A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity

Here is a podcast/radio interview from my appearance on Morning Feed with Ed Feldman from October of 2011, when I was promoting the Medium Rare Cinema screenings of Dream Lover and Comfort and Joy. Like my other appearances on Morning Feed, the topics are wide ranging starting with Harry Dean Stanton and Death Watch and concluding 2 hours later with a brief reference to Ilsa star Dyanne Thorne. In between there are discussions of Emilio Estevez’s magnum opus Wisdom, what a wonderful blowhard Oliver Stone is, how death is always the most efficient way to win an Oscar, what really happened to Orson Welles during the editing of The Magnificent Ambersons, and a slew of other free floating randomness. Some quick corrections for facts I could not remember at the time: Barry Scheck is the lawyer that Peter Gallagher played in Conviction, Robert De Niro has 4 children, and Dyanne Thorne was not in the 1982 version of She.   Download or stream the podcast below. Or you can subscribe on Itunes to the A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity feed. Download the full interview. Or if you want to listen to the podcast in a new window, just click the link.

Here’s a podcast with Tim League, creator and CEO of The Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest. This was recorded around November 2010 and the interview was initiated because Tim and Alamo Drafthouse Films were putting out Chris Morris’ Four Lions as their first film. You can hear my interview with Chris Morris here. This very weekend, Drafthouse Films is releasing Miami Connection, a goofy kung fu film that had been thought lost since its original 1987 release. Tim and I also discuss his involvement as producer on Red, White, and Blue, continuing the conversation lead actress Amanda Fuller and I had about its thematically erratic ending, his contribution to the trailer compilation series 42nd Street Forever, Vol. 5: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, how to run a repertory theater (a lot of which came in handy when I ran Medium Rare Cinema), hyperbolic critics, genre dishonesty, and a true dissection of a term I created, Phony Whiteboy Nihilism. As per the usual, there are going to be references to things that seem out of nowhere, such as the opening discussion of the trailer for the Sonny Chiba film The Bodyguard. I have posted the trailer for that film and for Lucky Seven below (which will help with my reference to a Wonder Bread robe). On top of that, I put together a musical montage that details the clientele type at the Alamo Drafthouse, made up of footage from the promotional extra on their 42nd Street Forever disc. That’s the very first video you’ll see after the podcast link. Note that the “Grindhouse” film effects were on the original material, and have not been digitally added by me.   Download or stream the podcast below. Or you can subscribe on Itunes to the A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity feed. Download the full interview. Or if you want to listen to the podcast in a new window, just click the link.   Share the video Facebook Twitter Google+ EmailEmbedCopy and paste this HTML code into your webpage to embed.     The Bodyguard trailer Lucky Seven trailer

Here is a podcast with actress Summer Qing (also known as Qing Xu), who plays the wife of Bruce Willis‘ character in Rian Johnson‘s twisty action sci-fi film Looper. Summer’s role is the main motivation for Willis’ entire journey through time. Summer was also in a few Chen Kaige films, like Farewell, My Concubine, and one of his early films, which I ask Summer about, Life on a String. This is a unique interview for me, because it’s the first one I’ve ever done using Skype (so the sound quality is below my usual standard, but still perfectly understandable) and the first time I interviewed someone who had to have my questions translated to another language. That’s why this version of the podcast will be Mandarin friendly, as Summer’s manager Ben Zhang does the translation for her. You’ll hear my surprise at this fact early on, especially in the way I then try to over-explain my questions. As this will be the “rough cut” of the interview (a more concise version will be released soon), you’ll get to hear my questions, Ben’s translation, Summer’s answer, and then Ben Zhang’s translation back to me. You’d think that would make the entire 25 minute interview quite disjointed, but it isn’t, as Summer is able to adequately explain how her part differs in the Chinese version of the film, how government censorship affects the Chinese film industry, and how the moral ambiguity of Looper differs from most films financed by the Chinese (which Looper partially was). Download or stream the podcast below. Or you can subscribe on Itunes to the A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity feed. Download the full interview. Or if you want to listen to the podcast in a new window, just click the link.   ???????? ???????) ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????? ????????????????????????? Skype ??????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Ben ????????????????? over-explain ????????????????????????????”????”??????????? ????????????? Ben ???? ?????? Ben ????????????????????????? 25 ??????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????? ???????? ?????? ?????????????????????????????? Itunes ?? ????????????????????????????????????

Here is volume 2 of the 5 Minute Feature Film series, this time on Michael Oblowitz’s adaptation of Jim Thompson’s This World, Then the Fireworks. The 5 Minute Feature Film series is where I take a full length movie and cut it down to 5 minutes in length, re-score it, but tell basically the same story, while simultaneously analyzing the film. You can find part one here, where I made a 5 minute version of the Nicolas Cage/Nicole Kidman vehicle Trespass. This World, Then the Fireworks, starring Billy Zane, Gina Gershon, Sheryl Lee, and Rue McClanahan, is a very post-modern look at film noir, like a David Lynch film, but with less consistency of vision (I uploaded the original EPK for the film on Youtube which hammers home that point even more). I reviewed the film here, and by reading that piece, you’ll understand my editing choices. What’s most interesting is that because of Oblowitz’s style, and how it would eventually completely reveal itself on the two Steven Seagal DTV movies he made (Out for a Kill and The Foreigner), the opening montage of This World, Then the Fireworks which sets up the tone of the film and the entire story, is practically incoherent. It’s cut so quickly and in such a flashy manner that there’s very little way to take in the important information, so, despite cutting a 100 minute film down to 5 minutes, I actually had to slow down the opening montage to make sure you could understand what was going on. The rest of the movie is less rushed, though it still has a twitchy nature to it, and my editing was aided by the broad performances and theatrical gestures by Zane, Gershon, and especially Lee. The music you’ll hear in this Five Minute Feature is from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony Pathetique and Django Reinhardt’s Bouncin’ Around. [This post contains video, click to play]

Below is a q+a with actor Fran Kranz, who plays Marty, the resident stoner in the new meta-horror-comedy The Cabin in the Woods. It was recorded after a screening of the film on April 9th in Philadelphia. The Cabin in the Woods is the feature directing debut of Cloverfield writer Drew Goddard. It was produced under the aegis of Joss Whedon with whom Goddard also wrote a handful of episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel for. Kranz is generally enthusiastic about the film, as he should be, and the interviewer (who I believe said that she was from Hitfix.com) leads Kranz into talking about the troubled distribution history of The Cabin in the Woods (it was shelved for three years during which time the studio that made it, MGM, went bankrupt), the anxiety over the threat of a post-3D conversion, and how the film has so many ideas that it would take a lot of explanation to spoil it. Personally, I’m on board with most of what Fran has to stay, though he’s led a bit astray by the audience’s questions such as when he flounders while defending the deliberately generic nature of the title. But his most confused answer comes when he criticizes the Saw and Hostel franchises as mindless torture porn without anything to say. As a descriptor, torture porn is questionable reductive analysis, but in this case it’s also misguided because Hostel Part II, like The Cabin in the Woods, is an astute analysis of horror film stereotypes and a smart look behind the curtain of villainous motivations. Mr. Kranz also seems unaware that the studio that he praises for picking up The Cabin in the Woods for distribution, Lions Gate, who he claims “gets it,” is the very studio that was built on the backs of the Saw and Hostel franchises, even going 3D for the final Saw film last year. Regardless of all of that, the q+a moves briskly, and goes in the occasional odd direction when Kranz throws some vitriol at Gus Van Sant and Michael Haneke for their recent remakes. And despite Fran’s insistence that The Cabin in the Woods is un-spoilable, the final question has Kranz revealing a few small secrets, but nothing overly detrimental. The sound quality of the recording, apart from some slight ambient noise and rustling in the first minute, is generally excellent. Download or stream the podcast below. Or you can subscribe on Itunes to the A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity feed. Download the full interview. Or if you want to listen to the podcast in a new window, just click the link.

As a companion piece to my analysis of Nicolas Cage’s current career, below is a visual summation of his 2011 movie Trespass, co-starring Nicole Kidman and Cam Gigandet. I’ve edited the entire thing down to just under 5 minutes, briefly glossing over important plot points (without major spoilers), yet you’ll still get the sense of just how repetitive the movie is. There are plenty of examples of the gun waving and threatening that is the film’s raison d’etre, some of the dialogue, some of Nicole Kidman’s lip implants, and lots of villainous scowling. The soundtrack features a combination of the film’s dialogue and selections from Richard Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony. If there is a positive reaction to my reductive interpretation, I’ll edit other movies down to this more palatable length. Turn on your speakers and click the bottom right of the player to fill up your screen with the image. [This post contains video, click to play]

Billy Crystal showing us how he can count I was on Gtown radio on Friday morning to talk about the Medium Rare Cinema screening of the uncut version of Burn! (being shown at a new location), but also to talk about the Oscars. I took the opportunity to discuss my experience in voting in the Online Film Critics Society awards, and the various stages which prevent any real surprises, and how that holds true in the Oscar voting as well. Because of the quick turnaround time, this isn’t as polished as some of the other recent podcasts, but it runs a brisk 90 minutes that you can squeeze in while watching the red carpet nonsense on mute. Download or stream the podcast below. Or you can subscribe on Itunes to the A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity feed. Download the full interview. Or if  you want to listen to the podcast in a new window, just click the link. (Right-click, Save Link As…)

Here is the third in a series of no doubt 4 million appearances (or maybe less) that I made on Ed Feldman’s Morning Feed. Originally the interview ran at an epic length, 3 and 1/2 hours. Now, after some judicious editing, it runs at a mini-epic length of 2 hours, but you’ll still get plenty of Mr. Feldman ranting and raving and leching on young female celebrities while I make fun of him for it. My appearance coincided with a screening of Looking for Mr. Goodbar that we held at Medium Rare Cinema back in September. A review of that film will appear on the site soon. Other topics of discussion include Drive, the strange mediocrity of the films of Mike Nichols, the homophobia and misogyny of Mr. Goodbar, the Margaret situation, Michael Rapaport’s documentary on A Tribe Called Quest, the pitfalls of rote film criticism, and many, many other diversions. Download or stream the podcast below. Or you can subscribe on Itunes to the A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity feed. Download the full interview. Or if you want to listen to the podcast in a new window, just click the link.

Here’s a podcast with Danny Buday, the writer/director of Five Star Day. Now I’m totally aware that most people will not have heard of this film, Mr. Buday’s first. That’s because Five Star Day, as of November 4th, has received a limited theatrical release, as well as a simultaneous release on Facebook. The movie itself is about a grad student, played by Cam Gigandet, who is to disprove the accuracy of astrology for his ethics class. He titles his paper, “A propaganda campaign of bullshit.” And within 24 hours of handing it in, despite it being his birthday and his horoscope saying that he’s supposed to have a “Five Star Day,” his life completely falls apart. So, his plan is to prove that astrology is bullshit by finding three other people who were born at the same Chicago hospital within a few minutes of him. He finds their addresses and flies from California to Chicago to meet Jena Malone, who plays a bartender with a young child and a troubled relationship with the father (Chris J. Johnson) of her daughter, who happens to be a junkie. Cam then moves on to a well adjusted nurse (Brooklyn Sudano), also living in Chicago, to ask her questions about her birthday that he experienced such a tough time. Finally, he talks to a lounge singer in Atlantic City (played by real-life singer Max Hartman, who gives the best performance in the film) about their shared birthdays, and what the lounge singer went through. Keep in mind that he’s never met or talked to these people before, so his arrival is going to be, at the minimum, a surprise. Within our interview itself, there are some minor spoilers about Mr. Hartman’s character, but nothing that would ruin your enjoyment of the film. In the midst of the conversation, Danny and I discuss how wise it would be to hand in a paper with profanity in it when your professor (the great Nick Chinlund, unfortunately underused) has told you that you need an A just to pass the class, the questionable idea of just showing up on people’s doorstep, unannounced, and asking personal questions,  and whether the marginal believability of certain plot points turns the film into more of a romantic fantasy. Download or stream the podcast below. Or you can subscribe on Itunes to the A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity feed.   Download the full interview. (Right-click, Save Link As…)

Here’s my second radio appearance on Morning Feed with Ed Feldman. This time I was promoting the Medium Rare Cinema screening of the Richard Dreyfuss vehicle The Big Fix but the conversation once again jumps around a lot to movies being released around that time (June 2011) such as Submarine, Tree of Life, Super 8, as well as my insistence that as many people as possible see the documentary about A Tribe Called Quest, Beats Rhymes & Life. And most importantly, you get to hear a clip from Double Dragon. Once again, I’ve edited the show to its bare minimum eliminating any tangents that don’t go anywhere or local political talk, which still means 90 minutes of banter and me making fun of Ed Feldman’s back hair.   Download the full interview. (Right-click, Save Link As…)

Here’s a podcast with Ann Louise Bardach, journalist for The New York Times, Newsweek, Slate, etc., and the screenwriter of Dennis Hopper’s Backtrack, the director’s cut of which I reviewed here. Now Backtrack was an incredibly troubled production, sitting on the shelf for two years before being dumped by its bankrupt distributor in a cut retitled Catchfire, shorn of 20 minutes that Hopper intended to be part of the film. It wasn’t until 1992 when Live Home Video put out a VHS of Hopper’s preferred cut that any of the footage was available. Unfortunately all of the DVD versions have been the cut version, still re-titled Catchfire. In our interview, Ann Louise discusses some of the trouble Hopper found himself on the set, especially as the 1988 writer’s strike was in full swing in the midst of production. Hopper was also recently sober, which may have caused a lot of the tension that resulted in the cast and crew giving Hopper the silent treatment.  During this 15 minute interview (audio quality is fair as cell phone static is an occasional problem) you can also enjoy hearing about how Hopper’s unpredictable whims resulted in the more ridiculous scenes in the film. Download the podcast or stream it below. Or you can go to Itunes and subscribe to A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity. Download the full interview. (Right-click, Save Link As…)

This is my appearance with Ed Feldman on his show Morning Feed, on Gtown Radio, on May 19th, 2011. As of this writing, I’ve appeared 4 times, this being the first, and it runs just a shade under 2 hours. I was there to promote the Medium Rare Cinema screening of John Woo’s Bullet in the Head, but that’ s only a minor sniff of the various topics covered. I will post the next few shows in the upcoming weeks. Those of you who don’t live in Philadelphia will be happy to know that I’ve edited out almost all of the local political references, so you won’t be lost. However, considering the rapid fire pace of the conversation, I do recommend being at least minimally film literate before listening.   Download the full interview. (Right-click, Save Link As…)

The initial financial failure of Disney’s Tron (directed by Steven Lisberger) was attributed to the enormous expectations based on the egregious expense of the project because of the complicated computer effects. Tron was simplistic story-wise, and the replication of the feel of a video game would become commonplace not long after its 1982 release. The $20 million had been spent on the technological advances which ironically succeeded in developing a following for a video game based on the movie. There were several versions of the game; one had the player in the film’s colored lightcycles*, trying to avoid the other bikes on the screen. The colored motorcycles resemble an image from another $20 million sci-fi film from 1982, Hal Needham’s Megaforce, where real life motorcycles emit colored smoke behind them. And that’s pretty much where Megaforce’s visual creativity ends which makes the financial expenditure rather mysterious. Tron and Megaforce both owe a lot to Star Wars, both were clearly envisioned in sci-fi western terms, but Megaforce is far more interested in explosions, car stunts, and gunfire than actual ingenuity. That’s because Needham, who appears to be represented in Megaforce as Michael Beck’s** redneck character (though Needham has a cameo himself), was a stuntman who used his connections as the guy who lived in Burt Reynolds’ poolhouse to develop into a film director. Needham’s most famous films were the first two Smokey and the Bandit films, and to a lesser extent, the first two Cannonball Run films (the third is called Speed Zone) and it was this momentum that got Needham the Megaforce job. Other factors probably had to with Jackie Chan, who Megaforce producer Raymond Chow forced on Needham when he was making the Cannonball Run films, in an effort to make Chan a star in America too. In Hong Kong it worked, as Chan was top-billed (as opposed to 10th billed in the US), but Chan wouldn’t break through until 1996’s Rumble in the Bronx. Needham, making his cameo Now Chan is not in Megaforce, it’s difficult to imagine him in any role apart from the token Asian among the cast of cornpone warriors, played by Evan Kim, who also played Bruce Lee in the Enter the Dragon parody in The Kentucky Fried Movie. No, Needham was more interested in pure white-bread jingoism; hence the villains in Megaforce are all Communist stereotypes or vague foreigners with Spanish accents, like lead henchman Henry Silva. Barry Bostwick is the ethnically cleansed Ace Hunter, sporting a blue headband and perfectly coiffed blond hair, and his compatriots are all juvenile males, but honorable to a fault. That’s why when Edward Mulhare (in a role eerily similar to the one he had in Knight Rider, which premiered later that same year) asks for help from the Megaforce*** to goad Silva and his troops into crossing into Mulhare’s country’s territory so they can attack, Mulhare is the one who ends up as the bad guy. He has ulterior motives, and nothing underhanded can be accepted in Megaforce. How do we know that? Why, when the Megaforce attacks a base they give themselves four minutes to get in and out and Needham makes sure we’re aware of this by literally having a clock on screen the entire time, counting down. The Megaforce can’t spare a second, and they don’t think the enemy will ever fire back, delaying them. These sorts of mild bits of macho aren’t why Megaforce has a cult following though, going as far as to clearly inspire Team America: World Police, with several sequences even duplicated. No, that has to do with the rampant homoerotic costuming (from the costumers of Batman and Robin) and the absolute pointlessness of what appears on screen. The Megaforce wear motorcycle helmets with arrows painted on them, arrows that seem to be pointing at the brains they don’t have. This lack of awareness comes full center in scenes like one where Ace Hunter lets Major Zara (played by Indian beauty queen Persis Khambatta, from Star Trek: The Motion Picture) know that no matter how proficient she is at military games, she can’t come with them to fight Silva and his gang because it would upset the team’s morale, or some such nonsense. Her response to the decision? “That’s what makes you what you are, a great leader.” Their romance is based on such respect, or that’s all we can believe, because when they embrace in the next scene as if they were longtime lovers, there’s either 15 minutes of development missing or Needham didn’t think women had a choice in who they would fall in love with and why. Despite an early scene where we learn that women don’t like cartoon pigs, I’m going with the deleted scenes option, because Megaforce is such a mess structurally and pacingwise. Bostwick doesn’t appear for the first 15 minutes and he’s the hero. Silva is in one or two shots in the opening scene and then we don’t see him for 45 minutes. The movie appears to be set in the future, but Ace Hunter has a very important putdown on Silva, “The good guys win, even in the ‘80s.” I guess that explains the electronic score Megaforce has, but a time period rarely seems relevant to the proceedings. Besides, you don’t want to pretend your movie is set in the future when they appear to use balloons made out of stone for target practice. One can only speculate where the money went (up their nose?), because it certainly isn’t in the shoddy miniatures, or the fantastically abysmal blue-screen work that isn’t the least bit convincing (using the already antiquated Introvision process, also used by Knight Rider). Maybe all the money went to a wrangler for Bostwick’s headband?   * Ok, it was really just moving lines on the screen, but you could easily imagine yourself in the lightcycle. ** In an odd twist, Beck was the lead in another 1982 war movie, Battletruck, where he played a character named Hunter. *** The Megaforce is an elite group of military stragglers from armies all over the world, presumed dead or missing. Or at least that’s what the hilarious opening crawl says, read to us in the utmost of seriousness. A crawl only slightly shorter and more convoluted than the legendary one that opens Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark.   P.S.  Enjoy the theme from Megaforce.  

Below is an interview with director Billy Corben, who made the two Cocaine Cowboys films, Raw Deal, Limelight, Square Grouper (his new documentary about pot smuggling in Florida, which he happened to be promoting at the time of this interview), and The U, which is relevant now since its subject is Miami University’s football team, and Billy is the go-to expert talking head for any news station or TV show that happens to be covering the current scandal. Tommy Smothers lookalike Our interview focuses more on Square Grouper and his first film, Raw Deal: A Question of Consent, since I had wanted to interview him about it even before Cocaine Cowboys was made. As per the usual, this isn’t a conversation that stops to explain references, so you’ll find most of the more obscure stuff in the images and the audio file (which refers to a quote about Jimmy Buffet) below. As for the topics that come up in the midst of this 90 minute back and forth, you will learn what the mysterious reasons are behind why Magnolia bothers with theatrical releases (since they simultaneously release their films in the theater, on DVD, air them on TV, and make them available on demand), why Bernie Kosar looks so disheveled in his interviews for The U, and how piracy can actually help a small film become a financial success. Tom Noonan lookalike Also, take a look at the Canadian cover for Square Grouper. Billy mentions its “quality,” but the point can’t be made with words alone. Note that the actual 90 minute interview is underneath the final images, not the tiny clip right beneath this sentence.   “Even if Jimmy Buffet’s a manatee-huggin’ son-of-a-bitch.” Download the clip here. (Right-click, Save Link As…) Mr. Corben offers a microphonic proposition to the DA. Mr. Corben dressed well for his interview with the DA. Mr. Corben chasing the DA Mr. Corben shows off his bare legs.                                                                             Download the full podcast below or subscribe to it on Itunes (search for A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity, Adam Lippe, or Billy Corben).   Download the full interview. (Right-click, Save Link As…)