"The Weird Lovemakers" Sexploitation Movie Trailer

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Cinematographer Gary Graver, a close friend of Orson Welles, who shot many late projects for the master — most prominently THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which was never completed — died this past November.

Looking back through Graver’s credits is a strange exercise, as he photographed a broad range of material, including: BUGS BUNNY SUPERSTAR; Ron Howard’s directorial debut, GRAND THEFT AUTO; THE ORSON WELLES SHOW with Jim Henson, Angie Dickinson, and Burt Reynolds; five (count ‘em, f-i-v-e) made-for-TV-movies with Gary Coleman; interviews for IT’S ALL TRUE, the 1993 documentary about Orson Welles’ unfinished follow-up to THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS; a music video for Kool and the Gang; documentaries on subjects as diverse as Douglas Sirk and the Harlem Globetrotters; Welles’ late masterpiece F FOR FAKE; and a TV re-make of John Ford’s STAGECOACH, starring Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings.

Believe me, there were many more. Gary worked steadily from the mid-Sixties on.

According to his website, he and Oja Kodar were planning to complete Welles’ THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND when Graver died. A memorial service was held for him at the American Cinemateque in Los Angeles this past Sunday.

A few moments grabbed from Jacques Rivette’s rarely screened OUT ONE: SPECTRE.

Shot at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City. [Silent]

Click here to watch the video.

Tabu

A sensual island masterpiece, Tabu began as the collaboration between two talented Hollywood outsiders — accomplished documentarian Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North), who had recently been fired from his first attempt at fiction filmmaking, and German expatriate Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, whose American debut, Sunrise, was an artistic triumph that had failed miserably at the box office. The pair set out for the South Seas in 1929 and, working from an original story by Flaherty, hashed out a tragic screen tale of youthful love destroyed by societal conventions. Tabu relates the elemental story of a young island fisherman (the exceptionally virile Matahi) whose nascent romance with the beautiful Reri (Anna Chevalier) is dashed when a visiting tribal chief decrees her a holy maid whom it is taboo for any man to touch. Despite the directors’ shared romanticism and affinity for lyrical beauty, their collaboration fell apart once it moved to the directing stage. Flaherty found himself confounded by Murnau’s imperious approach and eventually abdicated control of the film. As a result, the sun-drenched Tabu gradually drifted into darker thematic waters, leading to a fateful finale so perfectly composed and rhythmically edited that it still has the power to make modern audiences swoon. The film’s sumptuous black-and-white cinematography earned cameraman Floyd Crosby an Oscar. And although Tabu wasn’t released until 1931 — four years after The Jazz Singer — it is a resolutely silent film, with images so distilled that not a single title card is necessary to convey dialogue. Sadly, Murnau would never again climb to such artistic heights; he was killed in an automobile accident only a few short weeks before the premiere of this cinematic jewel. — D.G. (written for Barnes & Noble.com)

Perhaps the greatest living American film director died this past Monday.

Robert Altman, American maverick, dies aged 81

Robert Altman, arguably the most colourful and distinctive film-maker of his generation, has died in a hospital in Los Angeles, California. He was 81 years old.

A late bloomer, Altman was a middle-aged TV director when he took over the reins of 1969’s Korean war satire MASH, reportedly after 15 other directors had turned it down. The movie tapped into a groundswell of opposition to the war in Vietnam and became a mammoth hit. It also established the director’s genius for loose-limbed narratives and overlapping dialogue; a kind of controlled chaos that caught the mood of a culture in flux….

Even in white-bearded old age he was an unapologetic dope smoker, a famous raconteur and a fierce critic of George Bush’s policies. He also continued to make films that beguiled and exasperated in equal measure….

Earlier this year Altman was presented with a lifetime achievement Oscar at the annual Academy Awards. Accepting the statue, he admitted that he had received a heart transplant from a female donor who was in her late-30s. “By that calculation you may have given me this award too early,” he told the audience. “Because I think I’ve probably got another 40 years left in me.”….

—READ THE ENTIRE OBITUARY AT THE GUARDIAN—

I was fortunate enough to interview Mr. Altman in 2000, when NASHVILLE was released on DVD.

The Q/A is located here. Please give it a read.

The Long Goodbye

Robert Altman was at the top of his craft when he made this revisionist detective gem in 1973 — one of a string of similarly skewed genre masterpieces that included McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville. Elliott Gould stars as an unkempt, mumbling update of Raymond Chandler’s seminal Los Angeles private investigator, Philip Marlowe. This version of the famous gumshoe lives in a dump of an apartment with his finicky cat, across from a group of scantily clad young women who pass their days baking hash brownies and doing tantric yoga. When an old friend (played by former baseball player and author Jim Bouton) drops by needing help, Marlowe is pulled into a slow eddy of deception and betrayal. Altman, Gould and veteran screenwriter Leigh Brackett have created a character who brilliantly suggests how the rigidly moral 1940s detective of Chandler’s fiction might function if he were plopped down into the shallow, transient world of the “me decade.” And the unexpected finale will be as shocking to traditionalists as it is poetically appropriate. Photographed to hazy, sun-soaked perfection by Vilmos Zsigmond, the film also sports a large, distinguished cast, with especially strong turns by a bearded Sterling Hayden and an occasionally topless Mark Rydell. One of the best films of the 1970s. — D.G. (written for Barnes & Noble.com)

@ Film Forum

A documentary featuring extravagant Red Chinese musicals is playing at FF through April 11th. It’s called YANG BAN XI: THE 8 MODEL WORKS, and here’s the truncated blurb —

During China’s “Cultural Revolution” (1966-76), the productions RED DETACHMENT OF WOMEN and THE WHITE-HAIRED GIRL featured ballerinas pirouetting with rifles held aloft and male dancers executing venal landlords. On screen and stage these fiercely propagandistic stories, part Chinese classical ballad, part MGM musical — in which songs praising Mao always seemed to coincide with a glorious sunrise — were termed yang ban xi, and they were the only form of art allowed. (Traditional opera was banned by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing – one of the infamous Gang of Four, later blamed for the Cultural Revolution’s violent excesses.)

Of the 13 or so revolutionary operas (essentially dramatic ballets with song), eight of the most popular were termed “the 8 Model Works.” Captured on film in gorgeous Technicolor and Scope, their influence was incalculable – the main performers became instant stars, revered throughout China. Today, young Chinese who crowd Starbucks cafes and modern discotheques are starting to learn about the very different world that was China just decades ago – yet the Yang Ban Xi remain curiously alive, as two vibrant contemporary dance numbers done for this film attest. This Dutch production blends archival footage of the bad old days with interviews with Chinese baby boomers who sometimes wax nostalgic for what was, after all, their version of the ‘60s.

…here are some things the critics have said about it –

“The director revisits the country’s recent past to explore the history and legacy of one of the strangest byproducts of totalitarian madness: the revolutionary spectacular… While the model operas were wholesale kitsch extravaganzas and enjoyably nutty… they were also deadly serious.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“An unexpectedly inventive documentary. This strange little film grows into a creative portrait of China’s broader modernization.”
– New York Magazine

“Fascinating!”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

…still not convinced? Watch the trailer and dig those groovy vintage clips. It looks like it could be some fun.