UPDATED WITH EYEWITNESS REPORT ON DJ MOM PANTS!
Johnny Cash, the revenge-minded father of a dead teen porn star, Bijou Phillips, Julius Shulman, Kelly Lynch, “Kevin” from The Office, Vilmos Zsigmond and a sour-faced Kristen Scott Thomas. No, these are not my ideal players in the perfect poker game but just some figures who have rocked my world so far at the Newport Beach Film Festival, which has reached the halfway point and continues through Thursday.
Friday began with a bout of deja vu all over again. About midway through the excellent documentary Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, I realized I had seen much of this footage before on public television. Sure enough, a quick check of Google revealed that KCET/Channel 28 in December showed Bestor Cram's documentary on the country music legend's 1968 concert at Folsom State Prison. But there were animated sequences and the recurring story of one Folsom inmate I don't recall in the PBS version. I hung around to the end hoping to ask someone associated with the film about this but, alas, there was no post-screening Q&A. You can catch Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Edwards Island 6. It'll be the best $8 you've spent on a movie ticket in a long time.
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The documentary reveals how this was a make-or-break concert in Cash's
musical career, the somber walk participants made into the gloomy
prison and the rollicking good time everyone soon shared. Archival
footage, live Folsom songs playing over clever animated video and
heart-wrenching stories about many forever touched by the event make
the Man in Black's fans appreciate him even more, while likely winning
him some new ones.
Speaking of deja vu all over again, I almost walked out of that picture and into the feature film The Horseman.
But then I re-read the film's description in the festival program more
closely and realized that, yes, I had already seen that one, too. In
fact, I pre-screened it for readers' viewing pleasure before the
festival but totally forgot to write about it.
Writer/director/editor/co-producer Steven Kastrissios' The Horseman is an ultra-violent, Australian revenge drama. Peter Marshall
plays divorced father Christian, who learns there was more to his
troubled teen-age daughter's death than a drug overdose and plunges
himself into the seedy world of underground pornography for answers.
While on his mission, he picks up a young female hitchhiker (Caroline Marohasy)
and eventually supplies the gentle nurturing his daughter obviously
missed. It's an interesting story and there are solid performances. My
problem was with the violence: it is so gory and over-the-top that it
seems out of place in this film. Where a Quentin Tarantino movie would
have enough humor laced in to make such horrific images seem
cartoonish, The Horseman is so dark and grim that by the time
it comes to the ultra-violence, it plays like snuff porn. Perhaps that
was Kastrissios' intent.
Instead of subjecting myself to The Horseman again, I ducked into Wake, which strives to do to funerals what The Wedding Crashers did to nuptials–complete with Jane Seymour
(sans flashing tits). Bijou Phillips plays Carys Reitman, a
young woman who fills a void created by her inability to feel anything
emotionally by attending strangers' funerals. A mortuary worker who
pines for her (Yes Man's Danny Masterson) reluctantly tips Carys to a young woman's funeral, where she is moved by the eulogy of the deceased's fiance Tyler (Ian Somerhalder of TV's Lost). Through the wonders of Lennox Wisely's
unbelievable script, Carys manages to wind up with the
dead woman's engagement ring. Extremely quickly (and unsuprisingly)
Tyler has the hots for Carys, who must fake having been a friend of his
former fiancee because she's got the hots for him. But the dead girl's
family believes Tyler killed her, and, by the time Carys is alone with
him in a remote cabin, she begins to have her suspicions, too. It all
comes to a head in monumentally lame fashion.
The screening
was followed by a Q&A with director Ellie Kanner, Phillips, Masterson, Wisely,
producer Hal Schwartz and no doubt someone else I am forgetting. Many
audience members remarked how much they loved Wake, although there was some
chuckling in the back of the room as Phillips went on and on about how
much she appreciated being in a comedy without all the death and
torture associated with some of her previous films. Uh, I believe this
whole movie centered on death. Or was that The Horseman? All I know is at least one viewer found both to be torture to sit through.
Am told that the Weekly was associated
with a post-party for Wake that featured Masterson (a.k.a. DJ DonkeyPunch and DJ
Mom Jeans) on the turntables.
UPDATE!!! Clockwork could not attend the p-p due to undergoing a hipster replacement at the time, but at least one Weekling was there and filed this report: “DJ Mom Pants, aka Danny Masterson (That 70's Show), spun at the party and did an amazing job. . . . Absolut hosted the bar featuring an array of vodkas, a Coke bar and food. . . . There was an array of celebrity appearances, including Christopher Masterson (Malcolm in the Middle), Adam Gregory (90210), Michael Welch (Twilight), and Bijou Phillips. Some say that Seth Green was there as well, but I cannot confirm that. . . . The party started at 10 p.m. and ended at 1 a.m. . . . Valet parking was a nightmare and some people had to wait over an hour to get their cars. Some resorted to walking and retrieving it themselves.”
Walking? In Nouvea Riche? How gauche.
There was also a party atmosphere the
following night when former Santa Ana resident Drake Doremus' Spooner
packed the Lido. I previously went on and on and on about the film,
which, stars former Tustin resident Matthew Lillard. In that
post, Doremus indicated he had appeared on stage at the prompting of
his mother, Orange County Crazies improv troupe founder Cherie Kerr.
That brought this clarification from momma: “For the record I just want
to (laughingly) say: I didn't push Drake onto the stage, the truth is I
couldn't get him off the damn thing!!!”
I had remarked to someone with the festival that there
seemed to be a lot of Los Angeles-centric stories this year. But Sunday I found myself playing Six Degress of Minnesota.
The
documentary love letter Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius
Shulman is not about a Minnesotan. Born in Brooklyn on 10/10/10,
Shulman is a transplanted Angeleno who got into the ground floor of
architectural modernism that sprang up in California in the 1930s by
photographing the creations of Richard Neutra, Rudolh Schindler, Frank
Lloyd Wright, Harwell Hamilton Harris and even some architects you
haven't heard of. Besides a shooter's eye, Shulman possesses an
ecyclopedic knowledge of the Los Angeles basin and a profound distaste
for the cultural, architectual and environmental havoc that has been
wreaked on it. On top of that, he's just a character, spewing
one-liners and witticisms throughout Eric Bricker's impressive,
important and eye-opening motion picture debut.
Shulman could not
make the trip, but Bricker was there for a post-screening Q&A
alongside the photographer's best friend Rose Nielsen of the Woodbury
Institute and Minnesota-born actress Kelly Lynch, who hosted Shulman's
95th birthday in her Neutra home and appeared in the doc. Bricker, who
has an art consulting background, revealed he fell into making the film
when he was searching for still photographs of San Francisco for a
project 10 years ago. He was given Shulman's phone number by his next-door neighbor. Meeting the photographer he had never heard of, Bricker was blown away
by the work and a bond that led to a decade-in-the-making doc was formed. The passion Shulman
demonstrates in his work and life “is what we all yearn for,” Bricker
said. “He has an amazing mind,” added Nielsen. “He's like a walking
history book of LA.”
Next up was the world premiere of second-time
writer-director Patrick Coyle's Into Temptation, which stars Law &
Order's Jeremy Sisto as a Roman Catholic priest Father John Buerlein,
who learns in the confessional booth that high-end prostitute Linda
(Kristin Chenoweth of Pushing Daisies, musical theater and now
memoir-writing fame) is going to commit suicide on her birthday. Set in
Coyle's hometown of Minneapolis, Minn., the picture tracks the race by
the pastor to prevent the stranger from carrying through with her plan.
Unlike many other small budget flicks I've seen this year, Into
Temptation does have a cohesive script, and unlike many other
multi-million-dollar behemoths, the film strikes just the right chord
of reverence for the Catholic faith. Father John battles temptation
throughout, but this is no Monsignor or The Thorn Birds. There are
heavy moments involving what led Linda to prostitution, but there is
also comic relief in the situations the priest from a poor parish finds
himself in and, especially, the scenes with his best friend, Father
Ralph (Brian Baumgartner of The Office), whose better-off
congregants afford him the lifestyle to which he is accustomed.
“That's
a great movie” and “now my mascara is running” were heard when the
lights came up, just before Coyle, Sisto, Baumgartner and producer Ann
Luster made their way to the stage for a Q&A. But the first
audience question was not a question but an emotional monologue from a
man standing right behind my seat saying he's been knocking around the
Newport Beach area for five years and has seen many young girls head in
the direction of Chenoweth's character. Singling out fathers, he said,
“You give them the love they need at home so they don't end up like
that.” Sisto and Baumgartner explained that while looking for projects
when their respective shows were on hiatus, they were drawn to Coyle's
script. “For nine months we basically do the same episode over and
over,” Sisto said of Law N Order. “This came out of nowhere.” He
found himself “inspired by the script, the gentleness of it, the magic
of it.” Coyle said he was inspired by the revelation that his father
once entertained entering seminary, something that made him wonder what kind of priest his dad would have been. Compassionate, conflicted Father John was his answer.
He said his wife read the script and said, “If you get a good Father
John, you'll have a good movie. We got a great Father John.”
As Baumgartner looked over at Coyle with his boo-boo lip, the director
also added, “And a great Father Ralph, too.” Asked what his favorite
scene in the picture was, Baumgartner joked, “Every one I was in.”
Vilmos
Zsigmond (pictured) had something to do with every scene of pictures he has
involved in, which include Deliverance, Close Encounters of the Third
Kind, The Deer Hunter and possibly one shot in Minnesota. Zsigmond is a
longtime Hollywood cinematographer and the co-subject of Philadelphian
James Chressanthis' documentary No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo &
Vilmos. Laszlo would be Zsigmond's late friend and fellow Hungarian
cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, whose credits included Shampoo, New
York, New York and Mask. (Kovacs was also feted at the 2004 NBFF, which
featured a 20th anniversary screening of another of his films,
Ghostbusters.) At the post-screening Q&A with Chressanthis, who
worked as an intern under Zsigmond on The Witches of Eastwick, the
cinematographer said he loved everyone he worked with in the movie
business and advised a young woman seeking advice from a pro, “If you love
something, you can do it. If you don't love it, you can't.” He said
he's “only” made 70 pictures, but out of those there are “at least 35 I
really love.” Those in his profession have less to fear about a loss of
quality from digital photography than they do from poor lighting, he said. Zsigmond
recalled his opening McCabe and Mrs. Miller
by “flushing” the exposure, which is also known as “controlled fogging.”
“Someone said I was a very courageous to do that, and it looked very
bad in those days, but it looks like a piece of art today.”
Chressanthis revealed that the last project Kovacs worked on, the
documentary Torn From the Flag, was completed posthumously. It's
about a subject dear to Kovacs and Zsigmond: the Hungarian revolution
of 1956. But Zsigmond predicted it will not be shown in his native
country because leaders there “don't like to mention 1956.”
The star of writer-director Stephan Elliott's adaptation of Noel
Coward's Easy Virtue indeed hails from Ely, Minnesota. Jessica Biel
plays Larita, a sexy American fireball (quite a stretch), who gets
swooped up by young Englishman of breeding John Whittaker (Ben Barnes) as the Roaring Twenties limps into the Depressed Thirties. They
quickly marry and return to jolly-old-you-know-where to meet mumsy
(Kristen Scott Thomas), whose face is so tight you fret about her fiber
intake. The two Mrs. Whittakers don't exactly get along, and the
story's juice is watching the pair battle each other for the young
man's heart and loyalty. Elliott's lines and sight gags are ably handled
by a game cast that includes Colin Firth, Kimberly Nixon and especially Kris Marshall as take-no-shit butler Furber. Get this on Netflix if you don't catch it in the theaters. Actually, you may have to do both; people were laughing so
loud at my viewing I missed much dialogue.
It appeared the most difficult
job for cinematographer Martin Kenzie was making the beautiful English
estate and grounds appear soon headed for disrepair. I'm betting he
used controlled fogging. See what you learn at these deals?
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.