The Order of Myths Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Cinetic Gears Up to Distribute Arthouse Fare Online and On Demand
Filed under: Independent », Distribution », Home Entertainment »
Movie blogging is cool and all, but I would argue that cinema's best use of the Internet is making rare fare available to the audience at large. That's slowly but surely starting to happen, and CRM (Cinetic Rights Management) is adding to the pile with a new arthouse deal. Teaming up with a bunch of arthouse film distributors, CRM will slip content online through their FilmBuff label, hitting desinations like iTunes and Hulu.The plan is to make "award-winning and critically acclaimed films" available, and they've listed four titles thus far. There's Ti West's Trigger Man (Scott called it a "watchable curiosity"), Olivier Assayas' Demonlover (Jeffrey M. Anderson called it a "hopped-up, arty cover for a standard issue Hollywood thriller"), Mike Akel's Chalk (Jette said it was "a great illustration of how a movie can truly blossom with the right crowd"), and Margaret Brown's doc The Order of Myths (which Jette said "gives us a good feel for the fun and exciting parts of Mobile's Mardi Gras as well as the undercurrent of "traditional" racial segregation that still exists today").
Having grown up in a town that had nothing more than a "Video World" stocked with only the crappiest of B fare and mainstream numbers (I remember driving to the closest city to rent Tromeo and Juliet), I'm always jazzed about more rare fare getting out there. But the best piece of pie will come when anyone, anywhere, can read up on a movie and be watching it in one or two clicks -- no matter how rare it is.
Spin-ematical: New on DVD for 1/13
Filed under: Action », Animation », Classics », Comedy », Documentary », Drama », Foreign Language », Horror », Independent », Music & Musicals », Romance », Sports », New on DVD », Home Entertainment », Remakes and Sequels », Cinematical Indie », Western »
Appaloosa
Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen are unlikely cowboys, Jeremy Irons is an even more unlikely villain, and Renée Zellweger is the least likely "proper widow" the Old West has ever seen. Appaloosa is a fitfully entertaining, post, post-modern Western; Eric D. described it well as "a buddy movie, a rough-and-tumble, no-girls-allowed, steak-and-potatoes romp that happens to be set in the Old West." The DVD includes an audio commentary by Harris (director/co-writer) and Robert Knott (co-writer/producer), four behind the scenes mini-features, and deleted scenes. Also on Blu-ray. Rent it.
Swing Vote
Like Appaloosa, Swing Vote was pretty much ignored during its theatrical run, but deserves to find its audience on home video. Kevin Costner is in his everyman, blue collar mode here, which means the film is immensely likable and funny. He plays a small town loser, with a way too precocious daughter, who must cast the deciding vote in a presidential election. Of course it's contrived and silly and obvious and non-partisan, but I loved the election videos made by the suddenly too-eager-to-please candidates (Dennis Hopper and Kelsey Grammer). The DVD includes an audio commentary with Joshua Michael Stern (director/co-writer) and Jason Richman (co-writer), a "making of" mini-feature, deleted scenes, an extended scene, and a music video. Also on Blu-ray. Rent it.
Tokyo Gore Police
For extreme horror fans only: everything your splatter-loving heart could desire. Buy it.
More new releases: Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach, Mirrors (also on Blu-ray), My Best Friend's Girl (also on Blu-ray), Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys, and Without a Paddle: Nature's Calling (also on Blu-ray). Plus the great, faux-Kennedy TV mini-series Captains and the Kings, which enthralled me when it first aired way back in the Mesozaic Era (Richard Jordan! Richard Jordan! Richard Jordan!).
SXSW Review: The Order of Myths
Filed under: Documentary », SXSW », Theatrical Reviews », Cinematical Indie »
Although I'm from New Orleans and celebrated Mardi Gras annually throughout childhood, I knew little about Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, except that they're very proud to have the oldest American Mardi Gras celebrations, since 1703. (They love to brag to New Orleanians about this.) Margaret Brown's latest documentary, The Order of Myths, showed me that New Orleans isn't the only city with racial issues rife in its Carnival festivities. The movie premiered at Sundance last month before making its way to SXSW.
The Order of Myths focuses on the 2007 Mardi Gras preparations in Mobile, which are blatantly divided by race. Most of the city's parade organizations are all-white; one integrated group founded in 2003, and has a single white member. Mobile has two separate sets of Mardi Gras royalty: a white king and queen (Max Bruckmann and Helen Meaher) and an African-American king and queen (Joseph Roberson and Stefannie Lucas). The movie alternates between the preparations for each side of the segregated Mardi Gras: the clothing designers for the royalty and their courts; the parties and luncheons; and the everyday lives of the people involved.
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