Saturday, May 17, 2014
For my 18th birthday, my uncle, to whom I owe much of my love for movies, gave me Danny Peary’s classic 1981 book Cult Movies: The Classics, the Sleepers, the Weird, and the Wonderful. In that book (the first in a series of three), the author writes short essays on 100 films that had, according to him, earned a place in the cult canon.
The book became a bible of sorts for me, an introduction to all kinds of movies that would become important to me: The Girl Can’t Help It; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; I Walked With a Zombie; Shock Corridor; The Tall T; The Warriors; Two-Lane Blacktop and many others. Though the cult canon has changed a lot since 1981, and though Peary has a distinct preference for postwar American films, the book was still a great primer on the many ways in which films could be odd.
So of course I sought out Cult Movies 2. As I had in its predecessor’s table of contents, I put a little black dot next to the title of each film after I’d seen it. Both books are pretty heavily dotted now. It was always a great thrill to be able to mark off another of Peary’s selected films.
I remember marking off, for example, the 1976 film The Great Texas Dynamite Chase at some point in high school, when cable television was still pretty weird. I was introduced to the film by "Joe Bob Briggs’ Drive-In Theater," the Movie Channel show that he hosted for years and that was responsible for a great deal of my cinematic education. (Joe Bob remains one of my film heroes and is a major reason why I dedicated my academic studies to film.) I’m sure that the film played at 2 a.m. on some weekday. I was usually pretty groggy for my first-period classes.
Tags: movies , film , the great texas dynamite chase , roger corman , exploitation films , new world pictures , claudia jennings , jocelyn jones , Image , Video , Web Only
Friday, May 16, 2014
This week in movies you missed: This weekend brings us Warner Bros.' new $160 million version of Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards. Who's Gareth Edwards, you may be wondering, and what makes him big enough to snag the job of rebooting the big guy?
Answer: He made a movie called Monsters (2010) for reportedly less than $500,000, with a crew of seven and special effects he created with off-the-shelf software in his bedroom.
What You Missed
In 2011, NASA discovered evidence of nearby extraterrestrial life and sent out a probe. On the way back to Earth, the craft crashed in northern Mexico. Result: Six years later, part of the country is occupied by giant, glowy flying squids. (That's what they look like, anyway.)
Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) is a photojournalist who haunts the edges of Mexico's quarantined Infected Zone, looking for photo ops of children killed by alien attacks. Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able), his boss' daughter, has been injured while vacationing in Mexico, so Andrew is enlisted (with threats of imminent job loss) to bring her safely home.
This involves traveling to the very verge of the Infected Zone, where a mishap deprives the pair of their passports. Their only way home is through the quarantined area and over the massive wall that the U.S. has built to keep flying squids from infringing on its territory. (Are you catching the political implications yet?)
Why You Missed It
Monsters reached 25 U.S. theaters. It's now on DVD, Blu-ray, Netflix Instant and Amazon Prime.
Tags: monsters , godzilla , gareth edwards , scoot mcnairy , Movies you missed , Image , Web Only
Bread and Puppet Theater, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, wraps up an indoor revival tour of one of its classic shows, Birdcatcher in Hell, in coming weeks with three final performances in Vermont and one in Montréal.
Birdcatcher is an elaborate pageant, and one of the Glover-based puppet and political theater company's oldest pieces. Founder and artistic leader Peter Schumann created its first incarnation in New York in the mid-1960s with the poet Bob Nichols. The original show featured all-blue masks and puppets that enacted bombardment scenes from Vietnam.
In 1971, while Bread and Puppet was in residence at Goddard College, Schumann resurrected Birdcatcher in response to president Nixon's pardon of the single solider who had been held accountable for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. That time, Schumann's papier-mâché puppets were blood red, and the show featured an enormous and elaborately designed "King of Hell" puppet.
Tags: bread and puppet , theater , Image , Web Only
Thursday, May 15, 2014
What’s graduation without “Pomp and Circumstance,” Edward Elgar’s undisputed aisle-walking melody since, oh, about 1905? Meh, might be the response of Adam Ackerman, who will graduate this Sunday from the University of Vermont Medical School.
“I personally don’t like ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ very much,” admits the 31-year-old. Ackerman is a highly trained musician who veered off into medicine after studying jazz composition as an undergrad at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and then earning a master’s in composition from the New England Conservatory (NEC).
So, at his instigation, Ackerman and his classmates will march to a completely new tune instead: Ackerman’s own “Vermont Passacaglia.” The composer wrote the processional for the occasion, and the med school has engaged a brass quintet of musicians from the NEC to play it.
Tags: UVM Medical School , Pomp and Circumstance , Adam Ackerman , graduation , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
The South End Arts District's "BTV Flea" market, organized by Vintage Inspired Lifestyle Marketplace, returns this Sunday, May 18, for a second season of monthly outdoor markets.
Described by Vintage Inspired's Mary Heinrich Aloi as "an eclectic mix that is typical of all South End ventures," the market features a wide array of antiques and handicrafts from local vendors. And this year, there's a lot more food.
Aloi says she reached out to area food trucks and other vendors to encourage a community-gathering atmosphere. She's hoping to build BTV Flea into a regular destination event that'll give crowds a new reason to hang out in the South End.
So after browsing the household goods and artwork for sale, market-goers will be able to gorge on wood-fired pizza from Colchester-based Pizza Papillo — which makes classic Neapolitan-style pizza in an oven the company imported from Italy and carts around on the back of a pickup truck — as well favorites from the Lazy Farmer, the chef-owned, Winooski-based "mobile catering food trailer."
Tags: burlington , south end arts district , btv flea , vintage inspired , lazy farmer , switchback , Image , Web Only
Saturday, May 10, 2014
But I didn’t have mixed feelings about Deceptive Practice, the documentary that I selected on the basis of its poster-image of the face of Ricky Jay. I regard Ricky Jay as a national treasure, a man deserving of every honor this culture can pile upon him. And while I already had piecemeal knowledge of his background, I was happy to learn more. To me, Jay is one of the most fascinating men alive.
As a bonus, the film, whose full title is Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, was thoughtful, visually appealing and playful. In a number of ways, it is similar to The Kid Stays in the Picture, the documentary about film producer Robert Evans, a film I admire very much.
Tags: what i'm watching , ricky jay , deceptive practice , documentary , magic , robert evans , Web Only
Friday, May 9, 2014
In punitively slashing the budgets of their own state colleges, legislators in the South Carolina House of Representatives have unwittingly given late-night comedians a great wealth of new material about narrow-mindedness, blind ideological loyalty and homophobia.
As reported in various media outlets including National Public Radio the College of Charleston had the audacity to assign to first-year students a book that acknowledges the existence and humanity of people who are not heterosexual. That book, the acclaimed Fun Home by Vermont cartoonist Alison Bechdel has also been adapted into an award-winning, Pulitzer-nominated off-Broadway musical.
The University of South Carolina Upstate, another school that state legislators deemed worthy of a good, hard spanking, did not assign Fun Home to first-year students, but did assign other works that dare to challenge the state’s centuries-long tradition of upholding heteronormativity.
Tags: fun home , alison bechdel , south carolina , homophobia , Image , Web Only
This week in movies you missed: A few months ago, proud papa Dave Donohue of South Burlington, a cinephile and sometime filmmaker, wrote to tell me that his son Zachary's feature directorial debut was being released by IFC Midnight.
Cowritten by Zachary Donohue — who grew up in Vermont and the Adirondacks — and his partner, Lauren Thompson, The Den is a horror flick visualized entirely through web and phone cams that has drawn positive notice from outlets ranging from the New York Times to FEARnet. It hasn't screened in Vermont, but it is available on VOD, and I finally got a chance to watch it.
What You Missed
Elizabeth Benton (Melanie Papalia) just won an academic grant to study the sociology of a video-chat site called the Den. Like Chatroulette, it pairs users randomly for real-time web-cam chats as long or short as they desire.
At first, meeting random people is addictive, even if most of them are guys asking to see her boobs. Elizabeth starts shunning face-to-face encounters with her pregnant sister (Anna Margaret Hollyman), her friends and her boyfriend (David Schlachtenhaufen) to hang out in the Den.
Then she encounters a user with a blocked video feed who starts sending her odd messages. Her computer wakes up mysteriously at night. Suddenly she's looking at footage of a young woman being brutally murdered.
Tags: Movies you missed , horror , webcam , IFC Midnight , Image , Web Only
The aftermath of Waking Windows 4 last weekend in Winooski produced a number of intriguing developments, including widespread tinnitus and epic Narragansett hangovers. It has also led to the union of two of the area's highly respected and successful taste-making teams.
In an email to Seven Days last night, Brian Nagle — aka DJ Disco Phantom — wrote that AM and MSR, the two driving forces behind WW4, have officially merged to form Waking Windows Presents. It's a natural move, given how closely the two organizations have worked together over the years. And Nagle said that fans can pretty much look forward to the same mix of up-and-coming and cutting-edge music we've come to expect from both.
"We will still be bringing the same awesome shows to town, but now it will just be under a new name," he wrote.
What kinds of awesome shows, you ask? How about Neutral Milk Hotel at the Higher Ground Ballroom on September 9 and 10? That do anything for ya?
Tags: Waking Windows 4 , Waking Windows Presents , Angioplasty Media , MSR Presents , Brian Nagle , DJ Disco Phantom , Neutral Milk Hotel , Video , Image , Web Only
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
When singer-songwriter Rachel Bissex, a beloved fixture of the Burlington-area folk and jazz scenes, died of breast cancer in 2005, she was mourned by her family and many friends and fans. And her death was strongly felt at Camp Common Ground, the “intergenerational family camp” that she helped to found in 1994. Bissex was not only one of the camp’s organizers but a warm and friendly presence whose musical performances were enjoyed by attendees.
“Unlike many other singer-songwriters, who tend to be a little shy, [Rachel] was really outgoing,” says Jim Mendell, co-director of what is now called the Common Ground Center, and another of its cofounders. “She’d be singing on a porch and all of a sudden have 10 or 15 people singing on the porch with her. She was a really generous person who made everybody’s lives happier and more musical.”
This weekend, the Common Ground Center will host “Coming Full Circle,” a “mini music festival” that will celebrate Bissex’s life and mark the camp’s 20th year.
Tags: camp common ground , rachel bissex , chris dorman , emma sky , jim mendell , starksboro , Image , Web Only