17th Century Murder Conspiracy, Horses with Cancer, Moe, Larry and Curly

Despite my best efforts to avoid the festival, I did go to a screening of the San Francisco International Film Festival at the PFA. I saw Rembrandt's J'Accuse, which is an "essayistic documentary" on Rembrandt's famous painting The Night Watch. Directed by Peter Greenaway, Rembrandt's J'Accuse contends that the painting leaves visual clues (31 or 32 in total) of a murder by the men depicted in the painting. Among the more "subtle" clues is a ceremonial spear that is shaped like a man's genitalia and the casting of a man's hand shadow onto another man's crotch.

I'm not sure if I'm convinced of the murder conspiracy but the film was tremendously entertaining. I wasn't expecting a big crowd due to the esoteric subject matter but the PFA was near sold out.

2009 San Francisco International Film Festival
Rembrandt's J'Accuse; documentary with re-enactments; directed by Peter Greenaway; (2008)

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I saw Lost in the Fog at the Roxie as part of their $5 Monday ticket special. Director John Corey took questions from the audience after the 7 PM screening. I don't follow horse racing but even I knew about Lost in the Fog, the phenomonally successfully racehorse from the Bay Area. The story lent itself well to a documentary. Corey mentioned that the original intent of the story was to focus on three men - the owner, the trainer and the jockey of Lost in the Fog. As he was getting ready to wrap up the film, the horse came down with cancer and died.

He retooled the film to include the horse's final months and had to cut the jockey's screen time. The owner, the late Harry Aleo, was a San Francisco fixture with his Noe Valley office featuring photos of Ronald Reagan and other Republican memorabilia. The scene I recall is toward the end of the film when Aleo is at the Tennessee Grill in the Inner Sunset district. I've eaten at that diner many times. I wonder if I saw Aleo there. His face looked familiar but maybe I saw him from news reports on Lost in the Fog.

Also, Corey was a former staffer on KPIX's Evening Magazine. That was a show that featured Mike Rowe and Malou Nubla as correspondents that would go around the Bay Area cover "human interest" stories. Rowe has said that some of the segments evolved into Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel. Anyway, Rowe was the narrator of Lost in the Fog. Although Corey did not mention it during the Q&A, I'm sure he met Rowe during his time on Evening Magazine.

Lost in the Fog; documentary; (2008) - Official Website

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I also took advantage of the Castro Theater $5 Tuesday admission promotion by seeing a program of Three Stooges short films. At the beginning of one film (An Ache in Every Stake), there was a Stanford Theater moment where the film burned or disintegrated in the projector. Having read that nitrate films can produce toxic fumes when they burn, I reached for my coat and was ready to bid a hasty exit. Fortunately, no noxious gases were created and the projectionist re-spooled the film within a few minutes.

Three Stooges Shorts: Curly's Greatest Hits
Micro-Phonies (1945)
Hoi Polloi (1935)
We Want Our Mummy (1939)
Calling All Curs (1939)
Disorder in the Court (1936)
Violent is the Word For Curly (1938)
An Ache in Every Stake (1941)

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Speaking of the Discovery Channel, I notice there is a large Bay Area contingent on that network. In addition to Rowe, The Mythbusters (one of my favorite shows) is filmed locally.

On Sunday, I was flipping channels and saw the stars of Dogs of Chinatown on Time Warp which is a Discovery Channel program. I saw Dogs of Chinatown at the 4-Star a few weeks ago. Eric Jacobus and Ray Carbonel (who did Q&A after the screening), were performing some stunts on the show using high-speed photography. Jacobus (co-founder) and Carbonel are members of the Stunt People, a growing group of martial artists, acrobats, stuntmen, and stuntwomen who make their own films out of San Francisco, CA in the USA. They sport multiple ethnicities, body types, and martial arts backgrounds.

Movie Puke

I was at the Landmark Bridge Theater this past weekend to see Tokyo Sonata (great film by the way).

As I was milling about the lobby, I noticed some tri-folded pieces of 8.5 x 11 paper. I picked one up at there was a picture of Corey Haim and Corey Feldman on the cover with the subtitle "Corey vs. Corey The Ultimate Battle." The rest of the "tiny zine" was an introduction of the Two Coreys phenomenon in the late 80's. Does anyone remember the commercials for the Two Coreys chat room? After setting up the Coreys Craze, the unsigned author proceeded to give thumbnail descriptions of her favorite bad movies starring one or both of the Coreys. I thought it was entertaining and can relate to a fellow "bad movie connoisseur" as well as her adherence to grammar and spelling.

The title of the 'zine was Movie Puke - A Tiny Zine for Cinemasochists - clever word play.

Going back to the table with the handouts, I found two more Movie Pukes - Issue #2 titled "Revenge of the Beach Comedy" and Issue #3 titled "The Girly Issue." Both 'zines brought back memories from my teenage years or introduced me to films so obscure/bad that I wouldn't watch them as a hormonally overactive teenager.

Anyway, Movie Puke has a Myspace page. There is even a photo of Issue #4 called "Dance Dance Dance."

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I notice that before screenings at Landmark Theaters, an employee will come out and thank the audience. S/he doesn't always comment on the film but they do thank the audience for coming. It's a nice touch in tough economic times. The Sunday 3:10 showing of Tokyo Sonata had a good crowd - there was probably over 50 people in the audience on Easter Sunday.

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I notice several films at the upcoming 2009 San Francisco International Film Festival are being shown in previews trailers at Landmark Theaters. Tulpan, Tyson and Rudo y Cursi are three that I'm aware of.

I am violating my previous pledge to skip the 2009 SFIFF completely. I bought a ticket to see Rembrandt's J'Accuse at the PFA on April 26. One of the first "independent" films that I saw in a theater was Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover during the summer of 1989 when I was living in Los Angeles. I cannot remember the name of the theater but it was extremely wide. It might have been an IMAX screen although I don't think the film was IMAX. I'll never forget two scenes from that film. I'll never forget Helen Mirren and Alan Howard being spirited out of the restaurant (coitus interruptus) and having to make their escape in a meat van with dead pigs hanging off of hooks. Of course, the final scene where The Lover is literally roasted and served to The Thief. Roasted penis anyone?

“Just because you have eyes does not mean you can see,” challenges the great director-contrarian Peter Greenaway in his new cine-essay, which reveals the mysteries hidden in plain sight in one of the most famous paintings of all time, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Where most see only a great work of art, Greenaway dissects the Dutch masterpiece to uncover an indictment, a conspiracy and a murder mystery sweeping across the ruling elites of Amsterdam’s Golden Age. Hosting the proceedings like a well-mannered 21st-century judge, Greenaway “investigates” each of the painting’s 34 characters, their poses and costumes, as well as the picture’s setting and lighting, to discover clues to Rembrandt’s fascinating take on, and indictment of, the power struggles of 17th-century Amsterdam. In the process, Greenaway moves far beyond narrative and documentary filmmaking (further beyond his already out-there early works like Drowning by Numbers or The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) to level his own j’accuse on contemporary visual illiteracy. With actors (including Martin Freeman of British TV’s The Office) restaging certain scenes and Greenaway’s clever intellectual side-notes and diversions (the development of candle-making in relationship to painting aesthetics, for instance), Rembrandt’s J’Accuse will change how you view art, and the world.

Actually, this film reminds me of an annual tableaux vivant event in Orange County called Pageant of the Masters in which paintings are recreated by real people in costumes, sets and make-up to match the paintings. I've never been able to attend but would like to see it one day.