History

THIS IS CINERAMA (1952)

February 2, 2021

(kanopy/Apple TV/Blu-Ray) Cinerama was a widescreen shooting and projection process that, at its time, was the closest you could get to a wholly immersive filmgoing experience. The way it worked was primitive and troublesome, as it not only shot three negatives at the same time (similar to early Technicolor films), but it did so through three cameras, positioned so the footage could be (mostly) seamlessly projected by three projectors.

The end result is spectacularly overwhelming. While the primary allure is the all-encompassing visuals, you’re also bombarded by seven-channel directional surround sound. It truly is a unique experience when it works, but projecting films like this is a hairy process, one that requires constant monitoring for -each- projector. (You can read more about the projection process here.)

If memory serves, the process broke down and had to be re-synced when I saw THIS IS CINERAMA at Los Angeles’ Cinerama theater during TCM Fest, a time when you have your top projectionists on the job. (The LA Cinerama is one of the few existing Cinerama theaters; the other two are in Seattle and Bradford, England.)

Cinerama as a shooting process didn’t last long, thanks to the unwieldy cameras and the introduction of single-strip widescreen lenses like the Ultra Panavision 70, but the theaters survived as many widescreen spectacles were converted to their three-strip projection setup, not unlike how many 35mm films are blown up for IMAX screens.

“So,” you might ask, “if it’s about the experience of being in a high-end theater, why should I watch this on my laptop? Also, isn’t the film mostly a travelogue with some choreographed water skiing?” Well, yes, you certainly aren’t watching for the story. However, while the current restoration allows you to watch it like any widescreen film, it also allows you to view it in the shape you’d see it in at the theater. In a time when we can’t — or at least shouldn’t — be attending theaters, it’s a similarly unique home viewing experience.

CIRCUS OF BOOKS (2019)

January 17, 2021

(Netflix) You may have heard of LA bookstore -Circus of Books- recently as there were a number of articles about their closure after operating for roughly 40 years. If not, while they were a proper bookstore, they were known for producing and selling gay adult material. The capper was that the store was run by conventional-looking couple Karen and Barry Mason, neither of whom you’d suspect as prolific quality smut peddlers.

In order to preserve the bookstore’s history, daughter Rachel Mason decided to interview her parents, take them down memory lane, research the full history of the store, and question her siblings about their memories growing up with -Circus of Books-.

It’s not only a fascinating profile of a culturally important store, but also of a family that kept their eyes low to the ground, and the repercussions of doing so.

SPACESHIP EARTH (2020)

January 9, 2021

(Hulu/kanopy/VOD) Released in May 2020, this doc focused on the first real attempt to create a self-sustaining, human-made biosphere, was perfect pandemic fodder, and remains that way. It’d be enough to just hear the tale of those who lived through two years of isolation, but the doc’s juiced by the corporate intrigue and mismanagement that occurred. A fascinating, bewildering experiment that calls for a slightly grander film than this, but I’m just happy to be able to experience it.

MEDIUM COOL (1969)

January 7, 2021

(DVD/YouTube) Apologies in advance for the lengthy entry — please bear with me.

I moved to Chicago to attend film school, specifically Columbia College Chicago (not to be confused with NYC’s Columbia College). Back in the 90s, Columbia College Chicago was known as a film trade school: folks who worked in the industry taught you the basics to become another cog in the industry, and you were immediately able to get your hands on a camera, sit behind an AVID deck, rig lights, etc., as opposed to say UCLA or NYU, which taught you film history and theory for two years before you could shoot a single frame of film.

Freshmen CCC film students were required to enroll in FILM TECH I, and your first exercise was to shoot a three-minute silent film in Grant Park, an iconic Chicago space carved out in the mid-19th century, and was never to meant be touched by developers’ hands. It’s also basically Columbia College Chicago’s backyard.

Grant Park also happens to be the location of the protests that occurred during 1968 Democratic National Convention, the time and place of Haskell Wexler’s (best know as the Oscar-winning cinematographer of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOS NEST, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) hybrid fact/fiction documentary MEDIUM COOL, a film primarily concerned with the ethics (or lack thereof) of documentaries and photographic/filmic journalism, but whose captured footage of the DNC protest turned the film into an evergreen historical document.*

If you aren’t familiar with the events of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, here’s a primer.

(If you can’t view it, basically: a peaceful protest was turned into a bloody warfield by Chicago cops abusing their authority, all approved by the first Daley mayor.)

I didn’t see MEDIUM COOL until about a year into my CCC education, but I was still shell-shocked to see it, shot in the very same field I filmed a terribly pretentious, very slight short film. I admit, I felt a bit dirty, despite the fact that yes, it’s a public space but, after watching MEDIUM COOL, it felt like hallowed ground (even if it hosts Lollapalooza and the Pitchfork Music Fest every year).

Watching the events unfold yesterday (January 6th 2021), witnessing folks storming the US Capitol, watching a coup so dumb it felt like Christopher Morris penned it, immediately brought me back to when my wife and I travelled to DC for the Women’s March in 2016 which was definitely a clusterfuck of a protest, but still: it was a peaceful, indelible protest.

It made me recall all of the times I’ve seen protests in the news, and how when I was in D.C. my mind blurred into all of the prior D.C. protest footage I’ve seen in film and news over the years. It was a surreal moment then, and seeing a locale turn into the shitshow of domestic terrorism we witnessed on the 6th, of cops simply opening the floodgates into the US Capitol, allowing these racist, seditious assholes run rampant through the building, looting it as if the Patriots just won the Super Bowl, fried my brain.

To say we haven’t resolved the issues that spurred the police abuse in 1968, events that occurred ~fifty years ago., would be an understatement. But this is why MEDIUM COOL exists: to visually document historically important events, to reflect on them, and to force the viewer to reconcile the events in the film with the events in their current lives.

Trailer:

The full film:

“The whole world is watching.”

TESLA (2020)

December 26, 2020

(Hulu/VOD) Was the world asking for another biopic about Nicolas Tesla? No, at least I wasn’t until I heard this one was helmed by cult filmmaker Michael Almereyda (NADJA, THE ETERNAL).

Michael Almereyda’s has recruited his regulars to bring TELSA to life: Ethan Hawke is Tesla, Kyle MacLaughlin is Edison, Jim Gaffigan is Westinghouse, and there are several other established, white, male actors. Eve Hewson (THE KNICK) is J.P. Morgan’s daughter Anne, who serves as the narrator in-and-out-of-time, trying to convince the viewer how Tesla’s current ranking in the cultural consciousness is unforgivably woeful (which goes against everything I know).

While it often looks and feels like an early naughts PBS docudrama, where the re-enactors often break the fourth wall to educate the viewers through a hazy digital video lens, Almereyda ladles out numerous idiosyncrasies to try to keep the audience off-kilter, such as roller skating scenes; anachronistic ice cream cones; obvious rear-projection with intentionally misplaced lighting setups; fictional interactions where Hewson’s character then informs the viewers that the scene ‘likely didn’t happen this way’; even a full-blown musical number.

Those bits of whimsy keep the film breezily entertaining. I know if my hungover high school science teacher screened it for class one day, I’d feel like a lucky boy (although I’d expect the teacher to make the requisite number of caveats that this biopic has ‘fictional elements for dramatic effect’). Despite the (presumably intentional) cheap sheen of the biopic, the blocking and camerawork is top-notch, and no one phones in a performance. I’m especially fond of Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s (GIRLS, BLOW THE MAN DOWN) loose turn as Tesla’s right-hand man.

That said, in the age of modern re-enactments like BIZEBEE ’17 and CASTING JONBENET, it feels like TESLA isn’t formally daring enough, doesn’t push itself far enough, which is a shame as Almereyda is known for grounded weirdness. However, this film is based on his first screenplay, which may account for why the tomfoolery feels quaint, as opposed to a grand remark on the unreliable nature of recreating history. Given the times we’re currently living in, perhaps a safely odd, comfortably unreliable biopic is what you need right now.

By the way, if you’re looking for some more fact/fiction-blended Tesla works, I highly recommend Samantha Hunt’s novel THE INVENTION OF EVERYTHING ELSE.

WAR & PEACE (1966)

September 6, 2020

(HBO MAX/Criterion) This WAR & PEACE is a beast of an epic — featuring over ten-thousand extras and allegedly costing anywhere from (adjusted for inflation) $200-$700 million dollars — and best when it’s spectacle, as the actual story gets a tad muddled within the adaptation. (After all, at the end of the day it’s still a state-made piece.) Watching it at home, be it on your phone, a laptop or even a decently sized flatscreen TV, does a major disservice to the film. Find a projector, screen it on your cleanest wall for best results, and make a day of it.

Vulture has a quality piece regarding the production of the piece, which took years to film. https://www.vulture.com/2019/02/the-wild-story-behind-sergei-bondarchuks-epic-war-and-peace.html

(HBO MAX has a surprising back-catalog of films for some reason and, if I were a film history teacher, I’d pitch an entire class around its offerings. It’s definitely worth scanning through their entire catalog for buried gems.)

SWING SHIFT (1984)

September 5, 2020

(VOD) The story of a young wife (Goldie Hawn) discovering herself through an airplane riveter job and a trumpet-playing Kurt Russell during WWII. Hawn feels oddly muted, but Kurt pours on the charm.

Directed by Jonathan Demme, and co-written by Nancy Dowd (co-writer of one of my favs LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS). Also briefly features a youthful Stephen Tobolowsky — with a full head of hair! — in his second-ever film role.

REDS (1981)

August 26, 2020

(HBO MAX/VOD) I feel dumb for not realizing that THE AMERICANS cribbed liberally from Warren Beatty’s three-hour epic about American union organizers, socialists, and Soviet sympathizers. While it’s gorgeously shot, the written word and Diane Keaton are the complicated hearts of the film.

Fun fact: Sondheim was hired to score the film — at the same time as he was working on Merrily We Roll Along — and you can read more about it here:

http://www.sondheim.com/works/reds/

THE LADY IN RED (1979)

August 10, 2020

(tubi) Penned by John Sayles — his second screenwriting credit — it tells the story of Ana Cumpănaș, aka the last woman to be involved with John Dillinger before his death. The film’s an odd amalgam of genres, including: cathouse, women in prison, and gangster, but yet manages to be more than the sum of its parts.

Please note: the trailer below is NSFW.