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SITA SINGS THE BLUES available free online

paul — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:01:10 GMT

One of Karina Longworth’s favorite undistributed films of last year is available to watch for free on Reel 13. Sita Sings the Blues won the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You award at the 2008 Gotham Awards. In Karina’s review from Tribeca 2008, she called it, “a strange and beautiful little film, a potentially wispy slice of autobiography smartly elevated through irresistible, orgiastic style.”

Watch the movie and read Brandon Harris’ interview with director Nina Paley from last November (republished) after the jump.

Originally published on 11/17/08 as SITA SINGS THE BLUES Director Nina Paley: The Media Diet by Brandon Harris

For fans of relatively offbeat animation, 2008 seems to have been a banner year. Pixar produced perhaps their most acclaimed effort yet with Wall-E, which is drawing considerable heat for a best picture nomination. Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir thrilled and horrified audiences in Competition in Cannes with subject matter and personal introspection not usually broached by animated films. Yet the most satisfying animated film that surfaced in 2008 may well have been Nina Paley’s delightful Sita Sings The Blues, which marries the tunes of obscure 30’s blues songstress Annette Hanshaw to a retelling, by three hip, Gen-Y Indians, of the Indian myth Ramayana and a mildly autobiographical story of a Seattle-based female cartoonist loosing her husband to his job in India. The film, a nominee for this year’s Gotham Award for the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You after an impressive festival run that began at this year’s Berlinale, screens at MoMA on Thursday and Saturday. Clearly a dedicated postmodernist, Paley discusses Sci-Fi channel’s Eureka, Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture and the strange ambiguities of influence.

What films or television shows have you seen recently?

Whatever they had on the airplane. It was Virgin, and they charged $7.99 for movies, so I stuck with the free TV channels (I don’t have TV at home). The SciFi channel was showing a commercial-free marathon of Eureka which I had never even heard of before, but it was pretty good plane fare. Also some other station was playing Spiderman, but with tons of commercial breaks which made it kind of tedious to watch.

Which ones stuck with you and why?

Eureka because I saw like 5 episodes, without commercials.

Does your interest in them have anything to do with your own work as an animator?

Not in any way I can identify consciously, but I’m sure it does somehow.

How do the films that you think of as “influences” affect your own style and preoccupations as a animator, if at all?

So many people have asked “what are your influences” over the years. I now conclude my answer is: EVERYTHING. Everything I see, even if it’s just out the corner of my eye, is an influence.

I’m one of those crazy free culture people who insist there are no original ideas; all creativity builds on what has come before. As an artist I pull stuff out of the hive mind, the culture that’s all around me. I’m so saturated in culture I can’t separate influences out, or keep track of each discreet one. Just as corals build complex structures from the calcium floating in the ocean around them, artists pull ideas and influences from the sea of culture, and organize them in ways that suit us.

How often do you read fiction? Do you wish you read more?

I read a lot. I prefer reading to watching TV. I also read nonfiction.

What would be your ideal literary adaptation and why?

Hmm. Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig would make a good movie, because people need to discuss this stuff and most can’t be persuaded to read a book.

How, if at all, has reading informed your animation?

It gives my mind an escape, something to do in “foreground” while my subconscious is solving problems in “background.” And it enriches me as a human being. My work is an expression of my whole being, so anything that touches me will in some way touch my art too.

What are you listening to recently?

I’m currently staying at a friend’s house in Oakland (I’m in town for the San Francisco Animation Festival). My hosts are cleaning up the kitchen right now, playing something on their boom box. I have no idea what it is, but I know I’m absorbing it and if I ever hear it again, it’ll sound familiar.

I almost never sit down and consciously listen to music. But just walking around, I hear tons. Stores and restaurants pipe in music, people play it in subways and on the street, it’s on people’s cell phone ringtones, it blasts from the windows of passing cars, it’s in the background everywhere. I can’t close my ears. I may only hear snippets at a time but it sticks in my mind, somewhere, adding to all the other influences in
there.

I enjoy quiet. In silence I can play back all the junk my mind has collected, and really listen to it. I have a lifetime of music playing in my head constantly. The DJ is my id, or subconscious, or maybe God.

Since I typed all that, my host’s soundtrack has turned to the Talking Heads, “Once in a Lifetime.” I’ve never owned a Talking Heads record, and don’t have an MP3 collection, but I know that song, and countless others.

If you could collaborate with one musician on one of your own films, whom would it be and why?

That would depend on the story, the idea behind the piece, and a lot of other factors. Right now I’m looking for a 30-second ditty on the theme of “copying isn’t theft.” Anyone have one or want to write one?

If there were such a thing as an “animated concert film”, who would be the best subject?

Live, from the Inside of Nina’s Head: God the DJ! That’s one long concert though.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore

FilmCouch 110: Movies That Should be Graphic Novels

paul — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:01:09 GMT

In episode #108, we posed a simple question: Which movie should be turned into a graphic novel? Your responses to the question became the fodder for a great conversation. Turning the typical page-to-screen progression on its head, we dig into the strengths and weaknesses of each medium. We discuss the possibility of seeing Mystery Train, Walkabout, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Zardoz, Hero, Die Hard, and Gangs of New York crammed into little action-packed drawings.

We check in with Karina for a hindsight conversation about awards season. She poses the question: Who would win in a fight, Benjamin Button or Iron Man? The answer is as obvious as it seems, but not for the reason you think.

Want to win a copy of Watchmen: The Official Film Companion? Send us an e-mail telling us what film you think has the best production design in entire history of cinema. It’s that simple. E-mail filmcouch [at] spout [dot] com.

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro

3:22 - From film to comic.

26:40 - The Oscars. What happened?

filmcouch-110

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore

Twittering The Oscars and Spirit Awards

paul — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:01:08 GMT

My favorite memory of the Oscars last year was Karina Longworth’s Twitters hitting my iPhone every few minutes. The way she can describe Diablo Cody’s dress in one sentence had me turning to my wife saying, “You’ve got to hear this…” By the end of the night we had the iPhone sitting between us, propped on a pillow where we could both see each twitter as it popped up.

Sunday, February 22nd, Karina and a gaggle of other SpoutBlog writers will live-twitter the Oscars again. Check back here at 8:00 EST. If you won’t have a laptop with you to see all the action, you can at least follow Karina on Twitter.

Saturday, February 21st, Karina will also be at The Spirit Awards, twittering from the scene. IFC’s televised coverage begins at 5:00 EST, hosted by Steve Coogan.

Want to see Karina’s Twitter stream? It’s embedded after the jump.

twitter.com/karinalongworth

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore

500 Days of Summer: Why I Walked Out Of The Sundance ‘Hit’

paul — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:00:25 GMT

Typically at SpoutBlog, we rarely state the obvious when it comes to a mediocre movie, trying to instead direct our gaze toward a gem that deserves some advocacy. Unless, of course, there’s a danger that said movie is going to overshadow the much earned good buzz around a great film. Such is the case with 500 Days of Summer starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. It’s a movie I walked out of at Sundance 2009, not because it sucked, but because it was lukewarm. I figured I’d never write, “It was so-so” for a review, so I left. But in the past week it has, surprisingly, garnered ovations that threaten to eclipse so many excellent films coming out of that festival.

Case in point, it’s number one in Coming Soon’s Best of the Fest:

Clearly the biggest crowd-pleaser at this year’s festival was this romantic comedy from first-time director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Webber, which covers a year and a half in the relationship between Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Bishl (Zooey Deschanel), the latter a flighty woman who breaks the former’s heart. While some of the ground covered is stuff we’ve seen before, the film is told in an innovative and clever narrative style, jumping around in time from the height of their developing love affair to the months that follow their break-up. Gordon-Levitt creates an infinitely likeable character that both guys and women can relate to, much like John Cusack in his heyday…. What could easily be seen as a “…Say Anything” for the younger generation, the film’s Sundance premiere received a standing ovation from the audience, and one can expect that when it opens in July, it will be another Searchlight hit in the vein of Garden State and Once.

Of course, I can’t write a “review” of a movie I didn’t fully watch. I can, however, write a review of my decision to walk out a half hour into it. In fact, I’ll use the above blurb to record what was going through my mind in the half hour before I left.

“Clearly the biggest crowd-pleaser at this year’s festival…” Must be taken with a grain of salt. A festival like Sundance combines star-spotting mania with meditative art films, wrist-slashing character studies and unsellable passion projects. So, seeing a couple stars (who happen to be seated in the audience) perform in a mildly funny comedy often brings the house down when, in a regular multiplex, the house would shrug and head to the bathroom when the credits roll.

“… from first-time director Marc Webb and screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael Webber, which covers a year and a half in the relationship between Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Bishl (Zooey Deschanel), the latter a flighty woman who breaks the former’s heart.” Deschanel’s greatness in other roles is that she can be flighty without being shallow. She has an introspective, girl next door quality that gives her romantic leads the feeling that she’s not the girl you get, she’s the girl you marry. It appears that Neustadter and Webber probably had Deschanel in mind for the part when they wrote it, but in their mind she’s Kate Hudson.

“… the film is told in an innovative and clever narrative style, jumping around in time from the height of their developing love affair to the months that follow their break-up.” Non-linear story-telling can make an already compelling story that much more compelling (Pulp Fiction, Memento). But if you take an old episode of Two Guys and A Girl and recut it with a non-linear plot, it’s still an ABC sitcom that’s easy to watch, but doesn’t compel you to laugh out loud.

“Gordon-Levitt creates an infinitely likeable character…” It’s not that he’s unlikable as much as tedious. If the male lead is a bore for at least a half hour of the movie, can you really say “infinitely likable?”

“…the film’s Sundance premiere received a standing ovation from the audience, and one can expect that when it opens in July, it will be another Searchlight hit in the vein of Garden State…” If there is one thing that Summer does have in common with Garden State, it’s that it tries to be a cinematic mix tape. But there was a certain chemistry between Zack Braff and Natalie Portman in that movie. However corny, the scene where Braff falls for Portman when she plays The Shins for him doesn’t have the screeching-brakes feeling to it that Levitt’s swoon does when Deschanel says, “Are you listening to The Smiths? I love The Smiths!”

In a lot of ways, 500 Days of Summer feels derivative of Garden State and a lot of other better romantic tweener comedies. It’s kind of like if Garden State had been turned into a TV series, recast, cancelled, then bought by USA network and restarted. Which is maybe why I felt watching half an hour was enough.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore

PUSH: BASED ON THE NOVEL BY SAPPHIRE Review, Sundance 2009

paul — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:00:40 GMT

Push took top prizes at Sundance 2009 (Grand Jury for Drama, Audience Award and special acting prize for Mo’Nique), but–like a lot of prize winners in the past–it may prove to be too much for regular audiences. During the Q&A after the screening I attended, a girl stood up and said, “I’m from Harlem and I know people like that, but I’ve never seen it on a screen before.” She then thanked director Lee Daniels through her tears and sat down. It was the kind of moment Sundance programmers live for.

This small, risk-taking film does show something that hasn’t been on a screen before, and it eclipses the feel-good-and-give-me-your-money bigger pictures. Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire is a simple story about an uneducated, pregnant girl in Harlem circa 1987. It leaves you a sweaty wad of mixed emotions and defies you to figure you what you’re feeling and why you feel it.

Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) is a sixteen year old girl who lives in hell. She’s morbidly obese and hated wherever she goes, except in her fantasies. (Kind of like Pan’s Labyrinth, but the war torn country Precious escapes is the Harlem ghetto and her fantasy world comes from TV.) It’s a little absurd and supposed to be funny. She has an indomitable wit despite the fact that she carries her father’s second child and her mother (Mo’Nique) is one of the most tragic and despicable villains, maybe, in all of cinema. Precious’ entire life is just a vessel to absorb all the victimization possible from being poor and black and female. Through her hallucinogenic fantasies, her protective sarcasm, and a couple of women who refuse to let her disappear, she inches — and I mean inches — towards prevailing.

If you’re starting to think Stand and Deliver with incest, think again. Precious’ journey is like watching somebody held under water learning to breath through a straw. If Push did not completely absorb you into the world of Precious, it may appear that her victories (like reciting the alphabet from start to finish) are minute, maybe even pathetic, but their monumentality in Precious’ world is visceral. It also helps that every once in a while there’s a fall-down funny joke.

Daniels’ freestyle comedy is what prevents the audience from walking away with PTSD. Shortly after what’s probably the most difficult scene in the movie, Precious is staying with her teacher and her teacher’s lesbian partner and remarks to herself, “They talk like TV channels I don’t watch.” At the screening I attended, the theater fell into fits of laughter, the way a death row inmate might when granted a pardon. When Daniels introduced Push, he encouraged the audience to look at how Precious laughs at what’s thrown at her, and laugh with her. My immediate thought was that his last screening must have been completely morbid and he wanted to lighten this one up. But now I think he may have been prepping us for the real brilliance of the movie. In some way, Precious’ humor creates an even deeper connection for us to her suffering because it makes her suffering more authentic. Isn’t it human nature to find some weird whiff of humor in the darkest hour? Finding a way to make a joke, albeit a dark one, can be the only reason at the end of the day to think tomorrow could be any better.

I know Push has everything going against it. Incest, a cast of “real” characters (even Mariah Carey looks like she’s served time in prison) and a location people don’t want to visit unless they have to, but it has an undeniable authenticity. It definitely pushes what an audience is willing to take. Some will say the waves of tragedy hitting Precious’ life smack of melodrama. Does Push go over the top? I really haven’t decided yet, but there’s that girl in the audience who said it was a spot on depiction of people she knows. I think there are lives which are more broken and sad than anything we’ve seen in movies before. Wrestling with whether or not I’ll allow Preicous’ life be authentic to me is, I think, is exactly what Daniels wants because days after I attended the screening, I still haven’t forgotten her.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore

Art and Copy Review, Sundance 2009

paul — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 23:00:26 GMT

On the surface, Art & Copy is a tribute to legendary creative minds in advertising, and the process through which they made their most iconic ads. From taglines that became pop touchstones like “Just Do It” and “Got Milk?” to how Mac, Budweiser and Volkswagon went beyond their product and became “lifestyle brands,” the charismatic advertisers share how it happened from their point of view, which smacks of self-mythologizing. Not only does the director, Doug Pray, appear to completely buy the mythology presented, but when the film raises moral and ethical questions about advertising, I’m not sure he realizes the questions are even there.

The documentary follows a simple structure. An advertising legend (Hal Riney, George Lois, Dan Wieden, David Kennedy, Mary Wells, Rich Silverstein, Jeff Goodby, Lee Clow among others) tells a story or expounds on creativity. Between each story is a meditative sequence that harkens back to Koyaanisquatsi: billboard scaffolding, a city highway, a satellite being constructed –the real concrete and steel lattice work advertising travels to get to us. Usually, over these images a disturbing statistic pops up like, “We receive 5,000 advertising messages a day.” Often, the images include workaday drones putting up billboards or sitting at banks of computers monitoring satellites. Then there’s a statistic revealing how absurd post-modern life has gotten like, “Children receive a zillion advertisements before they’re potty trained.” Paradoxically, these statistics are always followed by another ad executive sitting in an architectural masterpiece of a workspace talking about the power of creativity and how they harnessed it to the betterment of the world.

After a while, it becomes apparent that Pray’s desolate shots of satellites, billboards, highways and cables with the creepy statistics superimposed continually beg a question that won’t be answered: And do you, rebel/artist/advertising billionaire, feel complicit in creating this consumer madness? This massive spider web where we’re sold stuff from the time we open our eyes to the time we close them?

Although the question is not so subtly raised, it is obviously averted. In defense of the film, there is an insinuation that bad advertising has polluted the world and degraded consumers, but good advertising–the kind we’re talking about here–is basically art. Case in point: Nike’s Just Do It.

Nike wanted to sell sporting equipment that assists in a healthy lifestyle. Altruism, capitalism and creative genius align to make Just Do It. All of the sudden, people aren’t just buying Nike, they’re leaving abusive relationships, going back to school, changing jobs because they decided to “Just Do It.” Now, would these people have gone on to just do it–whatever it is–without Nike’s ad? Probably. Did Nike make billions by becoming an aspiration for a lifestyle rather than a pair of shoes that wasn’t significantly better than their competition? Definitely. Is the world a better place because Nike was able make shoes represent the life you want instead of the life you have? Well, that’s a question this documentary continually steps up to ask, then avoids.

Unlike Art & Copy, Beautiful Losers is a doc I reviewed last year wherein the artists actually ask themselves whether using their creativity to sell stuff is moral. In fact, wrestling with the question is part of their process of going from juvenile artist/rebels to grown ups. It’s troubling that in Art & Copy the altar of the artist/rebel has become so sacred that when questions about the ethics of one’s work become unavoidable, the worshippers simply won’t acknowledge them. These advertisers don’t ask hard questions about what they’ve created. It’s an elephant in the room which has been ignored for so long, that even though it seemed to be standing in the very editing room for this documentary, nobody acknowledged it.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore

Burma VJ Review, Sundance 2009

paul — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:00:25 GMT

Burma is under a repressive military regime. To a Western mind, it’s hard to imagine plain clothes agents of the government arresting anybody holding a camera (who’s not another agent), or soldiers shooting protesters in the streets then airing TV messages like “RFA, AFP, BBC [free press] saboteurs, watch your step!” Almost all images from inside Burma come from a few brave Burmese “reporters” with Sony Handicams. They leave them rolling in their bags, then briefly unveil the lens to capture a piece of an event without being discovered, which is the extent of their reporting. They upload the footage over the Internet or smuggle it to Thailand. From there it goes to Oslo, Norway where it’s broadcast back into Burma. Burma VJ is Anders Ostergaard’s documentary about the anonymous cameramen known as The Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). Without them, the world does not see what happens in Burma.

Having the emotional effect of a thriller because each action anticipates a truly brutal response by the government, to actually use the word “thriller” cheapens the power of the footage and the sacrifices made to get it out. “Joshua” is the narrator of the story (”Joshua” is his handle). He was compromised during a very small protest in 2007 and went into exile in Thailand. The footage he and his VJs caught of that small protest was played over and over on national media. Something changed. Since 3,000 Burmese were killed during massive protests in 1988, the country had been oppressed in an airtight silence. For 19 years, Joshua says “our stories were silent,” meaning they filmed silent people, restrained from any political expression. VJs themselves questioned whether anybody that wound up in front of their hidden lens was an agent who was onto them. Then the small sidewalk protest that sent Joshua to Thailand inspired thousands of monks to step out of monasteries in peaceful protest. At that point, bravery spread like a virus. For a week in September 2007, the brief clips captured and smuggled out by the BVD to Joshua in Thailand and on to Oslo changed world politics.

This is not a traditional fiml and it defies a traditional review. Director Anders Ostergaard does a compelling job re-stiching the events in chronological order. Reenactments of Joshua in his office in Thailand, gives the the film a personal point of view as the story unfolds before him, like it does us, in the footage coming in from the reporters he handles. But the story of the events from the start of the protests to their inevitable demise was a matter of simply telling what happened, rather than the sporadic bursts of information broadcast news provided at the time. The bulk of the footage is authentic, real people doing something truly brave. Real bravery, not being retold by people or reenacted with actors, is inexplicably beautiful.

As tens of thousands of people who’ve lived for 19 years stifled by fear begin to clap, shout and march down the street knowing they may not see nightfall, watching the movie feels like a privilege to see an authentic record of our capacity for courage. It’s a pure decision, to set aside fear and say “I want to be free,” even if it means death. Witnessed with wonder and then with despair as the inevitable response from the government comes, there’s a palpable feeling that watching Burma VJ is an amazing cinematic experience that somehow becomes an act of solidarity.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore

Thriller in Manilla Review, Sundance 2009.

paul — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:00:52 GMT

Take an epic sporting event, cut together the highlights and interviews with the athlete (or athletes) and coach (or coaches), and you have an instant crowd-pleaser, because the crowd already been pleased once and knows it will be again. I expected Thriller in Manila to be that documentary until the build up of “the greatest fight of all time” between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier unexpectedly wheezes, as a 63 year old, nearly incoherent Frazier walks into his decrepit Badlands of Philadelphia gym. With one shot of the little, cluttered room he lives in upstairs, the tone shifts to the unapologetic telling of Joe Frazier’s side of the story. Director John Dower has an easy target (Ali can’t speak for himself anymore), but to his credit he lets the camera remain on the mixed emotions of people closest to the fight and thereby raises issues–and the film–above its genre.

Through talking heads with the gray hairs who were there, archival footage and the relentless narration of Paterson Joseph, we go back to the late sixties when Joe Lewis and Muhammad Ali are friendly competitors. Joe Lewis personally lobbies President Nixon to get Ali back in the ring after Ali’s famous refusal to go to Vietnam for his religious convictions (a member of the all-black Nation of Islam). Back in the ring, Ali and Frazier go on to have three fights in a vicious rivalry that’s the stuff of sports legend and Greek tragedy. It all culminates in 1975 when Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos hosts the “Thrilla in Manila,” the third and final bout between Frazier and Ali.

Much of the film dwells on Ali earning his Great American Hero status more for his publicity skills than his fighting skills. Joe Frazier was an uneducated sharecropper’s son who grew up in Beauford County, SC, where he still couldn’t cash a check even after he became the World Heavyweight Champion of Boxing. He’s presented as the real black working class champion, even though Ali’s radical political views and charismatic spirit made him an icon of 60’s political activism. Ironically, Frazier’s fans were usually white conservatives who admired his quiet, dogmatic work ethic.

With Joe Frazier’s vicious left hook, it appears Thriller is going to pound Ali’s mythic image into the floor. The tipping point of the title fight and the film, happens when Lewis introduces his newly developed right jab, causing Ali to have to rethink how he’d protect his left side in mid-match. This turns the bout from a shoo in for Ali into a bloodied, epic war between the two men. At this point, Dower upends his own Ali exposé when Frazier’s drive to “take apart” the man who’d derided him for years as an Uncle Tom, sends Thriller flailing at religious fundamentalism, the group think of The Media, black on black racism and even the corruption between professional boxing and dictator regimes (Imelda Marcos, although married to a ruthless dictator, could not take sitting ringside anymore during the fight because it was too violent). All factors are complicit in what made “the greatest fight” the one neither man really walked away from.

The exhaustion Thriller creates in the audience by its conclusion has less to do with the typical drama of boxing that movies like Rocky revel in. As they pound and pound each other, each man exhibits an almost supernatural willpower to go on, but unlike Rocky, that heroic willpower may be the very thing that has crippled their twilight years. “Each one is Ahab and the other is the Black Whale,” Ali’s biographer says. Although Thriller in Manilla is heavy-handed at times, taking a sports history documentary and infusing it with Moby Dick horror is definitely something to behold. Unless you’re queasy like Imelda Marcos.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore

FilmCouch #99: Where’s the GI Joe PSA guy?

paul — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:00:55 GMT

Eric Fensler created one of the first viral video sensations when he overdubbed the GI Joe PSAs. He’s a rare artist who, like Andy Kaufman, is hard to describe in a sentence or two. One thing is certain, he’d rather not be called, “The GI Joe PSA guy.”

Listeners respond with what their families watched on Thanksgiving, while Karina Longworth was transfixed by Australia and Indecent Proposal over the holiday weekend.

(See two of Eric Fensler videos after the jump.)

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro, listener feedback

5:32 - Eric Fensler

29:41 - Karina on Indecent Proposal, Australia

42:21 - Listener voice mail: why movies are better than video games

filmcouch-99

Eric Fensler’s TRS-80 music video, featuring himself on keyboards

Eric Fensler’s GI Joe PSA, “Body Massage”

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore

Film Nerd Terrorists on YouTube

paul — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:00:25 GMT

In an email exchange this week with John Damer-a regular FilmCouch listener–he mentioned a movie called Gabriel Over the White House. Just go to this movie’s Wikipedia page, and a movie-dork acid will start to fill your stomach. William Randolph Hearst made a movie where there’s a gangster driveby of the White House and the President predicts last week’s bailout plan?!?!?! You must see it.

You start searching for the DVD and, probably, wind up at Amazon.com. There you’ll find a few secondary vendors selling VHS copies of the movie for over $100. Your heart sinks. A little more digging reveals there’s no copy at the local library. For the more Internet immersed, you may try Archive.org hoping the copyright expired and it’s now in the public domain. No luck. MGM still holds the rights. But there’s a guerrilla spirit of VHS movie collectors out there who won’t let baby be put in the corner.

YouTube is the current battleground in getting hard-to-find movies released, and John Damer has decided to start blogging about film essentials that are likely only available to you there. It was a short debate he and I had: Keep them a secret so they don’t get taken down? Or start letting people know as a bottom-up protest to release these movies in some legal way?

My vote fell on the latter side because doing nothing usually results in nothing. Watch them while you can! Gabriel Over the White House (1933), The Decline of Western Civilization (1981), Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Postscript: Kevin Buist and I have an in depth discussion this week about Gabriel Over the White House on FilmCouch. That podcast will be up Friday morning.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Paul Moore