December 2012 – Page 2 – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: This Holiday Season, What Happens When All of Our Cultural Memories Go Digital?

UN Headquarters — The UN's International Telecommunications Union recently voted to allow individual nations to censor the free flow of the internet.

[Editor’s note: the post below appears today on the front page of The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. As we celebrate the holidays, many of us are taking digital photos and videos of our loved ones, thinking that these digital files will be saved forever. The same thinking applies to our movies, books, songs, and stories – we save all of our creative works to the digital cloud, assuming they will be safely stored there. But between continual tech upgrades that make our digital files obsolete, and UN agencies that now seek to censor the internet, the question must be asked: are any of our cultural memories really safe in the digital age?

Recent developments are making it clear that control of digital information, and in particular of online artistic content, is the new front in the twenty-first century war of ideas. The UN’s International Telecommunications Union recently voted to allow individual nations to censor the free flow of the internet. This move was welcomed by authoritarian governments like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia – and condemned by democracies like the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Australia.

Combine this alarming development with the fact that many people now store their photos, videos, writing, and other creative works in online clouds, without ever creating hard copies or backing up their data – and the result is the potentially explosive ability of authoritarian forces to erase vast areas of our cultural memory at the push of a button. Without physical copies, no longer does a dictator have to go to the trouble of staging public burnings of art and books, as in 1930s Nazi Germany or 15th century Florence under Savonarola.

Jailed members of the Russian punk rock group Pussy Riot.

The freedom of the individual artist to speak out is more important now than ever, as today’s authoritarian nations seek to silence artists at every opportunity. Russia’s jailing of the women’s punk rock group Pussy Riot, China’s jailing of dissident artist Ai Weiwei, and Iran’s jailing of filmmaker Jafar Panahi are all examples of modern autocracies crushing citizens’ rights to creative expression. Apparently nothing is more threatening to today’s political fanatics than a free, creative individual.

And now the UN is going to give these authoritarian nations official sanction to censor the online work of artists, filmmakers, writers, and creative thinkers. This is a worldwide cultural catastrophe in the making.

Yet this isn’t the only danger that faces the preservation of our cultural memories; a new form of techno-utopianism poses a serious challenge to the preservation of our creative works. The problem in technologically advanced cultures like America is that we sometimes value technology for its own sake more than we do content. We equate advanced technology with greater value, so we rush to upgrade software, devices and formats without making any corresponding effort to ensure that prior digital files and formats can still be used.

Obviously it’s important that we progress technologically. As a filmmaker I embrace digital filmmaking tools for their ability to democratize the movies, and as a writer I wouldn’t even be writing this post if it weren’t for the freedom of speech enabled by the internet. But as the digital revolution matures, we must give thought to how we manage and protect the enormous new quantity of digitally-created works.

This holiday season we’re celebrating blockbuster movies like Les Misérables and The Hobbit, but the irony is that these films are based on classic novels by Victor Hugo and J.R.R. Tolkien that were written in the pre-digital age – and are still around today because they’ve been widely distributed in paper hard copies. But what about fresh artistic and literary works created today? Where will they be fifty or a hundred years from now if they only exist in digital form? Even if they are classics, who will have the chance to adapt them into tomorrow’s movies or other, future forms of storytelling if they are erased within a few years by government censors – or are unreadable because tech companies have upgraded tablets/e-readers to the point that they can’t read prior digital books? Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: This Holiday Season, What Happens When All of Our Cultural Memories Go Digital?

Sorry, No Jazz Guitar Here: LFM Reviews Django Unchained

By Joe Bendel. The real question is where’s the Gatling gun? The nineteenth century machine gun certainly found its way into Sukiyaki Western Django, Takeshi Miike’s homage to Sergio Corbucci’s spaghetti western, Django. Considering the shtickiness of his supporting performance in Miike’s film, Quentin Tarantino has good reason to distinguish his Django pastiche from its predecessor. This he surely does, re-conceiving the gritty western as a blaxploitation revenge beatdown. Frontier justice gets a whole new look in Django Unchained, which opens Christmas Day nationwide.

Dr. King Schultz is no ordinary dentist. The German expat has taken up the more lucrative work of bounty hunting. He also finds slavery appalling, so he has no qualms about liberating a slave to help him track down the Brittle Brothers, three of his former overseers who are now wanted by the law. That slave is Django, and when he teams up with Schultz, the Brittles do not stand a chance.

As everyone knows from Unchained’s media campaign, Django embraces bounty hunting because he gets paid to kill white people. However, he and Schultz make good partners, even becoming friends. After a profitable winter of killing outlaws, Schultz agrees to help the freeman liberate his wife, Broomhilda, who was taught German by her homesick former owner. Unfortunately, she was recently purchased by Calvin Candie, the master of the notorious Candyland plantation. A bit of subterfuge will be required to buy Broomhilda’s freedom, but Shultz has a suitably dubious plan.

They will masquerade as a prospective slave fight promoter and his free “Mandingo” advisor looking to buy one of Candie’s brawlers. Of course, the white racists of Candyland have trouble dealing with Django on civil terms, but the promise of Schultz’s cash keeps them temporarily in check. Unfortunately, Stephen (as in Fetchit?), the head house slave is instantly suspicious of Django and his partner.

The weird racial undercurrents detectable in Tarantino’s previous films build into a tidal wave in Unchained. On the surface, it is a scathing indictment of the antebellum era Deep South. There will be retribution of Biblical proportions, carried out in some of the best choreographed shoot-outs since John Woo’s Hard Boiled. However, before justice is served, Tarantino will thoroughly objectify African Americans, both men and women, and unleash a blizzard of racial epithets. Yet he will largely get away with it because of the film’s ostensibly politically correct sense of moral outrage.

Django_Unchained_2 — Jamie Foxx encounters the original Django, Franco Nero.

When watching Unchained, one gets a sense Schultz and Candie represent two sides of the auteur’s persona. Schultz is the white trickster he wants to be, finding acceptance from African Americans through social conscience and hipster sensibilities. Yet, if you peeked into the dark recesses of his subconscious, one might find fantasies of the master slinking off to the slave quarters late at night.

While he looks a bit like Christopher Guest, Christoph Waltz thoroughly dominates the film as Schultz. Conveying a charismatic sense of danger, he is the only character who consistently surprises viewers, while serving as the film’s figure of tolerance. Waltz also has the perfect flair for Tarantino’s dialogue, which is razor sharp as ever. In fact, the period setting is something of a blessing, forcing him to avoid ironic pop culture references.

Jamie Foxx is appropriately flinty when going toe-to-toe with his racist antagonists, but lacks Waltz’s dynamic screen presence. Cruel but disturbingly subservient, Samuel L. Jackson’s Stephen is one of the most distinctive villains of the year. Yet on some level, it is oddly problematic that Unchained invites the most scorn for an African American character. Conversely, Leonardo DiCaprio and his pasted on mustache are simply ridiculous as Candie. Completely lacking gravitas or menace, he looks like he should have a surf board under his arm rather than a whip.

Tarantino delivers some spectacular mayhem and some wickedly clever lines. Still, there is a leering tone to the film that feels wrong when the bullets are not flying. Regardless, there is enough attitude and inventive bloodshed to satisfy the filmmaker’s fans, as well as a cool cameo from the original Django, Franco Nero – but the running time of one hundred sixty-some minutes is just excessive. By comparison, Corbucci’s Django unleashes just as much mayhem in nearly half the time. Recommended strictly for connoisseurs of violent exploitation films and spaghetti westerns, Django Unchained opens wide this Christmas.

LFM GRADE: B-/C+

Posted on December 21st, 2012 at 10:29am.

Accept No Substitutes: LFM Reviews Sergio Corbucci’s Original Django

By Joe Bendel. Italian spaghetti western maestro Sergio Corbucci only helmed one official sequel to his classic 1966 western gundown Django, but scores of scruffy bootleg Django follow-ups were produced. In fact, they keep on coming, don’t they? None of them, including the recent homages from Takeshi Miike and Quentin Tarantino can hold a cigarillo to Corbucci’s original Django, which opens today in New York at Film Forum.

A stone cold killer comes to town wearing Union Blue and dragging a coffin. Much mayhem ensues. Basically, that is what the film boils down to. Like A Fistful of Dollars, there is an element of Yojimbo in Django, turning the title character loose in a town embroiled in a war between Maj. Jackson’s ex-Confederate white supremacists and a band of Mexican revolutionaries (who all look more or less the same), but attitude and action are more important than plot, per se.

Temporarily Django throws in his lot with his old associate, “General” Hugo Rodriguez, but that is only because he needs a few men to stage a daring gold heist from the Mexican army depot just across the border. He also holds a mysterious grudge against Jackson, whom he saves killing for last. Along the way, he rescues a fallen woman who duly falls for Django, but he is not really at a place in his life where he is looking for a serious relationship.

Notoriously violent in its day, Corbucci’s Django does not seem so shocking at a time when the Weinsteins will release Tarantino’s pseudo-reboot on Christmas Day (regardless of the unforeseeable national tragedy). However, its body count is still impressive. Django’s action scenes are not really shootouts, they are massacres. After all, that casket holds a heck of an equalizer, courtesy of Mr. Richard Gatling.

In a career defining role, Franco Nero is all kinds of steely badness as Django. There is something deeply existential about his presence, yet he is strictly business when it counts. Eduardo Fajardo is also thoroughly despicable as Jackson, providing the anti-hero with a worthy antagonist.

Frankly, some of the details do not make a lot of sense, like the racist Klansman Jackson being buddy-buddy with the Mexican army. At times, extras literally walk into the line of Gatling gunfire, which is awfully convenient of them. Yet, the metaphorically muddy environment and gritty action more than compensate for any pedantic grousing. Plus, it is truly impossible to watch Django and not hum the iconic theme song in your head for several days afterward.

Alex Cox suggests Django’s name is indeed a reference to the great Roma jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, in a way that would be spoilerish to explain. If so, it adds another layer of cult weirdness to the film. Regardless, Django delivers enough unrepentant action to satisfy any genre fan. An essential Italian western, Corbucci’s 1966 original is the Django to see when it opens today (12/21) at Film Forum.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on December 21st, 2012 at 10:29am.

LFM Reviews Chiller, The Complete Yorkshire Horror Anthology on DVD

By Joe Bendel. Yorkshire is known for its green hills and savory pudding. However, the region is also rife with supernatural activity, if one can judge from a Yorkshire produced anthology series that aired in 1995. While totaling only five episodes, it built up a cult following, so this should be a happy Christmas for fans now that Chiller—the Complete Television Series has just been released on DVD by Synapse.

ITV may not have done Chiller any scheduling favors, but the show maintained a surprisingly gritty, mature vibe. Indeed, one of the striking consistencies throughout each installment is the rather grim, depressed look of the characters’ environment. In fact, a bit of urban renewal kicks off a whole mess of trouble in the initial episode, Prophecy.

Francesca Monsanto’s family diner is about to face the wrecking ball, but not before some of her drunken hipster friends convince her to hold a séance in the basement. It always creeped her out down there—with good reason. It was loads of laughs at the time, but one by one they suffer grisly accidents that were in some way foretold by the Ouija board. Stranger still, the son of her fabulously wealthy new boyfriend seems to be involved somehow. Featuring Chariots of Fire’s Nigel Havers as the well-heeled Oliver Halkin, Prophecy is one of the best of the series, cleverly blending all kinds of genre elements, including ancient evils and exorcisms. It will also be of particular interest to teen horndogs for Sophie Ward’s fleeting nude scene as Monsanto.

In contrast, Toby, the second episode, is the weakest of the short-lived series. Miscarrying after an auto accident, Louise Knight and her husband naturally move into a spooky old house with a macabre history, hoping to start over. Before long, she appears to be pregnant again, but the ultrasound says otherwise. Essentially, Toby recycles elements of Bradbury’s story “The Small Assassin” and scores of subsequent demonic baby films.

Here Comes the Mirror Man represents a return to atmospheric form for the series, capitalizing on the eeriness of the abandoned church where a young social services case is squatting with his homicidal imaginary friend, Michael. Phyllis Logan (widely recognizable from Downton Abbey and Lovejoy) stars as Anna Spalinsky, the lucky caseworker who inherits Gary Kingston’s file when her predecessor dies an untimely death.

Beginning like the standard “skeptic learns the hard way” tale, The Man Who Didn’t Believe in Ghosts develops some interesting twists and ambiguities. Richard Cramer is an Amazing Randy style writer whose books discredit paranormal humbug. Suffering a stroke after a television appearance, he naturally relocates with his family to the big, spooky Windwhistle Hall, where the former owner’s wife died in a tragic “sleep-walking” accident. Why doesn’t anyone ever want to recuperate in the city, with plenty of people around? Nevertheless, the Cramers cannot resist the low asking price, only to be terrified by a series of mysterious accidents as soon as they move in. Of course, Cramer is not going anywhere, lest he commit professional suicide.

Just as it began, Chiller ends with one of its strongest episodes. Every full moon, a serial killer preys on the children of the aptly named burg of Helsby in Number Six, perhaps inspired by the ancient druid rituals once (and maybe still) practiced in the region. Indeed, there may be both human and supernatural agencies involved. Quite engaging as a police procedural, Number Six also boasts some of the series’ most sinister moments.

Arguably, Chiller makes perfect sense for Christmas viewing. There is a big turkey dinner at the Cramers (which becomes magically infested with maggots), a mass is held (as part of an exorcism), and kids chant nursery rhymes (derived from old Druidic rites). As a stocking stuffer for anyone who enjoys horror anthologies like Tales from the Crypt and Hammer House of Horror, Chiller is a solid bet. Recommended for fans of British genre television, the short but complete series is now available on DVD from Synapse Films.

Posted on December 21st, 2012 at 10:28am.

The Long Shadow of North Korea: LFM Reviews Our Homeland, Submitted By Japan for the Oscars

By Joe Bendel. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, many Korean-Japanese immigrated back to their homeland. Unfortunately, they chose the wrong one. With family at risk in the DPRK, active members of Japanese-North Korean friendship associations had no choice but to tow the party line. Yet, the implications of the basic foodstuff care packages they sent to loved ones spoke volumes. Granted a special three month visit for medical reasons, one such “repatriated” North Korean reconnects with his guilt-ridden family in Yang Yonghi’s devastating Our Homeland, which has been selected by Japan as their official foreign language Academy Award submission.

Yun Sung-ho most likely has a brain tumor. Given the woeful inadequacies of the North Korean medical system, he is allowed to briefly return to Japan—after a five year waiting period. He is fortunate his father is the president of the North Korean society, but he will still be monitored the entire time by his minder, Mr. Yang. Regardless, his family is grateful to see him again, especially his poor mother. Likewise, Rie is delighted to see her beloved brother again, but she cannot ignore certain ironies, like her brother developing malnutrition in the “Workers’ Paradise.” Yes, she is our kind of free-thinker and the unambiguous conscience of Our Homeland.

Based on writer-director Yang Yonghi’s own family experiences recorded in Dear Pyongyang and a subsequent documentary, Homeland is even more direct in addressing conditions in North Korea. Perhaps liberated by the fictional context, the film explicitly blames the DPRK for the misery of its citizens. There is no inclination towards moral equivalency. In fact, there is a clear affection for the Ozu-like quiet serenity of Japan.

While Yang’s script is unusually honest and challenging, her leads really make it hit home. Dynamic and vivacious but deep as a river, Sakura Andô is simply remarkable as Rie. It is an award caliber performance. Conversely, it takes a while for Iura Arata’s pitch-perfect portrayal to sink in, striking uncomfortable chords between bitterness and resignation. Boasting a top flight ensemble from top to bottom, Homeland is also distinguished and humanized by memorable supporting turns from Kotomi Kyôno as Yun’s ex Suni and Tarô Suwa as his loving blacksheep capitalist Uncle Tejo.

An assured narrative debut, Yang masterfully controls the mood and tone, despite the almost complete lack of soundtrack music. Her approach is intimate and not surprisingly documentary-like, but Homeland never feels overly talky or draggy. Indeed, the emotional drama never slacks.

Our Homeland is a deeply compassionate film, but it is also somewhat angry, plainly calling an older generation to account for sacrificing their children on ideological grounds. Its unmistakable critique of North Korean Communism might not sound like Academy fodder, but the foreign language division can be surprising – in a good way. After all, The Lives of Others won the Oscar and Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn was nominated before it even had American distribution. Regardless, Our Homeland would be a worthy nominee that deserves an international audience.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on December 18th, 2012 at 11:59am.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: The New Star Wars, Disney & Why Sci-Fi Was So Great in the 1970s

[Editor’s note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post.]

By Jason Apuzzo. It’s by far the biggest, best and most surprising entertainment news of 2012, yet still no one knows quite what to make of it: starting in 2015 we’re getting a new Star Wars trilogy, beginning with Episode VII, supervised by George Lucas and produced by Disney.

As Darth Vader might say, there’s “a tremor in the Force.” The question is: what will this new Star Wars look like, now that we don’t have Emperor Palpatine to kick around any more?

There’s certainly been nothing like this news in Hollywood in years, with rumors swirling around about the new Star Wars films almost on a daily basis. What will the new storyline be? Who will direct the films? Will Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher or Harrison Ford make a cameo? Did Boba Fett survive the Sarlacc Pit?

And will SPECTRE or the Miami Heat be the new villains?

LukeLeia — Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher.

It seems incredible that overnight Star Wars has managed to reinvent itself – again – and become the biggest, most talked-about sci-fi franchise around. (Imagine what James Cameron must be thinking right now.) The question on everyone’s mind, though, is what exactly a new Star Wars trilogy will look like with limited involvement from George Lucas, the original cast having hit retirement age, many crucial characters gone, and having to pick up where 1983’s Return of the Jedi left off – i.e., with Ewoks playing victorious drum solos on Stormtrooper helmets.

In other words, what is the ‘essence’ of a Star Wars film now that the series can’t lean on standbys like Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi or exploding Death Stars anymore?

For clues to this mystery, it’s best to go back to the 1970s, the fabulous era – at least, for science fiction fans – when Star Wars was born.

Although the 1950s are justifiably regarded as science fiction’s Golden Age, the era of the 1970s easily rates a close second. It was the period when science fiction finally replaced the Western as the great American movie genre.

BuckRogers — From "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century."

To be fair, what we’re calling ‘the ’70s’ here probably began around 1968 with the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes, and didn’t end till around 1984, with the release of The Terminator. So maybe we should call this sci-fi’s ‘modern’ era – or simply ‘the Star Wars era.’ Science fiction had a distinctive flavor during this period – it was darker, more realistic, and also more emotional – and Star Wars set the tone for the time.

It was also during this era that science fiction became more popular than ever – more popular even than comic book movies are today – dominating both the box office and prime time television.

Of the top 15 highest grossing movies of all time adjusted for inflation, four are sci-fi films from this period: the original Star Wars trilogy, plus Steven Spielberg’s E.T. A host of other films from this time – Alien, Blade Runner, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, just to name a few – are similarly regarded as classics. Plus, television series like The Six Million Dollar Man (and its spin-off, The Bionic Woman), Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century were huge hits – with the Galactica franchise still around with us today.

So how did they do it back then? What made sci-fi of this period so wildly popular?

The key thing to understand about ’70s or Star Wars-era sci-fi was how it revised and updated a genre that had gotten old and slightly creaky (think Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea). It did so in three major ways:

1) Science fiction became more realistic.

The big leap forward in sci-fi ‘realism’ came in 1968 with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which Kubrick made after consulting with scientists and engineers at NASA and MIT, and after devising new visual effects techniques like front projection. After 2001, which played out like a Cinerama documentary shot in space, sci-fi films couldn’t afford to look anymore like they were shot in your parents’ garage (even if they were). Continue reading LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: The New Star Wars, Disney & Why Sci-Fi Was So Great in the 1970s