A film movement characterized by ultra-low budget production that focuses on personal relationships and uses improvised scripts and non-professional actors.
Italian Neorealism? Nope. Cassavetes? Uh-uh. Iranian New Wave? Guess again…
Mumblecore.
Sometimes referred to as “slacker” cinema, mumblecore actually follows in the footsteps of some of the most revered film movements of the past. The difference is that instead of post-war Italy, the 1970s, or Iran, these films are set in contemporary America and follow the lives and tribulations of young postcollegiates as they navigate relationships and careers, or the lack thereof.
The Oscars are this weekend. The Hurt Locker is going to win, right? We’re looking forward to hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin. We miss the old days, though. Have you ever seen the ten minute musical number with Rob Lowe and Snow White from the ‘89 Oscars? That was pure Hollywood entertainment.
You may not know this, but Videology has a secret “back room” stash.
(No, not porn.)
Haven’t you always been annoyed when you go to the video store and the movie you want to rent is checked out? We know how you feel! And although no one at Videology has a PhD (I know, it’s hard to believe), we’ve still managed to figure out that a good way to prevent this from happening is to have more than one copy of our popular movies and TV shows.
But since this is New York, our square footage is limited, and we can’t keep all of the copies on the shelves.
Hence, the secret stash.
What we’ve done is pioneer a state-of-the-art DVD storage system (okay, we keep them in CD binders), along with a high-tech retrieval system (we go in the back room and get them), and best of all, an easy way for you, the customer, to know when to look on the shelves, and when to ask at the counter for the movie you’re looking for: our website!
So, wait, when do you ask us?
When you search for a movie or TV show on our website and you see something that looks like this, don’t look on the shelves, come ask us:
Maybe this is very 1998 of us, what with the twitter and the blogging and the facebook, but isn’t there something nice about getting a little surprise waiting for you in your email inbox? Something that’s addressed just to you (and everyone else on our mailing list)?
We think so!
So… you see that little form there to your left, right underneath the twitter logo? Just type your email address in there and you will get a weekly email with:
That week’s new releases
Videology news (this just in: on Wednesdays, rent 3 and get the 4th free! Did you know?)
Fun trivia questions and other contests (win free rentals!) that are only in the newsletter!
Insider information (I’m not even going to hint at what this might be, but I will say this: we are far more exciting than you may think!)
My favorite new show of the 2008 - 2009 season was FRINGE, which is sort of an X-Files for the ’00s, but swapping out weird science for alien abductions. Here’s the setup: FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) investigates a commercial flight that has made an emergency landing but the crew and passengers are all dead, and not by any normal means. The only person who may be able to help solve this mystery is Walter Bishop (John Noble), a once brilliant scientist who has spent the last 17 years in an insane asylum. To help bring him out of his shell, Agent Dunham enlists the help of Walter’s estranged, sardonic son, Peter (Joshua Jackson). They soon find out that this case fits other cases of strange phenomena dubbed “The Pattern,” all of which seem to have ties to mega-corporation Massive Dynamic which is run by the enigmatic William Bell, who just so happens to be a former colleague of Walter’s. Conspiracy much?
There is a lot of crazy crap that happens in FRINGE (created by JJ Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind Alias and this year’s Star Trek redux), much of it of the icky Cronenbergian variety. If I told you the two-hour pilot has at least one jaw-dropping moment, you can take that both figuratively and literally. There’s also gigantic bugs, people who drink spinal fluid, teleportation, parallel universes, sensory deprivation tanks, genetic mutations, a weird bald guy, and a cow named Gene. Special effects are top-notch for a TV show. In addition to all the viscera and conspiracy theories, the show is pretty funny too. Walter doesn’t have all his faculties and here’s a typical exchange between him and his son:
Peter: It’s an omelet.
Walter: It’s not an omelet!
Peter: Oh, my…ugh! Walter, why is there an ear in the omelet?
Walter: It was an experiment. It was a protein-rich incubator. It was growing.
Peter: It was growing? That’s perfect.
Walter: No, it’s not perfect. You just ruined it.
John Noble is pretty great as the Mad Scientist whose non sequiturs steal the show. Early in the season, they almost threaten to become formulaic, but then we begin to learn more about his character and he becomes a bit more haunted and tragic. The show definitely picks up with the introduction of Mr. Jones, who plays heavily into the rest of the season. (Jones is played by awesome character actor Jared Harris, who is now on the current season of Mad Men.) It all leads to a spectacular season finale that will definitely have you coming back for season two.
FRINGE Season One is out today on DVD, and I think with its complex storyline it plays much better at home when you don’t have to wait a week for the next episode. We’ve got Fringe on Blu-ray too. As we are located in Williamsburg, it should be noted that much of Season One of Fringe was filmed in the neighborhood — you may recognize the above still as being shot on Broadway and Bedford, mere blocks from our store!
That’s right. With the release of Season 4.5, the epic Sci-Fi- drama comes to a gripping and satisfying conclusion. Battlestar Galactica is one of the few shows on TV that has a clear and definitive end to it’s narrative, so there is a real sense of joy as the season wraps up all the show’s loose ends/philosophical ambiguities that have been bothering us since 2003, when the show started.
For those experiencing BSG Withdrawal, there is hope. CAPRICA, a new Prequel SyFy drama taking place 60 years before the cataclysmic events that started BSG. The television film event is currently out on DVD. The television show event comes out in 2010. You can check out the trailer here.
And then coming out on October 27th, 2009 is THE PLAN; a Battlestar Galactica film that tells the B-Plot of what the Cylons were originally planning. It is written by Buffy-scribe Jane Espenson and directed by Edward James Olmos; of STAND AND DELIVER fame. Stand and Deliver was the original DANGEROUS MINDS (and a rip-off of TO SIR, WITH LOVE) but dealt with a teacher who uses math to reach some kids that everyone else says are unreachable. Olmos is very good in the film and it’s wonderfully dated in the 80s.
Oh yes, Battlestar Galactica. It is such a masterpiece of Science Fiction, that for me to try to put into words how great it is, would probably just do the show an injustice. Luckily, the New York Times had a wonderful spoiler-filled article dissecting the three-hour finale. Also, The Onion had a good chuckle about it with their article Obama Depressed, Distant since Battlestar Galactica Series Finale. Watch the show, then read these spoiler filled articles. Or read, then watch, but that’s ass backwards.
How exciting! Finally a way to bring videology into your social networking landscape. I know some of you are hesitant, but please be assured we will not be updating you on what bagels we’re eating every morning (for the record, Onion). Instead, Videology on Twitter is an easy way to stay up to date on all the latest news in Movie land & DVD-ville. Stay current on what movies and television shows are coming out on Blu-ray & DVD. Find out about new arrivals of classic films right when they become available in our store. Share with us any other film related events going on in the New York area and we’ll return the favor, keeping you linked in on any new blog posts and cool goings on in the New York film scene, Follow Videology on Twitter & get the latest news about your favorite video store, Videology!
This French-Canadian film feels at times like a new Bicycle Thiefand other times like 400 Blows. But, you know, more fun. Little Leo in the slums of Montreal has one of the weirdest families in the world, which causes him to get into trouble for some very odd things and frequently escape into his own imagination. The film follows Leolo in his adolescence, dealing with living in poverty and finding interesting ways to make money, watching his older brother become a veritable goliath after being taunted by bullies, and, of course, discovering sex and the wonders of naked neighbors. Every character in this film is interesting, hilarious, and tragic from beginning to end. To make things even better, it has a soundtrack that features Tom Waits. WIN!
One of my favorite movies is Clue. It’s probably the best mystery/comedy ever made, even if that’s a pretty narrow genre. But you know what it was missing? Musical numbers. Now, thanks to France, we have that! Sort of. It’s a little bit Clue, a little bit House of Yes, and a fair amount of Happiness of the Katakuris. It starts with a knife in the back and escalates to a crippling snowstorm and then there’s affairs and betrayals and incest and lesbians, oh my! It’s an Agatha Christie novel turned into a play on uppers. Not all the songs are winners and some of these ladies should keep their singing inside closed karaoke doors, but the campy, quirky, kitschy way it’s all done makes up for it (and makes the bad ones pretty fantastic at times). When it’s all done, you can go on to watch François Ozon direct Ludivine Sagnier a year later in Swimming Pool and be pleasantly confused at how these are the same people.
For as much praise as Haruki Murakami receives for his amazing novels, it’s a bit surprising that so few have been adapted for the screen. And when someone finally does, they go ahead and take a somewhat random short story that appeared in the New Yorker and make it into a bite-size 75-minute feature. Yet somehow it really works. Mentioning the plot details would pretty much give away most of the story, so I’ll simply state that it’s about a dull man who falls in love with a woman who is obsessed with buying clothes of all shapes and sizes, and when the question of what to do with those clothes comes up later it gets very interesting and, well, a bit sad. It’s a heartbreaking but beautiful story and an extremely faithful adaptation to a short, cleverly manipulating that fourth wall with narration and meticulously shot, like so many other independent foreign productions.
Oh, those Scandinavians. Always with the teenage romance. If you saw Let the Right One In (and you should), thought, “hey, I wonder if this would be better without the vampires but with more lesbians,” then this is the movie for you. It’s a very sweet indy film about the new girl at school who everyone makes fun of, including the totally awesome rebel girl that she’s strangely drawn toward. It’s simple and it’s high school, so it’s a bit cruel, and a lot of the times feels more like a documentary. There’s also a pretty satisfying ending that almost makes up for the film’s really awful title. But we can blame that on the U.S. distributors as the original Swedish title is Fucking Åmål, which means exactly what you think as long as you know that Åmål is a small town and not, you know, something dirtier.
Flow documents the struggle between privatization and public access.
Water-related diseases kill a child every eight seconds and cause 80 percent of all illnesses and deaths in developing countries—more than from HIV/AIDS, war and traffic accidents combined.*†
The World Bank continues to fund billion dollar dam constructions around the world, displacing millions of indigenous people, drying up their farmlands and robbing them of their sustenance and livelihoods.
Nestle Co. maintains its right to bottle public water for personal profit, while draining municipal water supplies.
The EPA continues to approve application of the herbicide Atrazine (banned in the EU since 2004) at the rate of 80 million pounds a year—of which half cycles directly back to our water supply as rainfall. This despite its link as an agent in lowering sperm levels in men, causing prostate, breast and ovarian cancers, and demasculinizing male frogs even at low concentrations.
Does this make your blood boil? Flow shines a light on many similarly alarming scenarios. But not without balancing it out with engaging scenes of community activists, scientists and environmentalists speaking passionately and intelligently about what they are doing to provide and retain access to clean water. Watch the film, sign the petition.
OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
A film movement characterized by ultra-low budget production that focuses on personal relationships and uses improvised scripts and non-professional actors.
