Stan Lee: In Memoriam...

Every Entertainment Industry, Gets the Brand Ambassador it Deserves. And so it was, that Stan Lee aka Stanley Lieber, former Editor Publisher of Marvel Comics, finally died last month at the age of ninety four. I will give him credit, he took a fourth rate outfit from impotence to market dominance, and it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy the entire time. As a writer, he wrote the worst women in comics, craven passive unheroic creatures, worth remembering that Marvel didn't have a single super hero comic that centered on a female character up and running until the 1970's. In the 1960's Marvel was a chest burs tingly patriotic publisher in the vein of Mickey Spillane until Stan discovered his comics had some cachet on College Campuses and then overnight it enabled so called youth culture to a hilarious degree. He did train a generation of writers and creative, all of them to write just like him. The man had two great talents, he could write (bombastic pseudo mythic dialogue admittedly, but with a heart certainly) and he could hype, lord how he could hype. Hype so strong he himself began to believe it by the nineteen seventies, proclaiming himself soul creator of a good dozen of Marvel's bestselling superhero books, he called Marvel's audience "true believers" but clearly he true believer in his own almighty myth. The man spent most of the nineteen eighties walking back boasts he'd made in the public prints in the nineteen seventies...only Donald Trump can beat a record like that. After Chris Reeve's "proof of concept" with "Superman the Movie" in 1978, Lee managed to convince Marvel Comics to release him from his publishing duties and allow him to take up residence as the company's multimedia ambassador to Hollywood. Thereafter he signed bad development deal after bad development deal, A cheap "Fantastic Four" Movie that has become the exclusive property of video bootleggers a "Captain America" movie wherein the patriotic ubermensch fights...Mussolini (my legally blind ninety five year old mother could take down Il Duce who are we kidding...) and a handful of TV pilots best forgotten. The man had a genius talent for a bad deal, in fact Marvel's cinematic revolution was likely delayed a good decade because key characters like The Hulk, The Fantastic Four or the X-Men were scattered around tinseltown optioned out to different rival studios...somehow that universe has prevailed at the box office despite Stan Lee's legendary business ineptitude. Someday someone is gonna write a great history of this period in Stan Lee's life, from a "what-not-to-do" perspective...it'll be instructive. He Hyped, and he Believed, that is Stan Lee's legacy. If I criticize and list his faults its more or less in the shadow of that legacy, a fantasy empire in Hollywood with global reach, one that will likely soon rival Walt Disney's planetary predominance. When you've conjured at that level, you can afford a little candor..."Excelsior Stan, Excelsior"

Orson Welles alleged "Last Movie"....

the heretofore uncompleted "The Other Side of the Wind" Has finally be finished and dropped onto Netflix. Its currently playing in New York and Los Angeles, we may get it here in due course. I am legitimately conflicted as to this project, a longtime labor of love from Welles' proteges Peter Bogdanovich among others, I am never sure if the director's intentions are being honored when other's finish the film. The very act of finishing a film, especially from a chronic auteur like Welles strongly compromises it's innate status as a "Film" Directed By "Orson Welles". Ironically Welles himself ruminated on the complicated issue of "artistic provenance" in his 1973 film "F for Fake", ostensively a discursive look at Art Forger Elmyr De Hory among other fakers of note (including Welles himself). On the other hand, just the mere fact that Bogdanovich & Co even finished the damn thing and rendered up a comprehensive film at all is an achievement. I myself sat not one hundred feet away from Stefan Droessler the curator of the Munich Film Museum and the legatees of Welles' personal film collection who told an audience at Harvard that owing to the highly idiosyncratic editing, "The Other Side of the Wind" could never be completed. Welles' personal story is a "cautionary tale" that could easily be summarized as "how to do everything wrong and still somehow make movies". That part of his biography, the endless conflicts with studios and backers, I think sadly obscures his role as a still vibrant film educator, the man literally revised his style several times over the course of his career and made each revision work like gangbusters. A close study of his feature films, a bare fourteen or so (the number may grow, who knows?)is a complete film education unto itself. Which brings me to my own personal utopian vision as "Welles as Film Educator to the World", why not declare his unfinished "Don Quixote" adaptation a public domain property, digitally scan in all the exposed footage into a database and allow everyone a chance to collaborate with Orson Welles and complete "theirs and his" own version of said film? Well, we all know the answer to that, you can't make money off of that utopian vision(at least the people who own the unfinished film itself, several persons and institutions are in play) and if "The Other Side of the Wind" makes money, count on it, Welles other unfinished films (there are at least three more lying around) will be put in play. Which is the final irony, only long after his death, is Orson Welles making money for the studios in Hollywood.

Why Screen "Attack of the Mushroom People"? (1963)

The dirty secret is, most of the classic Kaiju movies, are not particularly scary per se, they are more akin to opera with giant radioactive mutant dinosaurs made of foam rubber as the defacto stars and vocalists. "Attack of the Mushroom People" (AKA "Matango, Fungus of Terror", I am sure that title is way more frightening in Japanese) is a genuinely scary and unsettling Kaiju by every measure. A collection of Japanese Bourgeoisie are shipwrecked on a radioactive desert island presided over by an invasive species of sentient mushrooms, intent of absorbing the castaways into that malevolent vegetable collective. Director Ishiro Honda, clearly wanted to comment on the hedonism and selfishness that came along with Japan's hallowed post war economic miracle...and what better prism by which to do that than a grim little Kaiju movie? The irony is, the film was not a box office success in Japan and the international rights were sold off to American International Pictures where it was duly dubbed and dumped on the US Television where locally it was creepy little staple on WLVI TV 56's "Creature Feature" for years. So far as I can tell, the film has never had an proper theatrical screening in the USA...at least not in the 21st Century as its very much not in that Japanese Kaiju classic repertory canon (I'm looking at You, Gojira!). Channel Zero, as always thinks that is a shame, and bids on Friday October Fifth to kick off the local Repertory Halloween Season with a screening of "Attack of the Mushroom People" in the Somerville Theatre's Micro Cinema. "Be Prepared, To Be Scared! This is a Kaiju Like No Other!!" The Somerville Theatre (micro-cinema) Friday, October 5th 8pm (sharp!) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma. 617) 625-5700 Admission $7.50 (Cheap! Cash Only) And while yer at it, why not join our official Facebook Fan Group for all the early word on Upcoming Screenings?

Kudos to the Somerville Theatre...

As part of their 70mmm Film Festival this week, they are screening two excellent examples of the Late Charlton Heston's "epic historic drama" filmography, "El Cid" with Sophia Loren & "Khartoum" costarring Sir Laurence Olivier. The Full Schedule Can Be Found Here. I've been fitfully lobbying various local repertory entities for some sort of a retrospective for the late Charlton Heston, (an "axiom" of the cinema per Michel Mourlet) who career spanned decades and overleaped genres with ease. Tickets are still on sale for today's 2pm screening of "El Cid" in sumptuous 35mm... advise purchasing tickets early, a leisurely lunch before settling in.

"Best Popular Picture"...

Is a new category being introduced by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences (AKA "The Oscars") in a attempt to improve the TV broadcast's ratings and hand a statue to a profitable film production with a high recognition factor. The critics have pounced on the proposal and mocked it as a "dumbing down" of the Oscars, which is ironic to me, because the Academy Awards are hardly "movie night" at your local Mensa chapter. There is also some criticism to the effect that this is a transparent ploy of obscure the heavy round of allegedly partisan politics that overshadows the balloting. There is a shit ton of politics in the lead up to the Academy Awards but it isn't always a bicoastal liberal caricature, there is definite "block voting", notoriously by British Artists working in Hollywood, how else to account for Eddie Redmayne's sudden vault to the A-List? And then there is Hollywood's ongoing exploitation of women In Front and Behind the Cameras, everyone sweats and tugs their collars about it, then hands a golden statuette to Judi Dench or Meryl Streep to ease the collective anxiety...for one night anyway. No...I'm guarded FOR this idea, I know it sounds like half baked pandering, but hear me out. Correctly deployed, this might finally get American Comedies they recognition they so desperately deserve, comedy remains the USA's best and most reliably self regenerating genre, it is overlooked almost every single year during "Oscar Season". Science Fiction and Fantasy (once Hollywood's "Red Headed Stepchild") gets a friendlier reception from The Academy that the hard work of Kate McKinnon or Seth Rogen or even James Franco... Granted the whole premise of the Oscars is bullshit from start to finish, anxiety wracked creatives and certain technical guilds none of whom have a strong sense of job security all voting themselves awards down to laughably obscure categories without any critical or outside input of any kind. I say the comedians and the comedy writers in Hollywood, who get Academy Ballots" ought to do some "block voting' themselves, how else to finally grab off what Jim Carrey has called "The Ultimate Tchotchke"? And who knows, this might be Gal Gadot or The Rock's Once Chance to Get Up on that Podium...or (dare I say it,) Bobcat Goldthwaite?

Whatever happened to Slapstick Comedy?

Ya never see it anymore in the movies save for the redoubtable Johnny Knoxville and his crew (and they are rapidly aging out of their "JackAss" racket sad to say). Even the crazy hilarious Kate McKinnon clearly had recourse to a stunt person for a half-dangerous half funny trapeze fight in "The Spy Who Dumped Me". There are still comical chases and explosions and the like in the movies, but the sort of intensive physical slapstick where the performer clears metes it out and or receives it is becoming a thing of the past. The only other example I can think of, is Jackie Chan, and he has pretty much aged out of the slapstick racket entirely alas and alack... I'll say this, Johnny Knoxville's last movie "Action Pointe" lasted a bare two weeks this summer and proved an unstable mix of fiction and "real time stunt work", but it was also likely an epitaph for the whole "JackAss" phenom. You now cringe with fright when a careworn middle aged Johnny gets himself catapulted thru the side of a barn, like when you see an elderly relation slip & fall in the kitchen. This is sad to me, can anyone out there think of even one performer in Hollywood whose comedy schtick is preeminently physical in nature? Sadly CGI has pulled the fangs of strict slapstick I think...you can literally use computers to create sequences that a Charlie Chaplin would have shot in real time. The modern justification is that CGI saves wear and tear on performers, but it also deals the artist out of the creative process in some ways. If Chaplin denied the sound era as long as he did (up to 1939 or so) then he'd a never ever have tolerated CGI on his sound stage. Bring Back the Clowns I Say....

Apropos of Nothing...

Insofar as "Christopher Robin" is concerned, (a new release told from the entirely superfluous perspective of Winnie-the-Pooh's humanoid sidekick)how much money do you suppose Buena Vista/Disney spent to dig up voice actors that could successfully impersonate Sterling Holloway and Paul Winchell? I'm thinking a million bucks and some digital intervention as well....

"Why Don Quixote?"

On Friday Night at 8pm Channel Zero, is gonna try some summer counter programming with a screening of G.W. Pabst's 1933 adaptation of "Don Quixote" starring Feodor Chaliapin. Cervantes classic novel is a wonder of the renaissance and a book that reverberates down to the current era as the "Knight of the Doleful Countenance" wanders Spain with his sidekick Sancho Panza desperately seeking a life of adventure and chivalry. In his battered comical armor and stern devotion to "staying in knightly character", Don Quixote is literally classical literature's first true cosplayer! Indeed the Mad Knight has all the symptoms, his entire world view is subverted, overwhelmed and guided by, the fiction he himself has imbibed. Don Quixote is literally the first character in all of literature to have a rudimentary self awareness of his own fictional status...hell its a book that literally breaks the Fifth Wall! Its always been a sort of wonderment to me at least,that this supremely subtle comical and multilayered book has never yet generated a definitive Hollywood Adaptation, although artists as diverse as Orson Welles and Mister Magoo have all taken a stab at it down thru the years. Some great books are strangely resistant to the full Tinseltown Treatment another example of which could well be "Moby Dick"...but I digress, this is fodder for a future post indeed. Director G.W. Pabst might perhaps be a good counterintuitive choice to adapt Don Quixote, he was in his heyday the only realist working and indeed prospering in German silent cinema, and sometimes as rich as character as The Old Windmill Tilter needs a steady hand to stave off caricature. Anyhow...this is also a film unseen in Boston as an experience of cinema, for perhaps eighty five years, so tell your friends. "DON QUIXOTE" (1933) Friday, July 20th 8pm The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma 617-625-5700 Admission: $7.50 (cheap!, cash only) In French, Subtitled in English

"When Harlie Was Dead..."

At age eight four, Harlan Ellison at last died in his sleep, much like William Randolph Hearst, a minor parallel that would move the late fantasist to litigation if the blood still surged in his veins. All snark aside, if you encountered Ellison's science fiction short stories at the right time in adolescence you'd be well served the rest of your life, the man was a strong even strident truth teller in his fiction, not many happy endings, much suspicions as to human motives, greed and cowardice very much on display in all those futuristic or fantastical landscapes. In a genre much given to fan service, cliches, stock characterizations and plain phoniness, he stood out with vigorous readable unflinching prose. His uncompromising advocacy on behalf of writers within and without Hollywood is a legendary thing, indeed writers are ripped off every day from Bangor to Guam, something he fought all thru his career. I agree with Ellison on one point, there has never been a Writer's Guild Strike in Hollywood that wasn't Completely Justified and Likely Overdue. As a scriptwriter he turned in superlative work tightly written and reasoned for everything from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" to "Star Trek", by his own standards he was a success in Hollywood sans compromise, I have no doubt about the essential truth of this given the many shows and producers he feuded with down or else turned down thru the years. The man's capacity for litigation, even successful litigation was storied thing up to his death and beyond. He lost out on some good and bad things thanks to that unyielding attitude, a attempt to bring "Two-Face" to the small screen on "Batman" failed mostly due to an ongoing feud with ABC. On the other hand Ellison thankfully missed out on being one of Irwin Allen's pet scriptwriters mostly because of an alleged altercation during a story conference. Harlan refused to be rewritten or worse plagiarized, indeed he was a harsh critic of the many spurious reasons scripts were rewritten or simply stolen in Hollywood. That having been said, if an Ellison Fan avoid his "Man from UNCLE" "The Do It Yourself Dreadful Affair", you'll be amazed such a slack lugubrious effort was ever written by the one and only Harlan Ellison, moreover on a show where he supposedly got on well with the producers. In his truth telling, in his zeal, in his courage, in his caustic wit, Harlan Ellison resembles no one so much as Samuel Johnson, he looms that big in the realm of fantasy fiction. His volumes of film and television reviews are themselves virtual textbooks on "good criticism, well rendered", he pioneered television criticism at a time when the genre was little more than regurgitating press releases. Harlan Ellison was honest, but he wasn't flawless, the man was a notorious fabulist sometimes to an absurd degree, he once claimed that the intervention of then VP Spiro Agnew had held up publication a collection of his TV columns "The Other Glass Teat". His writings are littered with absurd hyperbole,some of it hilarious some of it frankly inaccurate and misleading and...well...wrong. His literary output peaked in the 1970's just as science fiction into a sudden profitable haven for millionaires, rightly so Ellison criticized this tendency, he pointed out that prior to "Star Wars" the celebrities in science fiction were all writers, now the big names were producers & directors, persons of wealth, whose money was made off of movie ticket sales. Harlan also pointed out, that this cataract of money never really reached the Fritz Liebers or the Robert Silverbergs so now those creatives could enjoy both poverty AND obscurity. This is a criticism of the post Star Wars world I've taken to heart and repeat endlessly....a very insightful observation from the Departed Harlan. So in the end, its always seemed to me, a dreadful irony that Harlan Ellison, the loud, righteous & pugnacious defender of the rights of writers,ended up keeping up to one hundred and fifty science fiction short stories off the market up to the time of his death because he couldn't finish editing the third volume of his notorious collection "The Last Dangerous Visions". Christopher Priest goes into detail about that whole sad ironic situation in his pamphlet "The Book on the Edge of Forever", I'm sure it can found on Amazon or Ebay, I shan't bore you with the details of an already cringeworthy tale. As Herodotus Notes "By Great Thing are The Mighty Undone"and truly "The Last Dangerous Visions" is Harlan Ellison's Waterloo. That having been said, I don't think we've heard the last of Harlan he has a huge bibliography of fiction just waiting to be adapted...sadly by others IF it happens. Like Phillip K. Dick his fiction may finally start seeping into the film zeitgeist bit by bit, one can but hope for honest guardians of Ellisonian truth telling. On the other hand Harlan also had an awesome collection of ex-wives, who knows they may have litigious drives all of themselves...that would be the last irony of a supremely ironic iconoclast. :) "I Have No Mouthpiece And I Must Scream"

Margot Kidder, A Brief Memorial

There are a lot of "Lois Lanes" out there, seven by my count and the numbers will likely rise going forward. But Margot Kidder was the "You've Come A Long Way Baby" Lois Lane, career-centered, liberated, a achiever on her way to achieving more until Superman alighted on her penthouse rooftop (what city beat reporter could afford a penthouse in 1978??? Kidder was the envy of every newsroom from San Diego to Bangor on those grounds alone). If you ever get a chance, check out the audition tapes on the "Superman the Movie" Deluxe DVD, Kidder never smirks or condescends to the material, she knows exactly where the line is between wit and toneless camp, she never steps over it. You can see instantly why she got the part (although clearly Stockard Channing made it a tight camel race to the end), Kidder threw down her endless aces effortlessly...aspiring actresses should watch Kidder's auditions there is plenty to be learned therein. In the end, Margot Kidder was a leather lunged scrapper, she happily entered into a tacit three way alliance with Superman Director Richard Donner and her costar Chris Reeve to prevent said movie from degenerating into a Campy Burlesque, and their efforts paid off. Would to God those three ever got a script they could all invest themselves in...that would've been a Supermanfor all times. She had her challenges, psychiatric, financial,marital...like a lot of actors that did comic book movies back in the day it was certainly not the sort of resume builder that would get her up on the "A-List", but she worked and worked, and when necessary she signed autographs for money at conventions. I once saw her from a distance at a convention a few years ago, she seemed alert, lively & interested in everything, clearly she had gotten the help she needed. If anyone deserved to die peacefully and painlessly even if all too soon, it was Margot Kidder.

Proof Positive that the Somerville Theatre is Doing the Lord's Work...

lies in the fact that they are still screening "The Death of Stalin" AND Wes Anderson's "Isle of Dogs", varied films to be sure, but two out of my top ten for 2018 to be sure. Of course, Channel Zero (that redoubtable film and video franchise, now in it's improbable twenty third year) has all sorts priors with The Soviet Union's Premiere Genocidal Uber Tyrant.... Over at the Coolidge Corner we screened the documentary "I Was Stalin's Bodyguard" to a sold out audience, and later on at the Somerville Theater we screened the CPSU's official "obituary propaganda movie" "History's Great Loss" which is literally the last gasp of "High Stalinism" over the leader's corpse. It also features selections of the politburo's eulogies which were in turn recreated in the current film. And yes Lavrenty Beria really did look like Boris Badenoff up there on Lenin's Tomb.

Channel Zero Proudly Presents: "Smile Til It Hurts; The Up With People Story" (2009)

Director Lee Storey examines the story of the music group “Up With People”, that relentlessly Upbeat Singing Bulwark of TV Variety Shows in the 1960’s, & 70’s. Seemingly perpetually “On Tour” for Decades this Peppy Youth Choir was embraced by everyone from Billy Graham to Richard Nixon & was a Super Bowl Half-Time Mainstay! But behind the scenes, cult-like conditions are alleged!! Arranged Marriages!, Bumptious evangelical "moral rearmament", Shady Corporates Sponsors & Weird Politics! See the documentary that dares to tell the whole truth behind “Up With People”! The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) Friday May 4th
 8pm (sharp!) 
55 Davis Square Somerville Ma
 617 625 5700
 Admission: $8.50 (cash only, tickets on sale thirty minutes before showtime in front of the downstairs micro-cinema) One Night Only, A Full Cinema Experience! If there was a musical vaccine for youth rebellion in the 1960's, it was "Up With People", this is a story worth seeing!

It did my heart good to sit with a sold out audience

at the 7pm screening of "Isle of Dogs" last night @ the Somerville Theatre. I loved this movie...and I'm a tough sell on "Dog Movies", maybe its the faux stop motion animation, or the improbable all star cast, or director We Anderson's weird mixture of magic realism & Karel Zeman. Ah Karel Zeman, a filmmaker of the first rank, literally Communist Czechoslovakia's answer to Walt Disney, Dr, Suess & Ray Harryhausen all in one go! I am convinced with his emphasis on "radical unrealism" that Wes Anderson has screened such uber rare Zeman films as "The Stolen Airship" & "Off on a Comet" (both based on works by Jules Verne) wherein live action was incorporated with animation derived from the original illustrations. Someday Channel Zero will screen one of those obscure Karel Zeman science fiction titles, we won't sell many tickets, but it is a truism among us that the necessity to screen certain films is in no way conditioned by the potential audience. Wes Anderson doesn't have that problem a humorist, a stylist, an artist perfectly unafraid to make a "dog movie" and at least last night sold a shit ton of tickets as well....

2018 Oscar Predictions (last minute and incomplete)

Best Actor: Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour". Lacking any limey disease porn from Eddie Redmayne, this immersive impersonation of Britain's Wartime PM will have to do. It'd be tantamount to treason for the Academy's Famously United British Block of Voters to go anywhere else. The only counter scenario in play is a split in that block between Oldman and Daniel Day Lewis in "Phantom Thread" but so far that "BritBlock" has never split and likely won't with A Winston Churchill In Play. Just remember, this is a great historic impersonation, but so was Woody Harrelson in "L.B.J" and Woody is likely watching the broadcast from home tonight. Best Actress: Margot Robbie, this is personal prejudice on my part, Robbie made a champion catastrophe like Tonya Harding completely sympathetic to me, that is the essence of acting IMHO. Sally Hawkins may pull off an upset, but she was working mute in the world's first Kalju-Human Interspecies Love Story...that strikes me as a reach for the Academy. Frances McDormand has an outside shot but it's more on grounds of her overall "body of work" to date than anything else. Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer in "All The Money in the World", this is "Academy Politics" at work, voting for Plummer rebukes neatly the gruesome sexual escapades allegedly perpetrated by the film's original star Kevin Spacey. Moreover, Plummer is past eighty years of age, and reshot all those scenes in under six weeks...for stamina alone he deserves the Oscar. Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney in "I, Tonya"...As good as Robbie's Tonya Harding is, the film reaches Grand Guignol like levels of nastiness whenever Allison Janney's "Skate Mom from Hell" heaves onto the Screen....Besides when is she ever gonna be in that room again? Best Picture: This one is tough, but I am thinking "Darkest Hour", that BritBlock is pretty hardcore, they could again split their vote with "Dunkirk", but the performances in that film were more akin to neorealism, no other acting nominations were derived from it. Thus I think the race may actually be between "Darkest Hour" & "“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, the latter being more of a "message movie" suited to Academy Prejudices. "Get Out" is "The Stepford Wives" for African Americans, and as such will likely fall afoul of the Academy's default resistance of horror-sic-fi-fantasy driven material, something that will likely keep Sally Hawkins and Daniel Kaluuya off the podium entirely.

Apropos of this week's screening of "The Siege of the Alcazar" (1940)

but its almost a cliche' to note that the salient single factor that seems to unite all the 20th century's "A-List" tyrants is a manic obsession with...movies. You name em' Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Mao...all had a imbedded notion that movies could "form opinions" in the audience's collective mind thus encouraging certain desired behaviors and deterring undesirable activities. Propaganda as defined by Jacques Ellul is a species of cost effective police supervision based on a sound theory that if the flow of facts & news to the masses is thoroughly controlled, then attitude formation can be achieved thru an atmosphere of exclusivity. The one thing that unites, all the Marxists, Fascists & Nationalists cited above is a common sociological notion of the masses as uncritical "Receivers"of state sponsored propaganda. This is pretty much Jacques Ellul's formulation but it has a hidden flaw only regimes at the height of their powers can make successful propaganda, declining regimes wracked by economic issues & foreign policy disasters can never make useful propaganda, the tide of factuality has "come in" so to speak and is washing them away. And so in the mid 20th Century the newest shiniest art form was cinema, Lenin, Hitler Stalin (the latter two watched a film every day when they could) all of them were wild about movies and also absolutely convinced that thru movies, were the masses ruled. Hitler put Leni Riefenstahl on the map, Stalin was so taken with the movies that he laid down a patently insane decree after World War Two that "All" Soviet Films must be "Epic in scope". Mao Zedong wrote unsigned movie criticism for the "People's Daily"that succeeded in getting a classic film called "The Life of Wu Xun (1950)banned for thirty five years & Mussolini rebuilt Italy's film plant while his appalling son Vittorio acted as patron to a gaggle of future Italian Neorealist filmmakers. There is a funny thing about tyrants, they demand orthodoxy, and complete obedience but they are also willing to sponsor stylistic innovations in cinema, Eisenstein, Riefenstahl and Vittorio Mussolini's pet neorealist. As I said, "obsessed" in all these despots there is more than a little "thwarted movie producer" present. "The Siege of the Alcazar"(1940) is therefore political hype work, Mussolini wanted war, only by choosing the right side in a General European War could he hope to grab off millions of square miles in North African Colonies at the Conference Table. That was his real goal in 1940, control of the Mediterranean freedom from the guns of the Royal Navy, both huge gambles, sufficient even to make the most cowed populace quail. The solution was simple, crank up the grievance machine, hype Italy's status as an underdog in Europe and build up the Marxist menace. All this was vitally necessary as the Italian Masses were completely war weary from a campaign of "pacification" in Libya, to the conquest of Ethiopia down to their intervention in support of Franco in Spain. In 1940 Italy was already militarily spent even before the war declarations, situations like this cry out for the intervention of propaganda...hence our next film. So please tell your friends, as once again Channel Zero has gone to a very obscure film title for what we think are very sound reasons. “The Siege of the Alcazar” (1940) Directed by Augusto Genina The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) Friday February 23rd
 8pm (sharp!)
 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma
 617 625 5700
 Admission: $7.50 (cash only, tickets on sale thirty minutes before showtime in front of the MicroCinema)

"The Siege of the Alcazar " (1940)

a seminal work of Italian Fascist Propaganda is Channel Zero's inaugural screening for 2018 Next Month, Friday February 23rd.... We hear a lot of talk about authoritarianism being on the march out there, so Channel Zero thought it instructive to screen an authentic example of film propaganda from the 20th Century's First True Totalitarian Regime, Mussolini's Fascist Italy. Here the regime seeks to hype a skeptical population on the need for "Fascist Solidarity" with Franco's Dictatorship in Spain, depicting the seventy day defense of the Alcazar Arsenal in Toledo by Nationalist Troops against the "Republican Hordes". Director Augusto Genina's style could be summed up as "documentary fiction", he seamlessly dresses up a real event in the early days of the Spanish Civil War with real & amateur actors, facts are interwoven with pure dramatic invention, plain people are very much in the historic spotlight, the earliest flicker of the neorealist school can be discerned. Roberto Rossellini made a close study of "L'Assedio dell'Alcazar" in the lead up to his own directorial efforts on behalf of the Fascist regime, Michelangelo Antonioni LOVED "The Siege of the Alcazar", praising it's innovative technique to the high heavens in "Cinema" magazine (a film journal that was a veritable neorealist "petri dish" under the overt patronage of Vittorio Mussolini, the Duce's semi barbarous oldest son). It can therefore be inferred that that there was a certain amount of cinematic experimentation going on in Italy in the 1937 thru 1943 period. This was ongoing, even as the Regime started investing in "positive propaganda films" designed to persuade an already war-weary Italy on the vast territorial gains to be wrung from an aggressive European conquest at Hitler's side. The film experimenters of the 1937 - 1943 period in Italy one and all shed their fascist regalia and became some of the biggest names in Italian Cinema after the war...almost none were proscribed or disbarred from filmmaking after the war. "The Siege of the Alcazar " remains an interesting testimonial to the contradictions of the time, a stylistic advancement in many ways, but also a film itself dedicated celebrating fascist violence, grievance politics & the Cult of the Leader. Jacques Ellul teaches us that propaganda has many functions, implantation and perpetuation of certain ideas, cost effective attitude policing, both persuasion & dissuasion, "L'Assedio dell'Alcazar" is an example of an "idea replicator"summarizing the regime's own restrictive view of the Spanish Civil War (where Mussolini would ultimately commit seventy five thousand troops to fight for Franco)and the vision for a future that could be won only thru aggression & violence. The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) Friday February 23rd
8pm (sharp!) 
55 Davis Square Somerville Ma
 617 625 5700
 Admission: $7.50 (cash only) Tickets go in sale thirty minutes before showtime in front of the micro-cinema.

Top Twelve Movies for 2017

(Apologies for the delay to one and all....) Tower (2017) Keith Maitland's documentary on Charle Whitman reign of terror as the Texas Tower Sniper does something no other film has ever quite done, made animation the servant of journalism. It is a conceit that Wellesian in it's implications. Get Out (2017) A film that conclusively demonstrates that there are worse fates to be suffered than mere race based genocide. Director Jordan Peele did something pretty amazing here, he turned perky suburban nonentity Allison Williams into a mortal threat to the survival of the human race so....respect! Colossal (2017) because ALL alcohol driven dysfunction in this world can be effectively summarized & illustrated thru Giant Kaiju Monsters AND Anne Hathaway. Wonder Woman (2017) This makes the list simply because it took decades to upgrade the Amazing Amazon to Feature Films and DC Comics is notorious for screwing up two-car funerals, so I'm astonished that they got what they got right on this one, which is chiefly casting. If Gal Gadot keeps her health she can play Wonder Woman for another ten years easily....she played the part three times already and stolen every single scene she was in...she is a super heroic bargain at twice the price. Baby Driver (2017) Because Hollywood has "Institutional Aphasia" genres that used to be no-brainers become increasingly impossible to execute, so its just bracing to see someone pull off a good "car chase/heist" movie with such brio. Dunkirk (2017) This was likely the closest we'll ever get to a neorealist revival, a bunch of characters largely defined by their jobs and uniforms in on a ghastly historic battlefield at once expansive and claustrophobic. Logan Lucky (2017) Channing Tatum should just camp out in front of Steve Soderbergh's door and wait for his next script to be completed, those two are made for one another, a dry screen presence and a director that knows what whats those kinds of actors funny and interesting. Plus...this is the first time I've ever laughed at anything Daniel Craig has done on the big screen.... The Battle of the Sexes (2017) I always give props to two things, winning historic impersonations (Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs & Emma Stone as Billy Jean King) and movies that remind us how cringeworthy we were, we are and likely always will be... Mansfield 66/67 (2017) Jayne Mansfield!! The First Modern Celebrity who proved that complete non productivity and toxic fame were easily compatible...She is literally The Mother of All Kardashians! This was pulpy gruesome stuff and I loved every retrograde minute of it, one of the best documentaries I've seen all year... The Darkest Hour (2017) Remember what I said about historic impersonations?? Is there anything more satisfying than Gary Oldman of all people playing the hell out of Winston Churchill?? I, Tonya (2017) Margot Robbie for Best Actress, Allison Janney for Best Supporting Actress and all from a Tonya Harding biopic with virtually no miscasting whatsoever! The Shape of Water (2017)...or what would've happened in "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" had finally gotten the girl at the end of the movie...Guillermo Del Toro can do no wrong in my books, even his interspecies love stories are fascinating. I liked all these movies, for a industry in decline Hollywood managed to punch way above it's weight this year, lotsa history lotsa fantasy...but those are genres I like what can I say?

Apropos of the Justice League Movie....

Not sure what Warner Brothers' plans are for their chronically underperforming DCU Movies, if I were them, I'd double down on Gal Gadot and hand the rest of it over to Bruce Timm and the WB's animation division they at least know how to make these here newfangled comic-book movies. The Justice League had its strengths (generally a good cast from a technical viewpoint) but there is meta context here, they need the right actors, and the right mix of heroes, and this particular line up was three super strength users, a speedster and The Batman. So the team as given to us was a little too reliant on sheer brute force and that is abad mix when you consider the villain of the movie is a Darkseid henchmen nonentity I had to look up on Wikipedia after the show. But I grow lyrical... If they are gonna keep Henry Cavill on as Superman...and clearly they've got no choice at this point, then someone needs to sit down with The Big Lug and tell him to stop playing The Man of Steel as an homage to Douglas Rains' "Hal 9000" characterization. No Joke, the JLA was a remarkably low affect performance from Cavill, he smirked once or twice and thats it...Ben Affleck pushed in way more chips by comparison, to say nothing of Gadot who has played Wonder Woman three times in two years and never not stolen every single scene. Sadly I suspect Affleck is out the door he sounds like he's paid his dues and wants to go back to making heist movies on the South Shore, Gadot has got three more Wonder Woman movies in her easy assuming the scripts don't tank (and this is DC so they could very well) so that leaves Henry Cavill's Superman as the other main tentpole and right now, he needs to stop phoning it in!