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Red Road (Director: Andrea Arnold, UK/Denmark, 2006): I saw Red Road back in September as part of TIFF, and it was definitely one of my favourites. The director was on hand to explain the concept behind “The Advance Party”, a project/concept for a trilogy of three films of which Red Road is the first.
I didn’t know anything about The Advance Party before seeing the film, nor did I realize that Lars von Trier was involved at all, so that was a pleasant surprise. It is an intense, riveting piece and I really enjoyed how the themes and plot slowly rolled out. It was especially interesting afterwards, too, to read the character descriptions/restrictions that Arnold and the next two films’ directors were given to work with.
As the film is concluding its festival tour, Indiewire has a short article which details Red Road’s success and also sheds some light on The Advance Party, including some challenges that Arnold faced working within its structure.
UPDATE: The film will open in Toronto at the Royal Cinema on June 29th.
Official site for the film
More information from Glasgow Film
Interview with director Andrea Arnold at Reverse Shot
Tagged as:
denmark,
independent,
larsvontrier,
scotland,
TIFF,
uk
Blue Vinyl (Directors: Daniel B. Gold and Judith Helfand, USA, 2002): After seeing and enjoying Helfand and Gold’s latest film Everything’s Cool at Hot Docs this year, I was looking forward to seeing this, their first film. Let’s just say that the pair have developed quite a bit as documentarians in the past five years. Though the film explores an important subject, the toxicity of the vinyl used in siding and other products, the tone and production values were ultimately distracting for me.
Helfand is very much involved in the film, since the project grew out of her concern that her parents’ installation of vinyl siding on their house would lead to health problems and other environmental damage. She does a decent job investigating the vinyl industry’s record of deception and coverups, but she’s just a little too gimmicky. She reminded me too much of Michael Moore, putting herself into every scene, and even carrying around a piece of vinyl siding throughout the film. In a few places, her inexperience as an interviewer is obvious, and although she tries to play it for laughs, it falls flat.
One subject that I wanted to hear more about was the search for alternative building materials. She does talk to a number of people at a California convention, but doesn’t provide enough information about the innovation going on in the construction industry. The film aims for a light tone but has a hard time maintaining it when we hear about how many people have become sick or died from working with vinyl and PVCs. This is a decent first effort, but I’m glad that in their latest film, Helfand generally stays off screen. As well, they chose to make a more positive film focussing on solutions, which suits their style better.
Note: Ironweed featured this film on their April 2007 Earth Day edition. They’ve posted a good collection of resource links about vinyl siding.
Official site for the film
(6/10)
Tagged as:
corporations,
Documentaries,
DVD,
DVD Clubs,
environment,
Ironweed
Glastonbury (Director: Julien Temple, UK, 2006): For those on my side of the Atlantic who are not familiar with it, the Glastonbury Festival is England’s version of Woodstock and Burning Man rolled into one. Over the course of a long weekend each June, the pastoral setting is overrun with performance artists, buskers, ravers, rockers, stoners and just about anyone in the UK with an ounce of eccentricity. Oh yeah, and bands. It began in 1970, when farmer Michael Eavis organized a festival for a few hundred hippies. Recently, it’s grown in attendance to over 150,000 people. Along with that growth has come some unwelcome changes, such as the increasing presence of corporate sponsors, and, most notably in the film, the presence of a security wall that surrounds the entire property. The fence was constructed in 2001 after ongoing problems with gatecrashers, but the extensive security apparatus, including the wall, security cameras, and a substantial force of security police, seems at odds with the spirit in which the festival was founded. This in itself could have made a compelling film. But it’s not this film.
Instead, director Julien Temple (The Filth and the Fury) aims for a more impressionistic experience, using a mixture of amateur and professional footage shot over more than thirty years to give the viewer an idea of what it feels like to be there. While this conveys some of the mixture of emotions attendees must feel, it’s slightly disorienting. Organizer Michael Eavis pops up in footage from the 70s until the present, but we only gradually figure out who he is. As well, trying to cram as many bands from as many eras as possible into the film means that there isn’t a complete performance from any of them. And though there is a lot of endearing eccentricity on display, the film seems to revel in it just a bit too much, at the expense of conveying any coherent information about the festival and its history.
For example, there is a fascinating interlude in the middle of the film when Eavis allows the itinerant “Traveller” community to participate in the festival for a number of years. But by 1990, he has to throw them out after their community disputes erupt into violent fights during the festival. Just a bit of standard documentary exposition would have been welcome here. Same for the issues of security and sponsorship.
As it is, the film feels true to the spirit of anarchy that characterized the festival’s beginnings, and although it’s overlong at 138 minutes, it certainly communicates some of the exhilaration and confusion that make festivalgoers risk the (strong) possibility of torrential rains and knee-deep mud each year.
(7/10)
Tagged as:
Documentaries,
DVD,
music
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Director: Alex Gibney, USA, 2005): It took a little while for me to get around to seeing Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) but it was worth it. Everyone knows something about the collapse of Enron but how much do you know about “the smartest guys in the room” — Jeffery Skilling, Kenneth Lay, Andrew Fastow and Lou Pai.
Alex Gibney’s film provides a great overview of the Enron scandal by giving us a glimpse into the lives of some first class weasels. Lou Pai is by far the luckiest and the smartest of the weasels. He left the company with $280 million, became the second-largest land owner in Colorado and married the stripper girlfriend who had his love-child.
Without being too ‘preachy’, Gibney’s documentary shows how these guys thought they could outsmart the system. Their incredible greed and their willingness to rip off their stockholders and customers is legendary. There is a lot of information to absorb in this film but it does a fabulous job of explaining the whole scandal.
Tagged as:
corporations,
Documentaries,
DVD
Gummo (Director: Harmony Korine, USA, 1997): Writer/director Harmony Korine is one strange dude. Gummo (1997) is one strange film. It follows two bored kids as they wander around a small town in Ohio looking for things to do. They sniff glue, listen to black metal music, ride dirt bikes, kill cats and run into some of the strangest residents in the US. Harmony Korine claims that he cast the bizarre secondary characters in his film by hanging out at a Burger King for 45 minutes. I believe him.
Some of the more memorable moments in the film:
- trailer trash hanging out in the kitchen, drinking beer and wrestling chairs ( I actually laughed out loud during this scene because it was so absurd and probably real)
- a deaf couple screeching while having an argument in a bowling alley
- kids sniffing glue and getting high
- a mentally challenged woman shaving off her eyebrows
- an albino woman without any toes talking to the camera
I tried watching Korine’s other film Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) and didn’t enjoy it either. Somebody in Hollywood thinks that Korine is a genius because of his bizarre films — random scenes, no narrative, weird characters.
His films could be described as experimental but I prefer to call them crap. This guy doesn’t come close to the creative genius of say, David Lynch.
Harmony Korine’s latest film, Mister Lonely is due to be released this year. I’ll take a pass and I doubt that I’ll watch another film by Korine. In my opinion, there are much better films out there that I could watch.
Tagged as:
Directors,
DVD
