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Mind Blown

Mind Blown: Mozart in the Jungle Goes to Prison

Author: January 1, 2017 0 Comments

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Well, the holidays are behind us. The time of festive fun and great food, sparkling lights and age-old traditions…families gathering around to spend time together. Perhaps to Netflix and Chill together.  Or in this case, Amazon and Kick It together?  The television is at the top of the list of great time-passers as you wait for your turkeys to roast and/or your latkes to fry.  You can gather ’round and watch some instant classic football games, a classic holiday movie or even experience a bit of completely new and cutting edge mind-mushing, brain-bashing, reality-wrecking episodic television.

This year, I got treated to such an experience when my family decided to forge ahead with their viewing of Amazon’s award-winning Mozart in the Jungle, even though I’m still on Season 1.  I was totally fine with skipping ahead as I’m not terribly invested in the show.  I found it to simply satisfy the need for a half-hour bit of comedy decompression after an intense drama like its Amazonian counterpart The Man in the High Castle. Nevertheless, the episode next up on the queue for my family would change everything.  It was no comedy to me…it wasn’t quite dramatic either…it was odd, dare I say cubist, almost sans-genre, and it has earned itself a coveted spot here in our Mind Blown series.

Episode 7 of Season 3 is titled, “Not Yet Titled” and already the existential crisis-like nature of this episode is established which will hopefully allay your fear of missing out on the previous two and a half seasons. Because what unfolds is a transcendent piece of I-don’t-know-what; a blend of reality as we know it, with the reality and surreality of the show, commenting on the surreality of our reality as we know it.  The episode takes a mocumentary approach without mocking anything but instead revealing the freeing power of music on the mind through an experiment, cleverly crafted by the show’s creatives including Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman.  Schwartzman returns as his on-screen persona, Bradford Sharpe, to lead the charge of this experiment. The subjects? Detainees at Riker’s Island Prison Complex.  A real film crew follows a sort-of-faux film crew capturing the real reactions and interviews of real prisoners after a very real concert performance by real and not-so-real musicians (the orchestra in each episode, including this one, is filled out by actual musicians from The Chelsea Symphony and the New Westchester Symphony Orchestra to add authenticity to the on-screen performances alongside the Mozart in the Jungle cast members). To top this whole brain-bender off, the pieces of music chosen for the performance were by Olivier Messiaen. Messiaen wrote the featured works of the episode (such as “Quartet for the End of Time“) while in prison during World War II.

How are these prisoners going to react to an avant-garde orchestral performance, challenging pieces of classical music, that were born out of a man’s captivity?

“It took me a way from where I’m at, definitely did.”

Do yourself a favor and go check out the results.

Watch Season 3 of Mozart in the Jungle on Amazon Prime here!

The Mozart in the Jungle cast includes Gael Garcia Bernal, Saffron Burrows, Lola Kirke, Bernadette Peters and Malcolm McDowell. Watch out for cameos from all over the music world including Gustavo Dudamel, Joshua Bell and acclaimed pianist Emanuel Ax deeply engaged in a game of Dance Dance Revolution.

 

Mind Blown, The Blog

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Mind Blown: 99 Homes

Author: January 3, 2016 1 Comment

For those who know me, I am not a fan of New Year’s Eve.  A night usually filled with grand plans later supplanted by disappointment (I knew I was not alone!), I decided to take it easy and watch a New Year’s Eve movie or two with one of my roommates.  After Bridge of Spies, a solid film starring one of my favorite actors, we still had a few hours to kill before midnight and I was running out of options in my collection of SAG screeners.  Despite its not so festive nature, Ramin Bahrani’s 99 Homes was sitting there intriguing as hell and featuring one of my other favorite actors, Michael Shannon (especially after his little surprise turn in The Night Before, the Gatsby moment being one of the top comedy movies moment in recent memory). Grim looking vibe aside, we went for it agreeing that if we weren’t feeling it we would turn it off. But this film is just too damn provocative.

It follows blue-collar, single-father handyman Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) who loses his house to foreclosure and attempts to get it back by making a deal with the possibly sociopathic real estate broker Rick Carver (Shannon), an accomplice in the eviction that took Nash’s family home. Nash’s end of the deal? He only has to evict people from their own family homes.

Despite some moments of a-little-too-forced improvisation and “just because emotion” shouting, the film buzzes with a gut-wrenching authenticity, especially evident in the expected montage of Nash having his first run-ins with his prey.  Casting Directors Douglas Aibel and Tracy Kilpatrick did an incredible job in finding hauntingly real-seeming actors and combined with Bahrani’s scintillating direction, their woes pack so much gravitas onto this film.  The feeling it gives reminds me of what beachgoers feel after Jaws.  Owning a home today seems absolutely terrifying, especially for this generation, and as the fallout of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis settles, stories like 99 Homes and The Big Short have emerged, making it clear that there are far more dangerous sharks than great whites.  Without giving too much away (but still, just in case, slight spoiler alert) the ending is rather vague and doesn’t give much of an explanation as to where the hell we should go from here. There is one thing though…

“Don’t get emotional about real estate.”

Carver repeats this as a sort of demi-mantra for Nash and his devilish nature is frequently slightly outweighed by Shannon’s inherent likability as a very smart actor; he fools you for a second or two into thinking these and some other great quotes he rattles off are sage words as to how to stay afloat in the fraudulent system that ruined the lives of millions (that system fascinatingly portrayed in the already mentioned The Big Short by the way…seriously check that one out too). As far as 99 Homes is concerned, many families became homeless by trying to hold onto unaffordable real estate because of emotional attachment. But of course these poor people were being completely and utterly dicked over.  And therein lies the conflict that holds you steady for the entirety of this movie, that those responsible for the crisis are kind of smart men and women who took advantage as a means to succeed and survive.  Sometimes they seem right, most of the time they are completely wrong but trying to survive financially in a society led by the morally f**ked up while maintaining a healthy/happy life is an increasingly immense balancing act, isn’t it?

Mind Blown

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Mind Blown: AFI Film Festival

Author: November 7, 2015 0 Comments

As you may have noticed, the latest interview on SideKickBack should’ve dropped by now…fortunately, I have been a little too busy the last couple weeks as one of the most wonderful times of the year is upon us. If you haven’t heard of AFI Fest, you are truly missing out.

This is now my second year as a staff member at the prestigious festival that offers free tickets to all of its screenings. Yes, you read that correctly, f-r-e-e. Free films, for all. You could attend this festival, see dozens of world class films, mix it up with industry folk and cinephiles, see world premieres of movies in the same theater as the very stars on the screen in front of you, and only pay for parking.

Last year, a co-worker and I decided to attend a midnight screening of a South Korean comedy-crime-thriller because “why not.” The film was A Hard Day and it was kind of like Rush Hour. The only major difference was that it was way, way better. Funnier, more intense and just an overall better ride.  The best part of seeing it was that like a great live theater performance, we got the feeling we were watching a once in a lifetime moment.  A lot of these films will not adorn the pages of People Magazine or Us Weekly; they’ll be lucky to even see the light of day again in America outside the festival circuit.  Nevertheless, they are unique and easily loveable and damn good movies. I encourage all of you to try find some for yourself at this year’s festival.  We’ve got some bigger ones too, like Concussion with Will Smith or The Big Short with Steve Carrell and Christian Bale. Foreign films that wowed at Cannes Film Festival, we’ve got them too. There’s a film for you at AFI Fest, and all you have to do is grab some of our remaining tickets and you too can have your own little experience with an amazing gem of a film.

Come and check out AFI Film Festival 2015!

AFI Film Festival 2015 Film Guide

Mind Blown, The Blog

Mind Blown: The Dirties

Author: October 13, 2015 0 Comments

I’m not sure if this next installment is influenced by current events, perhaps its basic coincidence, but I guess that’s another way of saying it was simply meant to be. I recognize that when I watched The Dirties on Sunday night, the timing of seeing it was an important factor but perhaps that is the point.  Shot in a found-footage, documentary-like style (be prepared for some very shaky-cam) this festival darling follows two high school students making a home movie about taking down the bullies at their school, Quentin Tarantino style, guns a-blazin’.  As the film progresses, one of the young men takes the joke to uncomfortable heights.

I first heard about The Dirties during a Kevin Smith interview in which he also gave a shout-out to Blue is the Warmest Color. I mention this because while these two films are so different in so many ways, they have one very important thing in common that makes them fantastic: as Mr. Smith puts it, the feeling of watching a camera being dipped into real life. Two very different stories, two very different styles, one very overwhelming and sometimes physical response.

In The Dirties, writer/director/editor/producer Matt Johnson stars as Matt alongside his best friend Owen, played by Owen Williams; already reality has become a head-scratcher. The film opens with a purely accidental scene between Matt and two real life passerby kids asking about the movie that’s being filmed. There are scenes in which Matt sits down to edit the very movie we are watching.  There are the sudden moments of frighteningly real bullying, the kind that is psychological and paralyzing.  Going into watching the film, I knew there was a mixture of real people and actors partaking in the action and it is absolutely impossible to distinguish who or what is real or fake. Sometimes, catalyzing events happen that I felt like I missed because it wasn’t set up in a way that the camera could catch it perfectly, leaving me to wonder if it was staged or not.  There is a constant changing of mood and tone; one moment Matt is being his usual zany jokester self and the next he is reading Columbine by Dave Cullen; one of several incredibly brilliant and sobering ways Johnson reminds us of the anchor that holds this whole story in the real world.  The never-ending questioning and shifts lead me to feel perpetually unsettled by every person and everything they did, wondering if life is imitating art or vice versa.  Who is going to be the one that pushes this narrative over the edge?  I felt as though the story was going to betray me, that the harsh truths of bullies and school shooters would end up on my screen in a very unsettling way no matter how bad I wanted everyone to get along.  It was a unique feeling I don’t think a film has ever given me before.

The Dirties is a riveting, provocative and bold film made for very little by some very daring people and it brings to light just how bad we can be to each other at our most sensitive and volatile ages.  At a time when school shootings are the source of incredibly heart-breaking frustration, The Dirties offers a no-nonsense view on the matter that feels just too damn important.

 

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Mind Blown: Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in Pyongyang

Author: July 10, 2015 1 Comment

Every now and then I will come across a work, either a play, a film, or in this case a documentary, that fascinates the hell out of me. If it’s something that I don’t think is too well known, and I feel compelled to share it with you all, then I’ll do my best to convey why you must go and see it ASAP.  So, without further ado, I present to you my first “mind blown…” Dennis Rodman’s Big Bang in Pyongyang on Showtime.

I have always been intrigued by the whole North Korean situation and the complete mess of reports as to the actual state of things inside the country.  There is the government’s propagandized images of life in North Korea, making it look like a rich, bustling country.  And then there is actual footage that has been smuggled out, revealing the disparate nature of its starving citizens outside of the capital. Unjust executions, threats of nuclear war, and all centered around a boyish, pudgy dictator who couldn’t look less threatening.  It’s all stranger than fiction.

Enter Dennis Rodman. Yea…what? While he is the embodiment of strange, what could possibly relate him to one of the most mystifying countries in the world? Well he sort of became buddies with Kim Jong Un, the grand marshal himself.  When you watch the documentary, you’ll learn of the origins of this very odd friendship, but the important part to note is that somewhere along the way, Rodman proposed an exhibition basketball game between North Korea’s best players and some former players of the NBA in honor of Kim’s 31st birthday. Yea…what?

What I want to stress to you is how ridiculously unique the portrait of Dennis Rodman is in this story and how it should not be missed.  At first glance, Rodman seems completely naive, possibly blinded by Kim’s methodical hosting tactics. With lavish getaways complete with jet skiing and fine dining, the grand marshal knows that Rodman is the world’s biggest celebrity to visit his isolated nation, so he gives him the royal treatment in the hopes that Rodman will champion how great of a leader Kim is. But it’s not as if Rodman is politically unaware; he knows that as far as the United States is concerned, he is fraternizing with the enemy.  Rodman keeps repeating the phrase “I just want to open doors,” even through tears of frustration in the wake of death threats and personal strife with friends and family, all because of what he is trying to accomplish.  While he may not be completely tactful in his approach, Rodman is up to something, an idea, which isn’t the worst…there is precedent, after all, in Ping-Pong Diplomacy of 1971.

As the game draws closer, Rodman’s alcoholism comes back to plague him. He becomes confrontational and obnoxious far too frequently for someone who is trying to bridge an infinite chasm between two nations.  He is too out of his mind to coach the teams, he nearly blows a group interview with CNN amidst rumors that the game will be cancelled. But at the end of the day, the game is played. It is very competitive and filled with sportsmanship.  The teams mix up in the second half so as to have both nations play together, a very touching idea of Rodman’s.  Low and behold, after the final whistle, two groups of men, on the brink of war politically, shake hands and high five with nothing but respect for each other.

Should we cut Dennis Rodman some slack? Yea…what?

Mind Blown, The Blog

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