Experimental Lunch: Mothlight

by Allen Irwin

This essay kicks off another new column here at Perpetual Nostalghia: Experimental Lunch. The primary goal will be to write about shorter experimental films that can be viewed online, perhaps on a lunch break, and to provide context and commentary.

Mothlight (1963) - dir. Stan Brakhage



Stan Brakhage’s Mothlight¹ is a perfect example of what the average person probably imagines an “experimental” film to be: images flash past in a flurry of abstract shapes and colors, it has no plot, and there is ostensibly some grand, philosophical meaning latent in its flickering images of bugs, plants, and other organic bits. It also serves perfectly as an introduction to some of the central ideas and pleasures of experimental film viewing, such as pushing the boundaries of film language, exploring new perspectives, and examining the medium of film itself.

After Midnight: The Vampira Show and Fog Island

by Allen Irwin

This is the first post in a new series called Midnight Mass. It will be a place to examine different types of “midnight movies” and to experiment with different types of criticism, from information and link dumps to visual essays utilizing screengrabs and other media (and maybe a video essay or two if I get ambitious). The primary goal is to explore what makes a movie a “midnight movie” and how watching movies after midnight can affect our viewing experience. The only rule is that any movies I analyze must be watched... After Midnight.


A Condensed History of the Midnight Movie as Television Phenomenon

While the “Midnight Movie” as a cinematic phenomenon arguably had its heyday in the 1970s, with films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Eraserhead (1977) screening alongside offbeat oddities like Freaks (1932) and Reefer Madness (1936) at counterculture hangouts, the original midnight movie mania occurred much earlier in unsuspecting living rooms around the country. Almost any movie can become a midnight movie given the right framing or state of mind, and that crucial framing device was just what Hunt Stromberg, Jr., had in mind when he asked a young woman named Maila Nurmi to dress up like a vampire and introduce old movies on Los Angeles ABC affiliate KABC-TV in 1954. Vampira was born.

The City in the 60s - Lost Gems from Non-Theatrical Distribution

by Allen Irwin

Last weekend the National Gallery of Art screened a series of 16mm documentary and educational films organized around the idea of “The City in the 60s” to highlight the neglected area of film culture that is non-theatrical distribution. Of the 7 films screened, only one was shown theatrically in the United States, and the majority were shown in schools or other educational venues. Most of them are also available to watch online, and well worth checking out:




Felicia (1965) - This short documentary about a young girl living in Watts, LA in the mid 1960s feels very much like a precursor to 1970s films like Killer of Sheep (1977) and Bush Mama (1979), albeit with a more straightforward documentary approach, and it was produced through the same UCLA film program that would be responsible for the later L.A. Rebellion film movement (of which Burnett and Gerima’s are a part). It also serves as a window into a very specific point in time, as it takes place only months before the 1965 Watts Riots.

Jason Bourne in Middle Management

by Mark Paglia

The Informant (2009) - dir. Steven Soderbergh

I’ve always accepted Matt Damon as a versatile actor, but he does have a tendency towards one type of character: the peerless hero. The sort of person who’s just utterly better than everyone else. Sure, his characters probably harbor psychological stresses, but most screen time is taken up by feats of smooth perfection, be they intellectual (Good Will Hunting) or physical (the Bourne series). Even when he plays an everyman junior executive in Syriana, Damon winds up as an advisor to a foreign potentate, working his way into a muddled conspiracy theory and surviving missile strikes. The guy’s just unflappable.

Evil Dread

by Adam Sweeney

Evil Dead (2013) - dir. Fede Alvarez / The Evil Dead (1981) - dir. Sam Raimi

As with any other memory, it's relatively foggy. I remember few specifics. I don't remember what day of the week it was, nor do I remember my mother's purpose for going to Wal-Mart. What I do remember is it was around Halloween. I remember wanting to buy a horror movie. I remember there was a display with several VHS around the cosmetics section of the store.

I remember my first glimpse of The Evil Dead.

New Films Attempt to Capitalize on the Success of Lincoln

by Luke Burns

Thaddeus "Rad Tad" Stevens

Radical Republicans

The breakout character from Lincoln, Congressman Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones), gets his own movie—with a twist! Thaddeus “Rad Tad” Stevens is the raddest of all the Radical Republicans. When President Andrew Johnson (Alan Rickman) proposes an overly lenient reconstruction plan for the southern states, the only way to set things right is for Rad Tad to challenge Johnson to an epic series of extreme sports competitions, freestyle rap battles, and dance-offs.  And if a break dance beat-down doesn’t make President Johnson mellow out, then Rad Tad will just have to initiate some totally sweet impeachment proceedings.

Six Funny Things from the Films of 2012

by Luke Burns

This year, a few movies brought me to laughter with funny moments I wasn’t expecting. In no particular order, here are those moments:

 1. "I'm from the future!" - Looper

Is there anything more frustrating in time travel movies than when everyone ignores the advice of a character from the future? Just do what he says, damn it, he’s from the future. Looper plays on this time travel trope in the scene in which Joe (Joseph Gordon Levitt) discusses his plans for retirement with Abe (Jeff Daniels), a mobster from the future who has been sent back to oversee his organization’s operations in the past.

Joe: I'm going to France.
Abe: You should go to China.
Joe: I'm going to France.
Abe: I'm from the future! You should go to China.

This exchange encapsulates one of Looper’s central themes: the conflict between the arrogance of young people who think they can do anything and the arrogance of old people who think they know everything. It’s just not in Joe’s nature to listen to his elders, even an elder who KNOWS THE DAMN FUTURE.  And when (in one timeline, anyway) Joe does wind up going to China, we understand that this represents an important turning point for the character. More importantly, though, Daniels’ sheer exasperation in his line reading cracked me up.

Stand-up Comedy - 2012 In Review

by James Folta and Mike Yarsky

 
In a discussion of stand-up comedy specials, Mike Yarsky and James Folta talk about what they liked and didn’t like in 2012 and beyond.

James Folta: Lots of good comedy in the past couple years. I’ve been excited to discover John Mulaney, Hannibal Buress, Anthony Jeselnik and others. Who has excited you?

Michael P. Yarsky: Those people are definitely all great. Last year - in part because of Louie but also because he released a record, I discovered Doug Stanhope. In 2011, Doug Stanhope went onto a makeshift stage in Oslo with quasi-rehearsed material and spoke to people for whom English was their second language. At the beginning of the special, Burning the Bridge to Nowhere, he talks about how terrible and overly polished Comedy Central specials can get, and that his didn’t go remotely like it was captured on air. He said that it’s simply not indicative of live comedy or what it’s really like on the road. Not twenty minutes later or thereabouts, he is onstage, in a blurry shot and unsteady cameras, holding a plastic cup of beer, and he says, "I think that's why I hate observational comedy so much. Because there's no passion. There's no rage."

Wes Anderson's New Wave

by Mark Paglia

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) - dir. Wes Anderson

Despite respectively revolving around heists, high school, family dynamics, oceanography, tourism, and a Roald Dahl book, Wes Anderson’s films have earned a reputation for all being alike. That is to say, they all possess a bright, anachronistic set design and sad adults played by actors surnamed Murray, Schwartzman, or Wilson. Moonrise Kingdom branches out in one obvious respect by making extensive use of child actors, and in other respects as well. Overall it lacks the coherence of his earlier films, but Moonrise Kingdom very nearly makes up for this with the promise it shows for Anderson to expand his style.

You Can Never Go There and Back Again

by James Folta

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) - dir. Peter Jackson

 J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was one of the first books I ever really loved. I read it over and over. In fact, the second thing I ever bought with my own money, out of my dragon-hoard of coins collected in a sock, was the BBC radio dramatization of The Hobbit (my first purchase being the VHS set of what was then the original Star Wars trilogy). Later, I wore out my copies of the Lord of the Rings. I even read The Silmarillion and acted like I enjoyed the experience. (Don’t lie to yourself, that book is only a badge - the true believers will back me up on this one.)

So I was excited for the new film version of The Hobbit. I was excited when I first heard that Guillermo Del Toro would direct. I wasn’t even disappointed when he dropped out. (Though, can you imagine?) All this is to let you know that I’m biased towards The Hobbit. I want it to be great and live up to my childhood ideals. I’m inclined to be the Fox News to its GOP (Blam! Sucker Punch!). And, for the most part, it did satisfy me - watching this movie adapted what I loved most about the Lord of the Rings films to tell a tale with all the wonder and whimsy from the book’s sweeping mythology. It was fun in that Spielberg-directing-Indy rollicking adventure sort of way.

A Map of Empathy

By Mike Yarsky

Cloud Atlas (2012) - dir. Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski & Lana Wachowski

 























Because this is the recursive, matroyshka-based Cloud Atlas I am discussing, it seemed appropriate that, in my review of the film, I would quote my review of the book, in which I quote somebody else:

‘Roger Ebert wrote of Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain: "If [it] is an ambitious folly, that's hardly inappropriate because the movie itself is about one of humankind's most grandiose follies, the quest for eternal life...The movie has already been damned as silly and praised as audacious at film festivals from Venice to Toronto -- and both those assessments are valid, in part because of the movie's biggest aesthetic gamble: its earnestness." Substitute “the quest for eternal life" with "the will to power," and "its earnestness" with "its uniqueness of form," and that is mostly where I stand with Cloud Atlas.’

Issue 1 - Horror

VIRTUAL ROUND TABLE - Horror Scenes from Non-Horror Movies

Alien Surgery
by Brian Agler

The dissection of a supposedly dead alien goes horribly wrong in Roland Emmerich's Independence Day (1996)
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Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - Be Afraid of the Light
by Luke Burns

Kiss Me Deadly's (1955) Mike Hammer as monster in Robert Aldrich's bleak, cynical noir

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The Opening of the Ark
by James Folta 

The climactic opening of The Ark of the Covenant in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
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Plumbing Problems
by Allen Irwin

A look at Harry Caul's investigation of Room 773 in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974)

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The Haunted House in the Clouds
by Mark Paglia

An analysis of Irvin Kershner's The Empire Strikes Back (1980) as haunted house

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 "I Got a Live One Here!"
by Adam Sweeney

Jack Nicholson mixes horror with the comic in Tim Burton's Batman (1989)
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The Incinerator
by Mike Yarsky

Lee Unkrich's Toy Story 3 (2010) unintentionally reveals the most horrifying truth of all





ESSAYS

Consent & Horror
by Mike Yarsky

An examination of the implicit agreements between horror films and their viewers, and the abuses thereof.





REVIEWS

Everyday Horror
ParaNorman (2012)
by Allen Irwin


 
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Lionheart's Greatest Performance
Theater of Blood (1973)
by Adam Sweeney