DIFF ’01: Go Tigers!

October 18, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Film Festivals, Sports

*½/****
directed by Kenneth A. Carlson

by Walter Chaw Although it starts out well enough and detours in the middle with a vaguely interesting, if too-brief, look at how it must be for intellectuals to live in a place like Massillon, OH, Kenneth A. Carlson's documentary Go Tigers! is a repetitive and unenlightening piece whose attitude alternates between sympathy and scorn. The small town of Massillon, it seems, is obsessed with football–glimpses of other Ohio towns suggest that Massillon's fanatical fervour is perhaps the small-town Ohio norm. (Apocryphal tales suggest that Texas and Nebraska might be worse.) The revelation that rubes like their blood sports served rare is more than a trifle unsurprising; Go Tigers! very gradually amends our rooting for the high-school gridiron heroes to succeed, and we start to wish that the team bus would crash and save the world from a couple dozen illiterate, ill-bred, spoiled animals who dangerously reached their peak at the tender age of seventeen–er, nineteen.

Z-Boys Are Back in Town: FFC Interviews Stacy Peralta

October 14, 2001Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, Interviews

ZboystitleOctober 14, 2001|Eloquent and passionate about his work, generous with his thoughts and fears, Stacy Peralta seems to be free of the burden of self-importance that stunts many who attain fame and fortune at an early age. Poised on the precipice of stardom again some twenty-six years after the Del Mar National Skateboard Championships put he and his seven Zephyr Skateboard Team teammates on the map and into underground subculture lore, the surprise success of Mr. Peralta's Dogtown & Z-Boys (the winner of the audience and director's prizes at this year's Sundance Film Festival), chronicling the exploits of the Z(ephyr)-Boys, has led to scripting duties on a new David Fincher project (called "Dogtown") and another directing gig produced by Sean Penn based on the Hunter Thompson-esque memoirs of surfer/photojournalist/author Allan Weisbecker's In Search of Captain Zero.

DIFF ’01: Hybrid

October 13, 2001Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, DIFF/SDFF, Documentary, Esoterica, Film Festivals

****/****
directed by Monteith McCollum

by Walter Chaw Hybrid is an elegy for the passing of a man who fell in love early in his life and remained faithful until the day he died, two years past turning one-hundred. Presented in gritty blacks and whites, Monteith McCollum's six-year labour of love memorializing his grandfather Milford Beeghly is a stunning documentary that itself plays as a hybrid of something dreamed-up by Errol Morris and the Brothers Quay. Ostensibly about Beeghly's obsession with finding the perfect hybrid breed of corn as an industrial crop, the film somehow becomes a grand metaphor–for the rough grace of the American way of life, for the lingering death of the agrarian lifestyle, for the difficulties of balancing family with a calling, and even for the true meaning of happiness.

When Dinosaurs Roamed America (2001) – DVD

August 23, 2001Posted in2000s, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Documentary, DVD, Television

***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras C-
narrated by John Goodman
written by Georgann Kane
directed by Pierre de Lespinois

by Walter Chaw A co-production of the Discovery Channel that originally aired there, When Dinosaurs Roamed America is a computer-generated simulation of dinosaurs in their habitat, interacting like lions and elephants on an African savannah. It is narrated with homey warmth by John Goodman and interrupted now and again by paleontologists, who present the most recent information available on the beasts portrayed. A hi-tech bit of necromancy, When Dinosaurs Roamed America is consistently fascinating; the fact that all of the information and images presented are highly theoretical and possibly already outdated only distracts a little from the overall impact of the piece.

American Movie (1999) [Special Edition] – DVD

May 22, 2000Posted in****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Documentary, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Short Films

****/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A
directed by Chris Smith

Mustownby Bill Chambers You can imagine, as a virgin does sex, what it’s like to make a movie, but until you do it, you’ll never really know. In film school, I directed a couple of shorts–nothing you’ve seen, but that’s beside the point: American Movie reminded me of why I hate making movies and why I miss it all the same. For me, watching this picture was a religious experience: Our (debatable) class differences notwithstanding, I don’t know that I’ve ever identified with a screen character more than I did real-life struggling hyphenate Mark Borchardt. For non-directors, American Movie offers plenty of Fargo-style behavioral laughs, and it may kick-start the realization of your own elusive goals. This precious ode to fringe filmmaking pulls off the amazing feat of being accessible and specialized at once.