Duaneland
1. Duaneland (Three Rivers Film Festival). Local filmmakers Stephen Seliy and Joe Seamans tell the story of photographer Duane Michals, weaving documentary style and B&W stills as beautifully as Duane himself. 2. End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones (Regent Square Theater). Nose hairs, bad behavior and rocket guitars…
Oily Dealings
I actually feel sorry for Mayor Tom Murphy. As a Christmas gift to city residents, he announces he’s not running for mayor next year, but what does he get in return? A slew of news stories reporting that he’s the subject of a federal grand-jury investigation. I’m not sure what the big deal is.…
THE DESERTED STATION
Suffering automotive trouble en route through rural Iran, a city couple — a photographer and his wife (the wonderful Leila Hatami) — seek refuge in a tiny village. The husband leaves with the town’s sole male inhabitant to seek a car part while his wife, a former schoolteacher, stays to mind the hamlet’s children. On…
The Predictions Issue 2004
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in 2004, it’s this: You can make any fool prediction you want, and as long as it sounds good, no one will blame you if you’re wrong. Promise you’ll find chemical weapons in Iraq, insist our troops there will be welcomed as liberators, pledge that job creation will set…
Beyond the Sea
As director, co-writer, co-producer and star of Beyond the Sea, a movie about singer/songwriter Bobby Darin, who died in 1973 at the age of 37, Kevin Spacey (who’s already 45) comes very close to outsmarting himself. He doesn’t, though, and it’s not by accident. Spacey, it turns out, is a dazzling song-and-dance man who dares…
Honk If You Hate Free Speech
Brenda Glascott laughs at the $10 ticket she got Nov. 11 for beeping in support of an anti-war protester in Squirrel Hill. But she also believes it was just another skirmish in the struggle between local activists and police. Glascott, a 30-year-old University of Pittsburgh graduate student who lives in Highland Park, has marched in…
A Very Long Engagement
There are some idiosyncratic filmmakers you want to figure out, and there are some that you don’t. Then there’s Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the oft-acclaimed French director who plays at idiosyncrasies, but who’s really just a fabulist with the imagination of a precocious child. Jeunet’s freakish Delicatessen was impenetrable. His visually dazzling City…
For Stronger Elections
If City Councilor Bill Peduto decides to run for mayor, he may not know where to turn at first for a suitable Web site: Billpeduto.com is owned by a long-time supporter of outgoing Mayor Tom Murphy — someone now actively backing the candidacy of ex-City Councilor Bob O’Connor — and pedutoformayor.com was just registered…
Backing the Bus
“The bullshit’s so thick you can barely get through it,” says long-time transit activist Stephen Donahue, a leader of the grass-roots group Save Our Transit, which has been fighting to prevent service cuts and fare increases on Port Authority buses and light-rail vehicles. He can’t even get together a protest, Donahue jokes: “The political posturing…
Political Spirits
Democrats and liberals can’t do much to change the nation’s political profile until the 2006 elections. What to do with all that downtime? Drinking Liberally, a grass-roots organization that calls itself an “informal, inclusive weekly Democratic drinking club,” finds the answer in a pint glass. Founded in May 2003 in New York City, the…
A conversation with Marcellus Green
Where are you originally from?I was born on Shakespeare Street near Penn Circle. There used to be a train station and Liberty Theater close by. I can remember when I was 4 years old visiting the lady my father used to stay with when he came from Virginia. It was a big house,…
Prime Cinema
OK. First, I have a confession to make: I haven’t seen many movies this year that I haven’t been paid to see. Cinema Team CP has three soldiers, and from week to week we divvy up the product between us. I rarely ask to review Hollywood movies, and Team Leader Al (“Sir, yes, sir!”) rarely…
Pay Toilets
Jim Lingo once wrote on my notebook, “Justin Hopper is a Shitty Music Journalist.” I’ve still got that notebook, on top of my pile of rock memorabilia — the pink slip from my first “Brand New Cadillac”; a napkin from the café where I had coffee with Serge Gainsbourg; a test tube with Priscilla’s tears…
A Guy Called Gerald
To All Things What They Need
!K7
Dark beats and braggadocio; deep, resonating kick drums and sci-fi thriller synth oud pluckings; urban gothic vocals, gas masks and black cloaks, chic music for tony post-apocalyptic clubs. Along with these sonic touchstones, A Guy Called Gerald and Two Lone Swordsmen share a few distinct historical points: With his own “Voodoo Ray” and his single…
Double Features
Skimming a long list of films I enjoyed this year, I am bedeviled by the idea of choosing just 10. So instead, here are some interesting match-ups from 2004, ideal for Saturday night home-viewing. Since Otar Left and Power Trip. A heartbreaking drama and a fascinating documentary — both about keeping the lights burning…
The Battle of Algiers
The Battle of Algiers (Algeria/Italy, 1965, Gillo Pontecorvo). Restored print re-released in 35 mm and on DVD. This is so timely that it might as well have been made this year. Bright Leaves (USA, 2004, Ross McElwee). A witty rumination on the narcotic properties of filmmaking and tobacco, and the relation of both to…
Dream Work (For Man Ray)
1. Dream Work (For Man Ray). My friend Adam Abrams introduced me to Peter Tscherkassky’s short film “Outer Space,” available on Other Cinema’s Experiments in Terror DVD, but I was thrilled to see a print of Tscherkassky’s work. Both “Dream Work” and “Outer Space” take images from Sidney Furie’s The Entity which are then contact-printed,…
Lift
5. Lift, Missing Jane and Grim. It was great to see these locally made short movies premiere at the Oaks, the Rex and Loews to the large and supportive audiences they deserved. [Ed. note: Nickel wrote and directed “Grim.”] 4. Spider-Man 2. Enuff said. 3. Expiration and American Alien. Independent filmmaking at its…
Best Revivals
All The President’s Men (Byham Theater Summer Film Series). Not to wax nostalgic, but ’70s Hollywood cinema was quite often better than a sharp stick in the eye. Alan J. Pakula’s 1976 Watergate drama is smart, entertaining and just paranoid enough to sting. Also maybe the best newspapering movie ever. Au Hasard Balthazar (Harris…
