Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time
It was pretty awesome to see this, to realize that almost everyone comes to Vonnegut the same way, at about the same age. Somewhere in high school, or in the early years after, a friend will lend you a battered copy of Slaughterhouse-Five, or a particularly naughty teacher may prescribe Slapstick or Bluebeard – and then you’ll be hooked and wonder who this iconoclastic, deeply funny and painfully melancholy writer – and how to find more of his books.
According to friends in the bookstore, Vonnegut’s appeal isn’t fading anytime soon either, he’s still flying off the shelves and is one of those authors that thrift stores don’t even bother to exhibit. He will sell right off the counter before they get that far.
Filmmaker Robert Weide had a typical introduction to Vonnegut, but he went one step further. Knowing that he wanted to be a documentary filmmaker – and with a piece about The Marx Brothers already on the bus – he wrote to his idol. And Vonnegut responded after a while. He had seen Weide’s earlier film, liked it – and was happy to talk.
Almost 40 years later, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time is the result. Weide takes an appropriately unconventional approach to the film and finds in the editing process a perfect visual metaphor for Vonnegut’s obsession with characters sliding through time.
The deep affection that Vonnegut had for the young director is clear and it actually enhances the film. Unstuck In Time is a lovely, accessible and immensely sympathetic portrait of one of the world’s most beloved writers. If you are a fan you will be there. If you’re not, it can become one of yours. That’s how it goes.
Delivered
Filmmaker Robert Weide takes an appropriately unconventional approach to Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time.
READ MORE:
* Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival 2022: Eight must-see movies
* Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival: Eight great Kiwi movies to watch
* The fascinating and complex life of cows (and one human) explored in documentary
* The film that director Florian Habicht taught how to make part of the story ‘without script’
* The filmmaker who helped tell the harrowing story of rapper Scribe .’s father
Delivered
Xavier Giannoli’s adaptation of Balzac’s Lost Illusions is a calm, dense and immensely entertaining treatment, which is as respectful as it is mischievous.
Lost Illusions
Based – closely enough – on Balzac’s novel, this should serve as a template and inspiration for anyone looking to adapt a classic novel for the screen.
Instead of a gooey, respectful and stale reading of the 1820s tome, Xavier Giannoli takes a full-blooded and lecherous approach to his material—just as Balzac would have liked—turning it into a fast-moving, genuinely funny and sexy piece. of social satire that doesn’t even bother to establish its contemporary relevance.
The story of a naive poet who dreams of becoming a novelist – the rock stars of Balzac’s world – maintains its structure, but takes on a new dialogue and an immorality that Balzac could only allude to, through a calm, dense and immensely entertaining treatment. ie as respectful, as it is naughty. This is how adaptations of classic novels should be done. Bravo.
Thanks to Sundance Institute
Alan Cumming plays an important role in My Old School.
My old school
In 1993, a new student appeared at a secondary school in Glasgow. He said his name was Brandon Lee, but seemed unaware that his namesake—Bruce Lee’s son—was an actor who had died in a macabre accident that same year.
Lee looked older than his peers, but his story of traveling the world with his mother, an opera star, a car accident that burned his face and now living in Glasgow with his aging grandmother, was enough to convince his classmates. that this is a strange, but not unpleasant fellow student.
Midway through the year—and halfway through director Jono McLeod’s intensely weird film—the truth about who Lee was and why he looked so different to his classmates came out. And the truth was quite unbelievable.
I’ll keep this review spoiler free – although you’ll find it hard to avoid many of My Old School’s revelations – but McLeod, who was a classmate of Lee’s, put together a light-hearted and likeable film, even if it – Step some of the gnarly moral problems that Lee’s presence in a school full of naive teenagers must have caused.
Many documentaries about “secret identity” have come out in recent years, but My Old School seems worthy of a film and festival release – and not just because of the presence of Alan Cumming and a few other big names lurking in the voices and recreations. .
Delivered
You’ve never, I promise you, seen a movie like Neptune Frost
Neptune Frost
For a pure sensory blast that really needs to be seen on a big screen surrounded by the greatest speakers, this deserves to be this year’s sensation.
Written and co-directed by musician, poet, and performer Saul Williams, this Afro-futuristic, queer, dystopian musical dreamscape (that’s not a sentence I thought I’d write today) is a call to weapons for black cinema, a musical pitch – down and just an absolutely insane bombshell of storytelling, incredible musicianship and a reminder that even an art form as calcified and two dimensional as filmmaking can still be made to dance to another drum, if the story is worth telling and the filmmakers have a clear and burning vision.
You’ve never, I promise you, seen a movie like Neptune Frost. But I can also promise you that from now on you will see its influence, in a watered down and compromised form, in musicals, adventures and superhero movies.
Delivered
The Territory is spectacular, angry and urgent filmmaking.
The territory
This sleek and visually stunning documentary couldn’t tell a more timely or relevant 21st century story.
Director Alex Pritz – a respected cinematographer – and producer Darren Aronofsky initially present The Territory as a portrait of the farmers and loggers who want to earn a living from what they see as virgin and uncultivated land on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. These men are encouraged by current Brazilian President Bolsonaro – and see themselves as a new generation of settlers, claiming their claim just as generations before have done.
But Pritz is quickly changing perspective to take us into a community—once thousands, now hundreds—of the area’s indigenous people, who have lived on the same land for generations and whose claim to traditional rights to it seems unquestionable.
The Territory is spectacular, angry and urgent filmmaking. The story and themes are universal and the larger problem of deforestation and carbonization of the atmosphere is more current with each passing season. Don’t even think about dismissing The Territory as “another environmental film”. This one resonates and begs to be seen on a cinema screen.
Tonight (Thurs 28th July – and runs until 7th August) kicks off in Auckland, this year’s edition Whānau Marama: New Zealand International Film Festival will also include Wellington (August 4-14), Christchurch (August 5-14), Dunedin (August 11-21), New Plymouth (August 11-21), Masterton (August 17-31), Matakana (August 18-28) Visits ), Hamilton (August 18-31), Tauranga (August 18-28), Hawke’s Bay (August 18-28), Palmerston North (August 18-28), Nelson (August 18-28), Timaru (August 18-28) August) and Gore (August 18-25).