Alexandra477

Perfect Leap Day Film.

February 29 only happens every four years, swathing it in certain romantic mystique. According to European folklore, women were invited to propose marriage on this day — and if a man declined, he had to buy the shunned damsel gloves, gowns, and/or cash. In Scotland, they say it’s unlucky to be born on Leap Day. In Greece, they say it’s unlucky to get married in a leap year. This Midwest girl simply recommends watching the film Leap Year. It’s a fresh romcom panini stuffed with a female proposal, an irreverent Irishman, and a nicknamed suitcase. It has Amy Adams storming through craggy hillsides in four-inch heels, as well as cameos by John Lithgow and Kaitlin Olson. Like Broken English, Sliding Doors, and Lost in Translation, Leap Year offers something precious: clever love. It may have been slammed by critics after being released last year, but it’s not some pandering blockbuster. So on this storied occasion, I propose that we each think our own thoughts and like what we like.

Screen on the Green Movies in Goodale Park.

The Short North Civic Association kicks off the third season of Screen on the Green on Friday, July 22 with a screening of Airplane! This will be the first of three outdoor movie nights held at the softball diamond in the southwest corner of Goodale Park. Other showings include Rear Window on August 19 and The Goonies on September 16. All movies begin at sundown and will be preceded by a half hour of classic cartoons.

Screen on the Green is free and open to the public. Local food carts will sell refreshments. Attendees are encouraged to bring blankets, lawn chairs, and flashlights. There are no rain dates. Big thanks to the Gateway Film Center, Short North Foundation, and ComFest for helping us to fund this season, to The SBB for booking the food carts, and to Eartha Limited for donating its services to make these events zero waste.

   

One-Line Movie Reviews.

Spring is 55 days away. Until then, I’ll swath myself in wool sweaters and blankets. I’ll wear down 9 sticks of lip balm and drink enough hot tea to fill Buckeye Lake. And I’ll rely on massive movie consumption to help me cope until this Great White Frigid Despair is replaced with unhunched shoulders and degrees above forty. Here’s a list of recommended movies that I’ve watched in the past month that will (hopefully) aid you in quashing winter’s chill.

All About Steve: For fans of crossword puzzles, individualism, and the non-blockbuster side of Sandra Bullock.
An Education: A sophisticated yet heartbreaking British tale of growing young.
Black Swan: Another Darren Aronofsky masterpiece, dissecting elite-level ballet through lithe self-slaughter.
Cyrus: Proof that puppy love can hit later in life, and a warning that delightfully awkward moments may accompany it.
Going The Distance: Long-distance relationships suck, but they’re quite fun to analyze.
Invictus: An intimate peek at rugby’s roughness, Morgan Freeman’s virtuosity, and South Africa’s progress.
Iron Man 2: Cheeky comic book gallantry and Mickey Rourke’s attempt to speak with a Russian accent.
Please Give: Manhattanites are sometimes unglamorous and often chaotic, but rarely empty of life lessons.
The Kids Are All Right: A loosely piercing diorama of natural love and unnatural consequences.
The King’s Speech: One man’s debilitating journey to liberate his voice, and another’s unorthodox quest to validate it.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: An unpredictable tilt-a-whirl of tangy aggression and youthful spunk.
Tenure: Raise your hand if you like Volvos, cardigans, academia, and New England sensibilities.
Winter’s Bone: A harrowing and unforgettable way to spend 100 minutes.

             

Of Voyeurism and Magic Soap.

This week I watched two documentaries that sustain the notion of brilliant people being absolutely nuts. One is about an egomaniacal Web savant who advocated reality television before it existed, and the other a radical soapmaker who obsessively spread messages of universal unity. Both films made me wonder if these men were brilliant because they were insane, or went mad because they were geniuses.

We Live In Public follows a self-serving tech mogul and his premature discovery that people like watching people who know they’re being watched. His name is Josh Harris, and although he’s unlikable, he’s intriguingly twisted. Through heaps of namedropping and bucketfuls of smirks, he explains how our future entertainment will revolve around omniscient video surveillance. Yes, he should have worn one of those “I’m kind of a big deal” T-shirts, but beneath the egocentric bullcrap is a man who was reared by TV sets instead of parents. He learned life lessons not through family, but episodes of Gilligan’s Island. And so he devised an empire of web-based applications designed to overthrow television. After reaching a net worth of $80 million, he launched a series of draconian underground webcam experiments that resulted in him fleeing penniless to Ethiopia. His grotesque alter ego Luvvy the clown was almost as awkward as his lust for depriving his subjects of their privacy. But when you think about it, he’s no more disgusting than Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Rock Of Love, or Real Housewives Of Atlanta.

On a more literal soapbox is Dr. Emanuel Bronner, the subject of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox. I’ve used his famous soaps for years and have always been curious about their 30,000-word labels demanding peace and unity for all mankind. The doctor was an accomplished chemist and seventh-generation soapmaker, but he brought hyper-nonconformism to a new level. Like Harris, he endured familial strife. He emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1929 and lost his parents in the Holocaust. His sister committed him to a mental hospital from which he escaped, and he later sent his own children to live with rotating foster parents so that he could continue his mission of saving humanity. The detailed moral code that he created and affixed to all of his products sought to unite humanity through one faith, one God, and extreme goodwill. An exercise fanatic, health nut, and talkaholic, he married four times and eventually became blind. He spoke of his liquid peppermint soap as though it was the world’s only sundry worth acquiring. Since his death in 1997, his family members have quietly achieved some remarkable goals. Without any vehement proselytizing, they developed our country's first 100% post-consumer recycled bottles, donate more than 70% of their profits, and capped their salaries so they don’t make more than five times that of their lowest paid employee. Crazy or not, some stories are just worth sharing.

        

Found Footage Festival At The Drexel.

Many people store boxes of old VHS tapes in their basements. If thrown into a VCR, those videos would probably replay moments of weddings, birthday parties, and graduation ceremonies. But some of us have darker, and weirder, recorded exploits.  If you’re one of them, don’t let Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher get their hands on your material. Since 2004, they’ve collected gobs of found VHS footage from thrift stores and garage sales and have edited them into bite-sized comedic pieces of toe curling fodder known as the Found Footage Festival. Last night at the Drexel Theatre in Columbus, a near sold out crowd enjoyed every wicked minute of it.

Joe and Nick have bottled their blend of embarrassment entertainment into 90-minute live comedy acts featuring delightfully awkward video clips and caustic commentary. They were in town for one night only to air the fourth volume of their festival, which contains unbelievably abysmal exercise videos, Saturday morning cartoons, dating service segments, sexual misfits, costumed animals, and unfortunate celebrity endorsements. For me, the highlights were the Chuck Norris cartoon that blurted his name every other phrase, an over-zealous knife and blowgun enthusiast, and a bumbling furniture salesman named Bargain Bernie who repeatedly squawked “I’m just trying to save you money.”

Joe and Nick will continue touring their friendly mortification roadshow through May. Relish at your own risk, and keep all of your old VHS tapes under lock and key.

 

Neo-Love Film Trifecta.

In the past two weeks I watched three films that adroitly explore postmodern love: Away We Go, Paper Heart, and 500 Days Of Summer. This trio of spry adventures is as heartwarming as it is genre shattering. Flimsy romantic comedies have finally met their match. 500 Days Of Summer pitches itself as a “romantic-comedy-drama,” Paper Heart says it’s a “hybrid documentary,” and Away We Go claims to be a “comedy-drama.” What used to revolve around moonlit evenings and closed mouth kisses has evolved into multiethnic couplings, complex scenarios…and hot feminists.

Away We Go plunges through a biracial couple’s struggle to define their thirty-something lives amidst an unplanned pregnancy. They travel to Phoenix, Tucson, Madison, Montreal, and Miami in an effort to create an idyllic new life, only to learn that their unglamorous real home and real life are imperfectly perfect. Despite her boyfriend’s wishes, the self-empowered girlfriend has no desire to get married but pledges a lifetime of teetering and unpredictable devotion.

The multiethnic leading lady in Paper Heart also travels across the country on a self-awareness journey about the existence of love. Driven by her desire to define it and determine if she’s capable of recognizing it, she falls in it. She’s awkward, inventive, and hilariously endearing (not to mention an incredibly talented singer-songwriter). Her clumsiness quietly becomes the film’s grace, and her interviewees of all ages and backgrounds unanimously establish that love is real. And scary. And euphoric.

While 500 Days Of Summer doesn’t involve cross-country travelling, it traverses substantial ground about love and the lack thereof. This story that “is not a love story” follows a young man who falls in love with a free-spirited independent woman who doesn’t want to be in love. He falls in love with her anyway, ignores her repeated reminders, and nearly becomes paralyzed by her un-love of him. Through clever techniques like a throwback dance sequence, film noir spoof, and split screens of “expectations” and “reality,” he realizes that you can’t be a lover if you don’t have a love-ee.

    

Where the Mild Things Aren’t.

Sometimes a movie snatches your heart in its mammoth claw for 101 minutes and there’s nothing you can do but jostle through its forest of emotion. Such was the case with Where The Wild Things Are. I loved the book and was curious how it would translate to film, even though my friends warned me that its melancholy level rivaled Bambi’s. I was tempted, at the last minute, to avoid certain sadness and dart into the adjacent theater for The Gloved One’s final moonwalks, but I stayed the course. Spike Jonze deftly and fearlessly commandeered a journey through the volatile imagination of a troubled child. 

As a young girl trying to cope with my parents’ divorce I often drenched myself in solitude. I created my own impenetrable universe filled with daydreams and blankets and stuffed animals. In the first ten minutes, this film opened the secret door and beckoned me back into my fort. Those old stomach-pit feelings of sorrow and escapism came barreling back. Yes, the animatronics were breathtaking, the acting was outstanding, and Karen O’s soundtrack was gorgeously uninhibited. But the adaptation of a 1963 children’s story into a raw, poetic exploration of a child’s mind was a brave reminder to respect our youngsters.

 

Screen on the Green at Goodale Park.

Friday night was the first “Screen on the Green” movie night at Goodale Park, thanks to the Short North Civic Association. They showed the classic Coen Brothers film “Raising Arizona” on a giant inflatable screen and had refreshments from local food vendors including the Clintonville Community Market and Rad Dogveg.

We met up with friends, laid out some blankets, and laughed under the moon and stars. You could hear the trucks whizzing by on the freeway. It was a spectacular night and I hope they show more movies. Kudos to the guy who hauled his leather recliner.

   

This Blog Is Not Yet Rated.

I just watched “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” for the second time. It exposes the MPAA’s hypocritical rating policies and reaffirms that those wily media moguls still have us in a headlock. I want to believe that it’s possible to create a movie rating process that jives with everyone’s beliefs but I’m not sure what universally constitutes too much sex or too much violence. I think that some “NC-17” movies should have been rated “R” and that the MPAA treats independent releases less favorably than big studio ones. All of our thresholds are different, so how do we create a public system that gives us objective ratings information without infringing upon a filmmaker’s rights? I wish I knew.

Movies About India.

I’ve been on a bit of an Indian movie bender. Visiting India several years ago changed my views on faith and humanity, so now every movie I watch about it reminds me of going there. Outsourced was airy and sweet yet insightful enough to depict what it’s like being a bumbling American who's trying to embrace Indian culture. It’s a safe bet for anyone who’s curious about Indian life or intrigued by the notion of cross-cultural relationships. It may also provide some comfort to people who lament companies that outsource positions overseas. Adapted from the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup, Slumdog Millionaire is a worthwhile emotional investment. It swiftly uncovers India’s harsh poverty situation and explains (if not justifies) the measures that some people take to “succeed” in a caste-driven society. I turned The Namesake off before it was over. It was based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s book and stars the guy from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and the Australian model from Real World: London. I wanted to like it but couldn’t empathize with the characters and found the dialogue to be uninspired. Brick Lane is a beautifully told and exquisitely shot story based on Monica Ali’s novel about a Bangladeshi woman, her arranged marriage, and eventual poetic rebellion. I wanted to run around the block in my sari high-fiving everyone when it ended. Namaste.