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Forget it Ji, it’s Kolkata

Odie Henderson

“The Bengali Detective” plays HBO On Demand, beginning November 16th.

The first thing you need to know about “The Bengali Detective is that Fox Searchlight purchased the remake rights ten months before the general public laid eyes on it. Director Philip Cox’s documentary features a charming leading man, adultery, triple homicide, mystery and suspense, a cute little kid, a dying spouse, corrupt officials and unbridled dancing. What studio could resist any of that, let alone be faithful to the darker, sadder grace notes that underscore the source material? The fiction version, due in 2014, will probably replace the casual matter-of-factness of “The Bengali Detective” with overdone “Slumdog Millionaire”-style schadenfreude. Unlike Danny Boyle’s popular Oscar winner, this film reminds the viewer that those who cannot afford much should still be afforded dignity without the gaze of pity. Save yourself the three-year wait and watch “The Bengali Detective” now.

According to the film, 70 percent of the crimes in the East Indian city of Kolkata are unsolved. The authorities are either incompetent, corrupt or both. So the citizens turn to one of their own, the local detective who takes their cases. The titular Bengali detective is Rajesh Ji, head of the Always Detective Agency. He takes numerous cases, sometimes more than he can comfortably handle, and his motley crew of assistant detectives conduct surveillance, interview suspects, and shoulder their share of the legwork. During “The Bengali Detective, ” Ji investigates three cases: One has a predictable outcome, one is a deceptively trivial crime, and the last is the harrowing triple murder of three best friends. The film gives each case a title so we know which one we’re following with the detectives.

“Deepti” follows a middle-aged woman who comes to Ji with the suspicion that her husband of 24 years is cheating on her. Cox interviews her, and she talks of arranged marriage and her spouse’s incredible cruelty toward her over the course of their relationship. “Just because he’s a man doesn’t make him lord and master,” Deepti tells the camera. Later, after two of Ji’s assistants tail the husband to the expected results, Deepti issues a statement to Ji that is devastating in its descriptive simplicity. “My heart is blank,” she tells him, “but at least I know the truth.” Cox leaves her story with a quiet long shot of the saddened wife staring at the bright green folder containing Ji’s case documentation.

From Seattle, with free refills

Jeff Shannon

“The Off Hours” is now available on most on-demand platforms including Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and most major-cable services. NOTE: The film is not available through DirecTV. It will be released on DVD in January and will premiere on Hulu and Netflix later in 2012.

by Jeff Shannon

There’s never been a better time for filmmaking in the Pacific Northwest. Running the entire spectrum from filmgoers and critics to actors, writers and production talent aplenty, the Seattle film community has always been close-knit and cooperative, and its D.I.Y. resourcefulness has resulted in a slow but steady rise of intermingling talent. (Full disclosure: Several of the creative people mentioned below are casual Facebook acquaintances of mine.) Ten years ago and earlier, you were lucky if your micro-budgeted project got finished and accepted by festivals, and for several years it seemed like the Native American drama “Smoke Signals” (written by Northwest author Sherman Alexie and distributed by Miramax in 1998) would be Seattle’s only claim to a locally-produced breakout success.

Undeterred, Seattle’s film community continued to percolate like the coffee that stereotypically defines “The Emerald City” for most of the outside world. Abundant indie-film projects, and the passions that fueled their creation, have led to a natural progression of experience and expertise, and this year alone the Sundance film festival hosted four films shot in Washington state. When you consider the local history that led us from “Gas City” (an obscure, no-budget 1978 slacker drama shot among the aging motels and nightspots of Seattle’s Aurora Avenue) to the international success of director Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday” (2009), it’s no wonder that Seattle has become the Northwest’s answer to Austin, Texas: A film- and music-loving city (per capita, Seattleites are still the nation’s #1 moviegoers) where independent filmmakers can find the talent, resources, and community support to foster their projects from start to finish. Indeed, “Start-to-Finish” is the name of an innovative program, introduced by the Northwest Film Forum in 1998, designed to select and co-produce films with the goal of national and global exposure. Canadian alt-auteur Guy Maddin found NWFF so appealing that he came here to shoot his 2006 film “Brand Upon the Brain!,” now available on DVD from the Criterion Collection (and photographed by the gifted Benjamin Kasulke — see below).

Faces that bring their own light

Steven Boone

“The First Grader” is streaming On Demand via Amazon and Vudu, and the DVD is on Netflix and on sale.

by Steven Boone

It doesn’t matter that “The First Grader” is as shamelessly, sappily manipulative as that TV commercial where Sarah Mclachlan wails a tune while the camera zooms in on miserable animals peering out of their rescue shelter cages. Nope. It doesn’t even matter that the musical score, which I will give the alternate title “Mother Africa Weeps,” is the World Music equivalent of an Oreo McFlurry — a real pancreas-buster. Never mind all that. The imagery in “The First Grader” places it on par with cinema’s great sentimental masterpieces, “Umberto D,” “Tokyo Story” and “Ikiru.” From the first frame, this film warns that it is working in a universe of pure emotion.

The film’s true story concerns Maruge (Oliver Litondo), a former Kenyan freedom fighter and political prisoner who has been forgotten in the post-colonial age. He walks around the countryside in rags while the new generation of power brokers benefiting from his sacrifices zip through Nairobi in Benzes. When he learns that the government is now offering free education to all, he tries to enroll in a local elementary school. He’s illiterate, it turns out, and he wants to learn how to read an important old letter for himself. Of course, the 84 year-old has a tough time convincing the overcrowded one-room schoolhouse to let him in.

Inventing David Geffen: The Art of Self-Creation

Jeff Shannon

“American Masters: Inventing David Geffen” premieres Tuesday, Nov. 20th at 8:00pm on PBS. (Check local listings.) It can also be viewed, where available, via PBS On Demand.

by Jeff Shannon

It was my good fortune to be working at Microsoft when the big announcement was made in March of 1995: Microsoft was entering into a joint venture with DreamWorks SKG, the new film studio and entertainment company founded the previous year by mega-moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (the “SKG” in the company’s original moniker). At the time, Microsoft dominated the booming business of multimedia publishing, and the group I was working in, nicknamed “MMPUB,” was producing a dazzling variety of CD-ROM games and reference guides. As an independent contractor I was the assistant editor of Cinemania, a content-rich, interactive movie encyclopedia (later enhanced with a website presence) that was an elegant and in some ways superior precursor to the Internet Movie Database.

A haunting, in time and space

Steven Boone

“The Innkeepers” is streaming online through Amazon Instant and Vudu. It is also offered on some cable systems’ On Demand channels and opens theatrically in a limited release February 3rd. The official website is here.

by Steven Boone

The trailer for “The Inkeepers” betrays a basic insecurity common in low-budget indie films nowadays: They want you to think they’re as loud and hectic as their big-budget counterparts. They’re afraid you won’t show up otherwise. And so this horror film which builds its scares slowly, stealthily and through the peculiar quirks of its characters is sold as just another clangy, generic mainstream fright flick. Mercifully, the actual film shows only a little of this poisonous “ambition.” It’s mostly just a good old-fashioned ghost story, well told.

This film’s wealth of personality is apparent early on, as director Ti West takes his time recording the subtle oddball chemistry between Claire (Sarah Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), the only staff on duty at the Yankee Pedlar Inn. Luke is obsessed with documenting a legendary ghost at the Pedlar for his website. He is surprised to find that Claire, his secret geek-girl crush, is just as fascinated by the subject. For a healthy stretch of the film we just watch them goofing off and pranking each other when not rendering poor service to the inn’s only two guests (one played by Kelly McGillis from “Top Gun,” appearing about 15 years older than her actual age–the biggest jolt of the movie, for a viewer over 30).

Hara-Kiri: Of courage, compassion & cowardice

Steven Boone

In Takashi Miike’s “Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai,” power and tradition crush good people, just as they did in Masaki Kobayashi’s 1962 version. Both films are expressions of social rebellion, but where Kobayashi’s conveyed a spirit of righteous vengeance that anticipated the course of its revolutionary decade, Miike’s is more plaintive and despairing. There are struggles, but nobody wins, ever. Weak and cowardly people who happen to be tending the levers of power simply carry out meaningless rituals that destroy lives.

As in the ’62 film, through flashbacks we get a good, long look at the lives an inflexible Samurai code has destroyed. With the elegance and shyness of an Ozu domestic drama, Miike renders a family formed under bittersweet circumstances: A poor Samurai dies, leaving his son in the care of his old war buddy, a fellow widower with a daughter of his own. Raising these children in early 15th Century peacetime means drawing from meager earnings as an umbrella maker rather than as a soldier of fortune. Hanshiro Tsugumo (Ebizo Ichikawa) might have been tough on the battlefield, but he imparts a gentle nature, not a warrior’s stoicism, to the boy, Motome Chiziiwa (Eita). Motome becomes a schoolteacher and, inevitably, marries Hanshiro’s daughter Miho (played as an adult by Hikari Mitsushima, the radiant star of Sion Sono’s Miike-like masterpiece, “Love Exposure”). He fulfills both obligations with his father’s patient, nurturing ways.

Raccoon Nation: The hep cats of the ‘hood

Odie Henderson

“Raccoon Nation” premieres on PBS’s Nature series Wednesday, Feb. 8, at 8 p.m., 7 p.m. Central. Coming on DVD/Blu-ray March 13.

Let’s be frank: People watch nature documentaries because they want to see wild animals doing the Wild Thing. This can be shown on regular TV because, as Bea Arthur’s Maude famously said, “animals making love is rated G. People making love like animals–that’s R ” An animal documentary serves to showcase how its subjects survive, hunt, eat, play, and yes, get their freak on. There’s a reason the sexiest piece of music Elmer Bernstein ever wrote used to play over footage of animals gettin’ bizzy on “National Geographic.” A Barry White soundtrack would have been way too hot for TV.

Alas, “Raccoon Nation” is a relatively chaste animal documentary, which is unusual but no less interesting. Its focus is on another popular topic of nature non-fiction: man’s effect on the animal kingdom. Our species is usually depicted as destructive, and rightfully so. Forests and wooded areas are disappearing, leaving animals homeless and upsetting the natural balance by misplacing both predator and prey. “Raccoon Nation” takes a different approach, however, suggesting that humans may be responsible for the continued survival of the misplaced animal. The more we try to get rid of raccoons, the smarter they get. It’s side hustle disguised as adaptation.

As more and more development occurs, the animals start living closer to us. The urban jungle is now literally a jungle. Deer have been spotted in my hometown, and 10 miles away, Irvington, New Jersey saw an episode of “Bearz N The Hood” when a city block’s trashcans were set upon by ursine visitors. My current neighborhood is overrun with rabbits, foxes, possums, squirrels and birds who are decidedly NOT pigeons. I walked out of my house this summer, and there were so many animals in my yard I thought I was in “Song of the South.”

Walk Away Renee: You’re not to blame

Jana Monji

“Walk Away Renee” is available on SundanceNow’s new Subscriber Video-on-Demand Program Doc Club from June 27, 2012.

When you were young didn’t you think your parents were crazy? Did you swear you wouldn’t turn out like them? For filmmaker Jonathan Caouette, those two worries have defined his life because his mother suffers from bipolar personality and schizoaffective disorders, something that he focused on in his award-winning 2003 documentary “Tarnation.” In his new film, “Walk Away Renee,” Caouette brings us up to 2010 with the focus on Caouette driving his mother, Renee LeBlanc, in a U-Haul from Houston to New York.

For a dysfunctional family, road trips can be filled with emotional landmines. For Caouette, this bonding experience starts out well, but early on, they lose Renee’s 30-day supply of lithium. Without her mood stabilizing meds, you know that things can only get worse. For people who have bipolar relatives, this story might seem heartbreakingly familiar.

Caouette’s “Tarnation” begins with overexposed grainy images. The highlights are blown out to white; this isn’t a technical problem, but an expression of panic. His mother has overdosed and the documentary then shows the events building up to this emergency. Caouette began filming his family in 1984 and in “Tarnation” we see him as a young troubled boy, starved for attention and trying to make sense of his world, his sexual orientation and the mother he loves while being raised by his overwhelmed though well-meaning grandparents, Adolph and Rosemary Davis.

Norman Mailer: His life in public

Donald Liebenson

“Norman Mailer: The American” is available on Amazon Instant video. It is also available on DVD. Criterion has announced a two-disc Eclipse Series DVD set of Norman Mailer-directed features for release August 28, 2012: “Maidstone” (1970), “Wild 90” (1967) and “Beyond the Law” (1968).

Watching “Norman Mailer: The American,” I was struck by the similarities between Mailer and Charles Foster Kane. And it’s not just that director Joseph Mantegna (not the actor) at one point employs the title card for “Citizen Kane’s” faux newsreel “News on the March” to setup some archival footage. Or the fact that “American” was originally the proposed title for Orson Welles’ masterpiece.

Both films grapple with taking the full measure of a man who had significant influences on his times (Kane is fictional, but he was legendarily based in part on newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst). As Mailer’s life unfolds in all its glory, controversy and infamy, dialogue from “Kane” ran like a crawl through my brain. “Few private lives were more public… and he himself was always news.” And: “Here’s a man who was as loved and hated and talked about as any man in our time.” But finally: “It’s not enough to tell us what the man did, you’ve got to tell us who he was.”

Who forgives the Gonzo?

Odie Henderson

Opening theatrically in New York. Available now through Comcast On Demand, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu. See TribecaFilm.com for details.

by Odie Henderson

“Beware the Gonzo” begins with one of those flash-forwarded scenes where something from later in the film is presented to us as a means of foreshadowing. Being out of context, the scene has the tricky role of piquing the viewer’s interest while not being a spoiler. It rarely works, and “Beware the Gonzo”‘s opening scene is a big spoiler: a beaten up Eddie “Gonzo” Gilman (Ezra Miller) stares into a video camera and tells us that his actions have cost him his best friends, made him lose his girl, gotten him kicked out of school, and almost caused the divorce of his parents (played nicely by Campbell Scott and Amy Sedaris).

This is supposed to be an apology to all those he has wronged, but instead, it’s one of those politician mea culpas, a whiny “my bad if you were upset” speech that never forgets to be more about its subject than atoning for his wrongdoings. Out of context, it seemed pathetic, but I was willing to grant that I didn’t have the entire speech at my disposal. However, it hung over the movie, and as I met the interesting and trusting characters, dread crept in; I kept waiting for the moment when Gonzo would stop being the likeable character he is for much of the film and turns into this destructive monster.

This is not a bad thing, mind you, but the film’s dark turn treats some rather unsavory matters in eye-rollingly shallow fashion to produce a happy ending. It never makes its case for why we, or anybody in “Beware the Gonzo” should Forgive the Gonzo. If the film were honest, this tale of how power corrupts would have had a bittersweet, life-learning lesson of an ending: The hero learns from his mistakes and carries that lament with him as he moves on. Lacking that courage, director-screenwriter Brian Goluboff should have at least removed the most serious of “Beware the Gonzo”‘s sins from the screenplay. The ending would then be easier to swallow. More on that shortly.

Gonzo works for a prep school newspaper run by principal’s darling Gavin Reilly (Jesse McCartney). Reilly is a jock who not only edits the newspaper but comes from a long line of school attendees and patrons. Reilly’s family has won a prestigious history award for the school two years running, and he is in line to win it its third. Reilly is also a bully (and worse, as we’ll discover) who trashes all of Gonzo’s article ideas. He and his jocks beat up Gonzo’s friend, the wonderfully named Scott Marshall Schneeman (Edward Gelbinovich), giving him an gate-enhanced atomic wedgie. Scott’s predicament leads Gonzo to turn his “first day of school” article into an expose on the bullied kids. Reilly edits out all but two paragraphs of Gonzo’s article, forcing him to start his own underground newspaper. The first article is all about Scott and his run-ins with the jocks.

It ain’t over until the postman rings

Jana Monji

“Il Postino” will premiere on PBS at 9 p.m. ET Fri., Nov. 25 as part of the Great Performances series. Based on the 1994 Italian film, it stars tenor Plácido Domingo.

By Jana J. Monji

The opera “Il Postino” in its name shows its curious lineage. While not a great opera, “Il Postino” does feature the performance of Plácido Domingo, one of the great opera tenors, in a role specifically written for him during the world premiere performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles.

The opera is in Spanish, not Italian as its name suggests. “Il Postino” is also the name of the much acclaimed 1994 Italian movie that although originally released in the United States as “The Postman,” is now referred to as “Il Postino” to avoid confusion with Kevin Costner’s 1997 post-apocalyptic movie based on the 1985 David Brin novel.

The movie “Il Postino” was also based on a novel, Chilean writer Antonio Skármeta’s 1983 “Ardiente Paciencia” (Burning Patience) which was later retitled “El Cartero de Neruda” (Neruda’s Postman). The Italian movie “Il Postino” (Skármeta directed a 1983 Spanish language movie of his novel) transferred the location from Chile to Italy, changed the time period and the ending. As you might expect, the movie was in Italian.

Shut Up Little Man: An Odie Misadventure

Odie Henderson

Opening theatrically in select cities and available On Demand through Comcast, Amazon, Hulu and other providers. For more information, visit TribecaFilm.com.

by Odie Henderson

The technological weapon of choice is refreshingly analog: Cassette tapes containing the vitriolic, violent rants of two men living together in an apartment in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. The men, Raymond Hoffman and Peter Haskett, proclaim their disdain for one another in conversations loud enough to wake the dead. Haskett is an openly gay man, Hoffman a raging homophobe, and both are well beyond casual drinking.

The combination of opposites fueled by days of constant boozing provides enough hate to fuel the furnace that heats Hell, all of it recorded on those cassette tapes. The men become celebrities of sorts after their recordings go the pre-YouTube version of viral in the early 1990’s. Though Ray and Pete provide the content, the reward goes to the men who recorded them, Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitchell D. The documentary, “Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure” documents their return to the scene of their run-in with fame, a pink apartment complex they affectionately called Pepto-Bismol Palace.

Ray and Pete lived next door to Eddie and Mitchell from 1987 to 1989. After Eddie signs the lease, their landlord warns them that their neighbors can get “a little loud.” When the duo finds out how loud, Eddie confronts Ray. A drunken Ray threatens to kill him before returning his threats to Pete. Neither “Cops” nor “Judge Judy” were on the air in 1987, so the duo didn’t realize they could have their blitzed neighbors dragged out into the street on camera before suing the pantyhose off their trifling landlord. Being from a small town instead of a crime-ridden metropolis, Eddie and Mitchell also seem unaware that, if the walls are thin enough to hear the neighbors, bullets will have no problem getting through them. So, rather than call their landlord or the cops, Eddie and Mitchell decide to record Ray and Pete instead.

Mitchell tells us that Ray and Pete are aware they are being recorded, yet they continue to scream obscenity at each other. After collecting 10 or so hours of material, he and Eddie loan some of the cassettes to friends. The friends find the tapes hilarious, and pass them on to other friends who do the same. Soon, Pete and Ray are underground sensations, and Pete’s constant refrain of “Shut Up, Little Man!” becomes the catchphrase of the cassette crowd. Comic books based on the material are drawn by Daniel Clowes (“Ghost World”). Puppet shows are performed using dialogue from the tapes. A playwright and future nemesis of Eddie and Mitchell named Gregg Gibbs writes a one act play with Pete and a murderous Ray as characters. Even Devo samples the dialogue for one of their songs.

Ants in Your Pants of 2006

Jana Monji

“The Ant Bully” is now available through HBO On Demand and HBO Go until December 18.

A boy, a wizard and a war–that’s the basic formula for many children’s adventure stories. In “The Ant Bully,” as the name suggests, this story takes place in the insect world, but the bully is the boy named Lucas (voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen). This modest morality tale doesn’t go for big laughs but does deal with situations that young kids will inevitably face.

Based on John Nickle’s 1999 book by the same name, this 2006 feature was the first animated film produced by Legendary Pictures. “The Ant Bully” followed two better known 1998 ant-themed films: DreamWorks’ “Antz” and Disney’s “A Bug’s Life.” All three movies have messages, but are aimed at different audiences.

“The Ant Bully,” rated PG for mild violence, is definitely targeted at young children–preteen kids who might feel powerless, so far outside of the adult world. In the movie, 10-year-old Lucas has no friends and is the target of the neighborhood bully. He turns his frustrations on the anthill in his front yard, causing the ants to scurry about when he floods the anthill.

Frequently bloody, occasionally disgusting:A Halloween roundup from the fringes of horror

Jeff Shannon

With the exception of “The Woman” (which is still in limited theatrical release), all of the films from “Bloody Disgusting Selects” are currently available on multiple platforms including Netflix (DVD only), Amazon.com and most VOD providers including Comcast, DirecTV, Amazon, iTunes, CinemaNow, VuDu and Verizon FiOS. Check your VoD provider listings, or go to www.bloodydisgustingselects.com for more information about the films and where to find them.

On DVD, all of the foreign-language films reviewed here include an optional English-dub dialogue track for viewers with an aversion to subtitles.

by Jeff Shannon

Historically and statistically, the most abundant, profitable, and creatively expressive movie genre has always been horror. It has consistently been the most viable proving ground for new talent and a focal point for the most obsessive movie fans on the planet. It’s the most purely cinematic of genres, playing to the strengths of an artistic medium that has shock, surprise, dread, fear, and bloodletting built into every molecule of its DNA. It’s a realm of expression that challenges masters and amateurs alike.

Of course, there’s always a downside: The record-setting $50 million opening weekend of “Paranormal Activity 3” (which earned a one-star review from Roger Ebert) — and Paramount’s immediate strategy to keep that franchise booming — provided a stark reminder that, more often than not, horror is where commerce almost always trumps art. It’s the favorite plaything for copy-cats and money-grubbers. The genre’s blood is frequently tainted by fast-buck pretenders and greedy opportunists who care more about profit than the genre’s history, which is the worthy subject of some of the finest film scholarship that’s ever been written.

“How to Fold a Flag”: 12 times,for each of a soldier’s virtues

Jeff Shannon

Beginning a new column devoted to films available via Video on Demand in all its forms.

● “How to Fold a Flag”● “We Are the Night”

To say that Javorn Drummond, Jon Powers, Michael Goss and Stuart Wilf come from different walks of life is something of an understatement. If they hadn’t served together in Iraq in 2003-04, they never would’ve met. Now they’re back home, separated by geography, uneasy peace and haunting memories of what they saw and did during a war they determined to be pointless. They might meet again someday — or not — but they share a bond of life, death and military service that they’ll take to their graves.

These are the guys we got to know in “Gunner Palace,” the superb 2005 documentary co-directed by the husband-and-wife team of Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein. They defended America as soldiers in the Army’s 2/3 Field Artillery Division, never quite sure what they were killing or dying for. There was a fifth “star” in the film, Ben Colgan, who sacrificed his elite Delta Forces post to join the artillery unit in Baghdad. Then he sacrificed his life to an IED.

The Electric Dancing of War Babies

Steven Boone

Playing in theaters nationwide Thursday, August 4, 2011. Details here.

by Steven Boone

“The Electric Daisy Carnival Experience” captures a dance music scene I tend to find noisy and vapid. But that’s me. If you’re a big fan of DJ-based acts like 12th Planet, Major Lazer, Moby and will.i.am, or just a true devotee of the rave scene, this film is immersive, passionate about its subject and visually striking. Director Kevin Kerslake seems to have as many cameras on hand as the Beastie Boys handed out to concertgoers in their gonzo 2006 music doc “Awesome; I F—-n Shot That!”

It helps that Kerslake is a veteran music video director (R.E.M., Nirvana) whose career is probably older than most of the screaming kids in the crowd. He shows no restraint in dropping the camera deep into the mob like a performer into a mosh pit but doesn’t let the chaos take over. It also helps that, right up front, like Michael Bay showing us a Victoria’s Secret derriere in 3-D at the start of his last Transformers movie, Kerslake crams as many shots of unbelievably gorgeous girls doing cartwheels in clown makeup and lingerie as mathematically possible.

Tim and Eric Mediocre Movie, Great Job!

Steven Boone

“Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” is available for streaming/download on iTunes, Amazon Instant, Vudu and YouTube. In theaters March 2.

“Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” is a lot like “Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job!.” They’re both experimental video art posing as sketch comedy. In them you can see DNA from Ernie Kovacs, John Waters, the Kuchar brothers, Robert Downey, Sr., Tom Rubnitz, early Beck music videos, Damon Packard, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (and every other Adult Swim psychotic episode) and Harmony Korine, to name just a random few. But it’s likely that actor-writer-directors Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim took inspiration from none of these freaks.

The duo’s work seems to flow directly from three sources: Bad corporate promotional and instructional videos, absurd local TV programming and assaultive blockbuster films. Their collages of chopped-and-screwed sounds with spastic motion graphics and sloppy green screen don’t seem much different (in effect, if not production values) from what’s on cable any given Sunday. It’s just that they put unattractive, demented-seeming people in front of the green screen instead of the usual telegenic emoters. They spout nonsense where platitudes and corporate messages usually go. When celebrities appear on the show, they flub and stutter like robot hologram versions of themselves. It’s as if the show’s editor was a spam bot.

Whether any of it is funny is almost beside the point. The creeping surrealism often takes away your ability to blink, especially, I suspect, when, like me, you have no history with the show.

Puppet Nazis vs. the Grindhouse Gang!

Steven Boone

● Jackboots on Whitehall (DVD/VOD/Digital cable July 26)

● American Grindhouse (DVD/Hulu July 26)

by Steven Boone

The animated comedy “Jackboots on Whitehall” does its best to tweak every British stiff-upper-lip stereotype ever perpetuated in film and popular culture since World War II. This satire employs puppet animation techniques familiar from “Team America: World Police” and classic George Pal puppetoons, but with exquisite production design more akin to Wes Anderson’s stop-motion “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Instead of marionettes or stop-motion, however, filmmakers Edward and Rory McHenry employ animatronic dolls enhanced with CGI.

The period detail in this account of Hitler’s alt-reality occupation of London is stunning: a convincing re-creation of Whitehall, the road whose major landmarks comprise the seat of British government; the airship Hindenburg, which, in this reality, never blew up and now serves as a Nazi attack vehicle; Hadrian’s Wall and the hills of Scotland; vintage fighter planes, palaces, tanks, luxury cars… Equally meticulous is the costuming, from Winston Churchill’s pinstriped suit to the Raj soldiers’ blue turbans.

While the McHenry brothers’ puppets aren’t articulated beyond some binary limb and neck movements, they are sculpted with such expressive character it’s easy to suspend disbelief. Exuberant character voices help. Timothy Spall as a gruff Churchill, Alan Cumming as a fey Hitler and Tom Wilkinson as a simpering Goebbels play it lip-smackingly broad. Richard E. Grant portrays a tightly wound priest so perpetually furious that its possible he gave his entire performance through clenched teeth. Ewan McGregor lends the unlikely farm boy hero some warmth. Along the way, some downright filthy jokes fly by almost subliminally, under kids’ radar (including a visual joke last seen in “Boogie Nights”). In fact, so much of the humor is adult, whether in raunchiness or complexity, that Jackboots on Whitehall is less a family film than one for liberal parents and their precocious teens. The DVD includes a fascinating behind-the-scenes documentary that details just how much love went into this handcrafted epic.

Sleepless Night: Opening up a sixpack of Whup-Ass

Odie Henderson

“Sleepless Night” (103 minutes) is available on demand through various cable systems,

Vudu, iTunes and Amazon Instant, starting April 17th. It will be theatrically released in New York and Austin, Texas on May 11, 2012.

by Odie Henderson

A stolen bag of cocaine, a kidnapped kid, corrupt cops, a shaky camera and a dance club the size of a Super Walmart configure Frederic Jardin’s “Sleepless Night,” a frenetic French action film that will either get your heart or your head pounding. This is a relentless genre exercise, both exhilarating and exhausting. Its numerous showdown set pieces feature foes in gun battles, foot chases and fisticuffs. Our protagonist uses whatever’s handy to subdue his opponents: People’s noggins get hit with doors, bread, dishes, bullets and the cleanest part of the commode. Gendarmes go from corrupt to virtuous and vice versa, film speeds vary from slow motion to sped up, and narrow escapes coexist with near-misses. With this much activity, sensory overload is all but guaranteed.

Vincent (French comedian Tomer Sisley) is a corrupt cop who begins his day by robbing 10 kilos of cocaine from the henchmen of José Marciano (Serge Riaboukine). Marciano’s godson is shot, but not before Vincent is stabbed and both he and his partner are seen by one of Marciano’s men. Marciano knows who robbed him, and he also knows Vincent’s son, Thomas, would make a great bargaining chip for the return of his yayo. The gangster kidnaps Vincent’s son and demands the exchange be made at Marciano’s restaurant-slash-dance club, Le Tarmac.