Cinema

What We Had Was Good: Prince and Girl 6

July 20th, 2016

In 1996, six years following the disappointment of “Graffiti Bridge,” Prince agreed to provide the soundtrack music for director Spike Lee’s “Girl 6.” The project would mark the artist’s final full-scale cinematic collaboration, even though filmmakers continued to use his material and seek him out.

Functionally, the “Girl 6” record — credited to Prince even though at the time he was using the unpronounceable symbol to signify his name — constitutes a fantastic collection…

A rare glimpse into the Native American past

July 13th, 2016

After its fortuitous rediscovery about a decade or so ago, followed by a painstaking restoration, the long-lost silent melodrama “The Daughter of Dawn” received a limited theatrical release in 2014 and is finally being made available for Blu-ray home viewing next week. The independently produced 1920 feature had only a few showings when first made and then disappeared for nearly a century.

What is nearly unique about this historic 78-minute film is that it featured a cast made up…

Miller’s simple plan

July 13th, 2016

Based on a story by Karen Rinaldi, Rebecca Miller’s adaptation of “Maggie’s Plan” imagines the intellectual, white, fairytale New York City familiar to Woody Allen fans as the backdrop for a screwball-inspired comedy of amour fou and remarriage.

Featuring Greta Gerwig as the young woman who comes between, and then determines to reunite, academics Julianne Moore and Ethan Hawke, “Maggie’s Plan” covers little that hasn’t already been thoroughly examined by Allen during his…

MSUM’s Summer Cinema returns Monday

July 6th, 2016

There is nothing quite like the experience of seeing silent films on a big screen with a live musical accompaniment and a receptive audience. The 40th Annual Summer Cinema Series at Minnesota State University Moorhead starts Monday, July 11 and will focus entirely on silent comedy this year.

Two evenings will spotlight feature films by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and two will be four-film anthologies of classic shorts by Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy.

All movies will have music…

Dream on, dreamers

June 29th, 2016

Once its cult bona fides were established at the 2002 Butt-Numb-A-Thon (when Eli Roth presented a VHS dub to Harry Knowles as a birthday gift), the adaptation of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” made by kids over the better part of a decade in the 1980s enjoyed a run of successful public screenings – including a stop at the Fargo Film Festival courtesy of Ellen Shafer and Margie Bailly.

While Steven Spielberg and George Lucas graciously looked the other way concerning rights issues,…

“Rez Comedy” aims to break the mainstream barrier

June 22nd, 2016

By Kaley Sievert

“With this film, we hope to show the mainstream that Native American comedians are just as funny as Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., and Gabriel Iglesias,” says Jon Roberts, comedian and member of the Red Lake band of Ojibwe. “If given the opportunity, [Native Americans] can give America a look at something they never knew existed.”

Roberts and Rob Fairbanks, comedian and member of the Leech Lake band of Ojibwe, are two Minnesota competitors in Project Greenlight, a…

Off-beat noir defies 1950s stereotypes

June 22nd, 2016

Sam Fuller’s “House of Bamboo” seems to be pretty much under the radar of many film fans, but is interesting and unusual on several levels, as a social commentary and twisting the film noir “rules” by being shot in color and CinemaScope with stereo sound, as well as for reversing a number of traditional roles expected in the genre. It received a very good Blu-ray release last summer.

Samuel Fuller was an independent-minded, often-perverse maverick filmmaker, noted for some…

All my future crimes: Prince and Batman

June 22nd, 2016

Following “Sign o’ the Times,” his third theatrically-released feature as performer and second as director, Prince’s next cinematic surprise was the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s juggernaut “Batman” in 1989. Unfortunately, the prolific artist did not appear in the film, even though I recall discussing with friends the wildly nerdy notion (rumor?) that Prince would kill it in a violet cowboy hat as Shame should he get a later shot as a “guest villain.”

As funky, lush, and…

Consumer Blu-ray technology celebrates a decade

June 15th, 2016

High-definition video options now make it possible for home viewers to experience movies at home with a picture and sound quality comparable to commercial movie theatres, and even to own a theatre-quality copy for the price of one or two movie tickets.

Internet video streaming and intangible cloud-based “digital copies” have become increasingly popular over the past few years among those who love movies, but would rather not build a personal collection of discs (which can take…

Excellent choice: Lanthimos feasts on “The Lobster”

June 15th, 2016

Pitch-black absurdist Yorgos Lanthimos uncorks another of his signature brain-scramblers in “The Lobster,” an allegorical examination and satire of human behavior, framed by the filmmaker’s speculative imagination.

As divisive as any of his previous films, “The Lobster” marks the Greek auteur’s first principally English-language feature, as well as his first to employ several actors well-known to Hollywood, including Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Reilly.

“The…

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