Jim Brunzell III (djguamwins@yahoo.com) was born in the 70's, went to school in the 80's, played sports in the 90's, and has been writing on film for the Daily Planet since 2007. He is also the Festival Director and programmer for the Sound Unseen Music/Film/Art festival in the Twin Cities, lead programmer for the Flyway Film Festival in Pepin and Stockholm, WI, the creator of "The Defenders" series at the Trylon microcinema and has been working on a novel since finishing college. You can follow Jim on Twitter at (@JimBrunzell_3).
I return to the Optimistic Pessimist column after taking a month off to prepare for the 14th annual Sound Unseen music/film/art festival and work on the 6th annual Flyway Film Festival, which took place a couple weeks ago in beautiful Pepin and Stockholm, Wisconsin.In my time away from my weekly writing duties, the Twin Cities Film Fest took place in St. Louis Park, and I missed the entire festival. However, a few days ago, I was able to catch the somewhat remake, or better yet, re-imaged 2010 Mexican horror film We Are What We Are by American filmmaker Jim Mickle. His previous film Stake Land was a surprising effective look at the United States on political decay and economic crisis with a vampire outbreak for more added dreary news. The 2013 We Are What We Are version was a film I had no interest in seeing at Sundance earlier this year, mainly because I was enamored with the Mexican original. Continue Reading
When I asked Minneapolis Underground Film Festival (MUFF) program director Mark Hanson to mention one of the biggest challenges in gearing up for the sixth annual MUFF, he said, “Well, our mascot is this big gorilla costume and its head may not fit in any of the cars we’re using for the festival.”I laughed, as did Hanson, but then he replied, “We’re having the festival at St. Anthony Main again, but our festival last year was in August, and we’ve moved it to October, where I think it’ll be for the years to come.” He mentioned the theater went going through some remodeling. “We didn’t know when we could get in there, so we were waiting to find out, when we could have the festival, and once we got our dates, we were racing to get everything put together.” Yes, putting a film festival together has its ups and downs. MUFF, which takes place October 3-6, started as a “word-of-mouth” festival and has now brought in some top-notch “underground” films to Minneapolis. What’s “underground”? Continue Reading
If I said that when I was a child, watching movies became an obsession for me, that could be considered an understatement. In some cases, I would throw tantrums around my parents because I was nine years old and wanted to see the new Michael Douglas R-rated flick that they were going to go see. They would not drag me with them—and thank goodness.Well, I must have figured, if I could not see the movies that I wanted to, the next best obsession that I started to develop was collecting movie posters, especially the home video releases. I remember riding my bike up to the local video store, Video Vision, and looking at the walls and seeing all the different images, colors, actors, and critic quotes on all these posters. It got to the point that I was riding my bike up to Video Vision weekly, not even to rent VHS tapes, but to check out the new posters that hung on the walls or were displayed in the illuminated marquee case spotlighting the newest release.I got to know the manager of the video store and I asked her one time what happened to the posters once they come off the walls. Continue Reading
Drinking Buddies, the latest feature by prolific writer/director/editor and occasional actor Joe Swanberg—opening this Friday at the Lagoon Cinema and also available via video-on-demand—is probably the biggest feature Swanberg has made to date. It is also is the third film directed by Swanberg in 2013. (One of Swanberg’s 2013 films, 24 Exposures, premiered at Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival last month, but there’s no word on an official U.S. premiere date yet. I hope it will make its way to a U.S. film festival, ideally in the Twin Cities.)Since 2005 Swanberg has directed 18 features, starting with his first, the sexually explicit Kissing on the Mouth, where audiences were treated to Swanberg giving himself a “happy ending” in the shower. It provoked plenty of backlash, not because of that scene but because of the entire film. Continue Reading
Hammering the inevitable final “nail in the coffin” on the 2013 summer is a welcome relief. Going through the entire list of films released over the summer, there will not too many standouts and very few that struck a chord. Monsters University, The Act of Killing, You’re Next, Stories We Tell, and The Spectacular Now were five films that stood out in a rather lackluster summer viewing session. While there are a few summer movies that I have yet to see, it is nice to spring forward to the fall film season. I mean, is there really a rush or a need to see We’re the Millers on opening day—or ever?All eyes are on the dozens of films opening from Friday, September 6 through Thanksgiving weekend; many of them will be pure escapist entertainment, while many are sure to be Oscar-caliber treasures. Continue Reading
After spending a week out in Park City, Utah covering the Sundance Film Festival for Twin Cities Daily Planet, I had taken in 26 films and it was my last day to catch another film before my shuttle came to pick me up to head to the Salt Lake City airport. There was a film that had been talked about since it premiered almost a week earlier, director James Ponsoldt’s (Off the Black and Smashed) third feature, The Spectacular Now, based off Tim Tharp’s 2008 young adult novel. The film was written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber who had written the romantic comedy 500 Days of Summer a few years earlier. The Spectacular Now was bought by the flashy distributor A24 (Spring Breakers, The Bling Ring and the upcoming, The Rover), shortly after its premiere. Having initially missing the first press screening, there was a second one right before I had to head out of town and incidentally left the biggest impression on me.I still can remember the screening quite vividly even after seven months. Continue Reading
In the winter of 2003, Death Cab for Cutie and Dntel were two bands that had some name recognition, although, DCFC were on the brink of becoming the new focal point for the common emo kid looking for answers and a new direction in life with the upcoming release of “Transatlanticism.” When DCFC frontman, Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello began there “under-the-radar” side-project together, The Postal Service, I can’t imagine either of them would realize that there 1st and only album, Give Up would sky rocket on the independent rock radio stations and the indie album charts would also bring Seattle based icon label Sub Pop thousands and thousands of dollars. Eventually, Give Up reached the status of the 2nd biggest album to date for Sub Pop, with Nirvana’s first album, Bleach still holding the record for most albums sold on the label.It was in the scorching summer of 2003, when The Postal Service previously made their only Twin Cities appearance and played to a sold-out show at the 7th St. Entry. I ended up going to the show with a friend who was a bigger fan than myself at the time of their lo-fi synth-pop music but that show definitely struck a chord with me and even ten years later, I still find myself listening to the album and as another friend once put it, “I’m going to bob my head so hard to their music.” And yes, I still bob my head while listening to their only produced album. This past spring, the fine folks at Sub Pop released a 10th anniversary edition of Give Up with a bonus disc of unreleased tracks including the fine cover of “Against All Odds” by Phil Collins from the Wicker Park film soundtrack, new recorded tracks and remixes of songs from the album.This has all lead up to the return of The Postal Service to the Twin Cities to play a much bigger venue in Roy Wilkins in St. Paul that satisfied every fan that missed that one brief opportunity in July of 2003 to take in the glory of Gibbard, Tamborello and Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley playing your favorite songs from one of the most iconic alternative albums of the 2000’s.While openers, the Lawrence, Kansas based pop duo, Mates of State, have played in the Twin Cities numerous times, they did a fair job of getting the crowd ready for the main attraction. I was a little worried when Mates started their set, the auditorium was barely even half full for the early 7:30 p.m. set time, but by the 10 song set, people were filling in the upper bowl and the general admission standing mostly floor was close to capacity. Married couple, synthesizer/keyboard Kori Gardner and former MN native, drummer Jason Hammel, breezed through their 35 minute set playing mostly newer songs over spanning over their seven album discography, unfortunately played nothing from there first two albums, My Solo Project and Our Constant Concern but did end with a terrific cover of “True Love Will Find You in the End” by reclusive rocker, Daniel Johnston.When The Postal Service entered the stage, the crowd erupted with cheers barely before anyone could see the four touring members hit the stage, but once they did, they went immediately into “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” the first song off Give Up with Gibbard, the most recognizable member of the band, appearing in all black clothing and looking much more svelte than in his earlier years with DCFC. Lewis, hoisting a guitar in a black sequins dress was very game with Gibbard rocking back and forth with the guitar during the song with growing anticipation before it got to its more “faster” sequence after its brief guitar solo with both Lewis and the second female vocalist, Laura Burhenn from the Omaha band, Mynabirds harmonizing to Gibbard’s vocals.Without much of a pause, they jumped into “We Will Become Silhouettes” where the song took off and audiences crammed toward the front of the stage were now in the mood to start “bobbing” their heads and moving their feet around more wildly. It wasn’t until about midway through the song where Gibbard, took off his guitar strap and went to an empty drum set and starting playing the drums (which he did on multiple songs) and with Tamborello programming his laptop/computer monitors and the audience really made their presence known when Gibbard was on the drums. On their fourth song, they played a newer song entitled “Turn Around” that was released in 2013 and featured on the 10thanniversary double disc of Give Up did provide plenty of energy to the audience that might have only been familiar with the ten song release of the original Give Up LP.Following “Turn Around,” they jumped back into familiar territory of known songs playing “Nothing Better” and it looked to be that Gibbard and Lewis were in fact almost flirting on stage as they were dancing around with microphones attached to awkward red chords but was indeed one of the highlighted moments of their entire set.About halfway through the set, Gibbard paused and said to the audience, “The last time we were here we played at the 7th St. Continue Reading
“I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade. The Act of Killing is unprecedented in the history of cinema.” – German filmmaker Werner HerzogI began seeing this blurb on director Joshua Oppenheimer’s controversial new documentary The Act of Killing when the film premiered at the 2012 Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals last September. This same quote popped up again in the latest Walker Art Center cinema brochure earlier this month, and it’s quite a statement from a filmmaker who has made some important documentaries himself over his 45+ years in filmmaking.Herzog (Grizzly Man) and Academy-Award-winning documentarian Errol Morris (The Fog of War) both saw early footage of Oppenheimer’s film and signed on to be executive producers in order to help this film be seen. This inventive and provocative documentary is about Indonesia’s genocide in 1965, wherein Indonesian President Sukarno’s government was overthrown by the military. Anyone who opposed the military dictatorship could be accused of being a “communist” and, therefore, executed by death squads. Many of these death squad officials were previously small-time gangsters and some are considered “heroes” in Indonesia. Continue Reading
Over the past decade, the Twin Cities’ outdoor movie scene has been changing. The other day my friend and I were talking about drive-in theaters, we could only think of one still operational locally: Vali-Hi Drive-In off of East 94 and Manning in Lake Elmo, on the outskirts of the Twin Cities. Drive-in theaters are disappearing; many of us probably have fond memories of going to the drive-in at some point, but they—like video stores—are slowly becoming extinct.With the decline of drive-in movie theaters, there has been a recent rise of outdoor film screenings (and even some film festivals) that have dedicated programs to serve your dusky movie-watching (and music-listening) needs. A few weeks ago, Madeline Island, located at the very northern point of Wisconsin in Lake Superior (and about 90 miles east of Duluth) held a three-day film series. Screenings taking place outside, where family and friends could bring blankets, chairs, and tables and set up before each screening. Continue Reading
Close to two years ago I wrote about the growing demand for what was a film lover’s best option to watch a film anywhere but your local theater.I mostly discussed the main attractions at the time being Redbox, Netflix (receiving physical disc and/or streaming), or going to your local library; those options are still most likely the most popular choices, but the variety of ways of watching films outside of the theater have grown far and wide: cable on-demand, ITunes, Amazon, Vudu, Hulu, Vimeo, and even YouTube, have picked up steam as ways to watch films or television series. Meanwhile, video rental stores are on the verge of being extinct. When was the last time you heard anyone say they rented a DVD/Blu-Ray from Blockbuster? (I rented a few DVDs from the now defunct Filmzilla before they closed up shop at the end of May.) Personally, I have started to grow more accustomed to—and very fond of—the Netflix streaming option (I ditched my DVD/Blu-Ray plan over a year ago) as the number of titles have improved and their library continues to grow, the streaming quality has been steady and brisk, and, more importantly, Netflix announced in March 2011—a few months before I wrote my post—that it was getting into the “cable network game” and started producing original programming for customers with their subscription streaming service. At that point I was completely sold and on board.The first original Netflix-produced series was David Fincher’s political drama, House of Cards, based on the Michael Dobbs novel that was turned into a popular BBC UK television series in 1990. Continue Reading
