Moon opens in Chicago Tomorrow

We over here at my house have highly anticipated Duncan Jones' (aka Zowie Bowie's) feature Moon.

Starring hottie Sam Rockwell, it is a mix of a whole bunch of Sci-Fi archetypes and doppelganger scariness.

Check out the site and the trailer here.

Worst road trip photos ever.

CUBA MISSOURI TO CHICAGO IL - NOVEMBER 30 2008

Nostalgia in Film and Filmic Memorials

I recently wrote a paper on memory and remembrance in film. This is the abstract/outline.

Nostalgia in Film and Filmic Memorials
THESIS:
Within film and video the filmmakers have the capacity to relive moments and experiences that are too far from reach in reality. Thus, film work has become a vehicle to memorialize the past, creating narratives with strong nostalgic overtones, plus a new breed of documentary, experimental documentaries using home-movies in order to re-tell the stories of those they have lost. Both are unique memorials to the past, and have the ability to transcend that of a stationery monument.

OUTLINE:
Nostalgic memories:
Narrative films that use nostalgia as a theme within the films.

Mystery Train by Jim Jarmusch (Elvis, Screaming Jay Hawkins, and Joe Strummer)
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/59/59mysterytrain.html
http://www.kamera.co.uk/features/mystery_train.php

Badlands by Terrence Malick (the American dream, idyllic, 1950s)
Recycled Culture in Contemporary Art and Film by Vera Dika

Nostalgic Memorials:
The use of home movies in order to memorialize those we’ve lost.

Loss — Years after her father dies, director Kristen Nutile attempts to resurrect memories of him through old family movies. In a beautiful mix of grainy old footage, music and interviews with her family, she recreates a portrait of her father. We go on this moving journey with her to rediscover the past.

My Olympic Summer — In the context of his own cracking marriage, filmmaker Daniel Robin explores his parents' union. He discovers a letter detailing his mother's unhappiness, feelings which were then swallowed up by historical dramas that kept his parents together. So what truths are these home movies telling?
http://shortendmagazine.com/content/view/451/101/
http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/reviews.php?film_id=12974

THE PASSENGER
Kathryn Ramey
Documentary 2006, (16:00), 16mm on Video Chicago Premiere
A personal, experimental, 16mm film that addresses the filmmaker’s tenuous relationship with her mentally ill mother and her own reservations about pregnancy, birth, and parenthood.The physical reworking of the film’s surface serves as a signifying device for the process of building a life, becoming a mother, and repairing that which is broken between mother and child. The fracture between experience of a mother’s illness and memories of joys with her were literally sutured in the editing.
“At the funeral I was the only one of her children to speak. I said she had perfect penmanship and that she loved to dance and sing. The later were her gifts to me.” – Kathryn Ramey

DEAR ZACHARY:
A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER
2008, Kurt Kuenne, USA, 95 min.
“A gut-wrenching true-crime story…a virtuoso feat.”—Peter Debruge, Variety
“One of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen…unfolds like a masterful thriller.”—Erik Childress, eFilmCritic.com

“Every last person who steps foot into a theater to see this will walk away changed.”—Alex Billington, FirstShowing.net
A tale of madness, murder, revenge, and thwarted justice plays out in escalating increments of horror in a documentary begun as the filmmaker’s tribute to a friend. The 2001 murder of personable 28-year-old Dr. Andrew Bagby by a 40-year-old former girlfriend prompted filmmaker Kuenne, his best friend since earliest childhood, to begin a documentary in the form of a letter to the dead man’s infant son. Fast-breaking events involving the ex-lover/accused murderer, the child, Bagby’s parents, and the law, take the film in an unanticipated new direction with Kuenne scrambling to keep pace with the unfolding of an emotionally powerful real-life drama of Shakespearean dimensions. Beta SP video. (BS)

Julen kommer!

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Name:
American Decay and Urban Dreams

Topics:
film, culture, nostalgia

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Things I have looked at online.
Enjoy!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule_log
Log.

http://www.ling.su.se/staff/evali/glogg.htm
Glögg.

http://www.christmas-cookies.com/recipes/recipe41.pepperkakor.html
Pepperkakor (på glögg)

http://www.kristallbeverage.com/home/jul.html
Julmist, yummy.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2092
Niles, IL attraction (other than WalMart=

http://www.chicagobotanic.org/wonderland/
Pretty, fint!

http://www.chicagolandchristmaslights.com/
God Jul!

http://www.lpzoo.org/events/zoolights08.html
I wonder what the animals think?

http://www.andersonville.org/index.php/events/julmarknad/details/7
Julmarknad, dricka glögg och tar fika!

http://www.andersonville.org/index.php/events/community-calendar/details/8-late-night-andersonville
Party on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas_Day
Put out your shoes!

http://www.christkindlmarket.com/
I love thee.

http://www.santascandycastle.com/shopcontent.asp?type=Visit
Hansel and Gretel, contemporary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus,_Indiana
Roadtrip

http://www.holidayworld.com/
Dear god.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-worst-xmas-pg,0,7781979.photogallery
True.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Pickwick Theater & Cadillac Records

Last night I took Exal (my roommate) to the suburbs to check out the chaos at Wal-Mart. We ended up at Bath and Body Works buying smelly things. Like candy apple hand soap in a penguin dispenser. Yes, I am turning into my mother. Anyways, we decided to keep going west on Touhy and stumbled into the suburb of Park Ridge, IL. And low and behold stood the Pickwick Theater. One of the remain open movie palaces. Built in the 1920's the theater is Art Deco style, with a hint of Aztec influence.
I looked up online and saw what is playing there and saw that opening soon is Cadillac Records. A film that I have been anticipating. Not out of sure happiness it was made, more because I curious how it is going to work out. I'm pretty hesitant because of the regular skepticism, Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters and Beyonce as Etta James? Really? But having Adrian Brody as Leonard Chess might make up for it (dream boat). Being a huge fan of the Chess Records legacy and spending most of my time several blocks north the studio. A couple of years ago I even made an in-situ screenprinted shrine to Muddy and the boys of Chess.



















I'll report back with how the outcome of this film is after I go to this beautiful theater this weekend.

Summer blues.

I recently noticed that my summer is almost gone.
This is extremely depressing because I have gotten almost nothing done that I wanted to.
My movie has barely been started. I haven't been able to explore as much as I've wanted. And I'm still dealing with the same old problems.

What is really terrify is that my last year at school starts in less than 5 weeks. Which means that this next year is going to fly by. And I really hope I get the movie done. But then after that year what is going to happen?
I imagined I'd go to grad school, but I'm in no financial place to be doing so. The only way I could go to grad school next year is if I get a full ride or go to University of Texas in Austin, because I'd be in-state.

But I'm not even really sure if I want to do a production grad degree. Maybe I want to study history or film preservation. But a lot of this would mean leaving Chicago. Something I've become very attached to.

Maybe I should just chill out and work a bit harder at getting stuff done.
-September Undergraduate Film/Video Festival
-First feature: "Veracity: We All Shine On"

The last good movie I saw:
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (Palme d'or 2006)


Song that keeps playing:
Goodbye to You by Scandal

Uptown Theater

It's pretty obvious that I have a nostalgia problem. But I'm also prone to extreme fits of thirst for historical knowledge.

Today I read that the Uptown Theater is being sold at a foreclosure auction on Tuesday. This could be a very good thing, or a very bad thing.

I really hope someone buys it that wants to restore the theater and open it again for movies, plays, concerts. Some kind of theatrical epicenter. But it might be more likely that someone who wants to tear it down and put a Best Western there will buy it.

I guess we could find out soon. In the meantime I had checked out a book of pictures from the library of Uptown's gentrification/historical places where I found these great pictures of the theater.