Melancholia It’s What’s For Dinner

"Melancholia," 2011, Zentropa, Nordisk Film Distribution, Magnolia Pictures

If you’re on the fence as to whether you’ll have a big lavish wedding—don’t, otherwise you could have an entire planet crash the party and ruin the festivities.

Such seems to be the message of Lars Von Trier’s latest offering, “Melancholia” starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgård, Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt.

The film is presented in two parts entitled “Justine” and “Claire” which at first glance would seem to suggest some sort of meaningful dichotomy but  in reality is just a single unified treatise on how depression runs in families.

At first, “Melancholia” stylistically resembles Zack Snyder’s “300” in its visual richness combined with the psychological tension of a Bergman film.

In one of the first few shots, Justine (Dunst) is seen in close up looking like she scraped herself off the sidewalk after an all-night rave party.

Next, Melancholia itself appears out of the abyss as a stunningly beautiful, benign orb while Justine floats down an idyllic stream in her wedding dress almost right out of a Tennyson poem.

As the film’s title would suggest, Justine inexplicably falls into a severe depression on her wedding night.

The reception is at a gorgeous Victorian-era mansion owned by Justine’s sister Claire (Gainsbourg) and her husband John (Sutherland).

But perhaps in a sign of things to come, Justine and Michael’s (Alexander Skarsgård) stretch limo almost doesn’t make up the narrow unpaved road leading to the mansion.

Then things go from bad to worse as Justine’s shrewish mother Gaby (Rampling) and bumbling father Dexter (Hurt) almost single-handedly derail the nuptials.

Justine and Michael share a moment

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Gaby toasts the happy couple. “I myself hate marriages especially when they involve some of my closest family members.”

With parents like that, it’s no wonder Justine goes off the deep end.

She refuses to consummate her marriage to Michael and eventually gets dumped that same night but not before she boffs her co-worker,Tim (Brady Corbet) outside on the lawn.

Meanwhile John, despite channeling Jack Bauer, goes from self-assured lord of the realm to basket case.

At first he appears to be the only level-headed character in the film but when he discovers that Melancholia won’t just graze Earth but actually slingshot back and collide, he decides to check off the planet by committing suicide.

With all the depression running amuck, it’s no wonder John forgot that his primary responsibility to his family was to provide for them and protect them from harm.

Not that he could do anything about a rogue planet impacting Earth, but he could’ve saved face by at least pretending.

“Melancholia” was beautifully lensed in champagne golds, rich earth tones and brooding blues by Manuel Alberto Claro (“Reconstruction,” “Dark Horse,” “Allegro”).

Hey, if the world’s going to end, at least everything looks pretty.

Von Trier’s choice to score “Melancholia” almost exclusively from Richard Wagner’s “Tristan & Isolde” catalog definitely sheds light on why everyone’s in a bad mood.

“Melancholia” premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival where the verbally unedited von Trier made controversial statements that some perceived anti-Semitic.

Still, Dunst (who battled her own melancholy back in 2008) won the award for Best Actress and really put in a performance not seen since her role as Claudia in
“Interview with the Vampire.”

Stellan Skarsgård sans pirate makeup puts in a fine effort as Justine’s priggish boss Jack.

“Melancholia”is a well-crafted movie that’s worth seeing on the big screen, just remember to have a big bottle of Prozac on hand afterwards.—Steve Santiago

5 Reasons Why The Rocky Horror Picture Show Still Rocks

L-R: Patricia Quinn, Tim Curry, Nell Campbell, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

For more than three decades, one film has enjoyed the longest run of any theatrical film release in U.S. history.

The home version of the video game Pong was released the same year as its initial debut and the U.S. National Film Registry recently gave it a nod as being historically significant enough to warrant preservation.

Yet simply showing up at a midnight screening makes it highly likely you’ll be pelted with rice and leave soaking wet— making this film the first (and possibly only) interactive movie.

But just how Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show went from British stage musical to cinematic sideshow to

international cultural icon is an unlikely mystery to many, but it did.

Here are a few theories as to why the RHPS is still cool today:

Fearless depiction of alternative lifestyles

The Rocky Horror Picture Show above anything else is cheeky expression of sexual freedom mixed into a cocktail of horror, sci-fi and B-movie comedy.

Riding the wave of the already in-progress sexual revolution, RHPS challenged the notion of monogamy and the institution of marriage notably when the newly engaged Brad Majors and Janet Weiss both end up being seduced by Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

It also celebrates rebellion against societal mores with an in-your-face verve that was new and that Americans, having always been a rebellious lot, naturally gravitate toward.

Nowadays, the “Sweet Transvestite” from Transsexual, Transylvania, as Dr. Frank-N-Furter is known, barely elicits a yawn but back in 1975 when RHPS was released, LGBT lifestyles were still largely unacceptable both on and off screen despite activism throughout large cities across the U.S.

The connection to pop music, art and theater

It’s often a matter of timing when art clicks on a large scale and RHPS is no exception.

One thing RHPS had going for it is that during the mid 1970s, Glam rock, Punk rock and Disco were all vying for the attention of countless fabulous nobodies packing American nightclubs and concert halls.

Whether RHPS was the vanguard or merely emulated pop culture is not as relevant as its success at tapping into the of-the-moment vibe notably in the areas of costume design, soundtrack and graphic arts.

At the time, the gender-bending S&M outfit worn by Dr. Frank-N-Furter and the striptease ensemble gracing Columbia and Magenta were considered risqué and daring.

Today, recording artists like Britney Spears and Rihanna borrow heavily from Rocky’s closet while companies like Party City routinely sell Rocky-inspired costumes on the Web.

Likewise, Riff-Raff’s austere butler uniform became the costume de rigueur for countless ghouls in movies like Phantasm (1979) and others that followed.

The garish art direction seen in RHPSshares an uncanny similarity with graphic art designs employed by groups like the Rolling Stones.

     “Some Girls,” EMI,Virgin, Rolling Stones Records

The Stones’ red lips graphic, the Warholesque packaging seen the in the Stones “Some Girls” album and the jacket of The Rocky Horror Picture Show LP bear a striking resemblance to one another.

The stage version of RHPS (which preceded the movie) was one of several rock-inspired musicals that dominated the Broadway stage back in the 1970s.

Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell along with The Rocky Horror Show would enjoy great box office success along with later productions like the hugely successful A Chorus Line, Raisin, Dreamgirls and The Wiz.

Original soundtrack,Rhino Records

It was well cast

More than anything else, Rocky springboarded the acting careers of cast members Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Meatloaf.

After his breakthrough role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Curry went on to play Pennywise the Dancing Clown (seemingly using the same makeup artist) in Stephen King’s It and later the less believable Dr. Petrov in The Hunt for Red October.

Sarandon’s performance as the milquetoast Janet Weiss would later seem like a practice run compared to her Oscar-winning performance in Dead Man Walking which was in stark contrast to her vamp-like roles in The Hunger, The Witches of Eastwick and Thelma & Louise.

Barry Bostwick parlayed his role as the wuss-like Brad Majors into a part in Weekend at Bernie’s II and a glut of TV roles most recently as Tim Stanwick on Fox TV’s Glee.

And before finding success from “Bat Out of Hell” (and threatening to beat the
crap out of Gary Busey on season 11 of  The Apprentice), Meatloaf  portrayed the forgettable delivery boy Eddie who (like the actor’s moniker suggests) gets served up as the main course of a dinner party hosted by Dr. Frank-N-Furter.

“Don’t be upset,” Frank-N-Furter quips. “It was a mercy killing. He had a
certain naive charm but no muscles.”

That’s what Gary Busey said.

But more importantly, she would go on to open the highly successful New York City nightclub Nell’s which was a huge hit with the model crowd during the 1990s.

It’s got a huge recyclable fan base

No other film encourages fans to bring their own props to showings like RHPS does.

Fans typically show up at the theater (whether it’s allowed or not) with rice, squirt guns, rubber gloves and confetti among other things.

Without this huge, ravenous fan base that seemingly transcends generations, RHPS would no doubt be unable to continue the long-distance run it’s enjoyed for decades.

Said supply of ravenous fans is largely supported by the innumerable fan sites found on the Web.

One such site, http://www.rockyhorror.com, recently listed some 84 venues worldwide where RHPS is screened.

With that volume of free advertising, it’s no wonder why RHPS keeps breathing long after its presumed shelf life.

It’s got memorable songs

Audiences love musicals mainly for the memorable songs that with the right luck often become American classics.

“The Sound of Music” and “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music immediately come to mind.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is no different.

Songs like “The Time Warp,” “Fanfare/Don’t Dream It” and “Sweet Transvestite” put RHPS on the map and kept it there but like many musicals, it has its share of bombs that make you want to go outside for a cigarette break.

“Dammit Janet,” “Over at the Frankenstein Place” and “Planet,Schmanet, Janet” easily come to mind as songs that would like find a better reception on Sesame Street than on the silver screen.

Likewise, songs like “Eddie” have a cool 1950s rock sensibility but still don’t
seem to fit into the rest RHPS glam 1970s soundtrack.

“Time Warp” though cracked the top 50 of Billboard 200 back in 1978.

But above all the other cultural references, Rocky Horror really delivers an
accurate snapshot of what was “happening” in America back then—at
least in the big cities.

Punk, Glam, Disco and the fashion trends that come with them are all represented in RHPS.

Still, what really makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show cool is that it’s a unique experiment of sorts which encourages audience participation in a way that has never been duplicated since and probably never will.—Steve Santiago

Panic in the streets

"A Town Called Panic" 2009, La Parti Production, Made in Productions, Mélusine Productions, Beast Productions, Gebeka Films,

The past few years have witnessed a resurgence of decent stop-motion animated films that are slowly but surely reintroducing the genre to audiences who may recall classics like Art Clokey’s “Gumby” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” but not much else.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the iconic “Gumby” (which for decades provided hung-over college students with fodder for papers on pop culture) and “Rudolph” (really an early PSA on dealing with bullies and marginalization) but they both needed a dusting off.

Enter “Panique au Village” or “A Town Called Panic,” an out-of-competition selection screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Directed and animated by the Belgian team of Stéphane Aubier  and Vincent Patar, the labor-intensive, French-language film clocks in at 76 minutes and utilized over 1,500 plastic toy figures over a 260-day production period.

The plot of “Panic” is relatively simple yet refreshingly twisted:

Cowboy (Coboy) and Indian (Indien) realize they forgot fellow roommate Horse’s (Cheval) birthday, so instead of buying a practical gift like a saddle, they decide to build him a barbeque grill from scratch.

When the Bert-and-Ernie-like roommates attempt to order the bricks online, they leave a coffee cup on top of the keyboard zero key and mistakenly order 50 million bricks instead of the 50 bricks the project requires.

Thus, the panic ensues—a chain of events that can only simultaneously be called absurdly surreal and knee-slapping funny.

Cowboy and Indian complete the barbeque in time to celebrate Horse’s birthday but can’t figure out what to do with the rest of the bricks so thinking Horse won’t notice, they stack the bricks on top of the house– which of course results in the whole place collapsing.

Each day they rebuild the house and each night the walls are stolen by mischievous aquatic creatures called Atlanteans who occupy a parallel universe inside a pond owned by a perpetually agitated farmer named Steven.

When the trio discover the Atlanteans stealing the walls of their house, a chase ensues during which the three heroes get chased by an angry bear, fall down a hole to the center of the earth, get trapped inside a giant snowball-throwing penguin and eventually confront the thieving sea creatures but not before escaping a school of angry barracudas.

Rounding out the frantic village people are : Jeanine (Steven’s wife), Policeman, Madame Longray (a music teacher and Horse’s love interest) and an assortment of barnyard animals.

“Panic” was originally developed as a 20-episode series for French and Belgian television in 2003 but the idea of using animated, cheap plastic toys first came to the creators during the 1980s when the directors were art students in Belgium.

By employing a frenetic, Gumbyesque editing style and what the creators describe as character vocalizations “filled with laughing gas,” “Panic” evokes a filmic quality more commonly associated with auteurs like Luis Buñel and Jean Cocteau yet it is stylistically 21st century.

And although the TV series enjoys a cult following in Europe, Shrekkies and Pixar followers across the pond may not warm up to a film like “Panic” simply because there simply is a lot crazy stuff going that does not employ a linear narrative but then again that’s where the real beauty (and fun) of this film actually lies. —Steve Santiago