Friday, October 31, 2014
This Week in Movies You Missed: Of course I have a Halloween movie for you — if you don't mind that this outrageous Spanish import is more funny than scary.
What You Missed
Deep in the woods, three witches are receiving a prophecy about the "chosen one." "A yellow sponge?" one says dubiously, reading the cards. "Jesus Christ? A green soldier?"
It all becomes clear in the next scene, set in Madrid, where we discover a fellow named José (Hugo Silva) robbing a gold dealer dressed as Jesus, complete with loincloth and crown of thorns. His accomplices have equally silly getups, including SpongeBob SquarePants and a green soldier. Oh, and he's brought along his 10-year-old son (Gabriel Delgado) so they can bond while aiming semi-autos at cowering employees.
Tags: alex de la iglesia , witching and bitching , Movies you missed , Image , Video , Web Only
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Just in time for Halloween comes a treat for lovers of the holiday who have outgrown the thrill of candy. The Graveyard Girls, a Burlington-based pin-up artists' group, has just released its 2015 calendar.
Inspired in equal parts by horror movies and midcentury pin-up art, the calendar features a dozen female Vermont models posing in some of the state's many old graveyards. The unusual combination of scantily clad women and mortuary settings is tied together by a good-natured, "Addams Family" vibe. Hutton von Darte, the driving force behind the calendar, says she didn't intend it to be "too serious."
Von Darte, who lives in Malletts Bay, hired the models, snapped the photos and did much of the makeup and costuming. She also came up with most of the themes for the photo shoots, such as the barbarian warrior who graces November and the antenna'd alien temptress of July. Von Darte cites as her major influences the renowned pin-up photographer Bunny Yeager and the overall aesthetics of Roger Vadim's Barbarella and the output of the renowned British studio Hammer Films. Photoshop was used only minimally, says von Darte, and none of the models' body shapes were in any way altered. "It's very real fantasy," she tells Seven Days over coffee at Burlington's Maglianero Café.
Tags: graveyard girls , calendar , goth , halloween , calendar , cheesecake , pin-up , Image , Web Only
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Announced by Eva Sollberger, Seven Days employee and creator of the long-running video series Stuck in Vermont, the awards celebrated the best and most innovative Vermont films and filmmakers submitted to the fest, as decided by VTIFF judges. (Not all of the Vermont Filmmakers' Showcase films had been screened at the fest at press time; judges viewed all submissions in advance of the festival.) A packed house at Burlington's Skinny Pancake noshed on noshables as Sollberger read the results from a small stage.
The big winner of the evening was "11 Paper Place," a charming, digitally animated film supervised by Daniel Houghton and featuring the talents of several of his film students at Middlebury College. "11 Paper Place" won the evening's two most prestigious prizes: the Ben & Jerry's Award, which goes to the Vermont film that most eloquently raises environmental issues; and the James Goldstone Award for the most promising emerging Vermont filmmaker. (Disclosure: Houghton is the spouse of Kids VT Managing Editor Megan James.)
11 Paper Place from daniel houghton on Vimeo.
Another multiple-award winner was Robert Fritz's feature-length supernatural drama Past Tense, which picked up the awards for both Best Acting and Best Screenplay."Dark Legacy," a short film about evil porcine spirits, won Best Cinematography; Rob Koier's "The North Star," a short about an escaping slave, won the Footage Farm USA award for its raising of important global issues. The ceremony concluded with an open invitation from Vermont PBS for Vermont filmmakers to submit their works to the network for its planned showcase of in-state cinematic talent on the new channel Vermont PBS Plus.
This was just Day One of the festival. VTIFF will screen nine more days of films, both local and global, at this 29th annual event.
Tags: vermont international film festival , vtiff , film , movie , film festival , 11 paper place , awards , Image , Video , Web Only
I struggled with this question when I wrote a short book on the film This Is Spinal Tap, because that movie didn't seem to jibe with any of the prevailing theories about the nature of film cultishness. It isn't beloved by only a small, devoted audience; it doesn't contain esoterica graspable only by those "in the know"; it is certainly not "so bad, it's good"; it does not court controversy; it is not a "lost treasure," rediscovered by fans after failing to receive its due in its original release. But I think few film lovers would deny that This Is Spinal Tap is indeed a cult film.
Ultimately, I concluded, rather plainly, that a cult film is simply one that, for any number of reasons, attracts a devoted following. Furthermore, the term "cult" implies no particular scale: A film's cult may be small (like that of, say, the oddball semi-satire The Wizard of Speed and Time) or large (I see no reason why we can't call films in the Star Wars series "cult films"; same for The Lord of the Rings movies, and even for beloved classics like Casablanca). All of these films have inspired devotion in a certain segment of their audiences in ways that movies such as, say, 27 Dresses and Shooter do not. Cult films, it seems to me, can achieve that status in any number of ways. If they strike the right note with their audiences, they're in the club.
Tags: film , movie , what i'm watching , cult film , the adventures of buckaroo banzai across the 8th dimension , buckaroo banzai , this is spinal tap , Image , Video , Web Only
Friday, October 24, 2014
This week in movies you might miss: the "first Iranian vampire western."
You can kick off Halloween week in style by catching A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the debut feature from writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour, on Sunday, October 26, 10 p.m., at Burlington's ArtsRiot as part of the Vermont International Film Festival. (Tickets, $5-10.)
What You Might Miss
Somewhere in Iran, there's a place called Bad City dominated by a gigantic power plant and a fleet of idle oil wells. A place that appears to be inhabited mostly by pimps, whores, drug dealers, addicts and party girls.
Arash (Arash Marandi) is none of the above. He's a gardener with a sports car who likes to wear tight T-shirts and pose like James Dean. When his junkie dad (Marshall Manesh) runs afoul of a vicious dealer (Dominic Rains), he's in danger of losing everything he loves — but not for long.
Because someone else stalks the streets of Bad City. She (Sheila Vand) wears a chador and a Breton-stripe top like Jean Seberg in Breathless. She follows men. Quiet and demure, she invites them home with her. She decides for herself what they deserve. And she executes her judgment — sometimes with fang and talon.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Its sister festival to the north may sport a larger budget and a wider sampling of films, but the Brattleboro Film Festival is seriously bringing the cinema to southern Vermont.
With a program that spans more than 10 days, the third annual Brattleboro Film Festival, which will take over the town's historic downtown Latchis Theatre, features 31 films and a number of special events. Cinephiles who live halfway between Brattleboro and Burlington may find themselves torn, as the BFF and the Vermont International Film Festival overlap from October 31 through November 2.
In fact, the two festivals share more than the same space in the calendar. Five films — including the undersea documentary Angel Azul, the Brazilian animated feature The Boy and the World and the acclaimed documentary The Overnighters — will play at both fests.
Other films in the Brattleboro Film Festival hail from such countries as South Africa, Sweden and Japan, and include everything from anime to films about sex-centric road trips to a documentary about two of the royal families of American folk music. Fiction films, documentaries, features and shorts are all represented in a wide-ranging, diverse program.
Tags: film , movie , film festival , brattleboro , brattleboro film festival , cinema , Image , Web Only
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
There's a modern dance show coming to Burlington performing arts venue Off Center for the Dramatic Arts this Friday and Saturday. And not just any show. The Show.
Choreographed and performed by James Moore and Frankie Binder, the couple behind Steel Cut Theatre, in collaboration with Kelsey Wilson and Annie Brady of the newly christened local dance duo Dance Deliberation, The Show is a 70-minute movement arts production with 14 original choreographed dances and maybe a hidden "bonus track." Two of those dances are presented through video.
The four performers first collaborated during an Eat My Art Out event last year. Buoyed by positive audience feedback, they've been preparing The Show's eclectic, zany and occasionally serious movement pieces for months.
"We are interested in using movement to push through the mundane to find something real and true, sometimes serious, sometimes silly," writes Moore in the event's press release. "We find inspiration in music and have been exploring ways to support or actively fight against certain songs."
Beyond that, leave any preconceived expectations by the wayside. "There are dances that are more serious, and there are dances that invite you to laugh," Moore says. "We want to keep everyone entertained, and if you don’t like something, don’t worry, it won’t be there very long!"
Tags: steel cut theatre , james moore , dance deliberation , off center for the dramatic arts , burlington , dance , theater , Image , Video , Web Only
Monday, October 20, 2014
In April 2009, the Los Angeles-based screenwriter — who penned the script for Not Another Teen Movie (2001) and several seasons of the MTV Movie Awards — traveled home for a vacation and spotted his mom displaying a ski vacation photograph. He admits that his first impulse was to cringe.
"At first, I couldn’t understand why she was memorializing what I thought was an awkward moment," Bender recalls.
Then inspiration struck: "I sat down with my writing partner [and childhood friend Doug Chernack] at the time and told him about it. He was like, Oh, my God, my house is full of those. We thought if we had them, everyone must have them. So we launched a website to see if people would submit theirs."
Tags: mike bender , middlebury college , awkward family photos , vermont , Image , Web Only
Since September 2013, Ariele Faber has been fusing her background in laboratory science with a passion for art and design through Cerebella Design, the "digital surface design" company she launched while still enrolled at Middlebury College.
The 24-year-old creates scarves, neck ties and bow ties in striking, colorful fabrics that she designs using images of the surfaces of microscopic organisms taken through a microscope lens (called "photomicrographs"). She uses digital printers to transfer these onto organic cotton or imported silk fabrics. The results: abstract, geometric patterns that one would hardly guess came from microscopic pictures of frog skin, pollen tetrads, tapeworms and other organisms.
Tags: creative economy , vermont , ariele faber , cerebella design , burlington , Image , Web Only
Saturday, October 18, 2014
My viewing of The Telegraph Trail confirmed my expectations: It was solidly average, with few if any outstanding features. Which is why I liked it. The film is one of the 11 (!) movies that John Wayne made in 1933, back before he graduated to "A" pictures. These three films are most assuredly "B" westerns of the type made in great number from the 1910s through the 1960s, and are entirely typical of that form. By which I mean: They are all in the neighborhood of 60 minutes in running time (just barely feature-length); they were directed by workmanlike filmmakers with little, if any, personal style; they abide by — and indeed define — the typical narrative patterns of the genre; and they were made for relatively small budgets.
Tags: movie , film , what i'm watching , the telegraph trail , b film , b movie , john wayne , coincidence , western , Image , Web Only