Category: Articles

LFM Review: Machete Maidens Unleashed!

By Joe Bendel. Machetes and maidens: two great things that go great together and evergreen staples of Filipino exploitation films. Following up  Not Quite Hollywood, his epic survey of Ozploitation, Mark Hartley gives the That’s Entertainment treatment to the scrappy low budget actioners produced in the Philippines. Prepare thyself for an education when Hartley’s Machete Maidens Unleashed! (trailer here) screens during the  2011 New York Asian Film Festival, kicking-off this Friday, and once again bringing a heavy dose badness to the Lincoln Center.

Much like Tito in Yugoslavia, Marcos had plenty of military hardware laying about that he was more than willing to rent out to international productions. With the memory of the U.S. liberation during WWII still fresh for older generations, the Filipino climate was relatively pro-America and definitely open for business. Yet it took a visionary like Roger Corman to fully recognize the possibilities.

The Philippines made a star of Pam Grier, who starred in several women-in-jungle-prison films for Corman’s New World Pictures. Corman also recruited local talent such as Eddie Romero to grind out Brides of Blood movies for New World. As with protégés like Jonathan Demme, Monte Hellman, and James Cameron, who learned to crank them out fast and cheap under Corman’s tutelage before finding wider acclaim, Romero would eventually be recognized as an official National Artist of the Philippines. Yet, he happily sits down to talk about Black Mama, White Mama and similar cinematic milestones.

Never a dull moment.

Like Hartley’s NQH, MMU will leave viewers thirsty for many of the films sampled in glorious detail. For instance, Bobby Suarez’s Cleopatra Wong looks particularly intriguing (killer nuns) and vaguely PG-13-ish. Whereas many alumni of Corman’s prison films frequently express amazement at just how much they were able to get away with in terms of lurid sexual content—a point Hartley is not shy about illustrating.

Breezily paced, MMU features first-person interviews with Corman and scores of his American and Filipino colleagues, unabashedly gleeful in the naughtiness and profitability of their masterworks. While the commentary is not as laugh out loud funny as NHQ’s, it still has its moments, often courtesy of Corman vet John Landis. A good clean night at the movies (but best to leave the kiddies at home), MMU is a perfect example why NYAFF is pound for pound the most entertaining fest of the year. It screens with the straight-up legit Filipino exploitationer Raw Force this Saturday (7/2) at the Walter Reade Theater.

Posted on July 29th, 2011 at 7:30pm.

New Transformers: Dark of the Moon “Freedom” Ad; Film Debuts Tonight in Select Theaters

At the UK premiere.

By Jason Apuzzo. The wait is nearly over. Transformers: Dark of the Moon arrives in theaters as early as this evening, depending on location. I will admit that I haven’t looked forward this much to seeing a film in quite a while. Check out the ad above to get a sense of why I’m so excited.

I’m also excited because all indications are that Bay & Co. are pushing the technological boundaries of native 3D filmmaking out to a new level. Plus the UN appears to be among the villains. Plus Buzz Aldrin appears in the film, along with Bill O’Reilly.

And most importantly, we get Victoria’s Secret super model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. In 3D.

So if you’re not interested in seeing this film, especially as the 4th of July weekend approaches, please have yourself checked for anemia.

Incidentally, on the day/eve of Dark of the Moon‘s release, somebody dug up Michael Bay’s early music video work with Meat Loaf. It’s absolutely epic stuff – the key video here clearly being Meat Loaf’s cover of “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through,” featuring an 18 year-old Angelina Jolie and exploding jukeboxes …

Posted on June 28th, 2011 at 9:34am.

Bravo’s Billion-Dollar Housewife?

By Govindini Murty. Housewife shows are apparently bigger business than ever before, with one ‘housewife’ formerly of Bravo’s Real Housewives of New York City even recently signing a major merchandising deal for $100 million. I commented on this trend a year ago and said that it represented a move toward traditionalism  – posing a wry counterpoint to the apparent ‘progressiveness’ of modern popular culture. After all, the ‘housewife’ shows glamorize women who seem to do nothing but shop, gossip, have lunch, dress up and attend parties – and who have only acquired their lifestyles by marrying wealthy men. These tendencies reached their zenith in the deliciously campy and over-the-top recent episodes of The Real Housewives of NYC‘s lavish trip to Morocco (read hilarious recaps here, here and here), an obvious homage to the notorious trip to the Middle East from last year’s Sex and the City 2 – a film that earned over $288 million at the worldwide box office.

When these housewives have careers, they often appear to be pursued for vanity reasons, rather than for serious purposes of building long-term professional achievements or for supporting their families.  And yet, in the very fact that these housewife shows are highly popular on TV (and seem to be the major money-makers for the cable network Bravo, which has launched six of the Real Housewives shows), they appear to be one of the few ways in which shows featuring a majority of women characters can even get on the airwaves.

I’ve written previously about the highly un-progressive nature of Hollywood casting. Despite the fact that women make up over 50% of the population (and according to the MPAA’s 2010 box office report, purchase 50% of the movie tickets), according to SAG statistics they’re only cast in one out of three lead roles in film and TV, and only earn two-thirds of the pay of male actors. Watch most network TV shows, TV ads, or movies in theaters and you will see two or three men cast for every woman. It’s completely deplorable.

From TV housewife to ambitious businesswoman.

This disparity poses a telling contrast to the era of classic Hollywood, when it seemed that leading women got as many roles as the leading men -and were often the most highly-paid performers at their studios. When Greta Garbo made films with Clark Gable at MGM, she got top billing. When Marlene Dietrich was at the height of her fame in the ’30s at Paramount, she was the highest-paid performer at the studio. Mary Pickford was so powerful in the 1910s and ’20s that she co-founded and ran her own movie studio, United Artists, after being the top-paid performer at Paramount. Even Shirley Temple was the top money-earner at Twentieth-Century Fox in the depths of the Depression, single-handedly keeping the studio afloat and earning the paychecks to match. Is there any female actress today with the clout to co-found a movie studio? No. Is there any female actress today who earns more than the top male stars at any studio? No. Is there any top female actress who will get top billing over a top male star? No. And yet in reality TV – which may more accurately reflect the tastes of average Americans, due to the fluid, highly-adaptable nature  of the programming – women get the majority of the roles and significantly out-earn male reality TV stars. Continue reading Bravo’s Billion-Dollar Housewife?

LFM Review: Midnight in Paris

By Patricia Ducey. Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s latest film, is a frothy romantic comedy topped with a healthy soupcon of wisdom, a welcome turn from the now 75-year-old filmmaker.

Screenwriter Gil (Owen Wilson) and his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) accompany her well-heeled parents to Paris for a little pre-wedding vacation/shopping trip. Gil adores Paris and longs to leave L.A. behind to write novels there, a la Hemingway and Fitzgerald, in the heady Paris of his imagination; Inez, however, is quite content with the good life in a Malibu manse, financed by Gil’s steady income from what he derides as his B-movie success. (Mon dieu, what present day scribe would complain of steady sales of any scripts?!)

But Gil is an incurable romantic, and his longings create a pebble in the shoe of their relationship. He stalks off one night after a squabble to ponder his future, both literary and romantic. As the bell tower chimes midnight, an antique auto pulls up and the revelers inside drag him inside. As the night and the champagne flow, Gil comes to believe his hosts really are Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, as they insist, and that he has landed somewhere inside his most cherished dream. And so his adventure ensues, with Gil concocting ever greater ruses to escape Inez to return to the ‘20s, where all his literary and artistic idols—and one particularly lovely woman—await him. But I will not spoil the fun by explaining; the story is very clever and surprising.

Some of Allen’s arch improv-style patter falls flat, but more of it produces smiles or laughter. And Paris is a character here, too; Allen and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, weave a Paris of amber glowing streetlamps, sumptuous five-star restaurants and earthy flea markets for our delight. The city (at least the part in frame) looks perfectly lovely. He sets the action against a soundtrack of lively Cole Porter and many of his other jazz favorites perfect for the time. If you can’t afford a plane ticket, Midnight in Paris will do. Continue reading LFM Review: Midnight in Paris

Photos from the Moscow Transformers: Dark of the Moon Premiere

Director Michael Bay with star Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in Moscow.
Rocking out in Red Square.

By Jason Apuzzo. This really looks like fun. (Check out the gawking Russian dude on the right above, getting his first good look at a supermodel from the decadent West.) Apparently Linkin Park played in Red Square for the premiere. I would’ve preferred Daft Punk, but that’s just me.

It seems so much cooler to premiere a film in Moscow instead of West LA, doesn’t it? Especially since the politics are roughly the same.

Anyway, for more images of the Transformers: Dark of the Moon Moscow premiere, head over to Michael Bay’s site. Can’t wait to see this film …

UPDATE: More good photos and a recap video from the Moscow premiere are now available here.

Posted on June 23rd, 2011 at 4:57pm.

Sex Slavery in the Islamic World: LFM Reviews The Price of Sex

By Joe Bendel. Istanbul might be a beautiful city, but the women living in the Aksaray neighborhood would not know. That is because it is a red light district and most of the prostitutes there are slaves, confined to seedy sex clubs and prison-like quarters. Crusading photojournalist Mimi Chakarova tells the stories of the voiceless women trafficked into sexual slavery in The Price of Sex, which screens during the 2011 Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

There is no question, sex trafficking is a problem in Western Europe and the Americas. However, when Chakarova wanted to investigate ground zero for sex slavery, she took her hidden cameras to Istanbul’s Aksaray and Dubai – two cities which obviously have absolutely nothing in common, right?

Chakarova briefly acknowledges the hypocrisy of Muslim communities rather openly indulging in the fruits of sex slavery. Evidently in Turkey, pre-marital sex is illegal but prostitution is not. There would seem to be an inherent contradiction there, but the crooked cops doggedly look the other way. While conditions might be slightly better in go-go Dubai, the fundamental realities remain the same. Demand for Eastern European women is also quite high in both “markets,” reflecting a “Natasha” fetish amongst the clientele. Indeed, the frequency with which Eastern European women are targeted by trafficking rings hit close to home for the naturalized Bulgarian-American Chakarova.

The personal toll of the global slave trade.

Continue reading Sex Slavery in the Islamic World: LFM Reviews The Price of Sex