Sid Laverents: Super Cool 100-year-old Dude

Sid Laverents is a former vaudevillian who started making movies in the late 1950s. I saw a series of his experimental shorts at the Wisconsin Film Festival last weekend, and boy oh boy were they fun! A real hoot. You can actually order 'em right from the man himself. I think I'm gonna do just that fairly soon.

That's a Wrap

I saw a couple more movies at the Wisconsin Film Festival today. Urban Explorers: Into the Darkness is a new movie by Melody Gilbert, who directed Whole, which was one of my favorite movies at the festival a couple years ago. This one's also about strange and interesting people. Here, she focuses on people who explore abandoned buildings and subway tunnels and sewers and the like; I really liked everybody featured in the movie. You can find out more about the fascinating hobby/lifestyle of urban exploration here or here or here. The movie was good, by the way.

Flight of the Red Balloon was as lovely as I expected it would be. A lot of it was shot in reflections on store windows and reminded me vaguely of certain photorealist paintings I've seen, and there was a lot of playful fun going on in the backgrounds (a lamp that looks like a red balloon, shapes and patterns created by streetlights and signs, etc.).

I was supposed to see The Singing Revolution, too, but I screwed up and walked all the way to the wrong end of campus thinking it was at the Union Theater when it was actually at the Orpheum, so I ended up skipping it.

The End.

Ouisconsin Festival du film

More film festival movies on Saturday:

Unfortunately, the Union Theater at the Wisconsin Union isn't the best venue for film screenings. Sound problems hampered my enjoyment of The Pixar Story and You, the Living (a shame since both were decent movies) and one of the projectors broke during Planet of the Apes, which was a real tragedy cause the print looked nice.

(Speaking of which, right after I got home I learned some unfortunate news.)

The program of Sid Laverents shorts was fantastic, and I also enjoyed the epic Mongol quite a bit.

Movie Movie

I saw two movies at the Wisconsin Film Festival yesterday. Both were very good, but not quite as much fun as the movies I saw on Thursday.

First up was Bon Cop, Bad Cop, a Canadian buddy cop movie about a Mel Gibsonish loose cannon from Quebec and an uptight Ontarian who get partnered up after some very funny hijinks at a really messy crime scene. I liked it. I was expecting something a bit more parodic, more in the vein of Hot Fuzz, and this did have moments like that (and the villain's motivations and actions are similar in a weird way), but a lot of it played like a real buddy cop movie a la Beverly Hills Cop or Bad Boys II. The violent sight gags are worth it, though, cause they're really funny.

ADDED: the more I think about it, the more I think this actually was a lot like Hot Fuzz, just not quite as funny . . .

I also saw Timecrimes, which was a good head-scratcher. I'm still not sure if it solved all its paradoxes or not, but I suppose that's the way with time travel stories.

Good Movies Are Good For the Soul

I saw two films at the Wisconsin Film Festival last night. Both were excellent.

My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin's experimental documentary about his hometown, was utterly amazing. It was funny, weird, gorgeous, and very nearly perfect.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies was clever and a lot of fun. Like Down with Love or Far From Heaven, the cinematography, set design, and costumes were designed to give the feel of a time period through the movies of that time period, and they really captured the look of James Bond-ish thrillers. And Jean Dujardin was an eye-opener as the central spy, OSS 117 (sort of a cross between Austin Powers, James Bond, and Inspector Clouseau). He's an amazing comic actor.

Wisconsin Film Festival

The Wisconsin Film Festival starts today. I'm going to a few movies. It's their 10th anniverary this year. To celebrate this momentous occasion, here are some of my favorites from years past.

Whole: an amazing documentary about people who want to have their limbs removed.

The Big Red One: the reconstruction of one of Sam Fuller's great movies and one of the best war movies ever made.

Young Frankenstein: the classic Mel Brooks comedy, shown at the beautiful Capitol Theatre last year. This was just a great movie-going experience. I wish they were using this theater as a venue again this year, but for some reason they're not.

Blackboards: a wonderful, sad film from Iran.

Slasher: John Landis's amusing documentary about used car salesmen.

Cure: a truly excellent Japanese horror film.

Wheel of Time: Werner Herzog's documentary about Tibetan Buddhists. Beautiful.

Story of the Weeping Camel: one of the sweetest, most poignant movies I've seen.

The Life of Reilly: a surprisingly (?) awesome movie about Charles Nelson Reilly.

The Milk Can: one of the funniest movies I've seen in recent years.

Martin & Orloff: a very funny comedy from the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Meet the Parents: the original that the Ben Stiller movie was based on. Much darker and weirder. With Emo Philips, who is weirder than this guy, but maybe not as good an actor.

Hey, A Movie!

I ordered my Wisconsin Film Festival tickets today. Here's what I plan to see, at least for now:

*My Winnipeg

*OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

*Bon Cop, Bad Cop

*Timecrimes

*The Pixar Story

*You, the Living

*The Wonderful World of Sid Laverents

*Mongol

*Planet of the Apes

*Flight of the Red Balloon

*The Singing Revolution