Category: Movies Page 1 of 47

Connie has been reviewing film uninterruptedly since 1970 (47 years) and routinely covers the Chicago International Film Festival (14 years), SXSW, the Austin Film Festival, and others, sharing detailed looks in advance at upcoming entertainment. She has taught a class on film and is the author of the book “Training the Teacher As A Champion; From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now, published by the Merry Blacksmith Press of Rhode Island.

In the documentary “It’s Quieter in the Twilight” director Billy Miossi includes information on what was once called “Man’s Greatest Modern Adventure.” What was that adventure?

The Voyager Mission, which meant the launching of not one, but two space craft to tour the outer planets, specifically Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune—14 billion miles from Earth (farther than any other mission ever). In the late sixties, it was discovered that the gravity of a planet might enable a spacecraft to go forward in space to more distant planets. It was also noted that a line-up of the planets that would be beneficial for such an experiment was to occur in 1977; this configuration would not occur again for another 177 years.

Therefore, the Voyager project began in 1977 and was called “a fantastic exploratory achievement.” Initially, 1200 engineers worked on the project. It was Big News as the reliable Voyager spacecraft got great pictures of far-away planets in our solar system.Today, coming up on 50 years in orbit in 2027, only a dozen hardy souls remain on the Voyager project. This is a film about them, their dedication to the mission, and the end of what was once dubbed “Man’s Greatest Modern Adventure.”

This 90 minute film is just as much the story of the devoted rocket scientists who have remained at their posts through thick and thin. The space crafts have now gone out so far that they are beyond the solar system and, instead, sending back data that allows us to learn how solar winds affect other planets. As Ed Stone, Professor of Physics at California Technology Institute, an original member of the team, said, “It (Voyager) changed our view of the solar system.” Some members of the original team, speaking on camera, are 87. Others are 70. They are largely unsung heroes of our by-gone race to space.

In addition to phenomenal pictures of the rings of Saturn and other facets of the farthest planets, transmitted continuously for 42 years, we learn that active volcanoes were found on Jupiter. The scientific expertise comprised of the engineers behind the project is invaluable. As current Project Leader Suzanne Dodd put it, “They have what you can’t get from paper.”

We learn that there are only 3 tracking stations for Voyager (Madrid, Barstow, and Canberra) and only the one in Canberra, Australia, would be able to see Voyager, because it is only visible in the southern hemisphere. Complicating just normal operational issues is the fact that the Canberra observatory was due to shut down for nearly a year and the Voyager team had to plan ahead for the months that they would have no way to communicate with the spacecrafts. Also, decomposing hydrogen thrusters will make it impossible to control the spacecraft over time.

The spacecraft uses 4 watts of power a year and there are only 7.5 watts left. The only way to potentially keep the spacecraft flying and sending back data, say the engineers, is to turn off some of the heaters, throwing the heating task to those that use less power so that the salvaged power can help the aging spacecraft (perhaps) limp to a 50-year finish line. The temperature in space then becomes -76 Fahrenheit.

Another problem is the amount of time it takes to both send and receive messages or commands from the spacecraft. Voyager #1 takes 20 hours for the signal to reach Earth. Voyager #2 takes 17, so fixing anything quickly is not possible. There is even a momentary hiccup in the transmission of data during the documentary that requires 35 hours to fix.

Chris Jones, rocket scientist with the Voyager Project.

One by one the backgrounds of some of the engineers trying to reprogram the 42-year-old spacecaraft are sketched: Sun Kang Matsomato of South Korea; Jefferson Hall of Mississippi; Enrique Medina (age 70) from Mexico; Fernando Peralto from Bogota, Columbia; Suzanne Dodd, who left the project in 2010 but returned as manager; Lee Yang. We learn of the untimely death of Enrique’s wife from a brain aneurysm at the beginning of the pandemic. We see Sun Kang’s young sons growing up, after making models of Voyager as small children.

The 70-year-old says, emotionally, that he enjoys continuing to work on the Voyager project, because he feels needed. “I always loved Voyager. It makes me feel that I am needed some place. I have the expertise to take Voyager through 2025—and maybe longer.”

Indeed, others, including South Korean native Sun Kang Matsomato, say, “When I see that Voyager does not need me, I will leave.”

Perhaps the most emotional bit of film is the statement from Chris Jones, who worked on Voyager from 1973 to 1981 and then returned to the task. He retired in 2021, but breaks down and tears up, emotionally, talking about the project, saying, “There was a time when I was a kid, and I had the chance to do something for the very first time. As it gets to the end, it’s going to be special, because it’s the very last time.”

As another engineer says, “There are probably only 8 more commands to execute on Voyager. The end is coming.”

Frank Lawlor has provided an excellent soundtrack and the cinematography (Willie Leatherwood and Pete Mignin) and editing (Matt Reynolds) are top-notch in this SXSW offering.

The film opens in Los Angeles on Friday, May 19^th at Laemmle Noho #7 and on demand everywhere that day, including ITunes and Apple TV. A premiere screening and Q&A will be held at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California on Monday, May 15^th at 7 p.m. For all you space geeks out there, this is one you’ll like.

“65” by Scott Beck & Bryan Woods Is Well-Acted, Entertaining Sci-Fi Thriller

By Connie Wilson

On March 24, 2023

In Local, Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews

(Scott) Beck and (Bryan) Woods, the boys from Bettendorf (Iowa) ,have created another great film in their latest offering, “65.” The film stars Adam Driver as Mills, the pilot of a space craft from the planet Somaris, who is embarking on a 2-year run when his spaceship encounters cryogenic failure during an asteroid shower and crash lands on a planet that we will soon find out is Earth, 65 million years ago.

The ship had been carrying passengers in pods, but eleven of the passengers are dead after the crash, including the family of a young girl about the same age as Mills’ (Adam Driver’s) own daughter back on Solaris. Chloe Coleman plays Nevine, Mills’ ailing daughter. He’s being paid three times the going rate to make this long trip; his hope is to earn enough to save Nevine’s life. Alas, that is not in the cards, but the surviving pod person on his ship, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) will, in time, grow close to Mills, despite their inability to easily communicate.

The acting in the film is terrific. Adam Driver selects interesting roles and this is an interesting role, dealing with two people who are trying to come to terms with deep grief, while also staying alive on a planet inhabited by dangerous dinosaurs. Filmed largely in Louisiana and in Coos Bay, Oregon, the end credits also mention Ireland and Australia. Wherever they found the realistic-looking caverns and mountains, the “sets” (if one can call them that) are truly fantastic.

More importantly, the suspenseful beats that beset the characters while they attempt to make it to a still-working escape pod that has landed far from the impact point of the rest of the ship, are truly terrifying. The chasms they encounter look real. The attack by a velociraptor looks real. The imagined encounters—including Koa swallowing a large insect while asleep—are creative and original.

That is the best thing about this “Jurassic Park/Alien/Star Wars” combination movie: it does not feel derivative. It feels real and fresh and new. I’ve now been at this since 1970; trust me. Check it out!

All of the above are “the good.” I enjoyed this film more than the much more generic “Haunt” that the team of Beck & Woods followed up “A Quiet Place” with in 2019. In a month that saw sequels (“Creed,” and “Scream”) galore, this film is the rare indie, stand-alone, not-part-of-a-franchise.

A thinking man (or woman’s) film; I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is also family friendly with a PG-13 rating,

THE BAD

The “bad” of “65” is not the writer/directors’ fault.

The movie got pushed back in its release date from April of 2022 to March 10 of 2023 by Covid. Then, Sony, which budgeted it at $91 million, did not market it properly. I heard almost nothing about the film before it actually launched, slated to open against the franchise sequels mentioned in the paragraph above. It should have premiered at Sundance or at SXSW, like “A Quiet Place” did in 2018.

Some have mentioned that the title (“65”) did not help the film. It tells you nothing about the theme. I was not a fan of the information projected onscreen. Yes, I know that “Star Wars” did it, but saying “Prior to the advent of mankind in the infinity of the universe, other civilizations explored the universe” seemed about as cutting edge as using a voice-over to give us essential information, which generally is not done in modern-day movies nearly as much as in years of yore.

Others have pointed to Adam Drver’s last few films as not box office catnip. They mentioned “Annette,” “The Last Duel” and “White Noise.” With the exception of “The Last Duel,” which looked like a real lemon from the get-go, both “Annette” and “White Noise” will find fans when they stream, IMHO.

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, screenwriters of “A Quiet Place,” the morning after the film opened SXSW in 2018 with Connie at Starbucks.

I also wanted to share these insights from Beck & Woods in an interview with“The Hollywood Reporter,” because it underscores why “65” deserves to find its following.

Bryan Woods told the “Hollywood Reporter, “In order to sleep at night, we have to believe in a world where a great idea, if executed well, can still break out and get people talking about it. And I do believe that. I absolutely think that can still happen. Inevitably, there will be franchise fatigue. It’s just inevitable when you think about comic book movies, which we’re fans of. They’re done at such a scale that’s mind blowing, and they’re executed so well most of the time. They’ve had a stranglehold on the box office for 20 or 30 years, but there was 70 years of cinema where the only thing people would go see was the Western. The Western dominated 70 years of cinema, and then one day, people were like, “I’m done with the Western. I don’t want to see the Western ever again.” And now there’s only a couple that come out a year, so it’s all cyclical. Things will change, but I believe that there’s always room for a splashy concept that’s executed well.”

From Scott Beck: “And just the little that we can do as filmmakers, we’re always going to be interested in trying to carve our own path and make something new, and not necessarily stand on the shoulders of sequels or remakes.”

Q: You guys said something to THR years ago that’s stuck with me ever since. It was on the subject of John Krasinski getting the spotlight on A Quiet Place, and your thinking at the time was that he’d paid his dues for a long time to get that moment. And in due time, the two of you might find yourselves in a similar position to get a moment like that. Where did you guys develop such a mature mindset about all that? Is it your Midwestern values?

Beck: “Well, thanks for saying so. We had to develop thick skin early on, but we brought it upon ourselves. In high school, when we made these short films and feature films for no money, we would test screen them at the local community college. And we will never forget our first scathing review of one of our films. We were 17 or 18 years old, and at that age, you’re incredibly vulnerable while still trying to find your voice.

And yet it opened our eyes to criticism. You can learn from it as long as it’s a critique. There’s something to pull out of that, and that’s coming from two people who’ve read film criticism for ages from many different outlets. You also learn that you can’t please everybody, and things are not always within your control.”

“65” is a good movie. It will ultimately find its fans. Check it out!

“Evil Dead Rise” Premieres at SXSW and Heckler Makes News

By Connie Wilson

On March 20, 2023

In Movies, Paranormal stories, Pop Culture, Reviews, Texas

The first film of the trilogy, The Evil Dead, as well as its 2013 remake, were so horrifically gory that they were actually banned in various countries including Finland, Ukraine, and Singapore. That should have been my first clue that I would hate this movie.

Eight months, one Covid lockdown, and 6,500 litres of fake blood went into making the latest in the Sam Raimi “Evil Dead” series, this one entitled “Evil Dead Rise” and shot in New Zealand. Its Irish director, Lee Cronin, earned a Saturn award nomination for Breakthrough Director at Sundance. I had high hopes upon entry to the World Premiere on Wednesday, March 15th, at SXSW’s Paramount Theater.

I was game to sit through “Evil Dead Rise.” As a former active voting member of HWA (Horror Writers’ Association) and the author of three novels some might call “horror,” this would be right up my alley for “The Color of Evil” trilogy author.

Wrong, Snore-Snout.

If 80% of a film’s success is casting, this one started out wobbly with a freakishly tall and extensively tattooed leading lady, Alyssa Sutherland. The tattoos may not have been real and the Australian actress/model’s height is listed as five feet eleven inches, so take those comments with a grain of salt. I didn’t buy any of the actors’ performances.

The synopsis read: “A twisted tale of two estranged sisters whose reunion is cut short by the rise of flesh-possessing demons, thrusting them int a primal battle for survival as they face the most nightmarish version of family imaginable.”

I reviewed film through the eighties, when slasher films were all the rage. After about twenty in a row, I swore off the entire series of films that attempt to entertain you by thrusting a knife into someone’s throat (Kevin Bacon in one memorable eighties cabin scene) or gross you out by having excessive projectile vomiting.

This film has taken the worst of those gross-out concepts and amplified them. If that’s your thing, as it seemed to be for the man next to me who was laughing hilariously and thoroughly enjoying this movie, then go for it. If this audience member hadn’t been very large (and blocking the aisle to exit) I might have left before the end, but, thanks to Mr. Laugh-A-Lot, I couldn’t escape. I saw the entire film (as did the heckler.)

Watching an eyeball fly across the room from a severed head and someone else inadvertently swallow it: gross. Buckets of blood in an elevator that bursts forth? Derivative of “The Shining” but with much less plot justification.

During the Q&A for the film, Bruce Campbell was brought onstage, the original Ash of the first 4 films, who raised the $350,000 for the very first film that Stephen King championed and ended up playing a lead in subsequent films (but not this one.) This new version moved from the woods to the city

As Campbell (“Ash”) was speaking, an apparently inebriated male theater-goer in the audience shouted out, loudly, “This movie effing sucks” (profanity euphemism substituted). Campbell demanded that the man—already on his way out— be removed from the Paramount Theater. (It made all the papers.)

You’ve been warned.

“Tetris” Takes Off as Top-Notch Drama at SXSW

By Connie Wilson

On March 17, 2023

In Movies, Pop Culture, Reviews, Texas

Director Jon S. Baird at the SXSW premiere of “Tetris.”

“Tetris,” the film helmed by Scottish director Jon S. Baird and starring Australian actor Taron Egerton (“Kingsmen: The Secret Service”), screened on March 15^th at SXSW, telling a complicated story of how the Russian game Tetris became a worldwide sensation.

Henk Rogers, the Dutch-born American who secured the rights to the game over a period of a year and a half, while dealing with cut-throat competitors and the corrupt Russian governmental system, was onstage after the film screened and said, “It captured a year and a half in my life in two hours.”

Screenwriter Noah Pink (“Tetris”) at SXSW.

The scriptwriter, Noah Pink, described a once-in-a-lifetime scenario where his script happened to be on the right desk at the right time and the rest is history. Brian Grazer and Ron Howard produced, and everyone wondered how this complicated story of international intrigue and double-dealing had remained hidden for so long.

The cast included Russian actor Nikita Efremov, who portrayed the original Russian creator of the game,

Alexey Pajitnov. At film’s end, the two men embraced onstage and described the film as, “Really, a story about the friendship of two guys.” Alexey is aided in fleeing Russia by his American partner.

The ins and outs of the plot are so complicated that even attempting a brief synopsis is a Herculean task. Suffice it to say that the synopsis on IMDB says: “The story of how one of the world’s most popular video games found its way to players around the globe. Businessman Henk Rogers and Tetris inventor Alexey Pajitnov join forces in the U.S.S.R., risking it all to bring Tetris to the masses.”

Following the screening, Director Jon S. Baird said, from the Paramount stage, “It’s been a quite overwhelming reaction from the audience,” which gave the film, at its conclusion, a standing ovation. Of the film’s success he said, “”For me, it’s all in the performances. We had amazing Russian actors. Steven Spielberg said 80% of a film’s success was casting your film properly. The cast was amazing.” He went on to praise the performance of Taron Egerton in the lead role of Henk Rogers.

On Egerton’s part, he felt that the theme was quite universal and was “Really a story abut the friendship of two guys.”

The film releases March 31^st and will be showing here in Austin at Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas.

Entrepreneur Henk Rogers embraces Russian inventor of “Tetris” Alexey Pajitnov onstage at the premiere of “Tetris” at SXSW.

“You Can Call Me Bill” Is Documentary About William Shatner at SXSW on March 16, 2023

By Connie Wilson

On March 17, 2023

In Interviews, Movies, News, Reviews, Texas

“You Can Call Me Bill,” written and directed by Alexandre O. Philippe, screened at the Paramount Theater in Austin on March 16 at SXSW.

The documentary was financed by Legion, which is fan-owned, and all the donors’ names appear in the credits at the end.

The documentary opens in a forest with the quotation, “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” The director did a nice return to this forest image at the documentary’s end, but the middle contains Shatner pontificating on a variety of subjects and many clips from his work through the years. Ninety-one year old William Shatner, forever Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, is the subject.

William Shatner, subject of the SXSW documentary “You Can Call Me Bill.”

The film had a structure that was projected onscreen:

Prologue: The Miracle

Chapter 1: Love, death and horses

Chapter 2: Masks

Chapter 3: Boldly Go

Chapter 4: Loneliness

Chapter 5: So fragile, so blue

Director Alexandre O. Philippe and William Shatner onstage at SXSW on March 16, 2023.

The director explained that in this structure each portion corresponded to one of Shatner’s original songs. The best song was the last one, “I Want To Be A Tree,” which was Shatner saying he wanted to be cremated after death. Then a Redwood will be planted in his ashes and grow into a mighty tree. At age ninety-one he admitted that he thinks about death all the time, but the director shared that he had visited four cities in four days and keeps a schedule that a much younger man would have difficulty keeping up with. Shatner also recently reconciled with his 64-year-old wife just three years after their divorce.

If the structure for the documentary seems a bit “loosey goosey,” it was. But, as Shatner says in the documentary, “Ooga booga should be part of our lives.” It must have been quite a task to figure out how to structure the ramblings of the star, interesting though they are, and to coordinate them with clips from Shatnr’s body of work and still share insightful stories from throughout the years.

Two stories that stood out for me were Shatner’s remarks about how the original pilot (which appeared to star Jeffrey Hunter in the Captain Kirk lead) was passed on by the network, which then took another run at casting, giving “Star Trek” a second shot, a highly irregular course of action.

The other story that Shatner told involved the moment in time, post “Star Trek,” in July of 1969 when he was flat broke and sleeping in a truck in a remote field, while witnessing men walking on the moon for the first time, a bit of his life that he referred to as “the irony of symmetry.” Better times were ahead.

The clip that I enjoyed the most featured Shatner doing a bit at the ceremony awarding George Lucas a Life Achievement Award. Bill takes the stage and begins to talk, but he pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket midway through that reveals he is there talking about ‘Star Trek” but the invitation was for “Star Wars.” We can see Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford laughing heartily while seated beside Lucas and “Star Wars” storm troopers escort the confused Captain Kirk offstage.

Director of “You Can Call Me Bill” Alexandre O Philippe.

Shatner’s life advice: “Take care of the inner child. That curiosity is what keeps us alive. The search for love is what keeps us alive. Curiosity equals love.”

In regards to Chapter 1, Shatner said, “Nature or animals or people are what keep us connected.” He emphasized the connectedness of life on planet Earth throughout the one hour and thirty-six minute documentary, which released March 16^th after its first showing at SXSW.

On Acting: Shatner says that, “Learning the words is the work of the actor. The rest is just kicks.” When asked if he was a method actor who took the part home after his work day, he responded, “The carpenter doesn’t come home and try to fix the dining room table.” So that would be a no.

Regarding those who have imitated Shatner through the years, the verdict was “Every word is its own sentence.” Various imitators were shown giving his delivery their best shot, in the same way that Christopher Walken is often mimicked.

Shatner’s life philosophy: “Everything is an adventure.” He added, “Do it fully, boldly, courageously. Limit your sense of regret.”

In his discussion of loneliness, Shatner noted that he had “been alone all my life,” ever since his birth in Canada in 1931. He said, “Loneliness is endemic” and noted that he was talking about existential loneliness. Almost three years after the 91-year-old ‘Star Trek’ actor and his 64-year-old spouse divorced, William and Elizabeth recently decided to give their relationship another go. Shatner said: “‘My wife… she is the zest of life.”

Shatner’s trip into space with BlueOrigin on July 20, 2021, has played heavily into his becoming a proponent of trying to save the Earth. He talked about how he cried upon coming back to Earth and says that he thinks now that he was grieving for the Earth. He commented on the “total denial on a global sale of global warming.” He has been promoting efforts to curb global warming and become an activist to save the planet. He said, “The planet is all we have.”

The director filmed half a day per chapter on a massive sound stage, using three cameras, building up to the “I Want To Be A Tree” song that ends the film. was, as noted, mostly Shatner pontificating, with some clips. The information about the actor’s early years was sparse and figuring out the sequence of his rise to fame was up to the audience member. For one thing, getting the opportunity to go on as the understudy for Christopher Plummer in Henry V was helpful to his career.

Shatner, himself, may have given the best review of this work saying, “I believe about 85% of what I say is good and the other 15% is bullshit. His meditations on life, love, grief and loneliness (among other topics) are worth hearing.

“Talk To Me” Is Horror Hit of SXSW

By Connie Wilson

On March 17, 2023

In Movies, Pop Culture, Reviews, Scary stories, Texas

Talk to Me Danny and Michael Philippou (“Rocka Rocka”) worked on 2014’s great Australian horror film “The Babadook.”

But this year they are directing a horror film, starring Sophie Wilde and Miranda Otto. It premiered at SXSW and is being distributed by A24, beginning July 28th.

The film opens with pounding intense music at a party. A young man wades through the crowd to a room in the back and pounds on the door, insisting that his brother open the door. When the brother does not open the door, he breaks it down. Mayhem involving a large butcher knife ensues. The Philippou brothers have our attention.

The plot involves a hand that supposedly belonged to a psychic who communicated with the dead. Teenagers come into possession of it, and all hell breaks loose.

You must grasp the hand (supposedly the mummified remains of the psychic who owned and used it previously. You must light a candle and snuff it out when done. You must say “Talk to me,” followed by “I let you in” and that’s when the fun and games begin. Did I mention that you, as the subject doing this for “fun” at a party are tied to the chair and that only 90 seconds must elapse before the candle is blown out, or else the spirit that inhabits you might not leave your body? If you go longer than 90 seconds and happen to die during the time the spirits from limbo are inhabiting your body, they will take your corporeal self over and you are theirs, apparently forever with a very long-term habit of terrorizing and torturing other normal idiots who take up the hand and use it as a party trick.

The Philippou brothers at a Buzz showing of “Talk To Me” at SXSW 2023.

If you’ve followed this, so far, be aware that some studios gave the directors notes on their script that said they must get the history of the hand and explore that more fully. One of the two directors, appearing after the screening, said, “When I read that, I said, WTF is this? I don’t want to do that. We’d get notes like ‘You’re fired if you can’t get these in,’ so we went the indie route.”The moderator noted, with only thinly veiled sarcasm, that U.S. studios have entire offices of people who give filmmakers horrible notes, which the successful directors learn to ignore.

The filmmakers, instead, chose to gather friends and people’s whose opinions on the horror genre they trust(ed); they used their feedback, instead. Asked if they would refuse to use any horror technique seen elsewhere, the answer was, “I found it fun to do a spin on certain tropes. We wanted to have the film be both horror and drama. Life isn’t all one emotion.” The director mentioned films he admires: the Russian film “The Return” or “Memories of Murder.”

The Philippous finally went indie because they had heard and read a lot about studios requiring directors to do things a certain way and the director not having final cut. As one said, “We wanted to make a horror story, not become one.”

Newcomer Sophie Wilde carries most of the movie on her slender shoulders, and she does a great job. The

Sophie Wilde, star of “Talk To Me.”

consensus was that we were in the presence of a movie star. When asked how she got into the frame of mind to do the most grueling scenes, she referenced music and said, “I’m a firm believer in music to get into that mood: techno and ambient to get to a dark place.”

This film is quite the dark place. The make-up people did not get the nod they deserve, as the apparitions that haunt those who use “the hand” were horrifyingly grotesque. Sophie, herself, noted that some of the scenes were shot in an extremely hot, small room and, “I thought I was possessed. I was so hot. I felt like I wasn’t a real human being.”

This is an auspicious beginning with A24 for the Philippous. It was much more creative than the bigger budget “Evil Dead Rise.”

to me

Directors:

Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou

Executive Producer:

Stephen Kelliher, Sophie Green, Phil Hunt, Compton Ross, Daniel Negret, Noah Dummett, John Dummett, Jeff Harrison, Ari Harrison, Miranda Otto, Dale Roberts, Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou

Producer:

Samantha Jennings, Kristina Ceyton

Screenwriter:

Danny Philippou, Bill Hinzman

Cinematographer:

Aaron McLisky ACS

Editor:

Geoff Lamb

Production Designer:

Bethany Ryan

Sound Designer:

Emma Bortignon

Music:

Cornel Wilczek

Principal Cast:

Sophie Wilde, Miranda Otto, Alexandra Jensen, Joe Bird, Otis Dhanji, Zoe Terakes, Chris Alosio

“Little Richard: I Am Everything” Rocks the House At SXSW

By Connie Wilson

On March 17, 2023

In Movies, Music, Pop Culture, Reviews, Texas

“Little Richard: I Am Everything,” a documentary from Lisa Cortes, premiered at SXSW on March 13^th.

I’ve saved the best for last, because this was genuinely one of the best documentaries—if not THE best documentary—-that I saw this year (and I saw a lot of them).

There are extensive clips of Little Richard, the flamboyant showman from Macon, Georgia, one of twelve children of Leva Mae and Richard Penniman, a minister who ran bootleg on the side.

Richard was born somewhat crippled (one arm was longer than the other) and queer and his father kicked him out of the house because of his sexual orientation. He found a place to stay at Ann’s Tic Toc speakeasy, where he sang blues and gospel and listened to Sister Rosetta, the Mother of Black soul.

Director of “Little Richard: I Am Everything” Lisa Cortes.

We learn that Billy Wright helped Richard get a record deal and that Esquerita, a musician, taught him to play piano. The technique was boogie woogie on the left and Ike Turner with the right hand. However, the music that Richard was making was considered “race music” and was only allowed on Black stations. The documentary is right when it says, “It says something profound when Black music is the wellspring” for rock and roll. Of course, record producers tried to steal the sound and put white singers like Pat Boone on vinyl.

Little Richard was not much of a businessman and was paid only half a cent a record, which was a very low return. He played to segregated audiences, but he was so popular and so electric that white teenagers broke the color barrier to get into his shows in Black clubs. As Richard said, “My music broke down the walls of segregation.” He mentions Fats Domino and Blueberry Hill, as well as Bo Diddly and B.B. King and others who followed.

Little Richard used make-up and said “I don’t give a damn what they think.” But, ultimately, he lived in a constant state of contradiction because of his religious upbringing and would try to go ‘straight’ multiple times. These were the days of Emmet Till (Sept. 2, 1955) and Richard wanted “the capacity to own the right to be in the world.”

As Bo and Richard said, “We built a hell of a highway and people are still driving on it. And they ain’t paying for it!”

Various singers like Tom Jones, David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards pay tribute to Little Richard, who also helped the Beatles out when they were just starting out.

Then, Richard withdrew from rock and roll and enrolled at Oakwood College, a Black conservatory. He thought his music was the devil’s music, and a comet or Sputnik going overhead made him think the world might be coming to an end. He even married Ernestine Harvin, a fellow student, in Los Angeles. She described him as “positive, loving and caring” as a husband.

Richard toured in 1962 on a bill in London with Jet Harris and Sam Cooke. It was in Liverpool that he would meet the Beatles and Billy Preston in Hamburg at the Star Club. English bands, at that time, were very static, but Mick and the boys learned from Little Richard.

In 1964 Little Richard was on “American Bandstand” and, in fact, Dick Clark would organize the only testimonial awards tribute to Little Richard very late in his career, after he returned to music from spreading the word of God. Richard was described as “generous” and “so real” and he spoke up and told the world, at the 1989 induction of Otis Reddng into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, “He’s the root of all this.” Richard would also say, “I feel so real. I feel so unnecessary.”

It can truthfully be said that Little Richard paved the way for everything that followed.

The documentary director previously worked on “All in the Fight for Democracy,” a documentary about Stacey Abrams. She said she wants to “Explore figures and people who move things forward and are a continuation of how change is possible.” She gave credit to Gus Wynner (“Rolling Stone”) for their partnership and said that the documentary took 18 months to make.

For instance, Ernestine Penniman, Richard’s one-time love, was said to be dead, but came forward when the film was in post production. The family, when they finally saw the finished product, said, “You did Richard right.”

She sure did. It’s a terrific documentary and one of the best things at SXSW this year.

“Raging Grace” Wins SXSW Narrative Feature Competition

By Connie Wilson

On March 15, 2023

In Movies, Reviews, Texas

“Amazing Grace” Wins Feature Award at SXSW, 2023

I had not planned to write a review of “Raging Grace,” although I saw it. There is no need for a picky critic to deride the work of a new filmmaker which was 80% fine—until the end.

“RAGING GRACE” is, so far, one of the only feature films I have seen at SXSW, as I’ve devoted much more time to seeing one-time-only premieres of television series or specials. (“Love & Death,” “Lucky Hank,” etc.) I thought the film was overlong and that the ending fell apart. It was promising up to the final one-third, which would have been the last 33 minutes of the 99 minute film. The Filipino lead and her young daughter (the “Grace” of the title) were fine, and the sets were ornate and impressive.

There are only so many hours in a day. I have focused on television premieres that looked interesting and documentaries. For a variety of reasons (mostly time, but sometimes subject matter) I have not attended or reviewed animated films or shorts. I drive in from a suburb (Manchaca) each day, and it doesn’t make sense to spend half an hour driving in, pay $32.50 to park, and have a film that only lasts 10 minutes.

When I saw this film, the first Filipino feature to be included at SXSW, I was impressed by the acting and the lavish English manse that appeared prominently in the film. The first two-thirds of the film were excellent. For me, the ending fell apart. It seemed overlong; people were climbing under the railing in the theater to depart early. That was about the point where the film introduced 2 look-alike characters whose identities are not clearly explained and a chorus of Filipino singers were prominently featured. Other cultural touches (food, Tagalog sub-titles, etc.) were impressive.

There were many good plot twists in the film. But there was a lot, plotwise, that was left unclear.

There just weren’t as many “narrative features” this year at SXSW.

And then this happened.

Congratulations to Director/Screenwriter Paris Zarcilla.

May he continue to make feature films that are as promising as the first 2/3 of this film.

NARRATIVE FEATURE COMPETITION

Presented by Panavision
Winner: Raging Grace
Director/Screenwriter: Paris Zarcilla, Producer: Chi Thai

“Raging Grace’s heady blend of horror, history, and midnight humor announces the arrival of an exciting new filmmaking talent in writer-director Paris Zarcilla. The story of a Filipina house cleaner and her young daughter confronting Britain’s racial and class divides, Raging Grace is both frank and elusive, a film that subverts expectations on its way to a stirring conclusion. In cleverly employing genre tropes to explore vast socio political matters, Zarcilla has crafted a resonant, urgent work about labor, legacy, and diaspora.”

“Being Mary Tyler Moore” Documentary at SXSW Highlights Groundbreaking Nature of Moore’s Work

By Connie Wilson

On March 14, 2023

In Interviews, Movies, Of Local (Quad Cities') Interest, Pop Culture, Reviews, Television, Texas

“Being Mary Tyler Moore” documentary screens at SXSW on March 13, 2023.

Director James Adolphus, who helmed the documentary “Being Mary Tyler Moore,” was asked about his exposure to Mary Tyler Moore before he undertook making this extraordinarily intimate two- hour film about her life.

He admitted that he had never watched any of her shows, that she was more a figure that his mother knew. (“I knew her from the lyric in the Weezer song.”) He then said, “It’s odd to make a film about someone you don’t know and to fall in love with someone after the fact. She felt like my cousin, my sister. She had to fight back against the patriarchy.”

The documentary is an attempt to reconcile the insecure woman who looked so proud and regal with the real woman inside who was not that way at all. It was an attempt to show the modest, humble person beneath the veneer. With the help of many clips from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” it more than succeeds.

One week after the 18-year-old MTM graduated from high school, she got a job portraying Happy Hotpoint in television ads. The problem was that the young Mary had married Richard Meeker in 1954, when she was eighteen. She soon turned up pregnant, giving birth to her only child, Richard, and losing herHotpoint job in the process.

Later in the film we learn that Moiore’s own mother would gve birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, only a few months after Richard’s birth, giving Mary a sister, as well as a brother, John, who was 7 years younger. There were references to Mary’s mother’s alcoholism, but Moore’s parents were married more than 50 years. Her mother eventually sobered up and even took on duties caring for the two youngsters, Elizabeth and Richard, who were so close in age.

Mary’s marriage to Meeker did not last. She would separate and then marry again almost immediately, in 1962, to Grant Tinker, to whom she would remain married for 18 years. Her career, in 1959, included a stint as Sexy Sam, the faceless voice on “Richard Diamond, Private Investigator.” When Mary asked for a raise from her $85 per episode salary, she was fired.

Director James Adolphus of “Being Mary Tyler Moore” on March 13, 2023 at SXSW. (Photo by Connie Wilson).

Enter Carl Reiner, a comic mentor who envisioned her as the character Laurie Petrie, the wife in a 1960 pilot dubbed “Head of the Family,” The show eventually morphed into “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” When David Susskind suggested, in a somewhat offensive interview, that women should not work, Mary said, “I could waste a lot more energy sitting around chatting with other gals all day.” She became exactly what the network was horrified by: a contemporary woman. She also insisted on wearing pants on television, which broke new ground. (As a former junior high school teacher who insisted on wearing pants suits in 1969 at a time when they were banned by the school, I could relate.)

Throughout the documentary, we learn just how groundbreaking Mary Tyler Moore would become. This was just the beginning. In interviews, Mary referred to the period as “An unenlightened time. I believe in figuring out a way to contribute.”

At the end of the 5-year run of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” Mary was a hot property who charmed men without antagonizing their wives. She had a comic flair that no less an expert than Lucille Ball recognized and applauded. She was offered a picture deal with Universal and—unusual for the time—had the right to refuse to do pictures that she did not think would benefit her image.However, in order to be given permission to star in a musical version of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” on Broadway, Mary would give up that right of refusal and, following the Broadway bomb the show became, would end up in films like “Change of Habit” (1969) opposite Elvis.

In 1968, when she was 32, a miscarriage led to her diagnosis as diabetic. With a blood sugar level of 700, she was fortunate to have been discovered to have the disease, which would end her life at the age of 80 in 2017. Friends credit her Dr. husband with extending her life at least ten years.

Broadway having bombed, CBS offered her her own show. Mary and Grant Tinker jumped at the chance. Tinker saw that forming their own company would be beneficial and Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises was born, with Tinker at the helm and Mary the major talent. At one point, the company had six shows on the air at once.

Meanwhile, Tinker hired Jim Brooks and Allan Burns to write the show, which would place Mary Tyler Moore in Minneapolis as a woman making it on her own at the age of thirty.I remember how groundbreaking it was for the goal to be not just to marry, but to be independent and live on one’s own. “That Girl” with Marlo Thomas had a similar single girl protagonist, but her main mission was to find a husband.

At this point, in real life Mary Tyler Moore had never been on her own, but had been married since she was 18 years old. The entire idea of society’s pushing young women into marriage was covered in 1979’s “Kramer versus Kramer,” where Meryl Streep articulated this “never been on my own” status all the way to 5 Oscars. As someone who lived it, I can vouch that the goal was to “have a ring on your finger” by the end of college, at the latest, a goal that did not appeal to my own working mother or to me. Like Mary Tyler Moore’s onscreen character Mary Richard, this was “ahead of the times.”

Mary Tyler Moore lived the fifties ideal of marriage after school and as soon as possible. She remained mired in marital bliss, marrying Tinker immediately after divorcing Meeker. She remained a married woman until she was 44 years old, when she and Tinker divorced (1980)and she moved to New York City. She remarried for a third time in 1982 to Dr. Robert Levine, 14 years her junior.

The show that Mary Tyler Moore launched, about an independent thirtyish woman making it on her own, was a risk. It was almost killed by a terrible time slot, until Fred Silverman took over CBS, axed a lot of comedies like “Green Acres’ and moved “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” into the best time slot on television. It was, as Rosie O’Donnell termed it, “Appointment TV.” Silverman placed her show on the same night as “All in the Family” and alongside Bob Newhart’s show on Saturday nights. The rest is history, as the talented cast garnered multiple awards and still has one of the best endings of any series sit-com on television, past or present.

Lena Waithe answers questions about “Being Mary Tyler Moore” onstage at the Zach Theater during SXSW 2023 on March 13, 2023.

Mary Tyler Moore won 7 Emmies, 3 Golden Globes, and earned an Oscar nomination (for “Ordinary People”). And, as the documentary terms it, “As Mary Tyle Moore goes, so goes the nation.” This meant welcoming the 1973 Supreme Court decision to allow women the right to decide whether or not to have an abortion.In 1980, immediately after her divorce from Tinker, Mary conquered Broadway with her performance replacing Tom Conti in the play “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” Meanwhile, she described herself as “going through adolescence” in New York City, as she was said to be involved with Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the director of the play, and was socializing after years of marriage. However, she was drinking more than she should have been, and, as he noted, sometimes that could lead to belligerence. She would curb this possibly inherited tendency towards alcoholism by a stint at the Betty Ford Clinic.

In 1980, Mary Tyler Moore was nominated as Best Actress for her role as Beth in “Ordinary People” opposite Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton. Director Robert Redford said he had always been fascinated by the possibility of a dark side to MTM, who might have been brittle inside with a pensiveness, anger, hurt, and confusion over such issues as her inability to connect meaningfully with her son Richard.

Also in 1980, Mary’s son Richard, then aged 24, would die of a gun shot wound. The documentary says he had a gun collection, was inherently clumsy, and it was an accident. Three weeks after his death, MTM would be nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for her role in “Ordinary People.” She would also lose her younger sister, Elizabeth, to a drug overdose at the age of 21. Her younger brother John would die of kidney cancer.

Mary met Dr. Robert Levine, her third husband, when he cared for her ailing mother in 1982. The line in the documentary is that “She fell in love for the first time in her life.” Yet Grant Tinker’s children, who became her step-children, testify to the good years with Mary Tyler Moore as their step-mom. The 14-years-younger Levine would remain her husband till the end, caring for her in their bucolic Connecticut home. The couple was devoted to one another and Levine set the plans in motion to produce this documentary, despite turning down many earlier overtures.

The now 73-year-old Levine reached out to Lena Waithe (“Ready Player One,” “Master of None”) after reading an interview in “Vanity Fair,” in which she expressed an interest in doing a documentary about Mary Tyler Moore’s life.When asked about his decision to share his private film of Mary with Producer/Director/Writer Waite, Dr.Levine, an executive producer, said, to laughter, “To have a Black queer girl from the South side of Chicago want to tell her story. Are you kidding me?”

Dr. Levine was asked what surprised him after seeing the film. He responded, “I had never seen the bridal shower footage with Betty White and others. It was simple and natural. She talked about me making her a tuna fish sandwich in the middle of the night. Things like that had the most impact for her. It is the simple kindnesses that really have the most impact.The journey of her life was the journey of women in this country. As a human being, she felt the need to keep going forward. She was ahead of the times. I didn’t want a derivative feeling. A new voice coming forward (Lena Waithe) was interesting to me.”

Waithe added, “I wanted to give a real sense of how she was as a person.” The decision to use voice-over(s) rather than the talking head documentary approach was Waithe’s.

The documentary is long, at 2 hours, but it is very good. While an interview with Rona Barrett is over-used and David Susskind comes off poorly as an ultra-conservative fossil of the times in his onscreen interview, I would highly recommend this HBO documentary, funded by Fifth Season, if you are or were a fan of Mary Tyler Moore’s work. She helped raise over $2 billion for Juvenile Diabetes and gave so many other working women a model that remains groundbreaking.

Credits:

Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Documentary Spotlight)
Distributor: HBO
Production companies: HBO Documentary Films, Fifth Season, Hillman Grad, The Mission Entertainment, Good Trouble Studios
Director: James Adolphus
Producers: Ben Selkow, James Adolphus, Lena Waithe, Rishi Rajani, Debra Martin Chase, Andrew C. Coles, Laura Gardner
Executive producers: S. Robert Levine, Michael Bernstein, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller
Cinematography: James Adolphus
Editor: Mariah Rehmet
Archival Producer: Libby Kreutz
Music: Theodosia Roussos
2 hour

“Caterpillar” Is Fascinating Documentary on Opening Night of 2023 SXSW Film Festival

By Connie Wilson

On March 11, 2023

In Education, Health/Medicine, Movies, Pop Culture, Reviews, Science and Medicine

“Caterpillar” documentary at SXSW.

SXSW 2023 is back with a vengeance.

I have not received Red Carpet placement for Opening Night since 2017, so I executed Plan B, planning to take myself over to the Alamo Drafthouse on Lamar Boulevard to see “Confessions of a Good Samaritan.” This was a film about a woman who donated a kidney to a stranger. When I arrived, the film had begun, so I took myself to “Caterpillar,” instead.

This was a fascinating documentary about a new YouTube fad, changing one’s eye color, which is done, surgically, in India. It sounded very dicey, and, as it turns out, it is.

The documentary, written and directed by Liza Mandelup of the Parts & Labor film enterprise, followed the journey of Raymond David Taylor of Miami as he set off for India to have his brown eyes turned into a color described as “frost.”

It seems that there is a thriving cosmetic industry in Cairo, Mexico, Panama, and India and, of course, the recent deaths of two American citizens in Matamoros, Mexico, (we now know), was a trip for cosmetic surgery. A friend of mine flew to Costa Rica for dental work, so I’m surprised I had not heard of this latest vision fad, but I don’t spend much time watching videos on YouTube.

David had a very rough childhood, even getting kicked out of the house while young, at one point, and he (and most of the other patients) seem to think that “Changing me will change my outlook on life.” As David says, “If I feel sad one more day, I don’t know if I’m going to make it.”

He doesn’t have the money for the surgery, but a well-written letter to BrightOcular explaining his desire for the implants brings an offer from them to come have the cosmetic procedure for free, if he will let the company use his story and his photos for advertising purposes.

We then meet others on this medically unregulated journey, including Izzy, a woman from New Delhi, a young man from Japan, a male underwear model and a beautiful girl from Jamaica, but the focus is on David, which filmmaker/writer Mandelop explained was her attempt to initially start out with three main characters and trace their journeys, with one emerging as central to the story.

She described this engrossing film journey into eye surgery this way: “I wanted to visually convey it. I wanted to do something that people wouldn’t think was cinematic, like eye surgery, but make it cinematic. It became an emotional journey. David allowed me to make the film that I was craving.”

In the course of the journey, we meet David’s mother, who also suffered a rough, abusive life, but tried her best as a young single mother to care for her children on wages of $2.35 an hour. David’s mother and David don’t agree on a lot of things. She is okay with David’s being gay, but she says, “I cannot deal with that if you start cutting parts of your body off and adding stuff.” She adds that she thought he was a great female impersonator. Mom’s point-of-view is, “You’re stubborn. You don’t listen.” She adds, “You’re never satisfied with the way you look.” Others in the film describe the cosmetic procedure as “a bandaid to the past.” Most of the others have selected jade green as the color their brown eyes will be after surgery.

Writer/Director Liza Mandelup, “Caterpillar.”

It is a big blow to David when they do three patients’ surgeries simultaneously and, in the process, he is given jade green eye color by mistake, rather than frost. This will mean another eye surgery to fix the error.

If you are thinking, “This can’t be safe,” you’re right. It is only about four months post-surgery after David undergoes the procedure that he describes it as “the worst mistake of my life” when headaches and visual problems begin. All of the prospective patients seem to want to transform to some ideal person they have created in their heads. When the subject of the film appeared before us in person, however, the audience got the feeling that the subject of “Caterpillar” has, in fact, bettered his life, moving back to Brooklyn and now working as an EMT. He explained his mother’s absence from the showing as his way of “avoiding drama.”

Director Liza Mandelup and Raymond David Taylor, subject of the SXSW documentary “Caterpillar”on Opening Night, March 10, 2023.

Some other patients, we learn, who did not heed the United States opthalmalogists’ warning about the damage the implants have done (or are doing) to their eyes ended up blind or partially blind. One former patient whom David tracks down after he begins encountering headaches and blurry vision said that he woke up after 5 years with blood on his cornea. “I had to remove them or go blind.”

The unfettered access to the surgery and the patients seems quite unusual. That is, until we learn that the leadership of BrightOcular is very circumspect. No one ever comes forward to represent BrightOcular or another entity called Spectra. These agencies exist and are offering this service and heavily advertising how it will “change your life” on social media, with beautiful pictures of patients like David. They are not as forthcoming about the negatives of the procedure. The Indian physician who says he, personally, would not undergo the procedure knows this is a very risky way to change one’s outlook on life and seems to convey that through his reticence to heartily endorse the procedure.

David bought into it with words like, “This is my new beginning. I’m changing,” or “Beauty matters. Beauty gets you through the door.

Musical selections like “Stand By Me” and “I Want to Dance With Somebody,” selected by Music Supervisor Melissa Chapman, merge with the early upbeat theme of positive change seamlessly and add much to the extremely well-done production.

Afterwards, the writer/director (Liza Mandelup) and David, the chief subject, answered questions about the inspiration for the film and its aftermath. Liza said she had been doing research on the apps that can change one’s appearance when she learned of this eye surgery. She sent the BrightOcular company an e-mail asking if she could do a documentary about the process. They were very positive in their response and never really surfaced as an entity. Their leadership remains a mystery.

She cautions that David was one of the few patients who listened to the warnings from U.S. eye doctors, post-surgery, and had his implants removed fairly quickly. Others have faced the need to have cornea transplants and some have gone blind because they refused to give up the implants over a period of years. One patient, asked what she would be content with in regards to improving her appearance, answered, “What am I content with? Just more.”

Among the best compliments of the terrific job the filmmaker did with this riveting documentary was a woman who stood up in the back during the Q&A and said, in heavily accented English, “You mean this was a documentary? I thought it was a movie!”