12 Years A Slave (Rhoades)

McQueen Had Mission With “12 Years a Slave”

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

This is a true story based on an 1853 book titled “Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana.”

That pretty much sums up the new Steve McQueen movie “12 Years a Slave” -- currently playing at Tropic Cinema.

But the movie is more than that. Starring British actor Chiwetelu Umeadi “Chiwetel” Ejiofor as the aforementioned Solomon Northup, it’s a paeon to our thirst for freedom.

Along with Ejiofor, you’ll encounter Michael Fassbender as a cruel plantation owner; Benedict Cumberbatch as a mild-mannered slave owner; Brad Pitt as a Canadian carpenter; Quvenzhané Wallis as Northup’s daughter; along with supporting performances by Paul Giamatti, Alfre Woodard, and Paul Dano.

McQueen’s purpose was to help us address that blot on American history -- slavery. “I went into this film to try to embrace the issue, and master it, and make it mine, as such,” he says. “I was trying to look for a way into the tale, and the way in for me was the story of a free man who gets caught into slavery. And, what I liked about that was that everybody can relate to being taken away from your family, so you're on that journey with him.”

Did the Brit-born director accomplish his mission? “I think the film has begun to help, because people are talking about slavery again,” he said. “We need to just try to keep it in focus and try to have that conversation. It’s a difficult one, but a necessary one.”

In “12 Years a Slave,” McQueen forces us to watch such atrocities as hangings, whippings, and rape.
“Survive, survive, survive, that’s the biggest thing,” says McQueen. "Ultimately I’m here today because some members of my ancestors survived slavery in whatever way they could. They had to deal with it by simply surviving.”

Talk about man’s inhumanity to man. This is a movie that will seriously break your heart.

srhoades@aol.com

2013 Key West Film Festival (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

The Key West Film Festival

Variety was the order of the day at this year's Key West Film Festival with as many diverse characters as there are far flung locations.

First,  Jeffrey Schwarz's "I Am Divine" was shown together with stand up routines by the famed cinematic barista of bad taste John Waters, who proved to be just as surrealistic and slimy-sweet as ever. John Waters is a organic auteur of scandal and emotion, a glib and witty maestro with an Oscar Wilde touch. Waters is a rare thing running directly from the well of William Castle who stands alone in today's age of empty sensation and CGI. Monsters and creatures from space are not his bag. Waters is concerned with eccentricity, individuality and the courage it takes to shock and be offensive.

Jeffrey Schwarz's documentary is about the comedian Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead) and his progression from shocking underground comic actor to mainstream success story until his untimely death (some say due to heart problems from his excess weight and binge eating). The documentary is affectionate, comprehensive and bittersweet. As a whole, it makes a fitting tribute to a wonderful charismatic and privately churning person, gone all too soon. The film is irreverent and sweetly subversive in all the right places. As Divine's mother says proudly, "my son loved his cake." How could you not love that line!

Divine was teased as a young boy in school for being fat and effeminate. He learned to channel his hurt into outlandish tirades against late 1960's suburbia. He met Waters and started in movies, dressing in drag as a parody of a BBW femme fatale of filth and evil.  This is a singular documentary that highlights Divine's life with character and grace. Fittingly, the story shines like silver tinsel on an artificial Christmas Tree.

Next, "Sal" directed by actor James Franco, is an existential study on a day in the life of Sal Mineo who achieved absolute fame and cult status with "A Rebel Without a Cause" and "Exodus". Sal is a notoriously misunderstood Hollywood star who worked for total authenticity and heart in his roles. Because of his openness about being gay, coupled by his murder, delivered by a gory stabbing, Mineo was thought to be a seedy and perverse man. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. "Sal" reveals Mineo as he is: optimistic, warm, energetic and a bit naive about The System, jaded and bent to wear him down. Actor Val Lauren gives a poignant and facially detailed performance of this kind man and Franco's camera is unflinchingly closeup, hyper-intense and almost Warholesque in showing the day to day details of the man haunted by his shade of a once cute boy, the heart throb in Technicolor.

Interestingly, the actor Val Lauren also appears in Travis Mathews' episodic "Interior. Leather Bar" (co-directed by Franco), an experimental film using the so called "lost" footage of William Friedkin's  "Cruisin'" as a beginning. Rather than a story, the film is a sociological study of just what makes moviegoers feel uncomfortable about watching gay couples onscreen. The film retains a definite Warhol screen-test flavor. The camera follows Lauren like an obsessed fan and the actor goes through considerable awkwardness and discomfort as he considers various intimacies of porn. The highlight of this Mapplethorpic poster film in miniature is Lauren's goggle-eyed gasp of astonishment with a tincture of fear as he watches such slurping and sucking. The real trick of the film is that it makes the bondage of sex not all that shocking while Matthews' cruisin camera appears nostalgic and almost quaint. Aside from Lauren's laughable dancing (a deliberate statement of uneasiness in itself), the film makes for heady stuff.

If a 1970s leather bar is not your scene, there was some kitsch and horror to be found in "Escape from Tomorrow" about demons in Disneyworld. Director Randy Moore has a crisply compelling black & white vision and his scenes of forced happiness and cheer echo a David  Lynch pin of Lars von Trier. But by midway, the striking eeriness that seems so refreshing goes south into a "Westworld" of "Soylent Green" and we find ourselves in pedestrian territory. The glaring scenes of forced good nature are creepy enough and they would make Diane Arbus proud. Why the need for black eyed demons, blood and androids? The sight of tourists funneled in as zombies to the Happiest Place on Earth is enough.

There are two fine documentaries also. "Let the Fire Burn" focuses on the racially charged Move fire in West Philadelphia during 1985. The tragedy was an inexcusable fiasco and 600 neighborhood homes were scorched and lost. As disturbing as this film is, it is necessary and relevant through the awareness it produces upon us---lest we forget.

"El Yaque, Pueblo de Campeones" by Javier Chuecos is a stirring and heartfelt study on the sport of windsurfing that focuses on four masters: Cheo, Campello, Yoli and Gollito. The film is especially adept at illustrating the drive to succeed combined with the ritual of faith in the country of Venezuela, despite the fact that the nation gives pitiful support to these star athletes.

If you crave more mainstream fare Matt Dillion has a solid outing in "Sunlight Jr." playing a five-o-clock shadowed man in a wheelchair who tries to keep his male equilibrium intact despite a some dingy horizons as a hopeful father on Medicaid.

Less strong, yet with some artful flairs is the Wonderland-ish "The Truth about Emanuelle." Part David Lynch with a bit of the cult film "Heathers" thrown in, this suburban cobbler of the macabre is all over the place and fades into kitsch pretty fast with a creepy plastic doll that (yes indeed) changes expression. Although Jennifer Biel is no method actor, the Stepford Wife art direction does evoke some campy, if anemic chills.

And with some favorites like Paul Haggis, Mariel Hemingway  and Terry George appearing, this festival was nothing short of a psychological yet ultimately visual voyage, highlighting the educational and epic power of film to change our assumptions and enrich our human scope.

Once again, The Key West Film Festival created a broad canvas. It's tentatively scheduled for Nov. 12-16 next year, so mark your calendars.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

Big Sur (2013 Film Fest) ( Rhoades)

Front row at the Movies

Jack Kerouac
At “Big Sur”

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Before there were hippies, America had beatniks. This was a stereotypical description of members of the so-called Beat Generation. The phrase Beat Generation was introduced in 1948 by writer Jack Kerouac to describe the “underground, anti-conformist youth movement in New York.” This countercultural literary phenomenon eventually spread to San Francisco, where it incorporated drugs, sexual experimentation, and Eastern religions.

It was marked by such writers and poets as Alan Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and of course Jack Kerouac.

Kerouac became famous for his autobiographical books “On the Road,” “The Subterraneans,” and “The Dharma Bums,” among others.

“Big Sur” was Kerouac’s 1962 novel, a fictional recounting of his stay in a cabin owned by Ferlinghetti at Bixby Canyon in Big Sur. The protagonist in the book is called Jack Duluoz, an alter ego for Kerouac.

As directed by Michael Polish (“The Astronaut Farmer”), the film calls the characters by their real names: Kerouac and his friend Neal Cassady. They have a common mistress, Billie.

The trips to Big Sur were intended to help Kerouac recuperate from the pressures of sudden fame following publication of “On the Road.” Instead, he faced a nervous breakdown on his third visit.

Jean-Marc Barr (“Dogville”) takes on the persona of Kerouac; Josh Lucas (“Stealth”) assumes the role of Cassady; and Kate Bosworth (“Superman Returns”) is cast as Billie. Also we have Radha Mitchell as Cassady’s wife Carolyn; Balthazar Getty as Michael McClure; and Anthony Edwards as Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

“Big Sur” is playing at the Tropic Cinema, an offering in this week’s Key West Film Festival.

Michael Polish and his brother Mark usually make movies together. But for this outing Michael goes it alone -- acting as director, co-producer, and writer.

He found it hard to turn a Kerouac novel into a movie. “How is this going to work? Because there’s no punctuation, the dialogue’s very sparse between people… He’s got this prose that’s incredibly tricky because he’s a language spinner. How are we going to put this all into one movie? Because the essence of it – of a person going crazy after fame – is very enticing to an artist at any level, to watch somebody go in that downward spiral is fascinating. But how are we going to do this different? And I thought if I stayed true to his inner mind and words from back to front, from beginning to end, at least people would know exactly what he was going through in his head.”

Michael Polish pulled it off, nonetheless.

srhoades@aol.com

Mariel Hemingway Interview - 2013 Film Festival

Another Hemingway Returns for Key West Film Festival

By Shirrel Rhoades
Cooke Communication Film Critic

Mariel Hemingway says the first time she realized her grandfather was someone special, more than just a writer whose picture hung in her family’s hallway, was when she went to school -- the Ernest Hemingway Elementary School in Ketchum, Idaho. “He must have been somebody important to have a school named after him,” she thought to herself.

Growing up in Idaho, she hiked, rode, climbed -- a real tomboy. “I think my father wanted a boy,” she laughed as she reminisced about her childhood. Her dad was Jack Hemingway, eldest son of the great writer. Jack was known for his love of the outdoors, a devout fly fisherman. “A love of nature,” she said. “I think I got that from him.”

She sees nature as a way to stay at peace, a way of find your balance in life. She recently wrote a book about it with her partner Bobby Williams, titled “Running With Nature.” She and the noted stuntman met on a hike.

Starting off her acting career by co-starring in “Lipstick” with her late sister Margaux, she went on to receive an Oscar nomination for Woody Allen’s “Manhattan.” Among her many other films were “Personal Best,” “Mean Season,” “Star 80,” and “Creator” (“Peter O’Toole was crazy as a loon,” she says fondly).

Now Mariel Hemingway is appearing in a documentary called ‘Running From Crazy.” It’s a look at her famous family’s history, rife with “at least seven suicides,” bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, depression, and substance abuse.

Ernest Hemingway shot himself a few months before Mariel was born. Her sister Margaux overdosed on phenobarbital. Great Uncle Leicester committed suicide with a gunshot to the head.

“These are taboo subjects,” Mariel maintains. “But the film gives people permission to talk about these things.”

Why make such a revealing film? “I did it because I was very curious myself,” she says. “And I wanted my children to know about these family secrets.” But she also saw it as a way to help other people come to terms with mental issues.

A friend of hers at the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) suggested this documentary about her family.

“Are you out of your mind?” Mariel responded. “They’re all crazy.”

“But that’s the point,” her friend replied.

When director Barbara Kopple (a two-time Oscar-winner for “Harlan County USA” and “American Dream”) expressed interest, Mariel Hemingway began to take the project seriously. Oprah was an executive producer.

Mariel’s biggest astonishment in making the film was discovering footage her sister Margaux had shot of the family. “This uncut unseen footage that my sister did was a surprise for me. Listening to her talk about her pain gave me a new appreciation for what she was going through.”

In the documentary Mariel recalls her dysfunctional parents, the drinking, the fights, her father taking refuge in their basement while young Mariel dutifully cleaned up the broken glass and blood as if it were a normal nightly ritual.

Mariel Hemingway will be in Key West to present “Running From Crazy” at the upcoming Key West Film Festival, November 13 through 17.

Her actress daughter Dree Hemingway was a guest at last year’s Key West film Festival, appearing in her debut film “Starlet.”

Looking back Mariel Hemingway finds it hard to believe she’s only visited Key West twice before. “My first trip was twenty years ago, briefly. I came back a couple of years ago. It was good fun.”

Now she returns to the island where her famous grandfather remains a legend, his image plastered on saloons, T-shirts, and his one-time home. She brings her family’s untold story. “It’s a dark history of the family,” she says. “But it’s also an uplifting film.”

The Counselor (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway

The Counselor

The legend Ridley Scott teams up with author Cormac McCarthy in "The Counselor", a Coen Brothers-ish amorality tale of drugs, dilemmas, cacti and kooks. With so much iconic talent behind the writing, this film should be an instant classic. Unfortunately, at times you might run for the instant coffee. The film skitters and scatters like so much Uzi fire with laborious exposition, long pauses, some wordy philosophy, and smatterings of silliness that do not seem to add or enhance all that much to the story.

Visually, the film is exquisite however with long shots of ochre vistas as rich as the paintings of Mark Rothko or the color-fields of Barnett Newman. Smoking trucks appear like elephants humped on the yellow horizon as mascara-eyed cheetahs pant on the ground in Rodeo Drive collars.

The provocative Javier Bardem plays a drug kingpin Reiner, and he is striking enough despite his babble about women and sex talk. His hair stands straight up as if electrified and his character appears to wear overlarge chef pants. His role is part Joker from "The Dark Knight" and part Gomez Addams. Never has their been such an odd mixture of the strange and the silly, with all of his igauna-skinned barefoot lazing and lounging by the pool. Bardem doesn't do all that much but perhaps he doesn't have to. His role recalls Brando in some of his quirky, offbeat roles and the sight of him is almost enough.

The terrific Michael Fassbender plays the title role as the counselor, a supposed advocate for prison inmates dealt a bad turn. He is a blank page, a cypher in off white and beige, who nonetheless grows gradually scaly.

I have to admit he plays it perfectly as a man in a gray cyber suit who stares at his macbook passively and decides to be in on a drug fencing deal and a partner to Reiner's laundering club.

The cardinal sin here is the acting of Cameron Diaz who although initially exciting, delivers her lines with  such an uninteresting flatness and monotone, she makes it seem as if she is parodying a sitcom or drive in movie. Even if that is the case, her inflection is so sterile and her face so poker-still, she is not quite convincing. So she is an ice queen, a cold cat of hard flashing appearances. We get it, but the flash seems uninspired with such dull toned lines like "Truth has no temperature". Sure.

As a 21st century Veronica Lake, Malkina (which translates as 'evil cat') is a little less than dramatically Wilde, excluding a Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct) type scene which merges porn techniques with a car windshield.

When the dialogue winds down and the noose tightens a bit along with the gore, we get a passable if pedestrian haunted-hunted man play of perspiration and panic in the tradition of a "Blood Simple" or a "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia". This is not an awful or embarrassing crime-play of cold fish. It is only that it is repetitive as we have seen such shadowed and mean men before, pursued and panting along the harsh and bright valleys with no one to stop and hear.

Such Tex Mex terror and rosacea runs hum-drum. "The Counselor" is not originally noir or stirring in this abstract age.

One exception is Ruben Blades who gives a good outing as a voice on the phone with a string of advice that is a zen mix of Camus, almost reaching something poetic.

For the most part however, aside for some cool and crisp cinematography, these outwardly loud but inwardly cold and cruel characters are all cowpokes and preening dommes that we have seen before in other Cohen/Capotesque or De Palma-derived epics. There is even Brad Pitt here, acting too Brad and too Pitt.

At sunset's end, the two gorgeous cats seem to have more dynamic anima and pathos within their pelts than any of these high-hatted players.

Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com

John Waters Interview - 2013 Film Fest

John Waters Talks Rats, Tennessee Williams, and This Filthy World

By Shirrel Rhoades
Cooke Communication Film Critic

Mink Stole has appeared in every single movie made by John Waters (but one). But when I knew her she went by the name of Nancy. She was my receptionist in the late ‘70s, never mentioning that she’d just starred in “Desperate Living.” But I recognized her when I went to see the John Waters masterpiece in a neighborhood art house.

You’ll remember “Desperate Living,” the funky film that opens with a cooked rat on a dinner plate. It’s Mink’s hands serving up this tasty repast.

“We actually cooked that rat,” John Waters laughed when talking with me about his upcoming visit to Key West. He’ll be doing his monologue, “This Filthy World,” on November 14th at the San Carlos. It will immediately follow the screening of the Jeffrey Schwarz film, “I Am Divine.”

With Waters’ gaunt features and pencil-thin moustache, he might remind you at first glance of actor Steve Buscemi. “People are always saying to me, ‘I loved you in Fargo,”” chuckles Waters. One year he actually used Buscemi’s photo on his Christmas card. “It’s an old joke between us. His wife thinks it’s hilarious.”

John Waters says he’s looking forward to coming back to Key West. He used to visit often, back when his star Divine was here.

“I used to walk past Tennessee Williams’ house,” he reminisces. “But I never met him.”

He pauses. “I did see him one night with a bunch of people in a restaurant. But he looked very inebriated, so I decided that was not the night to meet him.”

Waters credits Tennessee Williams as changing his life. “He really did save my life when I was a boy.” He came across a book by Williams in the library. It showed him there was indeed another world out there, different from the drab existence he knew.

Perhaps it was “This Filthy World,” the place he likes to talk about in his stand-up show.

“But now I want to be an insider because everybody else wants to be an outsider,” he quips.

John Waters has been described as a filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, journalist, visual artist, and art collector. But just how does he see himself? “I think a writer,” he decides on the spur. “I’d never make a movie I didn’t write.” From his screenplays to his monologues to his books, “I write my spoken words.”

His upcoming book is titled “Carsick.” He tells of his adventures hitchhiking across America at age 66. “I’d forgotten you sometimes stand there for ten hours waiting for a car.” He made the trip with 21 rides over 10 days.

He only saw one other hitchhiker along the way, following Route 70. He urged his driver not to stop. “I didn’t want to share,” he says, holding back a smile.

Was hitchhiking ever scary? Only in his imagination, detailed in the opening chapters of the book. “I’m afraid to stay home,” he counters. “I have a fear of NOT flying.”

Relaxing in a posh London hotel as we talked, his surroundings were quite different from those he endured on the road. He began naming the best and worst roadside motels -- but looked quite content with Covent Gardens where he was taking a break from his non-stop travel schedule.

Will he visit the Tennessee Williams exhibit while in Key West, paying his respect to his unmet mentor? We’ll see. That brings the conversation back to our mutual friend Mink Stole, who is currently starring in a play by Tennessee Williams -- a dark comedy called “The Mutilated.”

“We talk all the time,” he says of Mink Stole. But promised to email her right away to tell her he’d met someone she used to work with.

As for John Waters, he likes doing things on his own terms -- such as his stand-up routine. “I’ve had some great stuff happen in my life,” he grins. “This is all gravy.”

srhoades@aol.com

Val Lauren Interview - 2013 Film Fest

Val Lauren Stars In “Sal” at KW Film Festival

By Shirrel Rhoades
Cooke Communications Film Critic

Val Lauren was destined to play Sal Mineo in a movie. He just didn’t know it at the time.

“Sal” will be featured among those films screening at the second annual Key West Film Festival. Val has the title role.

Raised in Woodland Hills, just outside of Hollywood, it’s not unusual he got interested in acting. But he credits his mother with introducing him to those great ‘50s and ‘60s movies -- and stars like Marlon Brando, Montgomery Cliff, and James Dean.

While studying at Playhouse West, he met another young actor named James Franco. “We started out together,” nods Val Lauren. “His car had broken down and he was staying with me part of the time.”

He remembers Franco getting the call to audition for a TV movie called “James Dean.” The two actors would meet at Jerry’s Deli after each audition call back.

To prepare, Franco immersed himself in James Dean. “I guess you could say I was his right-hand man on all the research,” says Val Lauren.

One day the director offered Lauren a small, uncredited part in the film. At the table reading, each actor would say his or her character’s name. When it came to Lauren, the odd man out, he would jokingly say, “My name is Val and I’m playing Sal Mineo.”

However, Sal Mineo’s character wasn’t in the movie. And, as it turned out, Lauren’s tiny scene got “lost on the cutting room floor.”

Then, a decade later, out of the blue he got a text message from his pal James Franco saying: “You’re going to play Sal Mineo -- cool?”

“Cool,” he responded.

Franco had gotten interested in Sal Mineo while doing his research for the 2001 “James Dean” movie.

Sal Mineo was a young heartthrob, but would later become the first openly gay movie star. Nominated for two Oscars (“Rebel Without a Cause” and “Exodus”), he appeared in such classic films as “Giant,” “The Gene Krupa Story,” “Crime in the Streets,” and “The Longest Day.” But at 37, he was stabbed to death in the alley behind his apartment building.

The irony was that Sal Mineo -- nicknamed “The Switchblade Kid” from a movie role -- died by thief wielding a knife.

James Franco optioned the book by Michael Gregg Michaud. When pitching the movie, he described it as “an unconventional movie about unconventional man who led an unconventional life.”

As Lauren explains, “We get to know him through the very last day of his life.”

Acknowledging all his research, Val Lauren also received a story credit on “Sal.” “I didn’t even know that was the case until we were at the Venice Film Festival and the credits started rolling. I looked over at James and he had a smirk on his face. A surprise gift.”

Val Lauren also will be appearing in “Interior. Leather Bar,” another film by James Franco that’s showing at the Key West Film Festival. And he’s filmed “The Last Knights” with Morgan Freeman and Clive Owen in Prague.

Lauren’s also wrapping up another project with James Franco based on “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He smiles at the small world we live in. “I’ve never been to Key West,” says Val Lauren. “I can’t wait to see the island, the beaches, the house where Tennessee Williams lived.”

He notes that he once posed for a snapshot outside the apartment Tennessee Williams used in New Orleans. “Maybe I can get a picture of me standing in front of his house in Key West. Start a photo album.”

srhoades@aol.com