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Screen Scene

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Parent Issue
Month
July
Year
1997
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held By
Agenda Publications
OCR Text

SCREEN SCENE

By John Carlos Cantu

Editor's Note: The films reviewed in this month's
column have all been produced by resident Ann
Arbor filmmakers. These films are available for
viewing at no charge (with I.D.) at Liberty Street
Video. Liberty Street Video's manager, Laura
Abraham, says they will gladly add other locally
produced films to their "Local Filmmakers"
department. For more information, call 663-3121.

THANKSGIVING WITH JAKE
[1996. Directed by Dave Chappell. Cast:
Stoney Burke and Shakey Jake Woods.
Ann Arbor Community Access Channel
9. 30 mins.]

Truth be known, if Ann Arbor had to choose a holiday meal with anyone in town--including mayors, sports coaches, university presidents, and others of that social ilk--there's not much question who'd be at the top of the short order list.

Now through the courtesy of Stoney Burke's fabled cable access program, Stoney Talks TV, two of Tree Town's most gone of gonzo warriors are available for dining with Ann Arbor--Thanksgiving-style.

Stoney Burke interviewing Shakey Jake Woods has more than a lot of potential going for it. We're not talking Martin and Lewis, here. Nor Clinton and Dole, for that matter. No, this has more sizzle than King Kong vs. Godzilla.

Jake, Ann Arbor's resident street philosopher and bluesman extraordinaire, is the perfect guest for Burke's incisive guerrilla-styled reporting. In fact, the best thing about this priceless documentary of future local folklore is Burke's surprisingly low-keyed handling of the ever-volatile Woods.

For Jake -- who comes across here as a dynamic blend of 4/4 superstar and Dear Abby-- is enough of a personality to hold any audience's attention. And Burke allows Jake the crucial space he needs to hand out all-over while smoothly manning the community-access call-in phone lines for the many callers who prostrate themselves with fervent abandon at Jake's feet for advice from Ann Arbor's hardest working singer/songwriter.

Serenading his television audience with original riffs (some cooked up on the spot) and a select blend of traditional cover tunes, Jake takes the time out of his busy schedule to set Ann Arbor's younger and older folks straight on what ails their lives.

In their quite earnest take on the meaning of Thanksgiving charity--and, more crucially, why we should enjoy it--Shakey Jake Woods and Stoney Burke both reaffirm the meaning of the true holiday spirit.

You, too, will walk away singing the graces of Thanksgiving with Jake after spending a little off-season turkey time with this dynamic duo shaking down the tree during America's most privileged national time-out.

PLAY THE MUSE
[1996. Directed by Jonathan Appel. Cast:
Brian Falkner, Nona Bennett, Natalie
Peterson. A Tiger Panda Film. 70 mins.]

Jonathan Appel's quadruple threat as writer, producer, director, cinematographer of Play the Muse is perhaps 20 minutes short by feature film standards. But this brevity is compensated by the command of his writing. As unrelenting as a young Ingmar Bergman, Appel's feature film debut dissects his character's psyches with nearly the precision of the all-time master of angst.

Middle-aged Russian pianist Gregor Olvan (Brian Falkner) has come stateside to teach music to the students of a high profile American conservatory. He's a bit conflicted, however, about the differences in values he finds in his students. He stresses old-fashioned discipline and they prefer unrestrained innovation.

Whiling his time with a vodka bottle, Olvan finds himself in the midst of an unexpected love triangle when his most talented student, Kathryn (Natalie Peterson), essentially seduces him to the tune of Chopin. And when his wife, Natasha (Nona Bennett) catches up with the two-timing maestro, she abruptly leaves to return home to the Motherland. Our last sight of Olvan has him walking from behind the curtain of a recital hall to his audience's warm applause.

Appel's story is neatly drawn. Indeed, perhaps a bit too neatly drawn for the film's brief running time. His character's motivations -- particularly Olvan's -- are sometimes too compressed to allow for these emotions to be played out persuasively.

On the other hand, Appel has a distinct flair for dialogue. His characters speak with an authenticity that compensated for the film's brevity. Once the film's story is established, Appel's verbal interactions sustain the narrative. And the actors dig into their material for its psychological worth.

Any film concerned with music has a special obligation to keep its soundtrack pristine. Play the Muse has an excellent score written and performed by Joseph Mancuso with additional Russian song and music by Jade. Between these composition and the Chopin sampling, the film keeps up a lively mix of sound and voice.

That old chestnut of the mentor-student relationship gets another workout in Play the Muse, but Appel's use of this melodramatic narrative isn't as much of a cliche as might be expected. His depiction of the disintegration of Olvan's relationship with both his wife and student is particularly sensitive.

If the film seems vaguely forced, it's probably because it is somewhat forced. A more leisurely clip would have allowed for more character development and the additional sequences would have allowed for a deeper psychological resonance. But given its brief running time, Appel and his crew work a fine variation on the sort of emotional torment that's kept art cinema busy since the beginning of sound.

RITUALS
[1995. Directed by John Manoogian. Cast:
F.H. Hess. Chromalum Productions. 26 mins.

Scramble Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe with Chris Marker's Le Jete and Chantal Ackerman's Jeanne Dielman, and you'll come close -- but only close -- to approximating the seven-day ordeal depicted in John Manoogian's Rituals.

F.H. Hess solos as "the Man" in this nightmarish short feature. The sole survivor of a near-total environmental catastrophe that's driven what little remains of life underground, the Man lives in a depressingly routinized world of run down machinery on the verge of collapse. He also spends his waking hours foraging aimlessly above ground--eating his meals from the meager remaining stock of his canned goods--and crafting an arsenal of bullets for the single gun shot that will ultimately take him out of his misery.

That's pretty heavy going for a half-hour featurette.

Fortunately, Manoogian and Hess keep the action moving briskly. The otherworldly horror of the Man's hovel--amazingly crafted from Andover College's art department ceramics storage room-- would be enough to keep anyone on edge. And the poor guy even has to sleep without changing his omnipresent military-style uniform.

Likewise, Manoogian's use of 8 mm videotape guarantees a visual distortion that reinforces the hypnotic drone of Albert Ricci's synthesized musical score. The result of this garish cinematography is a high-lit nausea that ably assists the film's omnipresent crunch of a soundtrack.

The premise is, of course, one of those staples of 1950's science fiction. But it's unlikely that any of these earlier stories were as pessimistic about man's future survival as Rituals depicts the end of the world. And if the film has a particularly poignant quality, it lies in its merciless depiction of man's last cosmic whimper.

Not so much unremittingly despairing as much as relentlessly foreboding, Rituals crafts a few existential last rites of its own. The film's disintegration vividly captures the horror of such a reality. True to his topic, Manoogian films the last stand of the human race with unflinching verisimilitude. 

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