Frameline 2010: Sunday
Jun. 29th, 2010 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nakedbeeIs it over already? Sunday morning we went to the Pride parade instead of films. After a short nap and a shower to wash off the glitter, we did manage to make it to the closing film, Howl, which was excellent.
last film review! and some extra stuff!
Note: plot summary (italics) and promotional image shamelessly lifted from the Frameline website. Click the image to go there for more info.
Howl
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked… ” So starts the opening line of Howl in this highly-anticipated film about the early years of poet Allen Ginsberg. Academy Award winning documentarians Rob Epstein (The Times of Harvey Milk, Celluloid Closet) and Jeffrey Friedman (Celluloid Closet) bend genres to depict the spark of a literary revolution.
James Franco shines as a handsome young Allen Ginsberg, making waves with his poem, Howl. The film is a hybrid of stories, including the famous Ginsberg reading of Howl at the Six Gallery. It also includes an imagined recreation of an unpublished interview allegedly given to Time in 1957; Howl’s obscenity trial in a San Francisco courtroom; and vivid and luminous animation by Ginsberg collaborator Eric Drooker, capturing the essence of the poem. The extraordinary format adds to a feeling of restlessness, a sense that 1950s America is on the cusp of radical change,which are sentiments that saturate Ginsberg’s poetry. It’s a wild ride of emotions aswe see the beginnings of Ginsberg’s relationship with his lover, Peter Orlovsky alongside the historic courtroom drama.
What a great film! I can see why they chose this one to close the festival. It was a meditation on art, censorship, bravery, and the creative process. There were several things that pleasantly surprised me about the movie. The first was that it was less a biography of Ginsberg and much more an annotated reading of Howl, which was really awesome. We'd get a few lines of the poem read aloud, then there'd be a snippet from the interview with something about Ginsberg's life that gave context/backstory/etc to the lines and then those lines would be repeated with an animated bit. The format didn't rigidly stick to that sequence, but the non-linear-ness made it more interesting to watch actually.
I was also quite pleased (and also quite surprised) by how positive and uplifting the tone of the film was. A gay man's writings about drugs and sex on trial for obscenity in the 1950's seemed like it could get dark, but it somehow managed to be inspiring and hopeful and joyous instead. I guess it helps that both the court decision regarding Howl and Ginsberg himself pretty much end up happily ever after, which is cool.
There's a theatrical release planned for the end of September - I highly recommend seeing it!
Extras
If you're looking for films to watch now, several of the movies I reviewed last year are now available on Netflix, Amazon, etc. For features, I especially recommend
* Fruit Fly: modern movie musical in celebration of fag hags and
* The Baby Formula: lesbian scientist figures out how to get pregnant using only her own and her girlfriend's DNA (very awesomely, both the actresses were pregnant during filming, which makes the movie look fantastic)
The best documentary (Fig Trees) is not out on DVD, which is a terrible shame. The best short (13 or So Minutes) is available on a DVD collection (Straight Men and the Men Who Love Them vol 2) but the rest of the shorts on that disc were so horrifyingly traumatic that I hesitate to recommend them. I mean, seriously, they weren't just bad or boring, they were actively traumatizing, so use caution. Euughh, just thinking about them gives me the creeps, so here are two bonus recs from festivals past:
* Yes Nurse, No Nurse: a fabulous Dutch musical (in full on classic Technicolor large scale dance number style), which is a reboot of a beloved Dutch children's show from the 60s.
* Were the World Mine: an awesome Midsummer Night's Dream high school AU that is also a musical.
last film review! and some extra stuff!
Note: plot summary (italics) and promotional image shamelessly lifted from the Frameline website. Click the image to go there for more info.
Howl
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked… ” So starts the opening line of Howl in this highly-anticipated film about the early years of poet Allen Ginsberg. Academy Award winning documentarians Rob Epstein (The Times of Harvey Milk, Celluloid Closet) and Jeffrey Friedman (Celluloid Closet) bend genres to depict the spark of a literary revolution.
James Franco shines as a handsome young Allen Ginsberg, making waves with his poem, Howl. The film is a hybrid of stories, including the famous Ginsberg reading of Howl at the Six Gallery. It also includes an imagined recreation of an unpublished interview allegedly given to Time in 1957; Howl’s obscenity trial in a San Francisco courtroom; and vivid and luminous animation by Ginsberg collaborator Eric Drooker, capturing the essence of the poem. The extraordinary format adds to a feeling of restlessness, a sense that 1950s America is on the cusp of radical change,which are sentiments that saturate Ginsberg’s poetry. It’s a wild ride of emotions aswe see the beginnings of Ginsberg’s relationship with his lover, Peter Orlovsky alongside the historic courtroom drama.
What a great film! I can see why they chose this one to close the festival. It was a meditation on art, censorship, bravery, and the creative process. There were several things that pleasantly surprised me about the movie. The first was that it was less a biography of Ginsberg and much more an annotated reading of Howl, which was really awesome. We'd get a few lines of the poem read aloud, then there'd be a snippet from the interview with something about Ginsberg's life that gave context/backstory/etc to the lines and then those lines would be repeated with an animated bit. The format didn't rigidly stick to that sequence, but the non-linear-ness made it more interesting to watch actually.
I was also quite pleased (and also quite surprised) by how positive and uplifting the tone of the film was. A gay man's writings about drugs and sex on trial for obscenity in the 1950's seemed like it could get dark, but it somehow managed to be inspiring and hopeful and joyous instead. I guess it helps that both the court decision regarding Howl and Ginsberg himself pretty much end up happily ever after, which is cool.
There's a theatrical release planned for the end of September - I highly recommend seeing it!
Extras
If you're looking for films to watch now, several of the movies I reviewed last year are now available on Netflix, Amazon, etc. For features, I especially recommend
* Fruit Fly: modern movie musical in celebration of fag hags and
* The Baby Formula: lesbian scientist figures out how to get pregnant using only her own and her girlfriend's DNA (very awesomely, both the actresses were pregnant during filming, which makes the movie look fantastic)
The best documentary (Fig Trees) is not out on DVD, which is a terrible shame. The best short (13 or So Minutes) is available on a DVD collection (Straight Men and the Men Who Love Them vol 2) but the rest of the shorts on that disc were so horrifyingly traumatic that I hesitate to recommend them. I mean, seriously, they weren't just bad or boring, they were actively traumatizing, so use caution. Euughh, just thinking about them gives me the creeps, so here are two bonus recs from festivals past:
* Yes Nurse, No Nurse: a fabulous Dutch musical (in full on classic Technicolor large scale dance number style), which is a reboot of a beloved Dutch children's show from the 60s.
* Were the World Mine: an awesome Midsummer Night's Dream high school AU that is also a musical.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-29 08:55 pm (UTC)