FATHER'S DAY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - It's Father's Day. Do you love your Father enough to rape him in the ass? If so, celebrate how much you love your Father and enjoy the fine work of Winnipeg's legendary Daddy Boy Bum Blasters Astron-6 in their horror masterwork wherein demonic serial killer Chris Fuchman forcibly sodomizes Dads then sets them on fire. Watch Father's Day today with your day on this most glorious Father's Day, then drill the old bugger so he gets the prostate massage of his life.

Father's Day (2011) dir. Astron-6
(Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, Steven Kostanski)
Starring: Conor Sweeney, Adam Brooks, Matt Kennedy, Brent Neale, Amy Groening, Meredith Sweeney, Kevin Anderson, Garret Hnatiuk, Mackenzie Murdoch, Lloyd Kaufman

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind. toward some resolution which it may never find." - Robert Anderson from his play, I Never Sang For My Father

A father's love for his son is a special kind of love. As such, Dads the world over face that singular inevitability - that peculiar epoch in their collective lives, when they must chauffeur the apple of their eye from a police station, for the third time in a month, after said progeny has undergone questioning upon being found in a motel room with a dead man covered in blood, après le bonheur de la sodomie, only to return home after dropping said twink son on a street corner, so the aforementioned offspring of the light-in-the-loafer persuasion, can perform fellatio on old men for cash, whilst Dad sits forlornly in the domicile that once represented decent family values and stare at a framed photo of better times, until he succumbs to unexpected anal rape and when doused with gasoline and set on fire as he weeps, face down and buttocks up, frenziedly tears out into the street screaming and collapsing in a charred heap in front of his returning son who reacts with open-mouthed horror as the scent of old penis wafts from his twink tonsils.

For most fathers, all of the above is, no doubt, a case of been-there-done-that - not unlike that inevitable fatherly attempt at understanding when Dad gently seeks some common ground with the fruits of his husbandly labours and offers: "Look son, I experimented when I was young, too."

So begins Father's Day - with the aforementioned, AND some delectable pre-credit butchery, an eye-popping opening credit sequence with images worthy of Jim Steranko and a series of flashbacks during an interrogation with a hard-boiled cop.

This is the astounding feature film (the second completed feature this year) from the brilliant Winnipeg filmmaking collective Astron-6 (Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney, Steven Kostanski) who have joined forces with the legendary Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz of Troma Entertainment to generate a film that is the ultimate evil bastard child sprung from the loins of a daisy chain twixt Guy Maddin, John Paizs, early David Cronenberg, Herschel Gordon Lewis and Abel Ferrara's The Driller Killer. Father's Day combines the effects of asbestos-tinged drinking water in Winnipeg with the Bukkake splatter of the coolest artistic influences imaginable and yields one of the Ten Best Films of 2011.

It is the seed of depraved genius that's spawned Astron-6 and, of course, with the best work in Canadian film, it has been embraced by an entity outside of Canada - that glorious aforementioned sleaze-bucket nutter who gave the world The Toxic Avenger.

This collective of five (not six) brilliant filmmakers (including Steven Kostanski, the F/X wizard, writer and director of Astron-6's MANBORG) are part of a new breed of young Canadian filmmakers who have snubbed their noses at the government-funded bureaucracies that oft-eschew the sort of transgression that normally puts smaller indigenous cultural industries on the worldwide map (including its own - Canada only truly supports such work grudgingly once it's found acceptance elsewhere).

In this sense, Astron-6 has been making films under the usual radar of mediocrity and steadfastly adhering to the fine Groucho Marx adage: "I refuse to join any club that would have someone like me for a member."

Imagine, if you will, any government-funded agency (especially a Canadian one), doling out taxpayer dollars to the following plot: Chris Fuchman (Mackenzie Murdoch), is a serial killer that specializes in targeting fathers for anal rape followed by further degradations, including torture, butchery and/or murder.

Our madman, Fuchman (substitute :k" for "h" to pronounce name properly), turns out to be a demon from the deepest pits of hell and a ragtag team is recruited by a blind infirm Archbishop of the Catholic Church (Kevin Anderson) to fight this disgusting agent of Satan. An eyepatch-wearing tough guy (Adam Brooks), a young priest (Matthew Kennedy), the aforementioned twink male prostitute (Conor Sweeney) and hard-boiled dick (Brent Neale) and a jaw-droppingly gorgeous stripper (Amy Groening) follow the trail of this formidable foe whilst confronting all their own personal demons.

This frothy brew of vile delights includes some of the most graphic blood splattering, vicious ass-slamming violence, gratuitous nudity, skimpy attire for the ladies, 'natch (and our delectable twink), morality, evisceration, hunky lads, delicious babes, compassion, rape, fellatio, chainsaw action, wholesome content, cannibalism, hand-to-hand combat, gunplay, family values, sodomy, immolation and monsters. It's all delivered up with a cutting edge mise-en-scène that out-grindhouses Tarantino's Grindhouse and delivers thrills, scares and laughs all in equal measure.

The film's sense of humour, in spite, or perhaps because of the proper doses of scatology and juvenilia is not the typical low-brow gross-out humour one finds in so many contemporary comedies, but frankly, works on the level of satire, and as such, is of the highest order. It stylistically straddles the delicate borders great satire demands.

Too many people who should know better, confuse spoof or parody with satire and certainly anyone going to see Father's Day expecting SCTV, Airplane or Blazing Saddles might be in for a rude awakening. Yes, it's just as funny as any of those classic mirth-makers, but the laughs cut deep and they're wrought, not from the typical shtick attached to spoofs, but like all great satire, derive from the entire creative team playing EVERYTHING straight. No matter how funny, absurd or outlandish the situations and dialogue are, one never senses that an annoying tongue is being drilled firmly in cheek. Astron-6 loves their material and, importantly loves their creative influences. Their target is not necessarily the STYLE of film they're rendering homage to, but rather, the hypocrisies and horrors that face humanity everyday - religion, repression, dysfunction - all wedged cleverly into the proceedings.

Clearly a great deal of the movie's power in terms of its straight-laced approach to outlandish goings-on is found in the performances - all of them are spot-on. Adam Brooks IS a stalwart hero and never does he veer from infusing his role from the virtues inherent in such roles. Hell, he could frankly be Canada's Jason Statham in conventional action movies if anyone bothered to make such movies in Canada on any regular basis.

Conor Sweeney as Twink is a marvel. Not only does he play the conflicted gay street hustler "straight", he straddles that terrific balance between genuinely rendering a layered character, but also infusing his performance with melodramatic aplomb. Not only is this perfect for the character itself, but it's perfectly in keeping with the style of movie that is being lovingly celebrated.

Anyone who reads my stuff regularly will know my mantra: Melodrama is not a dirty word - it's a legitimate genre and approach to drama. There is good melodrama and bad melodrama, like any other genre. Luckily, the Astron-6 team has the joy of glorious melodrama hard-wired into their collective DNA and Sweeney's performance is especially indelible in this respect.

Brent Neale as the hard-boiled cop is, quite simply, phenomenal. Will someone out there give this actor job after job after job? The camera loves him and he knows how to play to the camera. He is clearly at home with the straight-up and melodramatic aspects of his role and most importantly, he is imbued with the sort of smoulder that makes stars - he's handsome and intense.

Astoundingly, not a single actor in this film feels out of place. Whether they're emoting straight, slightly stilted, wildly melodramatic or, on occasion (given the genre), magnificently reeking of ham, this is ensemble acting at its absolute best.

The entire movie was made on a budget of $10,000 and once again, for all the initiatives out there to generate low-budget feature films, Father's Day did it cheaper (WAY CHEAPER) and better. The movie uses its budgetary constraints not as limitations, but as a method to exploit what can be so special about movies. The visual and makeup effects as well as the art direction ooze imagination and aesthetic brilliance and it's all captured through a lens that puts its peer level and even some big budget extravaganzas to shame. Imagination is truly the key to success with no-budget movies. The Father's Day cinematography is often garish and lurid, but delightfully and deliciously so - with first-rate lighting and excellent composition. The filmmakers and their entire team successfully render pure gold out of elements that in most low-budget films just looks cheap - or worse, blandly competent (like most low budget Canadian movies). It's total trash chic - trash art, if you must.

I attended this spectacular event in France many years ago called the FreakZone International Festival of Trash Cinema which celebrated some of the most amazing transgressive works I'd ever seen. When I expressed to the festival director that I was surprised at the level of cinematic artistry, he just smiled and said, "You North Americans have such a limited view of trash culture - for us, trash is not garbage, we use the word to describe work that is subversive." This was so refreshing. It felt like a veil had been lifted from over me and I realized what EXACTLY it was that I loved about no-budget cinema - as a filmmaker, a teacher, a critic and fan.

Making a movie for no money that is NOT subversive on every level is, frankly, just plain stupid. What's the point? And Father's Day is nothing if it's not subversive. Besides, I've seen too many young filmmakers with talent galore ruined by initiatives that purported to celebrate the virtues of no-or-low-budget filmmaking but then forced the artists to apply the idiotic expectations of "industry standards" - whatever that means, anyway. This has been especially acute in Canada where bureaucrats make decisions and/or define the rules/parameters of filmmaking.

Father's Day and the entire canon of the Astron-6 team should be the ultimate template for filmmakers with no money to seize the day and make cool shit. That's what it should always be about. And in this case, it took the fortitude of the filmmakers, their genuinely transgressive gifts as artists AND an independent AMERICAN producer to ensure that they made the coolest shit of all.

What finally renders Father's Day special is just how transgressively intelligent it all is and yet, never turns its proverbial nose up at the straight-to-video-nasties of the 80s, the grindhouse cinema of the 60s and 70s and the weird, late night cable offerings of the early 90s. It works very much on the level of the things it loves best. This is real filmmaking - it entertains, it dazzles, it makes use of every cheap trick in the book to create MOVIE magic and finally, it's made by people who clearly care about film. They get to have their cake and eat it too by having as much fun making the movies as we have watching them.

Father's Day was unveiled at Toronto's premiere genre film event, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival 2011 where it won the grand prize of Best Film - voted on by the thousands of attendees of the festival. It was released theatrically in early 2012 by Troma Entertainment and is now available on glorious Blu-Ray. You can buy it from the links displayed below (which assists greatly in the ongoing maintenance of this site.





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THE GREAT CHAMELEON - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Retard jokes? Scat yucks? Racist gags? Look no further.

The Great Chameleon (2012) **1/2
Dir. Goran Kalezic
Starring: Victor Altomare, Robert Davi, Stacy Keach, Monique Zordan, Ted Han

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A hardened criminal has been in stir for three years and all he really wants is a burger and fries. He stops at a fast food joint and faces a huge lineup - due, as per usual, to the stupidity and indecision of the clientele and the incompetence of the minimum wage staff behind the counter. Rather than suffering through a long wait, the criminal morphs into a shuffling, slobbering, slurring, whining and demanding mentally challenged person. He moves to the front of the line. Launching into "full retard", he causes enough havoc and, rather realistically (given how stupid MOST people are), gets the pity and support of the clientele and before you can see "cheeseburger and fries", he gets it right pronto AND free.

Okay, so think less of me because this made me almost soil my pants from laughing so hard. No, better yet - fuck you! Besides, even if most of us have not resorted to the "full retard" to get what we want when we want it, we find other ways to do it. I've thought nothing about affecting a gimpy limp to get to the front of lineups or pudging out my lower lips, furrowing my brow, lowering my visage and using a very thick Ukrainian accent to get Senior Citizen discounts without providing I.D. It's the humour of recognition, right? Ah screw it, who am I trying to kid? It's low-brow retard humour. But it IS funny!

The aforementioned scene is from a pretty awful, detestable movie. In fact, it's a total mess. HOWEVER, it'd be TOO easy to write it off as a complete pile of crap or maybe even one of the worst movies ever made, because the facts of the matter are this: I laughed quite uproariously all the way through the movie.

Seeing as The Great Chameleon is a comedy, this is not a bad thing at all, however, it can't change the fact that the script is little more than a flimsy clothesline to hang some of the most infantile gross-out gags I've ever experienced and that it's directed with all the panache and competence that might be brought to bear if one had hired a longshoreman to helm the proceedings. The picture, on so many levels, deserves little more than my lowest rating of 1 PUBIC HAIR, but I can't bring myself to do it because for better or worse...

I pissed myself laughing.

Its star Victor Altomare (who co-wrote the purported screenplay with the film's apparent director Goran Kalezic) plays a low-life criminal with a penchant for disguise who is sprung from prison by an FBI agent (Monique Zordan, perhaps one of the worst actresses now living on the planet) to lead her to the whereabouts of a little girl (Altomare's niece it turns out) who's been snatched by an Asian Mob boss (Ten Han, also awful but screamingly funny both intentionally and unintentionally). A grumpy parole officer (Robert Davi, shockingly good and funny in spite of how awful the movie often is) stakes out Altomare whilst he goes about his business with the help of his effete makeup artist played completely and utterly insanely by Stacy Keach.

Let it be said again that there is nothing remotely good about the actual filmmaking. The screenplay is a pretty inept excuse for a story and occasionally tries to sneak in stuff we're supposed to take seriously and the direction is lame at worst and barely competent at best.

Why is it funny? Well, first and foremost, Victor Altomare is clearly a funny guy. Now, anyone who knows me, knows all to well that I'm a veritable Encyclopedia Britannica of all things movie-related and yet, I have no idea - NO FUCKING IDEA - who Victor Altomare is. I've never heard of him and to my knowledge have never seen him in anything. I know virtually nothing about him. Seriously. His credits are meagre and mean NOTHING to me.

NADA!!!

Capisce?

Altomare is clearly no spring chicken and has sprung out of nowhere to produce, co-write and star in this movie. Out of fucking nowhere, I tell you. Now, maybe having no idea who he is could be a good thing, because what I do know is that he IS a good comic actor who might actually be a great comic actor if he was in a movie with something resembling writing and a director who could/would tone down his tendency to over-indulge his talents to their detriment. Altomare has a great mug for the camera and his comic timing is often impeccable. Unfortunately, many of the set-pieces go on far too long and bugger up their potential to be gems - or at least golden pellets of laugh turds.

As for mugs, he's surrounded himself with some of the best in the business. Craggy-faced Robert Davi is one of the best working character actors in the business. He'd have been so at home in hard boiled post-war crime movies, but in these woeful days, actors like him are always taking roles in pictures well below their talent. (Kind of like this one.)

By rights, he should be wearing an expression of "what the fuck am I doing in this thing?" all the way through The Great Chameleon, but he's such a great actor that he embraces his role happily, plays it completely straight and because he's often thrust into some utterly ludicrous situations (looking into his rear-view mirror to see Altomare in a kilt straddling the trunk and pissing all over the back window of his car, or sitting in a barber chair while Altomare in disguise as an effete gay hairdresser tries to seduce him, or - I kid you not - jerking off after seeing a hot, young naked woman hanging her boobs out of Altomare's window), his straightforward approach actually makes almost everything he both does and says knee-slappingly hilarious.

Stacy Keach, one of the most respected actors of his generation, minces and lisps and prances about in one of the most shockingly stereotypical renderings of a homosexual I've seen in decades. And even though one might wince at how completely inappropriate this "light-in-the-loafers" role and performance are in a contemporary context, there's no denying that he made me laugh almost every second he was on screen. If this were another age, Keach could well have had a fine career in his august years to rival that of Franklin Pangborn.

The two perfectly and genuinely awful performances in the film even have their charms.

Monique Zordan is stunningly gorgeous, but everytime she opens her mouth, her dialogue thuds so resoundingly upon the floor it'd been enough to have tenants below her complaining about the noise. Given the role and the dreadful dialogue she's forced to utter, it's possible that her performance is a casualty of some of the picture's worst incompetencies. I almost want to believe this as the camera loves her so much I'd be happy to see her in more pictures AND the stellar Davi does his job so well, he almost gets HER to raise the bar on her delivery.

Ted Han as the bumblingly evil Asian ganglord is also atrocious in a thoroughly wooden fashion, but he does give it the old college try and since he's forced to deliver some unbelievably foul examples of stereotypical "Asian" dialogue, he does get a few points for actually generating laughs.

The checklist of mean-spirited, old-fashioned and completely inappropriate humour in this movie includes;

- Shit jokes
- Fart jokes
- Vomit jokes
- Pissing jokes
- Retard jokes
- Cripple jokes
- Penis jokes
- Sodomy jokes

and ALL of the humour is rooted in:

- Misogyny
- Racism
- Ageism
- Sexism
- and every other "ism" you can think of.

But goddamn, a lot of it is funny and I know I'm headed straight for Hell because I laughed so much.

At the same time, it really might have been better if the movie had actually been good.

"The Great Chameleon" is in limited theatrical release and playing in Toronto at the Royal Theatre.

MEDIUM COOL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Haskell Wexler Classic is an important and influential work of the Cinema Vérité movement. It's exciting, urgent, vital and a worthy addition to the Criterion Collection.

Medium Cool (1969) *****
Dir. Haskell Wexler
Starring: Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill, Harold Blankenship

Review By Greg Klymkiw

“I hope we can use our art for love and peace.” So said cinematographer Haskell Wexler as he accepted an Oscar last April for his work on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? His seriousness and obvious sincerity startled the Academy Awards audience, long used to the standard thank yous to co-workers and producers. “I realized I might never get another chance at an audience of 60 or 70 million people. It seemed too big an opportunity to miss. What was I supposed to do – thank my gaffer and Jack Warner?”

Kevin Thomas

Los Angeles Times, 1 June 1967

A car off the highway. Metal twisted. Open door. Woman's body splayed on the asphalt. Blood gushing. A photographer attached to a movie camera hovers above - shooting - like a vulture circling its prey. One gruesome shot after another. Every conceivable angle caught on film. Real film. Real movie camera. Real cameraman - or so we think. We pray he isn't real because when he's sucked as much life out of his quarry as possible, he packs up and leaves the woman to bleed and presumably die. Alone.

The cameraman is John Cassellis. He is played by Robert Forster. Yes, we're watching a movie, but WHAT a movie! When Medium Cool was unleashed upon the movie-going public, nothing like it had ever been seen before and without question, not much (if anything) like it has been seen since.

Written, directed and photographed by Haskell Wexler, the celebrated cinematographer of such films as In The Heat Of The Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as well as two Oscar-winning turns for Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf and Bound For Glory, he crafted what might be the ultimate auteur film made in America. To this very day, Medium Cool is an important and influential work of the Cinema Vérité movement. It's exciting, urgent and vital - impossible to take your eyes off the screen while watching it, almost impossible to blink for fear of missing a frame and most of all, impossible to get out of your head once you've seen it.

On the surface, it might seem very simple - deceptively and cleverly so. Cassellis doesn't seem to care about much of anything unless he sees it through the lens of his camera. He loves shooting to the exclusion of all else. The only thing that matters is what he sees is what he shoots. The image is everything to him. It's not even especially important what story he's telling so long as he's telling it, so long as he's capturing his perspective on the world around him. He shoots, then hands off his negative (yes, kids - negative - ever hear of that?) to a helmeted motorcycle rider who crazily zips through the Chicago streets in the film's great opening title sequence.

The shots are in the can. What's next for him to plaster onto negative? He's like a junkie. He needs another shot. All that counts is the shot. From his eye, through the lens and bouncing back from his target and captured on unexposed stock greedily demanding a chemical bath in order to spool itself through the projection sprockets of a telecine and then, beamed over airwaves, mediated through a cathode ray screen and into the eyes, hearts and, hopefully, minds of its viewers.

His aim is true. What's done with it afterwards might not be.

Certainly Cassellis seems untroubled with his own part in journalistic exploitation and this is hammered home by his purely sexual relationship with a sex-drenched young fuck-buddy (Mariana Hill). He needs to SHOOT - film AND sperm. It's only once his life has been touched by a chance encounter with a pair of Appalachian expats in the slums of Chicago - a single mother (Verna Bloom) and her only child (Henry Blankenship) - that Cassellis opens his eyes to the insidious manner his images are being disseminated.

When he discovers that the corporate pigs running the stations and networks are furnishing his potentially incriminating footage of civil unrest to law enforcement officials (most notably, the FBI), he flies into a rage. The film builds to a harrowing climax involving a riot where his eye, so fixed on the events he's shooting, misses the plight of the people closest to him and eventually (and literally) jettisons both himself and the audience smack into a shocking conclusion.

The eyes of Cassellis remain shark-like, though the emotion fuelling his actions shifts from obsession to a form of vengeance. Nothing, however, can match the eyes of the mother and her son - especially her son - they're the battered and bruised receptacles of America's indifference and their part in Wexler's film reaches heartbreaking proportions.

The corruption and collusion of mainstream media and its relationship to both corporate interests and government are today a given fact, but in the late 60s, when Medium Cool was made, such a thing seemed unthinkable. When Wexler fashioned this film it was a shocker, but somehow in the context of today's world - our own strife amidst uncaring governments, in turn the puppets of a new world order of corporations - this picture is more important than ever. Its importance to both history and the art of cinema is virtually a given, but its importance to exposing and keeping all of us aware of contemporary political gangsterism has seldom been matched.

Films that focus upon media have never been uncommon, but only Federico Fellini in his 1960 film La Dolce Vita pre-dates Medium Cool with any significance. Via the character of Paparazzo (a name Fellini derived from Italian dialect to describe the buzzing of mosquitoes), the Maestro's masterwork is often credited with generating the etymology of paparazzi to describe the European phenomenon of photo journalists who use their lenses to capture celebrities in poses of compromise.

Certainly, Wexler's horrific opening pre-dates the death of Princess Diana and the photographers who chased and surrounded the twisted metal - shooting with abandon as life painfully drained from her. Years after Wexler's picture, writer Paddy Chayefsky and director Sidney Lumet delivered Network, the savage satire of news becoming "entertainment" and being rooted in corporate greed rather than any altruistic desire to deliver news in a traditional journalistic sense. Finally, though, Medium Cool is the yardstick to measure all cinema dealing with media and I'd argue that nothing even comes close to matching it.

America was on the precipice of massive upheaval and there was an overwhelming sense that major shit was going to hit the fan in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention - which, of course, it did. Wexler designed his film to shoot on location during this time and what he captures is probably the most powerful cinematic game of "chicken" between documentary and drama ever made.

He populates his film with a mix of great actors, non-actors and the real thing in the midst of actual events Cassellis and, by extension, Wexler's film, both capture so indelibly.

Robert Forster is the revelation here. Handsome, rugged, nicely buff - he's handed the difficult task of being often mute, bereft of real passion or caring - until, of course, it's too late - and even then, he switches into obsessive auto-pilot. Forster's performance here is one of the great performances in contemporary American cinema. Cassellis is a superbly etched character - seemingly passive, but active where it counts. His early years as a boxer (which he continues to train as) are the sort of physical skills cameramen absolutely require to get the brilliant handheld footage they need.

His motion picture debut was a couple of years earlier in John Huston's magnificently insane adaptation of Carson McCuller's novel Reflections in a Golden Eye. This was a brave way for any actor to expose himself in his first film. Playing the apple of Marlon Brando's closeted military officer's homosexual eye, Forster taunts Brando by riding a horse nude in eyeshot of the smitten military man, and in turn, obsessed over Brando's sexually frustrated wife played by Elizabeth Taylor, he repeatedly enters her bedroom nude and jerks off into her dirty panties as she dozes deeply within the Land of Nod.

Most actors today would greet such a role as a bad career move, but if they were lucky enough to have a director as visionary as Wexler, they'd go from one great role to another, as Forster did by going from Huston to Wexler. Forster, by the way, never hit the heights of stardom he should have and instead had a hugely successful film and TV career as a "working" actor until Quentin Tarantino displayed the same vision Huston and Wexler were imbued with and cast him in the world weary male romantic lead bail bondsman opposite Pam Grier in the wonderful Jackie Brown.

If anything, though, Wexler might well have handed Forster the role of a lifetime here - especially within the context of a medium like cinema that has the power to inform, entertain and effect real change. The shooter Cassellis is always alert to the possibility of those images and Forster always commands our attention to this fact with his expressive eyes. His powerful body helps him hoist that camera and aim it where his eye wants to go.

Wexler captures so many genuinely real events during his drama and it is Forster who is always at the centre of them. Whether we see riots, national guardsmen in mock training during protest march scenarios, the lives and milieu of Chicago's most racially segregated areas of Chicago - it's Casselis who is our onscreen tour guide as we see what Wexler sees via Forster - and it is ALL TOO REAL; the looks of hatred and mistrust upon the faces of those living in the neighbourhoods, the poverty stricken naked kids splashing through fire hydrant water in the blistering heat, encounters with revolutionaries in tenement slums, Wexler uses this great actor to allow us into a world of reality.

It's a mediated reality, to be sure, and this is always Wexler's aim.

But where the film, its intentions and ultimately, its impact become all too clear is the breathtaking, salient moment when Wexler trains his lens upon Cassellis and Forster so evocatively utters one of film history's great lines:

"Jesus," he says with a hint of passion that escapes from his seemingly cold, detached demeanour, "I love shooting film."

And so he does. He loves shooting film with a purity that is eventually soiled by both corporate and government evil. What then is left for a man when he discovers that his lifeblood is being perverted, subverted and sucked out of him - not for the good of man, but for the good of profits and maintaining the Status Quo? What finally is left, is that which Wexler shockingly provides us in his movie.

It's not a pretty picture.

What's truly terrifying to me and utterly disgusting (because it continues today with even more frequency and intensity) is that Wexler was strongly urged to re-cut his film as the corporate giants at Paramount were being pressured from so many levels of influence to mute and ultimately emasculate the film's power. Wexler refused. He had the power to do so. Instead, a brilliant filmmaker who had just won a fucking Oscar had his work initially manhandled and censored by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). For one brief scene of nudity and a handful of cuss words, the film was slapped with an X-rating which was effectively a kiss of death as it relegated Wexler's film to the same status of hard core pornography.

Nobody in their right mind would believe the rating was due to the aforementioned language and nudity.

Medium Cool was being censored for being too political and worse, not the capital "R" RIGHT political.

"Jesus, I love shooting film."

This is the sin more grave that those laid down in the Ten Commandments since loving to shoot film often means we must expose the evils of God and Country.

And God only knows, we can't have that now, can we?

The Criterion Collection Blu-Ray and DVD of Haskell Wexler's "Medium Cool" is perhaps one of the best packages they've ever put together. Wexler's haunting images are gorgeously transferred for our edification and the entirety of this disc is bursting at the seams with a wealth of material. There are two audio commentaries, one with historian Paul Cronin and the other with Wexler, editing consultant Paul Golding and actress Marianna Hill, as well as a new Wexler interview. The real gems are extended excerpts from “Look Out Haskell, It’s Real!,” Cronin's documentary that has interviews with Wexler, Golding, Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Chicago historian and the film's intrepid consultant Studs Terkel and a myriad of others, as well as excerpts from "Sooner or Later", Cronin’s documentary about Harold Blankenship, who plays Verna Bloom's son in the picture. Both of these documentaries form an important and near-epic look at a film AND a time and place when America was on the precipice of the eventual decline it's experiencing now. They both look great on this disc and present enough salient details for most viewers, though, in fairness, versions can be accessed in full unexpurgated form outside of the disc. They don't look "pretty" and suffer a bit from the editorial decisions made by Criterion, but part of me wishes they'd been presented in their whole on this disc in addition to the excerpts. The other absolute gem is Wexler's new documentary "Mediumn Cool Revisited" which focuses on the Occupy movement’s protests during Chicago's 2012 NATO summit. As per usual, the disc includes a trailer and a fine booklet with a new essay by film critic and programmer Thomas Beard. This is a keeper. If you care about cinema, you'll want to own this. I've only had this disc for two weeks and I've already spent hours and hours pouring over it.

Feel free to order the film directly from the links below:

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MAN OF STEEL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Best Superhero Comicbook Movie Since Raimi's Spider-Man Series

Man of Steel (2013) ****
Dir. Zack Snyder
Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, Laurence Fishburne

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I've never understood why director Zack Snyder is looked upon as a hack. Yes, he's humourless, but so is Christopher Nolan who frankly, isn't one pubic hair the director Snyder is. Snyder, you see, can direct. Nolan can't. Snyder has a natural affinity for shooting action. Nolan has little affinity for anything - especially action where he's a total tin-eye with no sense of composition or spatial geography. Stylistically, Snyder has genuine flair, but Nolan is possessed with little more than obvious, ham-fisted fakery that bamboozles the Great Unwashed as well, and rather inexplicably, all the others who simply should know better.

And now, here we be, at sea, with a new vessel containing yet another superhero franchise reboot. However, in spite of the clear divide between the two aforementioned men of the cinema, they're working as a team on it. Not a bad team, either. Nolan's got producing and co-writing duties whilst Snyder helms and results, happily, in Man of Steel, the best superhero comic book movie since the Sam Raimi Spider-Man series.

It's not as gobsmackingly phenomenal as Spider-Man 2 (which unleashed Raimi's mad sense of humour in all its glory), but Man of Steel does come closer to the dour sensibilities of Spidey 1 & 3. Frankly, this doesn't at all bother me. Great superhero comic books are, at their core, rife with darkness and when or if humour creeps in (not tongue in cheek, mind you), then it's a few extra maraschino cherries on the choco sundae. That said, if one's ice cream is rich, flavourful and drizzled with taste-bud bursting syrup, the cherries are nice, but not necessary.

Snyder hasn't attained the heights of Raimi's "Master" status, but I suspect he eventually might - albeit in his own unique fashion. Here he directs David Goyer's script with the same resolve he brought to bear on 300 and his compulsively obsessive flourishes on Watchmen (and lest we forget, the criminally underrated Sucker Punch). It results, in the parlance of a crotchety and late lamented old film distributor I knew, "One helluva good show!!!"

By now, we're all familiar with the ins and outs of this tale from both the comics and previous big and small screen incarnations. Krypton is a doomed planet. Scientist Jor-El (Russell Crowe) puts his newborn babe on a spaceship bound for Earth before the planet explodes. Like Baby Moses in the bullrushes, the child is discovered in the cornfields owned by the All-American Kents (Kevin Costner, Diane Lane). The childless farm couple adopts the baby as their own, christen him "Clark" and hide the evidence of the space craft. They know this is one special baby and fear what the government might do if the kid is found to be an alien.

Baby Moses grows up to be Baby Jesus and with the threat of world wide annihilation at the hands of the evil Krypton war-monger General Zod (Michael Shannon), Clark (Henry Cavill) becomes Superman and enters into all-out battle to save mankind whilst getting all google-eyed with intrepid Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams).

Goyer, who wrote all of Nolan's lamentable Batman pictures, here delivers an engaging structure rooted in flashback with an accent upon the science fiction elements of the old chestnut that have never been adequately plumbed. Add to this, the near film noir post-war sensibilities, so prevalent in the original first season of the 50s Superman series with George Reeves and Man of Steel grandly delivers the goods and then some.

What sells the picture is Snyder's spectacular handling of the action pyrotechnics. It's everything one would want. He seldom stoops to the contemporary annoyance of too many close-ups and confusing machine-gunfire styled cutting. Great compositions, breathing room when necessary, plenty of wide, long and medium shots and a few terrific moments of nail-biting suspense all add up to "one helluva good show!"

Yes, Snyder employs a lot of rapid-fire cutting, but it smartly employs genuine PICTURE cutting so that everything serves the forward motion of narrative (even if the narrative often involves extreme pummelling and shit that blows up real good). The big difference between Snyder and his untalented colleagues (Christopher Nolan, J.J. Abrams, Sam Mendes, Justin Lin, Shane Black, Gary Ross, Joss Whedon and Marc Webb) is that his editors are never forced to resort to those awful cheats of using sound almost exclusively to propel a cut because the footage itself is so haphazard. Snyder's action moves furiously, yet seamlessly because we are responding to genuine visual cuts. Action - rooted in narrative and character, not just pyrotechnics - is what moves, so to speak, the action forward.

What Snyder has going for him here - in spite of the pseudo darkness Goyer slathers upon the story - is the pure joy he delivers in one stunning image after another. Snyder clearly loves the D.C. Superman series (from a variety of periods, it seems) and paints gorgeous comic book panels that spring magically to life and are never weighed down by either crushing portent nor, frankly, the utter moviemaking incompetence of the aforementioned list of non-directors who have nary a shred of ability to adequately render action sequences.

Narratively, the only scenes that weigh the film down are those involving the Daily Planet newsroom. Amy Adams is always wonderful and while I was happy to see her in the Lois Lane role, she's still well behind the gifts displayed by Phyllis Coates and Noel Neill in the 50s TV series and Margot Kidder in the Donner/Lester features. The worst element here is Laurence Fishburne as editor Perry White. He sleepwalks through his role and displays none of the snap, crackle and pop Perry needs (a la Jackie Cooper in the 80s). The result is an incredibly dull subplot during the action scenes involving the perils faced by the newsroom team. The last 45 minutes or so is devoted almost entirely to action sequences and the rhythm here occasionally sags under he weight of this stuff. It's not enough to destroy the climactic pyrotechnics, but one wishes the screenplay simply had excised the stuff for being one thread too many - especially since Fishburne is so dull here.

The cast, though, is generally first-rate. Henry Cavill is a fine Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman. George Reeves was, in the first truly great season of TV's Superman a bit more square-jawed, two-fisted and pudgier than Cavill; Christopher Reeve was funnier, more charming and imbued with nicely traditional good looks and Brandon Routh...well, he was...uh, well, he was Brandon Routh. Within the context of Goyer's revisionist take on the Superman legend, Cavill acquits himself very nicely in the bearded itinerant blue collar wanderer portion of Clark's life, transitions very well during the ice sanctuary sequence and once in full-blown vengeance mode, he's one kick-ass mo-fo. He seems less assured in the romance department, but part of this is how the role appears to be written and that I suspect he'd just come off idiotically if given a chance to shift gears into the almost Cary Grant-like charm of Christopher Reeve in Superman I and II. (Alas, we're given a hint in the Man of Steel coda-like dénouement that the sequel might well jettison this poor actor into that territory which, I suspect, he might not be up to.)

As for General Zod, are there better actors on this Green Earth than Michael Shannon? Well, maybe a few who are just as great, but none better. His varied character starring turns in Take Shelter, Bug, The Iceman, My Son My Son What Have Ye Done, not to mention his endless hit parade of astonishing supporting turns can now include a bona fide blockbuster villain. While he allows himself a few tastes of ham, his Zod is tremendously restrained (given the opportunities) and from time to time, we actually feel for his genuine passion for his planet and people, as well as experiencing the gradual shift to Hitlerian madness.

In supporting roles, Costner and Lane are ideally suited to the elder Kent Couple. Costner, still one of my favourite screen personalities is easing gracefully into these types of roles whilst Diane Lane is gorgeous and appealing as she always is. If she's had any "work" done on her visage, I can't see it. I doubt she has. This woman is ageless, radiant and sexy as all get-out. Most actresses need only to look in Lane's direction to realize what freaks they're making of themselves with Botox and plastic surgery. Lane, I suspect merely eats well, exercises and perhaps indulges in nightly applications of Oil of Olay. Whatever she does, the camera loves her while she in turn, loves it with her continued fresh, appealing and winning work as an actress.

A word about Russell Crowe as Jor-El is in order since for me, the definitive portrait of Superman's Kryptonian Dad is STILL the King of Corpulence, Marlon Brando. Who will ever forget Brando's insanely overpaid extended cameo in the Donner/Lester Superman pictures? Even now, I can hear Brando as he intones in his trademark nasal-tinged drawl:

"They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show them the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son."

Given that Crowe is a might pudgy these days, I'd have preferred it if he'd been afforded the opportunity to deliver all his lines with his nostrils clipped. Alas, he is not Brando-ized, but it's also a solid performance.

All in all, I think Goyer and Nolan have delivered a fine coat hanger for Superman's derring-do. The "darkness" isn't glopped on like melted butter over a corn cob at the carnival. It seems to come rather naturally out of the science fiction elements of the tale. I especially appreciated the childhood sequences wherein Clark is horrified by his powers. When he begins to develop his x-ray vision is genuinely harrowing. Why wouldn't it be? The kid's sitting in the classroom, gets a mo-fo of a headache then starts seeing everyone's innards. This would be enough to mess a kid up and it fits nicely into the latter sequences where Clark becomes a wandering lost soul. It's dramatically appealing and hardly the doom and gloom drudgery Nolan crapped out in The Dark Knight trilogy.

This Diet Coke "darkness" is perfect for a comic book picture - especially given that Snyder has both visual gifts and an eye for action. Man of Steel is precisely what this genre needed right now. A real filmmaker.

"Man of Steel" is currently in wide release via Warner Brothers.



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MARY PICKFORD: RAGS & RICHES COLLECTION - THE POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL, THE HOODLUM, SPARROWS - Review By Julia Klymkiw - Cub Reporter - 12-year-old Cub Reporter reviews the exquisite Milestone Film and Video Special Edition, Extras-Packed Blu-Ray which presents "Kid-Friendly" Silent Films Starring Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford: Rags & Riches Collection - Milestone Film and Video
The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) *****
Dir. Maurice Tourneur 
The Hoodlum (1919) Dir. Sidney Franklin *****
Sparrows (1926) Dir. William Beaudine **********

Review By Julia Klymkiw
(Klymkiw Film Corner's 12-year-old Cub Reporter)

Mary Pickford was a really big movie star from Canada who made movies almost 100 years ago. She played the roles of kids a lot even though she was not a kid, but because she was petite and had really cute curly hair, she could do these roles very well. She was as popular as stars we know from today like Marilyn Monroe, Julia Roberts and Jessica Chastain, but I will tell you that she was very different from so many of the big stars we all know because she made silent movies before they had sound in them.

I love Mary Pickford and I think many girls like me will love her if their Moms and Dads let them see the movies on this Blu-Ray. She is someone who is so good that she always makes you laugh, but sometimes her stories can be sad too.

The Poor Little Rich Girl is so good because she plays a little girl whose Mom and Dad are very rich and they are afraid to let her go outside of the house. She just wants to be like other kids, but her parents are too busy for her. They love her and aren't really mean to her, but she sure wishes she could go out and play. Her nanny is mean though and Mary has to be pretty crafty at finding ways to sneak outside to play. Her Mom and Dad are angry and upset when they find out. She gets into some really bad trouble and needs to get out of it all by herself.

The Hoodlum is sort of like The Poor Little Rich Girl because in this movie, Mary lives with her grandfather and he is always too busy for her. This makes her very lonely. They move to a poor area of the city because her grandfather is a scientist who is studying poor people. He lets her be a real girl, but only because he is so busy. It's nice because she gets to meet her real Dad who is poor. When she goes to play with the poor kids in the neighbourhood they don't like her at first, but as she gets to know them better, they really begin to like her because she is a lot of fun and they always get into trouble. It's not bad trouble, but fun trouble. This movie is really exciting and made me laugh a lot. Mary not only gets to be like real kids, she gets to be like some of the poor kids and she gets to learn a lot about how other kids live.

Sparrows is so good that I gave it 10 stars. [Ed.note: Try arguing with a 12-year-old sometime.]

This movie has funny things in it, but it's not like the other two movies at all. This story is sad and scary. Mary plays a little girl who lives in an orphanage where a family of super bad people are very mean to all the kids. They buy kids and sell kids and this is not something orphanages should do, but in the old days this probably happened a lot. Even today it can happen, but only in countries like Russia and Ukraine.

In this movie, Mary is a bit older than the other kids and because she's a teenager, she always has to try to save them from the really horrible man who is the father of the family. He's not very nice. Well, that is being polite about it, because he is so evil. He makes the kids work really hard, he doesn't care when they are sick, he feeds them horrible food that is not nutritious and in such small amounts that Mary needs to sometimes steal extra food from the kitchen. The orphanage is completely surrounded by a swamp and I do not want to spoil the movie for you, but there are some horrible things in that swamp that want to eat kids.

This is a really great silent movie and I have to say it might be my favourite silent movie of all time. There are times when it is so sad you want to cry, but Mary is such a great hero that you always hope things are going to get better for all the poor orphans. Mary might be a kid, but she is almost like a real mother to the kids.

You really can't ever stop watching the movie. It's that good. Sometimes you laugh and other times it is so exciting and full of suspense that you almost can't bear it. And when the movie is scary, watch out! It's that scary!!!!!!

I think this is an amazing movie for all kids of today to watch. You see how people were very poor in those days, but even though it is from a long time ago, it is interesting to watch because you start to think about how poor people are today and that even today, there are a lot of kids who are treated badly. You hope that in real life there are characters like Mary plays and yes, there are brave people who help kids, but I think we probably need more of them.

Many movies and TV shows for kids have girls who are the main characters, but many of them only care about silly things. In Sparrows, Mary plays a little girl who is so brave, smart and caring. I wish more modern movies had actors like Mary Pickford who could play characters like the one Mary plays here.

Even though I think Sparrows is the best silent movie I have seen, I think the movie is so good that it is probably one of my favourite movies ever that's silent or sound. If you have not seen it, you need to.

This is such a good Bluray and I think all parents have to get it for their kids because they will learn a lot about how movies used to be so different, but were just as good as they are now. Even if the movies of Mary Pickfor are silent, they are not really silent. They always have great music and even the black and white has colour in it because in the old days they used to put colours on scenes in the labs. There is only one colour in the scene that goes on top of the black and white, but it is kind of cool because the colour is used to make you feel if the scene is happy, sad, sunny, cloudy or dark. My Dad explained that to me a long time ago when we watched other silent movies.

There are also a bunch of extra things on the Bluray that kids will enjoy because it explains and shows you how to watch silent movies. I do not mean to brag, but I did not really need this stuff because I have been watching silent movies ever since I started watching movies, but for kids who do not have a Dad who tells them all the stuff they need to know about movies then this is totally perfect. I enjoyed the little documentary things the Bluray plays before each movie starts and even though I knew most of the stuff I find it interesting to see how much stuff other kids don't know about it and how they should. The thing that's really cool is the extra sound on the movies that has the titles read out loud to you and gives you all kinds of cool information. This was good even for me because I didn't need to bug my Dad when I did have questions. He never minds when I ask him questions, though. ;-)


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