Category: Movies

The American Cinenatheque is currently running their annual fantasy and science fiction festival right now, but I hadn’t really bothered to pay attention to it because the lead highlights were a run of Caroline Munro movies, a dubious new Tobe Hooper movie, and some current stuff that didn’t really stand out.

Buried in the schedule’s fine print though was this:

End Of August At The Hotel Ozone (Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon) 1966, 80 min. Dir. Jan Schmidt. Scr. By Pavel Jurácek. Decades after a nuclear holocaust and the world is devoid of men, leaving only an isolated band of feral young women on horseback roaming the forests of Europe – until they reach the last vestige of civilization, the Hotel Ozone. Superb, thought-provoking sci-fi, something like Andrei Tarkovsky directing Mad Max with an all-female cast, with memorable b&w cinematography by Jiri Macak.

Voyage To The End Of The Universe (Ikarie XB-1) 1963, 84 min. Dir. Jindrich Polak. Scr. By Pavel Jurácek and Jindrich Polak. Another Czech sci-fi rarity, this was briefly released in the U.S. in the early ‘60s by AIP and then promptly disappeared – until now. A crew of astronauts encounter a deadly plague during a cross-galaxy voyage, in this excellent precursor to both Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Another beautiful b&w film, with eye-popping ‘60s Euro pop-art design. Prints courtesy the Narodni Film Archive in Prague. [Both films in Czech with English subtitles.]

Pop-art Eastern European apocalypse movies are like my narrowcast target demographic so I have no idea how I’ve missed both of these until now, but both are must-sees when they hit your local film geek pusher. End Of August… plays out almost like a documentary – not much dialog and what there is of the plot is the typical struggle of civilization versus barbarism versus the disconnect people have because of that. Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice is a later reference point. Perhaps even a gender-reversed Le Dernier Combat. Even more remarkable than the cast of unknowns is the dead village use to film in. It’s not a set, it’s an actual abandoned town that just barely held together by the overgrowth of vines holding the buildings up.

Voyage To The End Of The Universe is the absurdist 2001. A future communist utopia sends it’s first interstellar spacecraft (the Ikaria) to Alpha Centauri and along the way encounters a derelict spaceship of decadent capitalists (hilariously shown as an outer space gambling casino with roulette wheels and card tables and a swankily dressed crew), deals with crew ennui (apparently by elaborate dance routines), and pesky space radiation which may or may not be beneficial. Faster than you can say “1845 Franklin Expedition“, members of the crew pass out and/or go insane and the fun begins. So the script is kinda dippy, but the Panton-esque sets and the mostly electronic (slack-key guitar grafted onto the Forbidden Planet bleeps and bloops) soundtrack is just flat out amazing.

So who’s this guy Pavel Jurácek? Based on the two movies I’ve seen so far, he’s the Czech Rod Serling. Their favorite themes are similar – societal tedium and the breakdown of systems and people. Idealization of a home that’s unreachable (or may not even exist). Not much more about him on the web except that he unsurprising fled Czechoslovakia in 1967 when the Soviet Union invaded and only managed to make one more movie in 1970.

There’s another night of his movies at the Cinematheque, and I’m not missing it for anything. From the description of one:

Joseph Kilian (Postava K Podpirani), 1963, 38 min. Dirs. Jan Schmidt and Jurácek. This stunning, Kafka-esque short follows a man who sees a shop marked “Cat Rentals,” and rents a kitty for the day. But when he tries to return the animal, the shop has vanished. Terrified by the late fees he’ll incur, he searches desperately for the one official who can help him: Joseph Killian.

La Matrix Revoluciones in Havana, Cuba.

Two years ago I put together my top 10 list of movies that needed to be released on DVD and I think it’s time for an update. Of that initial list, The Monolith Monsters, Action In The North Atlantic, and the Dragnet TV movie are completely unavailable with The Driver available only as a region 2 disc.

Anyway, this year’s most wanted is:

O Lucky Man – Lindsay Anderson’s surrealist triptych with coffee salesman Malcom McDowell. I’ve always wondered how the heck something like this got made and wish more movies were like this.

The works of Oskar Fischinger – Known probably for some of his early work on Disney’s Fantasia, Fischinger was a pioneer in abstract animated films. Seventy years later, his films are still a couple light years ahead of their time. Attention Criterion: how about a monster Fischinger DVD box like what you did for Brakhage?

Highway 61 – This kinda got lost in the shuffle of early 90s indie road trip movies, but it’s smarter than the rest and, well, extremely Canadian. One of the best representations of Satan in any movie ever, and hey – Jello Biafra plays a cop.

Rikky and Pete – This one got lost in the flood of late 80s Australian movies. It’s not spectacular and the “wacky Aussie humor” could be just as annoying as it is charming, but it’s just gentle enough to be the perfect thing to watch when you’re sick.

The Lively Set – 1964 teenage exploitation on wheels. Hokey as any Elvis movie but with lots of racing scenes and twangy guitar on the soundtrack. Worth it alone for all the scenes of Chrysler’s 1963 Turbine Car.

The Loved One – Hysterically absurd Terry Southern comedy about the funeral industry, Hollywood, and Los Angeles cliffside living. Ahem… Criterion again?

Ace In The Hole – Bleak and ultra-harsh movie about journalistic corruption with Kirk Douglas as an alcoholic reporter. Possibly my favorite Billy Wilder movie.

Nightmare Alley – Lurid film noir about carnys, nighclub fortune tellers with Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell

The Conformist – Again, attention Criterion! Why the HELL isn’t this available on DVD? We’re not talking some offbeat cult movie, but a cinema classic. WTF?

Ere Erera Baleibu Icik Subua Aruaren – Basque artist José Sistiaga’s seventy (yes, seventy!) minute abstract work of 100,000 individually painted frames. This is messy and swirly flipside to the precision of early computer graphics and the “stargate” sequence of 2001. No audio necessary, the only soundtrack necessary is the sound of your neurons being tuned up.

The Double Life of Veronique – Again, I’m stumped as to why this hasn’t been released on DVD yet. Almost all of Kieslowski’s other movies are available, what gives?

Angel’s Flight – Gritty and bleak film noir filmed in and around the Bunker Hill area of Los Angeles before the city bulldozed the whole works down to put it out of it’s misery.

Ace In The Hole – Bleak and ultra-harsh movie about journalistic corruption with Kirk Douglas as an alcoholic reporter. Possibly my favorite Billy Wilder movie.

Play It As It Lays – Joan Didion adapted her own novel about the LA entertainment industry in the early 1970s.

Serial – Satire/sitcom of the baby boomer post-cocaine crash at the end of the 70s. Not a particularly great movie, but supposedly a lot got cut before it hit the theaters.

Dusty and Sweets McGee – Sort of the Los Angeles version of Panic In Needle Park which also came out around the same time. Terrific shots of the forgotten areas of early-70s Los Angeles.

When they haven’t been running “Flops!”-related programming, Trio has been showing the obscure teen exploitation movie Over The Edge on occasion. Known these days as Matt Dillon’s first movie and Kurt Cobain’s favorite movie, Over The Edge is the only movie I can think of that documented suburban teenaged angst and nihilism. Teen culture from 1977 to 1980 has always been divided up among punks and unhip valley kids but little about the then-new suburban areas that catered to upwardly mobile parents who sweated over property values. Of course, growing up in Orange County in the 1970s means that I’m the target audience for the movie, and while I didn’t feel the need to get stoned, smash cars, and listen to Cheap Trick there were plenty of kids I knew in junior high who could have easily been part of it. I had no idea that the movie was based on actual events that happened in Foster City, California in the mid-70s.

Apparently a DVD will finally be released later in 2004. There’s the obligatory fan web site with a “then and now” photo tour of New Granada (actually Aurora and Greely, Colorado) and a recent interview with director Jonathan Kaplan.

One thing I always wondered about was the television station that apparently played nothing but computer generated patterns on the screen. Apparently, some cable companies would have a channel that was nothing but a music track and an early audio visualizer supplying the video. Atari had a device called Atari Video Music that generated video pretty much identical to what’s in the movie.

Video synthesizers are themselves an oddball piece of early tech that bears further investigation. AudioVisualizers.com has a run down of the models.

The American Cinematheque schedule for Godzilla’s 50th birthday festival is finally posted. Basically, don’t expect me to exist anywhere outside of the Egyptian Theatre from June 24 through 29. The re-release of the first Godzilla movie (in it’s vastly superior original Japanese version) hit town a couple weeks ago and the Cinematheque premieres both Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla and Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S., neither of which I’ve seen before. More to the point, I haven’t seen any of these in the theater before and I’m especially psyched to see Rodan and Godzilla vs. Hedorah – which I maintain is single-handedly responsible for every Japanese communal acid rock band ever.

On the other coast, the Columbia University library is running an exhibition of Godzilla movie poster art through the end of the year. This cubist-Godzilla on the Polish poster is just unbelievably adorable – I desperately want a full-size reproduction of it.

I’ve ranted about the sorry state of movie and DVD packaging before, and this collection of movie posters painted by Bob Peak in the 1970s and 1980s only highlights how crappy things are right now. Why can’t all movie posters look like this instead of some airbrushed gibbering celebrity head? I absolutely love this gonzo poster for Harry And Tonto:

I only made it to three showings at the 3D Film Festival at the Egyptian Theater, but wow!

Didn’t the people who made The Maze realize that if you’re trying to make a scary frog monster, that you don’t want to give the frog costume a big smile?

LA area film fans should not miss this week’s run of How The West Was Won at the Cinedome. The movie itself is mostly hokey Americana (except for John Ford’s intense Civil War battle scene) with a big ensemble cast. However the real reason to go is to see the film in its original three-strip Cinerama projection. Just breathtaking. You really can’t go wrong with Cinerama views of the eastern Sierras, Monument Valley, and downtown Los Angeles in 1962.

Also showing at the dome this week is the documentary Cinerama Adventure which details the history of Cinerama. I suppose it’s all rather quaint compared to the typical IMAX movie, but there a certain earnest artistry to the Cinerama films that’s lacking now. Again, not the first time I’ve said something similar to that.

Fun Cinerama fact: The Soviet Union was so taken aback by the success of Cinerama and it’s potential as a propaganda tool, especially when the State Department talked about building a Cinerama theater in a retired aircraft carrier and going on tour with it. So naturally, they had to build one for themselves.