Well surprise, surprise Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal ruled the box office this weekend. Technically today counts as well, seeing as it’s Memorial Day weekend so it looks like they might actually reach their goal of $180,000,000. Within the first three days they made back the $125 million they spent, so now it’s just a matter of counting the change. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Iron Man are still holding strong, rounding off our top 3. Iron Man has hit a quarter of a billion dollars and still has a ways to go. Speed Racer hasn’t disappeared, but after three weeks it still hasn’t made back what they were hoping to make opening weekend. Seeing as it cost the same as Indiana Jones, they’ve still got a ways to go. The happy comedy threesome, Baby Mama, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo BayMade of Honor have remained in the exact same order for a month now, and seem to be holding on strong. Last but not least is The Visitor, a great film that shows that a quality film can hold it’s own against the monsters of the cinema.

Here it is, your Memorial Day weekend box office numbers:

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I can no longer say “Indy, I love you!” with the same vigor as I used to. The first half of the film was exactly what I thought it would be, entertaining, meaningless fun. Some of the stunts were, simple, feasible, and enjoyable. It had elements of the first films that I loved, an ordinary guy in extraordinary circumstances. Indiana Jones isn’t a superhero, he’s just as awesome dude. Then as the second half of the film rolled around, the special effects kicked in, any idea of reality, plot, or meaning disappeared and the film turned into a middle of the road chase film. Indiana Jones shouldn’t have have Star Wars type effects, yet for some reason (COUGH Lucas) there was. What’s great about Indiana, is that he gets punched, is constantly an inch away from death, and yet in the end he still wins. He’s the everyman’s hero. With all the added in CGI, the characters began acting like cartoons with no real sense of consequence and as a result you stop caring about them as humans and you lose what makes Indiana Jones so great. The humanity.

I think what I’ve decided is that I prefer Spielberg when he doesn’t have ridiculous special effects or CGI. I think the shark in Jaws looked more real and believable than anything in The Crystal Skull. There are moments that are textbook Spielberg and whether you like that or not, he does it well. Then it’s just mulled over with pointless, unrealistic shots that have just become tiresome.

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Last September in Los Angeles, the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival took place at the Sunset 5 Theater in Hollywood. The festival was sponsored by Independent Film Quarterly, Independent Movie Channel – both owned by festival founder Stuart Alson – and Moli.com. The festival boasts showcasing the next generation of voices in independent film and video, wrong! I went there was to watch the one good film in the festival; “The Manson Movie” was the opening night headliner in the documentary category. “The Manson Movie” is fascinating, just for the access he was granted with the notorious Manson Family.

Hendrickson is the only person alive that can boast being Manson the family filmmaker.During the two-year period around Manson’s trial Hendrickson lived, played, traveled, and got high with the Manson family while rolling 35mm film the whole time. The documentary takes us from Viet Nam, and all the footage was shot by Hendrickson himself; the L.A riots, trail and life with the Manson family, as he lived with them at the Spahn Movie Ranch. Hendrickson films infamous family members Paul Watkins, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, Steve “Clem” Grogan, and more in the late 60’s, and early 70’s. In “The Manson movie,” the kids are doing anything from acting, playing, and singing at the Spahn ranch, to protesting, hiding out, and monologing for the camera in this eighty-five minute long film.

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This is only available on region 2 DVD, so you’ll have to go some place fun like Cinefile for J’ai vu tuer Ben Barka (2005). But it’s worth the hunt. It’s a fine conspiracy thriller, taking its cue from the 1969 (Mehdi) Ben Barka affair, ever a sore subject in France and with obvious contemporary resonance: Barka was a militant Moroccan politician with unusual power on the international diplomatic stage, expected to unite an increasingly dissatisfied – and independence-minded – third world. Although suspicion fell squarely on French government agencies, no satisfactory solution was ever forthcoming to his permanent disappearance in October 1969.

A partially fictionalised account, therefore, Peron and Smihi’s film keeps the audience in the same uneasy state of ignorance as to what exact forces are at work and in what directions. Narrated by the corpse of small-time hood, PR man and budding film producer Georges Figon (Charles Berling), it focuses on four protagonists at one remove from the main conspirators: Figon and his girlfriend, and Marguerite Duras (Josiane Balasko) and Georges Franju (Jean-Pierre Leaud), with whom Figon is planning a film. As the last two suggest (along with the narrative conceit), there is a fundamental cinephilia at work, channeled through director Balasko and the talismanic presence of Leaud himself, as well as the cool gangster moves (unslavishly) evocative of Melville, accompanied by the appropriate hats, coats and cars, jazz and sunglasses, and the tough underbelly of 1960s cinema-Paris.

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“The MANSON MOVIE” a conversation with director Robert Hendrickson

Intro by: Terry Smith

Interview by Terry Smith with Dennis Lorence

In the last few days, there have been police combing for bodies at the remote ranch Charles Manson coined the “Devil’s Canyon hideout” while in use by cult leader four decades ago, it’s time to take another look at “The Manson Movie” with director Robert Henderickson. Now, forty-years after “The Family” went on a killing spree there are breaking developments from new evidence from grave sniffing dogs, earth samples and at least two-potential grave sites. The Death Valley hideout is busy once again and we are reminded of Charles Manson. Manson was a want-to-be musician, turned criminal, turned homicidal cult leader, who felt a race war was coming after listening to a Beatles song, named Helter Skelter. Manson ordered his followers to participate in a murder-spree that lasted over two nights in Los Angeles (killing seven people, including a pregnant Sharon Tate), to jump-start the impending race war. While the trail of the century was going on, a young filmmaker just back from the war was hired by Charles Manson to be the family filmmaker.

Hendrickson had to live, sleep, travel and document the activities of the infamous ‘family’ and in doing so he was allowed to film everything from weird, big floor-stained empty rooms with dirty mattresses to group protests. The film included everything from the start of the L.A riots, the ranch, protesting the trial in LA, group sing-a-long, and skinny dipping, to unseen footage of Charles Manson in the L.A superior courthouse. Hendrickson alludes to rumors of other-bodies at the ranch, and now officials are working with shovels, and instruments not available in the 1960s, which can detect human remains and that may add a new twist to the macabre story of the Manson Family.

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It’s a bonza week for cinefiles in LA this week, from pre-code naughties to Jimmy Stewart’s centenary to Psychedelic Healing Visions: a Celebration of Lavendar Diamond’s Film “Imagine Our Love.” The last is playing at the Silent Movie Theatre on Wednesday 27th, an art-film/indie-folk collision made to accompany LD’s forthcoming album, and starring their dulcet vocalist Becky Stark. You can bet it’ll be somewhat fey, but if it’s anything like the music, you’ll be won over. Quite a contrast from the Cinefamily’s Saturday matinee, which is quickie Born To Kill (1947) from the recently late Robert Wise. One of the toughest, sourest film noirs, it has ultimate tough guy Lawrence Tierney hooking up with ultimate dame Claire Trevor for manipulation and cruelty, with Elisha Wood Jr popping up, as the ultimate whiner/dope. The leads mix psychopathy and perversity in equal measure and it’s really quite something. Definitely not for kids.

Also not for kids is the mini “Forbidden Hollywood” season at the Egyptian. The Hays Code was introduced in 1934 precisely to keep this filth off our screens; that is to say, casual sex, adultery, nudity, drugs, crime, violence, you name it. A number of these early talkies have been resurfacing of late, the best of which is the Stanwyck vehicle Baby Face (1933) but she, along with the perpetually salty Joan Blondell, is quite a fixture in these flicks; they star together on Friday in William Wellman’s Night Nurse (1931) a thriller about a child kidnap plot with Clark Gable, and Blondell’s back for the second feature, Mervyn LeRoy’s Three On A Match (1932), this time headlining as a reform school girl, supported by Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart – should be good! Otherwise, over Saturday and Sunday, you can catch Stanwyck as an unwed mother in Capra’s Forbidden (1932), and Joan Harlow as a gangster’s moll in Beast Of The City (1932), no doubt being extra slutty.

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Well, I know what you’ll be going to see this week. The Children of Huang Shi. No way you’ll pass that up for the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Don’t know I know you well? Yes friends, it’s finally time. Nineteen years since the last one, but it’s finally here. Harrison Ford will be, well Harrison Ford with and Indiana Jones hat on. Don’t get me wrong, I love Indie and I love Harrison Ford, but all I can ever think when I watch him act is that’s f*cking Harrison Ford. For those of you who will be trying to avoid the Indie rush and want something more political, you have Postal or War, Inc.. Although I don’t know if either is really considered political?

Here they are! Your weekend movie releases with cast and crew information, reviews, showtimes and tickets, and trailers. Enjoy!

May 22

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull | Reviews | Showtimes and Tickets

May 23

• The Children of Huang Shi (Limited) | Reviews | Showtimes and Tickets
• Postal | Reviews | Showtimes and Tickets
• War, Inc. (Limited) | Reviews | Showtimes and Tickets

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Trailer:




The Children of Huang Shi Trailer:




Postal Trailer:




War, Inc. Trailer:




Remember when you were in college, and there was that one professor who had really funny and interesting stories, but at the end of the class you never really learned anything? Such is the case with the new movie War, Inc.

(John Cusack) stars as Hauser, a hitman with a troubled past who likes to calm his nerves with a straight shot of hot sauce. Given the alias of a trade show producer he is hired by Tamerlane, a war profiteering company headed by (Dan Aykroyd) that now occupies the battle scarred country of Turaquistan. Hauser’s target is Omar Sharif , Tariquistan’s oil minister who wants to build a pipeline through the country. This of course would cause a million dollar revenue loss for Tamerlane, so he has to go. Sent to help Hauser is Marsha Dillion, (Joan Cusack) a temperamental executive who has the inside info on all of the cleverly disguised tradeshow booths and show numbers.

If things weren’t strange enough already, along come two lovely young women who complicate Hauser’s life even further. The first is Natalie Hagelhuzen, (Marisa Tomei), a feisty left wing reporter who just wants to unravel the truth behind whats really going on. Then there’s Yonica Babyyeah, (Hilary Duff) a extremely flirtatious central Asian pop star who’s Celebrity wedding is the icing on the cake of the trade show. Torn between doing his job, falling in love, and haunted by memories of his past including a clearly psychotic boss (Ben Kingsley). Hauser sets out to make things right. But in war, nothing ever turns out the way you expect it to.

This isn’t a big budget summer movie so don’t go expecting to see incredible CGI effects. The war scenes are real enough but most of the action takes place on more personal level. Also, I ‘m not saying they didn’t try, but some of the location shots feel makeshift. However, If you are a fan of Wag the Dog or anything that has the feel of Billy Wilder films then this will be right up you alley.

It’s not that War, Inc.isn’t thought provoking or entertaining because it certainly has those moments. From a Popeye’s chicken restaurant that serves as a secret military hideaway to receiving your dry cleaning in an armored Hummer, the marketing puns are evident and well received. Humorous standout performances from Joan Cusack and Sir Ben Kingsley prove once again that in the hands of great actors, there are no small parts. John Cusack handles his character well enough, but it feels as though he’s channeling Martin Blank from 1997’s Grosse Pointe Blank. (It is of important note that the previous sentence was extremely difficult to write as I am an avid John Cusack fan) Moving on.

This film doesn’t try to push politics down your throat and through biting satire it cleverly manages to show the absurdity of war profiteering. But in the end we are left with a plot twist that leaves to many things unsaid, and an unclear direction of where the filmmakers were trying to go. However, maybe they’re leaving it up to us to decide. Perhaps there is no larger message here. It could just be as simple as War is ridiculous, no matter how you look at it.




I read an article about female directors in Hollywood and it made me wonder: is Hollywood a town that is supposed to make dreams come true sexist? Women are fighting in wars, running for president, but they have yet to conquer one thing…the summer blockbuster. “According to Media by Numbers, all 30 of the 30 top-grossing films from last summer were directed by men.” So where are all the women? Don’t tell me they’re not in Hollywood. Women hold many powerful positions from studio executives, to producers, managers, and agents. They seem to be doing everything EXCEPT for directing the big films.

“Mamma Mia!” and “Sisterhood of the Traveing Pants 2″ are the only two major Hollywood films to be releases this summer that have been directed by women. So what could be causing this?

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