On Demand Weekly

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: THE VINYL FRONTIER (FilmBuff).

THE VINYL FRONTIER
A babe in toyland
By Kris Scheifele

I live in Manhattan and if I wanted to, I could spend morning, noon, and night attending art events. One day, I was on 23rd Street in Chelsea on my way into I-20 gallery when a woman stopped to ask me, "Can anyone go in there?" I let her know that yes, the galleries are open to the public, but her impression of exclusivity really bothered me.

The vinyl toy movement is less intimidating, as portrayed by the documentary THE VINYL FRONTIER. For what you might spend on a dinner out, you can take home a limited edition toy/sculpture. Because these vinyl toys sit at the intersection between urban aesthetics—skateboarding, hip-hop, and graffiti—and cartoons, many are both menacing and cute—fanged bunnies, doughy skull-faced sprites, etc. While there are those who argue the fine art status of vinyl toys, many of the people creating these items have traditional mediums—painting, drawing, and/or printmaking—at the core of their practice.

The vinyl toy movement is populist in another regard: it plays out Joseph Beuys' assertion, "Everyone is an artist." Generic toys are sold, which allows toy enthusiasts to draw on blank white surfaces. There are even workshop-type gatherings where you can sit at a table covered with arts and crafts supplies to take part in the collective frenzy of personalization.

All this accessibility creates a bit of an addiction. It gives people the fever for collecting, which can compel some to stand in line for hours just to get a slight variation on a figure already on display at home. The film explains that these folks are called "completists," and they will collect everything by a particular toy artist—first the toy (or toys), then the skateboard, T-shirt, print, and whatever else. In other words, the purchase of a $7 toy can initiate the purchase of a $2000 painting—a definitively fine art purchase that might otherwise never have been contemplated.

FilmBuff and AMBER LAKE present a contest to celebrate Halloween and the release of AMBER LAKE. FilmBuff is hosting a special contest where YOU select your five (or more) favorite Halloween films and share them with your friends.

Contest rules and guidelines:

When: Oct. 24th, 2011 to Oct. 31st, 2011 (@ 11:59pm EST)

How to Enter:

1. Sign up here.

2. After being redirected to the homepage, click “My Profile” at the top right.

3. Click “My Collections”on the menu on the left

4. Click on the button, “Create your Own Collection”

5. Pick a title, write why you love these movies or want them to go together, Then pick 5 (or more) Halloween/Horror/Scary films and you’ll be on your way a great prize!

You can enter as many Collections as you want.

How to Win

The goal is to create a Collection of your favorite Halloween films, from scary to thrilling and gory, everything the reader loves to watch during this scary time of year. The winning collection will be the one that was the most popular on the FilmBuff website and through social media sharing. Two other collections will also be selected by FilmBuff's expert curatorial team.

Prizes: The winner of the Amber Lake contest will receive an exclusive screenplay of Amber Lake, signed by the filmmakers, Joe Robert Cole and the cast, Polly Cole (7th Heaven), Natalie Smyka (Grey’s Anatomy), Mekenna Melvin (Chuck), Carmen Argenziano (Angels and Demons) and Timothy V. Murphy (Appaloosa). You’ll also get an exclusive movie poster, a signed copy of the Amber Lake script, $30 of free movies from iTunes (including AMBER LAKE) and more!

On Demand Weekly is not a participant in this contest.

So many movies and so many movie lists of 2011. How could you watch or read them all and yet so many are so similar. Do you need affirmation of the films you may have seen in the theaters already? How about learning about the best films of 2011 you may have missed?

On Demand Weekly's Cynthia Kane and Chris Claro offer their Top 10 Movies On Demand of 2011. Tell us what you think of the their lists or what your #1 movie of 2010 is HERE.

Part I - Cynthia's is HERE.
Part II - Chris's is below.

10. SHUT UP, LITTLE MAN! AN AUDIO ADVENTURE
Matthew Bate’s hilarious and poignant film about unwanted fame and the subculture of pre-Internet tape trading was an entertaining and effective documentary.

9. THE MAN FROM NOWHERE
The violent and kinetic thrill ride from Korean director Jeong –beom Lee was stuffed with dynamic action set-pieces and an amazing performance from child actor Sae-ron Kim

8. BLACKTHORN
The last real man, Sam Shepard, took on the legend of the last real outlaw, Butch Cassidy, in an elegiac film about the final days of cowboys and Indians.

7. THE BIG UNEASY
Humorist Harry Shearer’s fascinating and heartbreaking document of the post-Katrina cover-up by the Army Corps of Engineers. Thoroughly sourced, sincerely conveyed, and absolutely fascinating.

6. BRIGHTON ROCK
Helen Mirren and John Hurt classed up this retelling of Graham Greene’s novel about a killer and the girl he entrances. Set against the birth of the mods/rockers conflict, Rowan Joffe’s film also boasted an intense performance by Sam Riley.

5. CONAN O’BRIEN CAN’T STOP
Behind the scenes with the talk show host on his post-Tonight concert tour, director Rodman Flender’s film was painful, funny, and painfully funny.

4. TUCKER AND DALE VS. EVIL
Horror clichés were turned on their ear in Eli Craig’s debut film. Stars Taylor Labine and Alan Tudyk were a joy as the harmless hillbillies mistaken for psychos.

Chris's Top 3 of 2011...

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: MR. NICE (Filmbuff).

MR. NICE

By Chris Claro

Bernard Rose’s MR. NICE is the fact-based story of the titular drug smuggler – real name Howard Marks – who tangled not only with police MI6 and the CIA, but developed a dangerously close relationship with the IRA through one of its busiest arms dealers, Jim McCann. Written, directed, edited and photographed by Rose (IMMORTAL BELOVED), MR. NICE eschews the horrors of MIDNIGHT EXPRESS and lacks the self-assured bounce of BLOW, though it tells a similar story of the rise and fall of one of the most notorious dope peddlers of the 20th century.

Rhys Ifans (ANONYMOUS) stars as Marks, who spends his childhood dodging school and bullies, but makes it to an elite university, where he is turned on to the power of hashish as both a narcotic and a source of income. Savvy enough to grasp that he’ll need allies on both sides of the law Marks forms a partnership with the violent McCann (David Thewlis, WAR HORSE) even as he assures his buddy MI6 contact McMillan (Christian McKay, TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY) that he will spy on McCann and report back on his activities.

Though MR. NICE features numerous staples of the drug-smuggling flick, including exotic locales, a charismatic lead, and a stand-by-your-man wife (Chloe Sevigny, BOYS DON’T CRY), the film is curiously flat. It’s an uninspired biopic that tells its story in a disappointingly conventional linear format. Not that every crime flick needs a disjointed timeline or a period-appropriate score to give it some zip, but drug smuggling has been a cinematic staple for so long that revisiting it requires a filmmaker to bring something new to the genre.

Sporting a wig that may be historically accurate but makes him look like the lead in a Jeff Beck cover band, Ifans plays Marks as a devoted family man who just happens to move millions of dollars worth of dope for a living. Motivated by the cash, Marks is almost smart enough to avoid getting caught, but expanding his empire to the US proves to be his undoing. Ifans makes the character a charming rogue but little more.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: AFTER FALL, WINTER (FilmBuff).

AFTER FALL, WINTER

By Chris Claro

Early in Eric Schaeffer’s overlong and icky AFTER FALL, WINTER, a French woman reminds Schaeffer’s character that “there’s a big difference between you thinking your life is interesting and anyone else thinking it is.” It’s interesting that the guy who wrote that line is as unaware of its stinging truth as Schaeffer is.

A filmmaker who has made a cottage industry of making films that explore his self-perceived interestingness, Schaeffer has spent almost twenty years offering variations on his neurotic, self-obsessed, insufferably narcissistic persona, beginning with the twee MY LIFE’S IN TURNAROUND, to the precious IF LUCY FELL, through the indulgent THEY’RE OUT OF THE BUSINESS. Now it seems that he has topped himself with the truly offensive AFTER FALL, WINTER.

Set in Paris, AFTER FALL, WINTER features the return of Schaffer’s TURNAROUND protagonist, Michael, a one-and-done novelist half a million dollars in debt. Convinced by a friend to shake his depression in Paris, Michael heads to the city of lights where he meets Sophie, a woman who lives a bifurcated life as both a dominatrix and a glorified candy striper. As their relationship progresses, secrets are revealed, lives are changed, and much BDSM is displayed.

Schaeffer’s Michael is a deplorable character, equal parts self-pity and narcissism, and his 130-minute odyssey, which leads to a grossly contrived ending straight out of ROMEO AND JULIET, is crass and unpleasant. Schaeffer wants his audience to think that he’s being “daring” by depicting aberrant sexual practices and full frontal male nudity as signifiers, but what he’s really doing is working out his own neuroses under cover of fiction. The creepy, voyeuristic vibe of AFTER FALL, WINTER is one of its least savory characteristics and keeps the audience from truly connecting with its characters.

A series of prolonged conversations punctuated by “shocking” scenes of sex and bondage, AFTER FALL, WINTER is less a movie than an indulgence, something that is true of almost all of Schaeffer’s work. As writer, director, producer, and star, Schaeffer clearly does not play well with others, eschewing collaboration in favor of shining the light on himself and his character, such as it is. As a result, enduring a Schaeffer film is akin to one of the great guilty pleasures for New Yorkers of the 1970s: watching unctuous, oily talk show host Stanley Siegel engage in therapy sessions on the air. (If you’re outside the tri-state area and haven’t experienced it, do a youtube search for Siegel. You won’t be sorry.)

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: LOVELESS (FilmBuff).

LOVELESS
With this Peter Pan, it’s not his nose that grows when he is lying
By Adam Schartoff

Andrew (Andrew von Urtz) is a middle aged single New Yorker with a dead-end job. While never explained, the scenes at work could be out of the OFFICE SPACE handbook. Clearly this is an intelligent, reasonably good looking guy, who has never been especially ambitious about much in his life or, if so not for a long while. To take his mind off that, Andrew continues to try to bed a growing pool of age-inappropriate women while the perfect one, his on-again, off again girlfriend Joanna (Cindy Chastain) is right under his nose. Her only flaw seems to be that she adores Andrew.

While Andrew continuously tries to get his screenplay financed —a script that is never explored in this movie— the opportunity of a lifetime literally falls into his lap in the form of the gorgeous Ava (Genevieve Hudson-Price). They meet in a bar late one night after she gets into a brawl with another woman. Andrew pursues Ava for her obvious assets until finally he ends up in her bed. That bed, for better or worse, is in house that Ava shares with her endless supply of swarthy brothers and one painting of their Dad.

One of LOVELESS’s running gags is that all the siblings have an active relationship with the late beloved patriarch, constantly seeking his approval though he is long since deceased. Whether the late father approves or disapproves of Andrew is an ongoing issue which resolves itself with Ava commitment to being in Andrew’s movie and financing it with the family money. It turns out that dead Dad was a real estate mogul.

LOVELESS is the product of filmmaker Ramin Serry (2002’s MARYAM) who based his character, Andrew, on his real-life good friend, von Urtz. If there’s an essential problem with LOVELESS, a character study, it’s that its main character, while not holey unlikeable or unsympathetic, is hard to fathom.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: SENNA (FilmBuff).

SENNA

By Chris Claro

You never know what you’ll get with a sports documentary. Some are overlong and didactic, like HOOP DREAMS or Ken Burns’ BASEBALL. Some, like MURDERBALL and DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, take you inside an unknown enclave of sports esoterica. Bud Greenspan’s series of Olympic docs offer viewers dizzyingly close-up views of the danger and precision of elite sports. And Leon Gast’s WHEN WE WERE KINGS brought Ali’s charisma and danger to a new generation.

Where Asif Kapadia’s SENNA excels – pardon the pun – is in showing how one sportsman, Brazilian Formula One driver Ayrton Senna, captivated and united his home country, even as he was derided by fellow drivers for his showmanship and selfishness on the track.

SENNA has all the hallmarks of a sports film, including an impossibly handsome, flawed hero at its center. Born of privilege outside Sao Paulo, Senna rose from go-cart racing to winning the F1 championship three times. Throughout his racing career, his fan base grew but he alienated his colleagues, none more so that Alain Prost, with whom Senna would have a rivalry that culminated in a controversial crash during the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix.

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand and from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: THE PILL (FilmBuff).

THE PILL

By Sky McCarthy

The morning after can be extremely uncomfortable, but THE PILL takes the awkwardness of a one -night stand to the next level. While this movie may be a snapshot to the sexual realities of today, the film lacks any imagination to provide unique insight. It begins with a classic tale of modern “romance” – boy meets girl, girl gets drunk, boy sleeps with girl…unprotected.

After a frantic morning fight, Fred (Noah Bean, “Nikita” “Damages”) convinces Mindy (Rachel Boston, “In Plain Sight”) to take the morning after pill despite her surprising religious convictions. Fred is immediately relieved after the initial swallow but soon becomes Mindy’s unwilling companion for the day when he realizes she must take a second dose within 12 hours.

The storyline is somewhat complicated by the fact that Fred is already in a relationship. Fans of the MY GIRL movies will be surprised to see Anna Chlumsky in a rare on screen role as Fred’s nagging and shrewish girlfriend. While Mindy initially represents a mental and physical escape from reality, she herself is emotionally unstable and invents white lies throughout the film to keep Fred’s attention. The next 24 hours take Fred on a strange roller coaster of events through New York City including a confrontational meeting with Mindy’s ex and a surprise visit to her parent’s apartment.

As the movie drags on, it becomes apparent that every character is completely flawed. Not one of them is likeable so it becomes unclear as to why anyone should care about hurt feelings or unwanted pregnancies. Initially the film plays like a lengthy PSA for the consequences of unprotected sex and one may be left wondering if Planned Parenthood had a hand in funding production costs.

On Demand Weekly spoke with Eric Schaeffer, writer, director and star of the new movie on demand, AFTER FALL, WINTER (FilmBuff).

On Demand Weekly (ODW): Your films are known for New York locations. What prompted you to include Paris for AFTER FALL, WINTER?

Eric Schaeffer (ES): I do have deep love for my home town and love filming here. I take it as the highest compliment when people say it feels like New York City is a character in my films. Having said that, I also like to challenge myself with every film I make and I’ve always thought it would be a huge challenge to make a film in a country where I don’t speak the language and while AFTER FALL, WINTERis primarily in English, there is some French spoken in the film and certainly a lot of French spoken in Paris.

I had never even lived outside New York for more than a 3 month stretch in my entire life so living in Paris for the 5 months it took to write and shoot the film was pure magic… and taught me that my love for my city and my country, that was profound before I left, was even more meaningful upon my return.

And lastly, Paris played a part in FALL, the first of the planned quartet of films about Michael Shiver, the main character in both FALL and AFTER FALL, WINTER, so setting it in Paris will make sense to those who have seen Fall but for those who haven’t, the new movie completely stands alone so they won’t feel left out of any important information, character or plot wise at all.

ODW: Could the exploration of loss & pain be explored in any other locale for this story?

ES: Paris certainly is a breathtakingly gorgeous city, replete with imbedded pathos seemingly at every turn so it is a rich and visually impactful place to film a movie about the exploration of pain and loss for sure. But certainly, as we all know, pain and loss are so personal and introspective that they are like a world unto themselves and as such often blur the vision of anything outside is anyway, so our geography in the real world is rendered meaningless and uniform. Unless of course we want to really drive the emotion home by going to a specific place that has significance to the origin of the pain and loss we are feeling. In this movie, Paris is such a place for Michael, but places like that are also places where we hope to get closure on heartache so that we can move on. So this movie could have worked someplace else as well, but I felt it made the most sense to take place in Paris.

ODW: What can you tell potential viewers about what the S&M scenes bring to the plot?

ES: The BDSM (Editor’s Note: derived from the terms bondage and discipline (B&D or B/D), dominance and submission (D&S or D/s), and sadism and masochism) in the film is portrayed more as psychological than physical. While there are a few scenes where BDSM is played out in the physical realm, they are less violent than the punishment doled out by the characters on each other’s hearts and emotions.

All of the BDSM scenes, whether physical or emotional are endemic to a story about people with secrets and people who want intimacy desperately, but are afraid and confused about how to get it.

The BDSM scenes

are both metaphorically

and literally crucial to the story

and very powerful visual

and psychological storytellers.

ODW: Where did you find the lead actress, Lizzie Brocheré?

ES: I was casting in Paris with a wonderful casting director and finding it hard to get the perfect actress to play this very complex role. One day I went to lunch and saw this very interesting girl out front of the casting offices and thought, “wow! That girl looks PERFECT! Hopefully she’s coming in to audition after lunch.” When I returned to casting, that girl was gone and she never came in so I sadly figured she much just live on the street or something. I went to get a tea in the kitchen of the casting offices during a break and suddenly, there was THAT girl, sitting at a desk in the back of the office. I went back in to the casting room and said to casting director, “Sylvie, who is that girl in your office?” “What girl? There’s no one here.” Sylvie replied. “THAT GIRL” I pointed out. Sylvie looked more closely. “Oh you mean my daughter?” I was like, “Is she an actress?” “Of course. Since she was 12 years old.” “Well why isn’t she auditioning?” “She’s too young. She’s only 26.” And I was like, “she’s not too young! Get her in here!” And the rest is history. She was amazing.

ODW: You have a recurring theme of the word "fall" (or variations of it) in your film titles (FALL, IF LUCY FELL). Could you elaborate on the prevalence of the word?

ES: Honestly, I originally wrote If Lucy Fell for Molly Ringwald to star in and she obviously didn’t end up doing it. One day when we were sitting on a bench in Santa Monica over looking the ocean she came up with the title. I loved it and it stuck.

In my film Fall, it made sense as a title as a double entendre. Falling in love and the season of fall, which for that film seemed like the season the story should be set in. So really, while I do love the word for many reasons, it’s romance and yearning among them, it really was by accident that I used them in both titles.

These questions are a nod to your character in the film...

ODW: What is your greatest fear?