1000101011101010101. That’s the opening pixel of Conan the
Barbarian as it will appear to future audiences. Good ol’-fashioned
film is dying, fast, as cheaper, digital projectors now control almost
every screen in town. If you want to see a roidy Arnold Schwarzenegger
tussle with a pathetically low-tech animatronic vulture screened on
celluloid in Portland, the 2012 Beer and Movie fest is probably your
last chance.
Whether this is a
good or bad thing depends on how much you enjoy seeing the future
Governator grunt simple English phrases while wearing a fur codpiece.
Aaron Mesh, WW’s esteemed movie editor, enjoys it very much,
which is presumably why Conan is in BAM. As Mr. Mesh planned the event
with film curator Jacques Boyreau and has a fiduciary interest in its
success, he agreed to stand aside as other WW writers take their best shots at this year’s lineup.
Thankfully, the task proved fairly easy.
2001: A Space Odyssey
A summary: Some monkeys figure out how to
kill each other with the leftover parts of other monkeys, and then a
computer kills some people, and then an astronaut kills a computer and
becomes a space baby. Also there’s a rectangle. It hovers. And it’s made
of LSD. So much for plot, people. In essence, 2001 is Kubrick’s sci-fi vision of the badly curdled romance between an autistic man and a gay computer—Lars and the Real Boy meets Battlestar Galactica—told
in the reverent tones and incomprehensible language of a Catholic high
Mass, complete with a glowing infant Jesus conceived from the corpse of a
de-sexed old man. You can watch it if you want, and feel less than you
ever did, and somehow be proud of yourself for that. Have fun. MATTHEW
KORFHAGE. 6:30 pm Friday-Thursday, Feb. 3-9.Conan the Barbarian
It’s tempting to argue that this turgid 1982 Schwarzenegger vehicle—penned, believe it or not, by the guy who wrote Apocalypse Now—deserves
a post-9/11 reassessment. There’s a lot to read into the tale of an
unbelievably muscular white guy who speaks mostly in grunts and travels
through central Asia in pursuit of a murderous religious fanatic. But
not even a forced Taliban metaphor can save the film from its own awful
dullness. The art direction’s nifty, James Earl Jones is James Early
Jonesy, and there’s a big-ass snake, and those are the only moments of
interest amid two hours of flexing and glaring. Those aren’t
lamentations of women you hear, Conan—they’re snoring. BEN WATERHOUSE. 9:40 pm Friday-Thursday, Feb. 3-9.The Untouchables
That The Untouchables is
frequently mentioned in the same breath as Coppola and Scorsese is a
travesty. Sure, the scene where De Niro’s Al Capone plays T-ball with a
dude’s head is giddily unhinged, but this is otherwise a film devoid of
originality. Celebrated hack director Brian De Palma—whose
career-spanning confusion of “homage” with “rip-off” is represented here
by an exceedingly goofy Battleship Potemkin shootout in a train
station—is completely tone-deaf, drifting between the comic-booky
do-goodery of Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness, Sean Connery sleepwalking
through speakeasies, and mismatched action sequences. Never mind The Godfather. The 1991 Christian Slater-Richard Grieco opus Mobsters is The Untouchables’ closest relative. AP KRYZA. 4:45 pm Friday-Thursday, Feb. 3-9.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Wait, when did Kirk and McCoy start
fucking? The man-love has always been between Kirk and Spock. But the
doctor? Eww. Bones is (metaphorically, of course) up in Kirk’s ass
throughout this movie, throwing a little bitch fit about everything Jim
does. I guess there needed to be some drama, seeing as there ain’t much
in the plot. Khan is all pissy—er, “wrathful”—hunting down Kirk with
some weak excuse about Kirk killing his wife. Grow up, ladies, and stop
fighting over a big, shiny phallus. It’s unbecoming, like Kirk’s O-face
when he screams, “Khaaaaan!” Is that the face Kirk makes when he gets
ear-fucked with that brain-control worm thing? Stick that in Kirstie
Alley’s head instead and control her off the ship and back to Cheers. PATRICIA SAUTHOFF. 7:15 pm Friday-Thursday, Feb. 3-9.Boogie Nights
There’s nothing wrong with Boogie Nights in
and of itself. Except it’s the movie that tricked Hollywood into
thinking Mark Wahlberg is a legitimate actor. If Paul Thomas Anderson
hadn’t cast him to play Dirk Diggler, Marky Mark’s single memorable
cinematic moment would’ve been fingering Reese Witherspoon on a roller
coaster, and that would’ve spared us an entire decade-plus of his
permanently furrowed brow ruining everything from The Fighter to the Planet of the Apes
franchise. That makes PTA the Baby Hitler of film: Set a time machine
to 1970 and I’ll smother him in his sleep. C’mon, you’d sacrifice There Will Be Blood to stop Entourage from existing, right? MATTHEW SINGER. 9:25 pm Friday-Thursday, Feb. 3-9.Raiders of the Lost Ark
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was
supposed to have tarnished the legacy of a great franchise, but Indiana
Jones was awful from the start. A startlingly dull bit of nostalgia for
the bygone dreck that Steven Spielberg rubbed himself up against as a
lad, Raiders of the Lost Ark has ossified into a totem worshipped
by man-babies who can’t say goodbye to childhood; revered by
dunderheads who mistake Harrison Ford’s smug mug’s war against charisma
for something resembling magnetism; and overrated by pretty much the
entire world. Watch it with adult eyeballs—you’ll see what I mean. CHRIS
STAMM. 1:30 and 4 pm Friday-Sunday, Feb. 3-5. 4 pm Monday-Thursday, Feb. 6-9.
GO: Beer and Movie screens at the Academy Theater, 7818 SE Stark St., bambeerandmovie.com.
And as usual, the WWeek's "too cool for school" squad reminds us that we're all dumber than them, and all the stuff we like sucks. You guys know that hating everything doesn't make you look smart, right? Right?
Well, it certainly makes us look smarter than people who completely misunderstood the concept of the article.
So you take pride in being smarter than peolple who completely misunderstands a point? That's not something to brag about. And your reply also doesn't address the originial poster's point. Your reply was based on rhetoric, and you know it.
Wow, got some weird mojo in the WW office last week? Dudes need to relax. Please, Matt, enlighten us on the hight concept you were attempting.
"So you take pride in being smarter than peolple who completely misunderstands a point"
Yes. Also people who can't spell.
The concept of the article is explained very clearly in the introduction.
Taking shots at people for committing an innocent typo doesn't make you sound intelligent. But since you brought the topic up, what makes you think that you are categorically smarter than someone just because they commit an error when they are typing?
Keep your rhetoric going though.
I'm pretty sure that still is from Conan the Destroyer, not Conan the Barbarian. Conan the Destroyer was kind of sucky, but Conan the Barbarien, contrary to your review, is a perfectly enjoyable movie well deserving of a place in the B-movie canon.
Chris Stamm - I think you meant George Lucas.
hahahaha seriously, who allowed this to get published in this state? I really don't have the time to make it out to the Film Fest, however, as I have already seen all the films before, this article really shocked me. The reason for the film festival is being ignored throughout the piece, replaced with every writers "opinion" (or reason not to attend the festy split into a reason for each movie) on the films. Every film included in the fest have been reviewed and editorialized by every wannabe critic under the sun, so swaying someones opinion who has already seen the films makes no sense. The films in the festival, while being a key selling point are unimportant. The reason for the festival is so that FANS can see epic films in the form of "vinyl" for movies. I think the article does a pretty terrible job of indicating how many theaters are doing away with 35mm projectors in favor of new 4k digital projectors, which offer higher quality picture at the loss of the grainy and magical ambiance of 35mm film. This festival is about going to see these films in their original state for the LAST time. You can watch them in their restored or remastered DVD or BD copies at home and criticize them all you want, but the feeling of sitting in the theater and hearing the first pops when the film starts and seeing the cigarette burns in the right hand quarter when a reel is switched doesn't exist in digital projection. Our next generation won't even know what I am talking about .For some this phenomena may go unnoticed, but Portland loves its vintage, and some people may not know how deep the digital projection monster has infiltrated and would have benefited from a more informative article had that information been readily available to them. I guess this article really could have given a bit more incite into the truth of the situation rather than just bashing their co-worker's act of love. On that note, incredibly biased article that bashes cultural icons that have been so much more influential than the words written by people who will not have any cultural significance in less time than their life expectancy. Especially when their articles are written to get a rise out of idiots like me just to to get read. Don't want to be a troll just providing some tasty perspective, make fun of ma grammer all ya like, I am neither a dictionary or a thesaurus so it's not my job :)
So... from what I can tell, most posters here have failed to notice:
A.) The festival is curated by WWeek screen editor Aaron Mesh, who
B.) Enlisted his "wannabe" critics to shit talk the festival as a means of roasting it. So whether we're too cool for school (and, honestly, I know it's sarcasm, but I just like the idea of being cool) is kind of moot. This is like getting pissed off at Jeff Ross for making fun of Pam Anderson's boobs. We write and tease because we love.
From what i can tell, the defenders of this article fail to notice:
1. This article is nothing like a roast because the blatantly scathing attitude that a roaster uses is situational tool that he puts away at the end of the roast. WWeek, on the other hand, adopts a perpetually snarky attitude towards anything that doesn't meet their deliberately condescending tastes. And it gets old. And your audience disengages. So when you do write something that is purely tongue-in-cheek, you've already lost your audience.
2. This article was not published for its readers, it was published because the writers of WWeek are too self-involved to not realize that thier private jokes don't qualify as worthy publishing. This article is has value as an in-house email, not as an article published to the public.