Watch-A-Thon flicks 32 & 32.5: LET THE RIGHT ONE IN & HAPPY-GO-LUCKY

Met up with a fellow 'thon runner Wednesday night to knock off a very satisfying double feature of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, a sort of Swedish 400 BLOWS with a vampire next door, and HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, a pretty amazing parable of what it's like to live happily.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
Like MY GIRL, except Swedish, and with vampires...
trailer | website

I really wish I could say that with more authority, but I hafta fess up that I've never seen MY GIRL, but I imagine that it could've been very much like this. Only, y'know, without the bloodsucking May-1900-December-2000 relationship.

* It's late and I'm fading. I'll try to revisit RIGHT ONE soon and punch up the "review." Bottom line: SEE IT! It's frickin clever, sweet, chilling, and gorgeous. Also, best big screen housecat action since SLEEPWALKERS! =)

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
That title pretty much says it all. =)
trailer | website

It's a super-sweet film I highly recommend. Poppy is the titular character, a lovely pixie of a British lass who I kept thinking would make an ultimate companion for The Doctor. A brighter, shinier, Donna Noble, y'know? Anyhow, she's a sweetheart of a woman, always ready with a smile, a joke, a compliment, or the lighter side of whatever challenge she or a friend is facing. Unsinkable and unflappable. We basically get to follow her in her days as a grade school teacher, 30-year-old driving school pupil, silver-lining-seeking member of a girls-night-out gang with strong whipsmart repartee, and oldest sister of three. Some of her encounters are troubling and dark, but as much as possible, she approaches and engages people with the sunniest of sides. It's so appealing, and, frankly, damn impressive. In the face of sad, dysfunctionally aggravating, menacing, and surreal situations, she always manages to put on the Happy. Remarkable. In tone, mood, and even music, it reminded me of French Tati films, as well as LITTLE FUGITIVE, and Ozu's GOOD MORNING. If those references don't do anything for you... How to describe it? It's like experiencing two hours of one of those Sesame Street segments where they take the camera out on the streets of Manhattan and look for the letters of the alphabet everywhere in the environment. I know that sounds nuts, but that really is what it's like. Y'know, with some added bits of muppet drama, like maybe Big Bird walking thru every once in a while, looking for Snuffleupagus, asking if we've seen him, but of course, we can't say, even though Snuffy's just across the street at the hot dog vendor, or there, waiting to go into the museum, or hey, now he's on the big screen in Times Square. Like that, and doesn't that sound like fun? Well, it should, cuz it is. =)

Keep on keepin on~

Watch-A-Thon: spread the wealth around...

I want your money (for the Brattle). I really do. But, cocky bastard that I am, with the finish line in sight, I decided to do a little looking around at the pack. And who do I see? A few fellow Brattle nuts, familiar strangers, people with whom I have undoubtedly shared many films but not really gotten to know. The thing is, I'm guessing that they have way more dignity than I when it comes to pushing their dirty little movie habit on every friend, acquaintance, client, vendor, stranger, or arresting officer.

Lucky for me and the Brattle, I'm short on dignity. At least, y'know, when it comes to sitting at a keyboard and zapping people w electrons seeking moviegoing spotters and boosting this or that film and the Brattle's programming. Of course, we're also very fortunate that my friends are long on patience and generosity. That, or motivation to shut me up. =)

I don't know who all visits these deposits of blogorrhea here at wuzzon, but if you're here for the first time, or the dozenth (only the Space Pope knows why), and don't actually know me in "the real world," given the content of most of my rambling, I'd guess that you're at least an irregular moviegoer, and possibly a full-on film fanatic, like myself and my fellow 'thon runners. Maybe even a Brattle patron, once or twice in a while. If that's at all the case, please consider supporting the Brattle by sponsoring one of my fellow runners. So far as I can tell, three of them are also availing themselves of firstgiving's capabilities, so those are the only ones I can push at you here.

As Obama says, it's better for everyone when we spread the wealth around.

(Besides, I can "afford" to refer you to other runners just now, as I happen to know that my parents are gonna drop some guilt money on my firstgiving page before the finish line. =)

Keep on spreadin on~

Watch-A-Thon 2008: only days remain!

Greetings, programs!

The Watch-A-Thon finish line is fast approaching (this Saturday, November 1), so I'm harassing you once again, this time to alert you that you're running out of time to be fashionably late with your tax-deductible support for this cool little moviehouse~

You can support my fundraising run with a flat donation at my firstgiving page...

...or choose to pledge a contribution per movie watched. If you'd like to do that, contact me via email (or comment) and let me know how much you'd like to pledge. Be warned, tho—this week I passed the 30-movie mark, so you'll want to modify your cyphering accordingly.

For an irregular record of the movie carnage wrought in my wake, check out my October blog postings.

And feel free to get in touch to ask me about any of the movies I've seen. I couldn't motivate to write a post about each and every one. Here are some quick takes on several that I didn't haven't yet written up/posted but highly recommend...

RELIGULOUS is something EVERYONE should see with a friend or twelve, even if you think it'll annoy or offend you. On the one hand, it's a hilarious mock-you-mentary in a BORAT-does-religion-instead-of-America way. On the other, Bill Maher has put together a kind of non-believer recruitment film, and it's totally built to start some really great discussions once the film's over. I'd be up for another screening if you're looking for a spotter.

FLASH OF GENIUS is a great David vs. Ford Goliath story, and altho it's based on a true story that unfolded in the early 70s, its tone seems remarkably resonant with society today. Kinnear is pretty wonderful as the professor-turned-inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper who has his American Dream turned into a nightmare by big business.

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST for some sweet, if unlikely, teenage one-crazy-night comical romance and musical connection. George Michael Bluth hits another coolest-nice-guy-ever role out of the park.

ASHES OF TIME. An ex-killer turned middleman-to-killers works year-round out of his desert outpost. As the seasons turn, he encounters an eccentric collection of clients and killers, almost all with tragic romantic pasts. Classic Wong Kar Wai (CHUNGKING EXPRESS, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) fare in its weaving of relationships, broken, forbidden, and quirkily ideal. What makes this different from his other films is the period setting and the martial arts. Not conventional HK screen action, but well-choreographed and Wong Kar Wai/Christopher Doyle stylized in treatment and editing. This is the second time I've seen it (the first was on video), and the action sequences struck me as very Frank Miller's ninja melees (a la DAREDEVIL) brought to life. It's beautiful stuff.

QUARANTINE is a ton of ghastly fun! Frankly, it's what Romero's recent DIARY OF THE DEAD *should* have been. A great live-on-the-scene-camcorder-POV style spam-in-a-cabin horror flick, except that this cabin isn't in some remote woods. It's an apartment building in Los Angeles, where the tenants find themselves trapped with an unknown entity or agent that turns each of them, one after the other, into cannibalistic killers. Joy!

BODY OF LIES is more Ridley Scott excellence at telling tight, taut, focused stories that feature drama and intense action that complement one another and move move move a story populated by an excellent cast of good and bad and who-knows guys. Leo plays a CIA agent on the ground in the Middle East, accomplished at navigating the society and culture, and looking to turn enemies and terrorist threats into intel assets. His operator back in the states, played by Crowe, believes he knows better how to work the system from afar. When Leo gets in with the head of Jordanian intelligence, Crowe's heavy-handedness and results-oriented shortsightedness threatens to ruin the potentially valuable relationship. Wacky keyhole satellite surveillance fun ensues.

Again, check out my October posts for a list of most of the movies I've seen, along with some more detailed rambles about films I haven't mentioned above. And please consider dropping a few bucks in support of my movie madness via my firstgiving page. I mean, don't you feel safer with me sitting in a movie theater, pacified by the pretty pictures, rather than, y'know, OUT THERE, somewhere, loose, doing who-knows-what? Yeah, me, too. =)

If you're thinking about casing the operation before investing, the Brattle is playing the highly quirky and highly entertaining election documentary FRONTRUNNERS thru Thursday evening, and then switches over to IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN for a special 5.30 Halloween screening, followed by the Friday night premiere kick-off of a long weekend of the Flaming Lips's psychadelic alien rock experience, CHRISTMAS ON MARS! Check this stuff out! =)

Thanks for your time and consideration, and triple-thanks to those of you who have chosen to enable my habit and support the cool little theater that I've made my home away from the office. You can see their illustrious names up in electrons on—I forget if I've mentioned this to you yet?—my firstgiving page. =)

Keep on keepin on~

Watch-A-Thon flicks 28 & 29: W. & FRONTRUNNERS

Thursday and Friday found me taking in two movies with political figures as their subjects. On Thursday, with visiting ambassador from New Jersey, Mike, it was W, Oliver Stone's cinematic take on the man we know as still-President George W. Bush, and on Friday, with my sister as spotter, it was FRONTRUNNERS—a documentary on the personalities, politicking, and campaign strategery involved in the presidential election... of the student body at Stuyvesant High in NYC in 2006. I gotta say, FRONTRUNNERS ends up being more about politics than W.

W.
Light on story and controversy, big on characters and a certain point of view (no surprise there, right?).
trailer | website

I honestly didn't get a lot out of this film. The overall take on the prez presented in it is one which I think must have crossed most people's minds if driven to ponder the man's motivations since arriving at the White House. It's not so much a story as it is a diagram or outline, highlighting telling moments in W's life. It's about the man, not his office, and despite, or even because (frightening) of his mistakes, aka decisions, it paints that man, George, Jr., in a rather sympathetic light. But you know, good lighting can only take you so far. Perhaps it will age well, tho. When history out-and-out condemns the man for his mistakes, the sympathy that Stone's scenes-from-a-life garners might be more powerful.

For a more compelling and enjoyable, and completely fictional, but deja vu-inducing, story with great performances, look up SILVER CITY on Netflix.

This film jumps back and forth between moments in his first term as prez and events in his younger years. In the past, we get glimpses of his remarkable charm and way with people, his realization that he's a link in the chain of the American dynasty of Bushes, but apparently a weak one, an indulgence in a drinking habit that grows into a bigger and bigger problem, and the apparent salvation from it, and the calling he hears, when he is born again in JC's name. In the "present" of his first term we meet his close aids and friends, an impressive thespian menagerie, I must say. I did not pay attention to the casting before going into this movie, but if someone had given me the list of players and parts, I would have had a lot of trouble seeing it work in my head. I hafta say, tho, everyone is remarkably, freakishly, even, well cast. As unlikely as it seems when you measure Brolin and George, Jr. up side-by-side, Brolin totally sells his good ol' boy Bush performance throughout the film. The weakest performance may have been Richard Dreyfuss as Darth Cheney. I had the most trouble seeing him disappear into this role compared to the rest.

The portrayals of Rove and Rice are... well, uncanny, and kinda scary.

There are several fictionalized meetings we are allowed to sit in on, and these are probably the most engaging parts of the film. One of the strongest themes that arises from these, sadly, is a sort of "fall of Colin Powell," following his struggle to be a responsible citizen and advisor as well as a good soldier. The other theme that emerges, at least in my mind, is how much any big decision-making is part of an already existing agenda. It's just a matter of waiting for some facts, or pseudo-facts, to line up with some certain manipulated personalities, one of which might possibly be the President's.

I mentioned above that the film paints a very particular picture of Bush, in regards to his motivations and influences. I can't think of any way to talk around that idea, so I'm just gonna go ahead and spill, so if you'd rather be "surprised" in the theater, skip on from here to the FRONTRUNNERS ramble...

Basically, it's about his father, it's about his Godly calling, and it's about falling in with a bad crowd. In the film, we get to see how the approval of his father drives him to attempt great things, but how the expectations of his father perhaps lead him to be resigned to his fate of repeated screw-ups. His early opportunities, and the one early "success" that we're shown, actually end up being facilitated by his father and his influence. George, Sr. is not shy about holding brother Jeb up as a chosen, favored son, compared to the shiftless good ol' boy George, Jr., quicker with his drink than with his ambition. His last name might as well be Costanza.

When we see W come to God, he's apparently a true believer. His belief gives him the strength to beat the demon in the bottle. He also takes this belief and approaches his father about running his Presidential campaign with an eye for appealing to the religious right. George, Sr. is not comfortable with wearing the cross for political gain, but does declare that if that's what the people are looking for his son is who they should be talking to.

It's a bit chilling to me when we see George, Jr. insist on closing staff meetings, particularly "star chamber" ones—in which they discuss sketchy intel, bypassing the UN, and war—with a prayer.

Given the remarkable cast and performances, I really would've liked to have seen more about the other players in his adult and political life, Jeffrey Wright's Powell, that freaky Rove, Scott Glenn's Rumsfeld, Bruce McGill's Tenet, even Rob Corddry's (!) Fleischer. The movie doesn't indulge me, tho, and I suppose that's fair. The film is about its title subject, and not meant to be a website or flowchart of the White House. More's the pity.

What to tell you? It won't change your vote. It will boost your admiration for Brolin's talents. It makes a decent complementary film to RELIGULOUS. Wait for the DVD or see it at a matinee.

FRONTRUNNERS
"It's high school!" Meet some interesting kids in an entertaining documentary on politics.
trailer | website | Brattle listing

I'm fading, so I'm gonna hafta keep this short. FRONTRUNNERS is a charming documentary following the four eccentric candidates—along with their running mates, friends, and faculty—campaigning for the position of student body president at Stuyvesant high school in New York City. You'll meet Mike, the self-assured (or is that cocky?—you'll hafta ask his veep) and experienced student body CFO. There's Alex, the jock, running on a non-existent platform with something of a whispering campaign. Then you've got Hannah, an over-achieving (but hey, this is Stuyvesant—isn't everyone?) cheerleader and accomplished thespian. And finally, George, the pseudo-philosophizing political machinesmith and student body chief of staff. Who will YOU vote for?

It's a pretty fun slice of high school (circa 2006) featuring some kids and candidates with real character. A great bizarro world of an escape from this countdown week of 24 hour news cycling "real world" election politics. It's playing in very limited release and currently on screen in the Boston area in its premiere run exclusively at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square thru Thursday night. Check it out if you can!

Keep on keepin on~

Watch-A-Thon 2008: final leg!

Hello, my oh-so-fetching and fascinating
[ ] friend
[ ] family member
[ ] MiceSpace pal
[ ] FBriend
[ ] teammate
[ ] acquaintance
[ ] friend-of-a-friend whose email address I pilfered from a mass mailing...

Brian here, again. How fare you? My, my! I must say, you are looking quite robust and fit! As ever, really. An uncanny resemblance to the ideal immortalized in classical Greek sculpture. Only, you know, with better hair. Oh, before you say a word, I must ask that you let me speak my mind, lest I be completely swept up and away by your charm and charisma, which, as impossible as it may seem, surpass your appearance in power and appeal.

I feel I must let you know that I am now on the last leg/week of my 2008 Brattle Theater fundraiser Movie Watch-A-Thon run. Being the thoughtful and well-informed friend and citizen that you are, I'm quite certain you're aware of my progress, but I hope you understand that in my position, I could not take the chance of not updating you. I mean no insult.

I know that you have no doubt been biding your time, taking in the lay of the land, accounting for political, economic, and cultural factors, always conscious of how your very influential support can best be timed and applied for maximum good. I myself am an unskilled amateur at such calculus, but have the gut feeling that that optimum moment is approaching, and will fall sometime this coming week.

How will you choose to support the theater and my run, I wonder? There is the straightforward option to make a one-time donation. But, do not forget that you can pledge an amount per movie, as well. Although, I must "warn" you that as of this week, I have just passed the 25-movie mark, and there is still a week of 'thonning remaining, so, if you choose to pledge, adjust your math accordingly.

You can make your donation via my firstgiving page.

It can be grueling, it's true—SO much bum-planting and popcorn-consuming—but I persevere, knowing that it's for such a good cause! Certainly the run is made easier if your work hours and sleep requirements can be pushed to the extreme degree that mine can. It also happens to be convenient that I'm not in demand at m/any social engagements and society affairs, as you are. However, if you discover a movie-sized gap in your upcoming itinerary—perhaps a serendipitous scheduling conflict with the Pope, or that Bono fellow?—my offer stands—I will gladly treat you to a film at my favorite little cinema anytime that we can manage it. Do let me know. The election documentary FRONTRUNNERS begins its week-long run tonight, Friday, 10/24.

FRONTRUNNERS trailer.

Brattle calendar.

Thanks very much for your time and consideration!

Keep on keepin on~

p.s. C'mon, Obama's got enough dough now, right? And besides, *this* is tax deductible!

p.p.s. To those incredibly super-hot PEOPLE magazine's sexiest individuals who have already contributed, thank you again for your generous support! Also, please disregard this message.

p.p.p.s. Please pass this message on to anyone you think would be into supporting this wonderful independent cinema (and keeping me off the streets)—thanks!

inflatable bag monsters!

They kinda remind me of Miyazaki creatures. =)

Thanks to Jessie for scouting them out.

Keep on keepin on~