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2012: Time For Change: DVD Review

Laura Aguirre — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 23:56:57 +0000

2012: Time for Change is not like the 2012 you saw last year. There is no John Cusack running around in a limo or flying a giant Russian airplane, instead there is a hippie on a mission. This is a documentary about the earth and the connection humans have to it. It’s about preservation and using other ways aside from agriculture to feed people. There are some special appearances such as by notable director David Lynch and Oscar Nominee Ellen Page.

Read the review below…

The Players:

Director: Joao G. Amorim
Starring: Daniel Pinchbeck, Maude Barlow, R. Buckminster Fuller, Gilberto Gil

The Plot:

2012: Time For Change is a documentary that presents ways to transform the unsustainable society into a regenerative planetary culture. According to the documentary and its director, this can be achieved through a personal and global change of consciousness and the systemic implementation of ecological design.

The Good:

Daniel Pinchbeck: Author Daniel Pinchbeck is no Michael Moore, but being the true pacifist that he is, he is able to carry the whole documentary on his shoulder. Whether he’s interviewing a regular Joe on the street, or spiritual leaders, or David Lynch, he’s always calm and it transmits to the viewer.
Appearances: Pinchbeck interviews, what some people would call, wackos. He deals with some pretty dedicated people who really care about greenhouse gases, water scarcity, economic devastation, yoga and Mother Earth, and by doing so he covers many a gamut of topics, and the viewer is able to get a better understanding on these things.
The illustrations: The director of this documentary has a day job as an animation and visual effects guy. Here he uses his expertise and add diversity and cool little stories into the mix.

The Not-So-Good:

Title of 2012: Time for Change: While you could never be sure of where a documentary will take you as director or producer, you could always change your title. 2012: Time for Change is deceiving. The documentary isn’t nearly as much about the year 2012, as it is about new age, new world order, yoga and connecting with the earth.

Overall:

2012: Time for Change is an education documentary that serves its purpose. It isn’t about the end of the world, though they do mention it a bit, it’s about connecting with the earth through other means than agriculture and industrialization. The conclusion is that we might be on the cusp of immense change, but for the good, because change is good.

Rating: 8/10

Check out more of 2012: Time for Change on their website.

Trailer:

Interested in watching 2012: Time for Change?

AFI Fest: Hour of the Wolf Movie Review

Tom von Logue Newth — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:20:41 +0000

As guest artistic director of this year’s AFI Fest, David Lynch gets to screen some old classics that mean a lot to him. One of them is Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf, whose psychological horror techniques echo throughout Lynch’s oeuvre from Eraserhead on. I will admit to having an unresolved relationship with Bergman (don’t we all!) but whichever way you slice it, this is a film both of brilliantly mounted psychological tension and of naked, neurotic exposure that could have been made by nobody but Bergman, and would barely even have been contemplated by anyone else. Partly because he displays that same sense of self-importance as always, but this time it’s fundamental to the subject matter, and in any case it’s hard to say that it isn’t actually justified.

The film is set up in good mysterious style by the passed-on-diary device of a vanished artist, and a mournful opening monologue from his lover Alma (Liv Ullmann). Max von Sydow is the stern-faced Johan, recovering from an unspecified physical illness with possible mental roots, on a possibly deserted island. They enjoy a moment of happy idyll, but as soon as Johan lights a gaslamp beneath his face, the darkness comes rushing on. Johan shows Alma (not us!) the grotesque figures who appear in his sketchbook; visions arrive: his dead mother, a past lover, a sycophant. The sycophant turns up again, when they accept an invitation to dine with the brusque, menacing Baron (Erland Josephson) in his castle on the otherside of the island. The aristocratic guests, it turns out, are something like a manifestation of Johan’s demons, led by the sinister vampiric figure identified with Johan’s sketchbook Birdman.

The film is split explicitly into two halves, and when the Hour of the Wolf comes on, that dead of night time when it seems day may never yet come again, and one’s darkest fears and impulses take control, physical reality becomes relative as Johan embarks on a nightmare course through the surreal geography of the castle, needled and threatened by the uncanny aristocrats; he’s directed into a tryst with a grotesque former lover, and finally experiences the artist’s ultimate humiliation, clown-faced before a cruel, laughing audience, unable to perform, deprived even of his physical voice.

The film is remarkable both for its technique of escalating horror, and for the autobiographical nakedness of the artistic insecurity. Bergman borrows a certain amount from the classic tradition – the Birdman is a deliberate dead-ringer for Lugosi, complete with Nosferatu’s folded ears, and Erlandson is hot to look like Karloff as the Monster. But there’s hugely effective use of concrete music and Sven Nykvist’s chiaroscuro photography is dazzlingly brilliant, and the film is filled witheerily surreal moments all of its own, be it a corridor flapping with birds, an old woman removing her eyeballs and face, or a spine-tingling effect that has the Baron walk tortured and hunched up a wall and onto the ceiling, physical horror born of pure emotion (and an ur-epitome of the Lynchian style).

The result is hugely effective – manipulative to an extent, of course, like all horror films, but shot through with a dread that is palpably Bergman’s own (autobiographical elements are sprinkled throughout) and a desperation made explicit in Johan’s passionate explanation of the artist’s compulsion to create, in the face of a world that doesn’t care. A shame therefore, that the nightmare ends in prosaically explicit fashion, unmistakably pointing to a specific guilt as the source of his self-torture. A shame too, that Liv Ullman’s character is smothered with the characteristic Bergman preference for a beautiful, intelligent woman who will stick by her man no matter what, utterly subservient; like Bergman himself, Johan is a great man, through one’s relationship to whom it is only natural that a partner should define herself, it seems.

The film was conceived as a companion piece to Persona, and that earlier work’s theme of personality transference/merger is prodded again, but far less fruitfully – Alma is a spectator to Johan’s visions and suggests that the demons have been transferred to her at the end, but its a slightly irrelevant adjunct to the central portrait of the tortured artist, and feels merely like an excuse to have a spectator. They are both brilliant, of course, and Bergman lets them free on a number of long takes of textured acting dynamics, while Ullman does at least give Alma a tragic helplessness – she can make you cry just be looking at a camera – as she attempts to pull the dismissive Johan back to the real world.

However one feels about Bergman and his self-regard, this is a killer example of a master film-maker at the peak of his powers. With this film and Persona it is not as though he uses a lots of experimental techniques (though he kind of does), but one feels that he could use anything at all, that he has all of cinema’s possibilities at his fingertips, and that he knows how to invent what he needs. It’s not an easy film, but approached with caution, neither is it an especially difficult one; if one is prepared to pay a little attention, it is a rich and frightening and totally captivating experience, which is just as it should be.

Rating: 8.87/10

Great Directors: Movie Review

Mali Elfman — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:00:48 +0000

When you see the title of this film Great Dirtectors you might be thinking that these are the top names in Hollywood, but the people involved in this movie have done more than just made profitable films, they are some of the most inspiring directors who with their films have changed cinema as we know it. It’s refreshing to be reminded that “Great Directors” does not mean “top grossing directors” and that unlike what the studios may think, the box office does not decide who should be making films. The films decide that for themselves.

Check out our review of Great Directors below…

Players:

Directed by: Angela Ismailos
Great Directors Interviewed: Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, Liliana Cavani, Stephen Frears, Todd Haynes, Angela Ismailos, Richard Linklater, Ken Loach, David Lynch, John Sayles, Agnès Varda
Cinematographer: John Pirozzi
Editors: Christina Burchard and Sabine Hoffman

The Good:

The Well-Rounded: There is an extremely well rounded group of directors in this film from indie American greats like David Lynch, to Oscar winning English director Stephen Frears, to Ken Loach who made some of the first films to be banned for their non-patriotic views of war and French director Catherine Breillat who would go to her film to watch people walk out of it in disgust. There are names you know and names that you should know, but all of them have had an effect on film as we know it, challenged themselves and audiences, and taken risks where no one else would.
The Interviews: Angela interviews the directors and gets them to open up and really discuss their process. It’s so interesting to hear directors talk so openly about what it’s like to make a film — It’s ego, insecurity, creativity, passion, everything that you thought and nothing that you expect all mixed into one!
Risky:

The Bad/Good:

More Detail: Angela covers a lot of ground in this film, but it’s obvious that there’s a lot of footage on the cutting room floor and I would LOVE to see it. There were definitely a few directors I could have listened to for the entire time (espeically David Lynch who had a fascinating story and an even more intriguing mind) and others who I wasn’t quite as interested in. The nice thing about this is that I have a feeling everyone will feel this way, except they’ll pick different directors. Everyone can find their own inspiration, it would just be nice to have spin-offs for whomever your favorite director is.
Pacing: There are a few moments toward the middle where the film could use a little boost in pace, but it’s hardly enough for me to ciritcize it for. For the most part it keeps up a good pace for the majority of the film, especially when the majority of the film is just listening to people speak.

Overall:

What you really walk away from this film feeling is like you got to peak inside the minds of some real film-heroes, people who have made film what is today. It’s a real film-makers film. You feel like you get a peek inside some of the most creative minds and find out what it really takes to be a director. All of them are extremely different and yet they’ve all made a huge impact whether it be seen through awards, audience reactions, political responses or even through their work effecting others works.

Rating: 7.75/10

In select theaters now!

Trailer:

My Son My Son What Have Ye Done Trailer Premiere

Mali Elfman — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:34:45 +0000

Wow. Leave it to Werner Herzog, a director known as much for being crazy personality as his crazy pieces of art, to bring us a greek tragedy set in modern day. He has just finished his second of two films and not long after we get the trailer for his first film, Bad Lieutenant, we now have the trailer for his second project which was produced by David Lynch, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done starring two of my favorite actors Willem Dafoe and Michael Shannon.

Watch the trailer below…

If you’ve ever flipped on the news in LA, at least once a month you get a standoff like this. Apparently, the film was inspired by a true crime story, in which a man named Brad McCallum began to experience “mystifying events” that lead him to brutally murder his own mother with a sword. Very ancient Greek, no?

What do you think of the film?

ScreenCrave.com » david lynch

2012: Time For Change: DVD Review

The Players:

The Plot:

The Good:

The Not-So-Good:

Overall:

Rating: 8/10

Trailer:

Related Posts

AFI Fest: Hour of the Wolf Movie Review

Rating: 8.87/10

Related Posts

Great Directors: Movie Review

Players:

The Good:

The Bad/Good:

Overall:

Rating: 7.75/10

Trailer:

Related Posts

My Son My Son What Have Ye Done Trailer Premiere

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