Screenhead

America’s first National Park, Yellowstone, is one of the most spectacular wildernesses on Earth and home to some of the richest wildlife beyond the plains of Africa.  Yellowstone: Battle for Life reveals the beauty and struggles of this amazing natural treasure. Every family and teacher must own the documentary. It’s for nature enthusiasts everywhere. The release contains three hour-long episodes that encompass nearly an entire year at Yellowstone National Park, as well as 30 minutes of behind-the-scenes special features. 

I was amazed at the detail and coverage of winter in Yellowstone. The documentary was such an educational and entertaining experience for me and my family. We watched how animals survive in the below freezing weather. Breathtaking fly-overs while narrator Peter Firth explains the paradox of being the home of world’s largest geothermal formation while also being one of the coldest places in North America. 

My daughter was captivated during the coverage of summer in Yellowstone. She learned about the humming bird that migrates every year to Yellowstone from Mexico. If a snow storm kills off the brilliant flowers, the humming bird get it’s nectar from, no problem the bird sucks the tree sap.  The humming birds lay and raise their young, and then head back to Mexico for 6 months before returning the Yellowstone.

Okay, so people weren’t too enthused by the Screenhead Film Festival’s big prize giveaway (it was ten DVDs, man!  That’s got a retail value of like two, maybe three hundred bucks!), but I’ve got something here that might put some fire in your belly.

It’s the Indieroar Film Festival, and I just got word of it from director Alan Rowe Kelly.  Top prize?  Five THOUSAND dollars.

Plus, you’ll also get some film editing software with that.  And if that isn’t enough, there are also second and third prizes too, a thousand bucks a crack.  Entries are being accepted in five categories: horror, drama, comedy, animation and documentary, and each entry must be UNDER twenty five minutes in length.

The public will vote on the gathered films, and winnow down the entries to the top twenty five in each category, the winners of which will be decided by a jury.

So if you’re a short film maker and you’re up for a shot at five grand, grab your camcorder and get to shooting.  Deadline for entry is January 15th, 2010.

It’s extraordinarily difficult to write a review of a movie like The Fourth Kind because it’s not really a movie so much as it is an agenda.

Clearly, someone desperately wants us to believe that what we’re seeing is actually really really REALLY REAL, and won’t be satisfied until, my guess is, we start pestering our Congress critters for answers.  I’m not sure.  Because I’ve never left a movie so utterly confused, and I’ve seen David Croenenburg movies.

This one follows Dr. Abigail Emily Tyler, who is played by Milla Jovovich, who actually TELLS us that’s what she’ll be doing in the beginning of the movie.  And we’ll be following her around as she conducts a sleep disorder study on the people of Nome, Alaska.  Now, Nome is downright infamous for being hard to reach, but apparently it’s also got a serious missing persons problem, and it’s somehow become the FBI travel destination of choice, garnering over two thousand official visits when neighbor Anchorage, who has something like seventy times the population, rates only about three hundred visits in that same time frame.

Now, it’s hard to tell at first glance just how much of this is real and how much of it so utterly fake as to be a complete pantload, because the movie is trying so very desperately hard to convince us that EVERYTHING WE SEE IS HAPPENING FOR REALS, YO, by virtue of running split screen so often I thought I was watching 24.  They’ll do two splits and three splits and four splits and four splits with rotating frames.  It got to the point where I wondered, is this a movie or a Final Cut Pro demo?  And they’ll run, almost ad nauseum, “real footage” alongside footage of the actors, to try and cement that belief.

I’ll freely admit that this is some creepy stuff–when that guy started levitating I got a little freaked out, and Abigail Tyler “herself” under hypnosis was a cold chill up my spine but do I believe this actually went down?  No.

See, one great line from the movie that manages to describe the movie in its entirety is where one of the “patients” is muttering that he’s okay, and “Dr. Tyler” swings in with “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”  And that’s exactly what I thought of this movie.  Yes, okay, you’re going to RELENTLESSLY show me this “real footage” and insist, as loudly and vociferously as possible that it’s real, and frankly, I kind of doubt it.

Folks, this has allegedly been going on since the year 2000.  But somehow it took almost TEN YEARS for someone to exploit it?  Come ON.  We’re talking about a Hollywood scene so desperate that TWO GARFIELD MOVIES looked like a good idea but we’ve got allegedly actual footage of a woman shrieking that she’s god in SUMERIAN and NO ONE’S ran with that ball yet?

The Screenhead Ten Scale joins me in a dismissive back of hand “bah” to this creepy but horrendously disjointed fright fest and acknowledges that the idea is pretty scary but forces my suspension of disbelief engines to glow white hot and give off an ominous whining noise.  Thus, it hands this incredulous horror romp a five out of ten for being creepy yet not even vaguely credible.

Despite social websites such as wikipedia becoming instututions for those in search of knowledge, the film industry hasn’t found a way of utilising this method for film-making. The best example so far has been Voices of Iraq, the 2004 documentary featuring footage of the public of the world’s most dangerous country shot by themselves. It was  fascinating project that provided the world with a perspective that was virtually unavailable until then. However, this year sees the release of another wikipedia-inspired documentary, albeit this time in a very different genre.

All Tomorrow’s Parties may be a classic Velvet Underground song, but it is also an alternative music festival that originated in the UK (since then it has spread to the US, Australia, and Spain, for special occasions). Hosted in an economy holiday camp, each festival has a famous curator who picks all of the other acts, making it a 3-day live mix-tape. Previous curators have included Simpsons curator Matt Groening, actor Vincent Gallo, and acts such as Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Mogwai, and Portishead. Across the years roadies, fans, and organisers have been filming performances, mostly for personal use, but now that footage has gone to a much better use. All Tomorrow’s Parties is a documentary about the festival, a collage of iconic performances and amusing moments across the festival’s 10 years, including some interviews that will prove fascinating for anyone interested in alternative music.

Kicking off with a live performances of the thundering Battles song Atlas, the doc cuts between performances, the activities of the fans at and outside the gigs, and also archive footage of the holiday site back in its heyday, all with a frenzied pace. The connection is the notion of social gathering. Today the holiday sites of the festival are an opportunity to bring together a community of people who look beyond the mainstream for their music and entertainment. And the documentary manages to catch a glimpse of the spirit of the festival’s community with many shots of its fans and their escapades (from getting drunk to dancing, to waxing lyrical about society). It also provides some magic moments, such as semingly impomptu performances from artists outside their cabin accommodation or on the site’s beach. Singer-songwriter Daniel Johnston sits on the grass playing an acoustic set to anyone walking by, indie-crooners Grizzly Bear harmonise on the beach at night, and hardcore noise duo Lightning Bolt deliver an intense set (that gets complaints from the resident neighbours) outside of the organiser’s cabin. All of these moments combine to offer a real sense of not only what this festival provides, but any modern music festival. And even though it’s a shame that we don’t get to see any songs performed in their entirety, All Tomorrow’s Parties is a perfect document for fans of alt-rock, indie, electronic, or anything outside of the kind of drivel we hear in American Idol.

The documentary will be available to download on the official website from next week.

I have to admit, some of the most interesting movies I get copies of to review are the documentaries.  Strange little pieces about strange little things, like the entire career of H.P. Lovecraft.  And today, I’m bringing out a documentary of the kind the History Channel would probably love–War Dogs of the Pacific.

They mean it literally, you see–War Dogs of the Pacific is all about the dogs who fought in the Pacific theater in World War II.   They were trained pretty extensively, and they served a whole host of roles in the war, including guard duty, ferreting out enemy positions, sensing enemy movement, and even outright combat. See, back in the last days of World War II, the Pacific was about the only game in town left.  And the Japanese had developed an especial talent for hiding and attacking from ambush, so the idea came to use dogs to track hiding places.  And boy, did it ever work.

This movie is spectacularly informative, and will almost certainly tell you at least something new about World War II and about the role that dogs played in this war.  It’s a downright amazing role, too–considering that people back then handed over their pet dogs to serve in the war, in some cases for good,  is just plain old amazing.

Of course, getting past the sheer awesomeness of the idea, you’re left with a pretty good if somewhat short documentary–this has a runtime of about forty five minutes.  But it’s a pretty sweet forty five minutes, especially if you love documentaries or war movies.

The Screenhead Ten Scale loves this movie, but it realizes its tastes are a little unique, and thus hands War Dogs of the Pacific an eight out of ten for giving us all an excellent, if esoteric, view of World War II.

Playing for a Change: Peace Through Music is an award winning documentary that brings music to the heart of the world.

With its stirring call for reconciliation and cross-cultural unification, the global music collaboration/multi-media project, Playing For Change has struck a deep and powerful chord world-wide. “Playing For Change is an exploration into the human spirit,” stated founder and film co-director/producer Mark Johnson. “It demonstrates the power of music to unite us as a human race.” “The project brings an insight into humanity,“ adds co-director Jonathan Walls. “It’s my wish that audiences around the world absorb this musical essence and become inspired to participate and celebrate its manifestation.”

I’ve enjoyed the CD/DVD and now the documentary brings the whole message together as a complete thought, bring peace to the world.

You can win Playing for Change: Peace Through Music DVD by posting your name now and we will pick the winner Saturday,  November 21, 2009.

There’s absolutely no chance that Michael Jackson’s final movie This Is It will win an Oscar for Best Documentary.

I’m sorry, but that’s just the case.  It was released too late in the year to be considered–at least this year.  But it’s not too late, however, for it to take other honors.  It could easily take the Academy Award for Best Picture, even if it has some pretty stiff competition in that department.

Most years, Academy Award for Best Picture is seldom a foregone conclusion even at the best of times.  But let’s face it…this is a wholly different animal.  This is a movie about the last concert ever that never actually happened but was in the process of doing so of one of the biggest entertainers of the twentieth century.

That and the Best Picture slate has been recently expanded to TEN competitors rather than five, so there’s some extra room on the field, a slot that This Is It could easily find itself in.

Can This Is It win?  Well, that’s not clear.  Especially since NONE of the slots have been filled yet.  But is there every possibility?  I’d say yes.

It’s hard to talk about a movie like March of the Penguins.  It’s harder still to talk about it without narrating it in your head in a voice that sounds just like Morgan Freeman’s.

And if you can read these paragraphs without hearing Morgan Freeman, well, then you’re  a stronger one than I am.

March of the Penguins, and its attendant documentary, On The Wings of Penguins (both of which are in the box set) are great looks at penguins.  One deals with penguins in the arctic, while the other deals with African penguins.  Needless to say, there are a whole lot of differences between the two, and you’ll learn all about them right here.

If you’re considering Christmas gifts for younger children, then this package might be pretty good for them.  Sure, you’ll have to fend off some unpleasant questions after a couple penguins and chicks die, but the sheer amount of information they’ll get out of it is fantastic.  Plus, there’s some penguin postcards and a little plushie penguin in the package, making this a pretty decent value for the price.

If your penguin knowledge consists primarily of anything you learned from Bloom County, then chances are you’ll learn a whole lot here, and Morgan Freeman’s expert narration keeps it fairly light and fun.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands this sharply rich and pleasant documentary series a nine out of ten.  Neither movie by itself really earns that high a mark, but considering the incredible value of the two-movie box set, it’s worth a little bump.

Apparently the whole Rock Band / Guitar Hero / I think I’m a real musician because I got three stars on a video game trend is carrying on wildly unabated and is now producing movies.

Sure, South Park went for Guitar Hero a couple seasons back or so, but now, we’re getting movies out of it.  Fake musicians are becoming part of the movie landscape, and I’m horrified.

First off, we’ve got Adventures of Power, which is all about–get this–AIR DRUMMING.  Some guy who works in a mine with his dad packs up and goes to New Jersey to compete in an air drumming tournament.  I’ve got the trailer below just in case you doubt me.

Now that I’ve reinforced my credibility by showing you the trailer, I can also point you toward one that’s so new it doesn’t have a trailer I can find yet–Air Guitar: The Movie.  This is about the, and frankly, this’ll kill you–world of competitive air guitar.

I’m horrified.  I’m horrified that Hollywood clearly thinks so little of us that these are actually considered commercially viable.