my eyes with the stereo on, I could nearly always escape the depressing industrial area.

So, when I went to watch the world-premiere of the Spanish time travel movie Cronocrimenes  aka Timecrimes on opening night of Austin’s science-fiction and horror movie festival Fantastic Fest, I was surprised and delighted to bump into an old friend. My pal: the song “Picture This” from Blondie’s 1978 multi-platinum selling “Parallel Lines” album, featured as an integral piece of sonic set dressing in the movie.

With the film’s poster reading “A trip back in time……from present to crime”  it isn’t exactly a spoiler to reveal that a key character keeps going back in time, trying to fix what’s gone wrong at one particular moment.

When the character returns to that moment the song “Picture This” is playing.

 Not familiar with the song? Not surprising. Even though it hit number 12 in the UK in ‘78, it wasn’t exactly a bit hit here. If my friends hadn’t fired up their ‘80’s record players, I’d never have heard it.


The idea that music has a transformative power isn’t exactly a new concept. Otherwise, why would I have been surrounded by so many people who surely remembered the 60’s when Bob Dylan played ACL?


For the premiere of the innovative Spanish-language/English subtitled “Cronocrimenes” writer/director/actor Nacho Vigalondo was in attendance answering questions. So I asked him about the use of the song.

It turns out the tune ended up in the film partly because the crew was playing the song a lot while they were making the movie. Thus when it came time to pick a song to clarify that the hero was back in the same place at the same time, the lyrics of the song seemed to fit the film.


“The lyrics for “Picture This” are so close to the movie” Vigalondo said quoting the lyrics: “Picture this - a sky full of thunder.” Indeed, a clap of thunder is a plot point in the film.


 I suspect that if I’d grown up in big city surroundings, that I might not have held on so tightly to the music of another time and another place—trying by sheer will to get myself to New York’s mythical CBCB’s club in the 70’s.


All in all, the film’s surprising use of the song shows the influence of our friends, coworkers and neighbors on our lives, perhaps especially on what we’re listening to.

No matter how global our world and economy gets, sometimes it matters most what the people closest to us are listening to.  If we love them, sometimes we’ll end up loving what they love as well.


(This column was slated for the  Statesman in 2007 but  didn't have space to run before the second time this film showed during Fantastic Fest. These pictures were taken with a borrowed point-and-shoot. I'm a slightly better photographer now.) 

Last Night at the Alamo Grindhouse (aka Watching Vintage Prints with director Quentin Tarantino) (2007)

Dressed in jeans and a black hoodie-- and clutching a beer-- film director Quentin Tarantino paced in the spotlight of the small stage of the Alamo Drafthouse theater in downtown Austin, Texas. He told the mostly male crowd that when he was in 6th grade, his mother had gotten him a subscription to Playboy. His first gift issue featured a pictorial on Casanova & Company (1977) a Tony Curtis/Casanova/ mistaken identity flick. Later re-titled Sex on the Run, it recently served as the kickoff film for Quentin Tarantino presents Last Night at the Alamo Grindhouse (May 10,11,13)—a three night mini -festival of grindhouse triple bills—showcasing Tarantino’s personal vintage 35mm prints of the low-budget gems that once played America’s drive- in’s.

The festival was inspired by the relocation of the downtown Austin, Texas Alamo Drafthouse, a quaintly tattered beer and food-serving movie venue. The downtown location was the first incarnation of what’s now a successful small chain of theaters known for eclectic programming. Sex on the Run was followed with Sex with a Smile (1976) an omnibus film of several short sex stories. The night ended with The Oldest Profession (1967) with seven directors contributing shorts on prostitution through the ages. (Tarantino’s sex comedy prints also screened at the 2007 Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival as Euro Sex Comedies Triple Feature.)

One distinctive aspect of the Alamo QT events is that there’s no velvet rope. The illusion: you’re watching movies in someone’s living room. Patrons are asked to refrain from seeking autographs or shoving screenplays into Tarantino’s face, but you can walk up and chat.

FANTASTIC FEST and Texas Chain Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

Swag from the premiere of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING

I think that a  version of this was published--in French-- in L'Ecran Fantastique in 2006, as I remember getting paid for it.

For the last thirty years, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise has featured the character "Leatherface," who has been one of the most enigmatic horror icons in genre films. He chainsaws, he chases, he apparently enjoys himself. Yet we never knew exactly why or how he developed his desire to sink his chainsaw into human flesh.

The new film Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning attempts to explain Leatherface’s origins. That doesn’t mean a wee Thomas Hewitt sitting in a therapists office discussing chainsaws and childhood trauma. Rather, this prequel to the events of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre focuses on the moment when the procurement and consumption of human flesh started to seem rational for the crazy, cannibalistic Hewitt family.

This gritty and darkly-shot film opens with Leatherface’s birth on the slaughterhouse floor. Abandoned by his mother, he’s taken in by the Hewitts. A brilliant and brief title sequence outlines Leatherface’s childhood.

The film then jumps to 1969, when the rural Texas slaughterhouse where Leatherface (Andrew Bryniarski) works is closing. Leatherface isn’t happy about losing his job, though it’s difficult to read his expression behind the black shroud covering his face.

Meanwhile the Hewitt’s hometown is threatening to become a ghost town without the money the slaughterhouse brings in. 

Don’t Fall in Love with a Dead Man (2004) ..a look at the movie "School of Rock"

This actually appeared on the now-dead website BlueEar.com on June 28, 2004. Yes, the Internets existed back then.


They say you always remember your first love. And sometimes, you run into him in the most unlikely places. I just saw mine on DVD, in Richard Linklatter’s School of Rock. My first love was the Ramones, whose music is featured in the film.

I suspect that for me, like for a lot of other people, music, specifically the Ramones was important because it was a promise we weren’t alone in the world. Growing up in a small town outside of Houston in the mid 80’s, punk was over, the Sex Pistols had come and gone, and Phil Collins and Aerosmith were kings of the FM wasteland.

Yet for the incorrigible misfits of my tribe-- and a few music critics in mythical New York-- there was an alternative to radio dreck. In this land of misfit toys, Joey Ramone was our spiritual leader, and Rock ‘N’ Roll High School was our Citizen Kane.

Despite the Ramones macabre lyrics about electroshock therapy “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment” (I really want a shock treatment) and child abuse “Beat on the Brat” (Beat on the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat, oh yeah…)- their songs were infectious—and subversive, even though we didn’t know the term. You don’t learn words like subversive in detention.

Hearing “Bonzo goes to Bitberg,”—about Ronald Regan’s controversial decision in to lay a wreath on the tomb of a German soldier (1985), made me realize someone else would understand my homemade Regan dart board. The Ramones was a promise that I could escape suburbia, republicans and the Christian right.

I saw the Ramones play in clubs in high school and college, but I only got close enough to touch my idol once. Last time I saw Joey, he was playing in a Christmas Concert in NYC with Ronnie Spector—ex wife of producer Phil Spector. (Phil Spector produced the Ramones album End of the Century, and, in an oft-repeated rumor, Spector allegedly pulled a gun on one Ramone during a session. One suspects that Ms. Spector and Mr. Ramone had much to discuss. )

Joey walked in during the opening band, all tall and gangly in an overcoat, yet no one in the room seemed to notice. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, it was like Elvis slipping in unannounced. When Joey stopped and stood behind my boyfriend and I, I swear that my heart skipped a few beats and I got a little lightheaded-- just as if I had been sniffing the glue the Ramones made famous on one of their first albums. I could have turned around and touched him, but I didn’t. I could have babbled something about how much he meant to me, but I didn’t. After all, if he wanted to be Joey Ramone in public, he would have dressed up as Joey Ramone before venturing into the lower east side. After all, half the other guys there were dressed as Joey Ramone, circa 1976--all converse and leather jackets and long hair. He soon disappeared with his valise and companion.

When Joey later appeared on stage, in Ramones drag with the trademark wig and round glasses, the bill included “Merry Christmas, (i Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” and “Danny Says”—the closest things to love songs in the Ramones repertoire. Standing there, I kept closing my eyes, shuttling back and fourth in time between the past and the present, between Texas and New York City, from the place I wanted to escape from, to the place I had escaped to.

While I am sure that Richard Linklatter’s experience was different than mine, we should treasure this little love note from Linklatter to the Ramones. Sure, Linklatter might tell you that the movie is a valentine to the Gods of Rock—Hendrix, Plant, Pink Floyd. But I can see the truth. The movie is all about the punk ethos, getting by with three cords, an attitude and a plan. And that’s all about the Ramones.

So girls, be careful whom you give your heart to. Most of the good ones are taken. Elvis and Joey have gone to that great sound check in the sky. You can’t fall in love with a dead man, it’s a relationship that will always leave you unfilled. If he’s dead, chances are that he’ll never come stand behind you and do things to your breathing. That’s a thrill that every girl should experience.

***

Anna Hanks, Austin, Texas, USA

REVIEW: School of Rock, by Richard Linklater, 2003
School of Rock is the 2003 film featuring Jack Black as a failed heavy metal guitarist. To pay the rent, Black connives his way into substitute-teaching at a posh private school. Rather than teaching the kids math and history, he teaches them music—and the concept of sticking it to the man.