Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Once I get some of the more pressing reviews and articles off my plate, I'll be taking my own shot at summing up the insanity of this past weekend. Until then, we've got guys like our own DISTURBED filing reports from the safety and relative sanity of their homes...
This past weekend I was in the wonderful town of Austin, TX. Friday night I saw the fantastic Requiem For A Dream to get me in the film watching spirit and Saturday morning I was whisked to the Alamo Drafthouse, which is just a great, cool place (despite the six dollar pitchers of soda).
I've stayed up for 24 hours many times before. It's no big deal, but the prospect was still daunting. Was Harry gonna fuck with us and show 2001 at hour 20? I had some Red Bull and some Penguins Caffeinated Peppermints (can too much caffeine hurt you?) and I was ready to go.
Where do you see your movies? In LA, the crowds are even more jaded and bitter than crazy fanboys. In most of the rest of the country, they're your basic audiences. The general public. They love Armageddon. They watch Die Hard With A Vengeance and don't see all the contrivances. Now, these aren't necessarily bad people to watch films with. If those angry LA crowds warm up to a film you know you've got something special. The average Joes certainly make comedies better (remember how fun it was to see Austin Powers 2 in the theater, and how much it sucked on video?)
But imagine a crowd of the sort of people who come to this site. The film buffs. Not only that, but the truly hardcore. There were about 275 tickets, I'm told. 45 of those were reserved. So then there were half for Austinites and half for out-of-towners. That means that the Austin people were the VERY first ones in line, and the out-of-towners were not just the first 115 or so out of the thousands and thousands who I'm sure were trying for tickets, but people who would actually drive or fly in from other states for 24 hours of film. Hardcore. This is an audience full of people who truly LOVE film. An audience that knew who directed Nosferatu and who starred in the remake as soon as Harry asked. A crowd that cheers at the end of every film. That applauds when Edward G. Robinson first appears onscreen.
Imagine watching Robocop with a crowd like that.
I sat with an audience like that this weekend. It was a blast. I also made the decision to sit through every film in its entirety. Many others left halfway through the Russ Meyer film. Pussies.
I'll do a rundown of the films for you. I'll try to keep it brief and stick to the films (even though it's much more than the films...it's a whole experience), as I know you non-attendees are probably sick of all of it.
1. Destination Mars! - Back in the fifties there was this guy you may have heard of named McCarthy. He had a problem with Communists. Most of the people he persecuted weren't Communists, but one of them was. Joseph P. McDonald, who directed the sci-fi classic Destination Mars! He turned in the names of everyone who worked on the film as being communists, as well as many others. The government seized the film and nobody ever saw it. Four years ago a group of people got the film back and have worked to restore it. We were lucky enough to be the first audience ever to watch the lost film. Wonderful.
2. The Hobbit - I love this book, as I'm sure we all do. I liked this film when I was little. Dear God was it painful now. Curse you, Knowles, for subjecting us to that goddamned song. It sounded like it was recorded on a Magic Fingers bed.
3. The Gift - Sam Raimi has sure got an eye on him. The Gift is something of a by-the-numbers thriller enhanced greatly by great acting (Keanu is even good) and lovely direction. If you don't know, the basic plot is Cate Blanchett plays a psychic in a small town. She does readings for people with a deck of cards. A girl goes missing and the cops come to her. There's more to it than that, of course, but just see the movie. My main problem with it was that Raimi did the typical thriller thing, and I was hoping he wouldn't. Every damn time someone turns around somebody is standing there, the score shrieks at you to make you jump, etc. The sound mix was really high too, so that any time anything happened it was a loud, startling noise. A little cheap, I thought. I have an aversion to that sort of trickery. Still, it was all done a lot better here than in What Lies Beneath. Blanchett, Reeves, Ribisi (who I have always liked, but w! ho even the haters came to love here), Holmes et al. are quite good, there is some really great imagery and it's just a fine time at the movies. And Katie Holmes' tits are spec-fucking-tacular.
4. The Sea Wolf - See it. James Cameron saw it. Marvel at the black and white fog photography. Bow before Edward G. Robinson. See it.
5. Wonder Bar - A Busby Berkeley musical the likes of which you've probably never seen. Sure, you know what to expect with the dance numbers -the overhead photography and such- but the film is genuinely funny and a lot darker than you'd expect. Noirish, even, at times. Al Jolson is a fucking riot, and the final dance number is a blackface piece that is...just...wow. Nervous, disbelieving laughter echoed through the Drafthouse. Most of us had seen blackface stuff before. We've all seen documentaries, or whatever, but it's quite another thing to see them in context. To realize that this is a real movie...a NORMAL movie...and that in it this sort of thing was perfectly acceptable.
6. Snatch - The audience went apeshit over this movie. I can't imagine the film ever getting a better reception than it did this weekend. Personally, I didn't think it was THAT good. I liked it, it was funny, but I wasn't as impressed as the rest seemed to be. Sort of the same as Lock, Stock. Many loved it, I thought it was all right. Same sort of intertwining plot as Lock, Stock (with one really great scene that plays on the connection...the bit with the guy being hit by a car.) Ritchie went a bit overboard with his direction, but some of it paid off nicely. Brad Pitt was hysterical. Definitely worth seeing. "Ade," who played Tyrone came up afterwards and signed posters and such. He was very funny.
7. Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra-Vixens - Funny for five minutes. Unfortunately, it went on for about 85 after that.
8. The screen was just blank for a while. They didn't show anything. Honest.
9. Robocop - Just try to imagine how great it would be to watch this film with an audience of 275 film geeks. The ED-209 scene, "Mind if I...zip this up?", "Bitches leave," the toxic waste. Just awesome.
10. Shogun Assassin - Too damned slow. Might have been appropriate for another part of the night, but just too slow for this ungodly hour. Some very cool gore, red poster paint blood, just some funny, badass stuff...but too slow. This is a hard time to program for, though. The last movie has to be killer, but the second to last one also has to keep you awake. Very tough.
11. Ed Gein - An excellent character study, with some great acting. The film itself was a little iffy...looked a lot like a first film, with some cornball direction and such, but definitely worth seeing if only for Railsback. Railsback came up and answered a bunch of questions afterwards. Cool guy.
12. The Shorts And Such - In between films there was weird stuff on the screen. Some great music (I heard some Thievery Corporation/Up, Bustle & Out and some DJ Shadow that sounded remixed) on top of bizarre Japanese humiliation gameshows and other odd crap. Before the films a lot of trailers were shown...a great porn trailer for It Happened in Hollywood, some truly awful sci-fi trailers, The First Vampire In China, Logan's Run, Tomb Raider. Many cool trailers, and even the bad ones were funny. A welcome addition. There was a bit from Bruce Campbell that encouraged the audience to massage Harry's ass. We also saw two short films from someone working on the LotR effects. One of them was lame, but the first one was badass. Cool Hong Kong action stuff with mutant hands and giant eyeballs. Really great. We also saw a Christmas short that Tim dug up. I must own this short on video. It's one of the funniest damn things I've eve! r seen. Santa Claus looked like a drunken hobo, the little kid had a black eye, Santa rambled about monkeys and insulted the kids...it was fucking classic. I don't know where Tim found this thing but it's brilliant.
The last few hours of the event I had a sore throat and by Sunday night I was sick with the flu (ever flown when your sinuses were all fucked up? I'm lucky my ear drum didn't blow) but in spite of all of it I had a whole lot of fun. Hung out with some groovy folks over the weekend. Lots of very cool people there. I will be there next year. Harry had better save me a ticket. I wouldn't miss it. -Disturbed
