RockaFire Explosion (2008)

Ever since I saw the trailer for this bad boy back in July, I had been foaming at the mouth to see it. I remember Showbiz Pizza from when I was a kid, but I was even more excited to get an intimate look at the man behind last year's RockaFire Explosion YouTube Phenomenon. Simply put, about a year or two ago, a man in his mid-30's named Chris Thrash began to upload videos on to YouTube of his in-home animatronic band, Showbiz Pizza's very own RockaFire Explosion. He had programed the band to perform modern radio Rock hits. Although the music wasn't that great, what made these videos so fascinating was the fact that somewhere out there someone had the RockaFire Explosion in their house. The mere thought of that boggled my mind.

Let just say that after watching the documentary, my mind has been boggled 100-fold!!!! Beginning in February, the Alamo Ritz will be holding screenings of the "RockaFire Explosion" documentary and I strongly urge everyone to check it out and learn about the power of dreams and the unwavering strength of the human spirit. Okay, so that's a lot of praise, but seriously, this movie was a lot fun and strangely moving at times...no joke. It's all about the pros and con of nostalgia, and the bizarre places we find happiness.

Here's the trailer that changed my life.


The Rock-afire Explosion Movie Trailer from The Rock-afire Explosion on Vimeo.

Wendy and Lucy (2008)

This was a slow moving train that seemed to really bore the hell out of my friends. It did not bother me as much, but I understand why they didn't like it. It's the "deliberately paced" tale of Wendy (Michelle Williams), a woman on her way to Alaska to work for the Summer when her car breaks down in a small town. Low on cash and options, her struggles to figure out her next move are complicated even more by the mysterious loss of her dog and companion, Lucy. She spends the whole movie wandering around looking for her dog, barely scrapping by, and having strange encounters with the locals. The movie has garnered a lot praise recently and has surprisingly ended up on a lot of year end Top 10's. whatevs, it was o.k.

35mm Shorts (Passages, Frankie, The Adventure, Love You More) (2008)

This was the one shorts program this year that I actually built up. Whenever you build a movie for a film festival, they never screen it before hand so you never really know if you made mistake until it first screening. It's kind of like working without a net, and it can be pretty stressful watching it for the first time with an audience. Every approaching reel change filled my heart with anxiety, but alas, there were no problems on my end. Anyway there were 4 shorts in this one.

The black and white animated piece entitled "Passages" about a botched delivery of a baby, directed Marie-Josée Saint-Pierre. It was intricate, fascinating, sad, and infuriating.

The film "Frankie" about a 15 year old Irish boy who is preparing himself to be a dad. It was interesting, but not my cup of tea.

For me, one of the 2 standout films of this collection was the curiously hilarious and uncomfortable, "The Adventure," by writer/director Mike Brune. It's about an older couple on a leisurely drive through the woodsy country side that gets interrupted by a bizarre encounter with a pair of mimes. Really Great!

Love You More preview from Matt Cooper on Vimeo.
And finally, there was the other standout short, "Love You More," by Sam Taylor Wood. It's the completely badass tale of two teenager drawn together by the Buzzcocks' single 'Love You More' during the summer of 1978. Right up my alley!

Just for the hell of it, here's "Love You More (mp3)" by the Buzzcocks!

Paper or Plastic? (2008)

This was a surprisingly compelling documentary about a yearly competition that I had no idea even existed. It follows 8 very different grocery store clerks on their individual journeys from various humble beginnings to the National Championship of Grocery Bagging in Las Vegas. It's a nice little gem of a movie. There were times where I just laughed at how ridiculous it all was, but when the grand finale came around I was totally enthralled.

Psycho Sleepover (2008)

This is an ultra low budget Slasher Comedy (a blending of genres that I'm not a big fan of) that was at times fun and entertaining, but that I'm willing to bet disappointed 95% of the audience that saw it during AFF. Here's the way I viewed the movie, yeah it's not a real "film" and yeah it's not "well made," but I'm guarantee if your best friend shot this exact same movie just for fun and never intending on showing it to anyone outside of their living room, you would think it was pretty awesome. Don't get me wrong, it's still bad, but it's not worth beating up because as Ian MacKaye yelled: at least it's "fucking trying, what the fuck have you done?"

Trailer:

Zero Effect (1998)

Man, this was a totally random AFF screening. I saw this movie at the Gateway in 1998 and I bought it on VHS not too long after. Since then, I have watched it at least 3 times a year, if not more, and shown it to countless friends. Honestly, it's one of my top 20 favorite films of all time. Needless to say, seeing it on the big screen again (for FREE no less) with the director, Jake Kasdan, in person for a Q & A was just what the doctor ordered. First and foremost, I love Bill Pullman's incredibly odd and affective turn as Daryl Zero, the World's Most Private Detective. Ryan O'Neil is great as the complicated and realistic “villian,” Gregory Stark, and Kim Dickens is absolutely perfect as the cool and enigmatic Gloria Sullivan, the only woman to ever crack the exterior of Zero. I love so many aspects of the film, but the one thing that continues to pull back viewing after viewing is the exquisite crafting of the final 15 minutes. As my girlfriend points out regularly, they just don't know how to end movies anymore. I agree, and when one gets it right, it can be the hook that brings you back again and again.

Here is Bill Pullman's rendition of his “song,” “Let's Run Off and Get Married.” It's not quite as good as the scene in the movie, but I still find it amusing.

Let's Run Off and Get Married (mp3) - Bill Pullman as Daryl Zero

Phantom Punch (2008)

So this film, "Phantom Punch," is about the life of boxer Sonny Liston was the second biopic in row for me at the Austin Film Festival along with “Crazy.” The two films finally opened my eyes to an alarming fact; most people live clichéd lives. All of these movies have the same formula: Rise to power, Fall from grace. Why don't they make biopics about truly strange lives? Perhaps a biopic about Andy Milliagan or Timothy Carey? At any rate, Ving Rhames stars as Liston. Apparently he considered this project to be his “baby” and worked on it for over 10 years. Supposedly, back in 1996, Tom Cruise (who co-starred that year with Rhames in “Mission Impossible”) considered producing it. As it ended up, the Meteor Man, Robert Townsend, directed it and he was at this screening for an introduction (a very Zack Carlson one at that). The movie had just as many clichés as “Crazy,” but the story was a little more interesting, although both films have subplots about infidelity and lonely housewives, but this movie had the girl from “Clueless” in it!! Again, this one felt like a made-for-TV production, but it's a decent movie with an inspired performance by Rhames.

My favorite line: “In that ring, I'm a deadly sin.”

How To Be (2008)

So here it is just one day away from the end of the year and I'm 35 reviews behind. Since the purpose of this blog is for me to keep track of how many movies I'm watching a year (and approximately what I thought of them), I figure I have to resort to disparate measures. So I'm going to attempt to bulldoze through these 35 reviews, hoping to keep them within about 5 sentences a piece. If I have a lot to say about something, I'll put as much as I can now, and I might go back later to add stuff. To give you an idea of how far behind I am, I'm starting with my reviews of this year's Austin Film Festival, which took place in October!

Last year at AFF I remember thinking to myself that the nearly-30-year-old-white-male-loser-living-at-home had become by far the most overused lead character in the Indie film industry, and Oliver Irving's “How To Be” is no exception to that trend. The main character, Art (Robert Patterson), is a depressed and pathetic young man in the mists of a “quarter-life crisis,” who after his girlfriend dumps him (“When we first met, I thought you were deep and mysterious, but it turned out that you were just sad and unhappy”), turns to Canadian self-help guru for help. He pays to have the famous author come to London to observe his daily interactions and be his life coach. The movie started out fun and off beat, but more or less ran out of steam before the third act. I do give it credit for avoiding the urge to sympathize with it's protagonist too much, opting instead to fun of his whinny self-centered overreacting. Also, the actor who plays Art's best friend is absolutely great. My favorite line in the movie comes when Art is lying about his mother's failing health; “She's been painted with the cancer brush.” Overall, the movie was not bad, but it wasn't really that good either.

Here's the trailer.


How To Be Trailer from How To Be on Vimeo.