el topo el topo el topo!!!!!!!!!!!!

El Topo is coming!!!

It's coming. If you haven't seen Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo, now is your chance. The Music Box Theatre is running it for two weekends, all midnight showings (February 16 & 17, 23 & 24), fitting since this was the movie that began the whole midnight movie culture.

To use words like "masterpiece" and "classic" to attempt to describe this film is to reveal the limitations of language. El Topo is not a film, El Topo is film. There is no way to consider this film in terms of inclusion or exclusion from lists, because there are no films it could be compared to. El Topo is your chance to be an exceptional person...don't blow it.

Even for those of you who have already seen it, I highly recommend you still attend. Yes, you've already seen it countless times, but you've also made love, dreamed and breathed more times than you can remember, but still cling to the hope of doing those things again. This is El Topo, for christsake! And it's El Topo on the big screen of the Music Box, not some pirated VHS or video projection like I've sat through. It's fucking El Topo!


But wait...it gets better. The week after El Topo leaves, it's Jodorowsky's follow up, Holy Mountain (March 2 & 3, 9 & 10), also as a midnight show. While not the life changing experience of El Topo, Holy Mountain is still a work of brilliance, only slightly dimmed in the shadow of its' predecessor. There are images contained within this movie, single passing moments, that are among the finest visual experiences cinema has to offer. As an added appeal this plays even less often in theaters than El Topo, once every half dozen years, tops.

Take to the streets, scream out your window, call everyone you've ever known. Cleanse yourself before you go. Don't speak to other people the day leading up to your viewing. Draw three interlocking circles on your livingroom floor. If you can't get a sitter, give your children to gypsies. Burn everything you own the color yellow. But be there.

Attention Chicago Film Dorks

The Blue Monk Page is looking into the possibility of starting a film club here in Chicago. The intended club would meet every week or two (depending on member schedules), for an evening of movie watching and perhaps discussion. We would cover the range of alternative and outsider cinema; exploitation, euro-sleaze, horror, cult, mondo, lost classics, pyschotronic, camp, experimental, underground, whatever. If you live in the Chicago area and have a love of bizarre and beautiful movies, feel free to either leave your name in the comment section, or e-mail me through the address listed in my profile. Thanks, Jason.

instead of the best of 2006

As I wrote in the piece attached to this one, there is no practical way for me to have seen a wide enough range of movies released last year to offer a valid “Best of 2006” list; I simply can’t commit the time, money or sanity needed to suffer the mostly dreadful movies being released. But while I only got to see about twenty new movies this year (easily half of which I could have done without), I was hardly idle, watching around four hundred titles over the last twelve months. This may sound at first like an incredible number, but take into account that I rarely watch ‘regular’ television, and that two hours with a movie is more gratifying than dedicating that same amount of time to a “Full House” marathon.

This is a great time to be a cinephile; while cynicism is the default attitude for lovers of the esoteric, never before has so much been so easily accessible. As more and more titles become available, we’re seeing the gradual disappearance of blandly uniform video chains, which never catered to any but the most common-denominator tastes. I’ve always resented that chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video edit the content of the movies they rent, and I look forward to the approaching day when I can dance on their graves.

Along with the ever-expanding catalogue of available titles, my film jones has been well fed by the opening of Odd Obsession only a couple of miles away. For any readers in the Chicago metropolitan area, I can’t emphasize enough how great this storeis, how it contains almost every rare title I’ve ever hunted. When you travel through life as a film geek, you carry in your head (or your wallet) a list of movies you’re forever on the look-out for, titles you’ve heard of or read about that you dream of someday finding.

Film is the only true Twentieth century artform. Perhaps not coincidently, film is also the only artform in which the United States has found a voice independent of European aesthetics. This is why it is a travesty that film continues to be the only art that has a canon defined by the first response of the public. While I think the inclusion of the audience in shaping the film canon is a definite improvement over the reliance on the cultural bias of academic authority used to frame value in the other arts, the harsh reality is that the public is only participatory to the extent that they fall for ‘opening weekend’ marketing blitzes. At the close of the last century, the industry financed American Film Institute published their list of the “100 Greatest American Movies of All Time”; and while I concede it certainly does include many worthwhile titles, only a slight bit of adjusting and it could easily be retitled “100 Most Effectively Marketed Movies of All Time”.

Instead of a “Best of 2006” list focused on movies released last year, here, instead, is a “Best Seen in 2006”- the most memorable titles I stumbled onto in the past twelve months. If you are a lover of important, exceptional or unusual cinema, there’s bound to be at least one or two titles worth your time.

A quick side note: despite being masterpieces that profoundly changed my life, I’ve not included either Prime Cut (1972; Ritchie) or The Big Red One (1980; Fuller), since both were thoroughly covered in my Lee Marvin series a few months back.

Viva la Muerte (1971; Arrabal) The surrealism of Spanish exile Fernando Arrabal is perhaps less cinematically impressive than his compatriot Alejandro Jodorowsky (whose Frando y Lis Arrabal wrote), but used with a focused purpose sometimes absent in A.J.’s work. A meditation on oedipal betrayal set during the bloody aftermath of Franco’s victory.

The Killing of Sister George (1968; Aldrich) It’s genuinely surprising to me that this non-judgmental gay film from grossly overlooked Robert Aldrich has fallen between the cracks. Although its’ premise borders on the torrid (an older bull-dyke and her ‘kept’ girlfriend, who spends the early part of the film in a babydoll teddy playing with dolls), not only is the issue of homosexuality’s ‘morality’ ignored, the other characters seem to be completely indifferent to the orientation of the leads. While this is yet another story where a lesbian ends up insane, her descent has nothing to do with sexuality and everything to do with society’s inability to value women after a certain age. Worth it alone fun bonus: a scene in a lesbian bar, with an all-girl mod band.

Bone (1972; Cohen) Sadly, there will probably never be a time like the early 1970s, when the line between message and exploitation was so poorly defined. A ‘big, scary blackman’ invades the Beverly Hills home of a wealthy couple, whose façade of bourgeois bliss quickly crumbles, exposing them as shallow, bitter alcoholics living far above their means.

Gate of Flesh/Nikutai no Mon (1964; Suzuki) In the rubble and chaos of post war Tokyo, four prostitutes band together, forming a mini-society based on unity, cooperation and a strict code of behavior. The arrival of a soldier turned criminal soon erodes their harmonious existence, which eventually mirrors the brutality and disintegration of the world outside. Working out of Nikkatsu Studios (which primarily produced low-budget and formula films), the prolific Seijun Suzuki has often been over-looked by Western audiences trained to see Japanese Cinema through Kurosawa’s eyes (Japanese film historian Donald Richie never even footnoting Suzuki). This has changed in the last decade, mainly because of the usually genre-leery Criterion Collection releasing six of Suzuki’s titles. Equally recommended is his 1967 deconstruction of the gangster film, Branded to Kill/Koroshi no Rakuin.

Deep End (1971; Skolimowski) I’d searched in futility for this film since I first read about it in Danny Peary’s Cult Movies almost twenty years ago. Unlike a lot of the movies I’ve sought, this one not only didn’t disappoint, but was even better than I could have hoped. There are countless movies about either coming of age crushes or obsessive stalkers, but this movie succeeds in arguing the dangerous idea that there is no difference between these two loves. Too often, any good movie that never found its’ audience is labeled a ‘lost classic’ by film fanatics (including me), but in the case of Deep End, it’s a label that comfortably fits.

Private Parts (1972; Bartel) A runaway hippie moves into a hotel, which turns out to be full of freaks and weirdoes. This was directed by Paul Bartel, who also made Death Race 2000 (1975), Cannonball (1976) and Eating Raoul (1982)…information that will have a few dedicated readers running out to find this title, and the rest shaking their heads, asking; “so the fuck what!?!”

Sweet Movie (1974; Makavejev) The marginalization of this movie stands as further proof that too much of our expectations of European Cinema is defined by the fragile sensibilities of effete anemics. So relentless in its’ use of obscenity and shock to discuss the failure of the Marxist revolution that it’s now nearly impossible to find, this movie is a testament to the idea that sexual and political freedom go hand in hand. Also check out Makavejev’s (equally difficult to find) 1971 exploration of Reichian philosophy, WR: Mysteries of the Orgasm, if for no other reason than the cameos of Warhol Superstar Jackie Curtis and Fugs founder Ed Saunders.

Ecstasy/Ekstase (1933; Machaty) Probably the least obscure film on this list, at least in film history terms. This is the foreign film that first taught American audiences to associate foreign films with something somehow naughty and forbidden. And while it’s certainly a shock to see a nude woman (Hedy Lamarr) walking around in a 30s movie, the most surprising scene is later, when she finally frees herself of the frustration of being the bride of an impotent neurotic, and the camera stays in extreme close-up on her face as she reaches orgasm through cunnalingus. Despite an out-dated ending of female sacrifice, an important and interesting early entry in Feminist Cinema.

Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space (2003; Tol) For about six months the trailer for Tamala 2010 ran at a theatre I frequent, but if the movie ever actually appeared on any Chicago screen, it did so with such quickness that I missed it. Thankfully, I finally got to see this dreamy, metaphysical cartoon on DVD, and while it would have been better on a big screen, its’ artistry still stood out. Any attempt to explain or even describe this complex, beautiful work would be an act of futility. Even being (reasonably) familiar with Japan’s tradition of serious animated features for adults, I’m hard-pressed to find anything to even compare this to. A serious work of art.

Coming Apart (1969; Ginsberg) Technically, a cheat, since I saw this once in my late teens, long before I was mature enough to understand it. While this movie comes from the same late 60s to early 70s era that most of this list shares, the failure of its’ initial release makes sense, considering how ahead of its’ time it is. You can look at the others and lament that they don’t make movies like that anymore, but this movie has no precedent…and no peer. Basically the story of a psychiatrist who secretly films his adultery and breakdown, Coming Apart manages to be experimental without bogging down in pointless theory masturbation. When it was released, the implicit brutality of it being clandestinely filmed with a hidden camera, mixed with the actors’ naturalism, terrified audiences, many of whom thought they were seeing something ‘real’, exploiting the private lives of actual people. While we no longer are so naïve, this film is still worth seeing, not just because it uses a thematic device standard in contemporary cinema.

why i don't have a best of 2006 list

Every now and then an already boring awards show is brought to a grinding halt, so that some Silver Age fossil like Jack Valenti can guilt us about abandoning theatres for the comfort of home viewing. In theory, I agree that the ritual of sitting in a darkened theatre and surrendering your senses to the movie experience is the ‘way motion pictures were meant to be seen’, but the reality is a little more difficult. The same industry that laments our absence is the one that has doubled ticket prices over the last decade, an increase far above the inflation level. Since rising ticket cost isn’t simply a reflection of the dollar’s shrinkage, it can only be a result of the industry’s lousy and short-sighted practices.

The problem with would-be blockbusters like last year’s Poseidon Adventure and The Wicker Man isn’t just that they’re hideous, unnecessary remakes of well-loved classics; it’s that their atrociousness has a lofty price tag. Both of these abominable travesties ‘opened wide’, which means after a month of multi-million dollar advertising blitzes, weekend premiers on four thousand screens simultaneously. That those four thousand screens (six times a day) were playing before mostly empty seats costs an awful lot of money, money which needs to be recouped somewhere else. If this reads like the bitter ranting of another anti-blockbuster spoilsport, consider the following; the current suggested retail price of a compact disc is $17.99, compared to the $14.99 cost ten years ago (this is only at major chains…if you’re paying this much for a cd you might want to explore the world beyond big-box stores and shopping malls). This seems a modest increase when compared to the rising cost of a single movie ticket; according to the IMDB, the median cost of a move ticket in 1997 averaged out to $4.59. Accepting that this number is so low because of matinées, discounted children’s admissions and the few remaining independent and second-run theatres being factored in, it’s still pretty unsettling to think about as one shells out just short of ten dollars to suffer through yet another remake or Saturday Night Live spin-off. The Hollywood rationale that their hands are tied, that it’s really our fault, because illegal downloading costs the industry so much lost revenue that they have to constantly raise ticket prices to survive, seems a particularly weak and cynical lie when considering the damage file-sharing has wrought on the music industry- which has managed to survive with only a 16% price increase over the last decade.

To be able to post a year-end “Best of 2006” I would have had to have seen quite a lot of movies…far more than I actually saw. Aside from the fact that for my girlfriend and I to have seen even fifty to choose from would have cost about $1,000, movie-going isn’t what it used to be. Movie theatres have become unsupervised daycare centers, over-run with roaming packs of restless teenagers seeking sanctuary for heavy petting and to plot their next crime spree. And as unsettling as the sullen stare of juvenile delinquents is, they are less disruptive than the increasing number of toddlers running wild through R-rated shows. The one upside of being seemingly alone in the belief that Mystic River (2003; Eastwood) was an over-wrought, over-acted mess was that I wasn’t too upset by the non-stop crying of the baby that had been brought to the 9:40 PM screening we attended. It was, however, a little distracting when we went to see Wolf Creek (2005; Mclean) -the most brutal, upsetting horror film made in at least half a decade- only to have a set of terrified, screaming preschoolers in the row ahead of us. I fully concede that as a non-parent I’m disqualified from determining what is appropriate for small children, but I have to think unrelenting sexual torture might not be ideal subject matter for children under the age of six.

The fact of the matter is, my love of movie-going is passionate enough that I could suffer through the spectacle of America’s Youth being unable to find jeans that fit (in the 90’s they were too big, now they’re too small), I could suffer through the evidence that procreation should be treated as a privilege and not a right, I could even suffer through the presence of the subhuman garbage that thinks it okay to chat away on their cell phones (or, more recently, illuminate the theatre with tiny green screens as they text message). But what I can’t suffer through is what’s playing on the screen. There certainly were good movies released last year, enough to comfortably fill a list of ten. The problem is, because of the over-valuing of awards, the studios sit on their ‘prestige’ releases until close to the year’s end. While this is great for keeping the memory of the movie fresh in jury’s minds, it also makes it nearly impossible for those of us outside the industry to see all these movies as they come out. Pan’s Labyrinth (del Torro), Deliver Us from Evil (Berg), Children of Men (Cuaron), The Queen (Frears), Iraq in Fragments (Longley), Babel (Inarritu), Blood Diamond (Zwick), Notes on a Scandal (Eyre), Perfume (Tykwer), Volver (Almodovar), Curse of the Golden Flower (Zhang) and The Last King of Scotland (MacDonald) have all dominated critics’ “Best of” lists, but have all also been released in the final three months of 2006. Not having access to either preview screenings or complimentary tickets (or the amount of time needed to attend that many screenings), it will take me quite a while to ingest what 2006 meant for film.

So since none of the twenty or so movies from 2006 I did see struck me as particularly note-worthy (Marie Antoinette indeed), I’ve decided to offer instead a list of the most interesting, over-looked gems I discovered last year.