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Cornell Cinema: My Winnipeg

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Film may be a relatively new art form, but enough time has passed since Eadweard Muybridge captured a running horse in 1878 for there to be well-established patterns and styles. No director today, no matter how revolutionary, can step behind the camera without a mass of influences and expectations pushing him from behind.
It’s refreshing, then, when a filmmaker breathes new life into these forms and creates something utterly new, as Guy Maddin has done in My Winnipeg. Sure, the little pieces that make up this puzzle are familiar: silent film intertitles, documentary stock footage, fifties television melodrama. But the work is more than the sum of its parts, and, what with the novelty of Maddin’s script, it’s a delightfully imaginative take on the nostalgic memoir.

Win A Date With Ted Hamilton: A Knock On Wood

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There are some things that our world could just do without. Examples that come to mind include poverty, war and Uggs. To this illustrious list, I propose the addition of another malicious element whose continued existence threatens our collective well-being: I speak, of course, of Elijah Wood.
Anyone who has had the misfortune of seeing this androgynous pixie on screen should know what I’m talking about. Wood is, quite simply, one of the most annoying actors of our time. Endowed with the unique ability to negate anything of merit in a movie of which he is a part, Elijah leaves his viewers crying for mercy — or at least for a gun.

Win a Date With Ted Hamilton: The Future Is Now

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Sup, broseph. Welcome to my column, where you’ll find endless pleasures of the intellectual and visceral varieties delivered conveniently through the medium of film criticism. And if you consider our little interaction here as a certain type of interpersonal event, then, yes, you can win a date with me — good thing, since I’m at least as charming as my silver screen doppelganger, Tad. So, on with the show.

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Daily Show Correspondent Visits Cornell

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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has been a near and dear part of my life for many years now, a source of solace that placates my righteous indignation with its tongue-in-cheek jabs at the powers that be. Whether highlighting government incompetence or mocking the inanity of the news media, Comedy Central’s darling little program accomplishes more effectively with its trademark irony, what ranting commentators and activists of the left attempt to do with their columns and protests — that is, point out the hypocrisy in which our society is steeped.

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A Primitive Era, a Primitive Film

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After seeing the half-baked crapjob that is 10,000 B.C., I realized an important thing about historical movies: when they’re dumb, they’re really dumb. Bad acting is one thing, but bad acting when you’re discussing woolly mammoths is quite another.

Transcripts From Evil Men

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Borges once wrote that “of the many kinds of pleasure literature can minister, the highest is the pleasure of the imagination.” He would know — his stories, filled with fantastical libraries and improbable books, overflow with intellectual charm. Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas, then, might be the book that Borges, were he given to longer prose, would have written.

Bolaño’s work is part fictional encyclopedia, part short story collection, and concerns itself with 31 invented authors. The subjects are, to varying degrees, fascists, anti-Semites, or unabashed Hitlerites. Most are Argentinian or Chilean, but there are some Venezuelans, Colombians and even a few North Americans thrown in for good measure.

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So This Is Why VHS Died Out …

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Be Kind, Rewind sounds like an awesome movie. For starters, it’s written and directed by Michel Gondry, the filmmaker behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, both interesting and excellent. Second, it stars Mos Def, Jack Black and Danny Glover, an unlikely trio that should deliver great results. And the premise — couple of friends making oddball versions of film classics — is a good one. Odd, then, that this movie just putters along in mediocrity, boring the viewer and going nowhere.

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Hail to the Crazy

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Van Gogh cut off his ear. Sylvia Plath stuck her head in an oven. David Lynch counts down the days till Bastille Day.
Maybe it’s premature to place the director of Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Dr. and more in the company of those great artists. But the man certainly acts as if he belongs. And in saying that, I mean he acts weird — really weird. Lynch, playing this Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at Cornell Cinema, puts this weirdness on display, and it’s not to be missed.
Maybe you’re familiar with Lynch’s work, and maybe you’re not. Bottom line, it’s strange stuff: unintelligible plot lines, bizarre dialogue and creepy atmospherics. Even Twin Peaks, his one foray into network television, stands as the emblematic oddball of its genre. Given the self-conscious peculiarity of Lynch’s films then, it’s easy to dismiss them as pretentious and ostentatious. No matter how great the presentation, you might not buy what’s going on underneath. I admit that I myself was rather suspicious.

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Mid-Winter Worthy

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It would be fair to say that mid-February is not the high point of this Hollywood year — we’re a long way from the summer blockbuster season, the writer’s strike has starved TV, and the slow run-up to the Academy Awards leaves much to be desired at the multiplex. Good thing, then, that this Friday and Saturday night Cornell Cinema is showing the year’s Oscar-nominated short films. Broken into the animated and live-action categories, the offerings, nearly all international (and largely Northern European), offer a refreshing break from the predictability of the big studio offerings.

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Hate the Spartans

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When it feels impossible to review a movie, there are only two explanations: either it’s a masterpiece, or it’s a piece of crap. So, you must be wondering, which of these is Meet the Spartans?

Let’s run down the masterpiece checklist: visionary genius, evocative delivery, enduring power.

Hmm. Meet the Spartans wasn’t the most stirring film I’ve seen this (month-old) year. But what exactly was wrong with it?

First, the premise: a spoof of 300 — which, by the way, was not the most profound movie ever made. When your mission is to satirize a film already self-consciously absurd, the results may not be great. So, no surprise, then, that Spartans blows; it’s defining features are inane comedy, half-baked plot, and subpar acting. It almost seems superfluous to write about a film that makes no aspirations towards relevance, but I’ll give it a shot.