The Letter A is for Ambergris
0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z - €5
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What better film fiction could I seek out on a grim January afternoon than the musings of a cancer scarred comic book novelist mining the detail of his deadened life for art. Ah death, where is thy sting?
American Splendor
[Shari Springer Berman + Robert Pulcini, 101',2003, 15], 21Jan04Based on the comic novels of Cleveland, Ohio resident Harvey Pekar, American Splendor seems to tread a fairly faithful path to its originator's form. Pekar, a published jazz critic saw in the work of Robert Crumb (immortalised in 1994's 'Crumb') a way to express his own experience whilst extending the possibility of what was becoming an established medium. Firstly using Crumb's own drawing skills and then later those of a host of comic luminaries, Pekar's American Splendor series became a regular fixture in the Comic Store. Following the mundane world of Pekar and his peers the comic sought to illuminate a life led most ordinary. It was a success.
American Splendor the film is a similar creature, albeit one that like its comic parent seeks to play with the form. Pekar is portrayed by both the dishevelled Paul Giametti, a shoe in for the part, and then later appears as himself, shot on a white-out set commenting on the movies trajectory, providing additional observations on his life as it unfolds within the movie. Very neat. When his uber-nerd buddy and one time promulgator of MTV post-irony promotion Toby Radloff enters the fray I began to dream his third and fearlessly hypochondriac wife Joyce would appear. Praise be, there she was, her bitten hairstyle and thrift store glasses for real and not just the feverish imagination of an overly excited props department. The ease with which this film moves back and forth is a joy, and the trick seems like anything other than that.
Slowly mapping Pekar's unsensational move from filing clerk and jazz aficionado to comic celeb
Here's a film that seeks to trade on and openly celebrate its nerdish origins. Which begs the question: what is a nerd? More later. The third adult comic novel goes mainstream movie American Splendor takes it s title from the Comic Book of that name, following on from ghostWorld and Crumb
letterman gets his
the real characters
use of comic frames
soundtrack
revenge of nerds
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Freebie event launching this movie upon the UK market. After event included free drink - never a good thing, South African wine (red or white) or beer - I write for you as a man somewhat fractured! Worth noting my South African adviser and I were neatly baked before we got into the movie theatre, a full house for an evening that I might have once painted PC-Eighties; I was younger, an innocent, my world less ambiguous, less complicated. Easier to disparage what you don't know, to dismiss the unknown.
Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
[Lee Hirsch, 108', 2003, cert], 3Dec03An extraordinary film I loved every minute of this. Amandla charts the role of music in the day to day struggle of the people of South Africa during their 43 year long battle with the madness that was Apartheid. Music is positioned centre stage by the narrative, illuminating just how important it was in focusing and making strong the opposition to the racism of the white South African state. And why did I like it? Well, has to be repeated, I was fairly stoned.
Now I don't like going to the movies in any kind of state other than straight. Cinema is a great drug unto itself, i see no reason to mess the experience up with any mixture of downers or hallucinogens. I've had my share of these in the past but I've concluded that I'd rather not spend the entire movie being distracted by the work of the lighting crew. I tend to be too much of a rationalist to be able to totally immerse myself when I'm stoned. So for me, best avoided! However for this movie it worked.
Amandala is a movie about people 'feeling it'! Tuned in and zoned out I came away with a real sense of the passion and truth of the interviewees. That the film included the music of Abdullah Ibrahim, one of my favourite jazznista's only helped me 'feel it' the more. All that footage of folk singing as the riot police drew in so clearly explicated here, the power of song to facilitate a sense of togetherness and community, of belonging in their perilous position of opposition.
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