An interview with writer/director Neill Blomkamp about his new horror film, Demonic.
Ryan Amon talks about the YouTube video that led to his first feature film score, in this week's "Elysium," directed by Neill Blomkamp ("District 9") and starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster.
Marie writes: Widely regarded as THE quintessential Art House movie, "Last Year at Marienbad" has long since perplexed those who've seen it; resulting in countless Criterion-esque essays speculating as to its meaning whilst knowledge of the film itself, often a measure of one's rank and standing amongst coffee house cinephiles. But the universe has since moved on from artsy farsty French New Wave. It now prefers something braver, bolder, more daring...
Marie writes: Now this is something you don't see every day. Behold The Paragliding Circus! Acrobatic paragliding pilot Gill Schneider teamed up with his father’s circus class (he operates a school that trains circus performers) to mix and combine circus arts with paragliding - including taking a trapezist (Roxane Giliand) up for ride and without a net. Best original film in the 2012 Icare Cup. Video by Director/Filmmaker Shams Prod. To see more, visit Shams Prod.
A horror or science-fiction movie without subtext is like Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory without electricity. The inner metaphor is what gives it life and resonance. Otherwise, it's just a story about stitched-together people parts. Or take David Cronenberg's "The Fly," a riveting, poignant horror/science-fiction/romance about an ambitious scientist who accidentally gets his DNA mixed up with that of a housefly. Everything about the movie is first-rate, from the direction to the performances to the effects. But what really grabs hold of you is the universal theme: We are all Brundlefly, sentient, self-aware beings whose bodies are going to decay and die. In 1986, a lot of people assumed the subtext was AIDS; Cronenberg later said he was thinking in more general terms about the process of aging. It doesn't matter. The movie works on those levels.
Cronenberg is particularly ingenious at making the word flesh, and the ways he develops his ideas are often even scarier than the explicit horrors: "The Brood" is a masterpiece about the psychosomatic effects of rage turned inward, and about the legacy of emotional abuse passed down from one generation to the next; "Videodrome" is about technology as an extension of the body and the brain; "Dead Ringers" is about mutant forms of psychological and sexual intimacy; "Naked Lunch" is about a writer who has to internalize his own sexuality before he can create art.... Cronenberg is an organic, visionary thinker, storyteller, filmmaker. His movies have meat on their bones. Other filmmakers whose work strikes me as insubstantial lack this ability to flesh-out their pictures with compelling, animating ideas. Their plots are meticulously plotted, but they're skin-deep and there's nothing to sink your imaginative teeth into.
Which brings me to this summer's hits, "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," neither of which I have much interest in seeing. Instead I'm intrigued by a few things I've read about them -- specifically about their subtext, or lack thereof. In a piece about the racial themes of "The Help" ("Why Can't Critics Just Get Along?"), David Poland writes:
Readers of Roger Ebert's Journal chose their favorites from the list of Chicago Film Critics Association nominees.
These are your Oscar front-runners after Sunday's voting by three critics' groups: "The Hurt Locker." Jeff Bridges. Meryl Streep. Mo'Nique. Christoph Waltz. Kathryn Bigelow.
This six-minute 2005 short, "Alive in Joburg," by South African director Neill Blomkamp, forms the basis for his "District 9." Unlike the feature, it is set in 1990 under the apartheid government, during which time (in actual history) thousands of black South Africans were relocated from an area of Cape Town known as District 6 to make it an "all whites area." (The same was done in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, setting of the feature film.)
On Thursday night I posted in entry in defense of Armond White's review of "District 9." Overnight I received reader comments causing me to rethink that entry, in particular this eye-popping link supplied by Wes Lawson. I realized I had to withdraw my overall defense of White. I was not familiar enough with his work. It is baffling to me that a critic could praise "Transformers 2" but not "Synecdoche, NY." Or "Death Race" but not "There Will be Blood." I am forced to conclude that White is, as charged, a troll. A smart and knowing one, but a troll. My defense of his specific review of "District 9" still stands. Here is my original entry:
¶ An online friend sent me an e-mail: "I wonder if you've caught the firestorm of reader reactions to Armond White's (negative) review of the film, which has sadly inspired a sort of virtual lynch mob among readers on Rotten Tomatoes. A few readers have tried to interject in defense of free speech and free criticism, but as you know, this is how it goes on the internet." I went to the comment thread and found, at that time, 14 pages of comments excoriating White for his negative review of "District 9." Bear in mind this was before most of those readers could have seen the film.
Some of them seemed pissed primarily because White had "spoiled" the movie's perfect TomatoMeter reading (at that point it was his negative review versus 49 positives). Others focused on his customary contrarian position; Armond White can be counted on to vote against the majority on film after film. I'm not going to pretend I read all 14 pages, but I did a lot of jumping around and didn't find a single comment defending the film itself.
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