Richard Bond's film about Tupac Shakur

Having visited Las Vegas (or Cibola, as Stephen King calls the model of the world) recently, I noticed the 2007 documentary “Tupac Assassination: Conspiracy or Revenge?” by Richard Bond (and “Bond Age Films”), examining the investigation of the gangland hit on rap singer Tupac Shakur on September 7, 1996 near the Strip in Las Vegas. 

The incident occurred about two years after OJ, and fits well into 90s lore.

The documentary recreates the scene on Flamingo Blvd with tinted model cars and makes it look chilling, as Tupac was surrounded and trapped.

Much of the rest of the documentary questions the police investigation, and interviews many parties never interviewed by police.  There were complicated ties to activity in Compton, CA as well as LA itself.

Early, the film makes interesting points about the squabble over the "ownership" of Tupac's music in the record industry. 

The DVD presents the film in full screen format. The film has a MySpace site here. 

There is a detailed biography on Wikipedia, emphasizing the way “2Pac” dealt with the problems in the inner cities, here. 

PBS Independent Lens looks at return of wounded Marine, "Hell and Back Again"

The PBS Independent Lens film “Hell and Back Again”, directed by Danfung Dennis, documents the life of a Marine, SGT Nathan Harris, who is severely wounded in the hip and thigh before the end of his deployment in Afghanistan.  The filmmaker traced his life back home in North Carolina with wife Ashley.

The narrative style of the film switches back and forth between his gradual healing at home and the backstories of the action during his deployments (there were three of them).

There’s a discussion of why he wanted to join the Marine Corps, that is to be a “cowboy”, to be a warrior.  The rest of us depend too much on people willing and wanting to do this.  But he has to get home to his wife. But he says at 26 he has grown up from when he was 18.

There’s a medical session, showing the healing thigh, where the doctor says it will be a year before he can go back to “killing people”.  He says that he will never get back to 100%, and that a grunt is all he ever had wanted to be.  Amazing!

The flatland infiltration episode near the end of the film does invoke the mood of “Hurt Locker”. The battlefield tears are hard to take.

The film won awards at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Jeffrey Brown interviews Mr. Dennis at this link supplied by PBS.

Laurent Bouhnik goes "all the way" in his new "Q Desire"

There is a new, explicit film by Laurent Bouhnik, titled simply “Desire”, with the DVD due from Strand Releasing on June 5.

In an unspecified town on the  Mediterranean coast of France, Cecile (Deborah Revy) experiences the loss of her father, who had been ambiguous and then supportive of her need for freedom. She throws herself into the lives of several teenagers, most notably Matt (Gowan Didi), and finds that only full “physicality” gives her any sense of meaning.  To set the tone of her life, she finds an urn for her father’s ashes in a bar.

In the notes for the DVD screener, the director is quite candid about his belief in the need for physical fulfillment.  The film is quite explicit (with “everything”), from the very opening;  the characters are impetuous, with their smoking, sometimes reckless driving (Matt gets struck by a car but is OK), and their need for adventure.  The film does present lesbian encounters, but all the men are interested in “straight” objectives only (even if blindfolded).  Some of the group scenes are shot in black-and-white and various sepias or colorizing of only certain objects. 

Given the male need for “aggression” in many scenes, I wondered, when I was younger, could I have ever proved myself “worthy”?

The film is also known as “Q” (the title on imdb). But remember, "Q" was the name of the all-knowing older godfather in the James Bond movies. 

Strand's official site is here. 

The film is not officially rated, but definitely would fall into the NC-17 area.  But that’s OK.  We need a respectable category of film just for grownups.

YouTube trailer from “FilmsActu”:

For today’s “short film”, look at my main blog for a discussion of Khan Academy’s  animated “Alien Abduction Brain Teaser” (18 min).  

"The Man of My Life": eclectic French film about a wise gay neighbor

A French film by Zaibou Breitman, “The Man of My Life” (“L’homme de sa vie”, 2006) sets up a well-to-do family in the Provence region of France, with a new gay neighbor.

Frederic (Bernard Campan), in his 40s and looking fit but otherwise close to his age, has loving kids and an attentive wife.  They invite a new neighbor Hugo (Charles Berling) for dinner, and gradually Frederic starts to question the basis of his own existence, over time.

The film shows a lot of fantasy, apparently embedded in computer and cell phone images, such as Hugo’s “hanging angel” for a boyfriend. It even makes art of the fitness equipment and running gear.

Hugo tells Frederic how his father threw him out of the house, and spread the misery by saying “You hurt your family was well as yourself” by being gay. How?  By not offering grandchildren?  But then we learn that Hugo has a daughter himself anyway.

Hugo also challenges Frederic about the existential basis of life, for example, the importance of family, which cannot be chosen, and friends and lovers, which can be.  He says that Frederic is living his own life from a distance, as if he were looking at it in the third person. 

This film is a bit more ephemeral and subtle than the usual "gay man loves straight man" film. 

Strand Releasing’s trailer:

 

"Daylight" is a taut mini-thriller, German style, in New York State

A recent but brief and taut thriller by David Barker, “Daylight”, transposes European-style small cast plotting to upstate New York.  A wealthy young couple (from Germany or Switzerland), on their way to an unspecified wedding (not theirs?), Dan and Irene (Aidan Redmond and Alexandra Meierhans) picks up a hitchhiker (Renny, played by Michael Godere) when lost somewhere in the Catskills.  Soon they are carjacked, and taken to a house occupied by co-conspirators Leo and Murph (Ivan Martin and Brian Bickerstaff).  Godere, one of the writers, is quite likeable in a way, and seems almost out of character playing this kind of role. 

The drama then takes some unusual twists.  The criminals act as if they were at war with rich people, to take by force what they can (to survive?)   Threats and “funny games” start, sometimes erotic (both homo and hetero), and gradually Irene decides she can use her pregnancy as a kind of defensive weapon.  There is a bit of Stockholm Syndrome for a bit – or is Irene faking it?  At the end, we know how Irene saves herself and her baby, but her husband is an open question.

I had rented the DVD and returned it, confusing it with “The Divide” (as on my “cf” blog, May 15), because the title “Daylight” would make sense for that latter film, so I watched it on Instant Play.  The rural cinematography is gorgeous online.  There was a famous film with Sylvester Stallone with the same title in 1996.

The film was distributed by Cinema Purgatorio for small limited release in 2011. The official site from the distributor is here. 

The film can be rented on YouTube through Warner Bros. for $3.99.   The language is mostly English (a little German, no subtitles). 

Note:  A review of "Battleship" (Peter Berg, Universal) is also on my "cf" blog May 25. 

Picture (mine), off US 9, about 80 miles N of NYC, 2011. 

Some samples from "48 Hour Film Project", 2012

I didn’t make it to the DC 48 Hour Film Project recap (the finalists were shown at AFI Silver last night), so I picked three 2012 films from three cities.

From the Cleveland project, I found Dustin Lee’s film, “Transistor”, filmed in Kent and Parma, Ohio, by Maple Films.  The required line seems to be “Nothing is Mundane”.  A young woman, stilling living a home, is bothered by hearing static and voices wherever she is, even in her office cubicle.  It comes off her cell phone, her car radio, an old radio found in the woods.  Finally a young man who knows something about this shows up.

The link is here.   Ohio is pushing film hard as a possible source of jobs in a recession. 

From the Miami project, I found "Mayanetics", by Sean Biffar and John Hunt, Miami, with script line “Some people like it that way” with prop of sunglasses.  This is a short documentary about a fictitious cult religion, as people sleep out on the "South Beach" and wait for a shaman to appear. He does, and is a bit underwhelming.  The young people on the beach, including a guy who doesn't walk on cracks, look like the real gods. 

From Las Vegas, I found the black and white silent short,  “The Grimace” from “Memory Loss Filmz” (sic), by Levi Velasquez  Steve Suarez.  A “joker” trolls the hallways and stalks the staff of a public school, and the film shows nothing that looks like the “Cibola” we know.  Link is here.

"Big Miracle": in the 1980s, the polar regions could still get too cold

Delta actually shows movies on flights three-fourths across the country, as with “Big Miracle” yesterday on a trek from Salt Lake to Baltimore.

A local news reporter Adam Carlson (John Kraninski) discovers three whales trapped by ice in the Prudhoe Bay area.  He recruits an ex-girl friend and Greenpeace volunteer Rachel Kramer (Drew Barrymore) to stir up the heroic effort to rescue the cetaceans. Adam hopes to have a nationwide news story and has his own ulterior motives besides environmental altruism.  (Rachel was Cindy Lowry in the “true story”.)

In time, a whole town (Barrow) is mobilized, as kids stop school to join an effort “bigger than themselves”.

The environmental issue seems the opposite of what we often hear about today, as with polar bears, who are endangered by melting ice, not refreezing.

There is a lot of 1980s feel-good stuff, with Ronald Reagan appearing to praise the efforts.

The official site is here (Universal).  The film is based on the book “Freeing the Whales” by Thomas Rose and is directed by Ken Kwapis.

Drew Barrymore’s role reminds me of the 2004 film “My Date with Drew”, made for $1000, for filmmaker Brian Herzlinger risks his bod a bit and wonders if he needs to look buff before meeting here.  The official site is still there, from Imagination and Rusty Bear films.

Pictures, actually near Tioga Pass, CA, recent trip