Free event: Giulia Doesn't Date at Night

There are several films taking place this month at the Italian Cultural Institute. The first is Giulia Doesn't Date at Night. A successful family man is tempted by a charming swimming instructor. Although the event is free you need to register here.

Giulia Doesn't Date at Night
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
6:00 p.m.
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Chicago
500 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1450

Filmmaking Contest: Northbrook Public Library Youth Film Festival

The Northbrook Public Library is sponsoring a filmmaking contest. Details:

All students (junior high through college) are invited to have their film or video showcased at the Northbrook Youth Film Festival. Any genre film or video (2 to 12 minutes in length) will be considered. This year a $100 grand prize will be awarded by the Northbrook Arts Commission. Films or videos must be submitted by May 15th to the Northbrook Library Multimedia Department or the Village Hall. For more information, call Kendal Maltas at the Village, 847-272-5050.


The presentation of winners takes place in June.

Youth Film Festival
Submissions by Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Showcase, Monday, June 10, 2013
7:00 p.m.
Northbrook Public Library
1201 Cedar Lane
Northbrook, IL 60062

The Host (2013)

Stop the insanity! I thought after the Twilight series was over we would be through with the combination platter of Stephenie Meyers and the movies. Unfortunately this is not the case.

The Host bases its story on a science fiction precept that aliens have invaded earth and taken over human bodies. The aliens, tentacled glowworms, are inserted into humans and take over the bodies, destroying the personalities of the human host (the film doesn’t say who performed the first surgery, since the glowworms obviously have no opposable thumbs). Some human citizens have become rebel factions, hiding out in the desert against these new invaders. Even a few who have been overtaken don’t take kindly to their new way of life, with their minds still active but trapped by the invading being called "souls" in the movie (ugh). One of these soon-to-be-disgruntled humans is Melanie (Saoirse Ronan), who is living a nomadic life with her young brother when she is chanced upon by another survivor, Jared (Max Irons). For a time they live in the lonely outback away from civilization and the film doesn’t say how, but Melanie is soon captured and invaded by a being who is closemouthed and wants to be called the Wanderer. Be sure to remember that--it is Wanderer with a capital W.

Wanderer is interrogated by a Seeker (Diane Kruger, another Capital Letter Alien), who wants to find out where the other rebels are hiding. Since at this point in the story, Wanderer/Melanie only knows of the existence of two other rebels, the importance the Seeker puts into her interrogation seems inflated to me. We the audience see that Melanie’s personality has not disappeared, and in fact still exists in her body, trying to coerce Wanderer not to give away the location of where her brother and lover might be. This internal struggle causes Wanderer to escape, fighting with Melanie's personality to save Melanie’s human friends and family, yet also maintain both Melanie and Wanderer’s own survival. She locates the desert caverns where her brother and, she finds, others are hiding: her uncle Jeb (William Hurt) and a few hot guys who alternately want her blood or her bod--Melanie’s lover Jared who distrusts her now that she has been overtaken by Wanderer, and Ian (Jake Abel) who also is distrustful but I guess becomes aroused enough to eventually defend and fall in love with the personality of Wanderer.

Wanderer lives with the rebels, with some defending her and others wary of her, but hot on her heels is Seeker. Seeker and the other aliens eventually track her down and Wanderer gives up a lot to save her friends.

Past seven days

If you're looking for some good science fiction, I suggest you skip the movie The Host. If instead you are looking for a high school age romance (and not even a very good one at that, sorry high schoolers!) , The Host is your kind of movie.  Does it surprise you to hear it is based on a Stephenie Meyer book?

Admission
Disconnect
The Door
Dormant Beauty
The Host
In the Fog
Jurassic Park 3D
Toys in the Attic

On the Road

The new film On the Road depicts the early life influences on beat writer Jack Kerouac, and generally speaks to the lives of 20-somethings trying to find their way in the world. The main character Sal Paradise (standing in for Kerouac) is played by Sam Riley. Among his circle of friends are Dean (Garrett Hedlund), who seems to have no desire except to have sex, take drugs, and drink; Carlo (Tom Sturridge) a beat poet; and Marylou (Kristen Stewart), Dean’s ex-wife but still on again/off again girlfriend. They often meet to drink, take drugs and talk about beat society stuff and although Sal is writing a lot, the film doesn’t show him as pursuing or succeeding with writing as a real career. Sal, who lives in the East Coast, goes to visit Carlo and Dean currently living in the West, where he finds out Dean has divorced Marylou and taken up with Camille (Kirsten Dunst). The film’s central relationship is between Sal and Dean, although overall the movie takes the “On the Road” aspect as Sal travels across America to visit his friends in the West.

Sal admires the charismatic Dean, whose confidence is something Sal doesn’t yet possess. But Dean asks Sal for writing advice which pleases him. We see that Dean though is pretty directionless and lives for the moment, even if the moment is pretty meaningless. He often throws over the woman he is with to spend time with his friends, something Marylou sees and accepts and joins along with, and something Camille comes to realize she cannot. What exactly is Dean looking for in life? IS he looking?

Sal continues to traverse back and forth over the three years or so this movie takes place in, visiting Dean and evening going down for a time to Mexico with him. Other characters include those played by Terrence Howard (a jazz musician), Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams (characters based on William S. Burroughs and his wife), Elisabeth Moss (wife of one of their circle), Steve Buscemi (a man who picks up the hitchhiking Sal and Dean), and Alice Braga (a migrant farmhand).

Cloudburst

This is a gay themed film about two older lesbians going to Canada to get married when one's family tries to separate them. Based on a play.

The two women, Stella (Olympia Dukakis) the butchy one, and Dot (Brenda Fricker) the gentler female, live together in Maine. Stella is brassy, drinks and swears. Dot is more of a homebody and is slowly losing her vision, making her pretty dependent on Stella although they are both in their 70s. Dot's granddaughter doesn't like that her grandmother's quality of life is not good (she apparently has no real knowledge of what a real lesbian is like and doesn't see the signs that her grandmother is one; she believes the pair are just good friends). The granddaughter tricks Dot into signing over power of attorney, then puts her into a senior home.

Stella is incensed and breaks Dot out of the home, then remembers she read somewhere that gays can get married in Canada. They go on the road and, suspecting the police are after them, pick up a young hitchhiker to change their M.O., even taking him home to see his sickly mother, and eventually he helps Stella and Dot also.

QWERTY

This indie romance focuses on the relationship between two outsiders. An oddball guy Marty (Eric Hailey) working as a security guard at a mall loses it when he complains about a $50 pair of trendy underwear, thus losing his job. But a quirky customer Zoe (Dana Pupkin) defends him and they start a romance despite his apparent misanthropic personality.

Zoe works at the DMV sniffing out licentious license plate numbers/words to revoke, and gets Marty a new job at the complaint desk where his pessimistic character is fulfilled. She eventually reveals her love of the word game Scrabble despite being shy about joining a Scrabble club at a library. Each brings out the unfulfilled character of the other.

But as expected, there are obstacles.  Zoe brings Marty home to meet the family but it doesn't go well as even she doesn't get along with them. Marty begins to feel like an outsider again, although he encourages Zoe to indulge her love of Scrabble, enough so that she gets over her shyness and enters a Scrabble championship, where she goes up against the narcisstic defender of the title. Filmed in Chicago.

Past seven days

Getting to some DVDs I've been ignorning this week.  And then braving blustery weather to catch the TCM Road to Hollywood travelling film festival last night!

The Apartment
The Call
The Croods
Ocean Heaven
Oz, the Great and Powerful
South Pacific
Thin Ice
Wasteland
Wool 100%

Wake in Fright

This is an Australian movie from the 70s, "lost" due to its depiction of the male dominated culture of Australia, which while embraced by international audiences, faded at the Australian box office. It re-screened at Cannes a few years ago (where it also won a prize in 1971) and is only one of two films to screen at Cannes twice in that festival's history. The film stars actors mostly unknown to me, except Jack Thompson in his first screen role, and Donald Pleasance, although the other actors are apparently well known in Australia.

It concerns a young British teacher, John (Gary Bond), who is kind of in servitude--teachers have to pay a sort of bond for their jobs, to prevent them from abandoning the job since the outback locations are pretty desolate and isolating. During the Christmas break from school, John tries to travel home to spend time with his girlfriend, but since he has no substantial money, ends up stranded in a small town nicknamed the Yabba, where he had planned to travel on to Sydney. In Yabba, he meets several locals here, including a policeman (Chips Rafferty) who buys him drinks then introduces him to a gambling game, an English doctor with shady methods who finds the Aussies are less discerning about his credentials (Pleasance), and a man who buys him a drink (Al Thomas) and takes him home where John and he spend time with his friends (including Thompson), and, other than John, ignores his wife (Sylvia Kay, the director's wife at the time).

At first John does try halfheartedly to get home, but his degeneration into drinking, gambling, and other male pursuits leads to a week of near-insanity. At the end of it John rejoins "civilized society" but we question what has changed in him now.

Past seven days

It's been a pretty good movie week!  You'd think I don't have a 9-5 job with the amount of movies I watch.

Asylum
Berberian Sound Studio
Cloudburst
Dead Man Down
In Time
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Midnight Son
The Miracle of Life
Mushrooming
Oma & Bella
The Other Side of the Mountain
Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy
The Silence

Free: Peace on Earth Film Festival

The Peace on Earth Film Festival starts today.  I believe all screenings are free.  This fest attempts to bring social issues to a broader audience.  Check out their blog.  I hope to catch one or two as my schedule permits.

Thirst For Love

This Japanese drama is from the 1960s. It is based on a book.

Etsuko is a young widow who lives in her father-in-law's home. I'm not sure if it is due to Japanese customs or something specific to this family, but Etsuko is her father-in-law's mistress and he hopes he can produce another direct male heir to continue the family line, as his first and surviving son is impotent; another child is a daughter with a son but he is not considered a direct line male heir.

We see Etsuko is numb to her existence, not reacting when her father-in-law makes advances on her--for her it is a duty to be endured more than anything else. One day she sees their young gardener Saburo watching her, but he claims he was innocently gazing on her, and not the sexual spying she subversively accuses of him of even though she herself was gazing on a naked statue and probably having sexual thoughts.

She continues to pursue Saburo in this way, not openly saying things, but always suggestive with her words which could also be interpreted innocently. Saburo is quite indifferent (or he appears to be) but when Etsuko faints when he is killing a chicken, he tries to revive her and while he is close to her body we get a sense that he has repressed sexual feelings for her (or perhaps he is a bit randy). When the family maid comes upon him he reverts back to his innocent behavior of reviving Etsuko.

Meanwhile, the rest of the family also is becoming aware of the different facets of Etsuko's situation, although they kind of accept how things are going--they accept that Etsuko is expected to produce an heir but don't really like the importance the father places on her. It seems there is a lot unsaid in this family, like the empty seat at the family dinner table that signifies the place that would have been taken by the dead son.

Past seven days

Not quite snowed in but I wish I were, with DVDs to watch!

Demetri Martin: Person
Little Deaths
Pale Flower
POP-U-larity
QWERTY