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Indiana Jones does not compare to the character study of the same topics explores in the Spielberg epic, yet done so quietly prefect here in a real Indiana Jones film called THE VIOLIN.

Life-or-death matters are handled with compelling gravity in Francisco Vargas' "The Violin," one of the most powerful movies screened at last year's Seattle International Film Festival.

this Mexican drama takes the peasants' side in dramatizing a 1970s revolt. The script vividly explores the impact of government oppression on three generations of one rebellious family.

Plutarco, perfectly played by 81-year-old Don Ángel Tavira, is never the frail grandfather he appears to be. Managing to play the violin even though his right hand is a stump, he just gets by as a traveling musician, using his practiced performer's charm to smother guards' suspicions and get past checkpoints. (Tavira deservedly won an acting award at the 2006 Cannes festival for this performance.)

After raiding an ammunition dump in a cornfield, Plutarco supplies his son, Genaro, with handfuls of bullets. Distraught by the news that his wife has been captured, Genaro and his son, Lucio, seem increasingly helpless in a situation that only the old man can effectively manipulate.

At first, even Plutarco seems to be getting nowhere. When he discovers a guard captain who loves music and wants to take violin lessons, the ice begins to break ? just enough to allow each man's humanity to become briefly evident. But as the uncompromising finale makes clear, this film is not any kind of heart warmer.

Although it begins with a graphic torture scene that suggests more of the same is coming, "The Violin" becomes increasingly restrained in its use of violence. First-time writer-director Vargas makes a point about brutality, then refuses to dwell on it. The most shattering moment is one character's silent reading of a list of casualties; his changing expressions tell us all we need to know.

Working in black-and-white with a gifted cinematographer, Martin Boege, Vargas creates a darkened fairy-tale atmosphere, especially as campfires light up the faces of the actors and smoke drifts photogenically through forests. Glimpses of village life suggest a timeless quality, especially when the grandfather recites a legend about the origins of war.

Don't leave before the final credits of "The Violin," which briefly goes dark, apparently for emphasis, before it really ends with an expressive coda. The blank moment throws in a touch of mystery. Most likely it's meant as a tribute to Tavira, without whom the movie would be unimaginable.

Move over Indiana Jone THE VIOLIN is the read thing - look for it on DVD ,

Vince UCB
Berkeley Ca Vmedia

UPDATE - I SAW THIS A SECOND TIME WITH A BETTER ENDING AND I HAVE UPPED MY GAME FOR THIS NEW INDI 2008 SKULL Flick.

The Ending in the new cut i saw today uses a non Hollywood ending that I truly hope Steven keeps it the final cut you see next weekend.

and no he doesn't die? or um? Lets just say this new ending does not follow the reagan formula - and for that reason I have upped the star factor.



I saw Shia Labeouf last sat night at the dress for SNL - and he told us there would be this secret screening that night. Of course we all ran the screeing on 40th street and saw the bone.

With the franchise and Spielberg not shying away from the original subtext of the franchise (the Reagan conquest) - Indi and his boy make for a fun play on the same metaphor this time around.

Dr. Jack Wheeler is a legend. he was the inspiration for the famed movie character.

While Jack has often been called a "real life Indiana Jones" and is part of the mix of historical figures Stephen Spielberg used (along with his own imagination) to create his fictional hero -- "Jones" is cartoon fiction and Wheeler is real.

In the 1980s he conducted a series of extensive visits to anti-Soviet guerrilla insurgencies in Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Laos, and Afghanistan, and to democracy movements in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, becoming an unofficial liaison between them and the Reagan White House. Based on his experiences with anti-Soviet insurgencies, he developed the strategy for dismantling the Soviet Empire adopted by the White House known as the "Reagan Doctrine. " It worked.

Dr. Jack Wheeler is virtually immeasurable as the architect of the Reagan Doctrine, he is one of the handful of men most responsible for the defeat of the Soviet Empire in the 1980s. He served his country as an "unofficial" liaison between the Reagan White House and anti-Soviet insurgents, pro-democracy activists and freedom fighters around the world, in Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, throughout Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union itself.

With this in mind this new romp with Indi and the kid sticks to that path.

'Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it, have never known it again." says Ronald Reagan

This Reagan Romp is fun - thick with 2008 Republican pride and will take the box office for the next 3 weekends.

Bye George Bush -
hello Mr McCain

Vince
Vmedia UCB

Gus Van Sant is now in production with his Bio pic MILK. and yes i was working close to that production since its based out here in SF. But none the less with avoiding ass kissing Sant - this picture is great! His best to date..

Paranoid Park was nominated for the Palme d Or at Cannes in 2007 his Elephant won in 2003 and Van Sant was awarded the festivals special 60th Anniversary Prize.

The latter places him in a very small group of filmmakers singled out for such recognition, iconic Indian cineaste Satyajit Ray among them. If Van Sants previous work is not proof enough that he is among Americas most original filmmakers, Paranoid Park will make it apparent. The adapted screenplay based on Blake Nelsons novel of the same name captures the peculiar patois of urban teenagers, and its narrative simplicity cleverly disguises a profound portrait of adolescent teen.

With fluid cinematography, an expert melding of Super8 and standard 35mm footage, and a sound mix worthy of Oscar consideration, the film is an illustration of Van Sants virtuosity, as well as a textbook example of cinemas potential to place us squarely in the emotional landscape of another human being.

Paranoid Park frequently breaks with the long tracking shots the director has favoured recently for a more intimate, mesmerising impressionism most effectively, in the gorgeous, lyrical slowmo of the skating scenes. The soundtrack designed by the experienced veteran Leslie Schatz is even more of a kick, a weird but affecting mix of electronica, Elliott Smith, Nino Rota and Beethoven (Schatz puts birdcalls over a shower scene and it works).

You only have to picture how differently Larry Clark would have approached the subject to appreciate Van Sants instinctive empathy for an alienated young man on the edge. Incidentally , or maybe not, its probably the directors most gay film since My Own Private Idaho.

It is also a movie about boyhood disillusionment. Even at the celebrated Paranoid Park, a sloping cement landscape appropriated from beneath a highway overpass, Alex is unable to skateboard. He tells people he isn't good enough, but actually Alex is too burdened to be cool.

While Van Sant suspends any moral judgment of his protagonist, there is no mistaking his indictment of the adults who are unable to communicate with kids, or to understand how profoundly they suffer.

A must see - look for it - i get the feeling it won't be on screens long.

And also be ready for Sants next film MILK

Vmedia
Berkeley ca

David Mamet's stage reputation is built on his glorious dialogue, pushed far beyond any sense of realism into a verbal symphony of intertwining solos built on staccato bursts of profane words elevated to terse poetry. But when it comes to Hollywood, his most interesting films are his genre pictures -- heist films, murder mysteries, con movies, all generally male-centric narratives that he reworks with his own brand of professional pride, machismo and male honor. It's a man's world and he revels in it.

"Redbelt" takes Mamet into territory no one otherwise would have predicted, the martial-arts thriller of honorable expert fighters, international competition and sinister organizers who corrupt the process. The sport here is Brazilian Jiu-jitsu, but Mamet hews to the samurai code, with Iraq vet and poor but proud Jiu-jitsu instructor Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor, all quiet dignity and modesty) as his honorable warrior in a dishonorable world.

The plot gets Mike involved with a self-loathing Hollywood action star (Tim Allen) and a big martial-arts bout promoted by the star's agent (Mamet favorite Joe Mantegna). Betrayed by those he trusted, Mike (of course) ends up defending his honor in a very public way.

It's glorious pulp fiction elevated to genre art, full of Mamet's cynicism about the corruption of big business (just substitute Hollywood for the martial-arts league) and his romantic ideals of men in military service and men dedicated to a higher purpose.

For all the physical sequences, the screenplay is pure Mamet: characters trading questions that never get answered, lines repeated like a mantra, dialogue jumping topics like the transcript of an ADD convention, but always landing back on topic A.

Mamet is more respectful than exciting as an action director, but his fascination with how things work, be it the mechanics of designing and promoting a big pay-per-view event or battling a world-class Jiu-jitsu master, makes it all quite mesmerizing.

Give this Mamet film a chance .. its better than his last 2 films.. but doesn't beat it current play on Broadway now called November ..

Vince
Vmedia Berkeley Ca

Even thou I worked on this project and I am close to its soul. I still have the gut feeling we will bomb this weekend.

Iron Man took the ball and ran hard its first weekend out and no matter how fast the racer is - we won't catch that crowd.

Well we may have a good first weekend - but then have engine probs for the rest of the run.

The picture I agree looks great - seems great - and I love Emile (even thou he was not in love with this script)

None the less I wish the Racer a good first weekend out of the pit and you guys tell me what you thing of this cartoon color maze version from the matrix boys.

Maybe million will sing the theme song this weekend - who knows?

Vince
Berkeley Ca - Vmedia

I saw a screening this weekend and its good to have mike back for the summer.

However he does show some restraint. He doesn't need to maul Alba, thats probably why he hired Justin Timberlake to play second banana. It helps that they've worked before? sort of. No, MM hasn't been helping JT bring sexy back. Timberlake did a voice in the wholly awful third Shrek movie. He was the annoying kid king, but don?t hold that against him. Timberlake has proven he can be incredibly funny in small doses. His guest hosting stints on SNL have been consistently hilarious. While I doubt 'Dick in a Box' will be funny stretched out over 90 minutes, Myers has given him more to do than the cup of soup bit from SNL. The movie is funny and will make money on a crowded Get Smart weekend.

Its worth senior citizen special monday price - or you tube some of the very funny tailors .

Vince
UCB Vmedia

When Harmony Korine's "Gummo" crept into SF film fest midnight showing I was lucky to have a ticket and see Harmony talk about his film. he was like a scabby thief in the night, it was greeted with the sort of critical violence that always makes me want to see the movie for myself. Sometimes a universally hated film is universally hated for a reason, and I've gotten stung at such movies as "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "North." But other such despised movies, like "Crash" and "A Life Less Ordinary," made me wonder if the entirety of American critics had seen the same film I saw. We say we want something different, and yet when a film actually gives us that, we punish it, mock it, call it pretentious and pointless. My honest opinion? I loved Gummo. That surprised me, since I'm not a big fan of Kids, the overhyped 1995 film that Harmony Korine wrote (Larry Clark directed it). Kids tried to be an old-fashioned cautionary tale dressed up in new-shit hipster clothes; the result was a shrewdly posturing work -- a film that young urban moviegoers could attend and pretend they'd walked on the wild side. Gummo, which Korine wrote and directed, is closer to the real thing. If it were a documentary, Korine would be hoisted up there alongside Errol Morris and Terry Zwigoff as a filmmaker who captured the chaos of inner life. Because it's fiction, Korine is denounced as an exploitative brat with a camera. What's really going on here? Seems to me a lot of urban baby-boomer critics have a knee-jerk aversion to any work that shows poverty-stricken rural people but doesn't serve up a clearcut uplifting message (banks are bad, farms are good, the community will always pull together, etc.). Gummo is set in Xenia, Ohio, a town that never recovered from a tornado. (It was shot in Nashville, though.) The two main characters are Tummler (Nick Sutton) and Solomon (Jacob Reynolds), two aimless kids who kill cats so they can sell them for meat and buy glue to huff. Korine regards them neutrally, without comment, and he treats everyone else onscreen the same way. That this is condemned as condescension, and not merely depiction, shows the condescension of the critics -- the same well-to-do critics who hate Jerry Springer because its guests are supposedly too ignorant (i.e., too small-town) to know they're being exploited. Working with cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier (Good Will Hunting), Korine sustains a depressive mood, a world of muted colors and no expectations, a place where entertainment consists of watching two men beat up a kitchen chair. Some may ask why we'd want to watch such things. Me, I think it's a relief. When a film like Crash or Gummo comes along that's so not Hollywood, so not about cute people with cute flaws and happy endings, we Americans, who claim to be sick of the same action movies and romantic comedies, have the gall to complain that movies like Gummo have no story. Well, the non-story in Gummo interested me a hell of a lot more than the non-stories that Hollywood passes off as stories. And Korine is a far more inventive visual filmmaker than his one-time director (and photographer) Larry Clark ever was. That famous shot of Jacob Reynolds eating spaghetti in a tub full of gray bathwater puts a slippery finger on a part of your brain that usually isn't touched. The movie is full of such bothersome, elusive images (a kid with pink bunny ears strolling across a bleak landscape; a retarded woman shaving her eyebrows; two skinheads pummeling each other -- for real; the sight of Out of the Blue's Linda Manz as Solomon's weird, tap-dancing mom). Directors have been hailed as visionaries for less. In fact, if Gummo had subtitles and came from, say, the Netherlands or Spain, some of the same critics who shat all over it might have embraced it. There's also a hidden compassion in Gummo -- the movie's dirty little secret is that it's not as coldly hip as it lets on. The notorious scene in which Solomon shoots the comatose old woman in the foot is actually rather ambiguous: this is their hapless attempt to wake her up. Another scene that drew critical fire -- Korine's cameo as a drunk guy who comes on to an encephalitic black dwarf after talking about how lonely he is -- struck me as oddly moving. Can we just not deal with movies that don't express emotions the same old way? Can't we, for just 90 minutes, rise to the challenge of genuinely difficult art? Your reaction to the people in Gummo says more about you than it does about them or Korine. If you recoil or laugh or scoff, you should ask yourself why. Perhaps the comatose old woman is Korine's metaphor for the lazy, narrow-minded, unadventurous American audience that he hopes to wake up. Most critics have rewarded him with a kick in the ass, but they should be thanking him. Better he should make X-Men 4? I'm reminded of a great quote by Spike Lee: when an interviewer said that Spike's use of different styles in the same movie isn't what some people are used to, Lee retorted, "Most of the movies that people are used to suck anyway!" A sentiment with which, I think, Harmony Korine would heartily agre

One of my fav Woody films - above read the opening page of script were woody under texts the opening act of Annie Hall. One of my Fav films. and fav scripts.

It was approximately a decade ago when a noted film director -- I believe it was Paul Verhoeven -- stated that in American cinema, it was OK to chop off a female breast but not acceptable to caress one. Of course, that quote still applies today, and if anything, American cinema has become more timid -- not in matters of violence or scatology, mind you, just in s-e-x -- since the early to mid-1990s, a period when the controversy surrounding the NC-17 rating was at its peak. You may recall that the NC-17 designation was created to replace the X rating for the purposes of mainstream cinema. The X became solely the domain of porno flicks; the NC-17 was supposed to allow moviemakers to create raw, uncompromised features made exclusively for the eyes of adult audiences, mature films that didn't need to tone anything down for the sake of the kids. Of course, it didn't quite work out that way. The United States is nothing if not a puritanical nation, and the forces of repression and prudery made sure that the NC-17 would fare no better than the X rating. With many mainstream newspapers refusing to even carry ads for films that were rated NC-17, the designation died a swift death. Today, it's barely ever used, and the few films not aimed at tots, teens or easy-to-please adults are simply released unrated. That's the case with John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus, but even without an officially sanctioned MPAA rating, the film pushes the envelope of what's allowed on screen further than just about any other non-porn flick that comes to mind. Perhaps not since 1980's Caligula has a non-XXX motion picture been as sexually explicit as this one (admittedly, I haven't seen Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs). But whereas Caligula was a wallow in brutality -- the violence and gore offset any potential pleasure generated by hardcore sequences which, truth be told, weren't all that competently filmed anyway -- Shortbus is a celebration of sex that, in turn, morphs into a celebration of those most inalienable of American rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A multi-layered film featuring a multi-character ensemble, Shortbus is weighty enough that it doesn't simply begin and end with the orgasm. Well, OK, it does begin with it: The opening montage, the most hardcore stretch in the film, finds the principal characters engaged in their own sessions of intercourse, masturbation or S&M. After this eye-catching intro, the film settles down and allows us to get to know its players better. Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee) is a sex therapist ("I prefer 'couples counselor,'" she states more than once) who has herself never experienced the joys of an orgasm, not even with her husband Rob (Raphael Barker). James (Paul Dawson) and Jamie (PJ DeBoy) are described as the perfect couple, though James' perpetual moodiness and Jamie's constant neediness lead them to mutually agree to seek companionship from a third party; that turns out to be a nice kid named Ceth (Jay Brannan), and the resultant ménage a trois proves to be a point of dismay for their mysterious, Peeping Tom neighbor Caleb (Peter Stickles). And Severin (Lindsay Beamish) is a dominatrix who's so burned out on her daily routine that she's searching for something -- anything -- to awaken her senses. Their paths all converge at an underground venue called Shortbus, a haven for open-minded people to discuss, watch and engage in all manner of sexual expression. The hype and controversy surrounding the film's erotic content has been so deafening that it'd be a shame if this gets dismissed out of hand as a one-trick pony. Director Mitchell, whose previous feature was 2001's marvelous musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch (in which he also starred as the transsexual protagonist), wrote the screenplay for Shortbus along with the participation of his cast members, and such a free-flowing environment of ideas allows the picture the opportunity to mature -- to grow and deepen -- along with its characters. In many ways, this is a New York picture through and through: That's evident from the witty opening sequence, when an extreme close-up of something (Is it a sculpture? Is that a penis?) comes into focus as the camera pulls back and we realize it's the Statue of Liberty standing guard over the Big Apple. There are the usual references to 9/11, but we don't sense that Mitchell is merely paying lip service -- these are frightening times for our country, with internal threats splitting apart the nation's citizenry as much as outside ones, and Mitchell seems to be suggesting that anything that can cheer us and unite us should be wholeheartedly embraced. It's an open invitation that should reach all states Blue, Red and Zebra-Striped, though, admittedly, I'm still freaked out that this is opening this Friday at, of all theaters, the Manor. (Let's just hope the bluehairs don't accidentally wander into this auditorium at the moment when James is ejaculating on his own face, or Manor management, like Lucy to Ricky, will have some 'splainin' to do to the medics subsequently called to the scene to revive the victims.) The cast is mostly comprised of screen novices and newcomers -- no surprise, since it's hard to imagine A-listers like Brad Pitt or Scarlett Johansson going this far for the sake of their art (though, Lord knows, their fans wouldn't object!). Their collective lack of screen polish provides the characters with a natural demeanor that works well for this setting. Sook-Yin Lee, however, is the breakthrough in the cast: Her performance -- by turns fearless, funny, frustrated and frenzied -- surely ranks as one of the year's best. Mitchell isn't so Pollyanna that he's suggesting everyone's difficulties will be solved by one good bout of sexual acrobatics. Indeed, many of the characters' problems and hang-ups are directly hardwired into their own opinions on the subject. But what makes Shortbus unusual for an American movie is that it isn't frightened of sex, it doesn't reduce the act to insensitive frat boy gyrations, and it doesn't employ it as a bludgeoning weapon (on that latter point, see this year's execrable Basic Instinct sequel as Exhibit A). As a movie, Shortbus is a turn-on, but not in the sense readers might imagine. The picture isn't physically stimulating so much as it's mentally and emotionally arousing -- it considers the brain and the heart the true erogenous zones, a viewpoint that ultimately turns out to be the movie's most startling aspect.

1984 classic is now being made into a film featuring Sean Penn, Emile Hirsh, James Franco and Josh Brolin.

Directed buy Van Zant .. he has changed the current SF Castro District back to 1975.

This film should hit screen in fall of 2008 to mark harveys murder that happen in November of 78.

Vmedia

It?s understandable if at first you feel as though you?re not getting enough information about Eraserhead's setting. And the timing is likely to puzzle you, too ? not just the pace of conversations (of which there are few), but the sensuous, heavy-lidded rhythms of the entire movie. Then there?s the plot? Or is there? At least there?s a main character, a pasty, suited man who vibrates with something like extreme anxiety and hurries through the oily puddles of his weirdly industrial neighborhood as though someone were chasing him. The audience would read this character as a freak for a wealth of reasons, but his most conspicuous feature is his hairdo: a shock of frizz that shoots straight up off his head like the Bride of Frankenstein?s, but blunt-cut across the top, like the eraser on the end of a pencil. The film gleans its title from this distinctive look: Eraserhead. It?s one of the most thrillingly irrational films you?ll ever see. The talent behind Eraserhead is that one truly surrealist presence in mainstream American film, David Lynch. Later Lynch would expose the subterranean evil of Capra-esque America in 1986?s Blue Velvet, recast The Wizard of Oz among the riotously criminal milieu of 1990?s Wild at Heart, and offer us a circuitous journey down Los Angeles?s famed Mulholland Drive in 2001 (although you won?t be there to admire the view). And critics and audiences will marvel at the perversity of it all. But it was in 1977?s cult touchstone Eraserhead that Lynch took his tense and fantastic approach to filmmaking to its furthest extreme. The theme of Eraserhead, as Pauline Kael concisely stated it, is ?a man?s worst fears of courtship and marriage and fatherhood,? and in giving voice to these fears the film succeeds unlike any other: When our hero Henry (Jack Nance) visits the home of his fiancée, for instance, he encounters a father so cowed that he?s literally gone numb, an aphasic and apparently immobile grandmother to whom lit cigarettes are given, and a harping shrew of a mother who completes the horror of hearth and home by coming on to Henry. The bed Henry subsequently shares with his wife is the site of stifling, fever-dream episodes that never end, or that end in quarrels. And the baby is a sick, sleepless monster that whimpers and coughs up its food. ?They?re still not sure it is a baby!? Henry?s wife cries at one point, and with its horse-shaped face and gauze-wrapped, oval body, it certainly doesn?t look like one. But Lynch tells Henry?s story in warped, image-driven episodes rather than a traditional narrative, and it?s these images and their inevitable, dream-like rhythms that make Eraserhead so extraordinary. It?s driven by a kind of aesthetic intuition that all but disappeared from the screen with the experimental films of the ?20s and ?30s; Lynch doesn?t explain scenes or let his characters talk them through, but instead culls images from the subconscious that seem arbitrary but that connect with the viewer in a weirdly indefinable (and often creepily sexual) way. We watch as a baked, ?man-made? chicken begins spasmodically working its truncated legs when cut into, and although we can?t pin any objective meaning to this image, its message of genetic misconception comes through loud and clear. Ditto the gristly, sperm-shaped organic things that Henry discovers in his bed, the angelic, disfigured woman who sings on a tiny stage within Henry?s radiator, his mewing baby, and a lot more. It comes almost as an afterthought to mention that much of this is very, very funny as well. Eraserhead is a work of rare genius and real bravery; it?s a comic nightmare we all have at once and whose meanings lay just out of reach. Lynch made Eraserhead over the course of five years. The picture previewed in 1976, and although its release the following year met with mostly hostile reviews, a cult grew up around it. The early ?80s saw a video release by Warner Brothers, but as these videos gradually fell off the shelves Eraserhead became harder and harder to see; viewers in recent years have had to settle for bootlegs with a distorted aspect and Japanese subtitles. It?s all the more a cause for celebration then that this unnatural little classic is finally available on DVD, through www.davidlynch.com, with a few nice extras and a wonderful transfer. It?s a unique, resonant fantasy of the day-to-day, and it?s been unavailable for far too long. And a postscript to fans: Stoners love Eraserhead for its trippiness, which is a valid premise, but the picture can be taken a lot more seriously than that. If it?s the dream logic and surreal content that appeal to you here, you?re directed to Eraserhead?s forebears: Luis Buñuel?s Un Chien andalou and L?Âge d?or. The new DVD includes a short film primarily interviewing Lynch about his memories of making the film.

What better way to celebrate the best Dorothy films in 20 years. Great black Vrigina Film,. that eats away at every moment anyone thinks of warm bloddy love. 4 good pounds and a bag of Gummy Bears