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September 18, 2008


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2008-09-18

Something out of nothing

Baghead riffs on the burgeoning subgenre of Mumblecore

B+

BAGHEAD
Sept. 19-24, Cinematheque

The Duplass brothers - Jay and Mark - are the great dissenters in the so-called Mumblecore movement. Their new film, a jape about struggling filmmakers caught up in the very horror film premise they've been trying to work out on paper, features two of the genre's hallmarks: adorable Mumblecore actress Greta Gerwig (LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs) and the requisite emotionally stunted adults hemming and hawing about What To Do With Their Lives. At once embracing this now-established formula and distancing themselves from it, the Duplass bros. do so not out of animosity for what's come before, but out of a curious fixation with how far they can take it, just to see if it withstands intense scrutiny in an unlikely genre.

Ross Partridge is hunky Matt, while Steve Zissis is chubby Chad: best friends introduced to us at a film festival screening, alongside the spunky, perpetually drunk Michelle (Gerwig) and the more traditionally attractive Catherine (Elise Muller). This opener is the most accurate depiction of what it is to see a short film at just such a festival, particularly the unimaginative questions aimed at the director, Jett Garner (playing himself) - "What was improvised?" "What was the budget?"; absolutely ludicrous but undeniably truthful.

Inspired by Jett's technique of shooting unknowing participants and then editing said footage into a workable film, Matt takes Chad, Michelle and Catherine to a rustic cabin in the woods, where Michelle's eye-opener of a nightmare, involving a slash-and-stalk killer with a nondescript bag over his head, motivates Matt to run with that concept. Problem is, all of his buddies prefer to drink and chat about life instead, with Chad crushing intensely over Michelle, knowing full-well that she's more likely to hop into bed with Matt should he show the least bit of interest. Catherine, on the other hand, ostensibly already dates Matt, though they're currently locked at a standstill with one another. To reveal any more would be a sin but, suffice to say, ethical boundaries are delicately traipsed as a hinted-at bloodthirsty madman staggers around, implacably, outside.

Employing the handheld camera style of Mumblecore proper, even as intensity mounts in the more suspenseful shock sequences, the Duplass brothers are able to maintain their hold on the viewer without getting too preachy. Amazingly, the film stays as light as it has been in its first half - all half-drunken preamble - even when terror strikes.

Performances are an advantage, too, with the close-cropped 'do of Gerwig reminding one of a post-punk Jean Seberg; her ability to play drunk consistently, slurring words and half-heartedly attempting to display her misplaced affection for Matt, is of the highest calibre. Zissis is amiable, while you can never quite gain a foothold on Partridge's true personality as Matt (in this case, a plus).
— Aaron Graham

Who knew assassins were so boring?

Nicolas Cage gives a decent performance, but Bangkok Dangerous still misses the mark

BANGKOK DANGEROUS
(Now showing)

The Pang Brothers have remodelled their somewhat-well-received 1999 Thai film of the same name, placing Nicolas Cage in the central role of the disillusioned hit man on a treacherous assignment who attempts to bid farewell to his profession while agreeing to do One Last Job, with the idea of living forever off its bountiful payoff.

Unfortunately, the stale action sequences come off as director John Woo's warmed-over leftovers, at least 10 years too old to be relevant, while Cage's weary role doesn't allow him to enliven his part with anything resembling his usual outlandishness.

Cage is Joe, a jet-setting, coal black-haired assassin whose work currently has him on location in Bangkok, doing business for two corrupt gangsters. Perhaps growing nostalgic for his lost innocence, or just generally bored with his typical thorough protocol, Joe lets his guard down for a small-time grifter, Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm), hired as a middle man to the club, and a deaf-mute pharmacist, Fon (Charlie Yeung).

After skilfully taking out three of the four targets he's been assigned, Joe sets his sights on training Kong to follow in his footsteps, allowing for Kong to move on from cheap scams, make some real money and earn the charms of a club dancer. Joe's affection for Fon also deepens with time, though the assassin's self-destructive ways will seemingly make it impossible for him to settle down. Their first date, held over some spicy food which Joe has a hard time eating, sets it up so that the diminished lines of communication are seen as a plus for this troubled killer and his deaf girlfriend; their inability to verbally interact replaced here, favourably, with knowing gestures and innately understood body language. We're led to believe this incapacity for revealing too much is what made Joe fall for her in the first place.

When the fourth target is revealed by Kong to be a good man, a politician who has done much for his country and its people, Joe must renegotiate his self-held principles of only murdering criminals.

Will he go soft and risk being killed for not keeping up his end of the bargain, or will he resume his icy cool reserve and commit the deadly deed?

Cage is not capable of being uninteresting, even when he's as mundane (as he possibly can be) in projects like this and the recent remake of The Wicker Man. Still, there's a curious remove here, as he lethargically goes through the motions of what he thinks an imbalanced, but still passive, killer would be. The handful of action sequences are a compendium of staples seen in other, better films, with a brief smattering of gore thrown in to wake up any viewers who may have fallen asleep. With a subgenre of film that reached its zenith in the '60s with John Boorman's masterful Point Blank, Bangkok Dangerous trudges along, content with rehashed platitudes.
— Aaron Graham

Satisfy your sweet tooth with these bands, baby

Film compilation explores the bands, the producers, the writers - and occasionally, the chimps - behind the bubblegum pop music of the '70s

A+

Satisfy your sweet tooth with these bands, baby

BUBBLEGUM MUSIC IS THE NAKED TRUTH
Sept. 25, 9 p.m., Cinematheque

Deriving its title from a collection of essays on prepubescent pop edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay, Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth is an evocative trip into the previously uncharted, much-maligned territory of music history.

With its primary focus on the years between '67 and '72, compiler/narrator Kier-La Janisse has delved deep into her files of rare footage for material representing such kooky and sickly sweet bands as 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Archies, Ohio Express (the group behind Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, not to be confused with its other smash, Chewy, Chewy), and The Sweet.

Producer-oriented more than anything else, the bands themselves are largely revealed to be frauds and fronts;n neatly contained packages of pop confections. As was more often the case, raging creative egos and enterprising spirits would ultimately take over after a band would have a hit, and the unit would either implode or go on, such as The Monkees, to finish up its run (and television series) at a resourceful peak. Later, songwriters and producers worked around this by not using human beings at all, and thus: animated cartoons - The Archies, The Groovy Goolies - were ushered forth to become the predominant venue for these manufactured delights.

Of all the music sampled, the most out-there acts may be The Banana Splits (colourful, costumed animals) or the actual group of monkeys that headled the Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp group. Pure WTF concepts, these trippy concoctions have numbers that are catchy as hell and even more entertaining to witness, with utter travesties and underrated gems alike springing forth at a tremendous clip. It's almost too hard to keep up.

Charting the phenomenon from The Brill Building (which began with such stellar songwriters as Neil Diamond, Carole King and Gerry Goffin), to West Coast producers, animated one-offs, The Partridge Family, U.K. glam sensations, Scotland's Bay City Rollers and, finally, to '80s boy bands such as Menudo, Janisse leaves no stone unturned. The corresponding images and sounds parade over the viewer, leaving them in a hazy daze, unable to reason with what they've just seen, but excited at the possibilities of what's coming next.

Thankfully, the selected excerpts from the many essays inside the book put everything in context - who knew that the Jackson 5 (depicted here in their difficult-to-locate cartoon) spawned many imitators and cash-ins, including The Osmond Brothers? Here, their animated shows seen side-by-side, the correlations between the two are thrown into sharp relief.

As a flashback to a simpler time of breakfast cereals, bell-bottoms, and moon rocks, Bubblegum Music... knows no equal. Only in retrospect do we realize how uncorrupted and ingenious this music could be.
— Aaron Graham

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