texas frightmare weekend

do you mind if i smoke in the car?

that's right. i am hanging out with lance henriksen this weekend. and john carpenter. and george romero. and sid haig.

texas frightmare weekend is here! the southwest's premiere horror convention gets underway in just a few hours. as you can probably tell, i am excited. there will be special effects instruction and demonstration, a custom car show that is all hearses and saturday night they are screening dark night of the scarecrow (1981) which i haven't seen since it originally aired. can't wait.

sporadic updates may follow. stay tuned.

starlite cinema series opening night - sad sacks and bad luck dames

ok, here are the particulars: our series of outdoor film screenings begins on saturday, 5.22.10 at 9 p.m. and i am kicking off the series with a little film noir 101 class followed by edgar g. ulmer's detour (1945). it's going to be a grand time and i hope all interested parties can make it out. to read more about it here is the event page. if you're not facebook-savvy (or enabled) just email me and i will make sure you get the pertinent details.

and whatever you do, do not pick this tomato up if you see her on your way to the show.

a preview of coming attractions

starting in late may i am going to be curating/hosting a film series in conjunction with the fine folks of the annie street arts collective.

as an homage to one of the great (and, sadly, disappearing) american communal experiences - the drive-in theater - i'm calling this the starlite cinema series and it will focus on both the established classics and the criminally overlooked, the odd and the interesting, both foreign and domestic. this is all basically a fancy way of saying come sit in the backyard and watch movies with us. the programming will take on a life of its own, i am sure. i may go off on genre tangents now and again, there may be holiday themes (i guarantee this on halloween), you might see oscar winners, you might see something that by all rights should never have seen the light of day. i'll do my best to keep it varied and interesting. the general format will be a brief introduction to each film with notes on what makes the film significant, production details, things to look for that might enhance your enjoyment of the movie, et cetera followed by the screening.

the prospective date for our inaugural show is saturday, 5.22.10. i shall return shortly with the what, where and when. hope to see you there.

trailer tuesday

this week's entry is for rialto pictures' re-issue of army of shadows (1969) that came out in 2006. jean-pierre melville's beautifully subdued palette is on display here as well as a condensed version of the feeling of tension without much hope of release that is sustained throughout the film. highly recommended. read more about this beautiful and heart-rending film and/or get a copy here.

the potential energy of the kinetoscope

in my estimation, film is the most complicated and challenging art form we have. this is what keeps me coming back to it over and over again. on their own, literature, drama, dance, sculpture, photography and music have all added immeasurably to our enjoyment and understanding of just what it means to be a human being. when film came along, though, the game changed. it changed radically. it was now within our grasp to combine all of these elements, and more, in seemingly infinite combinations.

let's start with the most basic element - the picture alone. entirely new texts and subtexts occur when you do something as simple and take a picture and put it into motion. check this out:

this is a photograph of an average hotel room. it is fairly nondescript. if someone showed you this photograph you would most likely only spend a few seconds with it. even if you looked at if for a solid minute (which turns out to be a long time when you are only looking at a photograph of a basic hotel room) what you could glean from it is limited by its static nature. it is a still image. it will only yield so much.

something profound happens, though, when you take this same basic notion and make it move. this is a short clip from chantal akerman's hotel monterey (1972). if you are unfamiliar with her work, chantal akerman's films are simple and lovely documents of the minimal and miniscule. they are elegies to the little things that lie in between.

i find this to be a great example of what i mean by the potential energy of film. just the simple, ever-present possibility of motion holds you fast. the delicate movement of a finger, a door moved by an inch or two, the almost imperceptible sweep of the camera as your surrogate in the scene - all demonstrations of how the still photograph is limited in what it can offer you. the motion picture demands a great deal more of you and even when nothing grand or particularly exciting happens, film still rewards you. long after you would have stopped examining the photograph, akerman forces you to stay and look. look harder. look longer. in this process you go from the same level of understanding you reached with the still photograph to "ok, seen it" to something altogether new. she stays with a take so long that you begin to look for new things in the frame. you find objects and relationships you would have never noticed and all of this takes place because of the mystery that could be discovered or revelation that could possibly occur when a picture comes to life and begins to move.

full disclosure - the music in this clip was added by whoever posted it to youtube. the original film has no soundtrack or score so it is a much more pure example of the phrase "motion picture". so, although the music is a lovely choice, to see it in its proper context you can just kill the sound. better yet, you can pick up eclipse series 19: chantal akerman in the seventies for a much better idea of how adept she is at showing you the things you might have missed. i see something new every time i watch her films.

paramount summer classics

my favorite time of the year is nearly upon us - the summer film series at the paramount theater. here is the freshly minted schedule for your perusal. starting 5.20.10 if you are looking for me you will be able to find me in row q, most nights. if you live in austin (or even if you don't) and you've never been you really should try to take advantage of it. the theater itself is a jewel and how often are you going to get to see brighton rock (1947) or sunrise (1927) the way they were intended to be seen, on the big screen? the popcorn is on me.

the one i might have saved

my favorite blog, arbogast on film, has issued an invitation to participate in a floating blog-a-thon with the theme being "the one you might have saved". which of the doomed characters whose corpses litter the horror cinema landscape would you offer a reprieve from their grisly fate if you could breach that fourth wall?

this is nearly impossible to narrow down.

i kicked around the idea of renfield from dracula (1931) for a while but something wasn't quite right about that one. he certainly didn't deserve to be strangled and tossed down the steps of carfax abbey like so much rubbish but he doesn't inspire enough sympathy or empathy to merit being the one i would save - too weak, too subservient.

saul femm from the old dark house (1932) is a sentimental favorite. this film is a desert island choice, no hesitation, and i love this character. like all the best psychotics, he almost convinces you that he is completely sane but can't quite keep the madness under wraps. there is a gleam in his eye at the prospect of doing evil that he cannot hide. in an instant, he turns from pious victim into knife-wielding pyromaniac. i take great delight in his malicious, insane glee but i can't justify making him the one. if i saved him i would feel responsible for looking after him and that would mean i would have to be forever on my guard because the little bastard is nuts. and, while it would never be boring having him around, i don't relish the thought of pulling into the driveway only to find him dancing a jig in the pile of ashes that was previously our happy home.

but then it came to me. i know who i would save in a heartbeat. this man:

good ol' dick hallorann from the shining (1980). no sweeter guy has ever been done dirtier than him. i would actually go back to working in kitchens if i knew he was going to be my boss. dick hallorann would loan you ten bucks if you needed it and never once ask about getting it back. he would sit out on the loading dock and teach you to play the banjo when it was slow. he would tell you about all the places he'd been and it would never get boring. he would make the best glass of lemonade you ever had. he was good to his grandmother. he would tell you to get your shit together if it was necessary and you would never get mad at him for it. dick hallorann is where it's at.

and he's great with kids,

kids that shine, anyway. as much as dick hallorann would gladly give you the shirt off his back that just goes double for danny. in a very short amount of screen time you feel that there's a true connection here; that he cares about, and fears for, this kid. and when danny puts out the call

dick gets on a plane and goes. roads blocked? get the man a snowcat! nothing is going to stop him.

well, almost nothing. jack, you are a son of a bitch. so, yes, if i could prevent that, i would. dick hallorann was a righteous man, doing the right thing. it's a damn shame that the shining isn't so hot at picking up axe-wielding maniacs hiding a few feet away. i'm not going to dwell on it, though. i am going to remember dick hallorann the way i want, the way i think he'd want us to remember him.

how'd you like some ice cream, doc?

sure-fire

this never fails to make me laugh.

how many americans does it take to screw up a movie poster?

with a few rare exceptions, the american movie poster shows a decided lack of imagination (dvd covers are even worse). they are almost exclusively based around selling the celebrities in the film with little room for any artistic interpretation. when there are no stars in the cast you have a slight chance of someone coming up with a bit of imagery that, given time and good fortune, could become iconic but almost all of the good examples of that come from the genre ghetto. large studios/major films seldom take that sort of risk. when you compare the quality and imagination of american graphic design in this field to the work of their counterparts in poland over the last sixty years they absolutely destroy us. their poster work is rife with the poetic, grotesque and surreal. when you aren't bound to selling pretty faces (hell, some aren't even bound to selling the content of the film) then whole new vistas open up before you.

some examples:

innerspace (1987) - there is simply no comparison. although, there is something to be said here for truth in advertising. i would actually go to see this based on the polish poster. then i would have to ask for my money back.

eyes wide shut (1999) - which one of these puts you more in mind of a peculiar odyssey where hidden dangers lurk and nothing is as it seems? i thought so.

someone to watch over me (1987) - who could forget the sizzling chemistry of mimi rogers and tom berenger? they're the bogart and bacall of 1987. i know you're thinking "wait a minute! what about goldie hawn and kurt russell in overboard?!" but that's much more of a bogie/hepburn vibe. forget it, it's better to just have a head full of crows.

apocalypse now (1979) - on the odd occasion that one of the performers is featured on the poster the polish versions are still superior. this depiction of brando is appropriately terrifying and mad. while this american version isn't a particularly bad poster (no superstars clogging it up, the hint of the horror of the unknown before you) it is still nowhere as compelling as its polish counterpart.

trading places (1983) - this is just madness. i know which one i am buying a ticket to, without a doubt.

and this is just a miniscule sampling of the majesty and lunacy you will find. there is a beautiful gallery of wiktor sadowski's work here and a nice archive with dozens of posters from several artists here. my favorite, though, is andrzej pagowski whose work you can view here.

chodźmy do kina!

trailer tuesday

this week's entry is vincent gallo's buffalo 66 (1998). it is a miniature masterpiece. let's span time.

i agree with david lynch

i agree with him about a lot of things but maybe none more than this:

sticking it to the tax man in technicolor

this being april 15th i thought i would take this opportunity to pay tribute to the greatest tax dodger of all time, sir robin of locksley. this is one of my absolute favorites and, quite possibly, the single greatest saturday matinee ever committed to film - the adventures of robin hood (1938).

the action begins with king richard the lionheart being held captive and his usurper of a brother, prince john, holding down nottingham castle (and the saxon populace of england) in the meantime. almost immediately, we are made aware of the cruel villainy of john's rule as his right hand man, guy of gisbourne, threatens a saxon hunter with death for the capital crime of poaching a royal deer. robin hood arrives just in time and sends the royal company packing, threats unfulfilled. robin shows up shortly after at the great hall of nottingham with a gift for the assembled.

take that, you effete clowns! errol flynn's greatest characteristic throughout this film, and the one that made him the definitive screen robin hood, is his unrestrained bravado. he's invited to sit and dine by prince john, which he does with gusto, when out of the corner of his eye he notices the guards moving to bar the doors. it is this precise moment that sets the tone for everything that follows. what plays across his face is just this side of joy at the notion of taking on a couple hundred of prince john's men single-handedly. the first action sequence of the film is underway and flynn moves through the scene, dispatching normans left and right, with an almost supernatural speed and skill. it's as if he is everywhere at once.

when not wreaking havoc in nottingham castle, he is roaming sherwood forest (which was actually the warner brothers ranch in chico, california) with his band of merry men. merry is quite the understatement, actually, and this is the other thing i find most appealing about the film. there is no sound heard throughout sherwood forest as much as that of hale and hearty laughter. even though the stakes were high - life and death, in fact - you will never see a more devil-may-care group. it's as if it's all a game for them, a complete lark, and the attitude is infectious.

the outlaw band manages to kidnap the party escorting the royal taxes, thoroughly humiliating gisbourne and the bungling sheriff of nottingham in the process, and giving robin and lady marian their first opportunity for some quality time. the love scenes are effective because they are the smallest element in the film. i don't mean small in terms of length of screen time or importance (because, as you will see, love eventually sets robin free in much more than a metaphorical way). i mean small in that they are modest and genuine. marian slowly, surely sees that robin is righteous, just and caring. there may have been no better actress at conveying loving devotion with just her eyes than olivia de havilland.

to avenge themselves upon robin, gisbourne and john develop a scheme to lure him into nottingham's nest of vipers with an archery contest. the fact that he goes for it is one of the primary reasons we as an audience find ourselves pulling for robin - for all his swashbuckling swagger, he's human. by this time he's already been dumped into the drink not once, but twice, by little john and friar tuck. he's not afraid to look foolish. and in this case, his pride is going to be his undoing. but not before he does this:

deal with that! of course, things play out the way you would expect. there are daring escapes, king richard returns to england, john and his toadies are banished from the kingdom and everyone else lives happily ever after. along the way, in what is my favorite scene in this final act, marian delivers a speech to john in which she is every bit as fearless and defiant as robin. there is no doubt that they are made for each other. each character's conclusion is inescapable and that's just fine. you don't go see this movie for left turns and convoluted logic. you go see this movie because it is everything that is great to your inner ten year old - swordfights! swinging on vines! eating food with your knife!

and i don't mean to downplay the artistry of it. the casting is pitch perfect. claude rains is the ideal mixture of vain and treacherous, basil rathbone is a proper bastard, melville cooper is perfectly incompetent and olivia de havilland is as virtuous as she is lovely. errol flynn simply has a vitality unmatched by any other action hero. ever. plus, you won't find more glorious scarlets, golds and greens in all of technicolor. and as melodrama it is textbook, sheer perfection. the bad guys are snakes, they lose. the good guys are solid dudes, they win and get the girl. after 102 minutes of thrills and derring-do the adventures of robin hood sets everything right, just the way a technicolor fairy tale ought to.

there's a great double-disc edition with a brilliant transfer and loads of extra features available here. watch it and see if you're not immediately seized by the urge go build a treehouse or jump off your roof with a sheet as a cape.

the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder

this is my favorite segment from les blank's burden of dreams (1982), the documentary he made about the production of werner herzog's fitzcarraldo (1982). herzog's earnestness borders on lunacy at times and this was absolutely necessary to complete a project beset with so many perils. lesser men would have given up, saner men would have never even started.

there are any number of things to discuss at length regarding these films but today what i am focused on is the value in following your muse even when your muse threatens you with your ultimate destruction. if you have that sort of fortitude, and you live to tell the tale, you find out things that very few people are privy to.

you can find fitzcarraldo either in a regular, single-disc edition or in werner herzog and klaus kinski: a film legacy, which is worth every damn penny. watch it first, then burden of dreams, which you can get at any online retailer worth their salt or directly from the criterion collection.

trailer tuesday

here at vitagraph, american we have a healthy reverence for the art of the trailer. previews of coming attractions are as much a part of the movie-going experience as the film itself. this recurring feature is intended to celebrate the best/most interesting of those little gems that entice us to come back next week.

our inaugural entry is for william castle's mr. sardonicus (1961). for those of you unfamiliar with castle, when it came to b-movie gimmickry he had no equal. for screenings of macabre (1958) he offered $1000 life insurance policies from lloyd's of london in case you died of fright during the movie. the tingler (1959) was filmed in "percepto" which meant that the creature in the film, which can only be destroyed by screaming, could "hear" the audience. it didn't hurt that select seats in the theater were rigged with large joy buzzers. the "punishment poll" in today's trailer was bunk. no alternative ending has ever been unearthed. that didn't make it any less fun, though. i'm pretty sure no audience ever voted for mercy anyway.

if you're interested, the william castle film collection is a great place to start. you'll have to rig your own joy buzzers.

cautiously optimistic

i read this interesting bit of news today.

i am looking forward to seeing what sort of programming they offer. here's hoping the experience is the exact opposite of what the gold class in the domain promises to be.

the phrases "boutique cafe cinema" and "enlightened bar food" fill me with trepidation but if they bring in films otherwise unavailable it could be worth braving that crowd.

on the plus side, i like the name. it was o. henry that first referred to austin as "the city of the violet crown" in 1894. in the nineteenth century some texans began to call austin "the athens of the south", in reference to the university. as athens, greece was the original "city of the violet crown", o. henry couldn't help but make this sly dig at these overly ambitious types. either way, it has a nice ring to it. i hope it works out.

the great man

"horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people" - w.c. fields

i have never known of a funnier man than w.c. fields. i have my dad to thank for passing along his abiding affection for the golden age greats - fields, the marx brothers, laurel and hardy, buster keaton and many others - to me. it's one of the greatest gifts i was ever given. out of them all, w.c. fields is nearest and dearest to my heart for a number of reasons. chief among those reasons is his obvious love of language. an avid reader, he was known to carry trunks full of books with him as he toured the vaudeville circuits in his youth. no other comedian of the era benefitted as much from the conversion from silents to talkies. his voice was one of the most unique instruments in comedy history. his verbal skill was unmatched by his peers. a master of the stinging aside, his throwaway lines were ten times better than bits others labored over for weeks. he took great joy in the sound of language as well as meaning, evident from just a quick glance at some of the character names in his scripts:

eustace p. mcgargle

j. effingham bellwether

augustus winterbottom

ambrose wolfinger

j. pinkerton snoopington

t. frothingill bellows

larson e. whipsnade

cuthbert j. twillie

egbert souse

cleopatra pepperday

and, my favorite, elmer prettywillie

of course, reading them here doesn't do any of them justice. when he says them, though, with the proper amount of venom, lasciviousness, malice, wonder or mirth, it's like music.

he was also a world class curmudgeon. and you know i can heartily endorse that platform. we share a number of the same views on child rearing.

but the best thing about what he did is that you simply never knew what to expect. like all the greats, he always surprised you. and that's the main reason i brought us all here today. most folks are only aware of the work he did toward the end of his life but that was just the tip of the iceberg with him. the films most people know him for came in what was, essentially, the third act of his career. as a young man he developed a number of skills that would serve him well in later life when he portrayed a series of raconteurs, roustabouts, carnival barkers and snake oil salesmen. in his vaudeville days, when he worked at fortescue's pier in atlantic city, new jersey, one of his primary jobs was drowning. if the matinees were slow he would swim out, feign drowning and be "rescued" (during which he would be conveniently taken into the theater). once a large enough crowd had assembled he would be revived and the show would begin. he sometimes "drowned" three or four times a day.

what he did best in those early days, though, was juggle.

no joke. he was billed as "the world's greatest eccentric juggler". and he had formidable skills. if you only are aware of his work from the late 30s/early 40s you might never be able to imagine that this oddly shaped man, renowned as one of hollywood's great drunkards (highly exaggerated, i think), would have ever been able to juggle at all, much less be one of the best. this is where you would be surprised. this clip is from the old fashioned way (1934) and his creativity and dexterity are remarkable, especially for a man of fifty-four.

the guy just slays me. every time.

if you'd like to see all of the old fashioned way you can find it in the w.c. fields comedy collection, vol. 2 along with several other films. i highly recommend it. thanks for reading/watching.

drat!

what's in a name

the name of the blog has a few things in it. if you understand it a little better you'll understand me a little better.

we'll do the second part first. "american". i really like it as an adjective but not for the reasons that typically come to mind. i do not mean it in any sort of rah-rah, flag-waving, love it or leave it sort of way. the image i am trying to invoke is much more carl sandburg than fox news. its use in the title does not mean i am going to discuss exclusively/mainly american film. what it does mean is that i find certain qualities in the word that i think were necessary to survive and prosper here since our country's infancy (not all of them pleasant) and i find these same qualities over and over again in the films i love:

an exploratory nature, the need for frontier

sturdiness, steadfastness, simplicity

a taste for violence

religious fervor

devotion to craft

and so on...

i am not going to go on at length about it. it's just to give you a foothold on my perspective. i know these things exist everywhere but in each place they seem to exist in a very specific combination. i admire our combination when it adds to up to, for example, the city of chicago, with all the good and the bad. that's how i am using it.

the title is also a play on american vitagraph. american vitagraph was one of the country's very first film studios. initially a direct competitor with thomas edison, they eventually sold their material to him for distribution. in the mid-20s they sold out to warner brothers and faded into history but at the turn of the twentieth century they were pivotal in the development of early american cinema.

the most important thing in the title, though, is "vitagraph". the recording of life. this idea is central to why i love film - the motion picture defeats death.

until the advent of the motion picture, specifically talkies, you could only be most effectively/accurately captured and preserved in photographs or as a disembodied voice on a wax cylinder or shellac record. moving pictures were such a revelation that i think we still may not have thoroughly processed all the implications. everyone on this earth born after 1900 (when the first sound films were exhibited in france) now had the opportunity for each succeeding generation to know how they spoke, how they danced, what they looked and sounded like when they ran, laughed or played with their dog. i maintain that this is still one of the most important technological advancements in human history. forget entertainment, forget art. the motion picture allows us to pass down the most complete document of our individual humanity throughout time. astounding.

this is why i love the movies. this is why i chose the name.

let's all go to the lobby

hello, and welcome to the new blog. still hate that word, blog.

as some of you folks know, my friend bobby and i are working on putting together a film podcast series. the format/content of said podcast is going to be pretty specific so i thought i might give myself somewhere to put everything else. this is going to be the spot to discuss all the things that don't (and some that do) fit under the umbrella of our other endeavor. this will be the home for the rants, the new release information, quickly organized field trips to the alamo drafthouse and the paramount theater and any number of other things, most of which will have something to do with the movies.

there won't be a focus on a particular genre or time frame, though i do have my tendencies. when you drop in here just think of yourself as dickie in stymie's taxicab - we're freewheelin'.

feel free to leave comments/send emails. thanks.