Adam Baran

From an IM conversation this morning with my friend JR:

Me: whats new
JR: just work
JR: i got laid this weekend
JR: 3 times!
JR: same chick though

This quote comes from the late Pauline Kael, the birdlike film critic whose often radically biting reviews drew ire and adulation from many.  I’ve been poring over her collection of short film reviews “5001 Nights at the Movies,” and some of them are incredibly funny to me.  This is my favorite one - in her review of TROG, Joan Crawford’s last film from 1970, Kael writes:

“Joan Crawford plays Stella Dallas with an ape instead of a baby girl.”  

That’s the best one line movie description I’ve ever read, even if I’m the only person my age who would get it.  (Stella Dallas is a super tearjerker with Barbara Stanwyck where she’s a low class woman who gives up her daughter so she can have a better life living with her father)  I’m going to try to get that good with my short reviews. 

Trog is an absurdly awful cheesy film where Joan Crawford finds a trogolodyte, which is a sort of prehistoric monster man and tries to nurture it by having it over for a Pepsi.  

But there’s some simple minded folk who are scared of Trog and want to kill it.  But Joan says “No.  It’s Pepsi Time!”  She takes a break from beating children and invites one over for a Pepsi with Trog. 

Okay that’s not exactly the plot of the movie, and I think those pictures are from some sort of lame Pepsi ad that came out when the movie did.  Joan was the head of Pepsi after all. 

Anyway, I’m glad this blog isn’t turning out to be too gay. 

My friend Darren Stein’s short film “Color Me Olsen” screened last night at the Tribeca Film Festival in the “Mood Enhancers” shorts program.  You must check it out! 

“Color Me Olsen” tells the story of two twins (Edmund and Gary Entin) who land in Hollywood with dreams of making it big, and take a job in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater impersonating the Olsen twins.  The job takes it’s toll on them, as the two become increasingly more obsessed with their roles and the lines between reality and fiction begin to blur.  It’s really a very funny film, gorgeously lensed and tightly edited. 

Here’s the remaining screening times:

Sunday, April 29th 6:30PM - AMC Village VII Theater (66 Third Ave at 11th St.)  Darren Stein will be present at this screening for the Q and A.

Thursday, May 3rd 11:30PM - Tribeca Cinemas Theater 1 (54 Varick St.)

Friday, May 4th 11:30PM - AMC Kips Bay Theater 13 (570 Second Ave. at 32nd)

There were a few other good shorts too, most notably “I am Bob” which actually stars Bob Geldof as himself.  When he’s abandoned by his limo driver at a remote pub holding a Lookalike contest, he’s forced to go head to head with another Bob Geldof impersonator to win the prize so he can win the prize money and get himself out of there.  It’s really funny too. 

I also really liked the Spanish short “The Water and the Milk,” although it seemed drastically, and unfortunately out of place in this program.  It’s a serious, beautiful piece about an old woman who lives in the desert with a cow, and what happens when a rainstorm strands the cow on a small patch of land surrounded by deep rain water.  It’s a very good short, if it does have a few moments shot a bit too much like one of those Stella Artois ads with the French villagers. 

Some of the other films didn’t fare so well and I won’t mention them, but it’s fascinating to me to watch bad shorts and wonder what the programmers were thinking when they picked them.  I do bare a sizable grudge since my own awesome film “JINX!” wasn’t selected for the festival, but seriously, it seemed like most of the films in this program were backed by heavy loads of money - in one case the filmmakers raised a staggering 60,000 dollars for something that was a painful waste of time.  Another filmmaker boasted about how heavy his use of product placement and sponsorship enabled him to do so much stuff he couldn’t have been able to do.  Perfect for Hollywood!  It made me wonder if I should just bridge the gap and write films like “Pepsi: The Movie” or “Me and my Helio Down by the Schoolyard.”  I’m sure they’d get made. 

And there’s something about the programming that’s totally off - this was a long program of shorts, too long to schedule for 10:30PM, and two of the remaining screenings are at 11:30PM.  Who wants to go see shorts that late?!  I’d recommend the Sunday screening, if you ask me.  Okay, end mini-rant here.  Must go self-soothe.

That’s not to take anything away from ”Color Me Olsen” which is worth the price of admission, and the Bob Geldof film too.  I like that Darren, who previously directed the twisted teen flick Jawbreaker, and the awesome pre-Tarnation home movie doc Put the Camera On Me, isn’t opposed to going back to doing a short now and then.  There are a lot of great things that shorts can do when they’re not restrained by standard story conventions and structure and Darren’s film does a lot of great things, indeed. 

Support your local (actually, he lives in L.A.) gay filmmakers!

Guess what everyone?  Today is my day!  Why?  I’ll spin you a tale. 

I’m in Kim’s Video, where you can usually bank on finding me trolling the aisles looking for cult fare, and after returning a video, I wander downstairs to the DVD sales section.  I’m looking at all the new releases, and I’m in the “M” section.  Suddenly I look over, and GASP (I mean it, literally I gasped, super loudly) what do I see?  Why, only one of my favorite movies OF. ALL. TIME :

Yes, that’s right.  MAHOGANY!!  I love this movie.  But why did I gasp, you ask?  (Seriously, it was loud.  I apologized to the person next to me)  Because Mahogany has never been available on DVD before this.  Well it may have, very early on, but actually I think someone told me once that Diana Ross had blocked the release of it for some reason.  I don’t know if that’s true, but who cares, it’s finally out. 

Mahogany stars Diana Ross as, well, Mahogany, a girl from the projects who dreams of becoming a fashion designer but gets swept up by creepy photographer Anthony Perkins and becomes America’s Next Top Model of 1975.  Her career is a smash, but she can’t keep a handle on Billy Dee Williams, her Congressman boyfriend.  There are so many amazing high camp moment in this film.  There’s the “I’m a success” scene, which drag queen Flotilla DeBarge used to lip sync to on repeat at Barracuda (and probably still does).  There’s the scene where she screams at Italian factory workers (”Non-Capisco! Non-Capisco!”)  There’s also the scene where she tries to order spaghetti!  It’s a fabulous melodramatic camp extravaganza, that didn’t connect with the public on it’s release in 1975, but has connected with the gays, and this gay ever since.   Hmmm, I wonder why?

The DVD cost me 11.99 plus tax.  It’s no frills, with widescreen but no special features, but honestly, it doesn’t even need them.  The movie is special enough! The colors of the space geisha outfits are much more vibrant than I’ve ever seen them.  And the immortal car crash scene (”TAKE THE PICTURE!!! TAKE THE PICTURE!!”) shines in all its digitally restored glory.  I love this movie! 

Now this DVD release may be the only good thing to come out of the release of Dreamgirls.  As you can see above, Paramount has clearly redesigned the DVD to cash in on Dreamgirls, which comes out next week.  It’s not clear where the image of Diana Ross on the cover comes from, certainly not from the movie, and that pink capital neon font looks suspiciously like the Dreamgirls one.  And the ghostly spotlight images make it look like the movie’s about a singer.  Don’t be fooled!  She’s a fashion designer! 

This is the way the Mahogany poster should look:

Actually that’s more like what EVER poster should look like! 

Support Mahogany!  Go buy your copy today! 

Here’s February’s movie catch up, y’all. 

The Devil’s Backbone - After Pan’s Labyrinth I wanted to check out some of Guillermo Del Toro’s work, since I’d always sort of avoided it, thinking it was in the same class as the crappy roach-fest shlocker Mimic.  But it’s clear now that film was molded after the fact by studio execs, and Del Toro does have some talent up his sleeve.  This one, about an orphan at a boarding school who’s haunted by a ghost, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War has a lot of the same themes and ideas that show up more skillfully in Pan’s Labyrinth.  I watched this movie on a sick day, pondering what it was about this movie that made it Michael Jackson’s favorite film.  I mean, other than the young boys, naturally. 

Stick It - My new roommate and I bonded over this piece of garbage from the writer of immortal teen classic Bring It On.  The film was sort of billed as Bring it on with Gymnastics, but it lacks all of that movies’ heart and spirit, not to mention jokes, and talented direction.  Every attempt at comedy falls flat.  The film is about a misfit girl who does something wrong, and for some reason the judge sentences her to go to gymnastics school, purely for plot machinations.  She’s a troubled teen who walked out on the Olympics, leaving her teammates in the lurch.  And now she wants a second shot.  The lead, unfortunately named Missy Peregrym (in real life) is so utterly unlikeable (bordering on loathsome) that it’s of no interest to the audience to root for her or hope that she sees the error of her ways.  Obviously, she goes against the grain, gets tamed, and though the unpredictable ending is sort of a nice touch, it’s too heartbreaking to see poor Jeff Bridges wandering around the set looking like a wounded puppy at the pound.  The sound work is so bad you can’t understand what people are saying half the time.

Danger! Diabolik!  - The inspiration for the Beastie Boy’s “Body Movin” video.  Super campy 60’s over-the-top Mod James Bond-y British spy spoof (sort of) about a super thief Diabolik, who’s alternately busy being lured into traps and finding his way out of them.  Mario Bava lays it on thick which accounts for the film’s passionate cult of followers.

Casino Royale - The real thing, no imitation here.  Daniel Craig is great, but the film is overlong and stupidly convoluted.  I realize that in general the plots of the Bond movies are pointless to overanalyze, but this one was so stylized and overly melodramatic at points that I couldn’t help watching as a passive observer.  Eva Green is the Pits with a capital P.  She’s. Just. Awful. 

Maniac - The Grandfather of Insane exploitation films.  Made in the thirties, this little bit of madness is as off the wall as they come.  The film mashes up Frankenstein and Murders in the Rue Morgue, telling the story of a doctor who forces his young servant, a wanted criminal, to steal bodies for him from the local morgue.  The doctor revives one hot dead mama, but when the servant fails to deliver again, the doctor wants to use his body for experiments.  Instead of shooting the servant, the doctor actually hands the gun to his servant and tells him to shoot himself for the good of science.  D’oh!!!  Once the doctor is dead, the servant uses his special effects makeup skills (seriously! that’s one of his talents) and dresses himself up like the doctor and starts receiving patients.  Among the patients is a man who thinks he’s “An orangutang from Murders in the Rue Morgue,” who ends up stealing the newly revived dead girl, and raping her.  This would seem like it would be plenty to go on for the plot, but not so.  There’s a whole nother world after that happens - in fact, the rapist and victim are never heard from again!  Then there’s a lot more - including a crazy old man who collects cats (his monologue is one of the most bizarrely retarded things you’ll ever hear) and pokes out one of their eyeballs onscreen.  What’s most startling about it is both just how insane it is for it’s time and the fact that it predates John Waters by about 40+ years.

Hercules in the Haunted World - Seven years prior to making Danger Diabolik, and one year after his cult smash Black Sunday, Italian giallo godfather made this campy Hercules movie starring muscle hunk (and I mean it) Reg Park as Hercules, and super-villain Christopher Lee as King Licos, who commands an army of zombie vampires against the strongman.  It’s super gorgeous colors, and ridiculous sets and costumes are enough to recommend it, though my personal feeling is that it suffers a lot at the end from pacing issues, meaning, some of it’s pretty boring. 

The Blackout - Pretty unknown Abel Ferrara film from 1997 starring Matthew Modine as a Matty, a drug addict movie star who goes nuts when his girlfriend Annie (Beatrice Dalle) tells him she’s aborted their baby.  Whilst staying in Miami, he goes to visit his friend Mickey Wayne (Dennis Hopper, in a usual awesome off-the wall performance) a strange 60’s-ish filmmaker who stages bizarre Lynchian porno happenings and, we’re sure, has something very dark about his life.  The night progresses through much weirdness and Matty blacks out.  The film flashes forward to years later, when Matty is living in New York, clean and sober with girlfriend Claudia Schiffer (who’s pretty good!)  He can’t get the idea out of his head that he did something horrible when he blacked out, and so regrettably he goes down to Miami to seek out Mickey and find out just what he did.  It’s an interesting film, one that doesn’t totally work, but it’s more fascinating to see the energy created by it’s unusual cast.  Hopper brings an electricity that’s totally mesmerizing.  It’s a dark, moody film, check it out if you like Abel Ferrara or Dennis Hopper.

Sonny Boy - Right up there with Street Wars and The Toy Box as one of the most insanely  bad films ever made.  The film tells the story of Slue and Pearl, a backwoods couple of outlaw criminals who live in a trailer and are basically local crimelords in the desert town of Harmony.  When Slue’s henchman Weasel kills a couple of travelers and brings their car back to Slue, they find a baby inside, and Pearl decides to raise it as her own.  But that’s not what Slue has in mind, and instead, he cuts out the baby’s tongue and decides to torture it into obedience, raising it as a feral killing machine trained to do his bidding. 

Did I mention that Pearl is played by David Carradine?  And that the film never explains why he’s in drag the entire movie?  Did I mention that this film will break down every shred of your psyche so that you are lucky if you’re not a quivering mess of primordial ooze a’ la Altered States by the end of the film?  It’s out of print, unfortunately, so call me if you want to watch it. 

Cure - Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s late 90’s pre-J horror creepfest about a killer who uses the power of hypnotism to get people to brutally kill other people.  I didn’t mind this film when I was watching it, but it just didn’t stick with me after the fact.  I have seen a few films by this director, who’s usually heaped with praise in the film press, but I tend to think he’s a bit overrated. 

The Mad Room - 1960’s remake of Ida Lupino’s Ladies In Retirement, stars Stella Stevens, wearing an outrageous beehive-y hairdo that never seems to move, and Shelly Winters as her overbearing, obnoxious boss.  Stevens has two siblings who supposedly killed their mother and father when they were younger, and now they’re ready to come home!  But once they’re all back in Shelly Winters’ house, things start to go wrong, and murders start to pile up again.  It’s a good creepy Grand Dames Guignol picture, but the ending comes too soon and doesn’t really ratchet up the tension enough to be fully satisfying.  Shelly Winters is great as usual. 

The Graffiti Artist - I met director James Bolton in February and wanted to check out his films.  This one tells the story of a young graffiti artist in Portland who’s arrested and flees to Seattle, where he meets another writer and starts to go out tagging with him.  Their relationship develops, and the boys hook up, and then everything’s changed between them.  It’s very well done, and there’s skillful camera work - so close on the faces of the actors that the tension is at times unbearable.  Really great, recommended. 

Rafter Romance - Lost RKO film shown at the Film Forum as part of a weeklong series.  This film stars Ginger Rogers as a woman forced to share an apartment with a man - he gets it during the night, and she during the day, or something like that.  Anyway of course they never see each other, and outside the apartment they meet and fall for each other.  Inside the apartment though, each one is pulling awful pranks on the hateful person they think shares the apartment.  It’s cute, but not great.  Remade as Living for Love. 

Double Harness - This was part of the same Film Forum series, and this one is a truly great film - undeservedly lost and unknown.  The beautiful Ann Harding shines as a woman who tricks the dashing playboy William Powell into marrying her and then has regrets later in their marriage.  The dialogue is cracking and sharp and funny and startingly honest for it’s time.  I had never heard of Ann Harding but she’s very beautiful and it seems, should have been a bigger star.  It’s airing on TCM this month so try to find it and DVR it for sure.

Half-Nelson - The pluses:  Ryan Gosling is amazing.  He’s smart, honest, funny, gorgeous, a totally great performance from a future major movie star.  The minuses: The story doesn’t really pay off in the end.  Major question in my mind - what happened to Ryan Gosling that made him a crack addict?  It killed me that we never found it out.  I really think this film was cut from the same open-ended Sundance institute, indie cloth that spoiled so many films in the 90’s.  It just feels like honesty for honesty’s sake - meaning, that in my mind it seems like indie films - and by this I mean films that bill themselves as such - all they do is take standard plots and update them with something hard hitting.  For instance Transamerica - it’s a road movie you’ve seen a million times before, but with a trannie.  And this one is To Sir With Love, with crack addiction!  I never bought the story in a full honest way, and the ending is really unsatisfying.  Open ended doesn’t cut it sometimes.  This is one of them.

The Oscar - A fabulous bad bad bad film from 1966 - it’s the perfect movie to watch on Oscar night, with a double bill of Pia Zadora’s The Lonely Lady, of course.  The film is a hilariously melodramatic rise-and-fall biopic of Frankie Fane, a two bit hustler who’s charm and charisma get him on the fast track to Hollywood super-stardom.  He’s aided by Tony Bennett (The singer, yes) who plays Hymie Kelly (the film name to end all film names!) in the performance that ensured he wouldn’t appear in another film until Analyze This.  When Frankie Fane’s career starts to falter, and he’s on his way out - an Oscar nomination starts to resuscitate his career - if he can win it, that is!  Fucking hysterical movie, also stars Jill St. John, Joseph Cotten as the studio boss, Merle Oberon, and Frank Sinatra(who appears even though the trashy film is basically his life story) - trust me, you won’t see this cameo coming!  “When you lie down with pigs, you get up smelling like garbage!” - shouts Hymie Kelly, and it’s never truer than in this delicious crapfest. 

Stingaree - Expected more from this lost RKO classic by hardboiled quickie director William Wellman, but it’s a ridiculous Australian western starring Irene Dunne as a maid who’s swept off her feet by local bandit Stingaree.  When he’s arrested, he leaves money to her and she goes off and becomes a worldwide Opera Star.  But when she returns to Oz, all bets are off and she’s lookin for her man!  S’okay, not great.  But the story is nuts. 

A Man to Remember - The other part of the double bill with Stingaree - this film is about a doctor who’s so unselfish that on his dying day they entire town gathers weeping at his funeral procession.  The film tells the story in flashback rather elegantly, although in my mind, it’s best remembered for the most tender and romantic incest plotline in early film history - between a brother and his adopted sister.  “Wow, sis, you’ve turned into quite a woman!”  The audience was howling!

That’s February, March coming soon!

The new issue of Butt Magazine is out at discerning newsstands now!  This issue features interviews with legendary pornographer Joe Gage, transman pornographer Buck Angel, a Dirty man who hasn’t bathed in 30 years, and sexy centerfold Juanjo Martinez. 

But most important this issue features two new interviews from yours truly!

The first is an interview with Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli, who creates delirious video pieces which recreate and reimagine scenes from his favorite films - usually starring an ensemble of amazing celebrities - Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Denueve, Sharon Stone, Helen Mirren, and Gore Vidal.  He created the infamous Caligula Trailer that played at the most recent Whitney Biennial.  He was great fun to talk to - maybe I’ll post some outtakes here. 

I also have a shorter interview in the BUTTSTUFF section with my friend Travis Blue, who works as a Bike Messenger in Seattle, and has a great butt.

I’ve been doing interviews and articles for Butt for a couple of years now, and I’m having a great time doing it.  I’ve gotten to interview some really great people - Mike Albo, Ed Droste, and John Cameron Mitchell, among others. 

Check out www.buttmagazine.com for more info and to find where you can buy it in your local area.