trailer tuesday

this week's entry is one i am very excited about. finally, five years on from there will be blood (2007), paul thomas anderson is back with the master (2012).

curtain call

it is time to ring down the curtain on another edition of queue de grâce. everyone take a last parting glance at the ol' girl.

thanks again to paramount staffers jim ritts, jesse trussell, nick barbieri, brooklyn henson, stacey fellers, laura vilches, paige deegan, scott butler, ian pirie and aaron ward for selecting such a wildly diverse and interesting group of films for me. here's the full list, for posterity's sake:

chinatown (1974)
a clockwork orange (1971)
daisies (1966)
reprise (2006)
head-on (2004)
silverlake life: the view from here (1993)
 steel magnolias (1989)
due date (2010)
road house (1989)
an american in paris (1951)
machuca (2004)
black orpheus (1959)
a boy and his dog (1975)
hedwig and the angry inch (2001)
toy story (1995)
cars (2006)
starship troopers (1997)
the fifth element (1997)
confessions of a dangerous mind (2002)
innocent voices (2004)

i appreciate all the time and trouble they went to for this project and it was a great way to kick off the summer moviegoing season. now that we have this batch of paramount-selected double features under our belt we can transition into the big screened, air conditioned comfort of a summer's worth of double features downtown for the paramount's summer classic film series. follow the link to see the full schedule. it's a doozy. you can also take a gander at all the special events, including the summer kick-off party featuring to kill a mockingbird (1962) and pillow talk (1959) taking place a week from today! if you're going to spend all summer there, like me, do yourself a favor and become a paramount film fan. you will save yourself a few bucks and help make sure our favorite theatre is around to do it again next summer. to make sure you don't miss any paramount related film news, you can also follow film programmer jesse trussell's blog where he will keep you posted about all the cinematic happenings at the paramount. i'll see you in row q!

i also want to extend a special thanks to our brothers and sisters in arms at vulcan video. we couldn't have had this much fun this week without them. keep it local.

the queue returns in late june and the sins of the past may return to haunt me as my favorite sister, haylee roulain, will be in charge, gaining some measure of revenge for all the cruel and hilarious big brother tricks i have ever pulled. you should ask her about the time i convinced her i was a vampire and that i had flown up onto the roof of our house right after she had watched the lost boys (1987). what a great day. haylee strikes back 6.18.12 through 6.24.12. it's the day she's waited for for thirty-two years. don't miss it. as always, thanks for reading along. see you next time.

invasion of the paramount: day ten

hello and welcome to my tenth and final day of programming chosen by the fine folks of the paramount theatre. the anchor leg of this relay is being run by aaron ward, development associate at the paramount, and we start off with george clooney's directorial debut, confessions of a dangerous mind (2002).

it's based on game show magnate chuck barris' batshit crazy autobiography in which he claimed he was a covert CIA operative. in between developing game shows and lowering the overall IQ of the american television viewing public in the 1970s, he was, according to him, traveling the world at the CIA's behest, carrying out assassinations, thirty-three in all. he often used his television production role as cover, frequently rewarding contestants with trips to politically sensitive destinations on which he served as their chaperone. in between the murders and gene, gene, the dancing machine, he found himself torn between two women, one representing the stable domesticity that barris desired but couldn't commit to and one representing the cutthroat cloak-and-dagger world that a man of his peculiar talents would find irresistible. vitagraph favorite sam rockwell is excellent as barris, all his tics turned up a notch to capture the twitchy hustler energy that the real barris overflowed with. clooney's direction has kind of a first-timer feel to it, though. you can definitely see him lifting moves from the more prominent names he worked for previously as an actor. at times it is a bit junior varsity steven soderbergh. it could be worse, though, and i really enjoy what he and screenwriter charlie kaufmann mined out of the book. this is kind of a sad and desperate story and, appropriately, the self-aggrandizement and paranoia is never eclipsed by the black comedy. it's probably a lot more fascinating, in general, to kids like me that actually grew up with the dating game, the newlywed game and especially the gong show on their television regularly. on the gong show we got a daily dose of his zany schtick as he emceed the worst talent show you've ever seen, a parade of people who wanted nothing more than to be on television and be "famous" but had little to no discernible talent. as it turns out, the empire he built on his exploitation of these people had nothing on the kingdom he built in his own deluded mind where he was the most attention-starved of them all. or not, if it is all true. i almost don't want to know for sure.

and, finally, we have luis mandoki's innocent voices (2004).

we examine the theme of rebellion and strife in latin america as seen from a child's point of view for the second time this week. unlike day six's machuca (2004), though, this one finds the kids much more directly in the line of fire. the setting is the salvadoran civil war of the early 1980s and the story is told from the point of view of chava, an eleven year-old boy who lives with his family in a village that seems to be ground zero in the conflict between the salvadoran army and the guerrillas. the salvadoran military at the time made it a practice to impress all boys into service once they reached the age of twelve, so chava is staring directly down the barrel of that if he manages to survive the daily/nightly firefights and bombings that are ripping his village to shreds. ultimately, chava and his friends elect to follow the guerrillas but are captured by the national army and marched to a remote spot to be executed. chava watches from his knees as two of his friends are shot in the back of the head. just as a soldier is about to pull the trigger on chava, however, guerrillas descend upon them and he is saved. as he escapes, he comes upon a rifle but finds himself unable to use it on one of his former classmates, the other child ultimately guilty of nothing more than having a birthday in the wrong place at the wrong time. chava's mother finally arranges to have him sent to the united states, which he does not want but accedes to because he finally realizes if he stays he will die. it is a heavy idea for a twelve year-old to deal with. though the film suffers from repetition occasionally and generally lacks the coming of age charms of machuca, it certainly makes you understand the attendant horrors and injustices of the use of children as soldiers in no uncertain terms. i am also comparing apples to oranges a little there, as these children literally live in a war zone. for them, growing up is a much more literal concern than a figurative one. they are lucky to see the next day, every day. it is a grim enough existence for adults. it must be infinitely more so for a child that has little grasp of the larger forces/ideologies at work and sees his family and that of his friends being rent asunder for reasons they can never hope to understand. equally chilling are the scenes of children as fully armed approximations of adult soldiers, exhibiting a childish pride at feeling grown up just because they have had a rifle shoved into their hands and a uniform on. it sort of underscores the fact that there may not be a great deal of difference between twelve and eighteen in a lot of ways and the horrible things that children and young adults are asked, or forced, to do in wartime effectively end childhood then and there. this would have made an excellent counterpoint to yesterday's viewing of starship troopers (1997). if you doubt that war is bad, watch this, not that. it leaves no room for misinterpretation.

and with that, we are done. thanks, aaron, it was a pleasure. it was a pleasure all the way around, in fact. i expected no less. i will be back tomorrow to wrap things up. for now, i am off to watch whatever i want for the first time in ten days. thanks for reading, everyone!

invasion of the paramount: day nine

day nine is a science fiction extravaganza courtesy of ian pirie, paramount ticket systems administrator. ian, i just want to say i hope you know this is nothing personal, but you have picked two of my least favorite movies of all time. finally, the jackals out there may get the bloodletting they so look forward to during queue weeks. first out of the gate we have the wall-to-wall blood, explosions and nubs of paul verhoeven's starship troopers (1997).

it is verhoeven's adaptation of a robert a. heinlein's 1959 novel of the same name and takes place in a future where humans are at war with a species of humungous arachnids known as "the bugs". a group of high school friends enlist in the military just after graduation and go their separate ways, promoting fascism and militarism across the galaxy in the name of the federation. they engage in a series of escalating battles with an ever-expanding menagerie of arachnoid types until a final showdown in which the handsome hero saves the high school sweetheart from having her brain sucked out and the head bug is captured and abjectly paraded before thousands of hoorah-ing meatheads, preserving and promoting the federation (read: american) way of life. i get what verhoeven was trying to do here, trust me. i just don't think he does it particularly well. this satire of the fascist/militaristic mindset is executed with about as much grace and skill as an episode of beverly hills, 90210. when your firebomb-laden social commentary could just as easily double as a recruitment film for the, let's just say, more impressionable cannon fodder in the audience (and that is a huge section of this film's fanbase), then you may have gone a little too broad with it. in its favor, it follows the star trek/roddenberry model of a future that is culturally and ethnically diverse and has a fair balance of gender equality. not in its favor is just about everything else. it's ham-handed, is badly acted and looks television-cheap. let's not kid ourselves, though. we know why people watch this:

the gore is legendary. the landscape is strewn with body parts like they are confetti and balloons and this is a flaming lips show. people come for the blood. blood is compulsory. that, and the shower scene. i have heard all the arguments - verhoeven anticipated the global climate of 9/11, he made the most subversive anti-propaganda propaganda film of all time, blah, blah, blah. nope, don't buy it. if you haven't seen many movies, maybe. what he did was set out to mock the superficial and banal and made something...superficial and banal, about as nuanced and subtle as his opposite number, the knee-jerk jingoists who completely misunderstand it. for an added treat, check out the commentary track for two hours of verhoeven feverishly explaining the obvious ("war is bad") and screenwriter edward neumeier inadvertently exposing how much he obviously hates women. repeatedly. starship troopers? i say kill 'em all.

next, it's out of the frying pan into the fire with luc besson's the fifth element (1997).

or, as i like to call it, bruce willis cashes a check for 126 minutes. oh my god, i hate this movie. there is no filmmaker alive that i would less rather spend time picking their brain than luc besson. our sensibilities? never the twain shall meet, i'm afraid. there are about ten seconds in his entire filmography that i actually enjoy:

  and i actually attribute that more to gary oldman.

i had the fifth element in the queue once before. here's how that went. i always rewatch them, though, whenever they are assigned, if for no other reason than to see how the other films in the queue re-contextualize them and to see what new comes of it. well, one thing springs immediately to mind this time around: 1997 was apparently the worst year for science fiction cinema in the history of mankind. or colekind, anyway. cube (1997) and gattaca (1997) second my emotion. excess was in fashion and depth was in short supply. just not my thing. so it goes.

it's not all rough seas today, though. the cinematic gods have smiled on us (austinites, anyway) and the paramount has announced its summer classic film series schedule! the schedule is incredible and there are numerous special events throughout the summer to add to your moviegoing experience. i highly recommend joining the paramount's film fan club if you regularly attend the summer series. the various membership levels have all sorts of perks and they pay for themselves in no time. paramount programmer jesse trussell has really outdone himself this year. i am sure there will be a post coming soon where i ramble on at length about all the things i am looking forward to this summer.

for now, though, i will close. once again, ian, sorry about that. next time i come in you can throw popcorn at me while the movie is playing.

tomorrow we come to the end of our grand and glorious experiment, one last day to get our groove on.

come back and see us or i will personally gong you.

trailer tuesday

this week's entry is for jean-pierre and luc dardenne's the kid with a bike (2011), which is showing at the regal arbor for the next little while. just one more for the list of things that i am dying to see.

invasion of the paramount: day eight

day eight is all about pixar, courtesy of scott butler, paramount graphic designer. i assumed his choices were connected in some way to his design background but he assures me it was only because he has a three year-old and wanted to pass along the experience of being forced to watch these films. we start with john lasseter's toy story (1995).

tom hanks is woody, a cowboy action figure and leader of a group of toys that belong to andy, a little boy with a birthday on the horizon. tim allen voices buzz lightyear, the new toy on the block. buzz is a little on the arrogant, self-deluded side and woody is a little on the jealous, insecure side. in the back-and-forth to be andy's favorite toy, woody and buzz find themselves in a series of perilous misadventures. they end up in the sadistic clutches of sid, a neighbor boy that delights in destroying toys, pulling off a daring rocket-powered escape to be reunited safely with andy and all the other toys in the final reel. i hadn't seen this since it was in theaters in 1995. it has certainly held up well and deserves its reputation as a modern kids classic, one of the best of its kind. this movie really changed the whole world of animated film. it is hard to overstate its importance in that regard. it is pixar's very first full length feature and they really nailed it the first time out of the gate. it was also the very first film that was entirely CGI and as pure kids entertainment it couldn't get much better. it's funny, teaches great lessons that are basic and easily understood about compromise, trust, overcoming jealousy and the nature of friendship and is still beautiful to look at almost twenty years later. i am very much a traditionalist and will always love hand-drawn animation the best, but this is pretty spectacular work. their entire universe is beautifully rendered and is rich in detail in the way that only pixar films are. the cast is right on the money as well. in addition to hanks and allen, whose personalities are perfect complements to one another, you also have don rickles, wallace shawn and r. lee ermey, all in top form. this very first effort from pixar set the bar incredibly high. they still approach that mark occasionally - up (2009), for example - but nothing they've done has proven to be as timeless while maintaining the purity and fun of genuine kid's entertainment. it's a rare feat to make something so simultaneously revolutionary and pitch-perfect. a true american classic.

for an example of what pixar has grown into since then, we have lasseter's fourth effort for the studio, cars (2006).

it takes place in a world populated with anthropomorphic cars of every stripe. it's the story of lightning mcqueen, an arrogant hotshot of a racecar on his way to california for a championship race, sponsorships, riches and fame. a mishap on the highway ends up separating lightning from his transport truck and he wanders off the main road, eventually arrested and impounded for accidentally tearing up the street in the town of radiator springs. while he is stuck there making restitution for his crimes, he slowly but surely begins to learn that there is more to life than being self-serving and he slowly warms to the idyllic charms of this small town. he pays his debt to society and heads off to his race but he is leaving a little bit of himself behind in radiator springs. the race is going badly until all of his pals from radiator springs show up as his surprise pit crew. he pulls it together in time to win but realizes that winning isn't everything and sacrifices taking that checkered flag to help another car in need. all the requisite lessons are learned but this one didn't quite do it for me the same way that toy story did. this one belongs more to the current crop of pixar films that i posit are more for adults than kids. yes, it is full of bright colors and there are jokes aimed at kids but there is so much of this that kids couldn't fathom. the pixar films of late have just as much regret, melancholy and nostalgia for times that even the parents of an eight year-old kid today don't remember as they do lessons about how to treat your friends. it's smart on pixar's part, i suppose. it gives the parents that have to go see these something to latch onto, but these certainly aren't really kids films anymore. in cars the central message is "slow down and take it all in before life passes you by", using route 66's lost battle with the interstate highway system as metaphor. it means a lot to me because i am a forty-one year-old man that has made mistakes and i have actually traveled a good portion of the old mother road. i remember vacations where driving was the trip, but i don't see how it's going to encourage an eight year-old to stop and smell the roses, much the same way that same kid isn't going to even partially grasp the significance of a lifetime of devotion as presented in up. i thought cars was alright, and i loved up, but let's not kid ourselves that these are for children anymore. it's kind of a shame. watching these together made me long for more pixar work in the vein of toy story. the artistry is still there. i just wish more of the innocence was as well.

thanks, scott. i hope at least that little bit of commiseration was somewhat satisfying, although i am guessing you have a lot more viewings of these in your future than i do. good luck with that.

tomorrow we abandon the kid's stuff and head for the furthest reaches of space to reconnect with an old friend of the queue.

did i say friend? perhaps i misspoke.

invasion of the paramount: day seven

it's day seven and i find myself at the mercy of the cinematic whims of paige deegan, grant writer for the paramount. to start things off, paige takes us far into the future for the post-apocalyptic madness that is l.q jones' a boy and his dog (1975).

adapted from a harlan ellison story, the movie finds us in the year 2024 and nuclear war has reduced the world to dust as far as the eye can see. among the groups of human jackals roaming the wasteland we have vic, a randy and reckless, just-post-pubescent don johnson, and his dog, blood. they scrounge for food and women, breaking frequently to argue telepathically about whether vic is dumber and hornier than blood is hungry. vic uses blood as his radar to sniff out potential mates and blood uses vic to stay fed. it's an arrangement that has kept them alive and satiated so far, if not particularly happy with one another. one evening, blood catches the scent of a lovely young lady, the wonderfully named quilla june holmes, who happens to be bait for vic, unbeknownst to our hero. she lures him into a subterranean world that is like some sort of norman rockwell tableau populated with fellini-esque grotesques. the plan is to kidnap vic and use him to inseminate the women that live in their underground society. it seems that when they abandoned the surface, their menfolk also lost the ability to procreate. they hook vic up to a vic-milking machine and begin an absurd ritual of marrying every girl in town to him, just to keep things proper. quilla june busts vic out, intent on using him to overthrow the committee that runs the show but it doesn't go in their favor, and vic seems more intent on getting back to the surface anyway, back to where you know what kind of backstabbing and skulduggery to expect from people. there may be no honor among scavengers but they're sure a lot more fun to hang out with than these orwellian underground loons. vic and quilla june escape to the surface to find blood starving, near death. food is in short supply, but our heroes are nothing if not resourceful and it isn't long before they are back on the road together, off to see what lies over the hill. i have a real spot for movies like this, movies that would have absolutely no hope of getting made today. yes, it's amateurish (even with jason robards (?(!))) and yes it is off its rocker, but enough people believed enough in this nutty idea that a full length feature film was made. this is truly auteur work on the part of l.q. jones, i think that it represents him about as well as could be. you know l.q. jones, right?

that's right. that tough old bastard. you take harlan ellison's utter lack of faith in humanity and you filter it through the bareknuckled, rip-roaring worldview of l.q. jones and you have a bleak, funny, ugly, completely cuckoo film unlike anything else you're likely to see. apparently, in world war four, feminists and mensa members were the first to perish. in his inimitable, no bullshit way, jones is reminding us that we shouldn't expect things to be pleasant when existence has been reduced to fulfilling the handful of survival instincts that are hardwired into our reptilian brain. i am glad i got this one in in the scant twelve years we have before 2024. at least i will be prepared now.

next up, we have the one man apocalypse that is john cameron mitchell's hedwig and the angry inch (2001).

it's the same old story - boy meets boy, boy becomes girl, boy leaves girl for boy, girl meets boy, boy leaves girl for superstardom, stealing all of her songs. hedwig is the titular transgendered punk singer (second time this week the queue seems to be following the week's headlines) whom has embarked on a u.s. tour of the worst restaurant chain you have ever seen so that she can stalk her former lover that has achieved success and riches with songs that are rightfully hers. along the way, we are treated to hedwig's life story. beginning life as hansel, a boy in east germany, he fell in love with a G.I., but to return to the states together they had to do so as a man and woman. to achieve this, hansel had sex reassignment surgery (slightly botched, resulting in the also titular angry inch) becoming hedwig. things weren't as rosy as anticipated in the heartland and hedwig is abandoned by her husband for another man. putting the pieces back together, hedwig meets tommy, a slightly backwards kid whom hedwig educates in the ways of love and rock, only to have tommy abandon her as well. tommy becomes rich and famous. hedwig becomes righteously indignant, stalking tommy until her career falls apart. they are briefly reconciled, resulting in a scandal that pulls tommy down and reignites hedwig's career. with the band back together, hedwig takes to the stage one last time for an epiphanic performance that finally leaves hedwig feeling like a whole person for the first time. i have seen mitchell's other work prior to this but this is one i just hadn't gotten around to for one reason or another. well, chalk one up for the queue again because hedwig kicked my ass. it is far and away mitchell's best work. it is funny, clever, moving and complex. talk about auteur work, this is no one but  mitchell's glorious vision from beginning to end. it's been a long time since i have seen work from a filmmaker at a point this early in their career so adept at weaving in their myriad influences and making it seem fresh and new. hedwig's monologues are hilarious and heartbreaking, the songs are fantastic and mitchell is an absolute natural, both in front of and behind the camera. i had always heard that this was kind of the successor to the rocky horror picture show (1975), as far as cult movies go, but i think that sells this incredibly short. much like rocky, it is appropriately outrageous and fun but hedwig gives you something more besides. this is all that and a rich experience, a true labor of love and it shows in every frame. there is a vulnerability, a wisdom and a sweetness that rocky doesn't come close to. you can keep your time warp, i'll take hedwig any day, the whole angry inch.

well, that was a pretty great day. telepathic dogs and transgendered rock stars. thanks, paige. you helped me find a movie i didn't even know i was missing. that's always a treat.

i'll leave you guys for now. i have to go check and make sure i have laid in enough cereal because tomorrow is all about cartoons.

see you then.

invasion of the paramount: day six

day six features a pair of excellent south american imports chosen for us by laura vilches, the paramount's booking manager. first up is the chilean political coming of age film, andrés wood's machuca (2004).

it is a sharply observed period piece set in santiago on the cusp of the coup by the brutally oppressive augusto pinochet, as seen through the eyes of a pair of schoolboys from opposite sides of the cultural divide. gonzalo is a fair-haired, freckle faced kid, a little soft around the edges with a good heart and with little clear idea of exactly how privileged he is. he meets pedro when the latter is integrated into his private school as part of a progressive program to offer education to poorer students. gonzalo refuses to go along with a group of bullies determined to teach pedro ugly lessons about their perceptions of class, coming to his defense instead, and a bond between the two is formed. they navigate the minefields of adolescence against a backdrop of civil unrest that is so intense it turns everything into a political action. simple pleasures and childhood rites of passage are magnified so that everything from buying someone candy to accepting a ride home from school equates to choosing sides in the fierce battle that is looming. things grow progressively more violent and inflamed until finally pinochet ousts sitting president salvador allende and his military forces harshly clamp down on the entire city, including the boys' school. the priests that previously administrated the school, attempting to teach the children dignity and fair play, are replaced by jackbooted thugs and administrators willing to follow the party line. when pedro is the only person, child or adult, with the wherewithal to acknowledge his departing mentor, he is removed from the school and a distraught gonzalo hurries to the slums where pedro lives to find out what has become of his friend. what he finds is a horrifying and frightening scene, with soldiers brutally corralling men, women and children, forcing people out of their homes and burning their belongings. he stands by helpless as pedro and his family are rounded up and their friend silvana takes on the soldiers beating her father. she grows more fierce and things spiral further and further out of control until she is murdered by a soldier right before their very eyes. still in shock from what he has just seen, gonzalo is accosted by a soldier and plays the the class card as his only means of escaping arrest, exhorting the soldier to look at him, as he obviously doesn't belong there with his light complexion and nice clothes. the soldier lets him go and he runs back to safety on his side of the tracks, presumably to never see pedro again. growing up is tough enough as it is. growing up in the middle of violent revolution certainly raises the stakes. it is hard to fault someone for doing what he thinks it will take to not be killed. it is impossible to fault a rightly terrified eleven year-old boy. none of that makes what gonzalo will have to live with any easier, though, as he goes back to a life of relative ease. this was just a great film. it was beautifully shot, exemplifying that style of filmmaking that follows john ford's example of finding the best place to put the camera and not burdening the story with excessive artifice. the kids put in uniformly excellent performances, with an especially wonderful moment revolving around the amorous possibilities that lie within a can of condensed milk. the politics are overt, so if that's not your idea of a good time this might not do it for you, but when simple human dignity is a matter of life and death and carefree childhood innocence is a luxury no one can afford, we should pay attention to what filmmakers like wood are trying to tell us.

for our second feature we go from chile to brazil and from cognitive dissidence to mythic revelry with marcel camus' black orpheus (1959).

i just did this one in last month's queue, so you can read those impressions of it here. i decided to go ahead and keep it in this queue in the spirit of seeing what a new pairing would bring out of it. aside from the things i mentioned last month, machuca highlighted one particular idea for me this time around. in the wake of our first film, i found myself focused a lot more on the unspoken circumstances of the poor and how anything can be a tool for revolution. when you are part of a disenfranchised and marginalized underclass you use what is at your disposal. music is a way to push back, dancing is a way to push back. if you live in a slum, no matter how colorful, and you face peril and poverty on a daily basis, you savor small victories in ways the privileged can never hope to understand and to mount a celebration is to engage in an epic and joyous battle. people on the outside of that can try to exploit it all they want but it is still your triumph. today, black orpheus reminds me to value those things easily taken for granted.

thanks, laura, for an excellent trip to the other side of the equator!

tomorrow finds us in a land where the revolution is long since over.

don't forget to bring a canteen.