An American Hippie in Israel (1972)

It is not often that I go this blind into a film, but I had heard that An American Hippie in Israel was something unbelievable. I guess, I just wanted to believe it was as crazy as I’d heard. I wanted to be surprised. I’m not sure if surprised is the right word, but unbelievable certainly is the wrong word to describe this film. Unbearable is a far better word. Perhaps, unbelievably-unbearable is the right combination of words or perhaps there are just no words in the English language to properly explain the anguish I endured while watching An American Hippie in Israel. 

It’ll have you screaming for freedom.

Maybe there is an Israeli word that adequately describes the mind-numbing experience of this film. Now, I’ve seen bad movies. I’ve seen boring movies. I’ve seen movies by Matthew Samuel Smith. Nothing prepared me for An American Hippie in Israel. Well, except maybe Hoodlums.

There are vast stretches of this film where nothing happens and its not that good kinda nothing. It’s not Antonioni or Akerman nothing. Sure, this film would like to imagine itself as some sort of existential exploration, but it’s more exploitation than existential. Yet, it’s not even interesting exploitation. It’s just maddening. It’s the kinda film you just want to scream at and with this huge pregnant pauses and scenes that extend well past the point of necessary, screaming at the screen is what I did.

Well, it turns out I’m not alone. After watching – or I should say enduring- this movie I listened to Mike White’s Projection Booth podcast about An American Hippie in Israel. I needed answers. I needed to understand. I needed to know why anyone would recommend that someone suffer through this film. What I learned was that over in Israel, this movie is like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. For two years, dedicated fans and curious masochists have gotten together to watch and heckle this picture. Hearing how these screenings are interactive, even performative and listening to all the choice lines from the movie condensed down, with that insanely lengthy gaps of dead space removed from the soundtrack, I was convinced that this film is amazing. There truly is some choice dialog in this film. It’s just surrounded by acres of nothing.

Yes, rarely do I have such marked transformations, so quickly, about a film. I suppose that goes to show what a little education will do for you. I am not really sorry that I went into my viewing so ignorant. I feel bad for the other fellow who was subjected to watching this with me. Still, we wear our experience like a scar. It was a feat of strength to get through this film. I imagine it is not so bad in a theater, under the influence, surrounded by like minded individuals who all know what to expect from this film, and feel free to share their frustration and humor with one another. That is certainly the only way I’d watch this again. I will however be quoting it for the rest of my free life.

http://vimeo.com/26789655

Sugar Hill (1974) – 5 Random Thoughts

1) Sugar Hill reminds us that zombies were not always uncontrollable, brain-hungry, monsters. The zombies in Sugar Hill are the more classical, voodoo zombies, summoned to do the bidding of their master. In this way, Sugar Hill is a throw-back to a more classic horror film.

2) Paul Maslansky only directed one film. Sugar Hill was it. Still, we can’t call him a one-hit wonder. He has a long track record of producing films like The Gun and the Pulpit, Race with the Devil, Hard Times, Damnation Alley, King, Circle of Iron, When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?, Hot Stuff, Scavenger Hunt. They are not common titles, but they are entertaining, if not interesting. For something more recognizable, one only need look at Maslansky’s most famous film Police Academy or its sequels. He produced Police Academy 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and the un-numbered Mission to Moscow. Love him or hate him for producing that series, it is far better than Cop and ½. He’s working on a re-boot of Police Academy which make financial sense, but it also pulls him farther away from the more edgier work he produced in the 70′s. 

3) Sugar (Marki Bey) has a hair-do just for killing.

If her hair is up, so is your time.

If her hair is relaxed, you too can relax

 

 

 

 

 

 

4) The one black fellow working for the gang of awful white guys comes on like such a tough guy when he’s first introduced in the film, only to be seen in the next scene shining the shoes of his white boss.

5) Dancing chicken foot. That is all. If you have seen the film, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, hopefully this leaves you curious enough to check it out.

Fog City Mavericks (2007)

Fog City Mavericks is a fluff piece and a real waste of time. Admittedly, I watched this documentary with the hope that some screen time would be spent profiling John Korty. Perhaps, some discussion of his early independent films would have been nice, maybe a few clips from The Crazy Quilt, Riverrun, Funnyman. Korty really gets no screen time at all and like so many of the voices in this piece he is really only there via some connection to Lucas or Coppola.

Some of the Filmmakers of San Francisco

After watching this film I suppose we are to think that maverick now means someone who evades the Hollywood system only to create a Hollywood-like system. Yes, Coppola, Lucas, the folks at Pixar, they have all contributed a lot to cinema, but even Fog City Mavericks stresses that they are Hollywood outside of Hollywood. The film also tries to create a cosmic bound between Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Eadweard Muybridge by highlighting that all three of them took a fateful turn towards filmmaking after a life threatening accident/illness. You hear that kids? Skip film school, get polio or wrap your car around a tree.

Their’s is a story that has been written numerous times in the trades, in fanzines, and in the mainstream press. It’s the unlikely story of the little man doing things his way and coming out on top. It’s an American tale dreamt by individuals and cities. If Fog City Mavericks has any real agenda it is to perpetuate that old myth and a similar one about how a town can become the new movie mecca. This week I just saw an article about Pittsburgh being the Hollywood of the East. Every city dreams of being that next big movie town. San Francisco comes close, because it has working filmmakers living there and producing films there, but do we need another Hollywood?

Why couldn’t more time have been spent on some of San Francisco’s real movie mavericks, other than the scant few seconds given up to John Korty and Bruce Conner? What of all the other mavericks hidden in the Fog City?

Beloved Enemy (1981)

Beloved Enemy was directed by Alan Clarke, written by David Leland, and inspired by Charles Levinson’s Vodka Cola*. Made in 1981, the film was made for the BBC’s “Play for Today” series and it speaks to cold war tensions of the era as much as it speaks to present economic stress and the continued growth of globalization.

Most of the movie consists of the two parties negotiating the terms of the deal. It sounds like a real bore, but Beloved Enemy is actually a gripping examination of the inner workings of international business deals. Leland’s screenplay and Clarke’s direction thrust the viewer into a world of jargon and coded meaning, making it both confusing and realistic. Both men believe the audience is smart enough and patient enough to listen for clues and determine exactly what is transpiring and the motives of each player. When it comes to light that the Soviets will not go through with the deal unless the corporation gives them access to laser technology that could also be used as a weapon the drama increases.

David Leland’s script creates a delicate balance between the edgy, but polite decorum of the board room and the hostility that erupts behind-the-scenes. Tony Doyle plays the bristly, hot-tempered Blake, who works for the British corporation. Steve Berkoff plays Koslov – the Soviet equal to Blake. In the back channels these two men expose the real motives of the people they work for, as well as their own motives.

Beloved Enemy is a solid 60 minutes of television and another good reason why the BBC really needs to put out a Play For Today dvd collection, even if it just includes Alan Clarke’s work for the series. Until the BBC sees the worth in such a set I fear the rest of the world will miss out amazing cinema that includes scenes like this one from Beloved Enemy. 

Here, Blake (Tony Doyle) delivers a speech on the matter of globalization that rivals Ned Beatty’s “The World is a Business” speech from Network. Doyle’s performance is horrifying, perhaps because  it feels so plausible. There certainly are people who see the world the way he does and treats others as he does. Many of them are running America.

*Prior to making Beloved Enemy, Clarke directed a documentary based on Vodka Cola. So, while I am checking off yet another Alan Clarke film from my must see list. I find myself adding another one. If you know how I can see it, let me know.

Rescue Dawn (2007)

Rescue Dawn is a good movie, but one key thing continues to bug me. The special effects of the aerial attack and crash feel incongruent with the rest of the film as Werner Herzog‘s methods of filming. This movie opens with archival footage of planes bombarding Laos or Vietnam. The footage is grainy, 16mm film. The movie itself was shot on 35mm color negative. The shots of Christian Bale in the cockpit look as if he’s before a green-screen. The images of the weapons leaving his plane look like a shot from a video game. I’m certain they are CGI.

So, why does the idea of CGI in 2006 strike me as being so odd? Well, because it’s a Herzog film and there has always been something so tactile and physical about his work. Now, I’m certainly not expecting Werner Herzog to instruct Christian Bale to attack Laos and then crash his plane, just for the sake of the film. Then again, Herzog has dragged a boat over a mountain.

You can see the questionable footage here in the trailer for the film

The odd thing about the trailer is that it inter-splices a shot from the early archival footage in with the action sequence of the aerial attack.

In the film the shot sequence goes:

1. Hand on controls
2. Weapons leave the plane
3. Close-up of Christian Bale’s face.
4. P.O.V. of Christian Bale through cockpit window as a target explodes right before him.
5. Then a profile of Bale in the cockpit as he jerks the controls back.

The last two shots are omitted from the trailer and replaced with the archival footage. Then the trailer springs forward to the crash.

You can view the crash sequence in the film here at the 8 minutes and 52 second mark.

It’s a poor upload of a Kurdish translation of the film, but the incongruent quality of the effects still stand out and make me speculate as to why the editor cutting the trailer worked in other footage for the trailer’s action sequence.

Captain America (1979)

Captain America, the 1979 TV movie, comes from a wildly different era than our modern one. This was a time before cable was prolific and before companies would spend big dollars to bring comic book movies to the big screen. The entire film feels like a pilot for a TV series that never came to be.

You have to wait nearly an hour and ten minutes before we ever see the Captain put on his iconic uniform and when he does you quickly realize just how little care or attention to detail was put into films costuming and design. Heck, this film completely throws out the entire comic book mythology of how Captain America came to be and replaces it with some modern California tale revolving around a motorcycle enthusiast and his bitchin’ van. From the tone of my complaints you might think I really care about comic book movies, but the truth is, I don’t.

a film so bad it is treasonous. Go USA!

I was never an avid fan of comic books. I only read my friends comics and learned what I needed just to keep up with conversations when they turned to the subject of superheroes. Try as I have to enjoy comic book films, I just can’t. I know they should be fun, something I can just go in and get caught up in the action for 90 minutes, or twice that if you are going to one of these modern comic book films. Still, it never works out that way. I find most comic book movies to be big, dumb, corny and ultimately uninteresting movies, more designed to peddle toys and tie-ins than tell a new or interesting story.

Captain America is certainly all of that. It is also so bad that I actually feel sorry for real fans of the comic. How painful it must have been to watch this and continually lie to yourself, telling yourself it was cool even though deep down you must have known it was an offensive, boring mess. Actually, it feels like a theft of time and attention. As with all TV movies, the films really exist to sell the commercial space around the film. I have no idea what commercials played the night this film was screened, but forcing kids to sit for over an hour or an hour and a half without showing them one glimpse of the man (in costume) they tuned into see is one hell of a mean, capitalist trick. In a way, it is probably more American than Captain America himself.

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

I really should do more homework before picking a film to watch. Even when I’m just looking for something mindless and funny, it is a good lesson to keep in mind. Had I bothered to check up on Wet Hot American Summer‘s pedigree before I decided to view it, I could have spared myself a lot of frustration. Instead, I selected the film simply because I kept hearing the title brought up over-and-over again by people when they were discussing lesser-known (I won’t say “cult”) comedies. Perhaps, I should also take better stock of just who is having these sort of discussions and how their tastes in film match up with my own.

Doesn’t this like one of those whacky films from the 80′s? Let’s try to make one of those, but let’s not really try.

Had I known that Wet Hot American Summer was made by many of the same people behind MTV’s sketch comedy show The State I would have buried this title so deep on my must-see list that I’d be more likely to watch all of the movies based Nicholas Sparks’ books before watching this so-called comedy. Oh, I’m sure that for many people this film, like The State, is hilarious or at least providing of a chuckle or two. I am not one of those people. I have always found the comedy of David Wain, Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, et al. to be lazy.

Wet Hot American Summer did not prove to be an exception. I cannot understand if this is an homage or satire of 80′s camp comedies. Ideas are introduced and quickly dropped. While watching the film I felt there was so much untapped potential, so many jokes that could have been, so many tropes left unexplored, and so much that left to be desired. Like ever other work of theirs that I have seen, I felt like I was watching a first draft, something that needed to be revisited and refined. Overall, there is the feel of improv, of jokes made on the fly, then quickly discarded, and never developed.

Live and learn. Next time I’ll check the ingredients before I down any old film. Next time, I’ll just watch Meatballs.