Smash Cut

I guess this is almost like an artist going full circle.

Back in 1992, techno virtuoso Moby sampled a cue from the score for weirdmeister David Lynch’s cult smash TV series “Twin Peaks” in a hit club track entitled “Go”.

Now Lynch himself has collaborated with Moby by directing an animated music video for “Shot in the Back of the Head,” a song that appears on the latter’s forthcoming album Wait for Me.

The video might not immediately strike you as “Lynchian,” but stick with it: it’s still pretty cool. I mean, not many people make love stories about a man and a disembodied head.

Check it out below.

Okay, so Monsters vs. Aliens is obviously one of the bigger hits of the season, and I figure it’s highly probable that the earlier, more artistically satisfying animated feature Coraline wouldn’t have made even a half of its box-office take without the help of 3-D or, if we’re to refer to stereoscopic projection by its current high-tech moniker, RealD.

The thing is, have you ever wondered how 3-D worked? Or why you register those axes or spears as somewhat physical entities flying towards you? Even more importantly, did you ever question how your vision might be affected by viewing films or other media in this way? Why you might feel a bit of a headache or some slight nausea afterwards? As 3-D increasingly becomes Hollywood’s Holy Grail in its crusade for maximum profits, I’m admittedly thankful that someone like Slate’s senior editor Daniel Engber has focused his investigative eye on its overall effects. I’m not trying to be Chicken Little here, but I do think, when so many of these films are geared towards families and, even more importantly, children whose eyesight has not yet fully developed, Engber’s points should prompt us to view these movies in moderation, and keep our fingers crossed that 3-D will remain a novelty rather than the norm.

Read the article here on Slate.

Hmmm, so why did I put the title in quotes instead of italics, you may be asking?

Well, it’s because I’m talking about the original short story by noted scribe F. Scott Fitzgerald which served as the inspiration for the Brad Pitt-starrer that’s currently doing strong business at the movies. (That’s Fitzgerald pictured above, obviously, not Mr. Jolie.)

Visionary director David Fincher’s adaptation The Curious Case of Benjamin Button clocks in at damned-near three hours, but the original source material about the backwards-aging protagonist is considerably slimmer, in addition to unfolding in a totally different context and having a more interesting take on the character’s ever-diminishing mental capacities.

If you’ve been wowed by the film — or even if you haven’t seen it yet — and you’re curious about the tale that inspired it, my alma mater the University of Virginia has posted it online.

You can read the entire short story here.

In a Sept. 21 blog posting, revered “Thumbs up/Thumbs down” Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert delivered some seemingly out-of-left-field notes on creationism.

Fans and readers are now wondering if the fella’s gone off his rocker (in the sense that nothing he’s written/said in the past would’ve led anyone to believe he was a follower of that school of thought) or if his site was hacked. I’m guessing the latter.

You can read the posting here.

Probably both of them, if they teamed up against you like they did on this poor guy. Yikes! “With great power comes great responsibility” indeed.

Okay, kicking myself a bit here. Just a bit, since I was away on a (very nice, highly enjoyable) vacation for a couple of weeks, so there’s not a whole lot I could’ve done about catching this one in the Big Apple.

The lives of Native Americans — I’m talking about contemporary existences, not those of the Old West — are rarely seen or discussed on movie screens these days. As a culture, they’re still relatively marginalized. Sure, there have been films like Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals or documentaries such as Incident at Oglala by Michael Apted, but let’s face it, you can probably count all the Native American-centric films ever made on both hands, with fingers to spare.

However, a “lost” depiction of displaced, urban-dwelling Native Americans from the ’60s has recently been redistributed in a new 35mm print to arthouse cinemas courtesy of the good folks at Milestone Films. You may know Milestone as the company that re-released Charles Burnett’s amazing black-and-white drama Killer of Sheep last year.

According to critics, The Exiles, a 1961 feature by Kent MacKenzie, is equally unforgettable.

The Exiles chronicles a day in the life of some young Native Americans who left reservation life in the ’50s for the decaying, hard-scrabble district of Bunker Hill in Los Angeles, California. It’s a gritty, no-frills depiction of a truly underrepresented culture, and probably offers a point-of-view that very few of us have ever encountered.

I missed my main chance to see it in New York this month, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to make an upcoming Brooklyn screening. If you’d like to take a look at the film’s “touring schedule,” go here. Read some of the lavish praise that the rerelease has been receiving here, and if you want to watch the trailer you can do so here.

Almost everyone in America has ordered Chinese food for take out or delivery before. But did you ever wonder about the lives of the guys who bring that beef with broccoli to your doorstep?

Playing in limited release right now is an acclaimed indie picture called Take Out, which follows a day in the life of one such delivery man in Manhattan. It just so happens that on this (very rainy) day, the protagonist — an illegal immigrant named Ming Ding (played by newcomer Charles Jang) — must pay an $800 debt to his smugglers by nightfall, creating a harrowing 24 hour nightmare.

Take Out is a real, honest-to-goodness independent film. Hey, remember those? It was shot on the cheap by co-directors Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou, using nonprofessionals for its cast and often including real-life take out and delivery customers in bit parts as well.

Read a rave review from The New York Times here. You can visit the film’s official website here and watch the trailer here.

If you live in New York, the film is currently playing at the ImaginAsian Theater. Showtimes are here.

Get some Take Out and support quality, homegrown indie cinema!

One of the more curious movie-related court cases in recent years has completed another chapter, with both sides claiming victory. In one corner is George Lucas and his company Lucasfilm Ltd. In the other: British designer Andrew Ainsworth of Shepperton Design Studios, who happens to have created the highly memorable, damned-near-iconic uniforms for the Stormtrooper soldiers in Lucas’s Star Wars saga.

Lucasfilm has been pursuing Ainsworth because the latter sold some Stormtrooper uniform replicas and helmets to Americans through his personal website, and the company cried foul, claiming that the designer infringed their copyright. Ainsworth felt that because he created the outfit, it was his right to sell it anywhere.

In 2006, a California court ruled that Ainsworth owed Lucasfilm $20 million for selling the uniforms to customers in the United States, the territory in which they own the Stormtrooper copyright. However, in a new court ruling, English High Court judge Anthony Mann has stated that while Ainsworth did, in fact, violate that copyright, his sales to United States customers totaled approximately $50,000 to $60,000. The amounts, according to Mann, were not high enough to make him susceptible to U.S. jurisdiction. Furthermore, Mann noted that under British law, the English copyright to the costume designs had expired, so Ainsworth is free to sell his replicas everywhere except the States.

Lucasfilm lawyer Mark Owen has touted victory for his side, saying, “At the end of the day, there is an order that Mr. Ainsworth infringed our copyright, and the next stage of the case will be discussing remedies for that.”

Judge Mann said that a hearing would be held in autumn to determine the terms of that next stage. The saga continues….

Check out this terrific homage to genre film auteur John Carpenter. It visually riffs off of his 1982 sci-fi/horror classic The Thing, and sonically emulates various soundtracks that the director/composer made for his movies. And, the short clip stars animated G. I. Joe action figures!

Action movies tend to fall into “guy territory,” not just in terms of audiences but also in relation to the people who make them.

One major exception to the rule — one who doesn’t receive nearly as much work or acclaim as she should, in my opinion — is Kathryn Bigelow, former flame of Titanic helmer James Cameron, and the gifted director behind the vampire-Western cult fave Near Dark and the Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze bankrobbing surfer flick Point Break. To an extent, I think a lot of contemporary action movies have tried to ape Point Break, but with much lesser impact. After all, what was The Fast and the Furious except Point Break with cars? And over-the-top pics like Shoot ‘Em Up have had skydiving fights, but the Bigelow film totally set the bar for them and, for my money, still raises it far above its imitators. Few current actioners, with their CGI-enhanced stunts, shaky camerawork, and flurried edits, come anywhere close to the stellar staging, tight cutting and jaw-dropping cinematography in the Keanu Klassic. The steadicam-filmed foot chase between Reeves and Swayze should be canonized as a cinematic treasure, right up there with the car chase in The French Connection.

Bigelow will finally be back to theaters with The Hurt Locker, a thriller centered on the challenges faced by an elite Army bomb squad in Iraq. Granted, I don’t know if the world wants/needs/will pay to see yet another Iraq War film (so far, none have fared well at the box office), but I’m definitely chomping at the bit for this one, mostly because of my die-hard support for its director. The movie reteams Bigelow with her Strange Days star Ralph Fiennes, and also features Guy Pearce, David Morse and Jeremy Renner.

The Hurt Locker is going to be one of five U.S. films which will competing for the top prize at the 65th Annual Venice International Film Festival beginning on August 27. I, for one, can’t wait to see how it fares.