Recent Stories in Film & TV

A reminder: This Sunday morning marks the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, where we spring back an hour.  Sure, it's nice for the days to be longer, but those first few mornings HURT.  And what to do with those longer days?  Watch some movies, of course.  Here's this week's new DVD releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.

This week actually has a bunch of decent films--except for Old Dogs (and let us never speak of that again).  Catch up on your Oscars-mandated viewing with Precious and Up in the Air, truly two of last year's best, well worth your time.  There's Michael Moore's latest manifesto, Capitalism: A Love Story, which somehow didn't make the final cut for documentary nominees.  (And once again, if you haven't seen Oscar winner The Cove yet, please do.)

For the kids, there's computer-animated aliens in Planet 51, which did not get very good reviews.  There's also Lasse Hallstrom's Hachi: A Dog's Tale, the remake of the based-on-a-true-story Japanese tearjerker about the love that exists between a dog and his owner.  It's not not kid-friendly (it's rated G), but you might have to have a heart-to-heart discussion after the film about the fact that everyone and everything your child ever knows will die....

Looks like Conan O'Brien has found something to do with his free time, as today he announced a thirty-city live performance tour.  Dubbed "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour," his live show promises "a night of music, comedy, hugging, and the occasional awkward silence."  That sounds like the Conan we all know and love.

Kicking off in Eugene, Oregon on April 12th, the tour will take place over two months, making stops in twenty states and three Canadian provinces, as well as a special appearance at Bonnaroo.  Locally, Conan will perform at McCaw Hall on April 18th and April 19th--looks like this second show was just added!  Prices start at $39.50 (but this is Ticketmaster, so let's just say $50) all the way up to $695 for the drool-worthy special VIP meet-and-greet package. 

Full list of tour dates as of right now--ticket sales are strong, so second shows keep getting added--after the jump....

The promoters for the third Isle of Wight pop festival in 1970 thought they'd build a bit on their successful draw of 150,000 the previous year. They got 600,000 or more. Despite the three-pound entrance fee for a weekend concert with Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Miles Davis, Procol Harum, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell, hordes camped out on a bluff overlooking the festival, watched for free, and occasionally set things on fire.

35-year-old Leonard Cohen was one of the last acts, roused in the middle of the night, and wearing what look like pajamas under his trench coat. Murray Lerner's live footage is more in the way of a concert film than a documentary, though he cuts away briefly to get context from Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and Kris Kristofferson. The best thing would be to see it in a crowded theater, savoring all the hits Cohen had come up with before 1970, enveloped in a darkness that is both the beginning and end of something. Leonard Cohen Live at the Isle of Wight, 1970: Friday, March 12, 9 p.m., Saturday March 13, 9 p.m.

Also opening Friday at the Forum is Bill and Ross Turner's mesmerizing 45365, named after the Zip code of a small Ohio town. Too improvisationally loose for "documentary" to sum up, the film has been called a "symphony," "tapestry," and "mosaic." The camera dogs its way around town, sniffing out what's interesting. Although it's frequently distracted from following this or that person (the judge running an election campaign, a police officer out on call, doings in the barber shop, an alcoholic with one foot on and off the wagon), the camera in its detours through town keeps stumbling upon community epiphanies that anyone who's fled to the big city will remember keenly. It's noteworthy that in a town where everyone knows everyone else's business, one of the most cutting things you can do is not refer to someone by their name. 45365: Friday, March 12-Thursday, March 18 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Tomorrow night, the 15th annual Seattle Jewish Film Festival opens, with more than 20 films screening at several venues around town. But the big, big movie in the festival is this Friday at SIFF, where Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti's Ajami plays at 8 p.m.

One of this year's best foreign feature Oscar nominees, Ajami has attracted stunning reviews. Set in a neighborhood of the same name in the ancient port city of Jaffa (part of greater Tel Aviv today), the film tells a series of interwoven stories about Jews and Palestinians grappling with the complexities of crime, poverty, and gentrification against the backdrop of the continuing violence between their peoples. The film's achievement--and it's supposed to be a doozy--was pretty well summed up by The New York Times's Ethan Bronner, who wrote in January that:

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the movie, however, is what it does to viewers. In a conflict where each side lives and breathes its own victimhood, feeling the hurt of the other is a challenge. Ajami meets it. When a Palestinian youth turns to drug selling to help pay for his mother's surgery, Jewish filmgoers here have wept. When the family of a kidnapped Israeli soldier breaks down over his murder by Palestinians, Palestinians in the theater have had tears in their eyes.

Pre-sales for the Friday SIFF showing are closed, but more tickets should be available at the door, and Ajami is being screened again on March 25 at the Washington State History Museum (tickets $11).

A rainforest tree at Lake Quinault Lodge. Photo care of Aramark Parks and Destinations.

If James Cameron wants to lick his wounds and soothe his bruised ego after losing a whole bunch of Oscars to his smoking hot ex-wife, apparently he'd feel right at home on the Washington Coast. 

Trying to take a bite of that sweet Avatar pie, two of Aramark Parks and Destinations' four Washington properties are advertising themselves as Pandora on Earth.  It makes sense that both Lake Quinault Lodge and Kalaloch Lodge are taking advantage of the film's success to promote the resorts' picturesque rainforest locales--Lord knows sci-fi fanboys will pony up the money (see New Zealand and LOTR tourism, or Forks' active courting of Twi-hards).

So head to the coast to get in touch with your Na'vi side.  Commune with nature, search for precious unobtanium, and/or try to plug your braid into anything that moves (TWSS).  Full press release after the jump....

Don't get the wrong idea--the Navy Times Scoop Deck is "thrilled that Kathryn Bigelow broke the barrier and nabbed the first top prize for a female director." But they're also worried that The Hurt Locker's gritty, you-are-there perspective will "lead people to believe the film to be an authentic and accurate portrayal not only of military operations, but the military mindset."

Intrigued, I asked the author, Lance Bacon for more details, based on his eight years in the Marine Corps, where he served as a platoon sergeant in the 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division. He worked with explosives experts, and was a combat correspondent his final four years. Continuing his journalism career, in 2000 he became managing editor of Air Force Times, where he provided combat coverage in the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom. Now he's a senior writer for the Navy Times.

I thought that the "military mindset" was supposed to be conveyed by Sgt. JT Sanborn, who never stopped trying to do things by the book.

There are characters in the movie who display the military mindset, as you rightly point out. Unfortunately, they have a secondary status in the movie....

Let's say someone was as pigheaded and risk-taking as Renner's character: What would his sergeant have most likely done?

There are some solid options for a sergeant in such a scenario. He could go to the team/squad leader's immediate supervisor. If that person was of the same nature (which is highly unlikely), the sergeant could "request mast." That means he can talk to anyone within his chain of command without having to divulge his concerns to others. For example, if he desires to talk to the battalion commander, he can do so without first explaining his concerns to the company first sergeant, sergeant major, commander, etc.

What does tend to happen to cowboys? In the movie, he gets complimented for being a "wild man."

No one in a real combat unit is complimented for being a "wild man." Discipline and integrated teamwork is the name of the game. Cowboys get you killed. The more specialized your unit, the more this holds true. There is a huge difference between heroic courage and reckless abandon. I had no time, use or respect for the latter, and most military leaders--from the squad level to top leadership--would say the same. A cowboy will end up in a job where he can't hurt others, the mission, or himself. And if he keeps acting in a undisciplined way, chances are good he will get a bad fitness report and soon be shown the door....

It's hard to find information on Prodigal Sons, Kimberly Reed's documentary about her truly dysfunctional family, that doesn't reveal too much of the story. The majority of the reviews and even the official trailer gives away more than I think is appropriate.  Since I live a life of NO SPOILERS--what's in the baaaaaahhhhxxxx?--I direct you to the review above (also because I agree with their recommendation of The Ghost Writer) and warn you to seek out further info at your movie-ruining peril. 

It's not a spoiler to say that filmmaker Kimberly Reed grew up as a boy named Paul, a popular dreamboat who never felt quite right in a quarterback's body.  So as an adult, Paul became Kimberly, and the film follows her as she returns to her Montana hometown for a high school reunion.  But she's also reuniting with her older brother, Marc, who she's been estranged from since their father's funeral.  Marc is the family's eldest of three sons, but he's also adopted (crazy) and suffers from the long-term neurological effects of a car accident (double crazy).  And it is the absolute worst when a crazy person has some sort of vague idea that there's a reason (read: excuse) for acting crazy.  That's tough to deal with as it is, let alone when he's your brother who has identity issues of his own....

"An hour-long parade of topless women," is the grabber DVD Verdict uses to get you into the review of LeGong: Dance of the Virgins, but it also says the 1935 film is "like a National Geographic photo spread come to life, replete with the gaudy temples, weather-worn faces, and vaguely erotic naked torsos. From historical, sociological, and ethnographic standpoints, the footage in this film is fascinating."

"Actually filmed in Bali," the movie poster assures you, by Marquis Henry de la Falaise. It was shot in two-color Technicolor. You wish the Paramount would have rounded up a gamelan orchestra, but it looks like the Paramount's Mighty Wurlitzer will be pressed into action, with Jim Riggs at the keyboard.

Trader Joe's Silent Movie Mondays begin at 7 p.m. (tickets are $12 adults/$9 students & seniors). After LeGong, the Silents of the South Seas brings Sadie Thompson and F. W. Murnau's Tabu, before closing up on March 29 with a collection of three Charlie Chaplin shorts.

Right now would seem as good a time as any to tell the story of the time I made Sandra Bullock laugh. It was 1994, outside Manhattan's Bryant Park, where limos were dropping off people going to the after-party of the MTV Movie Awards. My friend Dave and I, both NYU freshmen, thought it would be fun to go stand behind the police barriers and heckle famous people.

Speed was the big movie that summer, but I hadn't seen it, so I didn't recognize the person who everyone started yelling "Sandra!" at. Someone shouted out "Speech! Speech!" I found this all endlessly amusing, because, who was this person? I'd never heard of her or seen her. So I yell out, sarcastically, "You should run for President!"

And she laughed. It wasn't actually very funny, I'm sure she laughed out of a mixture of surprise and pity.

Anyway, there it is, the story of how I made Sandra Bullock laugh. Not a very good one, is it?

You've still got about an hour to find a spot to watch the Oscars before the 5 p.m. telecast begins on ABC.  (And girl, the red carpet has been on E! all day, doncha know.) 

The Mayor's Office of Film and Music has provided a list of notable Oscars events, including the Washington Filmworks benefit for local filmmakers at the Spitfire, Three Dollar Cinema's party at SoDo Park, and TheFilmSchool's auction at the Triple Door. On the Central District tip, as previously mentioned, the Bottleneck is hosting a viewing party tonight, and Central Cinema is of course hosting the Reel Grrls' second annual Oscars party.  And don't forget the 20/20 Awards coming at Central Cinema up next Monday the 15th, in which a select group of the Seattle filmmaking community rights the wrongs of the 1990 Academy Awards. 

As for tonight, let's hope for a couple pretty dresses and any film but Avatar winning Best Picture.

After you watch the other film award show this weekend, take your sense of outrage and "we wuz robbed" to the 20/20 Awards, held next weekend, March 15th at Central Cinema (1411 21st Ave). It features a little less red-carpet treatment, and more brutal honesty.

The organizers explain it like this: "We're going back 20 years to 'correct' the Academy Awards with the advantage of time, perspective, and history." They're doing 15 categories; things start at 7 p.m. Unsuccessful Oscar-defenders will be forever sullied, "new" faces will be rewarded with a Felix.

But of course, just holding an awards show is honor enough. They've managed to placate the lawyers for AMPAS (the cease-and-desist letter was "surprisingly friendly, breezy, and showed a sense of humor"). Some film industry folks were all set to become part of the 20/20 Voting Syndicate body, then reconsidered going on record.

This year, it's the 1990 Academy Awards put under the scrutiny of hindsight. Of the six 20/20 nods for Best Picture, none were noticed by the original Academy back in 1990. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing is up for seven 20/20 Awards, despite its poor showing with Oscar voters. And up for Best Doc is Michael Moore’s vastly influential Roger & Me, which didn’t even get a nomination.

The cavalcade of 20/20 stars includes Tyrone Brown (BrownBox Theater); Michael Seiwaerath (former NW Film Forum honcho); Curtiss Marlowe (Geek #1 in Heathers); Brendan Kiley, Lindy West, David Schmader (the Stranger); Andrew Chapman (cinematographer); dj Riz Rollins (KEXP); Jennifer Zeyl (scenic designer); Josh Feit (Publicola); Paul Mullin (gadfly/playwright); Gavin Borchert (Seattle Weekly); Sue Corcoran (writer/director), Brian McDonald (writer/bon vivant) and Sean Nelson (man about town).

Here we are, just a couple days away from the Oscars, so let's take a look at the films new to DVD, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video. This week features the release of two recommendable family films, Ponyo and Where the Wild Things Are, though the latter is more for dysfunctional young adults than actual children. Also out this week is Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, a tribute to the author directed by Lance Bangs and Spike Jonze, made during the filming of Where the Wild Things Are. There's plenty of Maurice in it, but it also features James Gandolfini, Meryl Streep, Catherine Keener, and Tony Kushner giving Sendak some love. 

This week also brought the DVD release of 2012, which you should not see, and which I have already discussed at length. I did not see Gentlemen Broncos, the latest from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, but I heard it was bad, like, unwatchable-even-on-a-plane bad. Yes, even with Jemaine Clement.

On the indie front, this week brings plenty of films made by the ladies. There's Rebecca Miller's The Private Life of Pippa Lee, which received pretty good reviews for a random name-heavy cast (Keanu Reeves, Alan Arkin, Blake Lively, Julianne Moore, Winona Ryder, Monica Bellucci, Maria Bello, and starring Robin Wright Penn as the totally cray-cray lead). There's also The Beaches of Agnes, French director Agnes Varda's self-portrait, which--as a documentary on a filmmaker made by the filmmaker herself--actually has a lot in common with We Live In Public, Ondi Timoner's look at web guru Josh Harris. Harris made (and lost) tons of money by being way ahead of his internet time, in terms of foreseeing things like virtual communities, user-generated video content, and the voluntary surrender of any expectation of online privacy. As a documentary, We Live in Public is great (and po-po-po-mo freaky), but as a human being, Josh Harris is a FAIL.

And as for a random pick of the week, there's Bollywood Hero, in which Chris Kattan plays Chris Kattan...in India! It was an "IFC musical comedy miniseries event" last summer.

[Don't miss Part 1. In Part 2 of the SunBreak's Eddie Muller interview, the Czar of Noir elaborates on the story behind one of his favorite undiscovered Film Noir vehicles, the role of women in the genre, and some of the screen legends with whom he's rubbed shoulders.]

Eddie Muller

You've unearthed a lot of overlooked movies over the years. Is there one that stands out in particular for you?

Woman on the Run. Have you seen it?

No.

It's absolutely fantastic. It really is one of those undiscovered, great films. Sometimes, you find these things and it's like, "Well, it's good," but you know why it's not a classic. But Woman on the Run really is a terrific film. Universal [Pictures]...had to go physically look for the film, because it was an independent, and it wasn't in their database. They looked [in their vaults], and said, "I'll be damned! [laughs] We do have this film."

We had to sign a letter of indemnity in order to show it; saying that if the rights holders were still existent, they would sue me and not sue Universal for showing a film that they didn't have the rights to. I said, "Fine! Bring 'em on." It was Howard Welch's company, and he'd be, like, 97 years old. If they come out of the woodwork, I'm fine with that. Hey, I made a thousand dollars on this screening, you want half of it? Fine, I don't care! [laughs]

When [Universal] sent the film, it was one of those great moments where the projectionist said, "Can you send Eddie up to the booth?" I was thinking the worst; that it actually isn't projectable. This was at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. And the projectionist says, "I just want you to see this, because this never happens." He'd taken the film out to inspect it, and he said, "This is the original band that was put on this film when it came from the laboratory. It has never been taken off this film; this film has never been projected." It was amazing! So we actually had the thrill of showing that print of that film for the first time ever.

So here's the deal: It came time to ship the film back. I said to myself, this film is really great. I can't, in good conscience, send this back without making a copy of it first. So I took it to a guy I know who runs a lab in San Francisco. I said, "I know this is against the law, but I'm asking you, as a steward of film history, to make a digital copy of this film--a Digi-Beta copy of the film." I couldn't do a 35 millimeter copy--I don't have that kind of money. I paid for this out of my own pocket. This is not the Foundation: This was before the Foundation existed. It was one of the things that led to the creation of the Film Noir Foundation. I couldn't send the film back, knowing that it could get lost in the bowels of the company, without making a copy. Not that I intended to do anything with it. I just wanted to know there was a copy somewhere else. So we did it.

I put the copy in my closet. For six years I sat on it. And then Universal had that big fire on June 2, two years ago. I waited a week or two because I knew what pressure these guys were under, and then I called. This was seven months before the next big festival in San Francisco. I was asking about the titles in the festival, and Universal said, "Don't worry about it--we'll make good on all of them because we have all the negatives. We'll just make new prints of everything."...

$5 Cover: Seattle Trailer from MTV New Media on Vimeo.

On Monday, the Seattle version of $5 Cover premiered all twelve episodes to a SIFF Cinema packed with cast, crew, volunteers, MTV producers, and Seattle music fans. The installments, along with short documentaries about each of the bands and B-side films about Seattle, won't start appearing online until June. Since everyone else will have to wait, I won't say too much beyond reporting that the finished product is so much better than the long-circulating trailer (above) suggests. 

When Audrey and I last discussed this matter, a map of band relationships had sparked delight and the preview footage had raised modest skepticism. Seeing the preview, I worried about how uncomfortable it might be to see musicians reading scripted lines to portray slightly more dramatic versions of themselves in service of thinly contrived plot devices. Happily, most of the moments of forced narrative are shown in the trailer itself, and the rest of the project quickly begins to feel more like a gently observed documentary than forced reality programming. ...

The fourth annual Noir City Film Festival may have finished its run at SIFF Cinema last week, but conversing with Eddie Muller--Noir City's enthusiastic ringmaster--still feels as bracing and entertaining as one of the Film Noir sagas he labors so tirelessly to preserve.

He's led an interesting enough life to fill a pretty rich book on its own. Long before becoming Film Noir's most vocal and eloquent steward, Muller studied film with (and acted in several films for) underground legend George Kuchar in the late seventies. He made Bay City Blues (an award-winning 14-minute, 16mm valentine to the hard-boiled universe of Raymond Chandler) as a class project next, then dove into the world of print journalism, slugging it out in the footsteps of his dad, a sports writer for the San Francisco Examiner. A decade-and-a-half in the ink-stained trenches honed his investigative and storytelling skills, assets he brought to bear when he started writing books.

The first, Grindhouse: The Forbidden World of "Adults Only" Cinema, opened the door to several written forays into fiction and cultural archaeology, as well as the formation of his own graphics firm, St. Francis Studio. Through St. Francis he wrote and designed The Art of Noir, a stunning and essential coffee table book of vintage Film Noir poster and promotional art. Muller has also written scripts and stage plays, co-written and produced a documentary on Adults-Only cinema (Mau Mau Sex Sex), and bartended professionally (he jokes that the latter marked his "one positive contribution to society").

But when I sit down with Eddie Muller at the bar in the Sorrento Hotel's swank Hunt Club, he's all about Film Noir. His passion for the compelling cinematic sub-genre burns brightly: Every work of fiction he's written has been informed by it; his non-fiction books Dark City and Dark City Dames stand as definitive studies of it; and he started the Film Noir Foundation to preserve and champion its importance as a uniquely American art form. Incidentally, if you've bought or rented a Film Noir DVD, don't be surprised to hear a meaty and informative commentary track by Muller: He's done a lot of them. Not for nothing was he anointed the Czar of Noir.

Tall, dressed in black, and sporting Reed-Richards-style slashes of white at each of his temples, Muller cuts a figure almost as imposing as one of the Noir toughies he's chronicled in those books and countless DVD commentaries...until he starts talking. His regular-guy demeanor leavens that wordsmith's combination of charm, curiosity, and investigative persistence, and his banter's peppered with frequent laughter and engagingly labyrinthine side trips. His knowledge of film in general--and his most beloved genre mistress in particular--is voluminous but never stuffy; and like most good writers he's articulate and insightful without ever putting on airs. Muller's one of those guys who can (and does) literally converse with anyone: In the minutes preceding our chat proper, he's cracking jokes with the server and comparing notes on mixed drinks and San Francisco watering holes with key members of the Sorrento staff. It's all in the service of a mind that never tires of telling--and hearing--great stories.

My interview with the Czar of Noir spans almost two hours, but it zips by at lightning pace. Damon Runyon, one of Eddie Muller's heroes, would be proud....

The Red Riding Trilogy is the British TV adaptation of David Peace's book series about power and corruption in Northern England in the context of several true-crime sprees (including that of the Yorkshire Ripper). Peace's four books have been turned into three episodes: 1974, 1980, and 1983. Why 1977 was skipped we'll never know.

Each episode runs about an hour and a half, featuring a different director and medium. 1974 was shot on 16mm by Julian Jarrold; 1980 was shot on 35mm and has more of a documentary feel, thanks to Man on Wire director James Marsh; 1983 was shot using a Red digital camera by Anand Tucker. After running on Channel 4 a year ago, they're getting the big screen treatment on this side of the pond.

There's recurring characters across the series, and like The Wire--though it's by no means as good as The Wire, duh--the focus is on the frustrations of conducting a police investigation, the frustrations of being a journalist, and the frustrations of living in an economically depressed area. And like The Wire, the Red Riding Trilogy badly needs some subtitles. I can barely understand your "English," Leeds!...

Unlike last weekend, will this weekend be rainy? Probcast says probably! With that in mind, here's this week's DVD releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.

This week's big release is The Informant! Matt Damon got chunky and frumpy for his role as Mark Whitacre, a whistleblower on price-fixing at agribusiness conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland, and yet his Oscar nom this year is for Invictus? For shame, Academy! The This American Life episode on this real-life incident was great, and I'm assuming Kurt Eichenwald's book was, too. In fact, the real-life story is so ridiculous and crazy that it's diminished by a fictional account, even if said fiction is directed by Steven Soderbergh and includes our precious Joel McHale.

What's in The Box? A movie I don't wanna watch. Also skip the misguided sideshow Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant and slashfest remake Sorority Row in favor of the Nazi zombies in Dead Snow, which was not so-bad-it's-good, but actually entertaining....

Breaking Upwards Movie Trailer from Breaking Upwards on Vimeo.

Not since the Stanford Experiment has someone come up with such a jarring hypothetical "Now let's see what happens" scenario. In Breaking Upwards, director/actor Daryl Wein and actress Zoe Lister-Jones film their own break-up by degrees. Instead of quitting each other cold turkey, they take days "off" from their relationship. The results, not wholly unexpectedly, don't go according to plan. Film School Rejects gives the film, on the other hand, an A. High Times says it kicks the shit out of Garden State.

Tonight at 7 p.m., Breaking Upwards plays at Central Cinema, as part of STIFF Night for February. Pizza, beer, and a break-up movie: we've got your perfect Thursday night right here.

The Film Noir Foundation's Noir City Film Festival began its fourth annual stop in Seattle at SIFF Cinema last weekend, to deservedly-packed houses.

The Fest has always earned major props from film noir hardcores for bringing obscure but top-drawer examples of the genre to light, and Friday's opening double-feature delivered a couple of honest-to-God undiscovered gems in Pitfall and Larceny.

The transformation of Dick Powell from apple-cheeked Busby Berkeley hoofer to noir tough-guy represents one of the great image overhauls in Hollywood history: Picture Zac Efron morphing into Clint Eastwood in an eight-year span, and you're about there. But Powell managed just such a hat trick with his hard-boiled turn in 1944's brilliant Murder, My Sweet. Pitfall hit theaters in 1948, and marked the continuation of Powell's exploration of the dark side. 

In it, he plays a happily-married insurance agent magnetically drawn into a fling with fashion model Lizabeth Scott. This being a film noir, things go rapidly astray--compliments of a sloe-eyed monster of a private eye (future Perry Mason star Raymond Burr), Scott's jealous ex-con boyfriend, and fickle fate.

It's the most wrenchingly honest and unflinching portrayal of infidelity you'll probably ever see from a Hays Code-era movie. Scott and Jane Wyatt (the female points of this triangle) are both realistically-rendered and likeable characters: The former assumes far more complex (and unfortunate) shading than the stereotypical noir femme fatale, and Wyatt's an unexpectedly iron-spined (and, um, kinda sexy) little pistol. Powell finds a core of charm and sympathy despite his actions, and director Andre de Toth keeps things moving like a recklessly-fired-off bullet. Burr, the movie's metaphoric and literal heavy, coolly steals the show with a performance that's a glorious kin to his villainous, flambé-tossing turn in Anthony Mann's Raw Deal....

Through Thursday, The Varsity Theater in the U-District is screening the five Oscar-nominated animated shorts, along with three of the "highly commended" that didn't quite make the cut (tickets $10). It's a fun enough evening of short animated films, but overall it leaves you with the depressing sense that Pixar--with its now 15-year-old game changing computer animation--has sucked all the joy, individuality, and creativity out of animation around the world.

Of the five nominees, four are computer animated--the stop-motion Wallace & Gromit caper A Matter of Loaf and Death is the only hold-out. And of the three commended films, two are computer animated. That's six of eight, and not so surprisingly, with the exception of one, they all look the same.

When Pixar launched itself into the mainstream with Toy Story in 1995, they became critical darlings on the strength of their groundbreaking technology coupled with almost quaint attachment to story and character that was a couple cuts above most mainstream fare. Aesthetically, they stood out (and continued to for some time) by essentially refusing to buy into their own hype: John Lasseter and his cohorts were aware that despite the robustness of their technology, particularly when it came to representing the inanimate world, they were still light-years away from photographic verisimilitude. Instead they settled on a charming, usually whimsical caricature of people and animals (and various anthropomorphic objects) that existed comfortably between more traditional animation and the numerous failed attempts to compete with live action (see, most recently, the motion-capture Beowulf)....

I told you before. And I'm telling you again: If there's an actor alive today who exudes all the emotional turmoil, confounding complexity, and mystic depth that was Kurt Cobain, it is the tween magnet who did those all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world high school movies.

Can Zac Efron sing? Check. (Could Cobain? Discuss.)

Can Efron play guitar? Doesn't really matter.

Can he rock a rock tee and jeans? You decide.

Can he brood? Mask pain with a sarcastic grin?

That's the real question. Can Efron—or anyone else with or without a SAG card—convey soul-deep doubt, desperate ambition, seething anger, and instant likability with a twitch of his mouth? A glacier-cool, sidelong look at the camera?

Hollywood's creative/financial minds are now seriously noodling this question, because a long-in-the-works Cobain biopic is finally moving forward. Based partially on Charles Cross' Heavier Than Heaven, a David Benioff-penned script is now in the hands of The Messenger director Oren Moverman. (Courtney Love's producer credit has not doomed the flick to straight-to-DVD obscurity. Yay!)...

"Their Love Was a Flame That Destroyed!" was a tagline for The Postman Always Rings Twice. Remade  in '81 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange, it was the 1946 original with Lana Turner and John Garfield that set the standard for erotic thrillers to come.

The YouTube trailer, above (compare with the original trailer), updates the opening credits so you aren't fooled into thinking all classic black-and-white films feature wholesome glimpses of sleepy small towns. Some are about plotting to kill your husband.

Tomorrow, Sunday, February 21, SIFF presents Postman (1:30 p.m., 6 p.m.) in a double feature with John Garfield's last film, 1951's He Ran All the Way  (4 p.m., 8:30 p.m.). There's a small-time hood, a cop shooting, a manhunt, and Shelley Winters. The Guardian says, "It's a doom-laden movie, wonderfully lit by cinematographer James Wong Howe." Here's a clip.

Leo, I know how you feel.

I knew Shutter Island would be bad last fall, when Paramount moved the film from October to the studios' February dumping ground. But I also knew I would have to see it anyway, because it's a Martin Scorsese film, starring his muse/mancrush Leonardo DiCaprio, blah blah blah. So, even though I have been sick of the ads for a month now, I did. And let me tell you: It is just as lousy as I expected.

Not that there's nothing good about the film. There's some lovely shots involving light and dark and cigarette smoke by master cinematographer Robert Richardson, and intricate visual landscapes care of production designer (and longtime Scorsese collaborator) Dante Ferretti. And the film has some genuinely tense and creepy moments. But.

The biggest problem with Shutter Island is its tone. Scorsese could have had a solid '50s-detectives-visit-the-local-insane-asylum B movie here, but the film's still got all the high-falutin' mainstream trappings: faux-artsiness, awkward exposition, overt Holocaust references, and an overly serious score. If it's a B movie, embrace that it's a B movie--don't dress it up in fancy clothes. Marty, ur doin it wrong.

Anyways, Leo does his best gumshoe squint and furrowed brow (and transfers his Bahhsten accent from The Departed) to play Teddy Daniels, a Federal Marshall who made the ferry trip with his partner (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate a missing patient at the titular locale. Lots of other quality actors show up--Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Jackie Earle Haley, Patricia Clarkson--but it's all for naught. You don't need great acting to get where this film is going, which I had already discerned last year FROM THE TRAILER. After a drawn-out final act, the film ended and a collective groan went up from the crowd. Never a good sign.

What's worse is that most critics are still praising Shutter Island, showing deference to the Scorsese legacy. (And props to David Edelstein and A.O Scott for telling it like it is.) Had the exact same film been directed by someone a little less critic-proof, say Chris Columbus or Ron Howard, I'd expect the reviews to be quite different. 

On the upside, at least Scorsese didn't use The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" again.

• Shutter Island opens today at theaters all over Seattle, including Pacific Place, Cinerama, the Metro, and Thornton Place.

Tonight, SIFF Cinema's annual Noir City Film Festival begins with a double-feature, and everything you could want from Noir: Adulterers, Con Men, Grifters, Private Eyes, Ex-Cons, and of course, Dames.

John Payne

Tonight's films, Pitfall and Larceny are both from 1948 and both not on DVD, so get yourself to SIFF Cinema (McCaw Hall at Seattle Center). Pitfall stars Dick Powell as an insurance man who has a disastrous affair with Lizabeth Scott; Larceny, with John Payne and Joan Caulfield, tells the story of con man who lets his romantic entanglements get in the way of his work.

Worth paying special attention to is dreamboat John Payne, an actor known to most of the world for playing the heart-of-gold lawyer Fred Gailey in the 1947 Miracle on 34th Street. But in my family, he's known as the guy my grandmother called "a terrible kisser." (Way to go, grandma.) Go see for yourself. Noir City continues through next Thursday.

It's a beautiful day, as if spring has sprung. That means it's time to lock yourselves indoors and watch some movies. And if you're looking for something to do this fine evening, head to the SAM, where their Steve McQueen series continues with Bullitt, followed by a Q&A with Steve's first wife, Neile McQueen-Toffel. And now here's this week's DVD releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.

Compared to the past few weeks, this week's lineup is actually pretty decent. So let's get the must-miss out of the way: Law Abiding Citizen, another title (like Couples Retreat before it) in bad need of punctuation, not to mention a better script. Don't remember this Jamie Foxx-Gerard Butler action thriller? Consider yourself lucky to have blocked those non-stop commercials from your memory.

Also out today is Coco Before Chanel, starring gamine cutie-pie Audrey Tautou as the fashion designer in her early years.  There's also Good Hair, Chris Rock's documentary about the politics and culture surrounding African-American hair. (Because there's two types of hair: the hair white people have, and the hair white people used to have.)  Speaking of black people, cult camp neo-classic Black Dynamite is also out on DVD. I thought it was released a couple weeks ago, but apparently it's actually out this week. I blame The Man....