We enter, yet again, the Hidden Theatre to see a special edition of Hidden Flick: Intermission – Parts IV and V. Once in a while, one must sit back in a mysterious locale, and gaze upon some celluloid that has sunk into the sands of time, and yet, it lingers…
Well…time for more popcorn, Red Vines, Raisinets and a refill of that 97-ounce soda. We take a break from our regular look at obscure films with another edition of Intermission, which means another look at a cinematic chestnut that may have been lauded or groundbreaking in the past, but has since been forgotten in history’s hourglass.
Part IV – The Hit Man
It was an old amphitheatre that was going to be torn down and replaced with gawdknowswhat—the owner just couldn’t say. “I had a few offers to do something with the place, but I couldn’t part with her. She’s special,” said…well, the owner just prefers to remain anonymous, almost like the Stranger, aka the Cowboy Narrator, played by Sam Elliott, in the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski. “Sarsaparilla for all my friends,” as Elliott channels Barfly’s Mickey Rourke in another cinematic dimension.
Sidney Pollack’s 1975 thriller Three Days of the Condor featured a man who reads lots of books, magazines, newspapers, anything written on any surface anywhere at any time. Like everything written—past or present and yet to come. Within the pages, he researches possibilities, yes, the very possibilities that some one, some entity, some secret organization can use against another group, another nation, another person secluded out of view, but somehow important to the inner working of something.
READ ON for more of this week’s Hidden Flick…
Always by your side, your hand in mine; stand up to the blow that fate has struck upon you; make the most of all you still have coming to you; the tree is full of leaves and life now and an absolutely gorgeous green. There is a spotlight on it, shining up from the ground, highlighting its perfection even at night. “Hope you are still swimming,” whispers the tree, and the clock spins once again…another life…another life, brother.
So…what have we got here, thus far? Mirrors and magical trees and circumstantial events and an alternate temporal universe and tragic wisdom and foggy paths during a long cruise, and, always, ALWAYS, that clever and bizarre sense of an amazing tale of a woman’s survival instincts…
Ahhh…but we get ahead of ourselves, don’t we? There must be some misunderstanding, there must be some mistake…I went to the places…I rang your house…jumped in my car…I went round there…still don’t believe it…she was just leaving…there must be some misunderstanding…
Mirrors, like children, don’t lie. Well…that isn’t exactly true, is it? Those filthy little unwashed bastards can yak a yarn from here until doom’s gloom, but yet, you’ll never get them to admit it. Ahhh…but, we’ve driven far afield (or is it swam?), haven’t we? And that is the point, innit? We swoop down amongst the fishy natives, concealing our celluloid charms, and ponder. Oh, to ponder, perchance to dream of another life, brother.
Many too many have swam where I swam; many more will swim here, too…
Pretty much anything is possible here, and that is eerie as the Lost Hypnotist, with perfect Oceanic manner, casually suggests, “Just imagine something pleasant.” And so he does—the universe inside and out…where some arrive, falling from a great post-progressive height, or is it Arriving Somewhere…yes, indeed, this week’s hidden Hidden Flick.
READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…
Love is a hell of a drug. It can also be a trap. Mix a little time into the potion and one can start longing for something that cannot be duplicated. Yes, time is an ocean, and if one swims around long enough, one can find the same wave to ride, or dwell within depending upon the dreams of those searching for something lost but soon to be found.
Pondering a return from whence love originated is also a dead-end loop that circles back upon oneself, encircling the soul like an invisible blanket of reliability that never seems to fit just right, always relinquishing its hold on the fantastical elements of what could be, and replacing them with the way things really are. And that central notion of love as a moment in space bereft of repeat visits, and time as an ocean of indifference to the dreams of man are at the heart of this edition of Hidden Flick, Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046.
The 2004 film, which took four years to produce for various apocalyptic reasons, is the third in a series spanning nearly twenty-five years in the Hong Kong filmmaker’s career after 1991’s Days of Being Wild and 2000’s In the Mood for Love. 2046 requires no information from either of the two films as it can be regarded as a stand alone experience. Well, at least it did to me, but I am not always looking for all the linear, plot-driven strands; I am looking for something different, something offbeat, something mysterious and hidden beneath the surface of what is known, speculated upon, and perceived to be. READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…
Deception is a tricky thing. Then again, to be deceptively simple also requires some sort of weird ethereal sleight of hand that is neither here, nor there. Ahhh…we find ourselves awash in a deluge of ersatz clichés, and that is never our intent, is it?
Of course not. So when one thinks of a basic Japanese horror film premise, circa 1977, featuring some fairly groovy music, one expects some dated piece of shit, no? Well, not exactly. And certainly not in the case of the little house of oddness we have come to investigate in this edition of Hidden Flick, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Hausu.
It is important to know a few essential things about Obayashi. One, he came from an experimental film and television advertising background, meaning he was used to capturing surreal imagery in a brief moment in time, regardless of its linear clarity. Who the fuck cares about a story when you can shock someone’s psyche instead. There was the avant-garde, and then there was Obayashi. Two, he knew how to use film to make a film, which could also be a comment on the nature of Japanese ghost stories in general, the horror genre, the beckoning blockbuster mentality in the wake of the ultra-popular Jaws, and that if you went completely over-the-top with special effects done in a clever and cheap way, one may be able to get away with it if presented with style and chutzpah.
READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…
[Originally Published: September 28, 2010]
The Wind Will Carry Us, a poem, a moment and after that—nothing.
Behind this window the night is trembling, and the earth stands still in its course, vague things lie behind this window, you and I, uneasy…
And it is the window, the view out there, one is forever focused upon—this space we seek, to see the soul within in a moment of independence, a moment of pure clarity, which in any life is but a fleeting glimpse of eternity before, again, one drifts inwards, into that reserved area of mystery we all occupy at one point. Indeed, the wind beckons.
We ponder the Great Unknown. Only, sometimes, as the saying goes, it ponders us, too. We ruminate over a true landmark in independent cinema marking its 40th anniversary in 2010 with a remastered-print screening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on October 27. And thus, we celebrate Barbara Loden’s searing vision of the iconoclastic soul on a road trip through a season in hell in this edition of Hidden Flick, Wanda.
The late Loden was married to famed and controversial director Elia Kazan. She was an actress in a few traditional Hollywood productions before writing, directing, and starring as the title character in the 1970 film about a woman who gives up her children to her husband after a rather abrupt and quick divorce. With only the clothes on her body, a purse and a few dollars, Wanda takes to the open highway, and never quite looks back. Wanda is always moving forward. But, in many respects, despite her bold departure from her family, Wanda still clings to the ideal of the man who can make it all happen for her. To her slow realization, she learns that men are just as fucked up as women. READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…
[Originally Published: 10/26/2010]
Zelig, chameleon, “I’m 12 years old. I run into a Synagogue. I ask the Rabbi the meaning of life. He tells me the meaning of life. But, he tells it to me in Hebrew. I don’t understand Hebrew. Then he wants to charge me six hundred dollars for Hebrew lessons.”
Rich sounds of some subterranean nature, specifically the voice, guitars and drums as it flows in the design, a sublime addition to a fine piece of cinema, an engaging slice which subtly celebrates the hidden truths of daily sounds, shadowing an almost silent unheard music captured by the Masqued Wind and carried off to another breathtaking locale.
And within the Unheard Music, the silent sounds of the daily ritual that you and I share, we toil amongst ourselves, neither forgetting or acknowledging each other’s existence, until we are free…a moment and then nothing, glass shatters beyond this window and the earth winds to a halt. Beyond this window something unknown is watching you and me. There’s laughing inside, but we’re locked outside the public eye. X marked the spot.
We venture forth and move backwards through time and space. Most people are unaware that on the initial release of London Calling, The Clash’s landmark double album, their hit single, arguably the most commercial piece of old school ear candy the band would ever record, wasn’t even listed on the sleeve. Train in Vain appeared as a hidden track, the last song on side four, kicking in after Revolution Rock, and solidified the legendary status of the album and the band. The gesture also spoke volumes about the post-punk quartet’s confidence that a) they could record a cool, timeless track, and b) they didn’t need to shove the product down the consumer’s throat by highlighting its appearance.
This punk mentality definitely found a home on the West Coast of America, as well. Many punk bands flourished in their own artistic way in the 1970s and 80s, but arguably no other Los Angeles punk rockers had the enduring longevity as X. Indeed, 30 years on, they celebrate their anniversary with a holiday run beginning in December. Before each show, the band will screen a film, this week’s Hidden Flick, X: The Unheard Music.
READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…
[Originally Published: May 11, 2010]
“I might choose not to risk my life for an uncertain cause. I might think that freedom won by death is not worth having. In fact…”
Yeah. I know. If you think I’m forgetting about writing about Heath Ledger, who stars in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as a truly fucked-up passenger on board the Quadruple-Faced Traveling Circus, you just need to tune in to the next edition of Hidden Flick, which will cross the line between the living and the dead—focusing on his final surreal role on the large cinema screen. An extraordinarily gifted actor gone too soon…lost to the sands of time…faraday…far, far away.
Ahhh…but we’re here for a special purpose, aren’t we? This is season four where everything gets weird. Hidden underneath it all, the three-seasoned layers of cinematic strange bliss is that feeling that something else is going on here—that a pursuit of the next film to see, that one little thing that will be so very interesting to a handful of heady peeps, is somehow not the point. The Cosmic Trickster at Play? Not content to talk about just one obscure gem, we are introducing a new concept: the hidden actor in our game. This special edition of Hidden Flick will focus on the work of an actor who first began his career peaking on a 1992 Subaru commercial, segued into a promising career as a lesser actor in major and indie works, before going superfuckingnova as Daniel Faraday in television’s LOST. Yes, this week is all about our Hidden Actor, Jeremy Davies.
Hang on. The film reel is spun…just like punk, ‘cept it’s cinematic.
READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Actor, Jeremy Davies…
[Originally Published: August 17, 2010]
For Mr. Marshall, who, when he heard I was penning this column a couple of years back, suggested this rather cleverly-written film as a possible Hidden Flick. Well, Big T, here it is at long last. Better late than tomorrow, eh? As always, the wordsmith was right.
And so the Merry Prankster hands me some dessert, which I appreciate since I’ve been eating salty food, and taking drinks from a monstrous soda, and jaysusHcrist!! When did Phish start playing a 45-minute Light?! This is bad ass porno funk, just like ‘97. Kneeling nearby, resting, at peace, content with the flow of the planets, and oblivious to nothing, her deep gaze resting upon me, forcing its own mysterious link, is a shy woman reading Krasznahorkai’s The Melancholy of Resistance. She smiles, I smile, and as I walk out through the in door, a tall and amiable lyricist follows, matching me stride for stride. We head to my European car—ever onwards, of course—to a destination he has plotted, as we shoot out towards Belgium, in our next edition of Hidden Flick, In Bruges.
Although In Bruges did minor business in the States, it garnered numerous international awards, and better box office overseas. Nee bother, of course. Who cares? We, of course, at the Hidden Flick factory are more interested in the hidden truths buried ‘neath the surface of these little celluloid gems, and buried below this little ‘two hitmen hide out in Burges, Belgium caper’ surface is a dark truth about humanity. What if one chooses the path of the cold-blooded, gun-for-hire, mercenary in a bloodless society, and someone who isn’t on The List, the Unholy Writ which Determines who is Slain and who Isn’t, gets nailed, tagged in the head with a stray bullet, and dies. Well, what if that innocent bystander is a child, a young boy, a young wandering soul with all his life, hopes, ambitions, dreams, and world-yet-to-be-conquered-aspirations still ahead of him?
Indeed, therein lies the entire surface details about the film co-starring Colin Farrell as the hapless upstart Irish hitman who runs way fucking afoul in his first job, killing a priest and a young boy, and also co-starring Brendan Gleeson, his senior hitman, and one who quickly takes him away to Bruges, Belgium, due to the specific instructions of their evil boss, Ralph Fiennes. The script is taut, pristine, profane, politically incorrect, and joyfully hilarious in every way. It is also sad, profound, dead right in wrong ways, and oddly reminiscent of what makes humans so divine and soulless all at the same time.
READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick, In Bruges…
[Originally Published: July 20, 2010]
In a room like this? With you? No way.
Way.
Warning: this edition is hidden in a game that features hedged bets (or is it hendged?).
If you’ve been with this trip this far, you know I don’t summarize, define, illuminate or underline the plot of a particular featured film. Instead, in glorious metaphysical critspeak, I see how the hidden truths of the written word, or sublime sound of the work, speaks to the multiple concepts of good and evil, time and space, and audio and visual.
Pretty much anything is possible here, and that is eerie, too, as the hypnotist, with perfect bedside manner, casually suggests, “Just imagine something pleasant.” And so he does—the universe inside and out…where some arrive, falling from a great post-progressive height, or is it Arriving Somewhere…yes, indeed, this week’s hidden Hidden Flick.
But …we’ve hidden our Hidden Flick in a hidden and dark trail of hidden clues, phishing for clues (Trickster God Alert), with dastardly false clues like a forest, filled with trees:
The ethereal pages of the mythical tome contains symbolic passages on certain pages, when translated into the correct series of words and imagery, that produce infinite levels of interdimensional conquests, and ultimately lead one back through the door, the Rhomboid vortex, indeed, back HOME.
READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick…
…a desperate search, in a utopia that contained its own contradiction, product of a wish that at once went beyond art and found itself returned to it: “When freedom is practiced in a closed circle, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere representation of itself.”
As one travels through time and space, the layers of the hidden onion peel back, and one remembers the secret within. One takes on the skin of the chameleon like so many times before, and sheds everything old. There it is—the nut of it all. The pursuit of enlightenment yields ultra long periods of prologue and epilogue in one’s life, and the middle, the spine, the meat of the story of one’s life can often feel almost trapped in time and space, isolated from the history, the back story of the life led which resonates, and then drifts away, LOST, replaced by another…everything new is just a random portrait nearby. And on the passage of a few through a rather brief moment in time, it is up to you to find that hidden gem, that lost chord, that chameleon searching for a new language…
We close our Season 4 with a glance at an overlooked classic little film from the early 1980s and our final look at what we leave behind and what we take with us when we move far away from the shoreline of our dreams, look at ourselves in the mirror, a brief moment of reality check, and move forward with our free will intact as we look at the mockumentary with a sarcastic and stinging bite, Woody Allen’s Zelig.
First, let’s discuss reaching number 60 with Hidden Flick. Of course, some of these editions had multiple films being dissected and pondered over, so the total is probably closer to 75, but even 60 is mind boggling. I felt I’d cover 20 obscure films, and be done with it. There was zero planning, no idea whatsoever other than discussing the love of weird cinematic curios, and certainly not any philosophical intent whatsoever. Quite frankly, I began this little journey with two desires: I enjoy films and wanted to talk about them in a tight but loose fashion, and I wanted to write about films that were a little off the proverbial commercial beaten path. Hence, hidden flicks. Would I be entertaining? Uh…doubtful. I think my spin is all about “hey, WOW—I never thought about that,” and the pursuit of the Great Unknown. For better or worse, I jam, therefore I am.
READ ON for more of the Season 4 finale…
