Tuesday, September 25, 2007

"Double Pumping" at Kinky Camp 3!

Eat, drink, scream at the (four) screens and be merry!

Saturday 9/29 at midnight at Monkey Town in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

http://www.monkeytownhq.com/contactinfo.html

A Double Doc Bill featuring Dustin Robertson’s “Pumping Velvet”:

Smalltown boy, rockstar, bodybuilder, circuit boy, menace and icon. Dustin Robertson has ascended from being continually gay bashed as a kid and abusing drugs, to becoming a competitive bodybuilder and working as Hollywood’s top music video editor for divas like Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, and Madonna. His personal experiences from his often-tumultuous life are documented through the innovative use of full color animation, narrative and fantasy sequences, erotic images, film and TV clips, music videos, and other forms of mass media.
--Matt Dy

SHOWN SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH

A “silent” version of that classic softcore Schwarzenegger flick “Pumping Iron”:
He’ll be back. Slicked in body oil.

Preceded by Kurt Koehler’s “Hung Frankenstein”:
Mel Brooks meets John Waters. Enough said.

Come one, come all, come campy!

Once In A Lifetime

John Carney's “Once” is a near perfect indie debut – “Before Sunrise” minus the worldly cynicism lurking around the edges, a pure and innocent portrait of the magical process of falling in love. Touching without the slightest sentimentality (a tightrope walk mastered by the French New Wave before its offspring descended into the cringe-inducing melodrama that passes for today’s date movie), “Once” is more than deeply, intoxicatingly romantic. It is mesmerizing. Like love itself the film’s poignancy sneaks up on you unexpectedly, slowly, quietly. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the musician actors playing the lead lovebirds, have a chemistry that radiates, generates electric sparks from the screen. The musical numbers are so organically engrained in the script that the songs become a third major character, a child born out of loneliness, desperation and love. It comes as no surprise that the stars fell for one another during shooting. “Once” could just as easily apply to the once-in-a-lifetime magic necessary to capture real love unfolding onscreen, to create a documentary of emotions encased in a fictional film.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

God Save The Queen

The director Shane Meadows in discussing his recent skinhead flick “This Is England,” was asked if he was influenced by similarly-themed eighties films like Mike Leigh’s “Meantime” and Alan Clarke’s “Made In Britain.” He replied that he wasn’t so much influenced by them as that they were a part of him. (So much of art stems from the ability to absorb other art.) “Made In Britain” is the film that marked the screen debut of Tim Roth, an actor I have much respect for, an average talent elevated to greatness through sheer passion and hard work. Unfortunately, “Made In Britain” is one very simpleminded film. A made-for-TV-movie about an intelligent but lost skinhead named Trevor whose violent, racist behavior leads to a stint in social services, Clarke’s mediocre work is less its intended youth crime and its consequences docudrama than cautionary tale, concerning the destruction of the nonconformist soul at the hands of Thatcher’s England.

The fact that the British generally don’t think outside the class-conscious box truly makes me appreciate American ingenuity. Growing up a rebel in Reagan’s America at the same time as Shane Meadows I learned not to lash out nor “blindly follow the rules,” but to pretend to so I could subvert society from within. I discovered it’s much more rewarding to beat the system than to destroy it. Dogs genetically predisposed to hyperactivity become angry and neurotic when they’re placed in confinement – inevitable behavior when the box they’re put in is too small. This is not the fault of the dog, but that of his environment. Likewise, the answer to Trevor’s existential dilemma isn’t the (British) “grow up and go along with the bullshit system,” it’s “rebel, just do it smart so you don’t get caught.” Thank heaven for the American way.