Florida Film Festival 2013 movie review: ‘Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp’

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Robert Beck a.k.a. Iceberg Slim, was a pimp turned bestselling author who used his ignoble lifestyle and career choices to help propel himself out of that same lifestyle, and at the same time provided a new, fresh, and most importantly, real voice to the landscape of Black authors of the era. According to the documentary “Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp,” this lifelong criminal and defiler of women and robber of people in general became one of the most influential and important Black authors ever. And after watching the documentary and listening to the people who share these views, it is kind of hard to argue against this point.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 6 – ‘The Prestige’

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The James Tait Black Memorial Prize winning and World Fantasy Award winning novel “The Prestige” is a fascinating story of a pair of turn-of-the-century magicians who develop an intense personal and professional rivalry, sabotaging each other’s performances and lives until tragedy costs them both in ways neither could imagine. Written as a pair of journals (one by each magician) and framed by a modern-day story involving the magicians descendants, The Prestige has its own set of literary illusions and tricks that seek to hide it’s admittedly dull secrets in plain sight.

Brilliantly written and employed, these tricks of the written word would simply not work cinematically. Only so much drama can be derived from scenes of fellas sitting around reading each other’s diaries. Such is the perils of literary adaptation, as things that work on the page and in the theater of the mind would not work on the most silver of screens.Continue Reading …

Florida Film Festival 2013 movie review: ‘SOMM’

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“SOMM” is a documentary about four young gentlemen all in the midst of attempting to pass the Master Sommelier’s Exam, a test established in the 1960s and which only about 200 people have ever passed, a test so hard that people have lost years of their lives to the devotion of all things wine just so they can have a dream of passing it. And if they can pass it, oh boy, do those doors of opportunity swing wide open for a certified Master Sommelier.

“SOMM” is an interesting combination of a mostly no-frills, just meat and potatoes documentary, and a much flashier, artier doc. It’s all footage of these four people, all in different places in their lives, all with very different personalities, all trying to help each other do the same thing, which involves lots of studying and wine tasting and the occasional shit talking, mixed with interviews of copious amounts of people involved in the wine industry, and this is all wrapped in a warm blanket of art, as we are treated to dreamy, slow-motion photography and a wonderful, jazzy cum classical score. I guess it makes plenty of sense to couple wine with jazz. They seem to go hand in hand.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 4/8/13 – ‘Kumare’

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“Kumare” is an excellent documentary about a man who sets out to start his own sham religion centered around yoga and meditation in an effort to show how people can be duped by such charlatans, only to find out that maybe these little sham religious leaders and religion in general aren’t all bad.

From my original review from my Florida Film Festival 2012 coverage:

“Fortunately, Vikram’s motives are far less sinister than most other frauds – as Kumaré, his experiment turns into a real lesson to give people, a lesson about how their search for a spiritual leader and guru should lead back to within themselves. And Kumaré is up front with this, telling people over and over that he is a fake and he is wearing a disguise and that he is just trying to help these people find the guru within themselves, but of course people only hear what they want to hear – so when they hear Kumaré saying he is a faker and wearing a disguise, they think he is speaking metaphorically and that he is being all deep and spiritual about his role, when in reality it was Vikram the whole time telling them the truth.”

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#13 – Slow Lightning

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In episode 13 of Cinema Crespodiso, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by Angel Rivera from the hit new podcast “SBK LIVE with Kevin, Matt and Angel,” and the three of them talk all things movies, ranging from the passing of the late, great Roger Ebert, to documentaries, to new movies in theaters like Evil Dead and on DVD like Hyde Park on Hudson, and they also get into their favorite horror movies and characters, their guilty pleasures in cinema, and they discuss the new trailer for the movie Only God Forgives. The fellas also play a new game called “Guess The Grosses” and Angel participates in the slowest Lightning Round on record, so check out all the free entertainment and enjoy the mad ramblings of the Crespodiso!

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Book-to-film adaptations: 5 – ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’

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When discussing the best book-to-film adaptations, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” stands out as a success in wrangling a wild narrative and boiling it down to a workable movie, especially because the wrangling was done by a director with a history of wild and unhinged films (several of which contain their own decidedly non-wrangled narratives). Then again, in hindsight, it seems that maybe this movie could have only happened this way.

Netflix pick for 4/1/13 – ‘The Warriors’

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I just recently republished my original book-to-film adaptation analysis of the great “The Warriors,” when lo and behold, on the most recent episode of Cinema Crespodiso (available here), the completely random Netflix Pick of the Week turned out to be “The Warriors!” So here we go!

From 1979, “The Warriors” is about a a Coney Island street gang getting framed for the murder of the biggest gang leader in all of New York City, and having to fight their way back home through about half a dozen other gangs, varying in numbers, style and competency. Walter Hill is a tough guy director, often making movies about tough guys having to do tough things or at least act tough, movies like “Southern Comfort” and “48 Hrs” and the recent “Bullet to the Head.” So while this movie does has a slightly cartoony feel thanks to some of the gangs’ outfits (a cartoony effect Hill claimed was intentional, stating that he wanted to treat this movie like a comic book story), it is still pretty gritty and intense at times, thanks in large part to being filmed not only on the streets of New York City, but late 1970s New York City, which is completely different from the city today, as it exuded menace and danger at every lonely street corner and in every darkened doorway.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 4 – ‘Dreamcatcher’

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If you’re playing along at home, you’ll notice that this series is a back and forth type of deal. No Country for Old Men was a best of, I Am Legend was a worst of and most recently, The Warriors was a best of installment. To keep the pendulum going, entry four brings us back to the worst of side, where we find ourselves staring into the gaping maw of Evil Otto himself…Dreamcatcher.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations: 3 – ‘The Warriors’

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Installment one was a “best” and installment two was a “worst.” So here’s another example of one of the best: Walter Hill’s The Warriors is an adaptation of Jewish-American writer Sol Yurick’s novel of the same name. Walter Hill, as we already know, makes manly movies about manly men. And The Warriors is populated with manly gang members, as well as younger kids trying to be men by being in gangs. Importantly, it must be noted that this write up of The Warriors will be of the original film and not the recent “Ultimate Director’s Cut DVD,” which itself (coupled with the director’s cut of Donnie Darko) is an example of a director not realizing what makes their film great. But that’s a completely different article. So with that out of the way…Continue Reading …