Month: August 2011

Cold War Double-Feature: 3 Seasons in Hell, At the Edge of Russia

By Joe Bendel. Ivan Heinz is the anti-Zhivago, a terrible poet who naively welcomes the Communist takeover of post-war Czechoslovakia. He soon learns the harsh truth about the Marxist regime. His poetry also dramatically improves over the course of three tumultuous years in Tomás Masín’s 3 Seasons in Hell (trailer here), which screens tonight in D.C. as part of the Avalon Theatre’s Lions of Czech Cinema film series.

Young Heinz has imbibed way too much dada. He harbors idealistic notions of the artist as an absurdist troublemaker that wins him few friends. His avowed Communism also strains his relationship with his painfully middle class father. Heinz is determined to suffer for his art, like his hero Rimbaud. Unfortunately, he will get his chance following the Communist coup.

At first, Heinz is surprised the masses are not celebrating the dawn of socialism on the streets of Prague. Of course, he is even more shocked to learn that the new regime has little use for a parasitic poet of bourgeoisie lineage with a record of anti-social behavior. His notoriously hedonistic lover Jana has scarcely any better standing. Eventually they come to the realization that this worker’s paradise is no place for their unborn child to live. Naturally though, his plans for emigration involve a dangerously dodgy criminal scheme.

Loosely based on the memoirs of Czech writer Egon Bondy, 3 Seasons hardly idealizes Heinz. Frankly, he is rather a petulant pill much of the time, but that never excuses any of the degradations he suffers and witnesses. Likewise, Jana would be quite a problematic figure as well, but together they seem the perfect pair, who deserve (and want) each other. Yet, should viewers ever doubt the film’s sympathies, the exquisite dignity and integrity of Heinz, Sr. serves a pointed corrective to the cruel madness unfolding around him. Continue reading Cold War Double-Feature: 3 Seasons in Hell, At the Edge of Russia

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo on Lars Larson’s National Radio Show

LFM Co-Editor Jason Apuzzo was on Lars Larson’s national radio show Friday talking about Cowboys & Aliens, Captain America, The Devil’s Double and other current releases.

Special thanks, as always, to Lars and his staff for inviting Jason on. He always has fun appearing on Lars’ show.

Lars’ show is broadcast on over 200 stations nationwide, and runs at different times across the country, so to find his show be sure to check out his website here.

Posted on August 10th, 2011 at 10:23am.

Classic Movie Journal: Lillian Roth, Fragments of Lost Films, and a Brand New Silent Movie!

Lillian Roth.

By Jennifer Baldwin. A few weeks ago I watched my new Warner Archive DVD of Madam Satan, a 1930s Pre-Code oddity extravaganza that was Cecil B. DeMille’s first and only musical. It’s famous (infamous?) for the wild costumes, Art Deco sets, bizarre musical numbers, and a spectacular finale that includes a zeppelin crash and the sight of parachuting party-goers landing in trees, Turkish baths, and the lion cage at the Central Park Zoo.

But what I really loved about the movie was that it introduced me to Lillian Roth. I didn’t even realize as I was watching it that the sexy, saucy Trixie was played by Lillian Roth of I’ll Cry Tomorrow fame. I knew that Susan Hayward played a woman named “Lillian Roth” in that 1955 biopic, but since I’d never actually seen it, I knew nothing about the real Roth. She must have been someone famous or else they wouldn’t have made a movie about her, but what exactly she was famous for I had no idea.

Well, now I know. The minute Trixie appears on screen in Madam Satan, the film starts to pop. If you want to know what I mean GO HERE TO SEE.

As the indispensable Self-Styled Siren puts it in her review of the film: “When she flings off her rumpled satin robe and twitches her pelvis to the Low Down number, the vaudeville energy of this rather plump, frowsy jazz baby ignites the entire movie.” AND HOW! I remember thinking that Lillian Roth’s Trixie was a million times sexier and spunkier than Kay Johnson’s “Madam,” the supposed “star” of the film.

So, of course, dutiful obsessive that I am, I started scouring YouTube for videos of Lillian Roth’s performances, just to see what else this sassy dame had to offer. Her voice has got the power and verve of Ethel Merman, but with a warmer tone and a bluesier, sexier bend. And she’s got charisma. Whatever that might be defined as, it shows whenever she’s on screen: she lights it up.

Which makes her brief movie career all the more tragic. This is a woman who should have been a bigger movie star, someone who could have been in the sexy/sassy comedienne ranks with Ginger Rogers and Jean Harlow. While her honest and unflinching autobiography is justly credited with raising public awareness about alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s really too bad that she’s more famous for beating her addiction (and having Susan Hayward portray her) than for her talent.

Madam Satan has kicked off a Pre-Code spurt in my movie watching these days (as I write this, Night Nurse, Ladies They Talk About, Two Seconds, and The Divorcee are on my desk waiting to be devoured), so I’m excited to see that Turner Classic Movies is featuring Pre-Code goddesses Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell in their Summer Under the Stars tributes on August 9th and August 24th, respectively.

On Ann Dvorak day, Scarface and Three on a Match are must-sees, of course, both two of the defining films of the Pre-Code era. Three on a Match, in fact, is still quite shocking, and Dvorak’s performance as a drug addicted woman is stunning and unshakable. I’m also excited for The Crowd Roars (1932), a Howard Hawks film I’ve never seen before, starring Dvorak and Jimmy Cagney as a fearless race car driver. Continue reading Classic Movie Journal: Lillian Roth, Fragments of Lost Films, and a Brand New Silent Movie!

LFM Review: The Whistleblower

The Whistleblower, which stars Rachel Weisz, Vanessa Redgrave, David Strathairn and Monica Bellucci and deals with UN corruption in Bosnia, opens in select theaters today. We wanted Libertas readers to know that our own Patricia Ducey reviewed the film during the Newport Beach Film Festival back in May, so be sure to check her review out!

Posted on August 5th, 2011 at 10:09am.

DIY Run Amok: LFM Reviews Bellflower

Firing up Medusa in "Bellflower."

By Joe Bendel. It’s either the apocalypse or an average day on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Who’s to say which? Whatever the case might be, there is a palpable sense of menace in the air, but at least nobody has to hold down a regular job in Evan Glodell’s extreme DIY indie production Bellflower (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York and elsewhere.

Woodrow and Aiden moved to LA more or less out of aimlessness. They drink a lot and speculate about the fall of civilization, which happened in LA around 1978. As part of their fantasy wish-fulfillment, they begin building a flame-thrower and pimping-out Medusa, a Mad Max style set of wheels. To put it more accurately, Aiden constructs all their hardcore hardware. Woodrow, by contrast, does not seem to be especially handy – but to be fair, he is a bit distracted by his love life.

If you consider a bug-eating contest at a downscale Coyote Ugly an endearing ice-breaker, then Woodrow and Milly do indeed meet cute.  She pretty much tells him straight out she is a problem chick, but he falls for her anyway. The fact that she is still sharing a crash-pad with her ex is of no never mind, until he inevitably walks in on them. From there things get really heavy, but Aiden has the flame-thrower operational, so they can set fire to stuff, which is always a good release.

Evidently a guerilla production of epic proportions, the behind-the-scenes story of Bellflower is probably more interesting than what made it onto the screen. Reportedly plagued with long involuntary shooting hiatuses, one would have thought Glodell could have used the time to tighten up the script. Frankly, his story is a real shrug-inducer, not in an obscure postmodern sense, but just for the baffling way it strings together scenes.

Yet, for all its deliberate eccentricity, there is something effectively eerie about the atmosphere Glodell crafts on his blue light special budget. While cinematographer Joel Hodge was probably forced to shoot on cast-off film-stock salvaged from dumpsters, Bellflower’s grainy look is appropriately suggestive of its apocalyptic themes, while evoking glorious exploitation movies past. Likewise, there is no denying the inventive design work that went into the creation of Medusa.

Not surprisingly, the performances in Bellflower are rather scattershot. Still, there is an interesting dynamic going on between Glodell and Tyler Dawson, as Woodrow and Aiden, respectively. While there are host of dark undercurrents at play, they still convey a sense of unconditional friendship that is surprisingly redemptive.

The term “rough around the edges” does not say the half of it for Bellflower. Yet, the craziest thing is the sense one gets that Glodell made exactly the film he intended. He definitely has a strange knack for establishing mood, but he probably ought to work from someone else’s scripts in the future. A decidedly mixed bag, but admirable nonetheless for its scrappiness, Bellflower opens this Friday (8/5) in New York at the Angelika Film Center.

Posted on August 4th, 2011 at 3:07pm.

The Mercury Men @ The Syfy Channel

By Jason Apuzzo. Last summer we posted about a then-forthcoming web series called The Mercury Men. The Mercury Men (see the trailer above) is a retro-, 1940s-style adventure serial about a lowly government office drone, who finds himself trapped when deadly alien visitors from the planet Mercury seize his office building and use it as a staging ground for a nefarious plot. Aided by a daring aerospace engineer from a mysterious organization known as “The League,” the office drone must stop the invaders and their doomsday device, the Gravity Engine.

The Mercury Men received a fair amount of buzz last year, including an appearance in Sci Fi Magazine (right next to a feature about Libertas Contributor Steve Greaves) and at Comic-Con. I lost track of The Mercury Men, though, until Libertas commenter Vince (to whom I tip my hat) notified me that the series had finally been completed and picked up by The SyFy Channel as a web program. The series is currently 7 episodes in (at about 7 minutes per episode), with 3 more to go – and all episodes will be available on-line at the Syfy Channel website by the end of this week.

Since we’ve been talking a lot here lately about both superheroes and alien invasion sci-fi, this seemed like a good moment to remind everyone about this series.

Dodging an attack by The Mercury Men.

It’s important to keep an eye on the indie/low-budget world, not just because there’s a lot of creativity in that arena – but because tomorrow’s big-time directors are regularly emerging from these humble projects. For example, Joe Cornish, whose debut feature Attack the Block we just reviewed last week, is already getting buzz as the possible next director for the Die Hard series. And Gareth Edwards, director of the low-budget indie sci-fi film Monsters (see our review here), has already been tapped to direct the Godzilla reboot.

As I mentioned previously, I love the creativity of what director Chris Preksta did with The Mercury Men to evoke the atmosphere of the old adventure serials, so many of which were based around a charismatic American hero (Superman, Batman, The Green Hornet, Captain America, etc.) fighting some sort of fascist invader. It’s also quite remarkable how far low-budget VFX have come in terms of their ability to fill out the otherwise constricted universe of indie filmmaking; it’s a classic case of technology freeing up storytellers’ imaginations. Beyond that, though, I like the pizzaz the filmmakers brought to this simple project, and its old-fashioned humanistic spirit – exemplified by the great speech given by ‘Dr. Tomorrow’ in the “Men of Tomorrow” episode.  And of course it’s also interesting, once again, to see the ‘invasion of America’ theme recurring, which we’re seeing everywhere these days.

So once again, best wishes to the team behind The Mercury Men, and I hope LFM readers take time to check out this fun little series.

Posted on August 2nd, 2011 at 5:45pm.