![[IMG: Cinemedusa Logo]](medusa.gif)
McCarthy’s welcome ‘Visitor’
by Mara Math
The Visitor
- Written and Directed by Tom McCarthy
Starring Richard Jenkins, Hiam Abbass, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira
Rated PG-13
Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes
Indie director Tom McCarthy thinks he got the better part of the deal when the State Department invited him to take The Station Agent, his much-honored first film, to the Middle East as part of an outreach program.
[Photo upper right] Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman and Tom McCarthy work on the set of The Visitor.
“I think the idea was, ‘Let’s go share our culture with people who might not have access to anything like this,’” he hypothesizes, with the slightest edge of mock-condescension, “And really, the reverse happened — I learned so much from the rich culture there, I probably got far more out of it than they did.”
The major benefit among many was being inspired to make his second film, The Visitor.
Before he directed, McCarthy began his career in improv comedy before shifting to dramatic theater. “I was getting fed up with everything having to have a punchline,” he recalls.
The great success of The Station Agent, which won Sundance and Independent Spirit awards, has not meant abandoning his acting; he recently appeared in the final season of HBO’s “The Wire.”
Although the New Jersey native had a happy childhood in “a big close family,” and displays a prodigious social ease, as a director McCarthy finds himself drawn to the stories of loners, misfits and outcasts.
“There’s a part of me that’s like that,” McCarthy says, “even though I’ve been very lucky, I’ve been supported — I feel alone at times, I can feel that in part of me.”
Widower Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins, Six Feet Under), The Visitor’s 60ish protagonist, is certainly profoundly alone, emotionally walled-in, until a chance connection with an immigrant Syrian-Senegalese couple transfigures the professor’s life. By way of his Syrian friend, Walter becomes enchanted with the West African djembe drum. And via the communion of the drum — the instrument most like the human heartbeat — his heart, like any new lover’s, opens to the world.
“As a joke,” McCarthy says, “my [director of photography] created a classic love montage with Walter and the drums, from his first shy glance to the score swelling to a glorious crescendo, etc.”
But the movie is not yet another story about a repressed white male warming himself at the hearth of a more “authentic” culture: As Walter and his undocumented visitors become entangled in the harsh absurdities of the U.S. immigration system, McCarthy exposes some of the darker corners of post-9/11 politics, and their human cost.
McCarthy’s first play, The Killing Act, was a prescient examination of the American cult and culture of celebrity. As a film director, he continues his concerns with what might be termed universal-but-peculiarly-American themes: alienation and identity, belonging and community.
With The Visitor, he is well on his way to joining the ranks of quintessential American directors.
First published in The Examiner (San Francisco), 2008-04-19 10:00:00.0
Looking for ‘Hollywood Chinese’
by Mara Math
Hollywood Chinese
- Written and Directed by Arthur Dong
Starring Joan Chen, Nancy Kwan, Wayne Wang, Ang Lee
Not Rated
Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes
Move over, Grauman’s. To film lovers, “Hollywood Chinese” has for nearly a century referred to that ersatz Chinese pagoda that boasts among its 210 celebrity footprints Tom Mix’s horse and “Star Wars” robot R2-D2 — but only one Chinese name, John Woo, who was not added until 2002.
[Photo upper left] Director Arthur Dong focuses on the history of Chinese-Americans in film in the documentary Hollywood Chinese.
Another “Hollywood Chinese” is the cure for that invisibility, however.
Arthur Dong’s lively new documentary spans the history of the overlooked Chinese-American contribution to film, beginning with lost genius Marion Wong, whose 1916 film The Curse of Quon Gwon Dong helped restore.
Dong intersperses clips from more than 100 films with interviews of a dozen-plus film icons, including Joan Chen, Nancy Kwan, Wayne Wang and Ang Lee.
Despite the severity of the racism delineated, Hollywood Chinese deliberately avoids preachiness.
“I want the audience to have good time — there’s humor, glamour, music,” says Dong, an Oscar- and Emmy-nominated director (License to Kill, Family Fundamentals, Coming Out Under Fire), who also wrote, produced and edited this time around.
“Of all my films, this is the one most made to be seen in a theater — I made this film for film-lovers,” Dong says. “You need the light shining through the celluloid, the energy coming through the screen.”
The documentary has aroused controversy not for its content but for the image in the film’s poster, white actor Paul Muni in yellowface for in the 1937 film The Good Earth.
Dong stands by his choice: “It’s important, because yellowface has been one of the main ways that Chinese people have been represented on screen.”
Although yellowface may have disappeared — Rob Schneider’s shocking turn in Chuck and Larry notwithstanding — bias is still alive in more subtle ways, Dong says.
In the hit film Juno, he notes, Juno’s Asian classmate has a thick accent and yips anti-abortion protests in pidgin. “And this is the only Asian character! What this is saying is that Asians are still foreigners, we’re still not seen as American.”
Just how significant the film’s reclamation of history is can be seen in its extraordinary coup at the Golden Horn Film Festival, the Chinese equivalent of the Oscars. Hollywood Chinese was not only selected as the first documentary ever shown opening night, but won best documentary as well, despite being made in English.
Dong, whose first feature-length film Sewing Woman — made while he studied film at San Francisco State University — was nominated for an Oscar, plans to take a break from directing to focus on raising his 5-year-old son.
His hiatus may not last too long, though. He heartfelt commitment is evident in his voice when he says of his son, “He is exactly who I need to make these films for.”
First published in The Examiner (San Francisco), 2008-04-11 01:02:18.0
The Woman Behind Persepolis
by Mara Math
Persepolis
- Written and Directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
Starring Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian (Ebi)
Rated PG-13
Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes
Marjane Satrapi has never been a conventional thinker. That’s part of what has made her autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis, about a feisty Iranian girl coming of age in repressive times, such a success, and her film based on the book such a delight.
[Illustration upper right] Persepolis tells the story of an Iranian girl who tastes Western-style freedom.
She is, after all, the writer of an illustrated blog for The New York Times who kindled a firestorm of controversy with an unapologetic column titled “I Don’t Want to Stop Smoking.”
Originally a painter, Satrapi found herself repulsed by the elitism of the gallery system. “I always wanted to do something that everybody could have access to,” the 38-year-old artist recalls. It was Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus that pointed her in a new direction.
Like many, Satrapi had believed that comic books were not for adults: “And suddenly you read ‘Maus’ and you are like, ‘OH! This is a great story! And this is not genre writing!’ It was a big inspiration.”
Although the first script that Satrapi and co-director Vincent Paronnaud wrote for Persepolis was twice the length of the final draft, Satrapi has no tales of editorial agony. “I’d already had to make choices in creating the book — 400 pages cannot hold an entire 16 years of someone’s life, unless this person has had a very miserable life!”
“Of course you would like to include everything,” Satrapi admits, “but you cannot. I am not a neurotic artist, I am a pragmatic one,” she adds. “I am here to serve the film, the film is not here to serve me.”
Satrapi and Paronnaud bucked the tide by eschewing computer animation for their film. Satrapi drew the originals for each of the 600 characters, after which their team used traditional tracing techniques.
“What we wanted to keep from the original book was this line that is a bit shaky, this line that is not perfect,” Satrapi says. “Also, Vincent and I are not very much computer people. I mean, I hardly even know how to send an e-mail!”
Satrapi also issues a challenge to conventional film categorization.
“Animation is not a genre — it’s a media,” she insists. “It’s just a way of telling a story. ‘Persepolis’ to us was a movie, and it just happens that this movie is drawn.”
It’s a compelling view, one that is gaining support: Persepolis won the jury award at the Cannes Film Festival — in competition with other movies, none animated.
France chose to submit Persepolis to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. Persepolis is also one of 12 first-round competitors for Best Animated Feature Film. (Finalists for these categories will be announced Jan. 22.)
The Iranian government pressured international film festivals to reject Persepolis, but with the exception of one Bangkok festival, was unsuccessful.
Satrapi confirms that an English-language-dubbed version of Persepolis will be released soon. Catherine Deneuve and Charo Mastroianni reprise their roles in English; Sean Penn, Iggy Pop and Gena Rowlands join the cast.
First published in The Examiner (San Francisco), 2008-01-14 11:00:00.0
Oscar-Nominated Shorts Take Spotlight
by Mara Math
Various Shorts
- Various directors
Various ratings
Various running times
San Franciscans who love film — or who just want a better handle on handicapping their Oscar predictions — are fortunate in having the opportunity to see all 10 Oscar-nominated shorts before the 80th Academy Awards on Feb. 24.
[Photo upper left] Madame Tutli-Putli, a film from Canada about a surrealistic journey, is screening this week at Landmark Theatres.
Landmark’s Embarcadero is one of only eight theaters in California screening the two programs — one of animated shorts, one of live-action — running this week.
In the live-action program, “The Mozart of Pickpockets” from France, depicts two thieves who find that adopting a deaf homeless boy improves their lot.
Based on an Elmore Leonard story, the British short The Tonto Woman presents a cattle rustler encountering a solitary woman who spent years as the prisoner of a Mojave tribe.
The other live-action nominees are At Night, from Denmark; Italy’s The Substitute, and Argentine Tango from Belgium, winner of 18 international awards.
“The quality of the animated program this year is excellent,” says art historian Karl Cohen, president of the local chapter of the International Animation Film Society. He praises the Russian short My Love, a painterly tale of a teenage boy’s dual infatuations, as “amazingly beautiful,” and singles out Canada’s Madame Tutli-Putli as “playful and innovative.”
Madame Tutli-Putli boards the night train with all her earthly possessions; the trip’s surrealistic turn suggests that the journey may also be a metaphysical one.
“Animation can be more akin to poetry, while live action is often more like prose,” Madame producer Marcy Page says.
Formerly an animation instructor in San Francisco before moving to Montreal, where she serves on the National Film Board of Canada, Page explains the short’s most unique aspect: Via CGI, special-effects wrangler Jason Walker gives the puppet figure of Madame the live eyes of an actor. Laurie Maher’s expressive eyes create a stunning illusion that anchors the film.
Another nominated animation is also Canadian, perhaps because, as Page gently notes, Canada provides more extensive support and funding for artists than the United States.
I Met the Walrus recounts the true tale of a 14-year-old boy who sneaked into John Lennon’s hotel room in 1969 and talked the icon into taping the interview that serves as the soundtrack.
In the final entry, France’s Even Pigeons Go to Heaven, a priest intercepts a mysterious radio message that sends him racing off to a wealthy old man with a machine that he promises provides a preview of heaven.
CREDITS
The 2007 Oscar Nominated Shorts
Where: Embarcadero Center Cinema, One Embarcadero Center, San Francisco
When: Various times
Tickets: $8.25 to $10.25
Contact: (415) 267-4893 or www.landmarktheatres.com
Note: The program also is at the Shattuck Cinemas, 2230 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley.
First published in The Examiner (San Francisco), 2008-02-16 02:22:00.0
It's Great How Girls Rock
by Mara Math
Girls Rock!
- Written and Directed by Arne Johnson, Shane King
Featuring various performers
Not rated
Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Girls Rock! is the exception to the rule that an exclamation point in the title inevitably signals schlock. This engaging, provocative and sometimes poignant documentary demonstrates that rock can be just as much a liberating force today as in the 1950s that spawned it — and just as much needed by today’s girls.
[Photo upper right] Amelia is one of the performers profiled in Girls Rock!, a documentary that proves to be engaging, provocative and poignant.
At the Portland, Ore., Rock’n’Roll Camp for Girls — “We put the ‘amp’ in camp” — campers ages 8 to 18 come for a week to create bands, learn the rudiments of their craft, write a song and perform it at the closing showcase.
Local directors Arne Johnson and Shane King focus on four first-timers, each compelling enough for her own documentary: Hyper 15-year-old death-metal rocker Laura, a Korean-born adoptee, bounces between insecurity and aggrandizement on issues of body image, race and gender.
Amelia, 8, is an avant-garde poet/musician so profoundly original that she may always be an outsider — until the day she sells out the Warfield.
Misty, a 17-year-old survivor of gang life and meth addiction, reminds us of what Johnson calls “messy and dangerous reality.”
Singer Palace, a mesmerizing 8-year-old whose authoritarian social style brings her rejection, finds herself drawn to raw scream as a vocal style. Assertiveness is a priority on the camp’s agenda, as well as cooperation and conflict resolution. One camper’s mother expresses near-tearful gratitude to Rock Camp for teaching her daughter “how to be nice.”
It’s at least equally important, the film shows, that the camp also teaches girls how not to be nice, or, as Johnson puts it, “Not to just be nice, to be real.”
Interspersed throughout the film are shocking contemporary statistics relevant to girls, presented with humor and elan via Liz Canning’s animation and graphics that mesh well with the film’s super-grainy, deliberately anti-MTV aesthetic.
“Twice as many boys as girls say their talents are they like most about themselves,” reveals one. “Girls are twice as likely to say a body part is their best feature.”
If you don’t like rock, or think you don’t, no worries — the soundtrack features an excellent and accessible mix, from Shemo’s beautiful “America” to Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl.”
And no fear, either, of a relentless barrage of deafening decibels; the bands’ performances, as varied as the soundtrack, are saved for the film’s conclusion, maintaining, in keeping with the subject a focus on process rather than competition.
Not unlike the final minutes of Nashville, the showcase provides some marvelous performance surprises.
Note: The filmmakers will appear at screenings today at San Francisco’s Embarcadero and at screenings Saturday at Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley. Also, a pre-show event begins at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Shattuck.
First published in The Examiner (San Francisco), 2008-03-07 11:00:00.0
Queer Comedy for Everyone
by Mara Math
Queer Queens of Qomedy
- Featuring Michele Balan, Poppy Champlin, Marga Gomez, Karen Ripley
“I’m a 20-year overnight success,” Michele Balan says, explaining how becoming a finalist on NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” has changed her life.
[Photo upper left] Michele Balan, a finalist on “Last Comic Standing,” appears tonight at the Brava Theater as part of the Queer Queens of Qomedy tour.
The New York comic is in town today for the Queer Queens of Qomedy tour, which also features local favorite Marga Gomez, co-star of the comedy doc “Laughing Matters,” and queer comedy pioneer Karen Ripley, named “one of the finest lesbian comics in the country” by QComedy Review. Producer Poppy Champlin, a comic in her own right (“Oprah,” VH-1, “All Aboard Rosie’s Family Vacation”) will emcee.
“We all appeal to both the gay men and the women,” Balan says of the all-lesbian tour’s success. “And straight people love to come to these shows because we don’t do the stereotypes of men and women: we’re smart, we read, we know what’s going on — people get tired of male comics always doing masturbation jokes.”
Voted one of the “Top 10 Comics” by Backstage Magazine in 2004, Balan got her start years earlier as a female female-impersonator, doing Bette Midler impressions. When her friends entered her in a talent contest at a gay bar and she won, “the prize was being booked to perform, and I had to do it!”
Eventually, and not without trepidation, Balan gave up the rewards of her 16-year executive career — an impressive salary, her Manhattan condo, and health coverage — to pursue a career in comedy. “I was thinking, I’ll die broke and penniless — but as I got older, I thought, if I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it.”
Lean years forced Balan to perform even with a broken bone in her foot, but these days her commitment is paying off: A flourishing career has her flying from a Seattle performance on behalf of marriage equality to a private corporate booking in Chicago for the Homebuilders Annual Breakfast, and includes gigs ranging from the Improv in Los Angeles to Olivia’s Danube cruise.
And she does have at least one small luxury back in her life: “I can park my car in a garage now,” she says, “instead of looking for parking for hours and hours and watching myself age.”
Balan is developing a magazine show with LOGO, the gay cable channel, for the 45 and older GLBT market. “We’ll be fun enough for the younger audience,” she says of this and a potential show with comic Marian Grodin, “and relevant enough for the older audiences.”
IF YOU GO
Queer Queens of Qomedy
With: Michele Balan, Poppy Champlin, Marga Gomez, Karen Ripley
Where: Brava Theater, 2781 24th St., San Francisco
When: 8 p.m. today
Tickets: $30 advance; $35 cash only at door
Contact: (415) 647-2822 or www.brava.org
First published in The Examiner (San Francisco), 2008-03-21 23:07:32.0
Martial Arts and Dance Meld into One
by Mara Math
Long River
- Directed by Alonzo King
Lines Ballet director Alonzo King explains how his troupe came to collaborate with the Shaolin monks on “Long River High,” a production that returns for a second year beginning Wednesday.
[Photo upper right] Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet and Shaolin monks return with a meditative performance, “Long River High.”
He says: “An acquaintance brought the monks by our studio, we traded some movements and that was it, I canceled the project I had planned and said, I want to work on this. The bottom line is that they are beautiful movers.”
“Both ballet and Chinese martial arts are classical forms, in which the shape of bodies in motion can be meaningful, even spiritual,” adds King. “Shaolin is not about the superficial movie versions of kung fu and ballet is not what someone is physically able to do to wow an audience.”
Both disciplines, he says, “are really about internal work and internal strength — the whole point of the monks learning the yoga-derived exercises that became the foundation of Shaolin in the fifth century BCE was to strengthen their ability to meditate and hold the meditation poses.”
A meditative martial arts discipline seems a natural match for a choreographer who has been a member of the raja yoga Self Realization Fellowship for more than three decades, and who has been known to instruct his dancers, “I want to see you become the arabesque instead of doing it.”
The Shaolin monks’ emphasis on simple, thoughtful living, rather than prohibitions or hierarchies, meshes well with King’s holistic world view. “I didn’t know about their no-hierarachies idea,” he recalls, “but the moment I saw them move, I knew it then.”
Egalitarianism has been a constant in King’s life, as he grew up in a family of prominent civil rights activists. “I was seeing people who were really standing in the middle of their truth,” he says. “They were living what they preached, pursuing an idea they would give their lives for.”
His consequent to authenticity, to “what is real, what is connected” as expressed in his art has earned him numerous major dance awards and fellowships.
He also credits his early exposure to many different cultures as influences for Lines’ many pioneering musical collaborations with artists including Rita Sahai, Bernice Johnson Reagon and Hamza El Din. Live music for “Long River High” will be provided by local Chinese music ensemble Melody of China.
“I never think about what people should take away from a performance,” King says, “but just like being in nature or meeting people for the first time, I hope for receptivity. If you allow yourself to feel, not getting all cerebral right away, allow yourself to tap into your own creativity in the seat, something will happen.”
IF YOU GO
Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet
Where: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 700 Howard St., San Francisco
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday; 8 p.m. Thursday-Friday; 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 3 and 7 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $15 to $65
Contact: (415) 978-2787 or www.linesballet.org
First published in The Examiner (San Francisco), 2008-05-26 10:00:00.0
Reviews and Web Design Copyright © 2006-7 Mara Math
Movie stills or other images featured in reviews are copyright © by their respective owners and are used here only for publicity purposes and with the courteous permission of their owners.
This page is coded to W3C standards. For the most consistent viewing experience, please use any major browser other than Microsoft Internet Explorer
Posted July 23rd, 2007