Listen to Me Marlon (opens in Cleveland August 28th at the Cedar Lee Theatre)

[LISTEN TO ME MARLON opens in Cleveland on Friday August 28th exclusively at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Hearing the premise of the new documentary LISTEN TO ME MARLON, thrilling though it was, still brought to my jaded mind the sideshow come-ons when someone announces they've got exclusive cine footage of a crashed-UFO retrieval at Roswell in 1947, or long-lost Bigfoot celluloid.

The pitch: it turns out that the legendary Marlon Brando, before his 2004 death, had squirreled away hundreds of hours of secret audio narration. Everything from psychotherapy sessions to phone-answering machine messages to what I might imagine were dry runs to the autobiography he published in 1994 (that critics found somewhat unilluminating, if my memory serves). There was even some attempt at DIY sleep-hypnosis - poignantly urging him to shed the obesity that had made him a distorted caricature of himself.

The Last Movie (July 25th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE LAST MOVIE screens Saturday July 25th at 9:20 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I had read a bit about THE LAST MOVIE while growing up, all of it negative. Various critics made out that actor-director Dennis Hopper's followup to his trendsetting hit EASY RIDER was a great example of a sophomore disaster, as a drugged-out "artiste" of cinema, spoiled rotten and riding high on the success of the earlier picture (plus various hallucinogens and pharmaceuticals), was given free reign to do as he pleased, and turned in an unwatchable, pretentious hippie-influenced mess.

(Making him, oh, how radically different from any other filmmaker over the past 40 years? Just asking)

THE LAST MOVIE even had an entry in Michael Medved's anonymously co-authored book of film-depreciation The 50 Worst Films Ever Made (And How They Got That Way), one of my favorite volumes of bilious film lore in the 1970s, even though, once VHS was invented and I actually started SEEING some of the 50 worst films ever made, I discovered that many of them weren't all that bad after all.

Then, one day in the late 1990s, the last time I had any expendable finances or hope the future, I conducted a mass-purchase of cassettes on behalf of my friends at the late, great B-Ware Video and Books in Lakewood. In the cache I actually found a VHS release of THE LAST MOVIE on the obscure United Video of America label. 

Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton (December 4th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[BIG JOY: THE ADVENTURES OF JAMES BROUGHTON screens Thursday December 4th at 8:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Want to know a true, humiliating fact about Charles Cassady? When I was growing up, I had a warped idea of what "gay" meant. Connecting it in my logical, innocent young mind (since then, largely destroyed) with the traditional use of the word "gay" and its derivations ("gaily"), I simply assumed that, when I watched some TV drama and there was a scandalous revelation that a male character was "gay," all it meant, very simply, was that he was too shamefully happy and disgustingly flippant to ever fit into functional society.

Really, that's what I believed - that "gay" men had a crippling abundance of enthusiasm and just couldn't ever be serious, employable or productive. All that was on their minds were putting on shows and going to the disco. I mean, that's what it always seemed like in the media. Gay guys could never have a hope for normal relationships and careers, consumed as they were with the things that made them unnaturally jubilant. Like Broadway and movie musicals, their Judy Garland collection, WIZARD OF OZ knick-knacks, gourmet cooking, children's beauty pageants, acting, designing women's fashion and interior decorating. Nothing useful to humanity. No wonder gay guys' families always disowned them. No wonder girls liked hanging around them (far more than they tended to hang around me).

I don't know what finally made me abandon my childhood theory of what gayness entailed. Possibly, when I caught an inkling of something called "lesbianism" and it just didn't fit the thesis.

Let Me Out (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I shouldn't perhaps mention this, but I have my Christmas gifts already picked out for local filmmaker Robert Banks, who is currently in post-production with a full-scale 35mm celluloid feature drama he is shooting with his students at the New Bridge arts school in downtown Cleveland. I'm giving Robert a few of my spare DVDs and Blu-rays (it's not as though I have anything else, really), one of which is sure to hit home for him right now. Like I said, nobody tell Robert. Yeah, sure, as if anybody is reading this right now.

One of the cinematic assortments in my theoretical holiday gift basket is the 2013 South Korean import LET ME OUT, which was - dig this, Robert - created by filmmakers/instructors Jae Soh and Chang Lae Kim at the Seoul Institute for the Arts, using their own students. So...your idea wasn't all that original. But at least watch what these guys did for compare-contrast and cautionary tales out of film-class life.

Birth of the Living Dead (now on video)

Review by Bob Ignizio

At one point in the documentary BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD, George Romero, director of the seminal 1968 horror film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, makes a point of telling BIRTH director Rob Kuhns that he didn't “make” his film by himself. No one makes a movie alone; it's a collaborative effort, and as Romero points out, even this documentary wouldn't be possible without the efforts of its crew.

Unfortunately, Kuhns seems to miss the point as none of the other cast and crew members of NIGHT get to relate their stories of making the classic horror flick. Romero does a pretty good job of telling how the film came to be and seems to go out of his way to give credit where it's due, but it goes without saying that some of the other people involved would have seen things from a different and equally relevant perspective. Given the short running time of BIRTH, and the fact that most of those involved still seem more than happy to talk about their experiences making NIGHT at horror conventions and in other forums, it's hard to understand why Kuhns didn't talk to any of the other surviving participants.

Book review: Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming From Bombay to Brazil

Book review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Now, when you think cinematographer, what do you imagine? The classic James Wong Howe lighting up the faces of beauties in B&W in the 1930s and 40s? Roger Deakins making the magic for Spielberg? Chris Doyle becoming a legend in his own time working with rising Hong Kong talent in the 1990s? Robert Banks Jr., shooting expired celluloid stock on a shoestring budget for a diversity of Cleveland filmmakers? Whoever that veteran lensman was who hit it off with delicious Leslie Ann Warren on the set of the TV miniseries North and South and got to marry the vixenish actress? Yes, I forget the latter's name, but "lucky bastard" will do.

What film schools won't tell students, however (besides that at the level of tuition those bastards charge, you better get a Leslie Ann Warren-quality fringe benefit) is that a lot of pro cinematographers just take industrial and commercial gigs most of the time. Nothing to be ashamed of, and sometimes quite interesting and creative gigs, but not Hollywood stuff.

Journey to Planet X (now available on Netflix streaming)

[JOURNEY TO PLANET X is currently making the rounds of the festival circuit. It had its broadcast premiere on Epix in May of 2013, and recently became available on Netflix Instant. It may be available elsewhere, but as of now there is no DVD or Blu Ray release, and I haven't seen it on any of the other streaming services I use.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

It's not unfair to say that JOURNEY TO PLANET X has a lot in common with the acclaimed 1999 documentary AMERICAN MOVIE (the link will take you to Charles Cassady Jr.'s review on this site). Both films chronicle the efforts of eccentric independent filmmakers with more passion than talent as they try to realize their dreams despite the numerous obstacles in their path. That said, the filmmaking duo of Eric Swain and Troy Bernier profiled in JOURNEY are very different people than AMERICAN MOVIE's March Borchardt.

Dope Island: Film-school Grads of 2012, Click Here to Change Your Major

It may not be too late. Do you really want to be part of this industry?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132306/Meenakshi-Thapa-Aspiring-Bollywood-actress-beheaded-fellow-actors-Amit-Jaiswall-Preeti-Elvina-Surin.html

...Especially sad part is, I would not be surprised if somebody makes a movie about it.

Ed Wood (April 14th at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium)

[ED WOOD screens Saturday April 14th at 7:00 pm and 9:30 pm at the CWRU Film Society, Strosacker Auditorium,]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I happened to learn the tuition rates lately charged by some of our local colleges. Would you believe more than $100,000 a year? In Cleveland? Most graduates at this point probably won't even earn that much in their lifetimes. Add student-loan compound interest and you've got a recipe for a post-grad career major in Despair and a minor in Anger.

And it's especially piquant for the film students, those who, on top of merely paying for the privilege to attend some con-job learning institution, slave for production costs, film-festival entry fees, psychiatric counseling etc., working themselves into deeper and deeper holes trying to gain a foothold in a tough media industry overwhelmed with applicants. And all the while it stares them in the face, that even if they “make it,” most of them will never, ever be as renowned and as loved as the exceptionally bad filmmaker-tranvestite Ed Wood Jr.